Voices of Islam (227 page)

As is the case with other intellectual and religious traditions, Islamic engagements with modernity have been neither static nor uniform. Tradi- tions ranging from the revivalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the rationalizing and Salafi tendencies of the early twentieth century and liberal movements of the twentieth century to the progressive Muslim move- ment of the twenty-first century can all be discussed under the broad rubric of Islamic modernism. At times, it has been difficult to locate the boundary between Islamic modernists and some nineteenth and early twentieth- century Salafi thinkers. While both advocated fresh interpretations of the Qur’an, the modernists tended to engage modernity explicitly, while many Salafi couched their language in terms of the ‘‘righteous forefathers’’ (
al- salaf al-salih
), the generation of Muslims living with and immediately after the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. As the Salafi movement became more intertwined with Wahhabism in the latter half of the twentieth century, the overlap between modernists and Salafi has been greatly reduced.

xviii
Introduction

The discourse of modernity itself has not stayed static, as it has come under severe critique and contestation from feminists, environmentalists, Marxists, subalterns, and others. As the discourse of modernity continues to change, so does the Muslims’ engagement with modernity.

There has also been a long-running tendency among Western journalists and even some scholars to look at the more conservative articulations of Islam (such as some traditional religious scholars) and even Muslim extremists as somehow representing ‘‘real’’ Islam. Subsequently, these same sources have not adequately engaged Muslim modernists, who are unfairly dismissed as lacking a constituency or influence. Even more problematic is the view that any explicit reimagination of Islam is no longer proper Islam. Lord Cromer, the British High Commissioner in colonized Egypt, once said: ‘‘Islam reformed is Islam no longer.’’ That attitude misses out on the vigorous and dynamic debates that are going on within not only modernist circles but also much wider segments of Muslim societies.

WESTERNIZATION AND ISLAMIC PARADIGMS

Part of the difficulty in establishing the proper boundaries of Islamic mod- ernism has to do with the way that the legacy of Islamic thought in the modern era is conceived. Many Western scholars have seen modernity as the exclusive offspring of the West. As a result, they approach any other civi- lization that engages modernity through the lens of ‘‘westernization.’’ There is no doubt that the encounter with Western institutions and thought has had a profound impact on Islamic modernism both positively (emphasis on human rights, constitutional forms of government, adoption of science, and so on) and negatively (colonialism, support for autocratic regimes). At the same time, many of the issues that Islamic modernism engages in today, such as human rights, democracy, and gender equality, are truly seen as universal struggles. Furthermore, most Muslims who engage in these issues frame their own discourse not as a borrowing or ‘‘infl e’’ from Western discourses but rather as a part of indigenous Islamic interpretations. Positioning the Muslims’ struggles in these universal arenas as perpetually derivative vis-a`- vis Western paradigms robs them of their own legitimacy and dynamism.

The above debate is also related to the question of when one begins the history of Islamic modernism. The older paradigm that viewed Islamic thought as being hopelessly stagnated before being jolted into a renaissance by its interaction with European colonialism is now critiqued by many schol- ars. Without diminishing the profound experience of responding to the shock, inspiration, and violation of the colonial experience, it is also impor- tant to realize that some of Islamic modernism also taps into important re- form traditions such as those of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762
CE
) and many others that predate the full-blown experience of colonialism.

Introduction
xix

Many Muslim modernists have readily acknowledged their interactions with Western models, institutions, and figures. At the same time, they have been careful to cast their movement in decidedly Islamic terms. Perhaps the most common strategy for presenting modernism as an indigenously and authentically Islamic movement is through the framework of
ijtihad.
Ijtihad initially had a narrower meaning, referring to the process whereby Muslim jurists would arrive at rulings for unprecedented cases. Modernists have gradually expanded the defi on of ijtihad to mean critical, independent reasoning in all domains of thought. In other words, the proper domain of ijtihad was taken to be not just Islamic law, but rather all aspects of thought. In an egalitarian move, modernists often hold that it is not just jurists but all Muslims who have the responsibility to carry on ijtihad. The majority of Islamic modernist writers emphasize the need for ijtihad, often juxtaposing it polemically against
taqlid.
As with ijtihad, modernists often came to reinterpret taqlid. Taqlid had originally meant simply following a school of Islamic law, or a designated authority (
marja‘
) in the case of Shi‘i Muslims. For modernists, who wished to highlight independent critical reasoning, taqlid came to mean blind imitationism, becoming a symbol of everything they held to be wrong with Islamic thought.

