Kumail Wasif INTS 4525 Reforming Islam Challenges and Prospects Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now Ayaan Hirsi Ali Harper, 272 pp. Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz Harvard University Press, 138 pp. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy Jonathan A.C. Brown Oneworld, 361 pp. Great swaths of the Muslim world are embroiled in war, insurrection and terrorism. Muslim-majority countries are experiencing six out ten of the deadliest conflicts today; two of the others involve significant Muslim minorities. Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria, Philippines, Somalia, and South Sudan, available at: http://www.dw.com/en/the-worlds-10-worst-conflicts/g-17454987. See also Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research 2014 Conflict Barometer, available at: http://www.hiik.de/en/konfliktbarometer/ Moreover, seven out the ten countries experiencing the most terrorism are Muslim-majority; two of the others also involve significant Muslim minorities. Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, India, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Thailand. Data from Global Terrorism Index 2015, available at: http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf Lastly, Muslim-majority countries score low on indexes of women and minority rights: seventeen out of the twenty countries with the lowest scores on gender equality are Muslim-majority, as are seven of ten countries scoring lowest on minority rights. Women’s rights data from Gender Gap Index 2015, available at: http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/rankings/ Minority rights data from Minority Rights Group International, available at: http://peoplesunderthreat.org/data/ Unsurprisingly, one potential explanation with widespread appeal is Islam’s role in fostering intolerance, repression and violence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes the argument in Heretic that these problems stem directly from orthodox Islam and calls for reforming the faith’s core principles. Maajid Nawaz and Sam Harris discuss if and why such a ‘reformation’ is possible in Islam and the Future of Tolerance. Jonathan Brown’s Misquoting Muhammad is an ethnographic study of interpretation and reform in Islam which provides depth to the discussion. This paper discusses the narratives and arguments presented by each author; it evaluates their positions on if and why Islam needs reform, how such a reform ought to happen, and the chances of it happening. The Heretic Hirsi Ali claims Islam has a ‘core creed based on the Quran, the words revealed by the angel Gabriel to the prophet Mohammad, and the hadith, the accompanying works that detail Muhammad’s life and words’ (p. 13). She argues that this creed unites all Muslims and dismisses the Sunni-Shia schism as tribal in origin. However, since the split, significant theological differences developed between these branches of Islam; moreover, numerous smaller sects developed highly varied theological views (e.g. Ahmadis, Alawites, Druze, Yazidis, Yarsan). Despite this apparent plurality within Islam, Hirsi Ali’s assertion about the centrality of the Quran and hadith is pertinent: mainstream Muslim clerics derive norms, values and laws almost exclusively through interpretation of scripture The theological differences between Sunnis and Shias stem from the latter’s use of and emphasis on a broader body of hadith which includes the teachings of Muhammad’s descendants.; minority sects that disregard scripture or West-based Muslim scholars that privilege human reason over scripture are not considered a part of Islam by the majority of theologians and devotees in the Muslim world and beyond. Instead, she organizes Muslims according to which part of the Quran and hadith they privilege. There is a qualitative difference between Muhammad’s life in Mecca and Medina; in the former he was the founder of a small spiritual community whereas in the latter he was the head of militaristic super-tribe. Hirsi Ali claims that Muslims who follow Muhammad’s example in Mecca as passive, inward-looking, ritual oriented, concerned with spirituality instead of politics, and more conservative than revolutionary; those who follow the example of Muhammad’s life in Medina are determined to imitate his political project which was intolerant and violent by today’s standards. She includes Islamists and jihadists are in the latter category. The problem according to Hirsi Ali is that Medina Muslims are gaining influence, because the Islamic tradition generally abrogates the tolerant Meccan verses in favor of the violent ones (the latter came later and are thus considered the final word on the subject). Moreover, oil-rich gulf states have supported the spread of Medina Islam in the form of Salafism. Lastly, Medina Muslims by their nature are more energetic, compelling and violent which appeals to Muslims dissatisfied with the status quo. Her solution is a reformation of Islam; she discusses why attempts have failed so far. In her view Islam – as a system of beliefs and Muslims that implement them – stamps down on critical thinking with the apostasy punishment, blasphemy laws, and increasingly political correctness. Moreover, she argues that Islam’s intellectual architecture looks upon moral improvement as requiring regression to a previous historical period (in contrast to the Western philosophical tradition exemplified by Kant, Marx and others). She explains this backward looking tendency stems from a famous hadith in which Muhammad said the Muslim community will deteriorate morally with every passing generation. As a consequence, Muslim attempts at reform have historically led to a reemphasis on historical dogma instead of an attempt to break free of it. Her solution is not nuanced – she wants to torpedo five of Islam’s defining characteristics. The