Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (23 page)

Ahmad al-Qabbanji is a Shiite cleric who has proposed to change core aspects of Islam’s doctrines. Al-Qabbanji was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1958, and studied Islamic jurisprudence at the Shiite Hawza of his hometown in the 1970s. He has said openly:

I have deviated from [t]his religion, every bit of which I reject. Let them say that I am an apostate and a heretic. It is true. I am an apostate from their religion, which stirs nothing but hatred of the other—a religion devoid of beauty, devoid of love, devoid of humanity.
29

Al-Qabbanji proposes “a modifiable religious ruling based on
fiqh al-maqasid
, or the Jurisprudence of the Meaning.”
30
According to this innovation, “jurisprudence should address the meaning conveyed by the revelation, rather than adhere blindly to its literal wording, with no regard for reality or reason.”
31
Al-Qabbanji has proposed viewing the Qur’an as divinely inspired
but not divinely dictated
, a break with current orthodoxy. Al-Qabbanji believes that “the Qur’an was created by the Prophet Muhammad, but was driven by Allah.”
32
Al-Qabbanji argues that structural reforms are needed within Islam to prevent its stagnation: “If we want Islam to be eternal even though reality is mobile, then Islam must also be mobile. It cannot stagnate. The scholars in the religious institutions view Islam as stagnant teachings.”
33

Another reformer worth noting is Iyad Jamal al-Din, an Iraqi cleric. Though he is a Shiite, al-Din has argued
against
political rule by clerics as occurs in Iran, and for separation of mosque and state, and has faced numerous threats for taking these positions. Al-Din rejects the imposition of sharia and favors civil laws in a civil state in order to guarantee full freedom of conscience to each individual citizen:

I say that either we follow the
fiqh
[Islamic religious law], in which case ISIS is more or less right, or else we follow man-made, civil enlightened law, according to which the Yazidis are citizens just like Shiite and Sunni Muslims. We must make a decision whether to follow man-made civil law, legislated by the Iraqi parliament, or whether to follow the fatwas issued by Islamic jurisprudence. We must not embellish things and say that Islam is a religion of compassion, peace and rose water, and that everything is fine.
34

Al-Din has defended the religious diversity of Iraq and has rebuked IS on theological grounds for imposing its religious views on nonbelievers. He has described the first article in most Islamic constitutions, which declares the state to be an Islamic state, as “a catastrophe.” He argues that “religion is for human beings, not the state.”
35

Ibrahim al-Buleihi, a former member of the Saudi Shura council who has held a number of government posts, has publicly stated that the Arab world needs a fundamental cultural change to empower
the individual
and make possible independent thinking.
36
Al-Buleihi rejects the groupthink and tendency toward public conformity that has constrained independent thinking in the Islamic world. Independent thinking, outside of the shackles of orthodoxy, is necessary for a civilization to flourish.

Similarly, Dhiyaa al-Musawi, a Bahraini Shia cleric, thinker, and writer, has called “for a cultural Intifada in the Arab world, in order to sweep away the superstitions that dwell in the Arab and Islamic mind.”
37

Reformers and the West

Just as critics of communism during the Cold War came from a variety of backgrounds and disagreed on much, today’s critics of Islam unreformed are not in agreement on all issues. Al-Qabbanji, for example, has expressed strong criticism of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Other reformers, such as al-Ansari, are generally pro-American in inclination.

Those Muslim reformers who propose breaking with Islamic orthodoxy to empower the individual, who want to create a civil state under civil laws, who view the Qur’an as a document created by men, and who support critically analyzing the Qur’an and the hadith—these individuals are ultimately allies of human freedom though they may differ with Westerners on matters of public policy. These men risk imprisonment and even death in order to reform Islam from within and change its core doctrines. They merit our support—though they are unlikely to agree with Westerners on every matter of foreign policy.

