Where are the "Reform Muslims?"

Great Debates
41

As a whole? I’d have to disagree, there. Islam is not quite as schismatic as Christianity, but it has been far more so than Judaism. Even Sunni Islam has seen its share of religious differentiation, not just in terms of different schools of jurisprudence ( which can have subtle, but significant effect on direction of belief ), but also the dozens of schools of Sufi thought, let alone such sects as the Wahabi ( or to pick an earlier puritan movement, al-Muwahiddun in North Africa ).

As to Islamic revival being solely conservative in nature, I’d agree that historically that has more often been the case. But hardly universal. Both a number of the Sufi movements and 19th century attempts with the Ottoman state to reform based on ‘Islamic modernist’ principles were not wholely conservative in orientation ( “conservative” here becomes difficult to define, as such movements tended to frame themselves as reaching both backwards for legitimization and forward towards modernization - but the backward casts, at least in the latter movement, referred back to the technical and intellectual achievements of the Islamic ‘Golden Age’ and thus weren’t necessarily retrograde and luddite like the similar strivings of the Wahabi ). Or, a step further, which led to an entirely new religion budding off, the Baha’i could hardly be called narrow-minded conservatives.

While there is no exact analog to Reform Judaism is a sectarian sense, de facto many Muslims are “reformist” in the less dogmatic sense that the OP seems to be discussing. One can even find sectarian strains, like modern Naqshbandi Sufism, that quite deliberately position themselves as a more humanistic alternatives to Wahabism ( indeed those two groups approach the fervor of ideological archenemies ).

  • Tamerlane
42

Elewyne,

You mentioned a line in the koran that you liked. There are lots of nice lines in the koran but there are also lots of nasty ones. I don’t mean this in an offensive way but Islam is like trying to hold a bag of worms - just when you think you’ve got it, it slips out of your hands.

This is because there are so many islams - every muslim has his own islam. So it becomes difficult to make generalisations about Islam because there are always going to be examples that contradict your generalisation.

In addition to this, as Tamerlane says, there is a kind of de facto reform movement going on as muslims increasingly interact with western culture.

I understand there will soon be made an Egyptian version of Baywatch.

I’m kinda torn on the subject of Islam. On the one hand I don’t believe that the Koran was written by God, I think it was written by a bunch of people out in the desert so I therefore MUST think that it’s all a load of codswallop.

Then I consider all the dubious teachings that seem to be contained within this thing -

  • the “beat your wife” stuff mentioned earlier and generally Islam’s attitude to women
  • the single worst legal system ever devised = sharia
  • the prohibition on apostacy. Once you’re in you can’t leave
  • the superiority complex Islam has - a non-muslim’s word isn’t worth as much as a muslim’s in a court, a muslim isn’t supposed to work for a non-muslim
  • the treatment of religious minorities in muslim countries like Sudan or Pakistan
  • the attitude of muslims even when they are a minority in countries like Phillipines

etc etc (I could go on for hours about things that bother me about Islam)

Then I look at how brainwashed muslims seem to be, they all seem to have total belief in all this horseshit.

Then I consider the fact that Islam is a universalist religion and I realise that they want to impose all this crap on me and my children.

At times I think that the only solution will be to have a big war in which all muslims are annhilated or forcibly converted. They seem to be going through a phase which we went through hundreds of years ago and came out of. They don’t seem to be learning by our mistakes, instead they seem determined to repeat those mistakes.

I want to shout at them - RELIGIOUS GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WORK, YOU NEED TO BE SECULAR YOU IDIOTS.

I KNOW YOU HAD A CALIPHATE AND STUFF BUT THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW, TIMES HAVE CHANGED. EVEN IF YOU HAD A MODERN-DAY CALIPHATE IT WOULD STILL NEED TO BE SECULAR AND DEMOCRATIC.

This is how I feel some of the time. At other times I relax a bit more. I look at the muslims I actually know in real life and I realise that there are de facto changes taking place in muslim society but they need to be left alone to deal with this themselves. Islam is a very proud religion and doesn’t take kindly to outside interference.

Islam may not be changing much on a doctrinal level but it is changing on a street level. Street Islam is a different thing to doctrinal Islam. Doctrinal Islam can’t change much because the koran is the inerrant word of God - this is one of the things I dislike about Islam. It appears to be tyranny by a book rather than tyranny by a leader.

Islam doesn’t care whether or not I dislike it but it should. If people dislike it then it’s on the way out (even if it really is the word of God).

