Islam In Sclerosis.

Note: This post is from 'open Democracy', an American liberal site which promotes excellent discussions. It is from 2005.




The costs of sclerosis

The rise of fundamentalism in the Islamic world, and the inability of Muslim societies to contain it, carry huge costs: from sectarian riots and pogroms against religious minorities to the entrapment of minds in impoverishing dogma.

Unreformed Islam’s relationship to the Muslim world is equivalent to pre-Reformation Christianity in Europe. The Reformation allowed the west to liberate itself from religious thinking and set free forces of progress; meanwhile, Islamic empires shrank into their shell, refusing reality, rejecting change and resisting “infidel” knowledge. Stupefied by ignorance, they submitted to western conquerors with scarcely a whimper. If today’s Muslim bomb-throwers want someone to blame for their mindless rage, they should look at their own ancestors.

The long-term answer to terrorism in its Islamic guise can only lie in reform. Islamic reformers must re-examine pre-modern practices and concepts (such as the hudood laws that allow men “non-reciprocal” rights over women); repudiate Islamic radicals who wish (as in Canada) to apply sharia laws to Muslims in the democratic west; shed sectarian dogmas that perpetuate intra-communal conflict; consign the theological disputes of early Islam to the past; and update or discard rigid rules (often deriving from pre-Islamic rituals) that have no relevance today.

The path to enlightenment

Only Muslims themselves can undertake such a project. But to whom would it be addressed? The Shi’a in Iran and elsewhere and some sub-sects recognise spiritual leaders, but Islam as a whole has no pope, nor indeed any temporal or spiritual head. The only claimant to an Islamic papacy in modern times is a mass murderer hiding in the Tora Bora mountains.

The precedents and prospects for reform are not promising. For centuries, reactionary Islamic scholars and clerics have used threats, intimidation and outright murder to resist it. Islamic graveyards are full of unsuccessful reformers. Ijtihad, the practice of knowledge-seeking by consensual discussion, once enabled Muslims to resolve issues not covered in the Qur’an or hadith; but founders of the Sunni schools of thought replaced it six centuries ago with the word of a single mufti (religious academic).

A mufti can issue a fatwa declaring the mildest dissenter a murtid (apostate), whom a Muslim is obliged to slay. I received my first apostasy fatwa thirty-five years ago, in the run-up to Pakistan’s first democratic election. In this I was in the good company of all Pakistan’s progressive journalists. Fortunately for us, for every reactionary mullah there was an enlightened one; for every fatwa, there was a counter-edict. When the election was over, three-quarters of Pakistan’s population had been placed beyond the pale of Islam, by virtue of their support for secular parties.

The mullahs retired to lick their wounds, but returned when the Americans put General Zia ul-Haq into power. During the Zia decade, democratic forces were systemically crushed and rational clergy driven out of mosques and madrasas. This rooted culture of ignorance and intolerance was further emboldened by the emergence of people like Osama bin Laden.

The extremist ideologies holding modern Muslim societies to ransom have been exported across the western world by globalisation, the electronic revolution, migration, abuse of refugee and asylum-seeking status, and arranged marriages.

The outlook for reform in the Muslim heartlands is bleak, but a ray of hope comes from European Islam. A new generation of Muslim thinkers is emerging, free of the fetters of the thought-police that bind its predecessors. The moderate tone of their Islamic polemics suggests that an updating of outdated theory and practice might be possible. Progressive Muslims in Britain and elsewhere must be encouraged to support, protect and encourage this movement. Their work offers some hope that Islam will survive the even greater tribulations this century is bound to bring.

openDemocracy, July 28, 2005



Comment: This posting explains clearly the problems caused to muslim people by the totally degenerate system of imams that now exist in the sunni muslim world in particular. Shia Islam is not similarly degenerated.

An Australian government that knew what to do about the 'Muslim Question' would start by removing the sunni imams from Australia and not allow any replacements.

However that will not happen as the dopes in Canberra are utterly out of their depth on questions of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East. Just look at the incompetence and bungling that surrounds the situation with removing Australian citizens from harm's way in Lebanon. They did not even have any notion of a plan in the drawer, ready to be acted upon when the time came. One does not need a doctorate from Harvard to predict trouble in the Middle East...but it caught the Australian government completely by surprise. Pathetic.