The Place of Tolerance
in Islam
On reading the Qur'an—and misreading
it.
Khaled Abou El Fadl
he terrorist
attacks on New York City and the Pentagon have focused public
attention on the state of Muslim theology. For most Americans, the
utter indifference to the value of human life and the unmitigated
hostility to the United States shown by some Muslims came as a great
shock. Others were confirmed in their belief that we face a great
struggle between civilizations. Islamic values, they say, are
fundamentally at odds with Western liberal values. The terrorist
attacks are symptomatic of a clash between Judeo-Christian
civilization, with its values of individual freedom, pluralism, and
secularism, and an amoral, un-Westernized, so-called "authentic
Islam." Indeed, Islamic civilization is associated with the ideas of
collective rights, individual duties, legalism, despotism, and
intolerance that we associated with our former civilizational rival,
the Soviet bloc. We seem to project onto the other everything we
like to think that we are not.
This intellectual trap is easy to fall into when we deal with the
theology of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, the Wahhabis of Saudi
Arabia, and the Jihad organizations. The theologically-based
attitudes of these Muslim puritans are fundamentally at odds not
only with a Western way of life, but also with the very idea of an
international society or the notion of universal human values. They
display an intolerant exclusiveness, and a belligerent sense of
supremacy vis-ŕ-vis the other. According to their theologies, Islam
is the only way of life, and must be pursued regardless of its
impact on the rights and well-being of others. The straight path
(al-sirat al-mustaqim) is fixed, they say, by a system of
Divine laws (shari-ah) that trump any moral considerations or
ethical values that are not fully codified in the law. God is
manifested through a set of determinate legal commands that specify
the right way to act in virtually all circumstances. The sole
purpose of human life on earth is to realize the Divine
manifestation by dutifully and faithfully implementing God's law.
Morality itself begins and ends in the mechanics and technicalities
of Islamic law (though different schools of Islamic law understand
the content of those laws differently).
A life devoted to compliance with this legal code is considered
inherently superior to all others, and the followers of any other
way are considered either infidels (kuffar), hypocrites
(munafiqun), or iniquitous (fasiqun). Anchored in the
security and assuredness of a determinable law, it becomes fairly
easy to differentiate between the rightly-guided and the misguided.
The rightly-guided obey the law; the misguided either deny, attempt
to dilute, or argue about the law. Naturally, the rightly-guided are
superior because they have God on their side. The Muslim puritans
imagine that God's perfection and immutability are fully attainable
on earth—as if God's perfection had been deposited in the Divine
law, and, by giving effect to this law, we could create a social
order that mirrors Divine Truth. By attaching themselves to the
Supreme Being, puritan groups are able to claim a self-righteous
perfectionism that easily slips into a pretense of supremacy.
Extremism in Islamic
History
Perhaps all firmly held systems of belief, especially those
founded on religious conviction, are in some way supremacist:
believers are understood to have some special virtue that
distinguishes them from adherents of other faiths. But the
supremacist creed of the puritan groups is distinctive and uniquely
dangerous. The supremacist thinking of Muslim puritans has a
powerful nationalist component, which is strongly oriented towards
cultural and political dominance. These groups are not satisfied
with living according to their own dictates, but are actively
dissatisfied with all alternative ways of life. They do not merely
seek self-empowerment, but aggressively seek to disempower,
dominate, or destroy others. The crux of the matter is that all
lives lived outside the law are considered an offense against God
that must be actively resisted and fought.
The existence of Muslim puritanism is hardly surprising. Most
religious systems have suffered at one time or another from
absolutist extremism, and Islam is no exception. Within the first
century of Islam, religious extremists known as the Khawarij
(literally, the secessionists) slaughtered a large number of Muslims
and non-Muslims, and were even responsible for the assassination of
the Prophet's cousin and companion, the Caliph Ali b. Abi Talib. The
descendants of the Khawarij exist today in Oman and Algeria, but
after centuries of bloodshed, they became moderates if not
pacifists. Similarly, the Qaramites and Assassins, for whom terror
became a raison d'etre, earned unmitigated infamy in the
writings of Muslim historians, theologians, and jurists. Again,
after centuries of bloodshed, these two groups learned moderation,
and they continue to exist in small numbers in North Africa and
Iraq. The essential lesson taught by Islamic history is that
extremist groups are ejected from the mainstream of Islam; they are
marginalized, and eventually treated as heretical aberrations to the
Islamic message.
