Open Discussions / Gulf Cultural Club
Our future at the crossroads
The role of holy scriptures in public life
*Dr Laith Kubba (Quran researcher)
**Michael Pryke (Youth President of the Methodist Church)
***Dr Fouad Nahdi (Radical Middle Way)
In a world that is becoming largely dominated by Cyber culture, is there a place for God in public life? The holy scriptures remain the main source of religious jurisdiction, morality and conceptions to many communities in this ever-expanding world. How to reconcile the natural human demand for inner peace (through spirituality, human feelings and God’s invocation) with the excessive materialism promoted by the Cyber culture? Digitisation and spiritual contemplation; akin or foes?
20th August 2018
Chairman: The topic for this evening is our future at the crossroads: the role of holy scriptures in public life. As a preamble to that it is really quite interesting to note that in a world that is becoming largely dominated by Cyber culture, is there a place for God in public life? The holy scriptures remain the main source of religious jurisdiction, morality and conceptions to many communities in this ever-expanding world. How to reconcile the natural human demand for inner peace (through spirituality, human feelings and God’s invocation) with the excessive materialism promoted by the Cyber culture? Digitisation and spiritual contemplation; akin or foes?
I think really there is a more deeper thought on this, and I am sure all of you can relate to this. I have a granddaughter who is only four years old. She is more conversant with the mobile phone. She knows how to download things, where to find the pictures on that. So it is quite extraordinary how the time is being consumed by younger and younger children who are very familiar with technology. I get very frightened as soon as I get something unfamiliar on my phone. I ask is it going to blow up. But these younger kids or younger generation are well familiar with it.
But at the same time it is interesting to know that whether you are living in Bombay or Birmingham or Lahore or any other place in South America the mobile phone has become so intrusive that whether the parents teach morality or whether society teaches children to be moral and ethical with the mobile phone in hand they can down load anything.
My younger cousins living in the sub continent of Asia are watching exactly the same things as the people growing up in London or Los Angeles but there is a broader culture which has taken out, as I said earlier, the concept of spirituality. It has become more material, you can buy things on line you book your hotel on line. So where are we going with this?Tonight’s speakers are able to talk about this in a more profound manner than I have been able to express at this juncture.
Michael Pryke: When the title of this was given to me a couple of weeks ago it was in the wake of the comments made by Boris Johnson the Foreign Secretary about the burka. I am an avid reader of the Metro when I am travelling into work and I consider myself to be somewhat politically savvyso when I was thinking about the role of holy scriptures in public life and what public life means I was immediately drawn to politics. And then I decided to write the title of what I would do tonight. Why should someone of faith be concerned with politics?
The chances are that quite a lot of people would have actually thought about this – or at least have been asked about it before. There are many opportunities in public life for someone to go into politics and public life and public contentment with politics and politicians is at an all time historic low. One key driver is this view of politics is that so little is achievable in public life.
A quote that would sum this up comes from the Labour MP for Newport East, Paul Flynn, who says in his book How to be an MP: “The belief that all political careers end in failure is based on the myth that all MPs hope to become prime minister. They do not. Happiness is keeping as small a space as possible between hope and achievement and paradise is when they coincide.”
It does not paint the prettiest picture for individuals to make a difference in political life. You can either fail or massively reduce your expectations. It is understandable therefore that the choice framed in such a way that people may conclude that there is no use in being in political life and that people of faith serving in politics makes no practical difference.
A more extreme view of this would be that no good can come from politics at all and that it would be best to avoid it altogether. I would suggest that this view is in no way consistent with what the bible teaches about politics and governance. Far from teaching us to flee from the arena the scriptures show that governance can be a force for good and it is important for people of faith to make their voices heard and counted within the public sphere.
Right at the start of the bible God gives the creation mandate to Adam and Eve to go forth into the world, to be fruitful and to increase in number and to have dominion over creation. In God’s creation it was intended that mankind, which was created in the image of God, should be the stewards of creation and give glory to God through increasing fruitfulness of the planet.
To put it another way, good governance was always intended to be a part of creation whereby the will of mankind and the will of God would not be in opposition to each other but rather mankind’s will and effort would reflect God’s own will for the earth to be fruitful. Tragically it is not very long before this perfect model fails. In choosing to eat from thetree of knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve invert the relationship of the world. Rather than serving the creator, God’s creation expects God to serve them. Rather thanplacing first and foremost God’s desire for creation to be fruitful the seed of selfishness means that mankind now seeks to maximise its own personal advantage regardless of the cost to creation or to others.
