The Knowledge of the Future? Unpredicatbilty and the Human Condition

As the Coronavirus sweeps across the world, we are reminded of Nassim Taleb's prescient insight that Black Swans determine the course of human history. These Black Swans are by definition unpredictable, and it is futile to prepare for them. But they shape the course of history and force us to work with them.

What I want to ask is the following? Is there an ethical value in this unpredictability?

I am reminded of this condition by a verse in the Qur'an:

Verily, with God alone rests the knowledge of when the Last Hour will come; and He [it is who] sends down rain; and He [alone] knows what is in the wombs: whereas no one knows what he will reap tomorrow, and no one knows in what land he will die. Verily, God [alone] is all-knowing, all-aware (Qur'an 31:34).

Modern commentators have noticed that modern science has shaken this belief. They often do not say this, but God's future knowledge mentioned in this verse is not as opaque as it once was. We know much more about the rains, the wombs, and perhaps also what will happen tomorrow (through statistics and experimental science with repeated trials in a laboratory). Commentators of the Qur'an have been quick to suggest that the verse is not contradicted by such developments. For example, they say, weather forecasters cannot predict with certainty that rains will come. And on a personal level, we know that too well.  But is this enough?

It seems to me that they are missing the point by focussing on the extent of human knowledge and not what kind of ethical act ought to follow from understanding this condition. Taleb's insight is more helpful in thinking about the human condition which is marked by unpredictability. In comparison with viruses and other natural disasters, humans often add to this unpredictability on a much higher scale. We know that a train can get us to work, but not that someone or some syndicate will steal cables. Or, we know that technology can be used to make life more comfortable, but humans are responsible for using technology to devise systems of government that keep the benefits for a few.

And I can think of no better verse than the following that emphasizes human responsibility:

Verily, We did offer the trust [amānah] to the heavens, and the earth, and the mountains: but they refused to bear it because they were afraid of it. Yet man took it up - for, verily, he has always been prone to be most wicked, most foolish (Qur'an 33:72).

This verse presents a strong contrast between human and natural capacity and responsibility. Much has been written on amanah, most of it to emphasize obedience to the laws of God. But the word is derived from the room amn which means "security" and peace. And amanah is translated as a trust or responsibility.  And this has led some of the earliest commentators of the Qur'an to suggest that it refers to the human capacity to fulfill obligations in general. Fulfilling obligations promotes a level of guarantee that humans will do what is expected - meaning, what is right and good. Without this commitment, life can be even more precarious than we know it.

The fulfillment of obligations is a responsibility that the mountains and heavens refused to accept.  And this is because they did not want to accept the burden that they would have responsibility for choosing to do good (fulfill obligations).  Many commentators seem to think that they were afraid of the wrath of God. But I think that if we keep our focus on the question of responsibility, then it means that only humans were willing to guarantee fulfilling their obligations. And it is this choice, exercised in a just and responsible way, that humans were prepared to take.

Of course, most of the time human will fail to live to our own expectations - "prone to be most wicked, most foolish." But the beauty lies in our conviction that they can if they want to.

The ultimate unpredictability of the future is part of the human condition, but humans have the responsibility to promote a world of trustworthiness. We cannot control the heavens and the earth, but we can and do all kinds of promises to each other. Written or unwritten, promises are the networks of relations that bind and make life stable and to some extent predictable.  Politicians promise to rule with justice and compassion, couples promise to love and support, and so forth. The predictability or unpredictability of such promises depends on humans. It is a grave responsibility, which the heavens and earth refused to accept. 

On the Mughal Empire

On my current visit in the Indian Subcontinent, I decided to familiarize myself with the history of the region. One of the books that I have read is Abraham Eraly's The Mughal Throne (Phoenix House, 2014). It is a lengthy introduction to the Mughals from Babur to Aurengzeb.

The first time I heard about the Mughals was in undergraduate class in Islamic Studies in South Africa. Just as in other dynasties, this one was clothed in a vision of a succession of amirs or sultans representing the power and glory of Islam. Since then, that reputation has been tarnished by a better understanding of history and reality and the battle over identity in modern public spheres.

