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Islamism's false narrative
A new book challenges the idea
that Islamists are the authentic representatives of the earliest Muslims
Islamism is the idea that the
laws of a nation-state should be subservient to a historical interpretation of
Islamic law. It is a dangerous idea not just because it seeks to justify
archaic punishments and create inequality between the citizens of a state, but
because it is gaining currency every day. While all Muslims aren't
Islamists, all Islamists are Muslims, and among the latter, Islamism is
predicated upon the belief that it is the most accurate vision of Islam. The
rationale Islamists give is that the Prophet Muhammad and the first generations
of Muslims, referred to as Pious Predecessors - salaf as-salihoon in
Arabic - were, functionally speaking, Islamists themselves. This is, in many ways, a powerful
narrative. Its potency lies in the fact that the moment a Muslim questions it,
he or she is called a sell-out. When rebuked like this, average Muslims,
unwilling to be depicted as critical of the first generations of believers,
immediately run away. This ability to stifle criticism is a large reason that
over the span of the 20th century, Islamism went nearly unchallenged among
Muslims. Yet, what if the Islamist
narrative about the Pious Predecessors is demonstrably wrong? What if the kind
of ideas - of religious supremacy, subjugating women, maligning minorities,
creating unequal legal schemes - that Islamists retroactively heap upon the
first generations of Muslims are lies? A short but probing new book by Asma
Afsaruddin, a professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of
Notre Dame in Indiana, entitled The
First Muslims: History and Memory, convincingly argues that the Islamist
depiction of the Pious Predecessors is incorrect. Even more damning for Islamists,
Afsaruddin says in the conclusion of her book: "It is quite clear that
those whom we call 'modernists' today are in fact much closer to the salaf
as-salih in their world view, as reflected in the early sources." In
fact, she goes on to call the modernists "the true salafis". In other
words, under the standards that Islamists themselves set, they fall short. Afsaruddin's argument is well
developed and thorough, laced with myriad examples of the ways in which the
Islamist narrative is more fiction than fact. Her best example is in the area
of women's rights, where she shows that the Islamist view of women isn't based
on how the salaf women actually lived, but on how 13th, 14th, and 15th century
Islamic scholars misleadingly depicted the first generation of Muslim women. In an exhaustive demonstration,
Afsaruddin shows how the 15th century scholar Ibn Hajar
"editorialised" and engaged in a "reconstruction" of a
number of the Muslim women from the 7th century, so they would come off as
passive, docile and submissive as opposed to how they were really: active,
involved in the public sphere, and independent. Afsaruddin gives similar examples
in the area of governance, relationship to the poor and disadvantaged and
relationships with non-Muslims. In the area of governance, four examples in
particular jumped out at me. The first is when she shows that
the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, did not believe they were in charge
of a divine state - a fact that should bring pause to the Islamists who have no
moral qualms about ignoring this fact. The second is when she shows that
Abu Bakr's ridda war
wasn't against apostates as Islamists pretend, but against tribes that no
longer wanted to pay the tax that they used to pay to Muhammad. This would mean
that the first war the Arabs fought after the death of Muhammad wasn't a war of
religion. The third is when she shows that
the fourth caliph, Ali, set a precedent for universal welfare - which bolsters
the modernist position that nation-states ought not to discriminate between
citizens. The fourth example relates to
Quran verse
4:59, which has been used by Islamists for authoritarian purposes. In full,
the verse reads: "Obey God and the messenger, and those in authority among
you." Islamists, however, subtly change the latter part of the verse so
that it reads, "those in authority over you." This
change from "among" to "over" allows Islamists to use the
Quran to assert themselves as politically superior to other Muslims. Afsaruddin
points out that the salaf as-salih, whom the Islamists purportedly
follow, didn't understand 4:59 like that. She takes the reader back to the
earliest exegetes - who were themselves Pious Predecessors - and shows that
they read the verse without a reference to political power. It's a very
effective dismemberment of the Islamist claim. I recommend this book to anyone seeking
to gain a deeper insight into Islamism. However, a few caveats: While the book is short enough to
be read by a lay reader, don't forget that it is written by an academic,
writing technically. This means that the first half of the book contains the facts
and the second half contains the application of the facts to the circumstances.
We're not accustomed to reading books like this so it takes a bit of getting
used to. I found bouncing back and forth very effective, and fairly easy. Also, although I am not an
academic I did find the referencing a little thin. I refer, for example, to
Afsaruddin's citation to Martin
Lings' biography
of Muhammad. Anyone who has read Lings knows that his is a devotional, not an
academic work, and has little place in a study such as this. This is, on the
whole, a forgivable error because I didn't notice Afsaruddin citing Lings for
any unique or unknown propositions. Another place I would have liked
to see better referencing would have been in the section on Islamists and
modernists. I think the discussion would have been stronger had it occurred in real
time, rather than at a somewhat theoretical level. Still, these criticisms are
negligible in light of the larger importance of the book. In conclusion, The First Muslims
is a probing and incisive work about one of the most important and most
contested group of people in Islamic history. The way the salaf as-salihoon
relate to the ongoing battle of ideas between secularists, liberals,
modernists, traditionalists and Islamists in Islam makes this book even more
relevant and timely. One of its primary contributions is to demonstrate that
the Islamist narrative isn't just worthy of opposition on moral grounds, but is
also lacking empirically. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/22/islamismsfalsenarrative |
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