Can Islam Change?
New
Statesman, September 13, 2004
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By Ziauddin Sardar
Beslan and 9/11 are leading millions of Muslims to
search their souls. Even clerics now question the harshest traditional laws
and look for a more humane interpretation of their faith.
The Muslim world is changing. Three years after the
atrocity of 9/11, it may be in the early stages of a reformation, albeit with
a small “r”. From Morocco to Indonesia, people are trying to develop a
more contemporary and humane interpretation of Islam, and some countries are
undergoing major transformations.
Much of the attention is focused on reformulating the
sharia, the centuries-old body of Islamic law deeply embedded in a medieval
psychology. The sharia is state law in many Muslim countries such as Saudi
Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and the Sudan. For many conservative and radical
Muslims, the sharia is Islam: it cannot be changed, and must be imposed in
exactly the shape it was first formulated in the ninth century. Since 9/11,
there has been a seismic shift in this perception. More and more Muslims now
perceive Islamic law to be dangerously obsolete. And these include the ulema,
the religious scholars and clerics, who have a tremendous hold on the minds of
the Muslim masses.
In India, for example, where the secular state allows
Muslims to regulate their communal affairs according to their own law, the
“triple talaq” is being changed. Triple talaq gives a man the absolute
right to divorce his wife by uttering “I divorce thee” three times. He can
do it by letter, telegram, telephone, fax, even by text message. Quite apart
from denying women’s rights, the law has inherent absurdities. For example,
as one critic has explained, “The moment a Muslim male utters ‘talaq,
talaq, talaq’, his wife becomes unlawful to him, even if he has uttered
those words under coercion, in a fit of rage or a drunken state, and regrets
his utterance the very next moment.” The only way out is for the woman to
marry someone else, consummate the marriage, get the second husband to divorce
her and then remarry the first husband.
But in July, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board
declared that triple talaq was wrong, promised to prepare a model marriage
contract (which would require both husband and wife not to seek divorce
without due legal process) and asked Muslim men to ensure that women get a
share in agricultural property.
These may look like minor changes, but there are enormous
implications to the board’s implicit admission that Islamic law is not
immutable. Certainly, it has set defenders of the pure faith at the throats of
members of Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD), who are campaigning for
root-and-branch reform. “Remain in your senses,” the conservative Urdu
Times warned Javed Akhtar, the poet and Bollywood screenwriter who is MSD
president. “The day is not far when you too will be counted among the
infamous blasphemers such as Salman Rushdie.”
Yet in India, at least, the purists—both the
conservatives and the more aggressive radicals—are on the retreat. Uzma
Naheed, an activist for women’s rights and Personal Law Board member, says
that even the religious scholars are changing. “It is not just that a person
like me is invited to address large gatherings of the ulema in different parts
of the country, where I am given a very patient and sincere hearing. It is
what the ulema themselves have started saying in public meetings that is more
significant.”
In Pakistan, however, the mullahs are still predominantly
hardline and are locked in a virtual civil war with reformers. The contentious
issue here is the Hudood Ordinance, which states the maximum punishments for
adultery (stoning), false accusation of adultery (80 lashes of the whip),
theft (cutting off the right hand), drinking alcohol (80 lashes) and apostasy
(death). The ordinance was imposed on Pakistan in 1979 by the military ruler
Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, under pressure from Islamic parties. It makes no
distinction between rape and adultery; thus women who are raped often end up
being whipped while the rapists are exonerated. Girls who have reached the age
of puberty are treated as adults. Worse, women are not allowed to give
evidence on their own behalf. Among the high-profile injustices was the case
in 1983 of 15-year-old Jehan Mina, raped by an uncle and his son. She was
sentenced to ten years in prison and 100 lashes, reduced to three years and 15
lashes in view of her age. In 1985, a blind maidservant, Safia Bibi, was
sentenced to a similar punishment. In both cases, the girl’s pregnancy was
used as proof that the sex act had been committed but the men were acquitted
on the benefit of the doubt. Several women have been sentenced to death by
stoning, the most recent being Zafran Bibi in Kohat in 2002, although that
sentence was quickly overturned on appeal.
