This is an excerpt drawn from Born A Muslim: Some Truths About Islam In India By Ghazala Wahab published by The Aleph Book Company.
When I was growing up, my faith was frequently challenged by my more religious cousins. They not only knew quite a few Quranic verses, they were also familiar with a range of Islamic texts written by various scholars over the centuries. It was immaterial whether they had actually read the text or simply heard an Islamic demagogue on an audio or a video tape.
The fact was that people like me had no interest in the disciplined practice of religion and hence never bothered to access such religious material. Besides, as a teenager, I had not dwelled upon my choices, which to a large extent were inherited. But inheritance is no argument.
I could not explain why I didn’t feel inclined to offer namaz five times a day, so to escape the harangue I used to face whenever I visited the maternal side of my family during vacations, I would quietly join them in prayer.
This further weakened my position, as it now appeared that I was lazy or worse, a hypocrite, hence morally weak and corruptible—someone who needed to be constantly pushed towards doing the right thing.
What made my situation worse was my inability to express what I felt towards God. Did I believe in Allah? If I did, why didn’t I obey his commandments? And if I didn’t believe in Allah, then on what basis did I call myself a Muslim! When I was young, I wasn’t aware of the Quranic verse which says there should be no compulsion in religion.
I also didn’t understand that non-conformists or independent thinkers threaten the carefully built structures that conformists nurture—today they refuse to obey, tomorrow, what if they start to question? This is the reason apostasy or irtidad worried the early Islamists—all it takes is for one challenger to stand up for the floodgates to open.
Despite the fact that the Quran does not mention apostasy, or prescribe any punishment for it (just as it does not prescribe any punishment for blasphemy), conservative ulema use it as a threat to keep in check those who they view as wayward. Apostasy, or the renunciation of one’s faith, became a sin after it was conflated with treason during the caliphate of Abu Bakr.
As the first caliph was engaged in consolidating the Muslim community and its territory, which entailed subduing rebellion in various parts of the Islamic world, ‘religious affiliation and citizenship were nearly identical terms in 7th century Arabia, so therefore were apostasy and treason considered one and the same.’
When Islamic laws were being written, apostasy was described as treason. Death was the prescribed punishment for the crime. Even after the emergence of modern nation-states, where citizenship had nothing to do with religion, the ulema continued to treat apostasy as a grave sin against Allah, a position the conservatives take against moderates or those they deem as ‘not adequately Muslim’.
Such people, they believe, must be preached to until they return to the fold or leave for good—there are no half measures. Since I was ignorant of all this, I continued to be on the defensive whenever challenged by any argument in the name of Islam.
There are others like me. Rizwan Ahmed, a businessman and an aspiring writer, struggled with several labels, calling himself agnostic and atheist before settling for non-practising Muslim. ‘When I was younger and more rebellious, I preferred calling myself an atheist. Perhaps it was fashionable those days.
But I was never an atheist. Despite my nebulous belief in God, I did find the idea of an Almighty comforting. Besides, I never left my Muslim identity, in terms of culture, language, festivals, and habits, and now more than anything else, empathy for fellow Muslims.’
Moreover, he also reads namaz occasionally, during Ramzan or on Eid. Today, when a family member urges him to pray more regularly, he has a standard reply. ‘I tell them: “You have asked me to come to the mosque to pray. You have earned your credit and place in paradise by showing the right path to a sinner. I have said no. The sin is upon me now. Let me rot in hell.” This shuts them up all right,’ he chuckles. Ahmed is fortunate in that his self-appointed minders back off when told to. Not all are this fortunate.
Some face such strictures on a daily basis, if not from relatives, then from Muslim neighbours or the visiting jamaatis (members) of the Tabligh, the proselytizing sect founded in the late 1920s by Maulana Mohammed Ilyas Kandhalwi with two objectives: self-improvement and the improvement of others. Hence, not only do they strive to turn themselves into an increasingly medieval version of Muslims, they also reach out to others, through a process called da’wah (invitation).