We see a glimpse of this in the story of the Tower of Babel. The city of Babel was determined to build a tower that reached to the heavens so that they could make a name forthemselves – otherwise they would be scattered over the whole of the earth. The focus of gathering in one place rather than dispensing is in direct contrast to the creation mandatewhich is to bring the whole earth under good stewardship.
Moreover the efforts to make a name by reaching the heavens are exposed by that when the Lord says, the Lord will come down to the city. They could not hope by their own efforts to reach the perfect dominion of God. The story concludes with God confusing their languages and recognising if left to their own devices nothing would stand against the desires of their fallen hearts. It is with good reason that the apostle Paul would then write in his letter to the Romans: “For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected to it.”
As with much of our world, governance has fallen with mankind. Of course it would be very easy to just draw the line here and conclude that governance was good in Eden but was inherently corrupt and irredeemable to failure. Some would draw this conclusion but it would encourage the church to withdraw from the arena of governance until the return of Christ. But I would say that it is inconsistent with the whole message of scripture in which Jesus has reconciled all things to God and made us ambassadors to his kingdom.
The Old Testament scriptures speak constantly of the redeemer to come and the kingdom of Israel and King David are pictures which point to Christ’s kingdom bringing the good reign of God to creation. Though Jesus victory of the power of evil on the cross he is able to give us the great commission: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
The compassion with the creation mandate of Genesis is striking. God’s authority is reasserted and mankind is reminded of the commission to go out to the entire world. The command of going out to make disciplines while having the immediate and important application of bringing men and women to faith also has the application of bringing dominion to earth as people’s hearts from seeking their own gains to seeking the will of God.
Not only does Christ claim authority over the whole world butearthly civil authority is itself God given. In Paul’s lessons to the Colossians he writes that all things, including powers thrones and authority were created by God, through God and for God and cannot exist apart from him. For this reason Jesus was able to say when on trial before the Roman governor, Ponchos Pilot that the power he possess to put Jesus on trial would not be his unless given to you from above. Even the persecuted church was reminded in Paul’s letters to the Romans that there is no authority except that which God has established and that the civil authorities exist for their good. Peter would write the same thing in his first letter.
One frequent counter argument is to refer to the occasion in which Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees over whether Jews should pay the poll tax to Caesar. Jesus now somewhat famously replied: “Give to Caesar back that which is Caesar’s. It has been used to advocate a divergence between the sacred and the secular. It is clear that all authority including Caesar’s belongs to God.
We are reminded once more that the creation mandate is that humanity is made in the image of God and is created to govern as God would govern but has no authority save what God himself has given mankind. The conclusion of scriptures is that man is created to govern as God would govern but has no authority. Governance is not as a result of the fall but an agent for human flourishing. Like everything else in creation it is subject to the fall but being redeemed through the agency of Christ and his kingdom. Scripture does not give us a mandate to withdraw from public life but instead a model of perfect governance which was intended in creation and to which we are empowered through the indwelling spirit.
But what would this look like in practical terms? First and foremost it means that becoming involved in politics and governance, whether as a legislator, civil servant or through other political agencies, is a legitimate calling to have. That being so it means that such people need the support and prayers of their friends when they enter this area of life. They are headed into a mission field and one which is easy for the fallen nature of government to change them rather than the believer bringing change to the fallen government.
We must remember the temptation to withdraw from public life is all the more unsustainable when government does not act in our interest or we see people of faith in public life fall short. Affirming that governance itself is a good God given gift we can play a role in bringing Christ’s lordships to areas of governance is an important first step.
We must be careful to recognise that this world is still fallen. The church faced immediate persecution by the religious and civil authorities of the time so we must avoid an eschatology that fails to recognise that perfect governance will not come until God himself returns to establish his eternal kingdom.
We must be equally careful however not to presume that our efforts are powerless or in vain nor exhorted to pray to the same authorities that make their life difficult. This means that politically minded people can lead their peers to pray for the government or for the great political issues of the day.
