It was probably a good thing that the people who invited Tariq Ramadan didn't organise the talk somewhere in PJ. If they had, the venue would probably have been surrounded by the police in order to arrest the Swiss-Egyptian Islamic scholar for not being licensed to speak. Luckily it was held in KL where it is still relatively safe to speak on Islam. Although if religious authorities like JAKIM and the Mufti of Perak had accepted their invitations to attend, who knows what might have happened since Tariq Ramadan is critical. Very critical. So critical that he is barred from entering no less than six Muslim countries ( Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and Libya).
But someone who is critical is, in our intellectually-starved country, a breath of fresh air. And it didn't hurt that it came in an eloquent passionate French-accented package either.
Tariq Ramadan was here on the invitation of a new organisation called the Islamic Renaissance Front which is dedicated to empowering young Muslims especially to use reason to bolster their faith. For two days, under the theme 'For People Who Think' and in dedication to the late renowned Islamic scholar Muhammad Asad, Prof Ramadan gave talks on the need for reform and renewal in Islam.
It is a pity that the audience was mostly from the English-speaking Muslim middle-class as well as some foreign students and scholars residing here because Prof Ramadan's message really needs to be heard by the masses. Not least because it is a radical message for people used to not thinking and blindly following whatever anyone they think of as a religious authority says.
Prof Ramadan's talk challenged many things that we in Malaysia have come to accept as Islamic. He asserts that while Islam is a universal religion, it doesn't mean that there is no room for diversity, both in space and time. Meaning that there should be room for many different interpretations and there must also be room for evolution due to the passing of time. It's not that Islam isn't relevant for all times but we must look at new innovations and challenges based on the same principles. And those principles are always justice and equality.
These principles are found in the Quran and the Sunnah but there have been many confusions. For instance, there is the confusion on the relationship between text and context. Many people do not, for example, place the text of the Quran in context of when and why they were revealed. They dealt with specific problems of the time but there are principles within them for all time.
Secondly, there is a failure to distinguish between principles and models. "Models," he said, "are historical while principles are universal." A model for a type of governance may be fine for a certain time but not for now. But the principles of that governance, based on jstice and equality, should still apply.
Thirdly, not being able to differentiate between laws and the way. He reiterated that syariah means 'the way' towards faith, not a set of laws. If we take it simply as meaning laws, we may well contradict 'the way', and 'the way' is always about achieving justice. If all we do is to make law but forget the way, then we may well lose 'the way'. Punishment which is almost always how we define syariah is far from 'the way' because 'the way' starts always with justice.
Fourthly, we often confuse rules and meanings. We are so obsessed with rules that we forget about meanings. We may pray five times a day but forget God at the same time. We need to distinguish between a religion of only rules, and one which connects spirituality with rules. We pray not just to follow rules but to remember God; if we don't, we miss the point.
In talking about reform, Prof Ramadan challenged us to think about what type of reform we want. Is it one where we have more and more rules, more and more adaptations? Or one where we transform both ourselves and the world? He feels that the essence of Islam is to reform in order to transform. He repeated many times on both days that we should not simply imitate.
Referring Asad, he said that imitation is wrong because it is colonialism.We should not simply take on what other people have done and put an Islamic veneer on it by making it halal (at one point he shocked the audience by saying, "I don't know what it means to eat a halal Mcdonald's"). The point is not so much to ensure things are always halal but to contribute our own input to the world. In other words, why are we eating McD which is from another culture anyway when we have our own foods?
In order to contribute however, we must have a vision of what we want to do and what world we want to live in. And visions have to be far-reaching and beyond what is reality now. We can't do that if we do not know the world. "If you want to change the world, know the world" he said.
It is therefore simply not enough to rely solely on religious texts and scholars. We need experts in all fields, indeed to 'shift the centre of gravity of Islam' away from just scholars. This, he says, is why Muslims have contributed so little to knowledge these days. The only area where we have been quite good is medicine because religious scholars realise that their lack of knowledge in this field could lead to death and therefore they have deferred to medical experts, thus allowing it to advance.But in other areas we are still lacking.
Prof Ramadan also said some things which few Muslims in our country have ever been bold enough to say. "Islam," he said, "has no problems with women, but Muslims have." He elicited applause from us women in the audience when he said that domestic violence is simply unIslamic. (Later on I had the opportunity to relate to him how it took us six years to pass the Domestic Violence Act in 1994 mainly because there were people who thought such a law would be unIslamic.). He said it vexed him that there are Muslim countries today where women are not allowed to enter mosques. Is that a problem of Islam or of some Muslims?
He asked what are our contributions today in culture, the arts, architecture, music? In music, he said he was so happy that Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) has now returned to making music of the highest level, and regrets the low standards of music in the Muslim world today which seems to regard audiences as infantile and only capable of understanding the simplest lyrics. Furthermore he stressed, "to be good Muslims, you do not have to Arab-ise yourself." I could feel an uncomfortable shifting in the audience's seats.
He also said something else which almost made the audience stop breathing. "Anti-Semitism," he stressed, "is unIslamic. We must acknowledge the suffering of the Jews." This is different from Zionism which is a colonial project which must be opposed, just as we oppose all colonialisms (including Arab ones). He deplores the people who, when unable to agree with Asad, said things like, "Don't forget he was a Jew." It is totally unacceptable, he said, to refer to people's past when you disagree with them. Indeed this is something we see very often here; when you can't find a better argument, discredit the other person.
Prof Ramadan's main emphasis in both his talks is that the way to faith, to be closer to God, is to think critically always."It is not because you are Muslim that you get everything. It is the quest for faith involving ongoing critical thinking that is most important."
Principles and ethics are important. Someone asked him a question about the ummah and he urged us not to romanticise the ummah in such a way that we are blind to wrong-doing. "I will not be your brother if, in the name of brotherhood, I am to support injustice...I belong to the principles, not to my community when they betray those principles."
It was really refreshing to hear Prof Ramadan speak because it was so different from the usual stuff you hear all the time but which are almost always unsatisfactory because they don't provide answers to contemporary questions. But there will undoubtedly be many who will not like what he says. Indeed, he himself pointed out the issue of power, where people in power hate to be criticised or challenged. This must be what prompted our own muftis here to object to any invitation to the Grand Mufti of Syria, Dr. Ahmad Hassoun to speak here because he is known to be open and progressive. What could be worse for those in religious power than for their flock to find out that other religious people think very differently from them?
Someone from the audience got up to say that he liked what Prof Ramadan said but he should be careful because he risked being assassinated. He should have mentioned that those most likely to assassinate him are Muslims, not anyone else.
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