In the past three years, protests against the Hudood
Ordinance, which was never popular, have reached a crescendo. The Joint Action
Committee, a network of NGOs which has held a string of demonstrations across
Pakistan, says that these “laws have not only given a bad name to our
religion, but defamed Pakistan in the world”. Though he has often promised
to repeal the laws, the country’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf,
always caves in under pressure from puritan Islamist parties. “No one can
deny,” he told a recent meeting in Karachi, “that we have to adhere to the
Koran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad. The question is of correct
interpretation.” He wants the Council of Islamic Ideology to decide on the
issue. And the mullahs who dominate it have never previously voted for justice
and women’s rights.
However, they cannot be left out of the equation. For the
vast majority of Muslims, changes to Islamic law have to be made within the
boundaries of the Koran’s teachings if they are to be legitimate. Without
the co-operation of the religious scholars, who bestow this legitimacy, the
masses will not embrace change.
This is where Morocco has provided an essential lead. Its
new Islamic family law, introduced in February, sweeps away centuries of
bigotry and bias against women. It was produced with the full co-operation of
religious scholars as well as the active participation of women.
Morocco retained much of the colonial legal system that
France left behind, but, in family law, followed what is known locally as the
Moudawana—the traditional Islamic rules on marriage, divorce, inheritance,
polygamy and child custody. At first, King Mohammed VI had to abandon plans
for change because, protesters claimed, he was trying to impose secular law
and western culture on Morocco. In spring 2001, however, he set up a
commission, which included women and was given the specific task of coming up
with fresh legislation based on the principles of Islam. Given enormous
impetus by 9/11 and its aftermath, it produced a report that many see as a
revolutionary document. The resulting family code establishes that women are
equal partners in marriage and family life. It throws out the notion that the
husband is head of the family and that women are mere underlings in need of
guidance and protection. It raises the minimum age for women’s marriage from
15 to 18, the same as for men.
The new Moudawana allows a woman to contract a marriage
without the legal approval of a guardian. Verbal divorce has been outlawed:
men now require prior authorisation from a court, and women have exactly the
same rights. Women can claim alimony and can be granted custody of their
children even if they remarry. Husbands and wives must share property acquired
during the marriage. The old custom of favouring male heirs in the sharing of
inherited land has also been dropped, making it possible for grandchildren on
the daughter’s side to inherit from their grandfather, just like
grandchildren on the son’s side. As for polygamy, it has been all but
abolished. Men can take second wives only with the full consent of the first
wife and only if they can prove, in a court of law, that they can treat them
both with absolute justice—an impossible condition.
Every change in the law is justified—chapter and
verse—from the Koran, and from the examples and traditions of the Prophet
Muhammad. And every change acquired the consent of the religious scholars.
Even the Islamist political organisations have welcomed the change. The Party
of Justice and Development described the law as “a pioneering reform”
which is “in line with the prescriptions of Islam and with the aims of our
religion”.
Elsewhere, the focus is not so much on Islamic law as on
Islam as a whole. In a general election last March, the Malaysian prime
minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, argued that Islam was almost totally
associated with violence and extremism and needed to be formulated anew. He
called his new concept “Islam Hadhari”, or progressive Islam. It was
pitted against the “conservative Islam” of the main opposition party, the
Islamic Pas. For the first time, the governing coalition won more than 90 per
cent of federal parliamentary seats. Pas, and its version of Islam (full
implementation of the sharia, without modification; a leading role in the
state for religious scholars; and so on), were routed.
