By Adam Misbah’ul Haqq
In the mid part of the twentieth century fast food franchises popped up all over the country. It was a time of assembly lines, burgers, fries and the ideologies of “progress” and “create the demand and fuel the supply,” ideologies which helped shape the contemporary age.
This was the first time in history in which the laws of supply and demand were so atrociously manipulated as to produce a complete economy based upon want as opposed to need. We now live in the age of consumerism where the customer is told they are right but are influenced and manipulated to the extent that their standards are reduced to what the market provides for their consumption.
In the early eighties major corporations lobbied to market their products to the captive audience of children, where the expectations of quality where thumped over the head by profit margin and quantity. People stood in line to purchase a burger wrapped like a present, thin french-fries fried in grease, and a cup of sugar, water, syrup and carbonate with a straw sticking out for a few dollars. During the seventies, eighties and nineties the fast food industries grew into multi-national conglomerates and could be seen popping up in almost every country, industrialized or not.
This is a place where the burgers arrive as frozen patties injected with artificial beef-flavoring which are later rolled through an oven press for mass-consumption, a place where cheap toys are fiercely marketed to excited and bewildered children who drag in their naive and bewildered parents for a quick and simple “all-American meal.” The gimmicks of attracting children and exploiting their undeveloped discriminative faculties were brought to near mastery by the early nineties. It was the wave of the future, and even though a journal of health recently stated that 80% of the country’s health problems were directly related to the American diet, the burgers were still walking out the doors, and those super-sized fries continued to disappear into the stomachs of hungry consumers.
In Islam a similar occurrence has emerged. A sort of fast-food-Islam, mimicking the Western phenomenon, began to emerge in the seventies shortly after the Saudis started raking in billions in petro-dollars.
It was a period of serious transformation within the Muslim world. After a decade of Wahhabi influence in the Middle East the Muslim world began seeing the proliferation of highly dogmatic literature which sought to explain to the colonized peoples what “Islam” really was and who the “real” authorities in Islam were–namely, the Saudis and those “scholars” who signed on to their policies.
The literature that resulted from this occurrence soon made its way in various shapes and sizes into an uneducated American-Muslim population in the eighties and nineties. This material, which for the most part hails from the Arabian Peninsula or is funneled out of the numerous publishing houses owned by the Wahhabi press in the Middle East, is, for the most part, designed for children. One could easily argue that intellectually, only a child or young adult could really gain anything from this literature because the way in which the material is laid out and the topics are examined disengages the reader from the tradition by telling them that they basically have nothing to offer the interpretive process in Islam, but that they should simply follow what the “noble” Saudi scholars tell you Islam is.
No longer do we have scholars who spent their entire lives studying and contemplating the principles, concepts and teachings of the Prophet, teaching what they have discovered in highly sophisticated halaqahs in mosques and in their homes. Instead we have books like, “Islam: The Simple Religion” and “What Islam Says About Free-Mixing.” These books, written by either engineers or Wahhabi scholars, are very popular because they can be read in one sitting. They allow us to avoid any debt we may feel we have to investigate what God wants of us, or any debt we might feel toward our rich and diverse intellectual tradition.
All of the sophistry of our past can be swept under the rug of the contemporary feel-good fast-food-Islam literature. For the first time in Islamic history we have an institution (The Saudi Council of Esteemed Religious Scholars, or whatever they call themselves) which can tell us (the lay people) what Islam is and how to follow it. Employing the materialistic philosophy of Wahhabism, a gloomy and puritanical religio-political movement which emerged about two hundred years ago in the Najd province of Arabia, a philosophy which concentrates on outward acts of worship and the dogmatic theology of its founder, the Saudis have perfected, for the time being, the art of legitimizing their own draconian rule by redefining the normative standards in our tradition with an authoritarian religious discourse.
This institutionalized ideology, which never existed in the pre-modern period, has crippled any intellectual advancement in the contemporary age and has subsequently set the Muslim community even further behind its Western counterparts than it was at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Even so, the production of this childish religious literature, literature that quotes endlessly verses from a crude translation of the Qur’an, the medieval rulings of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taimiyah, and loads of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari, continues to sell in the various Islamic bookstores which populate the web. Most of these bookstores have established a successful Internet market and sell this literature for a very inexpensive price.
…Jump to part 2
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Posted by ceramic hobs deals | November 13, 2010, 9:13 pmExcellent post, I am looking forward to the rest of the series. I’m also interested in how this phenomenon is related to the “certified Islam” discussed in a previous article on the site. Keep up the good work!
