Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam
The
powerful Indonesian conservative and nationalist group that operates madrassahs
or religious seminaries across the archipelago has taken on the ambitious task
of reintroducing ijtihad or legal interpretation to Islam as it stands to
enhance its political clout with its spiritual leader, Ma’ruf Amin, slated to
become vice president as the running mate of incumbent President Joko Widodo in
elections scheduled for next April.
From
Islamic point of view men and women are a single entity as a woman was created
out of a man’s rib and then, humanity was created with combination of a man and
woman. They are two equal parts of a single unit, which is differentiated into
nations and tribes only for the sake of recognition and nothing else. In the
sight of Allah, honour is not related to color creed or gender; it is the
righteousness of a person which elevates a person in hereafter......
Amal Al-Sibai
At
the time when Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) had migrated to Madinah and
many people were entering the folds of Islam, Heraclius was the Emperor of the
Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Heraclius heard of the Prophet from Arabia,
and he wanted to collect more information about this Prophet. At the time, Aby
Sufyan was still not Muslim. Abu Sufyan’s name was Sakhr bin Harb and he was a
prominent leader of Quraish in Makkah. Abu Sufyan was powerful, influential,
and wealthy. He led business caravans for trade between Makkah and the area of
Syria and Palestine. ...
Shiv Visvanathan
It is the third finding which is devastating to
swallow. Intergenerational mobility has been negligible for Muslims. It is as
if democracy in an electoral sense has worked more for OBCs and SC/STs but not
for Muslims. Neither liberalisation nor democracy has offered much to Muslims
in terms of opportunity....
Majid Rafizadeh
There are
currently, around the world, atrocities being committed every moment of every
day in the name of Islam; your goal should not be to be politically correct or
fiercely protect this religion, but to heal its wounded and offer support to
those that want to eliminate the abuses. Glossing over the often unspeakable
acts to which sharia can lead will only empower those individuals who have
malevolent intentions, while subjugating the most vulnerable to their
cruelty....
The Quran
doesn’t settle issues; it unsettles our complacency and asks us to think over
issues, have a consultation or dialogue on the same and always consider the
best amongst knowledgeable. In fact the Quran as discourse invites us to have a sort of Socratic
dialogue with ourselves/others so that what is to be truly honoured or is just
or beautiful comes to focus. We usually fail to notice why the Word or
Revelation necessarily means renouncing the very desire to interpret on our
part. A look at the theory of Revelation across religions clarifies the key
question so that we don’t hanker after meanings but prepare for receiving all
meanings that there are or become receptive to that which is – pre-linguistic
suchness – and one transcends all interpretative framing.....
Ahmad Raza
Qawwali/Sama
is yet more proof of the power of cultural transmission of spirituality and
ethical life by means of organised listening. Rauscher and colleagues have
reported in Neuroscience Letters that listening to Mozart’s music enhances
spatial-temporal reasoning by the brain. Voisin, for example has discovered in
his research that listening in silence activates auditory areas in brain.
According to French psychologist Jean Piaget, active listening plays a basic
role in the construction of our mental models of reality and knowledge....
As a matter of
fact, Islamic dogmatism, orthodoxy and fundamentalism as subscribed to by many
Muslim scholars, politicians, preachers and disciples of today are a fallacy
bringing about a fixated culture in society. The absence of reasoning and
inquiry has stagnated their minds and this has become an anathema to their progress.
Preachers delving into this dogmatic approach to Islam should not be allowed to
spread their influence, as this will muddle Muslim minds more and cause them to
return to the obscure ages of the past....
For too long,
Muslims have been imprisoned by the idea that their Present is simply the
West’s Past, and that their Future can only lead to the West’s Present. To
actually fulfil Tahtawi’s real vision, we must tap into the deep, rich bodies
of knowledge produced by Muslims over the centuries, and unchain ourselves from
Western hegemonising categories of understanding. This is how we can produce a
fresh and liberating engagement with Western traditions of knowledge....
Raza Habib Raja
I believe that
Islam has that progressive spirit within. We just need to emphasise on it, so
that we can come out of the current situation we are time-trapped in. I hope
that this debate, which has been kicked off by this act of bravery on Beevi’s
part, sets a good precedent and continues to take place. Only by debating these
issues can we move forward in the right direction. For now, good luck to Jamida
Beevi, and all the other valiant women who are supporting her!...
Pamela K. Taylor
While this may
seem like a huge departure from traditional theology and jurisprudence, the
companions of the Prophet clearly saw the Qur’an and its teachings in this
manner. For instance, Omar suspended punishments for theft mentioned in the
Qur’an during a famine. Obviously, he understood that as circumstances change,
so too should our understanding of the Qur’an. I am suggesting nothing more and
nothing less....
