Following his recent comments, Ameer Ali, former head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and current chairman of the Prime Minister’s Muslim Community Reference Group has written an interesting letter to The Australian thanking them for their role in the ‘debate’ about Islam.
I WOULD like to thank the editorial team of The Australian for encouraging an open debate and analysis of religious texts (“Brave stand on Muslim honesty”, Editorial, 5/10).
I would also like to thank your reporter Richard Kerbaj for clarifying (“Muslim cleric calls for ban”, 5/10), through the words of Keysar Trad, that the Holy Prophet was perfect as far as human beings go, but the wisdom of God Almighty is always greater. This is what I had intended to say in my comments published on Wednesday (“Prophet not perfect, says Islamic scholar”).
Taj Din al-Hilali’s support for my call for a modern reinterpretation of Koranic text is most welcome. It certainly bodes well for Australian society when the national spiritual leader sends such important, progressive messages. I have had the opportunity to speak to him and clarify my position on the Holy Koran and the Holy Prophet and all these matters will become clear when my academic paper Closing of the Muslim Mind is released later this month.
It is curious how Moustapha Kara-Ali, who only weeks ago was touted as an open-minded, progressive Muslim, has shown his true colours by criticising the inalienable right to question and analyse religious texts and by comparing my comments to the Danish cartoons. This debate has certainly shed light on some prevalent attitudes within the Australian Muslim community and paved the way for a healthy internal debate.
Dr Ameer Ali
Murdoch University, WA
There is really no point commenting on Ameer Ali’s comments in any great detail. Suffice to say, the most important and instructive paragraph in his letter is the last one.
Kuranda Seyit, executive director of the Forum on Australian-Islamic Relations (FAIR) and former media representative for AFIC, also has a letter in the same issue that is worth reprinting here.
AS a former colleague of Ameer Ali’s at the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, I can say unequivocally that he has no credentials in Islamic jurisprudence or history. He holds a doctorate in economics. To describe him in your headline as an “Islamic scholar” is incorrect and demeans real scholars, who have researched and argued vast bodies of evidence.
Even a Muslim lay-person knows that all prophets were perfect beings, that is, they were free of evil and guided by God. For Dr Ali to argue that the Prophet Mohammed was imperfect and that Islam needed to reinterpret itself, he would need to provide his scholarly evidence and present it with a clearly thought out argument.
Dr Ali should stop trying to create the illusion that he has something important or relevant to say. He has no credibility whatsoever in this matter.
K. S. Seyit
Strawberry Hills, NSW
It is, of course, true that Dr Ali’s qualifications are in economics and he has no standing in the Muslim community as a religious scholar, religious leader, or even a commentator on matters of Islamic jurisprudence or Qu’ranic exegesis. That he should suddenly catapult himself on to the front page and editorial of the national broadsheet by raising controversial ‘points’ about the Prophet Muhammad’s character, the worth of traditional scholarship, and the need for a radical and modern reinterpretation of the Qu’ran is interesting. But, again, the last paragraph of his letter holds some clues as to a possible motivation.
9 comments ↓
Look, I think that the most important piece of real information to come out of both letters is that there is a place in NSW called strawberry hills, and that people choose to live there.
fancy that.
Yes, there is a place called Strawberry Hills. The name is nicer than the place, I think. On a side note, I am reminded of the Beatles song, Strawberry Fields Forever.
On the topic at hand, these letters, clarifications and what not are quite disheartening. I think a suitable word for how many Muslims may feel about the current state of affairs is “dejection”. Very apt. Either that or “disgusted”. Perhaps both. Forthwith those feeling as such can be known as The DD Brigade.
I find the news at Satirical Muslim more preferable. It’s satire, but at least it doesn’t purport to be anything otherwise, unlike the “real news”.
Dealing with these sorts of people is like attempting to slay a hydra: there are simply too many figurative heads for any one person to deal with.
In any case, the title of his paper is a little odd. It’s obviously a play on Alan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. Bloom’s thesis is basically that cultural relativism and a creeping ignorance of the classical texts has led to a corruption of higher education (and, by extension, American culture). Oh, the ironies abound.
Posted on a forum.
