Excerpts from Arun Shourie's 'The world of FATWAS or the Shariah in action.' https://twitter.com/adarshrjha/status/1276476451747803137

(Maulana Mohammed Ali, mastermind of Khilafat Movement that led to Moplah massacre, in a letter to Swami Shraddhananda explained his views about Gandhi.)

"I have not yet found any person who in actual character is entitled to a higher place than Mahatma Gandhi....

(But) As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. (Therefore) even a fallen and degraded Mussalman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim.."

Ijtihad is the right to interpret the texts. Barely 200 years after the Prophet’s death, the ulema decreed that ‘the doors of Ijtihad have been closed.’ Because there were no pious Muslims left who could give reliable interpretations. Literal adherence shall be the rule.

(The most outspoken critic of this embargo was Iqbal, he delivered six lectures on the subject. He supported reforms with caveat that while reforming caution is more necessary than courage.)

'All great Muslim thinkers up to and including the eighteenth-century Shah Waliy Allah of Delhi, there is no dearth of revolutionary statements,’ writes Fazlur Rahman, the Pakistani modernist, in his Islam and Modernity.
‘But orthodoxy (has) an amazing shock-absorbing capacity..

All these thinkers were held in high esteem by orthodox circles as great representatives of Islam, but such statements of theirs as had some radical import were invariably dismissed as “isolated” (shaadhdh) or idiosyncratic and were quietly buried.’

(Ulema have) a decisive say in the day-to-day life of an ordinary Muslim. This hold has been tightened by the premise which has been dinned into every Muslim—that Islam does not concern merely the matters of the spirit, that it encompasses every detail of life.

This is the claim of every totalitarian ideology—of Nazism, of Marxism-Leninism for instance—the
claim namely that it has the right to regulate the totality of life.
(Similar hold ulema have over Muslims).

The liberal who happens to be a Hindu is so apologetic, he has internalized sham secularism so much (that) he has internalized double standards to such an extent that he has made silence on all matters Islamic, indeed toeing the fundamentalists’ line proof of secularism.

The ‘secularists’ of the English press are a ready example. They will refer to Ali Mian as ‘the moderate, universally respected Muslim leader’, without bothering to read anything he has written. They will refer to sundry muftis and maulwis as ‘Muslim divines’.

Worst of all, they will, by a Pavlovian reflex, weigh in on the same side as the ulema on issues, and insist that anyone who opposes that side is ‘communal’, ‘fascist’, ‘revanchist’.

Not quite the stuff of fatwas, you would expect. But those are the matters on which the ulema of the Dar al-Ulum, Deoband, have been asked to give and have with great piety delivered fatwas.

We are conditioned to thinking of fatwas as being decrees to execute or excommunicate someone. (They deal with vast range of subjects). They are commands/decrees (which are not only limited to) public domain, they aim to regulate
the most private of private domains too.

The believers have accepted the fact that even on such matters which are, so to say, wholly private they must go by what religious authorities say.
As far as religious authorities are concerned they never cease to emphasize (that) in Islam all questions are religious questions.

Islam is unique, they insist, it provides a complete code, a code that regulates every aspect of life. This is a major pillar of their power, and they are most emphatic in making both the believers and other entities— like the state in India— internalize this claim.

(The) twin features—the fixation on externals, and the insistence on those externals which separate believers from the others—have continued through the centuries, and are a hallmark of the fatwas.

The first step—the fixation on externals—will become evident from considering activities which come closest to the inner-directed search: fasting, the ablutions before prayer, the prayer itself.

The second step—of doing a thing in the way which is the opposite of the way the others do it— will be evident from what the fatwas say regarding the dress a Muslim ought to wear.

And the third step—of being aggressive being made the hallmark of the community—will become evident from considering the insistence of the ulema on slaughtering cows.

Ulema insist that the believers adhere to those externals which will set them apart from the nonbelievers. An innocuous thing like dress becomes an instrument for what would today be called strong political statements.

In shariah it is haram to wear clothes which obscure the difference between kafirs and Muslims, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. True religion, it declares, is that to wear the dress of the form which the firangis use is kufr.

For that reason, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia, clothes of an anglicized form are detestable, they are ‘haram, sakht haram, ashad haram’—forbidden, strictly forbidden, absolutely forbidden—and anyone doing namaz in them
is a sinner, a sinner who deserves punishment.

The dress of each people, Maududi says, is the qaumi tongue through which it manifests its qaumiyat and acquaints the world with it. Apart from geographical factors the other factors that affect the dress which a people wear—culture and religion of the qaum.

