And we thought it was long bygone. But “the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” (The Plague, Albert Camus)
Fatwa, the disrupter of public discourse, is back. It flourished during the Secular Raj, bullied institutions and individuals, and held the political system to ransom. Governments and parties trembled before it, doing everything in their power to appease the monster, only ṭo be devoured of their vitality and credibility. The Age of Fatwa seems to be back. It was never truly gone—just lying low—and is now rearing its head again.
The star cricketer Mohammad Shami is playing for his country, India. And it’s Ramzan, the month of fasting for Muslims. The pious observe the fast, and even the not-so-pious do, for this rite is one of the most definitive markers of community identity, and also a tool for forcing conformism—the rights of the community over the individual. The one not fasting is a black sheep, an outcast, a deviant—if not an outright traitor to the community, its ethos, and identity. And so, Shami is labelled a “sinner” and a “criminal” for consuming an energy drink during India’s match with Australia in the Champions Trophy semi-final. Muslim social media has been awash with outrage, and a cleric articulated this sentiment in a video statement, using antediluvian religious terminology of curse and castigation.
Also read: Muslim clerics strongly defend Shami after pacer is labelled ‘criminal’ on TV for not observing roza
Catching Shami in Sharia net
Such piety policing is not a one-off thing. It’s a thought system, a politics, and an ideology designed to discipline the independent, the free-willed, and the non-conformist. Earlier, the tennis ace Sania Mirza was condemned for wearing the attire prescribed for women players. She was piety-shamed for the skirts, which were said to be incompatible with “Islamic dressing”.
The civilised idea that religion is a personal matter seems to matter little in this discourse, which makes the individual Muslim a captive to the clergy and community—both of whom can harangue and chastise the individual for the supposed infringement of “community standards”. As I said, the prerogative to sit in judgement on an individual’s conduct and publicly malign them is not a stray occurrence. It emanates from a deep time warp of theological authoritarianism—a kind of totalitarianism that brings every sphere of human activity, even sports, under the purview of religion, viewing every tiny action through the lens of sin and virtue. Look at the formulation: “Shariat ke katghare mein khade hain” (he is standing in the dock of Sharia). The Muslim needs freedom from this panoptic surveillance of religious tyranny.
Having said that, I would definitely examine the merits of the purported religious issue if the brouhaha had actually been about religion, ritual, piety, and spirituality. It suffices to say that the Quran clearly states in Surah Baqarah (2:184-185) that those who are on a journey are exempted from fasting during Ramzan. Going by how journey and sojourn are defined in Sharia, Shami was indeed on a journey, attending to his professional duty. But the matter doesn’t end with this clincher, for it’s less about religion and more about power theology and the ideology of confrontation that it engenders.
So, let’s begin at the beginning. Cricket, Indian Muslim, and Pakistan—it’s a complex set. It’s helluva messy, to say the least. Religious sentiment, political ideology, and sporting attitude intertwine in a tangled manner. The sooner this fact is acknowledged and the quandary is resolved, the better.
For now, let’s ask the question: why did Pakistan, the Islamic Republic, host the ICC Champions Trophy during Ramzan, and why did Dubai, a Muslim emirate, agree to co-host all of India’s matches? And what about the participation of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the fast Talibanising Bangladesh? It’s not rocket science to understand that most players from these three Islamic countries wouldn’t be fasting during matches—if they did, they would compromise their performance and do a disservice to their respective countries. Is it any wonder that neither the clergy nor the techno-Islamist-infested social media of these countries has problematised the issue in the way it’s being done in secular India?
Also read: TV channels have created another controversy for TRP. This time, target is Mohammad Shami
Indian Muslim or Muslim Indian?
Isn’t it also surprising that the same Indian Muslims excoriating Shami are least bothered about why an Islamic country held the tournament during Ramzan, or whether the players from these countries were fasting? In their much-flaunted worldview, Islam transcends national boundaries, so they feel entitled to judge the conduct of all Muslims of the world. Did they ever wonder whether the Tablighi players of Pakistan—the proselytisers who use cricket to propagate Islam, who perform Namaz on the ground, and who can’t string a sentence without interspersing it with Islamic invocations such as Alhamdulillah and Mashallah—have been observing the fast or not? They know the answer, and therefore, prudently desist from asking such uncomfortable questions,
But then, why do they get so worked up if a Muslim player in the Indian team isn’t fasting? Is it because, as an Indian Muslim, he should have kept his religious duty above the national one? The community’s narrative has been set in a way as to make it incumbent upon the individual to keep the community’s interest above the country’s, and observe the code of conformism and solidarity. If an individual is seen to be infringing on the code, he is slandered as a Sarkari Musalman, that is, a traitor to the community.
To keep the Muslim community as a separate entity from the rest of the country, the narrative makers, inspired by power theology, formulated a question they neither had the intellect nor the integrity to answer honestly and convincingly: Is the Indian Muslim first an Indian or a Muslim? Saying “Indian first” was ideologically impossible, and saying “Muslim first” was politically inconvenient. Therefore, they took recourse to disingenuous theories about the plurality of identities. But such equivocation could only go so far. Eventually, the simmering sentiment finds a vent in the booing of a fellow Muslim perceived to have broken ranks. And what better way to restrain him than through the ex cathedra pronouncement of a fatwa? There is no way to resist it except with a counter-fatwa, which would drag things further into the abyss of religious rule and the de-citizening of Indian Muslims.
Therefore, it’s imperative that we establish a legal framework to dissuade the loose cannon ulema from indiscriminate fatwa firing. The Indian Muslims need freedom from the ulema, the ideologues of power theology, and the preachers of political separatism. The real question is whether the government will take the necessary reformative steps to conduce this freedom.
Ibn Khaldun Bharati is a student of Islam, and looks at Islamic history from an Indian perspective. He tweets @IbnKhaldunIndic. Views are personal.
Editor’s note: We know the writer well and only allow pseudonyms when we do so.
This article is studded with some incontrovertible facts. But instead of getting to grips with them and also ascertaining how the majority of the faithful looks at them, people tend to point the finger of suspicion at something or somebody else. This itself goes to show how intractable and seemingly unresolvable the problem is. Ibn Khaldun Bharati is the thinking person’s guy. He is the kind of thinker who raises questions that few would have the nerve to confront.
The moment you break free from the ulema, you realise the illogical hollowness of faith itself when not subservient to its clergy. Shuddhi/Gharwapsi follows as a natural corollary.
Why do y’all take these so called ulemas seriously? Just ignore them and move on. The real imams and muftis worry about socio economic problems, income disparity, lack of healthcare, lack of affordable education, etc.
If news outlets stop reporting about these stupid fatwas, these fake ulemas wouldn’t be relevant anymore.
The ulema who ostracised Shami, maybe he doesn’t know that Shami and every Muslim has the privilege to fast after Ramadan in compensation if they weren’t able to fast during Ramadan. Authentic Ahadith are available to everyone as evidence. Anyone can easily google for the same. Maybe the ulema was paid by the TV channel to say this. The article written by Ibn Whatever reeks of a biased man. It’s rooted in appeasement to the current environment in country.