The anti-Islamic polemic
SHELLEY WALIA
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The study of the Muslim world by the West has never been neutral or scholarly.
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IT was late in the evening and I was with a few friends, educated and conscious of the political crisis of our times. The discussion this evening veered from Uncle Sam's agenda to the rise of violence in the world.
My friends and I disagreed on almost everything. They were in favour of sanctions on Iran, I was for patience and dialogue. Iran being a Muslim country, I was shocked to hear their views on Islamic cosmography and the place of the Koran in the present volatile situation. They were clearly supporting Huntington's thesis of the "clash of civilizations" as we moved to the subject of violence and terrorism. The dichotomy crystallised in their views that the West and the non-Islamic are socially stable whereas the Muslim world was deeply promiscuous, given to pleasure and unrestricted by social dictates. The only thing I felt that was lacking were khaki shorts and saffron flags; the neo-Nazi-like stance was disquieting, for it threw light on the future of Indian and world politics.
Knowledgeable ignorance
Indeed it was a case of knowledgeable ignorance so central to the complex relationship of the West and the East. Edward Said puts it rather succinctly when he blames this ignorance and misrepresentation on Orientalism, his well-recognised body of study and expertise, which has "cowed far too many of us into believing that Arabs really are an underdeveloped, incompetent and doomed people, and that with all the failures in democracy and development, Arabs are alone in this world for being retarded, behind the times, unmodernised and deeply reactionary. Here is where dignity and critical historical thinking must be mobilised to see what is what and to disentangle truth from propaganda."
The argument revolved around the promise of sexual bliss held out in the Book of Traditions called Hadith that the defenders of Islam shall be blessed in heaven by a gift of 72 virgins and that their religion allows massacre of non-believers. I referred my friends to an interesting research done recently by Christopher Luxenberg, a German scholar, in his book Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, which has had a rousing welcome by those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut.
Cause of misinterpretations
The thesis of the book makes it clear that most of the obscurities and misinterpretations exist because of people's ignorance of Syro-Aramaic language in which the Koran was initially written. His interesting analysis, based on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, argues that in reality the reference is to "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offered, and not unblemished maidens. In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, "the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned." Anyone who wants to make a thorough study of the Koran must therefore have a background in the Syro-Aramaic grammar and literature for deriving "the semantic interpretation that can be established definitively only by retranslating into Syro-Aramaic".
I quoted the Koran where it is clearly stated that "There shall be no compulsion in religion", (Q2:263) and that all Muslims are advised: "Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love the aggressors" (Q 2:190-3). My friends, however, refused to believe that there could be any truth in what I was arguing. In the chapter on the position of women, I informed them that it is clearly stated: "And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice (between them), then (marry) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course" (4.3). But they were adamant in emphasising the lascivious sensuality and the inherent violence of each and every living Muslim.
Simplistic oppositions
I couldn't be more amused and at the same time a little perturbed. It was clear that the study of the Muslim world by the West as well as by right-wing Asian scholars has never been neutral or scholarly. The colonialist worldview that based the rationality of imperialism on the stereotypes of Islamic savagery and militancy had left its mark on even the educated class. A less demeaning and unjust world is possible only if people around the world begin to shed the disastrous pontification and half-baked knowledge of Islam. Intellectuals and religious leaders have to disapprove the Western discourse of regarding Islam as a incensed cauldron of bigotry and a dumping ground for censure.
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