The clergy and the state in Pakistan
have had problems with Allama Iqbal’s
view of the state in his Sixth Lecture.
Iran too has had to deviate from the
thought of Imam Khomeini on what is
“permanent” and what is “changeable” in
Islam. The man who has highlighted the
issue in Iran is Abdolkarim Soroush –
“foreign-trained” just like Allama Iqbal
– who was appointed by Imam Khomeini to
the Advisory Council on Cultural
Revolution, charged with re-opening the
universities and restructuring their
syllabi.
In the book, New Directions in
Islamic Thought: Exploring Reform and
Muslim Tradition (I B Tauris 2009),
Soroush discusses the subject of
“changeable” and “unchangeable” in Islam
with reference to two scholars, Shia
Allama Tabatabai and Sunni publicist,
Rashid Rida. Both discuss the concept of
daruri (zaruri in Urdu) and think that
law is “changeable” if it is
ghair-zaruri (non-essential). Soroush
says Muslims are agreed on the concept
but not on its application. We are
therefore back in the realm of
interpretation. He says: “Islam is
nothing but a series of interpretations
of Islam” (p.14).
He tells us that the Shia did not say
the Friday prayer for centuries despite
clear reference to it in the Quran. Then
he drops the bombshell: “Khomeini did
not consider belief in an afterlife an
essential” (p.10). He continues:
“Cutting off the hands of thieves is in
the Quran, not in a Hadith. Stoning is
not in the Quran, but of course, it is
present in the Hadith and in the
practice of Muslims. Nevertheless there
are fuqaha in Iran now, and there have
been some in the past, who think that
these … should not be applied, like the
Friday prayer” (p.12).
Iran stones people – mostly women –
to death but continues to be uneasy
about the punishment. Soroush has been
rejected by Iran and he now lives abroad
as a peripatetic lecturer at
universities. His message is: “We agree
on the categories, but let us not be
dogmatic about their application,
because the application of the essential
and non-essential, the changeable and
unchangeable, has been a matter of
dispute and disagreement among Muslims”
(p.15).
Allama Iqbal in his Sixth Lecture
perceived the non-essential nature of
hudood punishment. He equally foresaw
the uneasiness Pakistan would experience
with cutting of hands and stoning people
to death. Only the Taliban have carried
out these punishments illegally inside
Pakistan. The state of Pakistan has
avoided them even after the courts in
some instances awarded them. Are we into
the discussion of the nature of the
edicts of Islam and how we understand
them?
Pakistani scholar Asma Barlas is a
professor of politics and director of
the Centre for the Study of Culture,
Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College,
New York. She makes a highly significant
distinction about the concept of
universality of the Quranic message: “We
cannot re-contextualise the Quran – make
it relevant to all historical contexts,
hence universal – without first
contextualising or historicising it. And
yet there is a paradoxical tendency
among Muslims, which is to recognise the
historical contexts of Quranic verses
but to de-historicise the Quran, because
of their conviction that what renders
the Quran sacred is its ahistoricity
rather than its trans-historicity”
(p.18).
The Quran is often studied within
historic context. The fixity of the
juristic dogma (fiqh) actually prevents
us from making the big decisions about
the state. If you look closely, the
living Pakistani scholar Javed Ghamidi
has come under attack because those who
resort to violence don’t like his
deviation from the fiqh. Had Allama
Iqbal been alive today, he would be
lecturing in the US.
Published in The Express Tribune,
October 3rd, 2010.
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