Winds of Change.NET: You Say You Want a Reformation

April 21, 2006

You Say You Want a Reformation

by 'Callimachus' at April 21, 2006 1:39 AM

People in the West talk about the need for an "Islamic Reformation." By which they mean, perhaps, something that will have the same effect as what happened in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, when a monolothic theopolitical power cracked and what emerged, over time, was a Christianity that overall was less oppressive, less domineering, less dogmatic than what had come before.

Something like that -- the picture is oversimplified (and never mind that barrels of blood were spilled in the process). Or maybe they really just want someone to stand up and be Mecca's version of Martin Luther and say, "enough of this foolishness."

It's a hopeful vision. It's optimistic, and I've learned to be optimistic about the world -- like Churchill, because "it does not seem to be much use being anything else." So I like this idea, too. But I'm not so optimistic that I think it will happen.

For one: We want there to be an Islamic Reformation. There's no particular evidence that Muslims, in sufficient number and in the right places (i.e., not living in America or Canada) want there to be an Islamic Reformation.

Reformations don't happen because rival civilizations want them. If the Ottoman sultan in 1519 had said to the Pope, "Just this and this and this needs to be changed in Christianity so we can get along better," you can bet Rome would have responded with a papal "Bull!" In fact, if the Sultan had been advocating for exactly the same things Martin Luther spoke up for, you can bet Luther never would have got past the Wittenberg church door.

For another: There already was an Islamic Reformation. It happened while we were sleeping. The result is Wahhabi dominance, and Islamic Brotherhood, and Bin Laden. This is the Islamic Reformation. We're fighting it now.

When religions "reform" -- note the "re-" prefix -- they swim back toward their sources. And in every case, they carry the baggage of the present with them. Every attempt to reform Christianity during the 16th and 17th centuries sought the wellsprings. It turned away from the Catholic Church not because it was wrong to mix political power with religious authority, but because that's not how it was in the Gospels.

So they set out in search of the Christianity of Paul. But they always dragged their own time and place with them -- how could they not? If the command was, "be separated from the world," the shape of your separation would be determined by the shape of the world you lived in. Thus the same motivation, and the same Gospel, in different times and places led one group of people to be Quakers and another to be Pentecostals.

Or Amish. Look at an adult Amishman: he has a beard, but no mustache. Why is that? Because in 18th century Germany it was fashionable for young men to wear mustaches but no beards. So to get back to the Gospel and be not of this world, the Amish enshrined the exact opposite style. And they still wear it.

When Christianity reforms -- when it goes back to its roots -- it tries to foreswear the world. When Islam goes back to its roots, it tries to conquer the world.

And it takes modern conflicts and technologies with it.

* * *

The Christian Reformation (I prefer the term "Protestant Revolt") was as much about political control as it was about religion. Once Luther opened the door, kings and queens usurped the power of the church in their domains and changed it just enough to suit their purposes without undermining the people's faiths. England is a good example.

Islam has seen this, too, in the strong-arm rule of the men, mostly of military backgrounds, who have led Muslim-majority nations in modern times. The "secularism" of men like Saddam or Musharraf, or nations like Tunisia or Egypt, has been noted, but not so often noted is that it never really dethroned the faith from the hearts of their people, nor did it replace Quranic authority over civil matters.

Instead, secular rulers have tended to fudge their way to non-Islamic legal codes and constitutions by using legitimate, but perverted, aspects of Shari'a. Takhsis al-qada, for instance, the right of the ruler to control the jurisdiction of courts; or Takhayyur, the selection of any opinion within a school of Islamic jurisprudence, not necessarily the dominant one, or Syasa shari'ya, the discretion of a ruler to implement beneficial regulations if they are not contrary to Shari'a.

The "secular strong-man" solution, then, is temporary and insufficient. It is neither valid within the Islamic legal tradition, nor capable of displacing it.

Another path to reformation you sometimes hear promoted is "re-opening the gates of ijtihad." This is a favorite among Westernized and liberal Muslims like Irshad Manji, who says:

I also propose the revival of a tradition to correct what's gone wrong with Islam. Independent thinking and creative reasoning, known as ijtihad, was something Islam always prided itself on. My foundation, Project Ijtihad, aims to revive this way of thinking and I'm helping young Muslims to set up centres in various countries, including India and the United Arab Emirates.

