Shi'a Pundit

Devoted to the viewpoint of Islam of Muhammad SAW and Amir ul-Mumineen, Ali ibn Abi Talib SA, in the Shi'a Fatimi Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra tradition.

holy alliance.

usually, the only thing that unites former rivals is the perception of a common enemy. Whether the perception is true or not is irrelevant. This story alone demonstrates that in Iraq, the US has won the battle, but is losing the war:

NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 16 -- A popular Sunni Muslim cleric has provided grass-roots and financial support to a leading anti-American Shiite cleric, a rare example of cooperation across Iraq's sectarian divide that has alarmed U.S. officials for its potential to bolster festering resistance to the American occupation, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The ties mark one of the first signs of coordination between anti-occupation elements of the Sunni minority, the traditional rulers of the country, and its Shiite majority, seen by U.S. officials as the key to stability in postwar Iraq.

The extent of the cooperation remains unclear between Ahmed Kubeisi, a Sunni cleric from a prominent clan in western Iraq, and Moqtada Sadr, the 30-year-old son of a revered Shiite ayatollah assassinated in 1999. But ideologically and practically, it represents a convergence of interests between the two figures, who were left out of the Iraqi Governing Council named last month and, in their own communities, have emerged as influential if still minority voices of opposition to the four-month-old occupation.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

proslytezation as heresy.

There's a great amount of fascinating debate that occurs at the weblog intersection of Zack Ajmal, Ikram Saeed, Al-Muhajabah, Jonathan Edelstein, and Bill Allison. I am sometimes tempted to withdraw from the political blog world and immerse myself in the literary, religious, and philosophical worlds within their comments sections. If there were some way to unify these writers on a single forum the net impact would be truly impressive.

In the course of one of these bloggers' conversations, Bill makes the following observation:

The juxtaposition of these two ideas—potential salvation through ignorance on the one hand and religion providing the ethical construct for society—suggested to me a kind of heresy. If one accepted both Al-Muhajabah's statement of the orthodox view of salvation and that it is more important to treat people well rather than to pray, then it might follow that the religious duty of the heretic is to maintain a complete silence, lest he inadvertently condemn those who do not share his faith and whom he wishes to treat well to damnation by exposing them to the basics of Islam. And surely, the heretic would find fault with Al-Muhajabah, who goes to great lengths on her main site to introduce non-Muslims to "a good understanding of the basics" of Islam.

Note that Bill is not picking on AM here, but speculating about the extrapolation of the broader beliefs of many Muslims about who is (and who is not) eligible for paradise in the afterlife. AM's own writing on this topic is part of an ongoing attempt to "respond to those Muslims who believe that no non-Muslim can ever enter Paradise, no matter what, and to present information to those non-Muslims who also think that is the position of Islam." I often tackle the more conservative beliefs of Muslims (and the perception of those beliefs by non-muslims) myself, and AM is a great ally in this (though we do sometimes disagree on tactics, more on that later).

Bill makes an interesting point. Speaking from my own Ismaili Fatimi perspective, there isn't any "threshold" for admission to paradise. Heaven is not a Michigan grad school. On the part of the believer, there is either acceptance or lack of acceptance (or outright enmity) of the message of Allah. Entry is a matter of Allah's judgement, which is postulated to be both infinite and perfect. There is always room for Allah's mercy or intercession.

It's almost heresy to definitively assert that ANY particular person, muslim or not, is or isn't bound for paradise. The sole and final judgement is Allah's. And the only thing the religion tells you, really, is HOW to get there. That doesnt necessarily preclude another path, but
there are an infinite number of very, very wrong paths. There is only ONE "right" path, however.

As a result, from my perspective, proslytezation is a value-neutral activity, and the heresy angle doesn't really come into play. My community does not engage in prosetyzation but we have a number of converts each year, usually from the Hindu faith in India, but also some Sunni conversions (mostly in Pakistan) and occassionally even a European.

in the comments, Bill expands upon his point:

Aziz, I think, raises an interesting point as well. Is God bound to follow the law he promulgates? Suppose it is written that man must wear at all time green hats or be damned; suppose a man who otherwise follows all God's laws, and is exemplary in spirit, wears a blue hat. Suppose he does so because he genuinely believes the divinity intended men to wear blue hats, or because he simply prefers blue to green. Would God be bound to cast that man into hell?

I think asking whether God is bound by God's law is equivalent to asking "Can God create a rock He cannot lift?" - essentially, a logic trap. The question itself really is meaningless, like asking "What color are the eyes of the King of the United States?"

Likewise, the issue of what gets someone into Heaven is not reducible or analogous to the color of your hat. It's a far more complex judgement - with the absolute perfection of Allah's judgement as the foundation.

The bottom line is, that God has shown all mankind the religion of Islam. And whether you follow or not, and the degree of that following or not following, is ultimately your personal choice. Whether you attain Paradise will in the end be unknowable until you actually get to that stage - and you can rest assured that the judgement is, by definition, Just. :)

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

the good of the ummah?.

my earlier "muslim for Howard Dean" piece was published on alt.muslim as a standalone essay. It also sparked a response piece from a muslim who supports Kucinich:

America is a democracy. Bush can be voted out and another president elected in his place. That other president may be someone who will bring benefit to Muslims. Or he may just be somebody who will do less harm to Muslims. In either case, by voting for this other president we will have done something to help the umma, even if it is a small thing. That is exactly what Shakyh Munajjid is talking about. Bringing benefit to the umma and reducing harm.

This is profoundly wrong. When I cast my vote I am doing it as an American, not a muslim. From my perspective, trying to effect change "for the good of the ummah" by political action makes no sense, unless you are willing to admit that what's best for the ummah is not necessarily best for Islam.