Eraly's narrative is a refreshing and detailed account of the Mughals. Like other modern Indians, he has a preference for Akbar and even more for the British who succeeded the Mughals. But generally, this is an almost dispassionate account of invasion, plunder, empire building and religion - in that order. The religious inspiration is not central in the narrative, but it is not tucked away either. When he comes to Aurangzeb, Eraly goes on about his excessive religious zeal. But he then follows with an account of the realpolitik of building an empire and keeping it under control.

Even though Eraly concludes the book with a lament that the Mughuls did not build any institutions, he leaves us with fascinating details on administration, judicial practices and organization. Some of the Mughal rulers and officers seemed to have had the vision and the guts of building an empire that stretched across different territories and languages. And for the most part, they seem to consider it their right and responsibility to rule over this territory.

And this is the part that I think inspired them for hundreds of years. These central Asian warriors entered history and changed it in a way that most can only dream about. It was not just a matter of religion, good or bad. Reading about this empire, like any political epic, gives one a sense of history and purpose.

Of course, this right and responsibility often came at a price. Eraly occasionally turns away from the imperial record, to shine a light on the price paid for the Mughal empire by the peasants and workers. They worked hard and paid a lot simply for being spared. Very often, they found that joining the armies fighting each other offered better prospects than being plundered by them. Either be a plunderer or be plundered - seems the motto that occupied most of the people who lived in the shadow of the Mughal warrior Sultans.

Surely, there was more going on in Mughal India than this, but Eraly is a great place to start.

On Nouman Ali Khan's YouTube Tafsir - ethics and self-reflection

Like other special guests in recent years, Nouman Ali Khan attracted hundreds of worshipers to the grand Gatesville Mosque in 2019.  He seems to be part of a phenomenon in which middle-class mosques in recent years in Cape Town expended great effort and money to attract the biggest crowds. 

Given his popularity and wanting to know more about his appeal, I decided to look for him on Youtube. I watched the first lesson that came up in my search. It was a discourse on the Prophet Dawud (David) from the 38th chapter in the Qur'an (Sad 38:17-25). 

Khan presented a very clear and moving account of Dawud, his status as a prophet, and his reaction to a group of intruders who demanded that he judge between them. He began his talk with a short criticism of Muslim scholars who related this event to Biblical accounts. Muslims, he proclaimed, had a different and more correct version of the story which did not implicate the Prophet in impropriety.

He then proceeded with an interpretation that emphasised the ethics of judging between two individuals. Overwhelmed by the rude intrusion of the complainants, the Prophet Dawud made a hasty decision. In the case in question, he only listened to the person who had one sheep and complained that his rich compatriot who had ninety-nine wanted his as well. The Prophet Dawuod “understood that We had tried him” (Qur'an) and according to Khan, corrected himself. Khan dwelt on the theme of making fair judgments, by listening to both sides of a story. In this interpretation, the man with 99 sheep was wronged by not being heard by the Prophet. 

It was an impressive delivery, executed with great flair and conviction. I could begin to appreciate how thousands of followers turned to him for advice and guidance on social media.

I decided to read a number of commentaries to see how he produced such a compelling account. On the one hand, I was impressed by how Khan had managed to wade through the complexity of the exegetical literature to produce a clear and simple message on Islam’s ascendancy over previous scriptures, and its message of justice. 

On the other hand, this retelling was taking away an important and deep self-reflection embedded in the verses, and brought up by many commentators from al-Tabari in the 9th century onwards. Like Khan, most of these commentators also seemed to work with the doctrine that Dawood was a prophet of God who should not be accused of moral impropriety.

But unlike Khan, most of them retold the Prophet Dawood's alleged attraction to a beautiful woman he had seen bathing. All commentators with the exception of Ibn Kathir mentioned this in one way or another. Many also mentioned that the Prophet had asked that her husband be sent at the head of battle until he was killed. And they say that the Prophet then married this woman. One commentator offered a lexical analysis of the word for sheep (na’ja) and suggested it could also refer to a woman or wife, thus pointing to a direct relationship between the verses of the Qur’an and its Biblical version. 

In the exegetical (tafsir) tradition, then, this event or versions thereof was told just enough to allude to the Biblical story.  While skirting directly the implication of the Prophet’s deeds, an impropriety was implied. 

