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Lectures
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| Conversations Within Islam : Culture, Politics and Religion in the Global Public Sphere | |
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| Central European University, Budapest, May 29, 2003 |
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| Selected questions and answers : |
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| John Esposito : If we can begin, one of the most important issues facing Islam in the twenty-first century is how is the emerging generation of religiously oriented and motivated Muslim scholars, intellectuals and activists carrying on or transforming the challenges of reforming. How do they see themselves ? To what extent is there continuity with earlier generations of reformers—going back even to the late 19th early 20th century reform movements—and with the late twentieth century movements. To what extent is there something fresh or new ? And what does this mean for Islamic society and the relationship for religion and secular thought and culture ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : With all due respect to Hakan’s viewpoint, this is a specificity of Turkey that does not exclude it from the fact that it is part of the fragmented Islamic world. If Turkey were not colonized, it has been separated and isolated by this very colonialism (like the other components of the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia) from a strong entity called the Islamic world. Symptoms differ from one organ to the other; yet the plague/fragmentation is the same. Classifying the Islamic world into different zones complicates the issue and curbs the sustained efforts to unite this fragmented world and prepare it to confront the new challenges of blocs and balances of power.By way of illustration, I don’t know if an American, let’s say, from the State of California or the State of North Carolina would say the same thing if the United States of America were divided into 51 fragmented states with heads of states as pathologically narrow-minded and despotic as those in most Muslim countries! How can we face up to such formidable phenomena as Globalization if we are not united in let’s say “The United States of Islam” with one president, one congress, one senate, one department of state etc…It was possible in America that groups people different in cultures, races, religions…Why can’t it be possible in the Islamic world whose people share, though from inside the prisons of nation-states, common values, cultures, aspirations and projects ? |
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| Mark LeVine : But these contemporary reformers are clearly ‘political’ and are doing it from a religious motivation—at least in part—so how can we say that Islam is being ‘secularized’ or separated from a political ideology ? Do we perhaps need a different, more nuanced description than the black and white idea of religious versus secular motivations/ideologies ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : I agree, and think the experience in Iran is an example not the ideal. There were – and still are – deviations occasioned by the lack of conceiving Islam as a way of life and confining its tolerance-oriented universal message to a mere code of crime and punishment. That is why there have been attempts at depoliticizing Islam (or rather a parochial reading of Islam) because Islam’s role was miscomprehended. Islam provides you with general guidelines, and it is for the observant Muslim mind to derive such specific regulations as will befit its ever-changing context. Lord Acton said : “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. So where to seek vaccination against those deadly viruses of lust of power, intolerance, violence etc…? Here spirituality and morality come to center stage. Furthermore, so long as all the components of a society – without any exceptions – do not partake in the reformulation of a consensus-and-conciliation oriented communitarian project, room will be left to extremists who will fish in troubled waters and thwart any attempt at interpreting Islam in a different manner far from the beaten track. Therefore, it’s not a question of secularizing/depoliticizing Islam; it’s a rather a challenge of letting the flexibility and malleability of Islam embrace all the aspects of societal life. Islam is not to be blamed; it’s rather rigorous interpretations that must be upbraided.If I can turn to my opening remarks, first I would like to thank Drs. Levine and Esposito and all the organizers of the conference, and for having lifted a house arrest that I have lived under for so long and allowed me to make my first trip ever out of Morocco. The Moroccan experience is of course part of the larger Muslim experience yet with our own particularities. Our Islam is a Sunni Islam, and we have to understand that within this context, yet there are similarities in terms of the challenges all reform movements face that we need to address and highlight.In our association—the Movement for Justice and Spirituality—we are making our own historical criticism of the Sunni world. Because the Sunni world has been subjugated and under the yoke of despotic powers that are only nominally Muslim but are not in practice Muslim. If the Shiite world is also dealing with issues dealing with power in Islam, we are too. We must begin by understanding that there is a crucial concept—that of the historical break—that we can use to understand what’s happening in the Muslim world today. In the beginning Islam was supposed to be set up along democratic lines—the idea of shura, or consultation, or a binding contract between ruler and ruled, which was crucial for our development. But after the first four rightly guided caliphs and the coming of Muawiya and the Ummayad and Abbasid dynasties there was a change, a rupture and Islam was usurped and changed into a despotic power. |
