Islam Needs a Restoration not Reformation

Crosspost: Abdullah Al-Andalusi

The desire for the reformation of Islam tends to typically come as a demand made upon the Muslim world by external actors or influences.

Having been invited to speak in many debates and lectures about the question of whether there should be a reformation of Islam, I’ve observed that it is not a question that I or most Muslims raise, but one that is thrust upon us by others.

Generally, Muslims are well aware that there is no problem with Islam. Muslims understand that Islam defines human purpose in the cosmos, and offers a complete and consistent way of life that is designed to lead to human happiness and justice in this life and the hereafter. For Muslims, the author of the Quran, being also the author of mankind, knows humans better than anyone, and understands how humans should be organised and guided – therefore Islamic laws and solutions are perfectly balanced for implementation by mankind.

The desire for the reformation of Islam then, tends to typically come as a demand made upon the Muslim world by external actors or influences – typically by Westerners and those influenced by Western civilisation, i.e. “secular reformists”. Their demand for reform is based upon the false assumption that religion must be separate from state, and that Islam is comparable to Christianity’s problems with politics. However, there are a number of other fallacies and assumptions they make that quickly come undone under simple scrutiny.

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Deformist Subversions: “British Islam” Architects and Shaista Gohir

 

There are certain things in life which you simply do not do.  Reducing the benefits of the most vulnerable in society, like the disabled. Taking a country to war based on lies.  Abusing children as the BBC and powerful elites turn a blind eye.  And, of course, working with those linked to the notorious Quilliam Foundation.

ISB’s senior leadership, whilst leaving their former president Ahtsham Ali hanging as yet another victim in Michael Gove’s war on Islam, has had no qualms about liaising with and even defending deformists like Quilliam’s Usama Hasan, for instance.  Connected to this group of individuals are people like Dilwar Hussain, former ISB president and a deformist who is listed among the personnel at the pro-Israel, neoconservative Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which influences the global Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) imperial agenda.

“British Islam”

The past week saw a chummy deformist get together to discuss the neocon-cherished topic of “British Islam”. Organised by Hussain’s New Horizons in British Islam, speakers in attendance provided for a who’s who list of opportunist spin-doctors and deformists. Thus speaking at the seminar was ISD “senior researcher” Rashad Ali, known for is dubious contortions of Islam, subversion of Muslim communities, his close relationship with anti-Muslim propagandist Andrew Gilligan and promoting Zionist propaganda. The state-approved Fiyaz Mughal, Usama Hasan of the Quilliam/neocon, far-right linked Muslim Reform Movement, and his newly acquired colleague Salah al-Ansari also made an appearance.

Tony Blair: The Neoconservative Threat to the World (4) – Concluding Remarks

“Peace increases our peril”[1]

There was a time when the “Islamists” were admired by the British. Be it the “brave” Afghan Taliban who fought against Communism, or the Ottomans through their tolerant “calm, absorbed Islamism” who staved off Russian Christian extremism. They were admired because there was an interest to be served.

Pealing through Tony Blair’s staple neocon doublespeak and uncovering Blair’s definition of Islamism, it emerges that the war against Islam is ever-fervent, disguised under the words of human rights, democracy and convoluted epithets.

ISB and the Reformation Discourse

My last article seems to have caused unsettlement amongst some quarters it seems.  I was attacked for not verifying my information before “judging” people, although, my article refutes the statements made by brother Ahtsham Ali.  Some have labelled me a “deobandit”, whilst others have called me a “wobbler”, whilst another thought it was some “brillo”.  Ironic, to say the least, considering those who have made such claims failed to verify such “labels” themselves and “judged” me.  For the record, I have defended Sufis and Salafis.  My position is simple, I will defend Muslims where the attacker is using the Muslim as a proxy to attack Islam.  Hence, I have defended Shaykh Haytham al-Haddad, spoke highly of Shaykh Ibrahim Osi-Efa and written in defence of individuals who associate themselves with ISB and in so doing have established a track record of a non-sectarianist position.

ISB and reformation

As evident from the polished ISB website parading “British Islam” as increasingly clean-shaven jaw-bones and hijab-less heads, the Islam of ISB provides for a flavour which, in its endeavour to appeal to the masses of the British public, reduces Islam to insipidity, a shapeless gas which takes any form of its container and monochroming the Colour of Allah (al-Qur’an 2:139) which signifies Islam’s uniqueness, demarcating its own epistemological paradigm.