Aidha Saleh Albreiki
The Islam we have today, he says, is not what God intended for us in the 21st century but rather a frozen version from more than 1,000 years ago. This heritage is often backward, irrational and certainly not sacred, according to his views. He contends that even the Hadiths of Prophet Mohammed are not revelations nor sacred, and that we should follow the Quran alone. This view of Hadiths is the same as that of the Quraniyoon who, as the name suggests, limit themselves to following the Quran only. But he is not considered part of this group because he has his own wide-ranging and unconventional interpretation of the Quran....
Nesrine Malik
But how does
one stay on the right side of the fight—rightly denouncing abuses committed in
the name of Islam, such as honour killings, female genital mutilation, or the
death sentence for blasphemy and apostasy—without giving ground to those who
want to make those abuses about a religion or a people in a defining,
essentialist way? And how does one manage this without falling into the traps
of apologia or cowardice? ...
These include the doctrine of Al-Wala’ Wal Bara’, blasphemy laws, Hudood laws and hate rhetoric. This will be a tall order as the task is further compounded by the ongoing issue of sectarianism and inter- and intra-religious conflict. While some of these challenges are unsettling due to geo-political reasons, some are not insurmountable and can be moderated through creative and contextual interpretations – as seen from the other efforts discussed in trying to develop moderate Islam....
Yahya Cholil Staquf
The
recontextualisation and reform of Islamic orthodoxy is thus crucial to the
welfare of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, for it constitutes the one
indispensible prerequisite of any rational and humane solution to the
multi-dimensional crisis that has plagued the Muslim world for over a century —
which not only shows no sign of abating despite an ever-growing toll of human
lives and misery, but rather, increasingly threatens to spill over and engulf
humanity as a whole....
Many terrorists
who typically graduated from secular institutions instead of Islamic seminaries
formulated discourses entirely foreign to Islamic tradition. In other words,
their discourses have no intellectual precedent in Islamic traditions. For
instance, the idea that killing innocent people can be justified or that the
aims of a state should include establishing an Islamic caliphate -- neither have
any grounding in Islamic classical intellectual legacy....
One could well
say that the sacred texts don’t mean; they are. They are us. Since our own
being remains rather dimly available for scansion, how come sacred texts could
become available? No wonder most of the Quran is Mutashabihat that resists
meaning closure. In fact the very quest to interpret has to be ultimately given
up. One finds salvation by consenting to becoming a Question that our being
is....
Aizat Shamsuddin
Religious
leaders from all faiths, Shariah judges and community leaders – also referred
to as social influencers – must be exposed to democracy, political science, law
and human rights to understand the state policies from multiple angels and not
just from the religious perspective. And that the state's operations are
complex and reformative according to our progression in the 21st century....
Mustafa Akyol
These are the
Muslims who live in the high latitudes, where “dawn till dusk” can equal almost
the entire 24-hour day. In Reykjavik, Iceland, for example, which is now home
to nearly 1,000 Muslims, the sun will set at midnight, only to come back in
about two hours. That means the fasting time will be as long as 22 hours,
allowing for only one meal a day. No wonder this challenge has become a major
point of discussion among Muslim scholars in the past few decades...
Muslim clerics at mosques from across France were quick to respond to the “manifesto,” warning that it could inflame relations between religious communities in the European nation. Head of the Great Mosque of Bordeaux, Tareq Obrou, expressed outrage at the divisive letter, pointing out that “attributing anti-Semitism to Islam almost constitutes blasphemy, as two-thirds of the Qur'an’s prophets are Jewish". ...
Seda Demiralp
While “reform” has been a taboo in traditional Sunni Islam, there used to be some room for change within the traditional school, through the concept of “Ijtihad” (reasoning). This mechanism allowed the uncertainty and confusion that emerged during the adaptation of Islamic teaching to law in the four centuries after the emergence of Islam to be addressed. But around the 10th century the majority of Islamic scholars concluded that no issues were left that needed further clarification and the doors of Ijtihad were essentially closed....
Tehmina Kazi
This brings me to another unique feature of the critical Muslim movement: we are taking control of our own destiny, without allowing external forces to dictate the terms. For example, the recent "Happy Christmas 4ALL" Facebook campaign was an organic response to the frustration of seeing "Muslims ban Christmas" fabrications in the press. It turned into a celebration of the diverse ways in which people of all faiths and none mark the season. ....
Mustafa Akyol
Here is the key point: These terrible views were shocking to Turkey’s secularists, almost all of whom are against Erdogan. But they were also shocking to most moderate religious conservatives, many of whom vote for Erdogan. This is the case, because as polls show, hard-core Islamists who would like to see a Sharia-based Turkey — one like Saudi Arabia, where sexes are segregated and adulterers are stoned — makes up a small minority in Turkey....
Mohammad Hashim Kamali
Many purist leaders called for changing “general principles” to the “rulings (Ahkam) of Islamic Shariah,” as they argued that general principles can refer to general values such as equality and justice in a way to avoid instituting Islamic substantive law. The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruled that the state should only uphold rules that are considered apodictic with respect to both authenticity and meaning.....