Dear Brothers & Sisters -In-Islam,
Al-salaamu alaykum wa rahmat-Allaahi wa barakaatuhu (Peace be upon you,
and the mercy of Allaah and His blessings).
Last weekend I forwarded to the list,the "Adulteress Diary" by
S.L.Sanusi,today,In the interest of fairplay,I am forwarding a critical
essay on the diary by Bahir Aliyu Umar for you to get both sides of the
argument/debate on Sharia Law,and then a right of reply by the author of the
diary.The implications are enormous for the whole continent as the old
saying goes when America sneezes,the rest of the world catches pneumonia,the
same can be said of Nigeria.So be my guest and read on. No matter what side
of the argument win your vote you will end up wiser and better informed.
Have a nice weekend.

Still on that “Adulteress’ Diary”

By

Bashir Aliyu Umar

[Islamic University of Madina, Saudi Arabia]

Although it may appear belated, I feel it is essential to still go ahead and
make this contribution, even if to assist clearing possible confusion that
might have been caused by the ‘Adulteress’ diary’ written by Sanusi Lamido.

The original article, even if given the benefit of the doubt that it was not
an attempt to ridicule the Islamic Shari’ah, it has nevertheless succeeded
in ridiculing the fuqaha, the expounders of the Islamic Shari’ah, and the
torch-bearers and repositories of the Islamic intellectual, moral and
spiritual tradition throughout the history of the Islamic nation. Lamido
himself has conceded that he wrote the article to ridicule the
implementation of the Shari’ah in Nigeria. There is no doubt that the
implementation of the Shari’ah, being the actions of mortals lends itself t
o criticism; but its connection to Allah and His Messenger, peace be on him
does not allow a Muslim to ridicule it. As Muslims who believe that we will
be held to account by Allah for our deeds, we have to observe an ethical
code in our writings. If a person is bent on showing a literary prowess by
his ability to use satire, then let him look for themes other than those
connected with the religion of Allah or Muslims as individuals if indeed he
believes in Allah and the Hereafter. This is the secret behind many verses
of the Qur’an ending with the phrase: ‘if indeed you believe in Allah and
the Last Day’. It shows that as Muslims we are constrained to observe a code
of behaviour in our words and actions, by virtue of our Iman in Allah and
the Last Day. Ibn Qutaibah, himself an outstanding literati, when refuting
the works of the famous literary Mu’tazili Al-Jahiz, who in his literary
acrobatics and exploits would among other things mention a saying of the
Prophet, peace be o n him, side by side with the vulgar statements of such
godless people as Al-Jammaz and Isma’il bin Ghazwan; and who would mention
the arguments of the Christian polemics against the Muslims, and when he
comes to refute them the refutation would be so mild and empty that it is as
though he was only out to point out to the Christians what they did not
know, and create doubts in the hearts of feeble-minded Muslims; Ibn Qutaibah
said to him: if a person knew that his statements are indeed counted among
his actions, he would only say what will be of benefit to him…and then he
mentioned the famous ode of Al-Rayyashi: do not put into writing anything
except what you will be happy to see in the Hereafter. See Ta’wil Mukhtafil
Hadith (p 58). Mockery is in itself haram, but ridiculing the Ulama (the
malamai as he calls them) and portraying them as being insincere in their
narrations of the Prophet’s sayings, making a picture of them as people out
to administer doses of the people’s opium to the oppressed in order to
sedate them from reacting against the oppression of the powerful and the
bourgeoisie and the male chauvinists (this itself is a remnant of a Marxist
influence whose ghost has been pursuing Lamido, and it is high time for him
to shake it off as a Muslim especially one who writes about issues
pertaining to Islam), that is more serious, let alone using terms as
‘fanatics’ and what have you to describe people engaged in a work commanded
by Allah and His Messenger, peace be on him, as he did for the people of the
Hisba corps. A person would be everything the kuffar wanted him to be when
he starts using these appellations on Muslims, or is at pains to create by
all means a ‘Brother Jero’ theme out of the Ulama (i.e. Scholars) or
institutions of Islam. Allah says in the Qur’an: “O you who believe Let not
some men among you mock others; it may be that the (latter) are better than
the (former); nor let some women mock others: it may be that the (latter)
are better than the (former). Do not defame, nor be sarcastic to each other,
nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames. How bad it is to use a name
connoting evil on one after he has believed And those who do not desist are
indeed the wrong-doers, the unjust” (Suratul Hujurat 49:11). And the
Prophet, peace be on him, said: ‘A Muslim is sanctified and inviolable to
another Muslim in terms of his life, property and honour’. The Ulama are
especially inviolable as Ibn Asakir, a famous hadith scholar of the sixth
Hijra century said: ‘Know that the flesh of the Ulama is deadly poison, and
the custom of Allah in debasing the one who seeks to degrade them is
well-known…’

Secondly there are a number of themes that recur consistently in several of
Lamido’s articles on issues pertaining to Islam. The first is what I
observed to be a very negative attitude towards the early Ulama, the Imams
of Ijtihad, especially when they take judicial positions contrary to what he
feels are the right ones. They are at once in his sight concocting a law and
saying that it is a law of Allah, or they are to him men living in some
foreign land, and their statements are so undemocratic and so male
chauvinistic as not to include the voice of women, or that they are so
bourgeoisie as to carefully extricate their fellow bourgeois from the crime
of theft and let only the unfortunate poor and oppressed bear the brunt of
the law, or  ‘they are men, who hide behind the lie of being loyal to the
past to perpetuate the crimes of our present and escape’ this last he says
regarding our scholars, whoever he means by that. First of all, we are all
agreed on the fact that there is no theocracy in Islam; there is no clergy
that holds ecumenical councils to decide what the law of Allah is. In Islam
the law of Allah is not made by men, contrary to what obtains in
Christianity, as the Qur’an itself clearly asserts regarding the people of
the Book: ‘they take their rabbis and their priests as lords beside Allah,
and the Messiah son of Mary; while they were commanded to worship Allah
alone, there is no deity worthy of being worshipped but He’. When Adiy bin
Hatim on hearing this verse protested to the Prophet, peace be on him, that
the Christians do not worship their priests as asserted by the Qur’an, he,
the Prophet, peace be on him said: ‘do they not make permissible for them
what is prohibited, and prohibit for them what is permissible?’ Adiy replied
in the affirmative, and the Prophet, peace be on him, said: ‘this is their
worship to them’. In Islam the law of Allah is preserved in the Book of
Allah (The Qur’an) and the life practice and sayings of His Prophet, peace
be on him (The Hadith). The Ulama simply expound the law of Allah as
contained in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and apply it to situations on the
basis of analogical reasoning and other patterns of reasoning firmly
established in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, and in this
exercise, they are most worthy of holding to the admonishment of Allah: ‘And
do not say concerning what your tongues falsely put forth: ‘this is lawful
and this is unlawful’ so as to invent lies against Allah. Surely, those who
invent lies against Allah will never prosper’.

