Can You See My Voice: A Modest Manifesto

Received this over the Facebook from a sister in the struggle; it addresses the issue of conceding reason and the mind in religious belief, and it does so not from the perspective of an 'insider' so to speak, a believer. This relates to my conversations with my brother the follower of Ahlus al-Sunnah. What place can reason have at all if one does not trust it to make basic ethical decisions? We were driving to class the other day, and this same brother brought up the Palestinians as a people who were "being judged by Allah." As I pointed out that the Palestinians suffering was due mainly to being dispossessed by militant Zionists, he kept pointing out how the Palestinians brought moral degeneracy wherever they went in the world. I was totally disgusted. How can one attribute a people's suffering to Allah without considering the logical, historical reasons behind their suffering? Can one presume to know the mind of Allah such that one knows when She is punishing her creation? Anyway, the article is primarily about hijab, another practice mistakenly deemed "compulsory" in Islam.

Can You See My Voice? A 'Modest' Manifesto
By Inas Younis

Although I am typically cloaked in full hijab, when it comes to writing, I am always naked in both spirit and understanding. I prefer neither to cater to the vulnerability of those who approach every Islamic initiative with a defensive posture, nor to those who come equipped with preconceived and borrowed ideas, and for whom spiritual conviction is precluded by a state of chronic ignorance and religious constipation.

I am addressing readers who have an absolute confidence in their ability to think.

Fifteen years ago, I attended a Muslim youth conference where I was persuaded to yield to the anguish of an entire Umma (nation) by submitting in full blind faith to a strain of Islam championed by the Afghani rebels (pre-Taliban), who had been invited to motivate us into religious compliance. They appealed to our sentiments by way of an original anthem, exhorting us to hear the weeping of Afghanistan's most innocent victims – the orphans. But words and songs were not required when their paralyzed and amputated bodies served as the most powerful testament to the sacrifice they had made in the name of Islam.

A seed of guilt was planted by the suggestion that our Islamic Umma was reaping punishment because of our religious apathy. And as a condition to our collective survival, we were beckoned to atone for our shortcomings by submitting ourselves to the "cause." The nature of that cause was masked with a generic plea to vindicate the suffering of Muslims by volunteering to amputate something less valuable to a teenager than bodily limbs—our infantile minds. We were called to commit practically, to that which we had been taught to embrace ideologically. It was hardly a sacrifice considering that at fifteen my mind was practically and ideologically constrained by only one thought: the boys on the other side of our segregated lecture hall. But before I could surrender my moral autonomy, I had to extinguish a few reservations.

And so in a public forum I asked the visiting scholar to explain the significance of polygamy. And he replied that "it is a social solution for a social problem." Then I questioned him about hijab , the Islamic headcovering. He pronounced that it is a fard , a religious obligation, on all women. So although I had come in wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, I left in full modest regalia, head scarf and all.

I knew almost nothing of religion, but it did not matter, because knowledge was a minor technicality in light of the precedence that crying orphans commanded. I knew that I must act before I think, because as even the ancient Christians proclaimed, lex orandi, lex credendi , action precedes faith. Now I am thirty years old and a little more difficult to satisfy, and although I still believe that action precedes faith, I am convinced that it is the action of the mind, not the body, which precedes not only faith, but the physical action itself. Fifteen years have passed, and my commitment to faith has not betrayed the cries of the orphans in Afghanistan. In fact, it has only become aggravated by the cries of routinely overlooked victims of persecution—Muslim women. Women's voices are being used, with or without their consent, to wage a resistance movement designed to use them as props in counteracting western colonialism.

Observe the concrete example of this onslaught on women as embodied by the person whom I shall dub "the heart surgeon." I cannot name her, or describe her, because the person who related his recent interaction with this gifted female surgeon, who had saved his life after he suffered a heart attack, has never "seen" her voice. She was clad in black from head to toe and had but two slits in her face veil to allow her a restricted view of a world that was prepared to capitalize on the brilliance of her mind, as if it were a public commodity, without acknowledging her person. A world where she is told to allow her talents to be plundered for the benefit of her intellectual inferiors without the incentive of recognition and respect. A world which insists that her orthodoxy is a testament of her elevated status instead of what it has really become—a visual manifestation of her subjugation.

