Friday 23 January 2015

Is there a right not to feel insulted? Or freedom to offend? A critical Muslim's view

The Paris shootings of 7 January 2015, at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and in a kosher supermarket, have rekindled the debates on how contemporary multi-cultural societies can reconcile the freedom of speech and expression with respect for other people's beliefs and convictions.

The Malaysian-born British activist and academic Farouk Peru, who divides his time between the Muslim Institute in London, pursuing postgraduate studies at King's College London, and maintaining the Quranology Blog, responded with a provocatively titled and thought-provoking essay, published under the title "Why I support the freedom to offend me". Originally published on The Malaysian Insider website, it deserves to be posted her in full:

"I grew up in a culture of ultra-reverence. As Malay Muslims who grew up in Malaysia, we had more than just a healthy respect for our religious elders. In retrospect, I would even say that we idolised them. Even polite criticism towards these men (never women) of God was frowned upon.

They were self-proclaimed inheritors of the Prophet and so going against them was tantamount to betraying the Prophet himself. This is why the irreverence on the level displayed by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists would have been a massive culture shock to my adolescent self.

The Charlie Hebdo massacre was blamed on irreverence. I say “blamed” rather than “caused” because that’s just an excuse. What really caused the massacre were firing guns. These people could not handle the irreverence towards their faith shown by Charlie Hebdo.

In 2011, Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad and was firebombed as a result. Irreverence was something they peddled and did so with pride.

The irreverence people show to our respective religions act as a test of faith. To me, the people who meted out these violent reactions towards Charlie Hebdo failed their tests.

Of all the human endeavours in life, religion is the one towards which we should expect the most irreverence. Why? Because its very fundamental manoeuvre is to sell something intangible. It promises salvation if you believe and practise. Yet this salvation isn’t visible. So how can religionists expect submission and docility from those who disagree with them?

Judging from the past cartoons Charlie Hebdo published about Prophet Muhammad, they aimed to offend the Muslims. Of course they did. But who really determines if they succeed or otherwise? We do.

The Muslim themselves. We have a choice of whether to take offence or not. I choose not to. Those cartoons do not represent Prophet Muhammad to me so why on earth would I be offended?

Instead, Muslims should take these cartoons and any other form of criticism towards Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad as a challenge to their faith. Why should we have the privilege of being shielded from criticism? What gives us the special right to be exempt when we ourselves criticise other faiths and ideologies?

If we would be truly just, we would have to censor the Quran itself because it denigrates the status of Jesus – thought to be God and/or son of God by Christians – to a mere Prophet. Why is it all right for us to criticise a major religious figure yet we expect sanctity from the rest of the world towards our founder?

We should take any form of criticism, even mockery and satire to be a test of our faith. Ask ourselves, why would these critics and satirists publish their work? Is there any truth to what they say?
Oftentimes, their mockery has some loose relations with elements in our tradition. We should also ask, why did they interpret Islam in that way?

Has it something to do with us and the way we ourselves practise the faith? If we practised Islam in the right way, should any person have the moral right to insult us? These are all pertinent questions to ask.

Let's not pretend as if they are impossible to fathom.

This is why I support the freedom to offend me. It is a freedom, not a necessity. The people who seek that freedom may have legitimate grievances with my beliefs.

If so, I should investigate these grievances to see whether or not they have a point and if so, is it perhaps my interpretation which is at fault. If not, then they are not forcing me to swallow their fruits of expression. I have every right and prerogative to simply not buy their newspaper, open the webpage or listen to them.

We human beings – as the "earth as spaceship” analogy goes – have to live in a shared space. As such, we cannot afford to be hypersensitive but must rather instead by magnanimous and show good will towards people. It may be that the criticism masks deeper resentments with which we must engage with love, kindness and compassion."

This opinion article appeared first on the website of the Malaysian Insider – January 9, 2015.



grew up in a culture of ultra-reverence. As Malay Muslims who grew up in Malaysia, we had more than just a healthy respect for our religious elders. In retrospect, I would even say that we idolised them. Even polite criticism towards these men (never women) of God was frowned upon.
They were self-proclaimed inheritors of the Prophet and so going against them was tantamount to betraying the Prophet himself. This is why the irreverence on the level displayed by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists would have been a massive culture shock to my adolescent self.
The Charlie Hebdo massacre was blamed on irreverence. I say “blamed” rather than “caused” because that’s just an excuse. What really caused the massacre were people firing guns. These people could not handle the irreverence towards their faith shown by Charlie Hebdo.

