ISLAM AND SECULARISATION : SOME PERSPECTIVES AND PROJECTIONS Abdoul Mahdieu Savage, ( London/UK ) Abstract ------- The phenomenon of secularisation has received considerable scholarly attention both within and without the Islamicate configuration. This article seeks to explore its forms in Islamic majority and minority societies. It examines the general genetic make-up of secularisation . Furthermore, it attempts to refute some of the arguments put forward by Islamists in their attempt to justify their agenda. The article then elaborates the concept of modernity as the vehicle through which core issues in the secularity discourse are articulated. In the conclusion the article attempts to make some bold projections in relation to some issues raised in the essay. Preliminary remarks ------- To assume that every rational human being ought to have a legitimate say in the debate about the intensity of either religiosity or secularity in her/his society cannot be facile. This judgment of non-moral human obligation is an appropriate marker of the complexity and extreme importance of secularisation - or the lack of it - in every country /society the world over. Quite often secularisation and secularism are used interchangeably in elaborating modern Muslim identities and articulating socio-political programmes. Even though one is aware of the subtle nuances of meaning that do separate the two terms ,this article uses both in the manner of the non-distinguishing intellectual tradition. Mapping the genetic code of secularisation -------- Secularisation may be characterised as the process which favours the transfer of state power from the hegemony of religious authorities to a more inclusive source. Such a process may also favour the secularisation of institutions of learning , health authorities and hospitals , as well as the legal framework that maintains the dispensation of justice. It is not always the case that secularising forces set out to banish or exclude belief in the numinous and divine across the face of human affairs. The secularising experience most often leads to the creation of a secular state. A crucial distinction that should be kept in mind when discussing secularisation is that between secular state and secular society. The presumption of the secular state is that the social and cultural identities, disparate religious convictions, individual interests, rights and liberties are sanctioned within the polity. The notion of plurality of views and needs can only be sustained with a conducive spirit of tolerance . Effectively, therefore, a secular society which, hypothetically, banishes religion from its midst would be going against the very grain of secularisation since the views of those who profess any faith are not protected. A secular state should be able to sign up to , and articulate the core values in the treasury of a liberal democratic state. The phenomenon of secularisation has a European provenance. European intellectual and historical experience were behind its construction as a theoretical category to be articulated in the processes of states formations and internal identity-forming approaches during the Enlightenment. The product of rational thought, secularisation always aims to level the political and social fields in the name of liberty. Secularisation has been wrongly associated with moral laxity, promiscuousness and similar vices especially in post-colonial Muslim societies. This view derives largely from the fact that the belief is held by some Muslims that secularism and atheism overlap in exact measure without any remainder. To fully perceive how the ravenous atheistic monster devours a society, some have argued, you only have to take a look at the societies undergoing secularisation. From a critical perspective secularisation and atheism are not, and could not mean the same thing. A secular state only seeks not to commit itself in all matters religious. It accords and protects freedom of worship to the believers while tolerating the views and practices of those who do not belong to any denomination. It is almost difficult to see the distinction between the spirit of a secular state - not secular society - and the Qur`anic exhortation that there should be “no compulsion in religion”.[1] At the empirical level, all those who rail against the secular state as atheistic tend to forget that there are hundreds of Muslims living and practicing their faith in secular democracies in Europe, America and in other places including India Turkey , Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The point must be made at once that secularisation has generally never been a single homogeneous process. There have always been gradations and shades of secular states. In some states religion still plays some symbolic role. A case in point is the US where the process of administering the presidential oath of office is laden with religious symbolism. Another example of religious symbolism is the bold inscription “In God We Trust” on US currency. Similarly in Britain , respect for the divine echoes across football pitches whenever the national side is in action - “God save the Queen” is familiar emotional salvo. More to the point, there are some religious institutions in some secular states which do enjoy the largesse of the state. This is true in Britain, for example, were some Muslim newspapers, institutions of learning, civil society groupings and mosques have all enjoyed state funding of one kind or another. In most Muslim majority countries the call for secularisation has largely been made - albeit at a statistically low rate - by members of the intellectual class. Some of these scholars have investigated the possibility of creating a liberal democracy in an Islamic setting. They have demonstrated the existence of a common portmanteau of core values that bring together their findings and those of their liberal intellectual counterparts in Europe and America.[2] These values include, but are not limited to, abhorrence of the notion of a theocratic state, unalloyed protection of human rights and civil liberties, commitment to a democratic pluralist dispensation, and support for the use of rational thought in an attempt to brighten human condition. Abdullahi Ahmed al-Na`im is one Muslim academic who deserves a brief mention here because of his insightful exploration of secularism in recent times.[3] He yearns for a secular state - one that does not take sides in doctrinal matters - because that is the surest way to accord him the status of a “Muslim by conviction and free choice.”[4] It is wrong, he argues, for a state and its officials to coerce any individual to observe the canons of Islamic law . He maintains that for an Islamic state “to coercively enforce Shari`a repudiates the foundational role of Islam in the socialization of children and sanctification of social institutions and relationship”.[5] The fatal flaws of the Islamist discourse ------- The group of Muslims who have generated a panoply of discourses predominantly against secularisation of any kind are the Islamists or Islamic fundamentalists. There are various types of this phenomenon but the more virulent kind have transformed the Qur`anic theophany into a political ideology. Though they have been enjoying the fruits of modern empirical thought, scientific method, technical knowledge and technology, they are irredeemably committed to a programme of cultural and social atavism. The core characteristics of Islamism may be summarised as : *ability to be tolerant and accommodating of others *burning desire to revive the past *disdain for liberal democratic values *disrespect for rationalism in the production of knowledge.[6] A major point made in Islamist discourse is that Islam does not permit any transient separation between this-worldly and other-worldly commitments. Islamist agenda rejects the synechdochically charged call for the separation of “church”( read: religion) and “state” as an alien construction that does not fit the prevailing state of affairs in Muslim societies. This fiction , they claim, overlooks the fact that there has never been an urge for a Christian-style reformation in Muslim societies. Furthermore they point to the absence in Muslim societies of any entrenched religious class and institutions comparable to the ecclesiastical establishment in pre-Reformation Europe. And finally, they insist that Islam is a way of life in which there is no distinction between this-worldly and other-worldly affairs. The declared aim of the Islamism is to create an Islamic state which they conceive as a throwback to the Islamic caliphate. But Islamist discourse and modus operandi are flawed on several counts. irst, there is hardly any reference in the Qur`an to what might be the equivalent of a modern nation-state, which is the reality of the present day the Muslim countries . As states in the modern sense they all make requisite adjustments to live up to their ommitments and responsibilities with regard to the requirements of being members of the community of civilised nations. They sign up to international instruments like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and other rights-protecting treaties. To be sure, it is almost impossible to lapidate or flagellate someone today in any corner of the world without there being a global outcry. Thanks to the power of satellite television and the information superhighway/internet Secondly, tht erudite scholar of Islamic history , Ira M. Lapidus, has conclusively demonstrated that Muslim societies - their political, social and economic formations - were not fully Islamic. “The separation on an institutional level of state institutions and religious associations became the norm for the late Abbasid Caliphate, the Seljuq and Mamluk Sultanates, the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires and other Muslim regimes“. He labels his phenomenon as `secularised Islam`.[7] It is difficult to imagine how the Islamist hopes to do things differently in order to create a perfect Islamic state - which, incidentally, has never really existed in Muslim history. Third ,the immediate problem the post-Muhammad ummah (community of believers), referred to as the prototype caliphate ,had to grapple with was defining precisely who was a Muslim. The inability of the nascent community to reach consensus on this matter was at the heart of the early Muslim schisms which later translated into sectarianism This Muslim predilection of selectively defining an “offending” believer out of the faith tradition still persists today. One can only understand this in the context of non-existent excommunicatory powers in Islam. In the name of which Muslim are the Islamists advocating an Islamic state? Fourth, the insistence by Islamists that Muslims could only fully observe the principles and practices of the faith in an Islamic state runs the danger of exclude the millions of Muslims currently practising their Islam in secular democracies in Europe, America and indeed else outside Muslim configurations.[8]. Fifth, Islamism fails to realise that knowledge cannot be Islamised. Scientific knowledge especially has been acquired cumulatively across boundaries, cultures and civilisations. Would they Islamise the enormous contributions to knowledge by European, American and other non-Muslim minds or would they shun all alien production of knowledge? And finally, Islamism support of the so-called clash between “Islam” and the “west” leaves them vulnerable open to the charge of setting up a false dichotomy. If anything the corresponding counterpart of “Islam” is Christianity , and the corresponding counterpart of the “west”, in this case , should be the “east.” But the fundamental issue to be made is this: scholars of religions are increasingly realising that Islam belongs - by virtue of its geographical and Semitic origins , as well as patriarchy - in the same category with Judaism and Christianity. Islam is a western religion by all accounts.