I have problems with the whole halal/haram stuff as well - I think that anything that exists on this planet is available for us to use. It was placed there by God, why would God place it there if not to be used.

Take alcohol for example. Muslims will regale you with stories about how the streets of Medina turned red with wine as people poured their wine away, however Muslims will not mention the fact that anyone caught brewing wine received 80 lashes.

They tell you about the wine story as though it is in itself a proof of the koran - the people were so thrilled by receiving God’s message that they all instantly threw away their wine. They don’t mention the sinister element of violent compulsion that underwrote the banning of alcohol.

Much of Islamic history (as told by muslims) has this vague fantasy tinge to it. Another one is the idea that Muslims were always victorious in battle despite having fewer numbers. The unspoken suggestion is that because they have God on their side and because they are willing to die for their beliefs they had the advantage.

This is HORSESHIT. They won some battles, they lost some battles but it had fuck all to do with God being on their side and it had fuck all with them being more ready to die.

ANYONE who goes into battle is ready to die for what they are fighting for. This isn’t a uniquely Muslim phenomenon. And if God is on the side of the Muslims then whose side was He on during the Pakistan/Bangladesh war in 1971? Or the Iran/Iraq war?

Gah. They need some lessons in basic politics (how to run a political system), basic economics and basic history.

43

I wish someone much more knowledgeable in Jewish theology than I (with my inferior Reform Jewish Sunday-school background) would stick his/her nose in here, but to me Reform Judaism is a reaction to the literalism of Orthodox Judaism, in the sense that to Reform Jews things like keeping Kosher or covering one’s head in public are not requirements to be a Jew.

To Reform Jews, is it important to preserve one’s cultural heritage? Yes. Study Hebrew and Torah? Yes. Have 4 sets of dishes in the house? Not so much. Refrain from touching people of the opposite gender to whom one is not related? Nope. Ensure that women of childbearing age visit the mikvah (ritual baths) when they have finished their menstrual cycle? I’ve never set foot in a mikvah in my life, and of my entire remaining living extended family, maybe only my maternal grandmother has, but then she was raised quite Orthodox. It’s really quite a different way of life, and every time I see the Orthodox way of life up close, it just boggles my mind.

I guesss the closest Muslim parallel to Reform Judaism I’ve seen would be that followed by the Muslims of the former Soviet Union (mostly North Caucasians, with a few assorted Central Asians) I’ve known; they were very proud of their heritage, and of those members of their families who had engaged in formal Koran study or who knew Arabic, but well, let’s just say they didn’t follow all the rules to the letter. I’m sure that’s changed quite a lot since I was last there, though.

44

Jojo again, on Islam.

Very, calmly then.

Of course you mean it in an offensive way, you continue to natter on about the religion but know very little about it, other than you don’t like religion and Islam in particular.

Any religion of many hundreds of milllions of adherents, spread over hudreds of thousands of square kilometers and with more than a thousand years of history will be complicated and multi-faceted.

It’s hardly surprising then, Xianity, Islam, even Judiasm in its much more bounded way, are hard to reduce to slogans and still be accurate.

Well, there are also generalizations that are better grounded in fact than others.

One guy in the desert, if nothing else.

Super, is it helpful in understanding the religion to add this?

All the Abrahamic religions contain this sort of thing, came from highly paternalistic cultures. “Islam’s attitude towards women” -in a legal-theoretical basis- when benchmarked against attitudes prevalent at the time in the ‘Civilized World’ of the day actually stands up pretty darned well. Indeed compare women’s legal rights (theoretical at times) under sharia’ law to a women’s legal rights under say 15th c. English common law and our common law comes out not looking pretty.

This is simply ignorant posturing. Single worst legal system, where do generate this crap? What do you actually know of sharia’ law - in substance.

And? So what, Xianity had the same features until fairly recently.

As compared to your utter lack of a Western cultural superiority complex of course.

Yes, Islamic civilization, like every other of its type, contains the idea it’s the best. Like our own contains such an idea.

It is worth pointing out that , for the record, that court testimony features dropped out of practice in the 19th century, so our dear Jojo is rather typically scare-mongering with Medieval Islamic practices rather than addressing modern Islam.

