Muslim loyalty and belonging some reflections on the psychosocial background Abdal-Hakim Murad, January 2003

Our silence in the face of evil differs from that of secular people. For traditional theists, the sense of loss which evil conveys, of the fearful presence of a void, comes with a personal face: that of the devil. But the devil, being, in the Qurans language, weak at plotting, carries in himself the seeds of his own downfall. he very fact that we can name him is consoling, since understanding is itself a consolation. he cruellest aspect of secularity is that its refusal to name the devil elevates him to something more than a mere personalised absence. he solace of religion, no less consoling for being painful, is that it insists that when we find no words to communicate our sense that evil has come and triumphed, our silence is one of bewilderment, not despair! of hope, not of finality. he world is at present in the grip of fear. "e fear an unknown absence that hides behind the mundanity of our e#perience! perhaps ubi$uitous and confident, perhaps broken and at an end. %ymbols of human communication such as the internet and the airlines have suddenly ac$uired a double meaning as the scene for a radical failure of communication. &bove all, the fear is that of the unprecedented, as the world enters an age drastically unlike its predecessors, an age in which the religions are fragmenting into countless islands of opinion at a time when their members ' and the world ' are most insistently in need of their serene and consistent guidance. &t a time such as the present, a furqan, a discernment, between true and false religion breaks surface. (espite the endless, often superbly fruitful, differences between the great world religions, the pressure of secularity has threatened each religion with a comparable confiscation of timeless certainties, and their replacement by the single certainty of change. )any now feel that they are not living in a culture, but in a kind of process, as abiding canons of beauty are replaced with styles and idioms the only e#pectation we can have of which is that they will briefly gratify our own sense of stylishness, then to be replaced by something no less brilliantly shallow. *ostmodernity, anticipated here by "arhol, is occasionalistic, a series of ruptured images, hostile to

nothing but the claim that we have inherited the past and that language is truly meaningful. +n such conditions, the timeless certainties of religious faith must work hard to preserve not only their consistent sense of self, but the very vocabularies with which they e#press their claims. he &merican philosopher ,ichard ,orty offers this account of the secularisation process: -urope did not decide to accept the idiom of ,omantic poetry, or of socialist politics, or of .alilean mechanics. hat sort of shift was no more an act of will than it was a result of argument. ,ather, -urope gradually lost the habit of using certain words and gradually ac$uired the habit of using certain others. /01 "hat has happened over the past century, in a steadily accelerating fashion, is that the series of mutations in values, often grounded in popular perceptions of scientific paradigm shifts, has placed the traditional vocabularies of religion under unprecedented stress. &gainst this background, we can see three large possibilities amidst the diversity of the world faiths. Firstly, the 2time'capsule option, often embedded in local ethnic particularities, which seeks to preserve the le#icon of faith from any redefinition which might subvert the traditions essence. he risk of anachronism or irrelevance is seen as worth running in order to preserve ancient verities for later generations that might, in some hoped'for time of penitence, return to them. %econdly, there are movements, usually called 2liberal, which adopt the secular worlds reductionist vocabulary for the understanding of religion, whether this be psychological, philosophical, or sociological, and try to show how faith, or part of it, might be recoverable even if we use these terms. +n the 3hristian conte#t this is an established move, and has become secure enough to be popularised by such writers as 4ohn ,obinson and (on 3upitt. +n +slam, the marginality of )uhammad %hahrur and Farid -sack shows that for the present a thoroughgoing theological liberalism remains a friendless elite option, despite the de facto popularity of attenuated and sentimental forms of )uslimness. he third possibility is to redefine the language of religion to allow it to support identity politics. ,eligion has, of course, always had the marking of collective and individual identity as one of its functions. 5owever, in reaction against the threat of late modernity and postmodernity to identity, and in tacit acknowledgement of the associated problemati6ing of metaphysics and morality, this dimension has in all the world religions

