The Koran and Muslims

Intellectual stagnation in the Muslim world long preceded revivalism and its hideous offshoot, fundamentalism.

"Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change it themselves" Koran (13;11).

THE Koran is the Word of God. But it is read and understood by man, limited in insights and intelligence. It is meant, alike, for the lay person, for the erudite and the mystic. The legendary scholar Annemarie Schimmel noted in her work of encyclopaedic range Mystical Dimensions of Islam that "Sufism traces its origins back to the Prophet of Islam [Mohammad] and takes inspiration from the divine word as revealed through him in the Quran".

It has verses of explicit mystic significance: "And certainly we created man, and we know what his mind suggests to him - and we are nearer to him than his jugular vein" (50:16); "Wherever you turn, there is His Face" (2:115); and, God put signs of His existence into nature and into the human soul "can you not, then, see?" (51:21). The Sufi's quest is to read those signs within himself and outside.

Professor Kristin Zahra Sands of Sarah Lawrence College specialises in Sufism, Koranic exegesis and Islam and media. Her work, one of the several in the Routledge Studies in the Quran, is a model of erudition expressed in lucid style. She is keenly aware of the problem.

"The Quran, for Muslims, represents the word of God revealed to Muhammad. Its interpretation, then, requires a certain audacity. How can one begin to say what God `meant' by His revelation? How does one balance the praiseworthy desire to understand the meanings of the Quran with the realistic fear of reducing it to the merely human and individualistic? Is interpretation an art, a science, an inspired act, or all of these? Sufi commentators living in the classical time period of Islam from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries answered these questions in their own unique way, based on their assumptions regarding the nature of the Quranic text, the source of knowledge considered necessary for its interpretation, and the nature of the self seeking this knowledge. The commentaries they wrote are distinct from other types of Quranic commentaries both in terms of content, which reflects Sufi ideas and concepts, and the variety of styles ranging from philosophical musings to popular preaching to literary narrative and poetry."

Her book seeks to study the relationship of Sufis to the Koran comprehensively. Part I of the study concerns Sufi "hermeneutics", a word used to refer to the way in which Sufis described the nature of the Koranic text and the types of knowledge and methods needed to understand it. The basic question is how best to approach the Koran in order to discover its richness and transforming possibilities.

The fourth Caliph, Ali, put it succinctly: "Every verse of the Koran has four kinds of meaning: an exoteric sense (zahir), an inner sense (batin), a limit (hadd), and a lookout point (muttala). The exoteric sense is the recitation (tilawa), the inner sense is understanding (fahm), the limit (hadd) is the rulings of what is permitted and prohibited, and the lookout point (muttala) is what is meant by God for the servant by (the verse). It is said that the Quran is a clear expression (ibara), an allusion (ishara), subtleties (lata'if) and realities (haqa'iq) so that the clear expression is for hearing, the allusion is for the intellect ('aql); the subtleties are for witnessing (mushahada) and the realities are for self-surrender (istislam). There is no good in an act of worship without comprehension, nor in a recitation without pondering."

For the Sufi, knowledge cannot be separated from spiritual practice nor scholarship from personal behaviour. The Koran must be read with the heart as well as the head; indeed, with the soul itself. The book takes the reader through the various methods of interpretation by great Sufi commentators on the Koran, one by one. Particularly enlightening are chapters discussing commentaries on some verses of the Koran that are of deep mystic significance.

"The most important and difficult kind of knowledge to obtain, for the Sufis is a kind of knowledge that comes not from the strivings of the intellect but, rather, as the result of God's grace and a deeper kind of struggle within man. In his Kitab al-luma Abu Nasr al-Sarraj characterises this struggle in a corporeal way as the sacrifice of one's very lifeblood."

All this is far, far removed from the Koran as interpreted by the fundamentalist, the ignorant mullah and thanks to centuries of indoctrination, by the ordinary person, Muslim or non-Muslim.

Mohamed Charfi's book is one of the most incisive analyses of the historical misunderstanding of Islam by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Professor of Law in Tunis, he helped to float Perspectives, a progressive democratic Opposition group, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He served as a reformist Minister for Education but resigned in protest against the excesses of security forces against opposition to the reforms he had introduced. In Tunisia, scholars like Bayram in the 19th century have blazed the trail for reform. The erudition and rigorous analysis packed into his slim volume is amazing. Written in French, it was translated into the English by Patrick Camiller. The work draws heavily on writings in French by Arab and European scholars, which are not cited in English books. One hopes it is translated into Urdu and distributed widely in India and Pakistan. The author's analyses are based on the Koran.

