Culture and Religion

 In this article, I'd like to discuss a tension all too often felt in our spaces and communities, yet rarely addressed in its essence outside of opposition to its extremes. Now, I take it that this blog is not dedicated to Social Philosophy, but some of you may enjoy the read regardless.

Now, many of us are aware of the definition of Religion, and even if we are not, from a Muslim perspective, Islam is what we mean. Islam is the set of rules and guidelines for existence given to us by Allah SWT via His Messenger SAW. Culture, however, is harder to define. One definition by David Matsumoto, a Professor of Psychology, holds it as '... the set of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviours shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated from one generation to the next'. We may understand this as the unspoken similarities in how a group of people act, which makes them unique from other people, at any given point in time.

Then it becomes that culture is a living thing, shared assumptions a society operates under, behavioural rules crafted within a group of people to achieve the longer-term goals of that people. This becomes distinct from Religion in that Religion is unchangeable, a set of perfect guidelines that exist, while culture is our imperfect present- how people actually interact with the religion. A metaphor can be drawn to our own field, in that of NICE Guidelines and local practice protocols. While the NICE guidelines establish what a perfect procedure would look like, they take into account that patients and doctors do not exist in a perfect lab, there are differences from city to city, hospital to hospital, and bed to bed, so it is impossible for all instances to work exactly the same.

Islam has this leeway built into it, too. 'Urf' is the accepted customs, practices and traditions of a given society, and classical Fiqh holds that when Islam does not explicitly prefer one option or another, the legal ruling is that of the accepted local custom. Islam also builds on this idea of diversity in other ways. Contrary to popular belief, the Quran and the Sunnah do not precisely define what clothing is most Islamic. There are guidelines, of course, modest and colours that the Prophet SAW preferred. But wherever Muslims went, they were able to fulfill those guidelines within the style of the people who inhabited that land. In Persia, you found the Kaftaan, the medieval open robe associated today with Medieval Islam, a hangover from the Sassanids. Towards India, it became the Shalwar Kameez, a fusion of Persian influence and local Indian tradition. 

It is this very openness that led Islam to be as successful as it became, after converting, a people had no need to completely lose their identity, rather, as long as it fit the guidelines, anything could be Islamic. Islam did the same with architecture, as it left it vague what the ideal mosque should look like, except for a few base requirements of purity and direction. In Spain, they became masters of architecture that was one with nature, waterworks and geometrical masterpieces. In Indonesia, you see mosques of glass and pink, an homage to local building traditions. Everyone's tastes were equally Islamic, it was in this diversity that Islam flourished and was relished. Islam had the same approach to cuisine, to gender roles, to housing, to language, to humour. No civilisation had to be erased, merely living within the guidelines was enough. This allowed Islamic empires to be successfully multicultural for hundreds of years, under a shared moral and legal framework.

However, within Islamic spaces, we now see ourselves losing this ability for tolerance of thought and practice. On one side, we have people insisting that Islam has its own specific culture, that Arabic clothing and coffee are somehow more virtuous. On the other we have people insisting that Islam has no cultural link whatsoever, that a person can belong to a culture that opposes the guidelines of Islam and still be 'privately Muslim'. On the third, you have people who are defined by their hostility to the first, who end up hostile to anything associated with Arab culture. 

All three of these approaches become incredibly toxic very quickly. The truth is more nuanced, more subtle, and more balanced. While Islam does not define a *specific* culture, it does insist that whatever culture one is part of must conform itself to the guidelines of Islam, and it is not a completely separate affair from culture altogether. Culture is not religion, yet it must be *religious*. Both this tolerance for multiculturalism within Islam, and a desire for your community's culture to be Islamic, are eroding at an incredible pace. Too often people are polarised, and allow themselves to be culturally secular and religiously Muslim, or culturally Muslim and religiously secular. Both approaches are wrong.

After all, a hospital that only follows NICE guidelines without taking into account local antibiotic resistance is a case study waiting to happen, and a hospital that only follows its local protocols without adhering to NICE guidelines is a report waiting to happen. This is an issue that requires much further reading, writing, and elaboration, but I hope this article spurred you to consider more deeply your relationship with both your culture and religion, and to bring to light an issue that may slowly destroy our community's spirit. 

Assalamualaykum.

Saud Qureshi