Saadia's Column

Squinting Too Close (March 2003)

"You have been sent only to make things easy and not to make things difficult."
—Mohammed (peace be upon him)*

There is a tendency in the Muslim world to complicate religion unnecessarily. Rigidity, intolerance and pettiness have become rampant, in spite of the fact that the Quran condemns such attitudes time and time again. Among the Ummah, the emphasis always seems to be on what we shouldn’t be doing, as opposed to what we should be doing. Self-proclaimed religious authorities rant and rave; impressing their philosophies on illiterate multitudes; philosophies - to borrow from H.L. Mencken - that are based on the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.

The whole point of religion, after all, is to elevate oneself; to find peace; to find oneself, and thereby find God. To which end, all the squabbling, bickering and finger pointing is hardly beneficial. The questions rarely rise above the mundane: to eat non-halal, or not to eat non-halal? To go without hijab or not to go without hijab? To drink or not to drink? To use or not to use lipstick that contains a decimal percentage of animal fat? In fact it seems that the issues which the Quran touches upon either rarely or ambiguously are the ones which dominate the most time and discussion. There is precious little talk about the importance of honesty and education; of forgiving as opposed to punishing; of giving women their rights; of tolerance for all people regardless of race or religion. No, topics like those are studiously avoided.

The problem with squinting too hard at the small picture is that one loses sight of the big picture. And this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a progressive, tolerant Islam in the world today.

The reason I’m so averse to focusing on the nitty-gritty, is because history reveals that this is where fundamentalism and judgmentalism arise. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that anyone who refuses non-halal meat is a latent radical or terrorist. I’m simply saying that now more than ever, it is absolutely essential for Muslims to move away from relatively unimportant issues, and instead evaluate ourselves, our position in the world, and our understanding and realization of Islam in modern times.

The one thing we must be intolerant of is intolerance. The punitive and the prejudiced are not simply annoying, they pose a real and terrible danger, which has become manifest throughout the Muslim world. Once people start basing their morality on small, petty observances and practices, they readily believe themselves to be morally superior to those who do not attach the same importance to these observances. Eventually, many lose sight of glaring deficiencies in major areas. Their moral complacency with their ritual-obsessed lives has already wreaked way too much havoc.

* Taken from Gai Eaton’s Islam and the Destiny of Man