
The Sense and Sensibility of Muslim Experience
What does the Shia cleric in Iran have in common with the Sufi murid of Morocco? What does the Salafi in Yemen share with the Secularist in Turkey? What is the unifying thread between the Muslims of Senegal and those of Nigeria? Each has their own history, politics, and culture. Yet they all assert a common identity as Muslims; all claim an affiliation to Islam.
Yet what is Islam? You will find that for many, it is revealed religion-dogmatic and scriptural, for others, a form of identity politics, and for some a cultural affiliation. Islam has meant many different things to many different people. And how could we expect anything less? The ‘Muslim World’ consists of almost a quarter of the world’s population, spanning across the Middle East, South and Central Asia, Africa, and many diverse communities in Europe and North America. The diversity is just as stark when viewed historically, as ‘Muslim’ Civilization seems to accommodate pre-modern empires as dissimilar as the Abbasids, Mughals, and Ottomans. What we call ‘Islam’ contains multitudes, and in some cases blunt contradictions, enough to make a totalizing definition of Islam absurdly difficult.
Edward Said, the renowned public intellectual, probably had this problem in mind when he once remarked, that barely anything ‘intelligible, useful, or accurate’ can be said about Islam. That’s because the problem of definition begins the moment we reify, in other words, the moment Islam becomes a person or thing. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear academics, apologists, and pundits pronounce “Islam says…” or that “according to Islam…” We spend precious energy on debates about what’s wrong with Islam, with curious formulations such as “Islam” is peace or that “Islam” promotes violence. For someone so quotable, it is astonishing that no one has ever managed to speak to Islam, or even caught glimpse of Islam walking across the street.
That is because Islam per se does not exist, Muslims do. When we personify abstractions like this, we obfuscate the real actors and the role of human agency. Islam is not a noun, but a verb. Islam is primarily something one does, and these practices, intentions, and attitudes engender a certain experience of the world.
As for what Islam is, it is a religion of peace and a religion of violence. Islam empowers women, it also oppresses them. Islam produces fanaticism, and provokes freethinking. Islam is hostile to art, and liberates artistic expression. Islam rejects democracy, and embodies the most democratic and egalitarian ethos. Islam breeds sectarianism, and is the future of plural and cosmopolitan culture. Islam undermines wellbeing, and is the unceasing source of happiness and at the core of living the good life.
The point here is not to further muddy the waters but to restore the humanity of a faith. It is driven by real persons, not personified abstractions. Muslims are not passive recipients of some static and unchanging doctrine, even if we say so (or more precisely, because we say so). Islam is complex and contradictory, because it is human. What we call Islam is a mass deposit of diverse cultural, political, social, and spiritual expressions that give form and substance to particular human experiences. Some purely secular, others profoundly sacred.
The word Islam in Arabic refers to the act of submission, denoting the personal acceptance of godly ideals, the resignation of the ego, an entering into God’s peace in the act of surrender. In this sense, it describes an action, an occurrence, a state of being. Any religious language or behavior, if it is to convey anything, must give expression to, or drive towards, this devotional communion with something sacred.
The grand premise of religion, is that the mysterious reality we live in has meaning that points beyond itself. The consciousness of presence, wholly other and ineffable, that reverberates through all things, pervades the entire life of our ancestors. Although modern life does not as much accommodate this sense of the sacred, it has not entirely disappeared. To come to the roots of Muslim tradition is necessarily to come back to the primary ground of that experience.
Islamic scripture and practice are filled with clusters of metaphors like emerging from “darkness into light”, of “journeying on the straight path”, and following “signs on the horizon”. Religious imagery such as these are pregnant with feeling — feelings of vulnerability and reverence, of hope and trust. The point is not that Muslims pray, fast, or journey to mecca, but that there is an emotional life to Muslim ritual, elusive and personal, but at the core of the tradition. The point here is not to arrive at a tidier concept of what Islam is, but to shift our awareness to what it means to be Muslim, and like good poetry, to find the words most true to that experience. We must return to the sense and sensibility of Muslim experience.
