Rushdie on a 'Muslim Enlightenment'
Today's Star contains an opinion piece by Salman Rushdie calling for a Muslim Enlightenment. Such calls for reforming or modernizing Islam to make it compatible with the 21st century world order are in vogue (many might say for good reason). More often than not, under the highly charged rhetoric (note Rushdie's sign-off statement) these calls are seldom backed by a coherent, methodical substance about how a 'reform' or 'enlightenment' should happen.
Part of the reason for this, I think, is that secular Muslims like Rushdie and more recently Canadian journalist Irshad Manji neither have a significant knowledge of the Islamic legal tradition (in terms of both content and structure) nor are they in tune with the Muslim psyche - the overall cultural and religious mindset of Muslims (and yes I'm making a huge generalization but one I think is not unjustified). What they're concerned with is the end result, which typically means a secular, liberal, private Islam that is divorced from politics and government (after all wasn't that the effect of the Enlightenment on Christianity?)
I hold that the majority of Muslims will never accept such a vision of Islam, and more importantly, notwithstanding the need for Muslims to reconsider what many aspects of their religion mean today, that it is impossible to arrive at the end imagined by Rushdie and co. through a genuine application of the historical Islamic legal tradition of innovative interpretation known as ijtehad that both Rushdie and Manji so conveniently appeal to. In order to do that, fundamental portions of the Quran and other secondary canonical texts would have to be disregarded, raising the question whether what remains can really be called Islam.
7 comments:
Ali, good post, as always. I read the article on my way to work, and was going to write a post about it when I got home. Unfortunately, my brain has gone to mush, and so I con't get a post out.
I hold that the majority of Muslims will never accept such a vision of Islam, and more importantly,
I'm not a Muslim, but I wouldn't be so quick to say this. Christians said it years and years ago. At the turn of the 19th Century, there was a huge surge towards liberal theology, towards much of what Rushdie seems to be submitting for the Islamic faith. I especially like your last line, about whether what was left could even be called Islam... During the 20th Century, that trend towards liberalizing theology has led to empty churchs, disregard for the Bible as the word of God, dismissal of the claim that Jesus was the Son of God, dismissal of the claim that he rose from the dead, etc. Hmm... If you dismiss those things from your theology, you don't exactly have Christianity anymore. You have a shell, but you surely don't have Christanity
Pardon me if that was incoherent. I hate how much job leaves my brain emtpy at the end of a night.
Peter,
If I may point out a disanalogy between the Muslim case and the Christian one, the types of reforms that Rushdie and others are seeking seem to be related to praxis not doctrine.
Very clearly influenced by current events, would-be reformers like Rushdie want the usual list of changes in the Islamic world: secularism, free speech, and equality despite differences of gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation.
All very liberal values, but all can be sufficiently circumscribed so that they relate only to interpersonal interaction, and not matters of belief. Though it is not clear whether Rushdie considers that sufficient to constitute reform.
Thus, for example, a believer might hold that his religion is better than another's, while simultaneously refraining from having that manifest itself in the public square. Or that homosexuality is wrong, but not that homosexuals need to be killed/tortured/punished/what-have-you.
In a way, this is much the same trajectory as that of Christian Europe which could no longer tolerate the sectarian violence, and so had to separate things off. But it need not necessitate (at least logically) changes in fundamental beliefs, e.g. Jesus as the Son of God for Christians, The Qur'an as the infallible word of God for Muslims, etc.
This is why it is particularly painful to see reformers (Muslims, more often than not) feel so repulsed with all things Islamic that they think they need to change doctrine along with public praxis. Thus, Irshad Manji will tell us that to really get at the root of why so many Muslims are prone to violence these days, we must question the authority/infallibility of the Qur'an. Nonsense. All we need to do is investigate why Muslims are being violent. More often than not, there's as much a historical/sociological reason for that as there is a scriptural one.
As I said, it's not clear from this article whether Rushdie falls into this group. The *tone* of the article, however, leads one to be less than optimistic that he will draw those distinctions.