But most of all, premodern commentators insisted that this was a story of temptation with which the Prophet Dawud was tested. They did not say he failed, but they emphasised the fact that he realised his temptation. Their meditations turned around the very verse that Khan asked his audience to skip: "And [suddenly] Dawood understood that We had tried him: and so he asked his Sustainer to forgive him his sin, and fell down in prostration, and turned unto Him in repentance." (Quran 38:24).  This is a prostration (sajda) verse which, when heard or read, requires an immediate prostration. The prostration was a ritualised embodiment of reading and listening to a particular verse. In the story of the Prophet Dawud, it embodied his realisation that he was being tested (fatannahu)

Nouman Ali Khan offered an attractive message on ethics and justice. Prefaced with the conviction that Islam was better than other religions, he confirmed an unquestioned truth and guided his listeners towards ethical virtue.

But he avoided an uncomfortable truth in this exposition. In this particular case, the ethic of justice without deep introspection seems to truncate the message of the Prophet Dawud. Preaching about justice without a prostration misses an important method of the Qur’an. 

But Khan did demonstrate an uncomfortable truth of modern Islamic discourse. Many modern middle-class Muslims like to listen to lectures on the superiority of Islam over other religions. And they accompany this with the conviction that they ought to be just to merit this distinction. Of course, it helps to know that they can keep their "99 sheep." But they often stop short of taking that additional step into the self, the step exemplified in Prophet Dawud’s prostration. 

While scholars of religion and media stress the importance of mediation, they too often ignore the ethical choices and constructions made in the process. There may be considerable value in following this line of research more extensively than what I have shown in this brief review. 

Encounters of Decolonization. Do we have to chose between Excellence and Commitment?

At the University of Cape Town recently, we were privilege to listen to two outstanding contributions on decolonizization. Professors Vivek Chibber and Mahmood Mamdani addressed the challenges of decolonizing the post-colonial University. Both put forward compelling models and ideas, and opened up a wide-ranging agenda for the future.

Chibber and Mamdani put decolonization struggles in South Africa in a historical frame. Putting the exceptionalism of South Africa in the dock, they asked us to reflect on Indian and the East African experiences of anti-colonialism and decolonization.

Chibber was clearly committed to a Marxist project that he wanted to revive and strengthen. He was critical of what he called de-universalizing gestures in Indian subaltern studies which he claimed ignored capitalist and neo-liberal hegemonies at local and global levels. He was dismissive of the cultural turn that deflected attention from class and capital. I am not convinced that this was an accurate reflection of subaltern studies.

But his talk and seminars made a valuable point of the dominant capitalist framework that pervades the globe. Any alternative cannot afford to ignore this status quo. But the cultural language, which also pervades class and decolonization struggles in South Africa and elsewhere, cannot be so easily dismissed. I believe that all struggles have cultures - and these must be reflected upon as critically as the economic conditions in which we live.

Mamdani was equally committed to a de-colonizing political project. Also taking us out of South Africa, he presented the contrasting epistemological projects of Makarere (Uganda) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania).  Mamdani compared the political commitment of Walter Rodney with the academic excellence of Ali Mazrui. In his framework, Chibber may be characterized as following a Rodnean approach.

In this gesture, then, I am asking that we put Mamdani in conversation with Chibber. Or that we use southern categories to frame discussions going forward.

Both Chibber and Mamdani called us to listen to experiences elsewhere. I believe that it is time that we engage in more discussions with decolonizing experiments across time and space.  Across time, it means that the post-colonial project in the 1960s should be brought up for critical engagement. Often, the postcolonial turn is identified as intellectual discussions that have greater currency in New York and London. Mamdani opened the window to the postcolonial  in the South.

They both also showed us how not to think about intellectuals in the South in undifferentiated ways. Again, I found Mamdani more useful in how he brought the value of Mazrui and Rodney into conversation with each other. But he should have been more critical of them - he left us thinking how to hold the balance between excellence and commitment. In my view, this choice is not one that we should be forced to make. Perhaps we need to ask why we have to chose? How have intellectual projects been shaped and framed so that theory and application are separated from each other? what is the nature of theory that eschews commitment and application?