The problem is faced boldly at the very outset. "Islam is no less capable of evolution than Christianity or Judaism. But whereas, over the past few centuries, Europeans have undergone profound technological, economic, cultural and political changes, often amid considerable suffering and with major ebbs and flows, the Muslim peoples have fallen greatly behind in all spheres. This is not a fate to which they are doomed for ever; it is possible for them to close the gap."

In truth, intellectual stagnation in the Islamic world long preceded revivalism and its hideous offshoot, fundamentalism. Western imperialism inspired revivalism. Its opportunism aided fundamentalism (witness: Afghanistan and Somalia).

"Year after year the gulf has been widening between an idealised ancestral system, which is held sacred and disseminated through school, and a new system that is ever more widely regarded as an alien import contrary to Islam. This is a grave discrepancy that tears people apart and brings them to the verge of schizophrenia. For they do not wish to sacrifice either Islam or modernity. They are as attached to the Islamic religion as they are to the structure of the modern state, which they insist should be genuinely democratic and representative" (emphasis added throughout).

The political Islamist wants an imagined historical Islam to prevail over modernity. The modernist seldom rises to the intellectual challenge of understanding Islam as well as modernity. "There is no credible counter-discourse", especially among Muslims of the subcontinent. Most of them think in stereotypes. For the lay Muslim, the disconnect between the faith he learns at home and the rationalism and knowledge he acquires at school and in college is painful. He wants to be a good Muslim; yet finds the Islam preached from the pulpit strange, almost irrelevant. It need not be. Forty years ago the writer heard an inspiring sermon one Friday at the Islamic Centre in Washington, D.C.; less so, was the one he heard next Friday at a London mosque. The sermon at a mosque near the High Court in Mumbai was pathetic.

If in Muslim countries the authoritarian state stifles free debate, the same job is undertaken in countries where Muslims are a minority by the bigoted, ignorant mullah in complicity with Muslim politicians. Without free thought and free discourse, Muslim society stagnates intellectually and morally; even if Muslims prosper economically. What have Indian mullahs to offer to young Muslims? Except the warning that Islam and modernity are incompatible? Muslims are riven by what they feel is an elemental contradiction. "They have a kind of guilty conscience that they are both Muslim and modern; this prevents them from clarifying their discourse, defending their policies and adopting a more consistent standpoint. It is the duty of Muslim intellectuals to perform this necessary, if arduous task. In this, they have failed."

Like Tariq Ramadan, Mohamed Charfi is committed to the faith of Islam, erudite and intellectually honest and courageous. Colonial rule is condemnable. But the Third World tends to forget that it had made itself colonisable by its internal feuds and backwardness. Refusal to learn foreign languages, science and technology ensured backwardness. European Renaissance owed a lot to Arabs who had translated and enriched Greek philosophy and science which were lost. Arabic numerals were introduced into Europe in the 10th century by Sylvester II, the first French Pope and an "admirer of Arab-Islamic civilisation".

During the hour of trial, while a few ulema (Muslim clergy) opposed imperialism, a good many collaborated - from India to Tunisia. Obliging fatwas (edicts) followed freely in return for official favours. The foremost fundamentalist Abul Ala Maudoodi, who migrated from India to Pakistan to play havoc there, is lauded for, of all things, learning. He buttressed Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq's rule. Sample his lament that after the first four Caliphs who governed following the death of Prophet Mohammad, "the land of Islam saw the introduction of a mixture of philosophy, literature and sciences from Greece, Iran and India. This brought into being Mutazilite conceptions, currents tending to foster doubt and atheism... and therefore discord and factions, as well as the non-Islamic arts of dance, music and painting, which were encouraged by those to whom it was forbidden to engage in these vile arts."

Charfi rightly remarks that this "dismissal of everything produced by the human mind outside the sphere of Islam, and even of any elements within it later than the age of the Prophet and the four wise Caliphs, leads to a rejection of democracy and democratic attitudes".

Charfi holds that "there is nothing inevitable about fundamentalism, that what is involved is not a matter of religion but a problem of culture and education. In fact, we must distinguish between Muslims and Islamists". The fundamentalist presumes to direct Muslims "to do right and forbear from doing evil". Under this slogan he usurps extra-statal power. But he has no genuine interest in the faith; for, the Koran clearly says: "Each man shall reap the fruits of his own deeds; no soul shall bear another's burden. In the end to your Lord shall you return, and He will resolve your disputes for you" (6:158).

