Former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and former chairman of the Prime Minister’s handpicked Muslim ‘reference’ committee Dr Ameer Ali has an article in tomorrow’s The Australian which is going to make some waves (to put it rather lightly). The article isn’t online yet so we’re publishing a copy over the fold.
The authority of the pulpit is collapsing by the hour A wave of rationalism is spreading from emigre Muslim intellectuals, contends Ameer AliIN the minds of many Muslims, an imagined West is the source of all or most of the problems afflicting the world of Islam. Similarly, in the West, an imagined Islam, purposefully structured and popularly propagated, has created a perception that this religion is a threat to Western civilisation. Between these mutually exclusive mind-sets a new phenomenon is emerging in the real West, laying the foundations for a new wave of Islamic rationalism in the 21st century.The Islamic resurgence of the post-1970s strengthened the hands of the religious orthodoxy and engendered the spectre of political Islam but failed to rekindle the spirit of intellectual rationalism that once pushed Islam to the frontiers of science and modernity. That failure was compounded and worsened by the rise of tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world. The absence of democracy and lack of popular support forced these regimes to look for legitimacy elsewhere.By championing the cause of religious orthodoxy of the dominant variety in each context, these regimes masqueraded as champions of popular and populist Islam. Any intellectual pursuit that threatened this state-mullah alliance was aggressively curtailed. In Egypt, in Pakistan, in Syria, and in many other Muslim countries Muslim intellectuals who challenged populist Islam faced condemnation not only by the religious hardliners but also by the secular elite that governed these countries.
One happy outcome of this tragic situation was the voluntary exodus of Muslim intellectuals to the West. From an inhospitable environment of political tyranny and ideological oppression Muslim scholars migrated to find refuge in the West, where the mind enjoys more freedom to think, debate and express. As a result, the migrant Muslim intellectuals are now producing a new genre of publications, many of which are questioning centuries-old interpretations of the primary texts in Islam. A new era of ijtihad (independent thinking) rooted in scientific, objective reasoning is spreading from the West and is beginning to make its mark in the Muslim mind-set.
These intellectuals are not necessarily religious scholars by training, like the graduates from al-Azhar University in Egypt or Zeituna from Tunis or Qarawiyin in Morocco, but scholars trained in other fields such as social sciences, medicine, engineering, physical sciences and law.
For example, Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian Muslim, is an emeritus professor of Islamic thought at the Sorbonne, Paris, who approaches the Koran and other classical texts in Islam from historical, social, psychological and anthropological angles. The methodology of his research, the sharpness of his arguments and conclusions of his writings are dynamite to traditional Islam. Laleh Bakhtiar, a Chicago-based American female convert to Islam, is not a classically trained Arabic scholar, but has translated the Koran after years of research and is questioning the conventional meanings of some of the Koranic concepts.
Bassam Tibi, a political scientist, who writes mostly in German, applies sociological and anthropological theories to study Islam and finds that the cause of Muslim underdevelopment lies not in the West but in Islam as understood and preached by the orthodox clerics. Amina Wadud, an Afro-American Muslim convert from Bethesda, Maryland in the US, has a PhD in Islamic Studies and Arabic from the University of Michigan and is pioneering the research on gender relationship in Islam and retheorising Koranic hermeneutics. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a former Sudanese diplomat based in London, published Who Needs an Islamic State? in 1991, in which he questions the theological arguments advanced by the protagonists of an Islamic caliphate.
And finally, Abdullahi An-Naim, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, questions the inadequacies of Islamic sharia and its suitability for a pluralistic society.
There are too many of these scholars to enumerate and the number is increasing. All these cases underline the revolutionary thinking among Muslim intellectuals that is setting the pace for a new wave of Islamic rationalism radiating from the West.
Even writers from Muslim countries who are afraid to publish their works at home are doing so abroad. For example, The Book and the Quran [Koran]: A Contemporary Interpretation by Muhammad Shahrur, a civil engineer from Syria, is banned in his country. He argues that human understanding of the Koran is relative and changing and that it requires the continuous exercise of human reason.
