Encouraging Righteousness and Discouraging Wrong: Responding to Extremism in Islam

Islam teaches that there is no compulsion in religion. But militant ulema assert us that persons that depart from Islam are to be killed. The ulema even empower individuals to carry out the punishment. They permit random individuals to act as judge, jury and executioner. This amounts to permitting, if not counselling, the believers to commit murder. Is this in accordance with the teaching of Islam? It is not. For Allah prohibited taking a person's life without just cause. Does apostasy amount to a just cause? If it does not, then killing an apostate is murder and the perpetrator must be punished accordingly. Where do the ulema find to audacity to legislate differently from what Allah prescribed? Are they suggesting they legislate better than Allah? For the Book of Allah does not prescribe the death penalty for leaving Islam. Apostasy is a sin, not a crime. What is taking place? Is there a politicisation of religion? Are we witnessing the emergence of fascism and despotism? Upon what grounds do the ulema endorse a tradition reported by transmitters who were not prophets and even embrace the tradition as replacing a ruling of Allah? Is this rational? Is it Islamic? The turn to faith (salat) has to be initiated from within rather than forced from without; if it is forced, it is spiritual rape. Forcing a person to enter or remain connected to faith results in hypocrisy. The Book of Allah teaches that "there is no compulsion in religion." However, extremists justified resorting to force by misinterpreting key passages of the Book of Allah. "Encouraging righteousness and discouraging wrong" is among them. (Quran, 3:110, 3:104 and 22:41) The "best community" encourages righteousness and discourages wrong. In different words, the best community is ethical and encourages people to be ethical. By comparison, we find no book on ethics in Bukhari. Why is that? Following the Book of Allah encourages us to practice justice. Where do we find a book on justice in Bukhari? Following Bukhari teaches us to practice ritual, formal compliance with faith. But ritual without sincerity is empty. The Book of Allah was sent as enlightenment for humanity. It is a book of guidance, that differentiates right from wrong, justice from injustice, and good from evil. However, people drifted from the Book of Allah to different books, the books of traditions. This produced profound effects. The problems of the umma stem from turning from the Book of Allah to the books of traditions. The turn from revelation to tradition was facilitated by the perception that the forefathers understood the Book of Allah better than subsequent generations. The turn from revelation to tradition, or the eclipse of revelation by tradition, was enabled by the belittling of reason and the veneration of the forefathers. The traditions of the forefathers replaced the Book of Allah as guidance. This trauma was enabled by the shutting of the mind, what Fazlur Rahman referred to it as "intellectual suicide." The shutdown of the mind resulted from the clashes between the rationalists and the traditionists about the right way to understand the Book of Allah. The traditionists wanted to follow the book of Allah by following their forefathers. The rationalists, by contrast, want to follow the Book of Allah without intermediaries. The backlash against reasoning is a result of problematic exegesis that warped the teaching of the Book of Allah by mixing it with manmade reports of traditions. Problematic scholarship repressed reason with the result that Muslim experience difficulties in understanding revelation. The state of the umma requires a re-assessment. It is necessary to make a fresh start. The denigration of science and reason left the Muslims behind different nations in the sciences and technology and made them vulnerable to conquest and subjugation. Recovery and renewal require the return to revelation, through the rehabilitation and re-engagement of reason.