Last Sunday, the BBC hosted an edition of The Big Questions that examined arguments for and against the existence of God. Being an agnostic myself, I found the arguments presented by the ‘for’ side extremely weak and self-contradictory. Even more off-putting was the arrogant and smug manner in which certain individuals presented their arguments, especially the Middle Eastern sounding Muslim chap and Adam Deen. Both of these individuals touched upon the oft-repeated fallacy that the Quran must be the word of God since it contains no errors.

This is a very popular argument used by Muslim preachers who generally rely on audience’s ignorance of the Quran to win the argument. They also have a natural advantage in that people are fearful of criticising Islam and are therefore often reluctant to enter into the debate. It is also an argument that I often made when I was a young Muslim and am therefore very familiar with it.

It is, however, deeply flawed. The Quran not only contains many scientific and historical errors, there is also strong evidence to suggest that it was been changed, altered and authored by more than one source.

Most Muslims when faced with these contradictions will seek out an apologists attempt to answer them. They will post a link to said apologist and say ‘see, these have been dealt with’. What they won’t do is ask themselves, ‘how credible are these explanations’? Technically any contradiction is any ancient book from the Middle East can be explained away through the use or creative language interpretation, metaphors and other sophisms. But these explanations are rarely credible or convincing to the neutral observer yet appease believers due to their confirmation bias.

Some of these explanations rely on logic such as given in this example. If you were told ‘go to your home’, you would most likely interpret that as meaning going to your physical address where you reside. However, the word ‘home’ could also refer to a safe place and it could refer to somewhere you feel comfortable. Yet no sensible person would interpret ‘go to your home’ as meaning find a safe place or go to somewhere where you feel comfortable. Now that is the kind of fanciful interpretation words and phrases in the Quran are given by Muslim apologists who deploy mind-bending logic to preserve their holy book.

In the interests of time and your patience, I will limit myself to providing four such Quranic contradictions. I have heard Muslim attempts to explain away all of the below contradictions on numerous occasions, yet most of their explanations are so ridiculous that they don’t even deserve referencing.

Contradiction 1

The Quran states:

The Jews call Ezra a son of God, and the Christians call the Christ a son of God. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. God’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!
[Quran 9:30]

Putting aside the harsh and uncouth tone of the above verse, the content is simply incorrect. No Jews have ever claimed that Ezra was the son of God. You will not be able to find a single document or Jewish reference that makes this claim. Even if there was an obscure and minority sect in 7^th century Arabia that did make this bizarre claim, it is hardly accurate to call them ‘the Jews’ without further clarification. That is a bit like saying ‘The Muslims believe that Ghulam Mirza Ahmed was a Messiah’. If someone made that statement, Muslims would be the first to challenge it and quite rightly so.

Contradiction 2

The Quran States:

So let man consider from what he is created. He is created from a gushing fluid that issued from between the loins and ribs. (Quran: 86, 5-7)

The gushing fluid, semen, is not issued from between the loins and the ribs. It is created in the testicles and issues from the tip of the penis. There have been many Muslim attempts to re-interpret this verse in light of modern science. Most of these attempt to provide creative interpretations for the words ‘Sulb’ (backbone) and ‘Tara’ib’ (ribs). Apologists claim that sulb refers to the erect penis whilst Tara’ib refers to the sexual areas of a woman. However, you will never find these words being give those interpretations in any credible Arabic dictionary and there are no other examples in Islamic sources of these words being used to mean sexual areas of the man or woman.

Futhermore, all Tafsirs (commentaries) from Ibn Kathir onwards have interpreted sulb and Tara’ib as meaning ribs and backbone. Alternative interpretations have only been advanced very recently when this contradiction was pointed out. Whatever, you make of this mess, pardon the pun, you can’t disagree that the Quran is anything but vague, misleading, opaque and thus a poor guide or reference.

Contradiction 3

The Quran states:

Allah is He who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see; is firmly established on the throne; He has subjected the sun and the moon! Each one runs for a term appointed. He regulates the matter, explaining the signs in detail, so you can be certain of meeting with your Lord. (Quran 13:2)

And

Don’t you see that Allah merges night into day and he merges day into night and he has subjected the sun, and the moon each running its course for a term appointed. And Allah is aware of what you do. (Quran 31:29)

Every single tafsir (commentary) of the Quran written prior to the 20^th century also supports this view, as did almost all Muslim scientists of all the past. In fact even some Muslims defend this view today along with many who still believe the earth is flat, since that what the Quran suggests in many verses.

Modern apologists have claimed that the since the Sun does actually have an orbit around the Milky Way, the verse is technically correct. However, this far-fetched interpretation fails to take into account the fact that the sun’s orbit takes roughly 226 Million years. In the verse, God is supposed trying to convince mankind of his majesty and asking them ‘don’t you see’ and referring to clearly observable phenomenon. The orbit of the sun is not observable by humans and therefore this explanation makes absolutely no sense unless you are a believer who is desperate to find any explanation.

Contradiction 4

The Quran states:

And of every thing We have created pairs: That ye may receive instruction. (Quran: 51:49)

Not every creature procreates or reproduces through male and female sexual relationship. The whiptail lizard in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and South America consists only of females who reproduce by parthenogenesis. The Qur’anic Allah does not know anything about the biological process by which new individual organisms are produced. Today we know you can find an organism which creates a genetically-similar or identical copy of itself without a contribution of genetic material from another individual. There are also hermaphrodites.

So there you have it. There are of course, many other such contradictions but the above should suffice to bury the claim that the Quran is inimitable.

Al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham, tutor to the Umayyad Caliph Marwan, said “The Qur’an’s eloquence is not a miracle and people can do the like of it and better.”(1)

The Mu’tazilite scholar Abu Musa said “People are able to produce the like of the Qurʾān as regards eloquence, and composition and rhetorical beauty.”(2)

The 11th century Sunni scholar Abu al-Qushairy said: “We do not claim that everything in the Qurʾān is in the highest rank of eloquence.”(3)

Ibn al-Rawandi (former Mu’tazilite scholar) (d. 910 ad) said “Indeed the Qurʾān is not the speech of a wise god. In it are contradictions and mistakes and passages that are in the realms of the absurd.”(4)

1. Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafiì, “The Miraculous Nature of the Qurʾān and the Prophetic Rhetoric.” Page 160.

2. Al-Baghdadi, “The Difference Between the Groups” Page 164–165; and al-Shahrastani, “The Book of Sects and Creeds”, 1/68–69.

3. Al-Baghdadi, “The Difference Between the Groups” Page 164–165; and al-Shahrastani, “The Book of Sects and Creeds”, 1/68–69.

4. Quoted from Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi, from “History of Disbelief in Islam” page 216.

Al-Razi Quote in video is from Dr. Badawi, from “The History of Disbelief in Islam,” p 218

For a fuller rational analysis of the Qur’an see: محنتي مع القرآن

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30855635/My-Ordeal-with-the-Quran-ARABIC-محنتي-مع-القرآن

English version of “My Ordeal With the Qur’an” (Partial Translation)

Umar was once looking for the text of a specific verse of the Qur’an he vaguely remembered. To his deep sorrow, he discovered that the only person who had any record of that verse had been killed in the battle of Yamama and that the verse was consequently lost.
~Ibn Abi Daud, Kitab al-Masahif

the state of "yiddishkeit" yesterday

anyway, it appears to be (you can download it from here) from one of the increasingly odd sub-groups of the breslover sect of hasidim, who you may have seen in the recent tv documentary partying at their annual jamboree at the sect founder’s tomb in the town of uman in the ukraine. they are regarded as somewhat odd even by other hasidim (in a kind of sufi high-on-G!D hippy kind of way) but they are rather obsessed with the kabbalistic aspects of correct sexual activity, the piece itself being extremely revealing of the attitudes that filter through in much of the discourse from the haredi world, particularly the hasidic bits, so i thought i’d share it, with some translation and commentary:

1. a “leshem yichud” is a kabbalistic formula meant to be recited before an action in order to concentrate the proper intention and mindfulness.
2. the “sita aher”, normally called the “sitra ahra”, is a kabbalistic term for, not to put too fine a point on it, the “dark side of the Force”.
3. “klipot” is a term referring to the “shells” that enclose the “sparks of holiness that were trapped in the lower worlds (including ours) during the cosmic catastrophe of the creation of evil in lurianic kabbalah.
4. “pogem enayim” means “defiler of one’s eyes” – a transgression of a Torah commandment; according to most interpretations, gazing at immodestly dressed women will constitute this transgression – haredi interpretations of “immodestly dressed” covers pretty much anything that doesn’t cover hair, elbows, knees, neckline or reveals the curves of the (female, of course) body.
5. a “lav doraysa” is a negative prohibition (thou shalt not) directly commanded in the Torah.
6. “lo sasuro achary levavchem vachari anachem” is a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found in the third paragraph of the “shema”, numbers 15:37-41, to not “stray after your hearts”, in other words, follow impulses which might lead to idolatrous behavour.
7. “heshumer mkal dvar ra” is, again, a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found deuteronomy 23:10, to “guard the camp when you go out against your enemies”, usually understood as “watch your back”, but easily reinterpreted to signify the protection of one’s home from evil influences; you will note the implicit attitude to the outside world.
8. a “deraysa” is a Torah commandment. to be “over a deraysa” (again, hasidishe transliteration, inconsistently done) one means to transgress the Torah commandment.
9. “poskim” are halakhic decisors, some of the important ones of whom are mentioned here; of course, it is by no means clear that the *way* in which these guys mean it is the same as the way in which these poskim mean it, certainly their decisions do refer explicitly to watching a film, but rather to other situations. however, if you want to take it that way, this is where you’d get the precedent from. of course, you can see “immodest” women (as these guys think of it) anywhere you like these days, you don’t need to be watching a film.
10. ” to be over on “Vehyisem Kedoshim” and “Kidoshim Tihyo”” means to transgress the Torah commandments to imitate G!D by being “holy” – leviticus 11:45 / 19:1-2 – which is taken by these guys to refer to refraining from illicit sexual acts, although ramban – nachmanides – has a big argument with rashi on this precise point, so clearly this isn’t as clear as it is made out to be.
11. “reshaim” – evil people; presumably this means the baddies.
12. “pogem habris” means “defiler of the covenant”, which is generally understood to be the misuse of the bit of you that the brit affects – in breslover thought i believe this is generally understood to be a euphemism for [male] masturbation, in any case they don’t half go on about it.
13. “see keri while i am asleep” – i.e. have sexual dreams.
14. “shmoneh esreis” – this refers to the “amidah”, the “18 benedictions” or standing prayer, which is of supreme importance in jewish prayer and is said three times daily; they’re worried that your mind will drift off during it.
15. “hiruray znus with my tefillin on” – a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which can be translated as “thoughts of whoredom”, in other words, the contemplation of illicit sexual acts while wearing phylacteries during morning prayers, which they suppose will be much more likely; the preservation of proper mindfulness while wearing tefillin is of great importance.
16. “kfirot” – denial of the truth of Torah.
17. “tzadikim” – sages.
18. “holy Shemot” – the various Divine Names, the contemplation and manipulation of which are the practical structures on which many kabbalistic techniques are founded.
19. “azilut, briah, yitzirah and asiyah” – the kabbalistic names of the “four worlds”.
20. “nefesh, ruch, neshamah” – one schema describing the structure of the human soul.
21. “avodas haShem” – the service of G!D, which should of course be one’s primary consideration. the thought that watching a film might actually assist in this, or teach moral lessons, does not, of course, occur.
22. “moshiach” – the messiah.
23. “kedusha” – holiness.
24. “emunah” – belief / trust.
25. “chitzinim” – literally, “externalities”, which, kabbalistically speaking are elements of Creation that “act as a spiritual barrier” between humans and G!D, which are there effectively play “devil’s advocate” and be overcome in order to choose the way of Torah and commandments and closeness to G!D of our own free will.
26. “do teshuvah” – repent.
27. “find my zivug” – to locate and marry one’s destined wife.
28. “if i am married then i am willing to have my children considered semi mamzarim since i will not be able to control my thoughts.” – this, in my view is the most serious, as the prohibitions and disabilities associated with mamzerut (the offspring of Torah-prohibited intercourse such as an incestuous or adulterous liaison) are incredibly unpleasant, restrictive and persistent. this is pretty much tantamount to saying that they wouldn’t be able to get married (quite a penalty in the haredi world) because of your sins. to call this “overstated” barely covers it; there is no such halakhic status of being a “semi-mamzer”; the avoidance of potential mamzerut being a fundamental concern. raising it as a real possibility is, in my view, an outrageous piece of scaremongering based on the falsification of halakhah; it’s basically making up a new category of prohibition which can’t possibly be justified in intent, let alone determined in practice or policed; if having “impure thoughts” makes your kids “semi-mamzerim”, then nobody could possibly consider themselves free of these.

all in all, this would have been funny and mordant as a piece of swiftian satire – as a serious piece of moral exhortation, it is arrant nonsense and appallingly manipulative. if i find out who has been leaving this stuff lying around, i will have words.

Download FATWA on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings (pdf)

Update: FATWA-on-Terrorism-and-Suicide-Bombings_NoRestriction (can copy and paste from the document now) – Thanks AF!

Have you ever been in or witnessed a debate where an individual’s arguments got comprehensively demolished without him/her even realising? Well if you haven’t then prepare for this treat.

