An intellectual approach to religion

First I want to explain, perhaps justify, my approach to the religion of Islam, particularly with reference to my most recent book, Remembering God; secondly, to reflect on the burning issue of our time, the position of Muslim communities living as minorities in the West and, specifically, the identity crisis of British Muslims. I cannot claim to have any solutions to the problems which face my co-religionists; I can only offer, at best a few suggestions.
I might add that I may confuse you by my use of the pronoun "we", but I hope it will be clear from the context whether I am speaking as a Muslim of more than fifty years standing or as a Westerner, ineradicably conditioned by this culture. That, after all, is what I am: a man of two worlds, two homes, and quite comfortable in both. But make no mistake: these are two different worlds.
It is because I am a Westerner that I have not been afraid, as are so Muslim writers, to speculate freely on the very margins of orthodoxy. I seem, so far, to have escaped the kind of criticism that I rather expected, probably because the people who would have torn me limb from limb do not read the kind of books that I write. Even so, I feel a need to defend certain aspects of my approach to Islam, not least my use of Qura'nic quotations to support my personal views. Interpretation of the Qura'n is not for those like myself who possess neither the learning nor the intellectual equipment for such a task. Particularly in the modern age there are very few who are qualified for this. But the fact remains that the Qura'n itself constantly urges us to think, to consider, to meditate on the verses of the holy book, in other words to allow our intellectual and intuitive powers to function as best they can. On this basis, I believe, we have every right to speculate upon verses which stimulate us to reflect, but only if these personal reflections are presented as such, not as an authoritative interpretation.
The alternative - free individual interpretation - is an invitation to chaos. I was told once that a group of Black Muslims in Chicago, some years ago, having decided to rob a bank settled down, to search through an English rendering of the Qura'n for a verse that would justify bank robbery. They probably found one or thought they had found one.
That may be an absurd case, but the use of scripture to justify actions that are utterly contrary to the whole spirit of Islam is all too common, witness the events of September 11 and the campaign of murder mounted by the GIA in Algeria. It's an old story. Disorderly human passions have always seized upon the available religion to justify mayhem and to run riot. No doubt they always will; it is a reflection not of the religion in question but of the satanic whisperings in the human soul to which the Qura'n refers.
To my Muslim brothers who rush into unconsidered and sometimes violent action, I have always wanted to say: Cool it! So I have been accused of "quietism" implicitly associated with Sufism, but the test of action in this life is efficacity. Effective action springs from contemplation and from a cool, detached consideration of all the factors. Anger is the worst possible motive for action because it clouds judgement and makes us miss the mark or hit the wrong one.
The Messenger of God, Muhammad, is reported to have said: "Anger burns up good deeds just as fire burns dried sticks". If one asks what has been achieved for the Ummah, the world-wide community of Islam, by violence over recent years, the answer is bleak. We are worse off than ever, more victimised than ever and more reviled. It is ironic that, over recent centuries - the centuries of colonialism - the only effective resistance to foreign rule was led by "quietists" Sufis.
The religious authorities were so accustomed to subservience to the ruling power that they submitted readily to their colonial masters. Contrast this with the resistance offered by Shamyl in the Caucasus, by Dipo Ngaro in Indonesia, by Qasim in Palestine and, above all, by the emir Abdul Qadir in Algeria, all of them Sufi Sheikhs. For the Muslim the spiritual dimension takes priority and, when priorities are observed, effective action becomes possible.
In Islam intellect takes precedence over passion, whatever may be the appearances, and I make no apology for taking an intellectual approach to religion in my books. This is more necessary in the modern age than it ever was before. The decline in religious faith in the West over the past 150 years is something that no one can deny and this decline has been due largely to a devastating intellectual attack, above all the attack by scientism, that is to say the claim by many scientists to provide answers to all the questions worth asking. To questions regarding the meaning and purpose of like, scientism replies that life has no meaning and no purpose. It is as though a deep investigation of the workings of a clock, down to an analysis of the atomic structure of its parts, were to neglect the simple fact that the purpose of a clock is to tell the time. Today the defence of religion has to be an intellectual defence. Let us say a "cool" defence and a "cool" counter attack. Simple faith, so admirable in itself, is vulnerable in the face of this undermining process unless it is backed up by a coherent philosophy and by vision of the totality of things. In Islamic terms this is Tawhid, the doctrine of the oneness of God and the unity of all that He has created.