The Ulama nor matter their position of knowledge and fear of God are not
infallible, and we do not sanctify them from errors in their judgements,
contrary to the twelver Shi’ites. But the Ulama, the Imams of Ijtihad are
certainly sanctified from following their vain desires in expounding the law
of Allah, because that is the very basis of Ijtihad. Ijtihad is exerting
one’s utmost in knowing the judgements of the law of Allah, and among its
most important pre-requisites is justice that precludes following one’s
desires. Another is knowledge of the fundamental objectives of the law of
Allah, the Maqasid al Shari’ah. These fundamental objectives, which the law
of Allah is always set to achieve are: protection of the deen, life, wealth,
intellect and progeny. These are absolute necessities, and whatever will
establish them firmly and procure them is regarded as benefit that must be
procured, and whatever will negate them or impair them is regarded as harm
that must be removed. The other aspects of these objectives are what are
regarded as the removal of difficulty and bringing about ease, the so-called
Hajiyyaat; and what are regarded as the attainment of excellent patterns of
behaviour, and leaving what all sound intellects regard as improper
behaviour, the so-called Tahsiniyyat or Kamaliyyat. There are several other
details regarding the fundamental objectives of the Shari’ah that constitute
a whole field of study to which several books have been devoted.  The legal
positions of the outstanding scholars of the various schools of Islamic fiqh
must be seen within this context in order to understand the law of Allah
within its proper context. Lamido is well aware of some of these fundamental
objectives; he even made mention of them in some of his writings. However he
has refused to see the legal positions of the early fuqaha within that
context. Instead he chose to see their positions sometimes from a leftist
perspective, in which case they are to him what would tantamount to be
bourgeoisie or their agents; and sometimes from a feminist perspective, in
which case they are to him male chauvinists oppressing the feeble women folk
as his statements in this recent article show. This is what is called zulm,
injustice: putting things in their wrong positions. Among the fuqaha there
were some who took a position that was absolutely wrong. That position
despite the fact that it was not regarded as a different opinion, thereby
giving it the sanction of being worthy of being followed, nevertheless the
said scholar was not attributed to following his desires, he was simply said
to have erred. As an example I can think of none other than that of Ibn
Abbas, the Prophet’s paternal cousin and a scholar with an encyclopaedic
knowledge of the deen to the extent that he was nicknamed: the ocean,
because of his vast knowledge. It is well known that he alone among the
companions of the Prophet, peace be on him, regarded temporary marriage as
being lawful, in contrast to the position held by the rest of the companions
that its lawfulness was abrogated. The position of Ibn Abbas is not cited as
a different opinion in the matter, because it was wrong; as the Prophet,
peace be on him, is confirmed to have abrogated the lawfulness of temporary
marriage in several confirmed traditions. However, no one described Ibn
Abbas as being subscribing to a view that regarded women as mere chattels.
Another example is that of the same Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with
him, regarding ribal fadl, a form of usury prohibited by the Prophet, peace
be on him. Ibn Abbas regarded it as lawful. The opinion of Ibn Abbas is not
counted as a different opinion, but rather a wrong one, because it went
against a confirmed saying of the Prophet, peace be on him.  Nevertheless,
who but a die-hard Marxist would regard Ibn Abbas as one striving to protect
the interest of the economically powerful class by this juristic position of
his .

The argument that Lamido has launched on the position of the Maliki school
of fiqh, which regards pregnancy in a woman who does not have a husband as a
reason for inflicting the punishment of zina on her unless she establishes
the basis of the pregnancy not being from zina, or proof of rape, is so
clouded by feminist sensationalism as to render it to say the least
non-scholarly. This same type of feminist sensationalism was used to reject
a confirmed Prophetic hadith reported in the two Sahih collections. Writings
of such eminent ‘Muslim’ female feminists were cited; I mean by that Fatima
Mernissi, who as a Moroccan could be claimed to have some knowledge of the
deen. But the reality is that going by what the review of one of her books
which I read in the internet says, she is no doubt an apostate if what was
said in the said review was indeed her statement, because of the terrible
and derogatory remarks she made concerning the very person of the Prophet,
peace be on him, which I cannot permit myself to quote under any
circumstances.

I wonder why these feminists only find an arena of their activism in freeing
women from what they regard as oppression in the name of Islam. Where are
they from the oppression of women by the sex industry? I read an interview
in the website of CNN with a porno star, and it was pathetic how these poor
women are oppressed and virtually enslaved by the gurus of this terrible
industry. The American economy spent 14 billion dollars in 1997 on
pornography. I bet going by that interview the total of what these
unfortunate sluts made did not amount to a millionth of that amount. Where
are these feminists from the plight of young girls in our universities that
are being constantly harassed sexually by their lecturers? I heard the
plight of one young fresh year girl who would not flirt around with her
lecturers, and was bent on maintaining her chastity. She was so frustrated
that she considered dropping out of the university, till she was guided to a
trick of giving the irresponsible lecturers gifts in order to leave her
alone to pursue her studies successfully. I remember a bunch of rogues in
Samaru campus (ABU Zaria) in the early eighties, who were always present
during the summer term when new intakes into the SBS were coming into the
universities. They were purported to be engaged in targeting innocent young
female freshers to beguile them into a life of sexual pleasures and loss of
their chastity. May be the protection of the chastity of women is not in the
agenda of feminist activism.

The second theme that consistently recurs in Lamido’s writings is what I see
as an attempt to obscure the fact that there is an absolute and
transcendental truth in Islam. The western world view which out of its
fanatical and fundamentalist belief in relativity extends it to all spheres
of universal phenomena, both physical and non-physical, do not see anything
as absolute, and regards everything as relative. This has influenced Lamido,
and as such you see him when faced with texts from the Qur’an and Sunnah, at
once citing the issue of contextualization, to pounce against the absolute
proofs contained in those texts. At other times, he cites the differences of
opinions to show that the whole matter is relative to the way one sees it as
though he is saying: well, others have differed before, so since there are
differences of opinions every one is thus entitled to his own opinion. He
does this even where the contrary opinion cited is a wrong opinion and not a
different one, because there is a lot of difference in Usul from an opinion
that is wrong and one that is a different point of view as I will soon point
out. The most surprising of these tendencies is when he discriminates
between the proofs cited in the Qur’an and those cited in the Sunnah, as
though there are things that could only be established by the Qur’an and not
the Sunnah.

Before examining these tendencies, let me first briefly make this preamble.
There is truth and it is for real, and the realisation of its existence is
an innate human quality. That is why even without revelation human beings
quest after the truth as is evident from the quest of the philosophers of
Jahiliyya to reach it. This is as far as human experience is concerned. In
the Qur’an Allah says: “Mankind was one single nation (then they differed),
and Allah sent Messengers as bearers of glad tidings and warners; and with
them He sent The Book in truth to judge between people in matters wherein
they differed…” (Baqarah 2:213). This shows that mankind throughout their
history differ in their quest after the truth, and the thing that would take
them to the truth is the Book that Allah revealed to the Messengers. If the
Book were to lead them to further difference’s, we would have ended up with
a vicious circle.