Like many other Muslims, modernists have also cast their own struggles as perpetuating the spirit of the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Modernists often insist that the egalitarian spirit of the Qur’an in areas ranging from women’s rights to religious pluralism should take prec- edence over more conservative later rulings. The distinction between essence and manifestation (universals and particulars, or other similar dichotomies) is a common motif in the history of modern religious thought. Many modern- ists also argue for a situated and contextualized reading of the Qur’anic revelations.

Modernists fi Qur’anic precedence for their own critique of tradition- embedded injustices by pointing to Qur’anic voices (such as Abraham and Muhammad) who challenged their own communities that insisted on contin- uing ‘‘the ways of the forefathers.’’ In appealing to prophetic legitimization, many modernists have recorded the conversation between the Prophet Muhammad and a companion named Mu‘adh ibn Jabal (d. 627
CE
). Mu‘adh stated that if he found no explicit guidance in the Qur’an or the Prophetic Sunna, he would rely upon his own independent reasoning. While the sys- tematic nature of this anecdote may well belie a later juridical desire to legiti- mize legal methodology, it has served as a powerful tool for modernists to sanctify their own appeal to ijtihad.

Modernists also tapped into other traditions of Islamic legitimacy that pre- dated the encounter with Europe. One of their most powerful means of legitimizing themselves was by adopting the title of ‘‘renewer’’ (
mujaddid
), which recalls a statement attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: ‘‘God sends to this nation at the beginning of every century someone who renews its

xx
Introduction

religion.’’In doing so, modernists lay claim to the mantle of Islamic renewal, following established masters such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111
CE
) whose
Ihya ‘ulum al-din
(‘‘Revivification of the Religious Sciences’’) explic- itly evoked the theme of rejuvenation and renewal after death and stagnation.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY

The crisis of contemporary Islam is inseparable from the struggle over defi g Islam and the concomitant question of who gets to defi Islam, using what sources and which methodologies. The question of authority in Islam is today—and always has been—a contested one. It has often been noted that there is no formal church structure in Islam, thus making the basis of religious authority more fluid. However, the lack of a formal structure of authority does not mean that there is
no
religious authority in Islam. Com- peting groups of Muslims claim authority for themselves by appealing to reli- gious language and symbols. Foremost among them have been the religious scholars (
ulama
) and the mystics (Sufis) of Islam. However, Sufism is a con- tested category today, and many in the Muslim community who gravitate toward Salafi view Sufi with skepticism. For example, the mainstream Muslim organizations in the United States (ISNA [Islamic Society of North America], ICNA [Islamic Circle of North America], and so on) avoid almost all mention of Sufism (and also Shi‘ism). Ismailis, particularly those under the leadership of the Agha Khan, are arguably the most cosmopolitan and modernity-accommodating of Muslims, yet they too are seen by some conservative Sunni Muslims as suspect.

The majority of Muslims turn to the
ulama,
religious scholars, for religious guidance. However, many ulama today are ill equipped to handle the more sophisticated aspects of modernity. Traditional
madrasa
institutions in many Muslim-majority countries no longer offer the highest level of critical thought. Whereas these institutions historically attracted the brightest minds in the community, today they are often a haven for those who have been unable to be admitted to more lucrative medicine, engineering, and com- puter science programs. By and large, there are very few madrasas for the training of ulama in a curriculum that takes modernity in the sense of engage- ments with modern philosophy, sciences, politics, and economics seriously. Ironically, while it is modernist Muslims who are often best suited to handle these decidedly modern subjects, many community members view modernist scholars with skepticism because modernists are not usually products of the
madrasa
system. This skepticism of the community members reveals a great deal about the presuppositions of many contemporary Muslims regarding the ‘‘purity’’ of Islamic knowledge, and how it may be ‘‘contaminated’’ by Western training. Ironically, this compartmentalized view of knowledge con- tradicts both medieval philosophical notions and certain contemporary