In 2011, Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad and was firebombed as a result. Irreverence was something they peddled and did so with pride. The irreverence people show to our respective religions act as a test of faith. To me, the people who meted out these violent reactions towards Charlie Hebdo failed their tests.
Of all the human endeavours in life, religion is the one towards which we should expect the most irreverence. Why? Because its very fundamental manoeuvre is to sell something intangible. It promises salvation if you believe and practise. Yet this salvation isn’t visible. So how can religionists expect submission and docility from those who disagree with them?
Judging from the past cartoons Charlie Hebdo published about Prophet Muhammad, they aimed to offend the Muslims. Of course they did. But who really determines if they succeed or otherwise? We do.
The Muslims themselves. We have a choice of whether to take offence or not. I choose not to. Those cartoons do not represent Prophet Muhammad to me so why on earth would I be offended?
Instead, Muslims should take these cartoons and any other form of criticism towards Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad as a challenge to their faith. Why should we have the privilege of being shielded from criticism? What gives us the special right to be exempt when we ourselves criticise other faiths and ideologies?
If we would be truly just, we would have to censor the Quran itself because it denigrates the status of Jesus – thought to be God and/or son of God by Christians – to a mere Prophet. Why is it all right for us to criticise a major religious figure yet we expect sanctity from the rest of the world towards our founder?
We should take any form of criticism, even mockery and satire to be a test of our faith. Ask ourselves, why would these critics and satirists publish their work? Is there any truth to what they say?
Oftentimes, their mockery has some loose relations with elements in our tradition. We should also ask, why did they interpret Islam in that way?
Has it something to do with us and the way we ourselves practise the faith? If we practised Islam in the right way, should any person have the moral right to insult us? These are all pertinent questions to ask.
Let's not pretend as if they are impossible to fathom.
This is why I support the freedom to offend me. It is a freedom, not a necessity. The people who seek that freedom may have legitimate grievances with my beliefs.
If so, I should investigate these grievances to see whether or not they have a point and if so, is it perhaps my interpretation which is at fault. If not, then they are not forcing me to swallow their fruits of expression. I have every right and prerogative to simply not buy their newspaper, open the webpage or listen to them.
We human beings – as the "earth as spaceship” analogy goes – have to live in a shared space. As such, we cannot afford to be hypersensitive but must rather instead by magnanimous and show good will towards people. It may be that the criticism masks deeper resentments with which we must engage with love, kindness and compassion. – January 9, 2015.
- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/why-i-support-the-freedom-to-offend-me-farouk-a.-peru#sthash.Fr9TMmUk.dpuf
grew up in a culture of ultra-reverence. As Malay Muslims who grew up in Malaysia, we had more than just a healthy respect for our religious elders. In retrospect, I would even say that we idolised them. Even polite criticism towards these men (never women) of God was frowned upon.
They were self-proclaimed inheritors of the Prophet and so going against them was tantamount to betraying the Prophet himself. This is why the irreverence on the level displayed by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists would have been a massive culture shock to my adolescent self.
The Charlie Hebdo massacre was blamed on irreverence. I say “blamed” rather than “caused” because that’s just an excuse. What really caused the massacre were people firing guns. These people could not handle the irreverence towards their faith shown by Charlie Hebdo.