Hamza Tzortiz, formerly of HT but now a pseudo-intellectual debater for IERA, decided to attend the World Atheist Conference in Dublin on the 3-5 of June 2011, along with some other inarticulate chums. They filmed their antics and produced an edited montage of clips which is available to view here.

They begin their poor propaganda by complaining that leading atheists have refused to accept their challenge to public debate, as if the likes of Dawkins would waste their time debating these idiots. They then go on to present a series of clips which shows them making long winded and misinformed comments disguised as questions, often in a rude and abrupt manner. All the clips are comical in their own way, but the improvised street debate with PZ Myers is perhaps the most comical.

Hamza ambushes PZ Myers in the street and immediately starts grilling him about his views on God and creation. As the debate progresses, one notices a number of things. Firstly, Hamza is not actually listening to anything PZ Myers has to say; rather he is actually having a monologue. He poses questions and as soon as PZ Myers begins to explain, he interrupts with another long-winded question. Obviously, he is aware that the debate is being recorded and he doesn’t want to give his opponent the time to articulate his views. Secondly, he clearly attempts to baffle PZ Myers with wordplay and philosophical sophisms. He reels out a baffling list of terms and phrases which I’m sure he barely understands himself. Thirdly, the whole debate seems more like an attempt to intimidate rather than a meaningful exchange of ideas, especially when he is joined half way through by the in-bred Adnan Rashid, who is living proof of evolution himself.

Despite all of the above, PZ Myers does rather well and actually manages, without any preparation, to debunk all of Hamza’s key arguments. The only tragedy being that Hamza doesn’t even realise that his arguments have been debunked. His arrogance and inability to consider his opponents arguments leads him to walk away thinking he did a good job. Watch the clip and judge for yourself. It’s a prime example of pseudo-intellectual self-delusion combined with arrogance and self-righteousness.

In terms of the issues raised, as PZ Myers asserts, it’s the same old arguments that have been debunked time and time again. Hamza starts by trying to provide ‘proof’ for first cause, i.e. the idea that the universe could not have come about without something starting it. Though it’s impossible to prove this one way or another (that is if you understand the meaning of the term ‘proof’ in this context), even if one were to concede the point then it doesn’t in any way prove the existence of a God, certainly not a single eternal God who seeks to interfere in our daily lives and punish those who don’t believe in him. Hamza does concede this point, after wasting 10 minutes on it, but then goes on to asserting that we can prove such a God through revelation, i.e. the wonderful and miraculous Quran.

The Quran must be one of the most boring, uninspiring and scary books ever written. Most of its references to science are incorrect, since they merely reflect the state of scientific knowledge at the time, and it spends most of its time cursing non-believers and Jews. But according to Hamza, it is full of scientific wonders and miracles which Muhammad could not have known, since he was merely an illiterate desert dweller in a remote part of Arabia.

This is a very popular argument that Muslims love to deploy, but it is based on a series of fallacies. Firstly, Mecca was not a remote and desolate part of the Middle East in the 7^th century. Rather it was a centre of trade and pilgrimage and people from all over the region would visit it regularly. It was a centre of cross fertilisation of ideas as well as goods. Muhammad was a successful merchant who not only traded with and interacted with people from all over the region but also went on trade expeditions to places like Syria. So it is quite conceivable that he came across a wide variety of people and ideas. Furthermore, the Quran was ‘revealed’ over a 23 year period, so there was plenty of time to speak to people from around the region and get ‘inspiration’.

Secondly, most of the science in the Quran is actually incorrect but the Quran does accurately reflect theories in circulation at the times, which were largely informed by Hellenistic knowledge. Let me give just one example, the Quran supports the idea of a geo-centric universe, i.e. a universe with the earth at the centre and the moon, sun and other planets going around the earth. The Quran states:

Allah is He who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see; is firmly established on the throne; He has subjected the sun and the moon! Each one runs for a term appointed. He regulates the matter, explaining the signs in detail, so you can be certain of meeting with your Lord. (Quran 13:2)

And

Don’t you see that Allah merges night into day and he merges day into night and he has subjected the sun, and the moon each running its course for a term appointed. And Allah is aware of what you do. (Quran 31:29)

Furthermore, there are many Hadith which back this theory, for example:

Narrated Abu Dharr: The Prophet asked me at sunset, “Do you know where the sun goes (at the time of sunset)?” I replied, “Allah and His Apostle know better.” He said, “It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west. And that is the interpretation of the Statement of Allah: ‘And the sun runs its fixed course for a term (decreed). That is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing.’”
Sahih Bukhari 4:54

Every single tafsir (commentary) of the Quran written prior to the 20^th century also supports this view, as did almost all Muslim scientists of all the past. But Muslims today would seek to re-interpret the Quran in light of modern science and then claim that the Quran was misunderstood in the past. Since every word can have multiple meanings in Arabic, one is afforded some flexibility to do this. So expect buffoons like Hamza to be running around thinking they can prove the existence of God and the truthfulness of Islam for a little while longer.

In Islamic terms this has never been denied. There are, however, various attempts at trying to place certain limitations of what can and can’t be subject to interpretation. Different considerations such as the authenticity of the text; the level of clarity in the specific text; its context; any apparent conflict with other pieces of scripture; its harmony with ration (yes ration) or logic; and the consistency of the text’s outcome with the higher aims of the scripture - are all considered to be intrinsic elements within the text that require consideration in analysis.

So if literalism is not the only factor in textual interpretation then what are the issues? Are there other complexities to consider in Islam’s legal tradition and methodologies? And if so, then how can these be made clear and help us to apply Islamic texts to our situations today?

There are, in this regard, many works that are starting to appearing in the English language that discuss these issues. Dr Sherman Jackson’s translation of Ghazali’s ‘Faysal al-Tafriqa’ titled ‘On the Boundaries of theological tolerance’, explains that aside from the basic tenets of belief in God, the Prophethood of Muhammad, and the belief in an afterlife, everything else should be considered as secondary branch discussions and subject to legitimate interpretive differences.

Sukrija Ramic’s ‘Language and the Interpretation of Islamic Law’ is another book which discusses more substantively the manner of interpreting texts that has existed in Islamic hermeneutic discourse, the wide variety of traditional methodologies, and their differences and diversity.

These are by no means ground breaking texts but they do demonstrate well the complexities that exist on a linguistic and an interpretive level. This ranges from how to understand the import and purport of a statement, the denotation and connotation of statements, the rationale or intent of statements, how inductive principles are derived, which meanings should take precedence over others and how to generate a hierarchy of meanings. Not to mention the massive differences that exist on almost every single question of methodology of interpreting text and the huge resultant differences in the understanding of scripture related to religious rules, which are known as ‘Fiqh’ (though they are commonly and erroneously referred to as Sharia.)

In fact it is for this reason that medieval scholars forbade people claiming that their religious interpretations and edicts should be considered as God’s judgments based upon Prophetic sayings. Rather they should be considered their own. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf cites Ibn Qayyim - the medieval theologian and famous student of Ibn Taymiyya – as stating this in his text, I’lam al-Muaqi’een.

Often, however, people say - whether literally or figuratively – that certain problematic scriptures should be removed from the texts, or should not be read literally. These are often well motivated and genuine attempts at addressing many of the problematic and highly dangerous interpretations of text - ranging from terrorism and suicide bombings; beating women; not associating with non-Muslims; and adopting an a hostile ‘state of war’ attitude.

While it is beyond a blog to explain any of these issues in detail, or how they are or should be approached, some examples are nonetheless necessary to help illustrate that the discussion is not simply about objective readings of text, literalism, or authenticity. What this blog does attempt to show, however, are the complexities and diverse views that already exist within extant tradition, and that there are principles that are involved in understanding, contextualising, and applying texts to our specific situation or environment.

In fact I would say that literal reading has never been the sole modus operandi of reading scripture in Islamic tradition, so there is no issue with believing these are the words of God whist acknowledging that there are various rationales, principles, or conditions to interpreting what is written.

The following are examples (certainly not exhaustive) of some of the issues that Asma’s blog post on this site raises about the application of some of the traditionally accepted paradigms of interpretation. There has been recognition of:

Ilal – rationale behind the verses. For example, Jihad texts have a rationale, and the rule revolves around the rationale which was always repelling hostility (hiraba) as Imam Qurtubi states: ’because you are fought collectively you must fight collectively’. Others have interpreted Jihad texts as only obliging warfare when attacked. Imam al-Jassas, one of thefirst to write on the legal dimension of texts in the Qur’an, mentions the above two positions, and the latter as being views of the Prophet’s Companions, successors and jurists. Wahba Zuhayli, the contemporary conservative and traditional jurist, also states explicitly that warfare can only be engaged when being attacked. Zuhayli explains that in today’s world, where we have institutions like UN and international law, means that Muslims are treaty bound to adhere to these principles, rules and agreements. Not only is this consistent with Islamic teachings but also obligatory to follow.

Mu’ridaat - conflicting passages which require some re-interpretation of the verses, e.g. verses which conflict with other verses, rules and principles, or Hadith texts. An example is the apparent prohibition of taking Christians and Jews as awliya (friends and/or protectors). Commentators have stated that this is in direct conflict with verses which come asinformative statements declaring rules (as opposed to commands in the texts which can be abrogated, informative statements cannot). One example of an informative statement is: ’you are not forbidden from (loving) those who do not fight you, nor expel you from your homes, from being benevolent and exceeding justice towards them’. This is considered a general verse that applies to all people according to Imam Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, the first to document an exegesis of the Qur’an. Ibn Ashur also contextualizes the others as speaking of times when people were persecuted because of their religion. In fact in such times preferring the persecutors over believers is forbidden except in the instance that Muslims can achieve a good situation and protect their interests, not through deception, but sincere friendship (sidq) as the specific meaning of wala in this verse. Many traditional commentators, including al-Tabari, stated this. Ironically, this is also cited by al-Nabhani - founder of the modern revolutionary Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Another example of rules and principles would be the verse regarding ‘striking’ women. Fadriboohunna - a word within the verse – is usually rendered as, to ’lightly strike’ them, and this is one tafsir (commentary of the verse). Traditionally, this verse has been taken to mean various things, ranging from ’preventing them’ to ’make love to them’ (according to Zamakshari). Some have stated that this verse was not advocating but discouraging the practice of ‘striking’ by restricting it, so that it is makruh (discouraged) and thus unethical. Therefore it is quite reasonable for it to be forbidden and for people to be punished by state sanction. That it is makruh is the view of Imam Shafi’I (the founder of the third school of Islamic religious law) and this has been collected by Imam Bayhaqi. Another illustration of the same maxim related to the example of striking women and children, is given by Imam al-Izz bin Abdul-Salam, when he states that it is forbidden to strike women or children because generally this lies outside the aim (maqsad) sought by the verse which is reform. Since this could be done through other means (wasa’il) he advocates the prohibition of beating as a fatwa (religious ruling).  This is also in accordance with the tradition cited by Imam Shafi’I and Imam Bayhaqi, ‘laa tadriboo im’a Allah’ – ‘Strike not the female servants of God’. This is an authentic tradition and fits with the above views ofprohibiting either absolutely, or discouraging striking women at all.

In fact there is a recognition, within pre-modern text analysis, that certain passages in the Qur’an would be considered ‘mushkil’ (problematic), ‘ijmal’ (ambivalent), ‘khafiy’ (obscure), ‘ma’lul’ or ‘maqul’ (containing some kind of rationale which must be followed or cause the text to be dropped in the absence of that rationale being achieved).

Dawr ul-hukm ma’a ilaluha (the rule revolves around its aim) is a well-known maxim in the Principles of religious law (Usul al-Fiqh). It was based upon this principle that the Companions of the prophet and their successors changed whom they paid alms to and removed certain categories mentioned in the Qur’an. They never invaded Abyssinnia, for example, as that was the country which provided refuge to persecuted Muslims and where they could freely practice their faith (unheard of in pre-modern empires), and it was for this reason that it was forbidden. Imam Malik actually states that this was something that there was absolute consensus among the first three generation of Muslims (‘salaf’) as related by Ibn Rushd in the early period.

Another example is the widely misunderstood phenomena of Jizya, a tax for not serving in the military imposed upon non-Muslims in Muslim empires. The rationale was that they were a protected community, but not obliged to defend the empire. If however they weren’t protected or they did fight to defend the empire then such an imposition wasforbidden. This is explained in medieval juristic writings, such as Abu Ubida’s ‘Kitab ul-Amwal’ (Book of Revenue – a well-known work discussing such issues). This is also mentioned by conservative traditionalists today, such as Saeed Ramadhan al-Buti and Zuhayli in his work Athar al-Harb fi’Fiqh al-Islami.

As shown in the above examples, literalism is not necessarily the core of the problem as discussed by Asma. By citing many of these examples, do we mean to say that everything is contained in classical exegesis? No. There is need for new ijtihad and interpretation and in fact much of this has been done. For example, Shaykh Mahmood Shaltut (an ex professor and head of al-Azhar) wrote about freedom of thought and belief in modern secular society and the removal of rules, like the killing of apostates, which many schools traditionally did advocate. Some ulema like Buti and Bin Bayyah do not even see these bits of Fiqh as religious rules but injunctions for political circumstances that are not religiously necessary. Therefore there is no applicability for texts or verses which are not relevant to current circumstances since the political context for their application is completely absent.

