Waiting for the Islamic Reformation

No mat­ter what the pro­po­nents of Islam and Chris­tian­i­ty believe, it is a chal­lenge to call a faith peace­ful when the good and evil receive sanc­tion from the same scrip­ture. Pun­ish­ment for apos­ta­sy and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, cur­tail­ing the rights of women, and slav­ery — while the peace­ful pro­po­nents of both faiths can iden­ti­fy reli­gious tenets against them, there are oth­ers belong­ing to the same faith who can find reli­gious autho­riza­tion for them.

The real­i­ty is that despite the human­ist teach­ings of var­i­ous faiths, they can­not be cut out of the polit­i­cal sphere of human soci­ety.

The dif­fer­ence emerges when we con­sid­er how the medieval prac­tices sanc­tioned by faiths are imple­ment­ed by polit­i­cal author­i­ties. Islam is the only reli­gion which oper­ates in coun­tries as a theoc­ra­cy. These nations, pri­mar­i­ly in the Mid­dle East, have dis­mal human rights records regard­ing minori­ties and the rights of women. There are 13 Mus­lim nations where apos­ta­sy is pun­ish­able by death. Even in demo­c­ra­t­ic Islam­ic nations like Pak­istan, blas­phe­my is pun­ish­able by death. In nations like Sau­di Ara­bia, there are seri­ous con­straints on the free­dom of expres­sion. Women can’t dri­ve, and face restric­tions over employ­ment and own­er­ship rights. The trib­al pol­i­tics per­pet­u­at­ed by the Islam­ic faith finds its most telling man­i­fes­ta­tion in ISIS, which aims to estab­lish a Caliphate – a medieval Islam­ic state, to prac­tice the same brand of reli­gion the world is try­ing hard to sub­due and side­line.

Those who pro­pose that Islam is a peace­ful faith, one that ensures social jus­tice, tend to espouse the virtue when pro­tect­ed under lib­er­al democ­ra­cies. In the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, what gets missed many times is that Mus­lims in lib­er­al democ­ra­cies are able to prac­tice the pos­i­tive ele­ments of their faith under the pro­tec­tion of sec­u­lar laws. These laws pro­tect the same Mus­lims from the neg­a­tive ele­ments of their faith, some­thing they can­not deny as mul­ti­ple cas­es of dis­crim­i­na­tion and vio­lence in Mus­lim nations are autho­rised by Islam­ic law.

Con­sid­er female rights. If a woman is denied the right to seek out employ­ment, if she is denied the right to choose whom to mar­ry, what to wear, or when and how to move around in pub­lic, she can go to the police and achieve jus­tice. But in a Mus­lim nation, where the Sharia is the law of the land, the author­i­ties will be uphold­ing the law in deny­ing jus­tice to the same woman.

Sim­i­lar­ly, if some­one speaks up against a tenet of an ide­ol­o­gy or faith in lib­er­al democ­ra­cies and receives threats, they can too seek pro­tec­tion of the law. In Mus­lim nations, the same author­i­ties will be required by law to pun­ish some­one who crit­i­cis­es the Islam­ic faith. Regard­less of their faith, being a cit­i­zen of a sec­u­lar and demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, a per­son is ensured human rights and social jus­tice. Apa­thy can impede the imple­men­ta­tion of laws and there are many cas­es to prove so, yet there are mul­ti­ple avenues and author­i­ties through which
cit­i­zens can seek jus­tice.

The conun­drum aris­es when peace­ful Mus­lims claim that social jus­tice ensured in sec­u­lar democ­ra­cies is also ensured by Islam­ic scrip­ture. But those who com­mit human rights atroc­i­ties also back their actions with scrip­ture. When the world wit­ness­es how the word of God is imple­ment­ed in Mus­lim states, it becomes dif­fi­cult to under­stand the same faith as peace­ful and pro­gres­sive. More­over, there is usu­al­ly a ‘no com­ments’ retort when these peace­ful Mus­lims in lib­er­al democ­ra­cies are asked if they if would ever live in the nations dom­i­nat­ed by Islam­ic law.