But what the world of the female surgeon has imposed through physical coercion, ours has sanctioned through the psychological coercion inherent in the decree made by the consensus of those scholars who insist that the peripheral custom of veiling is mandated in Islam. A claim which, I have come to discover, is grounded less on theological evidence than on the religious vulnerability which seeks to use the visual imagery of women as an antidote to the helplessness we are experiencing at the hands of western dominance.

Frustrated by all these visual and intellectual contradictions in my faith, I sought out that very scholar who had satisfied my questions some fifteen years ago. Although he did not remember me, one peek into his lowered gaze and I was satisfied with the purity of his heart.

This time however, I had no mercy on him and started at the very beginning, by concerning him with the question of God. He replied that there are some things you cannot understand or explain. And after I felt hammered by that realization a few more times, I elected to dispose of the esoteric questions and get down to concretes. And so I asked him concerning the modern value of enforcing the hijab. He said that it is his opinion that it is obligatory, but of course a woman can choose.

But where is the choice when her salvation and love for God is contingent on her willingness to comply with those opinions you deem compulsory to circumventing a grievous penalty? So he wisely resorted to the same answers I received from the many
other people whose counsel I sought and finally said, "There are some things you just have to accept, and Allah has commanded it so." I asked him what he thinks I ought to do with my inconsolable mind. He declared, "Where your mind ends, revelation begins." Hence I was left without answers, but I was content nonetheless by the reassurance that answers are not always possible and I should finally take consolation in faith—thus god, thus divine law, thus salvation.

I was prepared to accept matters as they are decreed even if they did not appeal to my intellect. But before I could take one day's comfort in that realization, another irksome question demanded to be asked. What of those matters that contradict human intellect? For even if I succumb to intellectual apathy and blind faith I could not ignore the visual contradiction embodied in that female surgeon. Dumb was one thing, but dumb and blind was more than I could bear to sustain. If I drive myself to accept that my common sense, my intellect, is extraneous in matters of faith, then I must not only accept the corollary of that assertion, but also its remedy—dogma and literalism.

If I am not permitted to exercise my uniquely human capacity to integrate and conceptualize reality as I experience it then I too would be bound to the same prescriptions which compel that female surgeon to apply religious mandates across every situation no matter what her circumstances dictate. Some environments are innately devoid of any sexual context, where notions of modesty or vanity, female vs. male are completely immaterial, as would be the case in an operating room.. Hijab in the context of some environments, much less extreme than hospitals, does the exact opposite of its intended purpose—it injects the notion of sexuality where none exists. But before we even bother about arguments on the letter vs. spirit of the law, we have to be aware of an even greater, more insidious danger to the natural progression of literal thinking and that first axiom of blind obedience which we have been called to embrace.


THE INTELLECT vs. ISLAMIC LAW

If the things we cannot explain and do not understand are the means by which we seek to reinforce our belief in God's presence, if accepting religious law submissively without question, laws and fatwas which are not grounded in intellect but on vague interpretations of revelation, are the greatest reinforcement we have of the validity of any religious claim, then the measure of faith in God becomes contingent on the degree to which one is willing to forgo logic.

What happens when one is able to intellectualize the rigidity of dogma out of existence, is that then tantamount to intellectualizing god out of existence? Is the God who demands adherence in defiance of logic and reason, not the God of superstition? If we accept what we are told, that static laws are moral truths, and then allow others to attach our adherence to them as a testament of our commitment to God, then ask yourself if you are willing to act on it, without just applying it to others and then using repentance as a scapegoat to exempt yourself.

Ask yourself if you are willing to live according to the dictates of the faith-minus-logic world of that female surgeon. Or will you continue to rely on the luxury that a free society permits you by evading the very real and more pertinent question here: do you believe that you have a right not to believe, and still be a believer?

Are you prepared in the name of the God who granted you free will to renounce the attitude towards faith that relies on your ability to not justify things, to not understand, and worse, to resist the temptation to know them, making renunciation of the mind a qualification of faith in God.