Literal readings of scripture has never been a problem. The problems, and challenges,  lie in de-contextualized readings of scripture; misreadings of the literal; and ideologically driven readings done within a specific political narrative and outside of understanding the political context.

It is absolutely necessary and vital to get debates like this started and challenge extremist religious/political narratives. Of course, challenging extremists must be based upon a common set of ethics, but also their so-called ‘religious authenticity’.

given that the board of deputies and, by the looks of it, the community as a whole, has withdrawn cooperation with the programme, as it was clearly interpreted as a hatchet job, the same way that “the root of all evil?” was – tendentiously edited and, wherever possible, using extreme examples as if they were the norm. of course whenever the jewish community was mentioned, it was invariably accompanied by a shot of someone strictly orthodox – small boys with giant peyot, or behatted, abundantly bearded, penguinish yeshiva bochurs staring through bottle-top glasses. as we all know, all jews look just like that.

the jewish community yesterday, apparently

a salient example was that of the british humanist society researcher pulling out the “shocking” example of the jewish school that does 8 hours of “religious education” a week compared to 6 hours of science. i wonder which school it was? they didn’t say if it was a mainstream united synagogue school or a strictly-orthodox school, of course.

what the anti-faith-schoolers don’t seem to get is that in this “8 hours of religious education”, they’re *not teaching theology* or “how to be unscientific” – they’re teaching practical skills of language, textual analysis and interpretation. in this sense, the correct analogy is not between a “faith school” and a “secular school”, but between a “specialist school” and a “generalist school” – i don’t see dawkins jumping all over sylvia young because her schools devote 10 hours+ a week to performing arts compared to 6 hours of national curriculum science. these kids need to PRACTICE – and so do religious kids, whether they’re learning Qu’ran or Torah or gita or granth. most religion – and this is an area where the preponderance of christianity in this country distorts the debate – requires considerable grasp of both practical techniques and core knowledge, in the same way that you’d expect a specialist technology college to spend extra time on programming languages to an level of detail not matchable by a specialist modern languages college.

anyway, stereotypes apart, like most of the jewish people (and christians and muslims) i know, religious or not, faithschoolers or not, i do struggle with whether we’re doing enough to encourage critical thinking. and i think it is worth mentioning that, in my opinion, in general, we’re not, which is part of the reason that the kiruv and dawah organisations which are, as far as i’m concerned, the vanguard of clerical fascism, are gaining ground. whether pro- or anti- people don’t know enough about religion to make informed choices and, as a result, many are either accepting it for badly-thought-through, poorly-rationalised reasons, or seeking to have it eliminated for equally misguided reasons. there isn’t a strong enough voice saying that you can be both traditionally religious and a clear, critical thinker, or that even though you don’t believe something yourself you still think it has a role to play. and, in point of fact, i don’t hand over the programming of my kids’ minds to their school, to teach them “the correct way” to think, that has to be my responsibility as a parent as well. part of the problem with the faith schools debate, it seems to me, is that focusing on theology and the problems with critical thinking misses why faith schools are really needed – it isn’t to teach them to “think correctly”, it is to teach them the skills to live in that particular community, which are time-consuming to learn, the same way as if you wanted to grow up to be an orchestra player, you’d need to go to music lessons and spend a lot of extra time practicing in order to be able to perform to the required standard. because christianity does not, generally, require these sorts of skills (say, for example, latin and greek, or scholastic argumentation) it is a lot harder to say how they clearly add value, other than that by all the motivated parents competing to get in increases the performance of the school – i think it might in fact be just another variety of the hawthorn effect.

getting back to the main point about the critical thinking deficit, however, i think a major part of critical thinking is the ability to debate with people of differing opinions. this, i feel, is typified by the current debate over free speech and offence. i analyse the issue and i see a continuum, starting with unintentional offence, going through intentional offence, through harassment to ultimately incitement to violence. it seems to me the debate is currently polarised between those who see all offence as tantamount to incitement to violence and those who see even incitement to violence as merely an expression of free speech. considering the vehemence with which my religion and ethnicity is attacked by the former and their apparent inability to comprehend the continuum connection, one might think that i would go to that opposite extreme – as indeed i have been accused of many times, when pointing out instances of jew-hatred and being told i was merely being hysterical. in fact, i am naturally far closer to faisal’s espousal of the “fry/hitchens standard”, if you like – “so you’re offended? so fecking what?”, as i believe in free speech. my difficulty is where the line should be drawn, which needs a far more nuanced perception than i can currently bring to the debate.

an excellent example of the challenges of critical thinking is currently being debated at harry’s place and elsewhere in this intellectual neighbourhood of the blogosphere between edmund standing and others:

“why would anyone want to take books that manifestly do make assertions about ultimate reality and give clear commands about how humans should behave, the punishments they should incur for thinking or behaving differently, and so on, and then delude themselves and others into thinking that actually those books don’t say what they clearly do say, or attempt to ‘reinterpret’ those books in a way obviously at variance with their intended meaning?”

in other words, if someone says “kill the bastards”, he means “kill the bastards”, not “engage them in debate” – and you should take that statement at face value. the trouble is, mr standing, that *isn’t the way we do it in judaism* (and, i would argue, not the way many people do it in islam) – we take challenging statements like that as a jumping off point, assuming that there is more to the basic statement than meets the eye. it is, for us, clearly established by the talmudic debate about the “oven of akhnai” (BT baba metzia 59b) that human interpretation has the power to overrule a “voice from the heavens”, but our *authority* to do this is derived from the Torah’s plain meaning: “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30) – in other words, that it is for us to interpret how the Text should be interpreted, that’s how it’s designed in the first place, not as an instruction manual free from ambiguity. jewish texts are based on cardinal principles of interpretative methodology and it is understanding how these work that constitutes a large part of the training that jewish children undergo when they are understanding their texts. i would go so far as to say that you can see the difference between people with this training and people without it is abundantly evident from the attitudes of, say, your average bible-belt christian and those of your averagely educated student of jewish law – the latter would not consider carrying out a punishment from leviticus, or even suggesting that it should be carried out as stated in the plain text without the full range of checks, balances and protective safeguards detailed in hundreds of folio pages of Talmud, commentaries and halakhah, under the precise circumstances in which such conditions apply. yet what some people seem to object to is interpretations based on simplistic misunderstandings. the objection then is:

“We don’t look at the work of medieval cartographers and then try to ‘reinterpret’ their maps so they fit with modern understandings of geography.”

well, no, but this isn’t a physical phenomenon here, it’s a legal framework, so its application is always going to be a matter of interpretation. i really don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that – but nonetheless, i don’t see an authoritative argument being made in return for the benefit of those who might not understand why interpretation is important; G!D Forbid, someone might think that that’s what those texts actually mean, or that G!D actually Wants us to behave like bronze age maniacs, when nothing could be further from the truth.

r. jonathan sacks once said, in conversation with john humphrys i believe, that the Torah seeks to teach us to learn to think for ourselves; initially, like a parent, G!D Chastises us and then Picks us up – but there is an expectation that we learn, over time, to pick ourselves up and eventually, not to fall over in the first place. i would argue that developing critical thinking is a salient example of precisely that and that the Commandment to do so is itself a Divine Mandate – so objections such as this:

“In every other area of human thought and writing, we turn to the latest, most advanced ideas, not to the primitive ideas of men of the past.”

should be shown as the red herrings they are. of course, this objection is foreseen:

“There is absolutely no rational basis for ‘reinterpreting’ ancient texts to make them appear relevant to today, nor any objective criteria for how this should be carried out, or to what extent such texts should be ‘liberally’ reinterpreted.”

but why should such criteria be objective? do we demand objective criteria against which to measure the Torah? do we demand that the world be judged against the Torah’s criteria? no, we do not – by the Torah’s own command. nor do we always demand a “liberal” interpretation. the point is that the giants of Torah throughout history to the modern era have always provided for the best of modernity to be understood, whether as “the wisdom of the nations” or as “Torah and wisdom”, but this perspective is in danger from the tendency to look inwards, to assume we have all the answers, from fear and suspicion of the outside world. simply to assert that “it’s not a valid question”, or that “it comes from an impure source” is not going to cut it in the long-term, whether or not you’re able to control the sources of people’s knowledge; and, if this is what is sought, it is both immoral and contrary to the justice that the Torah commands us in the most emphatic terms to pursue.

we need to understand and respond to these questions and attacks as a bona fide challenge, as if they were asked in an open-minded way – because regardless of whether the people conducting the public polemic are open-minded or not, similar questions will always be asked from “inside the camp” – and not to be able to address them effectively will prove the case of the public polemicists.

—

Ummah is not a simplistic Muslim political bloc in the Qur’an & Hadith. It is used at times to mean the faithful, as in the verse, “You are the best nation” (Al-Imran or the Family of Imran), although even Umar was said to have held the view that this referred primarily to the Companions. Sometimes in the political sense it does not imply folk of one religion only, but rather society as a whole, composed of different religions – as in the Sunnah description of the Jews and Muslims of Madinah as one Ummah (nation), separate from all other nations (ref: the Mithaq or Covenant of Madinah).

It was on this basis that jurists have explained the special tie that nations and people within a country have to each other. Sheikh al-Islam Syed Husain Ahmed al-Madani explains this point of the relationship with the nation in his book Islam aur Qaumiyat Mutahidda (translated into English as “Composite Nationalism & Islam”). This is why in fiqh terms it has always been the case that certain countries and empires can have treaties of peace with others whilst other countries/empires ruled over by Muslims don’t – this is a historic fact and a shar’i reality – see Sheikh Afifi al-Akiti’s fatwa refuting suicide bombing where he mentions this.

In Muslim belief, everyone from the time of the Prophet till the day of judgment is the Ummah of Muhammad (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam). Ibn Hajar explained in the Fath al-Bari that some (the ummah of istijabah) have accepted the Prophet’s invitation to Islam. Others are still being called and hence they are the Ummah of Da’wah. Sheikh Shinqiti also mentions this in his tafsir, the Adwa’ al-Bayan.

In classical fiqh terms, if you lived in a land then your relationship meant that even if that land was at war with the Muslim empires you took no part and it was forbidden to do so; in fact this was the case if you had a treaty with that country and others did not – as alluded to in the Qur’an itself. Sarkhasi elaborated further and explained that any country which gave Muslims safety to live and practice their religion and was attacked, then the Muslim living within that country should join the military ranks and fight to defend such a country, citing the example of Ja’far bin Abi Talib, who according to the Mujtahid Imam, fought alongside and gave support to the Negus of Abyssinia.

There is a further extension of this in fiqh terms related to defining the land as a homeland for Islam. Ibn Hajar al-Haytami gave the fatwa that any land or empire where Muslims could practice their faith belonged to Dar al-Islam (as the Shafi’i madhhab states) and therefore if it was attacked by rebels or foreigners the Muslim majority countries/empires were obliged to fight to defend its integrity.

So, I don’t think the simplistic approach of “We are one Ummah etc.” is quite clear in the text or in fiqh terms. It all depends upon the political and social analysis that is made and then we decide what is the most appropriate form of response. Today, scholars like Mufti Juday and Sheikh Ibn Bayyah have taken the view that we live in an unprecedented situation, where in the western world we are given citizenship rights, not subjects as all were in the past of the king or caliph, but citizens who can all participate in shaping the governance and laws and rules of our society. This is a new reality which allows the practice of faith and political rights and respecting difference and religious rights. This means we interact with it accordingly – we have a social contract in a metaphysical, political and religious sense. Our loyalty is to fulfilling such agreements and respecting these political and social agreements and our faith ensures such fealty and loyalty. As Allah says in the Qur’an, “Awfu bi l-’Uqud” (5:1) – fulfil your undertakings and obligations.

In this sense we are a part of this society and Ummah and we have responsibilities here and now which are our primary responsibilities. This is so, whilst not forgetting that we are a part of humanity, to whom we have responsibility also, as the Prophet said to the companions in a mass-transmitted authentic hadith as mentioned by Najm al-Din Haythami, “You do not have faith until you have mercy.” The companions responded, “We have mercy for one another.” The Prophet sallallahhu alaihi wasallam, replied, “You do not have faith till you have mercy, and you do not have mercy till you have mercy for mankind, each and every one of them (al-nas jami’an).” And yes, within it we do identify with our fellow Muslims, but not as an exclusivist brotherhood, as the Prophet included all people within the brotherhood of mankind, as indicated in the hadith, “None of you has faith till he loves for his brother (in the narration of Imam Bukhari in his Tarikh: ‘… loves for mankind’) what he loves for himself.” Imam Nawawi explained that “brother” here primarily referred to the non-Muslim brothers of the early converts to Islam, and so the hadith applies to non-Muslims (and Muslims) generally and hence to the whole of mankind.

“Religion has been used, politicized, not only by groups but also the official institutions in every Arab country,” he told Reuters in 2008. The distinction between “the domain of religion and secular space,” he said, had been eroded.

The New York Times covers his passing:

Dr. Abu Zayd’s liberal, critical approach to Islamic teachings angered some Muslim conservatives in Egypt in the 1990s, when President Hosni Mubarak’s government was combating an uprising by armed Islamic militants. Dr. Abu Zayd criticized the use of religion to exert political power. He argued that the Koran was both a literary and religious text, a view that clashes with the Islamic idea that the holy book is the final revelation of God.

