Posts
Battleground Quranica
By Ali Eteraz / September 11, 2007
Sunni Islam is undergoing a gigantic tug-of-war – a power struggle – in which competing versions of the religion are facing off against one another. The struggle, with consequences that manifest themselves in terms of dead bodies and violent accusations of heresy, is at its heart, an aesthetic one: how does one arrange the sources of Islam? This article is an effort to catalogue that discussion. It might seem pithy and even irrelevant at time, but the fundamental questions about Islam today – the place of women, the place of minorities, the rights of non-combatants, the limits placed upon the various nation-states, the death penalty of apostasy and blasphemy, censorship, the organization of parliamentary (or one party) systems, Muslim democracy, Muslim republicanism, Islamism, Israel, oil and so on – all hinge on a) whose narrative about how Islam’s sources are arranged emerges victorious, and b) which narrative does the economically and militarily powerful West decide to empower.
The general trend among academics in the West is to list four or five presumably “standard” sources of Islam and then say “well, here are the ones the Salafis do not accept and add, here the ones the Wahhabis do not accept and add” and so on. I suppose academics do this because they see the world in terms of what is normative (within the academy) and not what is normative in terms of power. This is a flawed approach because it presumptively favors one particular brand of orthodox Sunni Muslims – the classic orthodox – which has been getting quite a proverbial beat down at the hand of the Salafis and Wahhabis for over a century. The only reason one would treat them as normative is if one a) truly believes they ought represent normative Islam (I do not), and b) truly believes that their position can address the various questions about Islam today (again, I do not). On the other hand, I am not comfortable with treating Wahhabis and Salafis as normative either – though they would just love that – because a) they do not actually have a unified method, and b) their service to a particular political ideological agenda means that we should be careful from treating them as normative. As such, I will treat only the Quran – which is to Islam what Christ is to Christianity – as normative, and explain the fascinating, contradictory and multifarious ways in which Muslims relate to it, and the massive systems they have created emanating from it. All of this becomes relevant because the fate of a billion people, and all those who are touched by them, depends on it. Pay attention.
POST A COMMENT
I used to respect you. I used to think you were a smart guy. But the more I read from you, you disprove this to me. "Wahhabi" is the derogatory term used to refer to "Salafis", they're one and the same. You talk about Wahhabis and Salafis like talking about Kikes and Jews as two different groups. The Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon, Iqbal, Osama, Mawdudi, Qaradawi, Sayyid Qutb, none of these are Salafis. Salafis are opposed to these people.The word Salafi refers to someone who follows As-Salaf As-Salih, The Righteous Predecessors, they are far from being "Modernists". I'm dissapointed in you.
was posted by your friend M. Simon
I think you leave out two of the most destructive influence from the West.
Communism/Socialism and National Socialism.
Both quasi religious doctrines disguised as political beliefs. A difficulty also seen in Islam although the emphasis may be reversed.
To become modern Islam must separate the public from the private. However, the result will be (as the “fundamentalists” do see) the end of Islam except as a vestige. Thus the war within Islam and between Islam and the West.
Islam will lose because people are human. Given the choice between heaven on earth and heaven in heaven people tend (by a wide margin) to choose the former over the latter. Material progress leads to spiritual decline.
Good comment Thabet… I wrote my comment before Ramadan began :)
I understand your perspective, as you make good points. I will keep them in mind for the future. I don’t have anything personal against Ali… the ongoing battlefront for ideas and perspectives on what truly implies Islam represents a defining age for Muslims, thus invested emotions and energy remain high.
I did not mention anything with regards to the old blog but since you bring it up, the respected non-progressive opinions no doubt existed, but in the same vein, they were present only marginally and in limited quantities. One cannot honestly let that define what the overall message stood for.
In any case, Ramadan Mubarak to both you and Ali … and I wish a blessed month to all the Jewish readers as well.
mphine: “Wahhabis” and “Salafis” and other “radical” groups might not look different to outsiders, and might even converge on certain matters, but their differences come out in different contexts (e.g. the place of the modern nation-state in Islam, the importance of the Islamic legal tradition or not, and so on).