Also Allah says: “In whatsoever you differ, the judgement thereof is with
Allah”(42:10). And He says: “And if you differ in anything among yourselves,
refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if you do believe in Allah and the Last
Day”(4:59). These verses show that the truth is one, and whenever there are
differences, referring them to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His
Prophet, peace be on him, which is the meaning of referring to Allah and His
Messenger, will lead to the truth and end differences. If the truth were
relative, this would not be the case. Therefore, the existence of different
opinions in a matter does not show that there is no absolute truth in the
matter; it only shows that people do differ and will differ in their efforts
to arrive at the truth. Neither does it give a follower the choice of
following whatever opinion he likes based on his desires, because that will
negate the essence of religion, which is to prevent the individual from
following mere whims and desires. What is obligatory on a person is to
strive to arrive at the truth based on established evidence, and if he is
not able to do that, to ask whom in his opinion is most knowledgeable and
God-fearing. When Malik and Laith bin Sa’ad were asked about the differences
of opinions of the Prophet’s companions they both said: ‘It is not as people
say: there is ease in this or that and one could follow whichever one likes;
but in fact there is a right opinion and there is a wrong one, therefore one
has to strive to arrive at what is right’. In another narration Malik said:
‘A person would not be safe until he conforms to the right judgement: two
opposite opinions cannot both be correct; Truth can only be one’. The ease
that is there in the differences of opinions of the great scholars is that
there is ease in striving one’s utmost to use his opinion in order to arrive
at the truth based on evidence from the Book, the Sunnah, the Concensus of
the Muslim scholars and correct analogical reasoning based on facts, if he
can do ijtihad. If the truth is not clear to him, then he should abstain
from telling people what the judgement of Allah is based on mere conjecture
or choice without reason. He could on his own follow what he feels is the
truth because as the Prophet, peace be on him said: ‘the right action is
what puts your heart at rest, and a wrong action is what worries you in your
heart’ and he said: ‘leave what you are in doubt, and act with what you are
not in doubt’.

So it can be seen that simply citing the existence of differences of
opinions is no licence for a person to do what he likes. This is the case
for those opinions that are based on proper ijtihad. But opinions that are
not based on proper ijtihad are not even worthy of mention, let alone worthy
of consideration as different opinions, because they are wrong from the
onset. This is the case for all opinions that go against a manifest ruling
of the Qur’an or Sunnah, or the consensus of the Muslim scholars, as the
famous adage of the Fuqaha says: there is no ijtihad when there is a
manifest ruling from a text of the Qur’an or Sunnah, and another that says:
any analogical reasoning that contradicts a text from the Qur’an or Sunnah
is unworthy of consideration. Based on this, there is no scholarly basis of
Lamido’s citation of what he called the view of some early jurists
particularly among the Kharijites who reject the ruling of stoning an
adulterer, and see the distinction between fornication and adultery as
baseless innovation, although he failed to mention even one among those
jurists. This is nothing but sensationalism. It is as though he is saying:
you see, there are dissident views, by no less than the politically radical
Kharijites who reject the mainstream ‘orthodox’ view subscribed to by the
majority. This type of assertion and argument would have some basis, if
there were orthodoxy in Islam. It would have some basis if the truth in
Islam were decided by ecumenical councils that convene to decide what
orthodoxy is and what heresy is, as is done in Christianity or other
religions. Then it would be quite possible to say that this being the
decision of mere mortals, it is possible that the dissenters are the ones on
the right path, just as we do postulate that it is quite possible that the
gospels of the Arians and Donatists or other Unitarian Christians that are
lumped together among the apocrypha are the real and true gospels, rather
than the canonical ones accepted by the Nicene Council. In Islam the truth
is not decided by men, it is the record of what was brought and practiced by
the Prophet, peace be on him, and what he left his community on. You do not
have to gather men to decide what that is. That is why you find a scholar
following the Sunnah in the eastern-most part of Khorasan saying the same
thing regarding Islamic belief and practice as another in the western-most
part of Andalusia, and they may never have met, or they may even be
separated by centuries. This is what Abul Muzaffar Al-Sam’ani said
describing the Ahl Al Sunnah. This is why our scholars speak of those that
deviate (I do not want to use the word ‘sect’ because of its peculiar
Christian connotation), that is they deviate from the Prophetic legacy, and
the Prophet, peace be on him informed us about them. The Kharijites are one
of those because they deviated from the Prophetic legacy by regarding anyone
who commits a wrong action that does not amount to rejecting the faith as an
apostate, and they see it as perfectly justified to wage war on the Muslim
community, because according to them they are guilty of apostasy. As a
result of this they rejected a large amount of the Prophetic Sunnah because
they regarded its narrators as apostates, and in its place they put in
authority their opinions without any illuminations from revelation.
Therefore, citing the position of the Kharijites as a different opinion
worthy of consideration on a matter in which it goes clearly against what is
established by the Prophetic Sunnah is telling us to accept deviation as
something worthy of consideration. This is despite the fact that when the
Prophet, peace be on him, issued a verdict of stoning on an adulteress he
said clearly: By Allah I will judge between you by the Book of Allah. This
was reported in the two Sahih collections.  When a young hired shepherd
committed zina with the wife of his employer, and the father of the boy
reached an agreement with the employer that the boy was to pay the sum of a
hundred heads of sheep to the employer, people of knowledge told him that
that was not the judgement of Allah, so he went to the Prophet, peace be on
him and asked him to judge between them with the Book of Allah. The Prophet,
peace be on him said: By Allah! I will surely judge between you by the Book
of Allah: the heads of sheep are to be returned to you, and the boy is to be
given a hundred lashes and banished away from home for one year, and then he
said to a man named Unais: go to the wife of this man (the employer) if she
confesses (to committing adultery) stone her to death. So you can see that
the Prophet, peace be on him has declared that stoning to death is a
judgement by the Book of Allah. If it is said: how come this is a judgement
by the Book of Allah, while we recite the Book of Allah and this is not
mentioned in it? The answer is one of two things or both: this judgement is
in the Book of Allah in reality, but its recitation has been abrogated with
the ruling entailed by it still maintained, as was reported on the authority
of Umar, and there is nothing problematic in it to entail its being
discounted as Lamido inferred, because this type of thing has its authority
from the Qur’an. The second thing is that it is in the Book of Allah by
inference, because the Prophet, peace be on him judged by it, and there is
no distinction between the Prophet’s judgement as recorded in the Sunnah,
and a judgement pronounced by the Qur’an. A similar thing is when Abdullah
bin Mas’ud cursed the women who joined their hair with artificial hair for
beauty, and he was asked why, he said: why should I not curse the one cursed
by the Messenger of Allah peace and blessings of Allah be on him, while he
is at the same time accursed in the Book of Allah? His wife said: I have
read the Qur’an from cover to cover, and this is something I cannot find in
it. He said to her: If indeed you have read the Qur’an then you have found
it, and he recited the verse: ‘whatever the Prophet gives you take it, and
whatever he forbids you, refrain from it’(59:7). This shows that the
companions of the Prophet, peace be on him, never made any distinction
between what is established in the Book of Allah and what is established by
the practice of the Prophet, peace be on him, and they regard both to be
from Allah. In fact the Prophet, peace be on him warned against making such
a distinction in a prophecy he prophesised, which we are now seeing its
realisation: he said: “let not one of you, lying down after filling his
belly, be informed of an affair with which I have commanded or prohibited,
say: I do not know this, what we find in the Book of Allah that is what we
will follow”. This is the hadith of Abu Rafi. In the hadith of Miqdam, the
Prophet, peace be on him said: “Soon will one of you be informed of a hadith
from me, while he is lying down relaxing, and he will say: the Book of Allah
is between us and you, whatever we find in it lawful that is what we will
regard as lawful, and whatever we find in it unlawful, that is what we will
regard as unlawful. But listen! Whatever the Messenger of Allah makes
unlawful is just like what Allah makes unlawful”. Tirmizi and some other
narrators narrated both hadiths, and they are both confirmed hadiths. He,
peace and blessings of Allah be on him, also said: “I have been given the
Qur’an and with it a similar authority”.