first is inerrancy: the belief in the infallibility of the Quran and Muhammad. Hirsi Ali sees this as problematic because records of Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Quran contain injunctions incompatible with modern morality (e.g. slavery) that can’t be historicized and dismissed if Muslims believe they are infallible and therefore timeless. The second is Islam’s obsession with death and the afterlife; Hirsi Ali argues it pervades every aspect of life in the Muslim world, leading to fatalism and intellectual lethargy. Muslims, according to her, are not inclined to improve their lives because they see them as temporary, and are instead focused on achieving heaven, which requires adherence to tribalistic values and sometimes violent death. The third is sharia, which is a general framework of values – increasingly codified – that Hirsi Ali sees as tribalistic. She argues they represent values from 7th century Arabia – what the West refers to today as patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, slavery, pedophilia, war crimes – that have been perpetuated by divine sanction. Fourth, she sees this value system as particularly insidious because it is socially (in addition to legally) enforced in Muslim countries. The tendency of Muslim communities to self-police religious morality is embedded in a hadith that encourages believers to forbid wrong and commend good where ever they see it. Hirsi Ali sees this as the source of religious mob violence and the stifling of individual autonomy. Lastly, she sees the idea of jihad as a source of a significant amount of political violence in the Muslim world. She holds that the concept of religious war in Islam is strong and needs to be terminated. Hirsi Ali uses anecdotes, personal experience and survey data to make these arguments fairly persuasively; she does not make these claims with academic rigor but that is not her intent. Her plan for achieving these ambitious objectives is broad. She wants the West to stop accommodating Islam and its sensitivities; instead Mecca as well as Medina Islam should be opposed. It’s clear that she envisions an important role for Western states in this fight: the analogy she uses is that of the ideological war against communism. Surprisingly, she is optimistic about the prospects for reform in the Muslim world. She feels that even though Medina Muslims have historical precedence and scriptural consistency on their side, their rise to power will expose their failure to deliver which will discredit their ideology. Moreover, he thinks rising awareness in the West about the problems stemming from Islamic theology will undermine Islam though she does not specify how. Lastly, she sees a constituency for change in Muslim countries, through the rise of Muslim reformers who acknowledge the challenges stemming from religious belief, and wish to reform Islam from within and without. She sees her own position as that of a blasphemer; she makes no secret of her intention to provoke. She believes that overt criticism, even ridicule, will be an important in Islam’s reformation. Many Western liberals are only comfortable with Muslims working for reform from within the intellectual confines of Islam; Hirsi Ali defies that. Unsurprisingly, she has received considerable flack for these ideas from the liberals in the West. There is plenty to criticize in her plans, but sadly her detractors often question the legitimacy of her voice instead of her ideas, dismissing her as an enabler of right-wing elements in West instead of seeing her as an autonomous thinker from that Muslim world with a view that deserves to be heard. Islam and the Future of Tolerance Maajid Nawaz and Sam Harris offer a more critical, if somewhat less heartfelt, discussion of many of these same issues. Nawaz is one of the reformers Hirsi Ali mentions in her book. Tolerance starts off with a discussion of Nawaz’s history as a radical and the insights on Islamism to be gleaned from that. Both Nawaz and Harris see the need for reform in Islam. Both feel that Islamism is embedded in Islam itself, but whereas Harris claims there is a direct causal relationship between scripture and horrendous violence by Islamist groups, Nawaz offers a more nuanced explanation. He feels that, as was true in his case, radicalization requires four elements: an identity crisis, a victimhood narrative, a charismatic recruiter, and finally an ideology or dogma. The latter becomes the lens through which radicalized individuals start viewing morality and politics. This ideology, Nawaz admits, is based on a modern interpretation of Islam – which he calls Islamism. His position is that Islamism needs to be eliminated and Islam needs to be reformed. It is clear the Nawaz dominates the ‘dialogue’; Harris later admits that Nawaz changed his views more than the other way around. The primary point of contention between the two is Harris’ assertion that a tolerant reading of Islamic scripture is inevitably disingenuous; Nawaz’s counters by explaining the concept of multi-vocality: any given text does not have meaning until it is absorbed by the reader, who then interprets it according to their own preferences and worldviews, often subconsciously. Linguistic disagreement over classical Arabic also produces variations in the understanding of scripture. Consequently, the same text can have multiple meanings. Nawaz does admit, unlike most proponents of the multi-vocality argument, that some interpretations are more authoritative than others within the Islamic tradition, and therefore not all interpretations enjoy equal authenticity or acceptance. Nawaz’s solution is to argue that ‘any given subject has multiple interpretations, which demonstrates that there’s no correct interpretation. If we can understand that, then we arrive at a respect for difference, which leads to tolerance and then