Posted on 09/25/2001 1:18:32 AM PDT by JasonC
I also offer it because, like the author of this article, I think Rahman's thought is a promising way forward, or at the very least that he has raised the right issues moderate Muslims will have to grapple with. I had the benefit of studying with the man briefly in the last years of his life, while he taught at the University of Chicago. He was a kind, urbane, measured, and impressively learned old gentleman.
A partial glossary of terms used in the article may be helpful. More detail about the nuances of each term are discussed in the body of the article.
sunna - exemplary conduct, moral example, precedent, tradition
ijtihad - interpretation
ijma - consensus, especially agreement of faithful muslims
ulama - body of religious scholars, divines
hadith - narration, especially reports of actions of Muhammad or his Companions
r'ay - opinion, especially personal
qi'ya - analogy, reasoning from similar cases
Here is a partial bibliography of Fazlur Rahman's works. The most useful for those new to the subject are "Islam" and "Islam and Modernity" -
Rahman, Fazlur (1962-3). ‘Post-Formative Developments in Islam - I’. Islamic Studies, I (4), (1962), pp. 1-23.
Rahman, Fazlur (1963). ‘Post-Formative Developments in Islam - II’ Islamic Studies, II (1963), pp. 297-316.
Rahman, Fazlur (1965). Islamic Methodology in History. Karachi, Central Institute of Islamic Research. [Out of Print]
Rahman, Fazlur (1979a) ‘Islamic Studies and the Future of Islam’. In Kerr, Malcolm H. (ed.), Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, Seventh Giorgio Della Vida Conference, 1979. Malibu, Calif.; Undena Publications. Pp. 125-133.
Rahman, Fazlur (1979b). Islam. (2nd ed.) Chicago, Chicago University Press. [In Print, usually available from Dillons.]
Rahman, Fazlur (1980). Major Themes of the Qur’an. [In print, available from al-Hoda books.]
Rahman, Fazlur (1982). Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago, Chicago University Press. [In print, available from Dillons].
Rahman, Fazlur (1984). ‘Some Recent Books on the Qur’an by Western Authors’. Journal of Religion, 64 (1), (1984), pp. 73-95.
Rahman, Fazlur (1985a). ‘ Law and Ethics in Islam.’ In Hovannisian, R. (ed.), Ethics in Islam: Ninth Giorgio Levi Della Vida Conference, 1983, in Honour of Fazlur Rahman. Malibu, Calif.; Undena Publications. Pp 3-15.
Rahman, Fazlur (1985b). ‘Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies: A Review.’ In Martin, R.C. (ed.), Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Tuscon, The University of Arizona Press. Pp. 189-202, 233-234.
Rahman, Fazlur (1988a). ‘Islamization of Knowledge: A Response.’ American Journal of Islamic Social Science, Vol. 5(1), 1988, pp. 3-11.
Rahman, Fazlur (1988b). ‘Roots of Islamic Neo-Fundamentalism’. In Stoddard, P.H., Cuthell, C. and Sullivan, M.W. (eds), Change in the Muslim World. Syracuse, US; Syracuse University Press. Pp. 23-35.
Or perhaps nobody has seen it - thus this little bump...
GOP Capitalist started a thread which discusses that aspect of the question, called "Understanding Islam - from early western roots to today's fundamentalism". I encourage you to read it. Basically, a skeptical view about the power of human reason came to dominate medieval Islamic thought. Chesterton notices some similar tendencies in certain schools of modern thought in the west and explains the practical issue thus -
"...there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary... That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought... If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped." - Chesterton
The authority to engage in real interpretation must stem in the end from a confidence in the power of human reason to arrive at the truth. Early Islam had that confidence. The philosophers had that confidence. But Ghazali did not, for reasons as perennial as philosophical skepticism, of the sort you also see e.g. in Hume, or the modern relativists, or radical historicists and postmodernists. Ghazali has the additional motive that the disorganization and uncertainty he can forsee from falliable and skeptical human thought, he doubts will manage to maintain a tradition of religious orthodoxy. Whereas literalism can. In a way, he combines the motives of Hume and Luther in the west.