So we can see from this that the argument that stoning to death is not
mentioned in the Qur’an is no proof against this ruling, since it is
mentioned in the Sunnah, and any one who makes a distinction between what is
in the Qur’an and what is in the Sunnah has gone against the above mentioned
hadith, and has followed a way that is typical only of the erring and
deviated groups.

Now coming to the ayah of Suratul Nisa which says: “When they are taken in
wedlock (slave women who are believers), if they commit indecency their
punishment is half that for ‘Muhsanat” (4:25). The Khawarij as Lamido claims
say that ‘Muhsanat’ are married women, and if their punishment were stoning
to death, how could stoning be halved for slave women? This is what Lamido
believes gave our scholars a lot of trouble, and as he claims even one of
our best brains raised more questions than answers in his attempt to redress
the problem. But far from it; all that it did was to show the Khawarij and
their likes that deviated from the Prophetic way in their true colours. The
impeccable ninth-Hijra century scholar Al-Shatibi has shown that one of the
principal reasons for the deviation of the innovators in the Islamic
community is their ignorance of the Arabic language. This particular case is
a glaring illustration of Shatibi’s point. In fact were it not for Lamido’s
insinuations of a cover-up and rejection of a view that he regards as
substantial, I would not go into any details regarding the meaning of this
verse, and it would have sufficed me to simply mention that this erstwhile
substantial view goes against a confirmed Prophetic hadith as well as the
ijma (consensus) of the Prophet’s companions, and that is enough to
discredit it. But his hinting that our scholars take a unilateral position
and make it on their own the law of Allah, in utter disregard of dissenting
opinions which they castigate as opinions of a lost sect that carries no
weight, makes it imperative to show that he has indeed misunderstood the
basic principles of Islamic law, and that the debate that he claims could
not be revived, could indeed be revived, and when it is revived it will only
demonstrate vividly why the views of the so-called lost sects carry no
weight with our scholars.

The root of the problem in this case for this people is in the meaning of
‘Muhsanat’, which they take as meaning ‘married women’, failing to realise
that this word is ‘mushtarak’ that is having several different meanings.
There are three different meanings to this word, and they are all in the
Qur’an, but the woeful failure of this people to know this simple secret of
the Arabic language, and their zealousness to prove the invalidity of the
concept of the ijma (consensus) of Muslim scholars, led them to make this
awful blunder. As I said there are three meanings to this word, and they are
all in the Qur’an: the first is ‘married women’ which is the meaning in the
verse that says: “(Also unlawful to you in marriage) are those women that
are already married (muhsanat minan nisa) except what your right hands
possess” (Nisa: 4:24). The second meaning is free women as opposed to
slaves, and it is what is referred to in the verse: “If any of you have not
the means to marry free women (muhsanat) who are believers, they may marry
believing girls from among those whom your right hands possess” (Nisa,
4:25). The fact that it is mentioned as a direct opposite of female slaves
shows that its meaning here is free women. If the meaning of ‘muhsanat’ in
this verse were the same as in the previous verse, there would be obvious
contradiction, and those who are bent on showing the existence of
contradictions in the Qur’an could quickly jump to such a conclusion because
it will be as though the first is saying: ‘marrying women that are already
married is unlawful to you’ and this one would seem to be saying: ‘if any of
you have not the means to marry women that are already married”, so how
could it be unlawful to marry this class of women and another reference is
made to show that marrying them is permissible? This type of understanding
is borne out of ignorance of the Arabic language. However, those who know
the language of the Qur’an and at the same time refer to the opinions of
those who witnessed the revelation of the Qur’an in order to understand it,
give every verse its proper meaning. Another verse with this meaning in the
Qur’an is: “This day are all things good and pure made lawful unto you. The
food of the people of the Book is lawful unto you, and yours is lawful unto
them. And lawful unto you in marriage are the free women (Muhsanat) who are
believers, and free women (Muhsanat) among the people of the Book revealed
before you…”. (Ma’idah, 5:5) This is according to the opinion of the
majority of scholars. Some hold that the meaning of muhsanat here is chaste
women.

The third meaning is chaste women, and it is the meaning referred to in
Suratun Nur: “And those who launch a charge against chaste women (Muhsanat)
and do not produce four witnesses flog them with eighty stripes” (Nur,
24:4). Going by the unilateral definition of the Kharijites who define
‘Muhsanat’ as married women, the one who slanders an unmarried woman will
not be flogged with eighty strokes of the cane in utter contradiction to the
consensus of the Muslims. But there is nothing wrong with that, because they
have a right to dissent, so Lamido will say. Except that he will not agree
with them, because their opinion seems to be anti-feminist. On a more
serious tone: I am not saying this is what the Kharijites say regarding
slandering unmarried women. All I am saying is that it is the logical
inference to the unilateral meaning they give to ‘Muhsanat’. If I am
properly understood you will see to whom the word ‘Muhsanat’ has given a lot
of trouble: our scholars or the so-called dissenters?

