Islam – Where we Begin and End

In any meaningful discussion, it’s vital for the conversing parties to speak so that they are referring to the same things. If not, they might be speaking about two different things and the resultant informational exchange emotional response may be false and unjustified.

I begin my discourse of Islam by fixing definitions. Since the word ‘Islam’ is used in so many different ways, I had to choose a criteria to determine the usage of the word.

My criteria was normative usage, that is usage by my experience of the discourse of Islam in the world.

In practice, this means that I tentatively accept the defintion of ‘Islam’ and subsequently of ‘Muslims’ used most commonly in the world.

The word ‘Islam’ refers to the socio-cultural entity which came into existence due to the historical phenomena of Mohamed ibn Abdullah of Arabia. Anyone born into this entity or adopts this entity as a result of conversion is named a ‘Muslim’.

It may seem strange that I do not choose the ’shahaada’ (the witnessing of God’s oneness and Muhammad ibn Abdullah’s messengership) as the criteria but this definition cannot be used for the following reasons:

1. We cannot possibly verify who has taken the shahada. This would entail asking over a billion people, an untenable task and we cannot know if they give correct information.

2. The language which pervades in the world, especially in the media identifies the Muslim as one from the aforementioned socio-cultural entity. Therefore, in any critical situations, Muslims would be identified by their socio-culture.

So this is where we begin – Islam as it is. This is Islam at the point of existentialisation.

Let us now investigate the means to understand if these definitions agree with Islam as it was meant to be.

As we can see from the world, the variations in thinking within the semantic space called Islam are wide. We find variations like fundamentalism, liberalism, conservatism and so on. These variations are then fixed with the adjective ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ so we get phrases like ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or ‘Muslim liberals’.

How do we begin to measure the authenticity of these variations and subsequently discover Islam in its pure form, if it exists? How do we know it exists? If it exists, do we need to seek it?

I believe the need to authenticate exists because Muslim societies are now at a low point of existence, suffering from various social diseases. They are far from essentialisation. Is this caused by Islam itself or by some other factors? Before we answer that, we must ask: What is Islam ?

To answer this, we must use the source of Islam, The Quran.

The Quran is considered to be the personal communique to Mohamed ibn Abdullah. Muslims treat it with extreme reverence, reading it and have a long tradition of scholarship arising from its study. It is then logical to me that the Quran be my starting point.

What does the Quran itself say about its position?

The month of Ramadhan is which in is the descent of Al-Quran, a guidance to humankind, a clarification of the Guidance and the criteria…
(chapter 2, verse 185)

So the Quran labels itself as a guidance to humankind, a clarification of the guidance and a criteria. There is therefore no ambiguity regarding its position among the Muslims. We can then seek authenticity of Islam by taking it back to the Quran.

Our end point therefore would be paradoxically at the point of our origin, the Quran. The Quran once engaged on its own terms would yield a world-view which is Islam in its pure form.

The Quran defines its system as that which will bring peace and justice for all humankind and enable them to live in metaphorical gardens on the earth. These gardens symbolise the felicity of God’s favour and allows those in it to live lives of safety, security and beauty. Muslims are those who precipitate and facilitate this state for the world.

This is what we seek. This is our end point. This is our essentialisation.