An Islamic Case for Pluralism, Equal Citizenship, and Religious

An Islamic Case for Pluralism, Equal Citizenship, and Religious Freedom

Introduction and Context Setting

Welcome back to our concluding plenary address and panel presentations on this very stimulating morning. I thought I might just set up the, before I introduce Sheikh Hamza a little more formally, but in not great detail, we'll just make a few observations about something, a question that sometimes comes up. And the question goes like this.

Some would argue that it's odd, even inappropriate, for non-Muslims to be involved in the debate about religious freedom in the Muslim world, the Muslim majority world. At the Religious Freedom Institute, we have a proposition that's central to our work, which says there are very specific roles for Muslims and non-Muslims to play in this discussion. And it's the same thing we say when we're in Myanmar or China, wherever it is, that the dialogue always has to include both the majority populations and the minority populations.

The Existential Question for Minorities

And this is the reason why. If you take the Middle East, the non-Muslim minorities there, it's not sort of an academic debate. It's a sort of an existential threat, you might say.

You look at the percentage of Christians in the Middle East, say 100, 150 years ago, when it was something like 13, 14%, you look at the percentage today, just a few percentage points, it's a matter sort of survival in a place where they've, in some cases, lived 2,000 years or more. The same would be true for minorities in other settings. So it's kind of a question of survival.

The Value of Historical Perspective

But there's a second reason. And the second reason is that sometimes the history of the non-Muslim minorities in a particular setting can be of use. I think we saw and heard a little of that in Dr. Philpott's presentation because the sort of the humility of the minority to recognize that their own traditions are not error-free, are often problematic, is a very good exercise in humility.

And also to acknowledge that we needed, most religions need, to develop and to think about their current situation in a critical and reflective way. And then I would add a third reason for the involvement or the unique contributions of non-Muslim minorities, in this case, to the discussion. And that is, if they are honest and they do a serious study and analysis of the majority religion, and they're honest about it, what they have to say about it can be very useful.

The Culture Debate About Islam

We started out today with the proposition that there's a culture debate going on with respect to Islam in the West, in which there are a number of people who are fearful, whether they say so or not, that there's something within Islam, in the DNA that is problematic. In that culture debate, if there are non-Muslims who come to the defense of Muslims to say, wait, wait a minute, study the history more carefully, study the sacred texts more critically, look more critically at this, and they say, hold on here, take a look and remind their own traditions of their own past, it can play a major result, a major role in a positive direction. But at the end of the day, everybody understands that there's no question that the case for the full citizenship and pluralism and religious freedom has to be made first and foremost by Muslims, not by non-Muslims.

The Need for Internal Islamic Discourse

There has to be a sense that it is fully consistent with the sacred texts and the religion. It has to be understood as something which is positive towards the health of Islam. And that's why it's such a great privilege to have the opportunity to introduce to you our final plenary speaker today, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf.

Introduction of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf

And I've only picked a very few points to make about his background. Many of you know him very well. And as was stated before, you can read a bit more in the bio.

But Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is clearly one of the Muslim world's foremost scholars on this topic. And what's interesting about Sheikh Hamza is that he's deeply steeped in the tradition of the Western liberal arts. I spent some time last night reading about his teacher when you were in your 20s and his emphasis, you talked about him during the consultation, his emphasis on the liberal arts.

He understands that world well. He understands the world of Islam well as well after 40 years of studying with leading scholars throughout the world. He's the president, actually co-founder and president of the Zaytuna College in Berkeley.

He serves as the vice president for the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies in Abu Dhabi. But this of course was founded by Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah who has been a major mentor to Sheikh Hamza. He's a prodigious reader.

His knowledge is far reaching. And what he has to say in terms of his scholarships and his YouTube videos is wonderful. I won't list the books, but I'll tell you one of my favorites.

A wonderful devotional book is the Purification of the Heart. It's the kind of thing which makes you still believe that academics can reflect the piety that's the best part of our religions. The 2018 edition of the Muslim 500 ranks Sheikh Hamza Yusuf as one of the foremost authorities on Islam outside the Muslim world.

Finally, Sheikh Hamza is a wonderful friend, a devoted father and husband. We're glad to have his wife Liliana here and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Religious Freedom Institute, co-chair of the consultation, Sheikh Hamza. Thank you.

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's Opening Remarks

In the name of God, most merciful, most compassionate, prayers and peace be upon our prophet, peace be upon him and upon all the prophets. First of all, it's wonderful to be at this campus. We were so struck by just the physical beauty of the place.

And so for any students that are here, I know this is a Christian college, I hope that you really show some gratitude every morning for the blessing of being in a place like this and afforded the leisure time to think about things that are important. And among them, what we're talking about today, which is religious liberty.

Everything that I wanted to say has pretty much already been said.

I think Daniel did a really good job. So I'm tempted after two days of really exhausting conversation to just open it up to some discussion. But I'll say some remarks.

The Quran as a Death Meditation

I did prepare a paper, but I'm not gonna read from it. I'm not a good reader from papers generally. But in the paper, what struck me at looking at this issue was, and I do, I have a practice with the Quran, but I was once asked to write a paper on death in the Quran, which was very interesting because that's one of the reasons why I converted to Islam.

My experience with the near death experience and then reading the Quran. But I was asked to write a paper on that, which I did not think would be that hard. You look in a concordance at Mawt )موت( in Arabic, and then you look at all the verses that have Mawt in it.

But what I found in writing that paper, which took me several months, and was published, a truncated version of it was published in the study Quran. It's an appendix in the study Quran. What I found in that, in writing that paper is that the entire Quran felt like a death meditation to me.

And I really, since I've been reading it since that time of doing that paper, it completely strikes me as a death meditation. You cannot find one page of the Quran that does not remind you of death. And the chapters that Muslims are encouraged to read every day are pure death meditations.

Yasin, Waqia, and Mulk. If you actually read those, you will see that the theme of those three chapters is about death. And not in a morbid sense, but in a sense of the gift of life is a tenuous gift.

The Gift of Life and Mortality

And being alive to the fact that you could be removed from the world at any instant is a very profound spiritual practice, because it's carpe diem, as the Romans used to say. It gives you a real sense of making life important. One of the things that strikes me about traditional photographs, photographs begin in the 1830s, but you will never see before the 20th century anybody smiling in a picture.

And it wasn't because they had bad teeth. The reason I'm convinced that they did not smile is because they had some sense. First of all, it took a long time.

They had to sit there, and the camera shutter speed was much slower than they are today. But I really am convinced, because the Native Americans, if you've ever seen Curtis's photographs of the Native Americans, you see the same phenomenon. You see the same phenomenon in the Muslim world.

Why is that? Like everywhere around the world, they had the same. And if you look at the statues and portraits throughout human history, they never smiled. The Mona Lisa has a very slight, I mean, there's a question, is it a smile or not? But I'm convinced that they really understood that something is going to be frozen in time, and I want to be remembered as a serious person.

The Seriousness of Life

And that is not to say that humor is not important, but humor is the salt of life. It's the spice of life. It's not the main meal.

And I think religion, if anything, it reminds us of the importance of life, that this is a momentous thing, that we are here, each one of us is a unique human being that has never existed before, that has an incredible genetic coding that is entirely unique. No other human being in human history has ever had the coding that you have, and you have a certain set of life experiences that no individual has ever had. And so you have this short time, each of us has been given this short time on Earth.