Two instructions given by Jesus are especially helpful when we consider how to engage in public life. In both cases Jesus has given his followers a commitment and a commission and a sending out. For the people who step out into political life it is perhaps easy to be excited by the commission but natural to be fearful in practical terms especially in what to say.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus meets this concern directly and instructs his disciples that when they are brought before rulers and authority do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say for the Holy Spirit will teach you at the time to what you should say. This needs to be restricted to a church leader defending the gospel publically, to a believer who finds him or herself in public life is to be Christ’s advocate. His instructions both encourage us not to be afraid about the challenges that lie ahead reminding us that he will provide all that we need. It will also serve as a reminder of our need to depend on him.
The second instruction more explicitly recognises the challenge of stepping into an uncomfortable environment. In sending out his disciples Jesus said I am sending you out like sheep among wolves therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. This is an excellent guiding principal for Christians who face political situations which they need to act in taking leadership decisions – than politics is the act of managing the competing ambitions and aspirations of humansinvolved in that decision.
Our fallen nature means that were human factors or not to matter there is the need to keep members of your organisation happy by advocating a policy you are not personally comfortable about and to not being able to speak about everything that you are passionate about. To fallen humanity politics can be like playing a game of monopoly when one of the players is disregarding the rules. One ought to be free and fair competition can be pitched of course by the cheating playing casually appropriating money from the bank. Jesus instructions recognises that he sends us among wolves.
These two commands are held within a perfect tension. A shrewdness that means that we are alert to schemes and not so easily tripped up by them while at the same time preserving an innocence which means that we ourselves do not become wolf-like in the process. Not everyone will be called to a life in politics but everyone can support those who are in recognising the calling of good governance in God’s good gift to humanity stepping into the challenging environment of political life is far from easy and these people need more than just our prayers, and our support and encouragement that they are speaking for Christ when they go into the environment whether they are standing to be a Sabbatical officer, applying to be a member of parliament to taking an entrance test for the civil service.
With government institutions shaping more and more of everyday life it is increasingly vital that Christians are making their voice heard within the public sphere. As Baroness Cox the founder of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust and a cross bench member of the House of Lords has said: I cannot do everything but I must not do nothing.
Chairman: Indeed you made a very poignant comment quoting the Labour member of parliament. In line with that I will relate a story which has been quoted quite often. The leader of the Islamic Revolution, when he was fighting against the Shah got a visit from the head of Savak in 1963 when he was deported from Iran and told him: you are a spiritual man, a godly figure, you should be connected with God, why do you want to get involved in politics? Politics is for corrupt people who have no morality and ethics and you a man of spirituality wants to get involved in politics. And Imam Khomeini gave a reply exactly in the manner that you are relating: I want to get involved in politics so I can clean politics so that it becomes more Godly. And that is the whole battle that is taking place with the Iranian model. That is not what we are discussing this evening. It is an anathema to the global elite that there is a nation that wants to bring God’s justice on this planet and that is what is becoming challenging to the corrupt powers that be.
Dr Laith Kubba: I would like to thank the organisers for this opportunity to address you. It is always a pleasure to be prompted to put thoughts on paper on topics that are not only contemporary but challenging. Here we are in London this global capital city in August 2018 trying to gaze and look ahead in a world that is exhilarating at such a rapid speed. No one could have imagined the discoveries that are taking place now and I think the theme is especially provocative and challenging to those who have faith.
We know for sure that artificial intelligence is going to wipe off possibly a billion jobs and that machines are going to replace not only a lot of manual work but even a lot of intelligent work be it that of lawyers or Muslim clergy. A lot of people who narrate can be replaced by a robot that will give you all the narration with various degrees of certainty.
So we are heading not only towards a world that is going to be recreated and re determined. We are sensing this empowerment of us human beings on earth, on this planet. No longer are we passive the receivers of the impact of mother nature as we were 5,000 years ago. We are facing many questions. Not only is artificial intelligence going to physically define where we live and our interactions and will take away some of our powers. It will expand our knowledge. Our capacity as human beings to intervene in mother nature isexecrating rapidly because of our ability to change the DNA not only of plants to become more fruitful but even of ourselves and the impact of all this is very profound.
