Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (14 page)

Although Muhammad ‘Abduh and al-Afghani are usually credited with being the founders of Salafism, and some people even attribute the creed to Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), it was Rashid Rida who best exemplified the ideas, and contradictions, of Salafism, and its elusive relationship with Wahhabism. Rashid Rida, a prominent Syrian reformer who trained in the Azhar seminary, and lived in Egypt, was one of the most influential jurists of the early twentieth century.
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He is today, however, demonized by Wahhabis for his rationalist and humanitarian approaches to Islam, and his jurisprudential works are banned, and frequently attacked, in Saudi Arabia, and outside of Arabia, by various puritan Salafi groups. This is quite ironic because Rida was a staunch defender of the Wahhabi movement against the criticisms of various Azhari jurists, most notably the Maliki jurist al-Dijawi (d. 1365/1946),
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and even a friend of King ‘Abd al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia.
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Even conceding that the founder of the creed, ‘Abd al-Wahhab, was intolerant towards others, and that the Wahhabis of his time engaged in fanatic behavior, Rida still insisted that the Wahhabis deserved the support of Muslims, as a Salafi movement.
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In many respects, this claim was incongruous because, contrary to the Wahhabis, Rida advocated a critical approach to the evaluation of the authenticity of Prophetic traditions (
hadith
), and also advocated the use of rationalist methods in the practice of Islamic law.
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Rida consistently argued that in response to modernity, Islamic law must be interpreted in such a way that human rights and public interests are adequately respected, and supported the study of philosophy, and the practice of parliamentary democracy, both of which were an anathema to the Wahhabis.
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In addition, quite unlike the Wahhabis, Rida, who was a classically trained jurist himself, was strongly supportive of the juristic tradition, and the status and role of the classically trained jurists in modern Islam.
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There were certain commonalities between Rida, as a Salafi, and the Wahhabis.
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Rida was critical of the practices and theology of Sufi orders, particularly the doctrine of intercession and saint worship,
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and he was also critical of the doctrine of
taqlid
(imitation) and a strong advocate of renewed
ijtihad
, although his position was considerably more subtle and nuanced than the Wahhabis’.
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The commonalities, however, were not sufficiently compelling to explain Rida’s willingness to overlook the intolerant and frequently violent practices of the Wahhabis.
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Nonetheless, Rida defended the Wahhabis because of politics – Rida was an Arab nationalist who was also increasingly anti- Ottoman. It is clear from his own writings that Rida welcomed the Wahhabi

rebellion against the Ottomans, as an Arab revolution being waged against their Turkish masters.
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This, however, exemplified a problem that came to plague Salafi thought throughout the twentieth century, and that is its political opportunism. Salafism, which initially promised a liberal type of renaissance in the Islamic world, persistently compromised theological principle to power dynamics and political expedience. Confronted by the challenge of nationalism, Salafis, often invoking the logic of public interest and necessity,
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consistently transformed Islam into a politically reactive force engaged in a mundane struggle for identity and self-determination. As a result, Salafism became a highly diluted and unprincipled moral force, constantly re-structuring and re-defining itself to respond to a never ending and constantly shifting power dynamic. In the end, no one could be entirely sure about the ethical and moral principles that Salafism represented, other than a stark form of functionalism that constantly shifted in response to the political demands of the day.
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By the mid twentieth century, it had become clear that Salafism had drifted into stifling apologetics. The incipient opportunism in Salafi approaches had degenerated into an intellectual carelessness and even whimsicalness that had all but destroyed any efforts at systematic and rigorous analysis. By the 1960s the initial optimistic liberalism of Salafism had dissipated, and what remained of this liberal bent had become largely apologetic. Through a complex socio-political process, Wahhabism was able to rid itself of some of its extreme forms of intolerance, and proceeded to co-opt the language and symbolisms of Salafism in the 1970s until the two had become practically indistinguishable.
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Both Wahhabism and Salafism imagined a golden age within Islam; this entailed a belief in a near historical utopia that is entirely retrievable and reproducible in contemporary Islam. Both remained uninterested in critical historical inquiry and responded to the challenge of modernity by escaping to the secure haven of the text. And both advocated a form of egalitarianism and anti-elitism to the point that they came to consider intellectualism and rational moral insight to be inaccessible, and thus corruptions of the purity of the Islamic message.
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These similarities between the two facilitated the Wahhabi co-optation of Salafism. Wahhabism, from its very inception, and Salafism, especially after it entered into the apologetic phase, were infested with a kind of supremacist thinking that still prevails until today. The level of intellectual sophistication found in the writings of Rashid Rida, for example, became increasingly rare, and increasingly the texts written by Salafis became indistinguishable from those written by Wahhabis. To simplify matters, I will call this unity of Wahhabism with the worst that is in Salafism, “Salafabism.”

