Towards A European Islam

Towards A European Islam. By Jørgen S Nielsen. London and NY: Macmillan and St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp 156. $59.95 hardback.

Perspectives on Islamic Law, Justice and Society. Edited by R. S Khare. Lanham, Maryland and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. Pp 207. $22.95 paper.

Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush. Edited and translated by Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri. Oxford and NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp 236. $29. 95 hardback

Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis. By Haideh Moghissi. London and NY, Zed Books, 1999. Pp 166. $55 hardback

Women in Islam: An Anthology from the Qur'an and Hadiths. Translated and edited by Nicholas Awde. NY, St Martin's Press, 2000. Pp 224. $55.00

The quantity of new titles discussing Islamic themes suggests increased awareness that, as Nielson says, 'the field of Islam … and the wider concerns of relations between the Muslim world and the west, Islam and Christendom, is one which will not go away' (Nielson p 138). It is also significant that words such as identity, democracy, women, justice and freedom occur in the titles and content of these books. Despite the prevailing image of Islam as somehow precluding discussion of such themes, Muslims and scholars of Islam are actually engaged in creative and serious debate on these and on other issues. Three of these books, Nielsen (pp 100 - 106), Soroush (p xiii) and Moghissi (pp 65 - 73 and passim), too, address the controversial phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism.

Nielsen is especially concerned with Muslim minorities in Europe. However, to shed light on Muslim experience in Europe he also says quite a lot about events within the Muslim world. Moghissi, whose focus is on women in Islam, similarly refers to the relationship between Western images of the Muslim World, and Western attitudes towards 'diasporic communities' in their midst (p 4). Nor does 'keeping silent about oppressive features' of Muslim contexts help Muslims anywhere, inside or outside of the Muslim world (p 4). Soroush, Moghissi and Sachedina (author of chapters one and seven in the Khare volume) are all from Iran. They are highly critical of their homeland's present regime. These books demonstrate that thought is not moribund within Muslim circles. Awde, though, is not a critical discussion of gender in Islam but an anthology of source material, while Moghissi is skeptical that Islamic law, which she says, 'is not compatible with the principles of equality of human beings', can ever give women a fair deal (p 141).

Nielsen's book appears in a series on 'Migration, Minorities and Citizenship' edited at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at Warwick University. Nielsen, one of this reviewer's former teachers, is Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian - Muslim Relations, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. He discusses education, family and relations with government as key areas to analyze the experience of Muslims in Europe vis-à-vis the majority culture and worldview. His intimate knowledge of West European Islam (the book's title ought to indicate that its subject is Islam in West Europe) enables him to draw on data, events and material from a number of European nations, especially from Germany, the UK, France, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Belgium.

A major difference between Muslims in West, as opposed to East, Europe is that in the former they are mainly a migrant community (or of recent migrant descent), while in the East they have a long historic presence. In both, though, they are minorities. Nielsen's books may have been strengthened by a more detailed discussion of how Muslims who find themselves in novel minority contexts might learn lessons from earlier, and from older, experiences of being a minority. Perhaps the dominant question that Nielsen addresses is; how can Muslims in non-Muslim countries be faithful to Islam, nurture their children in the faith, in a context that often seems, to them, to be hostile? Hostility stems both from a general perception that the Muslim world threatens Western democracy, freedom, human rights (lacking all three) and from the view that Muslims in Europe are 'fifth columnists'.

Indeed, in their response to Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses (calling for its author's execution) and in their 'questioning of the wisdom of the western intervention' in the Gulf, Muslims seemed to be out of step with majority opinion (see p 46). Similarly, calls for single sex schools, for segregation during sport, for the wearing of a head scarf and criticism that the education curriculum undermines 'Islamic Knowledge' (see p 57) all runs counter to prevailing ideology and praxis. As Nielsen shows, some of these issues have been resolved through compromise and accommodation on both sides, while others continue to cause friction between Muslims and the 'host' communities.

