Islam Today

Islam is a way of life and when it comes in contact with unknown people in unknown places there is a chemistry of change. There is a new set of thinking and practices that people accepting Islam adopt. For example, the distinction between the sacred and the profane assumes significance as the people new to Islam begin to learn Islam. Alcohol and promiscuity are profane and hence forbidden. But when Muslims migrate to places which are alien to Islam they develop what Lee Harris calls ‘defense mechanism’. Muslims naturally want to defend themselves from things like alcohol and promiscuity. Veiling women is an attempt to forestall what would lead to temptation and beyond. Muslims are under siege in a cultural survival. But in the case of war and conquest, at least in the early years, force alone did not change much. The most beloved uncle of the prophet did not accept Islam altogether; almost all the others did. The result accordingly is “a total and revolutionary transformation in the culture of those conquered or converted.”


However, the west still views Islam with skepticism bordering on hostility. Harris himself speaks of self defense mechanism as fanaticism of Islam and rational explanation of world phenomenon of Islam as “fanaticism of reason”. There is Noam Chomsky who believes that the Muslims are victims of an evil system and are not terrorists themselves. Then there is Paul Wolfwitz who blames the medieval Dark Age kingdoms in the Middle East for terrorism. Neither Harris in his book “The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the Enlightenment” nor Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book “Infidel” is ready to accept the fanaticism of reason. Both are irked by the rational apologetics of the western leaders. Even so Harris views Islam in America as admirable for the individual’s choice of faith is his or her personal matter. Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the other hand feels disturbed by the import of immigrants’ legacy of the distant Islam; in particular what she calls “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.”


There are mixed incidents of the last critique of Islam. Recently a father killed his daughter for not wearing the hijab. Aksa Parvez, 16, lived in a Toronto suburb. She would be wearing loose garment and veil herself while in house but remove the hijab and wear more fashionable westernized dress when she went to college. Her devout father strangulated her for not wearing the scarf. Even so the father did not look sufficiently into the other injunctions of the Koran where it is asserted that there is no compulsion in religion. Mohammad Parves, 57, of Pakistani origin, acted more tribal than religious. Individualism of belief in America seems not to have crossed borders. Moreover the ijtehad or individual’s independent reasoning in a critical context that is allowable in religious matters is suppressed for the sake of mere outward conformity. What better instance of suicide of reason than denying the allowable and not keeping patience! Giving time and patience and more careful upbringing would have prevented what was lost in a whirl of social pressure and conformity. This traumatic experience does not bode well for any, but only reiterates “the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females.” No denying that it is constructed into the textual fabric of faith but must be looked at in the larger mosaic of the designs of the fabric to make a splendid picture of faith. It should be much like the Cordoba, Spain, mosque, splendour of breath taking sight produced by the warmth of faith and prayerfulness.