His appeal to apply tools of modern epistemology and objective scientific reasoning to the study the Koran is anathema to hardline Islamists. Similarly, Hassan Hanafi, an Egyptian professor of philosophy, is well known for his rationalist views on Islam throughout the intellectual circles in the US, Japan, Germany and Morocco but is frowned upon by the al-Azhar establishment in Egypt. In short, scholars such as Shahrur and Hanafi have become intellectual prisoners in their own countries.
The situation is changing fast. The internet and electronic communication technology have revolutionised the production and distribution of knowledge. Sources of information that were only remotely accessible to a selected few are readily available to many at the click of a mouse. Inquisitive Muslim minds do not have to wait for a cleric to arrive for consultation on theological issues. With the help of the internet any verse or chapter of the Koran and any sayings of the Prophet can be accessed from multiple sources and the reader has the luxury of choosing from among a variety of interpretations, meanings and elaborations.
This revolution in information gathering has become a subversive tool and is eroding the power base of traditional clerics. The authority of the pulpit is collapsing by the hour. The traditional argument that one should be a trained Islamic scholar or an imam to interpret the Koran does not carry weight any more. There is a rising tension between the traditional guardians of Muslim orthodoxy and a new crop of secular educated Muslims, many of whom are better equipped with advanced methodological tools to handle the primary religious texts. An Islamic spring is dawning from the West.
While Western governments and the media are too preoccupied with fighting militant Islam and its terrorist offshoot, the more positive developments that are taking place within the Muslim intellectual world are being ignored. The wave of critical thought emanating from a new breed of Muslim scholars in the West is one of those positive changes. It is a good omen for a long-awaited Islamic renaissance. The hated West has become the surrogate mother of this wave of Islamic rationalism.
Ameer Ali, a former chairman of the Muslim Community Reference Group, is a visiting fellow at the business school at Murdoch University in Perth.
UPDATE: The article is online here.
30 comments ↓
Yes yes yes For 1,400 years Muslim scholars have failed to get it right because they kept approaching the religion through religion and didn’t interpret the Qu’ran using Boyles Law of Thermodynamics (or Ameer Ali’s Fourth Law of Apologetics, that heresy expands to fill the words alloted to it by the editor). If only the sahabah had been engineers and scientists, poor old Dr Ali wouldn’t have to appear on the pages of the Oz 1,400 years later to correct everything. Who needs books of fiqh when we have the periodic table and Grays Anatomy.
I realise this concept may be alien to some people here (it certainly is alien to those on the Muslim Village-idiot forums) but how about we focus on the actual points Dr Ali is making?
My understanding of the article’s purpose is to show that there are genuine debates happening within Muslim scholarly circles concerning religious authority and fundamental questions of Muslim law.
It’s true that he hasn’t mentioned everyone. The absence of Kaled Abou el-Fadl and Tariq Ramadan stands out like a sore thumb. But the article itself doesn’t need to be discredited completely.
The whole article strikes me as your typical pro-regressive pipe dream, wishful thinking at its worst. I’m surprised clowns like Manji, Hirsi Ali, etc., weren’t included as examples of the new breed of Muslim “intellectuals.”
Salaam,
Could someone please point out the controversial apsects of this article? I don’t understand which part I’m meant to be offended by. Thanks.
The authority of the pulpit is collapsing by the hour. The traditional argument that one should be a trained Islamic scholar or an imam to interpret the Koran does not carry weight any more.
How is this not controversial? The Islamic sciences are specialized fields like most others and Ali is arguing that unlike medicine or law anyone can offer their opinions on fiqh and tafsir or translate the quran (without even knowing Arabic!)
Eimad, if this is a statement of theory, I would agree with you. But the fact is that in practice, traditional scholarly authority is being undermined.
Much of this undermining has arisen from the inherent heterodoxy of Islamist movements and by salafist trends that sustain much of their work. The idea that one can throw out classical Islamic sciences espoused in the 4 Sunni madhabs and can re-invent the fiqh wheel lays the foundation for wholesale abandonment of classical sources of Islam.
