Hijrah in Reverse, Part 1
Azly Rahman
I took time today to reflect upon the story of Prophet Muhammad’s (Peace be upon Him) exodus/migration from Mekkah to Madinah in 622 AD, signifying the beginning /Year One of the Islamic calendar.
I posted notes on my Facebook page; a forum I utilise primarily as a tool for intellectual engagement, somewhat like a digital/electronic platonic cave or as a virtual salon of the French Revolutionary period, to discuss anything under the sun with view of deconstructing dominant ideas of the day.
Yes, “hijrah” is the beginning of the new year of the people of the Islamic faith but my questions were these: has the Islamic intellectual paradigm evolve since the 1900s? Has religion courted philosophy? What is still ailing the “Muslim mind” and what fundamental shifts need to be engineered?
These are questions that came to me spontaneously that asked to be posted for members of my Facebook forum I now call the Trishakti salon.
I posted a thought: perhaps the Quran is too personal and personalising of a text to be transformed into a hegemonising and universalising text for an “Islamic state”; perhaps an Islamic state exists in its impossibility, still an “imagined community” ruled by perfect people over perfect people they govern.
Perhaps the Quran is too vague of a grand narrative for political philosophy and that any interpretation of it as one, will run into the unresolvable problem of getting entangled into the complexity of praxis (ideology to practice) of the various “mazhabs/schools of thought”, each competing with each other on what truth is.
And we have not yet talked about the nagging problems of the use and abuse of the sayings of the prophet (the hadiths)
Sense and meaning
I thought perhaps the Quran is meant only for personal reading, best done hermeneutically, in that as many as there are souls in this world, therein lies the number of possible ways to make sense and meaning of how one ought to live his/her life as a “Muslim” or a “person at peace” or have submitted to a life of peace and peace-making.
I don’t know … as Socrates would say … the world of Islam is at best, politically messy, grounded in the triumph of the disabling influences of culture.
I thought, ala the Jeffersonian (American philosopher-statesman) ideal, had the Malaysian constitution clearly separated religion and the state, Malaysians would probably have a less complicated scenario of race-religious relations and class. Rather, race issues would predominate, making resolutions easier.
Countries claiming to be Islamic states are either ruled by dictators or despots, prone to perpetual revolutions due to its internal contradictions.
Like an evolving self and an evolving soul, liberal democracy may still be a useful political philosophy better than theocracy, as Man essentially are not born-sinners to be cleansed by the pepper spray of the state nor born to suffer to be robbed of his rights and be happy suffering.
