Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution
Author: Abdal Hakim Murad
THE POVERTY OF FANATICISM
'Blood is no argument', as Shakespeare observed. Sadly, Muslim ranks are today
swollen with those who disagree. The World Trade Centre, yesterday's symbol of
global finance, has today become a monument to the failure of global Islam to
control those who believe that the West can be bullied into changing its wayward
ways towards the East. There is no real excuse to hand. It is simply not enough
to clamour, as many have done, about 'chickens coming home to roost', and to
protest that Washington's acquiescence in Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing
is the inevitable generator of such hate. It is of course true - as Shabbir
Akhtar has noted - - that powerlessness can corrupt as insistently as does
power. But to comprehend is not to sanction or even to empathize. To take
innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme secular
utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral
constraints required by religion.
There was a time, not long ago, when the 'ultras' were few, forming only a tiny
wart on the face of the worldwide attempt to revivify Islam. Sadly, we can no
longer enjoy the luxury of ignoring them. The extreme has broadened, and the
middle ground, giving way, is everywhere dislocated and confused. And this
enfeeblement of the middle ground, the wasat enjoined by the Prophetic example,
is in turn accelerated by the opprobrium which the extremists bring not simply
upon themselves, but upon committed Muslims everywhere. For here, as elsewhere,
the preferences of the media work firmly against us. David Koresh could
broadcast his fringe Biblical message from Ranch Apocalypse without the image of
Christianity, or even its Adventist wing, being in any way besmirched. But when
a fringe Islamic group bombs Swedish tourists in Cairo, the muck is instantly
spread over 'militant Muslims' everywhere.
If these things go on, the Islamic movement will cease to form an authentic
summons to cultural and spiritual renewal, and will exist as little more than a
splintered array of maniacal factions. The prospect of such an appalling and
humiliating end to the story of a religion which once surpassed all others in
its capacity for tolerating debate and dissent is now a real possibility. The
entire experience of Islamic work over the past fifteen years has been one of
increasing radicalization, driven by the perceived failure of the traditional
Islamic institutions and the older Muslim movements to lead the Muslim peoples
into the worthy but so far chimerical promised land of the 'Islamic State.'
If this final catastrophe is to be averted, the mainstream will have to regain
the initiative. But for this to happen, it must begin by confessing that the
radical critique of moderation has its force. The Islamic movement has so far
been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves how it is that a man like
Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical demagogue, could have taken
over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his beliefs, while
the Muslim Brotherhood, with its pullulating millions of members, should have
failed, and failed continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a
failure in methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal
and prolonged inadequacy.
It is in this context - startlingly, perhaps, but inescapably - that we must
present our case for the revival of the spiritual life within Islam. If it is
ever to prosper, the 'Islamic revival' must be made to see that it is in crisis,
and that its mental resources are proving insufficient to meet contemporary
needs. The response to this must be grounded in an act of collective muhasaba,
of self-examination, in terms that transcend the ideologised neo-Islam of the
revivalists, and return to a more classical and indigenously Muslim dialectic.
Symptomatic of the disease is the fact that among all the explanations offered
for the crisis of the Islamic movement, the only authentically Muslim
interpretation, namely, that God should not be lending it His support, is
conspicuously absent. It is true that we frequently hear the Quranic verse which
states that "God does not change the condition of a people until they change the
condition of their own selves." [1] But never, it seems, is this principle
intelligently grasped. It is assumed that the sacred text is here doing no more
than to enjoin individual moral reform as a precondition for collective societal
success. Nothing could be more hazardous, however, than to measure such moral
reform against the yardstick of the fiqh without giving concern to whether the
virtues gained have been acquired through conformity (a relatively simple task),
or proceed spontaneously from a genuine realignment of the soul. The verse is
speaking of a spiritual change, specifically, a transformation of the nafs of
the believers - not a moral one. And as the Blessed Prophet never tired of
reminding us, there is little value in outward conformity to the rules unless
this conformity is mirrored and engendered by an authentically righteous
disposition of the heart. 'No-one shall enter the Garden by his works,' as he
expressed it. Meanwhile, the profoundly judgemental and works- oriented tenor of
modern revivalist Islam (we must shun the problematic buzz-word
'fundamentalism'), fixated on visible manifestations of morality, has failed to
address the underlying question of what revelation is for. For it is theological
nonsense to suggest that God's final concern is with our ability to conform to a
complex set of rules. His concern is rather that we should be restored, through
our labours and His grace, to that state of purity and equilibrium with which we
were born. The rules are a vital means to that end, and are facilitated by it.
But they do not take its place.
To make this point, the Holy Quran deploys a striking metaphor. In Sura Ibrahim,
verses 24 to 26, we read:
Have you not seen how God coineth a likeness: a goodly word like a goodly tree,
the root whereof is set firm, its branch in the heaven? It bringeth forth its
fruit at every time, by the leave of its Lord. Thus doth God coin likenesses for
men, that perhaps they may reflect. And the likeness of an evil word is that of
an evil tree that hath been torn up by the root from upon the earth, possessed
of no stability.