I do not believe, as some people do, in the innate “backwardness” of Arabs or of Muslims, or for that matter of Africans or Somalis. I do not believe Islamic orthodoxy is “ingrained” in the nature of Muslims. I do not believe the Islamic world is doomed to a perpetual cycle of violence, whoever succeeds in reaching the levers of power. And I do not believe that Islamic clerics—guardians of orthodoxy—are powerful enough to stop a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs.

I am a universalist. I believe that each human being possesses the power of reason as well as conscience. That includes all Muslims as individuals. At present, some Muslims ignore their consciences, and join groups such as Boko Haram or IS, obeying textual prescriptions and religious dogma.

But their crimes against human reason and against human conscience committed in the name of Islam and sharia are already forcing a reexamination of Islamic scripture, doctrine, and law. This process cannot be stopped, no matter how much violence is used against would-be reformers. Ultimately, I believe it is human reason and human conscience that will prevail.

It is the duty of the Western world to provide assistance and, where necessary, security to those dissidents and reformers who are carrying out this formidable task. Dissidents have many disagreements among them: what unites them is a concern that Islam unreformed provides neither a viable ethical framework nor a strong connection to the Divine, to the realm beyond. To repeat the words of al-Din, “We must not embellish things and say that Islam is a religion of compassion, peace and rose water, and that everything is fine.” It is not. But the fact that such words can be uttered at all is one of the reasons I believe the Muslim Reformation has begun.

•
NOTES
•

INTRODUCTION:
On Islam, Three Sets of Muslims

1.
Sarah Fahmy, “Petition: Speak Out Against Honoring Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis’ 2014 Commencement.” https://www.change.org/p/brandeis-university-administration-speak-out-against-honoring-ayaan-hirsi-ali-at-brandeis-2014-commence ment.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Brandeis Faculty Letter to President Lawrence Concerning Hirsi Ali, April 6, 2014. Available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M0AvrWuc3V0nMFqRDRTkLGpAN7leSZfxo3y1msEyEJM/edit?pli=1.

4.
Letter found on the body of Theo van Gogh, 2004. http://vorige.nrc.nl/krant/article1584015.ece.

5.
Asra Nomani, “The Honor Brigade,”
Washington
Post, January 16, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-the-honor-brigade-an-organized-campaign-to-silence-critics-of-islam/2015/01/16/0b002e5a-9aaf-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html.

6.
Soren Seelow, “It’s Charlie, Hurry, They’re All Dead,”
Le Monde
, January 13, 2015. http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article /2015 /01/13/c-est-charlie-venez-vite-ils-sont-tous-morts_4554839 _3224.html.

7.
Norman Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1957).

8.
Pew Research Center, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” 2013. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the -worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/.

9.
Kevin Sullivan, “Three American Teens, Recruited Online, Are Caught Trying to Join the Islamic State,”
Washington Post
, December 8, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/three-american-teens-recruited-online-are-caught-trying-to-join-the-islamic-state/2014/12/08/80 22e6c4 -7afb-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html.

10.
UN Security Council, 7316th Meeting, November 19, 2014. http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/sc11656.doc.htm. See also Spencer Ackerman, “Foreign Jihadists Flocking to Syria on ‘Unprecedented Scale’—UN,”
Guardian
, October 30, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/30/foreign-jihadist-iraq-syria-unprecedented-un-isis.

11.
Economist
, “It Ain’t Half Hot Here, Mum: Why and How Westerners Go to Fight in Syria and Iraq,” August 30, 2014. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/ 21614226-why-and-how-westerners-go-fight-syria-and-iraq-it -aint-half-hot-here-mum.

12.
Pew Research Center, “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010–2030,” 2011.

13.
Pew Research Center, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” 2013.

14.
Ibid., “Survey Topline Results”: Apostasy (Q92b), Belief in God (Q16), Duty to convert (Q52), Sharia revealed word (Q66), Influence of religious leaders (Q15), Western entertainment (Q26), Polygamy (84b), Honor killings (Q54), Suicide bombings (Q89), Divorce (Q77), Daughter marrying a Christian (Q38). http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-topline1.pdf.