At the same time, many clasically trained scholars with otherwise impeccable credentials have decided to question the utility of classical methods of training.
How do we respond to this? Do we deny its existence? Do we shoot the messenger? I’ve got no firm answers to these questions. But what Ameer Ali has done is point out an ongoing process that cannot be ignored. We may not like some of his language (which suggests an attempt to cosy upto the stated agendas of certain opinion editors), we cannot deny the existence of this process.
Mr Ali has salient points, but his sycophantic crowing is a little offputting.
The author makes a series of assertions that are the basis for his thesis
these are
1. Islamic resurgence in the 1970s strengthened the hand of religious orthodoxy
2. Tyrannical regimes prevented the development of an “intellectually rational” Islamic revival
3.Although the author was unable to elucidate it he implicitly asserts that there was a collusion between state tyranny and orthodox Islamic scholarship that prevented the rise of this “intellectual rationalism”
4. Tyrannical regimes acquired the cloak of legitimacy in the eyes of the populus by appropriating Islamic orthodoxy
5. Tyranny forced the intellectual elite to flee to the freedom of the west and whilst not being Islamic scholars, the freedom itself allowed them to make startling discoveries and insights into the Q’uran and Sunnah.
6. That these insights or the intellectual activity that created them is of itself meritorious.
7. The author goes on to list a number of obscure academics who have produced discourses on Islam that would be considered heretical, and that the author believes have merit.
8. The internet is a tool for disseminating this Islamic reformation to the wider Muslim ummah as opposed to “orthodox” Islamic scholarship.
9. That this new breed of Islamic scholars pose a serious societal and intellectual challenge to orthodox Islamic scholarship
10. Implicitly that intellectual rationalist re-interpretation of Islamic is praiseworthy and will be the catalyst for an Islamic renaissance
I list his points precisely because he is unable to do so clearly and sequentially. Leaving aside the stylistic and grammatical flaws in this piece, it is breathtakingly poor analysis which begs the question why would a major Australian newspaper publish such an inferior work ?
My response to his points are
1. The Islamic resurgence began well before the 1970s, Leaders of this movement, Hasan al Banna, Syed Qutb, Maududi, Musa Al Sadr etc lived in the early part of the 20th century. It was not the revival of Islam that strengthened orthodoxy but rather the other way around. Modernist movements (Sir Syed Ahmad Khan) and heretical sects of Islam (Ahmadis) were well funded and resourced by the British in the 19th century whilst traditional Islamic scholarship was repressed, yet it is the latter that were at the forefront of te Islamic revival. Ali’s error is one of fact and of causality.
2. In many instances the Islamic revivalism of this period was itself the product of modernist epistemology, and was the worse for it
example: Alexis Carrel’s influence on Syed Qutb, and Muawdudi’s cites his influences as Kant Heigal, Nieche etc. in is introduction to the “Tafhim ul Quran” The untrained Islamic scholar Qutb is credited as the godfather of Bin Ladenism is the sort of Islamic “scholar” that Ali advocates as the renaissance man of Islam.
Qutb has a purified elite as the vanguard for his Islamic revolution, if that is not modernism then nothing is.
4. This point must be an attempt at humor or it underscores how ignorant the author is of even recent history. Qutub, Al Banna Maududid, Khomeni were all repressed imprisoned or exiled. The modern tyrannies were almost all entirely seculer, Attaturk in Turkey, Bathism in Iraq, the Shah in Iran, Nasser in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya. They all did the best they could to undermine orthodox Islamic scholarship. This was a contest of Islamic revivalism with secular nationalism, ethnic nationalism, socialism and fascism.
example
5,6,7. The scholars that Ali names are so obscure that I am certain that not even their mothers can be certain of their heresies. Indeed Ali appears unable to name any startling insights that these “scholars” have discovered that have eluded the entire cohort of 1400 years of classical Islamic scholarship.
8. The internet is the great leveler, Ali is right to say that it has allowed the dissemination of unpopular or even heretical views, however these are not widely read, reproduced, quoted or followed. If these ideas are so transformative, then why in an era of mass communication and individual personal freedom of thought, do they get no traction in the Muslim community?
