Politics of religious knowledge

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Politics of religious knowledge
Ahmad Ali Khalid

The bitter truth for the liberals to concede is that ijtihad has been and can easily be used for conservative ends and conservative means. Thus, there needs to be a systematic exposition of the liberals' vision of ijtihad to counter any possible conservative assertions about it

In liberal circles of religious scholarship there is a contention that 'ijtihad' is the tool that will solve all our grapples and puzzles of establishing a suitable religiosity for our time, which accepts human rights, democracy, freedom and economic development.

Ijtihad is elevated from its formal place as a mere tool of legal reasoning restricted in the classical tradition to books of law, to that of an intellectual principle and a citadel of a rational religiosity. Ijtihad indeed forms part of the rationalist tradition of Islam and as such is the natural ally for reformists and liberals in the Muslim world. But ijtihad, which means intellectual exertion and in a technical sense juridical adjudication to solve legal problems, which have no precedent in the normative texts or in the jurists' corpus is not naturally a tool for liberals.

Ijtihad can also be illiberal and can also be disastrous; one can argue that the totally unprecedented phenomenon of violent extremism instigated by demagogues and ideologues is indeed ijtihad gone tragically wrong. If ijtihad is taken to mean that all Muslims can interpret their faith as they wish in accordance to what they see as new socio-political circumstances and new contexts, then we must be cautious. After all, conservatives and radicals can forward absolutely shocking and regressive opinions as ijtihad as much as a liberal can forward progressive and enlightened opinions as ijtihad. We need to avoid this anarchism and try and elaborate sensible parameters.

The determination of these parameters in terms of dealing with violent extremism will be easy as violent extremism and radicalism clearly are beyond the pale of Islam and clash with the fundamentals of Islam. The real argument is between the conservatives and liberals/reformists - a form of 'culture wars'.

The bitter truth for the liberals to concede is that ijtihad has been and can easily be used for conservative ends and conservative means. Thus, there needs to be a systematic exposition of the liberals' vision of ijtihad to counter any possible conservative assertions about it.

The one who does ijtihad is a mujtahid. Hence the question still remains: what ijtihad is, whose ijtihad is valid, who has the authority to carry it out, what are the qualifications of it, how can we institutionalise it and do we need to rethink the classical notions of ijtihad? Perhaps the most important question is: who has the right to carry out ijtihad? We need to answer these questions to reach a sensible consensus to distinguish between intellectual anarchy and truly enlightened understanding of religion. How do we establish a framework of determining whether a certain tendency of reasoning and deliberation of the religious sources is acceptable? Or do we simply rely on political convenience, and drag the religious discourse as the conservatives have towards a crass utilitarianism? In short, who speaks for the legal discourse in Islam, and how do classical notions of authority clash with the liberals' call for a comprehensive ijtihad?

These are all pressing questions. Prominent reformist intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush calls for an ijtihad on ijtihad itself. Many others say that the classical notions of ijtihad that the clergy have constructed as a purely legal notion to do with fiqh need to be abandoned. There needs to be a more expansive ijtihad, and if this is the case then the liberals and reformists have to quickly ground this new type of ijtihad on the normative texts of the faith. There are many other Muslim reformists and liberals grappling with these questions of modernity and reform. A discourse, which we can term as 'reformist Islam', is dealing frankly with these questions of change, modernity and reform.

Though there is agreement among liberals and progressive scholars on expanding the notion of ijtihad as a principle of intellectual change, the free exchange of ideas and encompassing fields other than law such as philosophy, theology and the social sciences. There can be an ijtihad in theology, Quranic hermeneutics, religious interpretation, usual al-fiqh - in short there can be total reconstruction of the Islamic tradition when put into critical conversation with other traditions and phenomena.

Hence liberals conceive ijtihad almost as a tool of intellectual liberation, freeing the believer from the shackles of retrograde traditionalism whilst appropriating the fundamentals of the faith with parts of the tradition that are deemed acceptable whilst putting the Islamic traditions in critical conversation with modernity. Ijtihad has become from being a humble legal tool to a way of thinking as a powerful idea for reform. Hence Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, the rationalism of the Mu'tazilites, to the powerful spirituality of Sufi poets can all be deemed as that quest for knowledge on the path of ijtihad. Furthermore, ijtihad is deemed as an evidence of Islam's inherent respect for the robust workings of human reason.

However, conservatives and traditionalists regard ijtihad as something far more mundane, a mere tool for solving unprecedented legal problems. Not even legal problems that have been pronounced on can be reconsidered by some traditionalists. Ijtihad is not a way of thinking; it is subsumed under a conservative and traditionalist framework and as such is subservient and thoroughly restricted by the parameters set up by the clergy and traditionalists. Conservative ijtihad is trapped by limits and penalties.The importance of ijtihad they can conceive is important. However, traditionalists argue that liberals are merely using ijtihad as a guise for harmful innovation (bid'ah). Hence the age-old debate in terms of distinguishing bid'ah from ijtihad, creativity from heresy has been re-ignited. This is a delicate debate. What is creativity and what is heresy? There has always been a fine line between heresy and creativity in Islam and trying to determine that line now is perhaps harder than ever.

Reconciling the issue of ijtihad is a much-needed resolution in the current Pakistani encounter with modernity. Whilst the ulema have erected socially constructed and restrictive parameters and contours on the question of ijtihad to guard their sphere of religious exclusivity, the liberals and progressives have never really come to grips with the issue of ijtihad in relation to multiple traditions in law, ethics and political thought in Islam and to that of modernity. When is ijtihad not valid and when is it heresy? When is it regressive and when is it progressive? When does it adhere to the spirit of Islam, and when does it violate it?

It is clear that the classical definition of ijtihad is too restrictive and does not take into account advances in human knowledge in other domains. Iqbal regarded ijtihad quite clearly as an intellectual attitude, calling it the principle movement in the structure in Islam. Pakistan is today grappling with extremism and needs progress on a political, economic and religious level.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at ahmadalikhalid@ ymail.com