Author: Ibn Warraq
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: May 19, 2003
If Islamic society is to become
prosperous, free and democratic, a true reformation must take place within
the Arab nations. The Arab governments of the Middle East must remove theocratic
Islam as the most dynamic, element within their borders. Gradually secular
education, respect for other faiths and the reflective gift of self-criticism
must blossom to produce a harvest of individual liberty. How likely is
such a reformation in today's Islamic societies? And can Islam institute
such reforms without betraying its very nature?
There are some (I believe, misguided)
liberal Muslims who deny any such transformation is necessary, that Islam
need not be marginalized for liberty to flourish. These liberals often
argue that the real Islam is compatible with liberal democracy, that the
real Islam is feminist, that the real Islam is egalitarian, that the real
Islam tolerates other religions and beliefs, and so on. They then proceed
to some truly creative re-interpretation of the embarrassing, intolerant
and misogynist verses of the Koran. But intellectual honesty demands that
we reject just such dishonest tinkering with the Koran's text, which, while
it may be open to some re-interpretation, is not infinitely elastic. The
truth is there is no real difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism
- at most there is a difference of degree, but not of kind. There are moderate
Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. All the tenets of so-called
Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Koran, the Sunna, and the Hadith
- the defining texts of Islam - and elaborated in intimate detail by the
classical Muslim jurists from all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence,
as well as by Shi'ite jurists.
The only solution is to bring the
questions of human rights out of the religious sphere and into the sphere
of the civil state, in other words to separate religion from the state
and promote a secular state where Islam is relegated to the personal. Here,
Islam would continue to provide consolation, comfort, and meaning, as it
has to millions of individuals for centuries, yet it would not decree the
mundane affairs of state.
Are Islamic societies capable of
being secularized? Yes, there are many reasons for optimism. Unfortunately
there also stumbling blocks that could easily sideline the process. On
the positive side:
1. Secularism has a long history
in Islamic societies. Since September 11, every journalist has been eager
to point out Islam knows of no separation between mosque and state. Indeed
in classical Arabic there is no pair of words corresponding to `lay' and
`ecclesiastical,' `spiritual' and `temporal,'or `secular' and `religious.'
But what these same journalists fail to add is that the doctrinal lack
of a separation of mosque and state did not mean that Islamic history was
a chronicle of a series of relentless Muslim theocracies. On the contrary,
as Carl Brown demonstrated recently, Muslim history has been marked by
a de facto separation of state and religious community.1 Civil rule was
mainly by a ruler's decree, which was given ex post facto religious sanction
by the jurists.
2. Many of the modern leaders of
culturally Islamic countries were secular in their outlook and approach
to the problems of modern industrial society. The name just a few such
leaders: Muhmmad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan, Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia,
Habid Bourguiba of Tunisia, Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco, Reza Shah and
his son Muhammad Reza Shah plus Muhammad Mossadegh in Iran, and so on.
Habib Bourguiba, for example, barely five months after Tunisian independence,
pushed through a radical legal reform (August 1956) that outlawed polygamy
and made judgment for divorce a prerogative of the court, withdrawing the
husband's exclusive right to divorce his wife. Although fourteen Tunisian
religious scholars issued a fatwa denouncing the new law, it was received
with enthusiasm by the modernists and met with practically no resistance.
Bourguiba had taken on the Muslim official religious class and won. Modernization
and secularization of education followed, including the downgrading of
the venerable Zaytuna Mosque University, which ultimately became a faculté
of religious studies in the University of Tunis.2 Unfortunately, corruption,
nepotism, incompetence, pandering to the mullahs, the obscurantist religious
scholars, led to the rising influence of the Islamic fundamentalists, who,
sensing that their time had come, demanded ever more introduction of Islam
into public life.
3. Other indications that Islamic
societies are capable of secularization come from the Islamic Republic
of Iran, of all places! Iran has adopted many institutions from the Western
democracies, which have nothing to do with Islam historically or doctrinally,
institutions such as popular elections, a constituent assembly, a parliament,
even a constitution inspired by the 1958 French Constitution.
Iran is also the theatre of very
optimistic developments. Hashem Aghajari is an Islamic revolutionary-turned-history-professor.
