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Debating bad ideas

By Laurence Maher - posted Wednesday, 2 August 2017


In April 2017, the Australian chapter of the international religious political party Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) disseminated on the worldwide web a video recording of a discussion, conducted partly in Arabic, between two of its women members.

This discussion concerned the following English language translation of Surah 4:34 of The Koran:

Men are protectors and maintainers of woman, because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means. Therefore the righteous women are Qanitat [obedient], and guard in the husband's absence what Allah orders them to guard. As to those women on whose part you see ill conduct, admonish them, and abandon them in their beds, and beat them, but if they return to obedience, do not seek a means against them. Surely, Allah is Ever Most High, Most Great.
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Ironically, HT has done Australians an unintended favour by challenging them to investigate and debate the merits of HT's theocratic detestation of secular Western liberal democracy. That worldview, set out at length in HT's English language online sites and elsewhere, includes religious supremacism, a form of sexual apartheid, and an occasional opportunistic fondness to offer to make a public case for "honour" killings.

What might the ordinary Australian reasonably make of the ideas expressed in HT's chosen scripture characterised by one of its women members as "beautiful" and a "blessing"?

Australians deserve to be reminded that Chief Justice Latham said in the Jehovah's Witnesses case (1943) that the freedom of religion under s 116 of the Australian Constitution is both the toleration of religion and the toleration of no religion. In the latter case, it protects the right to believe and say that all religion is superstition. At the same time, however, it also protects the right to believe and say that all infidels (whatever the sectarian starting point) are inferior and destined for well-deserved eternal Hellfire unless they submit. It matters not that either type of statement could result in another person experiencing the transient emotional reaction of feeling upset, hurt, displeased, offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated (etc, etc, etc).

In secular Australia, The Koran is no more than one of many competing books of religious and political ideas all the way to the charlatanism of L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics.

Nowadays, however, The Koran is uniquely controversial in that claims are being made that its ideas should be insulated from public debate. The most conspicuous pointer to that censoring device is the conflating of religious ideas with ethnicity/race.

The interested Australian non-believer (in the widest sense) really has no substitute for reading the book and making her/his assessment of its ideas. Just as with the other major religious books, the more Australians read The Koran carefully and form and express their individual opinions about the belief system it prescribes, the more the national debate about those ideas (and their reception down the centuries) will be well served. Among other contextual observations which deserve to be noted are the following.

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First, most interested non-believers (and, allowing for rote memorisation, likely many if not most believers) neither speak nor read ancient Arabic, the language by which, so it is said, the messenger Archangel Gabriel imparted, verbatim, the Almighty's words in verse form to a solitary prophet in the Arabian Peninsula fourteen centuries ago.

Secondly, given the claim that those verses were reduced to writing during the century or more after their alleged revelation, there may or may not be a debate about the authenticity of any given Arabic version.

Thirdly, a question arises for English speakers: which translation of which version is to be used?

Fourthly, there is the timing of the alleged divine revelation. Although it is possible to locate believers who assert that the modern world affects any reading of The Koran, such persons are probably outnumbered by adherents who, in keeping with the teaching of some (if not many) clerics/scholars, insist that it is the living book of God which, literally, explains and regulates everything on Earth, and that it binds believers and non-believers alike.

In some quarters, any suggestion that the belief system prescribed by the book is long overdue for a reformation, say of a kind that accounts for contemporary Christianity (in its many forms), is rejected as insulting or blasphemous or worse. This has an internal sectarian logic if The Koran is taken to be the last, complete, perfect and, thus unalterable divine revelation,and if it asserted, as must follow, that all Earthly authority derives solely from the Almighty.

If the foregoing summary is inaccurate and the plain English meaning of any part of the scripture has become obsolete as expressing a bad idea and can therefore be ignored (as is uncontroversial in Australia with earlier competing scriptures), there should be no inhibition in saying so in a secular democracy. In the Islamic world any such "disrespectful" claim can lead to lethal summary punishment.

The acute and entirely predictable sectarian sensitivity of HT to criticism of its religious ideas can also be seen in the statement of one of its Australian spokesmen that apostasy can attract similarly severe punishment.

Fifthly, in secular democratic Australia, the non-believer is not bound to disregard the plain English meaning of words of any scripture. Common sense dictates that there is nothing helpful to be gained by confecting ambiguity.