If you can't bring yourself to do it, then you are not alone. Countless doctors, scientists, and professionals at the height of their academic fields become absolute numbskull idiots when it comes to matters of religion.

Observe the man who needs confirmation on whether or not he should divorce the woman he loves, should it please his mother, or if he can be alone in an exam room with his female patients? Here is a man who is trained to make life and death judgment calls but cannot make the simplest decisions when it comes to his personal life or work.

Or notice the woman who asks if dancing is permitted if only for her husband. But what is even more absurd than the questions are the answers they were given, which were—yes, divorce her; no you can't be alone with your patient; and yes, you can dance for your husband as long as you do not imitate that infidel Brittany Spears. For more comical examples of the intellectual liquidation of our Umma I refer you to www.sunnipath.com, a site I was referred to by an even more mainstream organization, the Zaytoona Institute.

What is not so comical is the sense of urgency which is driving Muslims to abdicate their commitment to a rational faith in the interest of the anti-rational dogma of legalism according to and championed by our leadership, the abstraction of which can be embodied by a scattered collection of voices who have been eulogizing the merits of an Islamic state, all the while ignoring the reality and corruption which is our Islamic "state."

But here is the secret fear of our leadership, of our mullahs, from which all their irrational decrees are designed to hold back and deflect. It is the deep down realization that the literal materialization of everything they have been preaching has already been actualized in one of the most loyal, literal and failed experiments in Islamic history, Saudi Arabia, the land that is the logical conclusion of our illogical approach to religion. They will of course go into a diatribe about how that sham of a kingdom is not an Islamic ideal but rather its corruption, but they will not be able to tell you why. Not because they do not know why, but because to answer the question why, you have to be prepared to follow through with the answer and its subsequent implication—making public that which you have already painfully conceded in private, proclaiming your independence from every authority that up and till now has held us all emotionally detained and united under a philosophically flimsy banner of blind compliance to Islamic laws which are intellectually indefensible.

Proclaim your independence from laws which have kept women physically or psychologically gagged and men spiritually impotent. Say your farewell to edicts which are supposed to reinforce revelation, but have in essence denied its most fundamental premise, the premise where your mind ends and revelation does indeed begin. Your mind ends at the very beginning, with the most fundamental question and answer from which every other question and answer should stem. Are humans inherently good or evil?

It is with this question that Revelation kicks in with undeniable force and tells me what my intellect cannot, which is that humans are inherently good, a premise which not only makes my faith unique, but which is also one of the firmest of my religious beliefs.

Since our revelation stresses our inherent goodness, our fitra, then it stands to reason that the letter of the law is a superfluous mechanism in harnessing our nature, which revelation says is predisposed to goodness. No legalism or holy spirits are required for guidance if and when our natural proclivity is allowed to serve as our most qualified guide. But our natural inclination is not a given; it is a product of a soul that is under no compulsion, a soul which is completely free. Natural inclinations can only find representation in a world that is free of every variety of coercion and intimidation, making a free society the organic expression and incarnation of an Islamic state, and the more free the society, the more Islamic it becomes.

No amount of rationalizations or explanations can convince any thinking person that a stricter adherence to the codification of our traditions will cure our current crisis. We must stop insisting that ideological unity is measured by uniformity in practice and recognize that ideals are abstract and timeless and their implementation and will have different expressions depending on time, culture, place and circumstance. We should also recognize that pity and loyalty to the feeble minded and spirited of society who seek security through unity and uniformity is a betrayal and a crime against the intellectually gifted members of our society, who will either, in an effort to alleviate their anguish, use their intellectual prowess to become the most destructive force in the trend towards fundamentalism, or leave religion for the masses, and become either disgruntled atheists or mystics.

If uniformity in practice continues to become the standard by which we derive and uphold religious law, instead of reality and intellect, then we will forever be compelled to yield to the lowest common unifying denominator where the exceptions become the rules, the hypotheticals become the standard, and the what ifs become the what should be. And in order to insure uniformity in practice, scholars will be forced to spend their lives making concessions for every single legal contingency. And Islamic scholarship, philosophy, and art will have to be sacrificed in order to relieve the constipation which results from questions like: What if it rains in the morning, can I join my prayers? What if my shorts are one eighth of an inch above my knee? What if my wife kisses me before I had the chance to stop her, should I repeat my wudu?