He argues that in most European countries, Muslims have now found national platforms for voicing their concerns, which they lacked a few years ago. Although some of these platforms seem to be antagonistic towards the wider society, demanding changes in laws, for example to allow Muslim family law, see chapter 7, on the positive side, 'national government now has to take Muslim concerns seriously' (p 46). However, as he clearly states, not all Muslims share the same view. Not all, for example, would 'wish to subject themselves to Islamic family law, however it may be formulated in detail' (p 88). One problem is that Muslim law and tradition deals with 'communities', not with 'individuals: it was as members of recognized and tolerated communities that Christians and Jews had found their place within the Islamic state' (p 132). For its part, Western systems are designed to deal with individuals, not with all Muslims.

Nielsen's concluding thesis is that non-Muslims need to be better informed about Muslims, their hopes, aspirations and beliefs. The constant negative depiction of the Muslim world invites Muslims to respond with anti-Western polemic; the West is decadent, immoral, godless, ruled by human laws not by divine ones (see p 94). Nielsen writes, 'there are indications that European fears and accusations regarding Islam are becoming self-fulfilling prophecies - we are busily creating the ogre which we have been warning against' (p 138). On the one hand, Muslims complain of 'the intolerance of Western governments' (p 133), on the other, the majority communities of Europe forget that their own identities, 'cultures and ways of life' are products of 'an ever-moving and ever-changing history - and history does not end' (p 106). Muslims need to negotiate their own role in Europe's future. Nielsen asks, 'will their role be one of their own making, in interaction with their wider social and political contexts, for their own enlightened self-interest, or will it be one determined by outsider's perceptions, fears and understandings' (p 136).

R. S Khare, who teaches Anthropology in the University of Virginia, Charlottesville brings together essays by seven contributors, addressing 'Islamic Law, Justice and Society'. The contributors represent a range of disciplines, including the social sciences, law and the Study of Religion. Contrary to the popular view that Islam is a monolithic, unchanging entity, the essays in this book show how Islam adapts differently 'under differing political conditions' (p 1). Nonetheless, where regimes are attempting to govern according to Islamic Law, they do need 'general norms, rules, and principles to make' it work (p 191) and only a concerted effort at providing 'laws applicable in a rational and transpolitical order' can meet this need. Here, 'intergovernmental institutions like the OIC [Organization of Islamic Conference] and its Academy of Jurisprudence' may be best placed to take the lead (p 192). Interestingly, Ebrahim Moosa identifies the tendency of Muslims in diaspora to 'resort to casuistic legal analyses and problem solving … to address their say-to-day problems' as endangering Muslim solidarity.

In the light of my comment above about drawing on Muslim minority experience, Tahir Mahmood's chapter on 'Interaction Between Islam and Public Law in Independent India' (pp 93 - 122) is timely. He speaks of 'deep prejudice against Islam and its followers in India' (p 120), which echoes the European situation. However, he suggests that there is 'ample place for Islam in and under the public law of India' if Islam accepts that it is 'one of the many religious faiths in the country'. Its 'claim to be all embracing', though, 'can not be fully accommodated by … public law'. In other words, its political creed can expect no quarter, its ‘ibadat (spiritual) aspects 'can expect statutory protection' (p 119). As Nielsen pointed out, a similar challenge faces Muslims in Europe, who sometimes sound as if they want to impose their views on the whole of society (p 94).

Iranian émigré, Abdulaziz Sachedina's chapter, 'Woman: Half the Man? Crisis of Male Epistemology in Islamic Jurisprudence' (pp 146 - 160) discusses one of the most debated and urgent questions in Islam, the status of women. Sachedina first studied Islamic law in the traditional madrasa (seminary at Mashhad, Iran. He now teaches Religious Studies at Charlottesville. His concluding sentence suggests that his own view of the status of women under Islamic law is somewhat critical. He describes them as 'reduced to the legally silent, morally segregated, and religiously veiled half-the man'. Qur'an 2: 28 says, 'And call in to witness two witnesses, men; or if the two be not men, then one man and two women … that if one of the two errs, the other will remind her' (p 154).

