God tells us in His revealed Book that Muslims have a job. God gives us a charge, or marching orders, so to speak. The task that Muslims are given is to bear witness for God. As we have said before, the Qur'an interplays the roles of bearing witness for God for the sake of justice and bearing witness for justice for the sake of God (Q 4:135; 5:8). The message could not possibly be any clearer that God and justice are interchangeable. It is clear from both the text of the Qur'an and from the example of the Prophet that the charge to be with God for the sake of justice and to be with justice for the sake of God is one and the same. Moreover, in Surah al-Hajj (Q 22), God underscores that the obligation that Muslims carry is to bear witness over humanity at large (shuhada’ ‘ala al-nas), and that the Prophet will then bear witness over Muslims (Q 22:78). The act of witnessing that the Prophet performs over his Ummah will primarily manifest in the Hereafter. The traditions about the role of the Prophet in the Hereafter—his role of witnessing, assessing, evaluating and, at times, interceding on behalf of the Ummah—are numerous.
Let us pause for a second and think about how serious this charge is. It is remarkable. Students of history can perhaps best understand how critical and important this charge of bearing witness for God is. Consider the equating between God and justice. If only we knew how remarkable, unprecedented, and, indeed, revolutionary it was for the Qur’an to express this, especially at this time. In the annals of religious thought in the Near Eastern context, it is truly revolutionary.
Consider the context. Those familiar with the history of monotheism will know the extent to which the Near Eastern region and, indeed, the world at large constantly drifted into polytheism and struggled with the idea of a single God that was accessible to human beings without intermediaries. Judaism struggled with it for centuries. It required a number of theological reformations for Judaism to reclaim any form of monotheism and any notion of monotheism that lay the groundwork for anything approximating the ideas of equality and justice. Christianity, up until the Protestant Reformation, arguably never achieved the idea of monotheism because of the concept of Trinity and the long history of Catholicism, which taught that God can only be accessed through an intermediary and that the sanctity of the Church is more important than substantive ideas like equality and justice. Christianity struggled with the idea of monotheism for centuries. Indeed, in my humble opinion, neither Judaism nor Christianity would have ever achieved anything close to the idea of monotheism, nor of monotheism translating into substantive qualities like justice and equality, had it not been for the Islamic intervention in the world of religious thought. If Muslims were not a colonized people, they would understand the significance of the role that Muslims played in the liberation of human beings, far beyond the context of Islam.
I go back to the notion of bearing witness (shahada). The Qur'an tells Muslims that our role is to be witnesses over humanity (Q 22:78). At the time, Islam was but a phenomena in the middle of the Arabian desert. Approach the matter anthropologically and sociologically, and it sounds crazy. How are these desert people, on the margins of Near Eastern civilization, in this area called Hijaz, in the middle of the desert, in any way to assume that role?
But I want to introduce what I think is a very important theological idea. We all know that power corrupts, and we all know that the strong are corrupted by their own power. Power brings hubris and bias. Power is anchored in privilege, and power is a serious obstacle to any fair role of bearing witness. Muslims, in the years after the death of the Prophet and the period of the Companions, were born into power. Muslims created an empire and an imperial order that, indeed, brought many advancements to human beings, not the least of which were the advancements that eventually resulted in the birth of someone like Maimonides in the Jewish tradition and Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther in the Christian tradition. Yes, the Islamic empire shone a light far beyond its borders, but we cannot ignore the fact that, for centuries, the privilege of power exercised a corrupting influence on the ability of Muslims to bear witness.
The irony is that Muslims are best positioned to carry the burden of bearing witness when they are at their weakest, when they have joined the ranks of the persecuted, the dispossessed, the disinherited. The irony is that we, Muslims today, are better positioned to understand the Qur'anic command to bear witness over humanity than at any other time in Islamic history.
I have always wondered why the concept of bearing witness on humanity received so little development in Islamic history. The answer is clear. It is because Muslims, for so many centuries, were anchored in power, and being anchored in power gives no incentive to bear witness. For no one can see justice like those who suffer from the lack of it. No one can see injustice like those who suffer it.
