Having been subjected to a fatwah that called for his death for blaspheming against God and insulting the man Muslims consider His supreme prophet, few besides Salman Rushdie can be considered better qualified or to have more of a right to call on Muslims to modernise their outlook.
Such a call is precisely what Mr Rushdie makes in an article in today’s Times, entitled, ‘Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era’.
Amidst all the various flim-flam this week about how the anger of young alienated British Muslims might be abated by re-branding them British Asians or Asian British, Mr Rushdie goes to the heart of the problem when he writes:
‘It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it….
‘However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence within Islam that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical scholarly discourse all but impossible….
‘The traditionalists’ refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. Laws made in the 7th century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st.’
Amen, to that, brother!
Assuming what Mr Rushdie asserts here is spot on -- as I certainly do, it follows Mr Rushdie is no less right in drawing attention to how ineffective the government's present reliance on ‘traditional, but essentially orthodox, Muslims’ is likely to prove in helping to quell Islamist radicalism, unless they too publicly affirm the need for their religion to modernise itself in the way in which he calls for.
Earlier this year, doubtless through the offices of the Prime Minister, a knighthood was bestowed on Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, for his work in helping to promote good inter-faith relations in Britain.
In his article, Mr Rushdie reminds readers this is the man who, as recently as January of this year, denied Muslims could be terrorists, saying that he expected use of the expression ‘Islamic terrorist’ to become an offence after the proposed law proscribing incitement to religious hatred comes into effect.
Mr Rushdie further reminds readers this is also a man who, in 1989, said of him in relation to the fatwah just issued against him, ‘death is perhaps too easy’.
Iqbal Sacranie – whoops, sorry, Sir Iqbal - readers of the Times are elsewhere reminded in today's issue, is also someone who last year responded to concerns the paper had raised about what was being taught to prospective British imams at a training college in Wales, whose course was then validated by the University of Wales, by accusing the paper of engaging in a witch-hunt against what he described as being a ‘credible and established institution’.
The curriculum of the parent body of this training college, whose course the Times reprts today has had its validation withdrawn by the University of Wales, is one devised by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a great Muslim progressive according to the well-known authority on Islam, Ken Livingstone, whose teachings -- that is, al-Qaradawi’s, not Livingstone's -- include the legitimacy of wife-beating and the slaughter of homosexuals, apostates, and all Israelis.
Reliance by the government on ‘moderate’ Muslims of the likes of the head of the Muslim Council is unlikely to prove the way in which to curb Islamic fanaticism, given such ‘moderation’ as his.
Nor will simply requiring Imams wishing to preach at British mosques to speak in English be enough to stem the growing tide of alienation and hatred of Britain, and of much else too, to which young British Muslims are all too easily exposed today, not simply at their local mosques, but, often and far more commonly, through the inter-net or on videos – and all conveniently in the vernacular!
One thing is absolutely certain. Giving orthodox Muslims the power to prevent their religious texts being exposed to the kind of criticism for which Mr Rushdie is calling, through their being able to claim any such criticism an incitement to religious hatred, is the very reverse of what is needed.
What, then, is?
I am tempted to say that it should become mandatory for all British citizens, by the time they have completed their secondary education, to have been obliged to study and been examined in a course about religion in the modern world which would require them to become familiar with the very approach towards religious texts for which Mr Rushdie is calling in the case of Islam.
Control of marking of any such examinations would, of course, be in the hands of those qualified to teach and examine them -- an ideal way, we might think, in which to keep any idle theology and philosophy graduates fully occupied!
If it is protested that imposing any such requirement would be a gross intrusion into freedom of thought and expression, I would reply by citing in its support the words of that well-known apostle of liberty, John Stuart Mill, who, in his famous essay, ‘On Liberty’, proposed something not at all dissimilar, although, for purely pragmatic reasons that are no longer applicable reasons, he stopped short of calling for it to be made compulsory.
This is what Mill wrote on the subject:
‘The instrument for enforcing the law [requiring all children to receive an education] could be no other than public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age. An age might be fixed at which every child must be examined, to ascertain of he (or she) is able to read. If a child proves unable, the father [or, today, as likely, mother?!], unless [s]he has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be subjected to a moderate fine, … and the child to be put to school at his [or her] expense. Once in every year the examination should be renewed, so as to make the universal acquisition, and what is more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge virtually compulsory.’
Although, Mill would have exempted such a course about religion as I am proposing from being compulsory, he would not have done so, I think, because he considered that it would be dealing with too contentious a subject. Rather, he exempted it from inclusion as part of the compulsory curriculum for more pragmatic reasons. For all that, in the passage quoted above, he stipulates as needing to be taught is what he considers it to be necessary for children to be taught in their compulsory elementary schooling.
Mill does go on to propose a system of voluntary examinations for higher or secondary schooling, which Mill would have allowed at the time to be voluntary, for passing which children would receive a certificate.
Now, in such secondary schooling, despite attendance being voluntary, Mill did seek to include precisely such a course as I am proposing. Mill wrote:
‘To prevent the State from exercising, through these arrangements, an improper influence over opinion, the knowledge required for passing an examination (beyond the merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use) should, even in the higher classes of examinations, be confined to facts and positive science exclusively. The examinations on religion, politics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such an opinion is held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or churches. Under this system, the rising generation would be brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they now are, the State merely talking that care that they should be instructed churchmen and instructed dissenters. There would be nothing to hinder them from being taught religion, if their parents chose, at the same schools, where they were taught these other things.’
Mill made these proposals in 1859, twenty years or so before education became compulsory in Britain, at a time when the country could not have afforded to prolong universal compulsory schooling beyond the elementary level. Given how much more affluent the country has since become, plus the fact that compulsory education has now been seen fit to be extended to sixteen, there is no reason why the kind of purely informative course about religion I am proposing, that would acquaint British Muslim schoolchildren with the approach towards their religious texts for which Mr Rushdie is calling, and to which Mill took no principled exception, should not now be deemed a necessary part of the general knowledge that every British citizen should be expected to have acquired before leaving.
If certain present faith schools should find themselves unequipped to provide such tuition from their existent staff, then it would and should be the responsibility of the State to make such trained staff available to them, and to make acceptance of such staff and such tuition in them a condition of their receiving license to operate.
This would surely be a promising way of beginning to address the problem to which Mr Rushdie draws attention in his article.
The State needs, for all our sakes, to begin to grasp this particular nettle, however, painful it might initially be for it to do so. The alternative is to allow the weed of religious hate, intolerance, and violence to grow here to unmanageable proportions.
Comments (1)
An interesting piece and right to identify the key being how religious texts are read. The question is --- and I don't feel Rushdie (or to an extent, Irshad Manji, excellent though she may be) address this. How do we encourage the majority of Muslims to shift from naive literalism to a more sophisticated hermeneutic? The MCB certainly are a hindrance rather than a help:
http://mcbwatch.blogspot.com/
Posted by MCB Watch | August 17, 2005 11:09 PM
Posted on August 17, 2005 23:09