Liberal Islamic Movements
The Liberal Islam differs from in that it fits into the current of theological liberalism that knew the other monotheistic religions at the turn of the nineteenth century and twentieth century while the include both fundamentalist reform movements. On this point, the term Anglo-Saxon liberal Islamic movements lend a little ambiguity that the term European is to remove .
- Liberal Islam also means a reform movement within the Islam that combines modernity with Islam if we consider that modernity is defined by a list of a number of social issues and societal taboos that appear in Islamic societies, as are respectively the position of women or the relationship of religion and the state . The authors are both activists as academic writers or theologians. These theologians claim to the Sunnis as the Shia.
It must also distinguish
- the liberal movement in Islam, also called "progressive", whose proponents seek to restore pluralism of interpretations within Islam, against a simple reading of a text that was sufficient in itself , , which carry currents that are currently dominating the most fundamentalist
- of secularized Islam , also called "secular Islam" in francophone countries , whose adherents believe that Islam built a significant part of man (possibly a woman), specifically in his moral conduct, and citizen but is a religion which they recognize themselves agnostics
Even before the societal aspects, such as defense of secularism , non-obligation or restriction on wearing the Islamic veil or denial of corporal punishments prescribed by Shariah and jihad are many points (not exhaustive) defended by many of the "liberal Muslim" of XXI century , the Nahda is primarily a current of theological study.
Summary
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Concept of modernist crisis
Definition
From the modernist crisis that permeated Christianity since the Syllabus to Vatican II , we can define a modernist crisis as follows. It is the struggle of one or more authorities, including at least one religious, for their sole benefit of the legitimacy of the interpretation.
It requires:
- - A critical mass of literate population;
- - Economic development that is thought to these elite beyond their borders;
- - Several possible poles of legitimacy.
Case of Islam
The concept of the modernist crisis is little studied in regard to Islam except for French-speaking authors, by Gilles Kepel , Malek Chebel and Abdelwahhab Meddeb .
Similarities
a critical mass of literate population
In the Arab-Muslim world 50% of the population is literate (in part by the colonizers) but in the Asian world, who sets the tone in this case , the population receiving higher education is more important the will of the English colonizers to reach an elite Indian received while in its universities, training of local elites, the French colonization was more cautious.
Economic development
The crisis of modernist rebounds XIII in the early twentieth century when the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia and the alliance with the USA (protection against Saudi monarchical dynasty permanent supply of oil) leads to the Wahhabi school supplants the Egyptian school, with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
multiple poles of legitimacy possible.
In the case of the modernist crisis of Christianity, the three poles of legitimacy were the German university and French , the European Protestantism, the Roman Catholic Church, the latter two poles being open conflict and simmering since the Council of Trent.
We also both authorities claiming orthodoxy:
- The school Wahhabi , which in itself is an "innovation" of the eighteenth century but which claims a monopoly of interpretation, and a stronger grip on the holy sites.
- The Egyptian school, which benefited from the authority and legitimacy to Muhammad Abduh.
- Added to the rise of Asian Islam in which Islam Indonesia.
- Added to the Western university, because of the alliance game (the Ottoman Empire then most states arising from its allies are butchering of the German Empire while after the war of 1914-1918, part of them are placed under the protectorate powers by French and British) that German and British Archaeology , . The controversy between Renan and Jamal Al Din Al Afghani , bears witness.
To combat the influence, the Muslim brothers to return to Oswald Spengler 's theory of the decline of the West and develop it into " Occidentalism "
originality
However, the crisis known modernist Muslim specificities that never knew his Christian counterpart before the recent period:
- the intrusion of theologians in the field of debate, the current Islamic feminism (the Moroccan Fatima Mernissi , the Egyptian-American Ahmed Leyla , etc..) are part of liberal Islam, which pays particular attention to the ijtihad (interpretation of the Koran ).
