That Dr
Taj Hargey, the well-known gunslinger of Islamic contumacy, is back in town is more
than obvious. He has been feted by talk show hosts, has garnered headlines and
got social media buzzing.
His establishment
of an ‘open mosque’ in Wynberg that he says will welcome all – irrespective of gender,
shade of belief and sexual proclivity – may look good on paper, but the baggage
that it carries via Hargey and his ‘religious revolution’ is decidedly
overweight.
The pity
is that those who’ve entertained his bombast about liberality have no
institutional memory of him. Hargey – a native of Cape Town – may have a
doctorate in religious studies, but his is a career that has been plagued by conflict
and controversy.
Hargey,
no academic slouch, earned his first degree in History and Oriental Studies in
Durban and his doctorate at Oxford before moving back to Cape Town to lecture
at UCT. He also opened a bookshop in Claremont.
That
was in the 1980’s when the Cape-based Muslim Judicial Council was fighting a bitter,
drawn-out case in the High Court with a sect called the Qadianis, or
Ahmaddiyyas. They were objecting to being labelled as unbelievers by then MJC
president, Shaikh Nazeem Mohamed.
The
Qadiani sect, regarded as apostate by Sunni scholars worldwide, was founded in
India in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian. Scholars say he claimed to be a
manifestation of prophethood – a violation of the central Islamic creed that
Muhammad is the final messenger.
The
conflict is that whilst constitutionally, the Qadianis do enjoy rights to practice
their beliefs, Sunnis balk at the insistence of the Qadianis that they are
Muslims, when according to their doctrinal evidence, they are not.
Dr
Hargey became embroiled in controversy when he stepped into the dock as an ‘expert
witness’ in the MJC-Ahmadiyyah case. Rumours that he was selling pro-Ahmadiyyah
literature in his shop are believed to have contributed to his leaving UCT for
the US.
In the
US he ran into trouble collecting money to establish an anti-apartheid
newspaper. An investigation by the Austin Business Journal revealed it never
went beyond being a title. Hargey was criticised by media experts at the time for
claiming it would be South Africa’s first Black-owned publication.
The story,
also run by the Cape Town-based South in April 1990, revealed that Hargey’s
business card listed the address of an NPO, the Open House Cultural and Welfare
Society at 221 Landsdowne Road, in Cape Town.
Directors
listed by Hargey on its letterhead did not check out. One was identified as
Mandla Tyala, a South African journalist studying under a Harvard Fellowship. A
surprised Tyala denied being a director.
When
confronted, Hargey said the person was actually a Moses Tyala who was
travelling in the Ciskei. Another person, a Cape Town man, who was listed as
the society’s treasurer also denied any involvement with the society.
Hargey’s
next port of call was Britain where he formed the Muslim Educational Centre of
Oxford, becoming its self-appointed imam. He was declared a heretic by a local
publication, the Muslim Weekly, and Hargey successfully sued it for defamation
in 2009.
It was
in Britain that Hargey carved out a reputation for his disavowal of the niqab,
the face veil, supporting moves for its banning and even expressing approval of
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts to prohibit it.
And
whilst Hargey’s observation is correct that the veil is a ‘Persian invention’,
it is his ardent revulsion of it that proves the blatant contradiction of his
calls for true religious liberality and non-sectarianism.
Hargey
has infuriated British Muslims by labelling the Indo-Pak and Arabic communities
as tribally archaic. He has said that British mosques are filled with
‘Neanderthals’ harking back to the 7th century.
However,
it is his posing on the fringes of Islam as a mainstream practitioner that is perturbing.
Hargey’s spurning of Hadith (validated prophetic axiom) which underpins Islamic
law together with Qur’an, confines over 1,400 years of classical endeavour to
the dustbin, and is more reflective of extremism than moderation.
His
insistence on conducting marriage ceremonies of Muslim women to non-Muslim men (Muslim
men can marry Christians and Jews) has been regarded as gratuitously provocative.
His religious justification, for an issue better resolved in a civil court or
by Islamic legal experts, is spurious in terms of him saying the Qur’an does
not broach the subject.
Hargey’s
determination to establish his religious revolution in Cape Town, widely
regarded as having one of the most tolerant of Muslim communities, has
perplexed many. Cape Town’s mosque platforms are amongst the freest in the
world and women, for the most part, can pray in its 150-plus mosques and serve
on the committees.
Hargey’s
missionary zeal for an ‘open mosque’ is by far his clumsiest contradiction.
Mosques, by their very nature, are places of open worship. People do not stand
at the doors asking patrons about their sexuality, ideology or identities.
Islam is not a confessional faith, but one of private intimacy between the
individual and the Creator.
By actually
identifying congregants as Sunni, Shi’ah, gay or Sufi in the name of liberality
and non-sectarianism, Hargey is calling for unnecessary social discrimination
that in turn can only lead to the danger of unwanted social tensions. It is an
article of faith that Muslims are enjoined not to look into another’s heart.
The
question of gender equality, of women being involved in mosque activities, is an
old chestnut. The prophetic model was one of interaction. Many of the top Islamic
scholars of the Middle-Ages proudly listed women teachers, who were prominent
in Andalusian universities well before the European Renaissance, in their
certificates.
Finally,
it is hoped that cool heads will prevail in yet another contrived Taj Hargey
saga. What he has suggested is nothing new. Al-Quds mosque in Gatesville and
Claremont Main Road mosque are but two institutions which have had an open door
policy for as long as he has been controversial.
Indeed,
Cape Town may not be perfect, but it’s certainly 100% better than say, Kabul or
Karachi, where everybody knows Dr Taj Hargey will not dare to set foot.