In 2011, Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad and was firebombed as a result. Irreverence was something they peddled and did so with pride. The irreverence people show to our respective religions act as a test of faith. To me, the people who meted out these violent reactions towards Charlie Hebdo failed their tests.
Of all the human endeavours in life, religion is the one towards which we should expect the most irreverence. Why? Because its very fundamental manoeuvre is to sell something intangible. It promises salvation if you believe and practise. Yet this salvation isn’t visible. So how can religionists expect submission and docility from those who disagree with them?
Judging from the past cartoons Charlie Hebdo published about Prophet Muhammad, they aimed to offend the Muslims. Of course they did. But who really determines if they succeed or otherwise? We do.
The Muslims themselves. We have a choice of whether to take offence or not. I choose not to. Those cartoons do not represent Prophet Muhammad to me so why on earth would I be offended?
Instead, Muslims should take these cartoons and any other form of criticism towards Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad as a challenge to their faith. Why should we have the privilege of being shielded from criticism? What gives us the special right to be exempt when we ourselves criticise other faiths and ideologies?
If we would be truly just, we would have to censor the Quran itself because it denigrates the status of Jesus – thought to be God and/or son of God by Christians – to a mere Prophet. Why is it all right for us to criticise a major religious figure yet we expect sanctity from the rest of the world towards our founder?
We should take any form of criticism, even mockery and satire to be a test of our faith. Ask ourselves, why would these critics and satirists publish their work? Is there any truth to what they say?
Oftentimes, their mockery has some loose relations with elements in our tradition. We should also ask, why did they interpret Islam in that way?
Has it something to do with us and the way we ourselves practise the faith? If we practised Islam in the right way, should any person have the moral right to insult us? These are all pertinent questions to ask.
Let's not pretend as if they are impossible to fathom.
This is why I support the freedom to offend me. It is a freedom, not a necessity. The people who seek that freedom may have legitimate grievances with my beliefs.
If so, I should investigate these grievances to see whether or not they have a point and if so, is it perhaps my interpretation which is at fault. If not, then they are not forcing me to swallow their fruits of expression. I have every right and prerogative to simply not buy their newspaper, open the webpage or listen to them.
We human beings – as the "earth as spaceship” analogy goes – have to live in a shared space. As such, we cannot afford to be hypersensitive but must rather instead by magnanimous and show good will towards people. It may be that the criticism masks deeper resentments with which we must engage with love, kindness and compassion. – January 9, 2015.
- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/why-i-support-the-freedom-to-offend-me-farouk-a.-peru#sthash.Fr9TMmUk.dpuf
grew up in a culture of ultra-reverence. As Malay Muslims who grew up in Malaysia, we had more than just a healthy respect for our religious elders. In retrospect, I would even say that we idolised them. Even polite criticism towards these men (never women) of God was frowned upon.
They were self-proclaimed inheritors of the Prophet and so going against them was tantamount to betraying the Prophet himself. This is why the irreverence on the level displayed by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists would have been a massive culture shock to my adolescent self.
The Charlie Hebdo massacre was blamed on irreverence. I say “blamed” rather than “caused” because that’s just an excuse. What really caused the massacre were people firing guns. These people could not handle the irreverence towards their faith shown by Charlie Hebdo.

In 2011, Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad and was firebombed as a result. Irreverence was something they peddled and did so with pride. The irreverence people show to our respective religions act as a test of faith. To me, the people who meted out these violent reactions towards Charlie Hebdo failed their tests.
Of all the human endeavours in life, religion is the one towards which we should expect the most irreverence. Why? Because its very fundamental manoeuvre is to sell something intangible. It promises salvation if you believe and practise. Yet this salvation isn’t visible. So how can religionists expect submission and docility from those who disagree with them?
Judging from the past cartoons Charlie Hebdo published about Prophet Muhammad, they aimed to offend the Muslims. Of course they did. But who really determines if they succeed or otherwise? We do.
The Muslims themselves. We have a choice of whether to take offence or not. I choose not to. Those cartoons do not represent Prophet Muhammad to me so why on earth would I be offended?
Instead, Muslims should take these cartoons and any other form of criticism towards Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad as a challenge to their faith. Why should we have the privilege of being shielded from criticism? What gives us the special right to be exempt when we ourselves criticise other faiths and ideologies?
If we would be truly just, we would have to censor the Quran itself because it denigrates the status of Jesus – thought to be God and/or son of God by Christians – to a mere Prophet. Why is it all right for us to criticise a major religious figure yet we expect sanctity from the rest of the world towards our founder?
We should take any form of criticism, even mockery and satire to be a test of our faith. Ask ourselves, why would these critics and satirists publish their work? Is there any truth to what they say?
Oftentimes, their mockery has some loose relations with elements in our tradition. We should also ask, why did they interpret Islam in that way?
Has it something to do with us and the way we ourselves practise the faith? If we practised Islam in the right way, should any person have the moral right to insult us? These are all pertinent questions to ask.
Let's not pretend as if they are impossible to fathom.
This is why I support the freedom to offend me. It is a freedom, not a necessity. The people who seek that freedom may have legitimate grievances with my beliefs.
If so, I should investigate these grievances to see whether or not they have a point and if so, is it perhaps my interpretation which is at fault. If not, then they are not forcing me to swallow their fruits of expression. I have every right and prerogative to simply not buy their newspaper, open the webpage or listen to them.
We human beings – as the "earth as spaceship” analogy goes – have to live in a shared space. As such, we cannot afford to be hypersensitive but must rather instead by magnanimous and show good will towards people. It may be that the criticism masks deeper resentments with which we must engage with love, kindness and compassion. – January 9, 2015.
- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/why-i-support-the-freedom-to-offend-me-farouk-a.-peru#sthash.Fr9TMmUk.dpuf

Monday 12 January 2015

Has Sunni Islam as a 'Community of the Middle' died?

Herunder are some excerpts from an article that appeared in The Islamic Monthly. It is from the hand of Mohammad FadelAn established scholar, currently associated with the University of Toronto, Fadel is also a prolific author and critical debater on things Islamic.