These sorts of questions become completely legitimate when reason is isolated from religion.

You have only to look at the reality which is our present state to recognize that where there is impotence of the mind and spirit, there is subjugation of the body, specifically women's bodies. If man is the metaphor for the material world, the world of progress and development, then woman is his spiritual counterpart. Man's spirit is bound by his capacity to produce, and whenever man feels he has no power to effect change or to produce material goods, woman becomes the mirror of his castrated spirit. In an effort to alleviate his paralysis in the physical world, he will seek to bind and gag the spirit which demands he fight for it, the spirit which is woman, the spirit whose movements he seeks to control to compensate himself for the tyrannical politics of bigger men who seek to control him.

To resuscitate men's minds, I would like to propose that we initiate a movement to liberate the male spirit by psychologically and physically liberating women from the impositions of religious mandates that are no longer relevant or sanctioned either in letter or spirit. We should do this one scarf at a time, by reevaluating the directive imposed on women to cover their hair and demanding that our scholars publicly declare their confidence in our capacity to think abstractly and redefine ideals of modesty according to the customs and sanctions of current mores. We should acknowledge that anything exceeding those expectations is a testament to a woman's personal desire to hold herself accountable to an individual standard not to be imposed collectively on the entire female population.


DECONSTRUCTING THE VEIL-AS-OBLIGATION MYTH

In advocating for personal ijtihad (independent reasoning), I am imploring that we rediscover, not eradicate, the Islamic sciences. (For an intelligible book on Sharia, I refer you to Islam: A Sacred Law, by Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf.)

Here, I will examine only one example from Islamic law, which is the command made, through consensus of the scholars, that women must cover their hair. Let us examine the legitimacy of this directive based upon our Islamic sources of guidance minus their entirely male interpretations.

Historically, the custom of veiling and secluding women was not common in the Islamic world until about three generations after the Prophet's death. This form of dress was adopted from earlier pre-Islamic Near Eastern societies. Jews and Christians also covered their hair. And even
then, the veil was not worn by all women. It was a mark of status worn by women of the upper classes, not by peasants or slaves. It was never a unique or essential practice in Islam, and the Quran did not command all women to cover their heads. The primary source of evidence for its implementation is obtained from Surah an-Nur, which says:

And say to the believing women to lower their gaze and
guard their modesty; that they should not display
their Beauty and ornaments except what (must
ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw
their veils over their bosoms and not display their
beauty…." (24:31, Abdullah Yusef Ali)

The noun khimar, which is translated here as "veil," was worn in pre-Islamic times either as an ornament let down loosely over the wearer's back, or as a protection from the desert climate. Not covering your head was considered a bad practice, as was shaving the beard. Your reliability was questioned when either custom was not followed, in the same way that our current culture questions the reliability of those who don body piercings or tattoos. In accordance with the fashion prevalent at the time of the Prophet, the upper part of a woman's dress had a wide opening in the front, leaving her breasts exposed. Hence the injunction to cover the bosom by means of a khimar is intended to make it clear that a woman's breasts are not included in the concept of "what may decently be apparent" of her body and should be covered.

The significance of the verse is concerned with covering the breast area, juyubihinna, as the verse has also reinforced. There is also no sanction or punishment for failing to observe Islamic dress, as there are punishments for adultery and murder.

The interpretation of the phrase illa ma zahara minha by several of the earliest Islamic scholars is what a human being may openly show in accordance with prevailing custom. Although the traditional interpreters of Islamic law have been disposed to restrict the definition of "what may (decently) be apparent" to a woman's face, hands and feet, the meaning of illa ma zahara minha is really much wider. The intentional ambiguity of this phrase is to allow for variability in practice according to customs and personal interpretations of modesty.