Salafabism took things to their logical extreme. The bonding of the theologies of Wahhabism and Salafism produced a contemporary orientation that is anchored in profound feelings of defeatism, alienation, and frustration. The synchronistic product of these two theologies is one of profound alienation, not only from the institutions of power of the modern world, but also from

the Islamic heritage and tradition. Neither Wahhabism nor Salafism, nor the synchronistic Salafabism, is represented by formal institutions; these are theological orientations and not structured schools of thought. Therefore, one finds a broad range of ideological variations and tendencies within each orientation. But the consistent characteristic of Salafabism is a supremacist puritanism that compensates for feelings of defeatism, disempowerment, and alienation with a distinct sense of self-righteous arrogance
vis-a`-vis
the nondescript “other” – whether the “other” is the West, non-believers in general, or even Muslim women. In this sense, it is accurate to describe the Salafabist orientation as supremacist, for it sees the world from the perspective of stations of merit and extreme polarization. It is important to note, however, that this trend de-values the moral worth not only of non-Muslims, but also those that it considers inferior or of a lesser station, such as women or heretical Muslims. Instead of simple apologetics, Salafabism responds to the feelings of powerlessness and defeat with uncompromising and arrogant symbolic displays of power, not only against non-Muslims, but even more so against fellow Muslims.

Salafabism has anchored itself in the confident security of texts. But in my view, far from being respectful towards the integrity of the text, Salafabism is abusive. As a hermeneutic orientation, it empowers its adherents to project their socio-political frustrations and insecurities upon the text. Elsewhere, I have described the dynamics of Salafabism
vis-a`-vis
the text as thoroughly despotic and authoritarian. Consistently, religious texts became like whips to be exploited by a select class of readers in order to affirm reactionary power dynamics in society.
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The adherents of Salafabism, unlike the apologists, no longer concerned themselves with co-opting or claiming Western institutions as their own. Under the guise of reclaiming the true and real Islam, they proceeded to define Islam as the exact antithesis of the West. Apologetic attempts at proving Islam’s compatibility with the West were dismissed as inherently defeatist. Salafabists argued that colonialism had ingrained into Muslims a lack of self- pride or dignity, and convinced Muslims of the inferiority of their religion. This has trapped Muslims into an endless and futile race to appease the West by proving Islam’s worthiness. According to this model, in reality, there are only two paths in life – the path of God or the straight path, and the path of Satan or the crooked path. By attempting to integrate and co-opt Western ideas such as feminism, democracy, or human rights, Muslims have fallen prey to the temptations of Satan by accepting ungodly innovations (
bida‘
, sing.
bid‘a
). They believe that Islam is the only straight path in life, and such a way must be pursued regardless of what others think and regardless of how it impacts the rights and well being of others. Importantly, the straight path (
al-sirat al-mustaqim
) is firmly anchored in a system of Divine laws that trump any considerations of morality or ethical normative values. God is manifested through a set of determinable legal commands that cover nearly all aspects of life, and the sole purpose of human beings is to realize the Divine manifestation

by dutifully and faithfully implementing the Divine law. Salafabists insist that only the mechanics and technicalities of Islamic law define morality – there are no moral considerations that can be found outside the technical law. This technical and legalistic way of life is considered inherently superior to all others, and the followers of any other way are considered either infidels (
kuffar
), hypocrites (
munafiqun
), or iniquitous (
fasiqun
). Anchored in the security and assuredness of a determinable law, it becomes fairly easy to differentiate between the rightly guided and the misguided. The rightly guided obey the law; the misguided either deny, attempt to dilute, or argue about the law. Any method of thought or process that would lead to indeterminate results such as social theory, philosophy, or any speculative thought is part of the crooked path of Satan. According to the Salafabists, lives that are lived outside the Divine law are inherently unlawful, and therefore an offense against God that must be actively fought or punished.

