Voices of Islam (229 page)

However, the term ‘‘reformation’’ carries much baggage. In speaking of the ‘‘Islamic reformation,’’ many people have in mind the Protestant Refor- mation. It is this understanding that leaves many Muslims uneasy. Theirs is not a project of developing a ‘‘Protestant’’ Islam distinct from a ‘‘Catholic’’ Islam. Most insist that they are not looking to create a further split within the Muslim community as much as to heal it and to urge it along. For this reason, iconic fi such as Ebadi eschew the language of ‘‘reform’’ and ‘‘reformation’’ but call instead for a return to a real, just Islam.

A GLOBAL PHENOMENON OR A WESTERN ISLAM?

It would be a clear mistake to reduce the emergence of progressive Islam to a new ‘‘American/Western Islam.’’ Progressive Muslims are found every- where in the global Muslim
Umma.
When it comes to actually implementing a progressive understanding of Islam in Muslim communities, certain com- munities in Iran, Malaysia, and South Africa lead, but do not follow, the United States. Many American Muslim communities—and much of the lead- ership represented in groups such as ICNA, ISNA, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations—are far too uncritical of Salafi (if not outright Wahhabi) tendencies that progressives oppose.

xxviii
Introduction

Wahhabism is by now a well-known, puritanical reading of Islam that originated in eighteenth-century Arabia. It was not until the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia that Wahhabism had the financial resources necessary to import its mission all over the world, including to the United States. In spite of their exclusivist ideology, Wahhabis have had a great working relationship first with the British and since the 1930s with the U.S. administration. Lesser known is the Salafi movement, which represents an important school of Islamic revivalism. Salafis espouse a return to the ways of the first few gener- ations of Muslims, the ‘‘Righteous Forefathers.’’ Central to their methodol- ogy has been a recentering of the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. It would be a mistake to view American Muslim organizations such as ISNA and ICNA as Wahhabi. On the other hand, interpretations of Islam such as Shi‘ism and Sufism are usually absent from these organizations, and the representation of important and contested issues such as gender con- structions tends to refl a conservative, Salafi bend as well. It is in opposition to both Wahhabism and Salafism that many Muslim progressives define themselves.

On the other hand, one also has to acknowledge that the European and, more importantly, the North American contexts have provided fertile grounds for the blossoming of progressive Islam. Many participants in this young movement have found a more hospitable and open environment in the North American milieu than in Muslim-majority areas. Even the con- tested public world of post-9/11 America still offers great possibilities for conducting public conversations about difficult matters of religion and poli- tics. It would be hard to imagine such critical conversations taking place freely and openly in many Muslim countries. Also one has to acknowledge the significance of North American educational institutions, as well as many fruitful cross-pollinations with liberal religious institutions, human rights groups, and so on.

GLOBAL CHALLENGES TO ISLAMIC MODERNISM

In today’s political climate, it is a cliche´ to begin a discourse on Islam and Muslims with talk of ‘‘crisis.’’ It is not my intention here to add to an unrelenting assault on Islam and Muslims. Instead, I intend to explore the profound challenges and precious opportunities confronting Muslims who self-identify as progressives or as advocates of Islamic reform.

Muslim modernists face a whole host of challenges. Many modernists have profound internal disagreements on issues ranging from hermeneutical approaches to Qur’an and Hadith, women’s rights, and so forth. More prob- lematic is the ongoing question of modernity versus the hegemony of the West. Many modernists have wrestled with the question of how to incorpo- rate political institutions and science from the same Western civilizations that

Introduction
xxix

have colonized and exploited much of the third world, including many Muslim-majority countries.

Some initial phases of Islamic modernism became entangled in apologetic presentations of Islam in which Islam was idealized and imagined as a perfect system that had been sullied through the stagnation of later Muslim genera- tions. Such a presupposition does not enable one to deal constructively with problematic questions in the Qur’an or in the lives of the Prophet and the early Companions, even as it dismisses useful resources in later developments.

