Muslim Intellectuals and Modern ChallengesSummary of papers and debates prepared by Michel Hoebink

IntroductionThis report highlights the major themes of discussion that emerged in the workshop. Prominent among them were issues related to modernity and contemporary politics, including concepts of democracy, civil society, human rights, social justice and the role of women in Muslim societies. These issues were addressed in the context of more general discussions on epistemology and hermeneutics, which surfaced throughout the workshop. Among the more controversial themes in this debate were those of a historical analysis of the text of the Qur’an and the introduction of a scepticist concept of truth in Islamic thought. From epistemology and hermeneutics the discussion gradually moved towards sociological questions related to the communication of modernist views to Muslim audiences. A third major theme that emerged concerned the conceptual origins and nature of civil society in Muslim societies. Finally, a number of participants gave papers in which they discussed regional cases.

The discussions in the workshop were not polarized along Islamist vs. secularist lines, as is so often the case in debates on contemporary issues. Most of the participants could be described as Muslim modernists, whose project can be broadly characterized as an effort to reconcile the Islamist quest for authenticity with the secularist desire for modernity. It became clear from the workshop that within modernist discourse a similar tension exists as between Islamism and secularism. At the risk of oversimplifying, two opposed attitudes could be discerned in the discussions. On one side were those emphasizing that in order to remain relevant in the modern world, Islam should meet certain ethical and intellectual requirements of modernity. The other side stressed the need for authenticity in order to maintain currency with the prevalent understanding among the Muslim masses and to resist the cultural hegemony of the West.

Modernist ApproachesDuring the discussion concerning epistemology and hermeneutics, a debate developed between the advocates and critics of a contemporary modernist approach that builds on the intellectual heritage of ‘classical modernists’ such as Muhammad `Abduh, Muhammad Iqbal and others.

1. Asghar Ali Engineer’s paper, Islam and Modernization: Compatibility and Values, gives a clear exposition of classical modernist positions on a number of important issues. It will therefore be dealt with here in some detail.

Engineer’s basic argument proposes that the difficulties of Islam in the face of modernity are primarily caused by erroneous traditionalist views, whereas in truth Islam is very modern in spirit.

The first thing that should be understood when discussing the issue of Islam and modernity, Engineer argues, is that Islam as a religion aims to govern all aspects of life, i.e. the relationship between the individual and God as well as the relations between individuals and the collectivity of society.

This social dimension requires that Islamic teachings are related to the various and changing circumstances of life. Early scholars of Islam understood this well. Islam

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emerged in the cultural environment of 7th century Arab society and was mediated by the customs (`adat) of that society. Upon its spread from the Arabian peninsula to other parts of the world, different schools of law emerged which attempted to relate it to all these various regions with their disparate customs.

Unlike the early scholars, the orthodox `ulama of today consider the past as sacred and wish to mould the present into forms of the past. This is impossible: religion cannot live in a vacuum. The majority of classical works to which they refer were written in the 10 th

to 12th centuries, and it cannot be assumed that this literature answers all the problems being encountered today. Just like the medieval fuqaha we have been granted by God the faculty of reason and we have our own right to understand the Qur’an in our own context.

Which method should be used in interpreting Islam in the present age? In Engineer’s view, any discussion on the re-interpretation of Islam should primarily focus on the Qur’an. Unlike hadith, the Qur’an is the undisputed source for Sunni as well as Shi`i Muslims.

When interpreting the text of the Qur’an, a distinction should be made between normative and contextual verses. Certain verses are absolute and cannot be compromized or given alternative interpretations, but other verses are culturally mediated and must be understood in their context. The traditional `ulama fail to appreciate this distinction and consider all as normative, i.e. applicable to all times. Careful study of the text, however, can only lead to the conclusion that some verses must be understood as contextual. Slavery, for instance, being a prevalent custom of 7th

century Arabia, is often referred to in the Qur’an. But it cannot be said that slavery is the norm in the Qur’an; the verses that mention it must be regarded as contextual.

With regard to hadith, Engineer argues that Muslims should be aware that it is far more context-related than the Qur’an. A methodology should be developed to understand how to situate it in its own time and how to make it relevant - or irrelevant - to the present age.

An important issue in this connection is the dogma of the infallibility of the Prophet. The Prophet is unanimously considered infallible (ma`sum), but there is debate as to whether he is infallible solely in religious matters or also in secular matters. The debate centres around a hadith told by Bukhari (the hadith of the palm tree) which relates how the Prophet advised some people not to pollinate their date trees. They followed his advice thinking it was a religious order but the harvest failed. When they confronted the Prophet with this, he told them that in the matters of their life they knew best themselves. In Engineer’s view, this hadith implies that the Prophet should be considered infallible only in religious and not in secular matters.

In answer to Khalid Masud’s question as to how the distinction between the religious and the secular matters can be defined, Engineer replied that, in his view, the distinction is that between matters pertaining to worship (`ibadat) and ethics on the one hand and issues concerning social life (mu`amalat) on the other. The former do not vary according to place and time and when the Prophet spoke on these issues he must be considered as infallible and his words as beyond question. Issues belonging to the category of mu`amalat, however, vary in place and time, and it makes little sense to consider the Prophet as infallible in these matters.

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Considering this, how does Islam relate to modernity? Asghar Ali Engineer defines the parameters of modernity as: democratic governance, human rights in general, women’s rights in particular, plural society and coexistence with other religions. In all these issues, he argues, the spirit of the Qur’an can be considered as modern.

With regard to democracy, it should first of all be understood that Islam does not prescribe a specific form of government. It only prescribes ethical values such as justice (`adl), wisdom (hikma), compassion (rahma) and benevolence (ihsan), which can be the basis for different forms of government at different times. Even monarchy, which is not generally accepted today, was thought acceptable for a period of time providing it was based on Islamic values. Although it is well known that in Muslim history the forms of government were the subject of dispute and varied in different times and places, the orthodox `ulama today insist on applying certain forms from the past, such as the Caliphate. Yet even the Caliphate was not accepted universally, as it was subject of a dispute between Sunnis and Shi`is. It represents a historical form of government and it is not required of Muslims to apply it in the present time. So although it does not prescribe democracy, it can be said that the Qur’an is relatively democratic in spirit.

An important Qur’anic principle relevant to democracy is that of shura (consultation). The Prophet was told by God to consult the people in secular matters, not in religious matters. Early biographies of the Prophet (sira) are in fact full of instances in which the Prophet consulted his companions on several issues. In 7th century Arabia, the principle of shura was an established tribal practice, based on mutual consultation between the people and the leader, who was considered first among equals. Today, the principle of shura has taken the institutional form of the shura council (majlis al-shura), the equivalent of a modern democratic parliament.

Shi`a theology does not necessarily justify monarchy either, as some have claimed. Indeed, the Imam is considered infallible, but if this infallibility in the case of the Prophet applies only to religious matters, then this will also be the case with the Imam. So in secular matters the Shi`is must adopt democratic governance.

Regarding the issue of human rights, Engineer maintains that there is no contradiction whatsoever between Islam and the UN Charter. The basis of human rights is individual responsibility: a prerequisite for individual rights and duties. Although Islam emphasizes collectivity (the collective can be held responsible for order in society), the Qur’an clearly places ultimate responsibility with the individual. Moreover, individual responsibility inherently implies individual rights. With regard to the concept of rights, the Qur’anic statement ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (la ikraha fi’l-din) is relevant.

As to the issue of women’s rights, the normative verses in the Qur’an clearly demonstrate that men and women are entitled to equal rights. Patriarchal statements in the Qur’an on marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. must be considered as culturally mediated. The concept of wali (guardianship of male relatives over women) is a culturally mediated concept; not even mentioned in the Qur’an. A woman is free to contract her marriage on her own terms.

Finally, Engineer contends that the Qur’an also accepts pluralism and openness towards other religions. It accepts Judaism and Christianity and recognizes their prophets. The Qur’an says: “For every people there is a guidance” (li-kulli qawmin hadin -13: 7), which

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led Muslims in India to accept Krishna as a prophet of God. According to hadith, there have been 124,000 prophets, implying that each nation has its own. Furthermore, the Qur’an says: ‘Each has his particular goal towards which God turns him, so excel each other in good deeds’ (2: 148). In other words, each people has its own traditions and beliefs and ways of worship, but the point is not to concentrate on these forms but to excel each other in good deeds. This is a most modern concept. “But”, Engineer concluded, “all of us are doing just the opposite: we keep quarrelling about our traditions, rituals and forms of worship, ignoring the concept of excelling each other in good deeds.”

2. Tariq Ramadan’s paper, Islam and Muslims in Europe, a Silent Revolution, reveals that many of the challenges of modernity faced by Muslims in Europe are similar to those faced by Muslims in Muslim majority countries. The solutions suggested by Ramadan are informed by the same modernist heritage as those advocated by Engineer.

Because the new Muslim presence in Europe dates back less than 60 or 70 years, it is too early, in Ramadan’s opinion, for a valid evaluation of the process of integration. Due to the fact that the first waves of immigrants were of very modest economic and educational backgrounds and in most cases believed their presence in Europe to be temporary, there were initially few if any intellectual responses to the new situation. It was the 2nd and 3rd generations who realized that they were here to stay, and only then the question of how to be a Muslim and at the same time a European gained urgency. In the last two decades or so, a minority of practising young Muslims have established a multitude of new Islamic organizations. It was particularly the commitment of this group that led to a profound change in mentality and that will ensure that the Muslim presence in Europe will give rise to a truly European Islamic culture.

