The Ethics and Aesthetics of Belief and Disbelief

In the last two years, I have had the privilege of sharing some reflections on the Qur'an in a mosque near our home. This weekend (16 July 2017), I decided to share some ideas from a paper that I presented in Morocco recently. I started with trepidation since I know of the gulf that separates an academic talk and a discussion in a mosque. And I remembered Ibn Rushd's (Averroes) apt warning!

Anyway, this is the verse:

Abuse not those to whom they pray, apart from God, or they will abuse God in revenge without knowledge. So We have decked out fair to every nation their deeds; then to their Lord they shall return, and He will tell them what they have been doing (Q 6:108; translation from Arberry)

I asked if anybody in the mosque had heard the first part of the verse. I had the impression that this was a popular verse since it is often quoted by some Muslim scholars when asked about how Muslims should respond to insults heaped upon God or the Prophet Muhammad. None of 15-odd men in the mosque had heard of it. And my audience included a few who were not unaware of the public atmosphere of Islamophobia in recent times in some countries.

So even though I had decided to speak on the second phrase, I had to briefly elaborate on the first part as well. It was a call to set aside the gods from acrimonious human exchange. Insults and abuse should not be directed at the special or sacred (to use the Christian theologian Paul Tillich's definition of religion).  An alert reader or listener might detect a selfish motive behind this advice.

Alternatively, we might think of this as the Golden rule of Jesus' sermon on the mount - but now applied to the sacred that is cherished by those who abuse. But there is still a lingering expectation of mutuality in this rule - which might not take away the tinge or the aroma of selfishness.

Of course, if one thinks that the sacred is an absolute abomination, or alienation (Feuerbach), or neurosis (Freud) or opiate (Marx), then there might be no need to desist from abusing it. This is an idea of the sacred that exists in many circles in the modern world today. The sacred that some people believe in is rejected in its totality. In this case, the golden rule, if applied, would be to the human person but excluding what he or she may treasure and cherish.

Let me return to the second part of the verse which I wanted to focus on in my talk; and which I think sheds sheds some light on the first part.

So We have decked out fair to every nation their deeds.

This part of the verse has not been as extensively cited or discussed in recent dialogical exchanges over religion and mutual abuse. I have not heard anybody who cites the first part of the verse elaborate on the second part. And I did not expect anybody in the mosque to have heard of it. And this time, I was correct in my assumption.

There is a long history of commentary on this phrase. I submit that the the phrase points to the close relation between truth and beauty. It reminds listeners and readers that the sacred, truth and values,  including the ultimate decision of  believing or disbelieving, is founded on appearance. More than mere appearance, truth is rooted and founded on an aesthetic (a judgment of beauty and form). And that aesthetic is the basis on which beliefs, judgments and values are held. Beauty and truth are held in a tight embrace.

But there is a sting in the tail. An aesthetic judgement might be misleading or open the road to felicity. Beauty comes with truth, but does not guarantee it.

And more interestingly, for this reading that I am suggesting, the verse asks believers to recognize this adornment in the belief held by those who insult God. That might be a tall order which will be difficult for most. Recognizing the difficulty of fully appreciating that another person sees beauty where one only sees error and falsehood, I think that the verse takes on a 2-stage ethical reflection.

I would suggest that in the first part of the verse, we are asked to stop the cycle of insults. Someone has to stop - and it would be good to be that person.

Then, the second part of the verse ventures a more difficult ethical stance. Here, we are told that the foundation of a person's belief who insults your God lies in an aesthetic judgment made by the person who holds that belief. The aesthetic and moral judgment is not merely rooted in arrogance, stupidity or laziness, but on what the other truly thinks is beautiful.

The delicacy of belief and aesthetic is captured by the Adalusian exegete al-Qurtubi's reference to a rhetorical of prayer of Umar (the second caliph of Islam) in his reflection of another verse in the Qur'an that repeats this theme of aesthetics and truth. Reportedly, Umar turned to God and asked: “What will you make beautiful for us?” This question, I propose, exposes the precariousness of moral judgment. It locates moral judgment on aesthetics, which is necessary and inevitable. But that judgment is possibly misleading. So Umar (ra) asks God what He will make beautiful for him (hoping and trusting that it will be the good). 

I submit that this verse might be a good foundation for thinking about unbelief in a deeply respectful way.

The Good Life and its Representation: #Religion, #Ethics and what you can see?

