Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives

Only One Is Holy

C. Carvalhaes, C. Carvalhaes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137508270
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars from different fields of knowledge and many places across the globe to introduce/expand the dialogue between the field of liturgy and postcolonial/decolonial thinking. Connecting main themes in both fields, this book shows what is at stake in this dialectical scholarship.

Part I

Muslim And Jewish Perspectives

1

Returning to the One: Postcolonial Muslim Liturgy

Sophia Rose Arjana

Introduction

The “post” in postcolonial signifies a hope more than a reality. It is, in the words of Anne McClintock, a move that is “prematurely celebratory.”¹ For example, the term “postcolonial” is often used to describe the southern regions of the Americas, despite the fact that the United States has invaded Latin America more than one hundred times over the last hundred years.² Anyone living in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places occupied or invaded by military forces would contest the notion that colonialism is a relic of the past. So, why use “postcolonial” at all?

The organization of history in terms of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial is emblematic of the power that the West’s myth of progress has on our imagination. It is a modern vision of history imbedded in the Enlightenment notion of evolution and progress.³ This notion of human advancement is frequently employed in discourse surrounding Muslims, framing them as premodern and medieval or progressive, liberal, and modern. Muslims who don’t agree with neoliberal US policies are characterized as stuck in time—individuals literally suspended and incapable of moving. Muslims who identify with the imperialist aims of the United States and other world powers include some of the liberals and progressives who unequivocally make a distinction between themselves and their coreligionists, stating “I am not like them. I am advanced. I am modern.” For the most part, these statements have no malicious intention, but such words alienate Muslims—placing them in a different time than “moderns” occupy.

Even in serious academic engagements, intellectuals have a tendency to rely on antiquated ideas of a progressive West and developmentally arrested East. In a 1991 interview the late Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski described Islam as being in “slumber,” asleep at the wheel.⁴

According to this view, to be a good Muslim one has to change because Islam is fundamentally broken.⁵ The consequences of this position are quite serious—it assigns fault not to the articulation of Islam but to the very foundations of the tradition. For Muslims who believe in the holiness of the Qur’an and the sanctity of the Sunna (the Prophet’s actions and words), this is untenable. So-called traditionalists may be among the most “liberal” Muslims. Under the Orientalist rubric established for Islam, Muslims who cling to “traditionalism” are premodern (sometimes called “medieval”), while “progressive” Muslims are seen as choosing modernity. However, even this is a false dichotomy. Modernity is a condition, not a choice.⁶ None of us is free to choose another way because, in the words of Talal Asad, the crushing authoritarianism associated with its systems (liberalism, secularism, and so forth) extinguishes all other possibilities.⁷

As indicated above, the myth of progress shapes the conversation surrounding Islamic “reform” including the debates surrounding liturgy.⁸ In this volume of reflections on postcolonial liturgy, Christianity is the larger focus. In this chapter, I am interested in proposing three central questions surrounding Islam and postcolonial liturgy. First, what exactly is a postcolonial Muslim? This question can be answered by turning to a general description of postcolonialism, supplementing it with the theological concerns that are distinct to Muslims. Second, how do we describe the commitments that postcolonial Muslims are engaged in? Is this a reformation or a renaissance? Much of the discourse is focused on the idea of reform, a concept that suggests something has to be amended or changed. As I have argued, this puts Muslims in a very difficult position. Last, what is the vision of the postcolonial, conscious Islam that is expressed in this shift? Here, special attention is placed on commitments related to gender and sexuality due to the powerful shifts taking place in North American Muslim communities surrounding the participation of women and gender-queers in liturgy, specifically in congregational leadership. I will argue that the growing visibility of these voices is found not in the modern project of textual criticism but in theological commitments formulated in the earliest years of Islam, expressed both in the revelations set forth in the Holy Qur’an and in the spirit of the Prophet.

Postcolonial, Us-American, and Muslim

“Postcolonial” is a contested term. For the purposes of this piece, the characteristics outlined by Michael Jagessar and Stephen Burns are a good starting point. These include the “affirmation of the equal dignity of human beings,” “exposure of imperial dynamics at play in culture and politics, unreflective everyday practices as well as carefully and intentionally constructed policies,” and “celebration of subaltern wisdom, creativity and resistance to dominant supposed ‘norms.’”⁹ To get us to a definition of the postcolonial Muslim, I propose the following definition of Muslim: One who believes in the unity of creation (tawhid) through the one God (Allah), believes in the message of the Muhammad (PBUH) and other prophets (nabiyyun/anbiya), and self-identifies as a Muslim, regardless of any objections posed by his or her coreligionists.