The root meaning of ‘Ihsan’ from which ‘Muhsanat’ was derived is guarding of
chastity. Allah said: “And Mary the daughter of Imran who guarded her
chastity” (Tahreem, 66:12). Therefore the third meaning of ‘Muhsanat’ –
chaste women – is the nearest to this root meaning. The two other meanings
are borrowed meanings. A free woman is called ‘Muhsanah’, because normally
in the Arab society of Jahiliyya, slaves were the ones known to commit
indecency not free women. That is why when Hind the wife of Abu Sufyan came
to accept Islam, and the Prophet, peace be on him was giving the oath of
fealty to her which was mentioned in the second to the last verse of
Mumtahana (chapter 60: verse 12), when he said: that they will not commit
adultery (or fornication), Hind said: ‘O Messenger of Allah! Does a free
woman commit adultery (or fornication)?’ A married woman is called a
‘Muhsanah’ because marriage by its nature will make her chaste, it is as
though she is named ‘one who will be chaste’ just as a cow is named ‘a
tiller of the soil’ because tilling the soil is done by cows, and not by
other animals. Also camels are called ‘Hady’ because sacrifice to the
Ka’aba, (i.e. Hady), is with camels not with other animals. This is the
point behind Ibn Qutaibah’s mention of a cow and she-camel, if only Lamido
reflected carefully on it.

So going back to the verse in question, the meaning of ‘Muhsanat’ in that
verse is free women, that is the second meaning, and the verse will be
paraphrased thus: ‘When they are taken in wedlock (slave women who are
believers), if they commit indecency their punishment is half that for free
women’. The punishment for free women is 100 lashes if they have not
experienced a proper consummated marriage, otherwise it is stoning to death,
as clearly explained by the Sunnah. The Qur’an cannot speak of half-stoning
to death, because that is senseless. The Qur’an is the Word of Allah; it is
not for jest. Therefore the punishment that is to be halved is that of
unmarried free women, which is 100 lashes.

With particular reference to the case of Safiya, I deliberately choose not
to delve into it for two reasons: one, Lamido has by his statements and
insinuations raised issues that are potentially misleading regarding some
fundamental aspects of Islamic law and jurisprudence, especially to a lay
audience to which his writing was originally directed, therefore I saw it
more pertinent to concentrate on addressing those issues. Secondly, the
issue of Safiya is in an Islamic court of law, and in Islamic jurisprudence
the verdict of a judge is not annulled except where it goes against a
manifest ruling of the Qur’an or the Sunnah, or the ijma (consensus of the
scholars), or a manifest analogy of the first order (qiyas jaliy), so it is
pointless and a lack of adab (etiquette) to open up discussion on the
matter.

Having said this it is very important to point especially to the people in
the Hisba corps, that the Prophet, peace be on him has encouraged us to
conceal the evil actions of Muslims, as long as they do not go public with
them. Ibn Umar reported that the Prophet, peace be on him said: “whoever
conceals the faults and evil actions of a Muslim, Allah will conceal his
faults and evil actions on the day of Judgement”. (See what Imam Al-Nawawi
says regarding this in his commentary on Sahih Muslim 16/135). Imam Ahmad
reported on the authority of Thawban, from the Prophet, peace be on him: “Do
not pursue the concealed wrong actions of the slaves of Allah (in order to
expose them), because whoever is after exposing the wrong actions of his
Muslim brother, Allah will surely go after his own wrong actions till He
exposes him in the midst of his home”. Allah says: “Those who love to see
indecency circulate among the believers will have a grievous chastisement in
this life and in the Hereafter” (Nur: 23). And when a slave girl was brought
to Umar and accused of pregnancy from zina, he reproved the man who brought
her and said to him: you are a man that does not bring good. (see Musannaf
of Abdurrazzaq 7/404). Certainly this does not include witnessing a person
engaged in evil action and then leaving him alone, while one is in a
position to prevent him from doing that. This is only speaking of an evil
action that has already been committed, and this also regards people that
are not known to be open sinners and/or mischief-makers. Such a people do
not deserve having their secrets guarded.

On a final note, we do acknowledge that the situation of women in our
society needs redress. But the sorry situation of our womenfolk is part of
the symptoms of our drifting away from the teachings of Islam. Whenever the
life of the Muslims degenerates, every one will taste the terrible brunt of
that degeneration, but the weak among them will have a taste of that more
severely. And certainly women are by their natural disposition weaker than
men, so we see them having an averagely severer taste of the evil brunt of
our degeneration. The remedy is in returning to Islam, in strengthening our
knowledge of Islam and our abidance by it. The remedy is not found in the
agenda of feminism. Feminism will only lead us to further degeneration.
Simply reflecting on the situations of those societies where feminism has
made record achievements is enough proof to convince us that it is
impossible for it to provide a remedy for us.  Readers of this article may
be more aware than I am of the terrible social and psychological disasters
that the recipe of feminist activism has prescribed on the western
societies, among which are breakdown of the family, the basic unit of a
healthy human social existence, increased marriage breakdowns and rates of
divorce, increased number of single parent families, increased number of
children born out of wedlock and deprived of parental love, increased number
of home alone children (door-key children I think they call them), increased
exploitation of women by the pornographic, fashion and entertainment
industries, exposing women without any help or protection to an unequal and
unfair struggle in a merciless and ruthless society of economic wolves and
vultures, and several other ills that you are more aware of. If the western
societies are fighting a losing battle to redress the problems caused by
this illness, why should we purchase it for ourselves? Islam has on record
bettered the conditions of women. Even nearer home and not long ago, the
Jihad of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio has improved the conditions of women in
relation to their pre-Jihad conditions. Women were encouraged to learn their
religion, which protected their rights, and they even recorded intellectual
and literary achievements. The Prophet, peace be on him has given particular
attention to women in his farewell sermon in the greatest Islamic
congregation, the Pilgrimage, where he, peace be on him, was reported to
have said: ‘I beseech and admonish you to be good to women’ – three times.
He commanded men to be especially good to women, because of the weakness of
women, and this is the only natural way by which women will be protected.
The Prophet, peace be on him, said to them: “they (women) are like captives
in your hands’, and he also said: ‘marriage is a form of bondage, therefore
one of you should be careful in whose hands he places the woman that is
under his charge’. This is a natural description of the state of women. And
what a difference between a woman who is ‘captive’ in the hands of the
father or will-be father of her children, and another who is captive in the
hands of an unfaithful and exploitative lover or financial manager.

Once again I say the remedy is in Islam, which teaches that goodness to
women is a factor of goodness of one’s religion. The Prophet, peace be on
him, said: ‘the best of you is the one who is best to his family, and I am
the best of you to my family’. If the Prophet, peace be on him, is by virtue
of his excellence the best to his family, it shows that true religious
excellence in Islam must entail goodness towards women. He, peace be on him,
also said: ‘anyone who provides and takes care of two female dependents,
will come together with me on the Day of Judgement like these two fingers
(the index and the middle finger)’, this shows his nearness to the Prophet,
peace be on him. (Muslim reported the Hadith). Therefore when we, both men
and women, go back to our religion and learn it and hold fast to it, we will
be aware of our rights, and we will respect the rights of others.
Individuals are the ones who relate to human beings, in fact to the whole
universe, and when they become upright, their relation with one another and
with the whole of existence becomes good and healthy. Making them upright is
the goal of Islam, and it excels in that. The Prophet, peace be on him,
built and trained men and women, who as a result of their uprightness
brought into existence the best community raised up for mankind. Allah the
Most High said: “Surely this Qur’an guides to that which is most upright,
and gives glad tidings to the believers who work deeds of righteousness that
they shall have a magnificent reward; and to those who do not believe in the
Hereafter (it announces) that We have prepared for them a chastisement
grievous indeed” (Isra: 17: 9-10).

