muse
-
02:02:16 am on May 15, 2008 | # | |
Why Irshad Manji irritates me (its not just the hair). More eloquently stated than I ever could.
…because of the trials and tribulations that Manji faced as a child, because of the personal experiences that Manji had and the choices she’s made, she has taken the sum of those experiences and built the foundation of her argument around them such that they take on a scope that is completely inappropriate. That because they were or are issues for Manji they must be equally important issues for all Muslims in all times and in all places.
Read the whole thing.
(h/t Margari Aziza Hill)
-
Tag this post
razib 2:56 am on May 15, 2008 | #
that’s true. and i don’t know much about islam but the shoddiness of some of her assertions stand out even for me. but like many muslims the author is guility of overgeneralization as well. manji makes authoritative statements about what islam is, and isn’t, which can be easily falsified. but critics of manji do the same sort of inversion; e.g.,
Wanting to be homosexual and pray in your own way is completely a matter of personal choice but there is simply no way to justify it with the texts, traditions and methodologies in Islam. Expecting to do so shows a lack of intelligence on Manji’s part.
well, perhaps i’m ignorant, but i’ve read that groups like the alawites and alevis actually do not pray or follow other orthopraxy which is normative in mainstream islam. are they not true muslims? they were so accused, and so self-perceived for many years, but in the early 1970s a shia scholar in lebanon deemed the alawites ithna asharia muslims (i think it is pretty obvious there were political reasons for this, but i whatever).
muslims who criticize ignorant orientalists are often guilty of their own myopia and cultural imperialism. e.g., a sunni bangladeshi who stated that her family was orthodox because they would never depict images of human beings in their house, who was taken aback when a shia stated that that isn’t unknown in iran and isn’t perceived as un-islamic (when, from a sunni perspectivei guess shia are by definition un-orthodox, but who is a sunni to have final authority on these things?). and how exactly do we determine who authoritative scholars are? i assume no one is consulting god here. yes, manji obviously doesn’t know what she is talking about, but islamic tradition isn’t a monolithich and as a collector of obscure marginal facts i am pretty sure i can falsify most generalizations about any tradition. among 1.3 billion people is there total unity on any particular topic? even among the millions of ulems? additionally, the author of the post linked to acts as if non-muslims should just butt out of muslim affairs; that’s fine, but then muslims should keep their religion private and never demand public accommodation in any way which might facilitate the practice of their religion more comfortably. after all, as an atheist i’d laughed off if i demanded some accommodation in menu at a cafeteria because of my atheism. no one respects that because they know it isn’t as psychologically significant.
pluralism is hard. one of the more difficult things is obviously remembering that things aren’t as clear from the outside as they are to you who are inside and know the Truth. and yes, i know that writer was probably aiming toward a muslim audience and people talk differently to ingroups than to outgroups; but when i hear ingroups dissing in that manner i definitely have a lot more sympathy for ‘heretics’ like manji.
muse 3:35 am on May 15, 2008 | #
i actually wished the author didn’t obfuscate the issue by combining the issue of prayer and her personal sexuality. the former is far more salient to his point, and the latter is irrelevant (in my opinion).
and thats all we have to guide us at the end of the day - our own opinion, and the way we understand the Truth. everyone is guilty of myopia in that sense, because our opinions are informed by our personal experiences. you’re right, nobody has a direct line to God. so what do we do in that case, where all we have to measure the Truth with is ourselves? descend into the netherworld of moral relativism? in my opinion (again, ha!), no. you hold on to the thread of tradition while working within it to adapt to the needs of the day. precedent is important if you’re going to make any progress.
you’re right, tradition is not monolithic (as the author also points out), but to me the fact that you can bring forth marginal facts to falsify generalizations proves that generalization do exist, and they don’t come from thin air. they exist and have survived because they are important, especially when it comes to matters of aqeedah and worship.
i would not consider manji a heretic (though she calls herself that and gives it a different meaning, but whatever) because she’s a muslim. (so long as you call yourself a muslim, you’re a muslim as far as i’m concerned). i just think she knows not of what she speaks, and she does it with an air of such authority that its painful to watch. ofcourse i dont know what i’m talking about either but i’ll be the first to admit that.
razib 12:45 pm on May 15, 2008 | #
but to me the fact that you can bring forth marginal facts to falsify generalizations proves that generalization do exist, and they don’t come from thin air. they exist and have survived because they are important, especially when it comes to matters of aqeedah and worship.
