Muslim Authenticity

What makes one understanding of Islam more authentic than another?
What does it mean to say that someone has a ‘proper’ understanding of Islam? What does it mean to be a ‘good Muslim’ in Britain? How does the religious doctrine itself deal with the diversity of understandings of Islam? What is the range of acceptable alternatives of Muslim-ness? At what point are you an ‘apostate’/outside of Islam?

Identifying the point at which you are no longer a Muslim is, in reality, quite difficult, so many go about it by asking the opposite: what does it mean to be a ‘good Muslim’ with a ‘proper’ understanding of Islam?

You’ll notice three things if you go around asking Muslims these questions: firstly, everyone contradicts each other. Secondly, some religious Muslims will give their interpretation, before promptly referring you on to a ‘scholar’ (see: ‘who interprets Islam’). Thirdly, attempting to answer any of these questions leads us on to a bigger question: AUTHORITY – who gets to decide the answers to these kinds of questions?


Some people give this basis of religious authority to:
• Their parents’ or families’ understanding of Islam
• Their Local Mullah or Shaykh
• The hilarious array of online fatwas that I’ve yet to blog about
• A religious professional class, such as Muslim organisational leaders
• Their own independent reading of the Quran – and they derive authority from engaging with the text
• A Sufi shaykh – well versed and highly respected
• None of these things – rather they use their independent moral conscience to decide what Islam means to them and what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are.

As you can imagine, each of these sources of authority leads to rather conflicting answers to the key questions I’m asking. Nonetheless, the impetus to define the ‘real Islam’ remains strong among Muslims – perhaps because once Yusuf Muslim (the official Muslim 'Joe Bloggs') decides what being a ‘good Muslim’ means to him, he feels the need to judge everyone else by that criteria, in order to reinforce his belief that he and his friends are ‘real Muslims’. Needless to say each individual changes their criteria several times during their lives.

I changed my definition of what it means to be a ‘good Muslim’ when I read the Qur’an in Arabic, and realised it didn’t particularly emphasise ‘fiqh’ outside of worship – at least not as much as the British Muslim community does – fiqh does not equal morality, but that’s a point for another blog.

In the Isoc environment, the ‘good Muslims’ are the ones that join the Isoc, and help out with events and ‘bad Muslims’ are the ones who go to pubs and clubs (regardless of whether or not they drink alcohol). There is a silent expectation that no-one would do both. The irony, of course, is that when most of these students leave university and join the ‘real world’, they either isolate themselves from their workmates, or go to pubs without drinking.
I wonder if, at this point they adjust their understanding of what a ‘good Muslim’ is, or if they accept themselves as ‘bad Muslims’, which would probably result in them moving further away God.

Whatever your answers to the above questions, and whoever you give your Islamic authority to, be happy – all of the above methods have their place, and its up to you to contextualise them, and then come out with your own interpretation. There really doesn’t need to be one answer. I will finish with Ayesha Jalal quoting one of the most brilliant Muslim thinkers of the 20th Century, Muhammad Iqbal, who argues that the unity of Islam is defined by the difference inherent in creation:

“Islam is a notion of religion as faith with the potential to erase national and racial differences, in order to attain a universal human consciousness based on the multiplicity of existence, in the Unity of Divine Creation”

P.S. The provoker of this thought is the brilliant politics professor, Dr. Matt Nelson who is currently on sabbatical, but famous at SOAS for teaching a course entitled ‘Islam and Democracy’.

After writing the previous blog, I was drinking tea at the coffee shop downstairs, whilst reading Atul Kohli's opinions on ethnicity in India, waiting for my Jacket Potato with tuna, sweetcorn an mayonaise.  I love reading in coffee shops - it takes me back to Egypt when I spent around a month not talking to anyone, just reading Tariq Ramadan books and articles, and formulating responses to them. Good Times. 

Anyway, the point is I was reflecting on the last post, and have realised what I was actually trying to say about this blog.  Building on some personal reflections, anecdotes, and plenty of experiences, I'm going to dedicate a large chunk of this blog to essentially:

"How to study and practice Islam, without becoming a terrorist." 

As I write my thoughts on this, if you folk would be kind enough to give me some feedback over the next few years, I can see a Penguin-published best seller with my name on the front cover in the horizon.

Until then, I going to continue my conversation with Kohli, and I'll be back after 7 45 minute study sessions, and perhaps the new Star-Trek movie.

What's the point of this blog again?

So, this blog as you can probably tell is becoming a lot more political Islam than personal life, as it was first intended. This is for a number of reasons. Mainly because I need to get this stuff off my chest.  Here's why:

1. It will save me from exploding in anger at the next (sorry to say) salafi speaker who talks more about the politics he knows nothing about, than the little amount of Islam he does know about.  I'm not thinking of any particular "shaykh", but in my mind they've all kind of merged into one person. I know this is wrong, and I'm all about individualism, especially when it comes to Islam.  But it's like these guys were cloned, and then brought up in areas where they have a similar way of talking English, which is unlike anywhere else in the British Isles (this is even true for the British ones).