It's in relation to the overall time, it's an incredibly short time, so what do we do while we're here? For the ancient people, what was most important was seeking the truth, this idea of seeking the truth and understanding. And these were the great philosophers of human history, and they tried to convey that to people, but in many cultures, people fall asleep. They go into a type of group think, and they don't want to wake up, and they really are bothered by gadflies.

Waking Up from the Default Setting

In fact, very often they kill gadflies because they wake them from their sleep, and sleep is very comfortable. To go on to automatic pilot, the default setting of the human being, it's just a very comfortable thing to do. And so the alarm clock is something a lot of people smash when it goes off, right, and put it on snooze.

And this is the human condition. And so then you have another element, which is the complexity of living together, and the first great difficulty in that is the family. I once read a book by Fazlur Rahman that said that it

was called the themes of the Quran, and there wasn't any chapter on family, and I said that can't be possible.

The Story of Prophet Yusuf: Family as a School of Forgiveness

Like for a book that's sent to the world as a revelation to teach them how to be, it must have family as a theme. So I decided to read the Quran just from that perspective, and I realized there is a chapter entirely dedicated to the theme of the families, chapter 12. In fact, it's the only cohesive chapter in the entire Quran as in traditional linear terms.

And it's about a dysfunctional family of prophets. And I kind of realized that, I mean, the brothers wanted to kill Joseph, and they ended up throwing him down a well. And at the end of the story, Joseph forgives his family.

And so what I realized was is that that is what family is for. It's to learn how to forgive because of the difficulties of just being born into a family that is going to cause great joy at times, but also great grief. And so we're a human family.

The Human Family and Divine Diversity

And just like you have the uncle that nobody wants over on the holidays, right? Because they just know it's gonna be a problem. But he comes. It's like Robert Frost said, home is a place that when you go there, they have to let you in, right? And in a way, our religious family has those uncles that other people kind of look askance at, but we're Bani Adam )بني آدمwe're the children of Adam, and Eve, she was there too.

We are the children of these two parents. And even though we have this incredible diversity of color, of race, of language, of just physical features, just amazing bouquet of extraordinary divine artistry, if I could use that word. Some Muslim theologians would get a little upset with that.

So my point is this diversity of religions is part of the human diversity, just like you have a diverse family. If you've ever seen a litter of kittens, there's nothing more different than a litter of kittens. One of them's like clinging to the mother.

Another one's suckling, won't let go. Another one's like fighting one of them. Somebody's trying to get out of the box.

Divine Intention for Diversity

And this is the diversity that we find even in the most basic animals in the world. And so religious diversity is clearly part of the divine intention. And one of the aspects of a lot of cultures is this demand for homogeneity, this demand that everybody conform and everybody be similar, everybody look alike and talk alike.

And it's just, it's not possible. And so this desire to be free, this desire to be free is a profound human desire. People do not want to be, they do not know.

Most people love chocolate, but if you try to shove it down their throats, they're just not going to respond in some kind of affectionate way. They're going to resist it. And this is why in the Islamic tradition, it's very clear that if you read the Quran, you will see this constant theme, had we wanted, we would have made you all similar.

Had we wanted, we would have made you all believe. Had we wanted, we would have made you one nation. There's several verses.

The Quranic Rejection of Coercion

And then there's all these verses where it says, for instance, Noah says to his people, can I compel you to believe something?

Anulzimukumoha wa antum laha karihoon - Can I compel you to believe this and you don't like it?

In other words, I can't do that. The verse in Yunus:

Wa law shaa rabbuka la-amana man fil-ardi kulluhum jamee'an, afa-anta tukrihun-nasa hatta yakunu mu'mineen - And had your Lord willed, those on earth would have believed - all of them entirely. Then, would you compel the people in order that they become believers?

Do you think you can compel people to believe? And right before that, it says, had God wanted, he would have made you all of the same religion. If you look at the verse in the Quran:

La ikraha fi-deen - There's no coercion in the religion.

For people that know some Arabic grammar, that is nafy al-jins (نفي الجنس). It negates the genus of coercion, which means all forms of coercion. It negates the genus of coercion. The very hallmark of a civilized society is that we choose persuasion over violence.

Civilization and the Problem of Violence

That is the hallmark. If violence is the default setting of a place, it is not a civilized place. But we're a violent species, and this is a big problem.

And there's ways that this was dealt with in the past. One of the ways in the Japanese tradition, the Bushido tradition, was to actually take that martial spirit and refine it. This was called futuwwa (فتوة) in the Arabic

tradition.

It was called knight errantry in the Christian tradition of taking this sense, this intense masculinity what they now call toxic masculinity, which it very often can become, and refining into something virtuous, something noble, something that elevates people. Where you defend children, you defend women, and people can say, we don't want your defense. Well, the Yazidi women did want your defense.

Because when things break down, it's the women and the children that suffer more than any other group. And this occurs in wars. It occurs whenever violence strikes.

Women do very well in highly civilized societies. But when it breaks down, something very different happens. So this is the way that civilizations tried to do this, was to try to create a spirit in the individual.

The Problem of Group Tribalism: The Nika Riots

Now, the other thing that we have, which is a tragic aspect of our nature, is this group thing, where we fall into the Tutsis and the Hutus, and where I see the other. Now, if anybody knows about the Nika Riots, does anybody know about the Nika Riots? The Nika Riots were riots in Constantinople at the beginning of the sixth century under Justinian I. In the Roman tradition, they had these things called the demes. These were sports teams, and they had colors.

So they had these chariot races, and they initially had four colors, but then the chariots were reduced down to two, the blues and the greens. Not only did the chariot racers wear the color, all the fans in the stadium wore the color of their team. We're talking sixth century, right? The Nika Riots occurred because the blues and the greens got into a fight.

People were killed. Justinian had them arrested. They were punished to death.

Two of them escaped. They fled to a Christian church as refuge. They were surrounded, and they wanted protection.

The people there did not want them killed. They're people on the same team. And so Justinian decided to just give them a prison term, but what he did was he decided to have some chariot races to calm everybody down.

At the chariot races, instead of crying blue and green, they started sounding Nika, victory. This led to riots. Over 30,000 people were killed.

These are one of the major calamities in sports history. Over 30,000 people were killed. Now, there's political reasons for why they were in their state.

The high taxes, they were fed up with Justinian I. He was also a blue and sided with the blue side, so the greens weren't happy with that. Very stupid for a political ruler to take sides in sports because you lose a lot of people, right? The basket of deplorables, not a wise remark.

Sports as Pseudo-Religion

So we also have hooliganism, right? Football hooliganism. People, I once saw a billboard in London that said, if your religion is football, worship with Channel 4. Now, you can think that that's funny, but for some people in England and other places, religion and football are one and the same. Their team, that sports character, Beckham at the time was the savior, right?

Whoever it is now, you know, Salah, they chant in, where is it, Liverpool, you know? If he's a Muslim, we're Muslims.

They'll even convert to Islam because if he keeps scoring goals, right? So we look at sports violence, and as an educated person that used to be, I played sports in high school. I, on moments of profound weakness, I will look to see how the San Francisco Giants are doing when football, when baseball season is going on. But an educated person finds it really difficult to understand why there would be violence over a sports game.

Education and Civilization

And that's exactly it, an educated person. But an uneducated person does not have that luxury because that is such an important aspect of their lives. It gives their lives meaning.

They cover their walls in their room with their sports heroes. They know the stats. I learned statistics from my love of baseball in early, as a child, that's one of the benefits of baseball cards is you actually start understanding statistics.

So I did very well in my stats class. So religion becomes like a sport. You're on a team, and the uneducated people very often begin to treat the other team, instead of being gentlemen about this thing, and gentle women, which is really the goal of a civilized society, is to make gentle the way of the world.