The young Muslims belonging to these organizations raised questions that provoked important legal and theological debates within the Muslim communities: Should Europe be considered as a dar al-harb, in other words, is it possible to live there? If yes, what should be the relationship of Muslims with regards to the national legislation? Can a young Muslim acquire a European nationality and play fully his role as a citizen?

Together with European `ulama, efforts in the interpretation (ijtihad) of the Qur’an and sunna were made in terms of the European context in general and European legislation in particular. The question to be addressed was, ‘what is the essence of our religion and what room does European legislation leave it?’

Ramadan emphasizes that, in his view, the only way to arrive at a European Islamic identity is to separate Islam from the culture of the countries of origin. European Muslims should return to the principles of Islam stripped from these cultural contexts, which often have little or nothing to do with Islam. On the other hand he underlines that such legal questions should be addressed within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence, because Muslim thought should be reformed from within.

The effort of interpretation combined with a study of European legislation, Ramadan continues, has led to a new awareness that nothing in the letter or spirit of the secular European constitutions prevents Muslims from a full practice of their religion. Only in very rare cases, contradictions occur between European legislation and Muslim practice, such as; obligatory participation in collective insurance schemes that work on the basis

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of interest. In most instances, such contradictions can be solved by adaptations in Islamic jurisprudence through ijtihad and fatwas. In some cases, however, Muslims should rely on their constitutional rights. The prohibition of hijab (Islamic veiling) in France, for instance, is a matter that can be disputed on the basis of French constitution. The hijab is an Islamic practice and Muslims should assert their constitutional freedom to wear it.

Although a small minority of Salafi groups, such as the Hizb al-Tahrir in the UK, take the rigid view that the task of Muslims in European countries is to turn them into Islamic states, a majority consensus emerged that a Muslim should respect the constitutions and other laws of the country in which he resides, as by his living there he has agreed to a moral and social contract. Without compromising their own values, Muslims should consider themselves as full citizens and participate with conscience in the social, economic and political affairs of the country in which they reside. Also it was agreed that the categories of dar al-harb and dar al-Islam are historical denominations that have lost their relevance in modern life. Instead of dar al-harb, other concepts were suggested, such as dar al-da`wa and dar al-shahada.

Critique of ModernismOpposed to the modernist approaches of Engineer and Ramadan stand the views of Abdulkarim Soroush, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, Abdelmajid Charfi, Ebrahim Moosa, Farish Noor and Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh, who criticize contemporary modernism for its insistence on arguing within the premises of traditional Islam and its failure to address the fundamental challenges posed to it by modernity.

3. Abdul Karim Soroush’s paper; Revised Modernity versus Revised Islam gave a good overview of the areas of criticism.

Soroush criticizes Muslim thinkers for the virtual absence of philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of modernity. A major question posed by modernity is, how one can live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world? So far, he argues, this question has been addressed on the theological and legal levels. On the level of theology we ask: is it possible to defend Islamic teachings, or a religious worldview, with the scientific and rational intellectual tools of the modern world? On the legal level we ask: is it possible to practice Islam in this world and to keep our identity alive? In Soroush’ view, the problem posed by modernity should first be addressed at the deeper level of religious experience itself. The main task today of Muslims, those who defend the religious worldview, is to prepare the conditions for the revival of religious, prophetic experience. Such an effort should commence with the question: is it possible to have a religious, i.e. prophetic or mystical experience in such a secular, de-mystified world, or in other words, to expand the prophetic experience to the modern world? Only then can the question be addressed, of how to build a new religious system around it.

Soroush surmises that one reason for the absence of a more philosophical approach to the issue of Islam and modernity may be that modernity came to the Muslim world via politics and technological advances, not through philosophers. Thus Muslim thinkers became preoccupied with political issues of modernity such as secularism, democracy, pluralism, freedom, human rights, women’s rights, individualism etc. But these are subsidiary issues (furu`), based on the more fundamental philosophical characteristics

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(usul) of modernity. It is these philosophical characteristics that need to be identified in order to (re)define the position of Islam versus modernity.

In setting out to do so, Soroush stresses that a pure, a-historical, un-interpreted Islam does not exist; Islam represents a series of interpretations which are mediated through culture. But this principle also applies to modernity which is equally evolving historically, interpreted in different ways and developing its own critiques. It appears that in his definition of modernity, Soroush is primarily referring to its contemporary ‘post-modern’ version.

Soroush thus identifies a number of fundamental elements of modernity that caused rupture with the traditional religious worldview and that should now be addressed by Muslim thought. In the context of the ensuing discussions, the following points are the most important.

Critical vs. hermeneutic reason. A characteristic of modernity is that of critical reason, which among other things involves a historical approach towards religious texts. Contemporary Muslim religious thinkers rely instead on hermeneutic reason, which is often conservative as it confines itself to the text without subjecting the text itself to a critical historical approach. In order to investigate the relevance of Islam in the modern world, Muslims should expose their traditional thinking to critical reason.

Skepticism vs. absolutism. Another characteristic of modernity is skepticism as a concept of truth. In the traditional religious worldview, the belief in the existence and accessibility of certain and absolute truth was a commodity. In contrast, no modern philosopher believes in the mathematical certainty of truths. This issue of the status of truth lies at the basis of the question of democratic pluralism. The absolutist notion of truth is difficult to reconcile with pluralism whereas modern skepticism quite naturally leads to its acceptance. The failure of contemporary Islamists to accommodate pluralism is related to their reliance on an absolutist notion of truth. In Iran, the issue of the accommodation of Muslim minorities – including Sunni Muslims - created much turmoil immediately after the revolution and today the reformers of Khatami in fact constitute a new minority who are again confronted by the traditionalists with an absolutist discourse and a refusal to include them into the system.

Rights vs. duties. Whereas the traditional religious worldview was primarily concerned with man’s duties and obligations, the worldview of modernity is mainly concerned with rights. This idea of rights lies at the basis of the modern concepts of freedom and secularism. To be religious or ethical is not a duty any longer, it is a right. Freedom, in turn, entails secularism because ultimately it implies the freedom not to be ethical or religious. Muslim reformers have failed to address the issue of freedom and rights. Their notion of modernity is still duty oriented. There is a need for the development of a religious discourse based on the conception of rights, a move from a God of Duties to a God of Rights. Such a rethinking of fundamental concepts will entail a profound revision of the science of jurisprudence.

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Critical versus hermeneutic reasonA debate on critical versus hermeneutical reason first emerged during the discussions following Soroush’ paper. Abdelmajid Charfi, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid and Ebrahim Moosa elaborated on the need for contemporary Muslim thought to confront the modern challenges of critical reason and a historical and contextual analysis of the text of the Qur’an. The paper that engaged with these issues most directly was that of Abdelmajid Charfi.

4. Abdelmajid Charfi’s paper, Intellectual or Psycho-social and Cultural Challenges?, argues that the challenge facing Muslim societies is to expose its traditional assumptions to the criticism of a modern rationality, and to arrive at new reading of the founding texts which explores its potentials for the present age. However, contemporary Muslim modernist discourses fail to address this challenge. Whereas European Christians today look at the world in a fundamentally different way from their medieval predecessors, the modernist discourses offered to Muslims in the West and elsewhere are still based on traditional forms of religion. It is a kind of bricolage, which provides only short term answers and not solutions for the long term. In Charfi’s opinion, Muslim modernists should take a more profound look at these traditional discourses.

The point for departure of such an effort should be a questioning of the heritage of traditional Islam. During the 7th and 8th centuries, and under influence of the socio-political conditions of that time, Islam was subjected to a process of institutionalization, whereby its original intention was gradually overtaken by a detailed elaboration and formalization of rites, dogmas and laws. In the Qur’an, the rites and dogmas of Islam are very simple and mentioned without any detail or elaboration. Over the course of time, however, devotional acts were standardized and a number of untouchable dogmas were imposed. This process of institutionalization transformed Islam into a closed and exclusive system, that should be deconstructed to allow the original meanings to resurface. Without losing sight of its historical specificity, this phenomenon should be studied from a comparative perspective as it has affected all religions, particularly Christianity and Judaism. Such a deconstruction will enable us to revisit a number of notions, the questioning of which has been banished to the realm of the unthinkable by traditional Islam. Among the issues to be questioned are those of the human and historical dimensions of the Qur’an, the Qur’anic notion of the ‘end of prophecy’, the dogma of the legislative character of the Qur’an and the confessional nature of traditional Islam.

The first issue that in Charfi’s view is in need of profound rethinking is that of the human and historical dimension of the Qur’an.

In an earlier session, the argument for a critical historical approach to the text of the Qur’an was most forcefully expressed by Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid. The discussion of the methodology of interpreting the Qur’an, he argued, inevitably leads us to a debate on the nature of the text of the Qur’an. According to Abu Zaid, Muslims should take into account that the process of collecting and editing the revealed texts into the Qur’an as we presently know it took place over a longer period than has commonly been acknowledged. There was initially a multitude of texts, and their canonization into a single book was a historical process of reconstruction, which can only be understood through the historical context in which it took place.

