Treading the terrain of faith and liberation
Reviewed by Harbans Singh

The World of Fatwas or the Shariah in action
By Arun Shourie
Harper Collins. Pages 768. Rs 699

There is absolutely no doubt that Arun Shourie, the journalist, politician and the thinker, has done an exhaustive study of all aspects of Islam down the centuries before writing The World of Fatwas. In doing so he is aware of the possibility that some readers would be ‘angered or embarrassed at encountering this material’ but urges them to compare it to the material in original. He fervently hopes that by doing so they will be freeing the Muslims from the thralls of the ulemas and leading them to liberation.

This edition — the first having been published in 1995 — has been revised and expanded. The three editions notwithstanding, it is difficult to say if the author is anywhere near the lofty goal that he had set for the book. If he has not, then the fault lies not with the reader but with the aggressive style in which Shourie argues. But then Shourie is not known to hold back his punches. However, one wonders if Islam, as practised in Turkey and some other East European countries is different from the kind in India, and if so, why?

The bulk of the book is written in the context of the fatwas issued in modern India when Muslim power was already on the wane and the possibility of Hindu domination loomed large over them. The changing attitudes of Ali brothers, the hectoring of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Dr Zakir Hussain by the Muslim clergy and the apparently unreasonable fatwas and interpretation of what Quran and Prophet Mohammad meant, are all to be attributed to the post-1857 politics of the country.

The author rightly points out that the Prophet himself had conceded that in the affairs of the world he was as wise as the next person and that his word was final only in as much as it was related to the Din, and yet he argues with considerable examples of how the Prophet himself promoted hostility towards the non-believers. But the not-so knowledgeable person of Islam might wonder if he had really read the story of the visit of the Najran Christians to the Prophet in Medina where he allowed them to offer their prayers in his mosque — Masjid al-Nabawi, or that, after the conquest of Hayber, the Prophet returned the Torah of the Jews to them. Certainly, a far cry from what those who professed to be his followers did to the temples of objects of worship in India!

It is the exclusivity and finality of Islam that has caused much discord and regrettably it has led to the disparaging of other faiths. It must have happened even during the times of Ashoka or else there would not have been that rock edict asking people not to disparage other religions. Finally, one wonders if Islam has not become a tool of power, like all other religions before it, and therefore, when not led by wise men it becomes an instrument of oppression that wields all-pervasive influence that has been so meticulously brought out by Arun Shourie.

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