Divinity and modernity; a complex relationship

Open Discussions

in association with

The Gulf Cultural Club

To mark Prophet Mohammed’s birth anniversary

Divinity and modernity; a complex relationship

Tuesday 17^th September 2024

*Sheikh Mohammed Kazim Maroofi

(Researcher, Home schooling specialist)

** Dr Krish Kandiah

(Academic and research fellow)

***Dr Makbul Rahim

(Lawyer and independent researcher)

The birth advent of Prophet Mohammed was a watershed in the human history. It led to the last divine revelation and the rise of Islam. For 14 centuries the debate on the role of religion in public life has never ceased. This debate has also led to codification of the religious values to meet the requirements of the prevailing circumstances. In the present environment, this debate is also needed as more complex realities emerge in the post-modern world. The religious values often appear to be on the defensive as it is challenged by secular approaches to the emerging challenges including gender issues that have perplexed people of religion the most. The seminar will highlight these challenges.

Sheikh Mohammed Kazim Maroofi: Respected brothers and sisters and elders and esteemed scholars. It is a great honour and privilege for me to be situated now among such elite and prominent esteemed speakers and Dr Asaria who is my teacher. I genuinely did not expect that I would be speaking among such prominent individuals and as for the topic of discussion, I only came to know about it yesterday. It is a very intensive and extensive topic and requires a person to be very well grounded in various fields of theology from systematic to comparative and various sciences, modern sciences, knowing about the history of religion, the psychology of religion and environmental and cultural aspects which influence our thoughts.

Therefore, what I though because we are discussing the Prophet why not look at some his attributes and values. The reason being they are universal and timeless. We are still appreciating them today. For example: honesty, dignity, honour, integrity, modesty, loyalty, compassion, gratitude, servitude, certitude – we can go on and on. These are certain aspects of humanity which in modern times have been eroded a bit and become slightly side lined but one can still say this is something which is important. From this angle I believe that between divinity which propagates and which enforces this and modernity there is not a big gap. It is a very simple and straight forward relationship if you are going to look at it from this angle.

So we are here gathered to celebrate a personality and an entity. This is a personality who came into existence in a world which was emersed, drowned in perversity, depravity and degradation. They used to bury their daughters alive. Not just when they were born even after several years after bringing them up. It is mentioned in several accounts that the father would be digging the grave and the daughter would be watching and cleaning up the sand and dust and wondering what he is doing. The heartless nature of this individual was that he would bury his daughter alive.

And the Quran says that they will answer on the day of judgment. Not only that – children indiscriminately were killed. Not just the daughters. Those people who would have some kind of social standing in the society. Those who would be rich and lead people within the society. When it was feared their status would be diminished they would just kill their children.

This is what the Quran condemns. It says these individuals are on the edge of hell fire. And Allah also mentions that there was so much bloodshed and so many tribal feuds, so much barbarism so much disorder. There was no order, there was total lawlessness and it was basically the survival of the fittest. Individuals did not have any rights. It was the elites who ruled and the poor who served. This was the mentality.

This is when the Prophet came into this world. He was living among these people and he had the title of amin – someone who is reliable. He was very trustworthy and people would give their belongings to him for safe keeping. He was reliant. They would come to him and he would arbitrate in the issues which they had. He would be an arbitrator and a mediator.

It is very important to know that the Prophet was officially elected as the Prophet. He was not received with open arms. They did not bring garlands and flowers to him rather they threw stones at him, slandered him with all kinds of accusations: magician soothsayer etc.

He and his followers were subjected to some of the harshest sanctions one can perceive, they were isolated. For three years they were surviving on a single date or leaves for food. They were not allowed to have socialisation with community members. And the community members were not allowed to have any transactions with them economically.

They would stand for prayers and the internal organs of animals where thrown at them. The intestines and the utterers of camels. This was a daily occurrence. We can talk about all the abuses that the Prophet went through. Many of his companions were killed. But within the scale of 23 years it is the Prophet who says that no other Prophet was subjected to the level of persecution and harassment that I was subjected to. And that is a big claim to make. He was constantly ridiculed and mocked when he was building their army.

