Islam & the spirit of non-violence

Abad Ahmad's book is a timely reminder of the true essence of Islam as contained in its Quranic verses, but does little to address the criticisms directed at the faith and its followers

Understanding Islam: Its Spirit and Values

Author: Abad Ahmad

Publisher:  HarperCollins India

Pages:318

Price: Rs 499

Over the last four decades, the word “Islam” has conflated the 1,500-year-old faith with its billion-strong adherents across the world. This combination of faith and follower has encouraged some facile notions — of Islam making its believers intolerant, fanatical and violent. Muslims are viewed as the principal sources of terror globally —  being associated with the death and depredations wreaked mercilessly by Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and the extremists sent across the Indian border by the Pakistanis.

Some scholars have attempted to challenge this narrow and negative view by going back to the basic texts of Islam — the Quran and the Hadith — and expounding on what they see as the core tenets of the faith. Understanding Islam by Abad Ahmad, a management and behavioural sciences academic, is an effort in this tradition.

Dr Ahmad points out that Islam’s spirit is non-violent and peace-loving. It enjoins upon its followers moderation and brotherhood that emerge from belief in God and His messenger and acceptance of the other pillars of the faith — prayer, fasting, charity and pilgrimage. Islam rejects the idea of blind faith: The Quran exalts knowledge, recalling that God instructed humankind in the use of the pen and “taught man that which he knew not”.

Islam also celebrates diversity in religions. God did not make humankind “a single people”; He wants his different peoples to “strive as in a race in all virtues”. He also does not favour one religion over another: He will reward “any who believe in God, and the Last Day, and work righteousness”. Above all, there is no compulsion in religion; as the Quran says: “To you your way, and to me mine”.

Dr Ahmad has devoted considerable space discussing the rights and status of women from the Quranic perspective. He points out that the Quran provides women with rights in regard to inheritance and divorce, but there have been distortions in interpreting the texts by the clergy. The Quran gives “self-same rights in conformity with fairness” to men and women, describes how divorce is to be finalised, makes provision for alimony for divorced women and maintenance for widows, and places severe restrictions on polygamy.

The book devotes considerable space to matters of faith, with each aspect being supported by a series of Quranic verses under convenient headings: Faith and Unity of God; Righteousness; Good Deeds; Charity; Truth and Falsehood; Creation of the Universe; Life, Death and the Afterlife, and the Five Pillars of Islam.

What is missing from the book is the author himself. For the translations of the Quranic verses, he has relied on the work of Abdullah Yusuf Ali that goes back to 1934, ignoring the numerous more recent translations. Again, on the rare occasions he seeks to explain the meaning and implications of particular verses, he only depends on well-known secondary sources —the writings of Syed Ameer Ali (from 1891), Yusuf Ali himself, Karen Armstrong and Ziauddin Sardar. Some of these quotes are quite long, but contain no sign of an authorial intervention.

The author notes that Islam is viewed as an “intolerant and exclusivist religion”. But the only response he provides to this criticism is to quote the appropriate verses from the Quran. Again, he refers to concerns that several observers have about “the extremely distorted and violent behaviour of some so-called ‘fundamentalists’”, and notes that Islamic scholars refer to this as “Political Islam”. Addressing this aspect of contemporary Islam and Muslim conduct on doctrinal basis should have been a major part of the book, but Political Islam is not mentioned again in the book.

The author should have noted that contemporary Political Islam has three expressions: Wahhabism, the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Salafi-Jihadism. Only the last expression— Jihad —is violent. But all three expressions draw their belief-system, ideology and sanction for their deeds from Islamic texts and later commentaries by eminent scholars.

This matter needed a detailed discussion — it is not enough to say that many of these ideologues have distorted the “true message” of Islam. While Dr Ahmad rightly regrets that jihadi ideology “is quite contrary to the entire spirit and message of the Holy Quran”, the ideologues of Political Islam, including jihad, believe that their beliefs and actions are the “true” expressions of Islam.

Here we come to the central problem with the book: The author regrets that all religions, including Islam, become “trapped in ‘Identity Politics’” that leads to confrontations and conflicts within and between religious groups. But Dr Ahmad should note that every mainstream faith has two aspects: One, the personal engagement of the believer with God; and, two, the shaping of a collective identity by adherents of the same faith that can be and often is utilised for purposes of political mobilisation.

This is inherent in each belief-system and cannot be wished away —witness the widespread political mobilisation of adherents of all faiths in movements such as Zionism, Political Islam, Hindutva, the Khalistan movement, and several extremist Christian groups in the US, with all of them often using violence to achieve their divinely ordained goal.

This book is a timely reminder of the true essence of Islam as contained in its Quranic verses, but does little to address the criticisms directed at the faith and its followers across the world.

The reviewer is a former diplomat