A must-read diary to better understand Islam. — Jérôme à Paris.
Following on some discussion about the neo-con attitude that we face a monolithic enemy in Islam, I found an interesting book in a local bookshop the other day. It is No God But God, by Reza Aslan.
It’s a combination of a history of Islam with the thoughts on the author about the current and future directions of Islamic societies. Overall, I’d recommend it to anyone who feels like they don’t know as much as they would like about Islam. However, it will frustrate people looking for a complete history as it is a short book and concentrates on what the author considers essential elements although, it does supply good further reading lists. The other caveat is that Reza Aslan has written as a religious-political analyst, rather than as a believer. This is good for understanding in one sense, but this is not the book that will easily give you a better set of talking points for conversation with some Muslim friends about their beliefs.
Down in the body, I’ll attempt to touch on some of the main points that Aslan makes and how it connects with my last diary.
Aslan starts with the notion that he hopes to impart an understanding of Islam. Thus he notes that he is not concerned to portray fully the “history” so much as the “story.” Not all religious truth is bound in historical details and it is the myths and narrative that inspire faith and action as much as pure historical fact.
In overview, the book aims to make a reasonable construction of the early times of the Muslim faith in 6th and 7th century Arabia and then trace out the reinterpretations of that time that gave rise to the Sunni “mainstream” and the sects of Shi`ism and Sufism. Following the differing reactions of various branches to colonialism he hopes to show us something about the present day. He finally contends that there may be something of a Muslim “Reformation” going on and this may parallel the upheavals of the Christian Reformation.
In my diary about Mark Steyn I complained that there was a regrettable tendency to paint Islam as a large, monolithic entity. I feel this seriously distorts a lot of policy discussions about terrorism and the Middle East. The mention of a mainstream and two major sects should remind us (and this level of difference is presented in most of our media) that Islam is not a monolithic entity.
Background History
The section on the “pre-history” of Islam (and the early life of Muhammad) is very interesting if you are interested in how the religion is connected what came before in both religious and social terms. However, to keep this manageable I’ll spin forward a bit.
Muhammad has battled his orphan roots and in part through his renowned honesty and fairness has become a wealthy merchant in Mecca. All is not well and he is troubled by the poverty and unfairness he sees around him. Then, his is stricken by a vision from God, who calls him to be a prophet.
In its founding principles then, Aslan characterises the religion as very much concerned with reviving the social conscience lost as certain tribes became sedentary. The roving Bedouin tribes were not based on equality, but there was a strong sense that any tribe was only as strong as the weakest link. Helping the weak links become strong was thus a big part of their ethic. By contrast, the sedentary tribes around Mecca seem to have developed into the kind of rapacious capitalists Dickens would recognize all too well. Thus in the early preaching of Muhammad there is an attack on the corrupt intermediaries who act as gatekeepers between man and God and the exploitation of the poor.
This doesn’t suit the rulers of Mecca and eventually Muhammad and his followers are forced to flee to Medina. The descriptions of the community in Medina form the basis for the main concepts of how people should live in the Muslim faith. Aslan points up the social justice angle, noting how Muhammad set up a new local market in Medina, exempt from transaction taxes and with interest free loans as a “further step toward alleviating the divide between the ridiculously wealthy and the absurdly poor.” This strand of Islam becomes important in modern times.
As an aside, much like other religious texts, the early story of flight and fight and growth makes for a riveting read. It is easy to see how such narratives catch hold of the imagination.
Having noted the mythic power of the Medina community as a template for Muslim living, Aslan takes on the first structural problem. Essentially, the Quran gives only a limited view of this time. The rest of information comes out of stories and commentary (hadith) gained from those who joined the community. Unfortunately, not being the “divine word” like the Quran, these elements were not transcribed with the same care or rigour. Many were put together in later times and given a retrospective link with an original “Companion” who lived with Muhammad in Medina. As with any set of human writings, many were used to try and regain power, wealth and influence, especially those disrupted by the radical changes inspired by the Quran. This is further complicated by difficulties in translation.