been allowed to e#pand beyond its natural scope and limits. +ncreasingly, religionists seem to define themselves sociologically, rather than theologically. he (urkheimian ma#im that 2the idea of society is the soul of religion /71 is not so far from the preoccupations of activists who are more eager to establish institutes for +slamic social sciences than to build seminaries. he result has often been a magnification of traditional polarities between the self and the other, enabled by the steady draining'away of religiously'inspired assumptions concerning the universality of notions of honour and decency. -#amples are many and diverse. "ho could have thought that Buddhism, apparently the most pacific of religions, could have provided space for a movement such as &um %hinrikyo, thousands of whose acolytes have been interrogated in connection with terrorist outrages against innocent civilians8 3entral to the cults appeal, it seems, has been a redefinition of Buddhism as a movement for the preservation of -ast &sian identity. /91 +n +ndia, a vegetarian creed such as 5induism, in .andhis province of .u:arat, has now generated religious identity movements which, to the horror of more traditional practitioners, appear to recommend the e#pulsion, forced conversion, or massacre, of non'5indu minorities. he process of the 2saffronising of +ndia , descending on the &yodhya flashpoint, is seemingly well'advanced, and the prospects for regional peace and conviviality have seldom seemed less hopeful. /;1 +n the universe of +slam, the same transposition of the vocabulary of faith into the vocabulary of identity is well underway. "hat would &verroes have made of the common modern practice of defining the 5a:: as the 2annual conference of the )uslims8 "hy do social scientists increasingly interpret the phenomenon of veiling in terms of the affirmation of identity8 "hy does congregational prayer sometimes suggest a political gesture to what is behind the worshippers, rather than to what lies beyond the qibla wall8 he instrumentality of religion has changed, in important segments of the world faiths. .od is not denied by the sloganeers of identity! rather 5e is enlisted as a party member. <o such revivalist can entertain the suggestion that the new liberation being recommended is a group liberation in the world that marginalises the more fundamental pro:ect of an individual liberation from the world! but his vocabulary nonetheless steadily betrays him. +n the Quran, the word iman =usually translated as 2faith> appears twenty

times as fre$uently as the word islam. +n the sermons of the identity merchants, the ratio usually seems to be reversed. <either does the instrumentality of identity advocate a return to the indigenous and the particular. "ere it to do so, it would necessarily re$uire a respectful engagement with the art, spirituality, and intellectuality of the religions cultural provinces. &nd it is a shared feature of all identity politicking in world religions today that whereas religious revivals in the great ages of faith invariably generated artistic and literary florescence, the revivalists seem to produce only impoverishment. Beauty must wait! because dawa, the )ission, is more urgent! an odd logic to premodern believers, who assumed that every summons to the ,eal must be beautiful, and that nothing transforms a society or an individual soul more deeply than a great work of art, a building, a poem, or the serenity of a saint. *erhaps we could even invoke this as the nearest appro#imation we will find to an ob:ective yardstick against which to :udge the spiritual authenticity = asala ruhiyya> of religious revivals. ruth, as *lato taught, ineluctably produces beauty. he illuminated soul shines, and cannot confine the light within its own self. "hatever is done, or made, or said, or written, by such a soul, is great art, and this is part of our caliphal participation and responsibility in creation. &s &bd al',ahman 4ami puts it: -very beauty and perfection manifested in the theatre of the diverse grades of beings is a ray of 5is perfect beauty reflected therein. +t is from these rays that e#alted souls have received their impress of beauty and their $uality of perfection. /?1 +f we apply this measure, how much authenticity may we really attribute to the soi-disant +slamic revivalism of today8 2%ay: who has forbidden the adornment of &llah which 5e hath brought forth for 5is bondmen8 =@:97> "ho indeed8 he modern )uslim instrumentality of identity, then, does not seem to be about the affirmation of a culturally embedded self. he young radical activist does not really want to be a *akistani, or an &lgerian, or an &merican. %uch a person re$uires what one might call a negative identity. 5e or she desperately desires not to be someone. he medievals knew .od by listing all the things that .od could not be! this is the strategy known as negative theology, richly deployed in both )uslim and 3hristian metaphysics. he moderns, it seems, being more interested in religion than in .od, define religion by listing all the things that it cannot be. 5ence +slam, we are loudly told, is a list of

prohibitions. -verywhere we turn there is something we must not believe, and certainly must not do. he list of ideas entailing shirk or bida grows ever'longer! and no'one any longer takes pleasure and :oy even in the diminishing list of things which are still allowed. +slam, then, is about not being and doing things. "hat is left is ones identity. Because the list of prohibitions is so desperately e#tended, and embraces most if not all the beloved practices of the village or the urban district, one is no longer allowably %ylheti, or %ara:evin. his is a $uesting for identity that denies real, embedded identity. &s such, it often betrays its twentieth'century tributaries: he type and forms of cultural valuations employed by the new fundamentalist movements cannot be e#plained by an analysis of the tradition of +slamic religion and history! it has to be seen as an effect of inter'cultural e#change, which is fundamentally based on a "estern understanding of +slam as the culture of the Other. /A1 Bong ago, the ever'insightful 5ourani was no less frank in noticing the "estern etiology of 2movement +slam: )uch has been written in recent years about modern movements in +slam, and the origins and direction of some of them are by now well'known: a new emphasis on virtuous activity, :ustified in terms of certain traditional sayings, but derived in fact from the -uropean 2scientific thought of the 0C th century, and tending sometimes towards a revolutionary nihilism. /@1 Other, more psychological tributaries might also be cited. he shift to a culturally disembedded radicalism is often malignantly driven by a desire to wreak revenge on ones traditionalist parents or ones community for frustrations suffered at their hands. &gain, it appears as a "estern social phenomenon, rather than as traditional tawba. Often, too, it is perversely responsive to a global discourse that may despise those countries or their diaspora ethnicities. +t is, in short, a way of legitimising self'hatred! a religio'legal :ustification of an inferiority comple#. "hat, then, remains8 Once the son of *akistani migrants has stripped himself of his shalvar, his pir, his qawwalis, his gulab jamon, his entire sense of living as the product of a great civilisation that produced the a: )ahal and the ghazals of .halib, what does he have left8 &gain, the negative theology option will define his identity as what'is'left'

