Islam in under reformation which is
being accompanied by violence.
Let's hope it doesn't last hundreds
of years like Christendom.
The one parallel I can buy: In Europe, the philological criticism of Jewish and Christian scripture played a major role in loosening the dead hand of orthodoxy. That process began in the Reformation. The corresponding scholarly work on the Koran and hadith, barely underway now, may have a similarly important role in changing the way Muslims think about their traditions.
Jim, there are so many scriptural critiques of Islam and hadith that have been taking place (in fact from the very beginning of Islam) that one wonders whether that kind of textual critique indeed has any influence at all, or should we perhaps be looking at social and political transformations as engines of history.
All that said, I cannot emphasise enough again that Islam is not (and has never been) monolithic and there are enough differences and divisions and factionalisms (not to mention a decentarlised mode of scriptural interpretation) to where talking about "Islam and reform" might make for a nicely concise way of understanding Islam, but accurate it ain't.
Obviously Muslims have lavished a tremendous amount of exegetical and grammatical study on the Koran over the years. What has been missing is the kind of sustained, scientific source criticism that began in Europe with people like Spinoza. To a really remarkable degree, nobody knows much about the origin of the Koran or, for that matter, the actual, as opposed to constructed, history of the religion itself. Even Western books about Islam customarily take for granted the version of the origin of Islam that was worked out over the first couple of centuries of its existence. It isn't obvious that we know much more about the historical Muhammad than we know about the historical Jesus.
It took the Christians well over three hundred years to get realistic about their traditions, and that process is hardly complete to this day. I expect it will take the Muslims a comparable period, assuming that it happens at all.
Dan
Two thoughts.
The rejection of a central religious authority in favor of a book alone authority (one of the defining features of Protestantism) happened within two or three generations of Mohamed’s death. While one might hope for reforms in Islam, I think it is 1300 years or so to late to look for a "Reformation" in Islam.
Hilaire Belloc, in his book The Great Heresies postulated that the principle deviations from the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox main stream were essentially cultural movements defined by common cultural features, the theological reasons being the opportunity for the event not the reason. The book is more essay than an exhaustive research project, but if his proposition is correct, Islam was a “Reformation,” so the question is not really germane.
Hank,
Very interesting stuff. We do need to distinguish between "reformation" (the process of reforming the spiritual community) and the "Protestant Reformation(s)" as a specific kind of event.
Le Monde's religion reporter, Henri Tincq, wrote that one of the best things the West could do would be to to encourage funding of Islamic scholarship and centers of thought(such as al-Azhar). He suggests that Islam is in shambles owing to corruption, state interference, etc.) and rather than radically (ahem!) transformed, needs to be edified.
And I would like to add that the USA should look at itself...and the blossoming of cults like the Branch Davidians, People's Temple, the Mormons (yes) and a host of others that were/are potentially dangerous and untethered to Christian tradition. But that's the legacy of free-thinking Protestant Reformation for you, alive and kicking. Imagine what a thing like that could do for Islam.
Yes, the idea of a “Protestant Reformation” in Islam most likely misses the key points of either.
Spiritual communities often have reform movements and if one has some success we have a call for a “reform of the reform” to quote a popular slogan. Reform movements usually fall in to one of two categories, adapting to the secular world, or returning to the vision of the founder(s). Osama Ben Ladin and followers are, in their opinion, of the later group.
The safest guess is that what ever reform movements happen in Islam, they will be Islamic on Islamic terms, and good bad or indifferent they will not be what the West would expect. If one is going to hope for a long term resolution to the current controversies by a reform of Islam, they will be disappointed.
Islam has already had its Reformation. Like the Protestant Reformation it was a conservative one and Wahabism and Salafism spring from it. As Dan notes, the Protestant Reformation was quite different from the Enlightenment, which grew out of Italian Humanism which grew, in turn, out of the superstructure of Roman Catholicism.
That's just too much to bear for Protestant Americans, particularly those of the fundamentalist sort.
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