Political Islam? Or the Five Pillars?Comment on this article
Read other comments on this article The Five Pillars are the foundations of the Islamic faith: (1) The Declaration of Faith, (2) Prayer, (3) Fasting, (4) Zakaat (giving alms to the needy), and (5) The Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are physically and financially able). Each of the five pillars is clearly, essentially and absolutely nonpolitical. In fact, the five pillars decisively detach Islam from the machinery of State. If Islam stands on those five pillars as the Prophet (PBUH) commanded, our faith remains a personal, private matter of our duty to God and the community, and politics are totally excluded. In his most important document, his last sermon in Mecca, the Prophet (PBUH) gave clear instruction for Muslims to follow thereafter: to follow the simple steps of Witness, Prayer, Zakaat, Fasting and refraining from using certain items. None of these injunctions are political. Yet, today, enormous amounts of scholarship, emotion, devotion and energy are being spent trying to establish Political Islam as part of the Islamic faith. But nothing can validate the dangerous and impossible dream of world conquest. This is not to say that Muslims should avoid politics. Far from it. Our voices must be heard in deciding what kind of laws we want and what kind of priorities our governments should have. But equally we must recognize that those of other faiths, or of none, may have different views. The solution is not to fight, subjugate and kill them, but to find ways in which we can all live peacefully together. This idea is not novel. For centuries Muslims lived in harmony with Christians, Jews and those of other faiths and it can happen again. Islam and Democracy are compatible. So too are Islam and Modernity and Islam and Human Rights. We must recognize that Islam has changed over the centuries, not in its basic tenets, perhaps, but in its response to a changing world. We may hark back to a golden past of peace, enlightenment and prosperity, but we must adapt our relationship to others to the realities of the modern world. Islam is about submission, personal submission to Allah; it is not about forcing others to submit to Islam or to our ways. A recent letter to Dawn, the Pakistani English-language daily, published 9th October 2003, said it most succinctly. We quote it in part: “Religions have been grossly distorted and even perverted. Christian fundamentalists, Islamic militants, Hindu fanatics and Jewish extremists are commonplace words....
Paths leading to a summit are widely separated near the base, but they get nearer together as they rise. The wise climber takes the path on which he finds himself and does not worry too much about people on other paths. He will waste an enormous amount of his own time, if he keeps on trying to find where others are going, rather than pursuing his own path, and other people's time if he tries to persuade them to abandon theirs, however sure he is that his is the best.
Professor Toynbee says: "In order to save mankind, we have to learn to live together in concord in spite of traditional differences of religion, class, race and civilization. We must learn to recognize and understand the different cultural configurations in which our common human nature has expressed itself."
Man is much more than a mere thinking animal. He is privileged above all other creatures by the gift of reason and free will. By virtue of his inborn intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong, true and false, man has attained a level of intellect where he is free to make a choice.
Religions need to be freed from centuries of stagnation and made more humanistic, democratic and tolerant. While religious faith and doctrine cannot be changed, it is only the ethical or moral aspects which need to be strengthened to make the world a more pleasant and peaceful place to live in.” Perhaps the worst mistake we have made has been to give Islam a political dimension. Political Islam is not the Sixth pillar of our faith. Many scholars warned us about its disastrous effects, some of which we are experiencing now. As Asghar Ali Engineer has pointed out, some verses of the Qur’an are contextual, such as killing infidels, sleeping with slave-girls, four wives, etc. Those contexts are long over. Now is the time to follow the Qur’anic normative instructions of pluralism (which were temporarily abrogated due to circumstances – Mahmoud Taha, Abdullahi An-Na’im). Now is the time to accept that ‘Men and women are garments to each other’, ‘Your religion is yours, mine is mine’, ‘There is no compulsion in religion’. Now is the time to adhere to the normative instructions as shown in: ‘Say: verily I only follow what is revealed to me from my Lord’ (Al Araf 203). ‘I follow not but what is revealed to me’ (Al Anam 50). Do politics appear in the Qur’anic revelations? No. When the Prophet (PBUH) established and ran the Medinan state he consulted his followers. Prophets do not consult their followers on matters of religion. The Prophet clearly saw Islam and the state as separate. It is extremely important, especially for us in the turbulent world today, to separate the divine message from the earthly actions of the Prophet. Otherwise we will be stuck forever with killing nonbelievers, slavery, concubinage etc. The great Islamic scholar, Dr Abdul Aziz Sachedina made this point: “An Islamic ‘state’ is not part of the faith. What is required by faith (iman) is working towards justice and equity in [the] public space. There is no concept of ‘nation state’ in the classical formulation of political theory. We have the legal concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The first, ‘sphere of Islam’ means any part of the earth where Muslims predominate and create a government, even when they do not necessarily spread the message of Islam. The opposite is the ‘sphere of war’, which must be brought under the dominance of Muslims. These two concepts are absent in the Qur'an or in Hadith. They are part of the Fiqh formulations. Hence, it is living with Taqwa and working for justice everywhere that is required by our faith in God and the Prophet” We must return to the Five Pillars of our faith – say NO to Political Islam! Comment on this article
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