You cannot read the Qur'an as if it is an advisory manual. You cannot read the Qur'an as if it is a form of literature or an exercise in acoustics. You cannot turn the Qur'an into a source of entertainment or comfort. It is God's commands. These are God's orders, and God tells us to bear witness. Nor can we simply tell ourselves that our predecessors and ancestors have thought about this and figured it out. No, we must liberate ourselves from these falsehoods. We must realize that seeing justice, seeing injustice, and performing the role of bearing witness over humanity requires a great deal of consciousness and awareness.
Consider the following. Recently, in the United States, there was an incident report filed by a university that found graffiti sprayed somewhere on campus. I am not sure what the graffiti said, but in response an FBI task force on terrorism, along with Fairfax County and university police, stormed the house of two female students and, for six hours, searched the house. They refused to show the family a warrant before the search. They seized computers and electronics. They terrorized the families and interrogated the students, treating them like criminals. No one was arrested, but the university took out a restraining order against both students, barring them from campus for four years. This happened at George Mason University, and it happened to a Palestinian family whose daughters were active in the Students for Justice for Palestine organization.
The reason given for all of this was that the university was investigating a graffiti incident.
This is happening in a wider context. A new book was recently published, entitled Suppressing Dissent, in which some thirty scholars come together to review incidents of suppression of freedom of speech all over the Western world, including the U.S. There was another incident in Philadelphia, at Temple University, in which the houses of activists for Palestine students were stormed and searched and their computers seized. So, what happened at George Mason University is not an isolated incident.
At the same time, we have seen a truly unprecedented bill introduced to Congress. Eighty non-profit organizations co-signed a joint statement pleading with the Ways and Means committee at the House to squash this legislation, but the House passed the legislation regardless. This legislation gives unprecedented powers to the Secretary of Treasury to designate any non-profit organization in the United States a “supporter of terrorism.” In doing so, they can deny these organizations the privileges of non-profit status, let alone the ramifications that come with being labeled a “supporter of terrorism.” There are many problems with the bill, the least of which are the difficulties in challenging the designation and the fact that it does not distinguish between domestic and international terrorism. The father of the bill, Jason Smith, a Representative from Missouri, said that he introduced the bill because he sees “anti-Semitic” conduct all over the U.S. and he wants to target the organizations responsible for this “anti-Semitism.” More accurately, he wants to target those speaking loudly about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
What does all of this have to do with bearing witness? Keep in mind that, at the same time that this bill passed the House, Amnesty International released a report that calls a spade a spade, saying that Israel is responsible for a genocide. This follows the recent International Criminal Court indictment of Netanyahu. The Amnesty report is extremely detailed, considers all Israel's arguments, and evaluates all the claims and excuses that Israel uses to justify perpetuating the genocide. Critically, the report says that Israel is not solely responsible for this genocide, but so too are the countries that continue to supply arms to Israel for this genocide. That means the United States, Germany, and Britain are directly in violation of the Genocide Convention.
Think about it. Whether we like it or not, we Muslims are on the frontlines of confronting the very dangerous orientations and tendencies that are facing humanity at large. There is a threat to the environment that we, Muslims, can bear witness to. No less significantly, there is a very real threat to the values that have defined our day and age. At no other point in recent history has the meaning of the Genocide Convention come under such a real threat as right now. Democracy itself is under an unprecedented threat since the dawn of modern democracies. The very concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of thought are being betrayed by those who invented the ideas of freedom of speech and freedom of thought in the modern age.
Muslims have a choice. We can continue to ignore the Qur'anic command and bear witness only to myopic, ghetto-like issues that are of concern only to Muslim culture. This includes making a big “to-do” about the hijab or other "Islamic issues.” Or we can wake up to the marching orders that God gave us: “You shall bear witness for the sake of justice for God” (Q 4:135); “You shall bear witness for the sake of God for justice” (Q 5:8); “You shall bear witness over humanity at large” (Q 22:78). Muslims would then realize that the testimony of Amnesty International is our testimony. It is of direct interest and concern to the very function that we are supposed to play in the modern world. Instead of trying to always deny the fact we are disempowered, disinherited, and dispossessed, Muslims would then embrace the role of the disempowered and disinherited. Muslims would raise our voices in justice and unite with all others who also bear witness against injustice. Our day and age, our historical period, would then become meaningful in ways that were never realized in Islamic history before.