Boy, I would love to think that will work.

Ijtihad (independent juristic reasoning) was the way Arabic scholars applied and interpreted the Quran and the collected sayings of the Prophet. But around the 10th century of our age, stricter theologians like Al-Ghazali came to see this process as "leading to errors of over-confidence in judgement." So they closed the gates of ijtihad, and they've stayed closed. What replaced it was taqlid, unquestioning imitation of established jurists and schools.

But what would you get if you could reopen them? Certainly some aspects of Shari'a could be changed. But key components of Shari'a that bring fundamentalist Islam into conflict with the non-Islamic world, such as the status of non-Muslims, the status of women, the acceptance of slavery and the relationship of the Islamic state with non-Muslim states of the modern world, are literally rooted in the Quran itself, or the Sunnah. Ijtihad can't change them. It only applies to place where there is no clear Quranic injunction.

Another possibility lies in the work of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, which is worth a full consideration and a post of its own. But even his disciples admit there's not much hope they will gain traction in the Islamic world. His ideas, though rooted in Islam, are "considered to be seditious in Sunni theology," and Taha himself ended up as so many would-be Islamic reformers do: executed by a strict orthodox Islamist regime.

Printer-friendly Version

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.windsofchange.net/windsopcentre-cms/trackback.cgi/6243

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference
"You Say You Want a Reformation"

Tracked: September 12, 2006 4:02 AM

Islamic Reformation from Funmurphys: the Blog

Excerpt: I still hear people saying Islam needs a reformation (I suppose because they think that the reformation did wonders for the Christian world's politics). Callimachus at Winds of Change wrote a wonderful post on the subject a while back, You...

Comments

#1 from Jonathan at 2:14 am on Apr 21, 2006

Isn't what we really want to see in the Islamic world an epoch of Enlightenment? With the exception on small numbers of radically conservative/traditionalist Christians and Jews, all of us in the West are very happy to take advantage of the liberties that emerged not when religion was reformed, but when it was forced to contend with secularism and reason on a level playing field. While the tension between the spiritual and the secular has never been resolved (especially in America, it seems,) the fact is that we live in a culture that allows people to pratice any number of faiths if they so choose or to spurn all faiths if that is their preference. In other words, those of us in the West are free to make personal choices as we see fit in all matters of our life. This is a far cry from life for many/most (especially women, dhimmis, gays, etc.) in the Muslim world. Of course, the Reformation sowed the seeds of the Englightenment in many ways, but it was, ultimately, a secular revolution that made our world what it is today. (I'm aware that I'm speaking in generalities here, but I hope I've made my point.)

#2 from Dave Schuler at 2:18 am on Apr 21, 2006

The Reformation and the Enlightenment have somewhat different roots. The Islamic Reformation is well underway and Salafism is in the thick of it. Like the Protestant Reformation the Islamic Reformation is a conservative movement.

The Englightenment on the other hand grew from Italian Humanism.

#3 from Glen Wishard at 2:36 am on Apr 21, 2006

... the Reformation sowed the seeds of the Englightenment in many ways, but it was, ultimately, a secular revolution that made our world what it is today.

Luther's reformation began with purely religious questions, but the debate was quickly picked up on both sides by the "Humanists": secular or semi-secular scholars (like Erasmus and Thomas More) who had already sown the seeds of Enlightenment.

The reformation did produce a profound secular revolution, including a sexual revolution, but it was mostly unintended consequence.

So we should be waiting for the Muslim humanists to weigh in here. Yep, those famous Muslim humanists. Any time now, boys.

#4 from Andrew at 3:41 am on Apr 21, 2006

Here's an alternative view on what's going on with Wahhabism:

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_0905_Arab-P1,00.html

#5 from Pangloss at 5:51 am on Apr 21, 2006

The other night on The Daily Show I watched John Stewart swallow his discomfort as Reza Aslan stated cheerfully that the Luther figure of the Islamic Reformation was Osama Bin Laden.

That was where the discussion stopped, that night. In the service of advancing our understanding of the strategic environment, I'd love to see a fruitful discussion of what this means and what can be done. Is OBL really as major a religious figure to Islam as Martin Luther was to Christianity? If he is, can OBL's identification with Mohammed and moslem fundamentalism be used against him and his movement? Can the hatred that Iraqis feel towards AQ murderers in Iraq be generalized and spread to more and more current AQ symps, and turn AQ's "base" against it?

