There is a tendency to equate liberal Islam with moderate Islam.  Yet there are occasions when to be liberal demands a sense of outrage and rebellion.

The causes of the political radicalization of Islam are different from the roots of theological conservatism.  For decades the Royal House of Saudi Arabia has been theologically conservative but not politically radical.  Indeed, the monarchy in Riyadh was for a long time a classic example of how a Muslim regime could be politically pro-Western without being culturally Westernized.  Was the Saudi regime politically moderate without being doctrinally liberal?

            This Journal debate has been rich in trying to diagnose the nature of the radicalization of Islam, but relatively thin in diagnosing the causes of that radicalization.  The best diagnosis of causes of radicalism in this collection comes from Graham E. Fuller.

The Muslim world, feeling itself under siege, and with its sensitivities heightened by its witness of the struggle of Muslims right across the global ummah, is not currently operating in an environment conducive to intellectual openness, or to liberal and reformist thought.  The Muslim world is simply hunkered down in  defensive and survivalist mode.  Indeed, the forces of terrorism in the Muslim world must be brought to heel.  But it will not happen unless we see a change in hegemonistic U.S. policies, U.S. explicit embrace of Israeli  right-wing policies in the occupied West Bank, and linkage with American fundamentalist Christian attitudes.

            I have never heard the problem better formulated.  There are indeed global causes of Islamic radicalism and global reasons why “Muslim terrorism” has gone international.  One factor is the “Latin Americanization” of the Middle East by U.S. policy-makers and strategists.  Just as Latin America had for nearly two centuries been regarded by the United States as fair ground for imperial manipulation and for periodic military interventions, much of the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, have more recently been treated with similar imperial arrogance.  U.S. imperialism in Latin America had been an Empire of control rather than occupation.  The same is true of American imperialism in the Middle East.

            The second major trigger of globalized Islamic radicalization consists of the State of Israel, its brutal occupation of the Palestinian people, the annexation of Jerusalem and the United States’ enormous material, diplomatic, and uncritical support of the Jewish state.  Israeli behavior cannot even be censured by the United Nations Security Council without encountering the American veto.  Because of the Untied States, Israel has been enjoying almost total immunity since at least the 1967 Middle East War.  The United States provides Israel with an umbrella of impunity.  The resulting international frustration has aroused widespread rage throughout the Muslim world.

            The third international trigger of Islamic radicalism and major cause of Muslim terrorism is the multiple humiliation of Muslims in so many different countries.  Three Muslim countries are under direct foreign occupation (whether acknowledged or not) – Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.  Two Muslim populations are under some kind of international trusteeship – Bosnia and Kosovo.  Several Muslim minorities elsewhere are struggling for self-determination against enormous military odds – including Kashmir, Chechnya, Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand and elsewhere.  No other civilization in the contemporary world is under a comparable sense of siege.  This is quite apart from lower intensity rivalries between Muslims and non-Muslims in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast [Cote d’Ivoire] and Ethiopia.  (I regard the conflicts in the Sudan as more Arab versus less Arabized, rather than Muslims against non-Muslims).  Politically and militarily, the Muslim ummah is more sinned against than sinning.

            Almost all the contributions in this debate agree that there are also domestic causes of Muslim radicalization, as well as global causes.  Such domestic causes include authoritarian Arab monarchs and other undemocratic Muslim regimes.  But even those domestic radicalizing forces might not have risen to levels of terrorism if they were not reinforced by a resentment of American support for most Muslim dictators for decades – especially oil-rich dictators, but along with oil-poor Pakistan and Egypt.  Pro-democracy forces in countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were enough to politicize Islam, and even to radicalize it.  But the rise of the temperature to terrorism is almost always ignited by anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism, even at the domestic level.

            I am not a moderate Muslim in the U.S. sense of “moderate”.  Yet, at least on three issues I regard myself as a liberal Muslim.  I am against the death penalty; I am in favor of gender equality; and I believe that ijtihad will become increasingly crucial as a solution to Islam’s doctrinal problems.  On the death penalty I came out of the closet during the uproar over Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in the 1980s.  I deplored the book, denounced the author, and dissented from the death penalty not just for Rushdie but also for anybody else regardless of the offense.

            On gender-equalilty, I have had qualified reservations about polygamy, but not outright rejection.  I had grown up in a polygamous family, and knew its strengths as well as weaknesses.  On the other had, I have supported Amina Wadud’s effort to end male monopoly of religious leadership.  I have supported that effort of hers long before she dramatically demonstrated it in a Friday prayer in New York City in March 2005.  She had attempted it in a mosque in Cape Town, South Africa, n the 1990s, but with only limited success. I cheered her even then.

