I was in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, days before Operation Enduring Freedom. I heard, or so I thought, the monotonous droning of aeroplane engines every half hour in the morning. The base used by Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and US forces is reportedly 40km outside of Tashkent. Uzbekistan shares a short stretch of border with Afghanistan. Still the 2,000-year-old city of Tashkent is very calm.

The inflight magazine describes Uzbekistan as an Islamic state. This invited protests from new friends in Tashkent. We are a republic with a majority Muslim population, they cried. Like here, there appears to be contestation of these matters.

Muslim women in the city wear clothes right out of the fashion magazines of Europe. Young people from the several educational institutions in Tashkent are seen happily chatting in mixed company. Kissing couples, old people and children share the well-cared public gardens. Sidewalk cafes offer meals of grilled meats and bread, pilaf and vodka. There was no sign of moral panic.

The two most popular questions to strangers must be, "Are you Russian?", and next, "Are you Muslim?" My reply to being Muslim is met with reassuring smiles.

The unity of faith makes the stranger and resident, members of the community of Muslims, the ummah. This unity of faith, for example, presupposes that Muslims share the same ideas across cultures and histories. Thus, according to some views, the waging of war (jihad-qital) may be incumbent on every Muslim when the faith or Muslims are under attack. If we think along these lines, a Muslim whether in Central Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia or even the US, is expected to rally to the call of war.

Greater role for Islam

Many Muslims, given the current situation, caution the scrutiny of Muslim traditions which may lend a semblance of support to these ideas and unwittingly place Muslims at greater risk. However, I think this line of inquiry is necessary especially when the state and Muslims, collectively or individually, are demanding a greater role for Islam and Islamic law in public life.

All religions in history have sometimes played a role in the motivation or orientation of political violence including terrorism. It can be also said that secular and nationalist causes have produced terrorists. Thus a scrutiny of textual sources, interpretations and juristic opinions should not be construed as implying that Muslims have a greater propensity to political violence and terrorism than others. We need to understand the premises, put it in context and move on.

Jihad-qital (qital literally means 'fighting') played a key role in Islam's past. History has its place. The city of Tashkent, for example, has a new museum dedicated to Uzbek's illustrious son, Amir Timur (Tamerlane), warrior par excellence. Muslim history reveres its warriors. There is no reason why this will change.

Muslim views after the tragedy of Sept 11 in New York claim that historically, jihad-qital is limited to a defensive war and not an aggressive war. However, the spread of the Muslim empire and Islam from Andalusia (Spain) to Central Asia could not have been the result of just a defensive war.

Even if we were to accept that the traditions point out to a defensive war, are Muslims anywhere on the globe obligated to go to war when a majority-Muslim state or Muslims are attacked?

Peaceful means

Muslim traditional sources (text, interpretation and views) clearly address the use of force between the abode of Islam or territory under Muslim rule (dar al-Islam) and the abode of war or territory falling outside Muslim control (dar al-harb).

Muslims are encouraged to form peace treaties to suspend hostilities (dar al-sulh) until the next round of fighting between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. Early jurists developed the theory that Islam and unbelief cannot exist together in this world. One finds these views of founding jurists carefully collated in works such as Majid Khadduri's War and Peace in the Law of Islam (1955).

There is also a legal methodology developed by the early jurists (7th century development of Muslim jurisprudence), of understanding the significance of the verses of the Quran in relation to the use of force. Some verses were revealed during the period the Prophet Muhammad was in Mecca and some were revealed during the period he was in Medina. In the context of time the Meccan verses were revealed earlier to the Medinan verses.

In standard legal tradition, the later Medinan verses on the use of force are deemed to overrule the earlier Meccan verses. If we are to accept this juristic methodology without question, it would mean that the verses in Chapter 9 of the Quran, thought to be revealed around 631AD or the 9th year of the Hijra (among the last of Quranic revelation), sanctioned the use of force against non-Muslims. The abrogated earlier Meccan verses specifically instructed Muslims to use peaceful means and arguments with non-Muslims.

The two-paragraph expos is meant as a quick illustration of a particular problem in dealing with Muslim traditions (text, interpretation, views). Despite this we will have Muslims dismissing any critique as bordering on unbelief. We have Muslims calling to the rule of Islamic law as if there are still no controversies on understanding and accepting whichever views will prevail as law of the land. Belief is not to be equated with the blind acceptance of archaic methods to derive a juridical point as the message of the faith.

Methodology

Concerned Muslims must learn to develop different ways of accessing and sieving information of Muslim traditions. Indeed there is room to raise questions on methodology and new ways of looking at these methods which were evolved at a particular period in Muslim history.

Islam was received with hostility from the tribes of 7th century Arabia. Survival of Islam depended on the norms of that period. The use of force was also the norm of settlement of disputes in empires around the Arab peninsula namely the Sasanid and Byzantine Empires. There are also the events of the Great Fitnah which refers to the violent conflict over power with the death of the 3rd caliph Uthman in 656AD. Ali's short reign as the 4th caliph was marred by a protracted period of civil war.

It will also be noted that in the political arrangement of early Islam, Muslims are of one empire, albeit marred by internecine strife.

Muslims are today organised politically under nation states, each sovereign to the other. The relations and inter-dependence of modern nation states are regulated by international norms, conventions and treaties. These are factors to be taken into account as the existing political realities of the Muslim ummah post-colonisation and independence.

It has to take a tragedy like Sept 11 in New York to persuade Muslims and the state to rethink the Muslim historical tradition and norms. It was simply politically expedient to do so. Muslims have to maintain a cohesiveness of thought that would be at par with world opinion on the legitimate use of force that can be accepted this millennium.

While political expediency may have goaded our ruling elite to 'outlaw' jihad in the circumstances presented by the events in September, it might be noted that there is selectivity in this instance.

Room to rethink

Muslim traditions on the use of force supports the notion that force can be used against Muslims whose conduct is deemed subversive to the ummah or interests of Islam. Apostates and rebels are regarded as enemies of the ummah and deserve treatment like external enemies. This rational supports sanctions of death and rehabilitation to the apostate. We should ask ourselves if it is not also politically expedient to rethink these premises?

There is room to rethink both exegesis and legal methodology of earlier jurists in developing legal opinions. Fiqh (law) derived through this process is not imbued with infallibility as Muslims are wont to believe. It is this fiqh that is received as legislation as Islamic law in Malaysia.

The seeming impasse in the local political scene brought about by contestations of the Islamic state and Islamisation of laws should not debilitate efforts of civil society in building our democratic processes. We should seize the moment to redevelop and strengthen our constitutional guarantees to fundamental freedoms and the culture of human rights. Only these safeguards would ensure us our right to question any Islamic law, norm and practice.