We are also at the boundaries of knowledge in physics, in neurology in the mind and the powers that understand ourselves and these rapid advances in science. If you just look at the exponential curve of progress that is taking place it was very steady until 100 years ago. Then electricity was discovered. Then the ability to have communication broadcasting, then the ability to have computers and then the ability to network and now we are accelerating into a field of artificial intelligence. So the stage is rapidly changing: we are discovering our powers, we are shaping our future throughscience.
Where does that put our faith and religious institutions in this rapid race? There will always be a place for religion and there is always a market for it. But will it be critical in leading or does it always have to be led and react and try to become relevant and try to catch up with what is going on?
At a very young age – 50 years ago – I started with my awareness studying hard sciences. I was very good at it. I finished my Phd at a young age, again in sciences and engineering, and I am disciplined in that field. And throughout that journey in life I have never for a day lost faith and lost connection with my belief. But there is a subtle differentiation: if you want to keep that faith and that belief I think you really need to make the differentiation between religious heritage, the religious institutions, religious narratives and between the core issues of faith that the human mind by definition yearns to.
The mind from the moment of birth is equipped to learn and very quickly we not only learn how to make tools but we learn how to think and how to verify facts from fiction and to make causation and to differentiate from association all these technical things we have in our mind and that gave us a lot of advance and through science we managed to conquer mother nature and we managed to advance.
But at the same time that science as much as it gives us insights into all sorts of areas it does not answer a set of questions and it leaves totally open as a deep human need and human call to ask those questions and to continue that journey. Three of four thousand years of human history demonstrates clearly that we are always in search for existential questions: Why are we here? Where are we heading? What is after death? Is there a power up there? Are we alone in this universe? How do we relate to everything around us? Science cannot answer those questions. It tells us a lot about evolution but cannot answer those metaphysical questions beyond mind, beyond knowledge.
Philosophers can comfort us with answers and they can give us a few things that will settle the mind, like the stomach hungry for food. You can give it any type of food to kill that thirst or hunger. Is it useful of not? That is another question but there is a deep need to fill the mind with answers to these questions. So there is a call and that call will never go irrespective of how artificial intelligence would proceed. That is a deep call and that is an intellectual call.
And in addition to the intellectual call there is a call in us equally deep because we are not robots. The cutting edge of science is trying to understand the nature of the human mind itself, let alone the nature of life which has always been the subject of science but the human mind and awareness – what is it? Is it totally physical or is it metaphysical? If we extend robots with the capacities of neuro physics, can they become self aware? Can they think about beauty? Can they have abstract meanings? Can they question like we do? I doubt it. This is pure awareness – it is not intellect.
The human mind is obviously by itself a mystery. It is the product of 14,000 years of evolution and the question – and as I said there is a need to make a differentiation between the faith that I hold to and between religious narratives, institutions, culture etc. There are serious shortcomings in the institutions of religion and religious narratives and religious interpretations. That does not mean there are serious short comings in the faith itself. We must always struggle to go beyond the awareness of our ancestors. You cannot understand the world of today with the mind of yesterday.And if you were to assume that the world itself is fixed creature and it does not change. You can change your mind but the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry do not change. Your awareness can be elevated and your level of knowledge can be elevated more or less in a similar way.
I want to go to something that accompanied human civilisation, human history on earth. It is only 10,000 years of human history we have and religion has been a permanent feature be it false, be it the work of magicians or be it real revelation. And allow me to make a distinction between two religious heritages we have on planet earth. One of them is biblical based on the Ibrahimic prophecies integrated and related. We have different books on them two or three and I will reference the Quran. It is not only what I believe in but what my journey has led me to.
And there are other books be it the Buddhist or the Hindutraditions that have many pieces of wisdom, many factious stories, many valuable human experiences in meditation. But they do not claim they have been revealed from the God or from beyond planet earth. The Ibrahamic books make that claim. So we will deal with them. I deal with them specifically. I have read the bible the old and new testament and I see the messages are more or less the same. With joy I read the old and new testament but the Quran is very distinct in its style, it is very clear in its message. Any Arabic speaker can easily get the message of the Quran but you can also follow the impact that those revealed words had on human civilisation and on human history. The impact it created. I will come to it in a minute.
But the most important question that might come today is look at the Muslims today – look especially at the Arabs who read the Quran – we do not see any positive impact. And if you were to argue that faith is relevant in leading and making the future, this future which is going to be led by science how come specifically in Arab countries it is not so. That is specifically in making the distinction between the religion, heritage narrative and institutions and between the messages.
