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Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah
For centuries, Islamic civilisation harmonised indigenous forms of cultural expression with the universal norms of its sacred law. It struck a balance between temporal beauty and ageless truth and fanned a brilliant peacock’s tail of unity in diversity from the heart of China to the shores of the Atlantic. Islamic jurisprudence helped facilitate this creative genius. In history, Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly and, in that regard, has been likened to a crystal clear river. Its waters (Islam) are pure, sweet, and life-giving but—having no color of their own—reflect the bedrock (indigenous culture) over which they flow. In China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African. Sustained cultural relevance to distinct peoples, diverse places, and different times underlay Islam’s long success as a global civilization.
EXTRACT
Many in our community today look askance at culture but with only the vaguest notions of what culture actually is and the fundamental role it plays in human existence. For them, “culture” is a loaded word, something dangerous, inherently problematic, and “un-Islamic”(a deeply ingratiated Islamist neologism). Culture,for them, is a toxic pollutant that must necessarily be purged, since Islam and culture are mutually exclusive in their minds. Some foolishly or a historically regard Islamic culture—legacies like the Taj Mahal, for example—to have been chief causes of Muslim decline and fall in history. Their mindset reflects the general malaise of the modern period and the breakdown of traditional Muslim cultures, leaving chronic existential alienation and cultural dysfunction in its wake. Such cultural phobia is untenable in the light of classical Islamic jurisprudence and is antithetical to more than a millennium of successful indigenous Islamic cultures and global civilisation. We must insist upon the traditional wisdom of Islamic law and deconstruct the counter-cultural paranoia among us. But, if the counter-cultural identity religion unconsciously developing around many of our mosques, schools, homes, and college campuses is not brought under control and redirected, it will imperil the growth of Islam in America and Europe. As for those immersed in this counter-cultural paradigm, explication of Islam’s culturally friendly jurisprudence and talk of creating a British Muslim culture often awakens deep anxieties, subconscious fears, and implacable misgivings. Assurance that Islamic law sets down parameters for indigenous cultural growth rarely allays their apprehensions, because they are rooted not in rationality but a substratum of the subconscious that has been trained—often since childhood—in the defective ideas and false universals of an alien ideology.
Creating a sound British Muslim identity is a difficult and hazardous undertaking and requires personal integrity as well as knowledge and understanding. But there can be no safe retreat from the task, and the dangers of failure are devastatingly great. Failure to foster a successful British Muslim culture would not only threaten our continued existence but constitute an inexcusable betrayal of the divine trust and unique historical opportunity we have to make Islam work in Europe. Our sacred law requires us to undertake the task. The work before us is a matter of true ijtihad, moral commitment, and dynamic creativity. In the spirit of the great jurists of the past, any failure on our part would constitute “iniquity and disobedience before God,” except that, in our case, the “gross error” we commit pertains not to an isolated legal ruling and a few individual cases but the ruin of an entire community. A famous Mandingo adage states: “The world is old, but the future springs from the past.”
We must engender a Muslim culture that gives us the freedom to be ourselves. And to be ourselves, we must have a proper sense of continuity with what has been, is, and is likely to be. Only in the context of a viable cultural presence can we hope for a bright Muslim future to spring forward from the richness of our past.
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