Voices of Islam (230 page)

My hope is that a community marked by true love and devotion for one another would be capable of incredible transformations. That, after all, has been Islam’s legacy starting from the time of the prophets, including our own beloved Messenger of God. What a beautiful example this is for each of us to emulate, as we all seek to establish small, humane communities around us. People who are rude and uncivil to one another have no hope of transforming the world, much less themselves.

Love heals. Love transforms. That is why I have felt so strongly that progressive Muslim communities, and indeed all human communities, should be permeated by loving person-to-person relationships.

CONCLUSION

I pray that the above comments, as hard as they have been to write, will inspire some to address the present shortcomings of the progressive Muslim movement. Why bother? Simply because I believe that the ability of Muslims in North America to contribute to the grand project of Islamic reform is at stake.

I recently had a chance to spend a long day in conversation with some Christian activists who had worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of their insightful comments stayed with me: What Martin said was the same as what many Christian preachers had been saying for 100 years. What was new was that people had heard the message so many times that when a char- ismatic teacher came along, what he said simply resonated with that which they had known to be true in the innermost chambers of their hearts. Our task today is not to simply parody Martin Luther King, Jr., as much as some of us may idealize him. I believe that the best we can do at this moment in history is to work on projects large and small to establish righteous communities and just and compassionate interpretations of Islam. In time, our struggle—indeed, our
jihad
in the sense most relevant for today’s

Introduction
xxxiii

condition—will have the benefit of making its truths self-evident in the inner- most chambers of Muslim hearts.

Our struggle is both for ourselves and for our children. We have to be will- ing to live with the realization that none of us will get to live long enough to actually see the realization of a just world. But in the endeavor to bring that world about, our own lives will have achieved the dignity and meaning to which we are entitled. And we pray that our children may come to live in a world in which their dignity as Muslims, as citizens of this planet, and as human beings is engaged and acknowledged.

THE CHAPTERS IN THIS VOLUME

One of the persistent challenges facing Muslims in the modern era has been in developing a coherent methodology toward tradition. Indeed it would be fair to say that both modernists and their more conservative coreli- gionists have been guilty of selective and inconsistent appropriations of the existing traditions. Some of these issues are brought up in my discussion above. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah brilliantly examines the ramification this has had for a crucial issue, the boundaries of innovation and heresy in Islam. Mohammed Azadpur explores the most neglected of Islamic sciences in modern times, philosophy. Indeed the whole issue of the extent to which Muslims may (or rather, did indeed) connect themselves to pararevelational wisdom such as that of the Greek masters is a fascinating case for Muslims’ ability today to engage the wisdom (and perils) of modernity.

Two of the chapters in this volume, by Jamillah A. Karim and Aminah Bev- erly McCloud, address the experiences of African American Muslims. For far too long the experiences of ‘‘American Muslims’’ have been read, discussed, and mediated through the lens of first- and second-generation Muslims. This fallacy can be maintained no more. These two chapters remind us that if Mus- lim brotherhood and sisterhood are to be realized in Muslim America, a new reality must be created. Ziba Mir-Hosseini’s chapter is a powerful reminder of how the gender wars are a perennial indication of the struggles that char- acterize modern Islam. There is indeed no site more contested in the world than the bodies of Muslim women. The chapter by Scott Sirajul Haqq Kugle continues the engagement with gender issues by moving more specifi ly toward a frank, and no doubt contested, discussion of sexuality. Ebrahim Moosa continues his examination of critical thought in modern Islam by reminding readers that the working out of the challenges facing contempo- rary Muslims cannot be achieved outside of a thorough and rigorous methodology.

The last two chapters seek to break down the boundaries of the facile dichotomy of ‘‘Islam’’ versus the ‘‘West’’ in different ways. Hugh Talat Halman embarks on a fascinating discussion of the unfolding of spiritual

xxxiv
Introduction

movements in the West that are in many ways as rooted in historical Islamic tradition as they are in the post–World War II West. My culminating chapter seeks to identify the ambitions of some Muslim Neo-conservatives to live in an ‘‘us versus them’’ world, and asks us to strive for a world in which there can be a ‘‘rendezvous of victory for all.’’

NOTES

1. Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
   Three Muslim Sages
   (Delmar, New York: Caravan Books, 1964), 11.
   

2. Abdolkarim Soroush,
   Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush,
   trans. and ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21.
   

3. Omid Safi ed.,
   Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism
   

   (Oxford, U.K.: Oneworld Publications, 2003), 6.
   

4. See Leonardo Boff,
   Introducing Liberation Theology,
   trans. Clodovis Boff (Turnbridge Wells, Kent, U.K.: Burns & Oates/Search Press Ltd., 1987).
   

5. Bin Laden quotation from http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/
   docs/ 980223-fatwa.htm. Arabic original at http
   ://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/ mideast/fatw2.htm.
   

6. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin,
   The Edward Said Reader
   (New York: Vintage, 2000), 242. Said further identified ‘‘secular criticism’’ as not a movement opposed to religion, but rather as follows: ‘‘It is not practicing criticism either to validate the status quo or to join up with a priestly caste of acolytes and dogmatic metaphysicians. The realities of power and authority—as well as the resistances offered by men, women, and social movements to institutions, authorities, and orthodoxies
   .. .
   ,’’ Ibid., 223.
   