Other challenges are external. Muslim modernists do not have a natural institutional home, other than in academia and some media outlets. They have continuously struggled to find a home in the
madrasa
system, although in some places they achieved a measure of success because of efforts of Muhammad ‘Abduh and others. In other cases, they have been forced to live in exile (Fazlur Rahman, Nasr Abu Zayd, and so on) for having been per- secuted in their homeland. Politically they have often come under attack from a number of directions: from state authorities who find the modernists’ political critiques disturbing; from secularists who are puzzled by the mod- ernists’ continued involvement with Islam; from traditional religious author- ities whose own understanding of Islam is undermined by the modernists. Some modernists such as Fazlur Rahman and Iqbal have had the strange distinction of being targets of both persecution and large-scale admiration.

In conclusion, it is clear that Muslims are entering yet another age of criti- cal self-reflection. Given the level of polemics and apologetics, it is extraordi- narily difficult to sustain a critical level of subtle discourse. Yet Muslims today are not merely initiating social transformation, they are also reflecting much wider processes at the same time. They are well-situated to provide the most balanced and critical syntheses of Islam and modernity.

Moving more specifi to the North American context, Muslims who seek to engage in the grand project of Islamic reform face a number of chal- lenges. Writing as a self-identifying progressive Muslim, I will here seek to enumerate some of these challenges in order to position progressive reforms as a beacon for—and not against—the community:

1. Transcending antagonistic attitudes toward mainstream Muslim
   

   communities:
   

   There is a substantial difference between being an
   alternative
   to the main- stream Muslim community (in terms of particular practices such as gender rights, standing up against racism and classism, and so on) and being consis- tently
   antagonistic
   to the mainstream Muslim community.
   

   I am very concerned about some statements from some progressive Mus- lims in North America that repeatedly characterize the mainstream Muslim community as Islamist, Salafi, or Wahhabi. In today’s political climate, acting in such a way puts peoples’ lives, family, property, freedom, and reputation in danger. All too often those of us in the progressive community have felt that we must be unrelenting in our critiques in order to be effective. Surely, one
   

   xxx Introduction
   

   can be capable of nuance without surrendering the mandate of being radical in the cause of justice and truth.
   

   My own hope is that we in the progressive movement can be a light to the community, a voice of conscience, a mandate of justice, and an example of compassion, so that through the power of our moral calling, we will persuade many in our community to do which is most just, most beautiful, and most compassionate.
   

2. Struggling against secular tendencies in the progressive movement:
   

   One of my hopes for the progressive Muslim movement in North America had been that it would create a ‘‘big tent’’ in which Muslims of various per- suasions could gather to strive for common projects, some focusing on the interpretation of Islam in the modern world and others working on concrete and grounded social projects. While the openness of this proposition still appeals to me, I have also come to see that in practice it is extremely challeng- ing to create such a ‘‘big tent.’’ In particular, one is reminded that just as there are shades and gradations of conservative Muslims, not all Muslims who self-identify as secular are the same. The secular criticism of the Christian Arab writer Edward Said was not the same as the secularism of Karl Marx, or that of contemporary Europe. For Said, part of the process of ‘‘secular criti- cism’’ was as follows: ‘‘In its suspicion of totalizing concepts, in its discontent with reified objects, in its impatience with guilds, special interests, imperial- ized fi and orthodox habits of mind, criticism is most itself, and if the paradox can be tolerated, most unlike itself at the moment it starts turn-
   

   ing into organized dogma.’’
   6
   It is worth exploring whether the term
   

   ‘‘Progressive Islam’’ has become a dogma in itself, and thus ironically unlike itself—as Said suggests. As a loving self-critique, I would suggest that many progressives have become every bit as rigid, authoritarian, and dogmatic as the conservative movements they so readily criticize. This represents a moral and philosophical failure of the highest magnitude.
   