Islam, Dr. Abu Zayd said, should be understood in terms of its historical, geographic and cultural background, adding that “pure Islam” did not exist and that the Koran was “a collection of discourses.”

In 1995, an Egyptian Shariah court declared Dr. Abu Zayd an apostate from Islam, annulled his marriage and effectively forced him and his wife into exile. The couple moved to the Netherlands after he received death threats, notably from the Islamic Jihad group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who has since become deputy leader of Al Qaeda.

But Dr. Abu Zayd quietly returned to Egypt in recent years, first for lectures and later for health reasons.

In reviewing his book “Voice of an Exile: Reflections on Islam” (2004), many Western academics praised his scholarship.

“Nasr Abu Zayd is a heroic figure, a scholar who has risked everything to restore the traditions of intellectual inquiry and tolerance that for so long characterized Islamic culture,” wrote Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University.

“Do Anglicans, even moderates, really think of G!D as a sexless being? I was under the impression that most moderate religious people still think of G!D as male. People could use the singular ‘they’ and refer to a ‘parent’ if they were really that bothered.”

i think she could with some justice aim this question at judaism, but it is, nonetheless, a bit of an old chestnut. the best way i can answer it is that in the same way that we deal with anthropomorphism in the text: G!D Isn’t male any more than G!D Has a “hand”, or a “back”, G!D Forbid. when the Text speaks in these terms, it is only to be understood as the way *we* understand the interaction, not the *actual reality* – hence, when we speak of G!D as “Father” or “King”, these are merely the interactions and relevant relationships that are being described, not the Ultimate Reality of the Divine. by the same token, a number of incredibly important Divine Names and interaction/relationships are *female*, such as “E-L ShaDaY”, which comes from the word ShaDaYiM (breasts) and “Ha-RaHaMaN”, which comes the word ReHeM (womb), not to mention the considerable symbology of the Divine Feminine in kabbalah around the SheKhiNaH (Divine Presence) and “Matronit” and the male-female interrelationships actually *within* the G!DHead. one might also mention the idea that the “community of israel” is synonymous with G!D’s “bride” on some level, so that would require one of us to be “male” and the other “female” in that particular situation.

“And then there’s Jesus – no-one could lead themselves to believe he was genderless. Judaism has Moses, Islam has Mohammed – all these prophets are male. How does a person get around that one?”

perhaps by mentioning the seven major jewish prophetesses, sarah, miriam, deborah, hannah, abigail, huldah and esther – (talmudic reference: BT megillah 14a)? according to the great authority rashi, rebecca, rachel and leah should also be included.

a more serious criticism, i believe, is the following:

“If one accepts and follows traditions without question purely on the basis that they are traditions, this leaves the door wide open for all kinds of nasty things. In general, it silences and disables those who disagree with the traditions and would like to do things differently. It’s those ‘harmless’ traditions which can make people feel stifled and like there’s only one right way to do things. At the very least, they discourage creativity, critical thinking and independence.”

this is certainly a position with which we at the spittoon can identify – certainly within judaism (and, i and others would argue, within islam as well) the idea that there is One True Way Of Doing Stuff is a corrosive and oppressive idea not borne out by a truly insightful examination of the texts involved. however, the accompanying analysis is flawed:

“One can usually assess how harmless a tradition is by examining what the penalties are, if any, of not following it. In your example, I would imagine that a Jewish/Muslim pork-eater would face many negative reactions from their community, plus residual religious guilt, and that this is probably the real reason why they ‘like following the tradition’.”

now, this might be a perfectly adequate summary of how the uneducated “feel” about the law in question, in fact, the penalty in halakhah is the indication of exactly how important the principle incurring the penalty is in the first place. in fact, halakhically, the penalty is thirty-nine lashes, a comparatively light penalty compared to breaking shabbat, which is a stoning offence. now, before you get all bent out of shape on how unpleasant it is to get lashed, you’d have to also consider the standard of evidence, which required five further tests before the lashes could be administered:

1. the pork-eating in question would have to be done in front of two kosher witnesses (many, many difficulties in establishing what one of these looks like)
2. the two witnesses would need to have absolutely no discrepancy in their statements.
3. the pork-eater would have to receive a warning from the witnesses that by so doing, he would incur a penalty of lashes.
4. the pork-eater would have to respond that he had understood the warning and the penalty, reiterating precisely what they both were.
5. the eating would then have to occur within 3 seconds of this response.

incidentally, to be binding, the verdict would also have to be handed down by a properly constituted and duly authorised religious court – and there hasn’t been such a court for approximately 1500 years, but considering the re-establishment of such courts is a religious duty, i personally would prefer to rely on the other safeguards. even so, i hope you can see from the standard required that anyone who actually meets it is clearly out to make a point. oh, and, incidentally, if you ran away before the verdict was carried out, you couldn’t be re-arrested. in such a case, the negative feeling from your community is likely to be the only sanction.

another interesting challenge is made here:

“To what extent, for a religious person, is their holy book really their holy book, if they disregard most of its teachings (or haven’t even read it all the way through)?”

for jews, as we were born into a covenantal relationship, we are as subject to it as to the laws of the country we were born into. the same obtains with UK law. presumably amy’s not suggesting that i’m not obliged to follow the regulations of her majesty’s revenue collectors despite the fact that i may never have read them or heard of their provisions? by the same token:

“To align oneself with a movement, an organisation, that one disagrees with at least in part, knowing that in doing so you are giving it power – numbers at least, and in many cases, money too?”

i am not sure how this is different from being a citizen of a country whose policies you may or may not agree with – you’ve still got to pay your taxes.

as part of this discussion, i analysed deuteronomy 22:29 in its context. this provoked a number of further responses including:

“Regarding the Deuteronomy verse (22:29), it says that ’she shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her’ – humbled? That’s rather chilling, no? Is that a mistranslation too?”

not only that, but it is also misrepresenting what the text says, which is ‘AiNah” – “forced”, but not in a *physically* violent way, as in verse 25, more in such a way as to give her no choice but to marry him. i would say that this represents bringing about a marriage by “putting the woman in a compromising position”; if you know pride and prejudice, it’s what wickham does to lydia bennet to get money out of the family; he has to be bribed to marry her. the Torah is trying here to prevent the woman becoming unmarriageable; there is nothing to say that she can’t *then* divorce *him* (after betrothal and before final marriage), thus retaining her autonomy and a hefty divorce payout; it is just that *he* is forever prevented from divorcing *her*, not the other way around. i would understand this verse as a face-saving exercise.

amy then goes on to say:

“Regardless of whether rape occurred or it was ‘just sex’, isn’t it a bit sexist to generally suggest that it’s okay to buy a woman in this way?”

now, i’m not sure you can really project your attitude back to the bronze age as if human values and relationships have always been the same; i mean, that is the same sort of point of view that would reduce shakespeare’s “merchant of venice” to simple antisemitism. the initial audience of the Torah (as opposed to G!D) wouldn’t really understand what you’re getting at here. the thing is, you aren’t “buying a woman”; you’re contracting for procreative services, as it were, which can only be done by ensuring exclusivity on the woman’s part. the woman must enter into the contract without coercion and of her own free will and can exit it at her discretion on virtually any grounds (including bad breath) and is, for the duration of the contracted marriage, entitled to a statutory level of maintenance (and alimony), clothing, housing and sexual satisfaction, breach of which by the husband is, needless to say, grounds for divorce. this quite simply was revolutionary within the context in which the Torah was given; not only in that the woman had to agree, but that she maintained her rights, her property and right of cancellation. in fact, it compares positively to modern civil law in most respects – most people agree that merely falling in love is a rather worse basis for marriage than shared values and clear responsibilities on both sides! both sides contribute assets – the wife’s contribution is *not* a dowry, but her reproductive capabilities, hence:

“(Following your interpretation, it’s a bit like having to pay for something you broke in a shop – fair enough if it’s a vase, but a person? Why does having sex make you a broken person?)”

well, it doesn’t, nor is this implied, although permit me to observe, tongue-in-cheek, that most of us would pay more for new underpants than for second-hand. the statutory levels, in any case, are nominal – in reality, these would in the past have been negotiated, in the case of a woman who had emancipated herself from her father (or previous husband by divorce or widowhood) possibly by the woman herself. and there’s more:

“If God is a supremely knowledgeable being, with ultimate powers, and is perfectly good and moral, why couldn’t he send a clear message – even in the bronze age – that women are people, not property?”

the same reason that G!D also didn’t send the clear message “don’t drive on the wrong side of the road” – it wouldn’t have made sense at the time, only now. the clarity would in fact have been precisely the opposite.

“What stopped him from telling these citizens in no uncertain terms that it’s okay for women to have sex, they don’t have to be virgins until they’re married, and it’s not right to buy and sell them?”

the fact that this wasn’t a student dorm at berkeley, it was bronze age canaan – and if you hopped behind a bush with someone, you’d be liable to end up with your throat slit, or sold into slavery, thus precipitating a blood feud; it wasn’t like there was a police force and cctv; this was the wild fecking west! people took what they could get and, like it or not, if a woman didn’t have protection from a father, guardian or husband, she might be fair game, unless she stayed within the protection of the law. to be honest, this feels somewhat anachronistic reasoning, based on a very different axiomatic substructure, as the following statement identifies:

“I find it quite convenient that you’re explaining away misogyny as mistranslation, and contradictions as just not knowing the ‘right’ context of the verses in question. You seem to be taking it as your a priori assumption that there can’t possibly be any real inconsistency in the texts, there can’t possibly be any real misogyny. Why not? Why can’t there be?”

the answer to this is that if, axiomatically, one believes, as i do, that the Torah is a Divine document, any inconsistency in the texts is there to teach us something and the basis of traditional methodologies is the ability to identify the root cause of the inconsistency in order to illustrate the teaching point concerned. this has certainly been our approach as long as we can remember -and, more to the point, this is documented quite a long way back. secondly, in the conception we have of G!D it would make no more sense for G!D to Be a “misogynist” than it would for G!D to have a “hand”, or to “be angry”; these things are simply expressions of how we experience what we interpret out of the text. we believe that G!D Expects us to behave with respect and compassion to each other, not to systematically disadvantage half the human race. now, obviously, if you have different assumptions, then these might include a priori that any statement in the Torah reflects bronze age sensibility and capability in terms of gender relations, science and critical reasoning and therefore there can’t possibly be any real lessons to be learned from it. on this i suspect i might have to differ from you, seeing as how our culture is based almost entirely on this document and in most respects is generally considered to have produced major leaders in each field who are also committed to some of the same assumptions about the document. this is not to say that they are all going to agree with each other all the time:

“Why is your ‘methodology’ necessarily going to result in a clear, unequivocal message?”

because it is based on a clear set of assumptions and underpinned by a unified philosophical structure – i’m not saying that this necessitates clarity and unequivocable messaging in all cases, because it doesn’t, but in the case of this particular verse, it clearly precludes certain interpretations such as “G!D Is a misogynist” as nonsensical. there are some other pertinent questions that obtain:

“On what do you base your faith in it?”

on the fact that this way of doing things has preserved the sole remaining diaspora culture of the ancient world through several millennia of unremitting and occasionally genocidal hostility. in other words, it works.

“How do you know that the eventual interpretation is right, in any case?”

the principle we test it against is “after the majority shall you incline” (exodus 23:2) but we *also* preserve minority opinions (BT bava metzia 59b) in case eventually they become majority.

“What do you check it against?”

it’s peer-reviewed. all jewish law has been aggressively picked apart, analysed, defended or amended on this basis. that is what the talmud documents.

“Then you say that two contradictory positions can both be the word of the ‘living god’? How is that even possible – how can a creator of the universe not make his mind up?”

of course – but “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30:10), so we are told we have to work it out for ourselves, on the authority of the Torah itself, so the majority opinion came down on one side at that time. G!D may well Have an opinion, but in the famous talmudic debate of the “oven of achnai” (the reference given above) the majority decision was to say “bugger off, G!D, this is a human decision now, You Said so in the Torah”.

“Not be 100% clear about his message? Do you not find it slightly odd that all this interpretation is necessary?”

no, we find it incredibly empowering that we are being treated like grown-ups responsible for our own actions, not children with no sense of right or wrong.

“Why doesn’t God reiterate his message and clear things up? Hasn’t he got the power to do this?”

well, yes, obviously, but during the “oven of achnai” debate, the position of the majority was “we do not make legal decisions on the basis of Divine Voices from Heaven”.

we still haven’t quite got to the bottom of the equality debate here, however:

“When I talk about a sense of equality, I am talking about equality between men and women – e.g. what is it that leads you to know that stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin is wrong? Would you only know that it’s wrong if you’d read all the scriptures? Or would you know that it’s wrong based on your own empathy and reasoning? I would argue the latter, seeing as I know it’s wrong, and I haven’t read all the scriptures or engaged in textual interpretation.”

i would argue that the case that you are basing it on your own “empathy and reasoning” alone is not a strong argument. nobody grows up in a vacuum. you have these attitudes because you developed them, based on your upbringing. i would argue that you *have* been influenced indirectly by them because they have influenced the society you grew up in. i can even point to the bit of Torah that it comes from: “you shall love the stranger [person who is different from yourself] for you were strangers in egypt” (leviticus 19:34) nor am i saying that my own reasoning is inoperative – obviously, i needed to use it to apply the verse to this situation, similarly the sages needed to apply it in order to get the relevant safeguards in place to prevent it happening unless it really, really, really, REALLY applied. if you’re going to do something as drastic as stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin, you’d better be really sure that’s what the text says – and that what the text says applies to this EXACT situation.

