THE TEMPLE OF DISCORD

To be or not to be. Keeping in mind the current trend on social media in Pakistan, Shakespeare's famous phrase from Hamlet can be reworded like this: To build or not to build. The government-funded project to construct a Krishna mandir (temple) in the midst of Islamabad has offended many fundamentalist Pakistanis who believe (a) it is against the teachings of Islam to tolerate shirk (polytheism) and but-parasti (paganism) in an Islamic country; (b) it is horrible to build a heathen temple in a city named after Islam; and (c) shari'ah doesn't allow dhimmis (non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) to erect new places of worship.

I am no expert on shari'ah and I haven't found anything useful on the internet regarding this matter. Yes, some branches of Sunni fiqh do dictate that non-Muslims cannot build new temples, churches and synagogues, or even renovate their damaged places of worship. But what is the basis of this qiyas? Is it based on any explicit hukm (command) from Quran, hadith or the sayings of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs? This is what I need to know. I have asked this question to a few scholars of Islam I admire but haven't received a response yet. So, I tried to keep doing some research and then finally I found some instances from the sirah of the Caliphs where they'd forbidden the building of new churches. Here I hit upon the verdicts of Prophet Muhammad (as per Sunni sources), Caliph Umar and Abdullah b. Abbas regarding the prohibition of constructing new churches for Christians and the renovation of the dilapidated ones. Now, what to do about this apparent declaration in Islam that even Christians - the friendliest non-Muslims as per Quran - aren't allowed to erect new places of worship?

Javed Ghamidi provides a very decent explanation of this seemingly problematic situation. He says that the countries we have today are nation states where all communities live together as equal. In the times of the Caliphs, there was no concept of nation states among Muslims. They believed that a country was founded on the principles of a certain religion. And this concept was borrowed from the neighboring dynasties. Persians were Zoroastrians and that was the foundation of their empire. Romans were Christians and they had built the Byzantine Empire in the name of Jesus. So, Arabs, when turned Muslims and started expanding into the previously-impenetrable Roman and Persian territories, built the foundation of their new country on their newfound religion. So, non-Muslims were essentially not their citizens. Non-Muslims were treated as foreigners who had entered a pact with Muslims and were now ahl al-dhimmah (people under responsibility). As they were peaceful, Muslims were obliged to protect them, serve them and allow them freedom of religion. But, as they didn't belong to the same religion, they were like second-class citizens. That's why they had to face certain restrictions such as the one we're talking about i.e. prohibition of constructing new places of worship.

As time grew, religious states turned into nation states and now people came together not as people of the same faith but as the people of the same ethnicity. We have a country for the Anglo-Saxons, one for the French, one for the German, one for the Turks and so on. Then, we progressed ever further and molded all races into a single form i.e. nationality. So, if you are from African descent but have been living in the United States (born there, actually), you're a proper citizen with equal rights as that of the white people or the Native Americans. This is the concept we employ on the present-day political system of the world. Thus, the laws of fiqh our fuqaha derived to maintain their ancient social structure are no longer valid, as per Ghamidi. Ghamidi believes that it's not haram to let non-Muslims build new places of worship. He warns that being attached to ancient laws that were made to suit ancient requirements will never help us solve our modern problems. Quran and sunnah are eternal and they don't lay down any explicit prohibition to build new churches, synagogues or temples.

In the end, I would like to say just one simple thing: Stop wasting your time making other people's lives hell; your ticket to jannah hasn't been confirmed yet.