Dr. Tariq Ramadan – from Islamist to Reformist - Asjad Bukhari

Tariq Ramadan is prominent Islamic writer and professor of contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University.  He is from high profile religious family with excellent academic credentials. Founder of Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al Banna was his maternal grandfather. His father Said Ramadan was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and went into exile during Gamal Abdul Nasser’s time from Egypt to Switzerland where Tariq was born.

As part of his Canadian tour 2017 organized by CJPME (Canadians for Justice and peace in Middle East) he delivered his talk in Calgary under the title “Creating Thriving Societies in Troubling Times” on 18^th January 2017.

Highlights of his talk:

One should not oppose humanity by using spirituality; Don’t accept what is unacceptable; Challenge your politicians as Canadian not as Muslim or some other ethnic or geographic identity;  Muslims should join mainstream politics, raise voice for all injustices whether it is for blacks or for aboriginals or any one; Raise your concern to your elected leaders and argue them not to support dictators and military rulers in other parts of the world; Don’t accept double standard, if human life is important in Europe or North America it should be important in other parts of the world as well. He criticise west for supporting Gulf States and completing ignoring their human rights records.

His talk was full of appealing sentences that would help multicultural society like Canada to come together. My focus was looking for his views about political Islam or in other words Islamism.  Then there were two relevant questions where he touched that:

Answering the question regarding apologetic behavior from Muslims after terror attacks, he said we should condemn those acts as it goes against the basics of Islam but we should put in perspective the motives and causes of those acts of terror as well. For me this sounds typical “but” and this answer would bring us again into apologetic narrative.   

I asked the question: In my view other then imperialistic agenda political Islam is another reason for the uprising and trouble in Muslim World, how important it is to encounter the narrative of political Islam and how we achieve that? He suggested regarding political Islam we have to be careful, we should not classify all of Islamists or political Islam under one list.  Some are reformists and some are legalist. Some want to change into Islamic system peacefully and some are violent. We have to differentiate them. With this answer I comprehend that in his view nothing wrong with political Islam as long the movement is peaceful. 

In my view this is the point where Muslim societies need clear vision to separate religion from power politics. Narrative from Islamists is: Islam is a complete system of morality, justice and governance, whose sharia laws and principles should be the sole basis of governance and everything else in life. Establishment of Islamic state is the ultimate goal of message of Islam.  Until this point every Islamist group is on the same page but when it comes to develop the module and implementing Sharia then every sect and school of thought has its own interpretation and every group is too charged then it is inevitable to avoid armed conflict. That is another debate rather that so called sharia law that allows slavery and too many other controversial things is applicable in this DNA age or not.

Since the Afghan jihad of 80s the destruction of Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq and parts of Pakistan made it very clear that using religion as political ideology is gateway to exploit religion - once you allow the exploitation of religion then nobody has full control on that. This is the most slippery road for societies.  In this regard it is important to recognise that the narrative created by the founders of Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat Islami of Pakistan made huge influence on Islamic insurgence and terrorist groups like Taliban, ISIL etc. Ayman Zawahiri was Muhammad Qutb’s direct student and he was the mentor of Osama bin Laden and other leading members of al-Qaeda and Taliban. Lines between violent and none violent Islamists is very thin and it is only a matter of opportunity and situation and all can jump into violent jihadi armies.

 Tariq Ramadan as Reformist:

In Tariq Ramadan’s writings and lectures one can see two different standpoints and prospects. One for Muslims living in the western world and other about Muslims world and political Islamic movements in that part of the world. For some critics it is double standard that is creating confusion and giving excuses for extremist Islamist groups to exploit Muslims for political and personal agendas. But in Tariq Ramadan’s point of view most of the issues involved religious texts that Muslims take seriously, so simple act to condemn would not change anything in Muslims societies but opening the debate on these issues can lead towards reforms in those rules.

In terms of interpretation of Islamic theology he is reformist. These are the significant areas of difference between his views to traditionalists: He rejects binary division of the world into the ‘house of Islam’ (dar al-Islam) and the ‘region of war’ (dar al-harb). He is against all forms of capital punishment but suggests that Muslim countries could remove such laws after wining popular narrative on this issue and without foreign pressures.  He sees hijab as an Islamic prescription, but he suggests it is against Islam to compel a woman to wear hijab. He is also tolerant about music. He condemns suicide bombing and maintain that terrorism is never justifiable, even though it can be understandable in terms of political resistance.

No doubt Tariq Ramadan is most influential reformist in today’s Islamic theology with large following around the globe.  I hope he realise that the problem with Islamists (political Islam) is: Once they take the power then these reformist ideologies will supersede with classic Shari law that is mostly based on 7th and 8th centuries tribal desert culture and it clearly contradicts in several areas with 21^st century’s basic human values. We witnessed this in Afghanistan of 90s and parts of Iraq and Syria. Separating power politics from religion is the only way to resolve this conflict. Make religion as personal matter for spirituality and morality and public law should made on secular ground.