over! a religion of the gaps, a kind of void. hat void he understands as the Sunna. he Sunna, that is, as figured negatively, as a list of denials, of wrenchings from disturbing memories, as a :ustification for the abandonment of techni$ues of spirituality that obstruct rather than reassure the ego. +s this, then, a failure of religion8 +s the young 6ealot so overwhelmed by his alienation, his humiliation, and sense of rootlessness, that the Sunna which is what'is'left'over cannot restore his spirit8 %urely the scriptures insist that a turn to the Sunna must heal him, and help him to come to terms with his history and the trials of his life8 &ctions, however, are by intentions. &ccording to tradition, people tend to have the rulers they deserve, and the forces that rule the human soul are also in every case the appropriate ones for that person. he Sunna is a model of sacred humanity. hat is to say, humanity bathed in sakina, the peaceable 2habitation of .ods presence. 25e is the one who sent down the sakina upon the believers hearts, that they might grow in faith. =;D:;> his is in %ura al'Fath, which unveils to the believing community the nature of the test that they have :ust passed through, and which endured for several long years. he triumph at )ecca came about not through anger, an#iety, fear, and rage at the difficult, sometimes desperate situation of the )uslims, a small island of monotheists in a pagan sea. +t came about through their serenity, their sakina, which, +bn 4u6ayy tells us, means stillness =sukun>, contentment =tumanina>, and also mercy =rahma>. /D1 hese are the gifts of reliance on &llahs promise amidst apparent misfortune. he alternative is to be of those who are described as az-zannina bi lahi zannas-saw: 2 hose who think ill thoughts of &llah, which, the commentators e#plain, means the suspicion that 5e will let the believers down. he monotheistic .od, of course, does not let the believers down! 2"eaken not! nor grieve. Eou are the uppermost, if you have iman =9:09C>: the verse revealed in the aftermath of the shock of Fhud. %o the young 6ealot, driven half out of his mind by his sense of alienation and despair, reads the Sunna with the wrong dictionary. 5is view of the history of his community is one of khidhlan ' that .od has effectively abandoned it. Only a tiny, almost infinitesimal fraction of the scholars of historic +slam were even believers. he Ottomans, the )oguls, the F6bek khanates, the %el:uks, the )alay states, the 5ausa princedoms! all of these were lands of pure shirk and innovation! deserts with no oases of faith. &nd this

conviction has to make him one of az-zannina bi lah zannas-saw ' those who think ill thoughts of &llah. heir contention is that +slamic civilisation has been an atrocious, monumental, desperate failure! and the conse$uences of this conviction, for their religious faith, and for their ability to feel sakina, are no less disastrous. & .od that has allowed the final religion to go astray so calamitously cannot, ultimately, be trusted. 5is policy seems usually to have been one of khidhlan, of the betrayal of the believers. ,eligion itself becomes, in (urkheims language, entirely 2piacular, it is an attempt at cathartic, ritualised breast'beating, a rite of atonement and mourning, that seeks to channel ones fear of the uncontrollable and apparently blind forces which punish and threaten ones tribe. & cathartic component of religion has here become co'e#tensive with faith itself. "hat it feels like to worship such a .od is hard to imagine. But today, in +slam, as at the fringes of other religions, there are indeed people who worship him. <o peace can come of such worship, only a growing sense of being trapped inside a logic that leads only to fear and despair, unrelieved by anything more than the faintest glimmer of hope. *erhaps, the activist feels, worshipping his .od, if we are pure enough, and angry enough, .od will relent towards us! and we can anticipate the %econd 3oming by defying time itself, and creating a utopia for the pure somewhere on this earth. he piacular thus accumulates into an apocalypse. Bong ago, oynbee saw that such pro:ects invariably end in misery. +n the end, even 5erod serves the oppressed community better than does Bar Gochva. oynbee wrote of 2Healotism: a psychological state ' as unmistakeably pathological as it is unmistakeably e#aggerated ' which is one of the two possible alternative reactions of the passive party in a collision between two civili6ations. /C1 he 6ealot, oynbees 2barbarian saviour'archaist, cannot imagine that faith might re$uire the wisdom to recognise the capacities of individual human beings in different ages. +nvoking a ferocious definition of amr bil-maruf, 23ommanding the .ood, at a time when most people are weak and struggle even to honour the basic demands of religion, betrays an ab:ect and disastrous lack of common sense. /0I1 2Forcing religion down peoples throats will induce many of them to vomit it up again! such is the resilience or perversity of human nature. %tates which impose severe moral codes in public will find that they cannot deal with the proliferation of private vice, which almost

