For over 5000 years, primitive human societies have had a history of sacrificing some members, in the interest of the Greater Common Good, in an attempt to placate the Powers-That-Be.

Ancient Egyptians threw nubile young women into the river to please ‘Father Nile’ and prevent floods from destroying their carefully cultivated fields; the people of Crete sacrificed young adults and children near a volcano at Knossos, to stop it from erupting and casting disaster over the entire community; the Hindus slaughtered children on the altar of blood-thirsty goddesses so that the entire population would be spared epidemics; the Aztecs reportedly made a human sacrifice every day, to “aid” the Sun in rising.

Modern society has admittedly more sophisticated methods of appeasement, but the modus operandi and motives remain more or less the same – regrettably, even within the Muslim community.

Lately, there have been concerted attempts to carve the Muslim Ummah along the lines of “fundamentalists”, “modernists”, “Islamists”, “moderates” and “literalists”.

Like a belief-o-matic quiz attempts to match random personal beliefs with a prevalent belief system, this classification of the community paints a picture in broad brushstrokes. Ostensibly, it aims to differentiate between the “good” (read politically correct and thus socially acceptable) Muslims and “bad” Muslims – the permanent outsiders, who will never be in sync with modern times and its mores, thanks to their “ante-diluvian” “backward” “simplistic” “literalist” “anarchic” “heterodox” “regressive” interpretation of Islam.

The recent spate of violent protests and counter-protests against the publishing of blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, has given a new connotation and subtext to the clash.

Going by the verbiage, it appears that “good” Muslims are those who fit-in with whatever political and cultural system they happen to live under, while simultaneously trying to “uphold the age-old traditions of honouring the Prophet, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, through sacred music, art and poetry” (sic).

“Bad” Muslims, on the other hand, deliver hellfire and brimstone khutbahs, take to the streets in protest at the slightest provocation wearing faux suicide bomber kits and “I love Al-Qaeda” caps and most damning of all: don’t celebrate the Mawlid (birth anniversary of the Prophet, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and dare to criticise those who do.

Such a schizophrenic generalisation of arbitrary behaviour that supposedly makes up the portrait of a ‘bad’ Muslim—someone who spells bad news for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, harms the community. Calling on Muslims to “stop hiding behind a false sense of unity and call a spade a spade” and to be “openly critical of fellow Muslims when we think their actions are out of order” amounts to a declaration of open season on the ‘brothers and sisters’ in faith that one disagrees with.

Efforts to rid Islam of the “burden of literalism” in interpreting the Qur’an and Sunnah (traditions and approved actions of the Prophet, sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam); in the right to qiyaas (interpretive analogy); to exercise ijtihaad (independent reasoning) and define what constitutes ijmaa’ (scholarly consensus) are nothing new. What’s new is the vociferousness and the verbal aggression/arrogance towards those who refuse to cooperate/comply/comprehend, or simply beg to differ.

The Prophet, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said:
“Do not hate one another; do not turn away from one another, but be brothers, O slaves of Allah. A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim: He does not oppress him and he neither fails him nor does he hold him in contempt. It is evil enough for a man to hold his brother Muslim in contempt. The whole of a Muslim is inviolable for another Muslim: his blood, property and honor.” [Muslim]

No matter how cringe inducing another Muslim’s personal beliefs or actions might seem, the Muslim thing to do would be to “reason with them in a matter that is better” – not just dismiss them to the dustbin of public debate as “egregious actions of an extreme Islamist fringe” (sic).

The ramifications of doing so, go beyond propriety and the rights of a Muslim upon a fellow Muslim. They are a signal to the world that it’s okay to pick on a particular group of people because they’re not part of the community of ‘traditional Islam’. By extension, it’s okay to harass them at airports and public places, to enter their houses by force, interrogate them at will or detain them without charges, to look upon them with suspicion and deny them jobs, educational opportunities and visa entries, because, who knows what other rabid beliefs they might entertain – these people believe in the Qur’an and Allah’s Attributes literally!

As a Muslim who neither waves ‘Behead The Culprits’ placards at picket fences nor celebrates the Mawlid; who believes in the Qur’an in the manner it has been revealed and interpreted by the Prophet, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and the consensus of his Companions, may Allah be pleased with them all; I resent the dismissal of my intellect and opinion as ‘simplistic’ or ‘literalist’ based on a free-associative assumption of my beliefs.

I believe that The Right of Way should belong to all of us, not just to a select few who are out to re-interpret the Right Way.

I wonder what the belief-o-matic will make of that.