Islam Confronts Its Demons (What if bin Ladenism IS the reform?)

"And once again wars of religions are ready to devastate Europe. Boheman, leader and agent of a new sect of "purified" Christianity, has just been arrested in Sweden, and the most disastrous plans were found among his papers. The sect to which he belonged is said to want nothing less than to render itself master of all the potentates of Europe and their subjects. In Arabia new sectarians are emerging and want to purify the religion of Mahomet. In China even worse troubles, still and always motivated by religion, are tearing apart the inside of that vast empire. As always it is gods that are the cause of all ills." – Diary of the Marquis de Sade, quoted by Abdelwahab Meddeb in The Malady of Islam

Why has Islam, unlike its close cousins Christianity and Judaism, not undergone a reformation? The question may sound reasonable. Yet often as not, those who pose it forget that in the Christian case, at least, reformation was a painfully long procedure. They tend to neglect the gory episodes, and the intricate debates about doctrine, and think instead of the end result that Westerners live with today, something that the Moroccan philosopher Abdou Filali-Ansary aptly calls a state of "disenchantment" with pure religious dogma in favor of the ethical principles that underlie it, such that "faith becomes a matter of individual choice and commitment, not an obligation imposed on the community."[1] And that, of course, is as much a product of the Enlightenment as of the Reformation.

Those who know Islamic history have even better reason to find the question puzzling. The fact is that since its inception fourteen centuries ago, Islam has undergone bursts of reformation. Like other religions, it has splintered into myriad sects and sub-sects, each claiming to be the properly "reformed" variant of the faith. The biggest division is that between Sunnis and Shias, which, although its origins lie in the conflict over succession to the Prophet Muhammad's rule, soon took on doctrinal dimensions that grew increasingly hard to resolve. But while Shiism continued up until the nineteenth century to sprout esoteric offshoots (such as the Alawites in Syria or the Bahai in Iran), the much larger Sunni branch has maintained a surface unity, even as vying factions within it have periodically laid claim to being truer believers than their rivals.

Within Sunni Islam, reformers have always chosen one of two paths. Followers of the first trend might be described as literalists, meaning they have sought a return to the letter of Islam's founding texts, namely, the Koran, the hadiths, or recorded sayings of the Prophet, and the sunna, or recorded doings of the Prophet. The other trend could be called proto-humanist, meaning that they have sought to break free of the texts, reinterpreting them or filtering them in search of a presumed essence that may be more appropriate to temporal or spiritual needs.

Such attempts at reform through more flexible interpretation have often proved shallow and short-lived A good example is the Mu'tazelite movement of eighth and ninth-century Iraq, whose ideas of free will rationalism, and the need to understand the Koran withi its historical context were ultimately rejected by th Muslim mainstream as too dangerous a departure. Thei analytical methods remained influential, however, as did those of other Greek-inspired Muslim philosophers suc as Avicenna and Averroes, whose liberalizing notion were, in the end, similarly dismissed by more powerfu orthodox schools. Sufism, with its emphasis on spiritua content rather than ritual form, was an early but endurin application of such efforts to exalt individual appreciatio of the faith over legalistic norms.

Think of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Luther, Calvin, and others were all FAR more conservative than the Church, and claimed that authority derived from the Bible and not the Pope. They were railing against the various sins of the church, and grew a significant following. The "calming" of religious fighting took place once the Church was hopelessly divided YEARS later.

If the Wahabi-ists weren't so big on killing us, we probably should just leave them alone, and once they get enough rope to hang themselves, the moderates will hang the leaders, and the many groups (not just 2, but (possibly) dozens) will get tired of squabbling with each other and become peaceful, or lose out to the other groups. There will be more conflict now, but less later on.

The Islamic extremist syllogism is as follows:

If we follow Allah we will be exalted above all others.
The west (east, south, Christians, Hindus, whatever) are kicking our butts.
Therefore we are not following Allah.

Therefore we need to become more extremist..
The more extremist we become the more the west (east, south, Christians, Hindus, whatever) kick our butts.
This is evidence that we are not following Allah.
This means we must become even more extreme.

What we have here is a never-ending positive feedback loop.

Ultimately, social systems and religions are judged by their members for what they can provide to improve the members lives and the futures of their children. In recent times, that has been pretty much nothing.

The extremists have managed to externalize the anger felt by the members of the Arab and Islamic society. American and Israel are the scapegoats and they portray Islam/Arab culture as being humiliated by these scapegoats and responsible for all of its failures. Much in the same way that Chinese governments point anger outside whenver internal pressures increase.

Such a thing can succeed in the short run, but not in the long run. Unless Arabic/Islamic society can somehow reform itself, the people will sooner or later look for alternatives that will improve their lives and futures.

The primary model for them to look towards will be the non-Arabic Islamic states such as Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia which, despite their many problems, have had much more success with a more secular culture.

Success in Iraq could go a long way towards starting such a trend. It all depends on whether the Iraqi people have reached the point of frustration and grab for a lifeline.

re: Why has Islam, unlike its close cousins Christianity and Judaism, not undergone a reformation? )))

Could it be--there is nothing to reform, because there's so little to this cult in the first place?

I encourage all on FR to pick up the Koran, and the Sayings of Mohammed and read them. These works are wretchedly boring--maunderings of an illiterate obsessed first with his sexual appetites. There is nothing remotely challenging in these works--they are without depth, without richness, without beauty or direction--they uplift no spirit nor clear any thinking. Frankly, Islam is an undemanding theology ideal for the shallow and the stupid, the cruel and the lazy...

Adherents will progress to nowhere, because there is no nourishment in these works.

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