If highly relevant to India is the Chapter on Islam and Law, relevant to Pakistan is the one on Islam and the state. Together they constitute the core of the work; irrefutable in documentation and devastating in refutation of dogma. The gravest, most fateful, mistake by Muslims over the centuries is a palpable, wilful misconstruction of Koranic messages on marriage. This is a scripture, not a statute.

As Karen Armstrong writes, "We have to know how to read our scriptures. They demand an imaginative effort... A true meaning of scripture can never be wholly comprised in a literal reading of the text, since that text points beyond itself to a reality which cannot adequately be expressed in words and concepts... " (In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis; page 5).

Judges say that the worst way to read a Constitution is to read it literally and that every document must be read as a whole. Now read the Koranic verses for yourself in the Fourth Surah (chapter) on Women. The second verse in this Surah enjoins: "render unto the orphans their possessions... ". The third says: "If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four: But if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly [with them], then only one... That will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice."

The first verse is clearly illustrative, not mandatory. Honestly read, monogamy is what it enjoins; polygamy is permitted in that given situation and subject strictly to the overriding condition of equal treatment. But, wait. Later on, another verse (129) in the same Surah says in categorical terms: "And you cannot do justice between wives, even though you [wish it]."

To the true believer in the Word of God, this is God's assessment of the nature of his creature, man. It implies a clear prohibition of polygamy. Abdullah Yusuf Ali records in his commentary on the Koran that the immediate occasion for the verse was the battle of Uhud, which left behind many orphans and widows. This brings us to a fundamental of Koranic interpretation - reading the text in its context. Even those who disagree with that, cannot honestly ignore the overriding prohibition (4:129). It is, however, on a dishonest reading of the Koran that Muslim women have suffered for centuries at the hands of men and mullahs. They still do.

It is the same story in regard to divorce. The law in force in India is not Islamic law but Anglo-Mohammadan law, which the courts followed during the Raj. In 1905, an English judge of the Bombay High Court, Justice Batchelor, was honest to admit that "there can be no doubt that talaq-ul-bidat (the triple, irregular divorce) is good in law, though bad in theology". The Privy Council ruled in 1894 that it would rely on "the ancient doctors of the law" and not on the original sources, the Koran and the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. The Supreme Court of Pakistan rejected this approach.

So did Justice Baharul Islam in two judgments he delivered in the Guwahati High Court. He became judge of the Supreme Court. In a judgment delivered on September 18, 2002, Justice R.C. Lahoti of the Supreme Court (later Chief Justice of India) approved both. He said: "Quoting in the judgment several Holy Koranic verses and from commentaries thereon by well-recognised scholars of great eminence, the learned Judge, Baharul Islam, expressed disapproval of the statement that `the whimsical and capricious divorce by the husband is good in law, though bad in theology', and observed that such a statement is based on the concept that women were chattel belonging to men, which the Holy Koran does not brook. The correct law of talaq as ordained by the Holy Koran is that talaq must be for a reasonable cause and be preceded by attempts of reconciliation between the husband and the wife by two arbiters - one from the wife's family and the other from the husband's; if the attempts fail, talaq may be effected."

The wife has a corresponding right to divorce the husband. It is known as khula. Even Maudoodi said: "It is a great folly that we have practically withdrawn from our women the right of khula, little caring for the fact that denying them this right on a footing equal to talaq, is absolutely un-Islamic." Section 2(IX) of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, 1939, enables dissolution on "any ground which is recognised as valid for the dissolution of marriages in Muslim law". Khula is enforceable in Indian courts. No reasons need be given by the wife for divorcing the husband. Besides, she can also stipulate a right to divorce in the marriage contract itself.

Since the Koran mandatorily prescribes mediation by two arbiters from each spouse "if you fear a breach between them" (4:35), it implicitly rules out the instant arbitrary talaq, talaq, talaq (divorce). Charfi opines that "in several respects, sharia (Islamic law) was constructed by men against the principles of the Quran".

Over a century before him, Moulavi Cheragh Ali, an associate of Syed Ahmed Khan, expressed the same view in a masterly treatise published in 1885, A Critical Exposition of the Popular `Jihad' (Idarah-I-Adabiyat-i Delhi, 2004, Qasimjan Street, Delhi; 1984, a reprint, now unavailable). So did Mohammad Iqbal.

