Islamic Reform
Jim Sillars starts of this comment piece in The Sunday Times with a silly argument about people apologising for things which are not their direct responsibility, but he does improve by setting out a case that the Islamic religion needs to change.
If you ask me, the best reform for Muslims to make would be to recognise the obvious point that their holy books, such as the Koran (Qur'an), are written by men and not God because the insistence that these religious texts come , quite literally, from an all-knowing, all-seeing Supreme Being makes dialogue with fellow citizens difficult.
Just as it did with the Bible for many hundreds of years when people were routinely murdered for 'blasphemy' by Christian zealots and although we still have Christian fundamentalists on the scene, the western world has moved on from the days of the Spanish Inquisition.
The other area where Islam needs some work (which is related to Jim Sillars first point) is the tendency of many Muslims to resort to violence or even murder to settle their differences - a practice which is not by any means confined to Islam but is, I would say, more closely connected with that particular religion than any other in the world today.
The reality is that while some religious scholars and believers insist that Islam is a religion of peace, many of its practitioners regard it as their holy duty to kill apostates who decide to be Muslims no longer, for example, or murder perfectly decent people like Salman Rushdie.
And the problem is that these extremists (of whom there are many not a few) try to justify their actions by reference to Islamic texts and teaching which may be getting hijacked, but nonetheless clearly the message of peace is getting lost somewhere.
I, for one, have already pre-empted Jim Sillars' advice because I have started to read the Koran and, let me tell you, it's not easy going.
Islam can change if we all join the debate
Rather than condemn followers, non-Muslims should broaden their knowledge, says Jim Sillars
By Jim Sillars - The Sunday Times
Should all of the world’s Christians apologise for the murderous behaviour of their machete-wielding co-religionists who have killed scores of Muslims in the Central African Republic or should atheists, of which I am one, apologise for Stalin and Mao’s killing of millions? Of course not. So why do some suggest all Muslims should apologise for the murderous fanatics in Paris?
Post-Paris, we need to assess the role of religion, and analyse the effects of decisions, that have contributed to the crisis now engulfing parts of the Arab world. Aggression may be a crime in international law but those responsible for the invasion of Iraq, and the ensuing mayhem and carnage, weren’t found culpable and there’s no chance we’ll see Bush or Blair sitting in the International Criminal Court dock any time soon.
To build a harmonious society balancing religious and secular diversity, we have to be more honest and delve deeper into what makes each part of our community tick. Unlike the Scottish Secular Society, which condemned “the relentless march of Islam”, claimed “Islam cannot change; it does not want to”, and proclaimed: “We won’t stay mute.” I don’t want them to stay mute — I have never done so in my discussions with Muslim friends and colleagues — but I’d like them to study Islam in greater depth than is obvious from their statement, and to show understanding of a religion going through a renewal of belief, as has been the case for at least half a century now. Consistent western intervention in the Arab world is not the only reason “why”, but it has played its part.
I’ve lived and worked in the Arab world where discussion about how Muslims accommodate themselves to western society and debates about aspects of Islam are normal. I’ve heard Muslims argue about whether haram meant no alcohol or simply warned against it, and been told by a Muslim friend that when I died I’d go to hell. His beliefs didn’t offend me.
After Charlie Hebdo, Islam will be subject to open criticism in a way not experienced by Muslims before. It’s easy to identify differences between its teachings, the norms of secular society and the western Christian tradition — especially on the issue of the competing legitimacy between man-made laws and God’s laws. Non-Muslims must not flinch or retreat from debating these matters.
Our democracy and social values have not come about by accident, but from political and social struggles, and our ideas born in struggle must remain embedded. If there is a conflict between any religious belief and our laws, our laws must triumph. Yet this isn’t a secular position without distress or pain for religious believers. Ignoring that pain, or deliberately increasing it, is not wise. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by pushing things they do not like down the throats of our fellow religious citizens.
What would be gained for freedom of speech from a gratuitously insulting cartoon showing the Pope carrying out an abortion? Or one mocking the Holocaust? Given our history, both would be cartoons too far. I don’t believe the prophet should be free from the cartoonist’s pencil, but if it is truly mightier than the sword, why wound gratuitously? If we want a genuine debate with Muslims, we can exercise our free speech and criticise without gross insult.
Islam can change. No Muslim I have met wants to change the wording of the Koran, given it is God’s work. However, Islam is not as static as some believe. Change is possible, and debate does take place within the various schools of Islam, particularly in relation to the Hadith, the sayings and practices of the prophet, written some three hundred years after his death and, being from men, open to question as to what is genuine and what is bogus. Another area where I see debate within Islam is blasphemy, which has no Koranic origin but is the invention of clerics determined to exercise power.
