Apr 23 2007
MICHOT. Ibn Taymiyya: Muslims under non-Muslim Rule
I have been browsing for some time when I found the title of a book I wrote in the title of this post. And below is one review of the book. VERY INTERESTING!!!
it puts side by side fatwas from the medieval period of Islam with modern fatwas
on the same topic – how Muslims should think and behave when their affairs are
under the control of un-Muslim or non-Muslim powers. I don’t know of any other
book that has done this. The fatwas are translated from Arabic as literally as
possible, and while this can sometimes make for hard reading, it is worth it to
know that the originals have not been ‘twisted’ to make a particular argument.
We often hear muslims saying that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’. Having
read this book, I can accept that those are not just handy soundbites for
politicians wanting to keep people calm. The classical Islamic position does not
see Islam as a political identity; it does not require that Muslims must live
under an Islamic ‘political order’ or ‘state’ or ‘government’. Only the modern
militants demand that. The medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya speaks for the
classical position; the modern militants (who misread Ibn Taymiyya) speak for
the agressively, narrowly politicised Islam so much in the news these days. The
Introduction before the translations explains the context for the fatwas, and
how Ibn Taymiyya has been misread.
The notes on the life of Ibn Taymiyya
tacked on at the end make it clear that he was no ‘moderate’. He was a fighter,
an activist, always in the public eye. But he never preached or practised
rebellion or the use of violence against the powers he criticised. He used words
and argument, and went to prison for it, and died what we would now call a
‘prisoner of conscience’ — not a rebel or traitor.
I have to say the
book is very much an Oxford professor’s take on the topic. So it has a lot of
footnotes, some very long, plus a long bibliography and very detailed indexes.
That may put some readers off. I hope it doesn’t. The meaning and message of the
book is one that needs to reach a lot of people, especially angry young Muslims
in the West who are getting madder by the day, as their fellow-Muslims in the
Middle East and elsewhere get a hammering from ‘the civilised world’. For
Muslims living in the West the orthodox Muslim way to fight that crazy policy is
not the way of the wannabe terrorists.
KPDE 21.00 230407
