REFLECTION: Learning Islam – The Traditional Way

I have a confession to make. I am a huge fan of what is known as “traditional Islam” (let’s call it “TI”). This is a method of teaching and learning the classical sciences of Islam.

I understand TI goes something like this. You decide what classical Islamic subject or subjects you wish to study. You sit with someone qualified to teach at least the subject you want to learn. You sit and learn that subject with that teacher, either on an individual basis or in a class.

Once the teacher is satisfied with your mastery of the subject, he/she gives you authorisation to teach. That authorisation is called an ijaza, and it states the limits within which you can teach the subject. It could be as broad as more than one discipline or as narrow as a chapter of a book.

Your teacher is able to give you an ijaza because he/she has an ijaza from his/her teacher, who in turn has an ijaza from his/her teacher etc etc. This chain of ijaza is known as a sanad.

I haven’t done any research on the matter, but I suspect most qualified imams in Australia have learned their classical Islamic knowledge this way. Certainly this is how Islamic sciences are taught in classical institutions such as Dar al-Uloom Deoband in India or in similar classical institutions in Yemen, Syria and Morocco.

TI is a great method of keeping alive our classical Islamic tradition. Some of the great emerging voices of Islamic scholarship in the West have studied and qualified under this methodology, including Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Zaid Shakir, Nuh Ha Mim Keller and our very own (as far as Sydney-siders are concerned) Naeem Abdul Wali.

These scholars are at the forefront of communicating Islamic ideas in a manner relevant to Western communities, Muslim or otherwise. But are they able to do this just because of TI? Does anyone honestly believe that, when faced with a contemporary challenge, Western TI scholars only refer to classical commentaries?

I asked this question of Azhar Usman, stand-up comedian and director of the Nawawi Foundation, a US-based think tank which promotes Islamic sciences in the TI tradition. Other directors of the Nawawi Foundation include Dr Ingrid Mattson, who studied Islam in modern universities and is current President of the Islamic Society of North America (the US and Canadian version of our “AFIC”).

The Chairman and Scholar-in-Residence of the Foundation is Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, one of a galaxy of TI scholars in the US. Apart from studying classical sciences abroad, Dr Abd-Allah also did a PhD in Islamic Studies at Chicago University under one Professor Fazlur Rahman.

Why am I mentioning all this? Of what relevance does all this have to Australia?

Following the terror attacks of September 11, scholars of TI have come to the forefront of not only condemning the attacks but also identifying the root causes of the attacks. Azhar Usman believes that what tempted some Muslims to sympathise the attackers was a form of Islam which teaches us Western Muslims to regard only a narrow set of things as “Islamic” and to reject everything else as “un-Islamic”.

TI is different. TI regards everything as potentially Islamic with the exception of those things which are clearly proscribed in the sacred law of Islam (known as the sharia) as un-Islamic.

Hence, TI practitioners like Dr Abd-Allah contend that there is nothing un-Islamic about communicating Islamic ideas using stand-up comedy. When the Nawawi Foundation takes people on study tours to various parts of the current (or, in the case of Spain, former) “Islamic” world, Azhar Usman usually comes along to act as “court jester”, performing a show for his fellow tourists.

Usman told me he regards Islam as like a clear spring with no odour or taste or colour except for those provided by the elements of its path. Hence, Islam can be communicated using a variety of cultural methods.

Usman’s hero is one of the great scholars and communicators of Islam in Indonesia, known to his people as Sunan Kalijaga. The genius of Kalijaga lay in the fact that he was able to combine essentially traditional cultural symbols (wayang shadow puppetry and gamelan orchestral music) to communicate classical Islamic ideas. Today, wayang and gamelan are regarded as classical methods of communicating Islam in the world’s largest Muslim country. In Indonesia, the methods of Sunan Kalijaga are part of TI.

So there are some Australian Muslims claiming to represent TI who pretend that studying Islam in a conventional university is not consistent with TI principles. They criticise institutions such as the Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies headed by Professor Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne.

But as I learned from Azhar Usman, if TI can recognise the value of communicating Islamic ideas using traditional cultural symbols, why can’t it recognise Islam communicated in a conventional university?