Aslan documents all this by reference to examples involving the position of women and various rules and laws. He makes the point that there is now, in the present day, a growing movement amongst women in Islam to re-examine the genesis of various attitudes, particularly where the “hadith” extend the Quran in an apparently contradictory manner.
Similar problems of later commentaries and translation are explained in the case of “jihad” (the greater and lesser struggles), religious tolerance (the Quran forbids forced conversions, but they have been policy at various times in the past) and relations with other religions. The value of this is perhaps not immediate. No mosque is going to change it’s preaching as a result of reading these arguments. But to my mind it is very important to realise that the religion does not inflexibly embody the stereotypes thrust out by various commentators in the West. There is a big difference for the future between “most believers see things this way” and “the word of God as embodied in the Quran states things this way.”
The next strand Aslan focuses on comes with the death of the prophet. Following Muhammad’s death Aslan contends that whilst many official versions connect the rapid expansion of the original Muslim Empire to a time of peace and glory there were serious political factions developing. Muhammad had occupied a singular position of temporal and spiritual power. However, the succession had never been formally organised. One candidate with considerable support was Ali, from the family of the prophet. However, others resented the dominance of this tribe, seeking to regain lost power and others still believed that with the death of the Prophet there should be separation. The Caliph should never be also the religious leader. Those who supported Ali would be the forerunners of the Shi`ite sect, although at this time they were much more a political faction than a religious sect. The first Caliph chosen by the elders of the community was Abu Bakr and he took civil powers but desired to keep spiritual authority separate. In this time after the Prophet there was a large amount of work done to transform the principles of the Quran into a more complete way of living and worshipping God. The class of religious scholars who undertook this task came to be called the Ulama (learned ones.)
The story continues with a typical set of political murders, intrigues and civil wars. Ali himself was Caliph for a short time before being assassinated by a Kharijite rebel. (Setting the stage, perhaps, for the Shi`ite faction to become a sect of the martyr/hero.) Aslan claims the Kharijite faction became the first extremists, separating the world into People of Heaven (Muslims) and People of Hell (all others.) All the time the original rules and laws of life in the small city of Medina come under pressure as the empire expands far and fast. The hadith (mentioned previously) become increasingly used as a reference for new laws.
The Ulama
Aslan notes that in the modern period (after the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1924) there are no Caliphs. This leaves Muslims to struggle with a” dual identity as citizens of independent nations and a unified worldwide community.” Some believe in a restoration of the Caliphate, seeing the ideals of Islam and nationalism as diametrically opposed. For them, “the only legitimate Islamic state would be a world-state in which the chains of racial and national prejudices would be dismantled.” However, this is not the only view in a fierce debate about the interaction between the social and religious principles of the early Islamic Medina with the “modern notions of constitutionalism and democratic rights.” In 1934 the modernist reformer Ali Abd Ar-Raziq suggested that the secular position of the Caliph underlined that position of Islam rested on its moral principles and not the arrangement of political order. Sayyid Qutb (whose name some of you no doubt recognise) disagreed drawing on the fact that Muhammad was clearly the pre-eminent spiritual and temporal authority in Medina. Ayatollah Khomeini made some similar arguments to Qutb, tweaked to the mythos of his Shi`a audience. Aslan points out that each of these figures made their analyses in an attempt to unite the psychologically fractured worldwide community. However, in his opinion without a centralised political authority (like a Caliph) or a central religious authority (like a Pope) the only constant direction came from the Ulama. He is careful to emphasise that they should not be thought of as a monolithic institution, but at the same time:
“over the past fifteen centuries, Islam as we know it has been defined almost exclusively by an extremely small, rigid, and often profoundly traditionalist group of men, who for better or worse, consider themselves to be the unyielding pillars upon which the religious, social, and political foundations of the religion rest. How they gained this authority, and what they have done with it, is perhaps the most important chapter in the story of Islam.”
As we have seen, the original Caliph drew a line between himself and religious affairs, putting the Ulama into a position to define the religion and in a powerful place in society. The Caliph remained the other strong actor within the society and a key confrontation was sparked by the Caliph Al- Ma’mun around 820CE. His vision was to be the leader in civil and spiritual affairs. He supported what Aslan refers to as the “Rationalist” faction in the Ulama and tortured many “Traditionalists” who disagreed with him. Aslan notes that if his enterprise had succeeded then it is likely that an Orthodox Church with temporal connections, possibly like the Christian Papacy may have formed, which would have changed the world in many ways. However, the strongest effect on our world is that his failed attempt to take religious power swung power back toward the “Traditionalist” school in the Ulama.