   Among Muslims today, one also finds a variety of secular tendencies. Some Muslims come from a traditional heritage but are essentially agnostic in their outlook (often combined with the most antireligious interpretations of Marxism), whereas others interpret secularism as a call to keep the state powers out of the religious game. I have come to realize that in our desire to establish the widest possible ground for a ‘‘big tent’’ in some progressive Muslim organizations, we have left ourselves open to the problem of not hav- ing enough of a common ground. At the risk of overstating the obvious, a progressive Muslim movement has to start with at least a minimum of com- mitment to a
   tawhidic
   perspective, the guidance of the Qur’an, and the ear- nest desire to emulate the Prophetic Sunna. While I will always support those who seek to prevent the state (whether it is the United States, Israel, Iran, India, or any other state) from favoring one religious community over others, I have come to realize that a Marxist interpretation of secularism, with
   

   Introduction xxxi
   

   its hostility toward religion as a source of inspiration, presents one of the greatest dangers to the progressive Muslim movement. This danger is all the more pernicious because so many progressives identify with the Marxists’ devastating critique of socioeconomic class issues, colonialism, and so on. Yet this ideology actually suffocates the spirit of progressive Islam.
   

3. Engagement with the multiple intellectual and spiritual traditions of Islam:
   

   It is not just to outside critics that Muslim progressives have too often seemed ‘‘insufficiently Muslim.’’ I think there has been an unfortunate and unnecessary hostility among some of us to take seriously the spiritual and intellectual heritage of Islam, and to draw on the vast resources it offers us for living as meaningful deputies (
   khalifa
   s, as in Qur’an 2:30) of God in the world today. In the
   Progressive Muslims
   volume, I stated:
   

   Progressive Muslims insist on a serious engagement with the full spectrum of Islamic thought and practices. There can be no progressive Muslim movement that does not engage the very ‘‘stuff’’ (textual and material sources) of the Islamic tradition, even if some of us would wish to debate what ‘‘stuff’’ that should be and how it ought to be interpreted....
   

   To state the obvious, a progressive Muslim agenda has to be both progressive and Islamic, in the sense of deriving its inspiration from the heart of the Islamic tradition. It cannot survive as a graft of secular humanism onto the tree of Islam, but must emerge from within that very entity. It can receive and surely has
   

   received inspiration from other spiritual and political movements, but it must ultimately grow in the soil of Islam.
   7
   

   My serious concern at this point is that some of the organizations that have adopted the rubric ‘‘progressive Muslims’’ today are dangerously close (if not already there) to falling into the trap of providing an ‘‘Islamic veneer’’ for many positions without seriously taking on the challenge of engaging the traditions of Islam.
   

4. Reviving the spiritual core of a reform movement:
   

   One of my great hopes had been that this reform movement would be marked by a genuine spiritual core, something that would combine and yet go beyond the earlier rationalistic twentieth-century movements with Sufi etiquette and postmodern, postcolonial liberation stances. Yet for me the spiritual core has always been and remains at the center. As I see it, there is no way of transforming Muslim society without simultaneously transforming the hearts of human beings.
   

5. Recovering courtesy (
   adab
   ) and spiritual manners (
   akhlaq
   ):
   

It is imperative for the lofty social ideals of progressive Muslims to be refl in the
adab
and
akhlaq
of our interpersonal relations. I continue to hope that some of the Sufi ethics of dealing with fellow human beings would characterize our dealings with one another, to always recall and remember the reflection of the Divine Presence and the divine qualities in one another.

xxxii
Introduction

Some would call this notion romantic or idealistic. Maybe so. I for one continue to hold on firmly to the notion that without romance and idealism we have no hope of being and becoming fully human. Here, as in so many places, Gandhi had a keen observation: ‘‘As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion overriding morality.’’
8

On far too many occasions, many of us Muslim progressives have lost the moral basis of interpersonal relations. What is particularly disappointing to me is that we have time and again risen to defend those whose points of view and practices have been hard to justify under any existing interpretation of Islam but have been quick to demonize many others who have done no more than simply present what have up until now been traditional and common Muslim attitudes toward issues that are now part of the culture wars.