He was one of the student activists of 1979, who later fully participated
in the brutal repression after Khomeini's coming to power. He is now challenging
the infallibility of the ruling mullahs and calls upon Iranians to think
for themselves instead of blindly accepting whatever is preached in Friday
sermons, a piece of advice for which he has been sentenced to death. But
he is now supported by the students and professors at most of the country's
universities, and thousands of ordinary citizens, workers, and cultural
leaders.
Where Aghajari wants to reform Islam;
many students want a total separation between mosque and state. He wants
an Islamic Reformation, but the demonstrators are interested in the creation
of a secular civil society. He is a reformer, but they are revolutionaries.
Why is the press silent on these developments? More important still, why
is the Bush Administration not supporting these courageous students, workers,
intellectuals and soldiers in their fight for freedom?3
With these factors in mind, there
are also strong factors that caution pessimism:
1. With the partial exception of
Turkey, there is not a single stable democracy in the Islamic world. It
is not surprising that Muslims living under repressive regimes turn to
Islamists for support, both morally and economically.
2. The situation in the Middle East,
as described by Human Rights Watch in a report published 2003, is disheartening.
One of its conclusions: "Independent civil society institutions were fragile
or nonexistent in most countries. Throughout the region, political parties,
human rights organizations, and other entities came under attack from the
state or were hampered because laws did not permit them to exist legally.
In Iran and Saudi Arabia, conservative clerical establishments remained
entrenched and powerful, retarding progress and hampering the development
of independent and effective national institutions."
3. Free and fair elections will
not necessarily lead to secular governments as victories of the Islamists
in Algeria, Pakistan and Turkey have shown.
4. On July 2 , 2002, The United
Nations Development Program released the Arab Human Development Report
2002, which covers not only economic matters but such issues as the lack
of freedom and democracy in the Arab world, the high rate of illiteracy
and the position of women. Because it was written by Arab intellectuals
and academics, it is a just cause for celebration, since it manifests one
of the pre-requisites of reforming Islamic society, i.e., self-criticism.
Unfortunately, the report's contents make for depressing reading.
In the words of the Middle East
Quarterly, "with uncommon candor and a battery of statistics, the report
tells a sorry story of two decades of failed planning and developmental
decline. One inescapable conclusion emerges from its sober pages of tables
and charts: the Arab world is in decline, even relative to the developing
world. `The report was written by Arabs for Arabs,' announced a U.N. official.
Arabs did read it (it was also released in Arabic), and Arab authorship
made its arguments more palatable to Arab intellectuals and policy makers.
A columnist in Al-Ahram Weekly urged `a serious deep reading' of the report,
since `no changes will occur without Arabs facing the facts, however unpalatable
they may be.'"4
Learning from how secularization
took place in the West, secularisation in Islamic societies can be promoted
by:
- Scholarly Criticism of the Koran;
- Secular education encouraging
critical thought;
- Encouraging religious pluralism
by defending non-Muslims in Islamic societies;
- Encouraging secular democracies
not tyrannies; and
- The practice of self-criticism.
Many of these factors played a role
in the secularization of the Christian West: advances in knowledge in general
and the sciences in particular meant that the criteria of rationality could
be applied to religious dogma with devastating effect; Biblical Criticism
which led to the abandonment of a literal reading of the Bible and an undermining
of the Age of Faith; religious tolerance and religious pluralism that eventually
led to tolerance and pluralism tout court. As scholar Owen Chadwick put
it, "once concede equality to a distinctive group, you could not confine
it to that group. You could not confine it to Protestants; nor, later,
to Christians; nor, at last, to believers in God. A free market in some
opinions became a free market in all opinions ... Christian conscience
was the force which began to make Europe `secular'; that is, to allow many
religions or no religion in a state, and repudiate any kind of pressure
upon the man who rejected the accepted and inherited axioms of society
... My conscience is my own."5
What lessons can we learn from this
process of secularization of the West? First, we who live in the free West
and enjoy freedom of expression and scientific inquiry should encourage
a rational look at Islam, should encourage Koranic criticism. Only Koranic
criticism can help Muslims to look at their Holy Scripture in a more rational
and objective way, and prevent young Muslims from being fanaticized by
the Koran's less tolerant verses. It does not make sense to lament the
lack of a reformation in Islam, and at the same time boycott books like
"Why I am Not A Muslim," nor to cry "Islamophobia "(or fatwah!) every time
a critique of Islam is offered. Instead, political leaders, journalists
and even scholars are bent on protecting the tender sensibilities of the
Muslims. We are not doing Islam any favors by protecting it from Enlightenment
values.