But Islam is now living through a major shift, unlike any it has
experienced in the past. The Islamic civilization has crumbled, and
the traditional institutions that once sustained and propagated
Islamic orthodoxy—and marginalized Islamic extremism—have been
dismantled. Traditionally, Islamic epistemology tolerated and even
celebrated divergent opinions and schools of thought. The guardians
of the Islamic tradition were the jurists (fuqaha), whose
legitimacy rested largely on their semi-independence from a
decentralized political system, and their dual function of
representing the interests of the state to the laity and the
interests of the laity to the state.
But in Muslim countries today, the state has grown extremely
powerful and meddlesome, and is centralized in ways that were
inconceivable two centuries ago. In the vast majority of Muslim
countries, the state now controls the private religious endowments
(awqaf ) that once sustained the juristic class. Moreover,
the state has co-opted the clergy, and transformed them into its
salaried employees. This transformation has reduced the clergy's
legitimacy, and produced a profound vacuum in religious authority.
Hence, there is a state of virtual anarchy in modern Islam: it is
not clear who speaks with authority on religious issues. Such a
state of virtual religious anarchy is perhaps not problematic in
secular societies where religion is essentially reduced to a private
matter. But where religion remains central to the dynamics of public
legitimacy and cultural meaning, the question of who represents the
voice of God is of central significance.
Puritanism and
Modern Islam
It would be wrong to say that fanatic supremacist groups such as
the al-Qa'ida or al-Jihad organizations now fill the vacuum of
authority in contemporary Islam. Though they are obviously able to
commit highly visible acts of violence that command the public
stage, fanatic groups remain sociologically and intellectually
marginal in Islam. Still, they are extreme manifestations of more
prevalent intellectual and theological currents in modern Islam.
Fanatic groups derive their theological premises from the
intolerant puritanism of the Wahhabi and Salafi creeds. Wahhabism
was founded by the eighteenth-century evangelist Muhammad ibn 'Abd
al-Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula. 'Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid
Islam of the corruptions that he believed had crept into the
religion. He advocated a strict literalism in which the text became
the sole source of legitimate authority, and displayed an extreme
hostility to intellectualism, mysticism, and any sectarian divisions
within Islam. According to the Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to
return to a presumed pristine, simple, straightforward Islam, which
could be entirely reclaimed by literal implementation of the
commands of the Prophet, and by strict adherence to correct ritual
practice. Importantly, Wahhabism rejected any attempt to interpret
the divine law historically or contextually, with attendant
possibilities of reinterpretation under changed circumstances. It
treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a corruption of the
true and authentic Islam. Furthermore, Wahhabism narrowly defined
orthodoxy, and was extremely intolerant of any creed that
contradicted its own.
In the late eighteenth century, the Al Sa'ud family united with
the Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia.
The rebellions were very bloody because the Wahhabis
indiscriminately slaughtered and terrorized Muslims and non-Muslims
alike. Interestingly, mainstream jurists writing at the time, such
as the Hanafi Ibn 'Abidin and the Maliki al-Sawi, branded the
Wahhabis the modern day Khawarij of Islam, and condemned their
fanaticism and intolerance.1 In 1818,
Egyptian forces under the leadership of Muhammad Ali defeated this
rebellion, and Wahhabism seemed destined to become another fringe
historical experience with no lasting impact on Islamic theology.
But the Wahhabi creed was resuscitated in the early twentieth
century under the leadership of 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud, who allied
himself with Wahhabi militant rebels known as the Ikhwan, in the
beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia. Even with the
formation of the Saudi state, Wahhabism remained a creed of limited
influence until the mid-1970s when the sharp rise in oil prices,
together with aggressive Saudi proselytizing, dramatically
contributed to its wide dissemination in the Muslim world.
