by Ed Husain
Third, a primary motivation for the urge to kill ‘non-Muslims’ who offend Islam is the belief that ‘the Muslim umma’ or global community is under attack. The perceived exclusivity of the umma helps fuel the ‘them against us’ narrative. The Prophet Mohamed’s notion of umma included Jews, Christians and others when he addressed the people of Medina.
Fourth, the age of religious intolerance and empire is now over. For centuries, Jews and Muslims did not settle in the West because as blasphemers against Christianity and Jesus Christ they would have been persecuted. Empires protected their own versions of religion: England upheld Protestantism, France and Italy Catholicism, Russia supported the Orthodox, and the Ottomans advanced Islam. That world of rival empires has now, thankfully, ended. Muslims have settled and prospered in the West in large numbers because of the end of these blasphemy laws. Muslims and others can enjoy religious freedom. Muslims are free to proselytise, as they are to apostatise. In essence, Muslims are expected to be people of shukr, or gratitude. The Quranic opposite to shukr is kufr or disbelief. As a community of gratitude, it is among the greatest acts of ingratitude to burn the bridges of pluralism and secularism that allow for Muslims to observe their faith in the West.
Fifth, just as Muslims are free to be pious in the West with visible signs of Islam in the building of mosques, facilitation of Halal butchers, establishment of cemeteries, and fulfilment of every need of communal life, so must Christians or others in Muslim countries be entitled to be free. Even in the age of empires this principle of reciprocity was often in place. In a globalised world, blasphemy laws serve no purpose but to force believers to pretend to be religious when, in fact, they have lost their convictions in faith.
Sixth, coercion does not produce piety or sincerity among believers. Wherever there is enforcement of ethics, there is ground for the breeding of hypocrisy and the creation of outlaws. I saw this when I lived in Saudi Arabia. The Quran is clear in its declaration that ‘There is no compulsion in faith’ – and yet the Saudi ban on distributing Bibles and forbidding Christian gatherings meant that Western embassies became bastions of a locally defiant Christianity. Young Saudis converted quietly or rejected religion altogether and became confrontational atheists. Similarly, of the many Middle Easterners I met while living and working in the United States, it was Iranians who had escaped the rule of the Shi‘a clerics that were born-again, converted evangelical Christians only too keen to baptise me or any other ‘infidel’. Unless Muslims stop forcing Islam through the state, then there is a serious risk of more and more Muslims leaving Islam. What the Prophet called the ‘Dhawq’, or the taste of religious devotion, cannot be savoured unless it is done freely.
Among the greatest rights of the sacred within Islam is that God does not wish Muslims to kill God’s creation. Human life itself is sanctified. That strength of Islam to cherish the divine deserves to be protected through freedom, not force. The argument needs to be won, and the laws in Muslim countries need to allow for pluralism.
19
The Family Table
The patriarch Abraham, or Ibrahim as Muslims know him, was renowned for his hospitality and frequent visitors. Yet Ibrahim and his family preferred his guests to be of a similar outlook to his own, reflecting broadly his own worldview. One time a middle-aged traveller stopped by Ibrahim’s home. After dinner the visitor went straight to sleep with neither prayers nor thanksgiving to God. In the morning the man had breakfast, and later lunch, at Ibrahim’s family table, then worshipped an idol and, after his evening meal, went back to bed without joining in Ibrahim’s family worship of one God. After a week of such behaviour, Ibrahim confronted him. Disturbed by his distance from God and devotion to a statue, Ibrahim sent him away for being an ungrateful polytheist. That night, Ibrahim received a message from God: ‘Ibrahim, what is with you? You could not feed My servant, My creation, for a week, for not being My worshipper? But I have fed him and protected him for over forty years.’
The Sufis tell this wisdom story to encourage Muslims to honour our guests regardless of creed or background. ‘Guest is god’ is a popular saying among Muslim families in south Asia and Arab countries. Hospitality is not meeting at restaurants, pubs and bars, but sharing in the eating of home-made food in family surroundings. Westerners who have travelled in Muslim societies or Muslim-influenced cultures will have noticed this widespread warmth. Despite the spread of Westernisation, this institution of family and home-oriented hospitality still stands. Even when not meeting at home, ‘going Dutch’ is never an option – that is seen as an embarrassment. The Muslim host always insists on paying fully.
This is a cultural manifestation of the widespread, time-tested and deeply valued institution of the family. Without the family maintaining this refinement at home, we become ‘customers’ at commercial institutions, rather than loved and honoured guests at homes in far-flung parts of the world as we travel away from our own abodes. The family table means nothing without the family.
Islam’s deep influence on its adherents’ family life is beyond doubt. It is so deeply rooted and widespread that most Muslims of all hues, from the secularly unobservant to the most pious, are raised within an enduring Islamic culture. The Arabic names of members of the Prophet Mohamed’s family still dominate the choice of names given to Muslim children in Europe, Turkey, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Indonesia, and even among Uighur Muslims in China: Khadija, Ayesha, Fatima for women and Ali, Abdullah, Hasan, Husain for boys.
