Faith
beyond Political Correctness:
Islam’s
Commitment to Humanity
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The
ultimate vision of Islam is transcendent: it is a moral doctrine,
not a secular ideology. Islam takes the measure of the human
condition from the perspective of the eternal and fosters a faith
whose truth stretches beyond the realm of existence and time. Only
through a commitment to the ultimate transcendence does the human
world, the world of history and politics, acquire whatever meaning
that it seeks. For the human world can have no claim to being sui
generic (being an example of its type), whether existentially or
morally. Man’s existence is a gift, and his/her morality a
commitment. Morality is an obligation, a contractual agreement that
has been freely negotiated by Man himself and not a burden
arbitrarily imposed upon him. Existence and morality are therefore
indissoluble in the Islamic perspective. Just as we cannot will
ourselves into existence, we cannot annul the moral contract either.
We may, of course, if we are foolish or haughty, disregard the
stipulations of our agreement, but dissolve it, we cannot. The is of
the Islamic condition, accordingly, is never bereft of the ought of
the transcendence. The world of politics and history, whatever their
legitimacy and import, can never be the be-all and end-all of the
Islamic commitment.
The rationale behind Islam’s trans-political stake in the politics of humanity, is being eclipsed by the spread of a modern form of nihilism, both indigenous and foreign |
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Unfortunately,
this sterling truth of our faith, the rationale behind Islam’s
trans-political stake in the politics of humanity, is being eclipsed
by the spread of a modern form of nihilism, both indigenous and
foreign, that accepts no calling higher than the self-realization of
the political will. According to its secular gospel, there are no
transcendent values: whatever cannot be measured by the yardstick of
politics has no validity, whatever cannot be poured into the
sacramental chalice of politics has no healing power. The ultimate
gift of this secular consciousness is the loss of the transcendental
vision. Either it afflicts us as a home-grown messianic politics
that is totally bereft of political reason or it terrorizes us as
the scourge of a ruthless Empire that only lives by the logic of
force. Gone not only is the erstwhile morality of faith that never
submitted to the amoral claims of state-sovereignty, but also the
hope of the enlightened for a unified humanity and eternal peace.
Because of the clash of the two secular fundamentalisms, an
indigenous one that abjures the promise of the here-after for the
rewards of the here-now and a foreign one that sees its own project
as the End, the measure of our humanity is again the grisly logic of
Realpolitik and its unedifying elevation of the law of the jungle.
Ours is the Hobesian nightmare of might triumphing over right.
Given
the situation, when any commitment to staying within the ideational
ambit of Islam, simply cherishing it as personal faith, has become a
matter of considerable personal liability, it is imperative that
Muslim introspection and self-criticism refocuses on the primordial
covenant between Man and God, the raison d'être of the humanity’s
mission in history and the fount of Islamic humanism. Though this
reclaiming of our spiritual moorings may not convince our extremists
to renounce their parochial vision, nor may it cure the
powers-that-be of their hubris, but it may at least save us from the
misery of impotent rage, self-pity and breast-beating; it may even
persuade some of us to desist from the acts of senseless violence
and self-immolation. We may also realize that it is not our faith
that bears the responsibility for the spiritual callousness and
moral depravity of our times. For, cracking under the onslaught of
ungodly forces and confounded by the demons of nihilism, we
ourselves seem to be renouncing our primordial commitment to
humanity for a defeatist and suicidal politics of immediate return.
To
speak of Man in the Islamic vein is not only to confront the
sanctimony of the secular will-to-power; it is also to realize the
poverty of modernity’s image of man. For as soon as we envision
man in transcendental terms, we become conscious of the enormous
ideational gulf that separates traditional discourses from the
modern ones. For man, from the vantage point of any philosophical or
theological discourse, is a given, a precept rather than a concept;
it is through man that the world - cosmos, physis, nature - acquires
its meaning and form. The very raison d'être of modern science, and
the incontestable premise of its epistemology, on the other hand, is
the rejection of all anthropocentric visions and principles.
Needless to say that the Islamic perspective on politics and
culture, emanate as it does from the Islamic image of Man, is
irredeemably anthropocentric1
(based on human values and experience).
Islam’s
anthropological vision devolves from its belief about ‘the
ultimate scheme of things’, about the totality of being of which
God, Allah in the language of the Qur’anic revelation, is the
creator. The ‘ultimate’ in the Islamic worldview, thus, is
trans-cosmological; it stretches beyond the world of men and stars
(Al-Qur’an: 2:255). It also follows that the pre-eminence of the
political and the claim of its sovereignty, which is taken for
granted by every modern discourse, is found problematic when
examined from the Islam’s trans-historical vantage-point.