2. It will give me an opportunity to share with the blogosphere some of the things I've learned about being a British Muslim.  That might sound a bit boring, unless you're like me and you're quite sick of people who: 

a) know little or nothing about Islam, but who play themselves off as great scholars because they know a bit of Arabic and/or the fard ain (the minimum amount of knowledge compulsary for every Muslim to learn) and if your lucky may have memorized 1 or 2 texts of something fancy-sounding to English speakers but totally ordinary to an Arab.

b) are Ordinary Muslims (if there is such a thing) falling for it hook, line and sinker because of a reluctance to think critically when it comes to religion, as if critical thinking is some kind of sin.

c) Arabs who think they follow the 'pure' Islam, because it's not corrupted by Pakistani/Indian 'culture', ignoring or being in denial of the fact that they are following an Islam tainted with Arab culture, and that it's impossible to follow Islam without culture.

d) many others who can't possibily all be mentioned here. Disclaimer: I actually do love Islam and Muslims, I'm just getting rather cynical of the latter.  When I decided to accept the Qur'an is the Word of God, I didn't sign up to dealing with the retarded-ness of our (British Muslim) community... or did I?

Let me be clear. It's not just the salafis I'm speaking about here. It's the 'traditionalists' too, and every other Muslim categorisation you can think of. It's not so much about groups as it is about the mentality of following someone else, to remove yourself from the responsibility of thinking, and having the 'leaders' not tell you how dumb it is for you to follow them. 

For example, there are a large number of 'scholars' in the UK who are followed blindly, because of the title 'alim' given to them because of 3-6 years in a Madrassa, located somewhere in the parts of the UK white people now try to avoid.  

There's nothing wrong with spending 3-6 years in a madrassa (even one that requires you to learn Urdu, so that you can then learn Arabic, via Urdu, to save the teachers from translating the text books they've been using for decades, or writing new ones - Ibn Jabal anyone?).  I do find something wrong, however, with these people then giving 'fatwas' or legal opinions about matters to do with other people's personal lives, which frankly has nothing to do with them. And I have a problem with people who have personal problems and take them to 'shayukh', when the strategies they really need lie elsewhere. Watch one of those lame Q & A shows on the Islam channel and you'll know exactly what I mean. 

This week's key strategy:

If you have a problem with your personal life - go to a therapist/ councillor/ psychologist/ marriage councillor/ life-coach.  These disciplines have organically developed over decades to meet the needs of thousands of people just like you.  If your marriage is breaking down, or your partner beats you, or you child isn't performing well at school due to bullying, I have news for you: Fiqh (legal rulings of Islam) won't help, regardless of the size of the beard of the person reading these rules out to you.

Anyway, I digress. The point is this blog will have all my real opinions on politics and Islam.  It will be sprinkled with personal anecdotes whenever I can be bothered thinking them up, instead of just venting like I am now. 

The next few blogs will be addressing the issue of who we give Islamic authority to, and why. And looking at some useful strategies of how to interpret Islam, so our understandings make more sense in our contexts.

Who interprets Islam?

You do. And so do I. It's common sense really. Many Muslims would like to think that the job of interpreting Islam is down to a certain set of Muslim scholars. They are wrong, and they are lying to themselves. Even when said scholars interpret 'Islam', you still interpret Islam - you just add in your interpretation of what you understood from what those scholars say, to your interpretation of anything else you might know about Islam and the topic in question. This leads some to put a large amount of effort into studying Islam - which in and of itself is a great thing... however this does not necessarily make your interpretation of Islam more accurate or balanced - it just makes you better informed about the specific areas you studied.  You could have a degree in Shariah and memorize the Qur'an, and get the complete wrong end of the stick when thinking about relevant issues from politics to your personal relationships.  This happens all the time - just ask anyone who is friends with an Islamic scholar. 

So, what is your interpretation of Islam? How do you choose to interact with people of the opposite gender? How will you choose your life partner, and what processes will you choose to go through to marry them? And what is your stance on introducing homosexual marriage in a European country? What about teaching sex education to under 11's? Would you sit with your friends/family in a pub, even if you know you'll never drink alcohol? Is there really any correlation between fornication and gender segregation in your experience? What about hijab/niqab?

If the Qur'an and Sunnah are your reference points, as they are mine, I dare to say we may disagree on the answers to some of these questions, because we interpret Islam differently (as do virtually all individual Muslims regardless of madhab/scholar of choice/approach to 'reading' the texts). Tariq Ramadan points out that we 'read' the sources differently, resulting in different interpretations of them (salafi, sufi, reformist etc). We also invent and read other forms of authority differently, resulting in every individual having a different interpretation of Islam. Rather than studying 'Islam' in great depth thinking this will help us understand the real Islam, why not study how we form our different interpretations of Islam, in the hope of getting closer to real guidance?