i agree, generalizations do exist! there are statistical realities. that being said, such realities are more problematic with religious faith because many (though not all) conceive of their religion as a determistic system predicated on hard axioms. you see what i’m saying?
so long as you call yourself a muslim, you’re a muslim as far as i’m concerned
yes, and that’s the problem with the assertion above of generalization. from the outside (as a non-muslim), how do you judge what is islamic and not islamic aside from what “muslims” say? you could do a public opinion survey, but then you need to define an arbitrary interval of acceptable discourse.
the fact that boundaries don’t exist don’t negate the reality of trends and central tendencies. but when people are talking about ontological truths it gets muddled since they don’t conceive of the expectation of the validity of salat as 0.50 with a variance of 0.25, right?
Marc 2:01 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
I’m down for including all kids of folks within the belief fold of Islam, so long as that belief doesn’t carry them outside of it. No salah/prayer - no Islam. This isn’t really that harsh of a rendering. But just as important as to whether or not folks fall within the belief fold of Islam is what humanistic value do we place on them? Because the ultimate price of not praying can only be exacted in the Hereafter by God. This is why you find a very different voice in the pre-Modern Muslim Tradition in terms of kafir. It was mainly [though not exclusively] used to denote people[s] who were outside the fold of Islam but had nothing to do with their humanistic value.
So when I am saying that she’s tried to make her personal narrative into a metanarrative.
Perhaps you disagree with what I wrote but it was far from myopic.
Marc 2:03 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
Lost part of the second paragraph there somehow but hopefully you get the message.
Marc 2:07 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
You seem quite sure of yourself on a number of points but that’s besides the matter [or is it?].
Your statement seems a bit ad nauseam. As far as I can tell, and I did write the article after all, I in no way spelled out that the Muslim intellectual tradition is monolithic. In fact, if you take even a little bit of time and read through my site you will see that that is an underpinning argument for much of what I write.
Marc 2:18 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
This is the quintessential post-Enlightenment take on religion! That in a sense, religious peoples [Muslims here in this case] are incapable of defining what is or is not Muslim? This is not a far stretch from what is or is not “real” because the post-Enlightenment mind has lost touch with Reality - i.e., that which all reality is based on. Perhaps this is getting too dogmatic for you but this is what the great Muslim philosophers of the past wrestled with. If Reality [al-haqiyqah] is based off of a Single Starting Point [al Ahad] then reality is based on that principle [al Haqq]. I, and others far smarter than myself, have some to the same determinations. Muslim definition does not exist within a vacuum of self-authorization [I think therefore I am/I am a Muslim therefore I am]. It is the authority of the Prophet and God in the Qur’an that establish these parameters and it is precisely this that the modern post-Enlightenment mind fails to grasp.
Marc 2:19 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
have some to should read as have come to. God, I can’t type today.
razib 6:55 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
That in a sense, religious peoples [Muslims here in this case] are incapable of defining what is or is not Muslim?
there’s a problem of circularity; muslims define what and who muslims are. see what i mean? so from the outside how we decide who and what are muslims? i don’t care about your religion, it’s frankly just another superstition as significant to me as fetish veneration, but i understand as a matter of pragmatism that it needs to be accommodated because it is emotionally significant.
to you the ulema and muslim scholars obviously matter more than the likes of manji; you believe they have access to authoritative tradition and a deeper understanding of your religion. but to non-muslims this isn’t as important obviously since we don’t perceive your kind as having access to any real truth. it’s a matter of democracy and debate; and manji has a role to play in that, misguided and ignorant as you might perceive her to be.
razib 6:58 pm on May 21, 2008 | #
I’m down for including all kids of folks within the belief fold of Islam, so long as that belief doesn’t carry them outside of it. No salah/prayer - no Islam.
and who exactly are you to decide this? interesting, though my family is a pretty conventional hanafi one (as i have noted before, there are many ulems within it, up to this generation), some of them have expressed attitudes relating toward prayer very similar to alevis and alawites (not that they know what alevis and alawites believe). so perhaps in your estimation they’re not muslims either….
bdr 1:56 am on May 22, 2008 | #
Totally off topic, but why ulems/ulams? ulema is itself plural, and if one wants to use the Arabic singular but add an ’s,’ it would be alims.
razib 2:24 am on May 22, 2008 | #
i was phoneticizing the way my uncles say it.