Peace and Allah’s blessings be on you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Eye of the Storm: Critiquing the Critics of The Adulteress' Diary
By
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
Perhaps the best opening for this piece is an excursion into history. During
Jordan's 1989 parliamentary elections, two Islamists asked an Islamic court
to bring a female parliamentary candidate, Toujan Faisal, to trial for the
crime of apostasy from Islam. Toujan's crime was that she published an
article in the Jordanian paper, al-Ra'y (Opinion) dated 21 September, 1989
with the title : "Yashtimunana wa nantakhibuhum" (They insult us and we
elect them!). In that article Toujan mocked the society she lived in and how
in the name of religion women were being reduced to some subhuman level. She
criticized the use of the hadith that "women are deficient in intellect and
religion" and raised a number of seemingly reasonable questions. She
sarcastically remarked that since the Islamists believe that women are
limited by their reproductive functions the best women are those who are not
mothers. As it had been argued that women were incomplete because they
menstruated, then surely barren women were more complete than fertile ones,
and women in menopause than those having periods! Toujan complained about
how Islamists sugarcoat their views on women's deficiencies with euphemisms
praising women's femininity and decency, but when women demand their freedom
they are accused of wanting to abandon tradition under the influence of "the
West" or "modernism" and "secularism".
Her prosecutors wanted Toujan declared an apostate and divorced from her
husband. Her articles were to be banned, the media to be prevented from
dealing with her. Most blood-curdling of all, the Islamists wanted the court
to grant immunity to any one who spilled her blood. She was said to have
spoken "against the prophet and his religion". She had mocked the obligation
of a woman to be obedient to her husband and not leave his house without his
permission and she opposed the requirement that a woman's duty is to "cook,
clean, and serve the members of her family with maintenance as
compensation".While the case ran, every woman who stood for elections in
Jordan was defeated. The Islamists swept into parliament with a clear
majority but after four years were unable to deliver anything other than
rhetoric. Meanwhile Toujan was acquitted of all charges. Toujan had always
insisted that the attacks were political, not religious. "I am a Muslim and
I say that God is one and Muhammad is the prophet of God, so they have no
ground for their case in Islam, because only God can judge if a person is
sincere".
Some, though not all, of the reactions to "The Adulteress' Diary" echoed the
reactions to Toujan's article. The diary was a satire, not on Islam, but on
the manner in which Islam and its symbols are distorted and used in the
pursuit of naked secular power and the entrenchment of secular relations of
class and gender. In one particularly entertaining vitriol, I was accused of
mocking Allah, His Prophet, the religion of Islam, the companions and all
the early jurists- all in addition to having lived an apparently blissfully
erotic life in which I have "deflowered many virgins". We laugh at these
articles but there is a very frightening side to them. The views held by
Islamists and, in this particular case, quasi- and pseudo-Islamists, are
enough warning of what awaits proponents of free speech and progressive
ideologies if we ever allow these elements to be in full control of our
politics. Any one of the allegations levelled against me in "The Ushers,
Notes" is sufficient, if accepted by a court of law, for a death sentence
for apostasy. And all the allegations, without exception, are untrue.
Over time, I have learnt not to respond to these types of articles. The
writers tend to be exemplars of an intellect whose total domestication is
achieved through a constant disarticulation between the reading religion and
the reading of the world which religion is expected to transform. The
process of religious thought is deliberately arrested in time and space, a
certain era is frozen and given eternal fiat over all times while the world
marches on through history. By separating the reading of Islam from the
reading of the real life of Muslim people (including its tensions, its class
conflicts, its needs and its priorities- all of which differ in time and
space), Islamists (and would-be Islamists) are able to master what Paulo
Freire would call a literacy of stupidification, whose hallmark is the
anaesthetization of the mind and the paralysis of intellect. Rather than
break free from the self-imposed shackles around their brains, these
elements expect the rest of the world to feel guilty for the crime of
progress and modernity. The attempt to view religion in light of existential
reality, to marry (again borrowing from Freire) our "reading of the word
with our reading of the world" is viewed with suspicion and labelled
"modernism". Having provided a label, what is left is to provide a
definition of "modernist" completely lacking in factual substance as a
description of the views or works of those being criticised. The greatest
mistake one can make is to fall into the trap of defending the self and
abandoning praxis. It is in the nature of a radical reading of all systems
of thought, religious and secular, that they elicit such responses. The only
tangible outcome of the attacks is to place the radical in a defensive
position, making protestations of faith and trying to convince all comers
that he is a Muslim. Ultimately, it is the burden of the writer to proceed
along the tortuous task of unfolding this "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and
remember, when faced with so much wrath, that what he stands for is in
historic and historical confrontation with what his critics stand for. The
battle is joined at the level of ideology, not of faith.
There have been other rejoinders, more temperate in tone, and perhaps
suffering from no more than an honest misunderstanding of the diary. In one
case the "rejoinder" read like a commentary on the diary itself, providing
the details of all the hadiths, which provided a basis for the views
discussed in the diary. In another case, the major thrust was a sense of
betrayal, and the concern that unrestricted ventilation of these issues
would open the door to the enemies of Islam and Shariah to attack the
religion. The concern of course is legitimate, but it pales into
insignificance when viewed against the unfounded advertisement of Islam as a
crude and unfair religion, which is provided by contemporary northern
society. A third critic praised me to high heavens and concluded by
labelling me an intellectually arrogant writer who is also like a bird
unwilling to sing the praise of its ancestors. He paid the diary the
ultimate compliment of ranking it with two of the most notorious works of
pornography in classical Arabic- Muallaqat Imru'l Qays and Alfu Laytatin wa
Laylah. I did not respond to these pieces because it was clear to me that
readers are intelligent enough to see that there no major differences of
opinion between us, just as they could see that the real object of the
pseudo-fundamentalist's barbs was the writer of the diary, not its contents.
My belief was proved right when a few readers wrote in defence of the
contents of the diary publicly, and when many more wrote private letters to
me and to the critics themselves.
I am however compelled to respond to the latest by my friend and
brother,Bashir Aliyu Umar. The article in question is a summary of his views
already written on a separate network and over which we had an extensive
debate. The response is necessary because, in spite of the brilliance (and,
I must add, prolixity) of this write-up, it does not address the issues of
the diary- and those issues are important to me and need to be discussed if
we are to make any progress as a people. What it does, however, is raise a
number of pertinent issues of epistemology and ideology, and provide what
can best be described as a critique of my thoughts. Bashir discussed what he
referred to as "themes running through Lamidos's writings." This point is
important because very often this approach, deliberately or otherwise,
serves the purpose of obfuscation. The matter is no longer the content of
