Islam’s struggle with modernity

Islam’s struggle with modernity - History Extra

"'The House of Islam is on fire... In what way?'...

'The main reason why the House of Islam is on fire is because there are people, arsonists who reside within the house and these are people who are adherents to a form of thinking and actors in line with that thinking and those actors include the government of Iran, extreme Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and extreme Salafis so that entire category of people have reduced Islam to being a political confrontational ideology, so that's the House of Islam is on fire...

The book I think is very useful in trying to explain the 100-year humiliation that most Muslims felt throughout from Napoleon's Invasion. If we have to put a specific date on it in 1798 I think down to the First World War. So that period of about a hundred and twenty years was a very, very painful, humiliating, disrespectful period for Muslims because it didn't chime with who they were as a people, didn't reflect their history, nor did it speak to what Muslims are supposed to be.

A warrior people, with the upper hand, globally. Bernard Lewis talks about that brilliantly, that for a thousand years, Muslims were the global super power. And now suddenly they were reduced to losing imperial territory, losing the technological race. That 120 years or so put Muslims completely out of joint, as to who they were historically and what they expected to be, and as a result of that loss of empire, the Ottoman decline and a formation of 22 plus states on the corpse of the Ottomans, that led to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood... and then a whole range of other more extreme and sometimes violent organizations...

On the technology front, whether it's to do with scientific innovation in relation to medicine or the advanced arms that the French troops possessed you see the Ottomans trying to emulate French military attire or the latest guns that were available in the West, but imitation wasn't a problem.

But they could not understand what was driving Western innovation and what was driving the European thought process and behind that was two or three big ideas. And those two or three big ideas are still with us and those two or three big ideas haven't had the necessary impact on the Muslim world today.

One is the pursuit of complete individualism. That Napoleon was not the first time the Muslim world encountered, you talked about the Franks or the Crusaders. There was sustained two-way conversation for at least 200 years, but why was it that the Crusaders were not able to leave behind a legacy that troubled the Muslim world? One of the reasons for that is the Crusaders did not bring a world view to the Muslim world that was in complete contradistinction to where Muslims were... they were Christians, they had a holy book and that the fight was over Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the fight was a holy fight of some sort. And both Muslims and Christians whether they be Orthodox or otherwise broadly agreed on man, life and the universe. But Napoleon and the French Revolution brought something that was a shock to the Muslim mind and it still remains a shock to the Muslim mind. That's one of the reasons why we find it so hard to reconcile.

Individualism is one idea and that the second is the pursuit of rational thought to wherever that conclusion led to. Independent of religion or tradition. That was hard for Muslims to absorb because most Muslim communities, the tribe is important, the Ummah is important, the family is much more important than it was for Rousseau or Voltaire.

The third is that for the French Revolutionary and by extension, those who aspired to be more like France or Europe, history was a burden, history was something that had to be forcefully removed. Ties with the Catholic Church had to be ended. Robespierre spoke about a new calendar, a new birth. For most Muslims, history's sacred. History isn't something that is lived over there and is a burden, but history is something that is among us and ought to be revived and our best days were the past as opposed to the French Revolution, or the Enlightenment mindset that says, our best days are yet to come. So those ideas of individualism versus history versus the Muslim collectivist thought in contrast to where Europe was heading and firmly places itself, now, that's where the real challenges are..

Most Muslims started to define themselves as being against the West. So if the West was going to be individualistic, well we were going to be collectivist. So if the West was going to be logical, we're going to be excessively emotional and angry... if the West is going to disregard history, well we are going to re-imagine a perfect form of history and it boiled down to a crude competition and rejecting everything that the West stood for. At the same time trying to embrace that the West had become. There was a strange love-hate relationship, and that is still at play...

What should have happened is to understand that even within Muslim tradition there is a strong precedent for individualism and empiricist thought and being critical of history and looking to the future, not necessarily imagining a perfect past. Whereas all of that tradition within Islam. Take for example, the decriminalization of homosexuality in the Ottoman Empire in 1857. Now for whatever reason the Ottomans were 120 years ahead of the rest of the West... they decriminalized homosexuality, that was supported by Al Azhar and other prominent Muslim Muftis and thought leaders because it was seen to be an individual act between individuals and God and not for the state to be involved in. Now that's revolutionary...

'The word religion, the English word religion is inadequate to cope with the nature of Islam. Because what religion has come to mean in English, is this notion of something that is distinct from the rest of society so that you have the secular and then you have religion and that it is something which is private and it's kind of the individual faith, the individual believer and his relationship or her relationship with God. That notion of the secular is something that because Western Power was so global in scope, has kind of been enshrined across the entire world as something that is normative or something that has become a mark of modernity. Has that been a particular problem for Muslims do you think?'

'It's been a particular problem for the arsonists, the Islamists, the Jihadists, the group of people that want to make their version of Sharia state law and impose that reading of Sharia on everybody else. For them you're absolutely right, the word secular is anathema. And it's also bolstered by the fact that the West is secular therefore we must be the opposite to whatever the West is and that's why we see the Iranians or the Taliban or others trying to carve out a different space. But, I mean to paraphrase Bill Clinton, I firmly believe that there's nothing wrong with Islam that can't be fixed by what's right with Islam. In other words, there's a strong secular tradition within Islam that can be drawn on to make the argument for-'...

'So what is that secular tradition?'...

