Internal debate that may be necessary among Muslims

What you need to know:

  • According to a survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 70 percent of all conflict-related deaths around the world last year involved Muslims. Of the 12,000 terrorist attacks the previous year, the majority were in Muslim countries.
  • A central argument in these debates is that violent acts perpetrated in the name of Islam cannot be divorced from the religion itself, and, while this does not make all Muslims violent, there is need to acknowledge and address the fact that Islamic religious text is used as justification for the violence.
  • A third major argument about the reform of Islam is based on similar reforms that have taken place in Christianity, due to the role of Martin Luther, whose efforts clipped the powers of the once all-powerful Catholic Church, creating the Protestant movement, and the basis for a separation between church and state.

The terrorist attacks in Garissa, and elsewhere in Kenya, in which non-Muslims have been targeted for the most horrific slaughter, mirror similar violence elsewhere in the world in which the Islamic religion has been deployed to justify extremist violence.

According to a survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 70 percent of all conflict-related deaths around the world last year involved Muslims. Of the 12,000 terrorist attacks the previous year, the majority were in Muslim countries.

A statistic that has particular relevance for Kenya is that the majority of those killed in these attacks were also Muslims, a departure from what has happened here, where the victims have mainly been non-Muslims. What is to be made of all this violence?

One argument is that this violence is evidence that Islam needs reforms. Debates about the reform of Islam have been around through the ages. The rise of violence within the Muslim world, as evidenced by the horrors of the Islamic State in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria, have brought these debates back to the fore.

LINKS

Here in Kenya, there is a clear realisation that the attacks being experienced lately are either linked with, or inspired by, what is going on in other regions around the world.

A central argument in these debates is that violent acts perpetrated in the name of Islam cannot be divorced from the religion itself, and, while this does not make all Muslims violent, there is need to acknowledge and address the fact that Islamic religious text is used as justification for the violence.

This argument proposes that Islamic text must be interpreted in a manner that acknowledges that some of it culturally-based and, therefore, cannot be applied universally, and that a recognition of this fact will help Muslims co-exist with other people in multi-cultural and multi-religious societies.

A counter-argument interprets the violence that has engulfed the Muslim world not as evidence of the need to reform but as evidence that Islam is in the throes of reform.

The Iranian-American Muslim scholar, Reza Aslan, argues that while for 14 centuries, Muslim religious authorities, the ulama, maintained a monopoly in the interpretation of Islamic text, the rapid rise of literacy in the Middle East, and elsewhere, means that people have now bypassed religious authorities in the interpretation of Quranic text, since they can read it for themselves.

As a result, religious authority has been transferred from the institution of religious leaders and into individual hands, a fact that has created a cacophony of competing individual interpretations.

According to him, the violence within Islam is an attempt by various competing formations, to ensure that their interpretation prevails over the others.

WITHOUT MEDIATION

According to Aslan, “without mediation, without an imam or a member of the ulama telling them what the text means …what necessarily happens in this kind of situation, ….are individualistic interpretations that promote peace, and tolerance, and feminism, and democracy. And you have individualistic interpretations that promote violence, and misogyny, and hatred, and terror.”

During another age, Christianity went through the kind of internal trauma that is now facing Islam. Aslan concludes that, unlike in Christianity, the lack of centralized leadership within Islam means that “no one can say who is and who is not a proper Muslim, what is and what is not proper Islamic behavior.” As a result, “what you have is just a shouting match between all of these individualized interpretations fighting amongst each other while also fighting amongst the institutions of the Muslim world.

A third major argument about the reform of Islam is based on similar reforms that have taken place in Christianity, due to the role of Martin Luther, whose efforts clipped the powers of the once all-powerful Catholic Church, creating the Protestant movement, and the basis for a separation between church and state.

From time to time, reformist figures have emerged in the Muslim world, whether Turkey’s Kamel Atarturk, or more recently President Abdel El-Sisi of Egypt, or the various Muslim thinkers such as Aslan himself, Syrian Muhammad Shahrur, or Iranian Abdul Karim Soroush. The main arguments by these reformers is that radical ideology does not represent the mainstream of Islamic practice or belief.

STATE REFORM

An illuminating article by Nick Danforth in the Foreign Policy argued that the separation of church and state in Europe and America was achieved not because of a reform of the church, but that of the state.

A reform of the state gave it sufficient legitimacy to vie for primacy in competition with the church, and forced the latter to recognize the former in order to maintain its own relevance.

Amid the ongoing difficulties, Kenya needs to reflect on these things. Muslims need to take more responsibility than they have done so far in preventing the use of their religion to spread violent extremist.

It is their religion and only they can do that. In taking up more responsibility, it will not be easy since, as Aslan says, this constitutes a conscious decision to enter a space characterized by competing interpretations of the Quran, some of which are enforced violently. They will therefore need the sympathy, understanding and support of not only the state but the non-Muslim majority.

The current difficulties also imply the need for a continuing reform of the state, both to give it more primacy in the lives of all citizens and reduce the capacity of terrorists to use weaknesses in the state as an excuse for the horrors they commit.
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