Rahman understood the need to revive the idea of interpretation in Islamic theology. He faces the difficulty of maintaining an flexible and living, but still orthodox tradition, squarely. For him, men must be "authorized" to engage in interpretation to adapt the moral maxims of their faith to the conditions of later times. They must trust their reason that far. The requirement of substantial (but not uniform) consensus (especially of the learned), authoritative interpretation being restricted to faithful muslims, and the status accorded to the moral principles seen in the examples of the Koran and hadith, are meant to anchor this "living tradition" process.
Many of the ideas involved in this approach are more reminiscent of the catholic position on theological interpretation in the west, rather than the most common protestant one, with its emphasis on literalism. But that analogy is not completely correct, as there remains no hierarchy or central authority governing interpretation, simply the consensus of the learned "clergy".
Certain would-be reformers of catholic practice have sometimes called for a similar role for near-consensus of the learned. The 19th century liberal catholic thinker Lord Acton did, for instance, around the time of the first Vatican council (although he, wrongly in my opinion, insisted on consensus being 'complete'). In the high middle ages, Marsilius of Padua advanced somewhat similar ideas as reforms of the papacy. Each of those men were influenced by medieval philosophy, the first in its Acquinas form, the second as Averroism. Both of those, in turn are representative of the medieval philosophy Ghazali rejected.
I hope this helps.
For the most part, at least of what I read, the article appears to me to be a collection of specific title phrases, names, and vague connections to vaguely written explanations. However, I'm not criticising it for such, as it appears to be a comprehensive summary of an in depth study. In that regard, I doubt you will find many here at FR who have studied the topic enough, to be able to formulate any opinion on the matter.
My curiosity will bring me back to this post to see if any of those who reply, actually grasp much if any of the subject matter covered. I'm sure a few will, but not very many. For those who do, I hope future discussion will lead to some simplification (progress), thus providing the rest of us with an increased understanding. In my case, I think a whole lot of simplification may be needed.
It would however be helpful, if you were a little more clear (simplifying) on:
The requirement of substantial (but not uniform) consensus (especially of the learned), authoritative interpretation being restricted to faithful muslims, and the status accorded to the moral principles seen in the examples of the Koran and hadith, are meant to anchor this "living tradition" process.
Specifically, I'm not sure what you mean by the "requirement of substantial . . .consensus" and "authoritative interpretations being restricted to the faithful..."
Fundamentalist Islam gets around the problem of wandering and different human interpretations changing the tradition out of recognition, by rigid literalism. Some fundamentalists here do so, too e.g Bapists of the Bob Jones variety. There are varying degrees of commitment to literalism in other Protestant denominations.
Some of the more liberal denominations just let wandering human interpretations work their will, but the result is often little better than the latest fad dressed up with a few out of context quotes. Fundamentalists here dislike that and regard the result as lacking in religious legitimacy, as just the random opinions of falliable people. Instead of modifying a tradition, tradition evaporates and you just get trendy opinion. Fear of the same sort of thing is one reason fundamentalists versions of Islam are popular.
Between these two positions there is another one possible, avoiding literalism on the one hand, and anything goes trendiness on the other. Avoiding the first necessarily implies someone can interpret the literal text, trying to preserve what is essential, but authorized to reject outdated aspects. Someone must have this authority. Avoiding the second, anything goes, necessarily imples limits on this authority, in terms of the questions decided, who decides, etc. So the authority to interpret must be limited rather than unlimited.
Summing up the previous paragraph, a limited authority to interpret away from literal meanings is the necessary condition of a flexible tradition. No such authority means no flexibility. No limits on it means no tradition. Between stagnation and aimless drift lies the option of regular reform, but reform requires definite but limited authority.