This is what Aeschylus said, that the great Greek desire was to tame the bestial nature of man and make gentle the way of the world, what the Arabs call adab (أدب), right? The adab, which is very similar to the idea of a gentleman and a gentle woman. And this is something that you will still see in people that maintain a type of understanding of just recognizing the right of others. The great Persian poet, Hafez, said, if you realize that you were welcomed to a banquet by God, you were invited by God, but then that every single person that you see is also a guest to that same banquet, Hafez says, how would you treat them, the guests of God? Knowing that every human being is here with an invitation from their creator.

Cultivating Recognition of the Other

If you're a believer in a creator God, that's something that needs spiritual cultivation, and it should begin at the earliest stages, and it's something that unfortunately, in many cultures, we lack that cultivation. And so we begin

to see the other, whether it's racially or whether it's gender, for whatever reasons, we see them as other. I find it one of the great coincidences of language is that in the English language, we have other in brother, but in Arabic, you have brother in other.

So in Arabic, to say other is akhar (آخر), but to say brother is akh (أخ). So the brother is embedded in other, and I think that's a better way to see it, to see the brother in other, as opposed to seeing the other in brother. And I think that's what we need to get to.

The Complexity of the Muslim World

Now, about the Muslim world, the Muslim world is a very complicated place, and even a monolithic statement like the Muslim world, I think, is really not very useful, because it doesn't really mean a lot. A place like Guinea or a place like Mauritania is as different as Indonesia, as Ireland is to Albania or something. They're really different places with different cultures.

In Saudi Arabia, women wear a very dark, it's black. I saw a very funny cartoon where it showed, you know, a high school picture, and all the women were in black, and there were two women looking at it, both in black. You couldn't see any faces.

She just says, Mashallah, you haven't changed since high school. It's a slow reaction there for some, but it's okay. We're all, it's early, right? But in West Africa, they wear very colorful clothes, like the women wear very colorful clothes, and they like those clothes.

Culture vs. Religion

So that's culture. That's not religion. There's nothing in the religion that says a woman has to wear a black bag over her.

The same in Afghanistan, what they wear there. That's culture. It's not religion.

There's nothing in the religion that says that, and yet, somebody from that religion, from that cultural region, will equate culture with religion, and so when they go to West Africa, they'll say, why are those women dressed like that? That's haram, or that's not correct. I'll give you one example of this. I was in Mecca.

I went in Mecca, and I had my 10-year-old son was there, whose name is Daniel, Daniel, and there were two women there. I won't say from which country, but they asked him what his name was, and he says, Daniel, and one of them said, Audhu billah (أعوذ بالله), that's not a Muslim name.

It's like, we're in Mecca, and he came to me crying, and that's true.

The Problem of Ignorance

In Saudi Arabia, they do not name their children Daniel, and in Lebanon, the Christians use that word, but in

India and Malaysia, Muslims use that name, and Daniel is in the Book of Prophets of Ibn Kathir. There's a chapter called Bab Daniel (باب دانیال), so there's an example where, because somebody didn't know something, so this is a big problem of just human ignorance, and it's interesting that embedded in the word ignorance is ignore, that it is without knowledge, gnosis, gno is the Greek root of that, to know, and the Quran says:

Ya ayyuha an-nas inna khalaqnakum min dhakarin wa untha wa ja'alnakum shu'uban wa qaba'ila lita'arafu, inna akramakum 'inda Allahi atqakum - We created you in these diverse peoples and clans, to have gnosis of one another, to come to know one another, and then it says, the most dignified amongst you are the most dutiful, conscientious, and pious.

People that are actually concerned about the human condition, that have compassion.

Government Power and Spiritual Power

My, and I'll just conclude with this, my sincere belief is that government power deracinates, uproots, excises the spiritual power of a faith, and this has happened constantly throughout history.

When a state takes over a religion, the religion is waning in its spiritual power. Our prophet said that the prophetic model would only last for 30 years in governance, and to the date of the end of Hassan bin Ali, to six months of his reign, it was over, and he said, after that, he said:

إن القرآن والسلطان سيفترقان

Inna al-Quran wa's-Sultan sayyaftariqan - Power and the Quran are going to go separate ways, so go with the Quran, and don't go with the Sultan.

Our scholars historically were very wary of being co-opted by state power. They were very wary of it.

It doesn't mean that they didn't engage the state, they did, but they recognized the danger of religion being co- opted by the state. They recognized that, and this is why the devotional side of Islam to me is being so harmed by political Islamism, and it is an ideology, and I truly believe this, I really believe this, and I think a lot of the problems currently in the Muslim world are a direct result of this obsession with political power, and this desire to get into power, because once people get into power, they do what everybody else does when they get into power.

The Challenge of Governance

If they're in a democratic country, like, well, I can't think of any right now, but if they're in, I mean, if they're in a country where the rulers change every four years or six years, it's basically usually four years of these guys, and then they say, these guys are rotten, let's get some new people, they bring the other group, the blues and the greens, right? So then they bring the blues in, and they're terrible, and so then the greens come back, and it kind

Returning to the Quran in Times of Confusion

I'm gonna conclude with just, to think about these verses, and I find them very compelling. And I think the Prophet said towards the latter days, he said, everything will be confused. And he said that the world will be in a great state of confusion. And he said, even the most sagacious people will become confused by the state of the world.

And so Ali ibn Abi Talib said to him, what should we do in those days? He said, go back to the Quran. Let's go back to the Quran. And the guidance of the Quran about religious diversity is very clear to me.

It's just very clear. And I'm not a Qurani. I believe in the Hadith tradition, very committed to it.

The Case for Religious Freedom in the Quran

But I think that the compelling argument in the Quran for religious freedom is quite extraordinary. And this has largely been the practice of Muslims in most places. We have, I think, the apostasy laws, to apply the apostasy laws that have been in place for centuries in many parts of the Muslim world would lead to a real exodus from Islam.

I think it would harm the religion greatly. I come from an Usuli tradition, which text and context always is taken into consideration. And human beings now, we are in a new world and we have to embrace it.

We have to accept it. We have to understand it. We can't nostalgically look back in a past where everybody believed simply because they were part of that culture.

We are going to increasingly have people wanting to forge their own paths. And that's a very difficult thing. But we're in California.

The Strongest Verses on Freedom

And so I think the strongest verse in the entire Quran is:

La ikraha fi-deen - There's no coercion in the religion. (Quran 2:256)

It negates the genus of coercion. There's no coercion in the religion. And then in the verse:

Likullin ja'alna minkum shir'atan wa minhajan, wa law shaa Allahu laja'alakum ummatan wahidatan walakin liyabluwakum fima atakum fastabiqul-khayrat - For each of you, we have given you a way, a sharia, a sacred law, a sacred set of rituals, and a way to be in the world. And then it says that had God wanted, he would have made you all one group. But this is a test. So vie with one another in virtue.

Don't kill one another because you're different. Vie with one another in virtue. By their fruits, you shall know them.

Be the best that you can be.

Kuntum khayra ummatin ukhrijat li-nas - You are the best community that came out for humanity, not for yourselves, for humanity.

Historical Examples of Muslim Compassion

And as somebody whose descendants suffered the Irish famine, during the Irish famine, the Ottomans sent wheat to the Irish when they heard that there were Irish suffering. That wasn't for PR. That was because that was part of their religion.

The same happened when there was a great famine in France. The Algerians had bumper crops that year. This was before the French invasion of Algeria, and they sent wheat as aid.

