The Liberal Muslims'conference in London, this two-day conference organized by ‘Inspire’ has been a melting pot of thoughts and ideas, an indulgence of sorts. It brought together a ‘who’s who’ of liberal Muslims whose opinions and interpretations of the Qur’an have been a slap in the face to some in the classical-conservative field of view.
By Farrukh I. Younus, Freelance Writer - United Kingdom
One of the speakers, Chris Allen, addressed a rather subtle point, the tie between a Muslim woman’s dress and societies’ perception of Islam. A recent subject of discussion in the news, the burkini illustrated the divergence of opinion. Simply, when a Muslim woman dresses in such a way she is oppressed because she is hiding and covering herself, all the while when non-Muslim woman such as Nigella Lawson, a famous personality chooses to go onto a beach in a burkini, did it, she is hiding her modesty from prying eyes. What is oppression for one is liberating for another, thus the dress code isn’t really the subject, rather it is the creation of fear of, and anger towards a faith i.e. Islam. In this context, another of the speakers, Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, used her slot to address a number of the commonly misunderstood hadith relating to women. The classic example being a false narration where one of the companions Abu Huraira said that a man cannot pray if a woman or a dog is in front of him, to which Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, objected angrily saying that he has compared women to dogs. She then corrected him giving her own example of how the Prophet would pray and when he would prostrate he would tap her legs and she would move them out of the way so he could prostrate. Aside from the literal meaning of this hadith, it addresses a much wider concern, that is the attitude that even men who were close to the Prophet had with regards to women. If it happened here, where else did it happen? And more importantly, how have these attitudes remained to the point that the self-proclaimed champions of Islam do not view women as women but rather as sexualized objects that often need ‘protecting’?
Taking this further, Riba Mir-Hosseini, pointed out something which I hadn’t thought of previously. That is at a time of revolution and change, where some societies were trying to become more ‘Islamic’, in doing so, they simply uplifted conservative classical interpretation of Islam, integrating elements of them into their state’s legal code, without going through the same due process that took place throughout the differing periods of Islam. Even in early Islam where interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith varied between the different regions to which Islam spread reflecting the conditions and circumstance of the societies that lived there, one set of opinions were established as the norm. While in theory this may sound like a good idea, the problem is that it included vast statements and opinions based on a patriarchal interpretation of Islam, which in many cases didn’t reflect the example of the Prophet Muhammad himself. As a result, in the Western world specifically, you have a much stronger conservatism of Islam than you do in many of the Muslim countries e.g. attitudes to music, where all music in the west to some Muslims is ‘haram’ but elsewhere in the Muslim world good music is good while bad music is bad. Further, and this is what really struck me, is that in place of intellectual discovery which has been made possible in the west on account of the wider freedoms enjoyed by general society, when these evidences and discovery are then shared with the wider Muslim world – particularly with regards to women’s rights, they are disregarded for not adhering to the status quo, irrespective of whether they are sound or not. For me, a truth is a truth, irrespective of how it is derived. And for me, refusing to acknowledge the integrity of that truth is a reflection of the Qur’anic verse where people are criticized for following what their forefathers did blindly, more often than not, under the guise of tradition.
End of Inspire Conference
The conference concluded with the launch of an initiative named Jihad Against Violence (JAV). The initiative driven by the team at Inspire along with the support of Daisy Khan and Uasama Hasan, which is built upon a single philosophy of the Prophet Muhammad, that is, to seek peace instead of war. That is to say that we haven’t been created different to disagree with one another, rather our differences should be adding value to the wider human experience. One of the most important reminders this conference left me with is the knowledge and understanding of the relationship between man and Allah Almighty, one that is based on understanding and piety, not arrogance and self-righteousness. We are taught in the Qur’an that faith is a blessing. It is thus through our own individual actions that we must reflect the values of faith, from modesty to justice. However, all too often Muslims suffer from a superiority complex that is to say that we are on truth and others are on the path to hell. This attitude does not reflect the approach the Prophet himself had with others. Rather, his approach to any and every person was first that they are a human being, and that every human being as a descendant of Adam and Eve has the same rights with regards to freedom and justice as every other human being. Whether this is freeing women from pre-Islamic (and now post-Islamic) oppression, running the affairs of a state, or simply matters relating to everyday life, until such time as we adopt the Prophetic advice, ‘A person is not a believer until they want for the other what they want for themselves’; until we have understood and apply this in our daily lives, we as people have little right to claim that we are upon the path of truth.
In 2010, the journal Psychological Sciences reported on a study commissioned by the University of Arizona which found idle talk made people unhappy, going on to say “that the happy life is social and conversationally deep rather than solitary and superficial." So I return to my opening quote from the Quran which reads, (There are some people who purchase idle talk in order to lead away from Allah’s path without any knowledge.) And I ask myself, who exactly is facilitating this ‘idle talk’? Is it the person who accepts (all of) the status quo (as is), or is it the person who perhaps challenges (some of) the status quo, seeking clarification and better understanding of faith?
On Islam – 17/06/2011
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