Aslan traces the roots of Rationalist and Traditionalist factions to early debates over free-will vs. determinism. By the tenth century the major element of disagreement was the role of reason. Should it be placed above revelation or did revelation rule supreme in religious judgements. There are a number of other disagreements, but this is the key. Rationalists opened the door to change, whilst the Traditionalists opposed both change and inquiry, “cultivating a formula of bila kayfa (don’t ask why).”
The disastrous attempt at intervention by Caliph Al-Ma’mun led to the gradual loss of influence of the Rationalists within all the major schools of law and theology (except the Shi`ite schools, which will be examined later). This led to a number of what Aslan calls “extraordinary theological and legal developments in Islam.” The highlighted elements include: The widespread conviction that the Quran may not be translated and a view of it as completely static, unchanging and detached from the historical circumstances of its time.
This halo spread from the Quran to the laws and ideas developed from it, the hadith (mentioned earlier) and the decisions of previous Ulama. Thus, the laws and customs of mainstream Islam have become ever more stratified and bound by precedent. In the modern era, the system of madrassas sponsored by various institutions has spread these orthodoxies in many places and helped shout down reformist voices.
For Aslan, the greatest issue is:
it is practically impossible to reconcile the Traditionalist view of the Shariah with modern conceptions of democracy and human rights. Any modern Islamic state has only three alternatives for incorporating the Shariah into its legal systems. It can accept the Shariah as a legitimate source of civil law, but choose to ignore it in all but the most obvious family, divorce or inheritance cases, as Egypt and Pakistan do. It can fully apply the Shariah to the state with no attempt to either modernise it or adapt it to contemporary norms of law and society, as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban have done. Or, it can attempt to fuse the traditional values of the Shariah with modern principles of democracy and human rights through a comprehensive reform methodology. Thus far, only one Islamic state has seriously considered the latter option
I break the quote at this point to remind you that he is talking about experimenting (not necessarily successfully) with reform. We should not dismiss his argument from prejudice when we learn that he is referring to Iran.
Iran
Aslan relates the fact that Iran is a special case to its status as a Shi`ite community. The history of the Shi`ite movement is too long to expound here, but comes out of the assassination of Ali (mentioned earlier) and the later assassination of his grandson Husayn (and most of the rest of his family, the family of the Prophet) by the troops of the Caliph near Karbala (another name that crops up in our news reports now and then.) This massacre of the family of the Prophet by other Muslims sent shockwaves through the Muslim world. A small group, clothed in torn clothes and faces blackened with ashes began to meet in Karbala to lament the massacre and their own personal failure to protect the family of the Prophet. This kind of lamentation (a practice familiar to many religions) was at that time unknown in Islam and laid the foundation for what Aslan calls: “an utterly distinct religious sect in Islam: Shi`ism, a religion founded on the ideal of the righteous believer who, following in the footsteps of the martyrs at Karbala, willingly sacrifices himself in the struggle for justice against oppression.”
