Islamophobia and a working definition: A faith-based perspective
I commend the well-intentioned support of the APPG, and the Muslims who have sincerely wanted to address the issue of anti-Muslim hatred and prejudice. But here I comment on the APPG definition from a faith-based perspective and consider wider ramifications which should not be overlooked by those who believe and are committed to the bigger picture that God wants.
To talk about being a Muslim is to claim subservience to God in the way understood by Abraham and his prophetic descendants all the way to Muhammad, to be informed by God's revealed word and seek to live an honourable life within one's context. What God expects of us is to show appreciation and heartfelt reverence towards Him, to deal righteously with others, and to educate and inform people of the entirety of what God has said.
Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim racism and Muslimness
There is a fundamental question to begin with: what and who does a definition that centres around 'Anti-Muslim racism' and disparaging 'Muslimness' seek to protect and why?
I assert that the paper makes it clear that it wants to protect people of South Asian origin (the who) and their ethnic practices/identity (the what) when they are negatively targeted (the why).
Permissive Monotheism
The purpose of the shari’ah is to fully realise human potential, to guide to that which is wholesome and uplifting. It is also to safeguard people from the excesses that lead to less-than-optimal outcomes, and in the least, bad ones. The problem we have in sectarian debates is where the line is (mis)placed, and unfortunately, it is often the case that restrictiveness is seen as the marker of God’s will and guidance. God is rather explicit about this matter, where He stands on permissiveness vs restrictiveness, and the attitude believers should take. Yet, preachers driven by ethnic and sectarian commitments and interests muddy waters that are in fact very clear.
So what is our philosophy towards life as God intended it?
In what has become known as ‘conservatism’, religious personalities mischaracterise God’s law as restrictive when nothing could be further from the truth. Literally trolling the masses, preachers tell them that "Islam is easy" whilst arbitrary rules or poorly thought-out assertions cause misery, hardship and a narrative that perpetually inhibits growth and human development, whilst denying them resources and unendingly bringing about worst outcomes – all shamefully in the name of God. I'm pointing out the obvious here – one only need study life outcomes of Muslim demographics to see this is the case.
The problem with the term Islamophobia
In this post I begin with the term ‘Islamophobia’ which poses significant problems, both political and religious. As a reminder, the APPG proposed definition goes: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
The problem with the term ‘Islamophobia’ is:
a) it weakens our ability to robustly deal with anti-Muslim hatred as there is broad societal aversion towards it,
b) it inserts Islam into issues that aren't necessarily faith related. And if the APPG intends this to be about racial hatred then inferring religion by the term "Islamophobia" supports the widespread conflation that Islam is about ethnicity. (I'll deal with point (b) in later posts)
Music: Some facts of the matter
Over a decade, I've been asked about music so frequently that I've finally written this. I hadn't done so until now because I didn't want to engage the cacophony of polemics. However, I hold it that believers deserve better than the one-sided narrative they’ve been presented with, especially when we're speaking on behalf of God as to what He holds to be offensive, and as millennials (and younger) become the dominant generations, we need to be far better informed. I am not advocating what people should or shouldn’t do - things affect them differently so each moral agent ought to decide what's best for them. Also note that this brief post is not a juristic presentation but just a brief clarification for those who've asked.
From the get-go it's important that we distinguish between two things people tend to conflate:
- A range of cultures/behaviours associated (rightly or not) with types/genres of music,
- Music as melodious sounds, and instruments.
Here I am solely dealing with music as melodious sounds (including instruments) and not speaking to certain types of music that might inspire negative behaviour in some. Since I'm dealing with melodious sounds (including instruments), I don't distinguish between sounds from singing (ghina’) and sounds from instruments (aalaat) in this shar'i discussion - and most early jurists didn't.
Laymen and the scholarly tradition
A major problem the Muslim laity have been subjected to is the way in which the 'scholarly tradition' is abused.
How so?
