Beyond Islamic enlightenment Ali Eteraz October 11, 2007 8:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali_eteraz/2007/10/beyond_islamic_enlightenment.html In 1999 an important book was published by Amina Wadud, called Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. In 2005 Wadud led the first publicly-held, mixed gender, Friday sermon and prayer in history. Wadud's book and leadership opened the door to the first feminist translation of the Quran, by a woman named Laleh Bakhtiar, which removed the permission for wife-beating from the translation by choosing one of the alternative meanings of an Arabic verb. It would appear that Wadud had quite an impact. Now consider the fact that at a lecture by Wadud in 2000 at Emory University in Atlanta (where I was present), she said that the book which opened the door for her work was the 30-volume In the Shade of the Quran, by Seyyid Qutb. Yes, that Qutb. How can that be? We thought Qutb hated women. We thought that Muslim Brotherhood considers sleeveless women "naked." What does it mean when Wadud, a woman who so clearly opposes everything Qutb stood for - besides her feminism, she also opposes the death penalty for apostasy as well as cutting off the hands of thieves - also benefited from Qutb? Simple. It means that Islamic rationalism - the act of a Muslim using his (or her) individual reason to access the Quran and Islamic tradition - has triumphed so emphatically that both Muslim liberals (Wadud) and illiberals (Qutb), rely upon it. It means that the whole time people have been talking in terms of civilisations, we should have been talking in terms of individuals, because reason is an individual act. In fact, some of the most unsavoury characters of 20th century Islam have essentially confirmed that there won't be any turning back from Islam's individualist revolution. Let's start with Bin Laden. It used to be pretty difficult for Muslim reformers to say that we need to re-evaluate the Quran on the basis of our modern context. What reformers wanted was to subject Islamic rules to today's changed social and political circumstances, but that was met with a lot of opposition among Muslims who thought such an idea was a challenge to the timelessness of Islam. Then Bin Laden came along, hardly a religious reformer. He said that he was not going to listen to previous Islamic rulings because those didn't sufficiently take post cold-war politics and American hegemony into account. In other words, he said that he was re-evaluating the Quran and tradition based on his own, individual, perception of the modern context. Being able to reconcile Islam with new and changing contexts was the precise thing that reformers had been agitating for, though they had different means and ends in mind. Bin Laden, with his individualism, perhaps unwittingly, flung open a door that had only been creaking open. Take also Mawdudi, the grandfather of Islamism, who wanted a Sharia state in Pakistan, opposed women's right to vote and wanted to legislate the burqa. Before he came along it was almost impossible to do a commentary of the Quran unless you went through excruciatingly long training at the hands of esoteric clerics. After he - a mere journalist and political activist who didn't even know Arabic - published his multi-volume (and quite illiberal) commentary called The Meaning of the Quran, it became acceptable for other "average" people to engage the Quran as they, individually, wanted. Thus, Qutb, a mere activist and non-cleric inspired by Mawdudi, dipped freely into the Quran and wrote his own commentary. This opened the door for Wadud, a non-cleric, to publish her commentary on the Quran. Then Laleh Bakhtiar, the feminist non-cleric mentioned above published her translation and commentary of the Quran. Mawdudi thus legitimised radical individualism and liberal women took advantage. Today, the individualist revolution is ratcheting up. There are interpretations of the Quran, called The Second Message, that limit the Quran's message just to its humanist verses. Muslim legal scholars like An-Naim who believe in an Islamic secularism. Popular fundamentalists (with degrees in English literature) like Javed Ghamidi - a mainstay on Muslim satellite TV - who reject calls for theocracy and consign religious supremacism to the dustbin of history. Religious activists like Indian Shaykh Waheeduddin Khan, another mainstay of Muslim satellite TV, who revises Muslim theology and argues that the Muslim anti-christ isn't a person at all but "violence". Jerry Fallwellian preacher rockstars like Amr Khaled. Burqa-clad but self-professed feminists like Farhat Hashmi (I don't understand it either). Politicians, like Indonesian president Bambang who fight against radicals. Sufi-rock Islam belonging to Junoon. Journalists like Akbar Ganji in Iran who oppose the rule of clerics. Versions of Islam which reject hadith altogether (while amusingly positing that the earth is a spaceship). And so on. The age of individual, personal, idiosyncratic Islam, is coming if not already with us. The more one surveys the Muslim world, the more examples of idiosyncratic Islams will be found (and it is the responsibility of journalists to bring all of these to light). Because they are idiosyncratic it will be impossible to find any methodological similarities among these Islams. The competition between them will be one of popularity; the same way the west determines its truth. So, then, consider the irony: the same people who wanted to prevent the "westoxification" of Islam, who wanted to "purify" Islam, have ended up ushering the same thing that makes the west special: hyper-individualism. In 1784, Kant said that "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity". He added that "immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another". According to Kant, then, Muslims are experiencing their Enlightenment. Unfortunately there is a problem. The problem with this Islamic Enlightenment is that it contains all the problems of European Enlightenment. It is marred by the same kind of slavery, same kind of violence, and same kind of patriarchy. It is torn between the same kind of ideological right that plays on people's lowest prejudices, and a left that just like its western counterpart doesn't know how to negotiate between realism and idealism. When each individual person realises that her/his interpretation can just as valid as anyone else's, it is chaos that ensues, not peace and quiet. Furthermore, we don't need Adorno or Foucault to remind us that the French revolution and Napoleonic wars and Italian fascism and Russian anarchism and Leninism and Nazism and colonialism were all children of Enlightenment (Voltaire's bastards as they are called). Europe's individualist convulsions at the end of the 18th century unleashed a torrent of violence unmatched in human history. It is those same undulations that Islam is feeling today. So, while it is smart to acknowledge Islamic Enlightenment, perhaps it is not the right thing to investigate. In my mind, the question is about liberalism and civilian rule and the common good and tolerance. How will - and can - these things be assured among Muslims? Who are its opponents? Who are its supporters and how can they be strengthened? I'll look at these questions in my next two posts. This article is part of a series by Ali Eteraz on Islamic reform: Article 1: The roots of Islamic reform Article 2: The Islamic reformation Article 3: An Islamic counter-reformation Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