In Christendom, the catholic church has claimed such an authority and specifically vested it in a hierarchy of offices. With some questions left to bishops, others to the Pope, and the largest changes to a general council of bishops. The hierarchy filters changes proposed by theologians, the clergy, involved laymen, etc. Some other denominations agree that such an authority is needed, but disagree on who ought to exercise it (bishops, all clergy, congregations, etc). Sometimes only minor matters of church governance are covered by such authority, sometimes it extends to theological dogma.
Now, in Sunni Islam there is no hierarchy. There isn't even a legal distinction between clergy and laymen. Those thought of as "clergy" are simply the learned, religious scholars, or judges of traditional Islamic law. In practice these form a seperate body, referred to as the "ulama", but someone is a member of the ulama not by formal office, but merely because the term describes him. Shiites are different on this score, being led by ayatollahs with definite perogatives, like bishops. But for Sunnis, there is just a loose grouping of the learned, and everybody else.
So there is a difficulty about where a power to interpret can be lodged. If left to every Sunni, the result would probably not be the maintenance of a tradition. And those at all interested in Sunni Islam are generally interested in maintaining a tradition. Rather than being "liberal" and trendy like some "mainline", left-leaning denominations of protestant Christians, they'd just be secular or only marginally religious. So the reforming, interpreting authority can't be left to everyone, and there is no formal hierarchy to exercise it, as there is for catholics.
Where then does the interpreting power belong? That is the question Rahman is trying to address. Only a satisfactory answer to that question - one satisfactory to those for whom religious legitimacy and maintaining a tradition are important - can break the hold of rigid literalism among Sunni theologians. If they have to choose between literalism and chaos, they will choose literalism. If they have to choose between literalism as Sunnis, and a hierarchy as Shiites, they will choose to remain Sunnis and thus to remain literalists. What is needed is a non-literalist Sunni option, and that means some way for Sunnis to exercise an authority to interpret, without a hierarchy to do it for them and without licence for individual opinion to dissolve everything.
Rahman finds a basis for such an authority, and a means of exercising it, by examining the history of Islam, and the way things were dealt with before there was much to be so literalist about. In the early period after the Prophet, all of the later machinery of Islamic orthodoxy was in process of construction, rather than already existing as a received law. By necessity, the believers of that time exercised a sort of legislating power, as they settled a hundred questions raised by the changing condition of Islam in the world.
In terms of my analysis above, understand this is before the time of Al-Ghazali. Men were still confident in the power of human reason. Philosophy had not come in claiming "ownership" of such reasoning, in support of proposition that seemed doubtful. Skepticism about human reason had not yet been reached for as a sort of ward against such intrusions. Men reasoned confidently, with their own natural faith in their ability to find out the truth.
So what did they do? They did not listen to outsiders but legislated for themselves, of course. Only the voices of believing Muslims were listened to on questions of internal Muslim government and traditions. And they appealed to the moral examples in both the Koran, and in oral traditions about actions of Muhammad or his companions (Hadith, later written down). But they made these appeals not based on any literalism, but reasoning by analogy from the moral principle they saw in these sources. And then they settled such questions by an effective consensus among the learned. Which did not need to be total - some dissenters made no difference. And the process did not have to be formalized into parliaments, like Christian general councils. Islamic judges referred to consensus and precedent, in a sort of common law.
Rahman essentially argues that the authority so exercised back then was legitimate, was not any sort of usurpation or corruption of an imagined literalist purity. And the same sort of procedure provides a safe and legitimate place for the authority to interpret, including the authority to modify literalist readings, to drop outdated views, to preserve the best moral sense of the examples of the tradtion without being tied to literalism, the particular practices, rules, punishments of the 10th century, etc.
Incidentally, an analogy to a famous case in the 19th century may help some to see the sort of issues involved. Cardinal Newman switched from the Anglican to the Catholic church over basically the same point. As an Anglican, he had argued that the Catholic Church had innovated in doctrine and that it was proper to appeal against it to the authority of tradition, especially to the tradition of the early church fathers.
