HAND OF RELIGION

THE GREAT HAND OF RELIGION

Murad Ali Baig

The soothing hand of religion can calm the worst fears of many anxious millions just as the flaming passions of religion can so easily destroy millions of innocent lives. Human beings may have been a creation of God but religions were all the creation of countless human prophets, sages and philosophers. We need to however understand that like the hand of mortal men the great hand of religion has five different fingers.

The smallest finger is the spiritual core of every faith. Human beings in every culture had wanted to know where they had come from and where they were destined to go to after their deaths. This quest to seek the tenuous links between their fragile lives and their conceptions of some greater cosmic source of all energy had been at the core of all faiths. This spiritual quest included concepts like salvation, karma, sin, ethical behavior and the power of love that many believed could lift their spirits or souls to a better world both in this life and after death. These are quite similar in all religions.

The second finger of religion is the finger of customs and traditions. Every religion carries a huge baggage of the customs that are part of constantly evolving societies. These were shaped by the geographic, climatic and economic conditions that were very varied in different cultures. Every society had festivals rejoicing the advent of spring and autumn that later became part of their religious mythology. Winter fests common to cold countries were elevated into the festivals of Lori, in north India or Christmas in Europe. The fasting during Ramzan had been an Arab custom necessary to survive the acute thirst and hunger of the hottest weeks of summer long before it became an Islamic tradition. Human concerns about health or killing may have influenced the habits of food and drink but there was nothing spiritual about these. Pork, beef or alcohol may be abhorrent to many people but they do no injury to the human soul. There was similarly nothing spiritual about a veil, turban or the clothes people wear. They were all social customs that priests later made into religious requirements or acts of piety.

The biggest finger of the hand of religion was political. Every religion evolved out of scattered beliefs and faiths when a ruler promoted it and patronized legions of priests to propagate their faiths. As it was much easier for a ruler to get people to die in the name of God than for a mortal man the priests made people believe that their kings were god’s delegates on earth and it was god’s work to follow his commands. Religious faith kept the masses hardworking, obedient and disciplined so kings rewarded their priests with magnificent places of worship to awe them and many other earthly rewards. People were persuaded to believe that rulers had a divine right to kill or persecute people belonging to other kingdoms or faiths. Priests disciplined the masses mainly through the instrument of fear. They were obsessed about control and their carefully crafted visions of hell’s fire or terrifying incarnations kept worshippers in line. They also understood that hatred of perceived enemies was a powerful cement to unite their followers so they fanned the flames of hate against rival people or beliefs. They also promised miraculous boons as also the power to miraculously curse or defeat their enemies.

The forth vertical of every religion were the chains by which priests bound people to their religion. These are a heady mix of prayers, penances, pilgrimages, fasts, meditation, chanting, songs and sacrifices. These were elevated through religious art and magnificent places of worship that uplifted the minds of believers and made them feel that they were closer to god and could forget their sorrows and be filled with joy. Some ecstatic experiences even stimulated human bodies to heal their own ailments in almost miraculous ways.

The last finger concerned superstition. People believed their priests because they sincerely believed that certain words or actions would result in good or bad fortune for themselves and their communities. Christians touch wood visualizing that it is a part of the sacred wooden cross of Jesus. Many Hindus begin every endeavor or prayer with a entreaty to the elephant god Ganesh begging him to make their ventures or desires successful. Muslims take the name of Allah after every pronouncement about expected events. Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and others cover their heads before going into a place of worship following the old Zoroastrian custom of wearing a skull cap to stop polluting human hair from falling into the sacred fire. Many people believe that feeding the poor will earn eternal merit for the giver even if the practice can reduce healthy people into groveling beggars. Examples from the lives of prophets and sages become acts of piety. Many Muslims enter a room with the right foot first because they believe that the supposed example of Muhammad is an act of piety. People believe superstitions because they believe that they can miraculously change things for better or worse.

All the fingers of this great hand of religion are covered by a dazzling glove of mythology. The ideas of all the old prophets, sages and philosophers were spread by story tellers because written texts were too few and too difficult to make until  Gutenberg’s printing press in 1439 AD. Till then books were too rare and expensive. The art of all storytellers was to exaggerate so that the princesses became more beautiful, the kings more magnificent and beliefs more miraculous with each retelling. Space and time became playthings of bards and raconteurs so the characters of religious personages were constantly embroidered. All the early places of learning were seminaries of religion so a thick cloak of mythology hid the ugly or inconvenient while glorifying all that they wanted to show as beautiful.

