Ever since the publication of this book, a number of people - both Muslims and non-Muslims - have taken issue with my characterization of the current conflict within Islam as signaling a period of reformation. This is understandable, considering that the term reformation has certain unavoidable Christian and European connotations that may not be applicable to the Arab and Muslim world. Some reject the term because it seems to imply an inherent flaw in Islam that requires "reforming". Others view it as overly optimistic, perceiving the surge in jihadism as an indication of devolution, rather than evolution, of Islam.
But I use reformation deliberately, not only to emphasize that the violence and bloodshed we are witnessing in large parts of the Islamic world are chiefly the result of an internal struggle between Muslims (rather than of a war between Islam and the West), but also to stress that the current conflicts within Islam are those with which all great religions grapple as they face the challenges of modernity. And while there is no question that certain parallels between the Christian and Islamic reformations can seem strained, there are some similarities that cannot and should not be dismissed, because they reflect universal conflicts in all religious traditions. Chief among these is the conflict over who has the authority to define faith: the individual or the institution.
In Islam, this issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that the religion has no central religious authority - that is, no Muslim Pope or Muslim Vatican. Religious authority in Islam is instead scattered among a host of smaller, competing, though exceedingly powerful clerical institutions that have managed to maintain a virtual monopoly over the meaning and message of Islam for fourteen centuries. This religious authority is self-conferred, not divinely ordained; it is the result of scholarship, not divine decree. A Muslim cleric's judgment on a particular issue is respected and followed not because it carries the authority of God, but because the cleric's knowledge is supposed to grant him a deeper insight into what God desires of humanity. Indeed, it could be said that Islam's clerical class has maintained its monopoly over religious interpretation simply by maintaining its monopoly over religious learning.
That is no longer the case. Dramatic increases in literacy and education, widespread access to new and novel theories and sources of knowledge, and a swelling sense of nationalism and individualism have exposed many Muslims to fresh and innovative interpretations of Islam. A whole new generation of westernized converts and "veiled-again" Muslim (lapsed Muslims who have returned to their faith and traditions) are increasingly uniting in worship, not in the Grand Mosques of their parents but in independent "garage mosques" that have sprung up all over the world. Muslim men and women, first worlders and third worlders, gay and straight, extremists and moderates, militants and pacifists, clerics and laypeople, are actively re-interpreting Islam according to their own changing needs. By doing so, they are not only redefining Islam by taking its interpretation out of the iron grip of the clerical institutions, they are shaping the future of this rapidly expanding and deeply fractured faith.
However, just as the Christian Reformation opened the door to multiple, often conflicting, and sometimes baffling interpretations of Christianity, so has the reformation of Islam created a number of wildly divergent and competing ideologies. Perhaps it is inevitable that, as religious authority passes from institutions to individuals, there will be men and women whose radical reinterpretations of religion be fueled by their extreme social and political agendas. In this sense, jihadists like Osama bin Laden must be understood as products of, not counters to, the Islamic Reformation. Indeed, bin Laden joins a long and unsavory list of militant puritans - whether Muslims, Christians, Jewish, or Hindu - who consider themselves and their individual followers to be the only true believers, and all others to be hypocrites, impostors and apostates who must be convinced of their folly or abandoned to their horrible fates.
Like puritans of other faiths - militaristic or not - the jihadists' principal goal is the "purifying" of their own religious communities. In other words, their first target is not the West, or Jews, or Christians, or Zionists, or Crusaders, or any other outsiders (what the jihadists term "the far enemy"). Their agenda can most clearly be observed in the civil war they have launched in Iraq. For whatever else may be fueling the violence in that country, there can be little doubt that the primary aim of the jihadists who have infiltrated Iraq and who represent the most ruthless segment of the insurgency is the massacre of all those Muslims (particularly the Shi'ah majority) whom they regard as rawafida, or apostates.
Of course, that is not to say that the far enemy is not a target of jihadism, as New York, Madrid, and London can testify. But it is mainly as a means to galvanize other Muslims to the jihadist cause that most of these attacks against the West should be understood. The attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, were by bin Laden's own admission specifically targetted to goad the United States into an exaggerated retaliation against the Islamic world so as to mobilize Muslims to, in the words of George W. Bush, "choose sides."
Now, four years removed from that tragic day, perhaps the most hopeful development in this internal battle to define the faith and practice of over a billion people is that Muslims themselves are becoming increasingly aware that they are as much endangered by the extremist agenda as are the so-called infidels. Thus, the day before the London bombings, one hundred seventy of the world's leading clerics and scholars, representing every major sect and school of law in Islam, gathered in Amman, Jordan, where, in an unprecedented display of intersectarian collaboration, they issued a fatwa, or legal ruling, denouncing all acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. The Amman declaration was not only a tacit (if belated) acknowledgment of the civil war raging within Islam, it was an attempt by the clerical institutions to re-exert some measure of authority over those who have hijacked Islam for their own murderous causes.
It didn't work. The next day, and almost as if in response to the Amman fatwa, London was attacked. Two weeks later, a bomb demolished a hotel in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing nearly a hundred people - many of them poor, many of them Muslims. Two weeks after that, three hundred fifty bombs tore through Bangladesh, one after the other, in a violent attempt to dislodge the country's fledging democratic government. After each of these attacks, a new wave of fatwas was issued, again denouncing the use of violence and terrorism in the name of Islam. And after each fatwa, the jihadists struck again. And the war goes on. Reformations, as we know from Christian history, are bloody events. And though the end is near, the Islamic Reformation has some way to go before it is resolved.