If you wear the lens of heritage you will never get that message. If you were to wear the mind lens of contemporary human awareness, the challenges and where humanity is going on earth – if you wear that lens and you read the Quran you will find a very clear compass, a very clear map, very clear articles of faith that would become most relevant and most guiding.
Let me give one particular area. The existential views about ourselves, this human race on earth. Where did we come from and where are we heading? Science tells you about evolution so if you really want to wear only the lens of the science you can assume that we are an extension of the animal kingdom and the consequences are extremely dangerous.
We know that Hitler in part of his philosophy, part of his thinking and awareness, said we are an extension of the animal kingdom and the animal kingdom works on the selection of the fittest so it is nothing but natural that amongst human beings and amongst the different races there should be survival of the fittest. And we saw where lack of compass led. Extremely dangerous. So we need to have existential views that are relevant.
What does the Quran tell us that is in line with the bible and old and new testament about our creation? We all know the story. We are very special. In the bible it says we are created in the image of God and in the bible it says we are created with the spirit of God. When I look at this it says in the Quran that God speaks to the angles and says I will create this human and blow in him my spirit. I want you to bow to that human. They are bowing to God because God has put a touch of him in us. So there is something very divine about humans and that gives an extremely solid foundation. If somebody wantsto argue about human rights what would be more profoundthan to say than that you violate a divine soul, you are violating the dignity and the life a human being.
So that view of the divinity that we humans carry it extremely powerful and gives us an anchor on who we are. It also gives us a great sense of dignity because if God dignified us that much by making the angles bow to us when I look at myself in the mirror I say Laith respect the trust that God put in you. It also gives the same argument that is referenced in the Quran not once but many times, that says I am putting on earth my calipha, my representative, my guardian. And the angels said but this is going to create bloodshed and corruption on earth. And God says I know what you don’t. And it says that God taught Adam everything – all the names. People can interpret it differently but it is the capacity to know – the capacity to learn that made us able to represent God on earth.
There is also a very clear reference that despite that dignity, despite that very divine spirit which God put into us, despite our ability to learn we carry human weakness and frailty, a frailty that exposed itself when Satan tested us by tempting Adam and Eve in touching the apple – again metaphorically narrated in the three books. We human beings failed in front of that temptation and our journey on earth is a very long struggle, a mixture of our capacity to learn, our dignity, the spirit of God that is in us and the frailty that we have.
This will give you a view about yourself and about human kind – what are we doing on earth? We are perpetuating what God has done. One of the things that the Quran uniquely gives, that science and eastern books do not give. We need the revelation beyond science because it tells us something about the metaphysical world. It says there is a metaphysical world and there is a God. We do not see it. That is faith, I have that faith.
Second the Quran references a book. It did not say this book referencing the Quran. It said that book, no doubt about it, will guide the believers. What is that book? Other verses of the Quran tell us that this whole universe is built on the concepts of that book and all the divine books which were revealed through Moses, Ibrahim and Jesus. They are derivations from that book and the Quran asks us to read the signs in nature and the verses in these holy books to know so that we will be guided by those signs. So what we find in those books is that mother nature tells us a lot about how God created the universe.
There is a theory now in physics called the emergence theory. It is the latest theory in physics. You can easily look it up .What is the emergence theory? In essence it says that the universe started with a big bang. We do not know anything about what was before the big bang or surrounding the big bang. Or what caused the big bang. But we know that there was a big bang and then the universe of light, space, time, energy and creation. There is an emergence as if the universe is slowly revealing itself. What I learned from the Quran is that the whole of the universe is responding to the call of the absolute. And it is revealing itself. That book is demonstrating itself. And we can read how the atoms are formed and from the atoms the building blocks of the universe and the first cells and then the structure of the cells, be it a tree or be it an insect and then how humans emerged and how the eco sphere emerged. We are in charge now of creating a world, let us read the signs of that book, the universe with all the signs and let’s read what is in the holy books.