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Ebrahim Moosa also emphasizes that the Qur’an should be understood as a text with a political history that attempts to negotiate the multiple agendas of the society in which it occurred. We have to ask ourselves how this text was put together, which politics determined this process and how the shift from orality to literacy took place. Without metaphorically hearing the background music of that social context, Moosa argues, we can hardly make sense of the Qur’anic text.

In agreement with Abu Zaid (and Moosa), Charfi argues that the traditional view of the origin and collation of the Qur’an is not borne out by present historical and literary studies, and that Muslim thought cannot remain isolated from modern scientific knowledge in these issues. Charfi underlines in this connection that a historical approach to the Qur’an presupposes a view of revelation that allows for a human dimension of the text. In the orthodox view, Muhammad’s role in transmitting the revelation was a purely passive one; God delivered His message in the Arabic language via the angel Gabriel (Jibril) to Muhammed, who in turn passed it on to mankind without intervening in any way. However, also within traditional Islam, this view did not remain uncontested. Through the writings of the 14th and 15th centuries. authors al-Zarkashi and al-Suyuti, at least two deviant conceptions have survived, which at the time of their recording do not appear to have been considered as heretic. The first view, holds that it was the angel Gabriel who translated the ineffable divine words into human language and duly passed it to the Prophet. The second conception builds on the Qur’anic reference to revelation as a ‘descending on the heart’ of the Prophet (26: 192-5 and 2: 79), concluding that it was the Prophet who translated the meanings (al-ma`ani) revealed to him by the angel Gabriel into the Arabic language. In the first view, which seems mainly concerned with the danger an Arabic speaking God poses to the principle of divine transcendence, the Prophet’s role remains passive. In the second, more audacious conception, however, Muhammad’s role has become active as opposed to passive, as he intervenes by putting the message into words.

Another issue that must be readdressed according to Charfi is that of the closing of the cycle of prophecy (khatm al-nubuwwa). From the orthodox perceptive, the Qur’anic statement that Muhammad was the 'Seal of the Prophets' (33: 40), is taken to mean that the revelation brought by Muhammad is the final and immutable expression of God's will. However, the Qur’anic notion of the end of the cycle of prophecy also lends itself to another quite different interpretation; that Muhammad’s message was the beginning of a new cycle. This idea has been expressed by the modern Muslim thinker Mohammed Iqbal (d. 1938) in the following words: “In Islam, prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition. This involves the keen notion that life cannot for ever be kept in leading strings; that in order to achieve full self-consciousness man must finally be thrown back on his own resources” (Iqbal, Reconstruction, 1968 ed.: 126). Although Iqbal’s works are well-known, this assertion has never been echoed. This notion is probably closer to the original intention of Muhammad’s mission than the orthodox view and obviously more in line with such prerequisites of modernity as freedom and individual responsibility.

Another traditional notion that should be questioned is that of the legislative character of the Qur’an. Charfi emphasizes that in the Qur’an the word shari`a has moral rather than legislative connotations: it merely indicates the route to follow and does not prescribe anything specific. It was the fuqaha who began its use in the sense of law, in order to give divine authority to their human-made jurisprudence.

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A final issue that needs rethinking, in the opinion of Charfi, is the confessionalism of traditional Islam. In the past, political competition with other religious groups led to an increasing level of confessionalism, whereby Muslims started to demarcate their borders and emphasize their differences with others. But was this really what Islam intended as a message? Indeed, great mystics such as Ibn `Arabi found themselves oppressed by these limitations and although they basically remained Muslim, they could identify with the universal message of love, which we also find in polytheism and in the messages of Moses and Jesus.

DiscussionOf the issues raised by Charfi, it was particularly that of the nature of revelation which aroused discussion. Soroush and Engineer drew attention to Shi`i and mystical theories of revelation. Soroush argued that the idea that the Prophet was ‘active’ in his receiving the revelation is not new, and it should be reinstated. Modernization, he argued, is reactivating old notions rather than creating new concepts. In addition to the three theories mentioned by Charfi, Soroush referred to a fourth, put forward by mystics. This theory holds that the Prophet was active in making Jibril descend: he asked Jibril to descend. Ibn `Arabi appears to go even further and to imply that the Prophet was speaking to himself. In Iran, due to its philosophical tradition, many such ideas are now very well established and do not lead to charges of apostasy. Khumayni once said himself that the Prophet drew Jibril towards him. The problem here is that the implied conclusions are not always drawn.

Engineer adds that the Isma`ili understanding of prophethood (nubuwwa) and revelation (wahy) is not unlike the mystical conception referred to by Soroush. The root of the word for ‘angel’ (malak) is the verb malaka, meaning ‘to be in possession of’. In the Isma`ili understanding of revelation, it is not due to an angel descending, but to a special ability which the Prophet alone possesses within him.

Charfi replied with a criticism of the Shi`i concept of revelation. Shi`i theory, he asserted, implies a sort of continuation of revelation after the Prophet, but it reserves this for the infallible Imams. This is problematic because it renders the responsibility of common Muslims very limited. In Charfi’s view, a true Muslim is one who deals directly with revelation, not through an intermediary. After all, he argues, this is one of the fundamental requirements of Islam.

Abu Zaid observed that when discussing the mystical conception of revelation, it should not be forgotten that Ibn `Arabi is condemned in the Sunni world. Instead of discussing theories that are liable to be condemned by orthodoxy, he felt it was preferable to analyse the notion of revelation in the Qur’an itself. In this vein, he suggested that the discussion should focus on God’s speech (kalam allah) rather than about revelation (wahy). The Qur’an says: “God does not speak to man except through inspiration (wahy), or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to reveal (fayuhi, i.e. wahy), with God’s permission, what He wills.” (42: 51). This indicates that according to the Qur’an, there are three modes in which God speaks. The first is wahy, which obviously means inspiration here. The second mode, ‘from behind a veil’, appears to refer to a direct speaker, another voice, not that of Muhammad. And then, thirdly, there is wahy again, but this time it is the messenger who reveals. So the Qur’an as a whole is kalam allah. If we speak only about wahy, then we are talking about only one dimension of kalam allah.

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Charfi countered that the issue of revelation should be addressed today not only by distinguishing between wahy and kalam allah, but also by noting the different connotations of the terms al-qur’an, al-kitab and al-mashaf. These terms, he asserted, appear to describe different levels in the descent from the transcendent divine unity to the plurality of everyday life. The term al-mashaf covers the entire semantic range of the distinct concepts of wahy, kalam allah and al-kitab. The terms al-qur’an and al-kitab, referring to recitation and writing, respectively, indicate the important qualitative difference between oral and written discourses.

The notion of the closure of prophecy was commented on by Nurcholish Madjid and Saif Abdel Fatah. Madjid argued that the concept of khatm al-nubuwwa should be connected with the idea that in Islam there is no priesthood, no ecclesiastic authority. This implies the concept of individual responsibility: each individual has a direct and personal responsibility before God, and after the Prophet there is no one, no religious leader, who can shoulder this responsibility on his behalf.

In Abdel Fatah’s view, the closure of prophecy in fact means that prophecy has reached maturity. In this context, he referred to Malik Bennabi who said: ‘Read the Qur’an as if it has been revealed to you personally’. This means that there still is human interaction with wahy, and that is what today we call ijtihad. The gate of ijtihad today is open and no one has the right to close it.

Nurcholish Madjid commented on the confessional nature of traditional Islam. What is lacking in the perspective of contemporary Muslims, he argued, is the view of Islam, in its literal sense of surrender to God, as the real universal religion. Understood in this way, Islam implies both universal humanism and ecumenicalism, which is the theological corollary of believing in all prophets and sacred books.

Absolutism versus skepticismSoroush’s observation that contemporary Islamic discourses tend to be constructed on absolutist notions of truth and fail to engage with the criticism of modern philosophical skepticism found more detailed elaboration in he papers presented by Farish Noor and Ebrahim Moosa. In agreement with Soroush, both Noor and Moosa contend that an absolutist notion of truth is incompatible with democratic pluralism.

5. Farish Noor’s From Cultural Authenticity to the Politics of Difference: Islamism’s Entry into Malaysian Politics and its Consequences critiques the absolutism that lies at the base of Islamist discourse.

Drawing on the experience of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), Noor understands Islamism as a form of communalism. Just like other communalist groups around the globe, such as the francophone Québequois in Canada and the school of ‘Asian Values’, the Islamists follow a political strategy that could be called the ‘politics of difference’. All such groups rally their constituencies around the notion that cultural authenticity is the sole route to self-realization, basing their demands for a share of political power in the larger society on the claim that this cultural specificity must be tolerated by the rest.

So wherever they stand in the opposition, the Islamists follow a strategy that is based on demanding the tolerance of difference. This demand, Noor argues, is ultimately derived

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from the liberal democratic principle of the tolerance of pluralism, which the Islamists are fully aware of. Mostly operating as opposition groups in liberal democratic settings, their demands for tolerance are often articulated in the language of liberal democracy. The media organs of the Malaysian Islamist party, PAS, for instance, have never failed once to accuse the state of robbing them of their democratic rights and liberties.