Non-Muslims must participate in this debate as this doctrine is one of the drivers of radicalisation that creates problems for all of society. Rather than assaulting Islam, we should ponder the words of Bashir Maan in his book The Thistle and the Crescent, where he says “there can be no better antidote than information and knowledge” to the irrational view of “all Muslims as potential terrorists”.
With this in mind, surely the most pertinent question to put to the global Muslim community would be, isn’t the real blasphemy the assertion by any human being to claim to speak and act on behalf of the prophet and God, and to further claim to know whether the prophet or God is wounded by the views of a single human? If so, the Paris killers did not act to uphold the sanctity of their God; they murdered to justify the arrogance of men.
Jim Sillars was assistant secretary-general of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce from 1993 to 2003
Should all of the world’s Christians apologise for the murderous behaviour of their machete-wielding co-religionists who have killed scores of Muslims in the Central African Republic or should atheists, of which I am one, apologise for Stalin and Mao’s killing of millions? Of course not. So why do some suggest all Muslims should apologise for the murderous fanatics in Paris?
Post-Paris, we need to assess the role of religion, and analyse the effects of decisions, that have contributed to the crisis now engulfing parts of the Arab world. Aggression may be a crime in international law but those responsible for the invasion of Iraq, and the ensuing mayhem and carnage, weren’t found culpable and there’s no chance we’ll see Bush or Blair sitting in the International Criminal Court dock any time soon.
To build a harmonious society balancing religious and secular diversity, we have to be more honest and delve deeper into what makes each part of our community tick. Unlike the Scottish Secular Society, which condemned “the relentless march of Islam”, claimed “Islam cannot change; it does not want to”, and proclaimed: “We won’t stay mute.” I don’t want them to stay mute — I have never done so in my discussions with Muslim friends and colleagues — but I’d like them to study Islam in greater depth than is obvious from their statement, and to show understanding of a religion going through a renewal of belief, as has been the case for at least half a century now. Consistent western intervention in the Arab world is not the only reason “why”, but it has played its part.
I’ve lived and worked in the Arab world where discussion about how Muslims accommodate themselves to western society and debates about aspects of Islam are normal. I’ve heard Muslims argue about whether haram meant no alcohol or simply warned against it, and been told by a Muslim friend that when I died I’d go to hell. His beliefs didn’t offend me.
After Charlie Hebdo, Islam will be subject to open criticism in a way not experienced by Muslims before. It’s easy to identify differences between its teachings, the norms of secular society and the western Christian tradition — especially on the issue of the competing legitimacy between man-made laws and God’s laws. Non-Muslims must not flinch or retreat from debating these matters.
Our democracy and social values have not come about by accident, but from political and social struggles, and our ideas born in struggle must remain embedded. If there is a conflict between any religious belief and our laws, our laws must triumph. Yet this isn’t a secular position without distress or pain for religious believers. Ignoring that pain, or deliberately increasing it, is not wise. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by pushing things they do not like down the throats of our fellow religious citizens.
What would be gained for freedom of speech from a gratuitously insulting cartoon showing the Pope carrying out an abortion? Or one mocking the Holocaust? Given our history, both would be cartoons too far. I don’t believe the prophet should be free from the cartoonist’s pencil, but if it is truly mightier than the sword, why wound gratuitously? If we want a genuine debate with Muslims, we can exercise our free speech and criticise without gross insult.
Islam can change. No Muslim I have met wants to change the wording of the Koran, given it is God’s work. However, Islam is not as static as some believe. Change is possible, and debate does take place within the various schools of Islam, particularly in relation to the Hadith, the sayings and practices of the prophet, written some three hundred years after his death and, being from men, open to question as to what is genuine and what is bogus. Another area where I see debate within Islam is blasphemy, which has no Koranic origin but is the invention of clerics determined to exercise power.
Non-Muslims must participate in this debate as this doctrine is one of the drivers of radicalisation that creates problems for all of society. Rather than assaulting Islam, we should ponder the words of Bashir Maan in his book The Thistle and the Crescent, where he says “there can be no better antidote than information and knowledge” to the irrational view of “all Muslims as potential terrorists”.
With this in mind, surely the most pertinent question to put to the global Muslim community would be, isn’t the real blasphemy the assertion by any human being to claim to speak and act on behalf of the prophet and God, and to further claim to know whether the prophet or God is wounded by the views of a single human? If so, the Paris killers did not act to uphold the sanctity of their God; they murdered to justify the arrogance of men.
Jim Sillars was assistant secretary-general of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce from 1993 to 2003