According to the scholars of tafsir (exegesis), the reference here is to the
'words' (kalima) of faith and unfaith. The former is illustrated as a natural
growth, whose florescence of moral and intellectual achievement is nourished by
firm roots, which in turn denote the basis of faith: the quality of the proofs
one has received, and the certainty and sound awareness of God which alone
signify that one is firmly grounded in the reality of existence. The fruits thus
yielded - the palpable benefits of the religious life - are permanent ('at every
time'), and are not man's own accomplishment, for they only come 'by the leave
of its Lord'. Thus is the sound life of faith. The contrast is then drawn with
the only alternative: kufr, which is not grounded in reality but in illusion,
and is hence 'possessed of no stability'.[2]
This passage, reminiscent of some of the binary categorisations of human types
presented early on in Surat al-Baqara, precisely encapsulates the relationship
between faith and works, the hierarchy which exists between them, and the
sustainable balance between nourishment and fructition, between taking and
giving, which true faith must maintain.
It is against this criterion that we must judge the quality of contemporary
'activist' styles of faith. Is the young 'ultra', with his intense rage which
can sometimes render him liable to nervous disorders, and his fixation on a
relatively narrow range of issues and concerns, really firmly rooted, and
fruitful, in the sense described by this Quranic image?
Let me point to the answer with an example drawn from my own experience.
I used to know , quite well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the
Jama'at Islamiya, at the Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He
grew a luxuriant beard, was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and
spent his time preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a number of whom were
actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his khutbas. He had hundreds of
followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style
activism.
The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance,
providence again brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing
to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed to recognise him. The beard was
gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More astonishing still was that he was
walking with a young Western girl who turned out to be an Australian, whom, as
he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending to marry. I talked to him, and
it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no
longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in
Australia, and make money. What was extraordinary was that his experiences in
Islamic activism had made no impression on him - he was once again the same
distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion to
'radical Islam'.
This phenomenon, which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised feature
of many modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one's
early twenties, loses steam some seven to ten years later. Prison and torture -
the frequent lot of the Islamic radical - may serve to prolong commitment, but
ultimately, a majority of these neo-Muslims relapse, seemingly no better or
worse for their experience in the cult-like universe of the salafi mindset.
This ephemerality of extremist activism should be as suspicious as its content.
Authentic Muslim faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile; as the Qur'an
says, its root is meant to be 'set firm'. One has to conclude that of the two
trees depicted in the Quranic image, salafi extremism resembles the second
rather than the first. After all, the Sahaba were not known for a transient
commitment: their devotion and piety remained incomparably pure until they died.
What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism?
One does not have to subscribe to determinist social theories to realise the
importance of the almost universal condition of insecurity which Muslim
societies are now experiencing. The Islamic world is passing through a most
devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change
which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed
into a couple of generations. For instance, only thirty-five years ago the
capital of Saudi Arabia was a cluster of mud huts, as it had been for thousands
of years. Today's Riyadh is a hi-tech megacity of glass towers, Coke machines,
and gliding Cadillacs. This is an extreme case, but to some extent the
dislocations of modernity are common to every Muslim society, excepting,
perhaps, a handful of the most remote tribal peoples.
Such a transition period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing to
remain constant, makes human beings very insecure. They look around for
something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that
something is usually Islam. And because they are being propelled into it by this
psychic sense of insecurity, rather than by the more normal processes of
conversion and faith, they lack some of the natural religious virtues, which are
acquired by contact with a continuous tradition, and can never be learnt from a
book.
One easily visualises how this works. A young Arab, part of an oversized family,
competing for scarce jobs, unable to marry because he is poor, perhaps a migrant
to a rapidly expanding city, feels like a man lost in a desert without
signposts. One morning he picks up a copy of Sayyid Qutb from a newsstand, and
is 'born-again' on the spot. This is what he needed: instant certainty, a
framework in which to interpret the landscape before him, to resolve the
problems and tensions of his life, and, even more deliciously, a way of feeling
superior and in control. He joins a group, and, anxious to retain his newfound
certainty, accepts the usual proposition that all the other groups are mistaken.
This, of course, is not how Muslim religious conversion is supposed to work. It
is meant to be a process of intellectual maturation, triggered by the presence
of a very holy person or place. Tawba, in its traditional form, yields an
outlook of joy, contentment, and a deep affection for others. The modern type of
tawba, however, born of insecurity, often makes Muslims narrow, intolerant, and
exclusivist. Even more noticeably, it produces people whose faith is, despite
its apparent intensity, liable to vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of
real nourishment, the activist's soul can only grow hungry and emaciated, until
at last it dies.
THE ACTIVISM WITHIN
How should we respond to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what Islam
is for. As we noted earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of rules
which, when meticulously followed, becomes a passport to paradise. Instead, it
is a package of social, intellectual and spiritual technology whose purpose is
to cleanse the human heart. In the Qur'an, the Lord says that on the Day of
Judgement, nothing will be of any use to us, except a sound heart (qalbun
salim).[3] And in a famous hadith, the Prophet, upon whom be blessings and
peace, says that
"Verily in the body there is a piece of flesh. If it is sound, the body is all
sound. If it is corrupt, the body is all corrupt. Verily, it is the heart."