The overrideing question, however, is whether once these groups are in power will they be prepared to extend the same degree of tolerance to other marginalized groups? The Malaysian experience with Islamism indicates the contrary. When in 1990 after a major victory in the general elections, the All-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) took power in the state of Kelantan, a package of radical reforms was introduced based on the shari`a. One of the first results of these reforms was the closure of political space. A new form of Islamic governance was introduced based on the principle of mushawarah, consultation between the leaders of the state and representatives of the people. Although designed to give some semblance of democracy, the principle was circumscribed by the provision that only those matters not touched upon in the Qur’an and hadith were open to discussion. If discussion was to take place then only the learned `ulama were in a position to participate. In 1993, an Islamic criminal code was adopted which included hudud penalties, such as the death penalty for apostasy. The new moral and political order was not a matter of choice or negotiation. The Islamists argued that it was a moral obligation for all Muslims (and non-Muslims) to live within this new political framework and abide by its laws which were based on the covenants of God. When critics voiced their concerns over the shari`a laws, the party’s deputy president Ustaz Hadi Awang declared that these laws were essentially Islamic and that any Muslim questioning or resisting their introduction was guilty of apostasy (ridda).

In Noor’s opinion, the Malaysian experience shows that Islamism remains a fundamentally theo'centric discourse, based on non-negotiable, universalist and absolute notions of truth, morality, law and order. These notions ultimately contradict the fundamental democratic principles of productive ambiguity and tolerance of pluralism, compelling the Islamists to revert to hegemonic policies of enforcing homogeneity and eliminating all competing viewpoints as heretic, evil or abnormal. The Islamists’ discourse is unable to accommodate non-Muslims or Muslims who do not subscribe to their interpretation of Islam.

In conclusion, Noor points to a paradox that he believes is inherent in Islamist discourse: it is at once particularist and universalist. When in opposition, the Islamists base their demands on the claim that their particular identity must be tolerated, but once in power they are unable to maintain the same culture of tolerance towards others and rely instead on their tendencies towards hegemony and homogenization.

A number of progressive Islamists, such as the Malaysian Chandra Muzaffar, have called for a broadening of the Muslim mind beyond the exclusivist and universalist claims of absolute truth, in order to be more accommodating to the Other. However, the sad truth is that such progressive Islamists are few and their dissenting voices have not been heard. The odds may be against the development of an open-ended Islamist discourse, but one should not preclude such developments. Noor ‘wonder[s] whether Islamism as a discursive practice cannot evolve in a direction where it learns to accommodate radical contingency at its centre’.

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6. Ebrahim Moosa’s paper, Islamic Modernities Revisited - a Critique, explores the possibilities of reconciling contemporary Islamic thought with a modern scepticist notion of truth.

In Moosa’s view, contemporary Islamic modernism should engage in a healthy process of self-critique. Its history as a partisan voice towards the West has prevented Islamic modernism from developing such self-critique. Instead, there is a tendency to sanctify founding figures such as `Abduh, Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman.

These founding figures of Islamic modernism developed their ideas in opposition to the colonial thesis that Islam is incompatible with modernity (progress, the nation, democracy, women’s rights). In their efforts to demonstrate the modernity of properly understood Islam, the modernists internalized the Enlightenment project of reason and humanism (of which they rediscovered an Islamic counterpart in the rationalism of the 9 th

century Mu`tazilis). From this perspective, reason, truth and meaning are viewed as universal. It was believed that through reason one may distinguish realities with an objective existence from tradition and emotion.

Contemporary modernists, however, fail to recognize that Enlightenment humanism today is subject to critical revision, that experience has fundamentally altered inherited and accepted notions of reason, truth, meaning, self, history and progress. Through the influence of philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida, there is now a healthy skepticism towards these notions: it is to accepted that reason, truth and meaning are socially constructed, that they exist within established practices and discourses.

It is from this post-modern perspective that Moosa proceeds to critique the modernists. His basic argument proposes that the modernist defence of Islam, constructed on the paradigm of Enlightenment humanism, has become apologetic and essentialist. It counters the essentialist thesis of colonialism, that derogated Islam, with its own, equally essentialist, thesis in celebration of an idealized Islam.

Contemporary modernist discourse is predisposed to what Moosa calls ‘text fundamentalism.’ In spite of its rhetorical references to the concepts of abrogation and occasions of revelation, contemporary modernism fails to understand the historicity of the Qur’an. Instead, modernism relies on an a-historical, essentialist reading of the Qur’an. It continues to consider the text as sovereign and assumes that an objective, essential and a-historical meaning of the text is available. This essentialism implies that norms are generated by texts. The modernist fails to admit that norms are produced in the social process, and assumes that norms precede realities, that they are already there in the text and only need to be discovered. The text is thus viewed as the exclusive source of norms in Muslim thought, and if a norm is not found in a text, then no new norm can be generated.

Based on this essentialist premise, modernists can only attain their egalitarian and humanist readings through apologetic strategems. Contemporary norms are attributed to the past through a savage, arbitrary and a-historical appropriation of the text. On the basis of selective readings of the founding texts, Islam is reduced to essentially entailing justice, equality and humanism.

In this context, Moosa questions the distinction made by Engineer and other modernists between the ethical and pragmatic imperatives of the Qur’an. The argument of these

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modernists hinges on the notion that Muslim thought over the centuries has erroneously attributed normative value to verses that merely allowed or legitimated the Prophet’s pragmatic accommodation with existing social practices. As a consequence, in their view, Muslims have long failed to perceive, for instance, that monogamy is the preferred practice and have upheld polygamy as the Islamic norm instead of a barely tolerated alternative. This approach, Moosa contends, is highly problematic. In order to prove Islam’s egalitarian views on the status of women, too much is made of too few verses. Only a few verses of the Qur’an can be viewed as egalitarian, while the overwhelming amount of material suggests that patriarchy was the norm.

The essentialist approach leads modernists to other contradictions as well. It forces them, for instance, to argue that throughout Muslim history the text was understood incorrectly and that only in late modernity we discovered that everyone else was wrong. This is, in Moosa’s view, a seriously flawed analysis, which may serve apologetic purposes but is entirely unconvincing.

In all this, modernists are not basically different from traditionalists and neo-traditionalists. Their attitude is one of worship of the text (`ibadat al-nass), as opposed to an effort to understand it. In the end, the difference between militant Islamist and modernist appropriations of the text is a matter of the politics of the present, not one of method and theory.

On the basis of this criticism, Moosa advocates a thorough re-evaluation of the modernist project. As previously observed, he argues that modernists should begin to understand the Qur’an as a historical text; as a text with a political history that attempts to negotiate the multiple agendas of the society in which it took shape. Moreover, Moosa maintains that modernists should abandon their essentialist approach to the text. They should admit that norms are not generated (exclusively) by texts. Norms are produced in the social and discursive processes of the present and then discovered in the text. An a-historical essential Islam can only be conceived in the divine mind, which in terms of human understanding is a metaphysical possibility. In this world, however, Islam is inconceivable without Muslims.

A more historical approach to the text of the Qur’an and the way it is interpreted would enable Muslim modernists to abandon both their apologetic attitude and the notion that throughout Muslim history the text was misinterpreted.

Compared to the typical apologetic stratagem of selective reading in order to demonstrate, for instance, that the Qur’an endorses women’s equal status, it is preferable to admit the fact that the text reflects the patriarchal norms of the Medinan context. Once it is accepted that norms are produced in the social process, this is no longer problematic and it does not prevent contemporary Islamic discourse being from anti-patriarchal.

Rather than positing others as wrong, modernists should investigate how the text was dealt with in Muslim history. In Moosa’s view, the text fundamentalism of contemporary Islam is a product of its time. In early Muslim literature, he argues, there was less worship of the text, more flexibility in dealing with the literal text and with the relationship between ideal and reality. Some Muslim jurists even went as far as ignoring the imperatives of the text. The Maliki school, for instance, considers a man beating his wife as a ground for divorce, although the Qur’an explicitly tells men to beat their wives in

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certain situations. Fundamentalists privilege the original text because it enables them to ignore historical tradition. Ibn Taimiyya, for example, understood very well that some of his predecessors such as Ghazali and Juwayni reinterpreted the entire legacy through the lens of their personal world-view. Yet, Ibn Taimiyya would have us believe that he himself reads without any such lenses. Of course he also perceived the text in the context of his time; it is up to us to discover through which lenses he read it.

It should be noted that Moosa not only argues for a historical analysis of the Qur’an, but for a historical understanding of all truth and meaning. Whereas Charfi appears to hold on to the notion of an original intention in the revelation, which must be recovered by removing the historical debris of traditionalist Islam, Moosa argues for a complete abandonment of the search for a-historical and essential truths and meanings. Moosa’s skepticism becomes clearest where he contrasts his own view with that of Fazlur Rahman. Rahman, he argues, advocates a historical analysis of the Qur’an, but despite this he does not escape the essentialism of the modernists. In order to arrive at a historical analysis, Rahman formulated his ‘double movement theory.’ According to this theory, a study of the historical context in which the Qur’an was revealed should first establish the original meaning of revelation, the general values and principles underlying the various historical injunctions. Secondly, these general values and principles should be applied in the context of a contemporary reader of the Qur’an. Fazlur Rahman’s theory, allows for the re-interpretation of the Qur’anic truth in every age. At the same time, however, Rahman’s thought remains firmly grounded in the ethical positivism of both Enlightenment humanism and Mu`tazili rationalism, since he stuck to the notion that this truth in every age could be objectively established. This ethical positivism, according to Moosa, is ultimately absolutist and at odds with democratic pluralism, for it does not allow for a multiplicity of truths. Truth is, for Fazlur Rahman, ultimately singular, even though it may find multiple or overlapping expressions. Rahman did not countenance the possibility of multiple truths.

