Swelling the ranks of latter day surrogate orientalists Part I
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

At a glance Raja Petra’s article “Does an Islamic State Really Exist” (Malaysia Today Dec 17, 2006) gives one the impression that he is contributing to the debate about the role of Islam in politics, society and state craft. Given the present renewed interest if not also prejudice about Islam spurred by “political Islam” as a possible challenge to the dominant world order, war on terrorism and unending conflicts affecting the Muslim world, a sustained, informed debate on the subject is very much welcome. One would assume that Raja Petra is more than able to make a meaningful contribution to the debate given his association with a multitude of Muslim opinion leaders, locally and internationally and his previous writings on the subject.

From the outset, any student of Islamic political history would acknowledge the plethora and spectrum of opinions within the body of Islam itself. Gearing on this latitude, Raja Petra sets out, sometimes in cavalier fashion and sometimes with irreverent jest, to overturn generally accepted ideas and teachings about Islam as a religion of revelation, its theological doctrine, Islamic history and prominent personalities including the Prophet and his close companions.

Being the owner of the website that published the article, it is all within Raja Petra’s right and power to overturn commonly held views and beliefs to “debunk millenia old myths” in any manner he likes. But one wonders whom Raja Petra is writing to. The facets of Islamic faith that Raja Petra tackled are big subjects that are the provinces of specialized scholarship. Is the applause of a few worth the severe loss of credibility with his nonchalant mangling of Islamic doctrine, rituals and practice, and history without paying heed to the minimum standards of intellectual accountability and evidence based scholarship?

Raja Petra’s main thesis is that Islam as religious faith to a sizeable chunk of humanity for 1400 years has been cobbled up together by Muhammad, who “not only followed but believed in their generations – old religion (of the Pagan Arabs) – which was not only influenced by the different variations of Judaism and Christianity but Zoroastrian as well. It is no surprise therefore that Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam, borrowed heavily many of the rituals and practices from this ancient Zoroastrian religion”. To bring home the point, Mr. Petra in the next paragraph wrote, “What Muhammad introduced was the doctrine of the one God – ‘there is no God but God’. Everything else down to the rituals was inherited from pre-Islamic days. In fact, many were inherited from pre-Christianity and pre-Judaism days (such as the Hajj). And that is why some Jewish and Christian sects share the same method of praying as the Muslims and which are consistent with the earlier Zoroastrian methods”. Yes according to Islamic teachings the Hajj rituals came from Abraham, the father of monotheistic religions, but one is entitled to ask, which other rituals are borrowed from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism?

So it is, throughout the article Raja Petra makes sweeping unsupported assertions strange to mainstream teachings and sources (Muslim or otherwise) on fundamental aspects of Islam and its history.

“There was no Shariah or Islamic laws during the time of Muhammad … Laws were based on ancestral tribal tradition … Tribal laws came first and even Muhammad was not able to go against this …” writes Raja Petra, implying that we have all been had. The pious scholar jurists like Imam Shafi’i, hadith scholars like Al-Bukhari, thinker-theologian Al-Ghazzali, philosopher-jurist Ibn Rushd to statesmen, scientists, and scholars of the Islamic civilization when the Muslim world was the centre of the civilized world, to ordinary mortals like us today, have all been taken for a ride.

His writings suggests that we have all been fooled to believe that Muhammad was a prophet who received the final revelation to purify the message of Tauhid. And we have all been fools to believe that the Quran is a revealed book when in fact it was written by Muhammad who cut and pasted its contents from Christian, Judaic and Zoroastrian traditions.

All those painstaking, unbelievably meticulous scholarship that went into the preservation and study of the Quran and Hadith from which fundamental teachings of doctrine, rituals, social norms and laws are derived by our pious predecessors have actually been in vain because the Quran and Hadith are not what we think they are.