- emphasis on societal issues ;
- A process in two steps (1917 in 1948) and from 1979 to today. In the first period of Muslim modernist crisis is, at first, almost identical to the period of the modernist crisis of Christianity , it is time for reformers of the Nahda. According to Kepel, she faces a break until 1979 when the arrival of Khomeini on the political revival. In its second part, we can generally regarded as non-Arab Muslim thinkers develop a liberal response to the pact wahhabo-Salafi and that these thinkers and theologians are divided on all of the traditional geographical area of Islam like that of the diaspora Muslim. With decolonization and the collapse of the empire Soviet , Muslim modernist crisis continues where it left off .
We therefore distinguish two generations of liberal thinkers, that the crisis of contemporary modernism and contemporary theological liberalism, plus the positivists.
Major thinkers and authors representative
The list does not purport to be exhaustive. The struggle against the colonial English has led some of them to join the current splus conservaters. This is the case of Al-Afghani and Muhammad Rida.
Reform
| names | dates | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Muhammad Abduh | 1849 - 1905 | Egypt |
| Jamal Al Din Al Afghani | 1838 - 1897 | Afghanistan |
| Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis | 1889 - 1940 | Algeria |
| Muhammad Iqbal | 1873 - 1938 | India |
| Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi | 1842 - 1902 | Syria |
| Muhammad Rashid Rida | 1865 - 1935 | Syria |
| Muhammad Nasir Ad-Din Al-Albani | 1914 - 1999 | Syria |
| Malek Bennabi | 1905 to 1973 | Algeria. |
Liberals
The positivists
Mohamed Hamouda Bensa from 1902 to 1989 , Algeria.
The subjects played
The nature of torque between antagonistic forces of Islam Liberal (eng: progressive Islam, ie "progressive Islam") and Wahabism is indicated by Omid Safi .
He has in opposition to what he calls "Islam Web" or "pamphlet Islam" which he , "reduced Islam to a 6-page":
- "The Status of Women in Islam"
- "The concept of God in Islam "
- "The Concept of Prayer in Islam "
- "Islam is simple," a slogan which avoids any discussion, and directed to accept a single system of interpretation;
Cons ready to think that the liberal movement intends to work the various traditions of Muslim thought and practice, knowing that some of these interpretations are part of the problem while others offer solutions to problems in the making.
The ambition of progressive Islam is not confined to be a force anti-Wahhabi or dehumanize the proponents of Wahhabism. The dynamism of the movement is:
- to examine the claim of orthodoxy which Wahhabism is more rapid diffusion on petro-dollars that the quality theological it is rather a theological impoverishment
- to question the legitimacy of this current to treat Sufism as heresy and to crush the philosophical structure of Islam.
Sources anti modernist theological positions
Ibn Taymiyyah is considered the founding father of Wahhabism and Salafism , namely the fundamentalist Muslim contemporary. Curiously, science and technology are absent from the catalog of Ibn Taymiyya while their foreign origins are obvious Among these impure influences, it means:
- Areas of development of philosophy whose seed is Greek ,
- Sufism, "which crossed the graft influences Indian, Iranian and Christian" ,
- Muslim interpretation of the Bible , which permits the development of elliptical passages of the Quran by the use of biblical and rabbinic corpus
- the cult of saints, which is rooted in the bottom Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian.
Some features are common in the situation of Islam since 1979 and the situation of Christianity in the mid 19 th century from the Syllabus:
- existence of a system of torque a force between fundamentalist and liberal school of thought that denies The ideas of the liberal opposition to the Wahhabi interpretation, which claims to orthodoxy. The current Wahhabi and even some Sunni legal schools condemn this current under the name of secularism sometimes innovation any reopening of ijtihad.
- put forward by the new prohibitions fundamentalist movements especially in its social aspects: calling the hijab compulsory, and recognizing corporal punishments prescribed by Sharia The current Liberal contest these new prohibitions, these new requirements.