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| Mark LeVine : Nadia, this reading of history, while critical of much of Islamic history, would seem to be not all that different than the various Salafi discourses that for over a century have idealized the same period as a ‘pure’ period that should be the source for rebuilding Islamic society, politics, etc. How is your movement’s reading of this period different from Salafi historiographies, or even hagiography ? In fact, one could say that the time of the rightly guided caliphs was not that democratic, since two of them were in fact murdered and there was a lot of contention within the rapidly expending Islamic society and state about what Islam meant and should be. How do you deal with these issues in trying to use that period as the inspiration for your renovation of Islamic theology, politics, etc. ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : I do not say that such period was “pure” or “ideal” in the Platonic sense of the word, but rather ideal or pure in the sense that it was the example to follow for the coming generations.. Mohammed (Peace be upon him) was a human being and was sent to a society of human beings. As a consequence, there were misunderstandings – and even conflicts – between the members of that nascent society. Yet they were addressed by the Prophet (Peace be upon him) – who was both a temporal and spiritual leader – in a context of merciful, patient and caring pedagogy. In fact, convincing the Muslim ummah at large that such period was an ideal example that cannot be imitated was the political and sledgehammer argument that the Umayyad and Abbassid dynasties used to propose to the ummah an example that was “accessible”, an example based on autocratic rule and on separating state from religion, even though using religious arguments to justify their political hegemony. Our recommendation for Islamist groups is to accord exceptional importance to the crucial factor that the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs were personally educated by the Prophet Muhammad for more than 23 years. We refer to that period of time (the time of the Prophet and the four rightly guided caliphs) with a pedagogical concern in mind leading to action, not with a spirit of nostalgia, day-dreaming and weeping over vestiges. This is why 80% of our programs focus on spiritual education with a view to combating despotic and egoistic instincts and preparing ourselves to come to power not as a political force with “do’s” and “don’ts” but rather as a conciliating force attempting to bridge the gap (where interpretations of the sacred texts and prophetic traditions are concerned) between all components of the Moroccan society as a beginning and then moving to the long-term mission of uniting the Muslim world step-by-step and with all variables of time and place taken into account. |
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| More specifically, we can say that the time of the Prophet was one where power was in the service of the message, but after that with the usurpation of power by subsequent rulers the message was subjugated and at the service of power. And regimes had little or no legitimacy without power, but they relied on Islam and Islamic texts to legitimize their rule. And if we move toward today my father, for example, when he founded this movement and tried to develop a critical history and speak the truth, he was jailed for two years, put in psychiatric hospital, under house arrest for a decade, just for fighting for the right to criticize history and voice one’s opinion freely.It’s very difficult to disassociate Moroccan history from the larger history of the Muslim world, but it follows the same logic: that of power being usurped by despots and tyrants to serve their own personal interests. Hassan II, the late king, after the coup d’état in the 1970s, took the title “Commander of the Faithful” which has a religious signification, in order to subjugate the masses of Muslims because the coup was executed for political reasons. So for him to establish his authority he had to appeal to a religious authority. It is very much also, within the framework of contemporary world politics as described by people like Chomsky, who described such masses as a bewildered herd.By the press we’re accused of being radical, but in an intellectual conference we hope you’ll look at things more deeply. Yes, we’re radical, but we’re radical in a positive sense; in the sense of making a critical history of Islamic power, whereas in our reading of Islam vis-à-vis the Qur’an and Prophetic tradition we have a renovative reading dealing with issues like women or democracy: i.e., we’re trying to bring back what we feel is the original intention of the Qur’an and prophetic traditions. So our being radical is only in terms of being against the manipulating power that has used religion as a means to usurp power. |