mas$uerades as virtue in a political conte#t where religion has identified itself with a piacular rite of repression. %tates which behave in such a way as to be e#cluded from global trade will languish in poverty, further fostering disenchantment and e#porting streams of refugees. he sunna, brandished as a weapon of revenge against the sources of ones humiliation, will not allow itself to be used in this way. he sunna, as pure form, as a structure of life, cannot be itself if the inward reality of sakina is absent. he Baw is merciful when interpreted and applied by those who believe that .ods practice towards 5is people has been merciful. +n the hands of the 6ealot, it may become the most persuasive of all arguments against religion. &ctions, then, are by intentions, and the interpretation of scripture is the proof of this. %cripture is a holy place! and we need to calm ourselves before entering it. +f we march in, hearts bla6ing with fury, viewing the world with suspiciousness about the divine intention, then we violate that holy place. +n earlier times, only the pure of heart, and those with decades of humbling scholarship behind them, were allowed to cross the threshhold into that space. <ow the doors have been kicked open, and a crowd of furious, hungry, desperate men, stands $uarrelling around the te#t. J J J

+ would like to move on now. )uch of what + have said has been dismal! but religion is surely about facing reality. oo many of us today live amid delusions, no doubt because we find the reality of our times too disturbing to contemplate. 3onspiracy theories, paranoia, fantasies about the past or the future! these abound in religious conferences! not :ust among )uslims, but among religionists everywhere. ,eligion, however, invites us to 2get real ' to use a very )uslim &mericanism. Because we believe in .od and an afterlife, and in the ultimate restitution for in:ustice, we should have souls great enough to look reality in the face without flinching. )y e#perience of the world of faith which we all inherit is, despite all that + have said about the sickness of identity mania, a positive one. + mentioned at the beginning of this lecture that there are three religious paths commonly taken today: the time'capsule, the liberal, and that of identity politics dressed up as scripturalism. he liberal option, despite the shallow purchase of its theology, is in practice widely followed among )uslims: these are the millions of individuals who may cherish the memory of a pious

aunt, or perhaps a moment of religious insight earlier in their lives, or some vague sense of belonging to an inherited religious culture, but who seldom attend the mos$ue. For most religiously'active )uslims, the conservative option, with a variety of variations, is the most commonly pursued. &lmost all senior ulema in %unni countries adhere to some form of conservatism, entailing adherence to one of the four %unni madhhabs and to either the &sh2ari or the )aturidi theology. Often, too, they will be actively involved in %ufism. his is a reality of which the "est is largely unaware, given that it constructs its images of )uslim action from media images which inevitably focus on the frantic and the dangerous. /001 "hat is needed, then, is for mainstream +slam to reassert its possession of tafsir. +t remains in a strong position to do this. he 6ealots are everywhere a very small percentage of the total of believers. he masses are either too traditional or too religiously weak to want to follow them. <ever will e#tremism triumph for long, simply because normal people do not want it. &lready we find a growing sense around the )uslim world that 6ealotry damages only +slam, and serves its rivals. 2 hat which does not kill me makes me stronger, as <iets6che observes. & further reason why e#tremism has an uncertain future is that human beings are naturally religious. %ecularisation theories are now everywhere in confusion! and religion prospers mightily in most countries of the world. Belief in the transcendent is, it seems, hard'wired into our species, and what most human beings crave is not a megaphone for their frustrations, but a voice for :ustice which also serves as a source of peace and serenity in a stressful world. &ny religion that fails to supply this will soon be replaced by something else. here has never been an e#ception to this in human history. 3hristianity succeeded because pagan ,oman religion failed to provide a sense of spiritual upliftment. +slam succeeded because the -astern churches were spiritually debilitated by centuries of bitter polemic. <ew religious movements in the "est succeed by offering techni$ues of meditation and alternative therapies which seem absent from established religions as they are presently formulated. +slam, wherever it degenerates into a primal scream of panic about ones situation in the world, will certainly be replaced by any other religion that offers sakina. he mainstream, then, must reclaim the initiative, and e#pel the 6ealots from the sacred place. +t should not find it difficult to do this. +t has, after all, a great civilisation behind it,

