Posted by
Cary Wesberry on Sunday, March 09, 2008 8:49:22 PM
FP: Edip Yuksel, Thomas Haidon, Robert Spencer and Bill Warner, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Edip Yuksel, let me begin with you.
I think a good way to begin this discussion is to talk about Muhammad in the context of women's rights. What, for instance, are your thoughts on our video about the violent oppression of women in Islam? Some critics would argue that this reality is the outgrowth of the foundation that Muhammad laid down in terms of his own teachings and also his own actions in terms of women. Do you agree?
Yuksel: No I do not agree. The video portrays a sickening reality, but if Muhammad came back today, these same people would declare him an apostate and heretic and would perhaps stone him to death.
FP: But just a second, some would argue that the misogynist pathologies in the Islamic world (i.e. female genital mutilation, forced marriages, child marriage, forced segregation, forced veiling, honor killings etc.) are engendered by the second-class status accorded to women in Islam and the demonization of female sexuality that is rooted in Islamic theology.
Are the teachings and actions of Mohammed himself in regards to female equality, rape and sexual slavery, not a part of this issue? Is his life, what he taught, and how he led by example really irrelevant to Muslims who seek to follow their religion in terms of how women are treated?
Mr. Yuksel, what do you make of the track of evidence in terms of Mohammed as demonstrated by Bill Warner? Can you explain how and why it is irrelevant when it comes to Islamic gender apartheid? Please also take a look at how Robert Spencer has documented Mohammed's life in his new book -- and this book is based on Islamic sources.
Are Spencer's and Warner's findings about the Muslims' prophet really irrelevant, especially when they are all based on Islamic sources and agreed to -- and pointed too -- by Muslim clerics and scholars themselves?
Yuksel: None, yes none of these innovations can be found in the Quran, the only book delivered by Muhammad; they were imported from other cultures and sanctified or they were innovated centuries after the revelation of the Quran. Not only they do not exist in the Quran, they contradict it. Hadith (hearsay narrations falsely attributed to Muhammad and his companions) and their collections have been the prime tool in distorting the progressive message of Islam. The reactionary forces, misogynistic ideas and practices, racism, tribalism, superstitions, despotism, and many other vices of the "days of ignorance" were resurrected and sneaked back into the minds and lives of Muslim communities after they were rejected by the early Muslims at great cost.
Mr. Yuksel goes on in great detail with examples attempting to support his reformist views on Islam, with citations of violence from the Holy Bible. After tediously long descriptions and examples, Robert Spencer responds:
FP: Thank you Mr. Yuksel. Robert Spencer, go ahead.
Spencer: All sincere and genuine attempts to reform Islamic theology so as to reinterpret and/or remove violent and supremacist elements are to be welcomed. They are to be welcomed all the more wholeheartedly when they keep a consistent focus on the purpose that all such efforts have or should have in the first place: to convince Muslims that jihad violence and Islamic supremacism are not "pure" and "true" Islam, as the jihadists themselves claim, but that there is another way to live out their faith that is consistent and authentic on its own terms.
Edip Yuksel, when he says that "none of these innovations can be found in the Quran, the only book delivered by Muhammad" and that the Hadith are "hearsay narrations falsely attributed to Muhammad and his companions" that "contradict" the Qur'an, argues for the proposition that the Qur'an alone holds authority for Muslims, and that the Hadith is to be dismissed out of hand. This view is being espoused by an increasing number of reform-minded Muslim thinkers in the West, and there are certainly many immediate apparent merits to this view – stoning for adultery, the death penalty for apostasy and the compulsory covering of all but a woman's face and hands all come from the Hadith, not the Qur'an. A Qur'an-only Islam gives the hope that such practices, and others that have no Qur'anic foundation (although stoning is a bit of a problematic case, since in one Hadith Umar informs us that it was originally in the Qur'an, and should be considered to be from Allah, and some Muslim exegetes see the death penalty for apostasy in Qur'an 2:217 and/or 4:89) could easily be jettisoned.
As comforting as this may be to non-Muslims and Western-minded Muslims, the fundamental question for this and for all genuine reform efforts is: what chance do they have to become widely accepted among Muslims? One way to evaluate this is to examine the obstacles it will face in gaining such acceptance. The chief obstacle that Yuksel's blanket dismissal of the Hadith will encounter among Muslims is the fact that acceptance of ahadith that have been deemed authentic by traditional Islamic authorities is very deeply rooted within Islamic tradition. All Muslims agree that some ahadith were fabricated, but few would agree with Yuksel that all of them are. While he may be able to make a case for this on strict historical grounds, since in reality the historical foundations even for the ahadith that Muslims deem authentic are quite shaky, he will have a harder time compelling Muslims to accept such historical judgments even against ahadith that have been deemed authentic by authoritative Islamic scholars such as the Imams Bukhari and Muslim.
In fact, the acceptance of the Hadith is itself grounded in the Qur'an, in its exhortations to Muslims to "obey Allah and his Messenger" – that is, Muhammad (3:32; 3:132; 4:13; 4:59; 4:69; 5:92; 8:1; 8:20; 8:46; 9:71; 24:52; 24:54; 33:33; 47:33; 49:14; 58:13; 64:12; cf. also 24:47; 24:51; 24:56). Qur'an 4:80 even says, "He who obeys the Messenger, obeys Allah." It is Muhammad who "commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from what is bad (and impure)" (Qur'an 7:157).