“This is what I’m talking about. A religious person reads such a horrendous verse, thinks ‘That can’t be right’ and proceeds to delve more deeply into the scriptures to find some way of justifying it.”

i don’t really understand why this should be so wrong – it is the way the Torah does thought experiments; under what circumstances might such a penalty apply? what might justify it in *practice*? are you sure? are you really, really sure? what principle is being upheld? that’s not the same as “justifying” it – you can’t be “justifying” it if you end up effectively prohibiting it, which was the actual effect – but then again, you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know the proper context for Torah, which is as the written component of jewish law, not as a copy of “gender relations for dummies”, which is how it is so often abused by literalist protestants and bible-bashers in particular.

“I doubt that a person starts reading scriptures and then concludes ‘Well whaddaya know? Stoning women is immoral!’”

i agree – and so do the sages! although there are more morally complex issues in the Torah than this one.

amy is also good enough to address a criticism i make of her that she is generalising about religious people:

“Sure, not all religious people follow their religion in exactly the same way, but they do believe in a god/gods, and their holy texts do mean something to them. These are the two aspects of religion that I critique in my piece, and they appear to me to be pretty universal among the faithful. The rest is a critique of the arguments used by religious feminists to defend the misogyny in their holy texts, and examples of religiously-inspired misogyny. What is it that I’m generalising about? What is it exactly that you object to?”

well, i suppose what i object to is the implication that religious feminists are “defending misogyny”, because as i have attempted to show, i don’t think the misogyny is there either in intent or in application – except by people who really don’t understand either the text concerned, or who don’t follow an acceptable standard of textual interpretation. i accept that it *could* result in misogyny, because it *has* – but human beings do get things wrong from time to time and Torah is not easy.

anyway, i hope this is not too irrelevant and that there are enough interesting nuggets here for the conversation to continue here; certainly i would encourage people to take a look at the original piece.

****

The allegation that the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha in the year 624AD when she was only a nine-year old girl, is not new.

However, the fact this controversy has surfaced on rightwing blogs, is something that has caught a lot of Muslims by surprise. It was sparked by a lecture in Toronto where the former Muslim, Syrian-American Wafa Sultan claimed, “As a married man, Mohammed raped Aisha when she was nine; he was fifty-four.”

Wafa Sultan’s depiction of Prophet Muhammad as a child rapist seems to be a manifestation of her hatred of Muslims in general. She has no evidence of any rape having taken place nor does she have a record of Aisha’s age. However, what she does possess is a rage against her former faith that she expresses with wild abandon. In her book, A God who Hates, Wafa Sultan writes:

“Shouting has become their [Muslims’] hallmark and the main characteristic they use when they engage in conversation with someone whom they don’t agree with. Without it they have no sense of their own worth or existence; without it they have no sense eve of being alive. … On top of shouting their way through a conversation, they have acquired the habit of shrieking, and they take pleasure in hearing their own shrieks. They believe that the louder they shriek, the more they prove they are right. Their conversation consists of shouting, their talk is a screech, and he who shouts loudest and screeches longest is, they believe, the strongest. They fabricate disagreements so as to give themselves an opportunity to shout. They seek contradiction so that they can scream. … Islam canonized the Muslims’ desert nature, and from that moment on they were unable to acquire new ways of communicating with others.”

Just as Muslim anti-Semites denigrate Jews by claiming the ‘yahood’ have an incorrigible evil nature (fitra), Wafa Sultan too applies a similar diagnosis to describe the supposed unethical nature of the Muslim. She writes:

“The first moral question a person learns is the difference between the concepts of “yes” and “no” — in other words, the ability to decide what to accept and what to reject. … A Muslim lives his whole life and dies without ever having learned this lesson. Islamic culture has no clear concept of “yes” and “no.” The two opposites are confused in a way that makes Muslims’ behaviour incomprehensible to others who interact with them.”

After her Toronto speech, I protested her hateful language in an op-ed for the National Post. I was not alone in finding fault with Wafa Sultan’s logic or language. The Canadian Jewish Congress national president, Mark Freiman reacting to Sultan’s speech at the synagogue, told an Islamic conference in Toronto:

“…it is ironic that it was in a Jewish synagogue a short while ago that an ex-Muslim made the sweeping allegation that Islam as a faith was intrinsically incapable of political moderation or respecting the norms of secular society. The Jewish speakers at the event spoke up against this suggestion, but it is also appropriate tonight that I add my name and that of the Canadian Jewish Congress to the rejection of such irresponsible charges.”

Both Prof. Daniel Pipes and Avi Benlolo of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre too spoke against the main premise of Wafa Sultan’s speech.

However, my critique of Wafa Sultan upset a lot of people. Dozens of rightwing anti-Muslim blogs were up in arms, calling me a wolf in sheep’s clothing and accusing me of defending child rape. It was if the floodgates of hate had been opened. The Jewish Internet Defence Force, reacting to my article, said:

“In reality, Islam is like a deadly, contagious disease. Once it invades the mind of its victim, it is capable of transforming him to a helpless pawn that has no choice but to execute what he is directed to do. Of the reported 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, millions are already trapped in the terminal stages of this affliction, while millions of others are rapidly joining them. The people enslaved with the extreme cases of Islamic mental disease are highly infectious. They actively work to transmit the disease to others, while they themselves engage in horrific acts of mayhem and violence to demonstrate their unconditional obedience to the dictates of the Islamic cult.”

I also earned the ire of Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad. Writing in Pajamas Media, Dr. Bostom took umbrage at my objection to Wafa Sultan’s anti-Islam speech inside a synagogue. Accusing me of Silencing the Jews, he claimed I was a bully, hateful and disingenuous. In an email message to me, Dr. Bostom suggested I was,

“a despicable taqiyya-mongering pile of excrement.”

Another ex-Muslim, the author Ali Sina wrote on his website:

“Tarek Fatah proves my point that there is no such thing as moderate Muslim … Every “moderate” Muslim is a potential terrorist. The belief in Islam is like a tank of gasoline. It looks innocuous, until it meets the fire. For a “moderate” Muslim to become a murderous jihadist, all it takes is a spark of faith.”

It seems all the Islam hating ex-Muslims were reading from the same hymn book. Their mantra: A Muslim cannot be a “moderate Muslim,” unless they renounce their faith.

Farzana Hassan, author of Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today, who has faced her fair share of death threats at the hands of Islamists, on learning about this controversy, asked the rhetorical question. “Should a moderate Muslim simply become a lackey who accepts every insult hurled their way?” She wrote:

“Moderate Muslims, reserve the right to defend any unwarranted criticism of either the founder of Islam or the faith. This is not to suggest that a great deal of the criticism is not justified. It is. Moderate Muslims, without hesitation, and at great risk to our lives, unequivocally condemn all atrocities committed in the name of Islam. We continuously work toward eliminating gender inequalities among Muslims including child marriages. Nonetheless, the charge against Mohammad as a child molester, however, is unjustified for the following reason: His relationship with Aisha was a loving relationship between two consenting adults. It is more than likely that Aisha was closer to being nineteen than nine at the time of marriage. This claim is supported by historical data that puts Aisha at least 15 at the time, though it is likely she was older.”

It is not just Islam-haters who have a stake in reaffirming the myth that Muhammad had a child bride. The fact is that throughout Islamic history, many a caliph and mulla has committed pedophilia and then justified the act by invoking the supposed tradition of Muhammad in consummating a marriage with a nine-year old girl. Even today in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Muslim girls have been given away by their fathers, brothers or uncles to middle-aged men with no sense of guilt or shame, since they are told their very own beloved Prophet had sanctioned child marriage.

As far as men and women who consider Islam the enemy of human civilization, the story of Muhammad and Aisha is one that can be trusted to generate intense hatred towards the Muslim community. It does not help that instead of denouncing child marriages, the Islamists and the orthodox clergy of Islam continue to defend the practise as Islamically permissible, legal and honourable. The fact that a four-year old girl walks into Yemeni court asking for a divorce from her aging husband does not awaken these supposedly holy men to the crime being committed in the name of Islam. These men undoubtedly commit statutory rape when they force themselves onto these children.

It is in the vested interest of both Islam-haters as well as Islamists to continue to uphold the myth that Muhammad married a nine-year old Aisha. To the former, it is the juiciest scandal with which to deride Islam and Muslims, while for the Mullahs, it is a license to sanction pedophilia and child rape for themselves and their patrons.

This begs the question: How do people like Wafa Sultan or the Islamists claim to know for a fact that the age of Aisha was nine when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated? There are no birth records from the time and there is not a single piece of physical paper that can be traced back to seventh century Arabia that mentions the age of Aisha. In the absence of hard evidence, we have two choices:

1. We rely on medieval hearsay and gossip that has unfortunately seeped into Islamic literature, the Hadith and Sharia law, or;
2. We calculate the age of Aisha based on actual agreed upon indisputable chronology of events.

While the Islamists and Wafa Sultan rely on medieval gossip, I have chosen to make a rational estimate of Aisha’s age based on acknowledged historical timelines.

Most medieval Islamic history books were written 200-300 years after the advent of Islam and it is true that all of them state emphatically that Aisha was only nine when she became Muhammad’s bride. However, all of them rely on, and quote, one single individual as the source of this information. His name was Hishām ibn Urwah, a prominent narrator of sayings of the Prophet (the Hadith), who died in the year 756AD. He was Aisha’s great-grand nephew, who first suggested that his great-grand aunt was only nine-years old on the day of her wedding, 125 years after the said event.

Prior to his utterance, a century after the fact, there is no mention or reference to the age of Aisha. Hisham bin Urwah lived and taught in Medina for 70 years, yet no one else—not even his famous pupil Malik ibn Anas—reported Aisha’s age. It is no coincidence that the growth of harems of the Abbasid caliphs mushroomed to hundreds of wives and concubines–many young girls– at the time the sharia law based on bin Urwah’s report, legalized child marriage.

Instead of relying on the words of bin Urwah as so many Islam-haters and Islamists do, I suggest we look at a few facts that prove that Aisha’s age on the day of her wedding could not have been lower than 14 years of age.

The historian al-Tabari informs us in his treatise on Islamic history that the father of Aisha, Abu Bakr had four children and all them were born before the year 610AD, the year of the advent of Islam. If, as is generally accepted, Aisha became Muhammad’s bride in the year 624AD, then she had to be at least 14 years of age, if not older on the day of her wedding.

Other calculations based on historical events place Aisha as old as 20 when she was became a bride. Ibn Hisham, the historian, reports that Aisha accepted Islam quite some time before Umar (the second caliph). This means she must have been at least a young girl in the year 610. Assuming she was five years old when Abu Bakr and his family converted to islam, the information puts the age of Aisha at 20 or more at the time of her marriage with Muhammad was consummated in 624AD.

Furthermore, most Islamic historians agree that Asma, the elder sister of Aisha, was ten years older than her. It is also reported that Asma died in 683AD at the ripe age of 100. If this is true, then Asma would have been 31 years old at the time of Aisha’s wedding with Muhammad in 624 and the bride would have been 21.

Of course, these facts do not suit either the Islam-haters or the Mullahs who sanction child marriage. Had the medieval caliphs or their court appointed clerics in the 8th century accepted these timelines, it would have taken away their right to fill their harems with young girls of their choice.

My critics may argue that I am juggling the dates to validate my thesis, but where is the evidence that suggests my timeline of historical events is wrong? If the critics of Islam argue that there needs to be a reformation in Islam, then why would we not err on the side of an argument that could end child marriages in the Muslim world? In the absence of any documentary evidence that Aisha was nine years old when she became Muhammad’s bride, why cling to to the gossip of one man, ibn Urwah, who served the courts of the caliphs. These were the very people who trampled all over Islamic doctrine by governing as hereditary kings and building empires on the backs of slaves.

However, if one hates Islam and Muslims with the ferocity and vengeance of Wafa Sultan, then it will be difficult to them her believe that the relationship between Muhammad and Aisha was one of love and adoration, not one between a rapist and his victim. There is little evidence to suggest that any rape victim has ever fallen in love with her a rapist.

If one is consumed by the hate of Muslims, logic and reason is least likely to influence someone like Wafa Sultan. She makes little secret of the fact that she considers the world’s one and half billion Muslims as people suffering from a disease that she wants to treat. Such is her contempt for Muslims, as a physician, Sultan told a Jewish fundraiser in LA that “I have 1.3 billion patients.” Her remarks were so offensive that one of the attendees, Rabbi Stephen Stein later wrote in the LA Times, he had to walk out of the fund raiser. Not only does she consider all 1.3 billion Muslims as suffering from a disease that needs treatment, her disdain for Muslims crosses all thresholds of rational discussion. Demonstrating her contempt for Muslims, she rails in her book:

“God placed donkeys and mules at Muslims’ disposal, while the West gave them mastery over new forms of transportation …”

So deep is her hatred of her heritage, she suggests we Muslims were a primitive peoples before the arrival of the Europeans and Americans. She writes:

“Before oil was discovered in the Gulf states, Muslims lived in primitive existence. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the modern world descended upon their campsites, disfigured their world with palaces, high-rises, cars, and technology, and threatened the unchanging silence of their environment. …When people make an overnight transition from the Stone Age to the age of the airplane and the Internet, it is inevitable that they should undergo some kind of internal struggle in the process, and find themselves subject to depression and other psychological ills, specially when they continue to cling desperately to the teachings and social structure of their former environment. Muslims ran before they had learned to crawl, and tried to climb a ladder they had not even reached.”

