By Moin Qazi, New Age Islam
25 October 2023
In recent years, clichéd calls for reform of Islam have acquired more stringent tones. “We need a Muslim reformation.” “Islam needs reformation from within.” Such headlines keep flashing in the media. Yet if Muslims are true to themselves and their scriptures, Islam doesn’t need a reformation. Muslims need to save themselves from intolerance and dogmatism.
The vision of some reformers asks Muslims to abandon fourteen hundred years of accepted dogma in favour of a radical and demanding new methodology that would set them free from the burdens of traditional jurisprudence. In recent years, an enormous industry of reform-minded interpreters has arisen to explain, contextualize, downplay, or ignore them, often quoting the well-known verse that says there is “no compulsion in religion.”
Islam is worlds apart from Christianity. The two faiths aren’t analogous, and it is deeply ignorant to try and impose a neatly linear, Eurocentric view of history on diverse Muslim-majority countries in Asia or Africa. Each religion has its dissent and culturally evolved through uniquely distinct traditional paths and each religion’s followers have been affected by geopolitics and socio-economic processes in myriad ways. The theologies of Islam and Christianity are far away: the former, for instance, has never had a Catholic-style clerical class answering to a divinely appointed pope. The truth is that Islam has already had its reformation, in the sense of stripping cultural accretions and a process of supposed “purification”..”.
The truth is that Islam has already reformed in the sense of stripping cultural accretions and a process of supposed “purification.” Wasn’t reform precisely what was offered to the masses of the Hijaz by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the mid-18th century itinerant preacher? He provided an austere Islam cleansed of what he believed to be innovations, which eschewed centuries of mainstream scholarship and commentary. He rejected the authority of the traditional ulema or religious leaders.
The idea of the reformation of Islam can be better understood if we explore how close Wahhabism is to Protestantism or Catholicism is highly complex and paradoxical. In Islam, there has always been the argument that Wahhabism arose directly as an imitation of Protestant Christianity. And some Wahhabis do make this comparison. They say, “We are creating a Protestant Islam.” But many Catholics respond to this by saying to Wahhabis, “If you’re looking for models from the Christian world, the Catholics are much better models.
There is one significant difference, however. Protestantism did not attempt to enforce conformity. Protestantism fostered pluralism. Wahhabism does not promote pluralism, unlike traditional Islam, which is pluralistic and non-conformist and allows for diverse opinions. And that’s why, in the end, I now essentially reject the parallel.
Abd al-Wahhab was the most significant reformist who believed that Islam had been corrupted and weakened by the Ottomans and needed to return to its roots. But his brand of an original, authentic Islam was harsher and more stripped down than the religion that the Prophet Muhammad had founded centuries before. Al-Wahhab forbade many practices and traditions that were an established part of Muslim culture, such as the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, the decoration of mosques, and the use of music in worship and daily life.
People must realize that Wahhabism embodies violence because Wahhabism begins by saying that everybody who isn’t a Wahhabi who calls himself a Muslim isn’t a Muslim. And that is, in essence, a violent proposition. Some Wahhabis are not directly involved in going off and killing people, but they support the ideology that supports the people who are going off and killing people. The difference is that the Wahhabis have a religious dispensation that creates a totalistic sense of self-righteousness. Nazism and Stalinism didn’t have this.
Renewal and reform are the essential components of the new learning methodology of the Qur’an. The Salafis lead the most influential movement in this direction. They signify a stripping away of accumulated misreading and wrong or lapsed practices, as in the Protestant Reformation, and a return to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the Sunna—guidelines based on the recorded words and deeds of the Prophet
Nearly a century after it emerged in Egypt, political Islam is redefining the Muslim world. Also called Islamism, this potent ideology holds that the billion-strong global Muslim community would be free and great if only it were pious—that is, if Muslims lived under state-enforced Islamic law, or sharia, as they have done for most of Islamic history. Islamists have long been confronted by Muslims who reject sharia and non-Muslims who try to get them to reject it.
Salafism, imported into Egypt from Saudi Arabia and publicized around the world thanks to petrodollars, is the enemy of anything moderate and tolerant. The Salafis believe that the only true path is to follow the practices of the early generations of Muslims – literally.