which e#tremism cannot claim. +t has, too, a rich tradition of spirituality, still vibrant in many countries, which, where made available to "esterners, can seem hard to resist. his was recently made plain to me by the director of the %wedish +slamic &cademy. 5e told me that consistently, during his $uarter'century as a )uslim in %tockholm, whenever he mentions that he is a %ufi, people lean forward to learn more. "hen he mentions +slam, they lean back, alarmed. +s this merely the e#pression of pre:udice8 *erhaps. But )uslims should also consider the possibility that educated "estern people may be sincerely, rather than cynically, horrified by e#pressions of +slamic identity politics! and may be sincerely, rather than superficially, impressed by the literature and practice of traditional spiritual +slam. <o'one who wishes to practice dawa in the "est, or among "esternised )uslims, can afford to bypass that reality. Once the sakina has been found again, once religion becomes a matter of the love of .od rather than the hatred of our political and social situation, we can begin to e#tract our communities from the hole which we have dug for ourselves. Bet us take, as a topical e#ample, the $uestion of suicide bombing. 5istorians might well wonder how this form of warfare could take root in any of the &brahamic religions. One thinks of the kamika6e pilots of %hinto 4apan, whose religious rituals, coupled with a final message read before a camera, provoked such horror and alienation in 0C;Is &merica . One thinks, too, of the self'immolation of Buddhist monks during the Kietnam war. he religious motivation behind many amil terrorists, rooted in a Buddhist %outh &sian culture, also springs to mind. %uch a mentality is possible only for those who do not fully believe in a personal .od, and hence have no notion of the human body as made, in some sense in .ods image. For %unni +slam, however, in which even tattooing is a forbidden practice, such an activity is historically without precedent. 3oupled with the policy of targeting the enemys civilians virtually at random, it is clearly the symptom of a deep'rooted sickness. +t recalls the collectivist ethos =2 asabiyya> of the pre'+slamic &rabs, whose code of revenge =thar> authorised the taking of any life from a rival tribe to compensate for the loss of one of ones own, a system decisively abrogated by the Qurans 2no soul shall bear the burden of another =A:0A;>. /071 +t is also, we may speculate, connected with the phenomenon of radical religion as a form of self'hatred of which + spoke earlier. he piacular believer is so alienated from his self that he can contemplate its physical destruction, thus replicating, in oynbees words, 2the melodramatic suicide of the Healots who faced hopeless military odds. /091

his desperation is unworthy of the umma of +slam. -ntirely traditional scholars speak out against it in the strongest terms, as a bida in the most necessary sense of the term. But we need also to re'engage with the principle of rahma, of mercy, which flows from sakina. "hy e#actly do the hadith suggest that )uslims must not 2destroy anyone with fire8 /0;1 "hy are believers commanded so strongly to avoid taking the lives of civilians8 One reason is because if we do this, we damage the lives of others whom we will probably never even meet. 2"hosoever kills a human being for other than murder or corruption in the earth, it will be as if he had killed all mankind. =?:97> )any suffer when one is killed. Orphans, widows, relations, friends, neighbours! all these are the victims of the single crime. 3rime is never against an individual! it never has a single victim. "ar in the valid sharia sense targets only combatants, whose relatives recognise that such was their status. he targeting of civilians, however, is part of the barbarism of modern "estern, 3lausewit6ian conflict, inflicting a deeper sense of loss and alienation! and it is entirely foreign to our heritage. (uring the %econd "orld "ar, my grandfather worked as a firefighter in the Bondon Blit6. &fter the war, his behaviour grew erratic, and his marriage ended painfully, inflicting shock'waves on children and a wider world of relatives. Eears afterwards the reason for it became clear. One night, after an air'raid, he had pulled from the rubble of a building the body of a small girl who looked e#actly like his own daughter. he trauma of that moment never left him until he died, fifty years later. hat trauma lives on, subtly, in the lives of all his descendants. hose who take the lives of women and children, indiscriminately, and simply because they live on the other side of a frontier, should remember that they are inflicting wounds on other lives as well that can never properly be healed. "hat is re$uired, then, is an act of repentance, tawba. Our communities need to turn away from the utilitarian ethic that :ustifies even the worst and most inhuman barbarities as e#pedient means, and turn back to the authentic religious teaching that it is better to pray patiently than to descend into a tit'for'tat moral relativism that recalls the worst practices of the "ahiliyya. ,eligious patience, moreover, never runs out, because it knows that it will one day be crowned with glory. 2 rue patience, the )uslim proverb runs, 2is never e#hausted. &nd in the Quran: 2the patient shall be given their full reward without reckoning. =9C:0I> he phrasing is superb. #uwaffa suggests that they will be given a full, fair, proportionate reckoning! and then the phrase bi-ghayri hisab ' it is to be

