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It is difficult to take Khalid Samad’s letter about the Medina Charter seriously when it seems doubtful that he has ever read, let alone seriously studied, the text of the Charter. It is surprising to discover in a leading PAS politician such ignorance about so important a Muslim text. This may actually be a positive sign of the direction in which the young reformers of PAS want to bring their party, unencumbered, as it were, by the weight of the Muslim past.
Khalid begins his letter by claiming that the tribes of Awf, Najjar, Harith, Saida, and others whose names I did not mention in my original article, were non-Muslim polytheists. He makes this claim to undercut the point I made about Islamic law recognizing only ahl al-kitab (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) as ahl al-dhimma or protected people. His point is that the Medina Charter “was an agreement in partnership between all members of the Medinan Society when the Prophet (P.B.U.H.) arrived in Medina”. It is unfortunate for Khalid’s argument that the text of the Charter is very clear on this point: the tribes mentioned above are all in the part of the Charter that deals with the Jews, and it is made explicit that these are all Jewish tribes. The other tribes mentioned are the Jusham, al-Aws, the Thalaba, the Jafna, the al-Shutayba, the ‘Amr b. ‘Awf, and the al-Nabit. What is interesting here is that the main and most powerful Jewish tribes of Medina, the Nadir, Qurayza, and Qaynuqa, are not mentioned in the Charter. While it is true that these latter three tribes made separate treaties with the Prophet after the hijra, these were basic treaties promising not to enter into hostilities with the Prophet. The Medina Charter obliges the Jews who participated in it to take on much heavier commitments, and it is significant that only a limited number of the Jewish population of Medina actually signed up to the Charter. So much for Khalid’s fantasy about an “agreement between all members of the Medinan Society”. On the question of jizya, Khalid says that this poll tax was received “as an act of surrender and submission”, and “not humiliation”. There is a Muslim tradition that says that worshippers performing the ritual prayer should stand with their shoulders touching, so that the devil cannot walk between them. The devil would find it a tight squeeze to slip through the distinction Khalid attempts to make between surrender and submission, and humiliation. The Muslim legal scholars are consistent in treating the payment of jizya as an act of humiliation and punishment for the ahl al-kitab. To cite just one of numerous examples, Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr al-Namari, in his Tamhid, says that the jizya is designed to punish and humiliate the People of the Book. This function of the jizya is highlighted by the famous (to those who bother to study early Islamic history) case of the Banu Taghlib, a powerful Arab Christian tribe that refused to pay jizya because they were keenly aware of the humiliation this represented. They insisted that they were Arabs and therefore should not be so humiliated in this way. It is in connection with this that Sarakhsi, in his al-Mabsut, says that the jizya cannot be imposed on Arabs because of the ensuing humiliation: therefore, they must either embrace Islam or be killed. As to the word fath, or “opening”, for the Muslim conquests, it is a matter of perspective as to whether the non-Muslim inhabitants of the Persian and Roman empires experienced Muslim rule as a liberation. Conquerors and empire builders in history are apt to give pretty names to their acts of aggression. The Muslim conquerors needed to legitimize religiously their military adventures: hence the Muslim historians’ characterization of the conquests as a liberation from impious regimes and an “opening” up of the people to the message of God. The savage Japanese war in the Far East between 1941 and 1945 was described by the Japanese themselves as the establishment of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. My “liberated” parents remember this period as the Ubi Kayu era. The non-Muslim historical sources belie Khalid’s characterization of the Muslim conquests as a “liberation”: it is, as I have said, a matter of perspective. Khalid’s argument that the imposition of dress codes on the ahl al-kitab was merely a making of distinctions, with no implication of humiliation, is shown to be fallacious both by the context of the Pact of Umar as well as contemporary accounts of the way the dhimma conditions were imposed. Khalid cites Orthodox Jews today who dress in a particular manner as proof of how people in the pre-modern period dressed to identify their religious