Islam is eternal. The impact of the 2004 election upon Islam, the religion, the revealed Truth of Allah, will be absolutely zero. Ariel Sharon could be elected President with Daniel Pipes as his Veep and it would make no difference to Islam.

The ummah, on the other hand, is a loose political identity of muslims worldwide. This presumably includes the Sunni fanatics who tried to kill me in Yemen because of my Shi'a beliefs. It also presumably includes Udai and Qusay Hussein, who were not averse to reciting Qur'an verses in between bouts of debauchery. The ummah includes entire countries, such as Syria and Pakistan, whose pursuit of regional self-interest sometimes does much greater collective harm to muslims as a whole than Bush could do in twenty thousand lifetimes.

As such I reject the idea that we need to be on the lookout for the "ummah" when casting our vote. It's the height of arrogance to even presume what threads of fate will, in the end, tie together and benefit muslims as a whole. Only Allah can judge these things - and ascribing cosmic significance on behalf of the entire believer-politic to your vote is to take what is no more than your opinion and try to wrap it in the Qur'an for legitimacy.

Using religion - or even religious unity - as a validator of your political beliefs is a fundamental abuse of religion. And it offends me profoundly.

So let's dispense with the grandstanding and get down to the basic principle: your vote for President of the United States is solely a function of your political beliefs. Al-Muhajabah has done an excellent job in making a principled case for Kucinich, not just on his position re: the Middle East and Iraq, but for his generally Progressive position at the far left of the American political spectrum. I greatly admire AM for her principles and her dedication to them - she is admittedly far more progressive than I am and I disagree with her on the issues to some extent, but she is honest about her beliefs and does not try to wrap them in the Qur'an for legitimacy.

(I'll tackle the substance of why I won't vote Kucinich in a separate post..)

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

universal problem, unique solution.

This is one of those irony-laden situations that frankly drain my optimism.

In Yemen, there are two kinds of internet cafes - ones that let you sit with your back to the wall, and ones that don't. The former are commonly understood to be safe havens for (obviously, male) patrons more interested in porn than in fatwas. Some of the more accomodating cafes even have partitions between terminals for absolute privacy onscreen.

(Point 1 - porn is as popular in oppresively conservative religious countries as it is in secular, sex-drenched America.)

Naturally some "Islamic" "authorities" (the terms deserve separate sneer quotes in this context) take issue with this. Their response? outlaw partitions in the internet cafes.

(Point 2 - as usual, religious authorities find ways to legislate morality, seemingly oblivious to the fact that doing so renders honest piety utterly indistinguishable from simple fear, and therefore equally worthless.)

The response of the internet cafes? Invoke Islamic law and (successfully) argue that removing the partitions would violate women's modesty:

The cafe owners, meanwhile, have formed an organisation to defend their business and have come up with a cunning argument against the removal of partitions: it discriminates against women. Partitions allow women internet users to be segregated from men in accordance with Islamic custom, they say, and removing them in effect deprives women of their right to use the internet.

The segregation argument is the one that they are relying on. While it is tempting to admire the cunning of the internet cafe owners, and applaud the fact that the internet users have now avoided a needless imposition on their liberty (said imposition which, of course, completely contradicted the Islamic principle of choice and reason as the foundation of belief), it is equally true that this "liberty" was won by legitimizing the oppression of women (ie, the mandate of partitions for womens' modesty), in order to enable the objectification of women (granted, a more universal problem).

I can't complain - with partitions, maybe some enterprising young firebrand might stumble across the texts of Locke, Jefferson, and Syedna Qazi Noman. Heck, they might even stumble across Shi'a Pundit (my ego blooms with a thousand facets).

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the economics of polygamy.

Al Muhajabah has an interesting link to a study on the economics of polygamy. More interestingly, she has been examining polygamy on her Niqabi Paralegal blog, and makes this interesting observation:

As it turns out, various American courts have been dealing with the question of whether to recognize polygamous marriages and for what purposes since the late 1880s. More than two-thirds of these cases deal with Native American marriages. Other cultures include Hindu, Sikh, Chinese, and Nigerian animist. None of the cases actually deal with Muslims. Odd, isn't it, for a practice so closely associated in the Western mind with Islam.

And she also includes this link to her discussion of Christian polygamy. She really does her homework!

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

Dean decries civil rights abuses for Arabs and Muslims.

in the wake of this kind of atmosphere, it is encouraging to see at least one candidate have the courage to address the scapegoating of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular: Howard Dean comes out with a moving statement:

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean issued the following statement on the forthcoming Inspector General’s report documenting abuse of Arabs and Muslims detained under the Patriot Act:

“For the second time in recent weeks, the Justice Department Inspector General will be reporting serious abuses of the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims in the war on terror. These abuses are wrong and must stop immediately.

“I am appalled by allegations – which the Inspector General has deemed credible – that Department of Justice employees have, among other things, beaten Muslim and Arab detainees.

“This should not happen in America.

“The Inspector General’s report confirms my fear that we have unnecessarily compromised constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. The ongoing abuses alienate the community whose cooperation we need most and diminish our moral credibility in the eyes of the world. The rule of law and due process must continue to be the hallmarks of our judicial system.

“I urge Congress to reconsider aspects of the Patriot Act and other anti-terror tactics that lead to such abuses.

“The government must protect Americans against terrorism while protecting basic civil liberties every step of the way.”

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

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About Shi'a Pundit

Shi'a Pundit was launched in 2002 during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The blog focuses on issues pertaining to Shi'a Islam in the west and in the Islamic world. The author is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. Bohras adhere to the Shi'a Fatimi tradition of Islam, headed by the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).

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