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| Mark LeVine : Nadia, would you like to respond to Amr’s comment about the problems of using what he terms an ‘idealized’ model of early Islamist history as a basis for contemporary action? Is the same questioning of the need to use the models you are trying to develop happening within your movement, and if not, why do you think that among progressive Moroccan Islamist intellectuals this is not occurring ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : I would just like to make a clarification about the term ‘historical break/rupture’ that Hamzawy critiqued. Amr took it in the traditional way, conceiving it as some kind of nostalgia, return to the sources, return to Harun al-Rashid, the height of the Islamic empire. But for me we have to go back to the critical period, where the shift of power transformed from shura, or democratic power, to despotic power. To the time where Muawiya said, ‘I was the last Caliph and the first king of Islam.’ And these two concepts have a very important signification, and there’s a great difference between these two.The objective of our intervention/conference is to develop a constructive heuristic in the sense of developing a new comprehension of the real relationships between the west and Islam, especially one that breaks through the media perceptions, which are very dangerous. In this context, the first point is that the west in its comprehension of reality should not impose it onto the Muslim world. Perhaps there’s a methodological mistake that says that history is linear and thus the Muslim world has to follow the west, which has the duty of exporting its civilization onto other civilizations.In terms of the binarism between fundamentalists and moderates, secularists and moderates, this is a very superficial reading. This binarism is superficial because it ensues from superficial readings of events. Fundamentalists with regard to whom? Moderates in relation to what? Such attributes are subjective and depend on the angle from which we see things. To illustrate, let us take the phenomenon of Globalization. For America, it is a process that will enable America to have access to all (cultural and economic) markets and become more powerful. It is an ideological war before being an economic war. From the viewpoint of the underdeveloped South, namely the Islamic world, it is a prolongation of the crusades and colonialism. It is a process of subjugation, domination and misinformation. |
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| Therefore, attributes are subjective and very dangerous when used outside their context. As important, we must never forget, especially in this kind of discussion about religion and culture, that in the end the economic situation on the ground is crucial and even prevails over the political ones in the Muslim world. And in terms of reform today, there is a justification of the fact that there is a difference in comprehension between western and Muslim contexts. Reform took place in Europe in the context of a rebellion against a despotic, church power, while in Islam reform is inherent in the Islamic historical personality, and it presupposes the existence of a pristine moral/psychological state; a natural one for the individual towards high spirituality and for society having a sense of equity. Once this path is lost, most reformists come to put the train back on the rail, so to speak.Many people think that Islamists are foreign individuals—coming from Mars or another planet, not part of the Islamic community; when in reality they are part of a recurring movement of islah, which we can translate with some hesitation as reformism, taking into account the Islamic conception of the term. So coming to the issue of globalization the Islamic world is under the same pressure as other cultures, which is considered a historical break with the smooth course of history. In this sense the fall of Baghdad has had a huge and negative impact on Muslim societies.Moreover, we of course much realize that the Muslim world is not homogeneous, as reality is more complex. If we look at the Iraq war, many if not most Muslims, even though they don’t like Saddam, saw the invasion in terms of US interference rather than US liberation of Iraq. Why? We need to return to the notion of historical break: the despotic systems of Government have normalized the relationship of the Muslim communities with power, so this line of thought, which does not care whether power is despotic or democratic, has had supporters within schools of jurisprudence, who have served as the vehicle for spreading this kind of thought. They say that because this community is a sacred community there must be opposition to foreign intervention.But if we take into consideration other factors—for example, that 80% of Moroccans are apolitical and have no political knowledge, and so many are illiterate, we begin to see the problem. On the other hand, we also see that certain categories of our elites also live on emotions and nostalgia, and this is crucial. In fact there are three categories of elites we need to consider: the first is the type like bin Laden, who fits into this category of riding/using emotion and nostalgia, coming back to the roots, living in the golden era, etc. and bin Laden, who is an intellectual and knows why the US intervention took place in Iraq and how to use this fact to mobilize people. |
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| The second category of elite is in the service of despotic power, and we know power has an army of writers, TV and radio stations, apologists, media, etc., that they use to convey their message. And there’s another elite, which we can consider our movement as belonging to, which tries to make a new reading of the history and the future, but we’re having problems with despotic power because we’re prevented from propagating this line of thought which abides by moderation and non-violence and which execrates violence and extremism. |
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| Amr Hamzawy : We can say that they see that all religiously-oriented movements around the Muslim world failed in reaching their objectives. They simply failed: in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, regardless of the question of under which circumstances they failed they still didn’t reach their objectives. They articulated perceptions of society and politics at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s and by the end of the 1990s it has become clear that they haven’t managed to put their perceptions into practice and when they did do so a series of crises emerged. |