Aslan writes up a very logical collection of the main tenets of Shi`ism, but I do not feel able to summarise it. A key distinction to hold in mind is the survival of a rationalist tradition in Shi`a jurisprudence, although the right to exercise it is limited to a very select learned few, the Ayatollahs. Another is the development of a messianic concept around the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam, who will only return on the Day of Judgement. For a long period, the Shi`ah people and clerics entered a period of political abstention. All governments were considered illegitimate, pending the return of the Mahdi. This resulted in the majority of Shi`ite “ordinary people” to live under Imperial rule in a relatively peaceable manner. Religiously the government lacked legitimacy, but there was no focus on overthrowing it. However, in 1501, Ismail conquered Iran and pronounced himself “shah” of the new Safavid Empire. He instituted Shi`ism as the national religion and engaged in a jihad against the Ottomans. Aslan suspects that this changed the psyche of Iran forever. With the decline of this line of shahs in the eighteenth century, Shi`ism receded once again from political life until the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Aslan’s roots are in Iran and he develops the story of the revolution skilfully. Notable points to retain are the forcible reversal by the CIA of a previous overthrow of the monarchy in 1953 and that the revolution against the shah in 1979 saw an extraordinarily broad coalition within Iranian society rebel. Khomeini essentially subverted this coalition through his use of Shi`a mythology to attract the ordinary people and the skilful equation of social justice in Islam with the aims of the socialist to persuade them to support him. However, for Aslan, Shi`ism was replaced by Khomeinism. Suggesting a philosophy of Valayat-e Faqih “the Guardianship of the Jurist” Khomeini described the duty of the most learned and holy cleric to be the jurist, who would assume the authority of the Mahdi in his absence. (Note: I am condensing greatly here.) In combination with skilful political action to neutralise civil opponents and discredit religious ones this strategy brought Khomeini to absolute power. Aslan wishes us to realise what a radical departure from the history of Shi`ism this was. Never before had clerical power been centralised in one man and that man claimed secular power to prepare the messianic era (and state) before the arrival of the Mahdi.
Aslan segues into an outline of another major sect, the Sufis by noting that in his youth, Khomeini was inspired and transfixed by the Sufi vision of worship. Sufism is a topic for a book in itself and as Aslan says “it cannot be explained; only described.” Sufism is the long-standing and complex mystical tradition within Islam. Often seen as heretical by large parts of both Sunni and Shi`a establishments it contains many influences. It’s openness to some different cultures helped it spread widely in places like India where the more traditional strains of Islam butted up against things like the local integration of dance with religion. I won’t cover Sufism in detail in this piece as it doesn’t play such a big part in the final part of the book.
Colonial Period
The final part is an attempt to link all that has gone before with the modern history of Islam, where we are now and where we are going. Given the particular geographic spread of Islam it should not surprise us that Aslan considers colonialism to be a key period leading up to our present situation. He picks out the Indian Revolt of 1857 (also known as the “Sepoy Mutiny”) to illustrate the impact of colonialism on the Islamic community. The economic exploitation and general injustices of an occupying colonial power form the background, but the spark for the Revolt holds considerable symbolism. Cartridge papers for use by Muslim and Hindu soldiers (who had become part of the British machine) were coated with pork and beef fat.
they were convinced, and rightly so, that the British Army was trying to forcibly convert them to Christianity.
Aslan documents a number of other actions and attitudes of the colonial administration to support this view and notes the brutality of the response to the revolt. Most important is the effect:
The violence with which colonial control was reasserted in India forever shattered any illusions of British moral superiority. For most Muslims, Europe’s civilising mission in the Middle East was revealed for what it truly was: and ideology of political and economic dominance achieved through brutal military might. The ideals of the Enlightenment, which the British never tired of preaching, could no longer be separated from the repressive imperialist policies of the colonising government.
Aslan states that even so, a large group (who became known as the Modernists) still championed “European values” such as the rule of law and scientific progress as the only means of arresting the decline of the Muslim world. The Modernists also called for a re-evaluation of the status of the Shariah, claiming that the Quran was the sole source of divine guidance that was unchangeable and the Shariah should be modernized. This of course attracted the wrath of the Ulama, but it was the way that imperialism had tainted Enlightenment values that gave the Ulama their strongest point of attack.
Aslan traces out the colonial history of Islam in more detail than I aim to reproduce here. So let us jump to Egypt around 1890. The minds of al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu join to promote the concept of Pan-Islamism. Their ideal was a fusion of Islam into a democratic world state, with secular power protected from the Ulama. This religious vision proved incompatible with other forces of change in Egypt (socialists and nationalists who wished to fight the Imperial occupiers) and thus it began to fall into the shadow of “Pan-Arabism,” which concentrated on ties between Arabs under colonial rule. The end of the Ottoman Empire and the absence of a Caliph further damaged the aspirations of the Pan-Islamists, but the political reality of an Egypt no longer connected to the Ottoman region also reduced Pan-Arabism into a more nationalistic movement.