The platform speakers of ISB, to varying degrees, seek to deconstruct this colour, and through this deconstruction perpetuate confusion amongst people who will adopt a position more suited to their desires.  Some balked at my comparison of this with the neocon agenda to deconstruct Islam, however the reading of the RAND corporation policy in “democratising Islam”, and the creation and actions of Radical Middleway for instance, to forge as part of British policy, a dumbed down version of Islam are testimony to this reductionist Islam being propounded.

The methodology employed is through the use of not modernism, but postermodernist decontructionism; i.e. that no one can monopolise the “truth” and that traditional assumptions, however established are merely constructed meanings. As such interpretations become open (Quilliam anyone?).

A quaint philosophy except that its application to Islam ignores the fact that the process of verification based upon unshakeable foundations and principles has been occurring for over 1400 years by thousands of individuals whose piety is unparalleled today.

I do not doubt ISB’s former president, Ahtsham Ali’s sincerity in his research, lectures and propagation. However there are some serious issues which reveal this underlying issue of deconstruction in his discourses, which contain a mixture of dangerous advice and in some cases inaccurate, misleading statements. This concoction then allows for the doors for reformation of Islam to be flung open, not in minor issues, but issues which would attack the very fundamentals of Islam, as Usama Hasan (who is defended by ISB) has already done.

“Living Islam”, Promoting Confusion

Is ISB Living Islam or Reforming Islam?

It is interesting to note that those who compromise normative Islam or demonstrate a modernist tendency suddenly become “leading Sunni” Imams. The epithet was applied by the Times to former ISB President Ahtsham Ali who spoke at ISB’s Living Islam event, presumably because his statements fit in with neocon policy of attacking normative Islamic stances.

Claiming that the separation of the sexes is absent in the Quran, he iterated a statement which I would expect to see from modernist reformationists of the Usama Hasan variety,

“Stay in your houses and do not display yourselves like [women used to] in the time of ignorance [before Islam],” was intended specifically to the prophet’s wives, Ali said.

Aside from the obvious irrationality of ignoring principles of exegesis, like where a command is addressed to the wives it is for all women unless specifically stated otherwise, the validity of this statement can be determined by a perusal of a multitude of exegeses written on this verse which clearly indicate that the application of this verse is ‘aam (generic, to all Muslim women) as opposed to khass (specific).  The preceding verse which states that the mothers of the believers are “unlike other women” indicates to their special, raised status over other women by virtue of being the blessed wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him), not towards the specificity of the command (as claimed by proponents of Ali’s position).  (Tafsir Ibn Kathir – specifically states that these verses are an example for other women, Tafsir Alusi – also quoted supporting this view is Zamakhshari, Tafsir Baydawi, Tafsir Ma’ariful Qur’an).

There are more problems with Ali’s words.  By focussing solely on the Qur’an to unsuccessfully refute a mainstream understanding in Islam, he side-steps an entire corpus of hadith and usul al-fiqh (principles of jurisprudence) which is also used, in addition to the Qur’an, to extrapolate rulings.  It smacks of a Taj Hargey statement who uses similar reductionist diatribe to give justification to strange, un-Islamic views. One wonders how Ali would reconcile is position with the following hadith:

 Aisha (RadiyAllahu ‘anha) says that a woman from behind a curtain gestured a letter to the Prophet (peace be upon him). The Prophet (peace be upon him) withheld his hand. The woman said, “O Prophet of Allah, I extended my hand to you with a letter and you did not take it?” He said, “I could not know if this is a man’s hand or a woman’s”. She said, “It is a woman’s hand.” The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “If you were a woman you ought to have changed your fingernails with henna.” (Sunan An-Nasa’i)

The attack however continues with the emulation of the Prophet with his incredibly misleading statement:

“You don’t emulate except what [the Prophet] asked us to emulate. Wasn’t he allowed to have the culture of his time in 7th century Arabia?”

This is a grossly incorrect, reductionist statement. Emulation without an express command formed the basis of many rulings. Furthermore, emulation without exhortation was an expectation:

‘Aisha said, “The Messenger of Allah did something as an example in order to make things easier for people but some people still refrained from doing it. When the Prophet heard about that, he praised Allah and said, ‘what do you think of people who refrain from anything that I myself do? By Allah I am the greatest of them in knowledge of Allah and the strongest of them in fear of Allah”. (Bukhari wa Muslim)