When he went and looked, however, he found that the church fathers themselves did not make as much of tradition as he did. They couldn't; they had too many questions to settle about which no traditions yet existed. What he found was the church fathers themselves appealed not to tradition but to consensus among the members of the church. This authorized innovation when it was substantially agreed upon.
Newman found that he was appealing by tradition to traditional authorities, but those authorities themselves told him to trust consensus rather than tradition, and not to fear innovation. They appealed themselves to the statement in the New Testament that a gathering of Christians would be guided, not left alone, and reasoned that what Christians agreed upon was thus worthy of trust, whether traditional, literalist, or not.
Newman decided (rightly or wrongly, I am merely relating how he saw the question) that this meant the method of the Catholics in allowing innovation was safe, and that his previous reasons for rejecting it, based on what he had imagined about the importance of tradition, was untenable.
Rahman has a similar piece of scriptural authority for his ideas about consensus among believers and an authority to innovate. Muhammad stated that "the community of believers will not agree on an error". The debator's point turns on whether an agreement needs to be total for this saying to apply, since the literalist can always say -he- doesn't agree with interpretion X. But assuming a substantial consensus is all that is meant, this authorizes innovation, if the body of believing Muslims agrees on the innovation. It allows reform through a kind of democracy or consent.
The particular passage in my earlier remarks that had you wondering, was about all of this. Rahman's approach is opposed by some fundamentalist Muslims because they fear it would leave the tradition too much adrift, compared to literalism. To them he offers three safeguards against undo chaos. One, it is the opinion of faithful Muslims that is to be considered, not those of every ideologue of some trendy outlook. Two, they are to reason by analogy from the writings of the Koran and the Hadith, trying to preserve the moral principle involved in a given passage, not to simply make things up as their private opinions. And three, there has to be a substantial consensus, more than a majority, of the learned in favor of an interpretation, for it to be considered authoritative.
So if most faithful Muslims are willing to set aside the literal meaning of some passage, not to overturn its moral meaning but to adapt it to modern times, they may ignore a literal meaning. This then becomes a legal precedent to which other Islamic judges can and should appeal, when deciding similar issues. A common law, consent based process of debate among scholars, should adapt Islam to the modern world. And should be accorded greater weight than literalism.
The underlying moral idea, in my opinion quite sound, is that the morals of a devout populace are a safer place to look for justice than dead letter a thousand years old. But this is not an easy decision for many to make. Bob Jones style Christian fundamentalists here are not willing to make it. In a judicial context, not everyone is willing to allow the principle in matters of our constitutional law. It is at bottom nothing less than the question of whether men govern their laws or their laws govern them. Which is the question of whether they are truly free, under a law of liberty, bound by what their consciences demand of themselves - or not.
Those who would use dead letter to claim rule over millions and direct their actions toward their own enemies, are not sympathetic to this approach. It is, in my opinion, the critical issue in the coming struggle within the Islamic world. How Islam faces and deals with modernity will depend on this queston. How the rest of the world lives with Islam will depend on the answer the Islamic world gives.
Fazlur Rahman saw all of this. The scholars have not been idle as this storm brewed. He knew what the critical issue was and is, why it was there, what in Islamic history stood in the way and what can favor, the answer that he regarded as preferable and essential. He proposed his solution out of a profound love of his own faith, and a desire to save it from a course he considered ruinous. Whether he will be listened to now, is the question. We should do what we can to see that his approach is at least respectfully considered.
I hope this is interesting.
I don't expect you to have all the answers to this question, but any insight into this question (or secretagent's question), I'm sure will be note worthy.
I've been hearing a lot of really bad stuff about Islam recently. As a non-interventionist (temporary war monger), some of the material I've recently been presented with, I'm finding quite disturbing. I do not want to become a permanent war monger. That's one of the reasons I found your post interesting.
Your reply #12 is quite helpful. Thankyou.