But at the same time he was able to bring about a revolution. What revolution did he bring about that these barbaric individuals who were just fighting among themselves. One of their sources of pride was that they could defend the Prophet. They could sacrifice their lives for the Prophet. A lady with three bodies on a camel said the Prophet is alright. She did not care that her father, husband and son were killed. The safety of the Prophet was of the utmost importance.

The same individuals when the Prophet would be performing ablutions would not permit a single drop of water to fall on the floor. Similarly when the Prophet was going on haj when he would shake his head they would not allow a single hair to fall on the floor. They would be rushing to use that as a blessing.

Now the anti feeling of migration has been embedded in us. The Arabs too were not open to migration but when the muhajareen migrated to Medina not only were they welcomed. They gave half of their wealth to them. It was stupendous. So you wonder what is the reason behind the success, achievements and accomplishments of the Prophet. How was he able in the scope of 23 years to change such lawless people.

The reason mentioned in the Quran is that your ethnic were sublime. Your morality was impeccable. This was the most important thing. And this why his cousin Imman Ali when he was asked to describe the Prophet asked the people to narrate all the blessing which the Prophet had given them.

The Quran says when it comes to the virtues and the morality and the ethnics of the Prophet it is sublime. Allah says if it was not for you I would not have created the entire universe. You have to follow the Prophet unconditionally. And only then will Allah forgive your shortcomings.

We have sent to you a Prophet who is someone who feels your pain whenever you suffer. He feels the agony more than you will feel. When somebody is greedy it should be greed for salvation, greed for guidance. Whenever he would give a talk to the people and did not receive the desired result he would blame himself. He would rebuke himself. It is affecting me and not the individuals. He would then stay up all night and supplicate to establish a greater relationship with Allah. The lack of sleep would make him very tired.

Allah said I am not revealing the Quran to you so that you suffer. Whenever he would talk about the future generations and the oppression he would cry to such an extent that the people around him would also cry. He would also cry for the oppressors. Why should you cry for the oppressors. You should be happy that evil has been overcome. But the Prophet would say he has ruined his life. There are two lives which we are living: the one in the temporal world and the eternal life. The fact that the person would be eternally doomed that would sadden him.

 Just to summarise. Humanity is taking enormous strides. We are constantly progressing. We are constantly coming up with new discoveries and inventions in the field of empirical sciences, technological advancement, agriculture. You name it. We know about DNA about cloning. We know about so many things in the modern day.

But there is one aspect that we are going backwards, we are receding. That is in etiquette. That is morality. Poverty is going on a high. Sedition is increasing. Knife crime is increasing. These are the factors we are not developing we are going backwards. That is why there is a very core relationship between divinity and modernity. If you look from this aspect. I am not trying to overlook some of the prevailing problems or challenges that modernity has. But you are able to have the same etiquette and morality as was taught by all the prophets, especially Prophet Mohammed. Many of the modern issues can be dealt with.

 

Dr Krish Kandiah: My mother was born in India and my father war born in Malaysia. My father’s father was born in Sri Lanka and my mother’s father was Irish. So I am kind of confused about who I should cheer for in the Olympics. In football it is really easy – I cheer for Liverpool Football Club.

My mother was brought up in India just before the second world war and her father was in India helping in the tea plantations and he was a very good shot with a rifle. And every time there was a man eating tiger he was called in to shoot.in. There are many pictures of my father sat on the carcass of a dead tiger. These were not trophy killings.

But there was a problem. When my grandfather went to fight in WW2 he left behind my mother and her three sisters. He died in Al Alamein fighting against Romell. There were lots of Indians in that place standing up for freedom and justice. But because my mother was from a different ethnic background she was not accepted into either family. She was placed in an orphanage because she was the wrong caste and the wrong colour. It was supposed to be a Christian orphanage but they did not treat them very well. They said they were having piano lessons and they were having new shoes every year but mother was bare foot and never touched a piano.

