Islam: A Diverse Tradition

Greg Gulbrandsen, former director of the Media Center of the State University of New York, writes on www.selvesandothers.org (March 17th) that having read "over fifteen books" and attended "a number of seminars" allows him to "state definitively" that "Islam is a faith of subversion and conflict." Not surprisingly, it isn’t too difficult to also find angry Muslims who, having read fifteen books or so, can state definitively that Christianity, or Judaism, or secular capitalism, are faiths based on aggression. It’s a shame that such simplistic, divisive discourse has become mainstream both east and west. (Although only in the United States and Israel is it mainstream in government).

Mr Gulbrandsen’s fifteen books have apparently made him a linguist as well as an expert on Islamic faith and practice. Attempting to demonstrate that Muslims worship a "most deceitful" God, he claims that the "original" meaning of ’makar’ is ’deceiving’, but "politically correct" readings make it ’planning’. In fact, the word could be translated in both ways, and also as ’cunning.’ Of course, the verses he quotes must be read in context. Doing so makes it clear that a logical reading is "God is above all schemers" (sura 8:30).

Mr Gulbrandsen fails to look at aspects of Islam in their textual or historical context. Like a Muslim fundamentalist, he reads Islamic texts literally and with no sensitivity to the diversity of this great tradition. At one point he refers to the Hadith as a singular "holy book." But the recorded sayings and deeds of Muhammad are disputed as well as being tied closely to their context. Hadith reports are classified according to reliabilty, and there is debate over this classification. Sunni, Shia and Ibadhi Muslims include different reports in their favoured collections. And of course there is debate over how the Hadith should be applied. The fact that the prophet wore a beard may be interpreted by one Muslim as a directive for him to do so too. For another Muslim, Muhammad’s beard is no more than interesting information about social habits in sixth century Arabia.

Mr Gulbrandsen adopts the Taliban’s position on the much contested principle of ’abrogation,’ by which tolerant Quranic verses are supposedly superceded by later, less inclusive revelations. If, as Gulbrandsen alleges, the Quran (he doesn’t tell us which verse) states that Christians and Jews in general should be converted or killed, why did the Caliph Omar guarantee the right of Christians to maintain their holy places when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem? Why did Omar tell the Christians, "Your rights and duties are the same as ours"? It is true that non-Muslims paid tax in return for exemption from service in the Muslim army, but never to the extent that the population starved, as happened, for instance, under the burden of British-imposed tax in India. It is also true that there have been shameful episodes in Muslim history when religious minorities have been maltreated, but never on the scale of, for instance, the persecution of Muslims and Jews in inquisition Spain. More characteristic of Islamic civilisation is Prince Dara Shikoh’s description of the Hindu Upanishads as a "storehouse of monotheism," early Islam’s translation of thousands of texts from Greek, Indian, Persian and Chinese sources, and the wandering Sufi mystics who understood that "every (faith) community faces a direction of its own, of which He is the focal point." (Quran sura 2:148).

Mr Gulbrandsen also writes that ’Islam’ breaks the world down into two houses, of war and peace. This distinction was made after the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims, was never watertight, and has been clearly rejected by such important scholars as Tariq Ramadan.

Simplistic thinking slides into paranoia when Mr Gulbrandsen says there is "no such thing as a fundamentalist Muslim in relation to a moderate Muslim." In his view, peaceable Muslims as well as Quran translators are being deceitfully politically correct, seeking for short term reasons to cloak their true beliefs. So ’progressive’ Muslims, from Abdelkarim Souroush to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, from Ziauddin Sardar to Amina Wadud, as well as the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims - men and women, black and white, right and left wing, traditionalist and modern - are all actually cunning little Bin Ladens.

Mr Gulbrandsen shows his ignorance most starkly when he says, "I have yet to meet a Muslim who has backed away from anything stated in the Quran." This must either be because he hasn’t met many Muslims or because he hasn’t understood the distinction made between text and interpretation. There is a diversity of views about how much of the society organised by the prophet should be imitated by Muslims living in a different context. There are many Muslims who would clearly back away from, for example, the directive in the Quran to kill married adulterers. It clearly doesn’t fit a modern context, or other humanitarian principles of Islam. And the punishment was anyway virtually impossible to implement in earlier contexts, so strict were the conditions necessary for guilt to be established.

A religious Muslim would say that the Quranic text is divine and therefore perfect, but may well accept that its interpretation depends on our state of social development. Many Muslims are literate enough in their tradition to use Quranic verses to support their right to interpretation. After its first description of heaven and hell the Quran states, "God does not disdain to propound a parable of a gnat, or of something even less than that" (sura 2:26), and the revelation repeatedly talks of parables propounded "so that you might use your reason" (57:17).

Added to this there is the famous verse, "There is no compulsion in religion" (2:256), the hadith, "Difference of opinion is a mercy," and the fact that ijtihad, the independent interpretation of legal sources, is as much an Islamic tradition as taqlid, or imitation of previous interpretation.

There are illiberal Muslims, just as there are illiberal Christians, Hindus and socialists. But there are also open-minded, freedom-loving, tolerant Muslims. They feel no animosity towards followers of other religions, although they are deeply disturbed by attacks on Muslim lands such as Palestine and Iraq. Greg Gulbrandsen writes them all off as fundamentalists. His approach is unhelpful, to say the least.

All Quran quotations are from Muhamad Asad’s excellent, non-politically correct translation "The Message of the Quran."