Posted by Dawood | November 14, 2010, 4:31 amTHIS WRITE UP CONVEY NOTHING BUT AN ATTEMPT TO DESTROY ISLAM. TOO BAD WE HAVE GULLIBLE MUSLIMS PRAISING IT. THEY THEMSELVES CANNOT FIND DIRECTION THEMSELVES BUT MUST ALLOW THE MISLED ONE TO GUIDE THEM. SAYING WE DO NOT NEED THE SCHOLARS IS LIKE SAYING WE DO NOT NEED THE PROPHET HIMSELF. HE RIGHTLY SAID THE SCHOLARS ARE THE HEIRS OF THE PROPHETS MEANING THEY CONTINUE TO DISSEMINATE THEIR MESSAGE. ONLY THOSE WHO INTEND MISGUIDANCE WILL STRAY FROM LISTENING TO THE RIGHTLY GUIDED SCHOLARS AND MAKE NO MISTAKE SAUDI IS THE HOTBED OF GUIDANCE.
Posted by Abu Ab | November 14, 2010, 11:40 amThe issue is not whether Muslims need scholars or not, but why should a scholar given a prominent title by a modern head of state be any more legitimate than a scholars working in their own private capacity as intellectuals to investigate the Islamic sources and heritage, and disseminate their understanding to others?
It reminds me of a story one of my teachers told me regarding the late shaykh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Zarqa. He was at a conference and presented his views on the given topic, and afterwards, the then Mufti of one of the Arab countries (I can’t remember if it was Syria or Jordan, sorry!) exclaimed “don’t listen to him, he’s not an appointed Mufti!” Implying that al-Zarqa’s scholarly opinion had no value. Anyone who knows how prolific the late shaykh was, simply knows this to be untrue.
Posted by Dawood | November 14, 2010, 3:18 pmMy first question is, what is a Wahhabi? You did not clearly define the term " Wahhabi" in your post. Hopefully you will define the term in part 2. Please read CRS report for Congress entitled "The Islamic Traditions of Wahhabism and Salafiyya" written by Christopher Blanchard, Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs , Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Divison and "Inside Wahhabi Islam" by Roger Hardy , the BBC's Middle East Analyst. Roger Hardy state's (emphatically, I might add) that Bin Laden is a Wahhabi). Juxtapose those two papers with al-Qalahaanee's Tahreerul-Maqaaah min Sharhir-Risaalah and the recording of Yahya al -Hajooree titled, al-Ajwibatul Hajjoriyyah 'alal-Asilatil-Hadeethiyyah (the latter defines Wahhabism and state's that Bin Laden is not a Wahhabi). As a result of the many different definitions of Wahabi, it would be helpful to the reader if you stated which defintion of the term you ascribe to.
Also, can you name any of the Wahhabi scholars to whom you allude? I ask because Saudi has many scholars who give duroos and write books and treatises who are not members of al-Lajnah ad-Daa'imah lil-Buhooth al-'Ilmiyyah wal-Iftaa (Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Opinion). They differ in matters of fiqh as well as matters of school of thought and politics. Some are truly as you describe but even members of The Permanent Committee differ on many issues including the term "Wahhabi." You should not paint all Saudi Scholars with such a broad stroke.
Lastly, is it really possible to to read any of the following books in one sitting?
1) Jaami' Uluum Wal Hikam (Ibn Rajab Al Hanbali) ;
2) Explanation of 'Umdah Al Ahkaam by Shaikh Bassaam;
3) Buluugh Ul Maraam explanations by Shaikh Bassaam and also Al Imam As San'aani;
4) Ar Rawdah An Nadeeyah by Al 'Allamah Sideeq Hasan Khan.
Posted by Ashraf | November 15, 2010, 5:47 amUmm, I have no idea why that was directed at me?
I agree that the situation is more nuanced than often described, but the article is a good beginning to have an overview and begin discussing these issues, whether agreeing or disagreeing with it ultimately.
But why the arbitrary list of books? I don’t think anyone stated scholars and access to the tradition through serious scholarship are not needed… the author appears to be attacking what is perceived as a stagnancy in thought and what the author perceives as being responsible for it.
Ibn Rajab’s Jami` al-`Ulum wa al-Hikam is a very useful commentary on the Arba’in of Nawawi. It is also available now in a good English translation for those who don’t have Arabic. The other texts depend on one’s orientation. You may as well as someone “why can’t you sit through the whole Musannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzaq in one sitting?” (11 volumes). What aim is it to achieve? No one would have ever done so in the past anyway!
Posted by Dawood | November 15, 2010, 2:01 pmIt was a mistake to direct the reply to you. It was intended for the author. However, the books are not arbitrary at all. They are books that the "wahhabis" study and quote often. They are required reading for those who attend the University of Medina mentioned in part 2 of this article.
You seem to agree that the books I mentioned can not be read in a single sitting.
