The “clash of civilisations” supposedly under way between the West and the Muslim world, which many see as manifested in Iraq, as well as in Saudi Arabia’s growing violence, masks other conflicts that will probably prove to be more significant. One of these struggles is taking place among Muslims themselves over the shape of reform within their own societies.
The Muslim reformist tradition — the search for an authentic path that links Islam’s traditions to the modern world — has deep roots, stretching back to the middle of the 19th century. Back then, Muslim thinkers contrasted the decline of their own societies with Europe’s dynamism, a painful distinction in light of European successes in colonising large parts of the Muslim world. Then, too, Muslim intellectuals focused on the “decadence” of Muslim societies, their debilitating corruption.
Many early Muslim reformists were members of a tiny minority who had been educated in the written heritage of Islam. Far beyond Qur’anic recitation, these men aspired to participate in the centuries-long discussions among Muslim scholars about the proper ordering of Muslim life.
Their judgement was clear: Muslims had sunk below what their religion required them to be, and lagged behind the accomplishments of their ancestors. For the reformers, normality meant the progressive development of Muslim societies, and they tied this to the interaction of Islamic teaching with relevant, worldly ideas of the time — rationality, tolerance and ethically determined behaviour.
These early reformers, among them Muhammad Abduh and Jamaleddin al-Afghani, did not ignite the mass mobilisation they hoped for. But their influence was powerful and extended in directions they could not have anticipated.
The paradox here is that the open-minded reformism they espoused helped stir conservative trends among Islamic thinkers, who seized on the reformists’ revival of Islamic norms to urge a return to the “purity” of the first Islamic societies.
This conservative trend did not maintain the reformists’ engagement with the ideas of the European Enlightenment, arguing instead that these represented a further estrangement from authentic Islamic values.
Thus, the most lasting effect of the first reformist wave was the establishment of a salafi (traditionalist) trend and the emergence of an even more radical fundamentalism. Both traditionalists and fundamentalists were drawn to political activism and came to regard the state as a means to liberate Muslims from foreign domination and to re-Islamicise society.
Today, we can see the force of this ideology, but it would be a mistake to assume that the spirit of the original Muslim reformists has vanished. Out of the spotlight, countless Muslim scholars and academics have continued to probe the connections between Islamic thought and modern values.
Drawing on critical scholarship in history and theology, they have detailed the ways in which Muslims have changed their traditions in different times and places. Thus a sharp, focused challenge to the assertions of religious orthodoxy has emerged in the work of such important thinkers as Abdolkarim Soroush (Iran), Abdelmajid Charfi (Tunisia), Fazlur Rahman (Pakistan), and Mahmud Muhammad Taha (Sudan).
While their work encounters resistance from traditionalist circles, these contemporary reformers have had a big impact on a rising generation of Muslim intellectuals.
The reformists of the first wave attempted to “re-open the doors of ijtihad [religious interpretation]” in order to adapt the inherited systems of Islamic thinking to new conditions. Today’s reformists are attempting to separate the core ethical principles of Islam from the historical adaptations conservatives have enshrined as sacred.
By engaging fully with the main currents of modern thinking, they seek to better understand how universal principles can be expressed through Muslim tradition. — Â