The ZamZam Cooler

"Over forty years ago, when Lahore was still a beautiful garden city, I remember visiting the tomb of the famous Sufi saint Mian Mir in the fields outside the city, a sanctuary now surrounded by the horrid sprawl of the once beautiful Lahore. It was nighttime, and I decided to take a horsedrawn carriage called a tonga back to town. The driver appeared to be very poor and was scantily dressed. At the beginning of our trip, he greeted me with the Islamic greeting and asked me in Urdu where I was from. I answered in Persian that I was from Persia. He became excited and smiled. Then he began to recite God knows how many sublime Persian poems of 'Attar, Rumi, Hafiz, and others on Divine Love and the nostalgia of the soul for God, rendering all those poems as if he had experienced what was described in them and had composed the poems himself. That example -- riding in that carriage that night under the starry sky of the Punjabi countryside listening to an illiterate tonga driver reciting some of the most sublime mystical love poetry ever written, reciting both from memory and from the center of his heart -- shows how universal the living reality of the love for God is in the Islamic spiritual universe. This love uses the sublime language of Sufi poets, but this poetry speaks for all those Muslims, technically Sufi and non-Sufi alike, who are aware of God's Love for His creation, those whose own love for God, hidden within the very primordial substance of their souls, has begun to stir and the steed of whose souls has turned in the direction of that spiritual homeland from which they have come and to which they yearn to return."

"The rule of law, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, the accountability of elected
leaders before the people who elected them, and the separation of church and state." These, he says, are the most precious assets of Western democracy. "Do we have, as Muslims, a problem with these five principles? No."

Read the whole thing here. Its a piece in the Independent Newspaper from Britain.


I'm a big fan of Tariq Ramadan just like most Muslims in the West are. He has a good grasp of the positives of Western life and the structural failures of Muslim societies, and doesn't shy away from the faults of Muslim engineered "Islamic" thought which often is one of the main culprits for the backwardness seen in Muslim countries. But the thing is, Ramadan isn't an apologist to the West either. He sincerely believes Muslims are in a rut. That their scholarly advances need to mature in an age of globalization, just like everyone else but colonial rule and political interference and repression from the West have exacerbated problems. He courageously argues against certain streams of conventional Muslim scholarship and literal legalists on their own turf, espousing that their rulings and understandings don't have a sound scriptural basis. A lot of which, he says, is the product of the heavy influence of medieval interpretations that came at the zenith of Islamic civilizations, and are now misused to try and solve modern problems. And of course, he is one of the first to recognize and publicly advocate that a lot of the "Islamic" practices which are under the greatest scrutiny today, actually are very much composed with that "bad" cholesterol of culture and not so much of reflective of Islamic principles.

What I take from Ramadan is that our thought need be dynamic. It must be fluid enough to be in harmony with completely new scientific discoveries and to adjust to accommodate new techniques to deal with the new social ills that communities will face a hundred years from now. This is not to say that we must accordingly adjust our thought to perfectly model these parameters, no--but it will do so simply by virtue of being dynamic. Islam inherently has this quality, it just needs to be allowed to re-surface. Unfortunately, the current disconnect comes from at least in part, the understanding of Islamic law, which Ramadan in many of his works refers too. So from here on out I'm going to leave myself to the sharks and give my 2 cents (not adjusted for biased inflation) about Islamic law. If I'm thinking out loud too loud, don't hesitate to tell me ;).

Anyways, I've observed that Islamic law is described by a few banner terms, two of the most prominent being fiqh (فقه) and shari'ah (شريعة). The latter term is meant to describe, literally, the pathway. It refers to an immutable, eternal way to God. A code of ethics and life which is prescribed by God for the complete social, political and spiritual perfection of the Muslim world, if not for mankind. The former term, fiqh is often used interchangeably with the latter, shar'iah. That is, at least where I see the beginning of the problem.

Fiqh is not immutable. It is not the pristine, unchanging reality of shari'ah, but rather, fiqh is our best approximation to shari'ah and because of that, the methods of approximation will always differ and be changing. They will improve, be refined and updated to deal with new challenges that society will gradually come to face. Its not a contradiction that shar'iah is unchanging and that fiqh isn't. Shari'ah represents to us that eternal truth or haqq (حق), and is something defined and ordered by God, while fiqh is something designed and arranged by us, in order to reach that perfection. Maybe its the process of improving and amending fiqh that is spiritual, that is to be religiously observant or cognizant of God's law. If Shari'ah is a constant reality, then when we search for the only constant reality that exists in human society or human endeavor the only equivalent that we will be able to find is that of change. In this discussion we can be ease because we do not pollute the purity of truth with our own shortcomings nor do we create a rigid arena of religion in which we are bound by the time and space in which thoughts are developed.

Do I mean that we should burn all the legal codexes of Islamic scholars, past and present? Should we open the gates of ijtihad to every single Ahmad, Ali and Mahmoud? No. Lets begin to listen to the Tariq Ramadans of the world. The sincere people who have done the research and who want nothing more than for the Muslim world to be empowered and free once again. Scholarship is a big part of our religion. But scholarship has quality controls, its always engaged in debate and a technical battle of the best ideas but willingly (and happily) reconciles itself against the great moral and ethical message of the Qur'an and Sunnah. And it has a very important responsibility to lead and educate the people in order to strengthen their belief and to show them the path of righteousness and piety. That effort in itself must consider the element of time and circumstance. Contextual approaches need to considered more than ever and acontextual properties need to undergo a rigorous re-examination.