Zeroing in on her own Arab community, Sultan claims:

“When an Arab revokes his agreement he justifies himself by insisting that he had never agreed in the first place, as he had not said yes, but had merely smiled and nodded his head. This ambiguity means that Muslims’ relationship with others are capricious and uncertain, and this has made it hard for people to trust them. People who cannot differentiate between yes and no and can express neither unambiguously have a confused notion of concepts in general.”

I have lived in the Arab world and among Arabs for a decade. I admit, there is much they can be criticized for. However, not even the Arabs’ worst enemy would accuse them of being uncultured or inhospitable. On the contrary, one could argue the hospitality of the Arab is their saving grace. Their poetry, their language and their generosity has charmed the likes of Moshe Dayan and Amos Oz. Yet, so blinded is Wafa Sultan with her hatred of the Arab, she told the Toronto Jewish Tribune that it was only when she came to the USA that she learned to say “Thank you” or “excuse me.” The Jewish Tribune quoted her as saying:

“I practised medicine for nine years in Syria. Believe it or not, I learned how to say thank you [only] when I came to America. For the first time. Because you have to thank Allah and Mohammed, nobody else. I learned how to say please, how to say excuse me.”

Perhaps I as a Pakistani-Canadian could teach Wafa Sultan how to say, “Shukran” (Thank you) or “Min Fadlaq” (please) or maybe her hatred of the Arab has caused her to be deaf to these words, since they are the two most oft-repeated words one hears in an Arab capital or village. However, if her loathing for the Arab is couched in cultural disdain, her contempt for the non-Arab Muslim is blatant. She does not consider non-Arab Muslims to be true muslims. In her eyes, if the Arab is an inferior being, the Pakistani is worse, not even worthy of the Islam she hates.

Mehnaz M. Afridi is Professor of Judaism and Islam at the Antioch University in Los Angeles. The Pakistani-American academic recounts a talk at a Jewish Temple where she shared the head table with Wafa Sultan. She told me, “I had the inopportune moment to present at a Jewish Temple in Los Angeles with Wafa Al-Sultan. We were asked to show similarities between Judaism and Islam, and I did. I was the first presenter, she was second and gave a talk on how awful Islam was and how I was not a real Muslim because I am South Asian [of Pakistani descent]. Her beef with Indo-Pakistani Muslims was that we have ‘mangled’ the Islamic message to make it appear more positive.”

In her book, Wafa Sultan dismisses non-Arab Muslims, claiming,

“a Christian born and brought up in Jordan is more Islamic in his behaviour and way of thinking than a Pakistani Muslim.”

At the 2006 LA fundraiser where rabbi Stein staged a walkout, he recalls Wafa Sultan’s racist attitude towards non-Arab Muslims. He writes:

“Then this provocative voice said something odd: ‘Only Arab Muslims can read the Koran properly because you have to speak Arabic to know what it means — you cannot translate it.’ Any translation is, by definition, interpretation, and Arabic is no more difficult to accurately translate than Hebrew. In fact, the Hebrew of the Bible poses many more formidable translation problems than Arabic. Are Christians and Jews who cannot read it ill-equipped to live by its meanings?”

If Wafa Sultan was against child marriage in medieval Islam, then perhaps she should have also dealt with the institution of child marriage in Jewish laws of the same period, since her speech was made in a synagogue and her audience was primarily Jewish.

Wafa Sultan should also have considered the Talmudic Jewish traditions on child marriage that too permitted child brides. Not being an expert on Jewish law on child marriage, I had to rely on the Jewish Encyclopedia. I also requested two rabbi friends of mine to help me with this area One expressed his regrets, saying he was not an expert in the area, but my other friend acknowledged that although it is possible for marriages to be arranged in childhood, but no physical contact can happen before the age 13.

The Jewish Encyclopedia had more details. According to it, rabbis reckon “the age of maturity from the time when the first signs of puberty appear , and estimated that these signs come, with women, about the beginning of the thirteenth year, and about the beginning of the fourteenth year with men. From this period one was regarded as an adult and as responsible for one’s actions to the laws of the community. In the case of females, the rabbinic law recognized several distinct stages: those of the “keṭannah“, from the age of three to the age of twelve and one day; the “na’arah“, the six months following that period; and the “bogeret“, from the expiration of these six months. In the case of males, distinction was made in general only between the period preceding the age of thirteen and one day and that following it, although, as will be seen below, other stages were occasionally recognized.”

A ketannah was completely subject to her father’s authority, and her father could arrange a marriage for her, whether she agreed to it or not; similarly her father could accept a divorce document (get) on her behalf. If however the father was dead, or missing, the brothers of the ketannah, collectively, had the right to arrange a marriage for her, as had her mother. In the Talmud, there is inconclusive debate about whether the na’arah should be treated like the ketannah in relation to marriage, or whether she should have the freedom to marry as she wished, like the bogeret.

In mediaeval times, cultural pressure within Jewish communities lead to most girls being married while they were still children – before they had become a bogeret. Boys too, were under cultural pressure; several Talmudic rabbis urged that boys should be married as soon as they reach the age of majority. Indeed, anyone unmarried after the age of twenty was said to have been cursed by God; rabbinical courts frequently tried to compel an individual to marry, if they had passed the age of twenty without marriage. In the middle ages, many rabbis tried to abolish child marriage altogether; this, however, was due to their distaste for mi’un. Effectively, child marriage became nearly obsolete in Judaism; in modern times, it is an extremely rare event, as most areas with large Jewish communities have national laws against it.

Now, if it is okay for the Jewish community to abandon child marriage despite evidence that it was permitted and practised in medieval times, then why is the standard set differently for Muslims? Even if I were to concede–and I do not– that Muhammad married a nine-year old, isn’t it more important that we work–both Jew and Muslim–to end this practise? However, it seems this does not fit the agenda of either the Islam-haters or the Islamists.

The Hollywood screenwriter and television producer Kamran Pasha (of Sleeper Cell fame) who has authored a brilliant fictional novel about the life of Aisha, Mother of the Believers, told me that in his research for the book, he had concluded that Aisha was at least in her early teens when she became Muhammad’s bride. However, he chose to confront the critics head on. In the author’s note to his fascinating novel, Pasha writes:

“In my novel, I have chosen to directly face the controversy over Aisha’s age by using the most contentious account, that she was nine at the time she consummated her wedding. The reason I have done this is to show that it is foolish to project modern values on another time and world. In a desert environment where life expectancy was extremely low, early marriage was not a social issue–it was a matter of survival.”

As Islam-haters pummel the Muslim community with insults and mockery, our reaction feeds that hate. We burn books, threaten cartoonists or make a laughing spectacle of ourselves for the rest of the world. We simply refuse to indulge in retrospection and reflection. We refuse to discard the ossified books of the Hadith that justify so much that is wrong in the Islamic world and which contributes to so much shame and embarrassment.

Muslim scholars are caught in their own predicament. Most are willing to concede that historical timelines suggest Aisha could not have been aged nine when she became Muhammad’s bride. However, if they were to admit this flaw in the Hadith books, they would be opening a pandoras box. How many more laws of sharia, based on the hadith, are lies and need to be discarded? In the academia too, few Muslim scholars wish to be ostracized by the well-funded mosque establishment of North America– the only likely place that could host a reformation in Islam.

Too much is at stake for the Islamic establishment to admit that Prophet Muhammad was not the husband of a child bride. They would rather see their leader mocked then to admit to the fallibility of the Hadith literature. Until that happens, Islam-haters will continue to have a field day. For the rest of us Muslims–moderate, liberal, secular or progressive, call it what you may–the challenge is simple: Retain the Hadith literature for historical value as texts from our common history, but no more than that. We need to detach ourselves from the man-made laws and traditions of the medieval world and step into the 21st century, like the rest of humanity, as believers in the strict separation of religion and state and universal human rights where all men and women are equal, irrespective of relgion or race. If we don’t, then we better be prepared to be be mocked with derision as stragglers in the caravan who are slowing down the progress of all humanity.

****

Tarek Fatah is author of The Jew Is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism to be published by McClelland & Stewart in October this year. His first book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Wiley 2008) was shortlisted for the prestigious Donner Prize.

outside the serene environment of the museum, however, the dispute between the self-appointed guardians of faith and reason continues to rage. professor richard dawkins, the napoleon of socio-biology, recently devoted an entire episode of his hagiographic (but mostly excellent) series on darwinism, “the genius of charles darwin”, to rubbishing religion, as usual choosing its most rabid, swivel-eyed partisans, leavened with a selection of double-tongued “intelligent design”-peddling weasels to make his point about the idiocy and irrationality of belief. the sole exception to this parade of lunacy appeared to be the archbishop of canterbury, whose lyrical, articulate moderation was immediately dismissed by dawkins as yet another creationist strategy, this time the stealth doctrine of “absorption”. to this way of thinking, even the honour accorded to darwin by burying him in westminster abbey was suspect.

it is notable that those who find evolution unpalatable are similarly splenetic, even if they fail to match dawkins’ magisterial contempt in either grammar or coherence. but however less militant in tone than his ferocious assault on religion, the god delusion, “the genius of charles darwin” still left the indelible impression of an agenda that believes there can be no genuine meeting ground between empirical, peer-reviewed truth and obscurantist, infantile fantasy. religion, in dawkins’ view, quite simply cannot be taken seriously as a choice for anyone who considers themselves intellectually sound or critically robust. it is a vestigial remnant, a reminder of the dark era before scientific knowledge was available, a sentimental, regressive attachment – and it must be discredited, debunked and unmasked for the toxic, anti-reason fallacy that it is.

this is, of course, not the first time that religion has been attacked in these terms. the european “enlightenment” was founded upon a profound hostility to religion as an obstacle to progress, judaism in particular. much of enlightenment criticism of judaism could also be characterised as a new version of christian supercessionism, this time using reason and science to prove that christianity was more “modern” and “progressive” than its “backwards”, “primitive”, “uncivilised” predecessor. naturally, some thinkers went far further than this, rejecting any and all religion in favour of a new faith in reason, science, progress, class, nation or race. for judaism, however, the hostility remained constant; whether the aim was to convert or debunk. and, ultimately, even for those who abandoned traditional belief or any kind of belief, a new form of hostility, based on a vicious distortion of science itself, was able to make even having jewish ancestors a crime punishable by extermination.

pseudo-scientific racism offered judaism no opportunity to defend itself but, fortunately, science and reason seem unlikely to lead to a new holocaust. but existential issues notwithstanding, the militancy of science-inspired hostility to religion seems to have adopted a recognisable posture and set of tactics. they appear to be strikingly similar to those of the famous mediaeval spanish “disputations”, in which judaism, represented by such luminaries as nachmanides, found itself called to account before the kangaroo courts of the catholic church and the inquisition.

i do not seek to defend all religion against assaults when it seems manifestly obvious that some are well-deserved and many criticisms can be shown to have excellent foundation; in particular, the accusation that religion has often shown itself as all too ready to excuse injustice, immorality, inhumanity and the abuse of power, whether as a social influence or a political force. the prophet jeremiah speaks of the dichotomy between a “heart of stone” and a “heart of flesh”. we must be unarguably able to lay claim to a voice of righteousness and truth, or we will be unable to respond, as we should in no uncertain terms:

our religion is not as you say it is. you are misrepresenting what we say, misrepresenting what we do and misrepresenting our mission in the world. you are either ignorant of what we actually believe, or you are guilty of the same lack of critical engagement that you believe religion exhibits where darwinism is concerned and violating your own principle of empirical investigation. we have no problem with science, especially darwinism; it undoubtedly has some important things to teach us about ourselves and the universe. but we are not interested in a war between religion and science. more to the point, we will take responsibility for our own benefit to society and will not have our terms of engagement dictated to us by you. they should be dictated by our respect for the sources within judaism that enable us to articulate that benefit:

“when i behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you established; what is man, that you are mindful of him and the son of man, that you think of him?”  psalms 8:6-7

“if a man is worthy, they say to him: ‘you preceded the angels’; but if he is unworthy, they say to him: ‘a gnat preceded you, a snail preceded you’” genesis rabbah 8:1

“man has no pre-eminence over the animals, for all is breath” ecclesiastes 3:19

 there are often surprising sources of religious authority for such interpretations. one such is the towering figure of “the rav”, rabbi j.b. soloveitchik, who asks in response:

 “in truth, what is man when set against the vast universe and the heavenly realms? what is his worth in comparison to the cosmic process? what is he when set against the world and the fullness thereof? what is he in relation to worlds, visible and invisible?” ‘halakhic man’, p.169

 soloveitchik understands us as being reconciled by understanding G!D’s Recognition of us as “worthy to stand before G!D”. i do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the purpose of religion is to make us worthy of that divine recognition – and where we are not, we cannot expect protestations of moral superiority to hold water.

****

Hizb ut-Tahrir; Jamaat-e-Islami; Ikhwan al-Muslimeen and al-Qaeda all have, as a fundamental aim; the establishment of a global dictatorship under the rule of one Caliph, an autocrat, who will impose one interpretation of the Shar’iah over the entire globe. They intend to do this through unifying countries where there already exists Muslim majorities then launch a worldwide international effort at expanding this state through diplomatic and hostile means i.e. warfare.