There has been much discussion about whether this verse refers to all legal situations, or only some, perhaps involving matters where women's experience is limited, due to their restricted social roles. While the standard view has been that 'a woman's evidence equals half of a man's, regardless of the situational factors', Sachedina stresses that the verse itself allows 'a conditional commandment to be surmised' (p 155). Sachedina points out that although Muslim women participated in the early compilation of the Islamic tradition they have historically been excluded, leaving men to deal with women's affairs. In fact, men have often been embarrassed by this; 'my teacher often told the story of the discomfort and inadequacy felt by the late Ayotollah Burujardi (d.1961) when he had to lecture on … women's ritual purification to his largely male audience' (p 146). Sachedina calls for female participation in reaching legal decisions about women, without which Islam suffers an 'epistemological crisis' in this vital area. Women, he says, need to participate in the 'interpretive process of the text to communicate its context and intertext that has been the source of her cultural subjugation' (p 159).

Soroush's volume, edited by Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri is, in this reviewer's opinion, one of the most important books by a Muslim scholar published since Mahmoud Taha's The Second Message of Islam (English Translation, 1987, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). In its turn, Taha's was probably the most important since Muhammad Iqbal's The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930, Oxford: OUP). Souroush stands in the same tradition of progressive, or as he calls it, 'revivalist' thought. Iqbal's doctorate was from Munich, Souroush's (in the philosophy of science) is from London University. The task, he says, is to rise to the challenge of, 'reconciling, to paraphrase Iqbal, eternity and temporality' (p 27). Iqbal is often criticized for drawing more on Western than on Islamic thought. Soroush defends him, and others (including himself) from this criticism by stating that if an idea is true, then it is true regardless of its origin; 'for the condition of a principle's truthfulness is its harmony with other truths' (p 21). In the early years of the Islamic revolution, Souroush defended the 'social sciences and the humanities' from the charge that they were, '"impure" and "western' or else insignificant and worthless' (p 13).

Soroush's project is bold and courageous. Although he still teaches at the University of Tehran, his criticism of the Iranian regime is outspoken; 'it has built no foundations and principles from which to act meaningfully' (p 23). One of his books was only 'cleared for publication by the ministry of Islamic Guidance after a "critique" by a well-known religious fascist was imposed on the publisher as an appendix' (p 19). Souoush's thesis, called the 'contraction and expansion of religious knowledge', posits that 'religious knowledge', like any other form of knowledge, 'is human, fallible, evolving and most important of all … constantly in the process of exchange with other forms of knowledge' (p 16). Incidentally, Soroush weaves poetry (especially from the Sufi masters) into his text. He is a great admirer of the love mysticism of Rumi, as opposed to 'fear-based mysticism'. This clearly informs his critique of the Iranian regime, where fear is used to enforce conformity.

Soroush roundly criticizes traditional Muslim theologians, philosophers and jurisconsults of the Seminary for treating their 'merely human opinions as infallible, divine edicts' (p 177). Chapter 11, 'What the University Expects from the Hawzeh', addresses the relationship between Seminary and the University. God's revelation is infallible, he says, but our interpretation of it is not; 'It is up to God to reveal a religion, but up to us to understand and realize it. It is at this point,' he says, 'that religious knowledge is born, entirely human and subject to all the dictates of human knowledge' (p 31). As a type of human knowledge, alongside other types, religious knowledge can only benefit when its claims, morality and rationality are tested through dialogue with 'the sciences and needs of each age' (p 32). 'To try to mend and darn' the 'wears and tears' of religion 'is, in itself, an admirable and hallowed undertaking' (p 32). Discussion of human rights, for example, can not be avoided, 'we cannot evade rational, moral and extrareligious principles and reasoning about human rights, myopically focusing nothing but the primary texts and maxims in religion in formulating our jurisprudential edicts' (p 128).