Mohammad Fadel

In the intriguingly entitled 'ISIS, Islamophobia, and the End of Sunnism', he criticizes both media-savvy Islam (or religion in general) bashers such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris, but also presents an introspection into the shortcomings of the Muslim intelligentsia
Saying that their description of Islamic doctrines is reductionist is not responsive to the legitimate concern that certainly some Muslims hold to the doctrines that Harris and Maher criticize, nor does it provide an answer to the question that many people genuinely wish to know, namely, what is the content of authoritative Islamic teaching regarding a familiar range of contentious issues that are held to be important by mainstream liberals?
In a lucid and boldly argued piece, Fadel not only takes 'new atheists' to task for the misconceived views of Islam, but puts the blame also on Muslim intellectuals. He criticizes the latter for failing to come up with convincing counter arguments as a result of their own uncritical rehashing of outdated texts and over-reliance on authority figures from the past.
The profound weakness, or even the non-existence, of a credible institutional expression of Islamic teachings in the modern world means there is no source from which an outsider (or even Muslims) can know what authoritative Islamic teaching is. In the absence of such an expression, one can hardly blame non-Muslims — who wish to “know” what Muslims believe — for turning to the same sources that Muslims themselves do, such as pre-modern treatises of Islamic law that continue to be taught in seminaries in the Muslim world and are also  used by Muslims in the West.
While appreciative of the argument that there is no such thing as 'Islam', and that it makes more sense to talk of 'Muslims', it is methodologically impossible to give exhaustive representative accounts that accurately reflect the full diversity of opinion among the believers:
Such an empirical investigation, at its extreme, would require surveying of millions of Muslim individuals all over the world before conclusions about Islam could be reached. Not only would such a study be practically impossible, we generally don’t demand such precision in empirical studies before we accept the results of social scientific studies
Pointing at the cheap shots taken by new atheists such as Sam Harris, Fadel observes:
It is a trivial exercise to pick up standard works of Islamic law and find ideas that are repugnant to the modern world. But, it is also a trivial exercise to pick up classics of Western philosophy and law and find the same thing. Even Thomas Jefferson the most egalitarian of America’s founders, expressed views on gender equality that would disqualify him today from entering public office, or might even get him dismissed from a public office were he to express them openly. 
It is not just a matter of 'tit-for-tat' in debating the likes of Harris and Maher, the  lack of critical engagement with the Islamic heritage on the part of Muslims themselves is preventing any real tangible change in the generally deplorable political condition of the Muslim world. For example, in relation to the contentious issue of the application of Islamic law, Fadel observes:
..if Sunni Muslims are too indifferent to their law that they fail to articulate a meaningful expression of its content in the modern world, then the best that Sunnis can plead in their own defense is that historical Islamic law is irrelevant to their beliefs and actions. But it is this very nihilism that produces the ethical and political vacuum that authoritarian political regimes, corrupt oligarchies and religious millenarians have filled and created the political circumstances justifying Islamophobia.
Why, after more than a century of theological and legal reform that has generally moved toward greater recognition of rights of women and non-Muslims, for example, has a brutally atavistic movement like ISIS found a home (even if one hopes it is only temporary) in the Nile-to-Oxus region, which was once called the heartland of the Islamic world by the great American historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson? In my opinion, this is not because a reified Islam is teaching Muslims to reject liberal values as such, but is a simple and predictable reflection of the fact that political orders prevailing in the Islamic heartland have no interest in promoting liberalizing political values. 
Cutting to the heart of the matter, according to Fadel's diagnosis, Sunni Islam has failed to live up to its claim as representing the umma-alwasat -- the 'community of the middle':
Sunnism was historically a centrist tradition that rejected the messianism of Shiʿism and the unforgiving puritanism of the Khawārij. Its centrism, however, was not born of a kind of ad hoc reasoning that called on Muslims simply to take middle positions between extremes. It was a centrism based on firm adherence to certain moral principles, including rejection of armed rebellion with a refusal to recognize as valid the illegal conduct of rulers; a readiness to overlook moral shortcomings of individuals constituting the community, whether rulers or ruled, combined with an insistence on holding each person accountable before the law for their conduct
The consequences are dire, because in his conclusion Mohammad Fadel minces no words:
In short, the political theology of Sunnism was centered on the sovereignty of law and respect for authority (not power as such). The historical tradition of Sunnism, however, assumed a certain kind of relationship between political leaders, religious leaders and the public that no longer exists and will not return. Until a new political theology is established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realities of a democratic age, we can continue to expect the persistence of groups like ISIS and the Islamophobic New Atheists. 
For the full article, click here