Why Muslims are failing in society

The absence of reasoning and inquiry has stagnated the minds of Muslims and frustrated their progress.

COMMENT

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By Dr Moaz Nair

The fading of reasoning and inquiry is one of the main reasons why Muslims are failing in society. Reason, reasoning and inquiries play key parts in attaining knowledge. This applies to knowledge of revelation, too. When this is marginalised in a society, knowledge fades.

Too much discussion of religion and unnecessarily bringing religion into the domain of public administration are among other reasons that have contributed to major polemics among Muslims. Muslims should not be too Arab-centric but should look beyond this narrow scope in order to progress.

If truth be told, there was no such thing as “Arab civilisation”. The Arabs did not contribute much to the pursuit of knowledge in past or present civilisations.

The Persians were the people who contributed enormously to Islamic civilisation and, surprisingly, Persians such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd were themselves not much into religion but were labelled as philosophers by the dogmatists.

These Persians were the product of philosophical thoughts that had deep roots in the Greek civilisation of the past. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were some of the philosophers who influenced the philosophical thoughts of the Persians, not the Arabs. Persia was indeed a great nation of the past.

Too much discussion of religion in our society includes the endless discussion about the Quran as well, not only the collections of Hadiths. Hadiths have always been a contentious subject among Muslim scholars due to inquiries about their authenticity. Even among the so-called Quranists, there are various interpretations and endless disputes over the meaning of this and that verse in the book. This endless polemic does not seem to end. Among them are also Islamic apologists trying to interpret Quranic verses in a way that will appease their disciples. Many then end up claiming to be more righteous than the others.

The Muslim world has not really seen progress in the true sense. Only wars, illiteracy and poverty are the trademarks of most Muslim nations. Meanwhile, the non-Islamic countries, the “non-religious” countries in Europe and Asia are making rapid progress in science, economy and human welfare.

Ibn Khaldun was a 14th century Tunisian Arab thinker – a free thinker. He lived in a period after the dogmatic age of Islam but today it looks like some Muslim nations are back to the past rigid dogmatic age. Khaldun was the last of great original thinkers of the Islamic world before it died out. Just as Socrates’ death is seen as the end of the great ancient Greek philosophy, Khaldun’s passing should mark the end of an era of renewed and non-dogmatic thinking in the Islamic world.

The greatest thought to come out of Khaldun’s mind was that all powers or dynasties will eventually be replaced and that in essence, no polity is permanent. This is of course contrary to the contemporary Islamic thought among some idealists that idealistic Islam is a permanent polity.

Be it as it may, almost all of these Muslim intellectuals of the past were Persians, not the Arabs per se – because it was Persia that boasted the necessary societal erudition and intellectual stock to sustain a fair degree of scepticism in fundamental theological doctrines. If you register a list of medieval Islamic intellectuals, the list will be dominated by these inheritors of Sassanids and Achaemenids. In truth, without the Persians – or Greeks, or Indians or the Turkish – the Arabs would have very little to speak of in terms of civilisational achievements.

Ancient Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. In many ways, it has an important influence on modern philosophy, as well as modern science. The lines of influence started from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Muslim philosophers and Islamic scientists, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and to the secular sciences of the modern day.

Ironically, and startlingly to many Muslims, almost all great thinkers, scientists and philosophers of those days in the Muslim world were known as free thinkers, atheists or agnostics. They weighed their knowledge in philosophy, not theology. This includes Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ibn al-Rawandi, al-Khwarizmi and many more, whom some Muslims falsely claim were adherents to fundamental Islamic doctrines and thoughts.

These progressive Persian scholars held ideas that were deemed critical and against dogmatism. The Persian mathematician and poet Khayyam was an atheist, or at least a deist, and many progressive Muslim scholars during that time ascribed to the doctrine of “vahdat-e-vojud” which is Persian for unity of being. They believed that “godliness” lived in everyone and everything instead of being an outside power. This seems to be against the dogmatic approach to Islam by most Muslims.

Unfortunately, many free thinking scholars were also persecuted or murdered for their heretical beliefs. Examples are numerous but some of the more famous include Ibn Sina, Naser Khosrow and Hallaj. For that matter, many Muslims refuse to acknowledge the Sufis as Muslim at all. Nevertheless, Sufis have a highly spiritual vision of Islam that is not weighed down by all this fundamentalism.

Islamists should read more about civilisations of the past without prejudice. A nation can be doomed if dogmatism keeps rearing its ugly head among religionists. The Quran and the Hadith again should not be interpreted from 7th century perspectives but 21st.

A simple example would be, as what has been quoted, the interpretation by a controversial Indian preacher from overseas – a Salafi, now a PR of this country – “that Muslims have the right to sex with their female slaves”, where he referred to slaves as “prisoners of war”. The main reference cited is Chapter 23:1-6 in the Quran. It reads: “And successful are the believers who guard their chastity… except from their wives or those that their right hands possess.”

A controversial high-level Saudi jurist, also a Salafi, Shaykh Saleh Al-Fawzan, was quoted to have said in a lecture, “Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long as there is Islam.” He dismissed Muslims who believed otherwise as ignorant and blind followers. Another prominent Saudi Salafi cleric, Saad Al-Buraik, was quoted to have urged Palestinians “to enslave women of the Jews”.

No doubt slavery was a mainstay of life in Islamic Arabia and the surrounding lands in the 7th century. It was in this social milieu that Islam emerged. And it was in these circumstances that sex slaves were permitted.

There’s no desire among ordinary Muslims to drag humanity backwards into slavery, as today this practice is perceived as against morality. We are now living in the 21st century where cogent knowledge and awareness have opened up the minds of the people to think rationally.

Unfortunately, this is something the extremists ignore, and this witlessness further enforces the point that religious illiteracy and irrational thinking are the root cause of extremism. Islamophobic extremists as well as Islamist extremists like Isis or the Islamic State, for instance, who promote and authenticate sexual violence through some literal interpretations of passages in the Quran – and without context – do so to justify their own vicious mindsets.

We cannot afford to have a civilisation devoid of any thinking culture. Society needs a culture that can help people move forward in the fields of morality, reasoning, science, technology and new discoveries for the benefit of mankind.

As a matter of fact, Islamic dogmatism, orthodoxy and fundamentalism as subscribed to by many Muslim scholars, politicians, preachers and disciples of today are a fallacy bringing about a fixated culture in society. The absence of reasoning and inquiry has stagnated their minds and this has become an anathema to their progress.

Preachers delving into this dogmatic approach to Islam should not be allowed to spread their influence, as this will muddle Muslim minds more and cause them to return to the obscure ages of the past.

Dr Moaz Nair is an FMT reader