However there are also other verses which can be taken into consideration when deciding on appropriate dress, such as the specific commands about seclusion (al-Ahzab 33:32-33) which apply only to the Prophet's wives who, as the Qur'an asserts, are unlike any other women. Keep in mind that in traditional Arab society a sexual scandal was a very serious matter that could have been used to discredit the Prophet's mission. The hijab or curtain that was imposed on the Prophet's wives was a measure used to curtail the possibility of false accusations against the Prophet's family. There is a reference to the generality of Muslim women in another verse which states:

O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters, as well
as all (other) believing women, that they should draw
over themselves some of their outer garments (when in
public): this will be more conducive to their being
recognized (as decent women) and not annoyed. But
(withal,) God is indeed much-forgiving, a dispenser of
grace! (al-Ahzab 33:59, Asad transl.).

The context of this verse is that some of the hypocrites were molesting women in the street. Accordingly, Muslim women were ordered to dress in a manner that would distinguish them as modest and chaste and not to be assaulted. One could argue that this command is bound b context and time, and as such, dress is used to indicate a Muslim's identity and not necessarily as a measure of the moral status of the woman herself. It would of course also be socially preferable to raise men to respect women and not think that a woman's dress can serve as an invitation or license to assault her.

When the objective of a decree is stated in the Quran, then it is the objective, not the decree, which should take precedence in one's interpretation. One can claim that in light of the current situation we are facing, wearing the hijab has rendered women more of a target for the ill intentioned, and as a precautionary measure, one should not wear the hijab. I would never suggest that this is a good argument, but it certainly will quiet those who imply that the aim of hijab is to protect women.

The final verse with respect to veiling says: As for your women past the age of bearing children, who have no hope of marriage, there is no harm if they take off their outer garments, but in such a way that they do not display their charms; yet if they avoid this it would be better for them. God is all-hearing, all-knowing. (an-Nur 24:60)

Not one of these verses commands a woman to cover her hair explicitly. Even implicitly the emphasis is not on suppressing a woman's natural inclination to be feminine but rather to emphasize that a woman should not dress in a manner that is sexually suggestive.

The other source of guidance we have on the matter of veiling are two hadiths, reported sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The first of which is narrated below where Aisha said:

Asthma', daughter of Abu Bakr, entered upon the
Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) wearing thin
clothes. The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him)
turned his attention from her. He said: O Asthma',
when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does
not suit her that she displays her parts of the body
except this and this, and he pointed to her face and
hands.

Very few Muslims know that this is in Sunan Abu Dawud. The English translation of Sunan Abu Dawud is in three volumes. This hadith is in Volume 3, Book XXVII, Chapter 1535, and Hadith number 4092, titled: "How Much Beauty Can a Woman Display?"

Abu Dawud reports that this is a mursal tradition (i.e. the narrator who transmitted it from 'Aisha is missing), making this hadith a weak one. Few veiling advocates ever point out that this is a weak hadith and therefore should not be used to obtain Islamic
injunctions.

The other hadith, which is sahih (considered authentic), states:

My Lord agreed with me ('Umar) in three things... (2)
And as regards the veiling of women, I said 'O Allah's
Apostle! I wish you ordered your wives to cover
themselves from the men because good and bad ones talk
to them.' So the verse of the veiling of the women was
revealed (Bukhari, v1, bk 8, sunnah 395).

But again this was in reference to the Prophet's wives who were the target of insults and accusations by the "hypocrites." The majority of those who have attempted to interpret the Qur'an to mandate the hijab argue that the vernacular "beauty" includes hair, and its exposure is
therefore forbidden. But the term "ordinary'," means ordinary to the prevailing social customs. How is hair not "ordinary"?

The word "Hijab" itself is derived from hajaba, that is, to hide or conceal. Hijab/hajaba is mentioned eight times in the Quran. But Hijab is never used in the context of a woman's head covering. Even the word khimar really signifies any covering, such as a blanket, dress, or shawl.

What is clear, even after an analysis of various translations and even if one uses the word veil in translation, is an order that the woman's bosom be covered, not that the woman's head be covered. This is not to say that covering the hair does not carry noble connotations. My objective is not to destroy what I believe would be a beautiful custom if it were not marred by the decree that it is obligatory, depriving a woman from the sense of joy that she would derive from choosing it as a genuine expression of her interior state of purity and transcendent beauty.

