Fatwas and the Quest for Legitimacy

Rab Nawaz

It has been some time since the recent edict of the Coun­cil of Islam­ic Ide­ol­o­gy (CII) — Pakistan’s pre­mier con­sti­tu­tion­al body for ensur­ing Islam­ic obser­vance in state mat­ters — caused rip­ples by mak­ing the out­ra­geous claim that DNA evi­dence can­not be con­sid­ered con­clu­sive in rape cas­es. It is dif­fi­cult to tell whether the ensu­ing cen­sure from the media and human rights com­mu­ni­ty has strick­en a chord with the author­i­ties, but the oblig­a­tion to keep the debate alive remains. In fact, it would be bet­ter if it were tak­en a step fur­ther.

CII’s rul­ing is just the lat­est in a tra­di­tion of absurd attempts by the cler­gy to find its place in a chang­ing world. Be it the ule­ma dur­ing the Mughal era or mod­ern day schol­ars who have sup­port­ed one dic­ta­tor or the oth­er, it seems all too obvi­ous that the reli­gious estab­lish­ment has been try­ing des­per­ate­ly to retain its share of state pow­er like any oth­er group. At a soci­etal lev­el, they have been cling­ing to their con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da by issu­ing fat­was against any­thing mod­ern, includ­ing the print­ing press, rail­ways, loud­speak­ers, and cam­eras to name a few. And while the cler­gy con­tin­ues to sub­due the mass­es through a rejec­tion of ratio­nal­i­ty and sci­ence, there is an unqual­i­fied alle­giance towards any­thing deemed reli­gious, no ques­tions asked.

The unfor­tu­nate fact is that con­trary to all our boast­ful claims about the absence of a cler­gy in Islam, there has devel­oped a reli­gious class all over the Mus­lim world that plays on reli­gious sen­ti­ments and the igno­rance of peo­ple in its attempt to tight­en its grip on social and polit­i­cal pow­er. From Indone­sia to Moroc­co, every oth­er day, well-mean­ing and ratio­nal Mus­lims are left aghast at out­ra­geous reli­gious rul­ings that seem com­plete­ly out of place in our world. And what is worse is that the Mus­lim world seems inca­pable of for­mu­lat­ing any frame­work for chal­leng­ing and test­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of any claim made in the name of reli­gion.

The ques­tion of legit­i­ma­cy stands set­tled in the mod­ern world. In the intel­lec­tu­al domain, it is the objec­tive, ratio­nal and sci­en­tif­ic method that offers the bedrock to test any claim. And in polit­i­cal mat­ters, it is sim­ply the pow­er to per­suade oth­ers of one’s claim, man­i­fest­ed pop­u­lar­ly through the vote. The majori­tar­i­an frame­work of gov­er­nance, how­ev­er, los­es its legit­i­ma­cy if it fails to ensure uni­ver­sal human rights.

The ques­tion then aris­es as to why we Mus­lims are not able to under­stand and fol­low these same stan­dards and stop falling prey to ques­tion­able reli­gious author­i­ties. The answer is any­body’s guess.

Illus­tra­tion: Asad Fate­mi

(Edi­to­r­i­al Issue 10)