Whether Salafabism contributed, or could contribute, to honoring God’s Kingdom on this earth is a question I am not prepared to engage here. But in my view, it is clear that the impact of Salafabism on the Islamic intellectual heritage and the humanistic and universalistic orientations within Islam has been devastating. Two of the main problematics that distinguish Salafabists from others are: (1) whether the religious text is intended to regulate most aspects of life, and (2) Whether aesthetics or an innate human capacity to reflect upon and realize the good is possible. Not surprisingly, Salafabists exaggerate the role of the text, and minimize the role of the human agent who interprets the religious text. According to Salafabists, not only does the text regulate most aspects of human life, but also the author of the text determines the meaning of the text, while the reader’s job in engaging the text is simply to understand and implement. In the Salafabist paradigm, the subjectivities of the interpreting agent are irrelevant to the realization and implementation of the Divine command, which is fully and comprehensively contained in the text. Therefore, the aesthetics and moral insights or experiences of the interpreting agent are considered irrelevant and superfluous. According to Salafabists, public interests, such as the interest in protecting society from the sexual lures of women, can be empirically verified.
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However, in contrast, moral or ethical values and aesthetic judgments about what is necessary or compelling cannot be empirically quantified, and therefore must be ignored. So values like human dignity, love, mercy, and compassion are not subject to quantification, and therefore they cannot be integrated into legal determinations. Importantly, because Salafabists are dismissive towards the subjectivities of the interpreting agent, and aesthetic judgments are considered anathema, they largely ignore the intellectual products of the interpretive communities of past generations, and contribute to a sense of disoriented rootlessness among modern Muslims. Their approach to Islamic texts is very reminiscent of the pedantic literalism of the
Ahl al-Hadith
in the pre-modern period, who opposed every rationalist orientation in Islam.
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One event that is aptly demonstrative of the impact of the Salafabists, and the marked ambivalence that plagues current attitudes towards the Islamic intellectual heritage, is the controversy that surrounded the late Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1410/1989). Al-Ghazali, a prolific Azhari jurist who, like Rashid Rida, described himself as a Salafi, grew increasingly weary of the anti-rationalism and amoralism of those who described themselves as Salafis, and those whom I have called Salafabists. Cognizant of the influence of Wahhabis in contemporary Islam, al-Ghazali did not dare criticize the Wahhabis explicitly or directly. In fact, some Muslim thinkers who were known for their liberalism and rationalism had written books defending Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Wahhabism – portraying it as a movement most capable of confronting the challenges of modernity.
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Instead of criticizing the Wahhabis, al-Ghazali wrote a book severely criticizing what he called the modern-day
Ahl al-Hadith
– their literalism, anti-rationalism, and anti-interpretive approaches.
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Al-Ghazali also blamed the modern
Ahl al-Hadith
for perpetuating acts of fanaticism that have defiled the image of Islam in the world. He contended that the
Ahl al-Hadith
suffer from an isolationist and arrogant attitude that makes them uninterested in what the rest of humanity thinks about Islam or Muslims. In al-Ghazali’s view, this arrogant and intolerant attitude has deprecated and impoverished Islamic thinking, and denied Islam its universalism and humanism. Rather tellingly, al-Ghazali claimed that the modern
Ahl al-Hadith
have trapped Islam in an arid, harsh, and Bedouin-like environment in which the earmarks of a humanist civilization were clearly absent. This, of course, was an indirect reference to the Wahhabis and their legacy. In addition, al-Ghazali strongly defended the juristic tradition in Islam, and decried the ambivalence and dismissiveness with which this tradition is treated. Being aware of the confusion that has come to surround the meaning of the word “Salafism,” al-Ghazali avoided engaging in an argument about who are the real and genuine Salafis, but he did advocate a return to the methodologies of the scholars, such as Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida, both of whom were pioneers of the Salafi movement.