Although most Egyptians do not identify as Salafis, their thinking has been greatly influenced by Salafism, especially the younger generation. Much effort is expended in public displays of religiosity, such as beards, prayer beads, prayer calluses and women’s clothing. At the same time, the spiritual aspect of religion and the proper ethics Muslims should adhere to take a back seat.
Reforms are, of course, needed across the crisis-ridden Muslim-majority world: political, socio-economic and, yes, religious too. Muslims need to rediscover their heritage of pluralism, tolerance and mutual respect – embodied in the Prophet’s letter to the monks of St Catherine’s monastery or the “Convivencia” (or co-existence) of medieval Muslim Spain.
Responding to those who claim that sharia fuels much of the violence and political instability in Muslim countries, several scholars argue that Islamic law is the key to rebuilding the political order in the country. They point out that sharia is invoked to justify misogyny and human rights abuses but that it has also been it is not sharia but struggles over the legal system that has been the primary source of contention and conflict going back to the beginning of the colonial era .it is. We must try to understand how successive national states grappled with integrating Western jurisprudence, customary law, and sharia. x
WE cannot judge the era of the founding of Islam by the values of our own time: and, indeed, what we understand as the emancipation of women was never really considered by any of the great monotheistic religions. Some of the West’s Christian establishments have accepted relatively equal rights, abortion and divorce only under pressure from women’s associations and after long battles. Islam is aware of these changes. And it is inclined to blame the commentators of the Qur’an or canon law for the prevailing repression of women.
Westerners think of Islamic societies as backwards-looking, inhumanely governed, and oppressed by religion, comparing them to their enlightened, secular democracies. But measuring the cultural distance between the West and Islam is a complex undertaking, and the reality is that the distance is narrower than they assume. Islam is not just a religion, and indeed not just a fundamentalist political movement. It is a civilization and a way of life that varies from one Muslim country to another but is animated by a common spirit far more humane than most Westerners realize.
How did a religion that initially offered women greater freedom than they had known in traditional societies come to be associated with their repression? Muslim feminists have begun to reclaim the independence and respect accorded to women during the early centuries of Islam.
The problem is less religion itself than the way commentators have interpreted it. The Qur’an has multiple teachings with many meanings, and Muslims have always been free to comment on them according to circumstances. The texts have been interpreted over centuries to endorse conservatism and intolerance and promote openness, freedom, forgiveness and intellectual revival.
There is plenty of historical evidence for the servitude of women and the contempt and hatred they have suffered. Women’s inequitable legal and social situation in most Muslim countries is deplorable. But is this situation directly attributable to a religion that is seen as sexist, or is it the result of religious or civil authorities interpreting that religion according to a male desire to dominate, despite Islam’s insistence on the eq
Unlike Christianity, Islam was concerned with politics and governance from the start. The Muslim rule that developed in the lifetime of the Prophet required attention to principles of community life, justice, administration, relations with non-Muslims, defence and foreign policy. The main new ideas were a vision of what constitutes good governance, law and just society. The Prophet came not to protect the status quo but to reform and change. Women, for instance, were given legal status (where they had none before) and concrete legal protection within society.
If Prophet Muhammad’s life were revolutionary, its aftermath would have seen a monological recital of Hadiths and inflexible analyses of Qur’anic verses, where historical context is taken up or ignored to suit the interpreter. Memories of early Islam have hardened into dogma, and many scholars have taken the Hadiths as stone tablets.
Islam received the unique stamp of Prophet Mohammed’s success. Unlike earlier prophets, Prophet Muhammad lived for some years as the head of a state of his creation and to which he gave laws. He shaped laws about marriage, inheritance, divorce and similar matters, aiming to reform generally recognized customs. He restricted the number of wives a man might have to four—imposed an almost impossible f; fulfilment of a condition that equality is maintained among them. Women had no inheritance rights; the new code granted them the request for half of the men’s share. Slavery was widespread; Islam outlawed it except for captives taken in war, and for these, it introduced reforms and ways of regaining freedom. Wine drinking was gradually controlled, and usury was forbidden. The caste system, which was still in vogue, was abolished, as was the cruel practice of burying unwanted female babies alive.