However, in 1928, Hasan al-Banna founded the “Society of Muslim Brothers” rejecting both the modernism of Pan-Islamism and the narrow nationalism of the Pan-Arabist movements. His focus was on the social iniquity of a colonialism that produced such wealth for the British and such misery for the locals. This society is of considerable importance to understanding where we are now and so I will quote Aslan at length:
It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of the Society of Muslim Brothers on the Muslim world. Al-Banna’s Islamisation project quickly spread to Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Sudan, Iran, and Yemen. Islamic socialism proved to be infinitely more successful than either Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism in giving voice to Muslim grievances. The Muslim Brothers vigorously tackled issues that no one else would address. Matters such as the increase in Christian missionary activity in the Muslim world, the rise of Zionism in Palestine, the poverty and political inferiority of Muslim peoples, and the opulence and autocracy of Arab monarchies were a regular part of the Brothers’ agenda.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of al-Banna’s movement was that it represented the first modern attempt to present Islam as an all-encompassing religious, political, social, economic, and cultural system. Islam in al-Banna’s view, represented a universal ideology superior to all other systems of social organisation the world hs known. As such, it demanded a distinctly Islamic government – one that could properly address society’s ills. Yet, al-Banna did not believe it was hist duty to impose this ideology on the current political system in Egypt. The Muslim Brothers was a socialist organisation, not a political party: its principal concern was reconciling hearts and minds to God so as to alleviate human suffering, not bringing about a political revolution.
That he was not political did not prevent the colonial authorities from seeing him as a threat and in due course, al-Banna was assassinated, but the Society continued to grow, such that it could not be ignored by those nationalists in the Egyptian Army who conspired to rebel. Initially, the Society of Muslim Brothers enthusiastically supported Nasser who promised to implement a socialist agenda once in power. But eventually, his authoritarian rule clashed with the Brothers egalitarian values and he moved to dismantle the organisation, throwing many members into jail.
Aslan posits that it was “In the dank, sadistic prisons of Nasser’s Egypt” that the Brotherhood “fractured along ideological lines.” One man particularly absorbed the idea that change would not come through acts of social welfare, but by force. He was Sayyid Qutb and his philosophies play a large part in our modern situation.
Before joining the Muslim Brothers, Qutb had journeyed in 1948 to the United States and noted a society “devoid of human sympathy and responsibility … except under force of law.” He was upset at the combination of a “materialistic attitude” and an “evil and fanatical racial discrimination” which he blamed on the separation of religion from everyday life. He was also frightened by the “Westoxification” of the Middle East (the rising Western cultural hegemony in the area.) Thus, on returning to Cairo in 1950 he joined the Muslim Brothers and became a prominent member, committed to working on social justice. At one point Nasser even offered him a place in his government. However, after Nasser turned against the movement, Qutb joined countless others who were arrested, brutally tortured and imprisoned.
It was in prison that Qutb would write his revolutionary manifesto; Milestones (published 1964, the year he was released). He stated that “preaching is not enough” and espoused a cataclysmic, revolutionary change that required the establishment of an Islamic state. He did not seek civil rulers, in his mind the only ruler would be God and the only law, Shariah. This new ideology has been called “Islamism.”
(This should not be confused with Pan-Islamism, a supranational theory of Muslim unity under a Caliph (possibly democratically elected). Islamism called for an end to secular governments, a fully religious state.)
Qutb was re-arrested and hanged for treason after the publication of Milestones. Those who had taken to his message fled Egypt and found refuge only in Saudi Arabia, a country on the verge of an explosion of wealth.
Wahab and modern Extremism
Why was Saudi Arabia willing to take in these radicals? The answer lies in an early alliance between Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (1703-66) and the Shayk of a small clan, named Muhammad ibn Saud. The Wahhabism of that region is the essence of the “Islamic fundamentalism” which has been such a force in our times. This extreme and puritanical sect has impacted the world through its alliance with the clan Saud. Together they eventually conquered the Arabian Peninsula bringing them into a position of great power and wealth when incredible oil reserves were discovered in the region.