Wahhabism did not propagate itself as one school of thought or a
particular orientation within Islam. Rather, it asserted itself as
the orthodox "straight path" of Islam. By claiming literal fidelity
to the Islamic text, it was able to make a credible claim to
authenticity at a time when Islamic identity was contested.
Moreover, the proponents of Wahhabism refused to be labeled or
categorized as the followers of any particular figure including 'Abd
al-Wahhab himself. Its proponents insisted that they were simply
abiding by the dictates of al-salaf al-salih (the
rightly-guided predecessors, namely the Prophet and his companions),
and in doing so, Wahhabis were able to appropriate the symbolisms
and categories of Salafism.
Ironically, Salafism was founded in the early twentieth century
by al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida as a liberal
theological orientation. To respond to the demands of modernity,
they argued, Muslims needed to return to the original sources of the
Qur'an and Sunnah (tradition of the Prophet), and engage in de
novo interpretations of the text. By the 1970s, however,
Wahhabism had succeeded in transforming Salafism from a liberal
modernist orientation to a literalist, puritan, and conservative
theology. The sharp rise in oil prices in 1975 enabled Saudi Arabia,
the main proponent of Wahhabism, to disseminate the Wahhabi creed
under a Salafi guise, which purported to revert back to the
authentic fundamentals of religion uncorrupted by the accretions of
historical practice. In reality, however, Saudi Arabia projected its
own fairly conservative cultural practices onto the textual sources
of Islam and went on to proselytize these projections as the
embodiment of Islamic orthodoxy.
Despite its intolerance and rigidity, however, Wahhabism itself
does not bear primary responsibility for the existence of terrorist
groups in Islam today. To be sure, Wahhabism and its militant
offshoots share both attitudinal and ideological orientations. Both
insist on a normative particularism that is fundamentally
text-centered; both reject the notion of universal human values; and
both deal with the other, however defined, in a functionalist and
even opportunistic fashion. But Wahhabism is distinctively
inward-looking—although focused on power, it primarily asserts power
over other Muslims. This is consistent with its obsession with
orthodoxy and correct ritualistic practice. Militant puritan groups,
however, are both introverted and extroverted—they attempt to assert
power against both Muslims and non-Muslims. As populist movements,
they are a reaction to the disempowerment most Muslims have suffered
in the modern age at the hands of harshly despotic governments, and
at the hands of interventionist foreign powers. These groups
compensate for extreme feelings of disempowerment by extreme and
vulgar claims to power. Fueled by supremacist and puritan
theological creeds, their symbolic acts of power become
uncompromisingly fanatic and violent.
The Theology of
Intolerance
Islamic puritans, whether of the Wahhabi or more militant
varieties, offer a set of textual references in support of their
exclusionary and intolerant theological orientation. For instance,
they frequently cite the Qur'anic verse that states: "O' you who
believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies. They are
allies of each other, and he amongst you who becomes their ally is
one of them. Verily, God does not guide the unjust."2 Wahhabi and militant puritanism read this and
similar Qur'anic verses literally and ahistorically, and therefore
reach highly exclusionary conclusions. For example, while Muslims
may elicit the support or aid of non-Muslims over particular issues
when the self-interests of Muslims so require, they may not befriend
or share the normative values of non-Muslims. This orientation often
demands the performance of symbolic acts, which aim to distinguish
Muslims from non-Muslims—for instance, dressing in a particular way
or marking non-Muslims with distinctive symbols.
Islamic puritanism also often invokes the Qur'anic verse
asserting that, "whomsoever follows a religion other than Islam this
will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among
the losers."3 This verse is invoked in
arguing that the theology and rituals of Islam are the exclusive
path to salvation. Moreover, a mere testament of faith or a general
act of submission to God is insufficient to attain salvation in the
Hereafter; rather, a person must comply with the particulars of the
Divine law in order to qualify as a "true" believer. The puritan
trend is thus uncompromising in its rejection of all forms of belief
and ritual that do not qualify as the "true" religion of God.