Well past scholars have written a lot. They've often explicitly changed their opinion, or you can see an evolution in their thinking/arguments. Popular religious personalities pay little attention to this, usually because they haven't read wide enough nor intend to. Now of course, any scholar can't possibly read everything out there on a topic, but if s/he has a sound basis in the Qur'an and hadith, and recognises everything else as either an explanation of the two (fiqh), or a justification of the methods used to derive an explanation of the two (usul), then there's a critical engagement with past scholars that is far more meaningful. It also means that the scholar places where authority is - with God. Past scholars are a heuristic tool - we remain in conversation with thousands of scholars across the centuries to bounce ideas off them and evaluate what they bring to the table.
But this doesn't happen because people are more interested in what Ghazali or Ibn Taymiyyah said than what God and His messenger said. Yes, the laity require someone authoritative to interpret revelation, but placing ultimate authority in medieval scholars raises the same problems: they too need interpreting and contextualising for the laity! So in reality, the laity vest authority in popular religious personalities and who they choose to promote. Accordingly, the scholars that are cited today aren't necessarily those who buttressed mainstream scholarship over a millenium. They have been chosen in the modern period. In our context, the names of Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir and Ibn Hazm only became as widespread a few decades ago. But what about Ibn Daqiq, al-Mizzi, al-Sakhawi, Ibn Asakir, etc? Yes some know of them, but in no way are they mainstream. Why? Simply because they weren't chosen by contemporary preachers and sects. Your understanding of your religion is not objective - it is shaped by a plethora of forces. And in every age/context there are different forces shaping it. If you get that simple truth it makes you less polemic, far more chilled, and I'd argue much more closer to the Quran - the only holistic source that is infallible ('isma).
Now because we're at an embryonic stage of scholarly formation in the west, there is no benchmark or basic standard of scholarly inquiry, nor are the intelligent laity informed enough to recognise it, so much falls on superficial markers of shar'i learning. Where a higher level emerges or is propagated, it is seldom recognised and either maligned or ignored. it was in this vein that Ibn Hazm put it that scholars who wanted to engage the laity would have sacrifice some of their dignity. As the Mother of Believers Lady A'ishah put it, "How quick people are to find fault with that which they don't know/understand!" (Sahih Muslim) To some extent, in the past there was an understanding: Scholars informed preachers, and preachers simplified for the laity. Today, preachers are deemed scholars but they're little informed, and the laity are worse off as a result.
Most preachers/religious personalities are in a rush to say the next great thing. Social media has only amplified this ingenious proclivity. I can always tell when a preacher/religious personality has come across a quote for the first time using it to draw an entire narrative. But as a result of such myopia, usually, the narrative is either wrong or off-piste. This occurs with the most famous of preachers/religious personalities who are still very clearly in their formation stage (even after decades of 'learning'). Had they sat on the quote for a while and explored the subject further, over time they'd come across something else that would contextualise the initial quote or moderate their take on the matter. But the pursuit of a holistic narrative and understanding is VERY rarely the objective.
A solid grounding in knowledge that a person then wants to 'share' with the universe must start with first principles. Everything is built on something else. They should be able to justify each level/stage of their argument, and show how their argument relates to other subjects in order to bring the shari'ah together as a coherent whole. They should be aware of the biases/influences, and own them. Every shar'i conclusion ought to be an explication of the Quran. If it doesn't go back to the Quran, whether the divine address (khitab) is explicit or implicit, it is baseless and merely fanciful whims uttered in the name of God. The sunnah gives us insight as to what God wants in practice, whilst we mitigate for the variances in culture between 7th Century Arabia and 21st Century Western English speaking world.
