Why Afghanistan should not have dismissed the apostasy case
The urgent question is why the puritanical interpretation of sharia, which sees the holy law as a set of literal prescriptions taken selectively from the various sources, has come to prevail in recent decades. Much less is heard about a deeper, richer Islamic legal understanding, one that views sharia, the path of God, as something that mere humans can only approximate in their efforts to apply the few fundamental precepts of the faith to the laws of this world. The latter understanding accepts the fallibility of human interpretations and embraces the rich and varied Islamic juridical traditions. The former rejects most of those traditions, apart from the views of a few strict puritannical jurists.
The flattening and narrowing of Islamic law in the modern period, Abou El Fadl and others say, date from the colonial period, when the learned scholars (the ulema) began to see the authority of their judgments and teachings diminish. Then came scores of reformers from within the Muslim world—some progressive, some reactionary but all trying to make Islam applicable to modern society and governance. Often suppressed or harassed by secular nationalist leaders, Islamist reformers were driven underground or into exile. But some of the most reactionary Islamists also began to receive support from the wealthiest Islamic establishment in the world: the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. The sad irony of this outcome is that the most rigid views of Islamic law, views often rooted in tribal customs and practice, have come to dominate what began as a broad attempt to reform and modernize Islam.
Since September 11, the West and many moderate Muslims have been waiting for a forceful corrective to the Wahhabi-sponsored puritanical interpretations of the Muslim creed. And, to be sure, in the wake of the short-lived Rahman case, a few Muslim organizations and activists have registered their abhorrence of the apostasy charge. Yet few, if any, have clearly called for a long-overdue discussion of the meaning of sharia within the Islamic world. In Abou El Fadl's view, that discussion should have come even earlier, when the Afghanistan Constitution was being put together. But in their haste and sometimes their arrogance, Abou El Fadl says, western advisers feared "opening up the Pandora's box of Islamic arguments." More's the pity, he adds, "because what was needed in the writing of the constitution was a fuller discussion of what sharia means, not just paying lip service to Islam. All that was done was to postpone the issues."
And the real tragedy of the Rahman affair is that those same issues may escape close scrutiny once again.
advertisement
