SO
NEWSWEEK has retracted its report about the defiling of Islam’s holy book, the Koran, by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.
It’s too late. A single paragraph in the magazine, alleging that American soldiers had flushed a Koran down a lavatory, was enough to mobilise anti-American rallies from Gaza to Java. Violent riots have taken place in Afghanistan; effigies of President Bush have been torched in Pakistan.
Serious questions do emerge from this debacle. Muslims are left asking whether the United States, a country that trumpets the virtues of faith, respects all religions. Journalists are wondering what standards allowed an incendiary charge to be published without proof. But at least one more question needs to posed: even if the Koran was mistreated, are violent riots, chants of “Death to America,” and vows of jihad a justified response?
“What do you expect?” my critics will declare. “Abusing the Koran is like abusing basic human rights. If you’re a good Muslim, your very identity and dignity are bound up in revering the Koran. It’s the literal word of God. Unsullied. Untouched. Unedited. Unlike the other holy books.”
Sorry. That argument just doesn’t wash. One can appreciate the Koran’s inherent worth, as I do, while recognising that it contains ambiguities, inconsistencies, outright contradictions — and the possibility of human editing.
This is not simply a reform-minded Muslim speaking. This is Islamic tradition talking. For centuries, Islamic philosophers have been telling the story of the Satanic Verses. The Prophet Muhammad accepted them as authentic entries into the Koran. Later, he realised they deify heathen idols rather than God. So he belatedly rejected the verses, blaming them on a trick played by Satan. Which implies that the Prophet edited the Koran.
Let’s push this point further. Because pious Muslims emulate Muhammad’s life, those who compiled the Koran’s verses after his death might have followed his example of editing along the way. The compilers were, after all, only human — as human as Muhammad himself. Moreover, they collected the Koran’s verses from sundry surfaces such as bones, stones and bark. How did the passages get there? According to Islamic lore, the Prophet, an illiterate trader, could not personally record them. His companions served as second-hand scribes, often writing from memory.
Given so much human involvement, isn’t it possible that human errors infiltrated the process of pulling together the “authoritative” Koran?
In asking this question, I’m neither impugning the allegorical wisdom of the Koran nor inviting another fatwa on my life. I’m saying that Muslims have to get comfortable asking such questions. Riots in Afghanistan left at least 14 dead. Aid workers have been attacked; their offices burnt. How does this benefit the cause of dignity? Another question needs to be asked: is dignity the same as identity?
These days, it’s lazily assumed that if you challenge a group’s deeply held religious convictions, you’re undermining their dignity. That’s certainly how my questions will feel to most Muslims.
Yet by urging my fellow Muslims to consider these questions, I’m showing faith in our capacity to be more thoughtful and humane than most of our clerics give us credit for. I’m appealing to their heads rather than only to their hearts. Ultimately, I’m fighting not Islam but the routinely low expectations of those who practise it.
Contrast that with the tactics of Imran Khan. The Pakistani cricketer turned politician rallied his countrymen to express their rage about the Newsweek report. As a fierce critic of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, Khan was doing more than opposing his government’s co-operation with the United States on security matters. He knew he was feeding the most reflexive of Muslim impulses: to treat the Koran with uncritical veneration.
It reminds me of the Miss World beauty pageant in Nigeria in 2002. That fiasco spun off into church-burnings and more than 50 deaths. It was not the affront of immodestly clad women that sparked the uproar. Nigeria’s Muslims had known for months about their country hosting the pageant. Rioting began only after a columnist suggested that the Prophet Muhammad would have enjoyed it and taken its winner as his wife. An imprudent remark, to be sure, but should it have caused banditry and murder?
When people are indoctrinated to believe that certain dimensions of religion are off-limits to questions, it doesn’t take much to incite violence — or to withhold forgiveness. In the Nigerian case, even though the offending newspaper apologised three times, Muslim protesters set its offices ablaze. Weeks earlier, the same columnist had scolded Christians and invoked the name of Christ along the way. Nobody died.
Muslims worldwide are organising demonstrations for the end of this month against those who insult Islam. They will peacefully protest against not just the possibility of the Koran’s desecration at Guantanamo, but also proven torture at Abu Ghraib and civil rights violations suffered by Muslims in the United States. They have every right to condemn these injuries.
Will they also speak out against the bloody, fiery riots that, in the name of honouring Islam, are killing an increasing number of Muslims and non-Muslims? It’s a question worth asking.
© New York Review of Books
Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change. She is interviewed tomorrow in the Faith section.
