I like to think of my complicated relationship with religion
as being informed by both my quarrels with its theology and also with its
social manifestation. When adhered to faithfully, there is an undeniable
relegation of women to a passive (if not secondary) status. Where I do find
meaning in religion is in its instrumentalization as a call to action. During
my religious education, I remember the explicit discouragement of living the
life of a recluse. Retiring from society, and being unbothered about what ails
your fellow citizens was considered inherently unislamic.
The privilege of disengagement is obviously something only
afforded to the more well-off sections of society. Islam, as a religion born from
a call to action, makes sense as one refusing to endorse such disengagement.
Prayer, to the believer, is as much about standing up to injustice as it is prostrating
before God. There is, of course, the story of Abu Dharr expressing shock that a
man who finds himself hungry does not immediately take up arms against the
society that leaves him to this fate. Ali Shariati drew lessons from that; an
important part of being Muslim to him was to be able to respond to injustice
with action. A thread of liberation theology is visible there. If you pull at
it, you might end up in the present day and able to understand why someone
would start a losing war against one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries
in response to their colonial project.
Of course, it is just as possible (if not easier), to instrumentalize
religion as a form of social control. Its historical function has been to
maintain social order. Individual behaviour is controlled and kept in place –
for the most part – at the site of the family. Religion continues to be an
incredibly potent tool to that end. Its revolutionary potential and ability to
move a people to incredible bravery in the face of injustice has historically
also given way to the imposition of an unjust world order that instrumentalizes
(or at least hides behind) religion to justify it. It is, I believe, reasonable
to maintain that no part of this instrumentalization is inherent to Islam,
but a result of the material conditions and the deliberate intentions of the
actors who got to wield the religion at particular historical moments. As a
wise man once said, men do make their own history, “under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past.”
