By Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani
Praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds. I bear witness that there is no deity but God alone, without partner, the God of the first and last generations. I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger, sent as a mercy to the worlds. May God bless him and all his family and Companions.
I write these words while the world is preoccupied with the great epidemic caused by the pathogen known as “coronavirus.” It has spread through much of the inhabited world, making many people ill and causing large numbers of deaths. Work and travel have stopped, people remain at home, and mosques have closed in most countries, with neither Friday nor congregational prayers held, until God grants His servants relief and a way out.
Doctors say this pathogen spreads through direct contact. Infection occurs through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Some droplets enter another person, either directly or when they touch a surface on which the pathogen has landed, then touch their mouth, nose or eyes, allowing it to enter their body.
Doctors also say that not everyone into whose body the pathogen passes becomes ill. A healthy, strong body may kill it or prevent it from affecting health. In this case, a person showing no effects of infection remains infectious to others. Another person may be similarly healthy and strong and not become ill. The pathogen may thus circulate among ten people without any becoming ill or their carriage being recognised. A slightly weakened person may become ill for a while and recover, while someone severely weakened may be overwhelmed and die. To God belongs the command before and after.
As for symptoms, doctors say they appear after two to fourteen days: dry cough, high fever, difficulty breathing and feelings of tiredness and exhaustion. Their severity ranges from very mild to very acute, depending on the intensity of infection and the strength of the body’s immunity and resistance. Psychological strength, a person’s habits in expressing illness and pain, patience and adherence to medical advice also affect symptoms and recovery, by God’s permission and will.
The theory of political and utilitarian interpretation of religion resembles this pathogen and general epidemic in its transmission, influence, symptoms and effects.
The theory appeared long ago among extreme philosophers claiming affiliation with Islam. It reappeared about a century ago and spread extensively through the Muslim community in recent decades. Its carriers and transmitters were thinkers, intellectuals and religious teachers among movement-oriented Islamists. Its means of transmission are many and varied: directly through books, articles, sermons, lessons and educational settings, and indirectly through rewriting, reformulating and presenting religious, historical and intellectual disciplines in its light, and disseminating them through modern media forms such as television dramas, plays and discussion programmes. Its presence resembles fat in milk: confined to no particular place and possessing no definite shape, it changes beliefs and concepts in the realm of the unconscious.
Muslims differ in their susceptibility according to their levels of knowledge and faith:
Those possessing sound knowledge of God, His religion and His intent, and sincere, detailed faith, have not had their hearts and minds penetrated by the pathogen of this theory. The light of their knowledge and strength of their certainty burn it away. They remain safe from the disease and its symptoms in speech and action.
Those possessing the foundations of knowledge and faith but lacking in their details, while competing beliefs and ideas weaken them, have contracted a mild or moderate infection. Corresponding symptoms appear: they repeat some statements of the theory’s proponents without agreeing with its foundations, because they do not know them or understand their aims.
For those poor in knowledge of God, His message and His intent, and weak in faith and certainty, the theory finds open pathways to their hearts and minds, striking them in a vital place. Its symptoms appear powerfully, and they deviate from the straight path in knowledge, action, conduct and calling to God.
Just as disease has degrees from its beginning to death, so these people differ in how the theory affects them, their visible symptoms and how they express it. Some are contaminated by its foundations and branches, adopting the religion of extreme philosophers and esotericists. Some are contaminated by effects of its foundations and adopt its branches because they approve their outward appearance, without knowing the foundations or grasping the dangers. Others approve something and spread it without knowledge or alertness, merely influenced by the theory’s religious and media publicity, strongly present in contemporary Islamic discourse.
The most important symptoms of infection, in varying degrees of weakness and strength, are:
1. Diminishing the standing of worship and regarding acts of worship as means and causes rather than purposes and ends.
2. Focusing on worldly benefits and immediate gains from worship and adherence to Islamic law.
3. Magnifying the provisions of Islamic law concerning government and raising them to the rank of primary objectives.
4. A bleak view of Islamic history, its rulers, scholars and reformers. This varies in extremity, reaching in some cases the judgement that the prophets and messengers, peace and blessings be upon them, failed to accomplish their missions’ purpose by bringing about political revolution and establishing the just state.
5. An idealistic, fanciful, utopian tendency, dreaming of the virtuous city and claiming that the “caliphate” is the way to establish it.
6. Claiming functions for religion unrelated to it, such as numerous health and material benefits from performing worship, and claiming that “Islam is the solution” to economic and social problems and all the world’s problems. Such claims, especially after their falsity was exposed by the revolutions of Arab destruction, are undoubtedly among the most important gateways to atheism among Muslims’ children.
Praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the final prophet and messenger.
This article is extracted from the introduction to The Political Interpretation of Religion in Muhammad Shahrur’s Thought.
Available at: The source book PDF