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In this Radio Netherlands interview (thanks to all who sent this in) by Michel Hoebink, the celebrated "apostate of Damascus," Sadiq al-Azm, says what I have been saying for years now: that genuine Islamic reform "requires a departure from the literal text of the Koran."
What is the difference between you and modernist reformers such as Fatima Mernissi and Abdolkarim Soroush?People like Mernissi and Soroush pretend to reform Islam from the inside. They reform Islam as good Muslims. The group to which I belong does not do this. I want to reform the thinking of Muslims too, but I never pretended to do this from inside Islam or as a Muslim. I never made a concession on this matter.
So they are pretending?
Since the 19th Century, modernist thinkers have been haunted by rumours that they are not real believers, that they merely use religion as a means to mobilise people for reforms. And they even say so themselves: Until today, many of these reformers argue that, if you want to convince the people, you have to speak to them in their 'own language', that is to say: in religious terms.
This may be a valid argument, but it also reveals the instrumental way in which they think about religion.
I admit that it is easy for me to criticise them: I am a man of ideas, a public intellectual who is sometimes called upon to give his supposedly studied judgement on matters of public interest. I'm not involved in organising people and directing movements and so on.
Let me put it this way: In my view there is a division of labour in this effort of modernising Muslim societies.Both approaches are valid. We need people who work on the inside and we also need people who work from the outside. But personally I think there is a certain intellectual dishonesty in this claim to reform Islam from the inside.
Can Islam be reformed at all?
I think so, but it requires a departure from the literal text of the Koran. That's a radical step, because the Muslim masses cling to the idea that the Koran is literally true. But it is obvious that the literal text of the Koran simply cannot be applied in modern society.
Take for instance the corporal punishments prescribed in the Koran. Radical Islamists want to impose them, but they are a minority.The majority of Muslims have split personalities on this matter: They insist that this is the penal law of Islam and at the same time they admit that it is inapplicable. What I propose is to resolve this contradiction and officially state that the shari'a corporal punishments are obsolete.
The problem is that most of my colleagues who claim to reform Islam from the inside do not address this problem, probably because they fear it will alienate them from their audiences. Modernists such as Fatima Mernissi keep playing this game of quoting texts of Koran and Prophetic Traditions in support of their case, implicitly assuming the literal truth of these texts. And if they do not find anything that supports them, they twist and torture the meaning of the text until it suits their demands.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at March 28, 2007 7:29 AM
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Ameen
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at March 28, 2007 7:54 AM
Thx, Robert, for the interesting article.
I think it's very heartening to read about sensible people because it gives you hope.
If this view was common in the Mideast we wouldn't have all the problems we do with it. Even Israel could be live a normal life and be integrated into the community. I think it's ironic that Islamic rejection of Israel has resulted in Israel becoming like Fort Apache, whereas acceptance would tend to open it up.
at March 28, 2007 7:56 AM
Understanding the demographics and education level of >1 billion Muslims I think this is wildly wishful thinking. Because of the political and social directives of Islam it cannot experience reform as suggested.
Reform--no.
Convert--yes!
Posted by: turn at March 28, 2007 8:03 AM
As far as the West is concerned, Islam mostly went to sleep after the 17th century, after their expansion was stopped at the gates of Vienna. It only re-awakened when oil revenues enabled the Saudis to fund lots of radical madrassas and install radical imams in mosques worldwide.
The Saudis realize that their oil revenues cannot last forever. In anticipation of that day, they are trying to instigate an Islamic takeover of Europe through massive immigration. The loot of Europe can keep things going for long enough to try to perform a takeover of the rest of the world
Posted by: PapaBear at March 28, 2007 8:13 AM
As long as the Koran is at the heart of Islam it can never be reformed. And just like removing the heart from someone's body Islam would simply cease to be Islam without its central document.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at March 28, 2007 9:22 AM
Islam means peace. Why should you reform that?
Posted by: FreeSpeech at March 28, 2007 9:33 AM
Interesting, but a lost cause
Islam does not need reform, it needs to be abandoned, wholesale.
Posted by: UK Infidel Lover at March 28, 2007 9:47 AM
Excellent writing as usual by Robert Spencer, but IMHO he & other scholars, in trying to get reform-leaning Muslims to actually reject specific Quranic verses as non-divine or corrupted, need to emphasize over & over the shaky nature of the very sources for the Quran & Hadiths. I mean the various verses of the Quran were not even assembled together and codified as the Quran until decades after Muhammad’s death, and they were assembled largely from bits and scraps of texts and put into length-ordered sequence probably because they didn’t know the chronology.
The reliability of the sources of the needed Hadiths (controversial even among Muslims) are even much worse given how they were filtered out from a huge number of claimants and codified much later. And note repeatedly how the long it took the first biographies of Muhammad to appear. By modern historical standards the documentation is very shabby and suspect and the Quran is hardly to be taken literally by rational persons. Even the abrogation verse 2:106 in the Quran itself is testimony to this. Mr Spencer and other scholars can speak to all this much better than I but I think it needs to be harped on.