For them, there is a religious duty (fard) in which there is no dispute, that there must be a single caliphate encompassing the whole globe. There is no room for different interpretations, and anyone differing with them – especially the likes of the Hizb, and al-Qaeda, are upon Kufr – unbelief and apostates from Islam. In fact they would argue that all the Muslim scholars who have abandoned engaging in political activity for the sake of establishing such a super-state are upon misguidance, and Kufr, even if on the whole the Muslim jurists take the position, that there are different opinions on this issue, which are legitimate opinions – Ijtihadaat – and therefore we cannot start accusing others of being on un-Islamic positions for holding different views.

The fact is whilst mainstream religious scholarship prefers unity to disunity, and an ideal of unified peaceful relations, it recognizes the practical and political reality that has existed throughout our history, that we have always had different states and empires. Scholarship has always recognized that there differences in all such issues which warrant recognition. Barking on about the obligation of having a leader/caliph/head of state- all of which carry the same meaning according to groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, is not the same as proving that Muslim scholars historically or presently support the forceful unification of Muslim majority countries or expansionist states in the World. This is a false representation of classical and modern scholarship.

First of all, Muslim scholars have differed over the necessity of having a single political leadership. Rather it was considered acceptable to many scholars.

Secondly, rejecting the concept of having a caliph and Imam or leadership was considered as erroneous (this should be differentiated form the notion of an expansionist state), but not Kufr. In fact, it was considered a form of extremism amongst classical scholars to exaggerate the issueof caliphate as their many differences upon such issues.

Thirdly, political rebellion in order to remove leaderships by force, coup or militant means or through political agitation was considered heresy, and fisq (transgression) and an aspect of deviant sectarian cultiures such as the Khawarij; deemed outside of the way of mainstream Islamic teaching; which is where the seperation from classical tradition and Islamist ideological activism originates.

A question arise though about the apparent clear cut evidences from prophetic tradition which are often cited to clearly oblige the necessity of one caliph and forbid multiple rulers. It is then claimed that such rules are clear cut and definitive (Qati) permitting no other interpretations.

Methodological principles

The founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir Taqi ul-Din al-Nabhani explains in volume 3 of Shakhsiya Islamiya page 186, in the chapter titled ‘Mafhoom ul-Shart’ (the concept of the condition/conditional clause):

“The mafhoom al-Shart is when the rule depends upon something which has come in any of the forms of the conditional clause such as ‘if/when’ or any meaning implying a condition. It indicates the negation of the ruling when such a condition is not realised/is absent”
Nabhani also states that absolute and general statements would be restricted by conditional clauses, or in fact more generally by the denotation (mantooq) as well as the connotation (mafhoom) of the speech.

“It is permitted to restrict the the mantooq (the meaning of the denotation of the speech), by the mafhoom (the connotations of the speech), whether this is when it is the in the meaning of the statement and in harmony with it (mafhoom al-muwafaqa) or divergent from it (mukhalafa)” [such as the the conditional clause - he gives an example to substantiate this]. (Chapter: restricting the Mantooq by the Mafhoom, page 255)

Hadith about one leader and how they have been interpreted

So for example the hadith wherein the prophet is reported to have said as narrated by Sahih Muslim:

“whoever comes to you, and you are united under one man, and seeks to cause political dissention and separate your community (jama’ah), fight him”

This would apply when united under a single leadership. This would then restrict the meaning of other general texts which imply a single leadership according to nabhani’s principles of interpretation, i.e. the specific meaning would be then understood to restrict the general implications of other texts such as “if the pledge is given to two Caliphs, fight the latter” as applying under a single leadership, not when there are many different states and leaderships already.

Imam al-Nawawi comments on the above hadith in the chapter ‘the ruling of segregating the affair of the Muslims when they are united’,

“Whoever come to you and you are united…” stating that this refers to “those who rebel (kharaja) against the leader…”(!!) (page 444 of al-Minhaj bi-Shar’h Sahih Muslim bin al-Hajjaj, Dar al-Marifa, Beirut – Lebanon).

He also states regarding the second hadith that “generally scholars have agreed that you can not contract two caliphs… there is however the probability of the opinion of Imam al-Haramayn”. (page 445) He explains that there is a possibility of differet opinions in this matter. He states

“This is outside of the definitive matters (kharij min al-Qawati). And Maziri (the well known Maliki commentator on Imam Muslim’s collection of hadith) has narrated this Qawl (opinion) on some of the later scholars of Principle, including Imam al-Haramayn”. So it is the position of Imam al-Haramayn that it is permitted to have multiple political leaders. Imam al-Nawawi is not of this view and he states “though it is an irregular position and conflicts with the views of the early scholars and the apparent, absolute meaning of the text.” (page 435).

The important point is that it is not a definitive issue, it is subject to opinion and Ijtihad. Imam al-Haramayn is however one of the most widely accepted scholars agreed upon to reach the position of a Mujtahid Imam, and was the celebrated teacher of of revered Imam al-Ghazali.

What was Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni’s point of view? He explained this clearly in his text ‘al-Ghiyath al-Umam fi Tiyath al-Zulam’ where he explained:

“I do not deny the permissibility of appointing (two leaders) according to the need (haja) and enforcing both of their executive decisions as a religious duty. This however is a time without an overall Imam.”

People have misconstrued his words, as implying that this is only when it is impossible. This is absolutely false. Not just frpom the quotation itself, which is that it is according to the need (not even necessity), but Imam al-Haramayn explains in the following sentence, “if they agree to appoint an Imam over them, it is a right for the two leaders to submit to the decisions of this Imam in a manner he deems appropriate” He goes on to discuss to Imams in two separate countries, not one would have claim to the leadership of all the Muslims. [(pp 168-169 Muassas al-Rayan edition)]

al-Amir al-San’ani explains that in the statement:

“’Whoever left obedience to the Imam and separated from the community and then died, then his is a death of pagan ignorance.’…the phrase, ‘…left obedience…’, means obedience to the Caliph with whom there is agreement. And the implication here is that the Caliph referred to is that of a particular region because the people have never gathered together behind a single Caliph in all the lands of Islam since the time of the Abbasid State . Rather, the people of every region were independent with someone presiding over their affairs. If the hadith was taken to mean the overall Caliph which the people of Islam had united behind, then there would have been no benefit in the saying” [Subul al-Salaam, (volume 3, page 499)]

Imam Shawkani also held this view:

“As for when Islam spread and its territories expanded and its regions became distant [from each other], then it is known that in all of these regions loyalty was given to an Imam or Sultan… So there is no harm in the multiplicity of Imams and Sultans and it is obligatory for those people in whose land his orders and prohibitions become effective to give obedience to him after having giving bay’ah (a pledge of allegiance) to him. It is the same for the people of all the other regions.”

Shawkani goes on to say, someone not understanding this will not benefit from the presentation of the dalil (scriptural proofs) as he won’t “be able comprehend it”. [al-Sayl al-Jarrar (volume 4, page 512)]

Rejecting Imamate in principle

As for making the issue of political leadership a central aspect of faith, and declaring Kufr on ideas and people on the basisi of such ideas, or even for rejecting the whole notion of having any kind of political leadership, this is considered a characteristicof extremists. As Imam al-Ghazali stated:

“Know, however that error regarding the status of the Caliphate, whether or not establishing this office is a (communal obligation), who qualifies for it, and related matters, cannot serve as grounds for condemning people as Unbelievers. Indeed Ibn al-Kaysan denied that there was any religious obligation to have a Caliphate at all; but this does not mean thathe must be branded an Unbeliever. Nor do we pay any attention to those who exaggerate the matter of Imamate and equate recognition of the Imam with faith in God and His Messenger. Nor do we pay any attention to those people who oppose these people and brand them Unbelievers simply on the basis of their doctrine of on the Imamate. Both of these positions is extreme. For neither of the doctrines in question entails any claim that the Prophet perpetrated lies.” ‘On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam’ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa by Sherman A. Jackson, Oxford.

To clarify, it is considered a subsidiary branch of fatawa, not a fundamental aspect of religion. Which is why someone denying any aspect of recognising political leaderships is considered by the mainstream scholars to be mistaken, at worst upon a devaint position, but not a non-Muslim or outside the community of believers.

‘Nihayat ul-Su’al fi-Shar’h minhaj ul-Wusul lil-Qadi al-Baydawi ma al-hashiya Salam ul-Wusul li-Sharh al-Nihaya’ authored by Jamal ul-Din al-Asnawi and commentary by Shaykh Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti’ee, Alim ul-Kutub edition states:

“The obligation of appointing an Imam is from the branches of religious rulings (furoo ul-fiqh’hiya), and without a doubt they are not from the fundamentals of religion (Usul ul-Din).” (volume 3 page 92)

Political rebellion in order to forcefully remove leaderships

Imam al-Nawawi explains the orthodox position of the Sunni Muslim scholars:

“We should not challenge nor dispute the legitimacy of the political leqadership, nor come out in difference to them, unless we clearly see a evil perpetrated by them, definitively violating the principle of Islam. If this is seen then this evil should be denounced and you should speak the truth. As for khurooj (rebellion) this forbidden by consensus of all the Muslims.” (page 532).

So what about those who have decided to undertake military means to remove established rulers, despots and tyrants they may be, based upon their interpretation of such evidences? Well let us return to the writings of Imam al-Asnawi, Qadi al-Baydawi and Shaykh Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti’ee.

“Similarly the Khawarij, those who permit the slaughter of Muslims, taking their wealth and their famillies based upon an interpretation and speculative interpretation of the text; they are transgressors (fussaq) in our eyes, though not in theirs…” (volume 3 page 136)

Ironically Imam al-Nawawi (see above) applies the very same hadith stating that the meaning of the hadith which are politicised for their own ends by the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir, to mean that they should be fought for political rebellion.

I have always attempted to square this circle by drawing a line between those who say we are all sinners and homosexuality is a sin like any other judged by their god on judgment day (generally speaking, the Anglican answer) and those who say that it is a sin worse than all others (Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps, for example) and homosexuals deserve punishment in this world.

There is another way – and it is significantly more intellectually satisfying: to argue that religions can accept homosexuality. Dr Amanullah De Sondy does so today in the Sunday Times.

One of Scotland’s leading Muslim academics is challenging his religion’s orthodox opinion on homosexuality by suggesting Islam is compatible with a gay lifestyle.

Dr Amanullah De Sondy says there is evidence in Islamic history to support his claim but said conservative Muslims refuse to acknowledge it as they are “deeply homophobic”.

Rather than spend our time working out exactly what kinds of homophobia can be tolerated in modern British society, we should join De Sondy in making the positive case for accepting homosexuality.

The 29-year-old said his opponents often cite the story, which appears in both the Koran and the Bible, of God sending angels to destroy the sinful inhabitants of the valley of Sodom.

“It is often said to illustrate God’s disapproval of homosexuality. But on closer inspection it is about his disapproval of the rape of young boys. There is a big difference,” he said.

Intolerance is not necessarily part of Muslim tradition, De Sondy argues, pointing to examples of people living openly in same-sex relationships.

“In the 16th-century Punjab, there lived a Sufi [uslim mystic] saint and poet called Shah Hussain. He fell in love with a Hindu boy. They lived together and are buried in the same tomb. But some people want to rewrite history, saying the boy was in fact a girl.”

Then, inevitably, the Sunday Times goes to a couple of self-appointed Muslim “community leaders” for The Traditional View™.

Bashir Maan, a former councillor and a prominent member of the Glasgow Central Mosque, said many Muslims would be upset by De Sondy’s comments.

“Where is he getting his knowledge from?” he said. “Islam condemns homosexuality. He is quoting the saint out of context. He loved that boy but it wasn’t for sexual purposes, he just liked that boy as we all have our likes and dislikes.”

Maan also criticised De Sondy for asserting that many Muslims were homophobic.

“As one of the leaders in Scotland said some time ago, we don’t hate homosexuals —, we hate homosexuality.

“So it’s not that Muslims are homophobic, they just do not like lewdness. They do not like homosexuality. These people, homosexuals, they are human beings. They should be, I think, not hated, but we should try to put them off such practices.”

Apart from the fact that I consider homophobic the direct equation of homosexuality and lewdness, I am particularly troubled by the pathetic attempt to delegitimise De Sondy’s views by saying they would cause “upset”. Contradict if you will, but complaining about hurt feelings is a coward’s defence and one that is used far too much by self-appointed Muslim “community leaders” to suppress reformist and progressive Muslim voices.

The Sunday Times moves on to the views of the Scottish Islamic Foundation.

A spokesman for the Scottish-Islamic Foundation agreed that homosexuality is incompatible with Islam, adding: “The view of mainstream Muslim scholars and individuals is that it is against Islamic teachings.

“Like with everything, though, people are free to choose how to live their own lives.”

It is sad to see the Scottish Islamic Foundation backing away from its previous uncompromising defence of liberal values – as reported here. Both Maan and the Scottish Islamic Foundation’s spokesman are defending a deeply conservative position without bothering to formulate coherent arguments; they simply state it has always been that way in Islam.