CHAPTER 1:
The Story of a Heretic

1.
Sohrab Ahmari, “Inside the Mind of the Western Jihadist,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 30, 2014. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB20001424052970203977504580115831289875638.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Michele McPhee, “Image Shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Last Message Before Arrest,” ABC News, April 17, 2014. http://abc news.go.com/Blotter/image-shows-dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-message-arrest/story?id=23335984&page=2.

4.
Ahmari, “Inside the Mind of the Western Jihadist.”

CHAPTER 2:
Why Has There Been No Muslim Reformation?

1.
Nonie Darwish, “Qaradawi: If They [Muslims] Had Gotten Rid of the Punishment for Apostasy, There Would Be No Islam Today,” February 5, 2013. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/ 3572/islam-apostasy-death. Original footage available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB9UdXAP82o.

2.
Pew Research Center, “In 30 Countries, Heads of State Must Belong to a Certain Religion,” 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/22/in-30-countries-heads-of-state-must-belong-to-a-certain-religion/.

3.
Daniel Philpott,
Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 81.

4.
Albert Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age
,
1798–1939
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 247.

5.
“Hassan al Banna” in
Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought
, edited by Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 49–55.

6.
Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age
, p. 8.

7.
Sahih al-Bukhari, volume 8, book 76, no. 437.

8.
Ella Landau-Tasseron, “The ‘Cyclical Reform’: A Study of the Mujaddid Tradition,”
Studia Islamica
70 (1989): 79–117.

9.
David Bonagura, “Faith and Emotion,”
The Catholic Thing
, February 6, 2014. http://thecatholicthing.org/2014/02/06/faith -and-emotion/. Accessed December 18, 2014.

10.
Elizabeth Flock, “Saudi Blogger’s Tweets about Prophet Muhammad Stir Islamists to Call for His Execution,”
Washington Post
, February 9, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/saudi-bloggers-tweets-about-prophet-muhammad-stir-islamists-to-call-for-his-execution/2012/02/09/gIQATqbc1Q_blog.html.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Pew Research Institute, “Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East,” 2014. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/ 07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle -east/.

13.
Raymond Ibrahim, “Egypt’s Sisi: Islamic ‘Thinking’ Is ‘Antagonizing the Entire World,’ ” January 1, 2015. http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/egypts-sisi-islamic-thinking-is-antagonizing-the-entire-world/. Emphasis added.

14.
Shmuel Sasoni, “Son’s Suicide Is Rohani’s Dark Secret,”
Ynet Middle East
, June 18, 2013. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/ 0,7340,L-4393748,00.html.

CHAPTER 3:
Muhammad and the Qur’an

1.
Ernest Gellner,
Muslim Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 1.

2.
Sahih Muslim, book 19, nos. 4464, 4465, 4466, 4467.

3.
Gerhard Bowering, “Muhammad (570–632),” in
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought
, edited by Gerhard Bowering (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 367–75.

4.
Qur’an, Yusufali translation. University of Southern California Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/033-qmt.php.

5.
Philip Carl Salzman, “The Middle East’s Tribal DNA.”
Middle East Quarterly
(2008): 23–33.

6.
Philip Carl Salzman,
Culture and Conflict in the Middle East
(Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008).

7.
Gerhard Bowering, a professor of Islamic studies at Yale, summarizes the transition from Arab tribes to Muslim supertribe as follows: “For the first time in history, the tribal energy of the Arab clansmen, spent in the past on nomadic raids or tribal blood feuds, became directed towards the common goal of building a coordinated polity. This polity was to be driven by jihad.” “Muhammad (570–632),” in
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought
.

8.
Patricia Crone, “Traditional Political Thought,” in ibid., p. 559.

9.
See Sahih Bukhari, book 53 (Khumus) and book 59 (Al-Maghaazi). University of Southern California Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/.

10.
Antony Black,
The History of Islamic Political Thought
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).

11.
Patricia Crone,
God’s Rule: Government and Islam
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 10.

12.
For an analysis of determinism in Islamic history, see Suleiman Ali Mourad, “Free Will and Predestination,” in
The Islamic World
, edited by Andrew Rippin (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 179–90.

