My Impressions of Professor Farid Esack

Meeting personally Farid Esack for the first time, I was significantly impressed. He carries impeccable  credentials as an influential Muslim scholar and cleric, acknowledged prolific writer and articulate passionate speaker. He is recognized as a courageous Muslim interpreter of the Qu'ran, voice for the marginalized and oppressed, campaigner for social justice.

It was a special privilege for Singapore Interfaith Network on Aids (SINA) to organize the meeting on October 8,,2012 in which the distinguished Professor Farid Esack spoke on "The Challenges of HIV/Aids."  Professor Esack is a prominent advocate for the victims of Aids and initiated the movement known as "Positive Muslim" in South Africa.

Born in South Africa in 1959 to a poor family, he had his early education in  the traditional Islamic Studies program, in Madrasahs in Karachi, Pakistan. He secured his PhD at the University of Birmingham and post-doctoral work on Biblical Hermeneutics in Frankfurt-am-Main. He has taught at the University of the Western Cape, at Amsterdam, Hamburg and Gadjah Mada Universities and Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is a former Distinguished Mason Fellow at the College of William & Mary, and the Besl Professor in Ethics, Religion and Society at Xavier University in Ohio. Just before his current appointment as a Professor in the Study of Islam in the University of Johannesburg, he held a joint appointment  for two years at Harvard University between the Divinity School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as the William Henry Bloomberg Professor.

To participate in this important speech in Singapore were the practitioners who are directly involved in the HIV/Aids issue in Singapore. They represent the government Ministry of Health through its Health Promotion Board and the Communicable Disease Centre. Secular non-government organizations representatives were from  Action for Aids, Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (H.O.M.E.), Pelangi Pride Centre, Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE). Faith-based staff members on HIV/Aids were from Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation, Project X of Student Christian Movement, Catholic Care Centre), Kampong Kapor Methodist Church and Free Community Church. This group of fifty participants are actively and directly engaged in HIV/Aids projects of education, anonymous testing, counselling and healing support to People Living with Aids(PLWA), sex workers, domestic workers, migrant workers, shelters for the abused. They pursue the task advocacy for the rights of the victims to drugs, condoms, employment and housing. They battle with issues of discrimination and stigmatization..

Professor Esack shared his views especially on the broader aspects and the necessity of social justice in dealing with this public health issue. While it is an immediate need to deal with the physical and psychological aspects of people living with Aids, it is necessary to engage also individually and in solidarity with others in social, economic, religious and political problems that interlink with HIV/Aids.

What is the general response of the public to HIV/Aids? Professor Esack identified the levels beginning with ignorance, denial, scorn, pity, compassion, and justice.

He began by illustrating it in the scenario of an car accident in which a drunken driver was involved. We rush to the scene. There are those who ignore it and deny it for fear of being involved in a legal case. There is scorn thrown because the driver was drunk and deserves the dreadful consequences. But there are a few who express compassion for those who suffer physically. The ambulances were called but they delayed in arriving. The streets were not well lighted and there were potholes. Surrounding and leading to the accident are social justice issues which are related to the incident. To prevent accidents we must deal with such issues and must not treat it in isolation from the related factors.

Further he narrated the story of the woman who pick up the babies who were floating down stream and cared them. It is not enough for she needs also to be aware of how the babies were in the river in the first place. Someone upstream has been throwing the babies in the river. That situation must be dealt with too.

We are familiar with the story of the cars that plunged down from the cliff above. We rush to the scene below and provide the ambulance to care for the victims. This is necessary but we have to go up the cliff and find how we can prevent the cars from falling down. We are so busy with our ambulance work or caring for the victims without changing the conditions that cause the carnage.

While it is necessary to have compassion we must be engaged with justice issues. This was the clear challenge that Professor Esack posed to us who are so tied down with the care efforts of the victims of HIV/Aids without addressing the factors of culture, economics, religion. and politics. His compassion is to do justly to those who are afflicted and affected.

As I reflect about Professor Esack and his own involvement, he is not a single issue person or just touching the surface of different issues around him. He himself is hands-on and personally engaged in clusters of issues which are inter-related. He handles them according to his training and personal ability. He is a progressive Islamic scholar of the Koran.  In this minority religious community in South Africa he was active in the battle against apartheid. He is active in inter-faith relations.  He supports the rights of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered rights. Nelson Mandela appointed him to serve as a Commissioner of Gender Equality promoting the rights of all women. I can see how he has embodied in his own life and career the inter-connected issues. Coming from a background of poverty and enslave ment, he has developed the passion for social justice. He has pushed the parameters, he has stretched the limits, he has widened the horizons as he got involved in HIV/Aids and other causes in his society.

In a subsequent meeting organized by the Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies in which I am the only non-Muslim who was invited to be a member, I got a further insight about Professor Esack. To an audience comprised mainly of young progressive Muslims he conducted an open discussion with them. The theme of the talk was announced at different times to be "New Muslim" then "Modern Muslim" and finally publicised as "Good Muslim."  This indicated how the event could be interpreted differently. However Professor Esack shared on the topic of being a "Controversial Muslim." He emphasized that it is his willingness to take a stand and be different and not for the sake of just being different all the time. It is more of being courageous to deal with controversial issues even when it is not popular or in favour with the systems of domination by those in power. It is to be authentic and honest with his own convictions and to serve those who are voiceless, marginalized and oppressed. He made the further insightful observation that all the prophets of our religions have associated themselves with the hopes and aspirations of the downtrodden and showed the ways for their liberation. Being controversial is the perception of others but it has to be viewed positively as being courageous and prophetic.

It was an inspirational evening for those of us who were fortunate to be present and be enlightened by such an eminent personality.

Yap Kim Hao