Mindful of this commandment, under which all the other commandments of Islam are
subsumed, and which alone gives them meaning, the Islamic scholars have worked
out a science, an ilm (science), of analysing the 'states' of the heart, and the
methods of bringing it into this condition of soundness. In the fullness of
time, this science acquired the name tasawwuf, in English 'Sufism' - a
traditional label for what we might nowadays more intelligibly call 'Islamic
psychology.'
At this point, many hackles are raised and well-rehearsed objections voiced. It
is vital to understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has been, a
doctrinal system, or a school of thought - a madhhab. It is, instead, a set of
insights and practices which operate within the various Islamic madhhabs; in
other words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And like most of the other
Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in its later developed form, in the
age of the Prophet (upon him be blessings and peace) or his Companions. This
does not make it less legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences which only
took shape many years after the Prophetic age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or
the innumerable technical disciplines of hadith.
Now this, of course, leads us into the often misunderstood area of sunna and
bid'a, two notions which are wielded as blunt instruments by many contemporary
activists, but which are often grossly misunderstood. The classic Orientalist
thesis is of course that Islam, as an 'arid Semitic religion', failed to
incorporate mechanisms for its own development, and that it petrified upon the
death of its founder. This, however, is a nonsense rooted in the ethnic
determinism of the nineteenth century historians who had shaped the views of the
early Orientalist synthesizers (Muir, Le Bon, Renan, Caetani). Islam, as the
religion designed for the end of time, has in fact proved itself eminently
adaptable to the rapidly changing conditions which characterise this final and
most 'entropic' stage of history.
What is a bid'a, according to the classical definitions of Islamic law? We all
know the famous hadith:
Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every
innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in Hell. [4]
Does this mean that everything introduced into Islam that was not known to the
first generation of Muslims is to be rejected? The classical ulema do not accept
such a literalistic interpretation.
Let us take a definition from Imam al-Shafi'i, an authority universally accepted
in Sunni Islam. Imam al-Shafi'i writes:
There are two kinds of introduced matters (muhdathat). One is that which
contradicts a text of the Qur'an, or the Sunna, or a report from the early
Muslims (athar), or the consensus (ijma') of the Muslims: this is an 'innovation
of misguidance' (bid'at dalala). The second kind is that which is in itself good
and entails no contradiction of any of these authorities: this is a
'non-reprehensible innovation' (bid'a ghayr madhmuma).[5]
This basic distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of bid'a is
recognised by the overwhelming majority of classical ulema. Among some, for
instance al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam (one of the half-dozen or so great mujtahids of
Islamic history), innovations fall under the five axiological headings of the
Shari'a: the obligatory (wajib), the recommended (mandub), the permissible
(mubah), the offensive (makruh), and the forbidden (haram).[6]
Under the category of 'obligatory innovation', Ibn Abd al-Salam gives the
following examples: recording the Qur'an and the laws of Islam in writing at a
time when it was feared that they would be lost, studying Arabic grammar in
order to resolve controversies over the Qur'an, and developing philosophical
theology (kalam) to refute the claims of the Mu'tazilites.
Category two is 'recommended innovation'. Under this heading the ulema list such
activities as building madrasas, writing books on beneficial Islamic subjects,
and in-depth studies of Arabic linguistics.
Category three is 'permissible', or 'neutral innovation', including worldly
activities such as sifting flour, and constructing houses in various styles not
known in Medina.
Category four is the 'reprehensible innovation'. This includes such
misdemeanours as overdecorating mosques or the Qur'an.
Category five is the 'forbidden innovation'. This includes unlawful taxes,
giving judgeships to those unqualified to hold them, and sectarian beliefs and
practices that explicitly contravene the known principles of the Qur'an and the
Sunna.
The above classification of bid'a types is normal in classical Shari'a
literature, being accepted by the four schools of orthodox fiqh. There have been
only two significant exceptions to this understanding in the history of Islamic
thought: the Zahiri school as articulated by Ibn Hazm, and one wing of the
Hanbali madhhab, represented by Ibn Taymiya, who goes against the classical
ijma' on this issue, and claims that all forms of innovation, good or bad, are
un-Islamic.
Why is it, then, that so many Muslims now believe that innovation in any form is
unacceptable in Islam? One factor has already been touched on: the mental
complexes thrown up by insecurity, which incline people to find comfort in
absolutist and literalist interpretations. Another lies in the influence of the
well-financed neo-Hanbali madhhab called Wahhabism, whose leaders are famous for
their rejection of all possibility of development.
In any case, armed with this more sophisticated and classical awareness of
Islam's ability to acknowledge and assimilate novelty, we can understand how
Muslim civilisation was able so quickly to produce novel academic disciplines to
deal with new problems as these arose.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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