In the contest of ideas, the reformation of Islamic thought has failed conspicuously, and it not through lack of boosters in the west. People such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ameena Waduud, Irshad Manji, and other self styled reformers are plastered from one end of cyberspace and mass media to the other.
Indeed any host of intelligence agencies will tell you that it is classical Islam that has best used the internet.
9. Progressive? Rational? neo Liberal Islam has collapsed, by the witness of its own high priests. To suggest that one billion Muslims would be transformed by the intellectual masturbation of a few secular expatriate Arabs, on the make and on the take, is a flight into Narnia.
10. Time will tell.
What we see in the current democratization of knowledge is not the failure of classical Islam but its resurgence. On the internet and in the privacy of one’s own mind, people are free to choose who the listen to, who they read, and who they follow, and unfortunately for the author it is here that ones sees the full failure of “New Islam”.
The other point which is conspicuous by its stupidity is the author’s assertion that intellectual disciplines are best served when they are analyzed by scholars who have no formal training in the area of their study, for example, a civil engineer from a backward country , a political scientist and a lawyer are best suited to being the agents for the great reformation of Islamic scholarship.
Baybers, is the resurgence of classical Islamic scholarship about seeking out opinions on the internet? Or the freedom to dissent in one’s mind, which I think is not something that is a gift of the modern world, and a freedom which modernity has done a lot to erode.
Mutazilism, which Khaled abou Fadl espouses, and of which I suspect Mr. Amir, is not a new creed – and I don’t think heresies are new at all, nor are spiritual observations, only words and their expressions emerge newly.
“…there are genuine debates happening within Muslim scholarly circles”
What scholarly circles? Ameer Ali specifically mentions that these individuals are layman, e.g. engineers or economists- not scholars. Anyone who believes these people are ’scholars’ should have his heart operated on by a quack surgeon.
What really jumps out of the page is the idea that Muslims may no longer need nor desire the leadership of Imams to interpret the Koran. The idea is that every Muslim is his or her own Imam, that the holy books of Islam should be read unfiltered by religious authority.
Now in Christendom we have down this road before, it is called Protestism. The radical notion set loose by Martin Luther was that each Christian should read the Bible on there own and each individual was responsible for there own salvation. This unleashed a Century of war and the eventual shattering of Christian unity. While Roman Catholicism survived relatively intact Luther’s Protestism broke up into a myriad of different sects. The Chaos that ensued after Luther’s little posting, the insanity of tying to looking in to men’s souls and judging if there innermost thoughts were correct, created a backlash. The Enlightenment was that backlash.
Both these Western European movements seemed to have passed the Muslims by. At the time most followers of the Prophet, if they thought of it all, were grateful for not being involved in Europe’s insanity. Suleiman the Magnificent did try to cause a little more angst by offering Luther sanctuary. Luther, safe in the arms of his German protectors, scoffed at the idea.
It was only later that the fruits of the Reformation and the Enlightenment became apparent. Both the Industrial revolution and the Scientific revolution have their roots in the Enlightenment. With the both the physical tools and intellectual tools provided by the Enlightenment Western Europe proceeded to take over the world.
Flashing forward to the present day, we are very deep into the changes wrought by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The constant questioning and testing and rigorous logic envisioned by the Scientific Revolution and the Scientific Method has invaded every nook and cranny of higher learning. In the Christian world this has laid waste to hundreds of years of orthodoxy about the sources of the Bible. No serious scholar would now contend that Moses or King Solomon actually had a hand in writing any part of the Good Book. It was only a matter of time before the Quran, the Hadith and other Islamic documents were put under the same scrutiny. This process is only beginning, right now it’s mostly an amateur affair, people doing the work because they love the thought process and because they love Islam. Sooner or later the professionals will step in, the pier-reviewed denizens of the publish-or-perish University world. Good god what a donnybrook that will be, sour-faced Imams facing off against the multiple degreed overly wordy professors.