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From:”Ameer Ali”
Date: Fri, Oct 6, 2006 6:53 pm
To the Chairmen and Members of Islamic Councils/Societies.
Assalamu alaikum
It is with deep regret that I am writing this letter to explain to your members about the ugly reporting about the Holy Prophet in The Australian newspaper. I can understand the anger that this has created in the minds of all Muslims including myself. I was shocked at the headline above the photograph which said “Prophet not perfect” which was a deliberate act of mischief by the publishers.
I was completing a research article for an academic journal about why some Muslims behave violently when someone says, writes or draws something which is blasphemous in the eyes of the Muslims. As I was completing the article, I received a call from a journalist who was asking about recent developments in the community. I told him that I had nothing to report, but that at the moment I was writing this piece for a journal.
He showed his interest in the topic, and said he would be very much interested in reading it. I said it was only the first draft and that it had to be read by my colleagues for suggestions and criticisms, so I gave him access to only some parts of the paper on the understanding that he will not quote any part without my permission. After he read the article he called me again to discuss some of the points.
One point he raised was about my views on the Prophet and my explanation as to why some followers of Islam follow the physical aspects of the Prophet’s life more than his preaching. In a long discussion, I explained to him that there are two dimensions to the Prophet’s life; a human dimension and a prophetic dimension. The human dimension is the model of reality while the prophetic dimension is a model for reality.
This is the point I was trying to explain. I alluded to the incident about the blind man who came to visit the Prophet and was ignored by him because the Prophet was engaged with other matters. Later, Allah rebuked the Prophet for this behaviour. I said that this was a manifestation of the human element of the Prophet which was later corrected by Allah. And I said humans are fallible, and only Allah is infallible. If we ignore the human dimension of the Prophet, we are in danger of elevating him as equal to Allah in terms of infallibility, which is shirk.
It is in this context that the word “flaw” crept in and the journalist took that word out of the whole conversation and gave prominence to it in his reporting. This was mischievious. After this, when I saw the report in the paper, I immediately realised how the public is going to react and particularly the Mufti.
Before I could get in touch with the Mufti, the journalist was quick to get in touch with him first and get his reaction. Naturally, like any religious leader would react, the Mufti gave his response as was published in the paper. After I explained things to the Mufti, he contacted the newspaper and asked them to withdraw his comments but it was too late. The damage had been done.
The whole episode should be a lesson for all Muslims to be careful when discussing anything on religion with journalists, especially in this country. I hope you will understand that I only had sincere intentions, and was an unwitting victim of unscrupulous media reporting.
I hope you will circulate this letter to your members.
Yours Brotherly,
Dr Ameer Ali
When i spoke to him over the phone, he explicitly agreed to making those statements.
There is a major contradiction between what he said in his letter to The Australian and what he says above.
Also, the gaping hole here is that he only talks about his comments regarding the Prophet (saw) NOT his comments regarding modernist interpretations of the Quran. From my point of view, that’s the most egregious mistake in what he has said (though obviously not the most emotive)
I think that this has rapidly become an unedifying spectacle for all concerned. It should warn us, yet again of the pitfalls of speaking to media, speaking on matters of religious knowledge without formal traditional religious scholarship.
I think we owe it to a Muslim brother to take his letter at face value and to give him the maximum benefit of any doubt.The only role that other Muslims can have in this situation is to correct any religious misconceptions that have arisen.
On that point, I must say that everything that I have ever read in the Qu’ran and Sunnah, and that has been communicated to me by a sheikh, is that Islam takes an extremely dim view of slavery and enjoins believing Muslims to spend time, and money in freeing slaves. It does not promote slavery. Large chunks of the sharia are also designed make slavery economically unsustainable as well as making it morally reprehensible.
I think that this point must be made very clear, as it was the other appalling error in the original Australian piece.
As RPG points out, the advocacy of a progressive/modernist reinterpretation of religious texts must also be addressed, but this requires a much more detailed post Inshallah
It should also remind us that sending a draft of your academic paper to a journalist is no substitute for peer review.
From http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=150671
Ameer Ali: “We want an Australia which is like a fruit salad with a nice juice in it, not a mega fruit juice.”
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