Badawi, who is a trained religious scholar, took the term
“hadhari” from Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century Muslim historian and founder
of sociology. The term signifies urban civilisation; and Islam Hadhari
emphasises economic development, civic life and cultural progress. When
Muslims talk about Islam, says Abdullah Mohd Zain, a minister in the prime
minister’s department, “there is always the tendency to link it to the
past, to the Prophet’s time”. Islam Hadhari gives equal emphasis to the
present and the future. “It emphasises wisdom, practicality and harmony,”
says Zain. “It encourages moderation or a balanced approach to life. Yet it
does not stray from the fundamentals of the Koran and the example and sayings
of the Prophet.”
Islam Hadhari—fully explained in a 60-page document
published by Badawi last month—emphasises the central role of knowledge in
Islam; preaches hard work, honesty, good administration and efficiency; and
appeals to Muslims to be “inclusive”, tolerant and outward-looking. It
advocates that Muslims should attend secular and not religious schools.
Committees have been set up to spread the message throughout Malaysia, and
mullahs have been instructed to preach it during Friday sermons.
Nik Abdul Aziz, the spiritual leader of Pas, dismisses
Islam Hadhari as “nonsense”. But Muslim writers and thinkers, at an
international conference in Kuala Lumpur in August, responded warmly. “It is
certainly time,” said one participant, “to change gear and concentrate on
the humanistic and progressive aspects of Islam.” As critics at the
conference pointed out, however, Islam Hadhari stops short of changes to
Islamic law. And Badawi himself is hardly a good advertisement for the
concept. Government-controlled television and newspapers in Malaysia are full
of crude propaganda. The repressive Internal Security Act, a legacy of British
colonialism, is still in force. But Badawi’s image will improve following
the release this month of the former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who
was framed on homosexuality charges for which he was sentenced to nine years
in prison.
While Malaysia has a top-down model, Indonesia has opted
for the bottom-up route. The reformist agenda is being promoted by
Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the two largest and most influential
Muslim organisations. Established at the dawn of the 20th century, they
command between 60 and 80 million followers in mosques, schools and
universities throughout Indonesia.
NU, essentially an organisation of religious scholars, is
usually described as traditionalist, while Muhammadiyah, dominated by
intellectuals, is seen as modernist. Since 9/11, however, the two
organisations have acted, in some respects, as one. Both are committed to
promoting civic society and reformulating sharia. They are campaigning jointly
against corruption in public life and in favour of accountable, open
democracy. The newly formed Liberal Islam Network—intended to resist radical
groups such as Laskar Jihad (Army of Jihad) and Jemaah Islamiyah, which was
implicated in the October 2002 Bali bombings—follows a similar programme.
Its membership consists largely of young Muslims.
All three organisations promote a model of Islamic reform
that they call “deformalisation”. “The overemphasis on formality and
symbolism has drained Islam of its ethical and humane dimension,” says Abdul
Mukti, chairman of Muhammadiyah’s influential youth wing. “The first
mission of deformalisation is to recover this missing dimension.” Its second
mission, he says, is “to separate the sharia from political realms”.
Islamic law, Mukti explains, cannot be imposed from the top—as it has been
in Pakistan—but has to evolve from below. Indeed, the overwhelming view of
scholars and thinkers I met recently in Indonesia—including teachers at a
state religious university—was that the formal links between Islam and
politics must be severed.
Both Malaysia’s Islam Hadhari and Indonesia’s
deformalisation emphasise tolerance and pluralism, civic society and open
democracy. Both are likely to spread. Malaysia is trying to export Islam
Hadhari to Muslim communities in Thailand and the Philippines. Meanwhile,
Morocco is trying to persuade Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to
adopt its model of family law.
Muslims worldwide are acknowledging the need for
fundamental change in their perception of Islam. They are making conscious
efforts to move away from medieval notions of Islamic law and to implement the
vision of justice, equality and beauty that is rooted in the Koran. If such
changes continue, the future will not repeat the recent past.
Ziauddin Sardar’s Desperately Seeking Paradise:
journeys of a sceptical Muslim is published by Granta Books (£16.99)
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