Project Islamic Reformation
Ever since Islam and Muslims have come under the spotlight in the past two decades, there have been an increasing number of calls for a so-called reformation of Islam.
These calls often stem from very specific concerns that focus on the political dimension of Islam and the state of human rights in Muslim-majority countries. Media bias and misreporting aside, these areas do often pose tough challenges for Muslims across the world.
And the general perception in the West has been crediting Islam as the factor for this backwardness and inability to adapt with modernity. At the end of this line of argumentation, it follows that an Islamic reformation is the only way forward not only for Muslims but also for the relationship between Muslims and the West.
What these advocates for reform either don’t know or fail to highlight is that this project started way before any of these modern-day nation states even existed in the Middle East and produced some highly influential thought leaders in the Muslim world.
Muhammad Abduh the Defender of Islam
Abduh (1849–1905), an Egyptian Islamic scholar, professor, and writer, was one of the earliest reformers who spoke at length on Muslim civilization’s backwardness and inability to adapt with modernity.
He believed that Muslims had fallen behind due to the corruption of their rulers, inability of the jurists and scholars to keep the rulers in check, an outdated and regressive education system, foreign rule and hegemony, and disunity among the Muslims ummah. Further, he believed that the only reason the West had gotten ahead is that it took the best ideas from Islam and appropriated them for itself. Upon returning from France, he famously said:
I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.
Abduh’s reformist work mainly consisted of the following:
- A simplified Quranic exegesis (tafsir) accessible to the masses so they could read and interact with the primary Islamic text. He believed that every human being — ignorant or learned — should be able to understand the Quran and reflect on its message. Abduh’s exegesis project was later completed by his disciple and student, Rashid Rida.
- Acknowledging the primacy the human reason and rationality, he asserted Islam was a highly rational religion as it appealed to human reason to recognize God and His signs and that human reason in itself is capable of distinguishing right and wrong. This was in stark contrast to the idea of blind imitation (taqlid) found in Islamic jurisprudence that advocates for following past jurist’s positions without reevaluation.
- Advocated for an education reform grounded in learning Islamic ideas instead of emulation of the West. He strongly opposed the foreign missionary schools and efforts of secularists to emulate the western education model fearing the creation of a western-educated elite and inability of appropriating those ideas for Egyptian society.
- Strongly opposed ideas of polygamy and ease of divorce in Islam. He believed that Islam designates family as a unit of society and it had to be built on solid grounds. Allowance for multiple marriages and ease of divorces therefore compromised that foundation. Thus he strongly argued for monogamy and societal regulation on divorce.
- Abduh believed that veiling was not of essence in Islam and is tied to particular customs and traditions in Muslim societies. Further, he was a staunch supporter of improving the education provided to women.
Permitting women to be devoured by ignorance and be tempted by stupidity is a grave crime.
Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought
Mohammad Iqbal (1877–1938) was an Indian Muslim philosopher, poet and intellectual who was deeply concerned with the plight of Muslims living under British hegemony in the Indian subcontinent.
Iqbal was a prolific writer and poet who wrote at length on mysticism, the self, spirit of Islam, and Muslim resurgence and revival. Iqbal was concerned with the intellectual stagnation of the Muslim civilization and called for its restoration.
Iqbal’s reformist ideas called for the reconstruction of religious thought, or reinterpretation of Islam to adapt to modernity. His key ideas consisted of:
- God’s revelation to the Prophet Mohammad was divine affirmation of the necessity of developing human reason and intellect. The termination of prophethood and the purpose of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect. Further, Islam’s constant appeal to observe nature and history is testimony to the primacy of human intellect. Therefore, Muslims must focus on their intellectual development.
- Belief that Islam rejects blood-relationships, ties to race, ethnicity or nationality as a source of identity. Instead, the foundation of human unity is purely spiritual in origin. This allows for creation of new relationships between people across the world that transcend race, culture, language or religion.
- Reviving Ijtihad (independent reasoning) as the principle movement of Islam that can be used as a source of knowledge and method for uncovering moral truths, instead of following positions of jurists established in the early centuries of Islam in a very different time and place.
Blood-relationship is earth-rootedness. the search for a purely psychological foundation of human unity becomes possible only with the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin…And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature.
Maududi Articulating the Highest Aspirations of Humanity
Abul A’la Maududi (1903–1979) was a Indian Muslim scholar, writer, leader and theologian who was incredibly influential in the development of a political ideology for Muslims as a defense against colonial oppression, the rise of communism and the sectarian tensions in the Indian subcontinent.
Maududi had a lasting impact on the Muslim intelligentsia of his time with his highly detailed and comprehensive works on the political view of Islam. He wrote extensively and some of his ideas on politics were pioneering.
Maududi’s key reformist ideas consisted of the following:
- The cause of Muslim decline was their deviation from the values and norms espoused by true Islam and the way only restoring Muslims to their past glory was implementing the purified version of Islam.
- Islam has provided humanity with individual as well as collective responsibilities in order for humanity to live in peace, harmony and free from discord and chaos. These collective duties consist of resisting, opposing and combating evil to one’s greatest capacity without wealth, property or fame as primary desires.
- Muslims have a duty to establish a society with the highest levels of ethics and morality as its foundation in order to support humanity in achieving its highest aspirations.
- The only way of truly reforming Islam is by missionary and educational activities to create consensus among the population that Islam is the best system, as opposed to forcefully implementing Islamic ideology which would amount to totalitarianism.
The Muslim collective has been internally battling these ideas for a long time. This landscape of dialogue may seem static to the uninformed outside observer, but to this day there continues to be a dynamic internal dialogue that shapes the thoughts and ideas of Muslims around the world.
