Interpretation and Exceptionalism
By Asma Barlas
The title of my talk is "On Interpretation and Exceptionalism" and it deals both with the way in which most people in the U.S. perceive Islam, and the way in which Islam?in particular, its scripture, the Qur'an?deals with the concept of jihad.
As someone who has been asked to speak about Islam only a couple of times in the ten years I've been at Ithaca College, it's obvious to me that this new interest in it is the result not of positive developments but of people's desire to make sense of the attacks on the U.S. allegedly by a group of Muslim men, which has left them fearful, angry, and bewildered.
The irony is that looking to Islam alone may not provide the answers, or the closure, that people are seeking.
As Robin Wright says, "mining the Quran for incendiary quotes is essentially pointless. Religions evolve, and there is usually enough ambiguity in their founding scriptures to let them evolve in any direction. If Osama Bin Laden were a Christian, and he still wanted to destroy the World Trade Center, he would cite Jesus' rampage against the moneychangers. If he didn't want to destroy the World Trade Center, he could stress the Sermon on the Mount."
Even if one doesn't agree with this view, the point is that every religion?or secular ideology, for that matter?offers the possibility of violence and peace, oppression and liberation, depending on who is interpreting it, how, and in what particular contexts. As I always say, there is little family resemble between modern liberation theology and the Christianity of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Conquest.
And yet, ignoring that every religion is open to multiple interpretations, many people are attacking Muslims for making "it sounds like there are two versions of the Koran floating around out there. If so, what is the difference between the Koran that the Terrorists are reading, and the Koran that the rest of the Muslim world is reading? I need to have the 'real' Islam please stand up." (This is from an article forwarded to me by a friend with no title or bye-line).
The same author?who says he's a Catholic?also says he doesn't "want to hear [the] history about the Crusades, or the U.S. foreign policy crap, or . . . comparisons [of Islam] to Christianity and Judaism." Thus, while wanting Muslims to explain which Qur'an we are reading and which is the real Islam, he himself chooses not to explain the difference between the bible that the Crusaders and Conquistadors were reading and the bible he has been reading, nor to convince others why his Christianity is the "real" one.
Such a strategy not only lays upon Muslims a burden that believers in other religions refuse to bear themselves, but it also obscures the fact that the bloodiest conflicts, like the two World Wars, have had secular, not religious roots. Even those conflicts we think of as religious can be shown to be about power and resources, not merely ideology. This is no less true of the Crusades, than it is of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, or Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, or even the attacks of September 11th.
We might, therefore, be better served by trying to understand the political and economic conditions that engender conflicts and religious extremism; but this would require us to focus on the nature of our own foreign policies and also to recognize the complicity of secularism, capitalism, and liberal democracy in creating a global division of labor that, in privileging the few at the expense of the many, has provided the breeding grounds for much of modern day extremism, religious or not.
Second, even if we are to refocus attention away from politics and economics by looking only to religion to explain the events of 9/11th, I doubt that the confusion, hostility and fear most people are feeling these days are conducive to understanding Islam or for engaging in an honest dialogue with Muslims.
Ironically, even those people who are not necessarily angry with Islam will find it hard to have such a dialogue so as long as they continue to assume that learning about Islam will enable them to make sense of 9/11 inasmuch as this expectation arises in the assumption that there is a connection between Islam and terrorism.
It is this assumption that reveals the extent to which people think of Islam as exceptional and, in so thinking, do deep epistemic violence to it. Let me clarify with an example.
Terrorism and Islam's Exceptionalism
Jewish groups in then British-occupied Palestine introduced modern forms of terrorism into the Middle East in the 1940s. It was the Irgun, the Stern gang, and the Hagana that began the practice of bombing "gathering places [and] crowded Arab areas [in an attempt to] terrorize the Arab community" (Smith, 1992: 19; 140). The Stern gang even attacked Jewish banks, resulting in "Jewish loss of life" (120). The Irgun, as we know, "slaughtered about 250 men, women and children whose mutilated bodies were stuffed down wells" in the village of Dair Yassin (143).
Even though many such terror tactics continued until fairly recent times, people in the U.S. did not put world Jewry on call by asking Jews to explain what Judaism has to say about killing innocent civilians. People may have denounced these terrorist groups?freedom fighters to many?but they did not call on all Jews to explain which Torah or Talmud the Jewish terrorists were reading, or asked the "real" Judaism to "stand up."
Why, then, this assault on Muslims to explain what their "bible"?as that savant, Larry King, calls the Qur'an?teaches about violence? (He even badgered Hanan Ashrawi, assuming that because she's Palestinian, she's a Muslim, even though she's not.) The same people who say (like the anonymous author I quoted earlier does) that they don't give a "rat' ---" about Islam nonetheless are shrieking for the "real" Islam to stand up!
In an atmosphere where only Muslims are expected to keep protesting our humanity and to defend our religion, my politics dictated that I should not speak at all in any forum on Islam. But, my religion teaches the jihad of knowledge and, as a Muslim, this jihad is obligatory for me. That is why I am here today, to speak to you about jihad.
Jihad in the Qur'an
The word jihad means "striving" or "struggle," and not "war." So, the Qur'an speaks of the jihad of the soul, of the tongue, of the pen, of faith, of morality, and so on. This is the "greater jihad" and it is what allows us Muslims to actualize our identity as Muslims.
There is also the jihad of arms whose aim is to struggle in the cause of God; this is the "smaller jihad" and it permits fighting as a means of self-protection. There are a number of verses in the Qur'an about this form of jihad and I will quote two of the main ones:
"Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged?and verily God has indeed the power to succor them?those who have been driven from their homelands against all right for no other reason than their saying, ?Our Sustainer is God.' For, if God had not enabled people to defend themselves against one another, all monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques?in all of which God's name is abundantly extolled?would surely have been destroyed [before] now" (22: 39-40).
The second verse is,
" . . . fight in God's cause against those who wage war against you, but do not commit aggression?for, verily, God does not love aggressors. And slay them wherever you may come upon them, and drive them away from wherever they drove you away?for oppression is even worse than killing" (2:190).
Although references to killing make most of us recoil, it's important not to let our horror become an alibi for refusing to recognize some transparent truths.
First, one can kill huge numbers o,f people, wh,ile also avoiding any casualties to onese |