To date, the path of the traditionalist, or extreme movement(s) has not been significantly (enough) impeded. That is to say, the methods used, including terrorism, to spread their influence and increase their power have been "successful", and have not resulted in cataclysmic reactions from the West. "Can't we all just get along?" attempts at diplomacy and weak military countermeasures have been ineffective in persuading anyone (I use the term loosely) that "this way lies ruin."
Therefore, I believe that a massive and sustained campaign to destroy the "sponsors" and supporters of this terrorism is needed to provide the "significant emotional event" which could engender a moderate movement of overwhelming size. IMHO.
Let the bright young things in the foreign service talk to them, listen, find out what they are up against and what can help. Then work through the ambassadors in country, and through state and the cabinet over here, to do what can be done.
The immediate results may be things like exchanges of students, conferences, lectures, CSPAN presentations, publications, changes in educational policy, other policy recommendations in the host country.
It will not produce any dramatic, quick results. But in the long term, it may make a difference. And if nothing else, some decent people wrestling with a difficult problem, in ways that are profoundly in our interests and theirs, may see the effort is appreciated.
Rahman was at one time a highly respected figure in Pakistan. He had a crack at reforming their education system himself back in the 1960s, but encountered serious resistence. That was before he had worked out his whole, nuanced understanding of the issue and its problems. The less strident religious people in the country, especially those with a basically nationalist political orientation, may be open to his ideas.
In some other places (e.g. in Algeria, to a lesser extent Turkey), his ideas may be useful in other ways, to moderate somewhat the sometimes illiberal anti-religious policies sometimes engaged in by governments fearful of the influence of Islamic fundamentalism. Just dislike of Islam and repression, can wind up creating recruits for the extremists. Whereas reform ideas can accomodate the value many see in their traditional faith, without delivering people into the hands of the extremists.
As for the perception that Islam has all sorts of bad things wrapped up in it, that is certainly true, as things are today. The more the majority stays trapped in literalism, the more this is so. It is easy to see why. Literalism means making the historic practices of the 7th to 10th centuries a normative model for current actions and attitudes. Just as excessive literalism about Leviticus, or reflections on the political and military practices of the ancient Israelites, would produce unduly harsh practices here.
We often forget how general the problem was. Religious tolerance is a recent achievement in the west, historically speaking. Even after it was recognized in principle, it was often lacking in practice, and modern ideologies often repeated the same stance as previous religious intolerance. Nor was this problem denominational; it was quite general.
Some debators and apologists right now pretend that anything intolerant in the history of Christianity was an aberration, but this is a whitewash of the historical facts. I am not speaking of the origin of Christianity, to be sure. But every denomination, when it had power to do so, practiced intolerance (except the Quakers, perhaps a few others that late).
Luther and Calvin approved the suppression of heresy by violence. The puritans in Massachussets hanged Quakers on Boston common. A catholic king of France ordered all protestant subjects in his domains to be killed. The inquisition was not formally disbanded until the 19th century. Anti religious sentiment was just as extreme. The French revolutionaries cried "all the bishops to the lamposts". Confiscations of property simply because of the denomination that controlled it was a regular feature of European civil war and insurrection until the 19th century. And these practices extend nearly as far in the other direction. Suppression of heresy was nearly the first use the established church made of its power, once recognized by Rome. In the high middle ages, some Popes (ones not indeed renowned for their piety) claimed a right to rule every country in the world.
There were better men too, of course, who opposed unjust practices, however speciously argued. The point is merely that no doctrine has ever been immune to intolerance, and that tolerance established as a principle is of comparatively recent date.
It matters, then, whether contemporaries can provide their own input about the nature of justice. Contemporaries have something quite important to say about the matter. And if a religious tradition is sealed against all internal reform, then such input can only occur as hostility to that tradition, in toto.
The great calamity in that, is that many people will have attachments to both sides, some to the better aspects of a tradition they see threatened by outside hostility, others against a tradition that seems deaf to demands for obvious justice. The extremists gain as allies everyone who has seen anything good in one of the great monotheisms. Not the way we'd like to go if we can help it.