- put under a bushel many traditional Muslim thinkers who can be considered as liberal, however, both thinkers Mu'tazilites that thinkers, philosophers and theologians whose work is however better known as Al-Kindi (796-870), Al-Farabi (872-950), Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl (1110-1185) . Liberals call for the current revival of abkharisme and obtain resources in the various theological Sufisms
- condemnation of the historical-critical research on the Koran by most fundamentalists, for whom the text of the Quran is sufficient in itself, going so far forget the traditionalists medieval while the liberal currents encourage the .
Reopening of ijtihad
Do "of interpreting a perpetual task, never completed, always repeated, far from naive truths and misleading evidence that fanatisent crowds" . liberal thinkers deplore the virtual monopoly of the manual of Ibn al-Kathir (late 13th) in formal education that oversimplifies and leads to the home of fundamentalist theories .. They recommend for the quality of their explanations:
- the commentary of Tabari (ninth century)
- commentary Zamakhshari (XI century)
- Secrets of the Mystery of Fakhr ad-Din Razi (XII century)
The author stresses that these treaties are not averse to resorting to Isra'iliyat is to tell the Jewish and Christian scriptures and treaties that are devoted to medieval Arab authors in Contrary to the anti-Semitism which is the norm in the contemporary Muslim fundamentalism
Exegesis scientific and critical
The appreciation of diverse scientific work in progress in the field of Quranic research can be considered a marker of the boundaries between the different religious currents unique to Islam. In the vocabulary they exchange controversy, there is one used by the various protagonists in the crisis of modernism, this time enriched by geopolitics.
"We touch the Koran taboo seems to be very present among Muslims today. While in the Islamic tradition itself, the question of the formation of the Koranic text has been treated to be controversial, and has produced literature. It is these texts, published, scholars, "knowledgeable" are familiar, but not a Muslim "ordinary." I remember just a book just published, written in Arabic, which dates from the late the ninth century, which is entitled "Revelation and Falsification" and there is talk of the Koran falsified. "
Scientific Exegesis of the Qur'an
Internal tensions, sometimes substantial, are circulating in the Islamic world, and that from its origins. Most are related to the idea that Muslims are lessons to be learned from the sacred texts, in particular the quarrel between Mu'tazilites and their opponents on the issue of "uncreated Qur'an", a concept that currently plays in "preserved Quran" , means "preserved from corruption" in spite of the revelations made in that regard by both the traditional exegesis . The Mu'tazilite argue that the Qur'an is created and from the eighth century, they largely inspired by Greek rationality, engage in the process of exegesis. They will be defeated by the arrival of the Hanbali school, and according Seddik , therefore any scientific exegesis will be locked. In addition, the obscurities of the text are legion of this, it is open to interpretation.
The first of these currents of tension is the Qur'an, believed to have been directly revealed by God to his Prophet. However, until the 1970s, the general public knew nothing of the circumstances in which the divine word was written down, nor the ways in which the text had been stabilized. The pioneering work of Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921) and Theodor Nodelke had remained in the intimate circles of scholars. It was not until the work of John Wansbrough for this work to know a certain notoriety.
In Egypt, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd sharing this research direction, he had to seek refuge in Europe for daring to proclaim: "If the Koran is a sacred text, the Arabic language in which it was transmitted, is a human language."
Open the site of the genesis of the text to reach the decision philological oriented according to the criteria of historicity , in particular the relationship between the Torah, the Gospels should engage the Muslim thinker in this that the text betrays the and the Muslim tradition that fact. In the thirteenth century in Damascus, the Sufi Ibn Hud was holding a seminar at his home attended by Muslims and Jews, in which he commented on the Bible . According Abdelwahab Meddeb , this interest is the criterion of distinction between Islamism and Islam .
Work on the Origins of Islam
Works such as Edouard-Marie Gallez , showing Nazarene Jewish origins to Islam are welcomed by liberal Muslims and denigrated as a laborer West against Islam by all current salafo-Wahabi.