Rights versus duties7. Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh’s paper entitled Islamic Feminism in Iran catches up with Soroush’s remark that Muslim modernism should move from a duty oriented to a rights oriented discourse.

In Abbasgholizadeh’s view, Iran’s Islamic feminism is part of the international feminist movement. Like international feminism, it is the result of socio-economic developments combined with the transition from a traditional to a modern society, which created the ideological space for new roles for both men and women. Like feminist movements elsewhere, it is a social movement that aims to express the gender-specific demands of women and to combat structural inequalities between men and women through the reform of social and political institutions.

The Iranian feminist movement, however, owes its particular nature to the specific context of its historical development. As international feminism came into being in the context of existing ideologies such as Marxism and socialism, contemporary Iranian feminism emerged in the context of the Islamic religious discourse prevalent since the 1979 revolution.

In the first years after the revolution and in the context of the restrictive policies of the new regime, Iranian feminists were chiefly preoccupied with the definition of women’s

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duties on the basis of rational argument within the discipline of Islamic jurisprudence. In this, they were inspired by Ayatollah Motahhari’s concept of ‘dynamic jurisprudence,’ which advocated new interpretations (ijtihad) to allow for differences in time and place.

At present, the Iranian feminist movement is one of the spearheads of the reform process in Iran. As women are among the groups most affected by the tension between modernity and tradition, they constitute a dynamic sector of society. Iranian feminists are more urgently faced with concrete questions concerning their role in the home and society and as such tend to be in the vanguard of the new religious movement that is formulating solutions to contemporary problems, particularly with regard to human rights.

Iranian feminists are now moving beyond the question of formal requirements and duties to the question of women’s rights. Iranian reformers are divided between those who seek answers in jurisprudence, the particulars of religion (furu` al-din) and those who seek to reform the fundamentals of Islam (usul al-din). The transition from duties to rights requires a shift of focus from the particulars to the fundamentals of religion. In addressing the question of human rights, it is not sufficient to deal only with particular issues within the framework of jurisprudence, such as the beating of women, inheritance etc.; the force of reform should be directed at the fundamentals of religion (usul al-din).

Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh challenges new religious thinkers to formulate alternatives, in order to keep up with the development of thought in the Iranian Islamic feminist movement. To develop these alternatives, they should study women’s issues from an inside perspective rather than from the outside. Instead of dealing with modernity as a set of questions of jurisprudence, they should focus their attention on the development of those most affected by it. A view from within is important if the new religious thinkers wish to keep up with actual changes taking place.

DiscussionThe above criticisms of Islamic modernism and particularly the calls for a historical analysis of the Qur’an and the accommodation of a skepticist notion of truth aroused strong objections from Asghar Ali Engineer and Tariq Ramadan.

Engineer argued that although the various interpretations of the text should be viewed as historical, the text itself cannot be subjected to a historical criticism. To say that the text is historical and that eternal norms exist only in the mind of God, he argues, demolishes the authority of the text which is the very foundation of Islam. “If we begin to doubt the authority of the text, speaking of Islam becomes meaningless. Our project is by necessity a fusion of reason and faith in the text. Although some of the text is contextual, it must be recognized that the Qur’an is meant for eternal guidance.” He rejected Moosa’s criticism of his methods: “All of us make selective use of texts. I plead guilty to that. It is easy to reject modernism as apologetic but I think that the early modernists have reacted adequately to the situation. If someone tells me that my religion is reactionary and barbaric, I find a relevant text and say: no, it is not! As a reformer, I have to make selective use of texts because much of it is contextual and not meant for eternity.”

Tariq Ramadan voiced strong objections to the historicising approach to the Qur’an. Although agreeing in principle that this position should be discussed within the community, he judged that those who advocate it place themselves outside the Muslim

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community. The claim that the Qur’an consists of the words of Muhammad, of human words, represents in his opinion a total intellectual defeatism (al-tanazzul al-fikri al-kamil), a complete surrender to the spirit of the time: the priority of reason, progress and the individual. The contemporary emphasis on reason and individualism is excessive. Instead, he argued, Muslims should be critical of these ideas and debate the status of reason. Moosa may contend that traditional Islam is dogmatic and tends to text-worship (`ibadat al-nass), but his own rationalism is equally dogmatic and leans towards the other extreme of worshipping reason (`ibadat al-`aql). Ibn `Arabi has said that attempting to understand the text without an inner light may lead to `ibadat al-`aql. The Qur’an being the eternal word of God, the only legitimate role of human reason, according to Ramadan, is in applying this eternal text to ever-changing situations. He objected to Moosa’s implied suggestion that such faithfulness to the text would place him in the same category as the fundamentalists and traditionalists. Reading the text from a perspective of renewal (tajdid qira’at al-nass) is entirely different from what the fundamentalists do. It is the way the fuqaha and `ulama have dealt with their environment throughout Muslim history.

Responding to Engineer and Ramadan’s objections, which he said did not surprise him, Moosa observed that modernists are often reluctant to re-open these debates for fear that this may invite attack from fundamentalist or traditionalist quarters. The fact that in orientalist discourse, historical criticism has often served to throw doubt on the authenticity of the Qur’an has understandably strengthened this reluctance. In Moosa’s view, however, such arguments should be addressed directly, within the discourse of historical criticism and not in an apologetic fashion.

Moosa denied that the historical approach he advocates would undermine the authority of the text. The text is authority, but the question cannot be avoided as to what kind of authority it represents. It is to the early modernists’ great merit that they opened up vast new areas for debate. Nowadays, however, Muslims are faced with a whole new range of intellectual challenges, in the light of which the tradition is to be interrogated. The task at hand is to develop new tools for understanding the authority of the text in a new age.

In agreement with Moosa, Abu Zaid and Soroush denied that historical analysis and a skepticist conception of truth necessarily contradict the divine origin and authority of the Qur’an. The Qur’an itself, Soroush argued, states that this is impossible. Neither participant elaborated further in explanation of this denial.

Nurcholish Madjid suggested a way in which belief in the eternal and divine authority of the Qur’an could be reconciled with a skepticist and historicist concept of truth. Islam teaches us, Madjid argued, that there is no God but God, implying that people should liberate themselves from anything other than God. It also teaches that God is transcendent and unattainable, meaning that as soon as God has been defined, the object of worship is something other than God (namely man’s conception of Him). This implies that mankind must strive to approach but will never attain God, and that therefore the process of renewal is endless. As soon as one develops fixed ideas, one is definitely on the wrong path.

Madjid appears to introduce here into the discussion a distinction between the ontological and epistemological status of truth and to argue that epistemological skepticism does not necessarily deny the existence of absolute truth and essential meaning. In short; the Qur’an does contain an eternal divine meaning but this can only

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be approximated and no human being can claim privileged access to it. Although complete possession of truth is impossible, the ontological existence of truth suggests the possibility of being more or less close to it, rendering the notion of critical reason meaningful and offering at least some reassurance to those who fear a total surrender to historical subjectivity.

Soroush agreed with Madjid that assumptions and presuppositions should continually be questioned. This is in fact what the great Sufis have taught; Rumi calls man a wayfarer, always on the road, who should not be lured into thinking that he has reached the end of it. So in the quest for truth, one can only approximate the destination and should never claim to have attained full understanding. Translated into a modern mode of thought, this notion of approximating God implies historicity of thought and understanding.

Farish Noor drew attention to an apparent paradox in Moosa’s position. He criticizes modernists for their wishful interpretation of the text, but ultimately the consequence of his own skepticist approach is that in interpreting the Qur’an he will have recourse to equally subjective readings. Noor observed that the essentialism so typical of contemporary modernism often serves political aims. Similar essentialist ideas are popular with such contemporary ideological currents as ‘Africanism’ and the school of ‘Asian values.’ Such currents, he argue, respond to the reductionism of orientalism with a reverse reductionism of their own. The important question is, whether a perspective exists from which this reductionism can be criticized without falling into the same trap. “Once we accept that there is no space outside discourse”, Noor told Moosa, “then we are part of it ourselves as well. So where do I have to locate you in the middle of this?” Moosa agreed with Noor that politics thrive on essentialism and that intellectuals cannot easily extricate themselves from politics. “We are all involved in discursive practices, so it is very important where we situate ourselves in the political arena.” The problem with modernism, Moosa argued, is that it frequently sides with the state. Instead, it should locate itself within civil society and launch its critique from there. In answer to the monolithic essentialist statements of traditionalists or fundamentalists, one should demonstrate the complexity of issues rather than take recourse in modernist apologetics. For instance, the absurdity of the statement ‘The Qur’an is the constitution’ can be exposed by showing the complexity of the text.

Issues of Sociology and StrategyIn addition to their theoretical objections, Engineer and Ramadan expressed strong practical objections against discussing issues such as a historical criticism of the text of the Qur’an. This initiated a gradual move in the discussion from the intellectual to the practical and sociological challenges faced by Muslim modernists.

Engineer wondered what is the use of discussing the historicity of the Qur’an. As a reformer, concerned with bringing about changes in society, his point of departure must by necessity be the authority of the text. This is also a matter of reformist strategy. Attempts at reform that question the Qur’an itself and throw doubt on its authority by pointing to the contingency of (the present redaction of) the Qur’an are self-defeating because they make the very effort of reform suspect. “How could [such a reformer] face the people and the `ulama? [He] would share the fate of Salman Rushdie, or worse and be hanged!”.