Liberal Islam on the Defensive

            But those of us who see ourselves as liberal Muslims are greatly hampered by the external forces of Zionism, the American imperium and the global humiliation of Muslims from Kashmir to Chechnya.  Once again Graham E. Fuller captures the fundamentals when he says the following:

As long as conditions in the Muslim world remain radicalized – by terrorism, the sweeping U.S. military response, dictatorship across the region, and a sense of Islam under siege – only radical groups will flourish.  Moderation and liberalization can only flourish in a quieter and freer environment where radical voices find limited response.

            Fuller in this paragraph almost equates liberalization with moderation.  In the literature about developing countries, there was a time when modernization was equated with Westernization.  To be “modern” was to be as “Western” as possible.  In the literature about Islam, more recently, the concept of moderation has come close to being equated with Westernization.  To be “moderate” is now translated as being as “Western” as possible.  Sometimes the concept “Liberal” is also hijacked by the West.

            But most African social scientists and thinkers, for example, nowadays would reject the proposition that the modern African society is necessarily the Westernized African society.  What about thinkers of the Muslim world?  Do they accept the proposition that the moderate Muslim society is the Westernized ummah?  These are precisely the equations which make the reforms of Muslim liberals so difficult to implement in a broad climate of Islamophobia in the Western world and deepening Americophobia in the Muslim world.  Muslims begin to lose their moderation.

            Muqtedar Khan would surely agree that anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world is not necessarily anti-Christian.  Al-Qaeda’s strategy of September 11, 2001, seemed to have targeted the economic symbol of American power – the World Trade Center which they successfully destroyed.  Al-Qaeda also appeared to target the military symbol of American power – the Pentagon.  Thirdly, the airplane which crashed in Pennsylvania seemed to have been intended for either Capitol Hill or the White House, symbols of American political power.  What was missing on September 11, 2001 was any attempt by Al-Qaeda to target a Cathedral in either Washington or New York as a symbol of American religiosity.

            Al-Qaeda succeeded in demolishing a symbol of American economic might in New York.  Al-Qaeda triumphed in damaging a symbol of American military hegemony in Washington, D.C.  Because the passengers in a fourth plane succeeded in overcoming the Muslim warriors, Al-Qaeda failed in hitting a symbol of America political power.  What Al-Qaeda never targeted at all was a symbol of American Christian faith.

            All the contributors in this debate find a place for ijtihad – a “juristic tool” and potential mechanism of reform.  John L. Esposito gives ijtihad a wide role, whereas Abid Ullah Jan narrows the scope for ijtihad.  My position may lie somewhere between these two colleagues, but my reasons may be somewhat different.  Ijtihad may make Muslims more liberal but not necessarily more moderate.  My central thesis in this regard is that God deliberately reveals Himself in installments, partly through religious messengers and partly through the march of science and expanding human experience.  Some of the experiences may be radicalizing rather than moderating.

Human History as Divine Revelation

The reason why Islam recognizes so many prophets (nabiyyun) and so many messengers or apostles (rusul) is because Allah reveals himself in such installments across time and across space.  The Prophet Muhammad was the last prophet (nabii), but was he the last messenger (rasul)?  Let us accept that he was also the last rasul in the form of a human person.  But could Time be a continuing cosmic rasul or at least risala?  Is history a continuing revelation of God?  Is expanding science a non-carnate rasul?

            If God reveals Himself incrementally, and if history is a continuing revelation of God, should we not re-examine the message of Muhammad in the light of new installments of Divine Revelation?  The early Muslims of the first century of Hijra would not have understood much about distant galaxies.  So Allah talked to them in simple terms about our own moon (as if it was the only moon) and about the sun in the Milky Way (as if it was the only sun).  Fourteen centuries ago the Arabs were overwhelmed by the Almighty as the creator of our own galaxy.  Today we know that God created billions of galaxies.  Should we not reinterpret the verses about the sun and the moon in the Qur’an in the light of our new understanding of astronomy and the cosmos?