Muslims are amongst the few faithful communities that have in them an inherent integrity when it comes to discussing and practicing their faith. We walk into the halls of power and academia confident that Islam is in complete harmony with rationalism and science. We are not constrained by being inherently sinful, unable to right our own wrongs unless we blindly accept a certain mystical premise. For us, God isn't an obstacle in our way to greatness and prosperity but the great encouragement and the ethos of motivation. This is the spirit of Islam. We need to find it (as it relates to understanding our laws and customs). A great scholar once told me that when the light coming from a lamp is dim, when you go investigate why that is so, you will find on the surface of the bulb (the source of light) some dust. It is not the problem of the light itself that it is dim, its simply a matter of removing the dust for that light to illuminate naturally. We too need to realize that maybe, just maybe, that there might be a thin, or even a thick layer of dust on our legal understanding of Islam.

This weekend McMaster hosted its second annual global citizenship conference beginning Friday evening. I actually found out about it on the Thursday from a friend who I bumped into on campus who told me that Ignatieff was going to deliver a talk on campus. Iggy was giving the key-note to open the conference. I am huge Ignatieff fan and he is the official reason why my political blood is red again. Thats not to say I cling myself to his each and every word or policy suggestion--no not at all, but Ignatieff is an intellectual who has a wealth of experience in global culture and a really authentic understanding of foreign policy. Hes a real frameworks person and although its pretty clear that has hurt him thus far in politics, few have his skill set and even fewer have the ability to make decisions like does or have the type of political poise that he has. I'm definitely going to devote more blogs entries about Iggy later on. But back to his talk and the conference.

So he spoke really well, defining the spirit of global citizenship and how we are forced to reconcile that with those local affinities that are much more natural to us as history tells us. He expressed some concern about how those affinities to race, nationality, culture and religion often undermine global citizenship, fermenting fanaticism and are prone to always overlook the common good. That's true but definitely a weak statement when left without any qualifiers which Ignatieff didn't offer. So after his talk he had a book signing which I thought was a perfect time to pick up his famed Massey lectures, "The Lesser Evil," an added chance jab that thought he left unprotected in his talk, i.e. the localized affinities undermining global citizenship. When I came up to him, I told him that I don't believe global citizenship is such a revolutionary idea that goes against our conscious associative practices, sure we've never been this connected before but human thought always shares in it many of the same truths. Don't we often conclude that we're much more alike than originally thought? So global citizenship, if defined properly really should harmoniously transcend those local affinities. He kind of liked what I said but was way too tired to care all that much about it. To lighten the mood I told him how much I enjoyed watching the leadership race and how upset I was when I saw that he lost; adding finally that it was nice to see an intellectual finally make it in to parliament which his wife found kind of funny.

That was part one of the conference for me. Part two involved my actual participation which kind of was loosely defined a week ago, was on the brink of falling apart by Friday and then revived last minute. I was a panelist on a discussion entitled, "The anti-war movement and the Muslim world" at which I was to discuss Islamophobia on behalf of MMPJ. I was paired up with three veteran anti-war, peace activists leaders from the Hamilton-Burlington Area. My job was to be the "Muslim Voice". I'm going to post up my notes for my talk, neatly tuned to fit as a nice post so I don't have to unnecessarily make this post uber-long like I'm way too much in the habit of doing.

But the general feel of the discussion was good. Most of the attendees were Muslims at this particular discussion, about 40 to 50 people showed up. That's pretty good considering that there were other workshops, panel discussions and lectures going on simultaneously. After the discussion, a few people really liked my talk and came up to chat with me. I met a guy who had held a workshop a few hours earlier on his tour of West Africa with Engineers without Borders discussing (I think) a bunch of issues relating to sustainability, water purification etc etc. We had an interesting chat about the Muslim world and how he had lived with a Muslim family in Malawi for about a year. African culture sits really well with Islam, he told me. The absence of a real hierarchic clergy and first amongst equals kind of mentality really eases tensions with other faiths, as he observed at least in the few countries he visited. He brought up some really interesting issues about how there are quite of few young, western, unseasoned kids in Africa fresh out of school influencing and making policy decisions in rural communities that have a major impact on the development effort--a lot of it not so much for the better. He also told me about the typical Muslim treatment he got when entering the United States to deliver a talk at some schools in the Bay Area since his passports has been blackened by entry visas into states where Muslims are either a majority or a sizable minority. Just goes to show you how far certain policies reach. But a really delightful person. We chatted for more than two hours after noticing we share the same interests in development and welfare economics. Good times.

And you know what? That's the best part of it all. Conferences or events like this are a real exercise in being a part of that market place of ideas. Its really refreshing to be amidst people who want to explore different thoughts and problems, sharing research and academic interests, posing different questions and trying to destroy the confidence of past premises in order to build newer, logically sound constructs. That spirit of criticism is never sweeter and never more appropriate than at such venues. I'm really glad to have been apart of it and hope to do so again.