Minorities tend to get shafted in the developing world, nothing particularly Islamic about that, one need only look to Sri Lanka for Hindu vs Budhist example. At the same time one can note that the Islamic world never whole sale expelled or forced conversion of its minorities, like the Xian world was doing right up to the 17th century. Muslims, Jews and even the wrong flavors of Xians. Xian minorities were historically substantial in the Eastern Med basin, although 20th century migration have drastically reduced them as they go seeking better economic opps elsewhere. Stagnating economies, nasty (secular) dictatorships…

So, yes there is ugliness, holding it up as a particular black mark against “Islam” qua “Islam” is ahistorical nonesense and prejudice.

[quote]

  • the attitude of muslims even when they are a minority in countries like Phillipines
    [/qupote]

What “attitude” is that? What do you k now, in a factual matter, of the “attitude” of Muslims in the Philapines or of the history of that situation? I mean solid facts, not vague prejudices and bigotry – and keep in mind this should be in a rational analytical framework, you might explain it the context of say the Chinese Muslim minorities in East China, similar in Thialand - how they fit in the “Muslim” attitude, or how they differ from the Xian “attitude.”

I’m sure you could, however poorly informed bigotry is rarely all that entertaining.

Oh let me try this:
“Then I look at how brainwashed Southern Baptists and Born Agains seem to be, they all seem to have total belief in all this horseshit.”

I haven’t the stomach for the rest of your bile.

45

Damn I hit the wrong button. Well, good enough. Questions stand as they are.

46

I have no permanent enemies, only permanent interests… Well that amuses me if nothing else.

Simply adding information then:

Well, in theory this is all well and good, but I do not foresee any human society anywhere ever attaining such a fine theoretical goal.

As it happens, we’re visual animals first, creatures of intellect second by genetic accident. As such physicality and judgements by the same will always have a major role.

I hasten to add that in much of the MENA region, in urban areas at least, the standard is rather wider than cover all up. Certainly both men and women tend to cover more than in the West. Niehter will generally, outside wealthy highly Westernized areas, be seen w/o long sleeves and pants, regardless of the weather. That’s the culture, Xian or Muslim.

However, beach culture can be quite diff, just to throw out an example, and in North Africa you find popular beaches of the working class with a bizarre mix of bikinis, full bathing suits and women with the abaya on (or djellaba as they say there).

More variation than first meets the eye. I second Testy in saying that in reality, as a general matter, clothing ex-Niqab is not the primary concern of MENA feminists.

47

Elewyne,

You say you haven’t read the Koran but that is the only way to learn exactly what it is that make Mohammedans tick.

I recommend reading not only the Koran but a generous assortment of the Hadiths.

English translations of the sermons that are preached at the world’s major mosques every Friday are freely available on the net and are very easy to find. These include the main mosques at Mecca, Medina, Cairo, Yemen an lots of other places. They would be no different in nature to the sermons preached in all of the lesser mosques in the Muslim world and they would give you an excellent start in your attempt to gain insight into Islam and what its adherents are taught to believe in and stand for.

There is no point in trying to gain insights from the ravings and ramblings of people who are still busily engaged in their own study of Islam. People like Collounsbury, Tamerlane and my good friend and fellow student, Aldebaran, whose redaction of Uthmanians is second to none (not as gruesome as it sounds, incidentally).

Naturally, I include myself with the abovenamed as highly suspect sources of enlightenment in the ways of Islam and a net search by you on the topic will be far more profitable and trustworthy.

48

Oh look, our newest irrational Islamophobe is back:

Again my dear fellow, please do join us in the 21st century. Mohammedans is out of usage and has been for a while, except among bigots, in the English world.

And his habitual assertions.

I’m sure you can give citations to your googling so that we can judge for ourselves the quality of your “research” - I would have to think it slipped below your last assertions that evolutionary thought is not taught in the Muslim world.

Indeed one would not want to be confused by any actual knowledge, is that it? By the way, the italicized part makes no sense.

Enjoyable, someone advising people to get their learning about Islam from google searches.

49

A topical article appeared in today’s paper: Islam needs a modern and moderate reformation movement by Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

50

depends on what the meaning of the word “written” is.

I had a (Christian) friend who preferred the term Mohammedian because he also “Submitted to the will of God.” Which is taking strict definitions a bit too far, IMO, but just sayin…

51

I’ve only jsut seen this thread, but I’m going to chime in here, with this:

There are liberal branches of Islam, they do exist, and in many respects they mirror the Reform Judaism school of thinking, i.e. are not as literal as more orthodox Muslims.

A brief introduction to Ismailism, one such liberal branch, can be found here, and I’m more than happy to answer any other questions.

52

Well, oddly in Arabic…

That makes no sense at all as written. What is the logic? An Xian friend prefered to be called Mohammed*an (sic)?