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Ramadan explained his strong objection to approaches that question the divine character of the Qur’an (in its present redaction). He has repeatedly found himself forced to denounce advocates of such approaches, because their discourse put him in an embarrassing position vis-à-vis his community. Muslims in Europe are in an inherently transitional situation. For Ramadan, as an intellectual attempting to make a contribution to the development of Muslim thought and Islamic reform in this community, it is essential to work from within the community and not to antagonize it. It is therefore important to address legal issues concerning Muslims in Europe from within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence, through ijtihad and fatwas, even though one may consider spirituality as the real essence of Islam. This may appear traditional from the outside, but what we are witnessing in fact is nothing less than the emergence of a completely new, open-minded and progressive attitude.

8. A way out of the dilemma explained by Engineer and Ramadan was suggested by Jalaluddin Rakhmat; who saw a major role to be played by Sufism. In his presentation, entitled The Revival of Sufism: Does it help? A glance at the Modern Sufi Associations in Indonesia, he explores the potential of Sufi discourses as a strategy for the modernists to communicate with the masses. Rakhmat urged the participants not to lose themselves in theological debates but to focus on the vital issue of strategy and on the sociology of Islamic discourses. Whilst discussing philosophy and a variety of ideas about human rights and democracy, he argued, too little regard is given to the current situation in the world outside. Out there fundamentalism is resurgent and the boat of the liberals is sinking. The precarious situation of liberal thought today must be considered; and that and this is a problem of communication.

Fundamentalists, Rakhmat contends, are narrow-minded and focussed on the surface meaning of the sacred text; they ignore its universal values and are intolerant of pluralism of readings. Their manipulation of Islamic symbols, however, gives them credence with the masses. They worship Allah with fanfare. At the least, they wear ‘Islamic’ dress, speak ‘Islamic’ language and struggle to establish an ‘Islamic’ state. The liberals, in contrast, are open-minded; they advocate a dynamic understanding of the universal values of the text and are tolerant of other religions and dissenting opinions. Their problem is a lack of credibility with the masses because their Islamic identity is not clearly recognized. The authenticity and sincerity of the liberals is being questioned; fundamentalists successfully accuse them of being westernized and of ignoring or even violating Islam in their personal lives. What are the modernists going to do about this?

What is needed, Rakhmat continued, is a discourse that saves us from the pitfalls of either the fundamentalists or the liberals, that allows us to remain loyal to our liberal ideas while at the same time providing authenticity. For him and many Indonesian Muslims, Sufism represents a solution.

In modern Islamic discourse, Sufism was long disregarded as a sign of backwardness. Mystical Islam was discredited by all segments of the urban intellectual elite. Modernists blamed Sufism for all the calamities that befell the World of Islam or branded it as an escape mechanism in the face of modern challenges; traditionalists rejected it as a kind of heresy.

Since the 1980s, however, Sufism has re-emerged in intellectual discourse in Indonesia. In response to the challenges of modernity, a new (urban middle class-based) Sufi movement has emerged alongside the traditional Sufi orders, as so-called ‘modern Sufi

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associations.’ In contrast to the traditional orders with their emphasis on ceremony and spiritual authority, these new associations are forums for discussion, where debates take place regarding the relevance of Sufi ideas and concepts in everyday life.

Rakhmat contends that this modern Sufi association provides a rich treasure for an Islamic discourse that could be an alternative for both fundamentalists and liberals. Sufism is in agreement with the liberals concerning religious tolerance and open-mindedness. Sufism is known for its tolerance and respect for pluralism: the notion of unity of all religions (wahdat al-adyan), which is known by the famous saying: “There are as many ways to God as the breaths of human beings”. Moreover, Sufism is the best remedy against shari`a-minded fundamentalism. Unlike formalism and scripturalism, it draws the believer towards the core values of spirituality. The modern Sufi associations do not shy away from political Islam, but their understanding of it differs from that of the fundamentalists. Instead of a theocratic state that implements the shari`a as formulated by the fuqaha, they define the unity of the religious and the political as a common struggle for justice (`adl), peace (aman), and welfare (salah). The process of democratization can also be promulgated within this theoretical framework. Justice can include the proper allocation of political and economic resources, peace can incorporate the struggle for human rights and welfare can comprise the empowerment of the poor and mustad`afin.

Liberals, Rakhmat concludes, may solve their problem of communication with the people by adopting a discourse rooted in the Sufi tradition. When liberals criticize fundamentalists for being ritualistic and intolerant, they find no large audience because their discourse is too westernized. But when they communicate in Sufi terms, they will find wide acceptance. In this way, the emphasis on universal values and the ideas of pluralism and tolerance do not appear as foreign values implanted into the soil of Islam but are shown to be part of the Islamic heritage.

Rakhmat’s plea that the discussions should focus on sociological rather than theological issues was widely appreciated. Engineer, Ramadan, Charfi and Masud expressed their agreement that besides discussing their intellectual differences, modernists should discuss their practical problems of communicating their ideas to the masses.

Engineer, Charfi, Moosa and Noor further elaborated on the question of why liberal modernist discourses tend to become marginalized whereas fundamentalist Islamist discourses appear to have a greater appeal for the Muslim masses.

Engineer argues that the perceived lack of authenticity is not the only reason for the marginalization of the liberals. Liberal Muslim discourse demands people to think, reflect for themselves and assume responsibility. The majority of the populace shies away from such freedom and responsibility, and prefers others to think for them, particularly in religious matters. In religion they seek a mental refuge, a utopia which both the orthodox leaders and the fundamentalists provide.

In Charfi’s analysis, the obstacles impeding acceptance of the project of modernising Islamic thought lie both in the economic conditions and in the prevalent state of consciousness in the Muslim world. The main obstacle, he argues, is related to the lack of economic development of these societies. Where misery, illness and illiteracy prevail, it is futile to wait for a change of attitude. Other obstacles, however, could be referred to as cultural; they involve attitudes which are deeply anchored and internalized in Muslim

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consciousness and perpetuated by the educational system in Muslim countries. Firstly, there is a strong mentality of authoritarianism that pervades all structures of society, from governments to the nuclear family. Secondly, there is a general attitude of dogmatism which claims exclusive ownership of truth and ostracizes deviant voices. Finally, there is a prevalent essentialist way of thinking, which considers Islam as either essentially modern or essentially anti-modern, without taking into account historical factors that ultimately determine interpretations of the prophetic message. The rise of the Islamists is the result of this failure to bridge the gap between Islam and modernity. Relying on their political and mass-media skills, the Islamists capitalize on the confusion of the population by offering simplistic solutions.

Ebrahim Moosa observed in this context that Islamist groups often commence with an absolutist rhetoric but then go through phases in which they become more pragmatic and relativist, particularly when they gain a share of political power. The contemporary reform movement in Iran is an example, and the Islamists in Jordan initially had a strongly absolutist discourse, but once they gained political power they soon found it expedient to soften this rhetoric.

Farish Noor objected that this is not generally true; in Malaysia, for instance, the situation is quite different. The Malaysian state is challenged by Islamists and responds by attempting to out-Islamicize them. The result is a race towards Islamization, in which both sides continue raising the stakes. In such a situation, says Noor, it is almost impossible for one side to revert to a more liberal stance.

In addition to the internal factors discussed above, Farish Noor hinted at the existence of external factors impeding the modernization of Muslim thought. The issue of identity construction of Muslims in the modern world, he argued, should be discussed in relational terms. Muslims do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in relation to other communities. This is very clearly the case for minority Muslim communities such as in Europe, where efforts to revise or question established Islamic concepts, or offer internal critique, are severely hampered by outside circumstances.

Unlike his plea for a greater concentration on sociological issues, Rakhmat’s suggestion that Sufi discourse represents a strategic option for the modernists found little appreciation. Sufism, it was generally felt, is irrational and relies on a charismatic and authoritarian concept of authority.

In Farish Noor’s view, it is precisely the mass appeal of Sufism that makes it so dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands. Rakhmat referred to the liberal potential of Sufism, but it is not this aspect that is stressed by most modern Sufi organizations. The Malaysian Sayyid Naguib al-Attas, for instance, uses Sufi discourse but with quite different aims: he provides the state with the same sort of conservative authoritarian discourse that characterized the Mahdi regime, but now disguised, rationalized and explained in new Sufi terms.

Khira Chibani doubted whether it is possible to bring the liberal and Sufi discourses into agreement. Liberal discourse, she contended, is based on respect for individualism; it assumes that the individual should strengthen his individuality through rights and freedoms. Sufism, on the contrary, advocates the cultivation of a special relationship to God and the universe, whereby the individual relinquishes his individuality in favour of a union with a larger whole. Chibani therefore estimated that, rather than being close to

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liberal views, Sufism easily lends itself to be used by the state as a tool to manipulate the people.

Soroush saw a theoretical inconsistency as well as a practical danger in the project of employing Sufism for political purposes. Sufism may appear to be modern but the introduction of Sufi ideas into politics will cause more harm than good. Firstly, Sufism is authoritarian. Translated into politics, it inevitably leads to an authoritarian regime. Beware, he warned, we have tested all this in Iran! The Safavid rulers were Sufis - the people looked at the Safavid Shah as a murshid - and they were very authoritarian. In modern times, Khumayni’s concept of wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the jurist) builds directly on the Sufi heritage rather than on Shi`a jurisprudence. In Shi`a jurisprudence this idea has been around for just 200 years and it has always remained a minority view. Furthermore, Soroush added, Sufism looks with contempt at the life of the individual. Khumayni, who was a Sufi above everything, did not respect the life of individuals. It did not trouble his conscience to let them die for the sake of the Islamic Republic. Finally, Sufism is a duty-oriented system of thought whereas liberal Islam is rights-oriented. There is a profound incompatibility between the two, and it appears futile to attempt to bridge the gap.

