Interviewer: Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah. Can you hear me?

Abdullah Bin Bayyah: Peace be with you.

Interviewer: Peace be with you too, Your Eminence. I am asking about your vision concerning the means of reforming religious education.

Bin Bayyah: In the Name of Allah, the Most-Gracious, the Most-Merciful. Peace and blessings be upon our master, Muhammad, and upon his family and Companions. Let me first greet my brother Dr. Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, whom I believe is possessed of a brilliant mentality of Ijtihad (i.e., legal reasoning and discretion) and a comprehensive Shar`i vision that considers holistic objectives of Shari`ah. He is the inspirer of a great intellectual movement. I ask Allah to grant him success.

Taha Jabir al-Alwani: May Allah bless and reward you.

Bin Bayyah: Educational reform is an issue of utmost importance, not because of the current focus on it, but because it is one of the bases of renewal, which is an obligation on this Muslim nation. Evidently, there are disastrous flaws in our curricula, including deterioration of the scope of juristic Ijtihad, which results in an inability to cope with contemporary issues in transactions and shallow intellectual production in philosophy and humanities, let alone technology. All such necessitates major surgeries, so to speak, to our curricula and educational systems.

In addition, as my dear brother Dr. Taha said, there are many faults in our heritage that need to be addressed, a mater that involves much difficulty. Educational reform can and should be accomplished only by open Islamic minds with a firm belief that reform and renewal are not synonymous with destruction of classic legacy — minds that are aware of both the present time and history.

Our notion of reform is quite different from the Western model of religious reform. For us, reform is Shari`ah-based and covers such Shar`i sciences as the Qur’an interpretation, Hadith, Fundamentals of jurisprudence, Arabic grammar and linguistics, and logic (which was considered the master of all sciences). Yet, Shar`i sciences are so comprehensive that they cannot be reformed unless using a strategy that tightly links basics of Shari`ah to the lived reality. That link is what I call “renewal”.

The tools or means for attaining reform are universities, scientific centers, and Fiqh academies. If the Muslim nation, or some of its influential entities, has the will to do so, I believe it will be a first step on the road.

So, I commend his call for a reform that links holistic interests to partial interests, considers particularities in light of holistic objectives of Shari`ah, and deals with everything within the context of current reality.

Interviewer: Thank you, the Eminent Sheikh.

Bin Bayyah: And we have acute shortage in philosophy, in humanities, and in the matching of our concepts and such sciences. Thank you too.

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, former Mauritanian Justice and Endowment Minister, and Professor of Islamic Studies at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, expressed his objection to general invocations against non-Muslims. He asserted that the Islamic Shari`ah (Islamic law) enjoins us to consider the consequences of our deeds, words, and behaviors including supplications made from the pulpits of mosques.

It also forbids us to do anything that may stir enmity and dispute with non-Muslims. Sheikh Bin Bayyah quoted as evidence the prohibition of insulting idols before those who may be provoked by this, as the Qur’anic verse states: “And insult not those whom they (disbelievers) worship besides Allah, lest they insult Allah wrongfully without knowledge.” (Al-An’am 6:108)

Sheikh Bin Bayyah also stressed that Muslims’ supplication for themselves and their invocations against those who wrong and oppress them is a human inheritance that all nations share. The issue needs a balance of moderation that neither makes generalization, nor insults or provokes the other. But at the same time one should not feel subservient or humble before those who do not keep a covenant or treaty. This is what imams and callers to Islam should consider when they are standing at the pulpits of their mosques. Enthusiasm and ecstasy should not drive them to transgress the limits with regard to supplication, which is contrary to the Islamic values of tolerance, mercy, justice, and moderation.

His Eminence Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Vice-President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (“IUMS”) and the President of the Arab Islamic Dialogue Committee, stressed the need to introduce convincing values, especially to the Muslim youth in Europe. Such values would permanently deter them from committing the follies of terrorism or crime, and invite them to present the values of Islam and tolerance to Europeans.

Sheikh Bin Bayyah called on concerned bodies in the West to grant Muslim communities their rights, particularly their cultural rights, provided such characteristics do not contradict with the European Community’s basic principles.  He also called on Westerners to reconsider the relationship with the Muslim world to found a more auspicious coexistence for all, on the basis of common values of morality, intelligence and generosity.

The Vice-President of the IUMS said: “The world’s charity institutions have become a positive partner committed to support the projects of overall human development. They contribute to the advancement of Muslim societies by strengthening their public facilities, developing their physical, technical, and productive institutions as well as through the scholarships, educational institutions, training centers and the provision of relief assistance in emergencies or disasters. These charity institutions have been able to open up wider prospects for the global charity work in Asia and Africa, and have extended bridges of cooperation and assistance with all Islamic peoples.”