There is not a single verse in the Koran which sanctions punishment for apostasy; a good few to forbid that. "Had your Lord pleased, all the people of the earth would have believed in one and all. Would you then force people to have faith?" (10:99).

Mullahs traced the law on apostasy to a hadith and a source of law. But the man who reported it was 13 at the time of the Prophet's death. "Throughout the early centuries of Islam, religion was used as a cover for authoritarian policies involving the murder of opponents. The ulema always identified ridda (apostasy) with al-baghi (violent or ideological opposition to the Islamic regime in place). This is how they justified the crushing of popular revolts such as that of the Zanj or black slaves, a super-exploited sub proletariat which rose up between 869 and 883 CE [Christian Era]. It is also how they justified the execution of the great Sufi thinker Al Hallaj (in 922) or of Zanadika (free-thinkers) such as the celebrated writer of Persian origin lbn Elmokaffa, who translated into Arabic a number of literary works from the Indian and Iranian civilisations and was put to death in 757, at the age of thirty-six. Such practices later died down. Perhaps - and this was certainly one of the causes that precipitated the decline of the Muslim world - the ever more violent repression discouraged and eventually stifled any attempt at reflection or innovation."

On January 18, 1985, Mahmud Mohammed Taha was sentenced to death, under the Gaafar Nimeiri regime in Sudan, which had Hassan al Turabi as Justice Minister. Taha's interpretation of the Koran, with which Charfi disagrees, was held to amount to apostasy. Al Azhar University at Cairo and the League of the Muslim World, based in Mecca, lauded the sentence.

"Whereas the general philosophy of Islam - its broad orientation and fundamental principles - is absolutely valid and cannot change in time or place, the specific rules and applications adopted during or immediately after the Prophet's lifetime were geared to the prevailing circumstances and should change to reflect different circumstances. We must therefore distinguish between Islam, which is immutable and eternal, and sharia law, which should be amended or abolished. Islamists maintain that, on the contrary, nothing has changed since the age of the Prophet. And they do not like it when the incompatibility between sharia law and human rights is pointed out to them."

When the Koran says (2:1185): "Whoever of you sees with his eyes the new moon let him fast in that month", it is addressing the tribes of Arabia which had no precise calendar and adopted lunar months beginning from the moment when they "saw with their eyes" the crescent of the new moon. But in a literal reading of the sacred text, the Muslim world still suffers from the impreciseness of its calendar. People know the fast days or the beginning and end of the month of Ramadan only a few hours in advance - as if it were still impossible for Muslims to calculate the days and hours of the conjunction of the sun and the moon, while "others" are able to send space probes around Jupiter or Saturn.

There are three legacies from the past which Muslims must discard - the ossified sharia which conflicts with the Koran; the notion of the "Islamic state" which the Koran does not support and which never existed in history; jehad, which is a perversion of the concept as propounded in the Koran.

Any reform in the Islamic world must grapple honestly with four related tasks: (1) Interpretation of some Koranic verses in the light of the times, as against others which are of enduring relevance for all time. (2) Weeding out hadith (compilation of the Prophet's sayings) of dubious credibility. (3) Rejection of the authority of the ulema (clerics). (4) A sound appreciation of Islam in history, especially the role of the first four Caliphs, as distinct from Islam in the Koran.

It was only a century after the Prophet's death that the task of compiling the hadith was undertaken. There is not the slightest doubt about the integrity and authenticity of the Koran. One cannot say that of the hadith. The Prophet died at Medina on June 8, 632. Al-Bukhari, a man of piety and compiler of the most respected of the hadith, was born in the ninth century (194 of the Hejira; he died in 256). He was methodical. Having collected 600,000 hadith, he retained only 7,257 omitting 4,000 repetitions.

"Thus less than two centuries after the Prophet's death there were already 596,725 false hadith." Al-Bukhari told off a king who wanted him to read some excerpts in private. "Go," he told the emissary, "tell your master that I hold knowledge in high esteem, and I refuse to drag it into the antechambers of sultans." Islamic history would have been different if others had his integrity.

Charfi rightly says that "the Quran is the only source that escapes all these criticisms of unreliability". Out of a total of 6,236 verses, revealed over 22 years - 12 in Mecca, the rest in Medina - between 200-500 are estimated to be law-like rules.