Islam and Islamism: An overview - Asjad Bukhari

“It is I, the King of Kings.” Gilgamesh was his name from the day he was born, two-thirds of him god but a third of him human, from the epic of Gilgamesh.

The marriage between power and divine (in different forms) is not something new to human society. Whether we read books on ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian, Greek and Roman civilizations, or we study the history of organized biblical/monotheistic religions, the footprints of divine or sacred kingships are everywhere.

Religion by itself is an expedient and voluntarily scheme to set up morality, spirituality and social interaction. The synergy religion creates within society can contribute towards progress, but it also has potential to generate bigotry and hatred. Throughout human history, fanatics and extremists have exploited religion as a driving force for some of the worst atrocities. Conquerors, monarchs and warlords justified wars on the base of religious differences or sometimes in an effort to spread their faith. This religiously motivated adventurism has cost millions of human lives. In modern history, 14th to 16th century Renaissance Movements in Europe accomplished significant developments to separate religion from power politics, but still there are miles to go. In some societies the distance is in hundreds of miles and in some in thousands, but still we are far from better. Although in the developed world, the Church has no authority to govern the state, it still has some influence and involvement into power politics via political parties, pressure groups and lobbies.

Islam is a monotheistic belief system articulated by the Qur'an, a text considered by Muslims to be the words of Allah (God). It endorses certain moral and ethical values to lead a person with the blend of spirituality and morality. In Islam, believers (Muslims) need to shape their persona according to the prescribed guidelines to progress their soul for the betterment of this life and also to get the reward from the divine in life after death. According to the Quran, this message is the complete and universal version of faith that was revealed at many times and places including biblical prophets e.g. Abraham, Moses, Jesus etc. In Islamic belief, Muhammad (c. 570 – 632) is not the author of Islam, but instead is regarded as the last messenger of Allah.

Islamism: Historically, Western writers used the terms Islamism and Mohammedism for Islam as a religion and Mohammedans was an alternate to Muslims. By the turn of the twentieth century, the term Islamism replaced by the Arabic term Islam and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed The Encyclopaedia of Islam, the term Islamism disappeared completely. The Orientalist scholars removed this term as it offended Muslim writers and readers.

The resurrection and redefinition of Islamism, like its birth, took place in France in the late 70s as it started appearing in titles of books and articles to describe new Islamic movements and Islam as a political ideology. Retrieval of the term ‘islamisme’ never went without criticism and most notably by a French historian of Islam Maxime Rodinson, stating "If one chooses this term, the reader may become confused between an excited extremist who wishes to kill everyone and a reasonable person who believes in God in the Muslim manner, something perfectly respectable."

Parallel to that, American authors started using the term Islamic fundamentalism for politically motivated Islamic movements. In the mid-90s American authors like Graham Fuller expressed their disagreement with the term fundamentalism and suggested that “this more recent phenomenon in the Muslim world is not so much of an old-fashioned theology but it is a current political ideology” and they suggested using the term ‘Islamism’. Because of this, a majority of scholars are now using this term to describe the inflexible ideology of Islamic movements and individuals they believe:

‘Islam (Islamic state) should rule personal, social and political life of every Muslim and wherever Muslims are in majority or they are in governing position, the law of the land must be in conformity with the Islamic Sharia. Moreover they believe it is the core duty of every Muslim to spread this ideology all across the globe. The ultimate goal is to establish Caliphate (Islamic theocratic rule) in the entire planet.’

Upon the appearance of Islam, the social structure of Hijaz was based on tribal systems where every tribe was considered as a separate nation with some variation in their traditions. In Mecca, the birth place of Islam, Quraysh was a powerful merchant tribe that controlled the area and its Kaaba (the holiest shrine of the region). Prophet Muhammad was born into the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. When he was in his late 30s, he periodically went off in isolation to a cave in the surrounding mountains for days. At the age of forty, sitting in the cave, he reported receiving his first revelation from God. Three years after the first revelation, he started preaching these revelations publicly: God is one and submitting to Allah is the only way for salvation and he himself is a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other prophets e.g. Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jesus etc. Monotheist theology and social values preached by Prophet Muhammad were progressive and different (in some areas) than the pagan tribal traditions of Hijaz. This new religious and social movement stressed the unity of the Quraysh and that caused division and discord. After decades of long struggle by means of preaching and battles, in the end Prophet Muhammad and his companions managed to convert all Quraysh and other significant neighbouring tribes into Islam and they once again united. Although Prophet Muhammad’s message brought a number of social reforms in Hijaz, it still remained a tribal society where the status of an individual was determined by what tribe they were born into. On a socio political horizon, there was no other tribe wealthier or more powerful than the urban elite of Mecca, the Quraysh. Coincidentally, the most reliable and closest friends of the Prophet were also from Quraysh. Aftermath to the death of the Prophet, his closest companions prudently influenced followers that the caliph (leader/ruler after Prophet Muhammad) should come from Quraysh. This proposal was supposedly backed with the words of Prophet Muhammad.  In fact during that time, the people of Hijaz were not aware of anyone’s political leadership except that of the Quraysh and they had the popular support of the masses, and no tribe could challenge this position. History witnessed that all four Caliphs of Rashidun and four major Muslim dynasties after that established their legitimacy on the basis of this. Evidently this was not the divine rule to impose one ‘chosen’ tribe on all others. Rather, it was the pragmatic strategy for that time by the Prophet’s most reliable companions to avoid the battles for successors and to progress Muslims society after the Prophet’s death.