Now the US government sends aid because that's where the power is. But when you have power, that's what you should be doing. And when you're powerless, you have to understand that there is also a way of being

powerless.

And in some ways, being powerless, I think Socrates is absolutely correct when he said it's better, if you had to be one or the other, it's better to be oppressed than be an oppressor.

Thank you.

Panel Discussion Introduction

If I could ask the other panelists to come forward. I'm just gonna make two observations about what Hamza said. The first one is I was really struck, Sheikh Hamza, by your comment near the end that the problem of the relationship between religion and the state or religion and power is absolutely central. But it's not just central to Islam.

It is the issue that bedevils nearly every religious group. It's the one that for 2,000 years, Christians have struggled the most with as well. When you read the history of Christianity, the big theme is how Christians came to have a very different sense of what their relationship should power out to be.

And it changed over time. So it is the sort of the elephant in the room is to figure out what to do about that. The second thing that comes to mind after that remarkable presentation is I know that Sheikh Hamza is one of his favorite writers is an English writer by the name of G.K. Chesterton.

Reflection on Sheikh Hamza's Presentation

And G.K. Chesterton was a novelist. He wrote father Brown novels. And he wrote a lot of apologetics.

And he wrote a lot of social commentary, very prolific, brilliant genius. When he died in 1936, I don't remember which newspaper it was in, but there was an obituary about G.K. Chesterton in which one of his editors said about G.K. Chesterton, Chesterton had the capacity to take any topic that he touched and hang all heaven and eternity on it, or something like that. That reminds me of what we just witnessed with Sheikh Hamza.

We get used to talking in abstractions and arguments, et cetera. But we don't talk about beauty or literature. We don't make our truths reflected through all the many aspects of civilization.

And it's a truly wonderful thing to behold. So we have three respondents. And since you've got the bios, I'm gonna be very brief because once the three of you have spoken, I'm gonna ask that you perhaps speak for six or eight minutes each.

And then if Sheikh Hamza would like to respond or add anything, he may. But I'd like to give an opportunity, if I can, for some of you in the audience to make comments or raise questions.

And we need to stop by about 12.

Introduction of Panelists

So just a few words about our three fine respondents or panelists first. Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish journalist, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Often you'll see his writings in the New York Times and other publications.

He's written a remarkable book called Islam Without Extremes, A Muslim Case for Liberty, a book that has been banned in certain parts of the world. But it's a very important book. Dr. Sherman Jackson holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture, Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

I might just mention that his research interests include classical Islamic studies. He's writing a major book right now on tentatively titled Beyond Good and Evil, Sharia and the Challenge of the Islamic Scholar. And our third panelist is Dr. Qutb Mustafa Sano, who is a minister in the Office of the President and Diplomatic Advisor to the President of Guinea.

He has a remarkable career. In fact, between 2011 and 16, he was the Minister of International Cooperation for that country. And 2009 to 11, he was the Minister of Religious Affairs.

And he, in addition to these ministerial appointments, he's a scholar and a published scholar. He's a scholar in his own right, a teacher, professor, and a scholar who publishes as well. So I think what we will begin with is Mustafa, if I could ask you to go first, and then Dr. Jackson, and then Dr. Sano.

Mustafa Akyol's Response

Bismillah, Rahman, Rahim, in the name of God, compassionate, merciful. Thank you so much, and thanks for hosting us at Pepperdine. It's been a great experience.

We had two amazing days of conversation. We even survived the mountain lions, in that we were warned about. And thank you for being with us for the audience as well.

Now, I, of course, solely agree with Sheikh Hamza in the basic idea of freedom that we find in the Quran that is strongly emphasized in the core source of Islam. But, of course, not every Muslim agrees with that. And I think that's a conversation about which we have in the Muslim world today.

Personal Experience in Malaysia

I actually experienced that personally. About two years ago in Malaysia, I gave a lecture in very similar lines on the issue of apostasy. And I mean, I emphasized:

La ikraha fi-deen - no compulsion in religion (Quran 2:256), and apostasy issues should be reinterpreted with contextual, and it had a more political sense now.

And at the end, I said, well, religion is not something you can police. It's a matter of the heart. It's not something to be policed.

Well, at the end of the speech, five men came in, and they said, are you Mustafa Akyol? And I said, yes. And they said, well, we are the religion police. And so, I had to spend a night with those gentlemen, and luckily, they let me go the next day.

But they said, don't come back and speak about these issues in Malaysia again without (تولية - tawliya)or permission from the government. And they banned the book as well, because they think that apostasy is a criminal act. And they're not as harsh as the Saudi or Iranians probably, which would decree that penalty.

But they believe in correctional facilities, or rehabilitation centers to convince the apostates.

Historical Comparison with Christianity

Now, this is a conversation we Muslims should have, and we should always remind ourselves that if we were having a conversation about freedom and religion four centuries ago, it would be very different. We would be asking, why these Christians don't get that they should not burn heretics, and they should not force Jews to become Christians, and why don't they get the more enlightened and tolerant ways of the Ottomans, right? People were asking these questions.

And some of the Protestant leaders, some Enlightenment thinkers actually referred to the Ottoman Empire at the time as a better example. But things have changed dramatically. On the one hand, in the West, with a nicer part of the Enlightenment, and then with the change in Catholicism, the idea of freedom in all levels, advanced, and religious freedom advanced, and we have this idea of today that people should be able to free, and came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the meantime, the Islamic world even didn't keep its pre-modern toleration. It got worse in many levels, if you ask me. And that had different reasons.

The Muslim world became less secure, insecurity bred intolerance, and conspiracy theories towards minorities. Certain interpretations of Islam, which were very much on the margins in the pre-modern era, the most inflexible interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence became very popular and powerful thanks to a modern blessing called oil money. And the Muslim world lost some of its tolerance, whereas the Western world became more tolerant, notwithstanding all other problems in modernity, like colonialism and so on and so forth.

That's not a problem, but we are speaking about human rights here today.

The Need for Reinterpretation

Now, to go forward, we need a reinterpretation, I think, of certain elements of traditional jurisprudence that we have today. And that, our scholars here already emphasized, that needs going back to questioning issues about

abrogation and so on and so forth.

I would also remind that, as a Turk, the Ottoman Empire, interestingly, solved a lot of these issues in the 19th century, and many people forgot that. The Ottomans, first of all, rendered the laws about apostasy obsolete in the 1840s, in the Tanzimat Reforms. That's why it became possible in late Ottoman Empire to openly be an atheist.

Some were, there were some people like that in Ottoman Empire, materialists. They were not killed or punished for apostasy. In the Ottoman Empire, also, Jews and Christians were given equal status under the law, which is another part of the discussion, very important.

Jews and Christians in the late Ottoman Empire became equal. That's why they entered Ottoman bureaucracy. The Ottoman Parliament convened in 1876, had a big chunk of Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Armenian deputies, so they became, started to become statesmen as well.

And this happened under the Sunni Caliphate, so we should remind ourselves that these things happened.

Two Approaches to Reform

Now, the Ottomans did not do much Ijtihad on these issues, but they brought secular, let's say, state law to change things, and the Ottoman scholars allowed the state's authority to change issues in these matters. But today, maybe we need to go more forward, and I do think that we should, one thing, there's one thing that we should understand.

In terms of going forward, I think there are two different approaches here. One is what I would call the more neotraditional approach, which is saying that within our tradition, there are already solutions to this problem, and we just have to emphasize some of those. I very much respect, and I see much ground there.

