Why Islam doesn’t need a reformation

The Guardian ^ | Sunday 17 May 2015 | Mahdi Hasan

[Cronos]

In recent months, cliched calls for reform of Islam, a 1,400-year-old faith, have intensified. “We need a Muslim reformation,” announced Newsweek. “Islam needs reformation from within,” said the Huffington Post. ..After all, Christianity had the Reformation, so goes the argument, which was followed by the Enlightenment; by secularism, liberalism and modern European democracy. So why can’t Islam do the same?

Yet the reality is that talk of a Christian-style reformation for Islam is so much cant. Let’s consider this idea of a “Muslim Luther”. Luther did not merely nail 95 theses to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg in 1517, denouncing clerical abuses within the Catholic church. He also demanded that German peasants revolting against their feudal overlords be “struck dead”, comparing them to “mad dogs”, and authored On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, in which he referred to Jews as “the devil’s people” and called for the destruction of Jewish homes and synagogues. As the US sociologist and Holocaust scholar Ronald Berger has observed, Luther helped establish antisemitism as “a key element of German culture and national identity”. Hardly a poster boy for reform and modernity for Muslims in 2015.

...The truth is that Islam has already had its own reformation of sorts, in the sense of a stripping of cultural accretions and a process of supposed “purification”. And it didn’t produce a tolerant, pluralistic, multifaith utopia, a Scandinavia-on-the-Euphrates. Instead, it produced … the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Wasn’t reform exactly what was offered to the masses of the Hijaz by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the mid-18th century itinerant preacher who allied with the House of Saud? He offered an austere Islam cleansed of what he believed to be innovations, which eschewed centuries of mainstream scholarship and commentary, and rejected the authority of the traditional ulema.

[Cronos]

...Some might argue that if anyone deserves the title of a Muslim Luther, it is Ibn Abdul Wahhab who, in the eyes of his critics, combined Luther’s puritanism with the German monk’s antipathy towards the Jews

Non-Catholic FRiends, this is not an attack on Luther -- remember that the article says The theologies of Islam and Christianity, in particular, are worlds apart -- my point in posting this is to highlight that Islam has ALREADY had its reformation and become stricter -- producing the Wahabbis

[Billthedrill]

I would have said the Turks, actually, who took an Arab Caliph and gave Islam a Turkish Sultan. To a great degree what Wahhabism really is, is a sort of Counter-Reformation and a demand for return to Arab hegemony. But as you say, that’s really stretching an analogy past its limits. Interesting thought, though, and a BTT, and thanks for posting.

[dp0622]

compare the teachings of Jesus to the teaching of momeathead. 1 group may need to keep an eye on the right path. for the other there is no right path only death and destruction

[davius]

ISIS is to Islam as six is to half a dozen.

[onedoug]

islam needs no reformation. It needs to be destroyed.

[Shadow44]

Islam already resembles Protestantism in that it is decentralized, based on consensus of the community, and textual literalism.

The problem is that it historically has been the hadiths, and Islamic jurisprudence that hid Islam’s brutality.

Many later Caliphs cared more about administration than faith. So they supported the idea of symbolism and rationalism since they could drink wine, and get away with things forbidden.

Unfortunately, the masses reacted against it by adopting the kind of hardliner thinking we see today.

[Shadow44]

NB: That comparison doesn’t mean that Islam is the same as Protestantism. Obviously there’s a world of difference besides such superficial similarities.

[smokingfrog]

“Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated.”

[RobbyS]

The Protestant Reformers advertised themselves a return to the First Century Church. Wahabbism likewise is supposed to be a return to the Islam of Mohammed, and ISIS to the Arab caliphates of the First Islamic Century. The difference between the ideas of the Reformers is the difference between the Christians of the first century and the Muslims of the first century of Islam, between peaceful preachers and warrior bands.

[allendale]

Islamic culture is simply not compatible with the values, practices and institutions of modernity. For the past one hundred years Islamic culture has been forced to confront modernity. This is the real cause of the conflict and chaos within the Muslim world. Islamic apologists blame the United States and Israel. Either Islamic culture transforms or its countries will remain dangerous, chaotic backwaters. The jihadists are bewildered reactionaries who seek solace in the practices, values and even dress of the 11th century. They are doomed to failure. Sadly there does not appear to be much hope. Even Turkey ,which had benefitted from the remarkable achievements of Ataturk, has regressed.

[JimSEA]

If there was a “reformation” of Islam, it was the Sufi Mystics in India, of course by in large, they were brutally exterminated an only isolated sects remain.

[bluejean]

“They are doomed to failure”

But how have they failed? They own huge swaths of the Middle East. They are invading and infiltrating Europe and the USA in droves. They have intimidated millions with their slaughterfests. Political correctness makes it “wrong” to monitor, surveil or profile them even though we all know THEY are the enemy of our country, our civilization. They are carving out territories in our cities and implementing Sharia law. They lop off heads on video and we all go about our days, oh well. They’ll be doing it in our neighborhoods if we don’t start kicking butt. They don’t seem to be failing. They seem to be having a lot of success.

It all worries the crap out of me but all I see being done is a drone strike here and there and a lot of talk. No one seems to be taking them seriously. That is working quite well for them.

[nathanbedford]

The author entirely misunderstands the effect of Martin Luther and the nature of the Protestant Reformation and he entirely missconceives the need for reformation in Islam.

Martin Luther's contribution was to entirely alter Christianity's understanding of man's place in the cosmos thus opening the way for the shift from medievalism to the modern era. Before Martin Luther man lived under the authority of noble and priest, who serves under King and Pope who derived their authority directly and exclusively from God. Because Luther did away with the intermediation of the priesthood and provided man with a Bible in the vernacular, the line of authority now bypassed Pope and King, priest and noble and went directly from God to man. The whole structure of the Middle Ages was overthrown.

When structures crumble disorder is inevitable and so the peasants revolt in the wake of this new understanding of man's place in the cosmos ensued. Luther was a theocratic revolutionary but not a Marxist and he did not support the peasants. Rather he supported the petty nobleman who had protected him from the church. The Peasant Revolt was brutally suppressed with Luther's approval.

It was left to other Protestants to expand Luther's theocratic revolt to demands for secular change, to produce the Anabaptists for example, and to inevitably lead to the religious wars and 40 years war which was one of the most destructive wars in European history. These wars were not the object of Luther, but were the result of a new epistemology.

But the point is that the Reformation opened the way for the world to live with the scientific method. Without Luther we would have no First Amendment and we would be arguing as this author does that tolerance means something entirely different than what our framers meant. He is proposing a tolerance that is still theocratic and authoritative.

That is an oxymoron.

[Springfield Reformer]

The real problem is the difference in the two founders. Muhammad is the paradigm for the deception, violence, sensuality that characterize “originalist” Islam. Jesus is the paradigm for the unselfish love that seeks redemption and reconciliation and peace with God and with each other. “Originalist” Christianity. You get whatever you build on as your foundation. There is no way to reform Islam, except for them to cease their fight with Jesus and become His followers instead of His enemies.

Peace,

SR

[oldplayer]

islam needs no reformation. It needs to be destroyed.

You beat me to it, onedoug.

Oldplayer

[Eagles6]

Save

[Springfield Reformer]

Good observations. The shift from a sacral model of the state to the two-sphere model of the later reformers was a long process of transformation. Jesus Himself is credited by some analysts for sowing the seeds of this when He said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.”

[jocon307]

Ping for the AM. This looks interesting and the comments are very good so far.

[pallis]

Reform for Islam is Sharia law and jihad. Like everything else about about Islam, Islamic reform is bad for us. There is nothing of value in Islam that can make the world a better place. There is nothing in Islam that can make a single person better off, or a better human being. The fools crying for reform need to stop feeling good about the idiotic things they can say, and start understanding what Islam is.

[RginTN]

the point of reformation is to move away from the covert or die theology. Of course by doing that muslims will have to acknowledge Mohammed killed innocents because he could and that won’t happen.