http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=126325&d=12&m=9&y=2009&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion
Saturday 12 September 2009 (22 Ramadan 1430)
Islam within Islam
Shafeeq Ghabra | Arab News
Ramadan, which began on Aug. 22, offers an opportunity to reflect
upon the surge in religious observance and ritual across the Islamic and Arab
worlds and what the future might bring. For the last three decades, an Islamic
revival has held the Islamic and Arab worlds in its grip. Although religious
revival is a worldwide phenomenon, politicized Islam has run deeper than other
religions. The secularism and mainstream Islam of the 1970s was replaced, to
varying degrees, by a deep commitment to political Islam.
The Arab and the Islamic worlds of the 1950s and 1960s had a
forward-looking attitude with an eagerness to modernize. Trends in education,
art, music, theater, and dress could be characterized as progressive. For
example, in Kuwait in the 1950s, a group of young women burned their abayas,
the cloth (usually black) that covers the entire body. Earlier, in 1923, Huda
Sharawwi, a leading Egyptian feminist, publicly removed her veil in front of a
crowd. Within a decade, few women in Egypt remained veiled. Many scholars have
hinted or insisted that nowhere in the Qur'an or an Islamic text is it
mentioned that the hijab, the scarf covering the hair, is mandatory.
Qasim Ameen, a leading Arab thinker at the turn of the 20th
century, wrote books and articles on the liberation of women from tradition and
discrimination. His interpretation of Islam found no place for the hijab or
other covering or multiple wives.
A quick look at how Arab, Persian and other Muslim women of the
1960s and 1970s dressed in the Middle East reveals that few wore the hijab and
even fewer donned an abaya. In the 1960s in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus,
Kuwait, and Tehran, short skirts - even miniskirts - were the fashion of the
day. Male and female swimmers occupied some of the same public beaches in
Kuwait and other parts of the region. How then did the Arab and Muslim worlds
go from adopting modern dress codes to viewing the veil, abaya and hijab as
part of their Islamic tradition?
The June 1967 war delivered a crippling blow to Arab secular
nationalists. Individualism, secularism, and elements of liberalism had yet to
strike roots deep into the region. The defeat of Arabs at the hands of Israel
contributed to the rise of the Islamic forces that filled the vacuum left by
the secular nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. After
1967 many politicians and leaders took refuge in orthodox religion. The
Arab-Israeli conflict played a major role in interrupting the political and
social evolution of the region along lines similar to those taken by Latin
American nations and others.
No doubt, the 1979 Iranian Revolution also factored prominently
into the revival of Islamic traditionalism. Its leaders used Islam as an
ideology and banner in rejecting the failed policies of the Shah and US
influence in Iran. The revolution spearheaded the ascendance of an Islamic
ideology in which the hijab became a symbol. Some 40,000 teachers were
dismissed from Iranian schools, which adopted a new, Islamic curriculum that
emphasized an isolationist orientation and had an anti-modern tilt.
These developments represent a world closing in on itself, turning
away from Europe and the forward-looking attitude of an earlier era. On the
other hand, some leaders in the region began to use religion specifically to
avoid a revolution like the one in Iran. Several Arab governments formed
alliances with rising Islamic trends and moved to implement Shariah, which was
interpreted as restricting coeducation and changed curriculums, enforced or
encouraged dress codes for girls and women to include the hijab, and increased
public commitment to Islamic rituals. The Egypt of Anwar Sadat led the way, and
other governments followed. The victory of the Afghan Mujahedeen against the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1989 provided strength and confidence to the
rising Islamic movements. The war also made possible the alliance between
Afghan, Arab, and other Muslim fighters, including Osama Bin Laden, the United
States, and some Arab groups.
The Islamic world today stands at a crossroads. An orthodox
interpretation of Islam continues to prevail with a strong tilt toward
political Islam. In addition, an undercurrent of a new movement in the Arab
world seeks freedom of choice and a renewal of the aborted liberalism of the
1960s and 1970s.
The reform movement in Iran is symbolic of the climate for change
in the region. The world today is witnessing the beginning of the end of the
isolationist Islamist model in the Middle East. The way religion and politics
have interacted for the last 25 years is on the verge of transformation toward
a different model. One of the challenges will be salvaging the humanism and
equality of original Islam from the Islam of anti-modernism and fundamentalism
that evolved from conflict with the outside world. Discovering Islam within
Islam will be a long and turbulent journey.
- Dr. Shafeeq Ghabra is a professor of political science at Kuwait
University.