I had intended to write a series of blogs on religion and ethics soon after the 7th Wasatiyyah Conference in Cape Town on the 20th of May. But this was not to be as I began teaching a module on Jihad and violence at the University of Cape Town. I will report on this as well. For now, I continue my chosen blog journey on ethics, values and religions.

Shaheed's defense and graduation took place on the 10th of May, 2017. The thesis was based on field work in Mumbai on the good life as articulated around food, sacrifice, consumption and production. The cover on his thesis was a row of animal carcasses in the background, and a man sitting in the front. Shaheed was asked for a photograph by the University, which he supplied.

But Utrecht University chose a different photograph to announce the event (picture on the side). It was a photograph of a woman holding a cat on a lap, wearing a green dress and face cover.

The choice of this photograph rather than the one given by Shaheed revealed and obscured the moral life of Muslims. Firstly, the rejection of Shaheed's photograph says a lot of what is considered ethical with regard to animal rights and non-rights. Supermarkets are filled with meat, but the reality of the slaughter should be kept in the background.

On the other hand, the choice of this photo rather than the original one was perhaps an act kindness by the administration. Muslims already have a bad reputation! And the administration perhaps chose something more familiar and less jarring. This was surely more ethical. Holding a cat with tenderness was better than sitting in front of a row of animal carcasses. But then one has to ask, how moral is it to do something for another person? This choice was good for the image of Muslim society, but not so good in relation to the choice made by Shaheed? We have a contrast between ethics as freedom (Shaheed's choice), and a sense of the good (for the benefit of the Muslim image).

But I reflected on what this picture shows in relation to the history of public ethics and gender in the West since the advent of modernity. I read recently from Graeber that a major transformation took place on how ethics were removed from display under the impact of the Protestant Reformation. Men, in particular, had previously displayed their identity and values on their bodies, by the clothes and accessories that they wore. Then, under the impact of a pietistic tradition, this display was displaced with a dour exterior and an inner sense of rectitude and self-righteousness.

In contrast, women were expected to continue showing off their values, valuables and identities on their bodies.

So what does this picture show about Muslim ethics? On the one hand, it is revealing and concealing at the same time. It shows the values that Muslims hold dear. At the same time, it hides those values. A full cover from head to toe does not show anything, and everything. Unless, of course, the very act of concealing is a value. A women in niqab is a concealment by fact.

When one brings in the fact that this photo was chosen in Utrecht, Netherlands, then it seems that this says nothing about Muslim values. It displays a modern European tradition that frames women who show values or no values.

So, ethics and display are deeply connected. As ethics are personal and individual acts of kindness, generosity, etc, they can be entangled with public display and hypocrisy. This conundrum does not seem to have been addressed in the anthropology of ethics, but there is extensive discussion thereof in religious literature. 

Journeys on and in the Ethical - Religion, #Ethics and Violence

Castle in Cape Town

The International Peace College South Africa in Cape Town, in cooperation with AMEC (Afro-Middle East Centre) based in Johannesburg, hosted its 7th Annual Wasatiyyah Symposium in the Castle of Good Hope on Saturday 20 May 2017. The meeting turned around the challenge of ISIS to South Africa in general, and the South African Muslim community in particular.

Presenters wrestled with why about 100 recruits in South Africa turned their backs to the Muslim community. Moreover, they wrestled with why these recruits chose violence rather than the middle path (#wasatiyyah)- a path of commitment and moderation, a path exemplified by the history of Muslims in South Africa.

A few days earlier, I had the privilege of attending the 5th Annual Conference on Law and Religion (ACLARS) in Rabat, Morocco. The theme of the conference was Law, Religion and Security. Over two and a half days, academics presented papers on how law and religion mediated values, violence and power. As in the Wasatiyyah Symposium in Cape Town, delegates wrestled with how the best side of religion in African countries may contribute to security and peace. ISIS was the elephant in the room.

A few days before that, I attended a symposium entitled “Islam as an Ethical and Material Practice” that preceded my son’s (Shaheed Tayob) graduation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. It focussed on the implications and questions that emerged from this thesis (Islam as a Lived Tradition: Ethical Constellations of Muslim Food Practice in Mumbai). This was a very different meeting, mixing personal pride and reflection. But the conference, now located in Europe, reflected on the representation of Islam in the public sphere, and the practices that shaped and directed Muslims in Mumbai. There seemed to be a big gap between the ethical and the representational.

