Critiquing Customs

Our customs, whether personal or cultural, should never be mistaken for religious principles. Upholding them is not how we worship and obey our Lord! Moreover, our customs are not the natural way upon which Allah has created us and expects us to live. 

Sometimes our customs are in harmony with that natural way. At other times, customs can contradict it. There are some customs which are grounded in ignorance and falsehood. 

We must distinguish custom from instinct. Animals behave instinctively, according to their “natures”. These behaviors are no different than physical properties, like the fact that fire burns. The attraction that exists between males and females is therefore not a custom, but rather a natural instinct. 

As for things like the current fashion styles, these are also not really customs, but passing trends which are followed for a while by the fashion-conscious and then discarded. If we were to call them customs, they would be customs of the narrowest scope affecting only a small sector of the population for a short period of time. 

Real customs are those which a heedless society often mistakes for human nature and believes the whole world should follow. People who behave contrary to such customs are often identified as deviant by other members of society. Such an attitude makes it difficult for people to accept differences or coexist with others. 

It happens too often that people call upon their deeply entrenched customs to fight against the truth. 

Taha Hussein compared those who seek to change the world in order to preserve their own customs to a person who has a tight shirt and goes on a diet in order to fit into it. 

There are various ways customs can be critiqued. One way is to consider their causes and effects. It is possible that a custom made sense in its historical context. It fulfilled a valid societal need. However, as times changes, a custom can its purpose and no longer function in realizing society’s present needs. It is merely a carryover from the past. 

On the personal level, it is like a woman who always cuts off a fishes tail before frying it because she saw her grandmother doing so when she was a child, not realizing that the grandmother only cut it off because her frying pan was too small! 

It is like a building’s security guard who always stands at the foot of the particular staircase where he was told to stand when he first got the job fifty years ago, not realizing that the reason he was told to stand there at that time was because the staircase had been freshly painted! 

The political changes taking place in the Arab world today will precipitate a number of cultural and social changes. It is critical for the people to distinguish between what is a custom and what is not. They also need to determine which customs are still needed by society to function optimally and which are merely old habits getting in the way. 

The critique of customs is not merely an intellectual exercise carried out by professors in their ivory towers. It is a question of immediate relevance to a changing society that wants to get ahead. 

The principle for social change is to recognize that customs are human contrivances, and like all things human, they are subject to change and to passing away. Allah says: “You will surely experience state after state.” [Sūrah al-Inshiqāq: 19] 

When people do not have this awareness, they perceive their customs as being permanent facts of life, upheld by human nature, common sense, science, or religion. However, culture and human nature are two different things. Culture is constructed whereas human nature is instinctive. Culture is fluid and changeable. People who fail to see this resist every new idea in the same way that people who studied Newtonian physics at first resisted Einstein’s “strange” ideas. 

Customs also vary from one place to another, even in a single region of the world. For instance, the customs of the Gulf states are different than those in Egypt, Sudan, or Morocco. Customs are not like scientific facts which remain constant in all cases. Therefore, the customs of one country cannot be used as a standard to critique the customs of another. 

People in the Arab world drive on the right, while those in Britain and Commonwealth countries drive on the left. These are customs that have been raised to the level of law. 

When we compare our customs today with those of our grandparents a few decades ago, we must confess that it is like we live in a different world. Likewise, we must learn to accept that the lives our grandchildren will lead will be equally different from ours. 

As for saying whose customs are better – whether they really were “the good old days” – that is another matter. A more relevant question is whether the customs of the present day are really serving a positive function in society. Do they accord with our lived experience and our changing needs? Do they suit our cultural and social climate, or are they like wearing a winter coat on a hot summer day? 

A woman’s role in a simple farming society is different than in an advanced, educated one. Naturally, we will find the customs of courtship and marriage will be different, as well the average age when women have children. Social responsibilities and family relations will not be the same. The very way men and women perceive each other will be different. 

Likewise, the customs of the city are different than those of the country. The upper classes have their own customs, as do the poor. Educated people follow different customs than the illiterate. 

The customs of people living under dictatorial rule where security crackdowns are commonplace and speech is curtailed are going to be very different from those of people living in open societies where they enjoy free speech and openly elect their government. 

The age when all mass communication was top-down, coming from official or quasi-official newspapers and television stations is in stark contrast to the age of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, where every saint and sinner, every fool and scholar, can voice their opinion. 

As Muslims, our religion judges our customs and not vice-versa. Admittedly, there are some very good, ethical customs which our religious values applaud. 

Good sense dictates that we appreciate and respond intelligently to the changes going on in the world around us. We cannot give the same old prescription to every problem that comes our way.

Sheikh Salman al-Oadah

Source: en.islamtoday.net (May 20, 2013)