Or to put it in the Prophet’s (s) terms: “Wisdom is the lost property of the believer …”

(This article was first published on 8 August 2007 in Salam, the official publication of the Federation of Australian Muslim Students & Youth or FAMSY)

COMMENT: The Oz and Tanya

The Australian today provides a lengthy piece about an Australian woman who converted to Islam (presumably in Australia) before joining some Australian Muslims to study religion in Yemen. It’s hard to believe I’m writing this, but by printing stories like this, The Oz is doing Muslims an enormous favour. Here's an excerpt ...

In December 2006, Ms Smith, from Winston Hills in Sydney's northwest, posted a note on an Australian newspaper's website explaining why she had converted to Islam. "To share and enjoy the life and love of a relationship that is not managed by fear and abuse, especially not abuse that is cloaked in the name of any religion," she wrote. "As a Muslim woman I am free from any abuse because of my religion - Islam. It is because of my Islam that I don't live infear of a husband that comes back every night to bash me untilI'm black and blue, and then rape me."

The posting went on to blame alcohol - banned in Islam - for most domestic violence. "It is because of Islam that I am empowered as a woman and not sexually exploited by man, I dress for God and not for man," she went on. Islam did not permit women to be used and abused to sell alcohol and bubblegum, she wrote. "That's why I am one of many converts to Islam and that's why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world amongst women."

Ms Smith defended her religion on the newspaper website. "Islam liberated women 1500 years ago," she wrote. "We have enjoyed the freedoms and rights of keeping our last names as we are not the property of our husbands, we have had the right to vote before the women's liberation movement in the last century, the right to keep our own money, choose who I want to marry, have the right to inheritance, run a business, the right to be protected and maintained by our husbands regardless of how rich I am."

It all began a few years ago. Ms Smith first arrived in Yemen in October 2006, and quickly settled into a community of pious Islamic Australians studying Islam and Arabic in Sana'a. Among the expatriates were Mohammed bin Ayub and Abdullah bin Ayub, the sons of the alleged former leader of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub. The two men were arrested along with a third Australian, Marek Samulski, as part of a broad anti-terror sweep by Yemeni and British authorities.

The trio was held for more than two weeks, but were later released without charge and asked to leave Yemen with their families. Samulski is living in South Africa with his wife, while the Ayubs and their families are believed to have travelled to Dar-es-Salam and then to Lebanon.

Ms Smith's Palestinian in-laws say she converted to Islam four years ago, and she was awarded a certificate of Islam from the Yemeni Government last year.

Regardless of her travails in Gaza, Ms Smith has apparently remained committed to Islam since returning to Australia, and she has consulted a fundamentalist Salafi imam.

I’m sure some Muslims will read this story and ask: “Why do they always print the simpler and less controversial convert stories? Why do they focus on the ones full of complications and controversy?” To some extent, I agree with that. But after reading the story of Tanya Louise Smith, I couldn’t help but ask myself why leaders of peak Muslim religious organisations spend so much money fighting each other in courts and so little providing basic support services to converts.

I also couldn’t help asking why so many mosques in Sydney and Melbourne are managed by first generation migrants who want to reproduce the Pakistan or Lebanon or Turkey they left behind in the 1960’s or ‘70’s. And why they insist on employing imams who cannot communicate Muslim orthodoxy in the English language and in a culturally appropriate manner.

Most of all, I wondered why so many young Muslim Australians find themselves going overseas to study just the basics of their faith, basics which kids in Indonesia and other Muslim-majority states master in primary school.

The day our ethnic and language-based religious organisations started helping new Muslims instead of shutting them out or using them as political fodder is the day we will start reading less of such stories.

Or maybe I blame peak bodies and mosque committees too much. Maybe the fault lies with ordinary Muslims. After all, our leaders reflect who we are. Perhaps we should have a situation where ordinary Muslims "adopt" a new Muslim and provide her or him with some kind of moral or spiritual support.

In fact, it seems Tanya may have received more support from her in-laws in Gaza than from Muslims in her home town.

Still, it may all just be a complete beat-up. Either way, the story should really get us thinking.

UPDATE I: My purpose in writing about this was not to in anyway denegrate Tanya, her family or her experience of her faith. Rather, it is to get Muslim and other concerned readers to consider what we are doing and what more we could be doing to provide more support services to new Muslims. It was for similar reasons that I wrote this piece.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf