This is not the way of true Islam
THE distortion of Islam by Boko Haram terrorists cannot be tolerated. A recent video showing the forced conversions of the more than 250 abducted Nigerian schoolchildren is a sign of its madness.
Violence in the name of religion has to be condemned and the interfaith solidarity seen on Durban’s North Beach on Sunday last week was a welcome step in standing together in condemning Boko Haram’s distorted theological claims.
Acts of wanton violence and barbarism are contrary to the teachings of Islam. In Islamic ethics, the end does not justify the means. Leading South African Muslim scholars such as Rashied Omar, now at Notre Dame University in the US, have reminded us that religious extremism has no virtue in Islam.
And extremism is unequivocally condemned by the Prophet of Islam (Peace be upon Him), who is reported, in a tradition, to have declared thrice: “The extremists shall perish.” It is important to remember, though, that only a small minority of Muslims in the world are extremists. Extremism grew in response to the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the brutality of these armies in Muslim countries.
All this points us to an understanding of Islam, perhaps a “progressive Islam”, in which extremism has no place.
This is thorny. Muslims the world over feel that their future is under threat and conspiracy theories abound about attempts to undermine Muslims from within and without. So any attempt to rethink the norms in conservative pockets of Islam around the world is bound to elicit suspicion, if not outright resistance or even violent reaction.
But some honest and objective questioning is long overdue. In many Muslim societies today, practices that have nothing to do with Islam, or which may even be contrary to the values of Islam, are being reproduced and re-enacted as if they were articles of faith. Killing
innocent people, attempting to blow up a plane and kidnapping individuals are certainly contrary to the values of Islam.
This calls for a progressive practice. However, despite the demands for change and introspection, the progressive current seems weak. Why?
Progressive Islam has to begin from premises that are recognisably Islamic. Vital to this understanding is the recognition that harmonious coexistence, despite the complex diversity of this world, is possible.
However, the political realities of many Muslim countries — in which authoritarian regimes often work hand in glove with reactionary religious forces to perpetuate the status quo — make it extremely difficult for new progressive voices to be heard. The culture of hate speech, intimidation and slander is so commonplace in the battle for ideas that, in many cases, they have become regarded as the norm of public debate.
Despite the brutality of the occupying forces, senseless killings and kidnappings with horrific endings cannot go unchallenged. This brutality is often in violation of what Islam commands during conflict.
A contentious issue is the need for Muslims to discuss openly issues such as gender equality, racism, class and power. Because so many conservative Muslim scholars have come to regard these concerns as external to Islam and alien to the corpus of traditional Islamic discourse, the issues themselves have been cast as “secular”, “Western” or even “anti-Islamic”.
The progressive current, if it is to emerge at all, will have to burst the banks of conservative dogma that have thus far been reinforced by both Muslim conservatives and authoritarian elites. It needs to show that extremism has no place in Islam. A world without invasions driven by capitalist greed and a world without extremism is possible.
Our daughters and sisters in Nigeria remain in our thoughts.
Buccus is a research fellow in the school of social sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal