Why As A Muslim I Defend Multi-Culturalism

By Shaikh Michael Mumisa

Lecturer: Al-Mahdi Institute for Islamic Studies, Birmingham.

The discourse of pluralism is an issue of increasing concern to a wide range of contemporary disciplines. For theologians, philosophers, and social scientists the clarification of such an issue has become an urgent and inescapable task. For Muslims, however, the pursuit of this task remains hindered by both an institutionalised respect for disciplinary boundaries and a long-standing insularity with regard to contemporary traditions of thought. However, the twentieth century has been witness to great changes within Islamic theology. The phenomenon of globalisation as a significant feature of the post-industrial era is a key process that has generated renewed focus on the issue of cultural and religious diversity.  Globalisation has been a great cause of the importation and exportation of ideas between the East and West. Moreover, the Muslim world has also been rapidly expanding to incorporate races, cultures and environments of various kinds to the extant that the issue of religious pluralism can no more be perceived as a topic for metaphysical theorisation, or an exposition of views which are purely theoretical constructs, having little bearing on practical concerns of the society. 

Pluralism, migration, and multiculturalism are not new phenomena to Islam. Population movement has long characterised a Muslim world whose presence was felt across the world and in turn was shaped and enriched by permeation of influences and peoples from the religious and cultural other. What is often part of the forgotten memory of Islam is the recognition of this wide-ranging diversity of cultures as part of Islam’s rich heritage. The validity of religious faith in Islam [iman] is objectively determined by the way Muslims handle inter-human relations [mu‘asharat]. Moreover, it is in this area of interpersonal relations that the Islamic juridical texts need to be re-interpreted and contextually decoded to take into consideration the realities of the contemporary global period.  In the early period of Islamic scholarship, the Islamic discourse took a legalistic orientation. The texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah were subjected to a process of juridical interpretation. Meanings were fixed and concepts were set into ideological mold. This ideological framework gave it a continuity, a fixity. This led to a gradual discursive move away from openness and pluralism towards greater theological rigidity and defensive apologetics. Thus the classical ulama [scholars] or salaf are eventually, as keepers and hermeneuts of divine legal capital, the final arbitrators of all matters relating especially to the corpus juris, thus the fulcrums of power and knowledge.

The image of the non-Muslim in classical Islamic legal texts has had profound influence on the way Muslims interacted with the religious other at various point in their history. Moreover, their experience at the hands of the colonial West produced the Politics of Memory in the same way that the Auschwitz has affected modern Western political thought. Therefore, this imagine from the perspective of Islamic legal theory [usul al-fiqh] requires a re-reading to accommodate inter-faith and religious dialogue.

Within the context of social science discourse, pluralism in the sense of a multiplicity of a recognition of multiplicity in society and as a precondition for individual choice and freedom is contrasted by two opposites. First, it is opposed to any form of monism, i.e. a theocracy or Islamic State, an absolutist state, a total society and a cultural monolith. Second, it is opposed to anarchy, anomie in a cognitive or normative sense, epistemological relativism, incoherent post-modernism, and amorphousness. Therefore, a civil war of ideas within Islam is unavoidable between those calling for the establishment of an ideological Islam and those who attempt to engage Islam in the discourse of religious pluralism and multi-culturalism.

The central question before every concerned Muslim is: how will Islam in a multicultural global village deal with the question of religious pluralism? Theoretically the task that needs to be fulfilled is how to help ensure a creative discourse which is not a repetition of stereotypes that have so far jeopardised inter-religious dialogue. The practical concern that lies before us is to innovate ways and means so that we may answer the burning question viz. how diversity in the context of religious pluralism can be brought to fruition for the establishment of a peaceful, just, and egalitarian society?

Faith in Islam does not mean only truths to be affirmed, but also an existential stance, an attitude, a commitment to Allah [huquq allah] and to human beings [huquq al-ibad]. Islamic faith is not limited to affirming the existence of Allah [wajib al-wujud]. Rather, it tells us that Allah has mercy upon us and demands a merciful response. This response is given through mercy for human beings disregard of their religious and cultural backgrounds.

Jurisprudential and theological questions have been arising for which there is no clear precedent or reference in the Qur’an or Sunnah (imitatio muhammadi); questions such as those emerging under the rubric of inter-faith and religious pluralism, the role and duty of Muslims living in non-Muslim societies, among many others. There has been a growing concern and a realisation among Muslim youth that the Qur’an and Prophetic tradition, or Sunnah, are finite sources of law and cannot suffice the needs of infinite events. This has caused an urgent need for a re-reading of the sources of Islamic law and for the understanding of the message of the Qur’an and Sunnah so that it becomes existentially meaningful for the here and now.

To address the recasting of Islamic legal discourse within the context of the Western disciplines and religious pluralism then finds two audiences.  One is the modernist or “progressive” element which sees no need for such an exercise and advocates an unconditional subjection to a particular collection of intellectual, cultural, philosophical and ontological elements formulated in renaissance humanism and later Western thought, especially following the 18th century or the “age of enlightenment”. The other is the “conservative” or traditionalist element which mistrusts any attempt at addressing problems which arise in the context of occidental philosophy and considers this development a serious departure from orthodoxy and orthopraxy. To the proponents of traditionalism there is no other alternative but a strict and rigid adherence to the interpretations of Muslim classicists regarding the ‘religious and cultural other’. The interpretations done by classical Muslim scholars [the salaf] are seen as the final and only true meaning of the Qur’anic and Prophetic texts. The importance of maintaining the link with the Islamic legacy [turath] is often given as reason for this methodology and approach in the interpretation of Islam. However, the primary Muslim concern cannot be mere survival of an old tradition [turath] – Islam as a museum which displays once meaningful deposits – but the actualisation of a challenging message for the contemporary generation. For the ‘progressive’ element the challenge is how to ‘baptise’ the conservative Muslim into accepting the Western socio-political system, and to engage the Muslims in the discourse of democracy, pluralism, and social justice. On the other hand, the traditional or ‘conservative’ element remains suspicious at what it sees as a conspiracy to destroy its Islamic (Arab/Asian?) identity. It fails to see how it can be possible for a true Muslim to engage in any discourse that emerges under the rubric of pluralism and Western style democracy while at the same time remaining truthful and faithful to Islam.

As Muslims come in contact with the acute problems that exist in the world to day such as terrorism, they experience the need to take part in solving them. This means they will have to participate with people from other religious and cultural traditions since the nature of such problems is such that they do not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, or cultural background. Deciding to participate will mean that, as Muslims, they would like to do so ‘Islamically’, by recourse to Islamic Law. But then again the received Islamic Law is one that was developed to deal with problems that may be described as ‘local problems’ in the Muslim lands. The universality of the Islam, which they claim, require that they broaden Islamic thought, or even revise it (not destroy it) so that it can cope with the contemporary global situation. Thus, there is an element of contigency here which means that there is no final approach and methodology to Islamic Thought. We are certainly not dealing with a closed system, but rather, a very open and dynamic one. Indeed, a closed system of Islamic Thought would be impossible from an Islamic point of view as that would limit God to our own particular systems and God cannot be limited.

When we say that the inherited Islamic Law is ‘local’, we acknowledge the socio-phenomenal dimension present in this discourse; the influence exerted by the Islamic law on social process, and the conditioning imposed by the dynamics of society on the interpretation and understanding of Islamic law. The new methodology therefore should predominantly be concerned with ways to re-construct the Islamic discourse independent from these historical influences. It is an attempt to bring our existential experiences to the discourse, what is typical of our social locations and searching for an intellectual self-definition.

Early books of Islamic Law do not always provide the answers to contemporary social realities such as pluralism. Not because the writers of these books did not possess enough knowledge of the Islamic law and society, but because we cannot expect them to exercise some unearthly power and speak to us from their graves. We should not force these great scholars to deal with issues that did not concern them, nor to ask them questions that they never asked themselves.