Islam does not specify any particular dress or way of life. On the contrary, it adopts the ways as it finds them. But it lays down some principles and requires that every qaum change its ways of life, etc., in accordance with those principles, says Maududi.

Foremost among these are the limits regarding the region between the knees and the navel. It is necessary that this region must be covered whatever the qaum, and all women wherever they live must cover all parts of their body other than the face and hands.

Second, men should leave wearing silken clothes and ornaments of gold and silver. And both men and women should refrain from wearing clothes which suggest pride, insolence, unnecessary exhibitionism and lavishness.

Third principle: Islam, Maududi reminds the believers, requires that things which polytheism and idolatry have made their symbols be banished from your dress—for instance, the (sacred) thread, the cross, pictures, or similar things which are customary with non-Muslims.

Sacrificing cows is in accordance with the requirements of shariah, rules the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. It cites an ayat from the Quran which does not have a word about the cows, saying that it says, ‘We have set the sacrifice of the cow and the camel among the marks of the Din of Allah.’

It goes on to quote several ulema to the effect that slaughtering cows is an essential and long-standing practice of Islam. If Hindus object to the killing of cows on ‘communal grounds’—the grounds of Hindus, note, are ‘communal’, the grounds of Muslims are spiritual obedience

to Allah!—then it is not right for Muslims to refrain from killing cows. In fact, decrees the fatwa, on every occasion Muslims should keep up what has been prevalent in Islam for so long. If they stop it, they shall be sinners.

To stop doing so out of consideration for Hindus is haram. Unity with Hindus is haram. And the ones who are advocating this unity ‘are by their own admission sacrificing the entire life of the Quran and Hadis on idolatry’.

Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi aka Ali Mian, influential Muslim leader and scholar. Head of the Nadwatul Ulema, chairman of the AIMPLB, one of the founding members of the Saudi Arabian King’s Rabita-e Alam-e Islami, he is referred to by our press as the moderate Muslim leader.

Here is what he said on the subject of cow slaughter while addressing Indian and Pakistani pilgrims in Jeddah on 3 April 1986:
"Cow slaughter in India is a great Islamic practice—(said) Mujaddid Alaf Saani II. This was his far-sightedness that he described cow slaughter.....

....in India as a great Islamic practice...... Because the cow is worshipped in India. If the Muslims give up cow slaughter here then the danger is that the coming generations will get convinced of the piety of the cow."
The very words, the very malevolence of the fatwas.

Yet, when the fatwas are cited the retort is: ‘But who reads them?'
This basic attitude, this malevolent way of establishing one’s identity— by insisting on doing that one thing which hurts the feelings of the other— has led ‘the leaders of the community’...

....to twist what is in their own law books, to insist on disregarding what the Constitution and laws say, to conjure up ‘religious’ arguments if these will work, and ‘secular’ arguments if these are necessary, and to go on doing so with a persistence which will surprise anyone.

The object thus is to continue to kill cows one way or another—by arguing that doing so is an essential requirement of Islam; if that cannot be maintained, then by arguing that it is in any case one of the practices of Islam;

if that too does not work, then by arguing that there is an economic compulsion to kill them...
To the ordinary observer the doggedness, the insistence would be scarcely comprehensible. But that is because he is innocent of the fatwas and the psychology which lies behind them.

The point is to do the one thing which will show the kafirs down, which will put the kafirs out—for in doing so, as the fatwas state again and again, lies the glorification of Islam.

The Hindus are ‘absolutely Kafirs’ and he who does not regard them as kafirs, the ulema declare, is himself a kafir. They are definitely idolaters and polytheists, the fatwas declare. They certainly bow before idols in worship.

But supposing this is not so, they emphasize, the order of kufr certainly applies on one who even respects idols. Even to regard idols as intercessors, to want intercession from them—these too are kufr. So there is no doubt in Hindus being kafirs.

Kafirs are to be distinguished from zimmis. The latter too are kafirs in that they are non-Muslims, but they are ones who have submitted themselves to Islamic power, who, as acknowledgment of their subjecthood pay the jazia and live in ‘absolute obedience'.

The kafirs are not what they are because of some fortuitous circumstance. They are so by the design and decree of Allah Himself. ‘If God please,’ says Allah speaking of Himself in the Quran, ‘He would surely bring them, one and all, to the guidance’ (6.35-36)

The punishment for a sin committed by a Muslim is not permanent, say the fatwas, the torture of a kafir is permanent. The souls of believers are free to go where they will, the fatwas say, but the souls of the kafirs are imprisoned.