(Aslan’s book is able to neatly summarise the beliefs and position of Wahhabism within the Muslim religion, but as I have skimmed over his historical analysis I cannot so easily place it into context. There is some short explanatory material at Wikipedia, if you are interested.)
The key point to draw out of this is the integration of the tactics of the old Muslim Brothers with the forceful preaching of the Wahhabist sect. The Muslim World League has infiltrated Wahhabism into every Muslim society, in part through the attractive “black and white” world-view that fundamentalism engenders, but in large part through the construction of madrassas and mosques who (financed by Saudi oil wealth) are able to work hard on alleviating some of the misery of poverty faced by many Muslims. A madrassa education may be ideological in the extreme, but in many places it is a great advance, any education that includes reading, writing and arithmetic is a great advance (for the miserable poor) on no education. Likewise, money is often spent on water projects etc.
We can see how the history of Islam and colonialism has led us to a world where the Wahhabists often skilfully promote their message. But, our current instability in the world is not merely (as it was in the 1980s) connected to radicalism inside the Muslim states. The rise of al-Qaeda can be traced to many factors, not least the CIA construction of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. However, in ideological terms, Aslan notes:
Of course, the problem with fundamentalism is that it is by definition a reactionary movement; it cannot remain tied to power. The Saudi kingdom discovered this from the very beginning when, suddenly flush with money, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud began using his newfound wealth to build a life befitting a king. Soon Saudi Arabia was awash with modern technology bought from the West. … [Foreign nationals also abounded as the oil extraction industry grew.] In short, the king has been Westoxified and, as a result, turned his back on the Wahhabi warriors – now dubbed the Ikhwan, or “brothers” (not to be confused with the Muslim Brothers) – who had helped place him in power.
In 1929 the Ikhwan rebelled and were massacred.
However, Saudi Arabia quickly discovered what the rest of the world would soon learn. Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty and it gains adherents. Kill its leaders and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War a small group of Saudi dissidents calling themselves al-Qaeda took up the mantle of the Ikhwan and Wahhabism and turned against the Saudi royal family. Al-Qaeda parallels the original extremists (the Kharijites mentioned at the beginning of the story) and divide the world into People of Heaven (themselves) and People of Hell (everyone else whose exact interpretation of the Shariah or Quran differs from their own.)
Aslan has a firm view on the significance of al-Qaeda:
Despite the tragedy of September 11 and the subsequent terrorist acts against Western targets throughout the world, despite the clash-of-civilisations mentality that has seized the globe and the clash-of-monotheisms reality underlying it, despite the blatant religious rhetoric resonating throughout the halls of governments, there is one thing that cannot be overemphasised. What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West. The West is merely a bystander – an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.
All great religions grapple with these issues, some more fiercely than others. One need only recall Europe’s massively destructive Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) between the forces of the Protestant Union and those of the Catholic League to recognize the ferocity with which interreligious conflicts have been fought in Christian history.
Aslan spices the comparison with the reference that the evolution in Christianity from inception to Reformation took fifteen centuries. Islam is beginning its fifteen centuries. If his thesis that all this could be “an internal conflict” seems unconvincing then that is partially my fault for my clumsy summarising, but also I think it needs a certain lateral understanding. In this “globalised age” internal conflicts will doubtless impinge on “outsiders” much more than in the past, particularly when the area involved holds so much of the world’s energy resources. Likewise, the history of colonialism (and its particular influence on the fundamentalists of the present) makes “strikes against the West” items of singular propaganda value. We should not be surprised then that what Aslan terms “an internal conflict” comes to our doorstep with horrific and bloody visits.
Thoughts on the Future
In the final chapter of his book, Aslan tries to give us some pointers into the near future of Islam. He does so in part through a visit to his ancestral homeland of Iran. He notes in passing that the decision of the West to push Saddam into an attack on Iran was ironically the vital factor in allowing Khomeini to solidify his autocratic rule. Only “emergency war powers” could have enabled him to so successfully destroy indigenous opposition to his rule. (A reminder, perhaps that if we ignore the internal conflicts in favour of a high-level geopolitical analyses we are in danger of falling prey to unintended consequences.)