pluralism, which in turn leads to democracy, secularism, and human rights’ (p. 105). Perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is the definitions Nawaz provides; he sees Islamism as a family of groups that want to impose any version of Islam on society. He sees three kinds of Islamist groups: gradualist, revolutionary and violent (or jihadi) groups. He too uses the analogy of communism; groups within the movement differ over strategy – they may even hate each other – but their end-goal is the same: a classless society, or in the Islamists’ case, a caliphate. His reason for opposing Islamism is simple – he sees no place for theocracy in the modern world. Nawaz acknowledges that conservative Muslims – or classical Islam – may seem natural allies in the fight against Islamism. They can be suspicious of the state’s attempts to codify Islam and impose it on society, mostly because they are deeply conservative and suspicious of any attempt to manage their religious practices. They stand in contrast to Islamist movements that, like other fundamentalist movements, have internalized aspects of modernity, particularly communication, organization and violence, and borrowed revolutionary approaches from fascism and communism. According to Nawaz, conservative Muslims also pose challenges to basic human rights, particularly those pertaining to gender and the freedom of thought and expression. In light of this, he argues for a broad reform of Islam, to make it compatible with universal human rights values. Unsurprisingly, Nawaz has elicited hostility from Islamists and conservative Muslims, as well Western liberals who he calls the ‘regressive left’. Nawaz is relatively blunt in his calls for secular liberalism – which is an ideology embedded in Western historical and intellectual experience – to displace more traditional relationships between religion, politics and individual rights in the Muslim world. This has led to him being renounced as a traitor by Muslim communities but also by Western cultural relativists who – influenced by ideologies of white guilt, postmodernism and social justice – oppose attempts to apply Western values to other societies. Nawaz calls this intellectual trend reverse racism because it ossifies a supposedly ‘authentic’ imagine of Muslims, who are then subjected to lower standards, and their philosophical progress is discouraged. Since Nawaz does not fit this image of the ‘authentic’ Muslim, he has been called a ‘porch monkey’, ‘native informant’, and ‘Uncle Tom’ by liberals supposedly on the side of anti-racism. Understandably, Nawaz devotes considerable space to countering their arguments. Hirsi Ali’s and Nawaz’s analysis has strong parallels: what the former calls ‘Medina Muslims’ the latter calls ‘Islamists’; they both feel that this category constitutes roughly 25% of Muslims. The vast majority of the rest are what Hirsi Ali calls Mecca Muslims and what Nawaz calls conservative Muslims. In contrast to most commentators of the religion, they both see mainstream Islam as a source of problems as well and in need of reform. Nonetheless, there are significant differences between the two authors. Nawaz only calls for state intervention in the case of violent Islamists; the rest he expects civil society to confront, as is the case with racism and sexism. Hirsi Ali is more hawkish, and seems to want the state to take a leading role in the ideological war. Nawaz has taken the route of the reformer from the inside and Hirsi Ali sees herself as the outside critic. Both see a constituency for reform in the Muslim world and are optimistic about the future. Misquoting Muhammad Brown’s book speaks least directly to the question this essay addresses – why and how Islam needs reform – but it is the most informative. It is a histographic and ethnographic account of the process of interpretation in Islam. He discusses the Sunni-Shia schism, the formation of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, how Muslim theologians tackled the contradictions within scriptures, how they reconciled the needs of the time with scriptural consistency, and how historical contingency influenced religious dogma. This section will provide a short summary of the contents of the book. The schools of jurisprudence were formed when Muhammad’s companions settled in different regions of the rapidly explaining Islamic empire. The companions could speak with authority on Islam because of their proximity to Muhammad and his close companions. They were replaced by men of learning who continued to build upon religious knowledge. Understandably, there were differences between these islands of religious authority – they evolved into different schools. One of the important takeaways from this book was the way historical contingency affected theological positions. Internecine wars in Islam’s initial century persuaded theologians to encourage deference to political authority as a religious virtue. Centuries later, with the Mongol invasions, this trend was somewhat reversed as Muslims started the tradition of takfir – or declaring others Muslims infidels – in order to wage jihad against Mongols who adopted Muslim identities. As Islam spread, these scholars were keen to perverse the unity and integrity of the religion, especially in the face of Shia divergence, they collected the authentic hadith and compiled them into authoritative four books that function as the bedrock of Sunni Islam (in addition to the Quran). Reformists have tried to break away from this elaborate framework of interpretation. Islam has had two types of reformists: puritans and rationalists. The former has wanted to go back to the ‘original’ Islam without the endless scholasticism – and therefore inaccessibility – imposed on it by the clergy (or ulema). There is definitely an emphasis on egalitarian interpretation in this strand; its latest