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| Nadia Yassine : First of all, the Islamists of this generation were not even allowed to express themselves. How can you judge that they failed, Amr? In addition, let’s suppose they assumed power, shouldn’t they be given enough time to put their programs and projects into practice and rectify what should be rectified through self-criticism? In principle, it’s the people who should evaluate their performance not self-appointed secular governments. Yet even performance was not allowed to take place. So how can’t frustration lead inexorably to violence? Second, I would summarize that models are not to be blindly imitated. Otherwise, it will be contrary to the spirit of Islam. They are examples from which lessons ought to be drawn. Put simply: yes for shrewd inspiration, no for blind imitation. |
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| Mark LeVine : Nadia, can you go into a bit more detail about the conversations that are taking place in Morocco within Islamist movements, especially within your movement and between it and other trends, regarding the issues that Tariq and Amr were discussing, vis-à-vis the violence in Casablanca, and vis-à-vis the attempts by the King, to coopt Islamist discourses by sponsoring various religiously-affiliated charities and events. Is the King/Makhzan really interested in a true democratic dialog/opening, particularly with religious forces, or would any real achievement of social and/or political power by Islamist forces be met by the same kind of repression as occurred next door in Algeria ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : Conversations between Islamist organizations have never ceased. They may sometimes witness ebbs and flows due to our different relationship with the Makhzan. Yet international issues like Palestine and Iraq join us more together. International and national observers know that our movement is the biggest and most popular organization in Morocco. Unfortunately, we stand alone in our opposition of the Makhzan from outside the political “game/circus”.The Makhzan knows us very well because it has tried us many times since 1974. The Makhzan has attempted on several occasions to contain us; yet it has failed. Such containment has taken three colors. In 1990, the Makhzan proposed to give us the key ministerial portfolios in government. The money they proposed to give us was incredible. But we refused because we have principles that we cannot change and about whom we will be asked by God in the Day of the Last Judgment before thinking of being tried by the people. So corruption did not work.The other weapon the Makhzan used was harassment, repression and imprisonment. We passed the trial successfully. To give an example, our movement decided in December 10, 2000 to celebrate the Human Rights Day to express the injustice done to us (since all our newspapers and publications are banned. All publishing houses in Morocco have been given severe instructions not to deal with us. We meet only in the houses of the members of our association; 12 members of our association spend (since 1991) 20 years’ imprisonment in Kenitra prison in a fabricated story of murder; our student members are savagely repressed in universities etc…).The Makhzan’s intervention in that day was brutal. 375 of our members were savagely beaten. Two women members lost their babies. Despite all that, we did not react. We did not face violence with counter-violence simply because violence is not our line of thought or code of behavior. We are spiritually immunized against it. We have the videotape that shows the Makhzan’s brutality that culminated in beating our members in mosques in the sacred month of Ramadan !This is about violence. As regards the King’s exclusive representation of Islam, our criticism saps the very foundations on which the Monarchy stands. The historical letter addressed to the late King Hassan II in 1974 “Islam or Deluge” and the book “Caliphate and Kingship” (2001) present strong argumentation questioning the religious authority of the Monarch. |
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| Ziba Mir-Hosseini : More than any other group, women in Iran came to feel the harsh reality of subjection to the pre-modern and patriarchal mandates of Islamic law when applied by the machinery of a modern state. This was inevitable. And any version of Islamic state was and is bound to fail women. This is because what defines an Islamic state is the application of Islamic law, which in their pre-modern interpretations is not compatible with the aspirations of modern Muslim women. |
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| Nadia Yassine : I would view this from another perspective, namely that Islam’s malleability and adaptability as attested by its incredible spread throughout the world is sufficient evidence, I believe, of the fact that it can befit any context. It is the minds drawing inspiration from its general guidelines that must change, not Islam. By that, I don’t mean that its undisputable and immutable prescriptions ought to be discarded or its universal values and principles be ignored. Quite the opposite. In fact, it is those prescriptions, values and principles that guarantee its universality and capability of embracing ever-changing realities.Let’s say that the history of women in Islam cannot be dissociated from the history of the Islamic movement. So if the Prophet came to rectify a certain way in which people had gone astray, if in the absence of a propensity toward spirituality and social equity for society at large—whenever these two major factors are absent the first victim of such a situation are the women, par excellence. Not just in Muslim societies but everywhere.The Prophet Muhammad came to liberate women from the yoke of the pre-Islamic women. So the liberation of society is intrinsically linked to the liberation of women in Islam and Islamic history. If we take the example of our movement, which is advocating the liberation of women not just in theory but also in practice, we use the example of ibn al-Arabi, who was a Sufi and even we can say a feminist: in his spiritual quest he went all the way from Andalusia to Mecca to search for a women Sufi/spiritual master. |