My objective is to liberate every woman, myself included, who has only adopted the Islamic dress because she was misled into believing that it is an obligation, and even more importantly to liberate all the women who do not wear it from the unearned guiltthey harbor, for what they have been told is spiritual weakness on their part.

I got the impression from the many people I have spoken with that they would secretly agree with me but would rather not rock the boat over what they have, without our permission, deemed a minor issue. I pray that they will evolve the courage to forgo political correctness and stop hiding behind the pretense that it's the woman who is making the choice. Fear, of eternal damnation no less, nullifies the impression that it is a choice.

But my greatest motivation in seeking guidance on this issue was to speak on behalf of those who do not have the luxury to make an independent decision regarding their religious expression. For while I can take off my hijab, I know that the ramifications I, a mere housewife, will suffer in the hands of a few back biters and name callers will be negligible in comparison to the jail time and humiliation a female surgeon in Saudi Arabia would have to endure to assert her right to unveil.

When my friend was lying at the operating table, vulnerable and exposed, he was asked by the thoughtless man who was there to assist in the surgery to furnish some proof that he can pay for the superior quality heart tube which he demanded. The female surgeon terminated his coarseness by giving him her assurance that she would pay for it if my friend could not, proving that she is not only his superior in intellect but also in compassion.

My friend not knowing in what manner he would thank this angel of mercy, in what way he can make her feel singled out, without being rebuked for transgressing any social bounds, elected to do it by means of a poetic note of thanks. She took it from him as if it were a charge slip, only to rush back to plead with him to sign the note. In that act, she expressed both her nature and personality, for while she remains
nameless and faceless and claims no credit for her efforts, she insists that he be given credit for his.

And so in gratitude to the female surgeon who has healed and touched many hearts both literally and figuratively, I in a last literal and symbolic act of faith would like to take my hat off, or rather scarf off to you, my sister in Islam. For tomorrow I will go out unveiled for the first time in the hopes that the world will see you and me with new eyes and, more importantly, with enlightened hearts. And I am hoping
they will join me in public opposition to the veiling of your elegant mind and compassionate voice. A voice which, if it were allowed to sing freely, would triumph over the voices of those who either in their silent resignation or blatant endorsement have contributed to the horrors that will make September 11th both a day of awakening and tragedy for Muslims everywhere.

Inas Younis is a freelance writer residing in the
state of Kansas.

Copyright © 2003-2004 Muslim WakeUp! Inc.

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Historical Method: A Comment on Deeper Roots

The book promised to be "what the other book (Roots) promised to be but never was. Rather than an incapacitating, sentimental Euro-centric tracing of ethnicity, the author reconnects the Americas to the culture of pre-colonial West Africa and the universal way of Islam."

My next door neighbor in Oman gave me the book in our discussions on Islamic theology and law. He has traveled widely in America, so I assume he picked it up there. Anyway, the book brought up an old, yet still relevant issue: did Africans reach America before Columbus? Before I go on, a note on methodology is in order. While I think that is highly likely that Africans did reach the Americas before Columbus (and Dr. Quick presents numerous pieces of evidence, mostly gleaned from the work of Ivan Van Sertima) there is also the problem of how admissible certain pieces of evidence are. The reasoning behind Quick and other scholars' work is that an accumulated mass of similarities must ergo equal pre-Columbian contact. Yet a word from a comparative anthropologist is most germane here:

It can never be assumed that apparent likenesses between cultures are fundamental, while obvious differences are coincidental or due to special local circumstances. The selection of similar elements from different cultures and the dismissal of differences must always be justified logically, in detail, and in both historical and functional terms. As in any scientific enterprise, we must not simply choose our facts to suit our theories but must demonstrate that the cultural similarities considered to be fundamental are similar in detail and durable, while dissimilarities must be logically explicable as easily changeable cultural features.