Posted by Ashraf | November 15, 2010, 8:20 pmNo problem then, Ashraf.
I don't understand the relevance of your point about reading the texts in a single sitting though? No one is arguing that just anyone can flick through some books and suddenly become knowledgeable, nor that the Wahhabiyya/Salafiyya don't have their own manhaj towards reading, studying and engaging the texts from the Islamic heritage (like or dislike it, they have their own texts that are studied etc.).
From what I understood, the author was not referring necessarily to those who were scholars and had at least some formal religious education and training, but the everyday Muslims whose conception of the religion is often simplistic. And on top of that, certain scholars who may support such a conception of the religion and feed it to the masses of Muslims, the majority of which would never have a chance to learn more than the fard al-'ayn (even that if they are lucky!)
On top of that, it seems that this site has recenrtly been discussing the relationship between the ulama and political authorities in the various Muslim nation states today; that is definitely a very interesting topic and something worthy of consideration.
Posted by Dawood | November 17, 2010, 9:06 pmGreat set of thoughts here – the problem Muslims face is that we stopped thinking and reading when it comes to our faith but work fiercely to think and read when it comes to our professions.
Posted by swamibu | November 15, 2010, 5:27 amI agree. We are in a time in which there are many professionals who happen to be Muslim. Many are known as experts in their respective fields. Many can diagnose a medical condition in seconds. Others can provide case law from memory in an instant. However, if you ask most of these Muslim professionals about the aspects of tawheed and the proofs or ask them about the arkam of the salat or ask them about the foundations of wala' wa bara, you will notice that they are truly ignorant. They have elevated their respective professional books over the Quran and authentic hadith.
Imam Malik said, "The only man who is truly ignorant is he who knows nothing about his own deen."
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Posted by krugerrand | December 3, 2010, 2:46 pmSalamu aalaykom, within my modest knowledge that I have as a muslim, I believe ( I know ) that calling one a wahabi, salafi etc. is against our Islamic principles, thats a point number one, second in addition to not defining the term "wahabi" you have perpetually emphasis the same points that kafirs always say when they want to disunite the muslims and make us all their slaves, let me tell you something about term salafi, salafi means the one that follows the tradition and teachings of our beloved messanger of ALLAH S.W.T. salaLLAHU aalayhi wa salam and his companions, in other words, they are doing everything the best because ALLAH S.W.T. in the Qur'an says that we have to folow ALLAH S.W.T. and His Prophet salaLLAHU aalayhi wa salam with the words in the Qur'an as folows : surah 64, ayah nuber 12.
وَأَطِيعُو ا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُو ا الرَّسُولَ ۚ فَإِنْ تَوَلَّيْت ُمْ فَإِنَّمَا عَلَىٰ رَسُولِنَا الْبَلَاغُ الْمُبِينُ
and the translation is: Obey Allah and obey His Rasool; but if you pay no heed, then you should know that Our Rasool's responsibility is nothing but to convey the message plainly.
This shows clearly that following Qur'an as well as sunnah meaning hadiths is obligatory for every muslim, withot folowing one of these two you are not a muslim, because Muhhamad s.a.w.s. said " I leave you two things witch if you follow you will never go astray, the Qur'an and the sunnah" and in another hadith Muhhamad s.a.w.s. says "follow my sunnah and the sunnah of my righteous successors", so to conclude, from this we see that Qur'an and the sunnah are two inseparable units that HAVE TO be read and understood TOGETHER, because if you reject EITHER of them, you are a disbeliever, and Sahih Bukhari and Sahih hadiths from imam Muslim are considered both by contemporary and past religious scholars from the beginnings of their writing to be compleatly authentic, for instance, imam Bukhari made such a selection that he didnt want to take hadith from a man that cheated his goat by putting water into her food so that he can save on food suplies for her, and Bukhari prayed two rakats of nafila before righting any hadith praying to ALLAH S.W.T. to guide him whether to write it down or not, so from all this you can see that these two sources of hadiths, Sahih Bukhari and sahih naration of hadiths by imam Muslim are compleatly authentic and it is your obligation to follow authentic naration of our beloved Prophet Muhhamad s.a.w.s., brothers and sisters, do not listen what pro american people tell you about people that let their beard grow for instance, this is the sunnah of our Prophet Muhhamad s.a.w.s. and it is an obligation for every male muslim, in conclusion, I hope that everybody will understand that there is no salafi, no wahabi, no hanbali, no shafi, no maliki, no nothing, there is ONLY muslims and non muslims, and it is our obligation to read Qur'an and the Sunnah and to get our knowledge from those sources when it comes to Islam, ASALAMU AALAYKOM
Posted by Nimer | October 1, 2011, 2:27 am