One of the things the Quran says it tells us about the absolute, God. We human beings try to bring God to our own senses, we would like to see it, we would like to bring God closer because it is difficult to really try to reach to the absolute. That is natural for human beings. But God says in the Quran there is nothing like God but God chose to describe himself with names and those are divine names. In Arabic they are usma al hosna. And every single of those names that are absolute in describing God, God asked us to have those names even though we would make them relative; part of those names are being wise, being knowledgeable, being passionate, being capable, being creative – all these 99 names we as human beings are representatives of God on earth. We should try to copy these names and act by those names. A person who has no passion in their heart has no God in his heart. A person who has no knowledge has no God. A person who has no ability has no God. You ought to expand your knowledge, your ability, your passion.
Of course I have not covered all the points but I hope I gave you a flavour of the balance of how to integrate our approach to science with our approach to God.
Chairman: Thank you for that whole concept of the whole 99 names of God. I was talking to a very close Hindu friend of mine in Dubai and he said you have 99 names. In Hindism we also have many names. One of the names of God is Lakshmimeaning money. So there are different characteristics. We also believe in one God not multiple Gods. So it is interesting that the Hindu thought is that there should be one God. Whatever names we may have in Arabic are called sifr – the characteristics of God which we human beings should also imbibe.
Dr Fuad Nahdi: This topic is something I have been working on and thinking about for the last ten years. I have not been well and I have been having a lot of time to sit and think. The whole issue we have been confronted with in modern times I come to not as a Quran researcher or as a faith leader – I have been a faith leader in the past and I have tampered with a bit of the Quran. Today I come as person from that side of life which you might call dark. I have been working as a media person for most of my life. It is the marriage that we make between the media and faith that has today been the great determinant about the role of faith in public life.
One of the biggest issues about the matter of religion and faith in public life today is the challenge that faces us all – anybody of faith or no faith. It is the role of technology and the role of existence in the so-called digital world. The challenges that have taken place in the last 20 years of media are more massive than those that have taken place in the last 10,000 years of human existence in terms of communication.
As the famous saying told us the medium today has become the message. The big issue that everybody is struggling with ranges from fake news, to no news to vice news to all kinds of things. But it is the people of faith that I am trying to concentrate on to see what has been the relationship between technology and faith.
It is the more radical elements in an ideology or a system of faith that are the first to harness technology. And then they take the initiative. As a media person I can tell that in the war for media in the psychological war which is the worse war in terms of working for hearts and minds it is always about having the initiative. It is always the radical extremist elements because they have nothing to loose they use the media in a very aggressive way.
In the past Christianity became a victim of the Guttenberg revolution – the invention of the press and the bible could be printed taken away from the sanctity of the monks and available to everyone. The Lutheran revolution took place and led to the protestant church. That is part of church history.
For the Muslims the technology caught us with our throes down. The digital revolution caught as at a time when we Muslims were obsessed with other things which are relevant but they are not fully necessary. We are caught with for instance in the field of jurisprudence which seems to me to be a very limiting exercise to talk about for instance fikir kiliat – the fikir of kiliat. But at the moment this is an old fikir. Muslims in the past were minorities. Just get some books from Tartistan or Azerbaijan or places like that.
But what is needed and what is not being done is dealing with the fikr of the digital world. I have been planning this conference in partnership with google for some time but it has taken time. It is called fikr and fitna: Islam in the post digital world. The idea is that the technology is totally dismembering not only the core values but the way we understand how faith is transmitted and also determining the value of faith itself.
Today the talk from a philosophical or metaphysical sense isa good debate and scientists and intellectuals and Dr Laith and the ulema that I speak to talk about the whole question about asking the inner soul. At the end of the day Islam and the other traditional faith societies believe in what we call the primodial sense, the fitra that we are all born with this gold shaped thing inside us and our life never becomes fulfilled unless we fit that.
The problem today is because there is an expression to talk about materialisation and how people are obsessed with theme generation. The me generation do not have a whole grasp of knowledge. The me generation has corrupted the me. We have social media today. We have never had so much access as a human race to information about everything including politics and religion but we have never been so ignorant in turning that information into knowledge. There isan enigma between being swamped with information and having knowledge. Then what religion does to you, or what good religion does, is to take you from the level of knowledge into an area of marifa of experiential wisdom. Very few of usget to that place.