As to the principles that should guide the interaction between
Muslims and non-Muslims, the puritan trend cites the Qur'anic verse
commanding Muslims to fight the unbelievers, "until there is no more
tumult or oppression, and until faith and all judgment belongs to
God."4 Moreover, justifying an
essentially supremacist view towards non-Muslims, proponents of
puritanism often quote the following Qur'anic injunction: "Fight
those among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) who do not
believe in God or the Hereafter, who do not forbid what God and His
Prophet have forbidden, and who do not acknowledge the religion of
truth—fight them until they pay the poll tax (jizyah) with
willing submission and feel themselves subdued."5
Relying on such textual evidence, Muslim puritans assert that
Muslims are the inheritors of an objectively ascertainable and
realizable Divine Truth; while Jews and Christians may be tolerated,
they cannot be befriended. Ultimately, however, they must be subdued
and forced to acknowledge Muslim supremacy by paying a poll tax. The
puritan doctrine is not necessarily or entirely dismissive of the
rights of non-Muslims, and it does not necessarily lead to the
persecution of Jews and Christians. But it does assert a hierarchy
of importance, and the commitment to toleration is correspondingly
fragile and contingent. So it is conducive to an arrogance that can
easily descend into a lack of respect or concern for the well-being
or dignity of non-Muslims. When this arrogant orientation is coupled
with textual sources that exhort Muslims to fight against
unbelievers (kuffar), it can produce a radical
belligerency.
The Place of
Tolerance in Islam
The puritans construct their exclusionary and intolerant theology
by reading Qur'anic verses in isolation, as if the meaning of the
verses were transparent—as if moral ideas and historical context
were irrelevant to their interpretation. In fact, however, it is
impossible to analyze these and other verses except in light of the
overall moral thrust of the Qur'anic message.
The Qur'an itself refers to general moral imperatives such as
mercy, justice, kindness, or goodness. The Qur'an does not clearly
define any of these categories, but presumes a certain amount of
moral probity on part of the reader. For instance, the Qur'an
persistently commands Muslims to enjoin the good. The word used for
"the good" is ma'ruf, which means that which is commonly
known to be good. Goodness, in the Qur'anic discourse, is part of
what one may call a lived reality—it is the product of human
experience and constructed normative understandings. Similarly, the
Qur'anic term for kindness is ihsan, which literally means to
beautify and improve upon. But beautification or improving upon can
have meaning only in the context of a certain sociological
understanding and practice.
In a further example, as to justice, the Qur'an states: "O you
who believe, stand firmly for justice, as witnesses for God, even if
it means testifying against yourselves, or your parents, or you kin,
and whether it is against the rich or poor, for God prevails upon
all. Follow not the lusts of your hearts, lest you swerve, and if
you distort justice or decline to do justice, verily God knows what
you do."6 The idea that Muslims must
stand up for justice even against their own self-interests is
predicated on the notion that human beings are capable of achieving
a high level of moral agency. As agents, Muslims are expected to
achieve a level of moral conscientiousness, which they will bring to
their relationship with God. In regards to every ethical obligation,
the Qur'anic text assumes that readers will bring a pre-existing,
innate moral sense to the text. Hence, the text will morally enrich
the reader, but only if the reader will morally enrich the text. The
meaning of the religious text is not fixed simply by the literal
meaning of its words, but depends, too, on the moral construction
given to it by the reader. So if the reader approaches the text
without moral commitments, it will almost inevitably yield nothing
but discrete, legalistic, technical insights.
Similarly, it is imperative to analyze the historical
circumstances in which specific Qur'anic ethical norms were
negotiated. Many of the institutions referenced in the Qur'an—such
as the poll tax or the formation of alliances with non-Muslims—can
be understood only if the reader is aware of the historical
practices surrounding the revelation of the text. By emptying the
Qur'an both of its historical and moral context, the puritan trend
ends up transforming the text into a long list of morally
non-committal legal commands.