Rakhmat agreed with these speakers on the danger of authoritarianism and irrationality that is inherent in Sufism, but he insisted that all depends on “the hands that cook Sufism.” In his discussion of Sufism, he had referred to the new phenomenon of modern Sufi associations (such as the one he is associated with) rather than to the traditional Sufi orders. The Sufism he chooses to propound, in other words, is a rational and liberal Sufism.

Civil society between authenticity and democracyThe notion of authenticity was first introduced into the discussions by Farish Noor and Jalaluddin Rakhmat when they attributed the greater popular appeal of fundamentalists as compared to liberal Muslim intellectuals to the latter’s perceived lack of authenticity. In the context of unequal relations between the Muslim world and the West, the notion of authenticity assumes central importance in making certain ideas and practices acceptable or unacceptable. This was hinted at by Farish Noor, when he suggested that besides the internal constraints mentioned by Charfi and others, there are also external socio-political constraints on the effort of modernising Muslim thought. Noor’s remark indeed raises questions that require further elaboration. To what extent does the fact that modernity came from the West constitute an additional external obstacle to the intellectual modernization process? To what extent does modernization constitute westernization, i.e. an effort by Western imperial powers to establish cultural hegemony, and to what extent is the quest for authenticity a way to resist this?

In addition to these sociological questions, the issue of authenticity versus westernization also raises epistemological questions. To what extent is modernity specifically related to western culture and, more generally, to what extent can cultures consider ideas and concepts as their exclusive property and achievement? In the concluding discussion, Khalid Masud observed the question had not been raised as to whether all these modernity related issues should be perceived as matters of modernization or westernization. Masud preferred considering them as modern issues that came to the West and also to the Muslim world. They are questions faced by all people, and Muslims should address them as if the answers apply to all people.

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Abdel Fatah’s and Chibani’s papers on the development and relevance of the concept of civil society in the Arab-Muslim world further elaborated on the issues of authenticity, modernization and westernization.

9. Saifeddin Abdel Fatah’s paper, Umma-institutions and Civil Society in Islamic Thought and Practice, deals with the question of whether the concept of civil society is suitable for the experience of Arab and Islamic states.

The present state of civil society discourse and practice in Arab-Islamic countries, Abdel Fatah argues, is discouraging. Ten years ago, civil society began to be discussed as a solution to the problems of the democratization of (Muslim) countries, but today ‘the crisis of civil society’ is spoken of: civil society has become a problem itself. Instead of subsuming the diversity of its institutions under a nationwide vision, which will enable it to protect society from the hegemony of the state, civil society in many Arab Islamic countries has evolved into some kind of neo-tribalism. Its different institutions are engaged in trivial quarrels, making them susceptible to internal infiltration by the state and external infiltration by foreign powers. Meanwhile, the concept of civil society remains fashionable but vague and ambiguous, a consumer item like other goods coming from the West, that may well be under way to be replaced by new fashionable concepts such as globalization. Being only superficially assimilated, it has not become part of lived reality; people relate to it as actors staging a theatre play.

A critical re-assessment of the functioning of this concept of civil society in Arab-Islamic countries is therefore needed. Such a re-examination should be concerned in particular with the way this concept has been transferred and assimilated in the Arab-Islamic world, rather than with the way in which it emerged and developed in its natural habitat in the West. An important notion, in connection with the process of transferring concepts from the West to the Third World, is that of the ‘gate-keepers’, i.e., those who control the applications and meanings of these concepts, excluding some of their characteristics and adding others in accordance with their political agendas.

Sa`d ad-Din Ibrahim played this role of ‘gate-keeper’ for the concept of civil society in Egypt. Ibrahim relied on a conflict model of political development and modernization, which maintains that modern civil political culture and institutions tend to uproot and destroy traditional political culture and institutions. This view led him to a conception of civil society which excludes all historical institutions of religious heritage and disregards the fact that the concept of civil society was developed in Eastern Europe when Christian churches began playing an important role there.

In Abdel Fatah’s view, the concept of civil society can only be useful in the context of Arab-Islamic society if it is organically related to concepts and institutions of the cultural environment into which it is transplanted. This would require a reconciliation rather than a rupture between modern secular and traditional religious institutions.

In order to achieve this reconciliation, a procedural definition of civil society is needed, which will facilitate an approach within the historical and cultural context of Arab-Islamic civilization. Abdel Fatah thus defines civil society as consisting of institutions which are of a voluntary nature and operate independently from the institutions of political power. In addition, the concept of civil society must be considered as related to a number of other concepts such as citizenship, human rights, political participation, legitimacy etc.

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On the basis of this definition, Fatah identifies a number of traditional institutions which belong to the category of civil society, such as the `ulama, the mosque, ifta, waqf and the extended family. He calls these institutions the ‘institutions of the nation (umma)’, as they stand opposed to the institutions of political power. These traditional institutions cannot contribute to the development of civil society in their present form, they must be reformed and modernized. Yet, this reform does not necessarily imply modelling them according to Western forms. As in many cases the original intention of these traditional institutions has been distorted, this reform should rather be a return to their essence and origin.

The `ulama, for instance, were a very progressive force in certain periods of Islamic history, operating as an independent authority that could formulate legal and moral limits on the power of the rulers. At other times, however, their role was reactionary, such as for instance during the period of the Inquisition (mihna). With regard to this period of the Inquisition, it is significant and puzzling that the rational and liberal Mu`tazila, who are often viewed by modernists as progressive, played the role of the persecutors while Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, often dubbed a conservative thinker, played the progressive role of taking an independent view from rulers on the basis of the text. A related traditional institution of civil society is that of ifta (issuing legal opinions), which was progressive in the period when it was a real institution of the umma, not a governmental institution as it is today.

Another important traditional institution in this connection is that of waqf. It has often been argued that the rise of civil society in Europe was conditioned by economic factors: it was the existence of surplus that empowered citizens to create counter-hegemonic institutions. The institution of waqf demonstrates that in Islamic history also, the economic infrastructure has played an important role in fostering civil society. At times, waqf played an important role both in securing the financial independence of the `ulama and in the provision of funds for education. By the time of Muhammad Ali’s death, for instance, awqaf were providing 50% of educational expenditure in Egypt.

Among the traditional institutions of civil society Abdel Fatah also includes the mosque, which has had a number of important social functions besides being the place of worship, as well as the extended family, which protects its members from the power of the state.

An authentic Islamic concept that bears a close relationship to civil society is that of fard kifaya (a duty that is incumbent upon society as a whole, not upon each individual member as the fard `ayn). A theory of civil society appropriate to Muslim societies should take this concept and the above-mentioned institutions into account.

10. Khira Chibani, Civil society and Problematics of Identity. For the purpose of describing the development of civil society in the Arab-Islamic historical experience, Chibani defines it as consisting of all societal institutions that operate relatively independently from governmental institutions in such a way that they play a mediating role between the government and the people. In the light of this definition, civil society has played an important societal role in pre-modern history. One can refer here to instance of the role of the `ulama in limiting the tyranny of the state in the name of justice and equity, although the state was often able to accommodate them for its own purposes.

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In the modern period, civil society was represented by the project of reformist thought. In its initial stage, reformists called for the defence of identity in the face of the colonial powers and for the release of the Islamic umma from stagnation through the reinterpretation (ijtihad) of religion. With the further advance of modernity, the reformist project divided into three trends: one defending the concepts of liberalism and freedom, a second defending those of justice and socialism and a third defending national unity on the basis of Arab identity. The Arab nationalist trend emerged victorious.

Chibani stresses that, unlike in the West, civil society in the Arab Muslim world has not developed the democratic concept of civil freedom. In pre-modern history this can be explained by the fact that the social order was based not on the notion of civility but rather on concepts of tribal belonging and Islamic identity. In modern times, democracy remained a secondary issue in view of demands for independence, unification and the issue of Jewish settlement. The nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq adopted a social order based on one party rule and the compromising of civil liberties.

The concept of civil society in the Arab world experienced a boom in the last decade, which can be explained by a number of internal and external developments. On the external international level this was caused by the emergence of a new world order. The International Declaration of Human Rights and various agreements concerning minority rights legitimated interference in sovereign states in defence of those rights. Western states, the World Bank and the IMF added to the pressure by making support conditional on democratic reforms. The relevant internal developments were the retreat of the nationalist project, especially after the 1967 defeat and the second Gulf War, the decline of Marxist ideology in the wake of the collapse of the eastern bloc, and the emergence of such voluntary associations as trade unions, political parties and interest groups, that were pushing for political openness and civil liberties.

