Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia Disappoints with Its Closed-Mindedness

Faith should not be built upon fear of reasoning. Such faith is fake.

By Farouk A. Peru 

It is indeed a misfortune for our great nation when the Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia lends its name to this article penned by its fellow, Md Asham Ahmed in the Star. The sheer haughtiness and arrogance displayed by Asham is embarrassing at the very least. At the most, it speaks of Islamofascist tendencies.

I am not putting Md Asham in the same camp as Osama Bin Ladin but the seeds of the same kind of fascism are there. A simple ‘you are wrong, we are right, we are great’ set of tendencies. A point by point refutation of Asham’s article follows below: 

1. Asham begins by saying ‘Many Muslim thinkers and leaders today, being educated in the West and severed from their religious intellectual tradition, do subscribe to the idea that all religions are the same, subject to development and changes.

If Asham is claiming that Islam has not been subject to ‘development and changes’, then one must wonder where exactly he received his Islamic education from. Islam has, from the very beginning of the genesis of its religious superstructure, been subject to great ‘development and changes’. Some may even say that these ‘development and changes’ are retrogressive but that’s beside the point. Islam in the beginning did not have sciences of the Quran and hadith. The seerah itself was not compiled till 150 years after the Prophet and the opinions of the jurists were not even canonized till the closure of the doors of ijtihad. Wael Hallaq, luminary of Islamic legalism, even argues that the doors of ijtihad were never closed thus making sharia law very flexible to this very day. Of course, ulamak of the Asham variety prefer to ignore such blatant facts.  

1. Asham then makes his position clear vis-à-vis western philosophy when he says ‘So, what is called “western” philosophy is the western way of looking at life and why should a Muslim follow it when Islam has its own philosophy? In the first place why should he listen to the West? Western ideas are not necessarily correct, the best, or relevant to everybody’ .

Such closed-mindedness is so unbefitting a fellow of IKIM. I simply cannot understand where Asham acquired his understanding of ‘Islamic Philosophy’. Even a cursory read of literature (like books by Majid Fakhry) pertaining to Islamic Philosophy will tell us that Islamic philosophers like Al-Farabi, Al-Kindi and Ibn Sina were respondents to Greek philosophy, the very beginnings of Western Philosophy itself. This in no way means they were mere commentators but the interaction between Islamic and Western philosophy are undeniable. Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotelian philosophy were used as textbooks in Europe for centuries. Islamic and Western philosophy fed off each other and as a result, both civilizations benefitted from this interaction.

Sadly, Asham refuses to see this. He asks why a Muslim should follow Western Philosophy when he has his own? This is akin to asking why we should learn from any civilization or culture since our own is sufficient? Is it sufficient? If it is, why can’t it achieve consensus on even fundamental issues? Does Asham know that till today, Muslims have no universal agreement on the nature of Prophet Muhammad? Some sects (like the Barelwis) claim that the Prophet’s nature was light! These are fundamental issues which we cannot agree on. So we must accept that like Western Philosophers, we are humans trying to negotiate our undeniably human religious experience. 

1. Asham very cleverly proposes to the reader ‘What a rational person would do to an idea is to subject it to rigorous examination and criticism. Take for example the western notion of freedom and human rights. A proper thinker would want to know the reason why western people think the way they do about those issues. Philosophy is human reaction to the problems of life; it cannot be separated from history’ .

This is a fantastic proposition. Asham should direct this proposition to Islamic civilization, culture and philosophy. It will help dilute some of his arrogance. 

1. Asham then engages with Christianity’s position in Western Civilisation, claiming that it is deficient with respect to the concept of freedom. He says ‘Experience tells him (Western Philosophy) that individual freedom can only be guaranteed when the role of religion is curbed to the effect that it does not interfere in social and political life the way it used to be in the Middle Age.’ and that ‘The Renaissance saw a widening gap between the medieval structure of thought (based upon the doctrines of Christian theology) and a growing yearning for a free inquiry into the areas of humanity and nature, using methods and assumptions not directly derived from religion.’

What this essentially means is that because the West responded to Christianity’s philosophy of religion (which Asham deems as anti-reason), its answer to the question of freedom is to curb the role of religion. It therefore embraced secularism.  

How dissimilar is this to the Muslim political experience? Not dissimilar at all if one studies Islamic History. Early Islamic experience with the social forces of religion tells us that Muslims were divided into the pro-reason (Mutazilah) and pro-tradition camps (Ahl As-Sunnah or Sunnis). The Sunnis eventually won and with the triumph of Sunnis, Mutazilites were sidelined. Reason was suppressed and with that, some scholars believe, came the decline of the Islamic Civilisation.  

Can Asham point any finger to Christianity when mainstream Sunnism has strict blasphemy and apostasy laws? One cannot even question the basic tenets of Sunnism without getting ex-communicated. Sunnism can hardly be called a religion of reason so Asham should get off his high horse. Asham’s own animosity to free inquiry can be seen below.  

1. Asham begins his attack one Prof Ali Mazrui, the target of his essay by saying ‘Professor Ali Mazrui, an ardent believer in historical relativism, thinks that Islam, like all other religions, also undergoes development and changes. Mazrui thinks that doctrinally Islam is a synthesis of three religions – Judaism, Christianity and the message of Muhammad. He holds that Islam as a civilisation began with a religious synthesis, and just as Islam had been receptive to Judaism and Christianity in the sphere of religious doctrine, so did it demonstrate receptivity to ancient Greece in the secular field.

One only needs to make a cursory comparison between the Quran and orthodox Islam to see the philosophical incongruence between the two. Take for example the hyper-legalism of orthodox Islam. One simply cannot find the textual basis of this in the Quran. The Quran has very few laws and is more concerned with our ethics and philosophical development. Yet in orthodox Islam, it’s even possible to deduce that yoga is something abhorrent! Orthodox Islam is obsessed with haram-ising the world, it seems. Where else can one find such hyper-legalism than in orthodox Judaism which coincidentally enjoyed its greatest development in Kufa during the reign of the Abbasid Islamic empire. Of course Islam as we know it was subject to influence by other religions and philosophies. It is impossible not to have been.  

6. Asham then complains further about Mazrui’s interrogation of Islamic tradition. Mazrui questions classical hudud laws, the position of the companions of the Prophet and the fallability of the classical jurists of Islam and this bothers Asham greatly. Asham reasons, What Mazrui seeks to achieve is creating doubt about the truth, authenticity and finality of Islam, about the hierarchy of valid authority in the interpretation of Islam and its sources culminating in the authority of the Prophet, and reducing all to historical relativism and subjective interpretation. 

Is this scholarship or mere ranting? To me, this is simply the rantings of one frustrated by those who disagree with his views. He then points fingers at Western philosophy claiming that Muslims need to shun it and stick to Islamic Philosophy. Islam, he claims, is pristine pure and free from human agency. In this claim, Asham is ignoring the historicity of Islamic thought.  

The suggestion Asham makes to Muslims to subject Western Philosophy to rigorous criticism is very commendable but Asham should suggest the same thing to Islamic Philosophy itself. Does he worry that this might affect so-called faith? Faith should not be built upon fear of reasoning. Such faith is fake. Asham should worry less about Western Philosophy, Ali Mazrui and worry more about logical basis of his own approach to Islam.