What kind of reaction do you think Soheib Bencheikh, who is a member of the French Council for the Muslim Religion and head of the French Institute for Islamic Science, as well as a candidate for President of France, will get to this? Will his words be welcomed and taken to heart? Or will he be treated like Jamal Miftah? Probably he will get a little of both. “Former Marseilles Mufti Soheib Bencheikh: ‘Islam Must Be Criticized, Just as Christianity Was [Criticized] During the Enlightenment; Islam is a Message for All Humanity — Therefore It Is Not the Property of Muslims [Alone],'” from MEMRI:
Bencheikh says that Islam came into being in tribal societies and is still focused on the tribal lifestyle. Thus, he says, it should be reformed to address the needs of modern life: “…Religious teachings were developed and formulated between the eighth and 12th centuries, and have not undergone any reform or updating since that time… In the 60s, most Muslim countries chose political modernity. Most of them became either republics or constitutional monarchies. But these choices remained completely theoretical. [There] was no reform to [adapt] Muslim theology to this historical transformation. Consequently, [Muslims today] experience a dangerous discrepancy between their status as citizens and their status as believers…
I have maintained just this for years: that there has been no significant Islamic theological movement to buttress the cultural Islam that has prevailed in areas of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere for several centuries now. Consequently cultural Muslims in those areas are vulnerable to jihad recruitment based on Qur’an and Sunnah.
“This static theology we inherited was conceived for an Islam that was the religion of the majority and had sovereignty over its lands. Moreover, it was conceived for tribal societies. This theology was meant for times when nations hardly came into contact [with each other] – and if they did, it was in a spirit of rivalry for dominance. This theology could not care less about living in harmony with other cultures, and knows nothing of pluralism based on universal principals like secularism and religious freedom – [principles that are] applicable to all religions and granted to all.” [3]
Bencheikh also explains that Islamic jurisprudence was aimed at managing Muslim life in a tribal society and must therefore be reformed: “[To take] Islamic jurisprudence – which was inherited from [tribal] societies – and turn it into a kind of universal jurisprudence applicable to all periods means to ‘bedouinize’ Islam and prevent Islamic societies from evolving… In Algeria, for example, fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] is still applied… If I divorce my wife, she will have to leave our apartment with her children. Why is it like that? Because at a time when life was organized into tribes – and not into city blocks [as in modern times] – the divorced wife had to leave her husband’s clan in order to go back to her father’s clan. [In fiqh,] nothing has changed, even though the social framework has changed completely.”
Political Islam Is Heresy
Bencheikh states that political Islam is a heresy promoted by the Arab states: “The first heresy in Islam in the 20th century was the politicization of Islam. As soon as Muslim countries became independent came the birth of political Islam – i.e. a kind of Islam that is dictated by the state, obeys only the state, and is merely an organ of the state – since it helps the state to increase its power and oppress the people… We are all familiar with the failures and the bloody [inclinations] of political Islam.
“In the Muslim countries, the state still pays the imams’ salaries. It is the state that promotes Islam – but what kind of Islam? The kind of Islam that is not familiar with [the concept of] citizenship, but only [the concept of] subjects; the kind of Islam that is not familiar with [the concept of] a state [based on citizens’] rights, but only with the rights of the prince; the kind of Islam that is not familiar with democratic elections or with the free expression of a sovereign people, but only with the oath of allegiance [to the ruler].
“I am convinced that the Islamic state promotes its own destruction by teaching a kind of Islam that does not reform itself, and that still relates to traditional, patriarchal and tribal societies.” [4]
Bencheikh draws a distinction between Islam as a humanist religion and Islam as a political tool, stating that Muslim theologians have a responsibility to promote humanistic Islam: “It is up to us Muslims who are versed in religious science to make the distinction, in the minds of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, between a religion based on spirituality, humanism, and civilization [on the one hand], and a purely instrumental use [of religion], which aims at seizing worldly, material power [on the other]…” [5]
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