Popular Religion and the Application of Sharia

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

How many people, over the years, have asked me whether I pray or not? A great many, too many to count. And how many people have asked me whether I keep my appointments? Zero. No one has ever asked me whether I honor the commitments I make to myself. And how many people have asked her when she started wearing the headscarf? A great many. And how many have asked her whether she takes part in jihad against the occupation? No one has asked her that. And how many have asked him about his fasting? Many. And how many have asked him about his diligence in pursuing scientific progress? No one. How many people have asked them about performing prayer in congregation? Many. And how many have asked them whether they lie? No one has asked them that.

If we were to go around the Arab homeland and poll people, we would expect a large majority to express support for establishing an Islamic system of government, and this is quite clear in the results of elections held in some Arab countries. But which system are they talking about? What is the Islamic system they want? Is it the system that encompasses the questions mentioned above, or the one that encompasses the questions that are never asked?

Popular religion

What I mean by “popular religion” is that submissive religion, confined to certain religious rites and certain outward personal behaviors concerning what is forbidden and what is forbidden. It is a form of religiosity close to monasticism and clericalism, one deeply concerned with the unseen, with the torment of the grave, the horrors of Judgment Day, and supplications, without ever engaging with the practical, applied substance of religious teachings. It is a religion closer to submission (istislam) than to Islam, in that submission means abjection, subjugation, and surrender, whereas Islam means trust and reassurance. Note that traditional religious teaching tells people that Islam is submission to God, glorified and exalted, and subjugation to His commands, whereas the word “Islam” is not derived from istaslama (to submit) but from aslama, and islamization (aslama) means that a person entrusts himself to God — that is, that he trusts God and is reassured that the divine teachings will lead him to good and righteousness. The word istislam (submission) negates the individual’s will, on the premise that everything happens by God’s will, and God’s will is executed regardless; whereas the word aslama means the reassurance that an individual’s will, at peace with the heavenly teachings, will accomplish what that individual seeks to accomplish.

For this reason, popular religion teaches abjection, on the premise that God, glorified be He, intervenes in everything, and that His will extends over every activity, so that the individual comes to believe that all his efforts are ultimately meaningless, since the outcome results from a will that has already predetermined it. Such a religion suits the lazy, the sanctimonious, and those who imagine that the divine will shall intervene, in the end, on their behalf. Note that the divine will does not intervene on behalf of the lazy, the dependent, the cowardly, or the beggars.

Popular religion concerns itself with various matters relating to questions of permitted and forbidden, dominated by clericalism and monasticism rather than by the practical work of social construction that might lead to the establishment of the Islamic nation. These questions tend to concentrate on the following:

Women — their going out, their dress, their work, and their various movements, from their smiling to their shaking hands with men, to the rules governing their dealings with their husbands and unmarriageable male relatives, to their participation in public work;

Religious rites, especially prayer and fasting, without focus on zakat, which is considered the fundamental pillar of social construction — this is in addition to the complication of how the rites are to be performed, through minute detail in the rulings on ablution, pilgrimage, prayer, fasting, and so on;

The quantities of good deeds an individual can accrue, particularly through ritual acts, supplications, and recitation of litanies;

The horrors of Judgment Day and the torments of the grave, and lengthy elaboration on descriptions of Paradise and Hellfire and on unseen matters that a human being can never settle with certainty.

Practical religion

The Islamic religion is not a clerical or monastic religion; it is a practical religion resting essentially on these pillars: knowledge, work, jihad in all its civil, psychological, internal, and external forms, and ethics as the unifying vessel, or the comprehensive pillar containing all the others within it. This is the religion that establishes an Islamic nation driven toward progress, construction, and giving.

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…struggle against the self and struggle against the enemy, and a vast abundance of verses on ethics and on dealing with others, whether they are close or distant, whether they share one’s own religion or another, whether they are of one’s own people or of other peoples.

Knowledge, work, jihad, and ethics establish a nation from which a strong state can emerge, one that upholds justice among people — and this is what Islamic movements must focus on in their pursuit of the nation’s elevation. The priority in religion is knowledge, and the establishment of first-rate scientific and educational institutions that embrace scientific thinking and scientific research; and the entrenchment of concepts such as truth, commitment, the public good, bearing responsibility, fulfilling trust, social construction, economic and social development; and the entrenchment of concepts such as collective work and mutual cooperation, diligence in work, opening intellectual horizons before people, and developing concepts of freedom that provide the sound environment for human construction. These pillars and concepts are what establish justice, and what make Islamic movements a model for others, even those who are not Muslim.

Practical religion rests on taqwa (God-consciousness), which has three levels. The first is ritual taqwa, which means performing the rites prescribed by Islam; this is the lowest level. These rites derive their value not from themselves but from their practical repercussions on the ground. That is, they aim to remind a person continuously to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and they ultimately have no value if they do not become a source of social discipline for the person. The second level is social taqwa, which means a person undertaking the activities necessary to improve the conditions of the society he lives in, and developing the environment he interacts with. A person of social taqwa does not leave the street in front of his house filthy, and does not refrain from contributing to the education expenses of a gifted student in financial need. The third level is constructive taqwa, mastered by only a small number of scholars and experts capable of building the nation. This form of taqwa is possessed by only a few, because of its demanding scientific, intellectual, and logical requirements, and a great trust rests on their shoulders, one the general public helps them carry out.

Most Muslims think that taqwa means lingering in mosques, fasting excessively, carrying prayer beads, and multiplying supplications. This is a taqwa that builds no nation and makes no state, and it would be better to change this concept so that it becomes a beacon for serious work, rather than remaining a clerical symbol that neither helps nor harms.

Between the popular and the practical

Popular religion does not build a state. Whether women cover their heads or not, no state will be established by that; it is working, thinking women who build states. An abundance of supplications will not build a state; rather, righteous work builds it, and righteous work is the true supplication, not merely raising one’s palms to the sky. Appealing to righteous saints for help changes nothing; rather, it is appealing to one’s own muscles and staying up through the night that raises the level of production. Waiting for the Messiah will do us no good, because the Messiah will not stand with the lazy and the incapable. Dwelling at length on the torment of the grave will not push the nation forward; scientific thinking is what does that, and so on.

What is the use of closing down liquor stores if the great mass of people are drunk and drugged through spiritual escapism and flight from this worldly life and denial of its painful reality? And what is the use of theorizing against songs and music if the nation is suffering from psychological crises and moral predicaments?

Islam gives priority to educational programs that teach honesty, trustworthiness, bearing responsibility, ethical conduct, professional dealing, and social construction; it does not begin with cutting off the thief’s hand, nor does it establish the hudud punishments of killing, slaughter, and flaying.

In practical terms, most Islamic movements are off-putting, and they drive people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, away from Islam. The way they present Islam and the methods by which they put forward the Islamic idea produce the opposite of their intended results, and if they are to genuinely serve the Islamic idea and Islamic societies, they must hold fast to Islam itself, rather than to the illusions built by ignorant jurists over long years of backwardness and closed-mindedness.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الدين الشعبي وتطبيق الشريعة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.