Islamic theology needs to be rethought to fight jihadism

15 years after 9/11, the scourge of violent Islamist extremism has become even more complex and deadly.

The alacrity with which 30,000 Muslims from around the world joined the Islamic State’s so-called war against humanity has puzzled many. How could a peaceful, pluralistic religion be subverted so easily to create inhuman monsters?

Acceptance

Among many factors, social, economic, political, psychological, the one common feature is brainwashing of vulnerable people on the basis of a supremacist, xenophobic, intolerant, exclusivist and totalitarian jihadi theology.

This is a blatant misuse of Islam, a spiritual path to salvation, that 1.6 billion Muslims believe, teaches peace, pluralism, co-existence and good neighbourliness. But there has to be a reason why jihadi ideology has gained acceptance so quickly; why fatwas issued by reputed moderate scholars prove so ineffective?

How are jihadis able to create a 100 per cent certainty in the minds of some Muslims that violence against innocent people, including Muslims, whom they consider infidel, will please God and lead them to heaven? Clearly, we Muslims need to rethink some basic features of our theology.

Success of jihadism lies in the fact that, at its core, the jihadi theology is not different from the consensus theology of all other schools of Islamic thought. For instance, jihadists are able to misuse the intolerant, xenophobic, war-time verses of the holy Quran, as Muslims believe that all verses, regardless of the context, are of universal applicability.

Indeed, the Islamic theology of consensus, taught in all madrasas, says that the Quran is uncreated, meaning that it is just an aspect of God; and so, divine like God himself. The corollary is that no verse of the Quran can be questioned in terms of its universality and applicability.

Indeed, that any Muslim who tries to do so is committing blasphemy and deserves no less than death. The Quran on earth is said to be just a copy of the one lying safe in a divine vault in heaven called "Lauh-e-Mahfooz".

Consensus

This is completely irrational. Suppose Meccan elite had not responded to Islam’s message of equality with violence and persecution, leading to Prophet Mohammed fleeing to Madina. There would have been no battles in Prophet’s lifetime and no war-time verses would have been required.

How can these verses then acquire universal applicability and eternal value?

Not only that. There is also a near-consensus in Islamic theology around the so-called "Doctrine of Abrogation" whereby all peaceful, pluralistic Meccan verses, at least 124, are considered abrogated by the later confrontational Medinan verses. This is most damaging for Islam and useful for jihadism.

How do Islamic theologians reconcile the uncreatedness of the Quran, its total, unquestionable divinity, with the Doctrine of Abrogation is beyond a rational person’s understanding. This is a belief with hardly any basis in the Quran. It evolved hundreds of years after the demise of the Prophet.

The same is true of the divinity and universal applicability attached to Hadith, the so-called sayings of the Prophet, and Shar’iah laws. Narrations of Hadith were recorded decades and centuries after the Prophet passed away. Almost the last verse of the Quran (5:3) says that God has now completed the religion of Islam.

Message

How can we write books centuries after that and give them the status of revealed literature? Yet, all ulemas are agreed that Hadith is akin to revelation. This is clearly the height of irrationality.

Similarly, Shar’iah was first codified 120 years after the demise of the Prophet, based on some verses of the Quran and Arab practices of that era. This has been changing from country to country and age to age. How can we Muslims be told, as we are by a multitude of scholars, that it is a Muslim’s religious duty to see that this Shar’iah is established in the world?

Wherever a Muslim turns, from al-Ghazzali, Ibn-e-Taimiya, Abdul Wahhab, Sheikh Sarhandi, Shah Waliullah to Syed Qutb and Maulana Maududi, he or she gets the same Islam-supremacist message.

The latest among the most authoritative books on Islamic theology is a 45-volume comprehensive Encyclopaedia of Fiqh. This book has a 23,000-word chapter on jihad.

It gives the final, definitive definition: "Jihad means to fight against a non-zimmi unbeliever (kaafir) after he rejects the call towards Islam, in order to establish or raise high the words of Allah." 

Not a word about greater jihad, fight against one’s negative ego, nafs. Clearly Islamic theology will have to be rethought, and not just to defeat jihadism, but also to deal with many other pressing issues including human rights of women, children, homosexuals, religious minorities, atheists, and so on.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

Also read: What do we talk about when we talk about Indian Muslims?

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