The Life After Research
In this connection I should mention Professor Sophie
Gilliat-Ray (a white Muslim), who runs the Cardiff
University Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, funded
by the Jameel Foundation. Every year she holds an excellent
Public Lecture series, far superior to what happens in the
MI WGs, and hence we, in the MI, could learn from her. She
herself has done excellent research work on Muslim inmates
and Muslim Imams in the Prison system.
I have spoken to her many times. She is one of many
Muslim intellectuals who attended the first MI meeting at
the Sarum College, but did not return. We, in the MI, need
to attract such people. Finally I have hopes that MI will
move forward and will one day become a home for all British
Muslim intellectuals.
I attend most years the MI WG at the Sarum College with my
wife who has made many friends, who include Merryl Wyn
Davies and the wives of both Dr Zia and Dr Siddiqui. The
last MI meeting (Dec 2013) was meant to be on science, with
a peculiar title: “Trust Me, I am a Scientist”, but even
then most sessions were not on science. The last session was
meant to be on science in which two young women in a panel
were to describe their personal life-experiences with
something that they liked to call science. On the night
before the conference I was invited to join this panel, on
the grounds that there were no real scientists in the panel.
I was told, I think quite rightly, that the MI crowd
was not really interested in science, even though it has
science-graduates and even science PhDs in it.
But from the discussion after my 10-minutes
presentation, I thought perhaps some members were interested
in science, who would perhaps like their children to study
science besides the traditional middle-class Muslim
preference for law and medicine. Something happened after an
earlier session when I asked some questions and participated
in the discussion. After the end of that session two girls
(young members) came up to me. As it turned out they had
known me for some years and as usual with me, I could not
remember them (this inability to remember faces is an old
embarrassing handicap of me). Returning to the encounter,
one of the girls said to me: I am so pleased to hear you
speak. Puzzled, I said: I don’t understand. She answered:
your presence and voice exude reassurance that everything is
alright, which makes us feel calmer – please do come every
year. I was very confused and did not know what to say, but
when I asked if they would like to be on my science mailing
list, they said they already were. I do not think they were
pulling may leg, but I still do not understand my voice
exuding calm and reassurance
–
certainly my wife would not think so. I guess familiarity
breeds contempt.
This complement that I received made me feel humble but also
fearful, in case I damage this pleasant image by my careless
actions in the future WGs. It means that I always need to
behave in such a way that I can remain a voice of calm and
reassurance, thus providing a service. This further implies
that I cannot make aggressively critical comments on ideas
presented. I do not know if I am capable of this – so I pray
God to give the necessary strength for which I often recite
the Quranic verse 2:286 (the last verse of the second Surah
(Baqara).
At that point, I should perhaps mention that over the
centuries there had been many Muslim Reform attempts in
Muslim lands but none succeeded (see my book
Science Under Islam).
Even in this English land, there was such an attempt,
or movement, in the earlier part of the 20th Century, to
create an enlightened version of Islam
–
modernistic or progressive Islam
– by the
Woking Muslim Mission of the ShahJahan Mosque (also known as
the Woking Mosque) in Woking, Surrey, established in around
1890. This movement was supported by the great Muslim
luminaries living at the time in England, such as Sir Syed
Ameer Ali (the first non-white person to be a member of the
Privy Council), Allama Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the great Quran
translator and also Muhammad Pickthall, another great Quran
translator (the Meaning of the Glorious Quran). The
objective of the Mission was to bring about an enlightenment
and liberal Islam to the educated Muslims by discussing
major contentious issues, such as apostasy, purdah, usury vs
interest, halal food, and so on through public lectures and
literatures, the latter included the periodical called the
Islamic Review (distributed free), and also other
publications in newspapers and elsewhere. It (the Mission)
accepted the fatwa of the great Egyptian theologian Muhammad
Abduh (1849-1905), who as the Mufti of Egypt, sanctioned in
his fatwa as halal both the consumption of meat from
non-Muslim butchers, and the taking of loan with interest
(implying usury is haram, but interest is not). Personally I did not find Abduh’s fatwa
all that surprising, since even I have seen a hadith which
declares the meat of animals killed by hunting dogs as
halal, provided
you utter the name of God at the point of eating the meat.
This suggests that one can do the same with meat from
non-Muslim butchers, as many of my Arab friends seem to do.