            If we need to reinterpret Qar’anic verses about astronomy, why can we not re-interpret Islamic verses about ancient punishments (hudud)?  The expansion of human knowledge is not only about the stars.  It is also about human beings themselves and their behaviour.  If we now know more about the causes of crime, we also know more about the limits of culpability and guilt.  We know that poverty, bad parenting, a sense of injustice, racial discrimination, chemical imbalance in the human body, a bad neighbourhood and bad social environment, can all be contributing factors towards turning a human being towards crime.  At times ijtihad can lead to both liberalization and moderation.

            From these conclusions I proceed to the belief that some verses of the Qur’an were about events during the Prophet’s own time and other verses were eternal in purpose.  One can illustrate with the verses about Abu Lahab (“father of the flame”).  I believe the Prophet’s contemporaries knew that the verses were about the Prophet’s uncle Abd al-Uzza bin Abdul Muttalib.  In the Prophet’s own time it was understood that the verses were about a specific individual enemy of Islam.

            Should we re-interpret “Abu Lahab” in a more timeless fashion?  Alternatively, should we be reinterpreting Qur’amic verses in ways which would make them historically specific?

            The Sudanese theologian Mahmood Muhammad Taha had argued about the two messages of Islam – the time-specific message and the eternal.  The Nimeiry Government executed the old man in 1985 in the name of Islamic hudud.  Please read Taha’s book, The Second Message of Islam (Northwestern University Press – originally written in Arabic and later translated into English).  Mahmood Taha was a force for doctrinal liberalization rather than political moderation.

            If God has been teaching human beings in installments about crime and punishment, and if there were no police, prisons, forensic science, or knowledge about DNA fourteen centuries ago, the type of punishments needed had to be truly severe enough to be a deterrent.  Hence the hudud.  Since then God has taught us more about crime, its causes, the methods of its investigation, the limits of guilt, and the much wider range of possible punishments.

            Did the Prophet Muhammad say, “My people will never agree on error”?  If so we can take it for granted that Muslims of the future will be less and less convinced that the amputation of the hand is a suitable punishment for a thief under any circumstances.  This is a prediction.  I have not the slightest doubt that the Islam of our grandchildren will never accept penal amputation of the hands of thieves as legitimate any longer.  On such issues doctrinal liberalism converges with social moderation.

            Abid Ullah Jan rightly salutes the Sahaba and the Prophet’s disciples.  We revere them as the first converts to Islam and as supporters of our prophet (pbuh).  But we must not forget that the Sahaba were not themselves  prophets; most of them were not even saints.  As ordinary human beings they were the usual mixture of vices and virtues.  That is why three of Islam’s first four Caliphs were assassinated.  That is also why there was an Arab civil war within little more than a decade after the Prophet’s death – with the Prophet’s widow Aisha fighting the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali!  Sahaba behavior was often neither liberal nor moderate.  Have we been idealizing the Sahaba too much?

            If the Prophet’s disciples could be fallible, so could the founders of the Madhahib.  Indeed, for fourteen centuries the Qur’an and ahadith have been interpreted almost exclusively by men.  Male-centrism has also been a historic feature of Judaism and Christianity.  There is enough in the Qur’an which supports gender-equity, but none of the four Sunni schools was founded by a woman.  It might have made a difference if one madh-hab was founded by a woman like Amina Wadud.  A woman theologian like Wadud could be a voice of liberalization rather than moderation.

            The Qur’an does not prohibit slavery [any more than does the Bible or the Torah], but the Qur’an goes further than the sister religions in encouraging the freeing of slaves.  Islam is not anti-slavery, but it is pro-emancipation.  If early Muslims had used ijtihad enough, the abolitionist movement would have started in the Muslim world a thousand years before William Wilberforce, John Brown or Abraham Lincoln. 

            There are many other humane gems in the Qur’an waiting to be fully revealed through ijtihad.  Some may enrich liberal thought without encouraging political moderation.  But current Islamic thought is indeed “mired in literalism, narrowness of vision and intolerance” (to quote Fuller).  The necessary climate for an Islamic renewal is hampered by the forces which have put Islam on the defensive.  Both political moderation and doctrinal liberalization among the Muslim masses will remain difficult as long as the United States remains imperial and Islamophobic in foreign policy, Israel continues to brutalize and occupy the Palestinian population, and the rest of the world permits the humiliation of Muslims from Chechnya to Afghanistan, from Kashmir to Iraq.  When Muslims are politically radicalized, they often tend to be resistant to doctrinal liberalization.  The ultimate causes of radicalization are primarily non-Muslim in origin.  But the Muslim world suffers the most from the excesses of both political radicalism and doctrinal conservatism.