[9] Muslim engagement with modernity ------- The process of secularisation has always had serious implication for modernity. How to tackle modernity is the puzzle which the dominant reformist Muslim voices - different from the Islamists - set out to solve. It is important to note that modernity almost always covers the range of issues thrown up by secularisation: rationalism, freedom, pluralism and “otherness“, economic and scientific progress, inclusiveness and equality. Invariably, many Muslim thinkers see modernity as the most formidable problem facing the Muslim ummah (community of believers).Some of them hold that there is no incompatibility between Islam and modernity. A reformed Islam can accommodate the present day rationalism and progress. Fazlur Rahman , for instance, posits that in order to make Islam harmonious with modernity a new paradigm of rigorous Islamic thought has to be developed to replace the present Islamic methodology. [10]The reworking of the prevailing methodology is necessary because ,first, there has been an inability on the part of some Muslims to separate out the revealed message and the corpus of interpretations that has accumulated over the years. Each interpretation reflects the bias, temper and context of its interpreter. In the modern period the Muslim community is in danger of being unable to distinguish between human accretions and the revealed message. One area Muslims find problematic in the modern period is in the province of articulating and elaborating Islamic law. Fazlur Rahman notes that the legal content of the Qur`an is sparse. Before the emergence of the eponymous Shafii, Hanbali, Maliki and Hanafi schools of Islamic law, which coincided with the canonisation of the hadith ( recorded sayings and deeds of Muhammad) , the ideal sunnah (practices of Muhammad) permitted of ijtihad (liberal interpretation) and adaptation in determining legality. The sunnah of Muhammad was interpreted in the context of prevailing circumstances using the instrument of ra`y ( unfettered, expedient reasoning).[11]This rational and liberal approach to issues was severed by the methodology of the schools of Islamic law. The key theological and legal principles - there were hardly any Islamic political principles - that arose therein have been problematic. For instance, there still exists a major discrepancy between the assumption of Islamic law that man is free and responsible and the doctrines of Sunni theology which hold that man is not free. Fazlur Rahman derides the fact that a Muslim is thought to be responsible before the law for her/his actions because it is believed she/he is capable of using her/his rational faculty. Yet in the dominant Ash`ari /Sunni theology we are told that human beings acquire their actions through God’s power. He sees another discrepancy in admonishing Muslims to use reason to understand revealed truths, yet not allowing them to use that same reason to question the teachings of the legal schools in Islam. [12]To secure their extra-Quranic legal and theological positions medieval Muslim scholars declared the “gates of ijtihad” closed.[13] This closure has severely suffocated independent thinking in Islam. To address adequately the various problems - including liberal democratic values, civil liberties , minority rights, the gender question , economic and scientific progress - independent rational thought has to be resuscitated in Islam. Concluding remarks ------- Fundamentalism is the greatest threat yet that Islam itself faces. Nonetheless, it is doomed simply by preferring literalism over analogy and symbolism, by rewrapping efflorescing human hope and love with a blanket of intolerance. Placing rationality at the service of revelation in Islam is key to solving modern problems facing Muslims. Whether or not Muslims refuse to accept the full potency of secularisation in itself has nothing to do with its existential reality. The fact of the matter is hundreds of millions of Muslims live and practice their faith in secular democracies. Increasingly Muslim scholars trained in Europe and the US are using independent reasoning to recover the core values of pristine Islam. This approach is helping these scholars in their search to provide answers to the question posed by modernity and secularisation. And in some Muslim majority countries like Egypt “secularising” forces have begun the process of bringing the courts, law and institutions of learning under the ambit of the secular authority. In time Islam will open itself to rational debate. This is possible as long as the pre-eminent objective in interpreting the Qur`an is to derive the core ethical principles from its general statements instead of treating those statements as specific propositions. Select Bibliography ---------- *Esposito, John L., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World ,(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,1995) *Rahman, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity : Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982). *Ruth, Malise, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning, ( Oxford University Press,2004). *Sayyid, S., A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London and New York: Zed Books Ltd, 2003). *Ward, Keith God: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Oxford:Oneworld,2003). Notes ------- 1.Qur`an 2:256 2. Cf. Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies,(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,1988). 3.Abdullahi Ahmed al-Na`im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a, ( Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press,2008) 4.Ibid. 1. 5.Ibid. 1. 6.Cf. A. G. Noorani, Islam and Jihad: Prejudice versus Reality, (London and New York: Zed Books, 2002),65. 7.Ira M. Lapidus, A history of Islamic Societies, ( Cambridge: Cambridge university Press,20002),816 8.Cf. Noorani, Islam and Jihad, 76. 9.See Geoffrey Parrinder, “The Meeting of Religions Today” in Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Interfaith Theology: A Reader, (Oxford: Oneworld ,2001), where he notes that “The challenges are acute for the Semitic or Western religions of Christianity, Judaism and islam”,162. 10.See Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History,(Karachi: Central Institute of Islamic Research,1965). 11.Ibid. 6ff. 12. Ibid. 97ff. 13.Ibid.149ff.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 06:30:58 +0000
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