The call for reforming Islam, in spite of the confusions surrounding
the word “Islam”, is nothing new and Muslim scholars and activists have
articulated that call whenever they felt that certain elements of fiqh
or rules derived from the Quran and traditions of the Prophet that are
supposed to govern Muslim societies, incongruent with modernity and
change. In fact, the late Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010), one of the most
influential secular scholars in Islamic studies, titled his
“extraordinary” book, “Islam: To Reform Or To Subvert” (2006).
However, there is a new genre of calls arising chiefly from a
minority of non-Muslim and once-Muslim agitators, who directly point at
the Quran and demand that the reformation should start by “banning” or
“excising” the Holy Scripture itself. One of them even compared the
Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. This scurrilous demand, apart
from its bigotry overtone demonstrates an abject misunderstanding not
only of the history of the Quran but also of the centrality that it
occupies in the hearts and minds of the entirety of believing Muslims.
It adds insults to an injury caused centuries ago when Christendom
confronted Islamdom. Adding further to its negativity this call has
added another weapon to the propaganda armoury of Jihadists to recruit
volunteer fighters for the so called “Crusader-Zionist War”.
Reform
in reality is not a one off event to be accomplished by introducing a
new or revised document or an itemised agenda but an ongoing process
that keeps a phenomenon updated and relevant to meet the growing
challenges of an ever growing stock of human knowledge and civilization.
In that sense the history of Islamic thought bears ample testimony to
the fact that Islam had been reforming quite intrusively and extensively
during the first six centuries of its introduction and superficially
and restrictively thereafter.
The presence of different schools of Islamic jurisprudence today both
in the Sunni and Shia sects, and the survival of many mystical sects in
Islam, if anything, are an indicator of the dynamics of this reforming
trend. In the relative ambience of intellectual and spiritual freedom
that prevailed in medieval past the founders of these schools and sects
were engaged in translating a religion that was originally revealed to
Muhammad in Arabic and in Arabia, and making it accommodative and
practicable in societies living in different cultural and geographical
climes. That is why unlike in Christianity Islam never produced a
Protestant Movement which ended in Wars of Religion in Europe. Reform in
Islam was an embedded process.
As a result of this process diversity and not sameness became the
hallmark of Islam’s religious topography. It was the quintessential
achievement of a historically unmatched atmosphere of intellectual
tolerance and rational discursiveness that marked the realm of a
selected group of enlightened caliphs, sultans and emperors. Under their
rule hundreds and thousands of Muslim scientists, philosophers,
theologians, poets, thinkers and critics, not to mention the
participation and contribution of a comparable galaxy of Christian,
Jewish, Buddhist and savants from other faiths, coalesced and cogitated
with mutual respect to each other’s expertise, and through the
instrument of ijtihad, the Arabic term for independent and
critical thinking, produced a civilization unprecedented in any society
at least until then.
It was the decline of this reforming process from around the 12th
century that made Islam and Muslims enter a prolonged period of
intellectual somnolence and material stagnation from which they still
have not completely awaken. A civilization that welcomed controversy and
diversity, encouraged tolerance and compromise, and accommodated
rationalism and individuality received a mortal blow with the ascendancy
of politically supported religious orthodoxy. From then on it was not ijtihad but taqlid
or unquestioning imitation that ruled knowledge production in Islam.
The ideological genesis of today’s violently radical and jihadist Muslim
terror outfits can be traced back to this historical reversal.
It has become habitual for Muslims to blame Europeans and European
colonization for the decline and stagnation that engulfed Islamdom since
the 18th century. Modern scholarship has dismissed this argument as
untenable. Muslims were colonized because they became colonizable and
that colonizability preceded actual colonization by centuries. Even if
colonization is to be blamed how and why then a country like India,
which was colonized for a longer period than any Muslim country, managed
to come out of it soon and emerged as a competitive power at the world
stage when Muslim nations still remain powerless and chaotic?
Therefore, the most crucial reform that Islam needs is to restart
that reforming process and resurrect that ambience of freedom for
rational discursiveness, intellectual creativity and philosophical
pluralism. Freedom of thought and expression is a scarce commodity in
Muslim countries. The flight of thousands of intellectuals, writers,
academics and scientists from the Muslim world to the West is a colossal
brain drain occasioned by an intolerant religious orthodoxy supported
by political tyranny. The pithy remark by Abdelwahab Meddeb, the
Tunisian Muslim scholar at the University of Paris, “Arab excellence
seems to blossom abroad” may be generalised to cover Muslim excellence.
In this reforming process the Quran is neutral. Otherwise, how does
one explain the fact that the very Quran which is now being accused of
being instrumental in causing all the chaos and bloodshed was the one
that was equally instrumental in producing the most cosmopolitan and
glorious civilization in the past? The culprit is not the Quran but its
use and users. Ironically the reforming light of Islam will be rekindled
not from Islamdom but by Muslims living in Christian West. (Ameer Ali)