RSS feed for Shi'a Pundit

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.

August 30, 2004

Tariq Ramadan: Us and Them .

My last post on Tariq Ramadan's denial was one of only a handful in the blogsphere, but I think it's an important barometer of how off-the-rails our policies are at present. I often rail against the "vs." in the phrase "Us vs. Them" when it comes to domestic politics. But the broader (and quintessentially pragmatic) principle, of seeking alliances based on commonalities rather than strife based on (often artifically exaggerated) differences, applies to much more than election-year unity. Here's an interview with Tariq Ramadan where he goes into some detail on how "Us vs. Them" has harmed muslim integration in the West, by creating a false identity wich ultimately does more harm than good (hat tip: CMatt) :

You wrote in "To Be a European Muslim" that Muslims need to get past the us vs. them worldview, the old concept of Dar al-Islam, the Islamic world, opposed to the non-Muslim world (the Dar al-Harb, the House of War), and propose the new concept of a House of Testimony, a Space of Witness, available to Muslims anywhere.

That is exactly what I was saying about the way we are reading the text. Some Muslims are saying, "We are more Muslim when we are against the West or the Western values" -- as if our parameter to assess our behavior is our distance from or opposition to the West. They are promoting this kind of binary vision of the world that comes from a very long time back in the Muslim psyche. We have to get rid of this kind of understanding and evaluate if an act or a situation is Islamic or not, on the scale of the Islamic ethics and values per se, not against any other civilization

Our values are not based on "otherness." Our values are universal. We have to come to the understanding that it's not "us against them," it's us on the scale of our own values. This defines the place I live in. That is to say, my role in this world is to understand that I am a witness to the Islamic message before mankind. We need an intellectual revolution within the Muslim world. We are Muslims according to our spirituality and these universal values, and not against the West, not against the Jews, not against the Christians, not against secular people. The way I'm trying to re-read our texts is based on the awareness that this message is universal: that is why, for instance, the definition of our Muslim identity could by no means be a closed one against the others. This definition will help, God willing, in the way we deal with others.

The concept of Dar al-Islam is a hindrance today within the Muslim world. Even when we speak of Dar al-'ahd the House of Treaty, which stipulates that Muslims living as a minority among unbelievers should live peacefully but without truly joining these societies , it means peaceful coexistence but it also promotes this kind of binary vision, "us and them." It does not allow us to feel that we are part of the Western societies, that we are sharing with others our values and belonging.


This is perfectly in tune with what I've argued earlier - that when muslims argue that something is "good for the Ummah" they are abusing religion in the name of politics. The correct approach is not to validate that mindset (as Laura does in a piece that explicitly "justifies" voting as halal), but rather to denounce it outrght. Tariq Ramadan has the courage to do so, but that courage, and it's essential place in how we as Americans formulate our own response to the Islamofascist meme, goes not only unrewarded but punished. That's tragedy.

UPDATE: Paul Donnelly, writing in the conservative National Review, also lauds Ramadan for his courage. The article dates from 2002, however. Funny that the conservative establishment was in some ways clearer-eyed about Islam just after 9-11 than it is today.

Also, see Scott Martens's blog, A Fistful of Euros, for a detailed post and vigorous discussion in comments.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

August 25, 2004

Tariq Ramadan denied visa.

Tariq Ramadan is a controversial figure - that much we can agree on. Invited as a lecturer at the University of Notre Dame, his visa was suddenly revoked by the request of the US Dept of Homeland Security. Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a lineage which most zealous Muslim-phobes equate to support of terror. However, Ramadan's life work is to espouse a basis of Muslim identity firmly rooted in Western ideals, and has written a book called "To Be a European Muslim" detailing that philosophy.

It is likely that the enmity towards Ramadan, despite his explicitly moderate message of tolerance and inclusion of muslims within the political and cultural mainstream, stems from his unwavering critiques of Israel's human rights abuses towards the Palestinians:

"What I'm saying as a Muslim is that when I criticize a policy, for example the Saudi policy or the Egyptian policy, I am not Islamophobic," he said.

"And when I am criticizing the policy of the state of Israel, of [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, I'm not an anti-Semite. It's just a political criticism."


That's not unfamiliar territory to me. His (Israeli-hyper-partisan) detractors such as Robert Spencer insist that Ramadan is a closet anti-Semite, though Ramadan has explicitly denounced anti-Semitism as an alien import to the Muslim mindset, urging Muslims to take heed of the moral tragedy of the Holocaust.

