A heavy read

And not for the faint-hearted

Here is an intense journey through a land unexplored by even those living in it for decades and it sure leaves you completely baffled by the end. Sadakat Kadri in his earth-shattering book ‘Heaven on Earth: A Journey through Shari’a Law’ talks about the many misconceptions that people generally have about the Shari’a and how Muslims throughout the centuries have differed over its interpretation and application. Kadri defuses the popular Islamophobic theory postulating that Islam was spread by the sword, claiming that the Muslim rulers had a financial incentive to limit the conversions. He says that the jizya tax imposed on non-Muslims brought great revenues for the Islamic state and so it would not have made sense to convert the non-Muslims. Furthermore, he talks about the apostasy laws imposed by many Muslim rulers actually went against Qur’anic teachings which unambiguously mentioned that there was to be no compulsion in religion. Unlike the apologists, Kadri refuses to mince words and openly criticizes the criminal justice as interpreted by the hardliners.

He talks about the different law schools in Islam came into existence as the Muslim society expanded and need was felt for a system of governance for various affairs. Under the Umayyads, religious scholars had very little to do with the affairs of the state. All that change under the Abbasids, as the religious scholars now spent time with those skilled in jurisprudence, and the muftis (legal experts) would sit with judges and give fatwas (opinions) about God’s law. Every judicial decision was now to be validated by righteous men in the Muslim community who had to be bound by oath. This was similar to the English equivalent known as a jury.

The Hanafites used reasoning by analogy (qiyas) while the Malikites were more conservative and sought to emulate the behavior of the very first Muslims in Medina. Muhammad Al-Shafi, who was the student of Malik (The founder of the Maliki school of law), chose to propagate a way in between the two former schools of thought. He agreed with the Malikites that the Shari’a could be best understood by a scholarly consensus, but said the opinions of all the leading jurists were valid and not just those of the pious Muslims of Medina. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, the founder of the Hanbali school of thought, was the most rigid in his beliefs and claimed that God’s word had neither a beginning nor an end. The Ja’fari school of thought on the other hand was formed by the Twelver Shias who wanted to give legal significance to their beliefs. It diverged from the Sunni law and gave a slightly greater share in inheritance to women and even recognized temporary marriages.

Kadri meticulously bridges the application of Shari’a law in history to its implementation in contemporary times. Shari’a is not a monolithic entity and hence its application differs quite a lot in different parts of the Muslim world. What Shari’a could mean in Pakistan is quite different from what Shari’a means in Indonesia. While some Muslims advocate the ossified form of Shari’a without any change, others call for a more dynamic Shari’a that is relevant to the needs of the Muslim world. Hence, Kadri explains, there is no consensus amongst the Muslim world about what the Shari’a actually is.

He talks about how the Islamic Republic of Iran today truly embodies the Islamic spirit of tolerance for other faiths. His personal visit to Esfahan led him to witness children reciting the Torah in a synagogue, see active churches in every town he visited, and even a Zoroastrian temple in the ancient city of Yazd wherein the goblet of fire has been ablaze since 470 CE. But the sensitivity to some controversial issues, particularly the publishing of the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie in 1989, had deep repercussions in the Muslim world especially in Pakistan. Although the nation was founded as a secular state, its objectives were quickly betrayed. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a London-trained barrister and had personal reasons to value tolerance. He himself was a Shi’a and his wife was a Parsee. But with the passing of the ‘Objectives Resolution’, Pakistan’s politics were to be haunted forever. As power vacillated between secular politicians and army officers, religious parties were seldom to win a major share of votes of the Pakistani public. One reason being that the religious elite of the society had particularly stood against the creation of Pakistan and even the founder of Jamaat-e-Islamic Party, Abu’l Ala Maududi called Islamic nationalism a term as contradictory as a ‘chaste prostitute’. But Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization policies were to ensure that religion was now to dominate the political landscape of Pakistan.

Summing it up, this book is a heavy read and not for the faint-hearted. The complexity of the subjects addressed does tire the reader into reading them several times before comprehending their meaning. But one must be prepared to challenge his deeply-held convictions before reading this book. And if he is not willing to question himself, then he must stay not dare touch this book, for ignorance is always bliss.

………..

Excerpts

Excerpt 1:

‘The genesis of General Zia’s supposedly Islamic laws is a salutary reminder of the limits of politicized religion in Pakistan. Parties that directly credit God for their policies have only once polled in the double digits – after a cyclonic year of protests that followed the United-States led invasion of Afghanistan in later 2001 – and their share of the vote has since fallen back to well under 5%.’

Excerpt 2:

‘For all that Muslims complained about the People of the Book, they themselves had previously lacked a book. But their possession of one did no herald any significant change in attitudes towards non-Muslims, simply because – centuries of anti-Muslim propaganda notwithstanding – forcible conversions were entirely exceptional. Economic calculations did far more to define the trajectory of Islam’s early conquests, and the jizya, which was always more onerous than the 2.5% alms tax applicable to Muslims, was soon producing immense revenues.’

Excerpt 3:

‘Al-Mansur called his new capital the City of Peace (al-madinat al salam). It was a name that would be used for centuries, but another one, belonging to the original Christian community, has turned out to be even more tenacious – Baghdad.’

Excerpt 4:

‘Caliph al-Mahdi’s son, Harun al-Rashid (r.786-809), would be immortalized in One Thousand and One Nights as the caliph’s caliph: a ruler of mythical proportions, who was as eager to walk incognito among his subjects and carouse with louche poets as he was to exalt God and get to the bottom of the paranormal mysteries that endlessly beset his realm.’

Excerpt 5:

‘It was last forgotten on a grand scale in September 2005, when Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons that were supposed to represent the Prophet Muhammad, several of which depicted a stereotypically menacing Arab accessorized by a large beard, veiled women, a scimitar or a bomb. An organization calling itself the Arab European League soon responded by posting an online image of Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, and an Iranian newspaper then ran a competition to find the best cartoons about the Holocaust.’

Excerpt 6:

‘Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) was the son of a Saudi construction magnate, whose business trips to northern Pakistan during the early 1980s had instilled in him a deep admiration for the fighters who were standing up to a superpower. He had moved to Peshawar in 1984 to participate in the war more directly, and he now emerged at the head of a loose organization known as ‘the base’ – al qa’eda.’

Excerpt 7:

‘The approach towards apostasy promoted by modern hardliners raises wider issues of religious freedom – for it sits uneasily with some very explicit and apparently clear verses of the Qur’an…One particularly famous passage reaffirms the principle in terms as simple as they are persuasive: ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from error’.’

Excerpt 8:

‘The teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad proceeded to dispense were controversial enough. He denied the ancient theory of abrogation with its claim that one verse of the Qur’an might supersede another. He argued that God’s hostility towards Mecca’s pagans had not affected his general preference for peace – a view which, in a climate of simmering anti-colonialism, led his many enemies to peg him as a pro-British sycophant.’

Excerpt 9:

‘It was last forgotten on a grand scale in September 2005, when Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons that were supposed to represent the Prophet Muhammad, several of which depicted a stereotypically menacing Arab accessorized by a large beard, veiled women, a scimitar or a bomb. An organization calling itself the Arab European League soon responded by posting an online image of Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, and an Iranian newspaper then ran a competition to find the best cartoons about the Holocaust.’

Heaven on Earth

A Journey through Shari’a Law

Author: Sadakat Kadri

Publisher: Bodley Head

Pages: 332; Price: Rs. 995

The writer is a status quo critic by habit and a marketing scientist by profession. She tweets @mehreen_omer.