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| Ziba Mir-Hosseini : I don’t agree that he can be seen as a feminist because of this… |
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| Nadia Yassine : Perhaps we can have a debate about this issue. Let us not forget that ibn Arabi was envied by many of his contemporaries for his spiritual and scholarly erudition, which gained him widespread acceptance among the people of his time. But other scholars were envious, and after his death, according to Syrian scholar Said Ramadan al-Buti, added opinions to his books, in his name, which would reflect badly upon him. But I would say that we can even see Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a feminist. It may be a justification to show that he could be considered a proto-feminist and an inspiration for us.Why is this so important? Because when you are confronting the powerful and wrong manner in which jurisprudence has been shaped by those in power. And we see this problem still today with the personal status laws in the Moroccan context. And there was a huge march in Casablanca against the Plan for the Integration of Women into Development, upwards of a million people partook in that march to protest against alienating Muslim women and estranging them from Islam. Those feminists in favor of alienation, not liberation of women, based their arguments on the fact that the Personal Status Code does injustice to women on several accounts.What we say is that this Code is not a sacred text. It is ijtihad (effort of interpretation according to the Malekite doctrine). Actually, it is the Makhzan that uncritically adopted this code with a view to maintaining a Macho and male chauvinistic reading of Islam serving its own interests. We say that this issue is not the main issue. It is a sub-issue emanating from corruption of power. The Makhzan raised this issue in order to distract people’s attention from the root of all evils: despotism in the name of religion, exclusive and excluding representation of Islam). |
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| But look, we have an enormous problem, and of course some men resist—this is normal.If we move to a more contemporary situation we can examine the “integration of women into development,” a program dictated by international organizations through Copenhagen. The plan of action of the integration of women (the Khuta) into development comprises 215 articles, whose four major lines include: schooling and fighting against illiteracy in the rural world, reproductive health, fighting against poverty and improving the woman’s economic role, and improving the woman’s legal and political status.The two-million-demonstrator march the Islamist movements organized in Casablanca in March 2000 in parallel with the 20-thousand-demonstrator march in Rabat had a common goal: We are for the women’s liberation, we are for most of the articles of the Khuta (Plan). And this is what we’re doing in our association. Yet we are against the Muslim woman’s alienation from its Islamic principles. We oppose the fact that this Khuta was dictated by the World Bank and other ill-intentioned western institutions. We are best informed about our needs. We don’t need “guardians”.What is clear from the data they have gathered is that larger issues such as poverty and illiteracy are all crucial to the problems facing women. What this tells us is that while we must be for the liberation of women from their oppression we are not for their alienation from their Islamic values by just adapting—to use Ramadan’s term—wholesale Western values and a Western model. |
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| Mark LeVine : Could Amr and Hakan and Ziba please comment a bit more on this issue of gender/women from their own contexts, and also Nadia in terms of some concrete examples of how the discourse about women/gender has been changing during the last decade: i.e., what are some new areas of contention and reconciliation, how are political authorities dealing with the issue differently in Turkey, Iran, Egypt or Morocco and how are men theologians, like Qaradawi or Yassine, people within the fetulleh gulen movement or the young ayatollahs you, Ziba, have written about, are trying to make just the kind of theological nuances in methodology and interpretation that we’ve been discussing. |
