Debating Sin and Sinners
Our pulpits focus primarily on sins but not on what is sin and why it is a matter of life and death. And their list is such as to make audience guilty. Such sins as hoarding wealth, buying newer and newer cars or replacing old and not so old houses or carving unproductive assets such as land and neither cultivating it nor paying zakat on it usually don’t get discussed. Failure to invest in local businesses or struggling start ups, or just depositing money in banks that loses value through inflation and not sparing one’s money for extending to the family members or friends or colleagues as benevolent loan is a sin in which almost everyone here is indulging. Those who are addicted to meat – against which Caliph Umar warned – or waste it in lavish marriages besides wasting money on tents, disposables, decorations, unhealthy drinks and much of bakery and obscenely costly ornaments need to be taxed or put to task.
We have enough space in houses or mosques or shrines for hosting any function – marriage halls are and were not needed until recently, as robust community care prevailed. Consenting to participate in big baraat is a major sin by every definition. But people expect to be invited or beg to be invited for this. Constructing second house when even one is more than enough or too big to house small family is obscene display of one’s wealth. Keeping house idle and not sparing it for community needs such as hotel for the poor or travellers or anyone who needs is what is sin. Failure to offer lift to anyone who asks is a moral failure that hardly bothers us. Wasting people’s time in functions (every minute beyond scheduled time counts) or their health through sugary drinks is another sin we aren’t talking about. So count your bank balance and ask why you didn’t invest it in say sheep farming or any enterprize that creates wealth or jobs. Why don’t you pay your bill to the small shopkeeper or to the farmer at the beginning of the month as a goodwill gesture and to earn reward of benevolent loan? This would create ample liquidity to buy thousands of sheep/cows without involving bank support or credit.
We need to note that that God has instituted limits and kept silence on almost everything that needlessly bothers us. There is essentially freedom to do this or that unless specified or clear evidence that it harms body or soul or mind. Muslims don’t usually debate broad contours of ethics, of First Principles. They debate interpretation of First Principles in concrete issues where will matters. There can be many answers to the same question depending upon context and even the nature or contingency associated with person who asks the question. And different answers can all be in the right. Muslim world has practically adopted different juristic, theological, philosophical schools and the best minds haven’t been too keen to erase differences.
There have been sages, like Shah Waliullah, who have shown how to harmonize seemingly divergent positions of faith and reason, theology and mysticism. We often fail to underscore the immensely important but generally inadequately understood notion of Middle Path to which both philosopher- sages (Aristotle, Nagarjuna and Confucius) and the scripture of Islam attest. Middle path means, in its deeper understanding as can be had from classics of ethical philosophy and metaphysics, steering clear of any position that has tendency to become absolutist. Sermons and fatwas often fall prey to absolutism, absolutizing legal opinions which are human interpretations or attempts to capture the Divine Norm.
Sin is what alienates man from his own depths and pulls him down from his heights and one is punished by it rather than for it. Every time we fail to live upto the demands of conscience, we are punished by remorse and this is not disconnected from otherworldly punishment. God is the Self/Consciousness and whatever obstructs its natural light and joy is sin and it is ego that is the ultimate idol and root of fragmented consciousness called shirk. God doesn’t watch us from some heavenly realm; he is the watching self/witnessing consciousness in us. God is the unruffled, serene light we partly feel when silent or overjoyed, untouchable by sin. It is the mind/soul that sins, not Spirit. All religion is bridging the distance between the two and reaching a stage where anxiety about calculus of sin drops away and one radiates goodness.
Some would mind missing even one ritual prayer (nimaz) at allotted time and some don’t mind offering even one such prayer in life. The same applies for fasts (ek na rakha of Ghalib and silent minority contrasts with ek na khaya of many Muslims). For some Muslim women exposing even face or hair is sacrilege while for others hijab is like a mountain’s weight on their heads. Similarly about jobs in banks, beards and caps, questions, anxieties and guilt remain. However, in any case, most of us feel guilty about our failure to live upto a presumed ideal. The ideal is sometimes banishment of Satan as if God wasn’t wise enough in giving him respite till the last day. Sometimes it is a world where only one religion or sect reigns supreme. Sometimes it is universally upheld vegetarianism, a world without music and tobacco, a world where women’s public appearance is regulated according to certain juristic code (a fallible interpretation of divine word). The ideal one upholds holds one captive or may give one orientation.
We are condemned to face the court of conscience and what we construe to be the divine court. However, there are issues that aren’t processed or taken cognizance of in the divine court but about which we still keep troubling ourselves. Files are processed by conscience and Divine Justice Department and we often see them in action this very moment. Let us investigate the basic principle or testing light that is applied on every action in the latter. Conscience judges/punishes and it can err in its judgment based on the wrong feedback from some ideology one invokes. Sin and guilt are terribly important problems for theists and atheists alike as they follow our acute awareness of our responsibility and freedom. If some act is perceived as sinful and one can’t avoid committing it, it means one’s gradual destruction. Much of great literature is an exploration of the problem of sin and redemption or damnation. Now, what is the one principle in light of which one evaluates everything in moral terms and then decides one’s course of action or ask and supply to the court of conscience the right case or begin to worry about the verdict in the divine court? What is that which we seek to get in any action ultimately that would determine the right course? Do we have a standard test?
I think we almost all agree in theory and all agree in practice that it is the Test of Felicity, though it may be expressed in terms of happiness/joy/ananda, eudemonia, enlightenment, liberation/heaven. Buddhism invokes it by making suffering (the product of fall/sin/disequilibrium of human state) and its overcoming the central issue of religion. Vedanta understands Brahma-vit/knowledge of the Real/self realization in terms of the supreme joy/peace that transcends ordinary duality of joy and sorrow. All religions agree. All great philosophers from Plato to Kierkegaard to Heidegger to Voegelin agree. All poets, not only so-called aesthetes like Pater and Wilde would, in principle, appreciate the standard. Now let me show how Islam invokes this test in its own way.
What is often debated between advocates of Islamic State and Sharia law and their critics is the later human element of fiqh corpus though there is mutual misperception that it is the former that is invoked/contested. There are scholars like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim who oppose implementation of sharia law on the basis of their informed reading of sharia itself! Their argument is: Don’t invoke Divine name lightly and distinguish your human interpretation from the revealed norm. Every claim of an Islamic State may be contested/has been contested; how far it is truly Islamic and scripture can be quoted by both claimants and critics. Since Justice can only be approximated and one can’t say justice is done as Derrida cautions, and Islam is, above all, identifiable with, among other things, the Idea called Justice, we can’t say Islam stands implemented in particular formation.
We must ever struggle to approximate the ideal. Man can never claim righteousness or finality of interpretation or close possibility of further learning/correction/ dialogue. God is the Judge and the verdict is His. And He has not appointed priests/jurists as judges. They are appointed by States/people and can’t be above reproach in any concrete situation.