The true image of
homo islamicus has become obscured as much by the heartless positivism of modernity--as by the mindless literalism of the Islamic tradition itself |
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Any
discussion of Islamic humanism presupposes that we reach back to the
original message of the revelation, for the true image of homo
islamicus has become obscured as much by the heartless positivism of
modernity--as by the mindless literalism of the Islamic tradition
itself. We must start by reiterating the centrality of transcendence
in the Islamic scheme of things. Islam without a commitment to the
Ultimate beyond, affirmed in the testimony of faith as the Unique
God (Allah), would not be Islam at all. Thus, for all the sanctity
and existential necessity of the historical Muslim community, Islam
is not coterminous with it. Nor is the historical community, indeed
the world of history itself, the ultimate locus of the Muslim’s
loyalty. There’s no equivalent to the secular maxim, ‘My country
right or wrong’, in Islamic ethics. The Muslim’s loyalty to any
historical order, perforce political, is always conditional: it is
always deferential to the obligation of ‘enjoining the right and
forbidding the wrong’ (3:103).
The Muslim community may therefore never renounce the goal of human unity; it may never become an end in itself and fall prey to the logic of self-deification that is the essence of secular ideologies |
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The
very notion of faith, Islam (Surrender to God) presupposes a
trans-historical and transcendent disposition of man (fitra)
(30:30). Humanity and not nation or state is thus essential to the
Islamic vision. Whatever politics that emanates from the historical
existence of the Muslim community may therefore never renounce the
goal of human unity; it may never become an end in itself and fall
prey to the logic of self-deification that is the essence of secular
ideologies. Conscience (Din) and not Empire (Dawla) constitutes the
Muslim’s primary pathway to humanity. It is in the delineation of
this ideal that the Qur’an categorically affirms the ‘unity in
diversity’ of the human creature, and upholds the supremacy of the
moral over all other emblems of distinction or pride:
O
mankind, We have created you
male
and female, and appointed you
races
and tribes, that you may know
one
another. Surely, the noblest
among
you in the sight of God is
the
most godfearing of you..’ (49:13)
As
befits the transcendental worldview of the Qur’an, the addressee
of its discourse is a universal, archetypical and trans-historical
human being. Even the covenant that God has with man is primordial
and is contracted prior to the advent of the historical time. Man
enters his/her historical existence only after submitting to the
sovereignty of God:
And
when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam,
from
their loins, their seed, and made them testify
touching
themselves, ‘Am I not your Lord?’
They
said: ‘yes, we testify…’ (7:172).
Adam
has on his own accord accepted the challenge of creating a just moral
order on earth, an enterprise described by the Qur’an as ‘Trust’ |
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The
Qur’anic image of man, it must be underlined, is transcendental
without being anti-historical. Like every other being and non-being,
man is a creation of God. Yet, his status is special on two
accounts: ontologically, because he has been infused with God’s
spirit (15:29; 38:72: 32:9), and morally, because he is God’s
Deputy and the custodian of his creation on earth (2:30ff; 7:11ff;
20:116ff). It is through the story of the birth of Adam that
Qur’an alludes to, what may be regarded from our human point of
view, as the most significant act of creation. Adam, from the
Qur’anic account, may be envisaged in both transcendental and
immanentist terms; both as the primordial, eternal man and as the
individual, historical human being. The ‘transcendence’ of Adam,
which is reflected in his intelligence (‘aql) and which endows him
with rational faculty and moral judgment, must therefore be seen in
conjunction with his ‘immanence’, his mission in history. For
Adam has on his own accord accepted the challenge of creating a just
moral order on earth, an enterprise described by the Qur’an as
‘Trust’ (Amana). (33:72)
Man
acts thus as the intermediary between nature and morality, between a
blissful, albeit non-reflexive and amoral, existence and a voluntary
assent to the demands of a higher calling. For the Muslim mind,
further, the immensity of space and matter is a symbol of the
Transcendent reality: all this plenitude of being and immanence
points beyond itself. Significantly, then, it is the soul
(Intellect) of man which, as a repository of Divine signs, mediates
between the natural world and the transcendent truth beyond, and
assures man of his ultimate felicity:
We
shall show them our signs in the horizons and in their souls, till
it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. (41:53)
One
must not confound this transcendental perspective with the
biological one of modern science and construe Adam as an emblem of
Homo sapiens (in the manner of Lucy!), or reduce man’s being to
atoms and genes. Of course, it is licit to speak of man in concrete
biological terms, as the Qur’an itself employs biological images
and metaphors (23:12-14; cf. also 32:8), but it is only within the
‘grand paradigm’ of transcendence that the quintessentially
spiritual and moral nature of Adam’s mission can be contemplated,
and perhaps apprehended.