This led to my mother having a real problem with Christianity. She thought it was all hypocrisy with people who did not really live up to their faith. And my grand aunt in Brighton heard about my mother and two sisters and her mother and brought them to the United Kingdom

 My mother decided she was going to give something back to the society that welcomed her so well. She trained to be nurse when she was 16 or 17 years old. As she travelled to the Brighton General Hospital there were people who would throw a banana at her and tell her to go back to her own country. Some of the patients would ask for a white nurse because they didn’t want a brown nurse to touch them.

Can you imagine, you are 16 and that is how you are being treated. So my mother decided to fight a one woman resistance campaign to the racism she was experience. On a Friday night she would cook masses of rice and curry and anyone who felt like they didn’t fit in was welcome to my mother’s house. There were international students that came, nurses and neighbours that came. This was a little oasis of calm in all the xenophobia.

Since those days I describe my mother as fighting hostility with hospitality. One of the international students was a dashing young Malaysian student. He was supposed to be studying civil engineering but he ended up studying cricket and my mother and they fell in love and got married and my sister and I came along and we grew up in Brighton.

This picture of hospitality being the core of what it means to be human became a really important strand in my life. So now my wife and I have a mixed race marriage. I am brown, she is kind of white. She in English and Welsh and I am the mixture you heard about. We have six children: three are through birth and three are local children who needed fostering or adoption. I had a lot of desire to show hospitality as per my mother’s example. But also my faith, I want to share a little about the Christian perspective on this question of modernity and divinity. We will come back to hospitality. It is an honour this discussion is being held on the prophet’s birthday. I know very little about Islam so I am here to learn. I will share a little bit about my understanding of how the Christian faith handles this question of modernity and divinity.

Modernity is a funny word. It sounds like philosophical word, a technical word and I am a fan of culture and particularly popular culture. And if you want a metaphor to describe modernity probably the best way is to think your way back to the late 60s early 70s and to think about the television show Star Trek. The dominant colour for Star Trek was white- it was ethnic gleaming. And the idea was through technology and science we can overcome all the problems that society has. And so the Star Trek Enterprise boldly goes where no man has ever been before and they bring their technology and their superior civilisation to help out all the other planets in the universe.

The show was incredibly prophetic. They had devices that they used to flip open that looked incredibly like the mobile phones that we have today. It had sliding doors before there were even sliding doors. They predicted those and there was a whole ethnical dilemma about the physics behind teleporters.

This was modernity. That through our rational thinking and our technology we could over come all the problems that exist today. There was a commentator from the USA. His name was Walter Lipman and he described something called the acids of modernity. Modernity was like a solvent and it dissolved everything it touched. It dissolves some of the traditional ways of family life, communities and marriages. It was like a solvent. It dissolved everything. We had evolved beyond the old ways of doing things. And a lot of people thought this would mean the end of religion. Now that we have modernity and technology we won’t need religion anymore.

But the interesting thing about a solvent is that if it dissolves anything it actually dissolves the container as well. And now we no longer talk about modernity. We talk about post modernity or late modernity. And if you look at the world of modernity with post modernity another popular culture thing may help you.

Do you remember The Terminator movie. So The Terminator is about a piece of technology that was created by humans but becomes a little bit like Frankenstein. It now comes back to kill us. And technology is not the saviour it is the problem. It is going to come and destroy us. In The Terminator movie they predict the internet which will connect all these devices together. Somehow the internet will become self aware. It will have artificial intelligence. We hear about that more and more.

Artificial intelligence will look rationally at the universe and our planet and it will decide that humans are the problem and it will come to wipe us out. There are a lot of movies that describe that. You may remember one called I Robot that had a guy called Will Smith in it. And there was another movie that was very much like I Robot – I Am Legend. This is about a vaccine that was given to everybody and it turns them all into zombies.

 In this genre of movies you have things like The Matrix and the idea is that things we thought would save us – our rationality, our technology – are destroying us. They will destroy our environment, our free will, our economies.