without any reckoning at all. *atience, one of the supreme Quranic virtues, which led to the success of the peaceful entry into )ecca, is rewarded also in the ne#t life, infinitely. 5ere, then, is another possible yardstick against which to measure the authenticity of our +slam. +mpatience is impiety, it is the way of the zannina bi lahi zannas-saw. &nd those who cannot restrain themselves will be smacked down. "orse, they will bring misfortunes upon their communities. 2Beware of a tribulation which will certainly not afflict only the wrongdoers amongst you, the Quran warns us. =D:7?> o act impatiently on grounds of 2asabiyya, and to defy fundamental religious teachings about the sanctity of life, and to harbour ill thoughts about .ods providence ' all these sins must lead, in the traditional )uslim understanding, to divine punishment. hose who regard them as a shortcut to a world in which their self'image will be healed are likely to be disappointed. hat disappointment is now palpable in the world of +slamic identity'politics. +t is time that the great ma:ority stopped being a silent ma:ority, and raised its voice courageously. he sunna must be reclaimed as a via positiva. his is not, + believe, a heroic option! it is a fundamental religious duty. o uphold the honour of +slam, as a great world religion, and to defy the voices that would turn it into little more than a resentful sect, is a fard ayn ' an individual obligation. "e need institutions and faces that can believably do this. & few of our mos$ues and +slamic centres are in the grip of a small minority of worshippers who care nothing for peaceful coe#istence with their fellow citi6ens, and whose hearts and minds are overseas. )ost )uslims here, however, wish to be accepted as full and respected partners in the pro:ect of building a :ust and prosperous society, and do not wish their places of worship to be directed by the representatives of other governments or 6ealot political movements. <either are they at ease with the reinvention of religion as a ritual of distress. his ma:ority must now speak out. %ullenness, :ealousy, lack of tawakkul, lack of optimism, all these are vices which must be transcended. &nd that transcending can only take place where religion is once again centred on the love and fear of .od, not on attempts to heal a wounded pride. + am very optimistic that this will take place. &s + have already indicated, the e#tremists remain numerically and intellectually on the e#tremes. +slam is, despite the headlines, a success story. )ost )uslims prefer the spiritual to the frantic! patience to the primal

scream. "e must now make it clear to our institutions of learning, and to those who would help us from abroad, that the principle of shura demands that the e#tremes be e#cluded, and that the voice of ma:oritarian +slam be allowed its natural place. J J J

his optimism must, however, be tempered with an awareness of the immediate tactical situation. (espite the alarmism of a few intransigent voices such as (aniel *ipes and Bamin %anneh, /0?1 few if any of us respect the )iddle -astern mass'murderers who are currently inviting the world to regard +slam as the great political and moral failure of the new century. <onetheless, we breathe the air that they have poisoned. &nd the poison e#ists here, as elsewhere, because of the aggression of a small minority of 6ealots. &gain, it is time to speak out in favour of normalcy. he message is a positive one: +slam is not intrinsically committed to violent reaction against the global consensus. )ost scholars do not teach that globalisation obliges us to make hijra to a neighbouring planet. Of course we have our own distinctive assurances on moral matters, and a deep scepticism about the ability of a consumer society to increase human fulfilment and to protect the integrity of creation. But )uslims are not committed to :umping ship. +n British +ndia, a political conte#t far less egalitarian than the one we inhabit here, there were few who chose the option of hijra to &fghanistan . he ulema overwhelmingly stayed in place, and were not prominent during the )utiny. 2%ome scholars, as a historian of the period notes, 2held that a country remained darul-$slam as long as a single provision of the Baw was kept in force. /0A1 Once the bitterness of the )utiny had subsided, the )uslims were a peaceful presence who contributed much to the deeply flawed but stable global enterprise that was the British -mpire. hose *athans who fought and died at )onte 3assino, the 5ausas of the <igeria ,egiment who fought with the 3hindits in Burma! the Bengali Bascars who died in the Battle of the &tlantic, were not conscripts, they were volunteers. Fighting against a common totalitarian enemy they were engaged, in the broad understanding of the term, in a jihad. One cannot deplore too strongly the attempt by a few )uslims, such as &taullah Gopanski, to present <a6ism as a potential ally for +slam. /0@1 3learly, had <ational %ocialism triumphed, its scientists would have aimed at the elimination or reduction to servile status of all the non'white races of the world, not e#cepting the followers of +slam. o fight for the &llies was un$uestionably a jihad.

