The ZamZam Cooler

Prospect and Foreign Affairs Magazine held their second Top 100 Intellectuals poll in July 2008.

Unusually, the top 10 vote getters were all Muslims. But the peculiarity is now easily explainable: it turns out, most of the top 10 included a link to the poll on their personal or professional websites, effectively channeling their site traffic into votes. If only we could figure out away to be that clever in our politics ;)

Here is a list of the top 10:

1 Fethullah Gülen

2 Muhammad Yunus

3 Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

4 Orhan Pamuk

5 Aitzaz Ahsan

6 Amr Khaled

7 Abdolkarim Soroush

8 Tariq Ramadan

9 Mahmood Mamdani

10 Shirin Ebadi

This is my response to a discussion about PNG posted on facebook.

I think we all must admit – the influence of a scholastic community as revered as the maraja’a of Shi’i Islam extends well past the mundane issues of ritual and jurisprudence, whether they define such a restrictive boundary for themselves or not. People will invariably seek to extrapolate from their edicts and suggestions explanations and guidance on a plethora of issues outside of the legal hair-splitting agenda. So, at the very least, our maraja’a ought to be conscious of, if not liable for, the requests from its follwership to muse the package of political, social and economic challenges they face (in there many diverse manifestations). And hopefully, offer commentary on its religious implications in an insightful and not doctrinaire manner. It is in this respect, I contend that our marja’a have generally been neglectful. One major qualification I mention (of many omitted): I understand the limits and constraints as well as the unfair expectations cast upon any religious leadership (Br. Ali Assar rightfully pointed this out). And it is for such a reason why I prefer these provinces of human life to be free from the unilateral dictates of religious authorities. But the powerful strictures imposed by the consensus of the hawzeh on anyone who dissents from its opinions or silence not only evades the problems at hand, but disproportionately places the burden back onto the hawzeh alone to provide solutions for complex and inherently inter-disciplinary problems – an endeavor which is certain to be over-taxing and unfair to place on the hawzeh to deal with alone. Debates on how diverse issues -- in finance, culture, philosophy, politics and representation, social life, science, technology, and others -- intersect with faith require more than the theologically myopic opinions currently on display. Hence, my suggestion to encourage free-thought in order to develop a shared authority on issues of importance to Shi'is.

I applaud Fadhlallah for being exceptional. He, unlike his peers, seems to lay great emphasis on daily challenges trust upon his followership and is keenly aware of both the unique environment from where they emerge and the nature of the problem, not its superficial consequences. He addresses them as he can while encouraging people to permit reason and an attention to circumstance to govern their lives (at least, this is how I receive his messages).

On final note: this discussion or anything like it cannot be interpreted to be tantamount to a disloyalty to faith. Suggestions like those merely corroborate what I was saying in the first place: an intolerance of reason. There is a tendency to wield the common “specialist argument”: our lack of expertise on a subject should prevent our discussion and exploration of such a topic. Please note, my thoughts are not intended to somehow eclipse or form an authoritative account of what ought to be. It is merely what I hope to be a positive and healthy contribution to a discussion so absent in our community.