The Cunning of Con-sensus

By Hussein Ibish

In a recent web article called "Islam's Encounter with American Culture: Making Sense of the Progressive Muslim Agenda" Louay M. Safi accuses the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) of "progressive excesses and provocations" and of "lashing out," mainly on the grounds that PMU was a principle sponsor of the mixed-gender prayer on March 18 led by Amina Wadud.

Most of Safi's arguments are a sleight-of-hand, like three card monte or the old shell game. You've all seen the hucksters scamming tourists on many street corners in North America and Europe: the dealer flipping the three cards or sliding cups across a cardboard mat, complete with shills who urge the marks to bet that they can find the money card or pea. They never can, of course, and always lose.

Like the ever-elusive money card, in spite of lots of shuffling and posing Safi puts down no actual arguments, either secular or religious, against women-led prayers. The idea for women-led prayer is simply assumed to be a reflection of arbitrary cultural norms, whereas ideas opposing it are implicitly framed as somehow transcending culture and any specific social context, and as reflecting "fundamental Islamic principles and values." This functions as simple assertion, without any positive context or explanation for why one should accept that argument, but the appeal for fairness is dismissed as a drive for "puritan and absolute gender equality." You'll note that its not the man who is in favor of excluding women's religious leadership, and moreover insists on the hijab, who is the "puritan" and the "absolutist," rather it is those who want to ease restrictions and expand the options for Muslims in North America who are associated with the language of extremism and dictatorship.

Gender discrimination in Safi's arguments is normalized and transparent; it need not justify itself. It is beyond culture. Gender equality, on the other hand, is stigmatized as the product, not of any serious system of ideas, but of "free floating reasoning." Unlike discrimination, equality here bears the burden of having to justify its dubious claims, which may pose as reasonable but are actually "puritanical and absolutist." It represents the imposition of contingent cultural norms on transcendent spiritual values.

Like Hina Azam, Safi in fact does make culturally-defined complaints about the status of women in contemporary Muslim practice in the United States, writing that, "when Muslim communities neglect to provide a proper space for women in the masjid and the male leaders of the masjid prevent women from entering the main hall to participate in Islamic learning session, the question of subordinating Islam to patriarchic cultures is in order." So, really, there's no difference between Safi's approach, which is to subject certain religious practices to a test of social justice, and PMU's, except that his idea of where injustice begins and ends is framed in terms of a patriarchal, derivative discourse that is unsuited to the sensibilities of many contemporary American Muslims. In other words, he has imported a certain (and rather unpleasant) version of Middle Eastern culture with him to the United States and has confused that with Islamic principles. If he agrees with any given critique of the way in which Islam is being interpreted and is functioning as a social text, then the issue becomes important (as with the issues cited above), but if he doesn't, then it's the whim of the moment and an imposition of relativistic culture on pristine Islam. In this crude shell game it's the "fundamental Islamic principles and values" that are the pea: Where is it now? Can you find it? Ooops, it's not under that shell, sorry, you lose again, etc. It's certainly not to be found under the shell marked basic gender equality, which apparently is simply a whim of caprice. On the contrary, Safi endorses the mandatory exclusion of women from religious leadership among Muslims, which means that his interpretation of the faith embraces gender inequality as part of what he calls the "sublime values of Islam."

No surprise then, that instead of an actual argument here what you mainly get from Safi is a rather sad attempt to diagnose the supposed psychological malaise explaining why the Progressive Muslim Union would be so alienated from the mosque system that they would organize a woman's led prayer, which he calls a provocation. The implication is that the March 18 prayer was essentially an expression of exasperation rather than based on any serious principle. The irony, of course, is that it is Safi, Azam and the others who are asserting the primacy of a (patriarchal) cultural practice, cloaked in the garb of a religious norm and rationalized in the language of fiqh, over a principle (gender equality in society and in the eyes of God) that in fact is universal and transcendent. Sadly, there's almost nothing here beyond anxiety in the face of an evolving discourse that is moving too quickly beyond some people's comfort-zones. But it's too late: the bluff of the con-men has already been called.

Safi writes that "It is not logic and methodology that disturbs Ibish in Azam's argument, but rather the juristic tradition she invokes." In fact it is not the logic, methodology or the juristic tradition in Hina Azam's argument that I find objectionable. Rather it is that all that methodology, all that reading of juristic tradition, and all of that "logic" resulted in a retrograde and indefensible stance against women's religious leadership among Muslims, and a long series of literally farcical palliatives and anodynes she suggested to ameliorate her endorsement of mandatory formalized male dominance in American Muslim religious practice in 2005. Remember, the organizers of the Amina Wadud prayer were not imposing anything on anyone, just conducting their own idea of what a jumaa free of irrational gender discrimination could be like. What I take issue with, in other words and just to be sure that Azam, Safi and everyone else is clear on this, is Azam's conclusion. If a ruling contradicts the universal moral values embedded in Islam, including the equality of men and women in society and in the eyes of God, then it is not to be taken seriously. If fiqh is being read and argued in a dogmatic manner that places Islam at odds with basic tenants of social justice, then a severe disservice is being done to the faith and to the community. No ruling and no argument gets a pass on the grounds of its empty erudition or its conformity with a stale consensus, and certainly not on the grounds of any self-effacing determination to subordinate its chronological and geographical context to interpretations made long ago and/or far way. We need to start to think for ourselves for a change.

I find it striking that Azam, Safi and other opponents of women-led prayers will not take the time to explain why they think women are unfit to lead men in prayer. Rather, they simply assert that this is a fundamental principle of Islam, and avoid the substance of the issue by hiding behind the primacy of consensus (an approach, as I have argued, that also would have made the abolition of slavery all but impossible). As I've pointed out elsewhere, there are plenty of opponents of women-led prayers in traditional Muslim societies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa who have no problem in declaring that their opposition to the practice is based on women's spiritual inferiority, sexual power and/or impurity, and even the simple impropriety of women leading men not only in religious matters, but in society generally. Whether they are fully aware of it or not, Azam, Safi and the other opponents of women-led prayers are essentially buying into, or at least parroting, arguments that are grounded in these neurotic anxieties, which are what produced the so-called consensus in the first place.

To accept a "consensus" without acknowledging the basic logic that informed it is disingenuous at best. If there is a "universal moral principle" at work here it can only be that of mandatory male religious dominance and the subordination of women. Not to acknowledge this is either dishonest, or, far more likely, it reveals a level of indoctrination to a mystified cultural discourse that simply obliterates the capacity for critical thought. In this shell game, it's the double-dealers who are themselves the mark, and the grifters are gulling no one but each other.

Hussein Ibish is Vice-Chair of the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU)