Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (21 page)

1. Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff,
   Salvation and Liberation – In Search of a Balance between Faith and Politics
   (New York: Orbis, 1985), 25–6.
   

2. According to the Qur’an, virtually all the Prophets, including Muhammad, came from peasant or working class backgrounds and the option for the marginalized seems to be implicit in their very origins. All the Abrahamic Prophets mentioned in the Qur’an had their origins among the peasants and were generally shepherds in their formative years. The singular exception, Moses, was destined to sojourn in the desert of Madyan, where he was employed as a shepherd for eight or ten years (Q. 28:27). One may describe this as a process of “deschooling” in the ways of the powerful, in anticipation of his mission as a Prophet of God unto them and as a liberator of his people. Opposition invariably came from the ruling and dominant classes that the Qur’an describes as the
   mala’
   rulers or aristocracy (Q. 11:27, 38; 23:24, 33; 26:34), the
   mutrafun
   (ostentatious) (Q. 34:34; 43:23), and the
   mustakbirun
   (arrogant) (e.g. Q. 16:22; 23:67; 31:7). Support for the Prophets was usually forthcoming from the
   aradhil
   (lower classes), the
   fuqara
   (poor), and the
   masakin
   

   (indigent). In fact, the disdain of the aristocracy for social intercourse with slaves, serfs, and workers was a significant factor blocking their own entry into Islam. In Muhammad’s latter years in Mecca, the aristocracy indicated their willingness to enter Islam if he got rid of the riff-raff surrounding him. The Qur’an condemned such offers and warned Muhammad against considering them (Q. 18:28, cf. 6:52–4).
   

3. ‘Ali Shari‘ati, cited in Arabimian,
   op. cit.
   

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ISLAM: A CIVILIZATIONAL PROJECT IN PROGRESS

Ahmet Karamustafa

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One of the most difficult challenges awaiting anyone – Muslim or non-Muslim – who would like to observe, study, or understand Islam is to define and identify it. What is Islam, after all? To many, it will come as a surprise that such an innocent question does not have a simple answer. Wouldn’t most people – again, Muslim or non-Muslim – agree in calling Islam a religion, for instance? Aren’t there Islamic cultures? Isn’t Islam a civilization? Each of the statements implicit in these questions (“Islam is a religion,” “Islam is a culture or a set of cultures,” and “Islam is a civilization”) may look simple and straightforward, but in reality each is a mask that serves to cover up interminable difficulties.

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Let us first examine the assertion “Islam is a religion.” What exactly does this statement tell us? Not much, unless we agree on a definition of religion first. It turns out, however, that there is no universally accepted definition of religion. Even though scholars of all stripes, over the course of the past century or so, have made valiant attempts to fashion a universally applicable definition, it is fair to say that their attempts have not led to any meaningful consensus. The one candidate for a commonly accepted definition – that religion is belief in supernatural beings – has proven to be riddled with problems. Foremost among these is the indisputable fact that some major faith traditions like Buddhism lack beliefs in supernatural beings of a kind comparable to the one God of Western monotheisms! Further, there is the problem of determining the exact

referents of the term “supernatural,” which has proven to be a frustratingly elusive enterprise. The lack of consensus and the spread of confusion over the subject matter of religion have in fact led to powerful calls recently to abandon the concept of religion altogether for scholarly purposes on the grounds that it is an analytically obscure and methodologically unhelpful category.

The woes of scholarship are also reflected in popular usage, where the term “religion” is often passed over in favor of more appealing terms like “myth” and “spirituality” in reference to originally Asian, African, or Native American beliefs and practices, while observers as well as practitioners of Western monotheisms (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) frequently have difficulty in fitting these faith traditions into the concept of religion. Perhaps the most notorious instance of this difficulty is the oft-repeated adage that “Islam is not simply a religion but a way of life.” When used by outsiders, this maxim normally carries an air of opprobrium around it, with the implication that Islam should not, of course, be more than a religion, while insiders tend to repeat it with a special relish that also betrays a degree of astonishment (“How could anyone possibly have thought of reducing Islam to the level of being a mere religion?”) When we probe this issue further, however, it emerges that Orthodox and Catholic Christianity as well as Conservative and Orthodox Judaism are also viewed by most parties – both insiders and outsiders, scholars and observers – as “ways of life.” After all, who could say, in good conscience, that there is no such thing as “leading the life of an Orthodox Jew or of a devout Catholic?” To put it slightly differently, for most people there would be something amiss about any attempt to reduce Catholicism or traditional Judaism to a limited set of beliefs and practices called religion which is completely cut off from other aspects of human life. What, one wonders, is this thing called religion if Western monotheisms and non-Western beliefs and practices are not adequately captured by it?

At this point, many of you will no doubt want to object to this unexpected assertion that the term “religion” does not adequately embrace either Western or non-Western beliefs and practices. You will point to the existence of religious institutions (typically the Church is offered here as the obvious example), or to the widely held opinion that religion is a matter of beliefs about the cardinal questions of human life nourished in individual consciences. Could it not be claimed, you will continue, that “religion,” as a descriptive term, denotes particular institutional structures like the Church or, failing that, personal beliefs held by individuals and/or collective doctrines shared by large human groups? The term should have a referent after all!

Unfortunately, this well-intentioned attempt to salvage the term is ill-fated from the start. On closer scrutiny, “religious” institutions do not prove to be significantly different than “non-religious” institutions like the state or the market, so that it proves to be impossible to distinguish one from the other. Worse yet, not all faith traditions seem to have developed complicated institutional structures like the Church. Many, indeed, display relatively low

levels of institutionalization. And where institutions do exist, they do not serve to define the boundaries of the faith traditions. As is well known (though not adequately appreciated), there is, for instance, no church in Islam, though religious institutions of various kinds have existed from very early on in Islamic history. And none of those institutions (for instance, the religious college or the mystical association) can be said to stand for the whole of Islam. In short, trying to
fill in
the concept of religion by focusing on institutions is like describing the human body by fixing one’s attention only on the bones.

If institutions do not help us define religion, what about the assertion that

religion is all about belief and faith? Surely, this assumption at least will withstand scrutiny? Surely, all religious traditions are built around matters of individual conscience? Interestingly, it turns out that only Protestant Christianity fits this particular take on religion. It is true, of course, that concepts of belief, faith, individuality, and individual conscience were not invented by reformed Christianity: they are more or less universally found in the last three millennia of human history. But the suggestion that faith, hence religion, is to be understood primarily, even solely, as a matter of individual conscience is peculiar to Protestant Christianity. Since this form of Christianity was the civil religion of the United States throughout the twentieth century, it should not be surprising that popular conceptions of religion in America were shaped by it. But this view on religion does not serve us well when we turn our gaze to faith traditions other than Protestant Christianity (not to mention evangelical Protestantism, where it also fails). In Islam, for instance, individuality and individual conscience have always been at the core of the tradition, but very few have ever suggested that Islam can be defined using only these concepts.

To summarize our discussion so far: in both scholarly and popular usage, “religion” proves to be a murky concept with an unclear content, and there are serious doubts about its universal applicability. Under these circumstances, trying to define Islam by calling it a religion is, to say the least, singularly unhelpful. To the extent it can give rise to the false impression that Islam is a distinct entity with clearly delineated borders, the statement “Islam is a religion” might even be downright misleading.

But if viewing Islam as a religion is not particularly illuminating, how
should

we view it?

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If, in spite of our popular inclinations, the concept religion proves to be of little use in our attempt to answer the question “What is Islam?” do we perhaps stand a better chance by turning to the concept of culture? Is Islam a culture?

Indeed, there are many who claim or implicitly assume that Islam is

completely identical with a particular culture, so much so that they almost see Islam as another name for that culture. This kind of cultural particularism has

always been more influential than you might suppose. A version of it, popular among both Muslims and non-Muslims (though more among non-Muslim Westerners), for instance, has been the tendency to establish an equivalence between Islam and Arab culture. In this view, Islam is seen as a divine sanction placed upon certain or even all aspects of Arabian culture after certain undesirable aspects of it (for instance, unlimited polygamy) were removed or reformed through the prophetic mission of the Arabian Prophet Muhammad. Especially prevalent in the first centuries of Islamic history, this view was successfully challenged and eventually displaced both by other cultural particularisms (not surprisingly, non-Arab Muslims too tended to value their own indigenous cultures over those of others) and by other intellectually and culturally more egalitarian approaches to Islam. Yet cultural particularism never completely faded away, and it was given new license in the twentieth century with the emergence of nationalism among Muslims. The new Muslim nationalists, the majority of whom worldwide were non-Arab, claimed Islam for themselves and their own nations. The new nationalisms were on the whole built on secularist foundations, but many nationalist Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, had to build their nationalist ideologies on the cultural particularisms of the pre-modern era, which were intertwined with Islam. This naturalization of Islam by the new national cultures of the second half of the twentieth century, though never built on solid intellectual grounds, has proven to be influential in the formation of the popular cultures of these societies, so that it would be fair to assume that most Muslims on the globe today, as members of nationalistic cultures, associate Islam in the first instance with their own national culture and only secondarily with any other culture. This is not to deny the global dimensions of Islam, but only to observe that the identification of Islam with particular local, regional, and national cultures is the norm among Muslim populations in the world. Cultural particularism is a major force to be reckoned with.

Does this mean that for all practical purposes, we should accept the claim that Islam is to be understood as culture? Not quite. For one thing, it is crucial to remember that particularism of any kind (ethnic, cultural, racial, and, yes, even gender based) has always been challenged, contested, and, more often than not, counterbalanced in Islamic history by universalism (as most definitively demonstrated by the declining fortunes of Arabism after the third Islamic century). In other words, the globalist, universalist, and humanist dimensions of Islam have never been completely submerged by any limited and limiting particularism. Yes, there are many different Islamic cultures on local, regional, and national levels, but identifying Islam with any one of these cultures would be to reduce and to distort it. This is because Islam is primarily a supra-cultural package of values, practices, and resources that Muslims adopt to navigate the stormy waters of human life on earth. We simply cannot ignore this global, universalizing nature of Islam.

Conversely, it would be equally erroneous to identify any particular culture thoroughly with Islam. In the first place, the attempt to identify Islam with only one of the literally innumerable particular cultures that claim to be Islamic is manifestly nonsensical. Also, it is crucial to remember that the fit between Islam and culture is never snug. No matter how we choose to delimit and define any particular culture, we can be certain that it can never be completely identified with Islam, which is simultaneously in and above cultures. This is emphatically the case with Arab culture as well, which was, it is true, the locus of the latest divine intervention in human history that resulted in the two sources of Islam, the Qur’an and the exemplary life story of Muhammad. Contrary to what some rabid Arab Muslim nationalists and their non-Muslim counterparts may believe, however, Muslims have never seen this as a divine command to Arabize humanity. Instead, wherever they are in the world they have always been and likely will always be engaged in an ongoing struggle to bring their own local cultures into concordance with their own understandings of Islam. This engagement is not a restrictive or destructive one, nor is it meant to level the rich cultural diversity of the worldwide Muslim community into a banal cultural uniformity. On the contrary, it is a productive and creative affair whereby believers actively attempt to shape and resculpt their cultures in the light of Islamic precepts. Particular cultures will always be both more and less than Islam, and Islam will forever be both in and outside of particular cultures. It is this creative tension between the two that attracts and fascinates Muslims.