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Hasbun-Allahu-wa-Ni’mal-Wakil..

That repeating cry keeps on striking us.

Mothers losing their children, boys-girls losing their parents and families losing their homes. The whole city losing its life of past and present; hope for the future seems perishing under the genocidal bombardment. What is left to emerge is the repeating crying call: Sufficient is Allah, the best provider of all affairs.

At a past Critical Muslim Studies (CMS) conference, while Gaza featured in most discussions addressing the dire conditions of Palestinians, there was also strong condemnation to the failures of world leaders to react with principles, and this includes the weak responses of the Islamic-world leaders failing to meaningfully act in a unified front to prevent the massacre. The paper Rethinking Islamization as Religious Conversion shared a critical perspective on the conceptualization of Islam as Religion, proposed instead to consider reading Islam as a language or a discourse. Reading Islam as language loosens the definitive conception of religion that carries too much baggage from the Christian-European past, and furthermore constrains to the unintelligible other-worldly aspects of life. As language, Islam binds a global community with a common sense of Muslimness that could open up alternative paths in imagining Muslims’ future free from the dominance of others.

Reading Islam as a language may sound peculiar in the first instance, though that could be due to the hegemonic conception of religion that we are already attuned to. It may seem less strange upon recognising our living in relation to Islam is never really in the void of language; in prayers, invocations, and remembrance; even more so in our participation in social-community life. It is in language and through language, our expression of Islam and Muslimness manifest.

The emphasis on language becomes more substantial, considering the centrality of the Quran not just simply as a sacred religious book, but more as a phenomenon of language that brings reminiscence of divine presence, mercy and guidance. The Quran links the community of readers to the prophetic past through its recital tradition that informs the way of living for Muslimness in the world. The practice of reading further conditions intelligibility for ethical clarity, ascending away from rigid doctrinal religiosity, avoiding wandering mystical ambiguities; while dissolving problematic modern self-disintegration.

Still, reading Islam as a language faces a challenge in accommodating the diversity of Muslimness around the world while retaining the unity of Islam that binds the Ummah together as a global community. In this respect, several scholars have discussed Islam as a language or discourse.

In evading the problem of religious essentialism that tends to divide Islam into fragmented multiple Islams, Talal Asad (2009) uses the notion of a discursive tradition to explain the formation of Muslim communities through the authoritative scholarly tradition of Islam. The Ulama tradition functions as an orthodoxy that links the discursive traditions from the past to contemporary forms of Islamic knowledge. Still, a remaining challenge is in approaching diverse expressions, interpretations, and manifestations of Muslimness that go beyond the generally accepted discursive tradition of orthodoxy, including differences in religious understandings and apparent contradictions between communities.

Shehab Ahmad’s (2015) What is Islam? deals with this challenge of differences and contradictions among Muslims by discussing Islam as a hermeneutical engagement; Islam as a language provides the means for meaning in the lives of Muslims. Ahmad attempts to resolve this challenge by offering a way to frame the engagements with primary sources of the Islamic tradition using categorizations of pre-Text, Text and con-Text to explain the meaning of being Islamic.

But perhaps it is unnecessary to explain what Islam really is – Muslims fairly know what Islam is – as Sayyid (2014) states, “Islam is the name that gives Muslims a name”; and for Muslims, Islam is Islam and any other description won’t be able to represent its meaning from the actual living of Muslims. Instead, what could be more useful is to address obstacles preventing Islam from manifesting in ways that best represent Muslimness, especially in facing the various challenges in the world. Sayyid (1997) discusses Islam as a discursive universe, where Islam functions as a master-signifier that binds the discursive unity of the Ummah. The key problem facing the Ummah under the Western world order is how Islam has been displaced by other forms of discourses; nationalism, liberalism, scientific positivism, Kemalism, etc.; resulting to, among others, the essentialisation of Islam as Religion that limits its influence to the other-worldly, and restricts its potential in the reconstruction of the world. This displacement of Islam due to the hegemonic discourses of the West recalls the need to read Islam(ism) as a language or a discourse for Muslimness in facing the Westernese hegemony.

In this hegemonic world order of rampant Islamophobia, global inequality, and political antagonism towards Muslimness, a critical question for intellectuals and scholars with the task to open up paths for the future is how should we place the discourse on Islam as a form of knowledge in the world? Here again, the problem of representing Islam with the category Religion is easily recognizable as its articulation only leads to further displacement, obscurity and marginalization from the world.

Reading Islam as a language could be useful first in addressing the problem of the displacement of Islam, where its articulation fails to manifest into meaningful action. Furthermore, Islam(ism) as a discourse could be a tool to dismantle problematic conditions due to the Westernese ordering of Islam and Muslimness, and perhaps also helpful in dissolving problematic religious narratives from the Islamicate past.  Problematic narratives inflicted by; religious essentialism that causes takfiri and other forms of exclusivity; sectarianism that encourages inter-madhhab divisions; overly fatalistic tendencies causing other-worldly escapism; and religious narratives that tend to instrumentalize Islam to protect the interests of corrupt ruling elites; should be best abandoned, while more attention should be given in reformulating Islamic narratives that could lead towards the formation of a unified and dignified Ummatic order. 

In the absence of such an order, how can the Ummah speak for Gaza and the unjustly treated elsewhere? What most commonly heard is the banality of failing speeches by the leadership of so-called Muslim nations, while religious preachings sound mere conciliatory, indicating how far Islam as a language has been displaced from the world.

While the crying calls from Gaza are still striking our hearts and conscience; they come as reminders that there are still places where Islam still clearly resonates. With the world abandoning them, what is left for them to hold onto is in the language echoing past messengers; with patience, perseverance, and resistance that sufficient is God, and from God we all come, and eventually to God we all shall return.