Nor is there any reason why any such person should feel bound to spend precious time considering the copious secondary (Earthly) commentary. (Perhaps some non-believers would be sufficiently motivated to read the Life of the Prophet.) This too may displease believers, but the underlying conceit of any politico-religious claim to be the last word on anything and everything may excite suspicion in the mind of a non-believer and fortify her/his disinclination to embark on a reading of any translation of the book. That understandable reaction should be resisted.

HT's chosen English language version of the scripture speaks for itself. And it closely resembles two well-known translations. The first is by Pickthall (1930) – which claims to be "the first by an Englishman who is a Muslim". In it, for example, the equally plain word "scourge" is substituted for "beat" in Surah 4:34. Another translation is that by Dawood (1956) in the Penguin Classics series (available here online). In it, the plain words "superior to" are substituted for "to excel".

In his introduction to the Pickthall translation, William Montgomery Watt observed that since Pickthall had consulted "the Sheykh al-Azhar of the time, the head of the traditional Islamic university and presumably also Grand Mufti of Egypt, Pickthall might be said to have something like official approval."

Pickthall's foreword and introduction are essential reading for anyone trying to arrive at a basic understanding of the ideas contained in The Koran. However, in his foreword, Pickthall expressed the disconcerting assessment that the book "cannot be translated".

In response to the release of the HT video, one Australian academic commentator said that several recent media reports had sensationalised domestic violence within the Muslim community and often falsely linked it to Surah 4:34. This claim puts the non-believer in a curious position made curiouser because the same commentator uses yet another English language translation and provides a link to seven more such translations, including Pickthall's.

Finally, one paradoxical feature confronting the non-believer and exemplified in the recent controversy has been the commentary of some clerics to the effect that domestic violence is forbidden but whose comments omit to mention Surah 4:34 or its broad assertion of female subordination. This suggests that for some purposes there is a central element of doctrinal authority and for other purposes there are differences of opinion or textual interpretations. As fascinating as that conundrum is, it should not distract the non-believer's attention from the plain meaning of any given verse.

The reality is that Australians will not (and did not) miss the plain English meaning of HT's preferred translation, namely, that the Almighty has commanded that men are superior to women and that wife-beating has a role in ensuring that a wife obeys her husband and does not stray from the path of divinely revealed righteousness.

The same Australians would not need to be reminded that equality of the sexes is central to Australian democracy. Even those Australians unaware of either the nationwide campaign to suppress domestic violence/abuse or the proposed Women's Manifesto being circulated for discussion could be expected to conclude that HT's chosen scripture plainly conveys an idea which is incompatible with the nation's democratic principles (and forbidden by the criminal law).

That suggested negative response would likely have been reinforced for Australians who were (or have since become) aware that in February 2017 the then President of the AustralianFederation of Islamic Councils publicly stated that the controversial scripture could be defended because what it is really saying is that violence can only be used by a husband "as a last resort".

HT's attempts to use religion to excuse the inexcusable, especially when it affects female equality, is likely to be a reminder to Australians that the rigid "identity" stereotyping central to the ideology underpinning Australia's official policy of multiculturalism produces a contradiction in its sectarian treatment of bad religious ideas.

As the late Ronald Dworkin observed in 2006 commenting on the Danish cartoons  controversy, "No one's religious convictions can be thought to trump the freedom that makes democracy possible."

HT's complaint that its 2017 video was a necessary response to media comment that the laws of Islam had been painted as "barbaric, backward [and] not applicable to our current times" was revealingly frank.

Many, perhaps most, Australians would adhere to the view that the idea expressed in the plain English meaning of HT's chosen English language rendition of Surah 4:34 amply attracted that characterisation.

Australians who take the time to familiarise themselves with HT's one-eyed worldview could also fairly express the opinion that while HT has every right to advocate peacefully for theocracy, and to reject the freedom of religion expressed in s 116 of the Australian Constitution, it is, however, a backward and futile enterprise. HT's self-imposed politico-religious segregation for its members and their children is the antithesis of "inclusion".

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About the Author

L W Maher is a Melbourne barrister with a special interest in defamation and other free speech-related disputes. He has written extensively on Australian Cold War legal history.

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