Now another sociologist called Zygmunt Bauman says that because we are living in these turbulent times it is like a storm Everything we thought we could rely on is gone and therefore we as a human race cannot live with this degree of uncertainty that modernity and post modernity have brought us. What we go looking for is safe harbour, somewhere where we can shelter from all this chaos in the world that is changing.

And this safe harbour is often a way of going back to basics. What we saw this summer was an attempt by many people to go back to basics, go back to the tribes that they thought they could find security from.

Don’t know what your experience of the riots was this summer. I was in Chicago. But I had a lot of friends and family who were very worried to be on the streets. You could be assaulted for being the wrong colour in the wrong part of town.

I tried to understand this. I would like your perspective. I think what was happening with the riots was a little bit like what happened to me when I went to school. I remember my friends gave me a bottle of coco cola and as I was about to open it they were laughing and smiling and sniggering and when I opened it it exploded. For the last 20 minutes they had been shaking it. I opened it and it exploded.

I think what is happening in our culture because of all the uncertainty of modernity and post modernity is that our politicians or at least some of them, have been going back to a tribal way of thinking that we need to blame all these problems we are seeing in society onto immigrants and we need to blame them and the rest of us we are the safe ones. I remember all the things they used to say about people coming on small boats and they are going to destroy our culture. We need to send people to Rwanda. A lot of the language has been particularly negative not just of the immigrants but of people of the Islamic faith. They are they ones who are most often targeted for the greatest amount of abuse.

When that terrible incident happened in Southport and these three beautiful children were murdered by a young 17-year-old boy with a knife some of these politicians started to go on the internet and blame the immigrants. And not just any immigrants. They blamed Muslim immigrants. Because people were so shaken up by the things that were going on in our culture that triggered them to a violent response. The boy was not an immigrant, he was not a Muslim. His parents were from Congo. They didn’t care about whether it was true or false. It was like opening a can and everything exploded.

This is why the outwardness of modernity. People feel so uncertain and so worried. They may lost the things they used to rely on: a sense of purpose and hope and so our politicians, some of them, use that uncertainty to stir up hatred.

 Now I believe, going back to my mother, that the way you fight hostility, is through hospitality. If we can deconstruct the false narratives about immigration, about Islam, about people of a different coloured skin we can combat that not with more hostility but with hospitality.

I see that as one of the most important things that I take away from Jesus. It was good to hear how important it is in Islam to respect Jesus. That encourages me. In the gospels Jesus told many stories about the power of hospitality. I will tell you one of them – maybe you are familiar with it.

There once were two sons and the youngest son goes to his father and says father you are wealthy. Can I have my share of the inheritance now. I want to go away. I don’t want to live under your protection anymore. I want to go. And he goes off and he spends everything on wild living. He goes to another country and things are so bad that he runs out of money and he runs out of friends and he gets to the point where he has to get a job feeding pigs.

And Jesus told this story about a Jewish boy. Imagine a Jewish boy being so down on his luck that he has to feed pigs? And he is hungry the is even willing to eat the pigs food. He thinks that in my father’s house even the servants and the slaves have a better life than this. So there in the pig pen he decides he is going to go home.

 And he makes his way home. And when he is still a long way off his father sees him down the street and he runs after him. In the ancient wealthy people don’t run. They glide. They walk serenely. But his father doesn’t care. His father welcomes him, hugs, embraces him, kisses. He says I am not worthy to be called your son. And his father says no you are home we thought you were dead, you are alive. I will put a ring on your finger, I will put shoes on your feet, I will put a cloak around you to cover your brokenness. Let us throw a party and kill the fattened calf because I thought my son was alive and now he is back.

But you remember there were two brothers. The second brother was in the field. He hears the noise of the party. He asks one of the servants what is all the noise and is told your brother has come home and your father has killed a fattened calf and the brother decides not to go into the party. He is angry. How dare my brother decides to come home and expects to be treated as a son. My brother spent his half of the inheritance and now he has come home we will have to split the inheritance and I will get less. Just like the father ran to welcome the son home the father leaves the party. And this was a great shame. Why are the two sons not in the party? He goes out and talks to the older son and says you must come in. My son was dead and now he is alive.