We need to understand every religion from its primary scriptures and not from secondary sources, which are unfortunately prone to many interpretations that may be erroneous or deceptive and are usually representative of a particular school of thought. The only lasting solution will be to liberate society from manmade religion and return to the pristine message of the scriptures. These scriptures had a simple, straightforward and plain-speaking message for all humanity, which got distorted at the hands of the modern tools of intellectual sophistry and sterile polemics. We need to sanitize our bodies, environment, minds, and intellect.
The great modern reformist thinker Fazlur Rahman firmly believed that one of the primary purposes of the Qurʿān was to create a justice-based society. He saw the Prophet Muḥammad as a social reformist who sought to empower the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable. He viewed the Qurʿān as a source from which ethical principles could be derived rather than a book of laws.
He played the role of father, husband, chief, warrior, friend and Prophet. His respect for learning, tolerance of others, generosity of spirit, concern for the weak, gentle piety and desire for a better, cleaner world would constitute the main elements of the Muslim ideal. For Muslims, the life of the Prophet is the triumph of hope over despair and light over darkness. For instance, Rahman argues that the practice of family law in Islamic history had not accorded females the equal rights to which they appear to be entitled based on the Prophet’s example and teachings of the Qurʿān.
Earlier attempts were made to create new ideologies promising rejuvenation. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdouh led attempts to make Islam more legible by calling for adapting Muslim life to the West’s views on economic and political modernity. They never called themselves Salafists (for them, it was about returning to the sources to find compatibility with these new challenges).
Fazlur Rahman writes in his book Islam and Modernity: “A historical critique of theological developments in Islam is the first step toward a reconstruction of Islamic theology. This critique should reveal the extent of the dislocation between the world view of the Qur’an and various schools of theological speculation in Islam and point the way toward a new theology.” This is a significant suggestion that should have been considered seriously and would have benefited the Islamic world immensely. For him, it was the intellectual ossification and replacement of scholarship based on original thought by one based on commentaries and super-commentaries, the closing of the gate of ijtihad, and establishing of the Islamic method solely on taqlid (blind imitation) which led to the decline.
Fazlur Rahman’s goal was to reassess the Islamic intellectual tradition and provide a way forward for Muslims. In his view, re-examining Islamic methodology in the light of the Qur’an was a prerequisite for any reform in Islamic thought.
Rahman says, “Muslim scholars have never attempted ethics of the Qur’an, systematically or otherwise. Yet no one who has studied the Qur’an carefully can fail to be impressed by its moral fervour. Its ethics, indeed, is its essence and is also the vital link between theology and law. The Qur’an tends to concretize the ethical, clothe the general in a particular paradigm, and translate the ethical into legal or quasi-legal commands. But it is precisely the sign of its moral fervour that is not content only with generalizable ethical propositions but is keen on translating them into existing paradigms. However, the Qur’an always explains the objectives or principles that are the essence of its laws.”
At the same time, there needs to be abundant caution. Reform is an unruly horse that can go berserk unless adequately saddled. In several societies, the hardliners have served as vigilantes and sentinels of their faith. Their resistance has helped winnow the weaker strands in the formulation of new trajectories of thought and discourse. The bigoted and intolerant forces can acquire aggressive postures to suit their distorted understanding and ideological positions. Akbar is considered a great liberal king. However, we must not forget that he made extraordinary efforts to subvert Islam by attempting to reinvent the faith.
Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, the great mystic and theologian, was primarily responsible for the reassertion and revival of orthodox Sunnite Islam as a reaction against the syncretistic tendencies promoted by Akbar. It was a serious attempt to dilute Islam and reinterpret its original philosophy. Persecuted for his outspokenness and straightforwardness, he is today revered as a saint and saviour of Islam. Similarly, Darah Shikoh was not just a great liberalist of his times but was charged with blasphemy by clerics. Both Akbar and Dara Shikoh were secular individuals. Still, their creative efforts had much to do with power and politics. Nothing by way of communal harmony and interfaith cordiality eroded some of Islam’s most cherished values and traditions.
