In the last several weeks, I have read the expressions of opinions by several
persons on the views expressed by a prominent Saudi, namely Dr. Sheikh Zaki
Yamani. I was a bit surprised that a Saudi should have said what Yamani
did, but more power to him. If I remember correctly, he said, to
paraphrase him from the report in Pakistan Link that, compared to an age when
Muslims traveled by camels, today in the age of airplanes and fax machines,
there is a need for recodification of the Shariah, or the Islamic law. To
me his obvious proposition makes all the sense. However, Muslim culture is
a rather unthinking culture. So, I am not surprised that our
co-religionists found and reacted to his views, as if they should be shocking.
But nothing he said is shocking.
That Islam and Muslims have, to their own misfortunes in the modern age, failed
woefully to adjust to modernity is obvious. What is not obvious to our
orthodox and traditional Muslim brothers and sisters; even when they have
acquired ritually modern education and make a living in modern professions, is
that our hypocritical and unthinking refusal to rethink, reinterpret,
reformulate and recodify the thousand-year-old Sharia has kept the Muslim
society stagnant, fixated, and caught up in pre-modernity. For which
Islam, Muslims, and Muslim culture and civilization have paid and are paying
today, and will pay in the future, too, a very heavy price.
Unfortunately, even when it is grudgingly conceded that Sharia rules, too, must
change in time, no attempt is made to stay with the idea long enough to give an
example or two, much less to give it a extent, as to what in the Sharia, as
inherited from the past, is in need of change and what rules must be changed and
why? The whole matter is treated as a matter of public relations only, not
one of needed, urgent social and cultural change in how the Shariah can be made
relevant and responsive to changed historical and social reality. In this
sense, I found the article "Sheikh Zaki Yamani’s Comments About Islamic
Law" (Pakistan Link, Jan 8th 1999) by Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi rather
disappointing. What I consider disappointing about Islamic discourse
in America is that, rarely if ever, an American Muslim or for that matter, an
American Islamic conference or retreat addresses the real and substantive issues
of Muslim life in the contemporary world head on and tries to work out real life
solutions to them. Of course, only Islam and Muslims are worse for it.
Our women, the worst of all – they are the greatest victims of our
inflexibility.
Admittedly, it is not easy, neither risk free to risk thinking a new
thought, much less making a new proposal, as to which Sharia rules need and must
be changed, over-handled, or simply left behind where they belong, that is the
past, even the distant past. Khalifa Umar (RA) found that out already in the
fist decade after the death of the Prophet (PBUH). But Umar (RA) was
daring to a fault. Not surprisingly, Umar did not hesitate to make new rules in
and for new situations. I think he was quite right, too, not because he was the
Caliph, but because every Muslim has, should have, the right to reinterpret and
rethink the Shariah. I strongly disagree with Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi’s
recommendation that "this must be done with the help of an international
body of Islamic scholars, thinkers and jurists". Even an international body
does not think, it, too, needs knowledge, thought, and guidance which can
come, must come, because only individuals think, from individuals. Never has a
committee collective body or even a conference of Muslims provided conceptual
breakthroughs, new ideas or paradigms of Muslim thought, or contemporary
solutions to problems, predicaments and dilemmas that Islam and Muslims have
faced in history or are facing today. Only when a man or woman does not
want to speak out his or her own mind does he or she need a collective body to
speak to the community? Islam is not Catholicism which needs a committee of
Muslim Cardinals to issue authorized and or official pronouncements.
To be sure, modernity has tried our souls and post-modernity does so even more,
because while the former has still made some allowances for religious hypocrisy
the latter makes none. Muslim life present many instances of it.
1.We speak of the segregation of male and female in public places, yet we allow
Muslim women in America in all public places within and outside the Muslim
community.
2.We hold domesticity as the Sharia-sanctioned work for Muslim women, yet we
allow them to work outside the home.
3.We treat non-Muslims as second-class citizens of the Islamic state, yet we
demand equal rights as citizens of the Christian, Jewish and Hindu states.
4.We welcome Christians, Jews, Hindus, and others as converts to Islam, yet we
award a death sentence to a Muslim for converting to any other religion.
5.We retain polygamy in Muslim countries and would stand for no legal
restrictions upon it, yet we are perfectly happy and content to live in America
where it is legally forbidden.
6.We disallow privacy (being alone together, going out for a cup of coffee or
riding in a car alone together) to our boys and girls, men and women, yet allow
Muslim male doctors to practice gynecology upon Muslim women.
7.We denounce secular knowledge and education, yet we send our sons and
daughters to American universities to acquire the same to train for secular
careers and make good money and become rich. Compared to us, the Amish are most
consistent.
I for one am happy and proud that old Shariah rules, that are dated,
outdated, and obsolete are being discarded and new ones put in their place in
the American Muslim community. What I consider disturbing and even
shameful is that Muslims are not revising the Shariah rules consciously, but
allowing them to be changed by default. It is American practice that’s
recodifying the Shariah, not Muslim thought, reflection and nationality. Our
professional Islam and lived Islam are diverging increasingly with every passing
year. Muslim life in America is becoming contradictory,
hypocritical, anti-thetical and double-faced, while the immigrant generation is
still alive. In the next half century it would become increasingly
insincere unauthentic and comical.
Shari’i Islam and lived Islam cannot for long run on parallel or divergent
lines. The two have to run on the same line, if the soul, spirit, mind,
psyche, personality, character, and life of the American Muslim, male or female
are to be a unity. If this is true, the need for the recodification of the
Shariah is clear. So reinterpret Shariah forthwith.