For example, Quick cites Ferdinand Columbus, who writes about people in northern Honduras as being "black in color. They pierce a hole in their ears large enough to insert a hen's egg." "Black in color" indeed tells us very little of these people's concrete cultural origins, and should not be taken as evidence. However their piercings might tell us a little more. Even if piercing were practiced in West Africa similar to how Columbus described (quite likely), how do we know that this practice emerged in the Americas from contact with Africa? Independent invention seems just as likely. Happily for the scholar, their are some almost irrefutable pieces of evidence relating to language and other traveler's reports which put us on firmer ground. Overall the book gives some fascinating insight into what is in many ways still an underground history. Quick ends by meditating on a dynamic that has been much studied of-late, and remains relevant to African Studies in an Indian Ocean context:

"The real challenge is to be "Mecca-centric" yet in touch with the African world, to be an authentic Muslim yet still in touch with African American spirituality, to be a moral person yet still in touch with the pulse of African American youth, and to develop Islam in America without getting lost in the crises of the Muslim world."

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Taqleed, Ijtihad, and Wujub al-nazr

You drown in an ocean of God and can't breath -Jedi Mind Tricks

Recently I have been digging into different facets of Islamic theology, and it is certainly interesting to see the early theologians having debates similar to what the early Christian theologians were debating (the nature of G-d, His attributes, free will, eternity, oneness.)

What I always find MOST interesting about these debates is the degree to which the debaters assume that all those in the conversation know how to ascertain that something is true. It is rarely questioned HOW we actually KNOW FOR CERTAIN that something is true.

Islamic theologians tried to address this systematically, but even they were limited by the ideas and ideology current at the time. Many of them borrowed heavily from Hellenistic philosophy in order to argue their theological and philosophical viewpoints. However, if one reads the average book of aqeedah, what one generally gets is not sophisticated argumentation but crude propositional logic using mostly hadith. In fact, I have found that these books are rarely encouraging believers towards the pursuit of knowledge but towards the pursuit of certainty and non-argumentation. This is disappointing but understandable, as religious scholars are often tied to state projects of social and political control and religious ideology offers a convenient prop for this. Even if said religious scholar is not tied to a state-project, he still exists within a milieu which requires him to convince his followers that he knows THE way: uncertainty is public enemy number one when it comes to religious knowledge.

After considering all this, and then reading more on the basic principles of knowing (i.e syllogistic knowledge, first order logic, etc) I came across the following concept from Jainism (an an Indian religious and intellectual tradition predating Hinduism and Buddhism):

Anekantavada--the principle of multiple viewpoints

Anekantavada is basically the idea that since everything changes, what we know to be 'true' ought to be tempered by another knowledge: that of our impermanence and extremely limited knowledge of the world. Reality itself is manifold in its manifestations. Special relativity demonstrates this is in regards to the nature of space and time: an object's experience of it may be profoundly different depending on the reference point and relative nature of motion. This is rarely present at the level of ordinary awareness, rather it becomes apparent only as one moves at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Our experience of the world presents a profound paradox which we can ignore existentially, but not philosophically. To me at least, anekantavada is like saying "Allahu 3lim."

Even math, otherwise one of the purest and clearest ways to see the world, has its own set of inherent limitations. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem shows that since any given mathematical system complex enough to contain arithmetic, contains propositions that are true but not provable from within the system, then it may be possible that no single theory will be able to explain the whole world. To extrapolate beyond the abstraction: If we consider Islam as a "system" or a "special world-system" to borrow John Voll's words, then is it not the case that there are true propositions within it that are not provable using its internal methodology. (i.e the existence of G-d). By extension, doesn't this mean that there are things outside the system which are also true but not demonstrably true within the system? This does not invalidate the system's truths, but it does inject a sense of humility into the conclusions one draws within the logic of that system. In other words, the conclusions from our system or set, have to be part of a larger set of sets (The SET OF ALL TRUTH, if you will)

I will let al-Ghazali have the last word on this one, with his criticism of the Mutazilites:

"Don't you see that when you are asleep you believe certain things and imagine certain circumstances and believe they are fixed and lasting and entertain no doubts about that being their status? Then you wake up and know that all your imaginings and beliefs were groundless and unsubstantial. So while everything you believe through sensation or intellection in your waking state may be true in relation to that state, what assurance have you that you may not suddenly experience a state which would have the same relation to your waking state as the latter has to your dreaming, and your waking state would be dreaming in relation to that new and further state. If you found yourself in such a state, you would be sure that all your rational beliefs were unsubstantial fancies."