An essential element in this doctrine is a system of law, and that leads to the final point I want to make regarding the controversial elements in my most recent book. I have made a distinction which few people seen to make between Shari'ah and what is called in Arabic Fiqh most people have come across the word Shari'ah in newspaper headlines and it is always translated as "Islamic Law". Well - Yes and No. The word means road or path, basically the well-trodden path taken by animals to the watering hole where they find and drink the one substance essential to all living things. For me Shari'ah includes every possible aspect of the faith by which we live. It includes the way we move and have our being, the way we act, think, dream and speak. Fiqh, on the other hand, is Law, plain and simple, in other words it covers the legal implications of Shari'ah at least the implication found by learned men a thousand years ago. You see, I hop, the radical distinction I am making. As Muslims we must believe that the Shari'ah is from God and cannot be changed, although its applications are subject to considerations of public interest. Fiqh is of purely human origin and is open to change and development. In their own time the wise men who created the great structure of Islamic Law believed that they had covered every imaginable contingency that the believers might face in the course of their lives. But that was a thousand years ago. Today we face moral problems and dilemmas which they could never have imagined. That is the challenge today. What, for example, is the proper Islamic response to genetic engineering? Traditional Fiqh is silent. It is for the Muslim conscience to speak.
For centuries the good Muslim had no occasion to consult his or her conscience and perhaps consciences atrophied. Today there are no cut-and-dried answers and there has to be a rebirth of conscience, imbued with the spirit of Islam, imbued also with the mercy which is fundamental to our concept of God and which we must show to all living creatures if we hope, in our life to enjoy the divine mercy. Today I do not think we have in our community men or women fully equipped for the huge and daring task of revising Islamic Fiqh and, in any case, this would have to be an ongoing task since we live in an age of constant change. For better or for worse, we are thrown back upon the individual's conscience and this places a tremendous burden upon Muslims living in the West. Eventually that will be true of Muslims world-wide as western education infiltrates the whole Universe. Meanwhile we are in the front line, forced to decide what compromises are permissible.
In terms of Islamic principles and practice Western culture is decadent. That is hardly surprising. My grandparents would have used a stronger word. They would have spoken with horror at the degeneracy of the modern age, the decay of religious faith, morals and of the arts. Yet the world of Islam too is decadent although in a very different fashion. Muhammad said that his was the best generation, after that the next generation and so on through the ages, a steady decline which is in the very nature of things. Everything in this world declines, decays in the course of time. So be it. But there may be lights which shine only in a time of darkness and many of the sayings of the Prophet imply that there are compensations. As we slip and slide further from the remembrance of God it is said that He draws closer to us, at least to those who are prepared to acknowledge His presence. But despair is a sin in Islam and we have no reason to despair, living as we do in the warmth of the divine mercy.
When Muslims first came in large numbers to settle in Western Europe and the United States the host communities saw us as followers of one religion among other ones. Recent events have obliged them to think again. Muslims seem to be uniquely troublesome people, impossible to assimilate and out of place here and there. Some years ago a French writer expressed this succinctly. The founding principles of the French Republic, she said obliged France to permit Muslims to practice their religion freely and to live in accordance with their Faith, but this practice and the way of living presented a direct challenge to the very principles which permitted them. France had taken a perpetual irritant into their heartland. The Arabic word Din is usually translated as "religion" but it means much more. The Din encompasses every aspect of human living, personal, social and economic. The Arabic word for town, Medina, indicates that a town is a place where the Din is practiced and where it governs every activity. So an alternative translation of the term might, therefore, be "civilisation". In taking Muslims into its midst the West has unwittingly accepted the representative of a different civilisation with different values and different priorities. I think that westerners are only now becoming aware of this.
I go back a long way. It is almost exactly seventy years ago that I began to take a keen interest in world affairs. I remember weeping bitterly over the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dolfs in the early 1930s and dreaming of assassinating "Herr Hitler". I need hardly say that the world has changed beyond recognition in those years, and one of the most astonishing changes has been the readiness of the European countries to accept into their midst a great number of strangers, people of a different religion, a different culture and a different history; specifically Muslims. When I was a boy even the French were undesirable aliens with nasty habits - frog eaters and snail eaters! No one could have imagined the present situation which has sometimes seemed to me too good to be true. Is it? The rise of anti-immigrant parties in a number of European countries suggests that at least a minority of the population in these countries has never really accepted "the stranger within the gates" and was only waiting for a voice to express their dissent. To say anti-immigrant is, in fact, to say anti-Muslim. Recently a very eminent Italian journalist published a book, a best seller, in which she describes Muslims as "filthy people who urinate in baptisteries". Baptisteries? How odd! But I wonder if she would have dared to write this a few years ago.