Back in the 80's, the Moral Majority seemed on the verge of dominating US politics when Falwell fell from power. There is no doubt that OBL watched what happened in the US and has learned from it, and that AQ (The Base) is the vehicle for his attempt to claim the political power of the moslem public, and to become the new Caliph. Can his aura of attractiveness survive exposure to the horrors of the AQ world-wide jihad? Or will someone, maybe even us, let him off the hook?

Musingly,
Pangloss

#6 from Glen Wishard at 6:56 am on Apr 21, 2006

Is OBL really as major a religious figure to Islam as Martin Luther was to Christianity?

Luther was totally opposed to any continuation of the crusades, and in fact believed that the Christian Church should not fight even in self-defense, since it must trust to God alone. (Though it was okay for Christians to serve in the armies of kings and secular governments.)

Luther further believed in absolute separation of church and state, reflecting his belief in the absolute separation of Faith and Reason.

As mentioned above, Luther's reformation led to improvements in the status of Jews and women (the latter by doing away with medieval arranged marriages) though he did not necessarily sanction all of those improvements.

So is OBL a new Luther? We should be so lucky.

Back in the 80's, the Moral Majority seemed on the verge of dominating US politics when Falwell fell from power.

I don't know what you mean by Falwell falling from power (somebody better tell Falwell) but the Moral Majority was never anywhere near dominating US politics. It loomed large in the fevered imaginations of nervous liberals - and still does - but it was a mere symptom of the times and far from being the most important symptom. The most important symptom was called "Ronald Reagan", and it was 150 feet tall, with radioactive breath like Godzilla.

In spite of his many obvious problems, in the 80s Falwell was part of a broad move towards ecumenicalism, Christian activism, and support for Israel. He did some good things in that area, but he was neither the cause nor the leader of the movement. The Christian leader of that era was called "Pope John Paul II", and it was 500 feet tall, and it knocked over the Iron Curtain by sneezing on it.

#7 from Joe Katzman at 12:34 pm on Apr 21, 2006

"The most important symptom was called "Ronald Reagan", and it was 150 feet tall, with radioactive breath like Godzilla."

Chuckle. That's our boy.

"The Christian leader of that era was called "Pope John Paul II", and it was 500 feet tall, and it knocked over the Iron Curtain by sneezing on it."

No fair! He had the Popemobile as a booster. In both cases, you also forgot the "laughed at bullets" part.

And I'll add:

The British leader of that era was called "Margaret Thatcher"; it had a gaze that turned enemies to jelly, a voice that turned jelly to steel, and a tail that could knock over a junta thousands of miles away. It still lives, so we aren't brave enough to go comparing it to any movie monsters, no ma'am....

#8 from aardnarc at 1:20 pm on Apr 21, 2006

Isalm originated, it did not always exist. It was spread by force. There is no genetic reason why people are moslem. A superior meme will replace Islam. So the way to win the war the terrorists started is for the west to shout over an over as loud as we can a better meme. When people understand why intolerant fundamentalism is not in their own interest they will reform it naturally, automatically, without looking to westerners for advice. A better meme than intolerant fundamentalism consists of these ideas:

The free exchange of ideas, and tolerance of different beliefs leads to improvements and science, economics, government, medicine, religious interpretation and religious understanding, and in all areas of life. Intolerant versions of Islam are why moslem countires are economically backward.

When violence is used to coerce others with differing beliefs it causes civilization to regress back to the middle ages because violence corrupts those who use it and turns them into uncontrolled tyrants. Such tyrants inevitabley use their power for their personal gratification without respect for civil or religious law. Intolerant versions of Islam are why moslem countries are ruled by tyrants and moslems are oppressed not by westerners but by other moslems.

War and violence over religious differences has caused more immorality and sin than heresy or blasphemy ever has. Therefore each person must be allowed to chose his own religious beliefs.

The misuse of religion for political purposes has done more to harm to religion and driven more people away from God than any heresy or blasphemy ever has. For ths reason religion and government should be separated and religious law must be subordinate to civil law.

#9 from Mark Poling at 2:29 pm on Apr 21, 2006

"There is no genetic reason why people are moslem. A superior meme will replace Islam."