It is not surprising that Muslims in the West are bringing these new tools of understanding to Islam. These Muslims, especially the converts, have been living in the belly of the beast,. They are the children of the Enlightenment. They carry in their heads the lessons of Locke and Hume and Montesquieu and Jefferson and Madison. They are not about to kowtow to any received wisdom. They are going to ask embarrassing questions and come up with radical ideas. They are going back to the roots of Islam. Will this cause history to repeat itself? Will Islam fragment and if so, what would an Islamic equivalent to Jehovah’s Witnesses look like? Or will this “Reformation” look like Sufism, a movement in Islam that is shared by both Sunnis and Shi’ite s? The protests in Turkey proved that many Muslims want to preserve their secular society and that there are limits to were an Islamic government can go without resistance.
Western Governance and ideology has brought many concepts to the Ummah some like Authoritarian Antisemitic Socialism have not been helpful. Too many Arab people suffer under the rot and kleptomania of these “Moderate” regimens. But other ideas, of liberty, rule of law, open governance, civil rights and the right of privacy are very appealing. These ideas are not in any way Unislamic. Will the Prophets successors listen to the words being whispered in their ears by Tomas Jefferson and others? Only time will tell.
Dawud,
I am not sure why I need to explain this again, its all there in plain sight. I am not advocating looking Islam up on the internet. But Muslims do this now, and when they do they overwhelmingly favour orthodox Islam over these munafiqs. By personal choice , Muslims have rejected modernism in Islam in droves.
James,
You written a long piece, but it is my unhappy duty to tell you that it is based on false assumptions, Imams never interpreted nor sought to interpret Islam for the average Muslim. The Quran and Prophetic tradition insist on every Muslim, male and female being individually and independently religiously literate.. The gift of Islam to the wider world was the democratisation of knowledge 1400 years ago .
This subject is discussed here at some length
http://austrolabe.com/2006/06/.....-on-error/
As your initial assumption was false, all that follows in your contingent analysis is also false. I could spend some time going through it point by point, but I just don’t have the time.
Baybers wrote: The other point which is conspicuous by its stupidity is the author’s assertion that intellectual disciplines are best served when they are analyzed by scholars who have no formal training in the area of their study, for example, a civil engineer from a backward country , a political scientist and a lawyer are best suited to being the agents for the great reformation of Islamic scholarship.
Or, as “Lazarus Long” (Robert Heinlein) put it: “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”
On the subject of Heinlein, it’s the centennial on 7/7/07. He’ was a very interesting writer, particularly for the political themes in his novels, such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
[...] Over at Austrolabe, the team have provided a superb guest post by Dr Ameer Ali. He argues that living in the West – and being confronted for the first time with genuine freedom and secularism – has been excellent for the development of Muslim thought. 22. SL: Highly recommended. [↩] [...]
Someone asked why The Oz would print such articles. You might get an idea of the opinion editor’s slant on things by reading this exchange from Crikey! …
http://planetirf.blogspot.com/.....ditor.html
Baybers: “The gift of Islam to the wider world was the democratisation of knowledge 1400 years ago”.
So why did they ban the printing press for about 200 years?
[opinion]I think it shows a genuine fear of people thinking for themselves. Of course writing was still there, but it wouldn’t have taken a genius to see how much more powerful the printing press could be at distributing information. They didn’t want messages going out that they couldn’t control. THe Cristians did the same – they insisted on monitoring every publication – whereas the people in power in Islam at the time simply BANNED the printing press.[/opinion]
That would’ve had to have had a HUGE influence on the progress of the two cultures since the 1400’s. The west had a 200 year head start on producing widely available books.
Phil of adelaide
Phil,
you are correct that at the end of the Islamic empire, it was intellectually enfeebled, no longer religious and reacted by censoring things that it didn’t like
The difference is that Muslims did this at the end of their civilizations, whilst christians did the censoring at the beginning of theirs.
So I maintain the point that it was the Islamic world that gave humanity the gift of the democratization of knowledge. This is not a particularly controversial point.
