Who is a Muslim?

Recently, I read a book “Between Jihad and Salaam – Profiles in Islam” written by Joyce M. Davis in which she has published interviews with a number of prominent personalities of the Muslim world. The book contains seventeen profiles and interviews. First of them is of Hassan-al-Turabi of Sudan. The book includes profiles and interviews of Khurshid Ahmad, Abida Hussain, and Muhammad Aslam Saleemi of Pakistan.

During her interview with Saleemi, an Ameer of Jama’at-i-Islami at that time (1997), Davis popped up the question about the definition of a Muslim. Saleemi responded, “there were two qualifications: that you believe in one God and that you believe Muhammad was a prophet,” (1). Davis said to Saleemi, “although I consider myself a Christian, I believed in both those statements. Saleemi’s stony face softened and his eyes glowed with apparent surprise and joy. You are welcome, he said, beaming.”

Davis however was somewhat skeptical and seemed to believe that much more in addition was needed for becoming a Muslim. This incident pricked my mind. This question as to who really is a Muslim must have cropped up numerous times in the history of Islam, but didn’t it come up in the recent history of Islam in Pakistan? Yes indeed, it had.

During the 1953 riots against Ahmadis (Qadianis), the various religious factions in Pakistan had demanded with one voice that the Ahmadis be declared kafirs. A public court was constituted with Justice Muhammad Munir as President, to investigate the causes of the uprising. In order to determine whether Ahmadis were indeed kafirs, the court had to first comprehend who, as a matter of fact, a Muslim is.

This question is discussed on page 215 of the Munir Report which was released in April 1954. It is appropriate to quote from it verbatim:

“The question, therefore, whether a person is or is not a Muslim will be of a fundamental importance, and it was for this reason that we asked most of the leading ulama to give their definition of a Muslim, the point being that if the ulama of the various sects believed the Ahmadis to be kafirs, they must have been quite clear in their minds not only about the grounds of such belief but also about the definition of a Muslim because the claim that a certain person or community is not within the pale of Islam implies on the part of the claimant an exact conception of what a Muslim is. The result of this part of the inquiry, however, has been anything but satisfactory, and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be (p. 215)….

…Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of every one else…” (p.218).

Our (Muslims’) tragedy is that when we talk to non-Muslims, we tell them that nothing can be simpler than Islam. Among ourselves, we cannot even agree on something as fundamental as the definition of a Muslim.

Ghulam Ahmad Parvez was a modernist, and a learned and esteemed scholar of Islam who attempted to interpret the Quranic injunctions according to the modern times. He had a considerable following in the liberal circles. He wrote an article “Fatwas of Kufr” in his monthly magazine, Tulu-i-Islam, in the issue of August 1969. In this essay, he published the results of his comprehensive research and showed that all the prominent contemporary ulama had declared one another, individually, kafirs. This was a sad reflection on the state of affairs in the Islamic world.

Although Davis did consider the definition of a Muslim given by Saleemi as somewhat light, not necessarily complete, and given unprepared and on the spur of the moment, but on second thought, what else is there?

I do hope that Saleemi himself sincerely believed in the definition that he gave to Davis.

Reference

1. Davis, Joyce, M., “Between Jihad and Salaam – Profiles in Islam,” St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997, p. 285, 293-294.