The question of ”progressive” Islam is a thorny one. At a time when Muslims the world over feel that their future is under threat, and when conspiracy theories abound about attempts to undermine Islam from within and without, any attempt to work towards a radical rethinking of Muslim norms, values and praxis is bound to solicit controversy and suspicion, if not outright resistance or even violent reaction.
But some honest and objective questioning is long overdue. In many Muslim societies today practices that have nothing to do with Islam, or which may even be contrary to the values of Islam, are being reproduced and re-enacted as if they were articles of faith. The systematic marginalisation and disempowerment of Muslim women, for example, is one glaring example of how Islamic orthodoxy has been put to work to serve the interests of patriarchy and the status quo in many societies.
For these simple reasons there has to be a shift in the way in which contemporary Islamic thought is developed. The calls for a progressive Islamic praxis are not simply coming from outside the Muslim community, but increasingly from within. Yet despite the demands for change and introspection, the progressive current seems weak. Why?
The starting point is the simple fact that any ”progressive” school of Islamic thought has to begin from premises that are recognisably Islamic. Here the vocabulary and grammar is of crucial importance: ”progressive Islam” has to be recognised as something that progresses naturally and easily from Islam itself, and not some genetically modified, user-friendly version that has all sorts of trendy and sexy concepts grafted on to it for reasons of political correctness or public relations. Furthermore, it should be noted that the Muslim public is not entirely blind to the (often clumsy) attempts to ”modify” Islam to suit other agendas.
The development of an organic progressive Islamic discourse is hardly going to be an easy task. For a start, the political realities of many Muslim countries — where authoritarian regimes often work hand-in-glove with reactionary conservative religious forces to perpetuate the status quo — make it extremely difficult for new progressive voices to be heard. The culture of hate speech, intimidation and slander has become so commonplace in the battle for ideas that they have become routine and regarded as the norm of public debate in many cases. How often have we heard progressive intellectuals and scholars bemoan their fate and utter the lamentable cry: ”It’s just a matter of time before I get that bullet between my eyes”?
Resisting the occupation of Iraq is clearly justified. But despite the brutality of the occupiers, senseless killings and kidnappings with horrific endings on the part of Iraqis cannot go unchallenged. This brutality is often in violation of what Islam commands during conflict. In such a context the emergence of a progressive current may seem impossible, but a discourse of free speech and open intellectual engagement, making respect for religious differences a reality and dialogue less hazardous than it is today, can go a long way towards defining Iraq’s uncertain future.
A complicating factor in the search for a new discourse is the uneven power differentials between East and West — and within many Muslim societies themselves — which often leads emerging progressive voices to seek help and refuge in the arms of like-minded intellectuals, NGOs, donor agencies and/or governments abroad.
Even more contentious is the need for Muslims to discuss openly and frankly issues that have come to the fore over the past few decades, including gender equality, racism and anti-racism, class and power differentials. Because so many conservative Muslim scholars have come to regard these concerns as external to Islam and alien to the corpus of traditional Islamic discourse, the issues themselves have been cast as ”secular”, ”Western” or even ”anti-Islamic”.
The plight of millions of Muslim women who suffer from the very real effects of patriarchy therefore remains unaddressed. Is it any surprise then that so many Muslims have turned to so-called Western NGOs to seek redress for problems that originate within contemporary Islam, when they could and should be looking for the solutions to these problems in their own societies? Yet whenever Muslim intellectuals, scholars, feminists and minority groups have tried to raise these concerns they have been systematically vilified and demonised, and have often been hounded out of their communities by the self-proclaimed ”defenders of the faith”.
Here then lies the problem faced by progressive Islamic thought today: due to the apparent ossification of debate and self-critique within the Muslim world, the respect for alterity and difference among Muslims has waned to an all-time low. The oppositional dialectics between the West and Islam have further entrenched the cultural, religious and ideological divide between the two sides, making dialogue itself a hazardous venture that few would attempt. Lost in the midst of this are the minorities within the Muslim world who are not trained as scholars of Islam, and are thus not ”qualified” to speak on matters Islamic.
It should be obvious to us by now that the rhetoric of the ”golden age” of Islam is simply that: empty rhetoric that has little relevance in the face of today’s reality. The progressive current, if it is to emerge at all, will have to burst the banks of conservative dogma that have thus far been reinforced by both Muslim conservatives and authoritarian statist elites. This cannot and will not be an easy or pleasant task, and can only lead to antagonism and conflict. But perhaps we might as well admit that by now change will not come easily to Muslim countries, and that a reformation of Islam from within can only be achieved through such antagonism and the productive ambiguities therein.
Crisis may, after all, be the best and sole ally of the progressive forces today.
Farish Noor is a researcher at the Centre for Modern Orient Studies in Berlin. Imraan Buccus is a PhD candidate at the University of Nijmegen in Holland and the Editor of Al Qalam, a progressive Southern African publication