He claims that the “Islamic resurgence of the post-1970s strengthened the hands of the religious orthodoxy”. If there was an Islamic resurgence wouldn’t that have been a result of growing religious orthodoxy? He has put the cart before the horse.
He provides no evidence that modern sociological, anthropological or scientific ‘methods’ of interpreting religious texts offer more insight than traditional methods. He provides no evidence that the scholars he lists have benefited the ummah with anything except their dissenting views. It’s dissent for the sake of dissent. It’s adolescent rebelliousness writ large and directed against Islam. He celebrates these people just because they are rebelling against the status quo, smashing the orthodoxy of their parents.
He says the ‘traditional argument’ that only scholars can interpret the Quran carries no weight anymore. He provides no evidence, no justification. All we can understand from his piece is that this idea carries no weight with him. However, the growing popularity of traditional Islamic institutions such as Zaytuna and Sunnipath and the popularity of people such as Abdul Hakim Murad and Sh Nuh testifies against him. Where are the equivalent institutions for Ameer Ali’s school of thought? Where is the secular Hamza Yusuf or the secular Abdul Hakim Murad? Where are the murids of his rationalist elites? Where are their conferences? Where are their websites? Where are their fatwa-banks?
So would these individuals be tolerated back in Muslim majority countries?
“From an inhospitable environment of political tyranny and ideological oppression Muslim scholars migrated to find refuge in the West, where the mind enjoys more freedom to think, debate and express.”
Dr. Ameer Ali also acknowledged his more limited knowledge of Islam as compared to the scholars in the community and that he is not one to be approached for religious verdicts or explanations in contrast to the respected Imams. Thus it was made evident that his role in the community as advocate for the development of the Muslim community and any such related matters of political nature was more warranted.
source
Phil, generally speaking, you’re right: the printing press did have huge social implications, but don’t overdo it. Even Luther’s translation only ever achieved the equivalent of 1 in 3,000 per capita circulation. What really makes a difference is: a) paper and b) mass literacy.
Secondly, the Ottoman Empire had other, and more important reasons for banning the printing press. As they correctly foresaw, printing would be a very good way of mobilising anti-Ottoman forces within the Empire- I mean nationalism. And the rest, is history…
ay so imams are free to pontificate on matters that are outside their direct expertise- daily life, politics, law, finance, economics, health, sexuality, psychoanalysis, mental illness, the environment, government, law, social policy and all matters of life, death, public and private concern (without expertise in the area) that is ok- but when a reverse occurs- anyone not strictly schooled in the classical tradition dares to step in their priveleged domain then all hell breaks loose!
when religious regulations seek to regulate matters outside the personal and private domain of the soul- a reciprocal responsibility and freedom to critique this power arises- in fact it is necessary.
to undermine and dismiss the role of the intellectual in this highly contested domain of knowledge and power is really wrong. if religion involves the getting of wisdom- to learn, undertand, think, reason than ideas should not be treated with fear, those who disagree with us should be called “munafiq”, there are no “heresies” only disagreements. this questioning should not be antithetical to faith.
ps- don’t dismiss the power of ideas- even if it does not come with the dress and pomp of authority and institutions. did not humanity’s great revelations come from the depth of deserts, unlettered prophets and artistic inspirations??
pps- there’s some fabulous stuff on the internet! (this site included)- it is amazing tool if used correctly.
Yes, Sarah that it about right, Muslim scholars are free to “pontificate” on subjects as diverse as sexuality, finance, politics, because that is what our deen has given us insight into. If Muslim leaders cannot teach from religious doctrine about these subjects, then why have a religion? No one can say that they don’t do so without wider public scrutiny.
We are not stopping these people from speaking we are just interrogating their assertions and applying the same scrutiny that they seek to apply to classical (real) Islamic scholarship. I agree that intellectuals should be free to speak, but equally we should be free to challenge and where necessary attack those views.
Here we are not afraid of the power of ideas, We welcome a contest of them.
heresy: belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine
Their beliefs are heretical, and I am sure that they would be happy to say so. Many of these people wear their heresy as a badge of honor.
