Revisiting the relationship between culture and Islam

Auwais Rafudeen

It is refreshing to observe that there is a greater appreciation of a community’s peculiar cultural traits than was the case in much of the 20^th century Muslim world. Influential quarters had previously looked upon cultural practices as unnecessary accretions, as barnacles that needed to be scrubbed off in order to restore “true Islam”.

So they would deem, for example, the Cape custom of visiting the “kramats” prior to undertaking the Hajj as, at best tolerable, at worst a “bidah”, a custom that added no religious value to this particular obligation. Or they would view the local flavourings injected into weddings, name-givings and other celebrations, including Eid, as superfluous, as not located in the Sunnah, as irritants or even obstructions to the true practice of Islam.

The contemporary roots of such attitudes can be located with various anti cultural paradigms of Islamic thinking that emerged in the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries. These paradigms can be loosely termed the Islamic revivalist (Islamist), the literalist and the modernist. The Islamist paradigm was initially influenced by revivalist Sufi trends of the time. These trends, characteristic of orders such as the Sanusiyyah and Tijanniyah, sought to bring Muslims back to a more literal application of the Quran and Sunnah, and they were antithetical to cultural phenomena that obstructed such an application. While much of later Islamism was to become suspicious or hostile to Sufism to greater of lesser degrees, the theme of “back to the Quran and Sunnah” was to become the hallmark of its thought. The literalists found their roots in 18^th century Wahabism, and were far more dogmatic in their rejection of cultural “additions” and in confining the Quran and Sunnah to their outward meanings. Originally marginal in the pre-20^th century Islamic world, Saudi state support coupled with the oil boom led to a global proliferation of this ideology particularly through returning ‘ulama from various parts of the Muslim world who had studied in that country and were inducted into this thinking, again to varying extents. And a small but strategic group of modernists who wished Muslims to pursue progress, resonating significantly with the Western definition of this term, found Muslim culture antithetical to that progress.

This scrutinization of the relationship between culture and religion was in the context of colonialism and the Muslim world’s underdevelopment vis-à-vis the West. Muslims were desperately seeking solutions to their deplorable political state leading to intense self-analysis. It appeared to many of these early scholars that Muslims were following their religion as a cultural formality, that there was no distinction between the essential (the rules of the religions) and the non- essential (cultural practices), and that indeed often the non-essential was adhered to but the essential not! Such an analysis intensified in the course of the twentieth century through Islamist thinkers such as Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi and Imam Hasan al-Banna, the movements they inspired such as the Jamaat –e-Islami and the Ikhwan ul Muslimin, ‘ulama of revivalist Sufi institutions such as the Deoband seminary in India, ‘ulama inspired by Wahabism, and intellectuals who saw cultural appendages as responsible for Muslim backwardness and underdevelopment.

This hotchpotch of thinkers and movements were not unchallenged. This was to be expected: they had not only taken on the cultural practices, but also the ‘ulama and Sufi shaykhs who had validated such phenomena as acceptable and even laudatory aspects of the religion. These ‘ulama were able to advance a cogent defence of many practices and customs on the basis of Islamic law and maintained their grip on mass religion in the Muslim world. The output and the influence of the Bareilly ‘ulama in India is a significant example in this regard and illustrative of many other areas in the Muslim world. However, for various reasons, such as growing urbanization, the oil boom, the growth of “secular” studies and new organizational techniques the public face of the religion was changing. A new breed of Muslims, among both professionals and ‘ulama, resonated with this new “anti-cultural” shift. And they became significant spokespersons for this perspective.

Two things have to be conceded: first, there were genuine problems of the sort noted above in the Muslim world. In fact, even the ‘ulama sympathetic to cultural practices often pointed to the need to reawaken the Shariah and reorder priorities (the obligatory, the sunnah, and then culture). Secondly, Islam has an in-built restorative spirit, that comes to the fore when the spirit of the religion appears to have been lost. There is an inevitable “clean-up”- one foreseen by the Holy Prophet when he spoke of a religious renewer (mujaddid) that would appear in every century.

The anti-cultural turn in Islamic thinking could potentially be seen as a marker of such renewal. And no doubt these paradigms helped maintain and restore countless individual relationships with Allah- relationships that could otherwise have been lost to atheism and agnosticism, and at a societal level helped shaped major contemporary Islamic discourses with regard to knowledge, law and finance. The Islamic banking phenomenon, for example, is largely a product of Islamic revivalist thinking.

But the anti-cultural paradigms went self-consciously beyond tajid to islah (reform), seeking to reshape elements of the religion that were in perfect conformity with the Shariah. They attacked notions such as intercession, the homage to the awliyah, the celebration of the Holy Prophet’s birthday etc- all of which have a pedigree in the canons of Muslim law, facts which were ably pointed out by their adversaries. Moreover, there appears not to have been sufficient appreciation and understanding of the concept of ‘urf(custom)- a concept that generally legitimizes the customary practices and cultural habits of people as long as these are not in clear conflict with the Shariah. In fact, and more generally, anti-culturalists failed to fully appreciate the complexities of Islamic law- with regard to its sources and application- in their espousing of a literal approach to the Quran and Sunnah. But most tellingly, they at best regard cultural practices as tolerable whereas from the pro-cultural platform they are seen as the heart of the religion. This is a point that needs some elaboration.

At a surface level cultural practices form society’s protective layer. The maintenance of cultural rituals, even when these are merely formal, allow individuals to keep in touch with the mores and values of that society. So a visit to a saint’s tomb or attendance of a Mawlid by those who are not especially religious otherwise should not be scoffed at. Such practices maintain contact with the religion for those who otherwise may have had none at all. In fact, it can be argued that the endorsement of such practices by many of the ‘ulama is precisely so that even those on the margins have outlets for religious expression. In fact, many of these ‘ulama see such practices as ways by which the marginal will be gradually drawn into acting upon the central tenets of the religion. These ‘ulama are acutely conscious that gradualism is part of the religion’s ethos: religious teachings cannot imposed upon an individual but has to make allowance for human nature and differing spiritual temperaments and capacities.

But at a deeper level cultural practices can be seen as the very culmination of these teachings, as the very heart of the religion. The successful result of these teachings, after all, is the manifestation of beauty, love, respect and humility in both the individual and in society as a whole. Such qualities tend to be reflected in the profound etiquette (adab) associated with cultural practices. In fact, culture is all about etiquette and acting with refinement, both towards one’s self and to others. So, for instance, in a nikah the practice of calling on more than the number of witnesses than is strictly required by the Shariah is in order to honour and respect to all branches of the family and not to hurt anybody by leaving them “out”. Such etiquette beautifies the Shariah, strengthening family and community bonds- bonds incontestably promoted by the religion. Similarly, the dignity and joy associated with birth of the Holy Prophet, as communicated in the central teachings of Islam, finds palpable expression in the rituals and recitals of the Mawlid ceremonies. The Mawlid, in an important sense, “completes” the feelings of love and respect for the Holy Prophet that follow from the central teachings of Islam. It is the arena which ensures that proper regard of the exalted status of the Prophet, upon whom be peace, will be diffused through society. And to come back to our original example: visiting the “kramats” is a profound manifestation of respect and humility before Allah, humbling oneself before Him by giving proper recognition to those whom He honours and loves, and hoping by this recognition that one too is admitted into Allah’s Favour. And this is, of course, the ultimate objective of our existence.

Cultural practices, far from being an interesting aside to Islam or, worse, alien to true Islam, is in fact at the very heart of the religion. This does not mean, of course, that one simply validates any cultural practice- clearly restoration was needed to counter any enervating or distorting effects of practices. But all too often in contemporary public Muslim discourse the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater and the role of culture is fundamentally misunderstood.