Building back up
For decades (if not a couple of centuries) many Muslim writers, scholars and thinkers have sought to analyse the decline of believers and how to rectify it. Suggestions range from knowledge and ‘religiosity’, to lack of agility or colonialism. I feel that a lot of these are either symptoms or describe the process by which believers got to this situation. But they don’t address the underlying cause. For example, a lack of knowledge might be why people do or think silly things, but knowledge is widely available, in fact, far more available than it has ever been at any time in human history. From one perspective, being a mujhtahid (if we’re talking about Islamic Law), a doctor or an economist today should be a walk in the park in comparison to the past. So saying it’s a lack of knowledge is pointing out the obvious symptom - a constructive analysis would tell us why people would rather remain uninformed, and of course, the ‘why’ is subject to context, place, and culture under scrutiny.
The Taliban and this time around
Given that I advocate a) that believers ought to concentrate on rectifying their own regional affairs rather than assuming that they can somehow save the world to the detriment of their own situation, and b) that we need to re-evaluate the notion of all Muslims everywhere being of equal priority, why am I now commenting on Afghanistan and the Taliban?
Simply put, the last time the Taliban were in power many young people here were left without shar’i-educated and informed voices to offer them substance and clear guidance in how to view things and what to do. What became deeply unfortunate was that this lack of cultivation allowed for the “war on terror” to cause a generation of radicalisation or misplaced priorities in the name of religion. Most became reactionary and were easily provoked along the way to do things that were counter-productive. Of course, the nefarious actions of the US and its allies required staunch opposition, but underlying confusion towards the Taliban’s claims of implementing God's law and our relation to it, misrepresentations by lay imams, and juvenile characterisations of the Taliban built on their visual representations (beards and turbans) had people misconstrue them as prophetic companions!
Well this time around things are very different. Newer generations have much more nuanced thinking. Personally, I now have the moral obligation to do something about it, and having observed the last two decades, I have no desire to go down that path again, nor allow for a future in which my kids have to deal with the same (understandable) shortcomings. Hindsight is great wisdom and we should’ve learned a lot by now: what to do and what not to do. Many Muslims often assume doing the same thing repeatedly will somehow bring about different results - the essence of stupidity - but intelligent people know better.
- The shari'ah
- The Caliphate
- The ummah
- Opposition to foreign policy
These issues have persistently caused confusion for western Muslims, who, driven by riled up emotions come out with all sorts of things, unworkable or absurd. Nearly everything you hear on these issues are uninformed by the actual Law and scripture, and vastly informed by populism, post-colonialism and grievance politics. In the west, political and social strategies lead to behaviour that’s either pointless or ineffective, and frustrations from the resulting failures further entrenches Muslims in their unproductive methods. I think it’d be interesting to see what happens this time around if we press the restart button.
We’re certainly in a different place now, and today’s generations are different (not so sure about the Taliban though!). Times have completely changed and much of this is down to social media. Whilst Muslim millennials are far more cosmopolitan, better politically informed, more socially attuned and carry less immigrant anxieties, many ideas are still inherited because thinking on these issues hasn’t been reformed - and with negative consequences.
The neurodivergent salaf?
The idea that people of standing, intellect, honour and godly commitment may also be neurodivergent isn’t hard to understand or accept, except amongst those who have no experience. It’s ONLY the insular or those with little exposure to neurodivergence that make assumptions on what it is (and the most negative assumptions at that).
There is no standardised definition of neurodivergence, but it’s basically someone who thinks behaves/differently from the the majority of people. It’s a concept that describes individuality and uniqueness in cognitive functioning. In more recent years it has been used to describe those who think, behave, and learn differently to what is typical in society. Being neurodivergent should not be considered an inherent deficit but simply a difference in processing the world around us. It can be argued that it is the result of normal, natural variation in the human genome, and can be a competitive advantage in the right environment.
The commoners and the leaders - a medieval tale
For a while I’ve grappled with widespread Islamic narratives feeling like I’m in an alternate reality. For yonks I’ve been trying to understand how people have translated the Quran and the sunnah into something so uninspiring, problematic, irrational, anxiety-inducing, and destructive. But as time has gone on, it’s becoming quite clear.