Hardliners have their unique place in all discourses and their presence helps redefine unchecked and anarchic impulses. Always delay judgment no matter who you are, how experienced, and how knowledgeable you think. Give others the privilege to explain themselves. What you see may not be the reality. Never conclude for others. This is why we should never focus only on the surface and judge others without fully understanding their perspective. This requires an enormous amount of tolerance.
All scriptures are, above all, a spiritual and moral resource that, if they are correctly understood and internalized both in letter and spirit, provide the reader with helpful guidance through the complexities of modern life. It is the nature of the human dialogue that finally culminates in the direction one is seeking for his salvation. Human perversity and ignorance can turn this overtly benevolent and benign exercise into intricate, complicated means to divide people. Instead of divine consciousness and guidance being the moral principles that bring people together, it becomes the embodiment of the most fundamental differences. They should be seen as a training manual for human nature. Submitting ourselves to their wisdom should mean testing and interrogating all our ideas and experiences afresh in the light of the fresh dose of thinking ingrained during the dialogue. We must all teach ourselves to read these divine and holy books liberated from the weight of tradition and classical commentaries. The real wisdom that we can glean from them is the one that ignites our spirituality when we constantly think outside the box of our earthly concerns by keeping in mind the intersection of time and timelessness.
While several reformist thinkers continued their creative work in the last two centuries, it was the great poet Muhammad Iqbal. He conceived a very coherent and inspiring philosophy that crystallized around Islamic ideals. His Islam is not the Islam of primitive punishments, the veil and bigoted mullahs, but the Islam which provided a new light of thought and learning to the world and of heroic action and glorious deeds. He was devoted to the Prophet and believed in his message. Iqbal regarded as ‘nullification’ the search for ‘inner meanings’ or ‘hidden meanings’ in either the code of Muhammad (peace be upon him) or in his way of life, which he found not only satisfying but also convincing. He blamed the Persian poets for confusing the message of Islam. As he put it, “The Persian poets tried to undermine the way of Islam by a very roundabout, though apparently heart–alluring, manner. They denounced every good thing of Islam and made contemplation in a monastery the highest crusade in the way of God.”
Iqbal preached action. He was a rebel against all the accretions that had gathered around Islam due to the Hellenic and Persian influences and wanted to cleanse it so that the world could, once again, witness the glory of Islam in its pristine form. For the laziness and lethargy that had gripped the Islamic fold, Iqbal blamed the Sufis. They, with their Iranian background and Greek ideas, had corrupted the religion of Muhammad (peace be upon him). As Iqbal explains, “it is surprising that the poetry of Sufism in Islam was produced during the period of political decline. The nation which exhausts its fund of energy and power, as was the case with the Muslims after the Tartar invasions, changes the outlook. The weakness becomes an object of beauty and appreciation, and resignation from the world is a source of satisfaction.”
Iqbal’s poems reflect the pain and agony he felt at the degeneration of Islam. This feeling is patent in every couplet. Muslims are repeatedly asked to go back to the early era of Islam when the spirit of Muhammad (peace be upon him) goaded his followers to conquer half the world and brought enlightenment to people of various regions and colours. While Iqbal retained his admiration for the otherworldliness of Sufi mystics. He rejected their belief in the world’s transitoriness and the unreality of life. He was appalled by western commercialism and greed, lamented the loss of the Muslim empire, and was saddened by the decadence of Islam.
A legacy can be preserved only if it is honoured and respected by its custodians. We must try to understand and delineate those attributes that aided the personalities of yesteryears to attain those levels of glory. At the same time, we have to examine the social and cultural factors that enabled them to use their talents to their farthest value and harness their energies toward the goals fruitfully. Some Muslim countries have seen the emergence of leading politicians who have unfortunately not been able to live up to the ideals of the early women and have done significant damage to the reputation of an Islamic female.
Islam is at crossroads today and Muslims are poised at a critical juncture in their history. The stagnation in Islamic thought is patent in the couplets of Muhammad Iqbal:
You are one people. You share in common your weal and woe.
You have one faith, one creed and to one Prophet Allegiance owe.
You have one sacred Ka’aba, one God and one holy book, the Qur’an.
Was it so difficult to unite in one community every single Musselman?
—–
Moin Qazi is the author of the bestselling book, Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has worked in the development finance sector for almost four decades.