Thank you for your compliment about this website, you give it too much credit
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
Anyone who can come out with a statement like:
really does not deserve to have his article read any further. There certainly was no “state-mullah” alliance in Syria; while the scholars were allowed to teach certain things and to lead prayers, we all know what happened when Muslims demanded that the country be ruled by them according to their principles rather than by a minority according to principles borrowed from eastern Europe. People I have spoken to with connections to Sufis in Syria told me a few years ago that they could not hold their gatherings openly in Damascus, and had to meet at different houses week to week.
‘…Any intellectual pursuit that threatened this state-mullah alliance was aggressively curtailed’
Errr…mate, if there is a state-mullah alliance in Syria, than what was Hama all about?
I agree with Irfan.
What are you agreeing with exactly?
Orthodoxy is under assault that much is true. But is this a good or bad thing? What is Orthodoxy? From the Greek it is “correct thinking.” Where did this idea come from? In Western Europe it came from the need of the Roman emperors to lay down some sort of unity to their new Christian faith. Beginning with Constantine and ending- well ending never, the Hierarchical church tried to impose a clear faith on its laity. Now in the Orthodox churches this is very much a top down affair.
Islam never had a figure quite like the Pope. The Prophet (peace be unto him) was the only man that all Muslims ever agreed to as the final authority on religious matters. He occupies that very special niche unto this day. The Caliphs tried to impose religious hegemony but that failed. However a type of Orthodoxy was created by Islam, it was much more collegial than the Christian analog but with definite power centers, with definite leaders and with definite followers.
For most of history Christian Orthodoxy and Islamic Orthodoxy looked very similar. There was a vast, illiterate and rural faithful being lead by small, literate and urban elite. The elite controlled the faith because only they understood the writings of the sacred text, only they could read the commentary, only they had the leisure to deeply delve into the mysteries of the faith. So while it may be true that Islam has at its core has an individualist approach to the faith, very few were able to realize this before the 20th and 21st centuries.
Looking at this new literacy we look for parallels, the question being, has this happened before? The Christian analog of Reformation then “Enlightenment” is germane. An explosion of literacy and cheep books shattered Christian Orthodoxy. Today we have an explosion of literacy and the Internet. Already we have people who have the leisure and the academic chops to study the sources directly. They bring new modern tools this undertaking. Some of these tools are that of literary and linguistic analysis. This is not the challenge of Marxism or Socialism or the challenge of Baathism this is something only developed in the past 30 to 40 years. This challenge is radical, it gets to the roots of the text, and it gets to the words them selves. This challenge will offer new interpretations of old formula. These tools and new Archaeological finds have decimated Christian Orthodoxy, what will happen to Islamic Orthodoxy? While history is pro log it does not necessarily repeat itself. Islam is confronting with and adapting to modernity, just as Christianity is confronting and adapting to modernity.
By reacquainting Western Europe with ancient Greek knowledge, by gifting those blighted savages with learning and logic Islam did sew the seeds that became Renaissance, Reformation and finally the Enlightenment. And it is the children of the Enlightenment who have come to challenge Ancien Régime of the mullahs the grand muftis in matters great and small. They have seen the corrupted state Islam of the so-called secularists in Syria and Egypt, a combination of the worst aspects of European Authoritarianism and Islamic Puritanism, and they have recoiled. Maybe “true” Islam should not be tarred with the brush of the base fools who have signed on for this corrupting exercise of collaborating with the Kleptocratic secular elites. Maybe “true” Islam wants nothing to do with the club wielding yahoos beating up women for showing a wisp of hair under their hijabs. But these guys are getting their marching orders (clubbing orders?) from someone who went to all the right madrassas and is reading all the right texts and conferring with all the right Imams who are referencing all the right commentaries written by all those very old and dead men of the 12th century. This is all very “correct,” all very Orthodox, but profoundly wrong.
It is said that Islam is a moderate religion a “religion of peace” maybe this is the start of a new movement a “moderate” place between the ethical bankruptcy of Modernity and the crushing conformity of the extreme Salafists.
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