Our scholars who go and study in the mountains of Morocco, the deserts of Mauritania or the valleys of Yemen becomewhat I call water carriers of that knowledge. They go and learn the intricacies of the language, the grammar of how the Quran is written, they learn about how to memorise books and books and books. But the skill that is needed by our younger generation by this generation is to turn it into something they can use. Nowadays everything is about how we can make it utilitarian. How we can make it functional.
I am just going to throw some ideas which have been coming my way. One of the biggest issues which has not been discussed is the social media. There are hundreds of people who like you, they are on line all the time, your friends and your communicators. There has been such loneliness out there. The levels of suicide have never been like what we have today. The more society is digitalised the more this becomes an ill. The mental illnesses take away the human touch. And remember that the human touch is also associated with God because we cannot touch God but we can touch human beings who are an extension if we are talking about him as an image and this is that kind of thing.
So my issues are regarding the challenges. I find myself that religion and in my case Islam, most of it is written in a legalistic way. The argument is very legal because of our history. It is almost as if you need a legal mind to argue a case.
So if you want to use a hadith a tradition of the Prophet, to legitimise something you are doing what you need to say is so and so said on the authority of this. By the time you arrive at what they say you are more than 143 characters and in twitter you are disqualified. So we never get to the message.
So that whole idea of today’s world is about the new religions that are coming from the likes of Chopra and other people is because they managed to distil some of the essence of religion. They sound like Islam, they sound like Hinduism. This is the challenge for me as a media person, how to we manage to extract the message. This is the challenge. We now have a generation that has an attention span the size of an ant. And the size of technology is that of an elephant.
You sit and home and it changes the whole notion. For instance charity. As Muslims during the most blessed ten days and tomorrow or today depending on who you follow we are going to have the ritual of slaughtering. This is the story of Abraham and stuff like that. It is supposed to be about sharing. Today we sit like other people of faith disempowered. We sit in our room and we talk about charity when we are having these big tv dinners. We are talking about societies that have moved from geographical entities to special entities. There are now online communities. That has changed the rules.
We talk about memorising the Quran. I believe in the next ten years you will be able to put a chip in your head and the whole Quran can be downloaded in a second. What are going to be the issues of that? I want to know what Islam says, a hadith, and I go to sheikh google, and in two seconds I have it downloaded. That is the idea that anything do with godliness had to come with an aura.
The only thing that distinguished our Prophet was that when he came he said he was the last Prophet. But he was the master of minds and it is this that is important. Remember many years ago when I was under the tutelage of Dr Saeed we started a Muslim publication we asked a very big scholar what should we do with a Muslim, what does it constitute? And he said keep away from akida? Akida is belief or to discuss. When we asked him why he said belief is dangerous. And it is particularly dangerous especially when it is not covered by good manners and good behaviour. Then it becomes like a baby holding a sharp knife, he will cut himself and all those around him.
So it is important that you have the character and the manners to behave. We find that this is the issue. When I go to the hospital nowadays and I sit in the queue I am not the only Muslim. One of the inventions this country can be proud of is the queue. It is a very big indicator of civilisation. And then my Pakistani friend or my Polish friend does not care and walks right in front of me. It is very embarrassing. You have to stop them by saying you have to sit in the queue. We get this issue of where is the ethics being dismantled from the religion itself.
When our young people get angry and they have a hundred reasons for getting angry when they go and shout and abuse and use their moral authority by going on the other side by not showing control. I am talking about manners and things. We talk about public life. We are also talking about lets be honest – less and less belief in God. They have personalised God and made their own God and chose to think what they think God is about. It is the same thing about general politics. We are seeing one of the signs of the times in the political world. All parties are breaking down. There are no more alliances. We are talking about even British politics. It is no longer about left and right and the middle line. The line that we play – how people miss psychological things.
The godliness that has been blown into us to make us to make us think and to contemplate. This is a word that is being used more than any other word in the Quran. And that process will be paralysed. It is no longer a process thanks to the mechanisation of the media. We were thinking a few years ago that there was going to be democratisation of the media and that everybody was going to get access. This is not true. It is one thing having a knife. It is another knowing how to use it. And who to use it against.
I found the other day I was reading a book. I have been working with the radical middle way an organisation set up to deal with I won’t say about extremism and radicalisation. The radial middle way. It can be that we think in a world of extremes that to become middle has become radical. It has occupied part of my life. Before I became a pensioner I tried to work on interfaith between Christians and Muslims. I was a founding member of the Christian-Muslim forum and did many things to sit down and talk.