The spiritual core is the element that most religions are proudest of and these are quite similar in all faiths. The other elements are essentially material issues that differ widely from religion to religion. The thick encrustations of mythology that surrounds religions makes it difficult for people to see the spiritual core. Instead of marveling at the multifaceted miracle of life itself from the smallest organism to the tallest tree, religions make people quarrel endlessly about the material details of their faiths with the result that the gentle hand of spirituality is quickly covered by a hate filled glove of religion that has caused more death and destruction than any other human endeavor.  

This article was just published in the quint.

ZAKIR NAIK – PREACHER OR PROVOCATEUR?

Murad Ali Baig

It is easy to blame anyone for inspiring terrorism but there is no evidence that Zakir Naik is guilty of doing anything but proclaiming words about Islamic law and traditions. A look at YouTube or other social media will show an ardent speaker in a prayer cap to proclaim his piety and a neat western suit and tie to declare his relevance to modern audiences. He attracts huge audiences not only on his own PeaceTV but at numerous public venues in Dubai, Dacca and in many Indian cities.

Many viewers may be offended by his remarks about women’s rights, Osama Bin Laden, Jews, etc., but it has to be said that Naik does not step outside the limits of Islamic traditions. If his comments are offensive it is because the Quran and many other sources of Islamic law, like all scriptures, were created in mediaeval times when values were very different to those of today. He greatly resembles a passionate criminal lawyer who will argue his brief and shows an impressive knowledge about Judaism, Christianity and even Hinduism.

His brief is however confined to Islamic writings and he does not admit what historians know today that the verses of Quran were only collected 33 years after the death of the prophet by Uthman the third Khalif. He, like most Muslims, also ardently believes that the events in the life of the prophet were well recorded when in fact the first biographer ibn Ishaq was born 72 years after Muhammad’s death. Al Tabari the second biographer was a Persian born another 53 years later. The second most important Islamic scripture is the Hadis (Hadith) that was composed by Al Bukhari and others still later. Islamic traditions can thus be proved to be the work of a number of mortal humans and not the immortal words of God as many want to believe.

Zakir Naik is not universally popular in Muslim circles but this is not surprising as there are approximately 72 Muslim sects and sub sects and his strongly Wahhabi orientation is especially offensive to the many million Shias, Sufi and Ahmediyas. The Wahhabi element is mainly responsible for the hate and violence that it often advocates. Abd Al Wahhab, born about 1703, popularized a very extreme Islamic philosophy that rejected not just idolatry but reverence to any mortal. The Wahhabis disallowed ceremonies for marriage or death, worship of saints, adorning of graves, tombs or other sacred objects, holding religious processions, art, music and dance and demanded the total suppression of women. They did not even spare the tomb of the prophet at Madina and stripped the Kaaba of all the treasures gifted by pilgrims to decorate it. 

Religious teachers including his own father and uncle were horrified at his excesses but he was fortunate to find a patron in Muhammad Al-Saud who used this vitriolic new creed as a powerful weapon to propel his tribe to win his descendents the kingdom of Arabia that they rule to this day. Then the discovery of oil in 1938 gave them the power to finance the spread of their fanatic creed to all Muslim countries. 

Though Naik appears knowledgeable about Judaism he does not explain how the Jewish Torah (Tawraat) became one of the sacred books of Islam roughly three hundred years after the prophet. Most of the horrible sins in the 613 (not 10) Commandments and the ghastly punishments in the book of Leviticus are not found in the Quran but are widely used by many Muslim clerics to make Islam so unpalatable in modern times.

If Islam was the religion of Muhammad how was it hijacked by revisionists?