manifestation is Salafism (which is almost exclusively the source of contemporary international terrorism). The other type has called for human reason to be privileged over scripture and the theological framework the ulema derived from it. The original rationalists were the Mu’tazilites during the 8th-10th century; they used Greek rationalist and logical methodologies to conclude, among other things, that the Quran was not eternal. However, their intellectualism did not ultimately reverberate with the elites and masses as much as the dogmaticism of their rivals the Ash’arites – the forerunners of Sunni Islam. By the 15th century the Mu'tazila were extinct, but ironically their methodologies were internalized by Ash’arties who used them, not to conclude that scripture is fallible, but to reconcile the contradictions within scripture as much as possible. This is how Sunni Islam – which constitutes roughly 80% of the Muslim population today – was built and entrenched as an ossified and perpetually backward looking theology. Perhaps the most important takeaway from Misquoting Muhammad is the difficulty of reforming Islam. The puritans have periodically sprouted in different parts of the Muslim world; since they wish to imitate Muhammad’s life and behavior, political violence has often been a part of their project, in contrast to classical Islam which due to historical realities had to circumscribe the violence embedded in scripture. However, these movements have not been particularly durable (until relatively recently The Wahhabi movement of Saudi Arabia; the salafi-jihadi movement compromising groups such as al-Qaeda and the ISIS; and various fundamentalist movements including the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami have proven to be exceptionally resilient. This may have to do with their ability to access oil wealth and adopt of other aspects of modernity.), partly because it is impossible to make claims about the Quran and Muhammad without recourse to the theological resources of the ulema. They were the ones who compiled records of Muhammad’s life without which the Quran lacks critical context. Moreover, they compiled the classical Arabic dictionary without which the Quran cannot be understood – giving them significant say over meaning. Rationalist reformers – like Nawaz – confront the same challenges. They have to dismiss the ulema and their canonical texts to shift Islam’s moral paradigm away from 7th century Arab tribalism, but in doing so they undermine a thousand years’ worth of safeguards against political chaos and upheaval. Brown’s ultimate point is that breaking away from the authority of the classical tradition is fraught with danger and challenges. Conclusion The problem is that the ulema do not offer neutral ground between Western states and Islamists that is compatible with global standards of human rights. Brown, for all his sympathy and admiration for the clergy, has to acknowledge this. The main schools of jurisprudence still hold to slavery, gender-based discrimination, homophobia, pedophilia, and jihad (as world conquest) as authentic Islamic values. When classical theologians take positions against groups like the Islamic State, as Harris points out, they cannot dispute the morality of practices such as slavery, they instead utilize technical arguments such as adhering to treaties and obeying leaders, which unsurprisingly do not seem to be effective in discouraging modern jihadism. Moreover, fundamentalism (violent or otherwise) is not the greatest challenge facing Muslim societies – it is grass-root issues that have stifled social, economic and political development. These are associated with conservative Islam, for instance the suppression of women’s rights, which is a critical obstacle to economic and political growth, and the stifling of the freedom of expression in matters of religion. The murder of the Pakistani governor Salman Taseer and the recent turnout of a hundred thousand people to the funeral of his murderer is illustrative of the problems stemming from conservative Islam. Those supporting the murderer were not fundamentalists, but their opponents: Barewalis who are often associated with Sufism and political quietism. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/my-fathers-killers-funeral.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0 It is clear that mainstream Islam has the fed the problem of Islamism by fostering intellectual and economic impoverishment as well as by providing Islamists the basis of an ideology. Consequently, Hirsi Ali and Nawaz are right about the need for reforming the entire Islamic tradition. Nawaz has the best ideas about how this is to be done. Hirsi Ali’s call for the US and other governments to fund liberal Muslim reformers is unviable for a number of reasons. Firstly, many of these states, including the US, are legally prohibited from interfering in religious affairs. Secondly, Muslim reformers supported or funded by the West are immediately discredited in the eyes of Muslims who, for a number of reasons, have internalized severe in-group/out-group perspectives. It is simply impossible for Western states or Western backed reformers to make the kind of changes to the Islamic tradition that she wants. On the other hand, Nawaz is too optimistic about the plurality of interpretation shattering the hold of the traditional clergy. Reformers have to fight against a thousand years of theological consensus on these core issues, such as on the place of women in society. Moreover, these views are very widely held as evidenced by polls referenced by both authors. Lastly, Muslim communities in the West are somewhat insular and unresponsive to outside philosophical trends, and Muslim societies in the Muslim-majority countries are more so. It is clear that reform in the Muslim world will be a violent and drawn out process.