I suppose a good follow-up question, drawing on the lessons of the Reformation, is whether the loosening of authority, primacy of scripture, and separation of public and private inevitably results in the not-so-Christian Christianity you've been witnessing. This is something Muslims need to think honestly about, I think.
Peter, thanks for your comments. I suppose one should never say never. Perhaps what I mean is that at this particular moment in time, it seems impossible that the majority of Muslims would go along with a secular Islam. Who knows what the situation might be a hundred, two hundred years down the road.
Junaid, regarding your comments. I think (and you might disagree) that with Islam, the two components of belief and practice are both of near equal significance, unlike Judaism which is concerned primarily with the latter and Christianity (and Peter can correct me if I'm wrong) which emphasizes the former strongly over the latter.
Thus if we are talking about substantial changes to Islamic praxis they have to appear to stem from doctrine - there is no other way for Muslims to accept them as genuinely Islamic. This is why I mentioned that a purely liberal, private version of Islam where, as you said, doctrine and scripture do not have authority in the public sphere, seems not to be Islam at all.
I don't deny that practice does have an important part to play in Islam, or that Islam occupies the proverbial middle ground between Christianity and Judaism.
But the question is what makes something *Islamic*? I do not mean on a descriptive level -- where Muslims consider everything from strict gender segregation to the crescent and the clothing of one's culture to be Islamic, simply by virtue of that being the de facto reality (especially in contradistinction to others). Rather, on a normative level, why are some things Islamic and not others? I think when it boils down to it, while there are certain fundamental practices (e.g., ritual prayer, pilgrimage, etc.) that are indivisible from Islam, they are relatively few, and what what makes someone a Muslim is what he or she believes, i.e. doctrine. On that level, I would disagree that praxis and doctrine are of near-equal significance.
Thus if we are talking about substantial changes to Islamic praxis they have to appear to stem from doctrine - there is no other way for Muslims to accept them as genuinely Islamic.
It is true (descriptively, and to some extent even normatively) that the only way Muslims will accept them as genuinely Islamic is if they come from a set of intellectual commitments thought to be legitimate from the perspective of Islam. There are two points to consider, though:
1) Whether Muslim epistemology is a necessary feature for the ontological definition of something as "Islamic". I don't think that it is. Whether or not Muslims deem/accept a particular value/practice as Islamic doesn't change whether or not it is in God's Eyes. This might not be what you were getting at in your post, but it's an important consideration nonetheless.
2) What constitutes doctrine, in my view, must be restricted to very fundamental beliefs. At the risk of essentializing, I daresay that this was the view of many traditional Muslim scholars. Contemporary Muslims too often include everything traditional Islam has ever held to be a point of fundamental doctrine.
As such, it is not uncommon to see Muslims thinking that a person who holds that punishing people for blasphemy, for example, is a violation of a fundamental right to free speech is talking about something less than Islam.
I readily grant that questions about the capacity of religion to involve itself in public matters are often thorny. But, in my view, that does not make holding a view that is contrary to much of what Muslims believe other than Islam. It is simply a reading of Islam.
I do not think, for example, that endorsing secularism puts one outside of the pale of legitimate thinking about Islam. I think that secularists have an enormous burden of proof, that it might be a very difficult project, and that the onus falls on them to make some very convincing arguments. Yet, they can still be Muslims. And I do concede that there are many opportunities to come to very secular conclusions about individual cases, e.g. apostasy. (In fact, Muslim history attests to many such "concessions.")
In the end, that might not mean endorsing secularism, but something that amounts to roughly the same thing.
Junaid, what you present appears to be a rather radical departure from the prevalent way of looking at Islam. You are effectively denying the premise that a secular Islam cannot be true Islam. Even if we look at Islamic doctrine like you say,
What constitutes doctrine, in my view, must be restricted to very fundamental beliefs.
