By: Sabah Salih
Aug 8, 2007
There are some very good reasons why Islam, or any other religion for that matter, ought to be kept out of the proposed Kurdish constitution. These are just a few: 1. Islam is not indigenous to Kurdistan: it is an import from Arabia, the outcome of bloody conquest, not of peaceful give and take. 2. Islam, being a projection of Arab hegemony, works to undermine Kurdish particularity. Working by stealth and intimidation, its ultimate goal is to colonize the nation spiritually as well as culturally. 3. Kurdish culture is older than Islam by thousands of years. Islam wants to rewrite this cultural past in purely negative terms, whereas modern life wants to preserve it as a storehouse of valuable experiences without which our presence cannot be understood and our future cannot be planned for. 4. Islam, like all the other religions, is the product of a time period in human history when people’s knowledge of how the universe works was severely limited. Today, a fifth grader knows more about the cosmos than most people did in 8th century Arabia. What suited that time period as an organizing principle of social and political life cannot meet the challenges of modern life. The challenges and rewards and pressures of modernity are beyond any faith’s grasp. 5. If in centuries past human identity was largely the function of religion, more than anything else, today’s identity is the function of such notions as Kurdistan, France, Finland, and Sweden and their corresponding images and symbols (i.e. the nation state), and of the teachings of Enlightenment: logic and dialectic, free inquiry, and scientific solutions, among other things. 6. Islam demands obedience and submission, whereas modern life, being smarter, encourages people to question all authorities. 7. Islam gives itself the right to interfere in people’s lives, whereas modern life is all about choice and leaving people alone. 8. Islam portrays itself as a comprehensive system. Modern life considers this claim to be false because social life always outpaces the systems meant to regulate it. 9. By combining religion and politics into one, Islam reveals itself to be totalitarian through and through, whereas modern life has been one sustained human effort to rid the world of all forms of totalitarianism. 10. By claiming a special status for itself, Islam reveals itself to be discriminatory against other faiths and against those who want religion to be a strictly private affair. 11. Islam’s presence in the constitution would lead to more, not less, prohibitions against thinking. 12. Simplifications are at the heart of all religions, including Islam, but human life as it has evolved over thousands of years is too complex to be reduced into a series of either or’s. 13. Islam justifies its existence by claiming to have a mandate from God, whereas modern life considers only one mandate to be legitimate: the people’s mandate. 14. A society’s well being today is not dependant on religion; it is rather dependent on good hospitals, good schools, good libraries, good housing, good services, good parks, good roads. 15. Islam is a prisoner of metaphysics, whereas modern life has been all about busting metaphysics and liberating humanity from them. 16. Islam is fixated on afterlife as humanity’s ultimate goal, whereas modern life focuses on here and now and on a more down-to-earth future. 17. I saved this one for last because in my view it is the most important one: Islamic law is patently discriminatory against women. In our effort to separate religion from politics, Tunisia could be our model. Like Kurdistan it is overwhelmingly Muslim, but its constitution and laws are resolutely secular. What is good for Tunisian society can be even more suitable for Kurdish society, because Kurdish culture has always had a robust secular tradition and plenty of room for dark-edged humor and biting satire. Absolute doctrines, whether political or religious, have always had a tough time contending with the lethal power of Kurdish humor; it is always there to cut power down to size. As my great uncle used to say before his prayers, “Allah, your days are numbered; the moment I find a better god, I’ll drop you, and I’ll have no regrets.” Dr. Sabah Salih is Professor of English at Bloomsburg University, USA.
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