Second, simply by protecting non-Muslims
in Islamic societies we are encouraging religious pluralism, which in turn
can lead to pluralism in political affairs. By insisting that "my conscience
is my own," we are encouraging, in the words of Owen Chadwick, a free market
in all opinions, which is one of the chief cornerstones of any liberal
democracy.
We can encourage rationality by
secular education. This will mean the closing of religious madrassas where
young children from poor families learn only the Koran by heart, learn
the doctrine of Jihad - learn , in short, to be fanatics. The failure of
the central government in Pakistan for example, to provide free schools
and economic prosperity for all its citizens has led to the rise of madrassas
where poor children are given some schooling and food that their poor parents
cannot provide. In Pakistan, it is clear that many of these religious schools
are funded by Saudi Arabia. The West must do its utmost to reduce the ideological
and financial influence of the Saudi Wahhabism, and instead encourage Pakistan
to provide free secular education for all children , boys and girls. The
West can give aid with strings attached to this end.
What kind of education? My priority
would be the wholesale rewriting of school texts, which at present preach
intolerance of non-Muslims, particularly Jews. One hopes that education
will encourage critical thinking and rationality. Again to encourage pluralism,
I should like to see the glories of pre-Islamic history taught to all children.
The banning of all religious education
in state school,s as is the case in France where there is a clear constitutional
separation of state and religion is not realistic for the moment in Islamic
countries. The best we can hope for is the teaching of Comparative Religion,
which we hope will eventually lead to a lessening of fanatical fevers,
as Islam is seen as but another set of beliefs amongst a host of faiths.
It may surprise some to learn that
the Islamic fundamentalists fear the humanities, especially History and
Sociology, more than the natural sciences. Many of the leaders of the various
Islamist groups are by training engineers .They do not fear Physics, in
fact most of them are convinced that all the modern discoveries of modern
nuclear physics are predicted in the Koran. They are wary of History and
the social sciences, for it seems these disciplines have a tendency to
relativize human knowledge. Certainly, a course in the methodology of History
and Historical Research should teach methodological skepticism; as R.G.
Collingwood said, the fundamental attribute of the critical historian is
skepticism regarding testimony about the past.This skepticism can of course
be extended to the early history of Islam.
But education alone cannot solve
the problems. Several million young educated people enter the job market
only to learn that their education has not opened the doors to economic
prosperity they had imagined. Education without economic opportunity leads
to social frustrations which can serve as a recruiting grounds for the
fundamentalists.
Islamic countries will never make
any progress if they continue to blame all their ills on the West. Muslim
intellectuals who spew forth hatred of the West, and indulge in such self-pity
are not leading their people to assume responsibility for their own actions.
Islamic countries need charismatic leaders capable of self-criticism, who
can say to their people, "the fault is not in [the] stars, but in ourselves,
that we are underlings."6 Neither does the fault lie with the Stars and
Stripes, nor some putative "Crusader - Zionist" conspiracy. These leaders
must direct their people to democracy, institute a civil state with a uniform
code of civil laws separate from and independent of religious institutions,
and allow free choice of religious belief and practice. Such leaders must
pass legislation to enshrine the rights of all citizens, men and women
, Muslim and non-Muslim. Finally, these leaders must institute secular
education. These building blocks can create a stable democracy by
driving the necessary wedge between mosque and state, reducing the former
to a more circumscribed sphere of influence.
Ibn Warraq is the author of Why
I Am Not a Muslim, and the editor of What the Koran Really Says, The Quest
for the Historical Muhammad, and The Origins of the Koran., and most recently,
Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out http://www.prometheusbooks.com/site/new.html
End Notes
1 L.Carl Brown, Religion and State:
The Muslim Approach to Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
2 L.Carl Brown , Religion and State
: The Muslim Approach to Politics, New York : Columbia University Press,
2000, pp.120-121
3 Michael Ledeen, December 6, 2002,
National Review Online
4 Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2002,
Vol.IX :Number 4, p.59
5 O. Chadwick, The Secularization
of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, 1975,
pp.21-23
6 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1.2
, lines 139-140
