Reading Jane Austen while Gaza Burns
Guest writer Dr Farah El-Sharif explores the problem with state sponsored scholars today, Dr El-Sharif is my guest this Friday on The Thinking Muslim (show release Friday 6pm BST).
"The Prophet Muhammad praised the status of the scholar by saying, "the superiority of the scholar over the worshipper is like the superiority of the moon above all other heavenly bodies. The scholars are the heirs of the Prophets, for the Prophets did not leave behind a Dinar or Dirham, rather they left behind knowledge, so whoever takes it has taken a great share.'"
But what happens when the scholar's ink is suddenly dry, when his pen does not write against injustice, despite witnessing a river of blood coursing through the Muslim world, from Gaza, to Yemen, Somalia, Libya, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and to Lebanon? What can be said of the intellectual who restricts himself to legal or creedal concerns only, while turning a blind eye to the cries of the starving, the orphaned, the maimed and the suffering? What happens when tens of thousands of innocents fall prey to one of the most relentless, brutal ethnic campaigns in history while celebrity shaykhs and jurists are barely able to call it a "genocide" publicly?
Worse still, what happens when Muslim scholars actively deploy their pulpits in service of vehemently anti-Muslim governments such as the UAE and reserve their most eloquent speech to enjoin those living under horrendous injustice to "suffer silently"? Once an aberrant sect within Salafism, how did Madkhalism--the strict obedience to the state--become a normalized way of being and of thinking across various Muslim groups and affiliations?
In other words, why is fear and attachment to this world so endemic among those who are meant to be the foremost exemplars of piety, faith and reason? What repercussions does this condition have on the collective spiritual health of the ummah? What is to be said of the state of Islam, when pulpits worldwide are restrained to the point of irrelevance to the daily lived realities of Muslims? When imams regurgitate government propaganda and when those who don turbans cower in muted shadows, rather than exercise what the Noble Prophet ﷺ called the best of jihad, to speak a just word in the face of a tyrant?
To illustrate the seriousness and pervasiveness of this condition, just last week, the most prominent seat of higher learning in the Muslim world, al-Azhar, was forced to delete a post pressuring the Egyptian government to take tangible action to lift the siege and forced starvation of Gaza. In Mecca, a pilgrim was jailed for crying out wa Islamah("where are you, oh people of Islam?") by the Sacred House, the Ka'ba. In Jordan, professors are jailed for supporting Palestinian freedom. Even in the West, where the ceiling for speech is arguably much higher than anywhere else in the Muslim world, British and American Sufi-afflilated scholars convene symposia on subjects such as the topic of Jane Austen, as the genocide and famine in Gaza rages on, squandering their duty and their pivilege in exchange for a docile, quiest Islam, reminding us of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.
Instead of being Prophetic bearers, a great deal many--but certainly not all--the scholars of our time risk deforming the rich, ethics-driven Islamic scholarly and legal tradition. They risk doing so when they allow themselves to become mouthpieces for despotism, fashioning injustice as "realism" and servility as "virtue." Unfortunately, at this moment when Prophetic wisdom is needed the most, many Muslims do not know which authority figures to trust and look up to due to "adab policing" and silencing tactics. This fear-based way of thinking is undoubtedly exacerbated by decades of inferiority complex, and internalizing "war on terror" rhetoric, which has produced a kind of Islam that supports a theology of "might makes right", whether through interfaith forums, normalization and Orwellian "peace" initiatives.
There are many reasons for this state of atrophy. Often, Western scholars in particular are driven by contemporary anxieties born out of "culture wars." They decry the "activist" and "woke mind virus," so in response, they course correct so far right, that they end up granting religious cover for unchecked state tyranny and repression in Muslim communities worldwide. Unfortunately, these dynamics produce the type of scholarship that is more embellished than transcendental, and more reactionary than rooted: it risks becoming more concerned with "victimhood culture" than the lived realities of actual victims themselves.
I discuss this heavy topic and more on the Thinking Muslim Podcast with Muhammad Jalal. We had a candid conversation about the state of Muslim scholarship in our ummah and no holds were barred. Although some might find it uncomfortable to call scholars we once trusted to a higher moral and ethical standard in this moment of rampant, global moral rot, it is imperative for our spiritual health as a global Muslim community--and especially as Muslims living in the West--to be able to maturely and transparently debate our condition. In order to confront the leviathan challenges of our time, we must be able to clearly diagnose and articulate the true sources of weakness, cowardice and strife that are still lauded and platformed within our communities.
Far from relishing in the act of critique, speaking of this obvious crisis in scholarly and political authority is motivated by a concern for the state of Islam, of Muslims, and of humanity. What is our moment if not a grave calling cry--an urgent opportunity--to course correct back to the true tawhdic way of scholarship. One that is not beholden to fickle, worldly state powers, but to God alone."
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