Chris­tian­i­ty was once con­sid­ered a dog­mat­ic polit­i­cal pow­er in the West­ern world. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, the Cru­sades and the per­se­cu­tion of sci­en­tists are dark chap­ters in human his­to­ry, where a faith was used to divide and sup­press, exer­cis­ing polit­i­cal pow­er ema­nat­ing from the high seat of the Pope, and evil car­di­nals. But Chris­tian­i­ty wit­nessed a ref­or­ma­tion from with­in, where com­mu­ni­ties chal­lenged the dog­ma, and over time, estab­lished a spir­i­tu­al, and to a great extent, gen­uine form of faith, cre­at­ing a more direct link between Man and God. The ref­or­ma­tion cre­at­ed the Protes­tant faith and a series of oth­er Chris­t­ian sects, which under­stood faith as a cel­e­bra­tion of life and God, not sub­mis­sion to a high­er author­i­ty.

The con­trac­tion of reli­gious author­i­ty in the West laid the foun­da­tion for the estab­lish­ment of sec­u­lar laws. As God stepped back dur­ing the estab­lish­ment of nation states, enshrin­ing civ­il rights in laws became the call­ing card of human­ists and rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies around the world. Issues like slav­ery, ban on abor­tion and pun­ish­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, which claim sanc­tion from bib­li­cal scrip­ture, have been weak­ened and almost wiped out, as God has tak­en a back­seat, and human­ist prin­ci­ples, uni­ver­sal rights, the human dri­ve for free­dom and sec­u­lar
doc­trines con­tin­ue to gain more legit­i­ma­cy. They face chal­lenges all the time when strug­gling to ensure rights to mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties, yet they gain new ground and achieve new feats every­day.

This inter­nal ref­or­ma­tion in Chris­t­ian soci­eties had the effect of a spir­i­tu­al over­haul in Chris­tian­i­ty.

Same sex rights, which is the new civ­il rights strug­gle of the 21st cen­tu­ry, has been cham­pi­oned by tra­di­tion­al Catholic com­mu­ni­ties, name­ly Ire­land vot­ing unan­i­mous­ly in favour of same sex mar­riage, and even Pope Fran­cis giv­ing his bless­ing to same sex rela­tion­ships, focus­ing on cel­e­brat­ing the uni­ver­sal human emo­tion of love. We sel­dom, if not nev­er, see such a push towards uni­ver­sal human rights in Islam­ic nations or from Mus­lim lead­ers.

If the cru­sades were on today, Chris­tian­i­ty would have a nefar­i­ous image in the world, but human soci­ety has come a long way in achiev­ing and con­tin­u­ing the strug­gle for human rights, main­tain­ing a strong win­ning streak.

Reli­gious-polit­i­cal author­i­ties have rel­a­tive­ly moved ahead with the times eras­ing restric­tions on civ­il lib­er­ties, while in the Mid­dle East these restric­tions are alive and kick­ing as they are sanc­tioned by Islam­ic scrip­ture. We must realise that ele­ments like the Klu Klux Clan and White Suprema­cist groups, which draw their ide­ol­o­gy from scrip­ture, can­not oper­ate with impuni­ty in the West, yet the world they imag­ine does exist in some regards in the Mid­dle East and North Africa. Islam needs its own Ref­or­ma­tion to cur­tail the dog­ma that has tar­nished the image of the faith in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The Mid­dle East wit­nessed an Arab spring, call­ing for an end to dic­ta­tor­ships, but the world is wait­ing for an Arab spring for civ­il lib­er­ties to sweep the Mid­dle East. Islam­ic soci­eties must move ahead with the rest of the world, so theoc­ra­cies and medieval ideas do not con­tin­ue to restrict the progress of human devel­op­ment across the world.