Wednesday 16 April 2008

Blog or Clog?

Scrutiny, ridicule and criticism are not strangers to Islam or to Muslims. Dinidu De Alwis, an apparent journalist contributing to the Sunday Times has decided that he should take his turn at this ancient practice and so wrote two blogs in his website and the first post of which can be found at http://dinidudealwis.com/?p=105.

Nonsensical musings of a self confessed ignoramus should not be the subject of an elaborate response. However the blog written by De Alwis deserves particular response for the fact that it is written by journalist and for the comments it has elicited.

De Alwis is a tragic comedy of epic proportions and classic case of confusion and contradiction.

His ostensible objective is to demonstrate that the extremism in Islam is ‘founded and fed’ from the Quran. But his problem with the rational Muslims is that they have not explained the contextual meaning of the Quran to the extremists. In other words the extremists have read the Quran out of context according to him. Then clearly one cannot argue that the Quran ‘founded and fed’ the extremism. If someone were foolish enough to read De Alwis’ posts and attack a Muslim, having read it out of context, then could it be said that the blog ‘founded and fed’ the attack? So in other words De Alwis scores an own goal and defeats through his argument his objectives. Hurrah hurrah.

In substantiating his argument about a contextual interpretation to the Quran, he cites five verses of the Quran. But before getting down to that let me point out that De Alwis asks himself the question, ‘[I]s the Quran aggressive?’ and gives the emphatic response, ‘Yes it is’. However at least he has the honesty to admit that the strength of the opinion is restricted to the ‘bits and pieces’ he read, vide his post script ‘[F]or the purpose of writing these posts, I’ve read only bits and pieces of the Quran’.

What De Alwis has done is like criticising Darwin’s theory of evolution after reading ‘bits and pieces’ of On the Origin of Species. Intelligence would inform and a sense of responsibility would caution that comments of the strength of De Alwis’ should only be made after a proper research and analysis. The postscript does not exculpate the inadequacy in terms of research. And this lack of responsibility is most shocking as the following paragraphs will show.

Since his comments are based on ‘bits and pieces’ they surely deserve to be shredded into ‘bits and pieces’.

After offering the opinion that the Quran is a book of aggression he qualifies that by saying that it should be seen “in the socio-political situation at the time. People, tribes and countries were at war, and a sense of unity was needed. This for Muslims came in the form of religious unity.” Thereafter citing verses of Sura 8:55 to 60 he states “[R]ead the thing, and try to understand contexually. It’s survival.”

So according to his ‘contextual’ interpretation the verses have something to do with ‘survival’....but forgive me for you confuse, for in your postscript you write, “and have not attempted to understand it in a non-literal manner.” So then what were you doing trying to give the contextual meaning up there a few paragraphs ago?

Not only was the introduction contradicted by the body, the body is contradicted by the postscript!

Secondly what was the ‘socio-political situation of the time’? What was the historic context in which those particular verses revealed? These are questions which the posts don’t answer.

In any case for that contextual interpretation of unity to succeed the author would have to demonstrate that either that the early Muslims were an amalgamation of tribes or clans which were previously at war or potentially at war but who were kept together because of Islam.

Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of Islamic history would know that early Islam spread not with clans and communities coming together en masse but on an individual basis. During the migration to Yathrib the Muhajireens left some of their family behind, family that did not accept the Message of the Holy Prophet. In fact some of the leaders in the campaign against the Holy Prophet were his own uncles. So how can one say that groups were at war and they came together because of Islam, when in fact, families had to part ways because of the religion?

One of the most dignified of the companions of the Prophet and a person who has a very important place in Islam was Bilal ibn Rabbah, who was the first black man to embrace Islam. He did it, on his own and not as part of a peace deal between warring communities.

Therefore if the author gave a contextual interpretation, it is suspect for the reasons set out above.

Having decided to argue that there is a contextual approach he then proceeds to blame the ‘rational’ Muslims for ‘as a group of people who have an understanding of what the Quran says, as a group of people who understand that old time religious text writers loved using parable and metaphor’ for not sharing their knowledge with the alleged extremist elements.

The author’s understanding is that the Quran is a product of ‘old time religious text writers’. The author though having decided to grapple with a heavy subject like interpreting the Quran neither bothered to understand it’s method of revelation and compilation nor tried to understand the basis of the ‘understanding’ of the ‘rational/extremist/blind faith Muslim’ whoever they may be.

This intellectual lethargy on his part is fatal to his argument because none of the three groups of Muslims as interestingly classified by him ‘understand’ the Quran as being the product of ‘old time text writers’ who ‘loved using parable and metaphor’. Every Muslim believes and it is a fact of Islamic history that the Quran was revealed to the illiterate Holy Prophet and that it was held in memory and written in various separate places/documents and thereafter consolidated into one book. The Quran is not therefore the product of ‘old time text writers’. So the rational Muslim does not have the understanding that the author attributes the rational Muslim to have and upon which attribution the author decides to confer blame.

He argues that the extremist terrorist takes a literal interpretation to the Quran. Islamic jurisprudence has no place for a literal interpretation because it’s based on the four pillars comprising of the Holy Quran, the Sunnah, Ijma and Qiyas. The words of the Quran as given meaning to by the Sunnah of the Prophet and applied when necessary by analogy [Ijma] and consensus [Qiyas].

Then you might ask, what is Quranic literalism? For starters De Alwis must stop relying on such unreliable sources of information as the Wikipedia. It is as accurate as its general editors, the general public. Readers of this blog should visit the Wikipedia entry on Quranic literalism. See the subheading ‘references’. There is no reference to support the assertions made there. It seems our journalist needs to be taught the basic lesson to ‘always check your sources’.

There is a lot more to be said and written about that blog. But I will stop at this for now. De Alwis, why don’t get over your problem with the Quran and the Muslims and try to learn and understand its true meaning and beauty. Read it contextually and as a whole and understand its true meaning as that is what you have advocated. It is the religion and the Holy Book of one fifth of the world’s population and an important minority in Sri Lanka who have contributed positively towards the country. They are a community of intelligent people who don’t take anything blindly, not even their faith as you may suggest, but analyse and critique things and this includes your blog.