In this context, the concept of civil society was adopted by both Islamic and secular trends and by the systems of government itself; all deploying it for their own purposes and within different strategies. The Islamic trend proclaims itself to represent those civic forces that can confront the authoritarian state. The secular trend, on the other hand, has invested the concept of civil society with a dimension of struggle against the Islamic trend, which it perceives as a threat to the foundations of civil society, notably pluralism and freedom of thought. Another trend employed the concept of civil society to advocate economic liberalism, privatization and cancellation of the role of the provider state. Yet others used the concept to justify intervention by Western states and their non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The democratic reforms that were imposed by Western states on many Arab countries as a kind of barter for international assistance, have strengthened the confrontation with the West in the name of cultural authenticity. The forces that benefited most from the imposed opening up of political space have been precisely those fundamentalist trends that are opposed to the Western model of democracy.

This analysis of the present situation of civil society in the Arab-Muslim world brings Chibani to pose a number of more general questions regarding the demand for authenticity and its reconciliation with the requirements of democracy. Should the efforts of Western powers to globalize the boundaries of civil society be understood as efforts to impose on everybody a civil society conditioned by Western terms? Could Arab civil

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society have local or national dimensions that can be built from within and be emancipated from the West? Is the nationalist project one of the types of coalition able to face attempts at westernization, and the imposition of values that run counter to cultural authenticity? If a discourse of authenticity is needed in one way or another, how does it relate to the demand for democracy? Can the religious and nationalist discourses of authenticity be reconciled with democracy? Can democracy be rejected in the name of identity demands, or is the discourse of authenticity and identity no more than a pretext for rejecting democracy? Can the nation state achieve democracy outside the nationalistic project?

Chibani concludes that in the past, Arab nationalist thought has halted the demand for democracy in order to face the dangers posed by globalization to national identity. Contemporary Arab intellectuals, however, have come to the conclusion that the real answer to the challenges of globalization is national integration and the rebuilding of national identity through democracy and national solidarity. In Chibani’s view, this could indeed be one of the possible solutions to the problem of disintegration, which diminishes the strength of Arab societies in the light of globalization.

Regional Cases Two of the papers contributed to the workshop, by Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid and Nurcholish Madjid, are case studies focusing on specific Muslim countries, Egypt and Indonesia.

11. Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid’s paper, Codification of the shari`a in Egypt: A problem of power struggle, is an analysis of the recent public discussion in Egypt that preceded the introduction of a new Procedural Personal Status Law. In Abu Zaid’s view, this public debate provides a microcosm of Muslim intellectual and political diversity in Egypt.

Since 1883, Egypt has had a judicial system that is divided between modern civil courts and traditional shari`a courts. The jurisdiction of the latter is limited to the application of the traditional Islamic personal status law, which deals with matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and alimony. The new law, which was approved by the parliament on January 29, 2000, was the first amendment of a Procedural Personal Status Law that dates back to 1930.

In the two months preceding its approval, the new law generated a fierce public debate in the Egyptian media. This debate centred around three issues dealt with in the new law, all meant to improve the legal position of women. Most controversial was the introduction of the principle known as khul`, which basically gives a woman the right to obtain a divorce without the consent of her husband by renouncing all her financial rights and returning the bride-gift (mahr). Whereas the old law only provided for a woman’s right to unilateral divorce when a she could prove that harm was inflicted on her, the incorporation of khul` in the new law considerably extended those rights. The supporters of the new law presented the principle of khul` as an Islamic principle, quoting the Qur’an (2: 229) and hadith. Further controversy concerned an article that was to give women the freedom to travel without the consent of their husbands and the recognition by the new law of a certain type of unregistered marriage.

In the public debate that followed a variety of groups can be identified. The most important of these groups were: (a) the government, including the Islamic Research Academy of al-Azhar, (b) the opposition parties, (c) the extra-parliamentary Islamist

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party Hizb al-`Amal, and (d) the lobby of human rights activists, NGOs and women’s organizations. The government, although the initiator of the new law, was itself divided on the issue; the ruling party’s deputies in parliament were unable to agree. At one stage, the government decided to postpone the discussion for one week, during which the media declared that the president was holding a meeting to make sure that the law was in accordance with the shari`a. The Islamic Research Academy of al-Azhar was also divided on the issue. At least five `ulama, including the new mufti, were against the law, but the shaykh al-Azhar defended the law in parliament. As for the opposition parties, the leftist Tajammu` party and the Nasserists were in favour, whereas the leadership of the liberal Wafd party initially agreed with the new law, but in the final session withdrew from parliament declaring that it was anti-Islamic. Outside the parliament, the Islamist party Hizb al-`Amal, in its newspaper al-Sha`b, repeatedly declared the new law part of a Zionist-secularist conspiracy designed to destroy Islam. Among the human rights activists, NGOs and women’s organizations, the majority considered the law a step in the right direction, to be followed by further steps. Some criticized the principle of khul` on the ground that it only provides for rich women who are capable of paying back the mahr. A minority rejected the law on the principle that human rights, not Islam, should be the frame of reference for such laws.

This debate, as pointed out by Abu Zaid, reveals a shift in public discourse. The polarization between Islamists and secularists, which had characterized Egyptian public debate in the 1980s, has given way to a variety of discourses, each with its own political agenda, and almost without exception expressed in religious language. Rather than discussing the issues in detail, the whole debate was further characterized by a tendency to demonstrate disagreement with others. A similar phenomenon, Abu Zaid argues, can be observed in Morocco, where fierce controversies rage regarding polygamy and raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 years. On close examination, however, it appears that polygamy is a marginal practice in Moroccan society and that the average age for women to marry is 25 years. The subject matter of such controversies does not seem to relate to existing social problems, but is rather used as a symbolic vocabulary to show differences, as there is no other platform to express these differences.

12. In his paper, Reflections on the challenges and opportunities of Islam in the modern world, with special reference to Indonesia’s current experimentation with democracy, Nurcholish Madjid argues that the processes of nation-state building and democratization in Indonesia are closely associated with the process of Islamization. Without denying the existence of undemocratic Muslim discourses in the country, he demonstrates that the one indigenous force capable of overcoming local primordial loyalties, overturning hierarchies and authoritarian traditions is (modernist) Islam.

Indonesia is the Muslim country farthest from the Islamic heartlands; it is the most recently Islamicized and the least Arabized. The Islamization of the central island of Java did not begin until the end of the 15th century. Indonesian Islam is strongly related to patterns of culture found in the coastal regions of Indonesia. Throughout Indonesia, a clear distinction can be made between the cultural patterns of the inland and those of the coastal regions. The inland cultures are agriculture-oriented, inward-looking and hierarchical, whereas the coastal ones are trade-oriented, cosmopolitan and egalitarian. The coastal regions easily adopted Islam because their cosmopolitan and egalitarian cultures were compatible with it. An important role in this process was played by the

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Malay language, which was the lingua franca of the islands of Southeast Asia. It became the language of Islam and developed into a literary language with a rich tradition of scholarship and belles lettres, written in the Arabic script. All this resulted in an ‘Islamicate’ culture that, in contrast to the diverse and regionally specific cultures of the inland peoples, transcended regional boundaries and was present throughout Indonesia. The wayang puppet-play and gamelan music, which are often thought of as ‘Indonesian’ by foreigners, in fact represent regional phenomena limited to Java and Bali. The only cultural styles that are truly pan-Indonesian and are appreciated all over the country are 'Islamicate' ones such as qasidah music, which has its origin in Arab-Muslim culture.

The development of an Indonesian national identity is, in Madjid’s view, closely related to the process of Islamization and the emergence of this ‘Islamicate’ trans-regional culture. It was not by accident that the first generation of Indonesian nationalists opted for Malay as the national language rather than the dominant regional language, Javanese. Indonesia’s founding fathers did not refer explicitly to Islam in their definition of Indonesian national identity. Having had a secular education, they played down Islam as a common denominator and relied instead on the Indonesian language in their construction of a modern concept of Indonesia. Indirectly, however, they did build Indonesia on 'Islamicate' culture, of which the Malay language was an inseparable part.

With its roots in the egalitarian and cosmopolitan culture of the coastal regions, the ‘Islamicate’ culture of Indonesia is also more democratic than its regional traditional cultures. Among the four large political parties that emerged victorious from the first general elections of 1955, only the Muslim modernist party, Masyumi, proved to be a consistent supporter of democratization. The other three, the Muslim traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, the nationalist PNI, and the communist PKI, were rooted in the traditional culture of Java - i.e. not predisposed to the idea of democracy - and eventually supported Sukarno’s abolition of parliamentary democracy in 1958.

Suharto, who replaced Sukarno in 1965, relied on a nativistic, inland Javanese concept of power, in combination with military rule. This turned out to be so effective that his regime lasted for 32 years. However, Quarto did not comprehend the human aspect of the modern nation state; he understood stability and capitalist development, but failed to see the complex relation between Islam, nation-building and democratization. In the first 25 years of his rule, all attempts at democratic reform were blocked, and Islam and Muslim political parties were primarily seen as security threats. As a result, Indonesia was delayed in its development towards becoming a modern democratic nation-state. Only during the past decade did Suharto accommodate a significant part of his Muslim subjects and allow Muslim organizations to play more prominent social and political roles.

The present-day experiment with democracy in Indonesia has opened up a wide space for the most diverse views and discourses. Not surprisingly, this has led to increased visibility of Islam. In the power struggle that is taking place, the fragile beginnings of democracy are threatened by new forms of authoritarianism. In Madjid’s perception, the only indigenous tradition that is really compatible with democracy is (modernist) Islam. Muslims therefore bear a special responsibility for, and will have to play a leading role in, the establishment of a more democratic Indonesia.

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