I found that people of faith are extremely boring. One of the things you need to get up and know is do you have gospel rock and roll. We brought into our millennium young people into a culture of don’t dos. The result is nobody knows what to do and it is the same thing in public life and in politics. The whole generation has been brought up on don’t do. We can’t make small political decisions from a local level to the international level.
Institutions from local government to the United Nations – and God bless Kofi Annan who just passed away – there is no moral compass. Is there an in between Nelson Mandela and stuff like that.
The whole idea about our future at a cross roads is how do we turn God into public life. This is a very interesting challenge. A leading BBC documentary maker met me a few years ago and we had a discussion. He was very anti Islamic but when I sat down with him he told me I think Islam makes a lot of sense to me – more than Christianity. And I asked him why do you have a problem. He said my problem is I am secularist. My biggest worry is that in this society we have struggled a lot to keep religion out of public life. We have struggled in the streets, we have made our laws, we have worked hard. We instinctively feel that the coming of Muslims to this country is trying to bring religion back into public life through the back door. This is why there is this hostility. He said I changed his attitude about this as there is a another way of looking at it.
When we talk about Brexit the Muslims ask what is going on about the racism in society. The Christians in this country who have protested worry about the Catholics coming and taking over. This is one of the things they do not speak about. Modern media is not covering and discussing things but it is putting things underground – what you call fake news.
My son warned me when you come you should write a speech instead of going all over the place which is what I do. This can only be done for people of faith. We need to think about it in a whole way. At the end of the day faith is something which is functional and utilitarian. If it is going to serve a function you got to get people. If it is going to make changes in public life it will come back.
I am doing some work with the Economist at the moment. And one of the issues with money in the Muslim world is that the process of secularisation is going fast. But two countries in the Muslim world are going to be secularised and very anti religion. They are Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And one of the reasons there has been too much religion in public life. Too much access. There needs to be a balance in the situation. When the pendulum swings from one side to the other this is where God and religion is about finding a balance between our existential questions and about our public life about justice. This is an issue.
There is a very interesting debate going on between the Ethiopian head of state and the UAE. The issue is during the prophet’s time the persecution was intense. The Prophet advised a group of Muslims that it might be good for them. He told them to migrate to Abyssinia because a Christian kingdom with a just Christian kingwas there. The first Muslim migration was to Abyssinia and they went to a just society.
We are seeing today the influx of Muslims going to the West because there is a lot more justice in the West. But justice is not a lasting thing. There is justice here because a lot of injustice had to be done to other parts of the world to get the justice here. It is for us to find how we can make the balance. The new head of Ethiopia. I think one of his parents is a Muslim and the other is a Christian. But he grew up as a protestant. He visited the UAE and he told them we will help your Muslim population. And he came and he said if that is Islam we don’t want it. Just teach us how to read the Quran and we will learn it ourselves.
I am sorry for rambling all over the place. It was a very interesting conversation. Thank you very much.
*Laith Kubba is researcher and specialist in Quranic culture. He was senior program Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Endowment for Democracy. Formerly he was director of International Relations at the Al KhoeiFoundation in London and the founder of the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue, a London-based network of liberal Islamists. He was former spokesman of the Iraqi Government. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq.
**Michael Pryke is the Youth President at the Methodist Church. He took up his post after an election that had taken place at the preceding year’s 3Generate, the Methodist Children and Youth Assembly; taking over from the previous Youth President, Tim Annan. He had worked at Stamford in the Northampton region.
***Dr Fuad Nahdi is the Executive Director of the Radical Middle Way and Founding Editor of the pioneering Q-News – the Muslim Magazine which he founded in 1992. His contributions in fields of media, community activism and interfaith work spanning over three decades has been widely recognised in the UK and across the Muslim world. Fuad is a graduate of the Centre for Journalism at City University, London. He has worked and contributed to media organisations from around the world including Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Arab News, The Nation, ABC News, Crescent International, Africa Events and BBC World Service. His journalism and commentary has been sought after by The Economist, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Statesman, Arab News, Mail & Guardian (South Africa), BBC, Arabia Magazine, Asahi Shimbun, Channel 4, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and others.