I think we are at an impasse until we delineate exactly which fundamental beliefs we are talking about and what they mean. For example, the most basic and fundamental part of Islamic doctrine - لا اله الا الله or There is no god but God - is deemed to have widespread implications in both the private and public spheres. This raises the question of multiple interpretations of doctrine itself. Is it possible to have multiple interpretations of even fundamental beliefs? How wide of a range can this interpretation of doctrine be allowed to have?
I submitted that a secular view of Islam is fundamentally different from what actually constitutes Islam. I don't deny that multiple readings of Islam are possible and could all claim legitimacy. I just don't think secular Islam is one of them. You don't seem to agree, but unless we go further and see exactly what a 'legitimate' secular version would be like, I fear we might be stuck in speaking in vague, hypothetical terms.
Yes, but hypotheticals are about all I'm good at.
You are effectively denying the premise that a secular Islam cannot be true Islam.
Not quite, at least I don't think I am. It is difficult to say what "true Islam" might look like. All I'm saying is that something can not be disqualified as true Islam just because it ends up endorsing secularism. (For the record, I'm doubtful that such a position can be endorsed with real consistency and rigour.)
It is a large project to try to delineate what beliefs one thinks are fundamental to being a Muslim. But perhaps a simpler way to look at the issue is to take the argument you have cited: namely, that لا اله الا الله implies by necessity implications in both public and private spheres, and interrogate what assumptions it rests on. Why should a simple creed that on its face says nothing more than the Ontological Reality of God have such far-removed implications about politics?
In following the argument at each step, can we countentance the possibility that someone might have a different understanding of one of the moves along the way. I do not think this is so far-fetched. What would be more difficult (and the reason I am doubtful of the ability of secularism to be "Islamic") is how to deal with Qur'anic verses that clearly indicate religious "interference" (a crude term) in public matters. But this is where the issue of multiple interpretations would most clearly come into play.
Is it possible to have multiple interpretations of even fundamental beliefs?
As far as I can see, fundamental beliefs are simply the result of revelation. So having multiple interpretations would be entirely possible. I might consider some of them outside the pale -- indeed, to be consistent with my own interpretations I think I would have to -- but that says nothing about whether they are.
How wide of a range can this interpretation of doctrine be allowed to have?
On what grounds do we seek to restrict it? Simply that we don't agree, or that it doesn't accord with what many Muslims think, or that it goes against orthodoxy?
Importantly, I think the formative period of Islam tolerated a *lot* more variation than we do now.
The question is simply this: Who is judging what the parameters of Islam are? If it's an individual deciding what works best for him/her, it seems totally reasonable for me to say I think X is an expression of kufr. What does not seem reasonable is that this becomes a public matter, that I use the coercive power of the state (or some other such poweful entity) to tell them that what they're doing isn't Islam.
unless we go further and see exactly what a 'legitimate' secular version would be like, I fear we might be stuck in speaking in vague, hypothetical terms.
Trying to figure out what a secular Islam might look like will have to wait. As I said, I'm not convinced it will be "true Islam." My problem is that it is thought to be so a priori.
In the meanwhile, one might consider whether it's possible to have something that might not endorse secularism (the separation of God from the public sphere) but comes to the same conclusions in a round-about way.
Junaid, to return to something you said earlier, the resolution of which I now think has an important part to play in this whole issue:
1) Whether Muslim epistemology is a necessary feature for the ontological definition of something as "Islamic". I don't think that it is. Whether or not Muslims deem/accept a particular value/practice as Islamic doesn't change whether or not it is in God's Eyes.
I don't think it is as simple as that. Of course what someone considers 'Islamic' might differ from what is truly so in God's eyes as you say. However, Islam is supposed to be a concept that very much belongs and applies in this world; therefore there has to be some way for you and I and other actors to know what is Islamic and what is not. Epistemology does play a role in determining what constitutes Islam and what does not. Without it, we could never be sure of anything. A purely metaphysical criteria for the determination of truth is practically useless for us in the here and now.
Now that doesn't mean we can't tolerate variation, but there have to be discernable limits to how much variation is too much.
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