As in all religions the traditions of Islam were changed frequently over the centuries by a number of passionate clerics who moved the Islamic Sharia from the mostly peaceable words of Muhammad to the angry rhetoric of the Taliban and IS. This continuous shift is clear from main milestones of the religion:

570 AD. Birth of the prophet Muhammad.

610. Muhammad receives the divine revelation from the angel Gabriel.

622. The Hijra. Muhammad migrates from Mecca to Medina to mark the beginning of the Muslim calendar.

632. Death of Muhammad.

661. Assassination of Ali that marks the beginning of Shia faction.

665. The third Khalif Uthman announces the definitive version of the Quran probably written by Zaid Ibn Thabit 33 years after Muhammad’s death.

704. Birth of Ibn Ishaq the first biographer about the life of Muhammad. There is no record of the prophet’s life till 82 years after the hijra. 142 years later Al Tabari elaborated on it.

Two hundred years after the death of Muhammad the second most sacred Islamic book, the Hadis (or Hadith) was compiled by a few pious scholars to guide Muslims to not only follow the words of the Prophet in the Quran but also examples from his life. Scholars like Al Bukhari tried to trace the descendents of the prophet’s family and reconstruct the stories of his life. Bukhari however rejected 99% of the stories that were offered to him. Restrictions on women like the veil only now become a requirement. The Prophet’s smallest actions become acts of piety for many Muslims. 

750 – 1258. Abbasid Caliphate. The Islamic empire containing many diverse races became a complex imperial society that needed new legal authorities like the Qazi (magistrate) concerned with legal matters, functions of the police, taxes and the status of non-Muslim subjects. Islamic law now split into six schools.

In the tenth century the Jewish Torah (Tawraat) was adopted and the Jewish sins of blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, etc., became Islamic sins. Muslim clerics only now began prescribing the Jewish death sentences by burning, stoning, beheading and strangulation even though the Quran had never prescribed such punishments.

Four categories of punishment in Islamic law were devised much after the Quran. These were Qisas - (retaliation as `an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth’ following the Jewish Torah); Diyya -compensation paid to the heirs of a victim in blood money or ransom; Hadud – harsh punishments for severe crimes like murder, adultery, blasphemy, intoxication, idolatry or apostasy and Tazir – punishments given at the discretion of a Qazi.

1256. After the bloody sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols, Ahmad ibn Tamiyya, a Muslim scholar, was driven out of Iraq and declared a new policy to divide the Islamic world. `Dar ul Islam’ (abode of Islam) and `Dar ul Harb’ (abode of disbelievers). He also redefined the word Jihad to mean a Holy War.

1683. The defeat of the Turkish armies outside Vienna marked the end of Islamic expansion and the beginning of European power that was to soon dominate the world and push Muslim countries into increasingly narrow minded orthodoxy.

In the nineteenth century Islam was hijacked by Mohammad Abd Al Wahhab who started the Sunni Wahhabiya movement. It accepted the Quran and Hadis but opposed all innovations, superstitions and deviances with a very narrow interpretation in a puritanical and legalistic form. They considered the veneration of pirs, the intercession of Imams, religious holidays, and other devotional acts as heresies and even desecrated the tomb of Muhammad. With the support of the ibn Saud family they promoted an extreme form of Islam that led to the Taliban, Al Qaida and IS.

1922. The Balfour declaration at the end of the First World War Britain callously divided the former Turkish territories. Israel became an independent country in 1948 and began a series of bitter wars with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria leading to an unending cycle of conflict ever since.

1991 and 2003. The American `War on Terror’ against Iraq and Afghanistan (2001) outraged many Muslims who considered them morally unjustified. The American CIA support for Saudi Arabia made them virtual allies in the creation of the radical Taliban. Later the Sunni ISIS attacked the Shia majorities in Syria and Iraq who were supported by a Shia Iran backed by Russia.

Like all religions Islam changed frequently over time. As many of the frequently irrational or violent laws of Judaism became sanctified in Islam Muslim clerics found them convenient to regiment their followers with increasingly onerous regulations enforced by draconian punishments.

People forget that the Quran explicitly says that killing in the name of Islam is the opposite of Jihad and had expressly forbidden an attack on anyone who had offered no offence and that it is forbidden to harm or to kill women and children. Many do not know that it is also forbidden to take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners. Even suicide is forbidden. The Prophet had said that anyone who sets another on fire, even an ant, commits the greatest sin and is destined to the fires of hell.