On a less serious (but not totally less serious) note, I fear that meme will be Scientology.

Placenta for everyone!

#10 from Phil Davis at 4:15 pm on Apr 21, 2006

I'd have to agree that they are in the throes of reform even as we speak. The Wahhabists proclaim all the time that they are leading the way to the return of true Islam since they want to return to living by an absolute literal interpretation of the Quran. Pretty much every major sect of Islam (well, maybe not the Druze, not sure about them) starts from the belief that the Quran is the actual word of god, and therefore perfect and unchangeable. After all, how are you going to argue with something that comes straight from the source?

To truly have Islam 'reform' the way most non-Islamic people define the word, first the majority of Muslims would have to admit that it a document compiled in the 8th century by imperfect human beings might not be 100% relevant in today�s world. Not sure how much progress I'm seeing with that so far.

#11 from David Blue at 4:45 pm on Apr 21, 2006

Congratulations on your excellent article, Callimachus. That must have taken a lot of work.

Until I think more - really think, which takes time - I don't have anything to add to what you said but applause and cheering. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

I do not consider the article linked by Andrew in post #4 equally good. It mischaracterises Huntington's position badly, and mocks it on the basis of that misrepresentation, and also does a poor job on Bernard Lewis, and basically it never gets back on the right foot.

It would be interesting to discuss some time how far we have come from a world where we could implement the recommendations of Samuel Huntington, who thought that the clash of civilisations was avoidable and who wished devoutly to avoid it, and who thought that the relative decline of the West unavoidable and best managed by the West, chiefly Europe and America, drawing nearer together. Just don't let anything drive us apart, and our relative decline won't be too severe and we'll be all right. (If Huntington's thesis was a pop song, it would not be some fighting song but "Let's Stick Together." I approve.)

It all makes a lot of sense, except that the jihad onslaught intensified on 11 September 2001, and far too much of Europe then decided that America's right to fight in response was subject to a European veto that could be - and was attempted to be - exercised without any serious regard for American sentiments or even vital interests.

And terrible demographic facts that we had all been ignoring came to prominence. The Europe that Huntington wanted America to bond with - she's a-going-away; (I did not say: she's all gone.)

Those with the wind at their backs do not typically quit the contest to please the losers and the prospective losers. This goes double with a religion that promises that the infidel will be subjugated "no matter how averse they are" to it, and takes a gloating interest in the humiliation, immiseration and exploitation of the defeated. Guys wearing T-shirts that say 2030 THEN WE TAKE OVER are not good candidates to invest in a reform movement pleasing to the people they expect and intend eventually to push aside. Whether we wish it or not - and as far as Huntington and Lewis are concerned it's "not" - the conflict created by Islamic imperialism is not to be avoided.

It would have been great if the French and the Germans had believed in the West sticking together, the way Huntington said we all should, but ...

Well, some things you can't explain away
And the heartache's with me till this day
You didn't stand by me
No, not at all
You didn't stand by me
No way

We are not living in the world that Huntington wanted us prudently and modestly to aim for, and you can't get there from here.

#12 from Matt Shultz at 4:48 pm on Apr 21, 2006

"A superior meme will replace Islam."

Are you so sure of that? I'm not. Looked at from a purely memetic perspective, Islam is almost as perfect a monster as Scientology. It establishes a massive incentive to join (the jizya) and enacts a high penalty for leaving (the penalty for any form of apostasy being death.) It discourages both any attempt at questioning it (the Quran was handed down by God hisself, dontcha know) and any effort at finding knowledge outside of it (the definition of a Muslim edumacation being memorizing the Quran.) And, like any good brain-washing technique, it requires frequent, regular reinforcement (praying five times per day.)

If you were to say, 'design me a memetic complex that would be both fast-spreading and very sticky' you'd have a hard time doing better than Islam.

I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but I am sure that it's not yelling Enlightenment values like "The free exchange of ideas, and tolerance of different beliefs leads to improvements and science, economics, government, medicine, religious interpretation and religious understanding, and in all areas of life." Of course those are all great and true things, I love them dearly, but frankly we have been shouting them at the top of our lungs for decades now, to basically no effect ... unless that effect has been to convince the Muslims that Enlightenment values will only destroy their religion, which is of course more or less true. Islam is not compatible with the Englightenment, any more than Communism is compatible with prosperity or Scientology is compatible with good acting (sorry, couldn't resist.)

