Book Review

Religion on the Rise
Islam in the Third Millennium

By Murad Hofmann

Amana Publications
10710 Tucker Street, Beltsville,
20705-2223,MD, USA.
Pages 248 Price (bar coded)


By now, it is a three-decade old paradox that while the Islamic and Muslim world is under severe assault of the Western military power and media might, Islam is making deep inroads into the heart and the popular psyche of the West. Minarets are rising alongside the spires of the churches, more women sport headscarves, more customers are found reading the fine print on products at shopping malls for Islamically haram ingredients, and more Islamic chaplains joining the Western armies.

But negative perceptions of Islam in the Western mind have stayed intact, rather aggravated. ‘Misogynist, anti-democratic and illiberal Islam' is now seen very much in the midst of white, blonde and blue-eyed Westerners. Rise of ethnophobic political movements is just one worry. They feel perturbed by the Azan from the local mosque at odd hours. Muslims make ‘a mess of their graveyard by insisting that the graves of their dead must face Makkah' and the rule of putting the corpses in caskets must be done away with, local authority schools inducts Oriental languages, men and women of ample proportions strut about the streets sporting gaudy and flowing garments. These are just about few more practical manifestation of Islam breaking the average Westerner's mono-cultural mould.

Nearly 40 years after Egyptian author Muhammad Qutub penned Islam, the Misunderstood Religion, a German neo-Muslim has attempted bridging the gap between divergent perceptions on several vital issues of public interest. The book under review, Religion on the Rise with the sub-title Islam in the Third Millennium, is a profound study of the conflict between a spiritually rich, but moored-in-the-tradition Islam and the matured, adult, disciplined, dynamic, law-abiding, and technologically developed West with tempting invitation to youth in the Muslim world. Yet the West is fully aware of the cultural decadence and weakening of the human content that has been wrought upon it in the wake of tremendous material progress.

The author takes up the question as to whether Islam would modernise, or assimilate the American way of life or would influence the future course of civilisation. Would Islam turn out to be the therapy for the sick West to survive its crisis of functioning as a civilization? The study proceeds to soften the coarse sensitivities on either side due to pent -up anger and aggressive moods.

Coming to the brass tacks, the Muslims are urged to disprove three major accusations, 1-lack of respect for human rights, 2-especially basic rights of women and 3-absence of or failure of democracy in Muslim countries. All these lead to the larger myth that Islam is incompatible with the human rights and democracy. The occident argues these points as if the West holds patent rights over the subjects adding a ring of credibility to the cynical remark that ‘human rights probably are blonde and blue-eyed'. But Europe's record in the century that has just gone by, Holocaust, Apartheid, two World Wars, genocide, Stalinist terror did not happen in the Islamic world. If Islam in the 20th century has not always been the most fertile ground for democracy, it has also been less fertile ground for the greatest evils of this century, i.e., Nazism, Fascism, communism and genocide. Moreover, the fact that jails in the Islamic world are mostly populated by Islamic activists is enough to prove that prime target of human rights violations in the Islamic world is Islam itself.

As for democracy, the West seems to be falling victim to its own arrogance by measuring the ‘modernity' in other countries by how closely they come to resemble them. And it would be no less ‘secular' than the West. Take for instance, the Federal Republic of Germany where the Church and the State are supposedly separate. However the State enforces the religious holidays, legally recognises the religious organisations as public organizations, collects pay-roll taxes for churches, teaches religion in the school, allows oaths in the names of God for military personnel, and has on statutes safeguard the religious sensitivities. If this is not religious obscurantism, why denounce Islam as the only defender of ‘theocracy'.

Hofmann takes the debate away from shura-democracy polemics by stating that several Muslim groups anchored in the West have now veered round to the inevitability of accepting written state Constitutions, Parliaments to be the only feasible way to have consultation (shoora) to be elected through election, political pluralism, independent judiciary, Muslim women's right to vote and be elected. And these movements have much in common with Western grassroots movements supporting civil rights, women's liberation etc.

Western criticism of the status of women in Islam is not concerned with generalities but on six specific points: 1-polygyny, 2-women's status in marriage, 3-women's dress code, 4-segregation of sexes including total veiling, 4-unilateral divorce by the husband; 6-women's position in the law of inheritance and testimony.

Hofmann disputes the carte blanche effect of the verse for polygyny (even though practice in Muslim societies all through the history is contrary to it) and points to convenient dropping of the introductory sub-clause wherein it should be read with regard to widows with children to care.

Similarly, the verse Arrijalu Qawwamuna alan Nisa (ch. 4, v. 34) need not be taken for subordination of women to men. Translation like ‘Men will take full care of women', or ‘Men are to provide for women' serve the purpose better in that Islam requires the men to stand up for women rather that stand above women. Several such elucidation of age -old dictums make Hofmann's book an incomparable work in recent years. He is of the view that difference of opinion is permissible, legitimate and unavoidable in everything other than aqidah (tenets), akhlaq (morals) and ibadat (prayers and rituals).

This concern does, however, not relieve Muslims from the obligation of minimising avoidable friction by clearly distinguishing that which constitutes the core of their faith from those elements that are merely idiosyncracies of traditional Muslim civilisation. Mere manners of civilization can be abandoned, if necessary, to pave the way towards better integration, but not for the purpose of assimilation.

In between, the West comes in for sharp criticism for its tendency to monopolise rationality (despite all the mysterious beliefs of resurrection, incarnation, trinity, original sin et al), for enslaving women into conformism, fashion, commercialisation; promoting ethnic cleansing even in states (Kosovo, Albania) which banned construction of mosques all through the last century and disintegration of family.

The book is by far the most comprehensive compendium on issues that beleaguer the ties between Islam and the West. The author displays remarkable command over the bases of the two civilizations, their history, their religious and ethical sub-structure and the worldview in a continually advancing world. Minor typographical errors do impede the reading, but overall production is reader- friendly.