The real Islam

Europe is gradually realising that the interpretation of Islamic law, not the religion itself, is the cause of much misunderstanding between Islam and the world

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

At 'Family, Law and Religion: Debates in the Muslim World and Europe and their Implications for Cooperation and Dialogue', a two-day debate held recently in Vienna at the Diplomatic Academy by the Austrian Association for the Middle East, participants talked of complex and competing legal frameworks within Islamic communities that have to be better understood.
Anthropologists, lawyers and legal practitioners agreed that aspects of customary law, constitutional law and religious jurisprudence often overlap and are lumped together as Islamic law.
For example, female genital mutilation, honour killing and head scarves are not legally binding for Muslims yet all the three practices are synonymous with Islam today.
During her work in Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Morocco and Indonesia, Elvira Ganter, project leader in Gender at the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) discovered how flexible and sophisticated Islamic law can be when it is understood in the right spirit. This, Ganter said, is in contrast to many well-meaning international laws that do not have any relevance to the actual life of people.
In the book Development Cooperation in Muslim Countries: The Experience of German Technical Cooperation edited by Ganter, researchers and field workers explain the impact of Islamic culture on the design of projects in various fields of development cooperation, including crisis prevention and conflict management, girls' education, environmental protection and micro-finance. Ganter concludes that there are no rigid rules on how to deal with Islam as a factor.
Even as GZT projects focus on women's legal reality, the attempt is to bring men on board as well. Ganter found that religious and traditional leaders, both male and female, are important agents of change. They often have adequate education in secular as well as religious subjects and it helps to involve them in dialogue, training and other activities to promote women's rights and education.
Participants analysed legal practices in a variety of local and comparative settings, from Southeast Asia to Europe, in an attempt to better understand different legal frameworks, particularly to influence development policy.
Islam is projected as the only problem in the world today. But what about worldwide resentment over the way Europe describes itself as civilised and the rest of the world as barbarian? The debate in the western world is reduced to: "We have human rights. You do not have human rights."
Add to this the rejection of the idea that men may use different religions to speak to God, as they use different languages to speak to each other. The real big area of conflict is the claim of people of each religion that theirs is the one true faith and that it is their duty to bring this chosen faith to all mankind. Of course, it is a lot easier to encourage a homogeneous society.
Earlier, Maajid Nawaz and Ed Husain, two British Asians, spoke at Vienna's Webster University on how more and more Muslims are standing up to help combat terrorism today. Nawaz was once part of a terrorism network in Britain and he explained how young men from immigrant families were radicalised not as Muslims but as rebels against the state and against racism. Nawaz said that it was not the Imams or religious heads that attracted him to radical Islam but a medical student who made Nawaz feel proud of being a Muslim not so much in the religious sense but rather in a larger political context. Two years ago, Nawaz publicly announced that he was giving up militant and political Islam but without turning his back on Islam itself. "It is important for Europe to recognise that intense debates are taking place within Islam that will eventually transform social orders from within. The greatest tension in Indonesia today is between traditionalists and modernists. Any attempt to liberate Muslim societies and Muslim women by military force is a mistake," said Jan Michiel Otto, Dutch professor of law and governance in developing countries. Otto's talk elaborated on how Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is able to maintain a balance between Sharia and national law although the two often overlap and compete with each other for influence.
Christian Giordano, an Italian cultural anthropologist, gave the example of Malaysia, a country marked by a permanent dynamic equilibrium between British common law, Islamic law and customary law.
Liselotte Abi from the University of Vienna pointed out that the Islamic laws of inheritance are controversial and often criticised when it comes to the rights of women.
To reflect the changing social realities and to remove discrimination against women, Abid suggests reforms to the sacred texts of Islam.
"What Islam says contrasts with the way Islam is practised," feels Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a London-based legal anthropologist, specialising in Islamic law, gender and development.
"Since the early 20th century, one of the main areas of debate among Muslims has been the application of Sharia-based family laws to contemporary life. For some, these laws embody the ideal model of family and gender relations; for others they encapsulate the patriarchal logic of pre-modern interpretations of Islam's sacred sources," she said. Tracing the history of the polemics between Islam and the West throughout the anti-colonial and nationalist discourses of the 20th century, Mir-Hosseini talked of the politics of war in the new century. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq added a new layer of complexity to the political and rhetorical dimensions of the debate, she said, drawing attention to one of the paradoxical and unintended consequences of the rise of political Islam. There emerged a new gender consciousness and a feminist discourse among Muslims and their potential for changing the terms of the debate from within.
Mir-Hosseini made a film Divorce Iranian Style a decade ago in a divorce court in Tehran. The film follows several women trying to divorce their husbands. Mir Hosseini showed the film in Vienna to insist that Iranian women extract justice in Sharia courts mainly because the religious judge speaks the same language as them. The women are seen using different ways to negotiate. They plead, shout and exaggerate in order to get the best divorce settlement.
This is a scenario that the West cannot imagine. For women with headscarves are looked upon by the West as oppressed, anonymous and voiceless.
The film is shot in Iranian courts where chador-wrapped women work within the system to confront the patriarch to get their way. The research done in Iran was contrasted with her work in Morocco where she found urbane-looking and French-educated judges. The women who came for justice in the secular courts were often of humble stock and remained intimidated by the unfamiliar language and atmosphere of the court.
Mir-Hosseini's conclusion is that women in Iran had better chances of getting a fair trial than women in Morocco.