'You take Islam's primary sources. In the Quran... there's no compulsion in religion. There's a verse that says... to you your religion, to me, mine. In the very early days, the Prophet Mohamed allowed for various religious denominations, including pagans and Jews and Christians to observe their religion'

'That's not entirely the same as the modern understanding of the secular is it?... A space in which religion full stop, is removed... everyone is kind of, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, are all kind of shoved to the corner and then you have a neutral space, in the middle, and I don't think the Islamic civilization, really sustained an idea of there being a neutral space, within the Caliphate'

'Everything that's in the modern world and associated with modernity, by definition doesn't stand the test of anything that was developed in antiquity. It's just what it is, right? Modernity is a reaction to various ideas and movements that have reached us from antiquity. But what I'm saying is that there are principles and ideas within Islam that can be applicable to the modern world. The Prophet famously saying when people asked him questions about this world... you know best about the affairs of this world. Now you're right in that that doesn't give us French laicite but what it does give us is principles and ideas with which we can work. Now, what I find fascinating at the moment, is in countries such as Tunisia there's a vibrant debate going on as to whether the kind of secularism that you highlighted Tom, whether that can work and the answer is definitely no. But they increasingly look towards what they call Anglo-Saxon pluralism or secularism here in the UK, and also in the US, where there's no hostility towards religion. And whereas the state is, yes, religiously neutral, but citizens are allowed to be publicly pious, and it's that tension I think that's a major fault line across the Middle East today. So my contention is that you can find evidence and thought and principles in early Islam to support a developed, fully modernized, secular state without compromising the individual's piety.'

'I suppose that what we might call a kind of more hardcore Muslim or radical Muslim would say to that, that you are putting the cart of your kind of Western liberal instincts before the horse of what classical Islam was and that you are therefore altering it, changing it, diluting it, making it something that it wasn't originally. Would you recognize the force of that criticism or?'

'Not for a moment... those who make that criticism are those who have lit the fire on the house of Islam. I think what I'm articulating is a renaissance of the early Muslim way of being. To be a pious Muslim, is an individual act... the Prophet Mohammed looks at a man, and say that's a man of paradise and his companions say we've never seen him at the mosque, we don't know of any pious acts that he does. Why is he a man of paradise? And one companion goes and follows this person, stays with him for three nights and says, "I haven't seen you do anything that confirms that the Prophet Mohammed's claim that you're a man. Well, what is it that you do? Because what this individual is doing, is secretive in worshiping God at night, quietly without being seen to be pious. Now there are these very strong traditions that we've got to lean on in order to achieve what it means to be a Muslim in the modern world and that's why I say it's a Renaissance than in any way or deforming or reforming Islam'...

'It seemed to me that any Hadith with which you personally disagreed with, you were kind of saying, "Well this is unreliable, this is not to be trusted.'...

'I've struggled with Hadith over the years. I've struggled with them because the Koran describes the Prophet as... a mercy unto mankind or to the universe. And then you come across claims of Hadith where the Prophet was allegedly violent. You have illogical Hadith about if a fly drops into your drink and there's one wing in the drink, dip the other wing in for the other wing is the antidote to the poison. Completely illogical sayings. So the early Muslims of the Murtazlah (sp?) tradition and others also had deep reservations about the Hadith. There's a famous incident where the second Caliph forbids many of the Companions of the Prophet from even attempting to write down the Hadith... My issue really is that we've lost that critical approach among today's Muslims when it comes to Hadith literature in particular, because it was written at least a 120 years after the Prophet's [passing]'...

'Scholars back in the early centuries of Islam appreciated that there was the risk of fakes going in and fabrications, but there was a science for evaluating this and that there were authoritative collections which were compiled and that it has always been accepted that these collections essentially are to be relied upon. So isn't the approach of saying well, actually I don't like this one. This is probably unreliable. Isn't the risk there that you're tugging on a thread that risks pulling the whole tapestry apart?'...

'Even in the strongest Hadith those who collect Hadith would always say... as he allegedly said. So for me it's bringing back that spirit of critical thought and bringing back the spirit of a Prophet that's compassionate, kind, logical, thoughtful. And Hadith have to be in keeping with the spirit of the Koran and the Prophet'

'But do you think you can apply that same spirit to the Koran?'

*pause*

'Or is everything in the Koran true?'

'For me a Muslim, everything in the Koran is true, but also the biggest reservations and the biggest areas of contention with modernity aren't all in the Koran. Most of them, whether it's to do with suicide bombings or with apostasy... are in claims of Hadith literature'

'There are verses within the Koran as well, which have been used to justify war and violence. Or indeed, slavery I suppose. You say, since the Koran mentions slavery repeatedly should Muslims reintroduce that practice too?'...

'There's a well-established principle from the very early days of Islam, and throughout history... consensus of the mainstream and the abolishing of slavery. What's interesting is that the Muslim scholars always looked at what the Prophet tried to do. There was injustice vis-a-vis slavery and-'

'Were there traditions in Islam of criticizing slavery as an institution? Or is that something that only derives modern European influence?'

'As I cast my mind throughout Muslim history, what you see is an attempt to free slaves. What you see is veneration of those who allowed for slaves to be free'

'But as in Christianity, I mean the same thing in Christianity that with a very few exceptions, there are some who criticize this institution. There doesn't seem to be this kind of mental leap, it's treated as being something like hunger or disease. It's an ill but it's just something that's there.'"