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IJTIHAD- IRSHAD MANJI & ISIS

Contemporary world is infested with issues of myriad kinds, but unfortunately all emanating from this creature called MAN, supposedly the creator’s ‘best creation’. Long ago we were told as youth, that ‘man has learnt to swim like a fish in the water, and to fly like a bird in the sky, but he couldn’t learn to live like a human being on this solid earth’. Sadly not only he has failed to live like a human, but he created a whole lot of problems for all living beings, whether for his fellow humans, or for animals or for vegetations around the human society. In his terms of trade with nature, first he blamed the nature, then tamed the nature and finally he maimed the nature. Thus the record of humans was certainly not something to be celebrated. Of course, this is not to say that entire humanity is negative. But it is an unassailable truth, that good has not proved itself better. It is only because good man stopped being better that the bad has become worse. Hence there is scope for plethora of questions where the civil society has failed to allow the fear to dominate the human society.

Ijtihad, although an Islamic tradition of dissenting, reasoning and reinterpreting, it is available to salvage the entire humanity in its pervasive application. Ijtihad is about struggling to understand our world by using our minds- which implies exercising the freedom to ask questions- sometime uncomfortable ones. Irshad Manji, tells us, why we all need Ijtihad, doesn’t matter the source, appreciate its sweep. She quotes an email from Jim, a Christian, an American reader of her books, “The message of Ijtihad, of questioning, speaks to more than just Muslims. Throw away the confines of political correctness and discuss, debate, challenge and learn. A brown Muslim women inspiring a white Christian man; Isn’t freedom great?” he asks.

Irshad Manji was born in 1968, to a Gujarati Indian migrant to Uganda and an Egyptian mother. Post IdiAmin trials and tribulations, the family migrated to Canada, when Irshad was only 4 years old. She attended a secular school as well as a madrassa. However madrassa expelled her for asking too many questions. According to her she learnt Islamic teachings through Arabic tutors in Canada.

At the very young age of 22, after graduation with honours, she became a Press Secretary and Speech writer in the Ontario Provincial Government in Canada. Two years later she became the youngest member of an editorial board of Canadian daily “The Ottawa Citizen”. Being a brilliant intelligent student, with freedom allowed by her parents she bloomed like a flower in a well tended garden. She had too many questions on all aspect of socio-political and religious dimensions of her evolving time.

It was in 2002, she became an ‘In house writer’ in University of Toronto, where she started to write her book ‘The trouble with Islam Today’. The book, on publication in 2004, catapulted her to instant fame and celebrity status in the English reading world of U.S and Europe. She was apparently troubled by how Islam is practiced today by the Arab influence on Islam that took away women’s individuality and introduced the concept of group honour. According to her, she is ‘attempting to reconcile her faith in Allah with her love of freedom and is not prepared to join an army of robots in the name of God.’ She likes to call herself as a Muslim pluralist. She invites Muslims and non- Muslims to transcend the fears that stop many from living with integrity; the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning their own communities. She quotes chapter 13, verse 11 of the Quran “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is inside themselves”. Demanding reforms in the Islamic practices she asks some bold and uncomfortable questions like “Why should I avoid examining the Quran and understanding it?” Now this is entirely ‘blasphemous’!

Writing a foreword to her book “ The trouble with Islam today”, Prof Khaleel Mohammed, a Ph.d in Islamic Law from McGill University and a Professor at San Diego State University, so also an Imam, he states “Let us face a simple fact. I should hate Irshad Manji. She threatens my male authority and things about Islam that I wish were not true. She has a big mouth and fact upon fact to corroborate her analysis. She does not fear death. She is a lesbian. My madrassa training tells me that Allah hates gays and lesbians. I should really hate this woman. But then I took into my heart and engage my heart and mind, I come to a discomfiting conclusion. Irshad is telling the truth. And my God commands me to uphold the truth- which means that I have to side with her”. Aren’t they brave words! If the book has been courageous in its radical contents, the foreword by Prof Mohammed, who is an Imam, has been equally courageous. World need to celebrate both these lady and gentleman. More so for Liberal Muslims, who feel unsafe to stand up to the world around them of violent bigots.

If the above 2 personalities are of international background, closure home in India, we have likes of Hamid Dalwai, who died at a young age of 45 years. He was a social reformer of his time, from Rathnagiri in coastal Maharashtra. Born in 1932, he passed away in 1977, when Irshad Manji was only 11 years of age. In the larger canvass of our evolving society, it is very pertinent to revisit the ideas of this long lost reformer activist. While it is true that Irshad Manji spoke of all Muslims and others as well, to be fearless in bringing about change, Hamid Dalwai restricted himself to Indian Muslims. How much Muslim intelligentsia agrees with Dalwai is not known. But like Irshad Manji, Hamid Dalwai too faced threats to his considered views.

Coming to the ISIS, we have just been told that Brussels, the capital city of Belgium and that of European Union has been bombed. In multiple explosions, some 50 or so have perished and hundreds injured. T.V. Channels informed, an organization called ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombing and therefore the killing and mayhem.