A week before that, Prof. Elena Stepanova from Ekaterinburg (Ural Federal University) invited me to an International Interdisciplinary Conference (Religion in the Public Sphere: Paradoxical Presence). I used the opportunity to reflect on the paradoxes in the National Policy on Religion and Education promulgated in 2003. The policy was designed to change the nature of religious education in South African schools. Here too, I was drawn to the ethical between deliberation and representational. The former was devoted to examine and explore the history of religions, while the latter was devoted to putting up religion for display (a display often marked by power and privilege).

These are privileges that I have often taken for granted. The meetings of sharing and learning find their way into writing, teaching and public life. This time, I was painfully aware of my carbon footprint as my Abdul-Aleem Somers has often reminded me. But as I looked back at these experiences, I also became aware of the interconnectedness of these meetings. In the next few weeks, I would like to revisit these meetings through the sights, sounds and emotions that they evoked for me.

I will be reflecting on them through the weekly meetings that we have organized at the University of Cape Town on religion and ethics. Our research group, Religion Education and Islam, African Publics and Religious Values, comes together for an hour to discuss articles and books that we read together. For 2017, we first read James Laidlaw’s The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), and we are now following up with Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Religion and Politics (Pantheon Books, 2012). From different vantage points, they are challenging us to think about ethics in religions, and in the study of religions. But as you will see, we challenge their conception of ethics through the religious that we know.

#Sermon in Cape Town: Tradition, #Ethics and #Modernity

I was writing a paper on religious leaders in the city of Cape Town, for which I had chosen a Pentecostal pastor and a Muslim reformist teacher. For both of them I was looking carefully at how they navigated Islamic reformism and Pentecostalism in their lives. I was looking at how their commitment to these groups was developed, adopted and modified. It was a careful study of change and innovation in leaders and teachers who prided themselves on fidelity to the tradition.

I was almost finished with my paper and it was Friday, so I headed to a local mosque to listen to the sermon. I  was hoping that in might give me inspiration to reflect on the paper, and to finish it. It did but it was disturbing as well.

I made sure that I got there early enough so that I could listen to the whole sermon. But as I walked in I heard the preacher condemning Islamic feminists and activists who advocated equal rights for gays and lesbians.  This ad-hominem attack was not completely unexpected as there has been a growing controversy within the Muslim community in the last few weeks around a religious opinion (fatwa) that declared that Sunnis should not get married to Shiítes.  Condemnation of groups was not unusual in mosques.

Was sectarianism raising its head in the city? Was this now another attack, on a different group of people? What was sectarianism? Returning to my thesis, was it new or old?

Listening to this attack on Islamic feminists and gay and lesbian Muslims was disconcerting. But what did he say?

His main thesis was that "these people" wanted to change the rules of Islam. The rules of Islam were fixed and good for eternity, brought to humanity by inspired Prophets and Messengers. This was a complete misrepresentation of Islamic law, which was characterized by diversity and debate. But I continued to listen.

The preacher asserted that these "deviant" groups were rejecting the sayings attributed to the Prophet (hadith). By rejecting the hadith, they rejected the sunnah, he continued. I could not help but recall Fazlur Rahman's argument that there was a difference between sunnah (a norm, the way of the Prophet) and hadith (one of the sources that pointed to the sunnah). Like other modern intellectuals, Rahman had shown how the first Muslim intellectuals assumed and worked with this distinction. It was only the great jurist al-Shafií who collapsed the two. Henceforth, a sunnah  (norm) was indistinguishable from a hadith (a text).  In one stroke, al-Shafií rejected all previous approaches to the sunnah. He also rejected and banished all rational and ethical deliberations in the identification of norms. Max Weber would have said that he played a leading role in the establishment of a tradition, at the expense of flexibility.

Failing to understand the debate raised by feminists and gay activists, the preachers only managed to fan the flames of sectarianism.

I had resigned myself to listen to a misrepresentation, when the preacher took a slightly different turn. He tried to point out that without hadith, Muslims would not know how many prayers there were in a day.  There is no mention at all in the Qurán, he declared, of the times of prayer.  This was another misrepresentation. But I had by now resigned myself to listen to blanket declarations without support. Perhaps, i thought, there were part of the rhetoric of sermons.

But then an innovation came soon. He said that one needs the hadith for the "direct number" to God. God's direct number, he revealed to us, was 2-4-4-3-4. Those who reject the hadith cannot reach God as they will not have this direct number. Don't reach for your mobile phone! He was referring to the particular number of postures (rakát) in the five daily prayers. He likened a connection with God to a telephone call with a friend. But we know what happens to the telephone number of big institutions. You might only be speaking to a call centre!

