Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Read Online Free PDF Page A

by the same U.S. government that claims to support democracy and freedom in the Muslim world – as the single greatest source of the impoverishment of contemporary Islamic thought. Yet ours is not simply an “anti-Wahhabi” Islam. That would be to remain in the realm of the polemical and oppositional. There is no option of going back to the eighteenth century prior to the rise of the Wahhabis, nor would that be desirable. As with all other modes of injustice and oppression, we have to identify Wahhabism and oppose it before we can rise above it. This aspect of the progressive Muslim agenda yet
    again identifies the necessity of remaining engaged with the very stuff of Islam, past and present.
    One should add here that Wahhabism is not the only brand of Islamic literalism-exclusivism, and our task as progressives is to resist all of them. In doing so, it is imperative for progressive Muslims to resist the oppressive ideology of Wahhabism, but equally important to avoid the trap of dehumanizing the Wahhabi-oriented human beings. If we dehumanize and demonize them, we have lost something valuable in our quest to acknowledge the humanity of all human beings. Gandhi was right: “It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself, for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator.” 13 This is a great challenge.

    Social justice
    There have, of course, long been Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, avowed atheists, and others involved in many social justice issues. Increasingly, they now find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with new Muslim friends. The term “social justice” may be new to some contemporary Muslims, but what is not new is the theme of justice in Islam. Justice lies at the heart of Islamic social ethics. Time and again the Qur’an talks about providing for the marginalized members of society: the poor, the orphan, the downtrodden, the wayfarer, the hungry, etc.
    It is time to “translate” the social ideals in the Qur’an and Islamic teachings in a way that those committed to social justice today can relate to and understand. We would do well to follow the lead of Shi‘i Muslims who from the start have committed to standing up for the downtrodden and the oppressed. Everyone knows that Muslims have always stood for the theme of Divine unity. Yet how many people have also realized that the Mu‘tazilites (who have greatly affected Shi‘i understandings of Islam) so valued justice that they identified themselves as the folk of “Divine Unity and Justice” ( ahl al-tawhid wa ’l-‘adl )? 14 In the Sunni tradition, there is a vibrant memory of the Prophet repeatedly talking about how a real believer is one whose neighbor does not go to bed hungry. In today’s global village, it is time to think of all of humanity as our neighbor. The time has come for us to be responsible for the well-being and dignity of all human beings if we wish to be counted as real believers. To borrow a metaphor from our Christian friends, we are all our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers now.
    The time has come to stand up and be counted. As Muslims and as human beings, we stand up to those who perpetuate hate in the name of Islam. We stand up to those whose God is a vengeful monster in the sky issuing death decrees against the Muslim and the non-Muslim alike. We stand up to those whose God is too small, too mean, too tribal, and too male. We stand up to those who apologetically claim that the beautiful notions of universal
    brotherhood and sisterhood in the Qur’an have somehow made Muslim societies immune to the ravages of classism, sexism, and racism. To all of these, we say: not in my name, not in the name of my God will you commit this hatred, this violence. We stand by the Qur’anic teaching (5:32) that to save the life of one human being is to have saved the life of all