Amad: You’re right. Ali is not an authority on Islamic law of any kind. But he did not claim that mantle in this post — you put him there.
More to the point, I think you could be charitable (especially in this month) and recognise his post was primarily ‘journalistic’ in intent and was discussing the different political and legal trends that Muslims have developed and partake in. If anything he appears to be affirming the heart of Islam, the sharia. Manji, Hirsi and other media reformists do not even recognise the sharia or simply see it as “bad”. I don’t know what authors he is pushing in the post above. Iqbal, perhaps?
Plus, if Ali is writing for Cif and Jewcy I don’t think his target is “Muslims” (Cif and Jewcy are not Muslim web portals). Brian Whitaker of Cif is at least familiar with the various currents in modern Islam, which is more than you can say for most politicians sitting on expert committees who can’t distinguish a Sunni from a Shia. In fact, Cif (Western media outlet) and WaPo’s On Faith blog (Western media outlet) are now giving voices to “mainstream” voices; look up the list of names at Cif and OF.
I know you and AE have a “history”; however, I don’t think you can say Muslims (at least not those on the web) are not paying attention to what he is saying, even given his own views which I think he accepts are not in the “mainstream”. There were hundreds of users on the old blog and voices from a wide variety of people. Both Yahya Birt and Dr. Mohammad Fadel were happy to post on his old website; they’re hardly nobodies in Western Muslim communities and both have impeccable “mainstream” credentials in terms of stature, learning, leadership etc; more than you or I or AE have anyway. Clearly they must have been listening to what AE was saying in order to post there.
And you stand on the same pedestal as AE does: if you disagree with what he has written here, why not write a counter-post on your own blog? Because your comment does not address the post; only what may or may not appear on Cif next week.
What is interesting, Ali, with all due respect, is that you have almost no credibility among the “mainstream” Muslims, yet you rant and rave as if you have some sort of legitimate authority. You have no formal Islamic training (in either Islamic or oriental institutes), you haven’t studied with any scholars, so on and so forth, so on what pedestal I pray, do you stand upon to talk about “Islamic reform”?
No doubt you have some good stuff to say on OTHER than Islam, but on the topic of Islam or your favorite “Islamic reform”, what you have to say is just plain useless because regardless of how much you hoodwink Guardian or Jewcy or whatever other organization into believing that Muslims actually pay attention to you, ultimately your story resonates among Muslims as much as the story of Manji, Hirsi (who are no doubt worse than you in their hatred of all Islam traditional) i.e. not very much at all. Of course Guardian and Western media outlets love to hear the “we must change Islam because it is so bad” and anyone with a compelling progressive story can get their word out, but ultimately what a losing proposition! Because the people who you are trying to “reform” don’t relate to the authors that you are pushing!
Of course it is your prerogative to say what you want but I find a compelling case for myself to come over here and suggest that if our brothers from other faith are looking for “mainstream” Islamic opinions, then they aren’t going to get it from you. No doubt you write well and you have interesting opinions, but if all people are looking for is fiction, then sure, go right ahead!
Amad
MuslimMatters.org: Discourses in Muslim Life
Ali,
Thanks for a very informative introduction to the subject. Its been half a dozen years since I took Intro to Islamic Law, so the historical piece served as a helpful refresher in some areas and provided new insights in other places.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and read the complete piece, but I'm not certain whether I buy into the significance of the various distinctions you attempt to draw between Salafis,Wahhabis and the splinter camps of Sunni Islamist radicals.
The larger point however, is well taken, the traditional consensus in Islamic jurisprudence has broken down, and Islam is growing through a period of painful adjustment as it searches for a new consensus. Judaism had a similar crisis in the 19th century that ultimately produced the modern denominations and Zionism. The aftershocks are still being felt, but because of our small size, our dysfunction caused barely a ripple outside of our own insular world. Islam, however, is such a large faith, that when it goes through a crisis, the entire world is impacted. Insha'allah, Islam will reach a new stable equilibrium with as little suffering as possible for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Wanna post your own comments? Gotta log in first!