The Qur'anic discourse, for instance, can readily support an
ethic of diversity and tolerance. The Qur'an not only expects, but
even accepts the reality of difference and diversity within human
society: "O humankind, God has created you from male and female and
made you into diverse nations and tribes so that you may come to
know each other. Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God
is he who is the most righteous."7
Elsewhere, the Qur'an asserts that diversity is part of the Divine
intent and purpose in creation: "If thy Lord had willed, He would
have made humankind into a single nation, but they will not cease to
be diverse… And, for this God created them [humankind]."8 The classical commentators on the Qur'an did
not fully explore the implications of this sanctioning of diversity,
or the role of peaceful conflict resolution in perpetuating the type
of social interaction that would result in people "knowing each
other." Nor does the Qur'an provide specific rules or instructions
about how "diverse nations and tribes" are to acquire such
knowledge. In fact, the existence of diversity as a primary purpose
of creation, as suggested by the verse above, remained
underdeveloped in Islamic theology. Pre-modern Muslim scholars did
not have a strong incentive to explore the meaning and implications
of the Qur'anic endorsement of diversity and cross-cultural
intercourse. This is partly because of the political dominance and
superiority of the Islamic Civilization, which left Muslim scholars
with a sense of self-sufficient confidence. Nevertheless, it is fair
to say that the Islamic civilization was pluralistic and unusually
tolerant of various social and religious denominations. Working out
the implications of a commitment to human diversity and mutual
knowledge under contemporary conditions requires moral reflection
and attention to historical circumstance: precisely what is missing
from puritan theology and doctrine.
Other than a general endorsement of human diversity, the Qur'an
also accepted the more specific notion of a plurality of religious
beliefs and laws. Although the Qur'an clearly claims that Islam is
the Divine Truth, and demands belief in Muhammad as the final
messenger in a long line of Abrahamic prophets, it does not
completely exclude the possibility that there might be other paths
to salvation. The Qur'an insists on God's unfettered discretion to
accept in His mercy whomever He wishes. In a rather remarkable set
of passages that, again, have not been adequately theorized by
Muslim theologians, the Qur'an recognizes the legitimate
multiplicity of religious convictions and laws. In one such passage,
for example, the Qur'an asserts: "To each of you God has prescribed
a Law and a Way. If God would have willed, He would have made you a
single people. But God's purpose is to test you in what he has given
each of you, so strive in the pursuit of virtue, and know that you
will all return to God [in the Hereafter], and He will resolve all
the matters in which you disagree."9 On
this and other occasions the Qur'an goes on to state that it is
possible for non-Muslims to attain the blessing of salvation: "Those
who believe, those who follow Jewish scriptures, the Christians, the
Sabians, and any who believe in God and the Final Day, and do good,
all shall have their reward with their Lord and they will not come
to fear or grief."10 Significantly,
this passage occurs in the same chapter that instructs Muslims not
to take the Jews and Christians as allies. How can these different
verses be reconciled?
If we read the text with moral and historical guidance, we can
see the different passages as part of a complex and layered
discourse about reciprocity and its implications in the historical
situation in Mohammed's Medina. In part, the chapter exhorts Muslims
to support the newly established Muslim community in Medina. But its
point is not to issue a blanket condemnation against Jews and
Christians (who "shall have their reward with their Lord"). Instead,
it accepts the distinctiveness of the Jewish and Christian
communities and their laws, while also insisting that Muslims are
entitled to the same treatment as those other communities. Thus it
sets out an expectation of reciprocity for Muslims: while calling
upon Muslims to support the Prophet of Islam against his Jewish and
Christian detractors, it also recognizes the moral worth and rights
of the non-Muslim "other."
The challenge most often invoked against an argument for
tolerance in Islam is the issue of jihad. Jihad, especially as
portrayed in the Western media, is often associated with the idea of
a holy war that is propagated in the name of God against the
unbelievers. Therefore, jihad is often equated with the most vulgar
images of religious intolerance.
At the most rudimentary level, the Qur'an itself is explicit in
prohibiting any form of coerced conversions to Islam. It contends
that truth and falsity are clear and distinct, and so whomever
wishes to believe may do so, but no duress is permitted in religion:
"There is no compulsion in matter of faith."11 Of course, this response is incomplete—even
if forced conversions to Islam are prohibited, aggressive warfare to
spread Islamic power over non-believers might still be allowed. Does
the Qur'an condone such expansionist wars?