Or he prefered to use that term over others. It’s not a ‘strict definition’ - it is a misnomer at best. Xians worship Christ, Muslims do not worship Muhammed and indeed rather strenuously reject the idea of divinity going along with prophethood as being a form of shirk, ‘associating’ verging on polytheism. Their position rather closely tracks the Jewish one, actually, and in general the two visions of God are some what closer to each other than the Xian one. It’s like calling Jews Mosesians.

Calling Muslims Mohammedans is at best ignorant and wrong, at worst shows you’ve been sniffing around old (and new) discredited texts on purpose.

53

Yeah, but there are several reasons to prefer Islam/Muslim to Mohammedanism/Mohammedan:

  • Islam/Muslim is the nomenclature the adherents prefer, so it is simple courtesy to use them.
  • The use of Mohammedan focuses the attention of the faith on the founder to the detraction of the belief. (We do not refer to Judaism as Moisheism or Mosaicism. Christianity and, to a certain extent, Buddhism, are a bit different because the person after whom the religion carries its name is believed to actually be God (or to have attained divinity).)
  • The word Mohammedanism was used, for many years, among far too many English writers and speakers to indicate that Muslims actually worshipped Mohammed–a point that goes quite far beyond merely insulting, being actually blasphemous to a Muslim.
54

Since the term Mohammedan seems to have originated with a Christian misperception that Muslims worshipped Muhammed in the same way Christians worship Jesus ( as an aspect of God ), a blasphemous notion in Islam, it is considered somewhat insulting by at least some Muslims today. Consequently it is usually considered an impolite an archaic term.

Yes, but outside of its current more liberal theology I wouldn’t consider Isma’ilism a good analog of Reform Judaism, in the sense that it arose from a much different place, i.e. as a result of an 8th century doctrinal ( and probably partly political ) split within Shi’ism. While it is a fairly liberal and apolitical sect these days ( and by definition it has certainly never been “orthodox” in either a Sunni or Shi’a sense ), it wasn’t at founding and for a number of centuries afterwards. Indeed at one time it was the very definition of the firebrand militant sect.

Of course in that facet, it is an excellent example of how Islam is hardly a static, unchanging religion.

  • Tamerlane
55

I think he means that the friend preferred to call Muslims “Mohammedians” because, since “Muslim” means one who submits [to the will of God], and since Ludovic’s friend, as a Christian, submits to the will of God, Ludovic would consider himself a “Muslim”.

I dunno…the term “Mohammedan” just seems so…19th century to me. When I hear it, I expect the speaker to go on to talk about how the Opium War is just ghastly, and ask me what I think of Mr. Dickens’s new book.

56

Well, orthodoxy has always been a pretty nebulous term within Islam, especially among the Shi’a, who have historically always been splintering into various groups based on some point of esoteric doctrine. Ismailism isn’t hetrodox to the same extent that say Bah’ai is hetrodox.

And actually, come to think of it, the Reformation in Christianity and Reform Judaism aren’t really very similar…the Reformation was a purifying movement within Christianity that stressed an end to what they saw as doctrinal corruption, while Reform Judiasm was formed as an attempt to reconcile Judaism with modern scientific rationalism and liberalism. If you had to compare anything in Christianity to Reform Judaism, it would be higher criticism and Modernist Protestantism (higher criticism coming out of Germany at the same time Reform Judaism did).

I guess you could mention the Mu’tazilites if you want to talk about “Liberal Islam” (and who I’ve always had a kind of sympathy for), but if you had to compare them to anyone, it wouldn’t be either the Protestants or Reform Judaism, but the Christian Scholastics and Maimonides in Judaism (both of which were influenced by the Mu’tazilites).

57

You might want to look at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, here:

http://www.islam-democracy.org/

which seems to ask the question "How can liberal democracy and Islam be reconciled. I don’t really know anything about the group. Anybody hear of them?

58

Agreed, to an extent. But then, Shi’ism and Sunni’ism arise from a doctrinal split also…

Tamerlane, I respect and admire your knowledge of Islam, but as for your last sentence, could I have a cite please? Are you talking about the Fatimid period? Or what?

A fact which is embodied into the very constitution of Ismailism.

59

You might want to look at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, here:

http://www.islam-democracy.org/

which seems to ask the question "How can liberal democracy and Islam be reconciled. I don’t really know anything about the group. Anybody hear of them?

60

I think he’s talking about the Nizaris and the “assassin” phenomenon.