Critique that Needs to be Undertaken by Muslims

An important part of being a Muslim is the determination to hold Muslim societies accountable for justice and pluralism. It means openly and purposefully resisting, challenging, and overthrowing structures of tyranny and injustice in these societies. At a general level, it means contesting injustices of gender apartheid (practiced by groups such as the Taliban) as well as the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities (undertaken by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, etc.). It means exposing the violations of human rights and freedoms of speech, press, religion, and the right to dissent in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, and others.

A vital corollary component of our critique entails standing up to increasingly hegemonic Western political, economic, and intellectual structures that perpetuate an unequal distribution of resources around the world. This hegemony comprises a multitude of forces, among them the oppressive and environmentally destructive forces of multi-national corporations whose interests are now linked with those of neo-imperial, unilateral governments. Together they enforce policies through overwhelming military force, hammering down at the poorest people in the world with disturbing frequency. And yes, as much as it makes some Muslims uneasy to hear this, it does mean challenging certain policies of the United States and other countries that put profit before human rights, and “strategic interest” before the dignity of every human being.

At the heart of a Muslim interpretation should be a simple yet radical idea: every human life, female and male, Muslim and non-Muslim, rich or poor, “Northern” or “Southern,” has exactly the same intrinsic worth. The essential value of human life is God-given, and is in no way connected to culture, geography, or privilege. (Qur’an 5:32 and 17:23-38)

A Muslim is one who is committed to the strangely controversial idea that the worth of a human being is measured by a person’s character, not the oil under their soil, and not their flag. A Muslim agenda should be concerned with the ramifications of the premise that all members of humanity have this same intrinsic worth because, as the Qur’an reminds us, each of us has the breath of God breathed into our being. (Qur’an 15:29 and 38:72)

Muslims as activists and intellectuals should have a vision and mission towards relentless striving towards a universal notion of justice in which no single community’s prosperity, righteousness, and dignity comes at the expense of another. Central to this notion of a Muslim identity are fundamental values that we hold to be essential to a vital, fresh, and urgently needed interpretation of Islamic spirit for the twenty-first century. These themes include social justice, gender justice, and pluralism.

In talking about social justice, gender issues, and pluralism, we are mindful to avoid the trap in which “Islam” becomes a facade for some contemporary political ideology such as Marxism, Communism or Capitalism. Rather, ours is a relentless effort to submit the human will to the Divine in a way that affirms the common humanity of all of God’s creation. We conceive of a way of being Muslim that engages and affirms the humanity of all human beings that actively holds all of us responsible for a fair and just distribution of God-given natural resources, and that seeks to live in harmony with the natural world. To put it slightly differently, being a Muslim means not simply thinking more about the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet, but also thinking about the life we share on this planet with all human beings and all living creatures. Seen in this light, our relationship to the rest of humanity changes the way we think about God, and vice versa.

We will time and again challenge, resist, and seek to overthrow the structures of injustice that have been built into Islamic thought. These challenges cannot be conducted haphazardly, however. They must be undertaken patiently and critically. Yet the necessary and contingent element of being a Muslim is the will to resist the structures of injustice that are built into the very societies in which we live. That goes for the Muslim world as well as the United States and Europe.

In crucial ways, being a Muslim also means being mindful and critical of the arrogance of modernity. What we mean by arrogance of modernity is an alleged teleology that posits a Hegelian, unidirectional, and inevitable march towards the end game of modern Western civilization. We no longer should look to the prevalent notion of Western modernity as something to be imitated and duplicated in toto. In fact, we direct our critique just as much to the West as to Muslim societies. This is particularly the case in response to arrogant voices in the West that insist on the inevitability of a global march towards modernity.

It is disturbing that these arrogant voices are not only coming from certain corners of the academic community (Francis Fukuyama, Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, etc.), but are also now being echoed by the most powerful government in the world. A recent policy paper released by the United States White House titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, for example, is riddled with disturbing instances of hubris. According to the very first sentence of this document, there is now “a single sustainable model for national success,” based on the essential components of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.

Not many people would argue against freedom and democracy, but many Muslims would point out that the foreign policy record of the United States is less than stellar in its support of democracy around the world. Time and again, the United States has supported and armed tyrannical rulers who have oppressed their own pro-democracy citizens. One could point to the U.S.-led overthrow of the pro-democratic Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, the U.S. support of the Mujahidin fighters (including Osama bin Laden) in Afghanistan during the 1980s, or the U.S.$1.5 billion given to Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime during the Iran–Iraq War. To these, one could add the more recent examples of U.S. support of anti-democratic Parvez Musharraf in Pakistan, and support for Hosni Mubarak’s regime when the Egyptian government imprisoned the noted pro-democracy reformer Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

Democracy would indeed be a worthy goal if we in the United States actually pursued it globally, and if we truly believed that other people should have the choice to decide for themselves as to whether or not they should embrace it. As Gandhi himself stated, “I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.”

It is the third component of this “single sustainable model,” an element benignly called “free enterprise,” that drives much of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Later on, the document further boasts, “Free trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty.” Where are these “whole societies” that have allegedly been lifted out of poverty? Nowhere is there an acknowledgement of or engagement with North/South divisions, or the myriad ways in which globalization has worked to make some of the rich super-rich, and the super-poor even poorer.

Another equally disturbing example of the essential arrogance that (mis)- informs The National Security Strategy of the United States of America is the call for a single system of morality. The President of the United States is here quoted as stating, “Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities.” Just whose system of morality is it that we are to abide by here? That of the President of the United States? Right-wing evangelical Christians? Tibetan Buddhists? Catholics? Secular Humanists? The implication is clear: according to this document, just as there is now (or so we are told) one sustainable model of national success, there is now one single acceptable system of morality. And it is the President of the United States (and his advisors) who gets to determine what that is. It is precisely such a hegemonic discourse that Muslims should challenge, in the same way that we reject the arrogant authoritarian discourse of Muslim literalist exclusivists.