How can Muslims obey such emphatic and oft-repeated commands after the death of Muhammad? The traditional answer to this question has been the Hadith. Muslims are told to follow what Muhammad commands, and only in the hadith can those commands be discovered. The Tafsir Anwar ul-Bayan, for example, articulates this traditional view in sharp terms: "Those who reject the Ahadith do not accept the position that Allah accorded to the Holy Prophet…Those who reject the Ahadith seem to object to Allah for conferring this position to the Holy Prophet…In this way, they actually reject the Qur'an since verses like the one above [7:157] clearly reveal that the duty of the Holy Prophet was much more than that of a mere postman." In other words, Muhammad is more than just Allah's messenger: he is, according to Qur'an 33:21, uswa hasana, an excellent example of conduct, the supreme model for emulation. Muqtedar Khan of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy explains:
No religious leader has as much influence on his followers as does Muhammad (Peace be upon him) the last Prophet of Islam….And Muhammad as the final messenger of God enjoys preeminence when it comes to revelation – the Qur'an – and traditions. So much so that the words, deeds and silences (that which he saw and did not forbid) of Muhammad became an independent source of Islamic law. Muslims, as a part of religious observance, not only obey, but also seek to emulate and imitate their Prophet in every aspect of life. Thus Muhammad is the medium as well as a source of the divine law. ("The Legacy of Prophet Muhammad and the Issues of Pedophilia and Polygamy," Ijtihad, June 9, 2003.)
This is a traditional and mainstream Islamic understanding. I wish Mr. Yuksel well in its efforts against it, but caution non-Muslim observers against assuming that he will achieve easy or widespread acceptance for his views among Muslims.
Unfortunately, there are also some problems with his analysis on strict Qur'anic grounds alone – problems that will also hinder the acceptance of his reform efforts among Muslims. Mr. Yuksel asserts, for instance, that Qur'an 49:13 "unequivocally rejects sexism and racism, and reminds us that neither man nor female, neither this race nor that race is superior over the other." Qur'an 49:13 says, "O people, We created you from a male and female, and We made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another." While it would be comforting indeed to see this as a blanket rejection of the male supremacism and commodification of women that mars so much of Islamic tradition and culture, on its face it is nothing of the sort. It merely states that Allah has created people from a male and a female, and says nothing that contradicts Qur'an 4:34 -- which, interestingly enough, in his lengthy exposition Mr. Yuksel does not quote at all. Yet besides its notorious command to beat disobedient women, this verse says: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other…" That doesn't sound like an unequivocal rejection of sexism to me. Nor does the condition of women in the Islamic world in general, expecially where Islamic law is rigorously applied, testify to a widespread understanding that Qur'an 49:13 has established equality between the sexes. Here again, I wish Mr. Yuksel well with his reform efforts, but I suspect that all too many traditional Muslims will quote 4:34 against his views. I look forward to his explanation of how he might respond to them.
Similarly, in his refutation of the proposition that "women are mentally and spiritually inferior to men," Mr. Yuksel never mentions Qur'an 2:282, which stipulates that for testimony," if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her." It was on the basis of this verse that, according to a hadith, Muhammad declared that women are "deficient in intelligence and religion." When a woman challenged him on this statement, he replied: "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? This is the deficiency in her intelligence." Mr. Yuksel may deny the hadith, but the Qur'an verse upon which it rests remains.
In conclusion, I find it unfortunate that Mr. Yuksel so often has recourse to the Bible in his attempts to show the Qur'an and Islam to stand for enlightenment and equality. For whatever the actual barbarity of any of the Biblical verses he quotes may be, the unpleasant fact remains that it is not Jews and Christians, but Muslims, who today are applying teachings that render normative "bizarre practices." Judaism and Christianity have developed interpretative traditions that mitigate the literal understanding of such material, while Islam has not – and no religious reform has ever succeeded when the reformers simply ignored uncomfortable material, as Mr. Yuksel has here so far, rather than confronting it.
Robert Spencer is correct, as usual. It's impossible to reform any system when "uncomfortable" material, or in this case ideology and violent oppressive practices, is ignored and not confronted directly or at all. Robert strikes here at the heart of the problem where reforming Islam is concerned. After everything I've seen and read I personally find it a nearly fantastical that Islam could be reformed in order to conform with civilization. Out of the approximately 1 billion Muslims on the planet today, 10% of them are radicalized Islamists who want little more than to see Israel and the United States destroyed. Applying the simplest of math shows us that 100 million Muslims are in fact radical, fanatic, and violent Islamists; otherwise known as Islamo-fascist terrorists. The one brick wall that reformists cannot break through with all their admittedly good intentions are those Muslims who don't wish to conform. No matter how you look at it, no matter from which direction you come; the 100 million Islamo-fascists will not be ignored. Remove those monsters from all of society and then you can begin to reform Islam and bring it into modern civilization.