A test of being a liberal in the West is to not only advocate homosexual rights, but to support gay marriage. From the United States to Ireland, Western nations have legislated for same-sex unions in defiance of conservative and religious views on traditional marriage and family life. There is not a single Muslim country that has legislated for this form of matrimony. Even those who consider themselves liberal, Westernised or progressive will in the vast majority of cases oppose any aberration from the traditional nuclear family. The mother–father–child family structure remains firmly at the core of Muslim communities globally, but not without its modern trials.
There is no concept of a ‘civil marriage’ in the Muslim world – the ceremony is fully religious even in the most avowedly irreligious families. The imam is present. He recites from the Quran and reminds the gathering that the Prophet said: ‘Marriage is from my way of life and whosoever rejects marriage is not from my community.’ According to the sharia, explicit agreement is then required from the bride and groom in the presence of male witnesses. The Prophet taught that upon acceptance of the dowry by the woman from the man, sweetmeats should be exchanged. In the Arabian peninsula the practice is to exchange dates, and in other parts of the world pastries, chocolates and other sweets are used to celebrate.
An imam normally raises his hands and prays to God, and for a few brief minutes the entire gathering joins in collective prayers for the newlyweds’ health and happiness, and for pious offspring. If the wedding is public and the parents’ consent has been secured, then a walima (feast, or banquet) is organised by the groom’s family.
The husband will almost always take his new wife home to live with him and his parents, and her own parents will bid her farewell. The notion that a son or daughter must leave home on reaching adulthood is still mostly alien in the Muslim world, and often two or three generations live together.
The strongest Western influences on Muslim marriage ceremonies are seen in the wearing of Western clothes, Western music being played at the walima while people eat, extensive consumption of Coca-Cola and similar soft drinks, Western cars and, finally, the novel concept of a honeymoon. Young couples now travel to faraway destinations, while older Muslims look on bewildered as to why a couple would wish to leave their families and be so selfish. Taking ‘moon’ in the lunar sense of ‘month’, the word ‘honeymoon’ has been translated literally into Arabic as shahr al ‘asl, ‘month of honey’. The month of honey is often spent in Western capitals.
Afterwards, the coup
le return home to the husband’s parents’ house, and go to visit the bride’s family with sweets and presents. Throughout, the deepest respect is shown for both sets of parents and elders. Parents are to be respected and protected partly because of the wider culture, but also because this culture has been reinforced by Islamic teachings for fourteen centuries. There is a generational contract in which the young venerate the elderly, and seniors show love to the young.
We see this on the streets, as young children are kissed, embraced and have their heads patted by complete strangers in a completely innocent and affectionate way. This ease of contact and proximity to children is now impossible in the West for fear of accusations of child molestation and paedophilia. When I first went to live in Syria, my friends would kiss young children on the hands, cheeks, head and lips. Coming from the West, that somewhat shocked me, but I soon realised that I was the one with a problem, not my friends.
Muslim societies also venerate their elders. The aged are not usually isolated or placed in old people’s homes. Older members of the family and the community are revered and honoured with kisses on their hands and foreheads and the offering of seats and prime place in the mosque on Fridays. Addressing an older person by their first name is considered overfamiliar and disrespectful, so titles are in order, or just calling all elders ‘uncle’ or ‘older brother’. This is, in essence, an extension of the deference to parents. The Quran categorically calls on believers to ensure that their parents need never utter the word ‘Uff’, an Arabic expression of pain or exasperation. The children’s conduct is to be exemplary – which is, of course, hard, and demands a constant struggle. ‘God, have mercy on them, as they had mercy on me when I was young’ is a prayer in the Quran for young people.
The Quran describes pregnancy as wahn ‘ala wahn, ‘exhaustion upon exhaustion’. The Arabic word for ‘womb’, rahm, has the same derivation as Al-Rahman, the most compassionate, one of the key attributes of God. Something of the divine function of creation is found in the mother when she gives birth, a miracle of God.
Muslims to this day are brought up to remember that once a young man asked the Prophet: ‘Who should I should respect the most?’ To which the Prophet replied: ‘Your mother.’ ‘And then whom?’ asked the youth. ‘Your mother,’ came the reply again. ‘And then whom?’ he repeated. ‘Your mother,’ was the Prophet’s further reply. Three times the Prophet emphasised the mother.
The strength of Islamic culture in Muslim societies is maintained through such ubiquitous teachings and their application in daily life and major life events such as births, marriages and deaths. But this harmony of text and context is challenged by modern life.
Until recently, the concept of an old people’s home was purely Western, and care of the elderly was always, and on the whole still is, the duty of the family. Most old people still live with their families – even in refugee camps I visited in Lebanon, three generations of Palestinians lived in the same ramshackle homes – but for the first time we are beginning to see this tradition coming under strain. In some countries, such as Egypt, elderly people in large cities may be given in-home care by non-family members, or sometimes placed in nursing homes. Saudi Arabia provides some in-home care and a few nursing homes mainly for elderly people with no family to look after them – otherwise, relatives are expected to provide for their aged family members.1
Muslims have traditionally had large families, but the modern, Western emphasis on smaller families, reflecting later marriages, with women often in their thirties, couples’ need for dual incomes and wives wanting to continue their careers, and smaller homes, secured by mortgages, are all factors influencing Muslim lives.