"The Adulteress' Diary" which the critic purports to be addressing, but the
"themes running through the writings" of the author of the Diary. These are
two separate points of discourse and we must not forget that. However, the
arguments presented in the one arena are taken as sufficient for the second.
I will show that this is not true. Having said that, I affirm that every
writer must accept that his world-view is a legitimate object of critical
discourse. I will therefore in this response to Bashir not only defend The
Diary, but answer him on the questions he raised on method and theory.
Let me begin by stating the following. Bashir Aliyu is my brother and my
friend. He is in no way to be confused with those seeking a locus standi in
Islamist circles because his record is established as a scholar and
activist. Although firmly committed to Islam and Muslim scholarship, Bashir
is widely read and broad-minded. There are however areas in which over the
years we have been in deep disagreement and which his paper, and this
rejoinder, will highlight. Since I have already said that Bashir's excellent
posting does not address the contents of The Adulteress' Diary, let me
restate what I consider to be the essential themes of the adulteress' Diary.
The only way to understand the Diary is to take it, primarily and
singularly, for what it is. The Diary is a work of satire. The Chambers
English Dictionary defines "satire" as "a literary composition, originally
in verse, essentially a criticism of folly or vice, which it holds up to
ridicule or scorn-its chief instruments, irony, sarcasm, invective wit, and
humour." This is precisely what The Diary was. It was not a pornographic
work, in spite of its graphic language. It was also not a work of
jurisprudence, even if it marshalled arguments of law. It was a satire on
northern society and particularly its hypocrisies and pretences. It
criticised in particular the northern Muslim male and how he views and
treats women, all the time justifying this treatment using the symbols and
authority of religion. It was designed to ridicule, and therefore was bound
to generate anger. But expressions of outrage at a satire, born as they are
of hurt pride, are not critiques. A proper critique of the diary would focus
on the following questions: What are these "follies" and "vices" which the
writer claims exist in the north? Do they in fact exist? If they do are they
follies or vices? Are they secular or religious? Etc. Not a single critic
seems to have zeroed in on this, because they all failed to appreciate the
satire as genre. So what are the points Safiya raised, in order of
presentation?
Safiya made the point, first, that lewdness is rampant, largely because
northern men, particularly its elite, are incurable womanizers. In guest
houses, hotels, homes and overseas, northern politicians, military officers,
traditional rulers, nouveax riches contractors and lumpen-bourgeoisie keep
women of easy virtue while pretending to be holier than the next man.
However, it seems only women are paying the price for this lewdness as if
only they are responsible.
Secondly, The Diary ridicules the conception of virtue held by northern men.
Every northern man wants to marry a virgin and also wants his daughter to be
presented to her husband as a virgin. This is a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately, the men do not bother about their sons( or even they
themselves) disvirgining other peoples' daughters. So a young girl like
Bariya Magazu is convicted for fornication but our outrage at violated
chastity does not make us seek by all means proof of the abuser who put her
in the family way. Our honour is not defined by our chastity, but by that of
our women. We value chastity in our wives and daughters but do not care a
hoot about the daughters of others. It is a sickness. It seems we want to
marry virgins not because we cherish chastity but because of the carnal
pleasures associated with virginity. Who made Safiya and Bariya pregnant?
That question will never go away. Linked to this is the penchant for early
marriages, often loveless ones, into which girls are forced. Safiya
associates this trend not with superior chastity of northern men but their
selfishness. Girls are removed from school, married off, turned into young
mothers. Sometimes they end up with complications while giving birth
(although one of my critics says the problem is midwifery!) The result of
these marriages and the impact on our society are well-known.
Next Safiya moves to her case and raises pertinent questions of procedure
and evidence. The central point in jurisprudence is the following: In Maliki
Law if an unmarried woman gets pregnant she is presumed guilty of zina
unless she can prove that the conception was not through voluntary illicit
intercourse. There is no verse of the Qur'an supporting this. There is no
record of the prophet doing this or commanding it. For this reason the other
schools of law give her benefit of doubt and only convict her based on
voluntary confession which she can retract. Although Malik's position is
traced to a saying of 'Umar, we have shown that 'Umar also in practice gave
this benefit of doubt. So on one level pregnancy as a sole basis for
conviction lacks basis in Qur'an and Hadith and conflicts with the position
of Abu Hanifa, Shafii and Ahmad-ie the majority. There is no point saying
well, she confessed, because in this case her confession is superficial. The
pregnancy convicts her-which is why even if she were to retract the
confession today she would still need to prove her innocence even if she
claimed rape. The proper critique of this section of the diary would be to
argue that in fact this law is just and that Malik's position is closer to
the rulings of Allah and His Messenger than the position of the majority.
Given the option of assuming her innocent or guilty, we chose the latter
option in spite of its horrendous implications. It is most surprising that a
call to ulama to accept the ruling of the clear majority of early jurists is
viewed as a negative attitude toward the mujtahids whose views may differ
from what I "feel are the right ones".
The final point she makes is a simple one. If I am guilty of zina because I
am pregnant then the man who made me pregnant is guilty of zina. I have
named the man and there are avenues of verifying the claim. Why is he not
guilty? Nothing said by the critics detracts from the validity of this
question. It is clear from the Diary that I believe the early ulama have an
excuse in that they had no way of verifying these claims. The whole issue of
reading the Law in accordance with what prevails in the modern world was
therefore not directed at the "early jurists and mujtahids" but the
contemporary ulama or, more specifically, the political leaders who are
instituting the penal code.
As for the issue of muhsanat, all that Bashir has done is to provide the
arguments Ibn Qutaiba offered as a refutation of the position of the
Kharijites on stoning. I did mention that there were many questions
unanswered.However as a Sunni Muslim I accept the ruling of the hadith and
that was clear from the Diary. The point was to draw attention to the
controversy on the matter, which would only arise anyway, if we accepted the
conviction. A final point worthy of note is that no Islamic country in the
world today stones a convicted adulteress. Not Saudi Arabia where Bashir is
studying hadith, not Iran, not Sudan, not Afghanistan. It is possible that
they are all suffering from the virus of modernism.
I will now reproduce, in brief, my response to Bashir on matters of theory
and method. I will focus on two key areas of disagreement and my response to
them. The first is the tendency to draw an organic link between fiqh, as we
have come to know it, and the Word of Allah, if you like the eternal nomos.
So for instance Bashir advises that because the Ijtihad of scholars is aimed
at interpreting Allah's law I should keep my satires away from the
implementation of Shariah. But this is precisely where I differ from him! I
make a clear distinction between that which is confirmed to be from Allah
and His Messenger-in the Qur'an and established a hadith (especially the
mutawatira and mashhura)- and the interpolations, extrapolations,
interpretations, embellishments, legends, myths and conclusions of human
beings over historical time. It is true that in making this distinction I