There's another more radical reinterpretation school that is called modernists in general. I find myself a little bit closer to that. But I, and I think the basic idea is that the core of Islam is eternal and unchangeable, and it's divine, but that core was interpreted and articulated in different contexts than ours today.

That was a context in which equality of all humans, that idea didn't exist, gender equality didn't exist. That was a context in which slavery existed and was accepted as normal. Let's not forget that Islam encouraged freeing slaves, but did not abolish slavery as an institution until the 19th century.

So if we were able to change some of our jurisprudence on that issue, which we did, we can change our, I think some of our issues regarding jurisprudence on other issues as well, including gender issues or freedom of religion issues.

The Importance of Freedom of Speech

And one more thing, to move forward with religious freedom in the Muslim world, we need another freedom

that is also very important, and that is freedom of speech. Because unless we can discuss these issues, we can't have any progress.

Unless it is banned to have a lecture like this, I mean, it's not banned, sorry. Unless you can't have a lecture like this in all parts of the Muslim world, you can't go forward. And I think we are at a time that Christians without their theology, Catholics without their theology, every tradition has gone through this.

I think we are at that time. One mistake would be to think that these are just Western ideas that are coming to corrupt us. There are some Western things that might be corrupting us, that's different, but I think ideas of human rights and freedom are universal ideas, which are rooted in our very sacred source in the Quran and in the tradition.

We just have to cultivate them more.

Dr. Sherman Jackson's Response

First of all, again, I want to join everybody else in thanking Pepperdine University and RFI and all of those who are responsible for affording us this opportunity to come together and to discuss an issue that I think is of extreme importance. And I think it's of an importance that has a permanency that we can all recognize.

My remarks are going to be a combination of response to Sheikh Hamza's remarks and also the topic in general. I think that the one thing that Sheikh Hamza mentioned with a degree of prominence was the issue of power. And I think that power is a problem for religion.

The Problem of Power

But I think that power as a problem must be treated as a problem. And as a problem, that means it is something for which we have to find a solution. It is not something from which we can necessarily flee.

Power is a reality in the world. And while it may corrupt, as I mentioned during our consultations, I think that powerlessness can also corrupt. And so the challenge for religious communities becomes how, what are the mechanisms through which, what are the resources through which we can moralize power, we can domesticate power, we can get power to do what it's supposed to do and prevent power from doing what it's not supposed to do.

I don't think, however, that especially given the geopolitics, not only of the modern world, but of the world as we've always known it, that we can simply flee from the problem of power. And I think that it's even more important when we think of power in the context of the value of religious freedom. One has to ask oneself how much religious freedom, globally speaking, is likely to remain in a context where religious communities are completely and utterly powerless.

Balancing Religion and Freedom

This takes me to the question of religious freedom. This is, as I said, an extraordinarily important topic, and not simply in what Sheikh Hamza said, what Mustafa just said, and some of the conversations that have been taking place all along. I want to sort of problematize the whole notion of religious freedom by pointing out that it is important that we pay ample attention to both constituents of this phrase.

In other words, it is religious freedom. And I think that oftentimes, perhaps given where we are as children of the Enlightenment, the focus may tend to be on freedom. And we can insist that freedom be absolute and pure, even if that comes potentially at the expense of the integrity of religion.

And I think that our real challenge here is to find the balance between the integrity of religion on the one hand and freedom on the other. And what I mean by that is that if we overly invoke a particular mode of liberal freedom where individual choice, regardless of the substance of their choice, is recognized as being sacred, we then have to ask ourselves, well, how much integrity will religion maintain if that becomes the norm? And we can potentially end up in a situation whereby in the name of religious freedom, because we haven't given the religion side the attention that it deserves, we may actually end up with less religious freedom rather than more.

Religious Freedom for Majority and Minority

The other thing that I want to speak to is the fact that when we talk about religious freedom, and I'm thinking here particularly in the context of the Muslim world, religious freedom as a construct runs the risk of being discredited if in the context of the Muslim world it is pursued in a manner that sees religious freedom as being important for the minority but not for the majority.

In other words, we can focus on the kinds of deprivations that minorities suffer in a particular context and ignore the deprivations of the majority. This is bound to breed a certain amount of resentment toward the very concept of religious freedom. And so I think we have to be very, very careful about talking about religious freedom, pursuing religious freedom, even defining religious freedom in a way that is insufficiently attentive to the plight, as it were, of the majority as well as the minority.

And this takes me to one other point that I want to make. I am not at all, not even a little tiny bit, insensitive or unalive to the importance of religious freedom for religious minorities, especially given the fact that I happen to be a religious minority in my own society. So I'm very aware of the importance of religious freedom for religious minorities.

I'm not trying to downplay that significance. But if we want the construct itself to be able to do the kind of work that we want it to do, I think we have to be very careful about running the risk of it being seen as just another chapter in the ongoing saga of a post-colonial project of domination. And I'm just speaking frankly here because I think the situation calls for that.

Rights and Responsibilities

But I think that there's another dimension to this. And I think that this applies to me as a religious minority as well as to religious minorities in the Muslim world. And maybe I'll pose this in the form of a question.

Religious freedom as a right, do we need to begin to think about the kinds of responsibilities that go along with that right? Where I am in the context, let's say, of America, for example, what responsibility, does the right to religious freedom give me the right to conduct myself in very anti-societal ways in the name of religious freedom? And I think the same should apply when we think about religious freedom in the Muslim world. And so when we're talking about members of society enjoying religious freedom, is that religious freedom seen as coming at the expense of whatever common commitments we have to the common good or society, or does religious freedom function as a basis upon which we can opt out of those obligations to society at large? I think this is a very important point because ultimately, again, if religious freedom is taken as an excuse for opting out, it will ultimately, well, the situation will ultimately become one where minorities suffer because the whole concept of religious freedom gets a bad name.

I'm looking at my stopwatch. I'm doing okay? Okay. Oh my God. Thank you.

I had two more points, I don't know. It's a miracle. See there? Yeah, yeah.

Make your point.

Maintaining Religious Identity

Okay, the two last points that I want to make is, again, looking at the importance of maintaining not only the integrity of freedom, but the integrity of religion. I think that when religious communities come together to negotiate this issue, we have to recognize that we cannot sustain the integrity of religion.

And Sheikh Hamza did mention the concept of diversity. Diversity of religion itself implies that each religion has its own identity, which itself implies a category of exclusion. In other words, I'm a Muslim.

That means there is such a thing as non-Muslims. If I'm a Christian, that means there is such a thing as non-Christians. And I think that sometimes in, I think it's a matter of just being overwhelmed by the situation.

I think we take the sort of lazy way out, and we think that by banishing all categories of exclusion, we all come together as one, and that's our religious freedom. I think that's a very dangerous approach. And I think that we have to be very careful, because that, again, it breeds the resentment, especially on the part of majorities.

And if we take this sort of in racial terms, we can see about something, we can see something about what's happened in America over the last number of years, where majorities become resentful of the manner in which minorities are enjoying what are perceived to be so, certain privileges, et cetera. So I think that allowing religious communities to sustain their identity as religious communities, and learning as people who are

interested and committed to religious freedom, learning how to engage those categories of exclusion without seeing them as categories of oppression, or as means to oppression. I think this is really, really important.