The unity and identity of divine guidance, available to all prophets and preached by all of them, renders all historical, ethnic and geographical distinctions superfluous. |
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Adam,
the first man, who stands for all humanity has also been recognized
in Islam as the first prophet, a fact which is construed that
mankind throughout its earthly sojourn has never been without divine
guidance. Significantly, when the Qur’an speaks of historical men
and women, especially former prophets, it does so without the least
regard to chronology and does not make any distinction between
former prophets. The unity and identity of divine guidance,
available to all prophets and preached by all of them, renders all
historical, ethnic and geographical distinctions superfluous. Here
again we encounter a transcendent vision that is inimical to the
politically sectarian views of humanity as ‘sovereign states’.
It demolishes all the idols of ethnic pride, cultural hierarchy and
religious exclusiveness.
The Qur’anic view of Adam’s
khilafa is a supremely humanistic doctrine, without the hubris and arrogance of errant humanism that according to the critics of modernity is its bane and the source of its nihilism. |
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Most
significantly, the Qur’anic designation of Adam as the
Representative or Vicegerent (Khalifa) of God is pre-eminently moral
in scope and purpose. It presents a conceptual scheme that mediates
between transcendence and immanence, that bridges the gap between
the de facto and the de jure, the is and the ought, of the human
situation - without invoking the ontological language of
incarnation. Man is denied the attribute of ‘sovereignty’ but
given all the freedom, royal power and ‘pontifical’
responsibility that are the privileges of the Viceroy. In moral
terms, it is tantamount to denying man the right to be ‘a norm
unto himself’ and a source of his own values. The Qur’anic view
of Adam’s khilafa is a supremely humanistic doctrine, without the
hubris and arrogance of errant humanism that according to the
critics of modernity is its bane and the source of its nihilism.
Though
there is no ontological relationship between God and Adam in the
manner of the Christian doctrine of Incarnation, the
Qur’anic Adam does appear to have some functional resemblance to
Jesus in being a bridge between transcendence and immanence; except
that Adam’s role, as mentioned earlier, can only be conceived in
moral terms. (Cf.: 3:58). In Christian theology, Jesus is referred
to as the ‘Second Adam’, redeeming mankind of the sin that the
first Adam had committed. Apparently, due to the absence of the
Original Sin in Islam, the first Adam retains the functions which in
Christianity are the preserve of the second. Little wonder, the
individual human being’s relationship to Adam, not only the
biological fact of belonging to his progeny but also the moral
obligation devolving from Adam’s covenant with God, his assumption
of the trust of moralizing nature, has become the emblem of
Islam’s humanism.
Returning to our own times, we must not become too depressed by the treason of our intellectuals! |
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Returning
to our own times, we must not become too depressed by the treason of
our intellectuals! We do know that when, at the mock tribunal of
‘civilization and human rights’, the discourse of Islamic raison
d’état that is the pride of the guardians of the sacred law (fiqh)
is indicted for not possessing a moral vision transcending the
self-interests of a parochial political community (the Ummah of in
the eyes of our critics), all that we can do is to recoil in horror
at this unseemly spectacle of ‘victor’s justice’. Very little
in the way of an exposition of Islam’s transcendent – and
ineluctably moral - vision is ever proffered by official Islam. All
that these beneficiaries of our historical order, whose authority
and power both have been crushed to naught by the juggernaut of
modernity, can conjure is a lame apology of the status quo! Islam
for them is nothing but a frozen moment in time, a provincial
culture rather than a universal faith. Any conscientious believer
may, however, notice that the legalistic discourse of the tradition
does not do justice to the moral vision of the Qur’an. And neither
does the parochial politics of ‘revivalism’ which lacks both the
jurist’s method of instrumental reasoning and his concern for the
common good (Maslaha)!
For the Muslim, any vision of man, any semblance of a moral and philosophical doctrine of humanism, remains specious so long as it does not measure man against a reality that is greater than man himself. |
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But,
even more crucially, the Muslim has no reason to be impressed by
modernity’s claims about the humanity of its order. Indeed, for
the Muslim, any vision of man, any semblance of a moral and
philosophical doctrine of humanism, remains specious so long as it
does not measure man against a reality that is greater than man
himself. It is here, in acknowledging man’s subordination to a
moral law, infinitely more universal and legitimate than the ones
prevailing in our, perforce parochial, political constituencies,
that the incompatibility of Islamic khilafa and secular sovereignty
is fully revealed. Islamic conscience, a gift of theocentric faith,
is never hostage to the Muslim political order, or any political
order for that matter, in the manner of the secularist. For the
latter, the political order is the be-all and end-all of all
historical existence. In the final resort, the secular doctrine of
‘state sovereignty’ removes all distinction between morality
(universal, in the Kantian mode) and politics (parochial, in the
constrictive sense of political correctness!).