Soroush offers a positive evaluation of secularism and of the language of rights as opposed to duties, in contrast to many Muslim writers who see secularism as the curse of the West and human rights as an affront to divine rights. Thus, 'The government founded on the guardianship of the jurisconsult [the Revolutionary Iranian government] as based on duties … conflicts with the modern political philosophies that base the idea of the state on the principles of the rights of human beings' (p 63). However, while the Guardianship of the Jurisconsult may 'act as a God-like potentate with unlimited powers', the secular state, 'rejects God-like pretensions because it does not consider government to be an extension of the divine power within human society' (p 64). The Guardianship enforces religious conformity from the top, producing 'a society of submissive emulators'. The democratic, secular state allows for the development of 'hearts that are lovingly, sincerely, securely, and freely immersed in faith' (p 145). Soroush is critical of Muslims who, in 'their confrontation with Western civilization, wish to turn Islam into an identity' (he refers here to Samual Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' thesis). He suggests that an 'Islam of identity' tends to clash with other identities, while an 'Islam of truth' can 'coexist with other truths' (p 24).

Muslims fear secularization because they think that it inevitably leads to 'profanation', whereas 'contemporary sociologists of religion have concluded that the continued presence and burgeoning of religion does not' support this view (p xvii). Indeed, says Soroush, 'If a society is religious, its government too will take a religious hue' (p 61). He is therefore able to advocate what he calls, 'a democratic religious government', which represents 'an invitation to the thoroughgoing project of religious rationality' (p 155). Indeed, in a religious society, a 'purely secular government would be undemocratic' (p 126). However, such a system would not privilege clergy merely because they are clergy (p 23). As the Sadris point out, other lay thinkers have been dismissed by the clergy 'as unschooled in the scholastics of the Seminary'. Soroush, however, uses 'his mastery of the seminarian language of critical discourse', gained while studying informally with various clerical teachers, to win followers among the clergy themselves (p xii). A religious democratic society would have to fulfil two conditions. First, enable the participation of its entire people. Second, respect human rights. This would 'entail the convergence of reason (‘aql) and revelation (shar‘)' (p 126). A society, 'becomes more religious as it grows more free', and, 'the religious jurisprudential government over a society of imitators is as remote from the spirit of democracy as … the devil from the Qur'an' (p 145).

Soroush ridicules the much-vaunted 'exalted status of women' in Iran and 'Islam's recognition of their glorious position and rights' as 'rhetorical niceties'. The scholars, he urges, need to re-examine the traditions on women, some of which 'no one dares to recite from the pulpit', to find a cure to this blight on Islam's record (p 182). As noted, Soroush would call this record to the bar of human rights and ethical discourse, to test and challenge its content. Moghissi, in her book, argues that Islam alone can do little to improve the lot of women, given its unapologetic discrimination 'against women and minorities' (p 141). Rather, 'change in Muslim societies … has to start, perhaps, with the rule of law, state accountability and separation of church and state' (p 142). While she is aware of (and cites) Muslim women who argue for improved status and for equal rights from within Islam (see pp 125 - 148) she finds it difficult to concede the viability of Islamic feminism, since she is convinced that the solution resides outside Islam (p 136). Her argument is that, despite the West's tendency to insist that Islam is 'all there is' in Islamic contexts, the reality is much more complex (p 135). Culture, history, politics, class, economics and many other factors, contribute to women's and men's experiences in Muslim countries.