But I use reformation deliberately, not only to emphasize that the violence and bloodshed we are witnessing in large parts of the Islamic world are chiefly the result of an internal struggle between Muslims (rather than of a war between Islam and the West), but also to stress that the current conflicts within Islam are those with which all great religions grapple as they face the challenges of modernity. And while there is no question that certain parallels between the Christian and Islamic reformations can seem strained, there are some similarities that cannot and should not be dismissed, because they reflect universal conflicts in all religious traditions. Chief among these is the conflict over who has the authority to define faith: the individual or the institution.
In Islam, this issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that the religion has no central religious authority - that is, no Muslim Pope or Muslim Vatican. Religious authority in Islam is instead scattered among a host of smaller, competing, though exceedingly powerful clerical institutions that have managed to maintain a virtual monopoly over the meaning and message of Islam for fourteen centuries. This religious authority is self-conferred, not divinely ordained; it is the result of scholarship, not divine decree. A Muslim cleric's judgment on a particular issue is respected and followed not because it carries the authority of God, but because the cleric's knowledge is supposed to grant him a deeper insight into what God desires of humanity. Indeed, it could be said that Islam's clerical class has maintained its monopoly over religious interpretation simply by maintaining its monopoly over religious learning.
That is no longer the case. Dramatic increases in literacy and education, widespread access to new and novel theories and sources of knowledge, and a swelling sense of nationalism and individualism have exposed many Muslims to fresh and innovative interpretations of Islam. A whole new generation of westernized converts and "veiled-again" Muslim (lapsed Muslims who have returned to their faith and traditions) are increasingly uniting in worship, not in the Grand Mosques of their parents but in independent "garage mosques" that have sprung up all over the world. Muslim men and women, first worlders and third worlders, gay and straight, extremists and moderates, militants and pacifists, clerics and laypeople, are actively re-interpreting Islam according to their own changing needs. By doing so, they are not only redefining Islam by taking its interpretation out of the iron grip of the clerical institutions, they are shaping the future of this rapidly expanding and deeply fractured faith.
However, just as the Christian Reformation opened the door to multiple, often conflicting, and sometimes baffling interpretations of Christianity, so has the reformation of Islam created a number of wildly divergent and competing ideologies. Perhaps it is inevitable that, as religious authority passes from institutions to individuals, there will be men and women whose radical reinterpretations of religion be fueled by their extreme social and political agendas. In this sense, jihadists like Osama bin Laden must be understood as products of, not counters to, the Islamic Reformation. Indeed, bin Laden joins a long and unsavory list of militant puritans - whether Muslims, Christians, Jewish, or Hindu - who consider themselves and their individual followers to be the only true believers, and all others to be hypocrites, impostors and apostates who must be convinced of their folly or abandoned to their horrible fates.
Like puritans of other faiths - militaristic or not - the jihadists' principal goal is the "purifying" of their own religious communities. In other words, their first target is not the West, or Jews, or Christians, or Zionists, or Crusaders, or any other outsiders (what the jihadists term "the far enemy"). Their agenda can most clearly be observed in the civil war they have launched in Iraq. For whatever else may be fueling the violence in that country, there can be little doubt that the primary aim of the jihadists who have infiltrated Iraq and who represent the most ruthless segment of the insurgency is the massacre of all those Muslims (particularly the Shi'ah majority) whom they regard as rawafida, or apostates.
Of course, that is not to say that the far enemy is not a target of jihadism, as New York, Madrid, and London can testify. But it is mainly as a means to galvanize other Muslims to the jihadist cause that most of these attacks against the West should be understood. The attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, were by bin Laden's own admission specifically targetted to goad the United States into an exaggerated retaliation against the Islamic world so as to mobilize Muslims to, in the words of George W. Bush, "choose sides."
Now, four years removed from that tragic day, perhaps the most hopeful development in this internal battle to define the faith and practice of over a billion people is that Muslims themselves are becoming increasingly aware that they are as much endangered by the extremist agenda as are the so-called infidels. Thus, the day before the London bombings, one hundred seventy of the world's leading clerics and scholars, representing every major sect and school of law in Islam, gathered in Amman, Jordan, where, in an unprecedented display of intersectarian collaboration, they issued a fatwa, or legal ruling, denouncing all acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. The Amman declaration was not only a tacit (if belated) acknowledgment of the civil war raging within Islam, it was an attempt by the clerical institutions to re-exert some measure of authority over those who have hijacked Islam for their own murderous causes.
It didn't work. The next day, and almost as if in response to the Amman fatwa, London was attacked. Two weeks later, a bomb demolished a hotel in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing nearly a hundred people - many of them poor, many of them Muslims. Two weeks after that, three hundred fifty bombs tore through Bangladesh, one after the other, in a violent attempt to dislodge the country's fledging democratic government. After each of these attacks, a new wave of fatwas was issued, again denouncing the use of violence and terrorism in the name of Islam. And after each fatwa, the jihadists struck again. And the war goes on. Reformations, as we know from Christian history, are bloody events. And though the end is near, the Islamic Reformation has some way to go before it is resolved.
... Preface to No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Reza Aslan
No comments:
Post a Comment