Bottomline, even if the Covenants were authentic, it is unlikely that current Muslims will observe them, except for those in ivory towers?
What a bummer. I guess I may have to relegate those documents to the abrogated/not-in-force category after all. But what would an average Muslim or even highly educated Muslim scholar say when confronted with these documents I wonder. Ignore them? I am not aware how these covenants can be abrogated at all unless superseded by other documents by the Prophet since they appear extra-Quran.
Haha, ericc. You just have to not see Muslims as mirror images of ourselves. They have very different attitudes to logic, evidence and scriptures. First, they have a hierarchy of scriptures. It is either on the list or not. In order:
1 Quran
2 Sunna
3 Hadith
4 Writings of saints/noted past ulama
There is only a singular 1 & 2 but there are many 3 & 4, which is accepted differently by different sects, groups, schools of jurisprudence & individuals.
1 is the only self-evident truth by which everything else is measured. 2 is generally accepted to be consistent with 1. 3 is categorised in accordance with authenticity which different authorities/scholars have different opinions. 4 - attitudes here is somewhat similar to what Orthodox acceptance of writings of saints but with even more diversity and even less consensus. Many non-Sufi Muslims do not even accept saints but do follow certain noted past scholars: Wahabi is a good example.
The fact of the covenants is in the Sunnah but the covenants themselves are not anywhere within the list above. (not that I know of anyway, someone can correct me here). So what exactly is mandated by scripture is not clear (A bit like Brexit - we all know the British voted to leave the EU but in what form and by what process the British people intended is not clear
).
So, trumping a long-held principle of religious pluralism, Muslims have taken it to show that Islam has always been tolerant of other religions. However, while it is not in doubt that Mohammad’s views in this area are well in advance compared to his contemporaries, European experience in the succeeding millennium (after the turmoil of the Reformation Wars), modern thoughts of religious freedoms have moved on far from there.
I think Muslim ideas reached its most sophisticated form under the Ottoman Empire. The salient points as follows:
1 Non-Muslims are allowed to manage their own internal affairs and their religious authorities will be responsible for the entire community
2 Non-Muslims will be accorded protection of the state provided they acknowledge the overlordship of Muslims
3 Non-Muslims will have to pay a poll tax
jizya, variously calculated by number of adult males, number of males, number of people, etc. They will then be exempted from the
zakat obligatory on Muslims. Most of the time, the
jizya works out to be more than the
zakat, but there has been cases where it is less. Depends on how the
jizya is calculated, there is no consensus unlike for the
zakat.
4 Non-Muslims may not serve in the army (non-Muslims cannot protect Muslims) and may not serve in the government (especially as ministers) unless there is no qualified Muslims
5 There is only a Islamic court system and none that is independent. So, where there is rule of law, where there is a grey area, it would almost always favour the Muslims. This leads to the property of non-Muslims who have no clear heritage lines or their orphans end up interstate and passed over to the government or Muslim authorities/families
While this may have been an advancement up to 5 or 6 centuries ago, it would be seen as violating basic human rights today as well as the fundamentals of basic liberal democracy (liberal here is a technical term not referring to their politics). To top it off, Muslims ideas will often be informed by local socio-political forces that has nothing to do with religion.
So really even if the covenants are implemented, they fall far short of what is expected in a modern democracy. Of course, it would be an advance on what a failed state like Taliban Afghanistan or a Muslim-nationalist government like Sudan would be doing. But I think the modern world expect more out of Muslims.