If I had to guess, though, I'd say that Islam - being a very sophisticated religion - will only be displaced by a religion of even greater sophistication. Sort of the way Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam replaced (or simply subsumed) the earlier pagan faiths. Of course nothing like that's even on the horizon right now, and personally I doubt that it'll be on the horizon even in my grandkids' time (and I'm pretty young.) In the interim, memetic warfare won't do us much good ... I'm afraid a lot of bombs are gonna have to be dropped to keep the Islamic rampage under control.

#13 from Joe Katzman at 5:25 pm on Apr 21, 2006

David Blue: "(If Huntington's thesis was a pop song, it would not be some fighting song but "Let's Stick Together." I approve.)"

At least you didn't pick "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge. I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.

#14 from celebrim at 5:38 pm on Apr 21, 2006

"Looked at from a purely memetic perspective, Islam is almost as perfect a monster as Scientology."

Almost? Islam is a far more dangerous meme than Scientology. It would eat Scientology for breakfast in a direct contest.

Scientology is a like a 4HD meme, and Islam is like a 20HD meme with a CR rating that is probably low for the danger it actually represents. (geek joke) I've got little doubt that if I became friends with a Scientologist, that I could witness to them. I've no such illusions about my ability to witness to a Moslem, to say nothing of the fact that a strict Islamic would never taint himself by allowing me to be friendly to him.

There is a website somewhere on the net I use to have a good laugh at. It was by an evangelical aetheist of some sort who'd got caught up in memetics and how 'dangerous' the Christian meme was. He had set up a really garish website attacking the Christianity as a 'meme'. I had to laugh, not only because some of his arguments were so lame and his website so badly designed, but because he was so sure that he could come up with a counter-meme that would banish a 2000 year old highly evolved infectious, self-replicating, highly resistant, meme devouring, thought-altering super-meme that had been refined over the centuries by the criticism, thought, and apologetics of literally thousands of the world's top minds. As 'dangerous' as he claimed he thought the Christian meme to be, he really didn't take his own beliefs regarding its memetic attributes that seriously. If he did, he'd have realized that the chance he'd actually be able to undermine the meme through an argument was around zero.

I really think that we are being equally arrogant if we think that we're going to be able to knock over the Islamic meme with mere words. Speaking as an 'assimilated' member of the aforementioned super-meme (which I why I can so easily joke about it), Christians have long known that Islamics are basically uncovertable through sermonizing or religious argument of any sort. We don't even bother. The best that will get you is beheaded, and the worst that will get you is and ended friendship and someone who turns his back on every Christian he ever sees coming. I know that its widely held within the evangelical community that the only way to convert a Moslem is through miraculous signs and wonders (if they have divinely inspired dreams for example, that'll work), and that their culture is such that they will accept nothing less as proof. Nothing else can shake thier conviction sufficiently that they'll risk or intellectually accept the change involved. My suspicion is that anyone that tries to resist Islam with words and philosophy is going to find that steamrollers take no damage when they hit someone, and that's if they don't find themselves putting on a hajib and a burka and thinking how wonderful it is to not have to worry about thier personal appearance.

And frankly, the multi-cultural meme has some nice attributes, but it has absolutely no resistance at all that I can see to something like Islam. Its philosophy exists entirely outside of thier experience, and thier sparing with Christianity has left them much less prepared for Islam than they realize. I have a good chuckle at the whole, "All religions are basically alike." meme, that they rely so heavily on. The multi-culturalists are the memetic equivalent of a population with no natural immunity to a brand new disease, and if they don't invent some new memetic technology quick they are going to experience the memetic equivalent of a lethal pandemic.

#15 from Joe Katzman at 6:30 pm on Apr 21, 2006

celebrim,

Don't forget the "Rage" feat, and "Thundering Rage" Eipc feat. And throw in "Advanced whine" somewhere too.