Mutazilites were the ulema whose school of thought became important in the mid-eighth century (Christian Era) and who ascribed a key role to reason in their research - as opposed to those who constantly invoked the hadiths in their creation of new laws. The Mutazilites explained the Koran itself by constantly referring to reason. They made reason the very criterion of religious law. In this way, they were able to develop extremely bold legal constructs. They were hunted down as infidels as early as 846 (CE). Their writings were thoroughly destroyed. It is only in the last century or less, since the rediscovery of ancient manuscripts, that we have had direct access to their writings. "With the crushing of the Mutazilites, the spirit of imitation carried the day over the spirit of reflection." The gates of ijtihad (reasoning), itself a source of Islamic law, were closed.

When Maudoodi argued that an Islamic state was necessary "to enforce" Islamic law he proclaimed his intellectual bankruptcy, political opportunism and lack of moral purpose. Has Islam no meaning or message for Muslims in Europe, the United States and India? The Prophet did not found a state; did not name a successor, and consistently advised: "You know better than I the affairs of the world below." His mission was stated in the Koran in restrictive terms: "You are only a messenger" and "Your mission is only to give clear warning" (16:82). He had a duty to preach; no power to command.

Mohamed Charfi recalls what ensued after the Prophet's death. The successors, the Caliphs, were men of piety, but they were also men of this world. "Muslims need a critical re-reading of their history in order to recover their religion in its original purity, free of the deposits left by the vicissitudes of history. The first two Caliphs were great political strategists; their deeds could not have been successful without the ruses, calculations and alliances inherent in all political action. Reasons of state explain a number of their decisions. For example, when Abu Bakr learned that Khalid ibn al-Walid (whom he had placed in charge of his troops during the war of the apostates) was committing crimes unworthy of a Muslim leader, he left him in his position in order to continue benefiting from his great military skills. The first two Caliphs were great politicians who served the cause they had given themselves with both intelligence and single-minded commitment. But they were not saints. Unfortunately the third Caliph, Othman, was even less of a saint. It may be possible to criticise the action of the first two Caliphs, but only in the name of principles that appear evident to us today but which, in their own time, had no purchase on relations between peoples. As to their personal conduct, they were above all suspicion. Things were very different, however, in the case of the third Caliph. His twelve-year reign, the longest of the three, was marked by nepotism and mismanagement of the public purpose... . A number of leading figures, including old companions of the Prophet such as the celebrated Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, vigorously protested against this outrageous conduct on the part of the head of state. Othman responded by issuing orders for corporal punishment against some and banishment against others."

After Ali's assassination in 661 began the Omayyad Caliphate's rule by dynastic succession. On March 23, 1924, Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in Istanbul whose cause Gandhi had taken up along with the Ali Brothers. During this long era "religion was used in the service of political ends". Three of the founders of the four schools of law were beaten up.

Contrary to myth, the first four "Rightly Guided" Caliphs were not elected. "The Islamic state, envisaged neither by the Koran nor the sunna, is a man-made institution that has used religion for political ends, to justify military conquests, exploitation of the people and the pleasure-seeking of Caliphs. Summarising and commenting on the thought of Ali Abderrazak, Abdu Filali Ansari writes that the theory of the Caliphate `did violence to the community, religion and reason'. This critique of the Caliphate cannot be taxed with hostility or denigration with regard to Islam as a religion and culture. During its golden age, Islamic civilisation was particularly dazzling; the Islamic contribution to science and universal knowledge has not been insignificant, and the importance of the philosophical works of Farabi, Kindi and especially Averroes no longer has to be demonstrated. The same is true of the invention of algebra or Khawarizmi's research in mathematics. In medieval Europe, medicine was taught from textbooks in Arabic or translated from the Arabic of Avicenna, Ibn Zohr or ar-Razi." (Vide Wilferd Madelung; The succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate; Cambridge University Press, 1997.)

Islam is not incompatible with human rights (vide the writer's article "Human rights in Islam"; Frontline, October 23, 1998). Nor is Islam incompatible with pluralism and its corollary, a secular state. Muslims are enjoined to respect Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus as Prophets of God. Mohammad is only the last of the Prophets. "We make no division between any of them" (2:129-132). More, there are other prophets who are not mentioned (40:78). Indeed, "to every people [was sent] a messenger" (47).

