April 9, 2004

Loyola campus welcomes visiting Understanding Islam Program Scholar Oussama Arabi, Ph.D.

Arabi offers his views on the program that spearheaded his arrival in America, Understanding Contemporary Islam

Oussama Arabi, Ph.D., is a visiting professor from the American University Beirut, Lebanon, who is teaching the upper-level course Understanding Contemporary Islam the spring semester in the Department of Religious Studies. Understanding Contemporary Islam aims to enhance the dialogue between Muslim culture and the United States by sending scholars from the Islamic world to universities and colleges in America who will serve as resources on the Islamic faith and life in contemporary Muslim societies. The program is under the joint auspices of the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Arabi has been teaching since 1985 in the Cultural Studies Program at AUB, where he teaches modern logic and Islamic theology and law. He received his doctorate from Sorbonne University, Paris, in modern symbolic logic with a dissertation on Quine and Wittgenstein. Loyola University is pleased to have Arabi for the spring semester before he makes his way to teach at Xavier University of Louisiana for the fall.

Arabi offers his views that may help the Loyola community Understand Contemporary Islam.

Q: What is the importance of understanding contemporary Islam for an American setting and an American audience?

Oussama Arabi: In the last half century, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies witnessed a surge in the U.S., but the expansion touched mainly academic circles and little drizzled to the educated middle and upper classes from whom politicians are recruited and who remained practically ignorant of Islamic culture and civilization. Undoubtedly in the present-charged context after 9/11, some adequate information about the Muslim world is a must for American policy makers and administrators. There is a lot of information on Islamic faith, law, and culture at present available in English, but somehow its circulation is very restricted and does not reach the general educated public. The Understanding Contemporary Islam program aims to contribute to a wider circulation by engaging some segments of the American population that otherwise might not have the chance of learning about Islam. Such throwing of bridges might affect the relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the U.S. Hopefully, better knowledge of Islamic values and mores allows for better understanding and reduction of tension between the communities. Also there is the long term prospect of influencing U.S.-Muslim international relations in the future, resulting in better political accommodation between the U.S. and Muslim countries.

Q: Why does the Understanding Islam Program specifically address the U.S., and not other Western countries for example?

OA: The importance of the U.S. on the world scene as the superior economic, technological, and military power makes clear the obvious benefits that friendly relations with the U.S. could bring to Muslim countries. Friendship is a two-way relationship, and both sides need to work for it to prosper. Knowing about the other side is crucial and in this respect Muslims also need to know much more about American society and American values. UCI is focused on enhancing knowledge of Islam by present-day Americans, and there are historical and geographical reasons that have mitigated against the growth of such knowledge in the American setting.

Q: It appears that Islam is not simply a set of ritual norms, but deals with strictly legal matters pertaining to social and political relations.

OA: Accepting Islam means surrendering or submitting one's life to the single God by obeying God's laws and rules, as pronounced in Islam's Divine revelation, the Qur'an. The Qur'an announces not only rules of worship, but also rules of marriage and contract, and rules of government; and the Prophet was inspired by the Qur'an to develop in great detail family, property, contract, and political rules. This is as known as the Prophetic Sayings and it covers volumes pertaining to the legal organization of multiple aspects of human life. Later generations of Muslim jurists continued the work of the Prophet in law, and the result was the development of four schools of Islamic law by the 10th century. If the aim of religion is to make peace and shun violence between humans, then Islam presents a real contribution to this end. Whether Muslims follow these rules has to do with human nature, which, the Qur'an tells us, is divided in its loyalty to good and evil. This is a general problem faced by other religions as well, but Islam attempts to mold the human soul in real-life situations by legally binding rules, thus reducing the impact of aggression and uncontrolled emotion.

Q: Could you mention some of those universal rules of Islam that are to guide human life?

OA: There is the principle of legal autonomy of all adult individuals by virtue of which individual will is the source of all voluntary human action; but subjective autonomy does not mean that all acts are equally right as long as they do not harm others, as in some relativistic Western ideas of personal freedom. Second, it follows as a consequence of autonomy that the individual is legally responsible for his voluntary actions; third is the principle of equality under Islamic law of all persons, whatever their social or political status; fourth is the requirement of equity and fairness in human dealings and relations; fifth, that harm is to be removed: the right to self-defense against aggression, the right to privacy; etc. All these are manifestations of the Divine Law's commitment to the principle of justice. In the Qur'anic Arabic the word for "justice," Al-haqq, is the same word for "the truth." Justice in Islam, like Medieval Catholic theology, is objective, i.e. is efficient in creation, and while it could be denied by some humans, it always finds its way back although sometimes at the price of immense pain and suffering; God says: "The Unjust (Untrue) is by nature fleeting." Of course Islamic law develops these abstract principles into workable rules for the various legal domains, but the idea is that of an essential rightness in the nature of things that humans ought to do their best to exemplify. The effort to discover what is right and just in Islamic law is called Ijtihad.

Q: Some Western authors have criticized what they call the excessive legalism of the Islamic religion; they claim that Muslim societies could attain modernity only if religion and state become separate.

OA: Maybe the separation of state and church was a major cause for the European leap economically, scientifically, and technologically, in comparison with other traditional civilizations. But it is hasty to make conclusions based on the West's "success" story and to apply it to other cultures and civilizations. First, the Western success is largely marred by two horrible world wars with over 40 million dead in World War II alone. Muslim theologians were greatly infatuated by Europe in the 19^th century; after World War I, their admiration subsided. Second, legalism may be a cause for a more organized and quiet individual life than the hectic nerve-racking pace offered by Western modernity. In terms of creativity, it is always good to remember that individual creativity is not an absolute value; some new ideas and inventions have caused destruction on a massive scale; surely the Europeans were not able to cope peacefully with the immense technological power they created, which led to destruction, war, and untold suffering. It is true that Muslim societies are more quietist and uniform than Western societies, but it is not at all obvious that agitation and excitement are the salt of good life. Given the basic human propensity to violence, corruption, and selfishness, Islamic legalism might be a plausible remedy.

Q What do you make of Islamic terrorism, now after 9/11, a subject of high concern to many a Western country. Does Islamic law justify such acts?

OA: Terrorism is a universal political phenomenon and not limited to Muslim terrorists. Muslim countries themselves suffer from it. A fanatic aggressive fringe is always ready to show its head in the name of higher causes, and the 20^th century is full of acts of terrorism from the most trivial to the most massive. The legalistic spirit of Islam goes against the very grain of terrorism; Islamic law clearly states that no individual is to take arms against any power except by order of the Muslim ruler. This is to be expected in a legalistic religion; only the governing body of the community has the right to decide matters of war and peace. Thus terrorism is out of the question in Islam. Furthermore, even when war is undertaken by an Islamic state, Islamic law prohibits killing of civilians, destruction of property, and the maltreatment of prisoners. Al-Shaybani in the eighth century C.E. was the first Muslim jurist to write an extensive treatise on the law of war between nations; he anticipated the European international law of Vittoria and Grotius by seven centuries.

Q: Many have been critical of the condition of women in Muslim countries. How do you respond to that criticism?

OA: When the Qur'an employs the words "the believers or the Muslims," it quite often repeats them twice in a row because it affixes the masculine and feminine gender endings to these words, making it clear that God is addressing both men and women. As for rights, Islamic law recognizes the protection of five basic rights, called the ends or purposes of Divine Law: the protection of a person's religion; his reason (mental powers); his body (physical integrity); his property; and his virtue (dignity and honor). So any harm incurred by a person on one of these five counts is unlawful and is to be removed by legal action. These rights are applicable to all Muslims, male or female, young or adult: they apply to women just as they apply to men. Islamic law gives women the same rights to education, property, transaction, political action as it gives to men. As in other cultures, the condition of women in Muslim communities is a reflection of the social, economic and educational class of the immediate family. Middle and upper middle-class women have greater opportunities, but with the spread of mandatory education in North Africa, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and major Islamic countries, the female Muslim population is getting new venues for betterment.

NB: The views expressed in this interview are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the position of the Islam Understanding Program on the discussed topics.