Interestingly, Islamic tradition does not have a notion of holy
war. "Jihad" simply means to strive hard or struggle in pursuit of a
just cause, and according to the Prophet of Islam, the highest form
of jihad is the struggle waged to cleanse oneself from the vices of
the heart. Holy war (in Arabic al-harb al-muqaddasah) is not
an expression used by the Qur'anic text or Muslim theologians. In
Islamic theology, war is never holy; it is either justified
or not, and if it is justified, those killed in battle are
considered martyrs. The Qur'anic text does not recognize the idea of
unlimited warfare, and does not consider the simple fact of the
belligerent's Muslim identity to be sufficient to establish the
justness of his cause. In other words, the Qur'an entertains the
possibility that the Muslim combatant might be the unjust party in a
conflict.
Moreover, while the Qur'an emphasizes that Muslims may fight
those who fight them, it also insists that Muslims may not
transgress.12 Transgression is an
ambiguous term, but on several occasions the Qur'an intimates that
in order not to transgress, Muslims must be constrained by a
requirement of proportionality, even when the cause is just. For
instance, it states, "Mandated is the law of equality, so that who
transgresses against you, respond in kind, and fear God, and know
that God is with those who exercise restraint."13
Despite the prohibition against transgression and the
condemnation of unlimited warfare, many classical jurists adopted an
imperialist orientation, which divided the world into the abode of
Islam and the abode of war, and supported expansionist wars against
unbelievers. But this view was not unanimous. Classical Muslim
jurists debated whether unbelief is a sufficient justification for
warfare, with a sizeable number of classical jurists arguing that
non-Muslims may not be fought unless they pose a physical threat to
Muslims. If non-Muslims seek peace, Muslims should make an effort to
achieve such a peace. This discourse was partly inspired by the
Qur'anic injunctions concerning peace. The Qur'an asserts that God
does not prohibit Muslims from making peace with those who do not
fight Muslims, but God does prohibit Muslims from making peace with
those who have expelled Muslims from their homes and continue to
persecute them.14 Elsewhere, the Qur'an
pronounces a stronger mandate in favor of peace in stating: "If your
enemy inclines towards peace, then you should seek peace and trust
in God."15 Moreover, the Qur'an
instructs Muslims not to haughtily turn away unbelievers who seek to
make peace with Muslims, and reminds Muslims that, "If God would
have willed, He would have given the unbelievers power over you
[Muslims], and they would have fought you [Muslims]. Therefore, if
they [the unbelievers] withdraw from you and refuse to fight you,
and instead send you guarantees of peace, know that God has not
given you a license [to fight them]."16
These discussions of peace would not make sense if Muslims were in a
permanent state of war with non-believers, and if non-believers were
a permanent enemy and always a legitimate target.
The other major issue on the point of tolerance in Islam is that
of the poll tax (jizyah) imposed on the People of Book
(Christians and Jews) who live in Muslim territory. When the Qur'an
was revealed, it was common inside and outside of Arabia to levy
poll taxes against alien groups. Building upon the historical
practice, classical Muslim jurists argued that the poll tax is money
collected by the Islamic polity from non-Muslims in return for the
protection of the Muslim state. If the Muslim state was incapable of
extending such protection to non-Muslims, it was not supposed to
levy a poll tax. In fact, 'Umar (r. 13-23/634-644), the second
Rightly-Guided Caliph and close companion of the Prophet, returned
the poll tax to an Arab Christian tribe that he was incapable of
protecting from Byzantine aggression.
Aside from the juristic theory justifying the poll tax, the
Qur'an does not, however, pronounce an absolute and unwavering rule
in favor of such an institution. Once more, attention to historical
circumstance is essential. The Qur'an endorsed a poll tax as a
response to particular groups in Arabia who were persistently
hostile to the early Muslims. Importantly, the Prophet did not
collect a poll tax from every non-Muslim tribe that submitted to
Muslim sovereignty, and in fact, in the case of a large number of
non-Muslim but non-hostile tribes, he paid them a periodic sum of
money or goods. These tribes were known as "those whose hearts have
been reconciled." Furthermore, 'Umar entered into a peace settlement
with Arab Christian tribes pursuant to which these tribes were
obligated to pay the Islamic annual tax known as the
zakah (almsgiving), and not the poll tax. Reportedly,
although they refused to convert to Islam, the Christian tribes
contended that paying the jizyah (poll tax) was degrading,
and instead, asked to pay the zakah, and 'Umar accommodated
their request.17
In short, there are various indicators that the poll tax is not a
theologically mandated practice, but a functional solution that was
adopted in response to a specific set of historical circumstances.
Only an entirely ahistorical reading of the text could conclude that
it is an essential element in a Divinely-sanctioned program of
subordinating the non-believer.
Final
Thoughts
Ultimately, the Qur'an, or any text, speaks through its reader.
This ability of human beings to interpret texts is both a blessing
and a burden. It is a blessing because it provides us with the
flexibility to adapt texts to changing circumstances. It is a burden
because the reader must take responsibility for the normative values
he or she brings to the text. Any text, including those that are
Islamic, provides possibilities for meaning, not inevitabilities.
And those possibilities are exploited, developed and ultimately
determined by the reader's efforts—good faith efforts, we hope—at
making sense of the text's complexities. Consequently, the meaning
of the text is often only as moral as its reader. If the reader is
intolerant, hateful, or oppressive, so will be the interpretation of
the text.
It would be disingenuous to deny that the Qur'an and other
Islamic sources offer possibilities of intolerant interpretation.
Clearly these possibilities are exploited by the contemporary
puritans and supremacists. But the text does not command such
intolerant readings. Historically, Islamic civilization has
displayed a remarkable ability to recognize possibilities of
tolerance, and to act upon these possibilities. Islamic civilization
produced a moral and humanistic tradition that preserved Greek
philosophy, and generated much science, art, and socially benevolent
thought. Unfortunately, however, the modern puritans are dissipating
and wasting this inspiring moral tradition. They are increasingly
shutting off the possibilities for a tolerant interpretation of the
Islamic tradition.
If we assess the moral trajectory of a civilization in light of
its past record, then we have ample reason to be optimistic about
the future. But the burden and blessing of sustaining that moral
trajectory—of accentuating the Qur'anic message of tolerance and
openness to the other—falls squarely on the shoulders of
contemporary Muslim interpreters of the tradition.<
Click here to return to the exchange, Islam and
Tolerance with Abou El Fadl and respondents.
Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda
Alfi Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law at UCLA and author of
Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law.
1 Muhammad Amin Ibn 'Abidin, Hashiyat
Radd al-Muhtar (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi 1966), 6:413; Ahmad
al-Sawi, Hashiyat al-Sawi 'ala Tafsir al-Jalalayn (Beirut:
Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, n.d.), 3 :307-308. See also Ahmad
Dallal, "The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought,
1750-1850," Journal of the American Oriental Society 113/3
(1993), who demonstrates that Wahhabism in the nineteenth century
was considered a fringe fanatic group.
2 Qur'an 5:51.
3 Qur'an 3:85.
4 Qur'an 8:39.
5 Qur'an 9:29.
6 Qur'an 4:135.
7 Qur'an 49:13.
8 Qur'an 11:118-9.
9 Qur'an 5:49.
10 Qur'an 5:69; 2:62.
11 Qur'an 2:256; 10:99; 18:29.
12 Qur'an 2:190; 5:2.
13 Qur'an 2:194.
14 Qur'an 60:9.
15 Qur'an 8:61.
16 Qur'an 4:90. Also 4:94.
17 Abu Zakariyya al-Nawawi, Rawdat
al-Talibin, 3rd edition, edited by Zuhayr al-Shawish (Beirut:
al-Maktab al-Islami, 1991), 10:316-317.
Originally Published in December
2001/January 2002 issue of the Boston Review
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