Quite apart from the fact that De Sondy has shown this not to be the case, this is not as good an argument as they clearly believe. For many centuries, Islamic scholarship tolerated slavery; certainly it is (as it is in the Bible) accepted in the Qur’an. People who make the argument that homosexuality always has been and always will be completely unacceptable in Islam should also make their case for why slavery is a different matter – which went from being accepted to illegal.

De Sondy makes an important argument for the acceptability of homosexuality in Islam and the “community leaders” also interviewed by the Sunday Times can only answer with intellectual dishonesty and unthinking conservatism. Sad but unsurprising.

We have had the normal reaction on the left to condemn him, the reaction from the right in the UK to call for a ban and even claim Muslims support them and this has caused a little stir amongst Islamists.

iEngage for example originally followed the 1st electronic print of the Express article stating that Ghaffar Hussain from the Quilliam Foundation had stated that the Burka/Burqa was a cultural practice and not sanctioned in the Quran, but then went further and mistakenly claimed that he supported a ban. This has subsequently been “corrected”, by both the Express and iEngage.

A number of ancilliary discussions have persisted some of which are quite interesting, hypocritical and opportunistic.

When speaking of the “Burqa” or Jilbab or veil or in fact niqab (face-mask) we should be clear that there is no explicit injunction requesting Muslim women to wear a veil but rather there are verses which are interpreted as such.

The verse which states: “Those who harass believing men and believing women undeservedly, bear (on themselves) a calumny and a grievous sin. O Prophet! Enjoin your wives, your daughters, and the wives of true believers that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when abroad) That is most convenient, that they may be distinguished and not be harassed. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” is interpreted traditionally to mean cover everything except, well for some everything!

Commentators though have explained that this does not include the face and hands and Imam Tabari (the first ever author of an exegesis of the Quran) in his commentary of the verse: “they show not their charms except that which is apparent” states that there is almost consensus on the fact that covering the face and hands is not a part of a woman’s Awra or parts of the body that must be covered. He states in his commentary, that what is correct is “that there is a consensus that women should uncover their face and hands in the prayer and therefore they are not obliged to cover the face and the hands, and this is the correct meaning of the words ‘except what is apparent from her” (in the verse from Surah al-Nur, Tafsir al-Tabari volume 5 page 419 Muass’sas al-Rayan edition).

In fact before poor Ghaffar Hussain made now infamous statement about the cultural nature of the Burqa/Jilbab, scholars had done so. Many have explained that the usage of the word ‘veil’ was more to do with Arab custom, and not a Quranic injunction nor any kind of prescription from God that they must be veiled.

Imam Muhammad Tahir ibn Ashur in his book Maqasid al-Sharia al-Islamiya in the chapter about the universal nature of the Shariah, states: “This is a legislation that took into consideration an Arab tradition, and therefore does not apply to women who do not wear that stykle of dress” (page 140 of Ibn Ashur: Treatise on Maqasid al-Shari’ah translated by M T el-Mesawi). [Ibn Ashur also states that there is a view which does not oblige the hijab at all i.e. covering the hair and feet and hands are not religious duties etc in his Quran exegesis al-Tahrir wal-Tanwir, volume 8 page 207).

But hold on! All this is pointless, why am I speaking about Quranic injunctions and so forth when according to iEngage this is nothing to do with a religious edict but a “liberal edict”(?!?).

Surely they are defending the right to practice what they see as their religion but within the framework of liberal democracy? Which would mean that if France decided according to their legislature to ban the face-veil/burqa/burka in public life by a democratic mandate they would of course agree with this? As then there would a be a liberal democratic mandate?

Or is it that they feel that the best way to argue their case in a liberal democracy is to seek to protect the veil through appealing to a common value of individual freedom and right to religious expression and personal liberty?

Well I guess they would have to, as traditionally Muslim scholars who have held that women should cover their face have always made the exception of social transactions i.e. if they are involved with say, speaking to their local MP, teaching or even learning, or just engaging in a financial transaction they should remove the face veil! (See writings of scholars like Zamakhshari and Suyuti for this).

So it is not so un-Islamic to prevent the veil in public life, as it is moreso contradicting liberal principles which allow individuals to dress as they please (a point of view I agree with) whilst maintaining that they should whenever public inquiry requires, remove it for purposes of identification, security, financial and other social transactions that require communication e.g. teaching etc.(Remember the case with the veiled school teacher?)

In fact, as a part of respecting the culture in the West those that have obliged the face covering state that it does not have to be covered from two of the main schools of religious rite, hanafi and shafi schools (it is well known the maliki schools don’t oblige it, and hanbali, Albani and Tuwayjuri have had quite some differences on it)

But hold on, when Jack Straw even suggested this, there was outcry! How unreasonable he was being!

Hizb ut-Tahrir (along with others) put out a statement saying that this was:

1. Divisive – the group has a chapter entitled why Hijab is not obligatory in one of its books!

2. They understand that it is a barrier to communication, but a minor one! In the book Social System in Islam which is a Party Policy book they explain that it is a barrier to social interaction and backward!

3. They say they recognize the differences,but in their policy book they state that it is not based on the Quran or any Islamic evidence!

4. They quote from scholars stating that the veil should be removed in public life in front of judges, when trading or to be recognized etc. So why capitalize on this debate? The irony is that they state not to capitalize on this discussion now (to whom and how?).

So if they agreed with Jack Straw’s point of view, and would not advocate it, neither fo they believe there is anything Islamic about it nor that it is healthy for society? Why the campaign?

Blatant Islamist politicization of social and religious issues for their own ideological Islamist anti-Western agenda!

The debate I am sure will continue but hopefully without wild accusations of Islamophobia and meaningful discussion about where we draw the lines to religious. But always expect the rants from the likes of Islamist political groups hijacking the discussion for political ends, and shallow “Think-Tanks” such as iEngage, for their petty squabbles…

Many Islamic theologians/scholars do in fact consider interest an aspect of usury, though many don’t (see here for a full discussion of all of the Islamic scholars who permitted interest and did not see it as Riba). Assuming many did forbid interest as Riba, it does not necessarilly mean that is the complete picture.

Traditionally theologians have developed elaborate means of ensuring that effective financial transactions are not prevented through the blanket application of Islamic rules of Fiqh (human interpretations of Sharia divine law) to situations without recourse to strategies where necessary.

These strategies are known as Hiyal which are means of avoiding unintended consequnces to prohibitions. For example, one which is given in medieval writings, is losing investors when they are afraid to invest funds with people who have ideas and business sense but no capital, when they fear losing their monies. Sound familiar? Well there have been ways of doing so since the early development of Islamic Fiqh.

Below is one found in the writings of Imam Muhammad bin Hasan al-Shaybani, a leading scholar and student of Imam Abu Hanifah (the founder of the 1st Sunni school of Fiqh) as the view of the three Hanafi Imams, Abu Hanifa, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad bin Hasan:

“What if someone wishes to give his capital to another as a form of capital investment where the other is the active partner (and he silent) but he wants the active partner to be liable for it – what is the Heela (permitted strategy) for this?”

He (Shayabani) replied: “The capitalist should give his monies with the exception of one dirham (let’s say a pound!) to the active partner as a loan. He should then form a partnership with him with the dirham (pound) along with the loaned money on condition that they work with the entire capital sum, and share whatever they are gifted by God equally or whatever ratio he so wishes. This is permitted.” Kitab al-Makharij fi al-Hiyal  [Edited by J Schacht. Leipzig edition 1930] pp76-78

(He also gives a more elaborate version to secure all monies if required involving three stages of contracts of loans, partnerships and not for profit agencies.)

It would appear then that though there are scholars that forbid interest and venture capitalism and returns on “loans”, they also provide ways around this. The problem with “Capitalism” and interest based banking seems more ideologically and politically driven, than based upon interpretations of Islamic rules and principles (as traditionally Muslims would tolerate differences of practice and opinion amongst themselves and not get revolutionary about it). It is not just the early companions  of the prophet like Ibn Abbas, later scholars and also recent Muftis like the famous Maliki Illi’yish (he did not consider Fiat money as being subject to rules of Riba), present day jurists and traditional authorities have explained this also. Those that did forbid interest and so forth have developed means of allowing most financial transactions within sharia frames. (It seems capitalism and interest based banking is not so un-Islamic after all)

There are certainly excesses and exploitation that have and do take place within existing financial institutions, in the developed and the “3rd world” dealings with it which people of conscience should unite against, but these should be separated from Islamist ideological rantings. If only the left new…

Today the word ‘Jihad’ has become synonymous with terrorist and political violence.  This has come about due to the way Islamist/Jihadists have interpreted the word ‘Jihad’.  In this article I intend to look at the meaning of the word Jihad as understood by classical scholars in Islam.  
 
Ibn Rushd summarized a few of the various opinions of Muslim jurists on the issues of peace and war in Islam: Some of those who approved of peace whenever the imam finds it in the Muslims’ interest are Malik, al Shafi’i, and Abu Hanifah. Al Shafi’i only does not approve of a peace duration longer that the period which the Prophet, peace be upon him, made with the nonbelievers… the reason for their differences in approving of peace without necessity is the apparent contradiction between His (Allah’s) saying (in the Qur’an):

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them,” and “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day,” and His saying: “If they incline to peace, incline thou also to it and trust in Allah.”

Those who considered that the verse of fighting abrogates the verse of peace did not approve of peace except out of necessity. Those who considered that the verse of peace places limits on that verse (of fighting) did approve of peace if the imam was in favor of it. [i]

[Ibn Rushd Abu al Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad, (al-hafid) (d.594/1198) Bidayat Al-Mujtahid Wa Nihayat al Muqtasid pg 283-284, Cairo ed]  
Thought, Herndon, Virginia, USA, 1993, pp. 17-33.)  
 
This demonstrates that peace and peaceful relations are dependent upon what is perceived as the best interests of state. There is no inherent need from an “Islamic” standpoint to be in a continual state of war. This dismisses ideas held by al-Qaida, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Ikhwan al-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), for global expansionist Caliphate being an ‘integral part of Islam.  
 
Does Islam Need Perpetual Jihad?  
 

Islam can countenance a state of permanent, peaceful coexistence with other nations and peoples who are not Muslims. In other words, contrary to the belief that Islam can only accept a world that is entirely populated by Muslims and, as such. Muslims must, as a religious duty, wage perpetual Jihad against non-Muslims, Islam can peacefully coexist with non-Muslims.

(Jihad and the Modern World by Dr. Sherman Jackson- Journal of Islamic law and Culture Spring / Summer 2002.)  
 
Can we have peace with the Kuffar:  
 
Ibn Taymia (ra) regarding the verse “there is no compulsion in religion…”: ‘The jumhoor (majority) of the salaf (predecessors) that this verse was not abrogated nor specified by anything, rather it is a general text and we do not coerce anyone to the religion of Islam, we only fight those who instigate war on us (Haaribuna). If they submit then there wealth and lives are protected by us and if they are not from the people fighting us (ahl ul-qital), we don’t fight them.” Tafsir al-Kabir Volume 2 page 319 and cited by Shaykh Wahbah Zuhayli in his Athar ul-Harb fil-Fiqh al-Islami Dirasat Maqarina page 82.  
 
Ibn Taymia (ra) said: ‘His Seerah (saw) demonstrates that anyone who signed a pact from the non-Muslims did not fight him (whether from the polytheists of the Arabs or others), this is documented in the Seer (biographical literature), narration, Quranic exegesis, Fiqh (code of conduct), Maghazi (tales of prophetic battles) speak of this. This is Mutawatir (mass transmitted reports) from his Sunnah, the Prophet never initiated war with anyone from the non-Muslims. If Allah had ordered him to fight every non-Muslim, he would have initiated fighting them and warfare.’ Risala ul-Qital page 125 and cited by Shaykh Wahbah Zuhayli in his Athr ul-Harb fil-Fiqh al-Islami Dirasat Maqarina page 105.  
 
‘Is Jihad fought to repel hirabah (enmity and hostility) or to eradicate ‘Kufr’ (Unbelief)?  
 

The position of the majority (Jumhur), and they are the hanafiya, the malikiya, and the hanabila, is that the legal rationale (illah), for Jihad warfare, is the repelling of enmity (hiraba).

(See: Bidayat ul-Mujtahid of Ibn Rushd Volume 1 page 369-372; al-Mughni of Ibn Qudama Volume 9 page 301; Fat’h al-Qadir of Ibn al-Hummam Volume 5 page 452)’
[Taken from al-Jihad fi'l-Islam by Dr Muhammad Saeed Ramadhan al-Buti – Dar el-Fikr Damascus/Syria & Dar el-Fikr al-Mu'asir Beirut/Lebanon 1997]  
 
The Obligation of Jihad is an Obligation of means and not an obligation of Maqasid [Objectives] (desired for itself)  
 
‘The Messenger of Allah (prayers and peace be upon him) said to Ali bin Abu Talib (may God be pleased with him), “That God guides a single (person) is better for you than a red camel.”  
Imam Subki stated

“it is understood from this, that what is sought from fighting is not fighting and conflict but rather the spreading of guidance” and it should be clear from this that the obligation of Jihad is an obligation of means, not Maqasid, an if guidance can be delivered without fighting Jihad, that is better…”

[Imam Subki -Tabaqat al-Shafi’iyah Volume 10 page 293]

It is clear from the above quotes that the Islamist interpretation of Jihad is a distortion of the correct meaning of the word.  Islam condemns terrorism in all its forms.