Compared to tribal pagan rituals, Islamic monotheist theology with better social and moral norms, became a great source for early Muslims to unite all tribes of Hijaz under one umbrella. Since these early Muslims did not have a clear vision and examples of the institution of the state, their first model of the state was very much like a tribal honor-system, where the chief holds all of the sources of power. The honor-system developed by early Muslims to run the society worked for a couple of decades. The reason for their success could possibly be the lifelong companionships and direct inspiration by the prophet. But how long this system survived and how it was destroyed by civil wars and monarchs – is a separate area of history and politics. What needs to be identified is, rather a 1400 year old tribal culture of the desert and power structure is the core value in the message of Islam. Or can this message be separated by tribal traditions and power structure of that time? In principle, the majority of Muslim scholars, whether they are Islamists or reformers, agree that values and guidelines of Islam are core, not the tribal culture. The differences begin when you identify, what is desert culture and what are the fundamental values and norms of Islam. Traditionalists perceive the majority of tribal traditions of that time as fundamentals of Islam, and they drive principles of an Islamic state from that tribal power structure. This is the source from where Islamists get the argument to justify amalgamation of power politics and Islam. Contrary to that, generally the subject of the Quran is not state or politics at all. Character building of individuals is the main topic of the Quran. It provides moral values for how humans should behave in family as well as in society.

In Islam, the idea of blending politics with religion was initiated during the first Muslim dynasty. Although Muslim monarchs of 7^th and 8^th centuries were not considered as spiritual or religious leaders, with the help of early Muslim clergy they systematically narrowed down the concept of Jihad into holy war. That was the time when under the influence of monarchs, Muslim clerics produced tons of literature that provided religious cover up for rulers to invade foreign lands as part of Jihad. Although those hostile Jihadi ideas never went without criticism and disagreement, the opposing voices suffered persecutions and had a hard time reaching the masses compared to the voices from the courtyards. Some opposing intellectuals argued on the bases of rationality and some tried to use mystic routes to highlight the tolerant and human side of Islam. After establishing the empire, those Muslims dynasties maintained certain distance between state matters and religion, but from time to time they used Islam for their political purpose as well.  

However, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the concepts of modern state changed rapidly; capitalist democracies and socialist states became a reality. In reaction to this, some of the Muslim world authors like Syed Qutab of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syed Maududi of Jamat Islami in Pakistan went in search of a modern Islamic theocratic state. These authors not only produced the literature, but they also launched political movements to achieve the dream of an Islamic state.  During the Cold War era, USA and other capitalist powers recognized these relatively unpopular Islamist movements as useful barricades against the spread of communist political movements in the Muslim world. They supported and invested heavily on these Islamist authors and their movements to suppress liberal and socialists Muslim thoughts. Afghan Jihad of 80s was the climax of that unholy marriage between capitalists and Islamists. After the climax of an unnatural friendship, in the start of new millennium, they become each other’s rivals.

Establishment of an Islamic theocratic state to implement Sharia (figh) law is the main objective of Islamists. However, they have no direct support from the Quran to aspire this utopia. Other than a few general guidelines, the Quran is silent on politics and statecraft. It provides some fundamentals on which society may be built, with the assurance of equality and social justice. It does not however endorse or sanction any particular form of government, including theocracy and neither does it demand to create an Islamic state. Contrary to that, it encourages individuals to follow the morals and values mentioned in the book. Islamists endorse Shariah law as divine and insist all Muslims to oppose manmade laws and struggle to enforce this law. This is nevertheless fraudulent claim, as Shariah laws are also manmade and developed by Muslim jurists (Imams) gradually (in their personal capacity) in the centuries after the Prophet’s time. These laws are somewhat based on oral traditions of the Prophet’s time. These traditions (hadith) were documented from verbal history after two to three centuries of the Prophet’s death. In these compilations, not only is the margins of error high, but also most of them are 1400 year old tribal customs of that time, instead of divine laws. These laws are not written in the Quran. Most interesting is the fact that there are dozens of versions of these Shariah laws. Some versions of these laws were adapted by Muslim rulers, and some were practiced by individuals in their personal lives, while some just stay in the books. This is the prevalent problem with Islamists; they greet the personal opinions of 8^th and 9^th centuries Imams as a divine and integral part of Islam, while completely ignoring the realities and needs of the different time and space that makes these manmade Shariah laws irrelevant to the present time.