How Misinterpretation of Shariah Law Birthed Boko Haram
In the Arabic language, the name of Boko Haram means The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad (Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad). The Nigeria's terrorist network fights with "sinful" Westernization, seeking to establish a "pure" Islamic state ruled by Shariah law.
Many traditional Muslim communities (Nigeria's Chief Sultan, the grand muftis of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the leading Islamic universities, main Islamic bodies in the UK and across America) have distanced themselves from Boko Haram, condemning its violent methods and distorted views on Islam.
Maryam Sakeenah, a Lahore, Pakistan-based writer, social worker, teacher and columnist, has penned an article entitled The Shariah's Lost Soul: Boko Haram and the Crisis of Authority in the Muslim World. In her work, Ms. Sakeenah tries to show how misinterpretation of the principles of Islam and lack of an adequate "authority" in the Muslim world led to emersion of "random groups" that set their own vision of Shariah law to justify chaos and violence they spread in the world.
According to the research made in 2013 by the United States'-based think tank PEW Research Centre, the majority of world Muslims strive to make Shariah law the official law in their respective countries and would like it to shape both their personal lives and politics.
Ms. Sakeenah explains that this desire is fuelled by the so-called "Muslim collective imagination," the nostalgia of a "bygone glory" of the pre-colonial days when the Islamic State flourished and ruled over continents for centuries.
The absence of Shariah law has caused the "decadence in post-colonial Muslim societies" which is further intensified by the"oppression, tyranny and the systematic suppression of religious aspirations by corrupt secular regimes."
Ms. Sakeenah then notes how the expression "Shariah law" and anything Muslim-related is today often associated with fear. This "irrational" fear, she says, is used by "xenophobes, racists and supremacists" who "resent multiculturalism and are uncomfortable with diversity" - but also by extremist groups exploiting the demand for Shariah law while "vying for political control and power" and employing "violent, attention-seeking tactics," like Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Al Shabbab in Somalia, the Taliban in Pakistan, among many others.
By instilling "simplified, reductionist stereotypes of Islam and Muslims," the groups are complicating the task of peacemakers, healers and arbiters engaged in toning down the polarization between Islam and "the West."
Many details of Islamic law, Ms. Sakeenah says, "were neither revealed laws nor stipulated as universal, absolute unalterable laws by divine will" but rather "are rooted in cultural context". The fanaticism "for restoring the letter of the Shariah in corrupt and decadent Muslim societies" can be explained by the inability of contemporary Muslim jurisprudence to put the spirit at the core of the letter of the law and to make Muslims understand that the law exists to protect the essential values.
It is the crisis of authority in the Muslim world due to which random groups pining for the return of Muslim glory make bold claims as to what constitutes Shariah law and give their own misconstrued versions tracing them back to sacred texts or early Muslim culture.
Those who got together to condemn Boko Haram’s actions as un-Islamic must also with a single voice present a blueprint of Islamic law that is relevant, practical and applicable today, in tune with contemporary cultural and socio political context. It is a long haul, but unless such a juristic magnum opus is initiated, twisted, grotesque and soulless versions of ‘Shariah’ will keep haunting us like a spectre. Authority as to who interprets religious law and how has to be won back.
If the ethical spirit of Muslim law is not reinstated, if the textual bases for inhuman, brutal and violent practices not refuted, routine condemnations from Islam’s defenders will serve no more than as rhetorical generalisations.
Source: Legit.ng