He concluded his sermon by appealing to the members of his audience to love the Prophet like the fans of Man United. In their love for Man United, fans know all the players, know the clothes they wear and promote, their habits and families.  There was nothing wrong with this, he assured Man United fans in the mosque, but Muslims who claimed to love the Prophet should do something similar. Compared to Man United fans, the fans of the Prophet fall far short.

Muir Street Mosque: Not the Mosque referred to in Article.

The special number to God (2-4-4-3-4) and the fan club were rhetorical strategies employed by the preacher.  They reveal that while he rejected Islamic feminists and gay and lesbian activists for changing the rules of Islam, he was himself deeply immersed in the metaphors of the modern world. He redefined what it meant to have a connection with God and the love of the Prophet. Our connection to God was like telephone call, and our community was a fan club.

Whilst deeply immersed in his modernism, the preacher railed against Islamic feminists and gay and lesbian activists. I think traditionalists appear to be the bedrock of tradition, but they are often unaware of the deep changes that they bring into their tradition. Whilst holding up against some groups identified as those who tarnish or threaten tradition, they are simultaneously making space (mostly unconsciously) for more insidious changes. An innovation that changes the way one connects with God and with the Prophet in Islam needs more careful attention, than an innovation that seeks fairness, justice and an end to inequity.

The Friday sermon in this Cape Town mosque might seem mild. But it is part of a growing sectarianism claimed in the name of tradition, in the city, country and elsewhere. It has embroiled communities and societies into interminable conflict. All the while, it conceals a radical change in the tradition, whilst claiming to be faithful to it.

They are nothing... but also everything in Surah Rahman in the #Quran

Dr. Majidi Bassier emailed me that he would be reciting Surah Rahman at the morning (fajr) prayers today (2 July 2016). Like many others, I have always enjoyed reciting this chapter for the refrain that flows through it to the very end: “Then which of the favours of your Sustainer will you deny?” The favours refer to the creation of nature, and human culture. They include the speech that humans possess to communicate with each other, the fruits and treasures that they find on the earth and in the depths of the oceans, and also the boats and ships that cross rivers and oceans. In sum, the favours cover all aspects of human existence on this earth (nature) and in this world (culture).

Many years ago in my hometown, we wished we had the privilege and honour of reciting this chapter in the night prayer in Ramadan. We knew it well, and knew that everyone listening enjoyed it too. Reciting this chapter would give us a special place in the town for one night. Alas, most of the time, there was a senior Hafiz who denied us this privilege. He sometimes changed the order of reciters so that he could recite Surah Rahman. He was a good reciter, but at the time we resented this high-handedness. But my uncle Mammandkaka and my father always gave me the opportunity to recite the Chapter at family events, and always made a point to say that they loved it when I read it. Listening or reciting it always brings tears to my eyes ... in gratitude for the little favour that they bestowed upon me.

Given the focus on the favours bestowed on humanity, it was surprising to also read “All that dwells upon the earth is perishing, yet still abides the Face of thy Lord, majestic, splendid” (Arberry Translation). On the one hand, the refrain turns attention to the bounties and favours found in human existence. Again and again, it implores human beings to be grateful for life, for the world and everything in it. On the other hand, all this will come to pass. There is no ultimate value in these favours. Only the face of the God would endure.

Listening to it these days caused me to pause. Is this verse not pulling the rug from under the refrain? Is it not ultimately destroying the intuitive message of the refrain? If everything is perishing, then the favours may be denied?

Immediately after this devaluation, however, comes “kulla yamin huwa fi sha’n” (“every day He is upon some labour” - Arberyy). Qurtubi reports that commentators found this to be a verse particularly difficult verse to understand. But they settled on the fact that God is always attending to existence, to the needs of his creation. God creates and destroys provides support and sustains, answers prayers and chastises. And he does it all in the world inhabited by humans. In a way, the verse restores value to the world and its favours. But now, the value includes life and death, and turns around the “labour” of God.

The two verses must then be put together: ““All that dwells upon the earth is perishing” and ““every day He is upon some labour.” The one declares that nothing else is of value except the face of God, and the other that every thing is of value as his “labour” (sha’n). The two together give us a perspective on the earth and the world that helps us to navigate between loss and recovery, appreciation and devaluation. There is a delicate balance between all and nothing in the face and labour of God. The favours of God include loss and recovery, overflowing bounties but also mishaps and obstacles.