#16 from Matt Shultz at 6:30 pm on Apr 21, 2006

Celebrim said:

"Scientology is a like a 4HD meme, and Islam is like a 20HD meme with a CR rating that is probably low for the danger it actually represents. (geek joke)"

Sadly, I get that. I'm inclined to agree though. The only reason I said 'almost a perfect monster' was that, this being the mortal world, nothing is ever quite perfect. Eventually, Islam will get killed - or more likely subsumed - by something more sophisticated; or it will evolve into a less predatory form (hah!); or, it will eventually rule the world (a thought that keeps me awake at night, especially given your point about the total lack of immunity in multiculturalist societies, which is something I've considered before.)

"As 'dangerous' as he claimed he thought the Christian meme to be, he really didn't take his own beliefs regarding its memetic attributes that seriously. If he did, he'd have realized that the chance he'd actually be able to undermine the meme through an argument was around zero."

I used to be one of those, back when I first discovered meme theory and my parents were still insisting on dragging me to our Anglican church every Sunday. Finally grew up and realized the futility of it, though. You don't subsume a religion with atheism, you do it with a bigger, badder religion ... and it takes generations. Tens of generations.

I really don't think negotiation is a long-term viable strategy with Islam. It isn't interested in peaceful compromise: it wants the whole planet. Ultimately we do too: for all our talk about living in peace with other cultures, what we really mean is that we want them to internalize our most important precepts (the various freedoms, democracy, capitalism, etc) which essentially amounts to our memes spreading at the expense of theirs. I view this, of course, as a Good Thing, but then I'm a Westerner and the Englightenment is my ideological home court.

To the Muslim, the Englightenment is ideological poison. Remember the intoonfada? There was some clown, I think in the UK, with a sign saying 'free speech is your terrorism' or something. And, well, yeah, it is: free speech (and freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly, and all the others) are toxic to Islam. Thus the planet isn't big enough for the both us. It'll take us a long time to realize it though, just like it took us almost too long with Hitler, and even when we start fighting it back in earnest a large number of citizens still won't get it. Which is part of our charm, I guess: historically, it's damn hard to find a war where every Westerner thought it was a good idea. Given the suppression of speech in certain other cultures I could name, it's hard to say whether that same lack of internal consensus on the big issues is a trait specific to Western cultures.

The next century is gonna be long, and hard, and bloody, and we haven't seen anything like the (probably thermonuclear) worst of it yet ... primarily because we've been dragging our heals for 30 years (and are continuing to drag our heals now). But in the end, I think, we'll win, because a) Arabs have historically been a lot of expressive flowery rhetoric before the fight, and somewhat underwhelming on the battlefield, b) Western cultures have historically been reluctant to fight, but absolutely evil ruthless bastards when they get pushed far enough. The only time in the past, oh, five hundred years or so that a Western culture has been seriously threatened by a non-Western culture was with the Japanese in the 1900-1944 period, and there we're talking about the one and only non-Western culture to ever get its shit together enough to avoid being colonized. They got dangerous because they realized the old ways would kill them, and chucked almost everything in favor of direct Western imports. The Muslims look back on the glories of the 8th century, instead of asking the hard questions of 'what do we have to ditch?' The result in the end is that they will get creamed, and the only question is how many bodies pile up in the meantime.

#17 from liberalhawk at 7:28 pm on Apr 21, 2006

if there is no way within islam to overcome fundamentalism, why is that millions of muslims, from the west to the balkans to the Sahel to Turkey to Central Asia are NOT fundamentalists. Is this another occasion where a western non-muslim is a superior authority on what is authentically muslim than muslims are themselves?

Maybe Itjihad is limited to the sources of the koran and hadiths. So? Drash, the jewish equivalent, is limited to the written torah and the Talmud as sources. Yet modern Orthodox scholars and even more so Conservative rabbis have done important modernizations with it. If liberal muslims say they can change with Itjihad, then let them.

the cavalcade of insults (20 HD meme, etc) doesnt help us win this war.

#18 from celebrim at 9:16 pm on Apr 21, 2006

"the cavalcade of insults (20 HD meme, etc) doesnt help us win this war."

I didn't realize I was being insulting. I realize that 3rd has experienced some munchkiny power inflation and all, but I thought it was well understood that 20HD was still pretty darn high. What should I have called it, an 'Epic' meme? snicker

"if there is no way within islam to overcome fundamentalism..."

I'm not even sure fundamentalism is the central issue. You take ostencibly fundamentalist Christians and thier is no telling what you might end up with. It might end up something like the Amish or the Quakers. It might end up something like the Knights Templar. And, you could end up with either end of the spectrum even without fundamentalism.