Charfi's conclusion is sound: "Although, in the Prophet's time, the word umma could denote solidarity of the oppressed against their oppressors, the idolatrous Quraysh, and although, at a certain moment in history, it became charged with the sense of a struggle for liberty, the concept has today become an anachronism. The Muslim religion, which formally recognises neither a clergy nor a church, should have been and ought to become the religion that encourages the ending of individual alienation and the full affirmation of individual liberty and sovereignty in the choice of beliefs, ideas and behaviour. But instead, because of its history, it has been the religion in which the individual dissolves into the community, loses all autonomy and endures the most oppressive enslavement to society and the state. The legitimation of force by the ulema has prevented the emergence of a theory of democracy and human rights."

J.M.S. Baljon notes that "the Koran, indeed in support of its message also appeals to man's intellectual faculties" and cites five such verses which justify A.J. Arberry's assertion of the Koran's "acceptance of reason as an ally to faith" (Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation (1880-1960); page 124).

Suha Taji-Farouki's volume contains illuminating essays on 10 Muslim intellectuals who performed such a task. One of them, Nurcholish Madjid of Indonesia, merits particular attention. "Contextualism was his weapon of choice to put an end to such absurdities, as well as to tackle more serious issues such as the relations between Islam and other religions, and death as the penalty for apostasy. It had to be recognised that the traditional formulations of fiqh (law) were essentially contingent, its rulings conditioned by time and place. He proceeded by what he called `contextualised ijtihad', and argues that, although modern as a term, contextualised ijtihad was exercised during the earliest period of Islamic history, even though it had not been incorporated into jurisprudence."

The editor, Suha Taji-Farouki, recalls that "during the last few decades, Muslims have read the Quran in a rich multiplicity of ways". The volume illustrates the diversity. It may be contrasted with the state of Muslim law whose origin and history Knut Vikor and Wael B. Hallaq's volumes ably trace. They are very dependable textbooks based on thorough research.

European and American studies on Islam are fairly well known. Less known is South Africa's contribution. Farid Esack is an internationally known South African Muslim scholar and activist who suffered imprisonment for his convictions. In this book, published in an inexpensive South Asian edition, he develops the theme of an Islamic liberation theology. He served as a Commissioner for Gender Equality with Nelson Mandela's government. It should prompt Indian Muslims to throw off the parasitical Muslim leadership that has fed on their problems and grievances since Independence and assertively take to secular politics as Indians while asserting their rights as Muslims, no less.

I make no apology for quoting this moving passage from Esack's book in extenso: "The introduction of tricameralism in 1984 and the ensuing nationwide revolt seemed to be the cue for Muslims to make their final break with apartheid and to identify with the oppressed. The UDF [United Democratic Front] with its appeal for all people to unite against the tricameral system, attracted Muslim leaders such as Imam Hassan Solomon, Shaikh Adbul Gamiet Gabier and Ebrahim Rasool and myself. The UDF created the conditions required for various sectors of the society to enter the struggle while retaining their own identities because it acted as a political front. Rasool explained the relationship between political organisation and religious awareness in the following manner: `The UDF taught us that it takes a lot of grassroots organisation to create the conditions whereby Muslims will take their rightful place in the struggle. It does not simply take an appeal from the Quran to create revolutionaries among Muslims. That [involvement] is the product of social conditions, theological reflection and organisation.' His statement is significant, for it encapsulates the basis of the emerging South African Islamic theology and qur'anic hermeneutic of liberation. The Qur'an, in order to be socially meaningful, is in need of moments within history. One such moment was now being forged within a context of oppression and struggle for liberation, a struggle shared by others outside the house of Islam."

What he adds is relevant to all pluralist societies, including ours: "A theology of liberation, for me, is one that works towards freeing religion from social, political and religious structures and ideas based on uncritical obedience and the freedom of all people from all forms of injustice and exploitation including those of race, gender, class and religion. Liberation theology tries to achieve its objectives through a process that is participatory and liberatory. By this I mean that it is formulated by, and in solidarity with, those whose socio-political liberation it seeks and whose personal liberation becomes real through their participation in this process. Furthermore, an Islamic liberation theology derives its inspiration from the Qur'an and the struggles of all the prophets. It does so by engaging the Qur'an and the examples of the prophets in a process of shared and ongoing theological reflection for ever-increasing liberative praxis."