For Aslan, the fundamental questions that were being asked in the colonial period remain:
Can Islam now be used to establish a genuinely liberal democracy in the Middle East? Can a modern Islamic state reconcile reason and Revelation to create a democratic society based on the ethical ideals established by the Prophet Muhammad in Median nearly fifteen centuries ago?
He thinks the answer is clear:
Not only can it do so, it must. Indeed, it is already doing do in Iran and in other parts of the Muslim world. But it is a process that can be based only on Islamic traditions and values. The principal lesson to be learned from the failure of Europe’s “civilising mission” [colonialism] is that democracy, if it is to be viable and enduring, can never be imported. It must be nurtured from within, founded upon familiar ideologies, and presented in a language that is both comprehensible and appealing to the indigenous population.
For Aslan, this Muslim Reformation that seeks to redefine the powers of the Ulama (and in his view retrieve the religion from their grasp) is not only occurring in Muslim countries, but in every great city of the world where many Muslims live. He feels that this Reformation, like others will be a terrifying event, but as he has articulated earlier, there is hope for the future.
To remind us that democracy comes out of the most unlikely circumstance he reminds us that the original democrats of the United States were slave owners who denied the vote to women and ethnic groups. We should not expect the convulsions of our time to produce instant, fully formed, perfect democracies in the Middle East. Just as many European countries established their democracies in explicitly Christian contexts we should expect and support Muslim democracies. Aslan feels that if we have confidence in the values of secular government we should be willing to let the secularizing influence grow slowly. For him the root of democracy is pluralism, which includes religious pluralism and religious tolerance. Enforcing a vision of a secular state in a religious land is unlikely to allow democracy to flourish. Religious pluralism is, in his view the first step to growing a culture of human rights in the Middle East and thus the first step to stable democracies.
Summary
Aslan has some further interesting ideas for those involved on the inside of trying to reform the concept of the Islamic state, but for us at outsiders I would summarise the lessons for us as follows:
1) There is a deep diversity within Islam and the rhetorical excesses of commentators like Steyn (who I wrote about before) who try to focus the West on a “fight to the finish” with a monolithic Muslim enemy are to be ignored.
2) Those who will tell you that Islam is inherently “anti-democratic, violent, anti-woman” etc. are in the end only playing into the hands of the extremists. There is a strong set of traditions and grounds for a more moderate interpretation of Islam and we should not allow the extremists to wipe it out in our minds.
3) The long history of interactions between the Imperial west and the Muslim peoples of the world prepares distrust and draws us further into what is essentially an internal struggle for the soul of Islam.
4) The extremists have made a large volume of their popularity gains by tending to the miseries of the ordinary people. We need to reconsider our associations with various “strongmen” who feed us secular homilies but are in fact dictators and oppressors. We also need to understand that a lack of prosperity begets revolutionary impulses.
5) Possibly the most important thing we can do is not fight, or even preach, but simply find ways to stop giving money to the extremists in Saudi Arabia.
6) If we have faith in our values we should not see this high point of “Islamic fundamentalism” presaging eternal conflict, but as the symptoms of the struggle that can bring a more moderate Islam to the fore.
7) Due to the history of our actions, we in the West cannot have much influence over this ongoing struggle for the soul of Islam. If we preach too openly we discredit our allies. My own view is that we must consider the past of the Cold War and understand that symbolic actions are important. We need to work on the tolerance of our societies, to make it plain that democracies can be a good place for Muslims to live. We should support and comfort those reformers cast out by the extremists, but not seek to use them as propaganda tools in a “clash of civilizations.” If we frame this as a conflict between “us and them” there is every danger we will only strengthen the extremist factions.
8) We also need to recognise the evolution of our own democracies. We need to be realistic about the kind of democracies we can expect to emerge at first, they will look a lot more like slave-owning, God praising, Virginians than the secularised social democrat, ENA graduates in Paris. We need to understand that pluralism and small elements of democracy are progress, rather than evidence or excuse to support a dictator who will suppress religious parties and hand over oil on demand. This is a difficult and risky balance to strike, as some religious parties are bent on harming the West, but it must be done, else we simply amplify the support and arguments of the extremists.