)ore recently, the struggle against communism effectively united )uslims and 3hristendom, a long alliance which both sides seem to have forgotten with astonishing speed and completeness. -nglish law, with its partial legal privileging of &nglican faith, is dimly theocratic, but does not make the totalising claims which the radicals make for their own various imams. )uslims in the Fnited Gingdom are not being offered a choice between .ods law and mans. .ods law, for the mainstream fuqaha, is an ideal for whose realisation we cherish a firm and ultimate hope. But it also includes the duty to act, out of maslaha, within the framework of laws drafted by ma:oritarian non')uslim legislatures. his is, no doubt, why the tale of the prophet 4oseph was so popular in pre'modern )uslim minority conte#ts. %ome of the greatest )uslim poetical works written in %pain after the reconquista were based on the story of the monotheist prophet who accepted a senior post in a non'believing political order. he story is no less popular in the villages of atarstan, of )uslim %iberia, and of 3hina . +slam, therefore, supplies arguments for loyalty. <ot because it regards the present state of affairs as ideal =a view commended by no'one> but because it recognises that it is the point from which one needs to begin working towards the ideal, an ideal which will itself be reshaped by the powerful instruments of ijtihad. he fundamental ob:ects, maqasid, of the Sharia are the right to life, mind, religion, lineage, and honour! and these are respected in the legal codes of the contemporary "est. "e may even venture to note that they appear to be better maintained here than in the hamfisted attempts at creating Sharia states that we see in several corners of the )uslim world. )uslims may be unhappy with the asylum laws here, but would one wish to claim asylum in any )uslim country that currently springs to mind8 "e may not approve of all the local rules of evidence, but if we are honest, we will surely hesitate to claim that a murder investigation is better pursued in, say, +ran or %audi &rabia , than in -nglish :urisdiction. he radicals in our inner cities, of course, will at this point revert to their primal scream. hey know full well that their movements have failed, and that despite decades of effort by them there is no Sharia order in the world. hey intuit that they are engaged in acts of collective religious suicide. Eet they protest and rail against the established political order, because for them religion has become nothing but the piacular rite of protest. %houting at rallies and denouncing the mainstream are for them the most satisfying acts

of worship. "ere they to be denied these practices, they would be forced back on their own spiritual resources, and they are well'aware of how much they will find there. Boyalty, then, is to the balanced, middle way, the wasat, which is the Sunna. +slam is a wisdom tradition that has seldom if ever generated e#tremes that have had a permanent impact. he current wave of 6ealotry will, + make no doubt, pass away as rapidly as it came, perhaps after some climacteric )asada. %ome souls will have been damaged by it! the name of the religion will have been damaged by it, and the historians will note, with a regretful curiosity, how +slam was for a few years associated with terrorism. But the e#tremism will disappear, because no'one who has a future really desires it. 3an we accelerate this healing process8 "e are, + think, obliged to try. "e have the advantage of knowing how to speak, and to whom to speak. he radical has to shout for a long time before anyone outside the )uslim community notices him. But the traditionally'committed )uslim who is part of society at large already possesses the network. 5e can claim membership in one of the worlds great traditions of art and literature, one that has already attracted many cultivated people in the "est. &lthough the central mos$ues in most "estern capitals are controlled by %audis with no affection for the society around them, and no ability to speak to it, +slams non'hierarchical nature means that such people can simply be circumvented. heir cultural maladroitness will always work to the mainstreams advantage. &lternative mos$ues and institutions of learning need to be established as matrices for the proclamation of authentic, mainstream, spiritual, moral +slam. here are strong reasons why this must succeed. Firstly, because everyone who has an interest in social cohesion wants it to succeed. %econdly, because unlike the +slam of those who distrust the divine purposes in history, traditional +slam is optimistic and brings sakina to the human soul. &nd finally, and most momentously, because this version of faith happens to be true.

!"#$ %& %+,+-, p&.& 'ichard 'orty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, (repr& e) *elhi,

7. -mile (urkheim, %he &lementary 'orms of the (eligious ife , tr. 4 %wain. =<ew Eork, 0C0?>, p.;0C.

3& 'obert Jay /ifton, Destroying the world to save it. Aum Shinrikyo, apocalyptic violence, and the new global terrorism & ( e) 0ork, %+++&;. Brenda 3rossman, Secularisms ast Sigh) *indutva and the +mis,rule of law! <ew (elhi and =O#ford, 0CCC.> 1& Abd2lkadir #miroglu, Molla Caminin eserleri (Ankara, %+3.-, p&30&

A. )ona &ba6a and .eorg %tauth, 2Occidental ,eason, Orientalism, +slamic fundamentalism: a criti$ue, in )artin &lbrow and -li6abeth Ging =eds.>, -lobalization, .nowledge and Society =Bondon etc., 0CCI>, p.779. 3arrells influence on %ayyid Qutb is fre$uently cited in this connection. 3& A& Hourani, 4$haikh 5halid and the a6shbandi !rder7, in $&M& $tern et al&, (eds-, Islamic hilosophy and the Classical !radition (!8ford, %+32-, ,+& D. +bn 4u6ayy al'Galbi, %afsir =Beirut, 0;I9>, AC;.