13.
Ibid.

14.
Tawfik Hamid, “Does Moderate Islam Exist?”
Jerusalem Post
, September 14, 2014. http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Does- moderate-Islam-exist-375316.

15.
Ibid.

16.
Ibid.

17.
Yahya Michot, “Revelation,” in
The Cambridge Companion to the Quran
, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 180–96.

18
. Harald Motzki, “Alternative Accounts of the Quran’s Formation,” in ibid., p. 60.

19.
John Wansbrough,
Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), and
The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

20.
Fred Donner, “The Historical Context,” in
The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an
, pp. 23–40.

21.
Claude Gilliot, “Creation of a Fixed Text,” in ibid., pp. 41–58.

22.
Arthur Jeffery, “Abu ‘Ubaid on the Verses Missing from the Quran,” in
The Origins of the Quran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book
, edited by Ibn Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998), pp. 150–54.

23.
Toby Lester, “What Is the Quran?”
Atlantic
, January 1, 1999. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-Quran/304024/.

24.
Motzki, “Alternative Accounts of the Quran’s Formation,” pp. 59–75.

25.
Michael Cook, “The Collection of the Quran,” in
The Quran: A Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 119–26.

26.
Malise Ruthven,
Islam in the World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 81, emphases added.

27.
Ibid.

28.
Ibn Warraq, “Introduction,” in
Which Quran? Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics
, edited by Ibn Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2011), p. 44. Warraq refers to Abul A’la Mawdudi,
Towards Understanding Islam
(Gary, IN: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1970).

29.
Raymond Ibrahim, “How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War”
Middle East Quarterly
(2010): pp. 3–13. http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war.

30.
David Bukay, “Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam,”
Middle East Quarterly
, 2007, pp. 3–11.

31.
Raymond Ibrahim, “Ten Ways Islam and the Mafia Are Similar,” 2014. http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/ten-ways-the-mafia-and-islam-are-similar/.

32.
Bukay, “Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam.”

33.
Andrew Higgins, “The Lost Archive: Missing for a Half Century, a Cache of Photos Spurs Sensitive Research on Islam’s Holy Text,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 12, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB120008793352784631.

34.
Ibid.

35.
Michael Cook,
The Quran: A Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 77, 80, 95, 127.

36.
Ibid., p. 79.

37.
David Cook,
Understanding Jihad
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), p. 43.

38.
Ibid., p. 32.

39.
Ibid., p. 42.

40.
Mariam Karouny, “Apocalyptic Prophecies Drive Both Sides to Syrian Battle for End of Time,” Reuters, April 1, 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/01/us-syria-crisis-prophecy -insight-idUSBREA3013420140401.

41.
Ibid.

42.
Ali Khan and Hisham Ramadan,
Contemporary Ijtihad: Limits and Controversies
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 36.

43.
Christina Phelps Harris,
Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt
(New York: Hyperion Press, 1981 [1964]), p. 111.

44.
Jason Burke, “Taliban Prepare for Civilian Rule,”
Independent
, August 21, 1998. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/taliban-prepare-for-civilian-rule-1173015.html.

45.
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha,
The Second Message of
Islam
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987).

CHAPTER 4:
Those Who Love Death

1.
Kevin Sullivan, “Three American Teens, Recruited Online, Are Caught Trying to Join the Islamic State,”
Washington Post
, December 8, 2014. http://www.washington post.com/world/national-security/three-american-teens-recruited-online-are-caught-trying-to-join-the-islamic-state/2014/12/08/8022e6c4-7afb-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Asma Afsaruddin, “Martyrdom,” in
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought
, p. 329.

5.
Imam Al-Ghazzali,
Ihya Ulum-id-Din
(Karachi: Darul-Ishaat), vol. 4, p. 428.

6.
Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “The Special Case of Women and Children in the Afterlife,” in
The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), pp. 157–82.

7.
Sermon by Sheikh Muhammad Hassan. 13:34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i92a3oKkGk.