Also I have read the great scholar Fazlur Rahman’s
discussion on usury and interest, arguing that interest
should be accepted as halal, while usury should remain haram
(see my book). Returning to the Woking Muslim Mission, sadly
this movement also did not survive its great founders. It
follows then that the current Muslim reform organisations
may not succeed either, except that if they die, I do
believe new ones will sprout soon afterward, since many more
educated Muslims in the UK are concerned today, than were in
Ameer Ali’s time, about the lack of adequate enlightenment
in Islam. They may not go all the way with my FERDH agenda
of reform, but they would perhaps go some way.
Even though I gave a seminar on CAMSAM at the Dr Hargey’s
MECO conferences at Oxford I soon realised that the MI would
never be a vehicle for CAMSAM. This was the time when I
began thinking about a blog on Science Digest (Scid) for
Muslim thinkers, which is now going on for several years,
with the help of my son Alvin who has created a blogsite for
me. In 2011, I
was invited by Dr Hargey again to speak on Human Rights
under Islam. It was a challenge for me. I read a lot for a
month, and then produced a seminar which many people
applauded in the conference (including a Christian Orthodox
bishop who attended it). I then decided to make it as part
of a new blog Universal Values Under Islam, a subject in
which I hope one day to write a non-controversial book.
It will take me at least five years, perhaps
completing hopefully in 2019 if I live that long. The new
blog has already been posted with an appropriate blogsite
Alvin has produced.
Muslim University-Students
Going back to my book
Science Under Islam, I thought that although most
Muslims do not usually read books, it is perhaps different
with Muslim University students, who I thought would be
excited in intellectual discourse on Islam, as we were as
students. My first shock came at the book launch meeting
that took place at the Manchester Metropolitan University.
Despite being invited, no students from any of the
University Islamic societies attended. I first thought it to
be an aberration; still expecting to be invited to give
talks in such societies in this Country, but none came. My
attempt to speak to the Muslim schools or schools with many
Muslim students also failed.
At that point, I got involved with the Keele
University Islamic Society (KISOC) through the Keele
(University) mosque which it manages. I had some link with
the mosque as I negotiated its founding in 1986/87 with the
then University Registrar David Cohen, a friend of mine.
Also, I am the only Muslim Professor and the oldest Muslim
resident in the Keele Campus, which seems to have some value
in relation to the mosque.
Gradually I realised that most Muslim University students do
not take any interest in the Islamic society or the mosque
of their Universities, except the Wahhabi oriented Muslims
who believe it to be their sacred duty to control the
Islamic society in their University and its mosque in order
to propagate their version of Islam.
They are the ones who vote in Islamic Society
elections and become the committee members of the Islamic
society, including the mosque committee. If these “Wahhabi”
Muslims lose their passion for the mosque, then I fear it
might not be maintained properly. However, they are not
interested to hear anything on Islamic reform, instead they
always invite extremist preachers who preach hatred and urge
them to convert other students into Islam. They call it
Dawa (invitation, meaning invitation to enter Islam), and they often
talk about forthcoming Dawa meetings to attend. I attended
one such meeting of the KISOC, where to my surprise, I saw
loads of Wahhabi literature on how to convert and how to
answer awkward questions, with typically Wahhabi
interpretation and distortion of Islam. I was astonished by
this Wahhabi machine operating in most, if not all, UK
Universities. The Wahhabis have been dominating the UK
University campuses for many many years, which I was not
aware of before. When in September 2001 I was told by a
postgraduate Arab Muslim student of mine that the KISOC had
held a special Dawa meeting on the Friday after 9/11
expecting to convert non-Muslims, I was horrified. I did not
realise at the time that these students were all Wahhabis,
and hence I should not have been surprised. Instead of
seeing 9/11 as an unspeakable human evil and Muslim shame to
be condemned, they saw it as an opportunity to convert –
I wonder what kind of sanity and mindset they had.
But on reflection I think they were perhaps urged to hold
this special Wawa by their superior unit
Having said all these, but having also had discussions with
the student members of the mosque committee at Keele, I must
admit that I was pleasantly surprised by their courtesy and
religious accommodation.
They happily accepted my proposal on the guideline of
the Friday Khutba (sermon) that the Imam should not only
refrain from criticising any Muslim sect, but also refrain
from criticising other religions. They even discussed to my
satisfaction how they would implement this guideline. I
thought it was a milestone breakthrough, but perhaps not –
perhaps these students were already against attacking
other religions, given that they, as I learnt, were regular
participants in inter-faith dialogues, organised by the
Keele Church. I developed an admiration for them, even
though I have reservation about their closed mind on Muslim
reform and religious zeal on conversion.