+& Arnold "oynbee, A Study o" #istory (!8ford, %+3+-, 9:, .3+& ;f& ibid., :, 33%n< 4"he Je)ish =ealots of that age, like the >ahhhabis at the present day, combine their puritanism )ith militancy&7 0I. 5ere the $uestion has been posed of the present'day appropriateness of +mam al'.ha6alis strongly 2:ihadist stance. +n his fiqh works, such as the /asit, .ha6ali suggests no more than a mainstream %hafi2i understanding of the believers relationship to war and peace! but the $hya shows that jihad is integrated into the very centre of his understanding of *rophetic emulation =see for instance $hya 0lum al-1in =3airo, 09;@! L G. &dab al'ma2isha, bayan shu:a2atih>, 99D'C: 2no'one was more vehement in war than him, 2he was always the first to e#change blows with the enemy, etc. ,eflecting on the $hyas 2:ihadist aspects, )ichael 3ook has shown that in comparison with the ma:ority of ulema, .ha6alis views on amr bil-maruf are 2marked by a certain flirtation with radicalism M .ha6ali is no accommodationist: he displays great enthusiasm for men who take their lives in their hands. =)ichael 3ook, 2ommanding the (ight and 'orbidding /rong in $slamic %hought =3ambridge, 7III>, p.;?A.> )odern &rab activists, even of the mainstream 2+slamist variety, have fre$uently been embarrassed by .ha6alis emphatic 2:ihadism! and 3ook shows =p.?7@> how several modern summaries of the $hya remove .ha6alis remarks on changing evil 2with the hand. )ore radical

writers, however, applaud .ha6ali: the &lgerian revolutionary &li Belha:: 2$uotes .ha6alis passage on armed bands with obvious relish =p.?7D>. he response to such implicit accusations should surely be that +mam al'.ha6ali adopted a stance within his own lifetime that he would not necessarily counsel for our own comple# and fitna'ridden age and circumstances, in which the use of armed force against heavy odds is typically denounced by the ulema as an action against )uslim interests = masalih>. %%& ?laming the >est for this is sometimes, but not in@ariably fairA the ne)smedia cannot be e8pected to focus on the pacific or the spiritual& Berhaps )e need to be more frank in blaming our o)n Muslim communities for failing to engage in more successful and sophisticated public relations& My o)n encounters )ith tele@ision and ne)spaper Cournalists ha@e confirmed that the mass media are only too happy to take articles from Muslims, or broadcast films made by MuslimsA but that they cannot see )here to find the contributions& 9n the Dnited 5ingdom , there is only one Muslim film production company, but se@eral hundred cable and satellite ": channels& MaCor mos6ues and organisations ha@e little or no public relations e8pertise& "o accuse the >est of misrepresentation is sometimes proper, but all too often reflects a hermeneutic of suspicion rooted in Eealot attitudes to the !ther& 07. For pre'+slamic &rab 2pride suicide, see )ustafa 4awad, 2&l')untahirun fil' 4ahiliyya wal'+slam, in 3l-*ilal, ;7 =0C9;>, ;@?'C. For +slams understanding of suicide as an 2+ndian foolishness see Baydawi, %afsir =+stanbul, 097C>, 0IC =to Quran, ;:7C>. +t is presumably not without significance that the deaths of %aul and %amson do not figure in the )uslim scriptures. %3& "oynbee, op. cit&, :9, %2,&

0;. ,udolph *eters, "ihad in 2lassical and 4odern $slam5 3 (eader =*rinceton, 0CCA>, 9A. %1& /amin $anneh, 4$acred and $ecular in 9slam7, ISIM $ewsletter %0 (July, 2002-, ., makes the follo)ing incendiary claim about the $eptember %% attacks< 4"he >est FGH has sought comfort in the con@enient thought that it is only a renegade breaka)ay group of Muslim fundamentalists )ho ha@e struck out in @iolence& Most Muslims do not share that @ie)&7

0A. Barbara )etcalf, $slamic (evival in 6ritish $ndia5 1eoband 789:-7;:: =*rinceton, 0CD7>, ?0. For the muted role of the ulema during the )utiny, see p. D7. %3& Ataullah 5opanski, Sabres o" !wo %asts& an untold history o" Muslims in %astern %urope (9slamabad, %++1-&