Moghissi, an Iranian, currently teaches at York University's Atkinson College, Toronto. Her book begins with a critique of Western views of Islam, borrowing from Edward Said. She describes two versions - the Muslim world as fanatic, irrational, totalitarian, immoral and as offering, for men at least, sexual possibilities denied in Europe. Double standards applied. What was regarded as 'appropriate in Europe', for example, 'female domesticity', was condemned as 'sexual slavery' in the Muslim world (p 15). However, she proceeds to describe the position of Muslim women in Islam as to all intents and purposes, just that - sexual slaves, which perhaps suggests that the latter image was not altogether inaccurate. Muslim men, she says, fear the seductive power of women's sexuality and so seek to manipulate and to control it; 'woman's very existence is serving men, sexually and emotionally. Women are a "tillage" for the male believer, to go to when he wishes…' (p 22; see Awde p 85). Islam's 'obsession with sex, women and the human body', she says, 'borders on the pathological' (p 46). The inequality of women and men before the law translates into the cheapness of women's lives; 'setting a higher price on a man's life … means that rape and women's murder go unpunished' (p 111).

Far from reforms in Iran promoting the cause of female equality, gains made under the former regime have been lost (see especially pp 104 - 109). It may be true that some Muslim women voluntarily don the veil (hejab) as an affirmation of their Islamic identity, in protest against Western slavery to fashion. However, for many women in present day Iran, where its wearing is legally enforced, it is far from empowering. She dismisses images of veiled-women and of harems as guaranteeing women's space and freedom as romantic and naïve (see p 87). 'Women who are persecuted, jailed and whipped for their non-complaince with hejab find the dress code anything but empowering' (p 5). Similarly, blaming everything on colonialism can not get Islam off the hook. Even if colonial governments to promote veiling (which fitted its perception of Islamic identity) this does not excuse the clerics who 'painstakingly protected' women 'for many centuries against modern ideas, institutions and relations' (p 86). The number of women in work may indeed have increased in Iran but mainly in low paid jobs or in 'coercive apparatus designed to control and police other women' (p 114). Moghissi refers to crimes against women as endemic throughout the Muslim world (see p 105).

Universal ethical norms, including the discourse of human rights, must not become the victim of postmodernism's critique of meta-narratives, she argues. Too easily, she says, the subjugation of women by Muslim men, inside and outside the Muslim world, get labeled as culturally appropriate; '"they" have their ways, "we" have ours. We should be "more accepting" of practices which are unacceptable here but admissible there' (p 5). This is the limit of postmodern analyses; 'Charmed by "difference", and secure from the bitter facts of the fundamentalist regime, outsiders do them [Muslim women] a disservice by clinging to the illusion of an Islamic path' (p 121). Islamic fundamentalism would thus become 'the only conceivable future for societies of the Middle East where fundamentalists now rule' (p 145).

Incidentally, aware that 'fundamentalism' as a term is not, generally, used as a self description by these regimes, she points out that we apply the term 'brutal dictator' to people who would never describe themselves as such (p 65). The authoritarian, totalitarian grasp on discourse that fundamentalists claim must be challenged, else women will not even be able to enter 'the discursive arena' (p 148). In this reviewer's opinion, Moghissi's and Soroush's projects converge. Soroush says that 'problems such as peace, human rights and women's rights' are 'global problems' and 'demand universal solutions' (p 25). Both reject totalitarian, singular truth; the truly 'religious community', says Soroush, 'is plural and pluralistic by nature … there are as many paths to God as there are people' (p 145).

Finally, Awde's books is a very useful anthology of those texts that form the primary sources of Islam's legal traditions on the status of women. It is some of these texts that Soroush invites scholars to re-examine. Awde usefully organizes his material under topics, such as 'marriage', 'status and rights', 'widowhood and death', making it easy to access information. However, he does not discuss the issue of authenticity - Qur'anic verses may, traditionally, only be re-interpreted (modernists say that Qur'anic principles, not 'texts', are eternal) but hadith (sayings of Muhammad) can be declared illicit. Such hadith as 'no people will ever be successful if they have entrusted the governing of their affairs to a woman' (p 91) and 'three things that could be of evil omen: a woman, a horse and a dwelling-place' may merit scrutiny (p 92). On the other hand, anyone equipped with Awde's book will be well placed to evaluate Moghissi's claim that this corpus 'is not compatible with the principles of equality of human beings' (p 141).