More significant and more revealing is the remark attributed to a senior minister in the new Danish government. Muslims, he is reported to have said, "have a taste for mass rape". This is interesting because it echoes almost word for word what was commonly said of Muslims in the early Middle Ages when Islam was the superpower in the known world and Western Europe cowered before the very real threat presented by the rival civilisation. It is, then, the rebirth of an ancient fear and an ancient anger, as though a long buried ancestral memory had been dragged into the open. A great many peaceful Muslims at home here or on the Continent are more worried about the future than they have ever been before. As if this was not bad enough, the events of September 11th have made us all suspect. The French novelist Camus who had grown up in Algeria confessed that, as a boy, he had supposed that sales arabes, "filthy Arabs", was a single word. Today there is a very real danger that "Muslim terrorist" will similarly be amalgamated. You're a Muslim? Then you must be a terrorist.
What can we do, we non-terrorists? Stand fast for the long haul, demonstrating all the while that we are good neighbours. It will take more than one generation for us to establish ourselves as worthy citizens of the countries in which the Muslim Diaspora has settled. I can see three necessities so far as the future is concerned. The first is a form of jihad to which no one can object; the struggle through skill and hard work to establish ourselves in positions of influence in the countries in which we find ourselves, just as the Jews have done over the years in the face of even greater prejudice. Secondly we have to abandon the stupid bickering which has disgraced our communities over recent years, we have to agree to differ in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood; the alternative is disaster and humiliation. Thirdly we must take pride in our Islamic identity and, on that basis, shrug off minor insults or imagined insults. Post-colonial complexes and sensitivities are still too prevalent. I remember as a schoolboy reading a story about the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo and, subsequently, an unpopular Prime Minister. He was walking down the street one day with a friend when a man approached and hurled insults at him. "Your Grace," exclaimed his friend in horror, "that man insulted you!" The Duke, untroubled, replied: "The Duke cannot be insulted!" In other words, if we know who we are and take pride in what we are, the yapping of a silly dog as we pass cannot wound us. Muslims used to be proud people, proud as any Duke. But to regain pride we have to immerse ourselves more deeply in our Faith and to recognise what a treasure we possess and what a splendid heritage.
The Muslim living in the West must try to understand the society in which he finds himself so that he can move through it as easily as a fish through water and operate effectively. This is not easy, particularly in England, for the English are a peculiar people. We do not always say what we mean, leaving the implicit meaning unspoken. Understatement is our art. Under circumstances in which an angry Muslim might say: "I'll kill you!", the Englishman will say, "I am somewhat displeased with you", It means the same thing. But to understand any people you must know their history just as you must know something of a man's past if you are to understand him. I do urge Muslims who want to feel at ease here to study and absorb the salient points of British history. Must they also be "moderates"? Speaking personally, I do not like the term. We are all fundamentalists in the precise sense of the word. Some of us emphasise one aspect of our Faith, some another. But, since God has said, "My mercy takes precedence over My wrath", I have only limited sympathy for wrathful Muslims while acknowledging that they have good reason to be angry. I too am angry as I read or listen to the latest news from Palestine, but I cannot allow anger to rule me and burn me up. That would be futile and of no help to the Palestinians.
Muslims tend to see things in black and white: this is right, that is wrong, nothing in between. As an Englishman and in tune with our grey skies I tend to discern shades of grey and this, I think, is a discernment that co-religionists must learn when dealing with the culture in which they are now embedded. That is difficult when so much that surrounds them is shocking to Muslim sensibilities, but whoever said that life should be easy? Moreover Muslims who think they have nothing to learn from Christians are as mistaken as are Christians who think they have nothing to learn from Muslims. In Islam a lifetime of learning is a duty never to be neglected. The word jihad is commonly taken to mean "holy war", but its primary meaning is effort, not only the effort to combat evil within ourselves and beyond ourselves but also the effort to learn, to understand and to grow until the end of our days. Relaxation is a premature death.
And now, I believe, we see the first green shoots of a specifically British and, perhaps specifically western Islam. The very suggestion is shocking to some people. Islam is one, indivisible. Of course it is, but we need only travel in the Muslim world to see that the Faith takes on different flavours - differences of emphasis - from one country to another in accordance with local history, local temperament and local culture. The religion of a village Imam imported unwisely from the sub-continent does not fit here and helps no one. We have to find our own way and that, to my mind, is an adventure as well as a challenge. But there is one thing we must always remember amidst the vicissitudes which, as the Qura'n reminds us, are an unavoidable part of human life, and that one thing was expressed by the Prophet when he said: "All is well with the believers under all conditions" (or "in every state"). Good fortune or ill fortune, victory or defeat, success or failure; they are all the same ultimately when the whole drama is wrapped up and the curtain comes down. "Is it not" asks the Quran, "Is it not to God that all things return?"
And so it is.
(Hasan Le Gai Eaton is writer, philosopher and intellectual. His most recent book "Remembering God" is published by the Islamic Text Society. This is an address he gave at the House of Lords, Moses Room on 20 June 2002.)