Modern civilization provides no evidence, not even in theory, that it aspires to overarch the pernicious divide of morality and politics, that it possesses a universal vision which identifies the self-interest of its own political community with the wellbeing of humanity |
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For
all its sanctimony, modern civilization provides no evidence, not
even in theory, that it aspires to overarch the pernicious divide of
morality and politics, that it possesses a universal vision which
identifies the self-interest of its own political community with the
wellbeing of humanity. All that the theory and practice of modern
politics offers is a compelling vindication of the creed of
Realpolitik (which upholds that humanity has no claim to any common
good or universal morality). A modern pundit, for instance, argues
that ‘the challenge of the postmodern world is to get used to the
idea of double standards’. Among themselves, the Europeans need
‘to operate on the basis of law and open cooperative security.’
But when dealing with the world outside Europe, ‘we need to revert
to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, preemptive
attack, deception, whatever is necessary.’ (Robert Cooper, The
Observer, April 7, 2002.) To this the American strategic thinker,
Robert Kagan, adds: ‘What Cooper has described is not Europe
future but America’s present…. The United States is already
operating according to Cooper’s double standards..’ (Robert
Kagan: Power and Paradise. Atlantic Books, London, 2003. Pp 74-5.)
Kagan’s own reading of the ‘long era of American hegemony’,
which we have just entered also claims that ‘just as we Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, … which led to an enduring American role
in East Asia and in Europe, so September 11, which future historians
will no doubt depict as the inevitable consequence of American
involvement in the Muslim world, will likely produce a lasting
American presence in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, and perhaps
a long-term occupation of one of the Arab world’s largest
countires.’ (ibid. p. 96).
Despite
the insufferable pain of this insight, our search for a meaningful,
moral existence must continue. It is the Muslim’s duty to
delineate the Qur’anic vision of the Khilafa of Adam in such a way
that mankind’s collective responsibility for the moral ordering of
the single human world becomes the paramount focus of the
socio-political discourse.
Dr. S Parvez Manzoor is a Sweden-based Muslim writer, thinker, and critic
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Prior
to any further discussion, however, a few words to the modern
reader are in order: Anyone who is cognizant of the remarkable
contribution of science to the wellbeing of the human community,
any claim about its non-anthropocentric character must appear
incomprehensible, if not downright offensive. Certainly, modern
natural science is the creation of man, and as such bears his/her
stamp. Nor can it be gainsaid that as its creator and master, man
uses science, wisely or foolishly, to promote his/her own
interests. As for the fruits of science, its umpteen technologies
and myriad gadgets, these are undoubtedly subservient to,
perceived or real, human ends. The cruel irony however is that
only by forsaking his propensity for viewing nature in human terms
was man able to penetrate the secrets of nature and acquire
prodigious power over her. In fact, only when nature ceased to be
described in an anthropomorphic language, could the progress of
science become a reality. According to the anthropocentric vision
of medieval physics, for instance, the entire world of nature
existed for the sake of man and was fully intelligible in his
mind. Thus the very categories in terms of which nature was
interpreted – substance, essence, matter, form quantity, quality
– presupposed that man was active in his acquisition of
knowledge and nature passive; while the knowledge of the physical
world, according to modern science, is accessible to us in
categories, space time, mass, energy and the like, that accord no
privileged status to the human observer. Not surprisingly, the
avoidance of all forms of teleological theories, explanations with
a human quotient, is strictly de rigueur in modern science.
E.
A. Burtt expresses this central metaphysical contrast between
medieval and modern science in terms of their conception of
man’s relation to his natural environment: ‘For the dominant
trend in medieval thought, man occupied a more significant an
determinative place in the universe than the realm of physical
nature, while for the main current of modern thought nature holds
a more independent, more determinative, and more permanent place
than man.’ (E. A. Burtt: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Science. Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, 1954, pp. 17-8. First
published in 1924; second revised edition, 1932.) The elimination
of the anthropocentric vision from the study of nature has also
revealed a universe that is without any value and produced a
science that is self-confessedly value-free. Such a science,
according to Leo Strauss, ‘is unable to establish its own
meaningfulness or to answer the question whether, and in what
sense, science is good’ (Strauss: p. 33). Strauss also contends
that ‘the assumption that we should act rationally and therefore
turn to science for reliable information – this assumption is
wholly outside the purview and interest of science proper.’ (ibid.) Our reverence for science then is a cultural trait that
does not ensue from its self-acclaimed value-neutrality or
non-anthropocentric cosmology.
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