Yasir Qadhi on slavery in Islam

Some thoughts on this thoughtful presentation from probably the most prominent Muslim traditionalist in America. I very much respect his attempts to engage this serious and important issue. Here are some points where I agree and where I disagree:

1. I appreciate how he tries to contextualize slavery, the terms for it, and the meaning of it in the context of different times. This is an important first step.

2. He is right that slavery (broadly understood) was a universal practice across many cultures globally.

3. He is incorrect that Islam was the first belief system to create rules about slavery. Not sure how he could claim this. He later claims that many other cultures had no 'rules' about slavery. Also incorrect.

4. He is also slightly in error about the 'legitimate' source of slaves in Islam. I think that is probably because he's focused on deriving notions of 'legitimacy' from text, rather than from actual practice. That is a long side debate which I will not take up here.

5. The virtues of manumission are frequently mentioned in the books of law. The interpretation we give to this practice, however, is KEY. See point 7.

6. I find the argument that, because there is no specific law legislating FOR slavery, therefore Muslims don't need it and can preserve the tradition intact...interesting. I'm not fully convinced, mainly because I don't think Qadhi has fully faced the historical and epistemological difficulties of this position.

7. I'm glad to see he raises this past disagreement among the ulama. But he studiously avoids the colonial context of abolition (I am sure he is aware of it, as he has spoken out on the impact of colonialism on Muslims before). This silence is curious. If Qadhi is a traditionalist, and he follows the pious ancestors, then what right does he have to call abolition 'more humane' than previous practices? How can he avoid that abolition was almost always and everywhere forced on Muslim countries by colonial invaders? Finally, we should ask ourselves, how does Qadhi know the INTENTION (his word) of Allah apart from The Quran and the actual practice of the early community? The companions took female captives as slaves or sex slaves (there are plenty of documented instances of this in the hadith tradition). By most accounts, even the Prophet practiced this. Isn't Qadhi saying that the generation of Muslims now who have gotten rid of slavery know better than the early Salaf and the Prophet did, since the later generations were the one to fulfill what he claims is the internal logic of the tradition? I would like to know more about how Qadhi would square this with his veneration for the early companions, and the Prophet himself.

8. I have said it once, and I will say it again: The abolitionist hermeneutic is a modernist hermeneutic. And once you have accepted a modernist 'logic' of history where you believe (as Qadhi seems to here, though implicitly) that history has moved progressively towards abolishing a practice that the early companions openly practiced without sanction, then you have rendered most articulations of traditionalism anachronistic. Progressive history makes a lot of traditionalists nervous, because it undermines their absolutist claims to an 'ethical ground'. Keep this in mind whenever traditionalists accuse liberals of undermining the basis of a 'traditional' Islamic ethics. More often than not the 'tradition' they practice is as modern and anachronistic as anything Muslim progressives have yet dreamed of.

9. I say all of this, not to beat a tired old dead horse, but because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding and emotional polemics on both sides of this issue. We need more clear sighted analysis. I think Qadhi himself might benefit from a serious engagement with scholars working on the links between slavery and law, both in Atlantic and Indian Ocean contexts.

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Some observations on the Michael Muhammad Knight versus Hamza Yusuf articles

Recently Michael Muhammad Knight published two provocative pieces on Vice critiquing Hamza Yusuf as a white convert and a spiritual salesman.

Here is the first one. It's called "The Problem with White Converts" and features a huge picture of Hamza Yusuf.
Here is the second one. It's called "Michael Muhammad Knight vs. Hamza Yusuf." It has a picture of Knight with a cape on, about to get in the wrestling ring with Yusuf.

Perhaps most readers outside the US have not even heard of Michael Muhammad Knight, so the context will seem unfamiliar. If that is the case, I recommend skipping the articles altogether. There are likely better uses of your time. But if you are American, what MMK is saying is important and true, although problematic.

Here are my cursory observations on the two articles:

1. MMK is not know for having good manners, or rather I should say, since I don't know him personally, he is not known for conforming to the rhetorical and performative aspects that Muslim scholars and the larger Muslim community understand as good manners. That means he says things in a bald-faced way, which makes some Muslims uncomfortable and means they are more likely to write him off.

2. To imply, as MMK does in the above articles, that Yusuf is some kind of huckster who is spouting rhetoric he does not believe is disrespectful, and wrong. Not just morally wrong (in the sense of implying that Yusuf is not sincere), but unverifiably wrong. Whether or not another person believes as he/she says is not a matter for idle speculation on the internet. Hamza Yusuf deserves more respect, not because he is Hamza Yusuf, but because it is neither good manners nor good argumentation to imply that someone is insincere. MMK ought to know as much, given how many times he has likely been dismissed, attacked, called insincere, etc.

3. White converts using Islam to authenticate and thereby de-privilege and "de-whiten" themselves is a real phenomenon. It is not altogether a bad thing. There are ways of moving through these spaces with integrity, and avoid becoming a slogan spouting, cartoonish parody. An analogy might be drawn to William Wimsatt's famous essay in Bomb The Suburbs "We Use Words Like Mackadocious", in that the attempt to shed white skin privilege by becoming Muslim often mirrors similar attempts by white kids trying to be down with hip-hop culture. There is an elaborate "hyper-performativity" of Muslim-ness (thank you Mahdi Tourage!) that mirrors the hyper-performativity of blackness in its relentless search for authenticity. I think Hamza Yusuf is a poor example of this, however. MMK could have done some more research, or perhaps even offered up himself as an example (actually he has in his books), before targeting Yusuf in this article.

4. The racial rhetoric of the "white convert", and the use of Hamza Yusuf as an example obscure an important point MMK is making, which is:
   The "classical Islamic tradition" is being packaged and sold as a product in the US, and it is product that cannot begin to fulfill the expectations people have of it. Notice that Hamza Yusuf and others who study abroad rarely speak on the debates going on over interpretation in the places they studied. Take Mauritania for example: I have yet to hear Hamza Yusuf give an opinion on how the Maliki fiqh scholars dealt with slavery in that country. It was instructive to hear an Mauritanian activist talk about other activists who burned books of Maliki fiqh, because of Mauritanian fiqh scholars complicity and intransigence with regards to the issue of slavery! These Mauritanian activists symbolically enacted their belief that the "classical Islamic tradition" did not have the resources to "do what was necessary" in Mauritania. Whether or not they were correct, it is instructive that there is a deep and divisive debate within the classical Islamic tradition that touches on issues of basic human rights. The packaging of the tradition hides the dimensions of these debates from Hamza Yusuf's audiences.

5. Lastly, a major issue which prevents MMK's point from really getting a hearing is that, by and large, lay people do not see their religion as religious studies scholars see it. Religious studies scholars tend to see religions as historically shifting sets of discourses and practices without an essence that is constantly debated and constantly undergoing change. But everyday people prefer their religion as an ideal that humans need to realize through obedience. It is something to be lived and practiced as a route to perfection. Historicization is seen as a threat to faith, an undermining of metaphysical certitudes. One hears, for example, in conversations among Muslim Americans, "Islam is perfect, but I am not." The attraction of an ideal is very strong in human history and human thought, and the logic of the historian (or even the anti-historical, anti-essentialism of Nietzche or the Tao) is cold comfort to those attracted by this idealism.

Inshallah, I am developing some further thoughts on the idea of tradition, empirical certitude, faith, belief, law, practice and the text, which will elaborate in more detail some things I have been thinking of in relation to the issue MMK raised. I hope to post it soon.
-NLM

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