Thinking Transgenerationally

And then, the last point that I want to make is, I think that given the enormity of this issue, I would invite us to think transgenerational, to think in terms of not whether we can come up with the silver bullet right now, but in terms of whether we can lay some foundations that may empower subsequent generations to finally find that formula that enables us to do what we need to do. I think that overly rash solutions may be worse than no solutions at all, because I think that they can end up being a medicine that's actually worse than the disease. So, I'm not unalive to the urgency of the matter, but I think in terms of getting it right, we need to be a bit more patient in taking all of the challenges that define the problem, and try to come up with something that actually gives us the possibility of coming into a new kind of world order for which this is the norm.

Thank you.

Dr. Qutb Mustafa Sano's Response

Dr. Sano. Thank you very much.

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Thank you very much. Let me take it as an opportunity to thank RFI for inviting me to take part of this.

And I'm quite happy to be in this campus. Originally, speaking before getting to politics, I'm an academic. I think my presence over here is to show some of these differences when an academic is getting to politics and what the academy could do for politics, to make politics more moralized, as Sheikh Hamza did state in his speech.

I would like also to thank Sheikh Hamza. I think he has done almost the job of talking about this pluralism, equal citizenship, and religious freedom. Before that one, I would like to appreciate a lot the speech of Dr. Daniel.

Dr. Daniel has laid down for us what we could take it today as a basis for whatever we want to do for this religious freedom. While I'm saying that, he has spoken about the seven seeds. And these seven seeds are known to be the one we should begin to summarize for all of us today, what we're talking about pluralism.

The Three Problems in Muslim Countries

We are thinking that these three items, we have problems in the Muslim countries. Pluralism, which is a problem, is not something which is most welcome in many Muslim places. Not only vis-a-vis this other religion, but even within the Muslim sects, the schools of thought.

The Need for Critical Engagement

Our reality today is that we have taken a side and we have put behind us most of the things, the seeds that Dr. Daniels stated in his speech. First of all, the discourse that's been taken for the extremists, these three things, to them they have seemed to be dangerous. They look at them as something which is going to put an end to their emergence, maybe the end of their, whatever they do in the community.

What we needed to do here, when you talk about it, is not to be apologetic. I don't like to be, but I want to be critical. Why I want to be critical, for Muslims we have been taught, Sheikh Hamza had it said, when you go and you get this train, what do you do? You get back where you are coming from.

If I get into this campus, I don't know where to go, so I have to go to the starting point where I started. When you get to that starting point, you will find the things clear and much better. That is the issue for the Muslims.

Are we really today telling that most of those people have taken the weapons, they have been going against communities, they have been persecuting the minorities, they have been going against even their own society, they have gone astray. So what is needed, that's the one Daniel mentioned here. They will take all the things, the religion itself has been hijacked.

Divine Design for Diversity

The religion which is looking at the land, at the humanity as if the same family, but in that family you have differences, and the differences is the basic, it is the principle what Islam wanted it to be, because Allah, God, if he wanted us to be all, why he created us into male and female?

Ya ayyuha an-nas inna khalaqnakum min dhakarin wa untha wa ja'alnakum shu'uban wa qaba'ila - I have created you from male and female (Quran 49:13), the starting point when it is male and female, that is plural. So plural meaning to say not only that one, you go into tribes, into nations and tribes. So rejecting this from the beginning is rejecting the religion itself.

The Prophet's Model of Religious Freedom

That's why here we should not be going to say, oh, you know, Muslims have practices, they think the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ has been for us as a model. It's a role model for the Muslims. Whatever you do in your life, you say, let me see, is it in line with the Prophet's way of doing the things?

You could see there was no more to somebody who has established and reiterated and confirmed this religious freedom than the Prophet Muhammad. I have spoken in my, I said it in my presentation, this is during this day, if you get to this, the Charter of the Medina, what you call the Constitution of Medina, you will find it, practically speaking, theoretically speaking, the religious freedom was granted to everybody. The equality in citizenship was also granted for everybody. There was no second class, as we talk in the second class of citizenship.

That why here you get it, the Prophet as a model. How was his relationship with the Jewish community or the Christians? You take it as a model. He himself, he got married to a Jewish lady.

One of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, they called her Safiya, the most one, we call it the most beautiful among the wives. And she was the daughter of the chief of tribe of Banu Qurayza. And he got married with them.

So today to tell you how he's been so much towards this kind of pluralism, towards this kind of pluralism, acceptance of others. But if Muslim come today and somebody do something else and they put it in the name of Islam, we should not be going to blame Islam. But it is a criminal, or sometimes somebody having some psychological problem, he would just like to justify it.

Three Things Hijacked by Criminals

That I would do to say that you have three items in your life that have been always hijacked by the weak people, by the criminals. These three things, first of all, the three things is religion. If you want to justify a crime, sometimes you put it in the name of religion, the religious would just forgive you.

Sometimes it's not the religion, you take the race. If you want to just marginalize and say something, you put it in the name of the race and then people will just say, yes, it's because of this. Sometimes you could be in the name of the ethnicity.

It is because of these things have been persecuted and that's the reason I want to say. So therefore, I think when you go back to these seats, especially the two or the first three, you will find it what the practices which are going around today, most of the practices, where how could it be more free religious, this could religious freedom would not be the time of prophet, allowing when people, Muslim were going for any battle, any battle at that time of the way, they were forbidden to destroy the churches. They were forbidden to get tattooed and anybody would get into his church, his head church.

They were told the message, you must not destroy, you will have to keep these things.

The Ummah of Medina

In addition to that one, we say, you did the practice of the prophet, the community of Medina, when you talk about (أمة - ummah) for Muslims today, they just say Muslims, it's not only Muslims. Because Muslims and those people are living, it is the citizens when you call them.

We have taken out because the Jews in Medina, they were part of the ummah of Medina. And then the community of Medina was part of it, but we have taken it out. And then we have decided to say, this is Islam to justify some of our crimes, some of the things we do against these things.

I would like to say here to end up to say, I'm not doing it to justify to say, you know, you get the verses in the Quran, you may like it or may not like it. You have a lot of, it is about 6,650 verses (approximately).

Out of 6,650 verses, you have the way revealed to prophets for 23 years he has to go through. So sometimes people just are very selective. You take one and hear, and then you put it, this is Islam. But you look, the practice of prophets, his role model would be there to guide us to say, yeah, what you are saying.

The Issue of Abrogation

You talk about abrogation or, because it is one of the way to get away, to be away from the practice of prophets, (عليه السلام - alaihi as-salam). What prophet didn't do within the 23 years of his prophecy, why you would like it to be done after him? And then you will be able to put it in the name of the prophet himself. Why he did not decide and wanted from the beginning to have two citizens in the Medina.

He just felt equal. He was, even one of the statesmen in Medina stated, was saying, no Jew should be projected, wrongly treated, because he's a Jew. Or no, because the relationship between the Muslims and these tribes were such very, very time.

They were having the same fame, the same having, they're having the same problem. So I would just end up to say to it, that things, it was something right. We need to continue to discuss it.

Continuing the Discussion

It might not be easy for those people who have been going against it, but you keep talking about this as an academia, and there will be time, the decision makers or whoever will be, the people will get it to clear. You must differentiate. Anything is violence, anything is discrimination, anything is going against these principles, do not put it in the name of Islam, or do not put it in the name of even your nations or the tribe.

Just put it, because I might be going through some psychological problem. So I need to be treated. So that's going to help us to be, that the religious freedom must be like.

I presented a paper in Sharjah about religious freedom. There was a whole of people there, how can you talk about this? I said, yes, is it forbidden to talk about it? Is it forbidden in Islam to say, that's it, you want to force me? And the issue of the belief, it is something has to do with my humanity. The most basic right of human being is the freedom of belief.