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| Nadia Yassine : The history of the women’s subjugation is inseparable from political subjugation of Muslims by despotic regimes. What ensued from that were narrow-minded readings of the woman’s role in Islam going on par with confining Islam into mere issues of personal status. So the heritage we have is not that brilliant. My father, Imam Abdessalam Yassine, wrote in 1994 a book, “Tanweer al Mûminât” (Guide for the Believing Women – English translation forthcoming) exclusively devoted to the issues of the Muslim women and their present and future role in the reconstruction of the disintegrated edifice of the Muslim ummah. In the book, he elaborately discusses the several internal (e.g. early secularizing/depoliticizing of Islam) and external (e.g. colonization) factors that have brought about the woman’s subjugation and alienation and proposes new solutions to get out of the deadlock.In our movement, we have been extending our hands to all components of our society through the proposal of an Islamic pact to be conceived and drafted by everyone and dealing with all issues (including issues of women) affecting our society. Unfortunately, it remains unanswered. We are boycotted by all political parties. Yet we continue our societal activity through meeting with individuals and organizations of goodwill to help develop this project further. A recent example of boycott happened last April when we invited left-wing and right-wing feminists to a one-day debate about the current issues of women in our society and invited them to lead the debate. Nobody came. Is it fear of the Makhzan due to their lack of popular support? We don’t know, but we won’t give up. |
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| Mark LeVine: Nadia, you also mention the importance of sufism within these contexts. Of course, orthodox and especially wahhabi movements are very anti-sufi, can you or anyone comment on how sufism is changing its relationship with orthodoxy as there is this attempt across the board toward reconciliation between various forces in the Arab and Muslim world. And Tariq, can you discuss briefly the role of Sufism in Europe, especially in interreligious dialog and even conversion to Islam ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : First of all, let me say briefly that Sufism is the spiritual side of Islam. After the Historical Break, Islam was ripped apart along with the division of the ummah. Some scholars took care of exegesis of the Qur’an, some of the Prophet’s sayings, some of Islamic jurisprudence and some of the spiritual side of Islam, called historically Sufis. Then let me say that the kind of Sufism we are advocating is far from nonchalant Sufism retreated in mosques and marabouts. It is a kind of engaged Sufism: We want spirituality to embrace all aspects of the life of the Muslims because we believe it is the antidote against deviations occasioned by contingency and day-to-day material concerns. You may call it “neo-sufism” or “social Sufism” since we have a strong conviction that progress towards God and spiritual perfection cannot take place in their most complete and noble form unless affectionate and caring progress is made towards one’s neighbor, be he Muslim or non-Muslim.Our objective (in the short run as well as in the long run) is to assemble all the above-mentioned parts of Islam. When spirituality embraces the heart of a Muslim (man and woman alike), his horizons will open: he will no longer consider his fellow Muslim brother or sister as heretic or going astray. He will no longer have one exclusive and excluding vision of Islam. He will accept difference of interpretations and abide by the principle of tolerance. He will work for the common good of everyone. He will be vaccinated against the deadly virus of extremism. He will be a philanthropist. He will see all human beings, though not being his co-religionists, as brothers and sisters in humanity. Speaking of which, he will consider his fellow Muslim woman not as baby-making machine, or a lieutenant of Satan, or a commodity or a sex target. He will see her as a fully-fledged citizen and full-time partner in the management of societal concerns.This lack of respect for women is generated by the lack of humility and modesty. When having a spiritual concern, each human being adopts a double philosophy or approach of things – that of having a low opinion of himself and a high opinion of others. So we believe spirituality – with which our ummah is imbued and which only needs to be revived in hearts – will be a conciliating and federating force joining all factions of the Muslim world in one homogeneous entity abiding by the principle of diversity within unity. This is the main workshop of our movement: Educating (spiritually and morally but also politically) nascent Islamism and making of it a building force, not a destructive force. |
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| Amr Hamzawy : If you look at Egypt and the way the Muslim Brotherhood deals with women, it’s a discourse that has no use to me. If you, on the other hand, look at the state’s discourse, it’s a discourse that is normatively superior because it states in a secular manner the rights of women, equality and other crucial doctrines, even if they’re not applied. |
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| Nadia Yassine : It is not a matter of speaking about rights of women; it is a matter of putting them into practice. They could have let the Muslim Brotherhood put into practice their programs and then make an evaluation, not forbid them from partaking in political activity under the pretext that they have a backward view regarding the issue of women. But it remains that most – if not all – jurisprudence regarding women must be re-explored through an enlightened ijtihad drawing inspiration from the enlightened model of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his four rightly guided successors. It is a challenge. |