Appended to the book is Nelson Mandela's letter from prison to Shaikh Gabier dated March 4, 1985. Here are some excerpts: "Until I was 23 years of age I lived, like most of us in those days, in a homogeneous social environment. Although I knew vaguely of the existence of other religions, I never even seriously thought about them. Then in the early forties I found myself working closely with members of other population groups, and discovered that these religions were as great as and, in some cases, even older than Christianity, with equally magnificent achievements in the field of human rights, education and welfare. I found that men like Maulvi Cachalia, Nana Sita and a host of others were fine and forceful personalities as eminent for virtue as any Christian. I must add that it was Maulvi Cachalia who first outlined to me the basic tenets of Islam and the history and achievements of the University of Deoband.

"Later I became an admirer of Dr. Abdurahman, the far-sighted pioneer who raised the question of Black unity with unrivalled dedication as far back as the twenties. I never met Imam Haroun but heard many good things about him. Imam Bassier visited us regularly on Robben Island and, at the time of my transfer to this place, his services were enjoying ever-growing support. Having listened to him there, I consider it regrettable that there should be no Moslem priest visiting us in this prison. The support we got as prisoners from the Christian Churches was not greater than the support and encouragement we were given by our Moslem and Hindu Communities... In conclusion, I want to point out that there are two evils which have confronted society right down the centuries. These are wars, on the one hand, and lack of opportunity and disparities in wealth, on the other. I consider the Moslem Judicial Council to be fully committed to the elimination of these evils. This is the reason why the MJC is an inspiration to us all."

If the South African scene is inspiring, the South Asian situation is profoundly disturbing. How did things come to such a pass after the intellectual revival by Syed Ahmed Khan and Cheragh Ali in the 19th Century? What the founder of the Aligarh movement wrote of the hadith over a century ago will shock Muslims in the subcontinent today: "It is the most sacred of all Islamic lore, yet Caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar had forbidden people to narrate a hadith. The latter even whipped offenders and imprisoned Ibu Masud, Abu Darda and Abu Masud Ansari for narrating traditions. In fact Abu Bakr burned all those traditions, which he had collected. Evidently the collection of traditions started in earnest only after the death of Caliph Umar (644)" whom Caliph Uthaman succeeded. (Quoted in Hafeez Malik; The Religious Liberalism of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan; The Muslim World; Volume LIV, No.3, 1964, page 163.)

Hafeez Malik, a distinguished Pakistani scholar, records: "The founding of four schools of jurisprudence started the decline of ijtihad." People began to follow them blindly - they do so to this day. Many ulema fabricated false hadith. He sets out 38 of them, which Syed Ahmad Khan listed in 1871. Some are still in vogue.

Why did Indian Muslims languish? Whatever stopped the process of rational reconstruction of the faith which Syed Ahmed Khan and his even older associate Cheragh Ali began in the 19th century? It was explained by the great poet-philosopher Iqbal to Akbar Shah Mujibabadi in the late 1930s. "The influence of the professional Maulvis had greatly decreased owing to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's movement. But the Khilafat Committee, for the sake of political fatwas, had restored their influence among Indian Muslims. This was very big mistake [the effect of] which has, probably, not yet been realised by anyone. I have had an experience of this recently. I had written an English essay on Ijtihad, which was read in a meeting here and, God willing, will be published, but some people called me Kafir. We shall talk at length about this affair, when you come to Lahore. In these days, particularly in India, one must move with very great circumspection." Iqbal carried this so far that on the persuasion of Syed Suleiman Nadvi he suppressed the essay on ijtihad he had planned to write. Maulana Azad suppressed the third volume of his commentary on the Koran, the Tarjuman al-Quran (Islam and Indian Nationalism: Reflections on Abul Kalam Azad edited by Ali Ashraf and Mushirul Hasan; Manohar, 1992; page 116).

Jinnah's secular politics put the mullahs back in their proper place. In a speech delivered at the Aligarh Muslim University Union on February 5, 1938, he triumphantly exclaimed that there was a time when Muslims "were led by either the flunkeys of the British government or camp-followers of the Congress... What the League has done is to set you free from the reactionary elements of Muslims and to create the opinion that those who play their selfish game are traitors. It has certainly freed you from that undesirable element of Maulvis and Maulanas. I am not speaking of Maulvis as a whole class".

