Can We Be Modern and Muslim? 

AN issue sprang up in the decade of the nineties which concerned the legal status of “half-widows”, a term peculiar and characteristic to the Kashmir context. Thanks to our classical texts of jurisprudence which had discussed the matter, though in some round about fashion,our Ulema could frame their judgment and decide the marital status of half widows.

However, the spectrum of questions which Muslims face in the modern world, be it Kashmir or otherwise, is not limited to Half Widows. There are issues and challenges arising out of the times we are living in which find no historical precedent and therefore call for fresh interpretation and explication of Islamic Jurisprudence in the light of permanent and timeless guiding principles of Islam.

Are one’s prayers valid in Bermuda shorts or skinny jeans? Does makeup invalidate ablution? Are formal mixed gatherings halal? Which Crypto currency is halal and which isn’t? How about insurance policies? How shall Muslims conduct themselves with non-Muslim majority and what bearing does Shariah have on the issues we confront in isolation and congregation that are specific to modern times?  Questions like these represent tip of the iceberg – the iceberg which accompanies the question of being a Muslim in modern times. Is it possible to be a Muslim in the modern world? Can Islam accomodate modernity? Are they mutually exclusive?

The question of Islam and its contemporary relevance has been debated across ages and each epoch has tried, in accordance with its epistemic and ethical prerogatives, to discover the meaning and relevance of Islam. The elan – the internal force of Islam has steered it successfully throughout ages and has guided the Muslim conscience and collective imagination to the shores of spiritual and material wellbeing. The claims of Islam to perennial relevance and the assertion of its timeless nature has been tested time and again, and history bears witness to the fact that the internal dynamics of Islam has never failed it in meeting the challenges posed to it by each passing day and  each passing era. The illustratious works of the likes of Al Ghazali, Shah Waliullah and Muhammad Iqbal demonstrate amply, the self-updating intellectual spirit of Islam which time has failed to dull or rust.

The day and age we are living in, has once again sandwiched Muslims between their timeless religious truths and changing situations of the day. This age’s pace is like no other in human history. Understandably then, the challenges have assumed the form of incessant shower, dropping over Muslim imagination and intelligentsia without any respite. To strike a balance between the flux of everyday life and the permanence of religious verdicts has turned out to be the most daunting intellectual challenge for modern day Muslim scholarship.

How to be Muslim and modern at the same time is a question that looms large over the Islamic horizon. The same can be restated to ask whether Islam and Modernity are compatible at all.

It must be stated here that by “modernity” we do not imply the intellectual and academic descriptions or allusions of the term, but imply by it the modes and mores of life that have become characteristic of modern times and modern man.

That the spirit of Islam is timeless and perennial in nature and holds within it the capacity to meet any intellectual, ethical or civilizational challenge emerging anywhere at any point of time is a claim that stands quite strong. But what irks Muslims as a pressing concern is to see these timeless teachings and principles playing out in practical life, in their daily issues, in issues they have to face day and night, the issues which are omnipresent and can’t be evaded as long as one breathes in this world. These issues confront a practising, and for that matter a professing Muslim in both the macro and micro aspects of his life.

It is not that the Muslim scholarship has wholly turned its face away from the cluster of issues arising out of modernity, but the absence of a comprehensive framework and the lack of unified theory has at times dissipated,the otherwise worthy efforts of Muslim scholars.

While we confront a phenomenon of any order and complexity, the desired response is to devise a parallel or counter-narrative which will by itself take care of the issues of lesser importance within the system. This is to say that a response should be principle driven which can be tailored and applied to the changing circumstances without having to start from ground zero.

The general and dominant response to western and by extension to modern modes of life from Muslim scholarship has been either of total denial or uncritical disdain. Whatever finds itself associated with modern/ity is tagged as anti-Islamic, immoral, a corruption of faith or put under such other categories. This has multiplied the ideological confusion and practical chaos among Muslims, who, like other people, find it impossible to enter the business of life without simultaneously addressing the hundred thousand issues of attendant modernity.

In a world heuristically described as a “global village”, our relationship with people of different belief systems and participation in their joys and sorrows has become another issue, with most of the scholarship out rightly condemning any such participation. A “Merry Christmas” to a fellow christian is met with a harangue of objections, an answer to which is not easily accessible.

The Muslim conceptualisation of “the Other”, to summarise this problem, lies at the heart of the debate. Perhaps the point has not been too well recognised on part of Muslims that world order has undergone a paradigm shift and a total change in character during the past few centuries. The power equation and power dynamics between Muslims and the rest of the world has inverted since the time when Islamic jurisprudence was formulated which governed and regulated Muslim relationships with the rest of the world. To think that our relationships with other nations and civilizations can still be rooted in the same conditions and clauses which we abided by some seven centuries ago is an unpardonable error. Ours has changed the status from producers of goods and ideas to consumers thereof during the past few centuries and these changes demand to be reckoned with.

With World Fiqh Academy and other such institutions passing rulings on an issue or two, now and then, the problem is not going to see any sustainable solution and devoted Muslims will continue to linger in the midst of an Islam-Modernity Imbroglio.

The digital space is throwing up new challenges, not only in the form of online Nikah and divorce but with economic concepts like Bitcoin, not to speak of the ethical dilemma which the darker side of the internet has put us in. Here again, instead of looking for bitwise solutions, an overreaching and a total defining solution shall be the aim and agenda of our scholars.

No doubt, the issues will continue to catch attention and receive proper treatment as they crop up but the priority should be placed on fixing these recurrent issues in the paradigm of all inclusive Islamic ideology – which may imply neither total denial nor the slavish acceptance. To live means to adjust, accommodate, accept, acknowledge and at times resist, reject and rectify the ideas and moors flowing from other people , cultures and civilizations and this is the task which Muslims and Muslim scholarship needs wake up to in an attempt to mitigate the challenges of modern life and modern world.

Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer 

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