But the older brothers says no, this son of yours has nothing to do with me. He is your son, he is not my brother. I have been slaving for you all these years and you never threw me a party. The father said no all I have is yours but you must welcome your brother home. And the story is an interesting one. It ends on a cliff hanger. We don’t know if the older brother comes home.

And Jesus told this story because a lot of people were criticising him for showing hospitality to the people who were described as moral outcasts. They were the wrong caste or the wrong race. Jesus was ready to welcome them all and people were very angry he was doing this. And Jesus told that story because he wanted people to know that the grace of God is for everybody. Everybody can find forgiveness, everybody can find a welcome. It doesn’t matter about your history, your background, your ethnicity, everybody is welcome.

And for me that has worked out in our family. That is why we foster, we adopt. We needed to show something of the grace of God to people in need. And that is what we need to do if we are going to undo the way that modernity is beginning to divide us. It is them and us, immigrant and native. We need to recognise our common humanity together. And to me this story of Jesus and the person Jesus helps me to know that this is possible.

Dr Makbul Rahim: It is a great honour for me to come back here. I remember a long, long time ago I cam here to speak about a project for saving the environment and what Islam has to offer on issues regarding the protection of the environment and in terms of improving environmental practices.

I would like to start off by looking at how Muslims and non Muslims have approached this question. We can look at how some of the writers or some of the speakers who have spoken about the Holy Prophet. It is interesting to see how researchers of comparative religions have spoken about the Holy Prophet . They identified the special characteristics of the Holy Prophet from the point of view of someone who is not a Muslim. That is an important window to look through.

There are three supreme qualities that characterised the Holy Prophet. Closeness to God, inner faith, inner connection to God the creator. This is the first characteristic that is identified. The second thing that is identified is his struggles over a period of 13 years in Mecca and then a period of ten years after his migration from Mecca to Medina and how they established an Islamic society virtually  from scratch.

We are talking about the time of Jahaliya. We are talking about the people who used to enjoy war. They used to enjoy plunder, taking people into slavery, killing children. So we are talking about a society that is quite brutalised in a sense. This is a society that did not seem to have much compassion or feelings for each other. Tribalism united them but there was a lot of division and that is something that clearly was a very important consideration for the Holy Prophet.

For the first 40 years he did not make any propagation – he lived a among the people without uttering a single word of propagation about Islam. During the 40 years he urged the people to exercise good will and affection for the people, for his tribes especially the ones who were considered trustworthy.

And what is interesting is that when he went to the leaders of the tribes they found his propagation of religion was too much for them. He was successful. They wanted to assassinate him in his house. And that is the time when the holy Prophet came to know about this he said these people tried to kill me but there are so many trustworthy things. I am a banker to them, I have helped so many of them because they trusted me so much despite the differences in ideology and belief. They used to leave everything in the custody of the holy Prophet. So you can see that they trusted the Holy Prophet so much. The Prophet said to Ali please when I go return all these things that people have left with me. This is one thing.

The other thing is that in 13 years the holy Prophet created a great revolution. By the time he comes to Medina an Islamic society is created. There is brotherhood between people who migrated and the people who were already resident in Medina. So the Ansar who were already living there welcomed those people. They welcomed the refugees. The people who migrated from Mecca to Medina. They were so inclusive. They took care of them and gave them hospitality.

So you can see the change that the Holy Prophet brought about in the mindset of the people. How all the people who were fighting with each other were united in Medina. Those tribes that were always at logger heads were united. When the Prophet asked them to give refuge to the people who were coming from Mecca as refugees and they did everything for them.

Today we have issues about who is a refugee, why are they here and what are they doing. Why have they come? They have disrupted our lives. They have disrupted everything that we have. They are going to take jobs from us. Can you understand the mind set of those people – how it has changed. In Medina the Ansar welcomed the refugees to their homes. They gave them refuge. They gave them part of the property. They also gave them part of the inheritance. You can see the change that happened. It was an amazing moment of change that the Holy Prophet brought about.