A postcolonial Muslim, then, is an individual who is mindful of the colonial past and realistic about the imperialist present. The immediate future is bleak, but Inshallah (God willing), humankind will heed the messages in the words of the line of prophets beginning with Adam and ending with Muhammad. Muslims often speak of the poor and abandoned members of society, particularly widows and orphans. The latter hold a special status in Islamic law, due in some part to the Prophet’s experience as an orphan. “Throughout the hardships of his life, Muhammad of course remained under the protection of the One, his Rabb, his Educator.”¹⁰ His experience as an orphan, although difficult, was marked with God’s mercy and compassion, qualities all Muslims are encouraged to practice.

Living as a postcolonial North American Muslim entails a type of resignation about the world in which we live, a world marked by crimes at home and abroad, what Cornel West describes—in the US context—as an imperial, moral, and spiritual catastrophe, seen in the “hellish conditions” the poor live under and the runaway militarism observed abroad.¹¹ This resignation does not, however, entail passivity. The postcolonial Muslim has no delusions about living in a postcolonial, post-racial, or post-military-industrial-establishment state—an awareness that is both theological and political. At the same time, the postcolonial Muslim exercises criticism in an effort to “rethink, transform, relocate, or reclaim” what has been perverted.¹²

Regardless of their sectarian leanings, Muslims from across the spectrum—intellectuals, journalists, artists, clerics, and others—use a language that is postcolonial, often solely focused on social justice.¹³ Omid Safi, a religious scholar who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written extensively about state violence, white supremacy, and social justice, problems situated in American empire and capitalism. In Safi’s articulation of Islam, the example of the Prophet must be regained and committed to anew. “For me, Muhammad represents the completion of the possibilities available to us as human beings, not because he is superhuman, but precisely because he embodies the meaning of what it means to be fully human.”¹⁴ The Prophet is, after all, the best of us. In Qur’an 9:128, he is described as ra’uf and rahim—kind and merciful—two of the asmah al-husna (99 names of God).¹⁵ It is only through the conscious practice of his example that we can be holy.

Postcolonial Islam: Reform, Reversion, and Renaissance

Islamic liturgical rituals are embedded with all sorts of interesting power dynamics involving race, ethnicity, age, gender, and sexuality. The discourse surrounding “progressive” Islam reflects a number of the complications that concern the framing of these Muslim voices, including the exclusion of “traditional” voices. The premodern (“bad”) Muslim is a popular character in the West’s treasure chest of tropes about Islam. He (and more rarely, she) is commonly featured in the discourse surrounding an “Islamic reformation,” an idea reflective of the West’s own religious genealogy, which is focused on the idea of progress. The post-Reformation view of religion as evolutionary has been a popular approach in both the academic study of religion as well as in colonial programs related to these intellectual pursuits.¹⁶ It is such an integral part of the Western consciousness that it is difficult to imagine an alternative, a point Dubuisson argues here: “Since this notion is intrinsically linked to all the philosophies, complementary or competing, that have been invented in the West, the West cannot, at the risk of its own disintegration, do without it, because these global conceptions would then decompose into scattered or juxtaposed fragments.”¹⁷

The political implications of this view are often expressed in the worship of secularism, which is readily presented as a solution to the world’s ills, especially those identified with religion. The anthropology of secularism informs the conversation surrounding Islamic liturgical reform. Secular normativity, as established in Europe and North America, forms the foundation for academic discussions related to the reshaping of Islam, which, as a newer religion, needs to be pushed ahead—by neoliberal policies and friendly Muslims—so that it is in line with the rest of modernity.¹⁸ Islamic liturgy, like most subjects related to Islam, is presented as premodern, backward, and in dire need of reform.

The myth of progress constructs Islam as a modification of the Jewish and Christian traditions—the final installment of a three-part program that seeks to complete the messages voiced by earlier prophets such as Abraham (Ibrahim) and Jesus (Isa). It is true that the Qur’an voices a critique of its Abrahamic relatives, but the critique is directed toward communities seen as straying from tawhid—the Oneness of God and all existence.¹⁹ Islam’s critiques of its religious ances...