Moreover, I would like to insert a critical Western voice to this discussion. Some western voices are also critical as we know, but they are also located in place, and not as universal as they seem to be, or seem to be read as such. By way of example, I can share Arendt whose The Human Condition we are reading in a reading group in the Department of Religious Studies. Arendt was engaging in a critical reading of the Western canon in the 1950s by comparing the West with Athens. Using Athens as a contrasting model, she presented a view of Western Enlightenment which she argued erased the truly political. Her deeply critical and  historical comparison was another way of provincializing Europe. Reading her critically, we have been asking how she erased the medieval in a typical modernist Western trope.

In summary, I  think of them as epistemological encounters that help us to rethink the nature of the university, knowledge, economy, society, values, past, and future.

Going forward, I think that we need more robust and collaborative debates and conversations over particular and general issues facing us in the next few weeks, months and years.

Revelation between Remembering and Forgetting

It is 13 years since one of the iconic Imams of Cape Town passed away. Imam Bassier was an Imam in the Bo-Kaap who had touched the lives of many people in his mosque and neighorhood. Moreover, he was a frequent visitor to the Robben Island, and offered a word of solace to those incarcerated there for many years. He was designated as the Muslim chaplain, but did not limit his concern to his particular flock (or Mureeds as would be called in Cape Town).

When reminded about his death anniversary, I asked his son to share with me the chapters of the Qur'an to which he was attached. I have become aware of this personal feature of the Qur'an in the lives of Muslims. Recently, Ebrahim Rasool mentioned that he was fond of reading Surah Zumar when he was in prison during the 1980s. He said that he found all he needed to pull him through. I had also heard others who were attached to certain verses or chapters of the Qur'an - many also for listening to melodious recitations that they had heard for many years.

I have not yet asked Rasool exactly  what attracted him to this chapter, and will never be able to ask the Imam. But I generally let my imagination lead me as I read and reflected on their favorite recitations.

This morning, I decided to share my thoughts on one of the chapters that meant so much to Imam Bassier. It was the the oft-repeated Surah al-A'la. And I focussed on some of its verses (87:6-9):

We shall make thee recite, to forget not save what God wills; surely He knows what is spoken aloud and what is hidden.We shall ease thee unto the Easing.Therefore remind, if the Reminder profits

Ostensibly addressed to the Prophet, the verses have perplexed commentators. They said that the Prophet used to be anxious to repeat quickly what Gabriel conveyed to him, lest he forget. This verse then provide support and confirmation that he would not forget.

But working with the idea of a fixed and definite revelation, these commentators were baffled what to do with a revelation that God wills to be forgotten. I have not read any convincing answers.

In his commentary, Martin Lings has suggested that the verses refer not to the Prophet, but to us normal mortals. He takes the meaning to refer to the flow of knowledge, and how it changes with the advance of time. Knowledge, as we know from modern science, is open to revision and development. But still I was not convinced.

I prefer to stay with the notion of anxiety that the commentators read into these verses. I think that they were right. In relation to revelation, I can imagine that remembering and forgetting might cause a certain anxiety when it is connected to something as weighty as revelation.

Forgetting revelation can be unnerving - especially in Muslim culture which frowns and castigates those of us who have memorized and then forgotten. More generally, we feel threatened by its moral and ethical demands.

Revelation, when elevated to a high level, generates anxiety by its very nature.The Qur'an, as most of us relate to it, unnerves us.

But is this not a metaphor for something deeper on remembering and forgetting. I know from recent neuroscience that both are very important for living a sane life. But what does it mean with regard to revelation?

Perhaps the next verse provides a hint on how to think of revelation and knowledge remembering and forgetting:

surely He knows what is spoken aloud and what is hidden.

If "spoken aloud" stands for that which is remembered, and 'hidden" for that which is forgotten, then we might think differently about remembering and forgetting. We might then backtrack and apply this to remembering and forgetting revelation - whether the Prophet or ordinary people like us.

Can we figure out everything, of the Qur'an and our relation to it - that which is hidden and open? Maybe we should let the flow of remembering and forgetting do its work. Do not try too hard to remember (put everything in the open), sometimes things are better forgotten (hidden). Only God knows both at the same time.

But what does this have to do with Imam Bassier? I remember him as a leader who seemed to have overcome the anxiety that comes with remembering or forgetting. Imam Bassier reminded me of someone who exuded confidence and composure. He let life flow, with him in it. There are people among us who exude this value - do not forget them and keep them hidden.