When the Holy Prophet came to Medina he established an Islamic society and an Islamic state. It started with a covenant with the Jews and the Christians who lived in Medina. So we have a constitution that the Holy Prophet promulgated about bringing good behaviour, taking care of non Muslims making sure they have rights. They have obligations but they have rights as well. This is a model constitution. This is one that everyone should be looking at and say how should we be looking after each other. How can we be sure that people of a different faith are taken care of. How do we demonstrate our humanity and our good love and affection.

God wants us to be good other human beings. He has asked them to be good to take care of them. So it is part of the love of God. You love God and then you love what God wants you do is to love. So this is an amazingly good demonstration of what the Holy Prophet did in Medina. People were not fighting. They were not killing. There was no persecution. This is what modernity today should be looking at. Today there is a chaos of modernity where there is nothing but materialism. Everyone is just seeking more and more at the expense of the others. In this stage, in this era of modernity what we need to look at is how the Holy Prophet provided a model and a template which can bring about cohesion and inclusiveness in society.

That is the very big lesson for us in today’s world when we are thinking in terms of nothing but technology and globalisation. So there are so many good things that are taking places in terms of medical advancements. But there is no faith, there is no inclusiveness, there is no feeling among people.

That is why it is so easy to use the instruments of destruction that are available that have been created by science and are being used against each other because there is no feeling for each other. There is no feeling of humanity. It is so important that we take out lessons from the holy Prophet’s life. We look at what he did and see how we can repair the world. The world is in need of repair. It has broken down. We need to repair this world using the examples which the faith traditions give us. And these faith traditions are for everyone. They are for the benefit of humanity.

That is a colossal task for us. When we talk of modernity and post modernity we are talking about where are we headed. Are we going to end of up in greater and greater chaos or are we going to have a utopian society? There is the conception that we need the kingdom of God on earth where we believe – the Muslims believe – that the Prophet will come. Mahdi will come to establish a kingdom of God on earth where there is going to be justice, equality and equity. That is what the people should be looking at.

Do they have anything to look forward to? Look at modernity. What are we looking forward to? Are we seeing something good happening or are we just seeing greater and greater chao? We need to take lessons. We should have discussions like this with people from different faiths to see exactly how we can fix the world. This world has broken down and we need to fix it.

 

*Sheikh Mohammed Kazim Maroofi holds a Masters degree in Islamic studies from ICAS (Islamic College for Advanced Studies) and Masters in Quranic sciences from University of Imam Khomeini, Iran. He is a public speaker, researcher and specialist in home schooling. He also studied Philosophy of Islamic Ethics at Al Mustafa International University Qum.

**Krish Kandiah is the Founder and CEO of Home for Good – a charity seeking to find loving homes for children in the care system. He is an advocate for fostering and adoption, has written several books and is a regular contributor to the Times, the Guardian and also a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2. Krish has expertise in the overlap between faith and development, faith literacy and communication. He is an ambassador for the UK aid and development charity: Tearfund. Krish holds degrees in Chemistry, Missiology and Theology. His PhD is from Kings College, London. He currently holds faculty positions at Regent College, Vancouver and Regents Park College, Oxford University and is an honorary research Fellow at the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University and an honorary reader in theology at St Andrews University, Scotland. Krish lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and 6 children (through birth, fostering and adoption).

Dr Makbul Rahim is a lawyer, legal consultant and independent researcher. He has a Doctorate (Doctor of Professional Studies) from the Middlesex University London on the topic of Islam and Environmental practices in Khoja faith communities in UK.

He obtained his law degree from the University of East Africa in 1970 and practiced as a lawyer in Tanzania. He was at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, researching international mineral laws and natural resources agreements in the African mining industry. He has worked as a legal officer and adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London providing interdisciplinary policy and legal advice and services in various legal projects. He has a keen interest in comparative religions, principles of faith and religion, Islamic jurisprudence, history and philosophy and interfaith issues. He delivered talks on Islam and Environment in various places such as Oxford College and Chichester Cathedral. He has taught early Islamic history at Islamic College London and taught at community Islamic schools.