persuasion. The difference is that Orthodox Jews choose what manner of dress they adopt: the ahl al-kitab have the manner of their dress imposed on them. Why would the treaty of Umar seek to make these distinctions? All the other provisions of the Pact of Umar are designed to underline the lower status of the non-Muslims. It is instructive that Khalid’s letter cites the dressing provision, as it is the only one that he is able to “spin” into a more positive light. When it comes to the giving up of seats to Muslims, and the prohibition on riding horses and bearing swords, well, what can you do, Khalid says as he wrings his hands, it was just after a war, these were difficult times. On the restrictions on the way non-Muslims worship, and the prohibiting of the building of churches and the repair of existing ones, Khalid is silent. An account by Ibn Taymiyya in his Iqtida’ al-sirat al-mustaqim illuminates the way restrictions on clothing served to humiliate non-Muslims. The Umayyad caliph, Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, deprived the Banu Taghlib of the right to wear turbans to humiliate them, and he also cut their forelocks. He forbad them to ride with saddles, and made them ride their animals with both feet on the same side. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya cites the same story in his Ahkam ahl al-dhimma to illustrate the humiliation implied by such deprivations. Khalid claims that the Pact of Umar and other regulations were regarded as “purely circumstantial”, by which I take him to mean that they were meant to address a particular situation at a particular time, and have no general relevance for Islam. Not all Muslim scholars agree with him. Take for instance the fatwa produced by Sheikh Damanhuri of the al-Azhar in 1739, which can be found in his tract, Iqamat al-hujja al-bahira ‘ala kana’is Misr wa’l-Qahira. The Sheikh declares that all Christian churches should be either be destroyed or be allowed to fall into ruin. He cites Ibn Hibban’s version of the Pact of Umar, and says, “It follows that the practice of men who knew what is proper was to forbid the erection of new churches and to prevent the repair of old ones. This falls in with elevating the faith, thwarting unbelief, and humbling infidels…The Companions agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to protect the weak believer’s faith. For if he sees them humbled, he will not be inclined towards their belief.” Once again we have the motif of humiliation as the basis for the dhimma regulations, and this time more than a millennium after the Muslim conquests. Loosening of laws and regulations that were in the first place purely circumstantial, Khalid? Khalid joins a long and distinguished line of people in citing the so-called golden age of Islam in Spain, where Jews, Christians and Muslims are all supposed to have lived in glorious harmony, until the nasty Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile came along and spoilt everything, throwing out the Muslims and persecuting the Jews. There seems to be a particular strain of amnesia that affects anyone who starts speaking of Andalusian Islam. It is true that Catholic Spain after the reconquista did not see tolerance towards other religions as a positive notion. Nevertheless, the life of the greatest mind during the era of Muslim Spain, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, should make us hesitate to paint so consistently rosy a picture of Islamic rule during the period. The Muslim rulers gave the Jewish community during Maimonides’s time three options: conversion to Islam, death, or exile from Spain. In fact, Maimonides’s Arab biographer, al-Qifti, claims that he was forced to convert to Islam, and only was able to revert to Judaism after leaving Spain. We really need a moratorium on selective citations of Muslim Spain as the exemplar of tolerance and harmonious co-existence. I am in total agreement with Khalid with regards to how the precedents in Islamic law and history should be taken in their context, and not seen as having by necessity any kind of force for our time. I wish more Muslim scholars in Malaysia would think in this way, and ponder the writings of Muslim thinkers such as Khaled M. Abou el-Fadl. It is not I who needs persuading on this point, but rather those among Khalid’s co-religionists who wish to create a system of governance that ignores democratic principles and seeks to replicate a medieval theocratic state in 21st century pluralistic societies. Khalid is one voice; there are other, more strident voices in Islam that would disagree with him, some within his own political party. Who then speaks for Islam? Khalid Samad? On what authority? Wa’llahu ‘alam
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