If you, this is to define, if you want to deny him from this, that's the things you could deny him, the most things you could deny a human being from that one. So that what Islam was saying:

لَا إِكْرَاهَ

La ikraha - do not do and tell me it's been abrogated or it's not been abrogated, you cannot abrogate it because the prophet did not do it. You couldn't do it in the name of prophet.

If you do it on your own name, you could do it.

The Question of Jizya and Dhimma

So at that one, it was saying, how could you just be saying, would you allow the Muslims to be equal? He said, yes, prophet equal, he treated everybody equal. You want to do it better, the prophet, or you want to do it like prophet did it? No, because these things, they are called the jizya )جزية(.

I told him, what do you talk about the jizya? Or we talk with dhimma )ذمة(. Some of the terms were created by later, that at the time of prophet, there was no dhimmiyin )ذمیین(. There was citizens of Medina.

Even Umar ibn al-Khattab, for the history, I finish with that one. They created, what do you call it, jizya. It is in the Quran, but in any different context.

And then one of the Christians come to see him. I hate this term. He called me to pay jizya.

Because Muslims, they have to pay zakat )زكاة(. And jizya is just the tax. So Umar told him, what would you like it to be called? He said, just call it sadaqa )صدقة(.

From now onwards, nobody should call it jizya. We call it all sadaqa. Sadaqa, it is a contribution that every single citizen should do in order to defend the state in case of any attack.

So he changed it. Because taking into account the feeling of others, the feeling of the things that is not being stated, it must be jizya. And then he changed it.

Dhimma also were created. But Prophet ﷺ, went it in the way, and to make sure that the people will be happy. So I think I would really like to be thankful to you again for such enough discourse.

And I'm happy that it is in such a great university, which is a very environment-friendly. And you may have more space here to be critic, to be creative, and to be accepting and receptive of what we can say. Thank you very much.

Sheikh Hamza's Final Remarks

Thank you, Dr. Sano. Thank you. Would you like to say anything, Dr. Sano? First of all, thank all of you for your remarks.

This is probably, in the history of Islam, I would argue this is probably the darkest period that the community's gone through. I think that it's worse than the Mongol period because at those times, the religion was not being blamed for anything. But I think people will look back at this period and wonder what happened.

There's gonna be a lot of interest in, historians look back and they try to figure out what happened. But the great tragedy of this time is this immense migration of these extraordinary communities that have been in the Muslim world for centuries and actually preceded the Muslims. They were there before the Muslims, the Coptic Church in Egypt, these great Christian churches in Iraq, Lebanon.

They're there. In Syria, these are really ancient Christian communities. There's still villages in Syria that were speaking Syriac.

And linguists have gone to these places because they're so fascinated at the preservation of an ancient language like that.

The Marrakesh Declaration

So Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah was so distraught about what was happening that he convened and it actually took three years. He began in Nouakchott and then we went to Tunisia and then we went to Morocco.

And it culminated with what was called the Marrakesh Declaration. And just as Dr. Sano was saying, the covenant in Medina was never abrogated. It did collapse because of political failure in the region, but the actual covenant was not abrogated.

And so what Sheikh Abdullah showed was that equal citizenship was the sunnah that the Prophet laid down, that there's nothing that could abrogate that, that the concept of (ذمة - dhimma), which is in the ninth chapter of the Quran, was used, but it was also not used by the Caliphs. Abdullah bin Marwan did not use it. He actually paid the Byzantines for guarding the boundaries.

So he argued that it was an option that was given. And if you look at Imam al-Qarafi's Furooq, one of the things that he says is that the purpose of the dhimma was to encourage conversion. So it was a type of soft coercion.

The Nature of Religious Conviction

It was the idea that, you know, hopefully that these people would want to. And that comes from this idea that Muslims actually believe that their religion's true. Christians believe their religion's true.

The Golden Rule

And I just want to, you don't have to do this, but how many people in here actually converted from the religion of their birth? So there's quite a few converts in here.

In another time, and in some places, that's a capital offense. And I think the golden rule of wanting for others what you want for yourself is a very important one. It's certainly a Muslim rule.

Okay, so.

Audience Questions

We've got about eight minutes left. So if we have a question or two, I think we can handle it. We'll start back, we'll start here, and then at the back, right here. The gentleman in the blue, hold on just a sec, get the mic.

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, wa-s-salatu wa-s-salamu 'ala rasulillah)

My question, it's part question, part comment. I just wanted to bring our attention to its verses in Surat ar-Rum (سورة الروم - Surah Ar-Rum) when God talks about the diversity of languages and ethnicities as one of his miracles.

And then the second is when he talks about:

And I think that points to the intention of us living together in plurality. The second question is just, I guess we just need to, people just need to learn and need to be, we just need to read, I guess, because that's the first commandment in our religion is to read, I guess, that we're not conversing and we just don't know, right?

Possibly, right?

Right behind you.

Question About LGBTQ Muslims

Along the lines of discussing pluralism and equal citizenship and religious freedom for minority groups, I was wondering what your thoughts would be on how we can deal with providing those same privileges for

minorities that may not be different from Muslims in a nominal sense. Nominally, they may be Muslims, but they may have a different understanding of Islam such that they've reconciled certain things that orthodox Muslims would not be comfortable with, such as Muslims who have reconciled being Muslim while also being openly homosexual. On an individual level, we may be opposed to such practices, but on a societal level, how do we deal with that in a healthy way to achieve pluralism and religious freedom in that sense?

Yeah.

While the mic's coming on over here, I'll let Mr. Hamza say something.

I mean, obviously, here we're in a secular society where people have the rights to live as they see fit, whether they're Muslim or any other group. So I'm completely subject to the laws of this land, and I'm not gonna impose on anybody else my views about any given thing as long as they don't encroach on me. So I think that's my American response.

Comment on Perception and Truth

السلام عليكم

As-salamu alaykum. I just had a comment about the question or discussion that happened about the theological framework, whether it's conducive to freedom. My understanding is that we, as human beings, have major issues coming to the truth as opposed to perception.

We deal with perception, and it's a major roadblock. So looking at the text of the Quran, scholars would differ. Like Sheikh Hamza, for example, have an orientation.

God's mercy, prophets' mercy, blessings, and kindness, combining that would give a different perception to the looking people at looking at textual interpretation, that the exclusionism is a difference. Even in science, people looking at the same text, same mathematical model, a mathematician would look at the model in one way, a physicist would look at the model different way. They have a very different perception looking at, some become reductionist and materialism versus others looking for spiritual aspects and combining, like understanding consciousness, for example, looking for religious experience, spiritualism.

So perception is the big problem. In my understanding, if you actually look at the comparative religion and look at the framework, Islamic text is more rich with pluralism, the number of ayahs, (إخلاق - Ikhlaq), (أ - Raaf), (Athid), and many, you know, (رؤوف - Raafu) the Sheikh Hamza alluded to. In other texts, it's not there.

Like Christianity, for example, has thou shall not depart, like marriage, for example, has been modernized to abandon that. So looking at the text, it would be very different practices. So it's because of secularization of Christianity, we have a different thing, right, different practices.

The Real Challenge: Education and Resources

So it's about perception. So Sheikh Hamza talked about knowledge and getting to the reality. And my question is, I will end up with this, is that it's not, you know, this is a right discussion to understand, but it's like, you know, Bangladesh, people, everything falls to the people, you know, the mullahs, every problem, whereas the whole country's being run by the secular people.