Blaming the problem on fundamentalism IMO shows a shallow understanding of the issues involved. 'Fundamentalist' gets used today as a general slur, and what people are really talking about is not a particular set of theologically beliefs but rather a particularly militant behavior which they somewhat mistakenly assume is a general feature of fundamentalism rather than an incidental feature of a particular form of American protestant fundamentalism. And for that matter, a sterotyped strawman form of behavior for American protestant fundamentalism which isn't actually all that common especially compared to the number of nominally fundamentalist people out there.

This is just another example of why the multi-culturalists are in trouble. 'Fundamentalism' is a meaningless term outside of context. Before it has any meaning at all, we have to look at the text which the celebrant believes to be not only an infallible guide, but both inerrent and invariably literal and simple to understand. It's the particular text and the particular reading of the text that gives Fundamentalism meaning. Every fundamentalism is going to be fundamentally different depending on what text they are reading. What this should challenge is the assumption that all religions are basically alike, and that all cultures are basically alike. Strangely enough, it doesn't.

Telling a post-modernist that fundamentalism is inherently tied to the reading of a text gives him the entirely wrong idea. The folks that think Derrida is the bomb assume that texts are infinitely flexible and conformable, and that you can read anything you want in to them. They aren't, or at least they aren't until you accept the assumption that you can read anything you want into them which puts us in a circular problem. Texts are not always infinitely narrow, but neither are they IMO particularly broad. The false assumption is that you can find a new way of reading the text that will incorporate anything you want to see in it and that this reading will survive and be transmittable.

In other words, deconstructionist readings result in weak memes and they lose in competition.

Now, I don't personally know how broad the range of ideas the Islamic text can incorporate, but to a large extent I'm not entirely sure it matters. That's because over time there is always a pull to read the text in the simpliest fashion possible. If the particular passage can be incorporated into the rest of the body of what you 'know' without a difficult reading, the tendency is to apply the easier reading. This is as I understood it Callimachus's point. Militancy gets into islam by way of easy readings, regardless of whether the approach to the entire body of writings is fundamentalist. Even if you aren't a fundamentalist, and I'm not, that doesn't mean that you feel inclined to pick and choose what you are going to believe. You don't just go and throw out the easy readings, because if you do, what ends up happening is that your religious conviction becomes so shallow that it no longer imposes any sort of behavioral duty on you. After that, you're association with the religion is reduced to an ethnic identity. You identify with that religion, but you have no real belief system other than that identity invested in it.

But, incidently, that doesn't make the identity less dangerous. The statement, "I will not suffer Allah to be insulted! We must defend Allah!" may not be theologically correct even to (or especially too) a fundamentalist Moslem, but if it is culturally correct it hardly matters if the violence is inspired by the text or by a sort of nationalistic defence of a cultural identity.

And nationalistic defence of the cultural identity is another one of those easy readings of the Islamic text.

"why is that millions of muslims, from the west to the balkans to the Sahel to Turkey to Central Asia are NOT fundamentalists."

I think that that is a very complex question with no simple answer. I think however that I just explained part of the problem. It's not hard to argue that for the past 200 years or so, Europe has at most been nominally Christian since Christian practices have been more or less non-existant and marginal during that time. Try to find a regular church going and praying Northern European sometime. When you have a non-practicing population, its very easy to incorporate all sorts of belief systems because the population either doesn't know what its nominal belief system says (it has no relationship with the text) or in practice it doesn't really care that much because it never really thinks about it. Much of the nominally Islamic world is as non-praciticing of thier belief system as Europe. There is a difference of course. Most of Europe is consciously non-practicing as opposed to merely incidentally so.

Another important point is that most of those areas you mention are not native Arab speaking populations, and so its difficult or impossible for the population to have the strong relationship with the text that is required for fundamentalism. For example, many English speaking fundamentalists will claim that the King James translation is divinely inspired and guided, and therefore is as inerrent as the original Greek text or more so (since the original greek text did not survive its assumed that introduced errors were corrected in the KJ and any difference in the KJ and an ancient Greek text is an error on the part of the Greek!). Where you don't have Arab speaking populations, you don't have much of a chance of fundamentalism in a religion which insists that the work is only infallible and inerrent in Arabic.