To get away with such gross irresponsible mangling of Islamic teachings and history, Raja Petra not so cleverly uses the device of selectively referring to obscure, off-mainstream sources. Even more irresponsibly so, the sources are not mentioned, but merely stating, “There are many variations of history and the history or story of Muhammad is no less spared these variations. For example, many believe Muhammad to be illiterate and they argue that the revelations he received must have come from God since he could neither read or write. Others, however, dispute this and they quote the following verses from the Quran to support their contention that Muhammad was in fact learned … . As for Muhammad’s ignorance of other religions, this is also in dispute, as his wife Khadijah’s cousin was a learned Christian who knew the scriptures well. As you can see, history is not an exact science and variations do occur. Who is reporting the more accurate account may never be known and until today experts dispute the many versions of history … These are but just some of the variations and you are free to believe whichever version you most comfortable with”. The accuracy and relevance of the Quranic verses to the subject matter aside, who are “they” and “experts” that Raja Petra refers to – are “they” respected scholars in the field or ill-informed individuals giving their cheap, prejudiced opinions?

Well, there are sources and there are “sources”. Raja Petra’s assertion that Muhammad, being a learned person, cobbled together Islamic doctrines, rituals and practices from Christian (and other ancient) teachings is nothing new. This was the well-worn charges of medieval Christian scholars who accused the prophet Muhammad an imposter on the basis that some of the teachings and names of prophets in the Quran were familiar to Christians.

The same charge was developed and refined by European scholars who specialized in the study of Islam in 19th and early 20th century – “Orientalism” – which Edward Said famously critiqued as an academic enterprise not to understand Islam but to dominate it, not to seek empathy with it but to ridicule it, abuse it and demonstrate its inferiority. Thus Duncan Black McDonald considered Islam to be a heretical form of Christianity, and even as late as the sixties, renowned orientalist Philip Hitti could get away presenting Muhammad as an imposter and the Quran as a rather jumbled document based on Christian, Jewish and heathen sources.

But the world of scholarship or Islam has progressed significantly since but Raja Petra refused to move along, preferring to believe his nameless “experts” who would today stand discredited in the academic world with those prejudiced and unsubstantiated ideas. It is to scholars like RJ Nicholson, AJ Arberry and Marshall Hodgson, who devoted their lives to Islamic study that we owe much contemporary knowledge of ancient Muslim manuscripts and modern holistic interpretations of Islam authenticating the early works of traditional scholars. Biographies of Muhammad written during recent years by European scholars do further justice to his personality supplementing the classical works of earlier historians of seerah (Muhammad’s life history). Of this, Martin Ling’s “Muhammad, his life based on the earliest sources”, W. Montgomery Watt’s “Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman” and Annemarie Schimmel’s “And Muhammad is His Messenger – the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety” come to mind.

Today, only Muslims can conjure the kind of poorly researched articles that Raja Petra writes in “Does an Islamic State Really Exist”. A westerner or a non Muslim risks putting their credibility and academic credentials on the line and being consigned to the thrash-bin of Islamophobes alongside Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson.

They resurrect worn out and failed anti-Islam agenda of the past, further abuse, mangle and distort Islamic teachings and the Prophet’s life and do the bidding for Islamophobes who can no longer write the way orientalists did up to 50 years ago. At least the orientalists of old had mastery of the Arabic language and were involved in actual scholarship.

Welcome to the world of latter-day surrogate Orientalism and join the fabulous world of Ayar Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Amina Wadud. Like them, Raja Petra has the right qualification. He seems to have a severe and profound aversion towards anything to do with organized religion and religious authority accepted by mainstream Islam – the unblemished revealed Holy Book (Quran), the authenticated prophetic traditions (Hadiths), the codified Islamic Law (Shariah) and the righteous scholars (Ulama).

Dr. Mazeni Alwi
Chairman, Muslim Professionals Forum

References :
1) Muhammad – his life based on the earliest sources. Martin Lings, Islamic Texts Society 1983
2) And Muhammad is His Messenger – the veneration of the prophet in Islamic piety. Annemarie Schimmel, the University of North Carolina Press 1985
3) Distorted Imagination – lessons from the Rushdie affair. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Grey Seal books 1990
4) Understanding Islam. Fritjof Schuon, Mandala Books 1976
5) The cultural atlas of Islam. Ismail R al Faruqi and Lois Lamya al Faruqi, MacMillan 1986
6) Muhammad, Prophet and statesman. Montgomery Watt. Oxford University Press,1961.