But for those who see good things in their religious traditions to also abide by modern standards of tolerance, they have to see, not an irreconcilable clash between them, but a way to preserve what is best, while modifying what can be improved. Literalism will always see any claim of improvement as a usurpation by mere men of a perogative not properly theirs. Because tolerance was nowhere to be found in the 7th century, a truly rigid literalism will never approve tolerance.
That is why I said earlier, that the way Islam answers the question of legitimate interpretion and reform, will determine how it deals with the modern world, and the modern world's relationship to Islam will depend on that answer.
The history of Islam contains lessons enough for them to learn what they need to know. They do not lack men of conscience or insight to show them justice. It is a question of whether they hold themselves free, as a people or as a civilization, to legislate equitably based on such lessons. Or whether they choose to view themselves as incapable of arriving at knowledge of such things, and therefore as bound to dead letter a thousand years old.
We cannot make that choice for them. Some will choose wrongly, and many or few, sooner or later, we will have to fight those who do so. The more choose rightly, the less they will hurt us and the less we will hurt them. In the end, they can only cease to be our enemies by becoming their own masters, by assuming the difficult authority to think for themselves, instead of letting an old book do it for them.
Rahman has shown at least one way that leads to that end. For that he deserves praise, and his ideas deserve a wider audience.
There is also another book I recommend, by a man named Leonard Binder, called "Islamic Liberalism". It is not an easy book for an outsider to the field, but for foreign service types dealing with this issue it may be worth mastering its contents. It examines numerous recent (well, 70s and 80s) movements of thought within Islam that contain elements favorable to democracy. Which does not always mean pro-western. But it might help to get a sense of the lay of the land, for people whose business is to know such things.
I hope this helps.
And no major western country is seriously pacifist, either. Some sects, like the Quakers, and some callings, like missionaries, some thinkers, like idealistic theologians - are committed to pacifism. The United States is not; it has a "vital national interest" doctrine instead. The Catholic Church is not; it has a just war doctrine instead. Hypocrasy on this subject at this moment helps absolutely no one.
We don't expect Islam to become Quakerism - and we aren't about to take what happened in New York like Quakers ourselves. Not all struggle is merely metaphorical, for us or for them. But terrorism is something beyond war between states, for it seeks to destroy that which allows states themselves to exist. That being responsible authorities in charge of all use of force from a given part of the earth, wielding that force for vital interests.
Even that is seperate from the larger question about religious tolerance. Our demand that Islam learn the lessons of religious tolerance is not a call from them to become pacifist, and it is something beyond calling on them to renounce and suppression disorganized terrorism. It is instead something applicable both within and between states - even states that do not tolerate terrorism, and even states that do sometimes fight wars with each other.
It is a lesson western civilization learned at great cost in blood and treasure during the early modern period. That religious war is more war than it is religious. That it corrupts consciences, debases religion, can make some states well nigh demonical; and all in all, that it is one of the greatest scourges that human wickedness can inflict on mankind. We hope Islamic civilization can learn this lesson rather more cheaply than we did. And do not relish paying full price to learn it all over again as their instructors.
I nominate you to head our Department of Middle Eastern Affairs, or whatever they call it. Until we find a way to climb out of these foreign entanglements...
I am currently questioning my own anti-interventionist beliefs. Not just on the immediate crises created by the airlines murders of 9-11, but on Islam as a whole. The question I'm asking myself, is this:
Is Islam actually a large scale, international murder cult (as opposed to being a religion)? And if so, does it pose enough threat to civilization everywhere, that it needs to be eradicated from the earth? And of course, is it reasonably possible to do so?
I honestly do not ask these questions of my own beliefs lightly. I am a radical libertarian, who has generally sided with the Islamic's against the U.S./Israel interests in the past. I want to believe that Islam is/can be a religion, like any other religion. But elsewhere (not on this thread), a good amount of disturbing information about Islam has been coming my way.
I'll be back later to respond to the above replies.
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