"Is this another occasion where a western non-muslim is a superior authority on what is authentically muslim than muslims are themselves?"

This is a naked attempt to squelch discussion on this topic. Essentially, you've said we are a bunch of orientalists and thus have no right to speak and no capacity to understand. Please pack up your Said and leave if you are going to be that way. I would gladly welcome the comments of any Islamic believer.

"Maybe Itjihad is limited to the sources of the koran and hadiths. So? Drash, the jewish equivalent, is limited to the written torah and the Talmud as sources. Yet modern Orthodox scholars and even more so Conservative rabbis have done important modernizations with it. If liberal muslims say they can change with Itjihad, then let them."

Believe me, I have no intention of stopping them, I just remain unconvinced of thier chances of success. In any event, your comparison between Islam and Rabbinical Judaism is weak for reasons you keep failing to understand. Islam is not Rabbinical Judaism. Just because they are both religions does not mean that you can draw an analogy between them and assume that if one thing is true of one it is perforce true of another. These texts have meanings and they produce cultural differences that are tied directly to those meanings.

#19 from Robert M at 1:53 am on Apr 22, 2006

This is one of the best written and thought out posts on this blog in a very long time.

#20 from Mike Daley at 3:20 am on Apr 22, 2006

February this year The Hudson Institute put a really great piece online, in pdf format. I just re-read after reading this post, and think most will want to read.
The item, Current Trends in Islamic Ideology, is volume three of a series. I sent Joe the pdf of V3 and the URL's of the preceding two.
back in Feb.
As I'm pretty much technically illiterate, I've never figured out how to get a link active in comments, so, if interested, you'll just have to copy/paste. Sorry!
Anyway, following are links to all three.
Mike

Volume 1:
http://hudson.org/files/publications/Current_Trends_in_Islamic_Ideology_vol_1.pdf

Volume 2: http://hudson.org/files/publications/Current_Trends_Islamist_Ideology_v2.pdf

Volume 3:
http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/docLib/20060217_TRENDS3_complete.pdf

#21 from Yehudit at 10:35 am on Apr 22, 2006

"Just because they are both religions does not mean that you can draw an analogy between them and assume that if one thing is true of one it is perforce true of another. These texts have meanings and they produce cultural differences that are tied directly to those meanings."

The difference is that on the Muslim side, the itjihad guys got marginalized and destroyed, and on the Jewish side, the talmud guys inherited the whole culture/religion and remade it.

My executive summary is: Islam means "submission" and Yisrael means "wrestler with God." And every difference between the two religions derives from that.

#22 from lewy14 at 12:36 pm on Apr 22, 2006

Callimachus, great post and a great discussion.

First, to amplify what Yehudit said above: folks who believe in some kind of equivalence of faiths should consider the trajectories and fates (personally and with regard to intellectual legacy) of three great theologians and philosophers, each of whom studied and comment on Aristotle: Averroes, Maimonides, and Aquinas. Read, and despair. An authentically Islamic reconciliation of faith and reason was lost.

#17 liberalhawk asks: Is this another occasion where a western non-muslim is a superior authority on what is authentically muslim than muslims are themselves? I'll take this at face value and answer incrementally:

What can we saw authoritatively about "what Islam is"? Islam is sufficiently broad that contradictory ideas may be sufficiently authentic and well founded in the texts and traditional exegesis. It would be wise I believe to shy away from statements to the effect of "X is what Islam represents", for most any X. I prefer "X can be shown to be well grounded in authentic Islamic traditions and texts", which is a more straightforward argument, and doesn't create exclusive claims.

Can Westerners or non-Muslims make claims about whether certain ideas (e.g., violent jihad) are authentic and well grounded? My short answer is "yes".

With respect to liberalhawk's other question: what about all those moderate Muslims? Celebrim mentions the many who are informally observant, or are pretty much non-observant. It's worth noting here that Sufism, the mystical strain of Islam, appears to be a moderating influence in many populations. Sufism and Salafism are mutually antagonistic, but both appear to be "authentically" Islamic. Sadly Sufism is not only lethally threatened by the jihadist Salafism of Bin Laden et al but by the "establishment" Salafism of the Saudis, and many others.

Finally, ijtihad is a two edged sword: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself was a great advocate of reopening those doors...