It's a tragic irony that the muslims most critical in bringing about cultural change in the Middle East and elsewhere, the potential saving bulwark against the rising tide of extremism, are lumped in with those they denounce. The reason is their refusal to denounce being muslim itself. Apparently, the only "acceptable" muslim is one who rejects the Qur'an as a divine text, Muhammad SAW as a prophet of God, and adopts a secular-fundamentalist approach to their "faith". Some are comfortable with this, others are not - count me among the latter. Tariq Ramadan is a hero to me and others like me who will always be a muslim and yet will not cede our right to be counted among the Men of the West.

UPDATE: via Brian Ulrich, I just discovered the blog Chapati Mystery, which also addresses the Tariq Ramadan issue in a nice post with useful links to more info on him via Muslim WakeUp! and Abu Aardvark.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

August 1, 2004

a note on matam.

Razib is reading Mullahs on the Mainframe, after much haranguing on my part. One of his observations centers on the issue of blood-letting during matam (the ritualized expression of grief we perform in remembrance of Imam Husain AS's martyrdom by the Ummaiyad tyrant):

The men above are violating the injunctions from on high in a community that does not normally tolerate this behavior, but they are admired and respected (according to the author). Is this an instance of irrational insanity?

I don't think so. Flagellation, self-mutiliation and mortification are recurrent motifs in human religious movements, whether that be Hindu ascetism, medieval Catholic Christianity or modern Shia Islam. One could assert that it is a recurrent psychopathology, but the description above, the respect that peculiar ascetes are accorded in Hindu culture or the power that European flagellators exercised suggests to me that we might have to redefine "irrational" or "pathological" if these behaviors fall under those umbrellas.

Like materialism, behavior like flagellation is nothing more than a status cue, those who survive great hardships with effortless aplomb are accorded respect.


Razib's larger point is true, but blood-letting during matam, contrary to Jonah's observation, is more viewed as a bizarre curiority than something that qualifies as a status cue. In our Bohra culture, status derives from khidmat, or service to the community.

It's VERY rare for anyone in our community to look favorably upon bloodletting matam. In fact, I have seen those who do ostracized, because it flouts the wishes of the Dai. I dont doubt that Jonah Blank observed some admirers of those who did the bloody matam, but I think that extrapolating a "secret admiration" from that single observation is ludicrous. Remember that like war coverage, the blood gets the most ink.

Often, BTW, non-Bohra Shi'a are drawn to Bohra celebrations, because they lack the organized institutional infrastructure to do it themselves. This is especially a problem in India and Pakistan (though less so Pakistan, because Shi'a in general are more cautious in expressing their Shi'ism there, due to the institutionalized Sunni hostility. Except for us Bohras)

Keep in mind that Jonah's observation was at a remote masjid, not the main one where the Dai was delivering the sermon. In Bombay, the community is enormous, and live video feed of teh sermons are carried over CCTV to numerous smaller centers even in remote districts of the city. This behavior only occurs at the fringes of Bohra culture, where it overlaps with the other non-Bohra muslim circles.

I was not at the bombay Ashara that Jonah Blank observed the admiration of blood matam, but I have been to Ashara in Pune, Karachi, Surat, and Houston. In Pune and Surat I observed other Shi'as doing blood matam well outside the main throng, and they were also surrounded by a fascinated small group, mostly of non-Bohras, but also some youth from our community who had never seen it before and were understandably fascinated.

The bottom line is that there is absolutely zero mainstream admiration for that action in my community, aside from the natural curiosity of youth about blood. Jonah's suggestion that there is some secretly suppressed, widespread contravention of the religious authority in this regard is simply wrong.

Jonah is not a liar, nor is he a fool. He is, however, an outsider, attempting to derive whatever insight he can to a (with all due respect to both sides) and alien culture and religion. He misfires several times in Mullahs on the Mainframe, the most notable example being his critique that the Bohra orthodoxy is fixated on the Fatimid period, an understandable misunderstanding but completely wrong nevertheless (I'll expound on that some other time after you've finished the book). But this does not detract from the overall excellent and sincere scholarship he devoted to the topic of my community.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

Archives

Nahj-ul Balagha

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).

traffic stats -

html hit counter