Al-Ghazali didn't reject reasoning, he simply said that it had its limits especially in regards to attaining the WHOLE truth of a situation. Thus he indirectly pointed to the principle of multiple viewpoints.

Now let us consider the application of this viewpoint to the science of knowledge leading to right guidance:

The central debate in Islam seems to be between taqleed (following a particular authority out of respect for their knowledge) and ijtihad (making a decision, particularly a legal decision, by independent judgement). Taqleed is what we 'ordinary' humans do, while ijtihad is for those well-versed in Islamic scholarship. There is a place in Islam for both of these concepts (for example, taqleed tells me that when I want an opinion about mathematics, I don't go to any random friend but to a mathematician or math teacher. That doesn't preclude my friend the Calculus II student from offering some brilliant analysis up to his level of expertise.)

Unfortunately the two been distorted into opposite poles (like when Western critics argue that "closing the gates of ijtihad" was the cause of intellectual stagnation in the Muslim world but ignore that there are plenty of Islamic commentators who have parsed this debate in different ways, with great skill.)

My question: Why can't an ordinary person perform ijtihad? Is there anything in the Quran prohibiting this? Unequivocally, no. Therefore, I am convinced that, with the availability of modern knowledge, one can easily perform ijtihad, and indeed should. One ought to have the deepest respect for true scholars, and be quick to point out factual errors, but the arguments against ijtihad only demonstrate how scared some 'ulama are of losing their power, as well as how far some have come from the reforming message of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him.

But even beyond ijtihad is the process of wujub al-nazar, or the obligation to reason to produce truth. Given the above limitations, proof with al-nazar will necessarily still be contained within a system (that of human thought) but it will be a larger system with more points of overlap. Whereas to reason from within ijtihad alone might also produce truth, but within a more limited system (the framework of Islamic law).

Now the question REALLY is: how does one parse out the differences between an obligation to use reasoning, and an obligation to obey the principles of a given system (Islam, for example). This is a very relevant question, especially when it comes to implementing Islamic law.
ASIDE: Please note that I don't use the word 'reason' (i.e. Western rationalism) but the word 'reasoning' to denote the process by which any group of humans produces its fundamental truth and which has produced a pretty stunning plurality of viewpoints on a range of ethical and ontological issues.
Many 'liberal' or 'modernist' Islamic scholars (I have problems with those two labels but we will address that later) have correctly pointed out that institutions which are now basically assumed to be the pillar of Islam as a 'system' are not in fact as ontologically sound as they have been purported to be and thus not to be relied on to establish the truth of a given proposition within that system. See, for example, Kassim Ahmad's Hadith: A Re-evaluation. The most shocking aspect of what Ahmad reveals is that the Prophet Muhammed himself (in an often ignored or misinterpreted hadith) clearly forbade his followers from writing down what he said.

Here is one of the reason's Prophet Muhammed's revelation was so important: he was specifically addressing the corruption and empty formalism that had arisen within the Judaic tradition due to the fact of relying on Talmudic interpretation and scholarly opinion. Using our earlier terminology, the logic of that system (Judaism) had become strained and unharmonious due to its overreliance on taqleed.

This produced a sort of disharmony between the obligation to reason speculatively towards the truth, and the opinions of past scholars. What the early Islamic scholars did, in an attempt to ensure that its system would not be corrupted along the same lines, is to try to ensure that there was a given system in place for discerning the accuracy of a given hadith. (Compare this to the Christian Church fathers decision to implement a priesthood)

But given that compilers like Bukhari didn't begin to write these down until some two centuries after the Prophet's death, isn't it ironic that Muslims would claim that the hadith are more accurate than say, the Gospels? (With a similar time lag between events and recording). I do not make this point in order to incite the ongoing battle of correct revelation; I am merely pointing out that theological controversies in Islam are a function of human limitation within that system, as is the case for Christianity, Judaism, etc. Any given system of religion will necessarily have a degree of pluralism; the question is never about eliminating that pluralism but of establishing its boundaries: how do we discern what is 'of the system' and 'not of the system'. Mathematically speaking, what is our set? And does our set harmonize with the set of sets? We are back to the principle of allahu 3lim.

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