Also, IMO, surprisingly lame apologetics like
http://www.brifkani.com/who_wrote_the_quran.htm should be repeatedly demolished.
I suspect that it is because the Quran rests on such obviously shaky foundations that there is so much resistance by Muslims to textual reform: it looks like even a little cutting at it could bring the entire edifice down. But good luck.
at March 28, 2007 9:55 AM
If you want Islam to reform, you might as well ask the Muslims to abandon their religion completely. I dont see the difference.
To change Islam in any way, shape, or form is to say we mortal human beings know better than God. He (God) was so behind that he forgot our time would come. This is blasphemy....
Posted by: Abdullah at March 28, 2007 11:07 AM
For a Reformation there has to be an acceptance that the Koran is a human-transmitted (thus fallible) document (since no human is perfect).
Mohammad was illiterate, so his words were written down by others. He died and the scattered fragments of his sayings were then edited and collected by a later Caliph who destroyed all varient "Korans".
So this is NOT Mohammad's Koran, but a Caliph's determination of what the Koran SHOULD PROBABLY BE.
With this ingress into a re-interpretation of the document, there might be some hope.
But this will take a rational approach to what has been sanctified irrationlism for a millenia.
There's a chance, but it will take some more intelligence and humane minds within Islam than it has seen in a while.
I wish them well, because, meanwhile, they wish me ill.
Posted by: profitsbeard at March 28, 2007 11:23 AM
Profitbeard,
I swear by Allah, Muslims don't wish people like you ill. You sound like a person who is open to logic rather than demands. You sound reasonable.
First we have to both live in peace and mutual understanding. Then we can talk, debate etc about differences in our religions.
As for those who wish to cause trouble, they can only expect ill from muslims.
at March 28, 2007 11:44 AM
"To change Islam in any way, shape, or form is to say we mortal human beings know better than God."
Muslims already imply that mortal human beings know better than God -- by the sheer fact that it is human beings (Muslims, beginning with the Muslim human being Mohammed) telling us what the Truth is.
Just because Muslims claim that this Truth is divine, not human, does not prove that it is in fact divine and not human.
In fact, the very fact that Islam rests on a human Messenger is a testament to the fact that its purported divinity requires a human medium. While all other religions (including Judaeo-Christianity) accept this paradox of the divine-human encounter and consequent necessity of creaturely mediation of divine revelation, only Islam insists obtusely -- in the face of obvious self-contradiction -- that its revelation is utterly and absolutely free of such mediation.
And Muslims cannot offer proof of their claim; all they can do is assert it, and then when pressed, try to rest on circular logic ("it's the divine truth because the Qur'an says it's the divine truth" -- how do you know the Qur'an is divine? "because the Qur'an says so").
At the end of the day, it is human Muslims claiming that Islam is divine. And their obtuse and gracelessly unpoetic intransigence (not assuaged by some of their cleverer, more nuanced snake-oil sophists) only makes their claim all the more preposterous.
Posted by: remote_control at March 28, 2007 11:55 AM
Islam needs the Prince of Peace in the answer of the New Convenant and not old rites of Islam.
Posted by: Lame Cherry at March 28, 2007 12:12 PM
"To change Islam in any way, shape, or form is to say we mortal human beings know better than God. He (God) was so behind that he forgot our time would come. This is blasphemy...."
One can't blasphemy against something that doesn't exist.
Allah is not the God of Abraham and Jesus. He is a figment of Muhammad's emagination.
The personalities of Muhammad's Allah of the Koran and Abraham's God of the Bible are two different personalities.
Once you realize this central fact, you'll be a free person.
Posted by: rational at March 28, 2007 2:06 PM
Abdullah applies Muhammedan logic:
I swear by Allah, Muslims don't wish people like you ill. You sound like a person who is open to logic rather than demands. You sound reasonable.
* Blashphemers or those who critizice or question the profit are killed in the Islamic countries, or are they not, Abdullah?
First we have to both live in peace and mutual understanding. Then we can talk, debate etc about differences in our religions.
* Generally, we in the west live in peace and we do have a lot of understanding. It is the Muhammedans who inflict terror upon us, since 1400 years...
* Debates' with Islam? You mean Da'awa?
As for those who wish to cause trouble, they can only expect ill from muslims.
* Whom are you threatening here, Abdullah? Who is causing you trouble? Anyone who doesn't submit?
at March 28, 2007 2:43 PM
ISLAM IS FROM THE EVIL ONE
why do muslims like abdullah find it so easy to swear by allah?
because theirs is the religion of the anti-Christ!
Jesus said:
33 "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.' 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply 'Yes,' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. [f]
Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at March 28, 2007 6:19 PM
Ynkedoodl2,
You hit it right out of the ballpark. This is why Islam can never be reformed, because it is a complete contradiction of the truth of the Christian faith.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at March 28, 2007 8:43 PM
What Ynkedoodl2 said.
To add with:
Revelations 22:18
Nothing is to be added to the word of God (as Islam has done) and nothing is to be removed from the word of God (as Islam has done).
Posted by: abad at March 29, 2007 2:52 AM
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