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| Mark LeVine : Nadia, can you comment on how your movement understands and promotes and utilizes non-violence in the Moroccan context, and compare it with Tariq’s remarks here? Hakan and Amr, can you also say something about what debates about non-violence are like in Egypt and Turkey right now, particularly vis-à-vis more extremist groups? Ziba, in terms of the reformers/opposition to the hardliners controlling the state, how are the ‘progressive’ forces meeting/dealing with state violence ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : First of all, condemning violence in our movement is not a matter of tactics and strategies. It is not a matter of currying favor with the West and America. It is a matter of principle, and we have demonstrated this principle for 25 years now though we’ve been subject to state violence. Our movement’s code of behavior and plan of action abides by three major principles: 1. No for violence, 2. No for underground action (Yes for transparency) and 3. No for depending (namely financially) on foreign organizations, which assures us independence in action.For sure, Islam categorically forbids killing innocent people. But how can this violence-generating anger and frustration be healed ? Two levels should be addressed: First, America must stop using double standard policy vis-à-vis the Muslim world because violence will only engender counter-violence, which may sometimes be viewed as self-defense and resistance in the case of Palestinians facing Israeli occupation, for instance. Second, the Muslim world should know that using violence will lead it nowhere.The huge task ahead is to unite the Muslim world (be it Persian, Arab, Asian, Turkish or whatever) and stand as a united bloc dealing on equal terms with the United States of America, the European Union and future unions. This is building vs. destroying, acting vs. reacting.Let’s take for example what happened on May 16 in Casablanca. Those who perpetrated the attacks belonged to an extremely poor social background. Most of them were illiterate or half-illiterate. They were between 16 and 23 of age. All these factors ought to lead us to ask many questions. Aren’t poverty, illiteracy, social frustration and unemployment the real ingredients of violence? If those young people used violence against others, other young people use violence against themselves and get drown when trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, fleeing poverty, frustration and state violence and dreaming of a fake El Dorado in Europe. Others become drug addicts or alcoholics. So violence takes various forms though its generating ingredient is one. Then, what should be done? Should we just try to deal with the symptoms, or must we cure the disease itself ? |
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| What we do know for sure is that a supposedly “politically disengaged” Salafiya movement was established by the Makhzan in Morocco around the early 1970’s (precisely after my father, Imam Abdessalam Yassine, addressed his open letter to the then-king Hassan II) in an attempt to face politically oriented Islamist organizations. That is, the Salafiya movement was conceived as an agent destined to neutralize the active Islamist components of resurgent Islamism by propagating (armed with Saudi petro-dollar) a simplistic, rigorist and disengaged reading of Islam criticizing everything save the system of power.However, what happened (like in Saudi Arabia) was that some components of this Salafiya (influenced by the frustrating experience of the FIS, by the war in Afghanistan against Soviet invasion, by world and by Arab and nominally-Muslim governments silence vis-à-vis what happens in Palestine, by the 1991 Gulf war, and many other factors) slipped from the controlling hands of secular governments and adopted jihad (in the sense of holy war) as a method of change.This is where salafiya jihadia came from. For the self-appointed secular governments in place, it was the logic of the biter being bit. Therefore, so long as secular governments turn a deaf ear to their people’s aspirations, so long as they misuse religion to achieve personal interests, so long as democracy is absent, violence cannot be avoided. We are doing a wonderful job though in extremely deplorable conditions, but we cannot do the entire job alone. We need other people’s help and this is why we’ve been inviting them to an Islamic pact. |
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| Ziba Mir-Hosseini : There are as many verses in the Qur’an that can be interpreted as confirming slavery as there are verses that can be interpreted as confirming gender inequality, but our understanding changed--not because Islamic scholars changed this understanding but because the world changed. And this is happening again in the Muslim world, where theory always follows practice, where new voices who are confident enough to face their tradition are arising. |
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| Nadia Yassine : The concept of slavery ought to be comprehended within its context. During wars waged by Muslim armies against despotic regimes or empires (not against ordinary people in the sight of whom they were viewed as liberators), Muslims had POWs. Were those prisoners placed in concentration camps like Guantanamo? No, they were adopted by and integrated into Muslim families with a view to making them initiated into Islam de visu and then going back to their people as informed missionaries. This was the model in the time of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and the four rightly guided caliphs.With the advent of the Umayyads and the Abbassids (usurpers of powers and assassinators of shura), tribal instincts and penchants of domination took the lead. POWs (namely women) were not viewed as potential converts but as mere “sex” slaves. That’s the deviation that occurred and this is why we’re criticizing our history with a view to drawing lessons from past errors and getting vaccinated against those viruses which brought about our ummah’s disintegration.As for verses that might be interpreted as stipulating gender inequality, they should also be read within their context. If one understands the role of the man and the woman in Muslim society – with man mainly catering for the needs of his family and the woman specifically devoted to the up-bringing and education of the rising generations of Islam (the most difficult task she has and which cannot in any way be compared to the relatively easy task of man) – this will help us comprehend why Islam has stipulated such and such prescriptions. Please do not take concepts out of their context; otherwise, they will obviously appear “unjust”.The fact is that only a confident Muslim, who is secure in his identity, her identity, can go back and ask these questions and not be ashamed. And the fact is that the majority of Muslims, including Muslims who call themselves secular, they don’t want to engage with religion, they look down on it. I’ve seen myself in so many meetings being criticized or looked down upon by secularist Muslims, who say, ‘How can you say this ?’ because my appearance defies their image or symbolism of what a practicing Muslim is like or a person talking from a position of faith. But there are more and more people coming from this position. |
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| Mark LeVine : Nadia, are you saying then that you would accept Hakan’s argument that Muslim societies as a whole must consider Islam/the Qur’an historically and not as the absolute word of God. In other words, what is the objective of your movement, for example ? Is it ultimately to ‘Islamize’ society the Ziba has mentioned as being problematic because once you start having some sort of control of state power or implementation of Islamic law there are always problems ? Or is your goal more cultural ? In terms of turning people toward ‘justice’ and ‘spirituality’ by the guiding spirit of Islam, without trying to enforce some sort of religiously defined political or legal system, as one can say FIS tried to do in Algeria. Finally, what is the specifically Sufi component of your mission, or perhaps even da’wa? What role can the kind of ‘New Sufism’ that we discussed after the forum as characterizing your movement play in the larger renovative process in Islamic societies and who does it dialog with more orthodox/conservative forces that have been opposed to it in the last century ? |
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| Nadia Yassine : Let me first begin by stating that the Qur’an is not a historical text, it’s Revelation that gives you general guiding principles and tells you to adapt these principles into your context. It’s an illusion to say that there’s everything in the Qur’an; it’s not a political constitution. It is the Word of God. Islam must be taken as a whole or must not.The objective of our mission is summed up in the name of our association: Justice and Spirituality. We want Shari’a as justice and Shari’a as spirituality: two sides of the same coin. In this respect, the New Sufism we’re advocating (whose Prophetic term is “Ihssan” – that’s why our association is called al adl (justice) wal Ihssan) endeavors to bridge the gap between all the components of Islam which fell apart after the Historical Break or the Greatest Ordeal (the usurping of power and assassination of shura).We educate our members and the sympathizers spiritually and morally in the first place and then comes social, political, cultural and economic education. Spiritual education is our barometer. It prevents us from falling into three deadly traps: 1- Nonchalant Islam retreated and cornered in mosques and “zawaya” (monasteries), 2- Cold intellectual Islam concerned only with reading books and speaking nostalgically of a used-to-be brilliant Islamic civilization and 3- Hollow activism whose main concern is action, action, action. These three poles are extremely difficult to reconcile and it is in this sense that jihad (in the sense of self-discipline) takes its full sense. |
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| We believe that only those Islamists who have succeeded in healing their interior diseases (arrogance, lust of power, self-importance, intolerance etc...) can be the right candidates to lead Muslim societies. By right candidate, I mean someone who accepts other people’s opinions since his concern is the welfare of his SOCIETY not HIS opinion. I am not dreaming, I am not theorizing, I am speaking about a 24-year-old experience that has hitherto succeeded. If you don’t live and practice these values within your organization, how can you dream of sharing them with your society once you assume power ???If we focus on globalization, there are three reactions to form of aggression represented by contemporary globalization. There was ijtihad, which attempted to cooperate with the despotic systems in place. There were uprising, which comes from the Shiite tradition going back to Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, and there was the reaction of retreat, usually Sufistic retreat. Concerning our reaction or hostility toward globalization, it is because we live the negative side of globalization and modernity because we were colonized and remain within this context, while the West has experienced the positive side. Let me conclude by mentioning the words of George Kennan, quoted in Noam Chomsky’s What Uncle Sam Really Wants (Tucson, Odonian Press (1992), page 13 in the French version)) where he said that we, the US, represents 6.3 percent of the world’s population and have fifty percent of the world’s wealth and we need to keep this wealth.So while we don’t legitimize violence in any form but if we are a non-violent association and if there are non-violent movements in the Muslim world, we want the Western world to stop the illusions of ‘international aid’ and other mechanisms for exploiting what is called the third world, and stop its own often intense violence, and behave justly toward us. |
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