Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 29
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 29 considerable portion of the book is an apologia for certain actions of the Prophet which are often criticised by non-Muslim scholars. Ameer Ali was yet another victim of the powerful influence of the Western orientalists’ autocratic spell, and it was these types of liberal thinkers who regarded the pure monotheism and alleged rigid austerity of Islam as counter-productive to being accepted into the European way of life, and it was these types of liberals who tried to suggest wrongfully that many Islamic laws were outmoded and were inappropriate for the modern world. They wanted to prescribe the spirit and not the letter of the Islamic law. According to Ameer Ali, the spirit of the law is a love of right- eousness, a striving after good works, a practice of the love of God and of His creatures. He quotes a tradition from Tirmidhi to show that the Prophet(sa) did not expect his law to be immutable but that he expected it to be observed less and less as men grew in true spir- ituality. And also according to Ameer Ali, many of Muhammad’s laws were the result of temporary circumstances. As the circum- stances ceased to exist, so the laws ceased to exist also ! What incredible ideas and thoughts had crept into the minds of so-called Muslims - the new breed of liberals who had tried to reconstruct the Muslim thought and who were playing right into the hands of the Christian orientalists. It was this type of liberal thinking, in the middle of the19th cen- tury, that brought untold damage to, and rocked the very founda- tion of Islam. Coupled with it was the Western orientalists’ brutal and vicious attacks on the Holy Prophet(sa) of Islam which contin- ued to go unchecked and unabated. It wasn’t any wonder then that Muslims in India began to find it increasingly difficult to practice their faith, thereby fulfilling another of the prophecies of the Holy Prophet(sa) that there would come a time when there would be nothing left of Islam but its name. In fact, many Muslims converted to Christianity, Hinduism and even Atheism. So much for the liberal thinking that the British should not be molested because they did not want to destroy Islam,