Introduction
xxi

rigorous interpretations of Islam. As early as the ninth century
CE
, the phi- losopher al-Kindi stated: ‘‘We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples.’’
1
This epistemological pluralism is also echoed in the works of the Iranian modernist intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, who states: ‘‘I believe that truths everywhere are com- patible; no truth clashes with any other truth
...
. Thus, in my search for the truth, I became oblivious to whether an idea originated in the East, or West, or whether it had ancient or modern origins.’’
2

The vision of Islam espoused by many modernists is a more liberal, inclu- sive, humanistic, and even secular interpretation of Islam that is greatly dis- trustful of Islamist political discourses. By ‘‘secular,’’ what is intended is a model of social relations in which the boundaries between religious discourse and political legitimacy are not collapsed, not one in which one would seek an exile of the religious from all of the public domain. The modernists’ suspicion of models of governments that base themselves on Islamic discourses often provides their critics with ammunition to accuse them of laxness of religious practice. Whether it is warranted or not, modernists have often been per- ceived as being less observant than their conservative coreligionists.

LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND TWENTIETH CENTURY

One of the characteristics of the modernist movement in the late nine- teenth century and the twentieth century was its transregional, translinguis- tic, and transnational character. While fi res such as Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida worked in Egypt, others such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal, and Fazlur Rahman hailed from South Asia. Figures such as Jamal al-Din ‘‘al-Afghani’’ moved with seeming ease from Iran and Afghanistan to the Ottoman Empire. One could mention other well-known fi such as the Malaysian Chandra Muzaffar, the Indonesians Ahmad Hassan and Nurcholish Madjid, the Algerian/French Mohamed Arkoun, and the American Amina Wadud to give a sense of its global reach.

Still, moving toward and into the twentieth century, a few Islamic modern- ists stood out above the rest. Almost all later modernists engaged with the ideas of the following figures either explicitly or implicitly.

Jamal al-Din ‘‘al-Afghani’’ (1838–1897):
Along with his disciple

‘Abduh, Afghani is seen as the most important of the nineteenth-century Muslim modernists. In the Sunni Arab world, he adopted the name Afghani to distance himself from his Iranian Shiite heritage. He was instrumental in arguing for a vision of Islam that adopted modern sciences. He is a good example of the ambiguity many modernists have vis-a`-vis realpolitik, at times supporting the British imperial forces, at times opposing them.

xxii
Introduction

Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905):
Along with Afghani, ‘Abduh pub- lished the highly influential journal
al-‘Urwa al-wuthqa
(The Firm Bond), a title that harkens back to Qur’an 2:256. Initially exiled from Egypt, ‘Abduh eventually returned to become Mufti of Egypt. Generally considered the most infl al of the nineteenth-century Muslim modernists in terms of his impact on later thinkers, ‘Abduh was responsible for many reforms in the educational system.

Rashid Rida (1865–1935):
Rida is a link between ‘Abduh and twentieth- century modernists. His journal
al-Manar
was one of the most important means for disseminating modernist ideas. He too talked explicitly about the need for renewal (
tajdid
) and renewing (
tajaddud
), connecting these con- cepts back to the aforementioned hadith that God sends a renewer (
mujad- did
) at the beginning of every century.

Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938):
This South Asian thinker is widely credited for having been the philosophical inspiration behind the creation of the state of Pakistan. One of the few Islamic modernists with a serious interest in poetry and mysticism, he is remembered for having argued for the importance of dynamism in Islamic thought. His widely influential
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
simultaneously harkens back to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s masterpiece
Ihya ‘ulum al-din
even as it took its dis- course into the twentieth century.