When he propounded the two-nation theory, they flocked to his support, which he accepted. The Congress had begun playing this game much earlier. It supported not only the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind but also the Shia Conference. This Jamiat survives in India, still. The pro-Muslim League ulema founded the All-India Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam at Calcutta (now Kolkata) on October 26, 1945, and it flourishes in Pakistan under a changed name, J U-I-I Pakistan. Another and poisonous export was the Jamaat-e-Islami. It was founded by Maudoodi in 1941 at Pathankot. He opposed the demand for Pakistan as also the tribal raid in Kashmir. In Pakistan, he took up the Ahmadiya issue in 1949 and flourished thereafter, with Saudi backing and, later, Zia's. In Pakistan, the revivalists hold the state to ransom. In India, Muslim society struggles to free itself from their shackles. Every now and then poets, scholars and artists are treated to their wrath. To cite an instance, the highly respected Director of the Khuda Baksh Library at Patna, Dr. Abid Raza Bedar, was denounced for his reported remark, at the A.N. Sinha Institute at the launch of Prof. S.M. Mohsin's book Keynote of the Holy Quran, that the word kufr (unbelief) used in the Koran has been misinterpreted and has affected our national integration (vide The Times of India; June 2, 1992, for the details of this instructive episode).

Fazlur Rahman was one of the most erudite scholars of the Koran in the last century. Son of a graduate of the Deoband seminary, his reflections remained within the Koranic parameters (vide S. Parvez Manzoor's review of his work Islam and Modernity in Inquiry, December 1984). He was appointed Director of the Islamic Research Institute. His teachings incurred the wrath of the mullahs; threats were made against his life. He left Pakistan and was appointed Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago in 1968, where he remained till his death in 1988. The university's faculty and students revere his memory.

His "double movement" theory is brilliant. "If we look at the Quran, it does not in fact give many general principles: for the most part it gives solutions to and rulings upon specific and concrete historical issues; but, as I have said, it provides, either explicitly or implicitly, the rationales behind these solutions and rulings, from which one can deduce general principles. In building any genuine and viable Islamic set of laws and institutions, there has to be a twofold movement: First one must move from the concrete case treatments of the Quran - taking the necessary and relevant social conditions of that time into account - to the general principles upon which the entire teaching converges. Second, from this general level there must be a movement back to specific legislation, taking into account the necessary and relevant social conditions now obtaining" (Islam and Modernity; page 20).

He complains that no serious effort is made to read the Koranic verses in the order in which they were revealed. That would show the context. If the Koran must be read in context, the hadith can do with close scrutiny and the ulema must be properly sized up. Maudoodi has been called "erudite" by a Muslim historian. Fazlur Rahman holds that "he was by no means an accurate or a profound scholar".

One understands; but up to a point. The growth of the Sangh Parivar and the riots and pogroms it let loose made Muslims defensive. The mullah-politician alliance jumped into the fray as defenders. A besieged minority is an intensely conservative minority. Muslims must give battle to bigots in both communities along with secular forces. But such is the clime that when Rafiq Zakaria pleaded with the Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University Syed Hashin Ali and Prof. Atiq Ahmed Siddiqui, Director of the Sir Syed Academy, to publish an English translation of Sir Syed's commentary on the Koran, he found them hesitant as they feared that it might provoke a fundamentalist backlash (The Times of India; November 26, 1988).

Significantly, themes of compassion, forgiveness and the like which are an integral part of the great faith are altogether absent in the discourse of the fundamentalists. So are scholarship and reflection. Their agenda is political. Religion is just another weapon to be used along with the gun besides recourse to violence, intellectual terrorism and religious blackmail. Muslims would do well to hearken to this moving counsel by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a man of religion:

"The creative development of Islam as a religion on earth lies rather in the hands of those Muslims whose concern for the forms and institutions evolved in Islamic history is subordinate to their lively sense of the living, active God who stands behind the religion, and to their passionate but rational pursuit of that social justice that was once the dominant note of the faith and the dominant goal of its forms and institutions. If this be true today, it will repeat what has been true in Islamic history of the past.

"The human part from day to day has ever been, amid the din of life, to hear God's message; to discern its meaning and to interpret it; and in a difficult and distracting and ever-changing world, to act. Whether more or less adequate, the Islam of history is the handiwork of Muslims.

"The Islam that was given by God is not the elaboration of practices and doctrines and forms that outsiders call Islam, but rather the vivid and personal summons to individuals to live their lives always in His presence and to treat their fellow men always under His judgement." (Islam in Modern History; page 308).