have been influenced by the traditions of Western Scholarship, starting from
Goldziher but mainly articulated in three Classics: Joseph Schacht's "The
Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence", Noel Coulson's "History of Islamic
Law" and Montgomery Watt's "Formative period of Islamic Thought". In a few
cases, notably schacht's, there are certainly questions about the extent to
which reality was forced into a hypothesis( as in the exaggerated roles of
Imam Muhammad in the founding of the Hanafi School or Ibn Qasim in the
Maliki school at the expense of the founding fathers, or the very limited
role to which Ibrahim An-Nakha'i was reduced) but by and large by applying a
generic methodology applicable to all brands of knowledge these scholars,
capable of detachment from mythology, were able to trace the evolution of
Shariah over time and the stages in its development and the contribution of
persons and generations and histories and experiences not just to the
crystallization of a methodology but to the law itself. It is therefore
clear to me that if I ridicule the manner in which Nigerian Muslim
politicians have defined their shariah project and approached the
"Islamization" of the polity I do not mock Allah or His Messenger but the
use to which their names or words are put. None of this is to say I accept
everything that the orientalists have to say on this matter. But on this
particular point I agree with them.
The second point I will pick up is this allegation: That I believe in some
form of relativism of truth. I believe it is a fair deduction but an
incorrect one. What is correct is that I recognise all revelation as eternal
truth. However I view the human interpretation of revelation as a contingent
historically conditioned understanding which may or may not hold permanent
validity. In this sense the existence of several views does not, as Bashir
says, mean to me that all views are equally correct (which is the true sense
of relativism). To do so is to accept some of the less secure dimensions of
post-modernist epistemology. What it does is to establish the essential
multivocality of Muslim discourse and thus question the attempt to present
the law as a univocal monolithic code to which all citizens are bound. The
history of Islam proves this. Muslim Spain was ruled by Maliki Law. The
Kharijite states of Oman and the Maghrib were based on Ibadhi jurisprudence.
Greater Persia was converted to twelver shiism by the Ismali Shahs. The
legal code of the ottoman Empire, the Mujallah, was based on Hanafi fiqh. In
every epoch and in every place the ruling version of shariah has never been
selected based on some platonic, eternal truth but on the exigencies of
power and power relations. Indeed what was in ascendancy in one
dispensation-such as Mu'tazili Thought- was soon to become the new heresy
and apostasy. No one in Saudi Arabia will propagate an interpretation of
shariah that questions the legitimacy of tribal/lineage oligarchies. No one
in Iran can question clerical despotism. No one in Libya can dispute
military dictatorship. The discursive arena is so defined as to ensure that
its boundaries are not drawn in a manner capable of upsetting the apple
cart.
The multivocality of Islam is reduced to univocality under the direct
influence of politics and secular relations-be they internal political
jostling or external threats. This is why any call to a "return to Islamic
Law" may on one level be a purely religious commitment to an eternal truth.
On a different and fundamental level, especially where the advocates are in
politics, the call is also a political slogan, intricately linked to the
social and political power calculations of the dominant classes. This is why
the "ghost of Marxism" will not be entirely abandoned. It gives one a
healthy scepticism and protects one from idealism that can be taken
advantage of. May I also note here that the whole point raised on there
being a universal truth that is not relative is the subject of profound
discussion in Western Philosophy. The discussion of absolutism was
anticipated by Plato. It is not correct to affirm, as Bashir did, that
western thought is based on a belief in relativism of truth. This belief was
held by the Sophists, and is in some form present in certain strands of
post-modernist discourses where the liberal desire to respect other peoples,
other cultures and other civilizations has sometimes degenerated into moral
ambivalence. But this is not the place to discuss this issue. The point is
to say to Bashir that in his assertion of the absolutism of truth he is
being a Platonist. When Bashir says "there is a truth and it is for real,
and the realisation of its existence is an innate human quality" he speaks
in the language of Plato. Truth is a universal form. It is that which Kant
calls a Categorical Imperative. It exists in an objective form, independent
of time and space. As we "discover" it, we merely undergo a process Plato
referred to as anamnesis, we remember that which we always knew without
knowing that we did. Perhaps if Bashir read philosophy with a little more
openness, he would be a little less suspicious of the subject. Perhaps he
should read Aristotle's concept of the "golden mean" and see how it fits
into the concept of wasatiyyah in Islamic theology and ethics- a classical
case of which is Ibn Qayyim's definitions of states in Madarijul Salikin.
Even Bashir's analysis of the effect of education on one's ability to
recognize this eternal truth- the qualities of the mujtahid- is mirrored in
Plato's trained philosopher.
One final note. I am fully conscious of the dangers of outright secular
ideologies-like feminism, liberalism etc. The experience of the USSR is
sufficient proof that sometimes when people fight for emancipation, they
emancipate people from one despotism into another. This is equally the case
with Islamist, as well as so-called liberal regimes. Before our eyes today,
America has "liberated" Afghan women from the burqah imposed by the Taliban
by force into a new dictatorship of "unveiling" which is forced upon them
with incentives of food and essential life-saving items. I, therefore, do
not believe that an argument is right simply because it is placed in the
context of a perspective of liberation, otherwise I would be a true
modernist and feminist-instead of talking about interpretations of the Law
of hadd I would be talking about the right of woman over her body, to sleep
with whosoever she pleases, which those who speak of modernists ought to
know is the real modernism. What is true however is that the reality of our
experience and the structure of our society are contingent and Islam,
understood in its multivocality is capable of being applied and interpreted
to suit these structures. So long as the final choice is left to political
actors it will only serve to entrench their secular interests and cloak them
in a religious garb. By exposing the link between that choice and those
interests one is able to expose a hidden political violence and engage the
project as both textual discourse and ideology. I do not deny that I am
taking sides in a social contest. What I do is deny the establishment the
right of pretence, the right to argue that their commitment has nothing to
do with ideology and everything to do with a fixed, unchanging Divine truth.

With the very best of good wishes,
Musa Amadu Pembo
Glasgow,
Scotland
UK.
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Da’wah is to convey the message with wisdom and with good words. We should
give the noble and positive message of Islam. We should try to emphasize
more commonalities and explain the difference without getting into
theological arguments and without claiming the superiority of one position
over the other. There is a great interest among the people to know about
Islam and we should do our best to give the right message.
May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Righteous
Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the hereafter.May
Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .
We ask Allaah the Most High, the All-Powerful, to teach us that which will
benefit us, and to benefit us by that which we learn. May Allaah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala grant blessings and peace to our Prophet Muhammad and his family
and
companions..Amen.

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