So the authority, power of the world has the responsibility to fix the world's problem. And instead of, you know, enormous amount of money that's being spent in arms race and all the other things could be used for education of the people. And once people are educated, this group here is mostly enlightened and not fighting with the street, right? People will not do that.

Enlightened people don't, master degree PhD people, they don't fight with each other, they are good, they understand. So the world population, it's not about religion, it's about power and authority and resources and educating people and sustaining them. Sustaining the norm is the challenge for the world.

Hermeneutics and Authority

You know, you've mentioned an issue that for most religious traditions that have sacred texts, the devils, all of them, that what they call hermeneutics, or how do you interpret, somebody said here talking about selecting, you talked to Dr. Sano about selecting this verse and not that verse, or even what that verse means. I mean, in the Christian tradition, the Sola Scriptura, if anybody thought that would solve the problem of, you know, we believe in the Bible, but people think the Bible says different things. And then I guess there's two questions here, maybe we'll probably have to end with this, and Mustafa and maybe you can make a final comment.

The two questions are, how in the Islamic world, where in fact you don't have a magisterium, you don't have a central sort of final word on this, that, or the other, how do you handle that? And then maybe more importantly even, you're gonna have the differences, religious freedom, how does that affect how you deal with the differences, I guess?

Mustafa Akyol on Sin vs. Crime

I mean, I'm certainly not a sheikh or mufti, so I'm not speaking in a jurisprudential authority here, but just as a proposition, I think, regarding the question about homosexuality especially, I think all religions have the right to define certain human behavior as sin, and disapprove them, and to advise their followers not to commit these actions, and also not to be forced to bless those actions by being forced to make a wedding cake or things like that. They might have their positions. But then individuals are free to commit those sins if they want to, and it's their choice.

Now, is this compatible with our traditional jurisprudential understanding? Not exactly, but we can rethink this, I think. I have a chapter in my book, which is banned in Malaysia partly for this reason, titled The Freedom to

Sin, and I there point to something that most of us miss. In the Quran, there are certain hudud (حدود), punishments, right? These are for crimes in which there's always a victim.

Theft, murder, brigandage, false accusation of adultery, and adultery itself, which makes a spouse being hurt in the case. But the Quran also bans other things, like alcohol, or gambling, but it doesn't bring punishments for them. The ulama (علماء), with qiyas (قیاس) extended hudud to these, and there was a discussion between Shafis and Hanafis on how valid was that.

But I think we should go back today and think that not every sin is a crime, and religions can advise us against sins. That's always been the case. Well, not always been the case, and I think every, that's always been the case.

If it is in private, it was like wine drinking is criminal.

Dr. Mustafa, you said you weren't speaking jurisprudentially, right?

Jurisprudentially. I'm not saying jurisprudential authority, I don't claim that.

Sheikh Hamza on Private vs. Public Sin

Jurisprudentially, the Muslim scholars have always distinguished between two types of ismahigh (عصمة), right, there's an ismah that is, the Hanafis call it muqawwima (مقومة) that they can actually rectify, and that had to do with mafsada (مفسدة) something that was socially corrosive, that corrupted the society, like selling drugs and drinking. No, drinking alcohol itself. And drinking alcohol, because they saw it as something that, mafsada, if you drank in your home, it was your own business, but if you went out in public drunkenness, which causes a lot of deaths in the United States every year, like on the road.

I mean, we're looking at, and if you look at violence around the world, and the association of, you just Google violence and alcoholism, and just look at all the social science on the amount of domestic violence that involves alcohol. So, they saw alcohol as a mafsada, but they distinguished between that and a ma'sia (معصية) which is something like backbiting. You cannot socially regulate the personal sins of people, a state doesn't have that capacity to do that, but sins that will impinge on the rights of other peoples, they saw as something that needed to be socially regulated.

Exactly, but what's criminalized the drinking alcohol publicly was not the Quran, but the Quran has no punishment who do it on drinking alcohol in public. I mean, it's of course, Hadith and other post-Quranic sources. Quran doesn't have a frame, but anyway.

Go ahead.

Dr. Jackson on Religious Debate

I do wanna agree with one part of what you said. I mean, the first part of what you said, and I think that again, and on the theme of religious freedom, religious communities will be at various stage in their debate over

various and sundry issues.

And I think that part of religious freedom, communally speaking, is to allow those communities to undergo those debates among themselves on the basis of the sources and authorities that are native to those religions, and not to come from outside, because we live in a modern liberal whatever world and say, no, you must adopt this right now, even if it's a completely incommensurable with the sources, authorities, and tradition of interpretation within your religion. And all of us, I mean, Sheikh Hamza, talked about living in families. It's not always, you know.

And also if a religion adopts the zeitgeist, when the zeitgeist over, it doesn't have any followers. Zeitgeist doesn't last very long.

With that, I think that's a good note to end on. Let me just, you want to say something? Okay, go ahead.

Dr. Sano on Qualification and Education

Thank you very much. I think one of the issues which is very important for Muslims or for the humanity at large, that is the level of the knowledge of individuals.

Islamically speaking or intellectually speaking, we are not allowed to give (فتوى - fatwa) or to give this some of verdict if you are not qualified for it. Because it is equal to medicine. Is every human being allowed to give? If I go to see, I meet my friend, Farouk, I tell him, oh, I got headache here.

And I would say, just go and take this and that one. But take this one going to be, for me, something which is going to kill me. The same thing for religious items.

When you come, why we are having extremism? When we are having the extremists, we have terrorism, or because you just take it, something like that. Somebody come to say this, and he or she would take it and go and blow up everything. But you will have it.

In America, you have the learned people like Sheikh Hamza and Sheikh, and you have got over here. The young people need to refer to. It's true, we are not going to tell the people everybody is free.

No, but you have to go. If I go to the college, the faculty over here, I'm not going to exercise to be a lawyer in this society without going through the process. The process, I have to be here, and I have to study for how many years, and I have to pass all my courses, and I got the license from the, you're not asking the people to get the license to allow every human being to say.

That is, this kind of disorder, this kind of indiscipline, you may call it, had created such, everybody is taking himself. As one has spoken about the reading, it's not just that you read before you pray, and the reading, prophets spent the 10 years almost in Medina, in Mecca. There was no prayer.

The Importance of Education Before Practice

When you get these things before, prayer was not obligatory upon Muslims. When you moved to Medina, the prayer people started praying over there. Why he did spend all these 10 years? Because he wanted people to get educated.

I do believe all the things will go through if we have people who are highly, who are qualified, educated, and that they do understand the things there, because if you don't know:

Al-insan aduwwu ma jahil - We are enemy for something that we ignore. If you ignore the things, sometimes you become enemy, you become offensive for it, because if you get to know it clearly, you will not.

So I would believe here in America, you get to discipline the people. They will be for you a guide, not because they want to impose, but they will tell you sometimes, we get something mixed in my mind. I don't get it clear.

This is the problem here. Because they have been spending all their life, Sheikh Hamza, they spend all their life, the day and nights, don't do anything, don't have some time, family life, because they won't really have such a disqualification. I would just be for that, and thank you very much.

Closing Remarks

In a university setting, to end with an affirmation of education is okay. And so I appreciate that. I want to just say two things very, very quickly.

Thanks to Pepperdine for hosting us here. Thanks to you, Malibu is a beautiful place, but you have to drive an hour or two or three, some of you, and you've come. So thank you very much.

And family, thanks to our panel for their great job and Sheikh Hamza. One final point, the participants in the consultation, there's a special dinner set, a lunch set aside for you in the cafeteria to the right in the venue.