Occasionally I wish that I were a television viewer so that I could see items like the BBC documentary on “Battle for Islam,” being presented today on BBC Two. (It will be 21:00 on September 5, for my friends in the UK.) BBC Online has a useful summary (“Viewpoint: The global voices reclaiming Islam“) by Ziauddin Sardar, the BBC presenter.
An important element of the counterattack against the jihadis and the promoters of “Islamist” tyranny (unfortunately referred to even in the essay by the misleading term “fundamentalists”) is the reclaiming of jurisprudence from the narrow, intolerant, violent, brutal interpretation they have given to the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence in recent decades:
The essence of the argument against the Sharia is much more than the fact that its interpretation and application is illiberal and contrary to contemporary ideas of human rights.
The fundamentalist position is that the Koran is the source of all legislation in Islam and therefore the Sharia is an immutable body of sacred law.
It is this concept itself that is now being challenged.
Sharia, it is being widely argued, is not divine but a “jurists’ law”, that was formulated and socially constructed during the early phase of Islamic history.
It can be changed, modified and reformulated – in its entirety.
Thus the Sharia, as an inherited body of rulings and precedent, is being reclaimed in Pakistan.
I wish the greatest success to the many decent and liberal-minded Muslims who are struggling against the voices (and the guns) of the intolerant and irrational among them and who have been, without any doubt, the most numerous of the victims of the advocates of politicized, intolerant “Islamism.” (I should note that Mr. al-Qazwini, pictured below, has presented himself as a voice of toleration in Islam.)