Philosopher and Islamologist, author of several works including “Islam: what problem? The challenges of reform” (VASCA-UPblisher, 2017), Razika Adnani explains in a column why, according to her, only profound reform can save Islam.
The Islam that Muslims know and practice is not the one that is with God nor the one that God wants exactly, as Muslims think. This metaphysical Islam is beyond human reach. If, according to the Muslim faith, the Koran is the word of God and, therefore, contains the Islam he wants for Muslims, the latter only know of the Koran what they have understood and they only implement what they have decided to apply.
ALSO READ: Muslim domination has “killed free thought” in the Arab world, according to Ferghane Azihari
The equivalence between the Koranic text and the commentary does not exist and the practical sharia of the law books is not a carbon copy of the Koranic sharia. The method of sayingwhich means “to take and transfer”, is an illusion, whether in the interpretive or legal domain. Muslims also developed theological theories which determined their relationship to religious texts, thought and truth. This human work explains why there is only one Koran, but several Islams. Recalling this history is essential to overcome the dogmatism of religious discourse which rejects any idea of evolution or reform, that which creates something new in Islam.
Attempts at reform
If this “future-oriented” reform is difficult to achieve, it is because Muslims have deified human beings while Islam is based on the principle of divine unity. They considered that certain religious people received the truth directly from God while Islam is based on the principle that Mohammed is its last messenger. They have sacralized other books written by humans while, according to the Muslim faith, the Koran is the only sacred book. Thus, they preferred not to respect the founding principles of Islam to put an end to all intellectual work in the field of Islam.
Between the 19th century and the 20th century, the political and economic upheavals of the Muslim world pushed intellectuals and politicians to want to modernize their society and therefore to feel the need to change and reform Islam. They then abandoned several rules of sharia to replace them with those of positive law. This was not enough to achieve the “real reform” that Islam needed, but enough to demonstrate that change and evolution were possible.
ALSO READ: Razika Adnani: “We must reform Islam to dissociate it from its political dimension”
This project to reform Islam was defeated by the conservatives. The Muslim world today is gradually erasing the achievements of this fabulous period of modernization. The reality in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and sub-Saharan Africa bears witness to this step backwards. The religious people, who hold political power, want to impose the rules which organized the societies of the first centuries of Islam. For them, they are sacred and therefore valid in “all times and all places”. They claim to have absolute divine truth and to know God’s rules as they exist exactly with him.
Adjustment to the rules
In their desire to prevent Muslims from emancipating themselves from the rules they imposed, conservatives have not forgotten Muslims living in the West. Their goal is that they do not abandon the practice of Sharia law. For religious people, Western Muslims must not modify anything in the Islam they impose.
In 2001, the Egyptian preacher Youcef al-Qaradaoui published a work he titled The fiqh of Muslim minorities. He explains in the introduction that it was the World Islamic League, founded by Saudi Arabia in 1962 and based in Mecca, which asked him to present a study on the problem of Muslims in minority situations, particularly in the West, and how to proceed so that they do not abandon the Sharia rules and do not move away from Islam that religious discourse imposes.
“Minority fiqh” or “minority jurisprudence” is not a reform of Islam, but an adjustment and adaptation of the rules of Sharia to the requirements of Muslims living in the West in a minority situation so that they can practice them. It is a solution which is dictated by the context and which is automatically canceled with its change, that is to say when Muslims are no longer in a minority situation.
Adaptation of religious discourse
“The adaptation of religious discourse to the Western context” is part of the same logic and has the same objective as “the jurisprudence of minorities” as specified in the glossary of the Grande Mosque of Paris: “the adaptation of religious discourse to the Western context” is neither a concession nor an alteration, but a necessity to respond to the contemporary challenges of Muslims living in the West. As for the notion of “necessity”, he explains that “ this principle states that when a religious prescription causes disproportionate harm, it can be temporarily reduced or adapted HAS”. Thus, regarding the veil, the glossary states that “The Religious Commission indicates to women facing professional bans the possibility of temporarily agreeing to withdraw it, based on the concept of legal indulgence (rukhá¹£a), but above all on that of necessity (Ḡarûra).”.
Just like “the fiqh of minorities”, “the adaptation of religious discourse to the Western context” does not concern Islam or even sharia, but only the way of temporarily practicing the latter. It is therefore not a reform of Islam. On the contrary, it establishes conservatism.
ALSO READ: Razika Adnani: “No, there is no ‘European Quran’, to claim it is to falsify reality”
“The fiqh of minorities” and “the adaptation of religious discourse to the Western context” send a very negative message to Muslims living in Muslim countries, particularly to women, according to which Islam admits no change and its rules no evolution, including in the West where we are content to find temporary adjustments.
A necessity
As for Western Muslims, the jurisprudence of minorities increases, among those who are practicing, the feeling of living in societies that do not allow them to be good Muslims. If some feel guilty about living in the West and withdraw into themselves, others are increasing their actions to force the law to adapt to their religion and not the opposite.
ALSO READ: Razika Adnani: “It is to console men that women are the first target of Islamism”
Islam needs a profound reform which does not only concern Western Muslims, but all Muslims. The rules of Sharia law which discriminate against human beings, which trample on their dignity, which inferiorize women and which do not recognize the freedom to believe or not to believe are not to be adapted to this or that situation, but to be abolished. Islam needs to be freed from old theology, including the theory of salafs which makes human beings gods. Nothing prohibits the religious reform of Islam which is more necessary today than ever. Necessary to put an end to the separation of Muslims, young people in particular, between a past to which they think they should belong and a present to which they belong.
