Culture, Religion and the Modern Muslim Man

The rising influence of the Western ways, visible through minuscule injections in our society of foreign conceptions like materialism, skepticism, modernism, feminism, agnosticism, invariably ending in atheism, hedonism and nihilism, has to be seen as a common Muslim’s revenge on the conception of religion and culture amongst us which has, in many ways, moved away from the realities of life. When hurdles are placed in the path of the natural conception of life, a conception of the life in line with fitrah, life rebels, seeks revenge. When the natural desires and legitimate endeavors of man are suppressed, his nature puts up a resistance that invariably ends up in defiance. This defiance is put against that conception of existence which is claimed to have its epistemic roots in religion. This gives birth, in the minds of a not so philosophically trained mind, both to the fear of culture and, with an extension, to the fear of religion – fear of culture and religion conceived as the anti-thesis of the natural inclinations of man’s true being. And what doesn’t correspond to reality cannot be “Truth”, it can only be a bunch of lies. Culture and Religion become a bunch of lies.

The first to fall in this onslaught is culture, for even when religion is not on display, culture is. For it seems that it is not a religious maxim, a Quranic aayah or a Hadith that acts through the adopted conventions collectively referred to as culture, leading to the separation and de-hyphenation of Culture and religion. Culture suffers the first attack for the defiant wants to believe that he is acting in the spirit of religion while rebelling against culture, for he wants to believe that he agrees to the sacrosanct nature of revelation and by extension of religion as if he were putting up this fight for the sake of religion and nothing else. As culture puts up the first defenses against the onslaught taking place, it invariably ends up the first to suffer destruction. What goes next? Religion! With the protection of culture taken off it, with the clothing of culture torn off its virgin body, religion lies naked and out in the open to be devoured by the glutton – the modern man deprived of his “natural and legitimate” needs! Now, religion dances to the tunes of the unsatisfied modern man. He bends it to his whims and fancies and where he can’t bend it, he escapes it. The daily escape from parts of it, one day at a time, ends up in complete freedom from it one day. This newfound “freedom” instills fear, the fear of old chains and shackles of religion. Fear of reverting back to the old life of conformity under social pressure raises the need and urge, in the “freed” soul, to propagate the newfound love – calling it reform! The reform follows the same path which the individual had followed, first the removal of culture as a determining factor of any social act, marriage and divorce for example, and then religion itself.

To escape this slippery slope is of utmost importance for anyone who holds on to a religious conception of life. The solution is two-fold, for the bridge is to be built from both sides. On the defiant’s side, the correct conception of “true being”, fitrah, is to be resuscitated. In the absence of such a correct conception, and in the absence of an intellectual defense of transcendental ethics and of culture, the only concept of life that he knows, that appeals to him, that calls him home in the ever-present myriad of Western Influences, is the promised heaven existing live in front of him in the West entering his brain through his phone, the TV set, the advertising hoarding, the Punjabi-Bollywood Music, the naked display of flesh and muscle in movies. The resuscitation can take place only with the restatement of Purpose of Life in the popular discourse. The overwhelming discourse driven by news channels and newspapers – driven by the overwhelming majority of movies and art industry, driven by countless public figures and more so the journalists and celebrities masquerading as academicians, driven by various schools in our colleges and Universities teaching us Engineering, Medicine, Economics, Sociology, Biology, Psychology and all the other sciences and social sciences – is that of the betterment of material life calling it with the beautiful name of “development”, insinuating development, material development, to be the Purpose of Life. Not even the spiritual religion escapes the material teeth of this modern industry called education, in whose auspices religion is studied, examined to be understood, to be experimented with, there lies its naked virgin body as an exhibit on the table, to be dissected, in the labs of sociology and anthropology. And any explanation that nullifies the need for a supernatural explanation is to be hailed as a discovery for having raised us above the medieval vulgarity of submission to the supernatural. It is to be hailed for it liberates us from immaterial. Drunken with this material conception of life, fed to him goblet after goblet, from kindergarten to his doctorate, in a life span of more than two decades, he arrives home via Twitter, Facebook, NGOs, and what not to protect his newfound love. The Purpose of Life becomes the assertion of material truths, material well-being, comfort, exerting his Will to Power.

The resuscitation of the correct idea of being, as understood by Muslims for the last fourteen hundred years, can take place only through the restatement of Purpose of Life as promulgated by our Master, the Messenger of God (saw). This restatement has to be such that it takes its rightful place in the popular discourse capturing the imaginations of masses like it did when it was first uttered in the sands of Arabia some fourteen hundred years ago. The Quranic Purpose of Life can find its rightful canonical status in our society, from which every other stream of thought emerges, only when its epistemic roots are thoroughly investigated and reaffirmed. This investigation and reaffirmation would create a sound intellectual defense of the Quranic model of life and by extension transcendental ethics. The need is not the revival of religion which is pretty much alive and thriving, but the revival of religious sciences.

Revival of religious sciences being one part of the two-fold solution, the second part pertains to building the conception of religion and culture in sync with the realities of life. Though the revival of religious sciences would go a long way in putting up a defense for religion and culture, the elements of culture that remain contrary to the spirit of religion and the acts within the religion that remain separated from their spirit need to be identified so as to bring them nearest to the spirit of Isam, if such a reconciliation is not possible the protection that society offers to such cultural elements needs to be withdrawn; and also the liberal ideas within the traditional understanding of Islam that have long been lost under the huge pile of rituals and dogma together with the principles of Islam not implemented in our society need to be reestablished. Such identification and reestablishment can only take place through the revival of religious sciences making its entries into popular discourse through citizens possessing strong academic acumen having undergone thorough training in the traditional Islam rooted in secular sciences like rhetoric, logic, and grammar. Every other form of reform betrays trust in the edifice of Islam, calling out loudly that Islam is dead wood in the living tree of Muslims, having outlived its utility, having nothing new to offer to the modern man, standing as a hurdle, as a roadblock between him and his “natural and legitimate” needs!

Liked it? Take a second to support us on Patreon!