Who is this ISIS? Why are they killing people indiscriminately? What drives them to kill people with so much ferocity? What is their purpose? Whatever be your cause, is it right to kill people so violently? Questions are far too many. Answers too may be available. But answers can at times only be explanations, but not solutions. World needs solutions.

ISIS is the brain child of a man called Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi, with his name being Ibrahim Awad Al-Badri. A very erudite Islamic scholar with a Phd in Quranic studies from the Saddam University for Islamic Studies in Baghdad, Iraq. Being claimant to be a descendent of Prophet Muhammad, he had a vision for himself and his people. He joined hands with Abu-Ayyub Al-Masri, who had founded Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), after disbanding Al Qaeda in Iraq (ABI). Because of his scholarship, Abu Bakr-al Bagdadi was chosen to lead the ISI, on the death of Al-Masri in 2010. Opportunity provided by the unrest in Syria in 2011, became a stepping stone for Al Baghdadi to expand his ISI into Syria. Al Assad family, who ruled Syria, starting with father Hafez al-Assad and now son Bashar al-Assad is from Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia. In Syria the majority are Sunni Muslims. The majority didn’t want Al Assad family to rule them. Thus Syria became a fertile ground for ISI to expand, since ISI itself was Sunni driven. In Iraq it was the Baath party of Saddam, who was a Sunni minority ruler in Shia majority country. Hence, is ISIS a product of this theological hatred between Sunni & Shia? Or a product of regional rivalry? Or even the regional rivalry is based on Sunni-Shia divide? Or for ISIS, ‘the enemy’ is all those who does not embrace it, which defines ‘The world is divided into Dawlat al-Islam, the state of Islam, and Daulat-al-Kufr, the state of Unbelief?’

Available information in the public space tells, that in late 2006, AQI joined with eight other Islamist insurgent groups to form the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The name chosen for this new group indicated its ambition of creating a caliphate, governed by Islamic laws. A caliphate is the rule of a Caliph, meaning a successor to Prophet Mohammed. The emergence of Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi, as the undisputed leader of ISI, with its entry in Syria, al Baghdadi changed the nomenclature of the outfit as Islamic State of Iraq & Syria (ISIS), in April 2013. 

According to the available information in Wikipedia, in 2015, ISIS took over the Camp Speicher, an old American military base in Iraq. ISIS militants surrounded the camp and ‘thousands of captives were sorted, the Shia were weeded out, bound and trucked away to be systematically shot dead in prepared trenches. Around 1700 are believed to have been massacred in cold blood. Far from trying to cover up the atrocity, ISIS reveled in it, posting on the internet videos and pictures showing the Shia prisoners being taken away and shot by the black-clad militants.’

Prior to that sometime in Aug 2014, ISIS released a video of gruesomely beheading American journalist James Foley, followed by similar beheading of four British journalists and aid workers.

The growing power of ISIS managed to ‘take over large areas of northern Iraq controlled by Kurds, which had Sinjar, mainly populated by Yazidis, a Christian minority sect. ‘Hundreds of Yazidi men who failed to escape were simply killed. Women and children were separated and taken away as war booty, to be sold and bartered as chattels and used as sex slaves’.               

In a matter of few months, Wikipedia informs that ISIS had blasted its way from obscurity on to the centre of the world stage. Almost overnight it became a household word. The violent retributive killings became frequent. Every week there would be news about such killing in news papers all over the world. There appeared little resistance so far to the spread of hate mongering by ISIS. It is true, U.S, U.K, France have declared war against ISIS. Can they curb ISIS, is difficult to answer in the short run. 

However going back in time, from Brussels to the disintegration of Iraq post Saddam between the current majority Shia rulers and the Sunni minority, it is becoming increasingly clear that while regional politics is the prime mover, the hatred of the Christian west is emerging as a common ground. You have powerful Saudi Arabia and its friends in the Middle East combined with Turkey, the Sunni’s have an upper hand, as compared to Shia Iran & Iraq. Thus, it is the numerical advantage of Sunni denomination that is forcing the issue in Pan Islamic world. Prima facie, it is the Sunni faction who appear to have problem with Shias, Ahmediyas and others. Reverse does not appear to be the case.  

Differences among sections of human civilization is a fact of life. They can be addressed by talk, debate, and discussion only and not by violent killings. Of course, the reasons of continuous violence from different sections of humanity is surely there. Whether it is the hegemonestic tendencies of super power or those who think they are powerful, U.S, USSR/Russia or China or even Israel all have contributed to the mess. Most sections of our global society are changing towards non-violent ways, although slowly. However, the Salafists among Sunni denominations, are still arguably the most violent and they should be made to realize that the world can be saved only by way of Co-operative Co-existence rather than absolutism of any kind. It will be a win-win situation to all. Will that happen!? is a question staring at all of us.

J. Shriyan