In the US and in Catholic societies, abortion is a major topic of controversy, but the sharia is relatively flexible on this issue: the Hanafi school permits abortions up to 120 days after conception. This issue is not widely discussed, nor is it a major obsession among Muslims, but the rise in abortions is a reality. In Indonesia, the rate of abortion is among the highest in the world at 37 for every 1,000 women – more than 2 million abortions a year.2 In Egypt and Turkey the rate is about 15 per 1,000 women, somewhat lower than the 16.9 in the United States.
Governments in many Muslim countries are keen to promote smaller families in the interests of economic growth, development and poverty reduction. Even the clerical regime of Iran subsidises contraception to assist in family planning.
Be it the rise of divorce, the gradual increase in old age care outside the family, or the urge to Westernise and reduce the size of Muslim families, these threats are not sufficient to destabilise the core Quranic concepts that still thrive in Muslim societies. For young people, traditional marriage is still the general aspiration, and creating a family naturally is the widespread norm.
When spending time as a guest with a Muslim family, a visitor from the West will witness all of the above, and experience something more. In the poorest of homes in Nigeria, in refugee camps in Turkey – playing host to nearly 2 million displaced Syrians – the visit of a guest is felt to be an honour. The family table is lit up with additional happiness when it welcomes a guest. The sense of hospitality traditional in the deserts of Arabia has been maintained in modern homes, where a visitor is made to feel significant and special in a way with which the West cannot compete. Muslim families spontaneously offer gifts, hugs and invitations to eat in their homes. The loving spirit of Islam still holds together the family from which society derives immense benefit. But the family also prepares its young and old for what awaits us beyond this life.
20
The Next Life
Human beings instinctively seek meaning in their lives. Consciously or unconsciously, we want to know where we came from, why we are here, and where we are heading. To these existential questions, Western humanism has no definitive answers. Moral relativism and ideas such as ‘There is no truth’ are strange to Muslim public discourse. Islam speaks to this human search for meaning, and does so in very clear terms.
The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife, for which they prepared in extensive detail. The pyramids of the pharaohs and the tombs of Egyptian nobles tell us precisely that this life was spent in preparation for another existence. The ancient Greeks also understood that life in this world was a passing phase: Socrates in his last days spoke of anticipation of meeting his creator. But the ancient Arabs did not believe in the next life. The Prophet Mohamed’s mission among the Arab tribes was to connect them to civilisations that saw beyond the here and now.
To the pagan Arabs, this earthly life was all there was. They killed their own daughters with impunity in large part because, as well as not being accountable to their contemporaries, there was also no question of having to answer for one’s actions after death. The notion of being judged in the next world for one’s deeds in this life was seen as an eccentric belief of the Jews and Christians who lived as minorities in the Arabian cities of Mecca, Taif and Medina. The Prophet’s call to believe in only one God was revolutionary enough for idol-worshipping polytheists, but to accept that there might be another life beyond the here and now meant a change in the believer’s whole approach to life.
Muslims believe that there is an Akhirah, another world, to which our souls travel upon our death, and throughout their lives they work toward success in the next world. This belief is reinforced with frequent reminders of the Akhirah in daily prayers and supplications, recitals of the Quran and maintaining purity of doing ‘good deeds’ that are free from ostentation or other motives. If, for instance, a conscientious Muslim gives alms or helps keep the streets clean or fights injustice, he or she tries to do so with sincerity for God and reward in this and the next life.
The greatest institutional reinforcement of Akhirah is the imminence of the annual Hajj gathering: every Muslim has a family member, relative or friend present. There on the great plain of Arafah, on the outskirts of Mecca, millions spend a day in repentance for the misdeeds of this life, and seeking sa
lvation in the next. The Prophet Mohamed’s last sermon was delivered on a mount in this valley, and his words echo to this day at Arafah and across the world. The day of Arafah comes approximately seventy days after Ramadan and a day before the Eid al-Adha, second of the two annual Muslim holidays. Months before the Prophet passed away, preaching on Arafah, he said to thousands of his companions: ‘Remember that one day you will appear before God to answer for your actions. So beware, and do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone. Pass on my words to others and to others again. So the last ones understand my words better than ones present here today.’
The Hajj is an annual reminder of the Prophet’s words on the preparedness for the next life. The Akhirah is our everlasting life: this abode is transient. Whenever I find myself in doubt about this truth, I recall the explanation provided by Imam Ghazzali (1058–1111). He wrote that just as an embryo did not know or understand birth and being a baby, and a baby does not foresee becoming a toddler and then an infant, and an infant does not understand puberty or middle age, and the able-bodied, healthy person at the peak of their lives doubts that they will ever be frail – so it is with the afterlife and us. Because we cannot scientifically comprehend the Akhirah, it does not mean that another realm does not await us.