7. Omid Safi,
   Progressive Muslims,
   7–8.
   

8. Mahatma Gandhi,
   Quotes of Gandhi,
   ed. Shalu Bhalla (New Delhi, India: UBS Publishers, 1995), 25.
   

1
‌

C
REATIVITY
, I
NNOVATION
,
AND
H
ERESY IN
I
SLAM

•

Umar F. Abd-Allah

The terminology of Islamic law and theology includes words for innovation, heresy, and related concepts like hypocrisy, masked infi and apostasy. Generally, each term has its own distinct sense, but the term
bid‘a
(innova- tion/heresy)—the focal point of this chapter—is the broadest and most prob- lematic. It covers a range of overlapping meanings, allowing for confusion and misuse. The word
bid‘a
is a familiar part of everyday Muslim discourse, although it is often used with less than optimal understanding. Certain groups are addicted to the term, using it mistakenly and without discretion as a rhetorical sledgehammer to crush ideas and practices they do not like.

When
bid‘a
is used by itself without qualifying adjectives, it generally has a pejorative sense, although in traditional Islamic usage—especially when qualifi covered a wide spectrum of connotations, ranging from the highly positive to the utterly reprehensible. A sound feeling for the theological and legal implications of
bid‘a
and related concepts is as relevant for Muslims today as ever, since it constitutes a defi element in their consciousness and unquestionably affects their behavior. Sherman Jackson emphasizes the need for instilling a critical modicum of Islamic awareness in the Muslim community, which he calls ‘‘Islamic literacy.’’
1
This core understanding must be suffi to give everyday Muslims basic immunity against the incompetent pseudoscholarly opinions that occasion- ally bombard them in the name of Islam. As will be shown, Islamic literacy is consistent with the dictates of
ijtihad
(utmost intellectual inquiry), which was not just a scholarly obligation but a requirement of the lay community to pass judgment on the aptitude of scholars.

Bid‘a
connoted both innovation and heresy, and this chapter treats its asso- ciation with both phenomena. Historically, its association with theological heresy was particularly common. For those familiar with Islamic scholarship, the term
zandaqa
(atheistic heresy) readily comes to mind in the context of the Islamic conception of heresy and is also examined. But, with reference to

2
Voices of Change

heresy,
bid‘a
was more inclusive, while
zandaqa
tended to be restricted to heresies regarded as so cynical and inherently hostile to religion that, as with apostasy (
irtidad
or
ridda
), jurists censured those who held them.

BASIC TERMS

The concept of
bid‘a
was common in pre-Islamic Arab usage. The root from which the word derived is morphologically linked with a distinct but similar radical,
BD’
(the difference being between the final letter
hamza
(’) in this root and the fi al
‘ayn
(‘) in
bid‘a
).
BD’
meant ‘‘to start or begin something,’’ while the primary meaning of
bid‘a
was ‘‘to start or begin some- thing novel.’’ Among the various words directly derived from the root of
bid‘a
was the noun
Badi‘
(Originator), cited in the Qur’an as one of God’s attributions: ‘‘Originator (
Badi‘
) of the heavens and the earth’’ (Qur’an 2:117; 6:101).
2
Use of
al-Badi‘
with reference to God denoted the uniqueness of His creative act and implied that He brought the world into existence without a previously existing prototype.
3
As an adjective,
badi‘
was applied to outstanding works of human genius, especially those of great poets and other masters of the spoken and written word.
4

The term
bid‘a
was less nuanced in its pre-Islamic context than in Islamic usage. It was consistently pejorative and was employed to condemn viola- tions of tribal custom.
Bid‘a
was applied to actions and ideas that lacked iden- tifiable prototypes in custom and were unauthorized by tribal role models. It constituted a sort of tribal heresy and innovation, deviating from established norms and the ways of great forebears from the past.

The message of the Prophet Muhammad challenged the established order of Arabia and was condemned as
bid‘a.
The Prophet countered by making the opposite claim and turned the
bid‘a
controversy on its head, undercutting the allegations of his enemies. Islam was neither a heresy nor an innovation, his teaching asserted, but constituted a restoration of the legacy of Abraham, Ishmael, and the earlier Arabian Prophets (Hud and Salih), ancient ancestral traditions that the idolatrous Arab tribes had distorted over time. The ideological battle is mirrored in a Qur’anic verse commanding the Prophet to declare to his opponents: ‘‘Say [to them]: I am no novelty [
bid‘
] among [God’s] Prophet-Messengers’’ (Qur’an 46:9).
Bid‘,
the word used in this verse, is almost identical in meaning and morphology to
bid‘a.
While it clearly indicates that the Prophet’s message possessed direct continuity with ancient prophecy—a point made explicitly in other texts—it also intimated that the pagan beliefs and customs of Muhammad’s contemporaries were
bid‘a
because they lacked continuity with antiquity and had veered long ago from the best of ancient Arab ways.
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