Sharia
distinguish between cyclical and eternal revelation in the Koran
The challenge is to distinguish the essential from the business cycle in 6236 verses of the Koran
This type of problem has not only been considered with regard to relations to maintain or not maintain with the Jews and Christians, as in the case of the article referenced. The problem comes from the current rules regarding repealing and repealed. Generally speaking, fundamentalist groups that considers the timing and manages the repeal repealed and therefore, the bellicose Medinan considerations take precedence over the more theological considerations revealed in the Meccan period.
Liberal thinkers such as Rashid Rida , eg regarding the condemnation of Jews, say that this sentence applies only to the Jews of Medina at that time. This is not the chronology but the circumstances of the revelation that manage to repeal and repealed.
See also
Social issues and societal
A number of issues explored by Western societies find themselves in the thoughts of the liberal Islam. If they are clearly identified, they are neither the same degree of priority or exctement the same content as in Western societies. However, reflection is also fueled by the large number of Muslims living in Western societies , often incorrectly called "moderate Muslims"
Genre
Gender shall be construed broadly as the defense of women's rights and the various issues relating to homosexuality and its associated disciplines. For an overview of the topic, consult the Safra Project, which provides an academic bibliography with the title Sexuality, Gender and Islam - Bibliography Women "I attended in my childhood (the 50s), in this citadel of Islam that was the Medina of Tunis, where I grew up, the unveiling of women in the name of Westernization and modernity, this concerned the women, daughters and sisters of the lawyers who held the chair in the theological college millennium Zaytuna (one of the 3 most important of the Islamic Sunni with Quarawine Fez and Al-Azhar in Cairo. The unveiling of women in the conservative environment I grew up not only the result of the action of emancipating Bourguiba. In the context of more traditional Moroccan King Mohammed V had himself announced his daughters. C 'was in vogue, and not only because of the proximity to France with the Maghreb. Across the Arab world, the unveiling of women was matched to a process begun in the late nineteenth century. " Contrary to what happens in the current Liberals and 2 other monotheistic religions, gender and feminist claim is not nullifying to distinguish what is liberal what is conservative. "Some male Muslim scholars committed to defending democracy and some semblance of progressive Islam can still assume that women are second class human beings and do not recognize their marginalization in the history of Islam. Academics Muslim personalities and sometimes even play the dangerous game of double talk and make comments based on their different groups, or posing for the gallery "Norhayati Kaprawi . Gender issues are also well supported by some current conservative theology as by liberal currents. So we're talking: Islamic feminism is not an innovation. At the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century, a pamphlet against the veil, Tahrir al Mar'a ("women's liberation") written by Quasim Amin and published in 1899 in Egypt. He described it as "a symbol of the subjection of women." This leads to the creation of the Egyptian feminist movement in 1925 with its president, Hoda Sha'rawi (1879-1947), reveals herself in 1926. The term "Islamic feminism" appeared in 1990 with the release of the Iranian magazine Zanan which for laymen, seems like a feminism adulterated in that it envisages a feminism based on the Koran and Sharia compliant . Feminism is not the monopoly of the liberal currents but also based on common Muslim tradition more open to women than would be published the current exclusivist. This is true of Sisters in Islam , an organization malaise born informally in 1988 and officially became a non-governmental organization in 1993. Islamic feminism is a discourse and then one strategy among many made by advocates of women's rights in the Muslim world . "In some cases, as in the works of Fatima Mernissi on the veil and forgotten queens of Islam, or those of Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas on the Quran and women, personal beliefs and approach to meet academic criticism interpretations and patriarchal practices and propose a new approach to the early history of Islam. "Valentine M. Moghadam . The best known of these writers and activists are Asma Barlas , Riffat Hassan , Azizah al-Hibri , Leila Ahmed and Margot Badran , who live in the United States , and Ziba Mir-Hosseini in the UK and Iran. The First International Congress on Islamic Feminism was organized in Barcelona from 27 to 29 October 2005 by the Junta Islamica Catalan with support from the Centre of Catalonia of the UNESCO in Barcelona. Some of the delegates called for gender jihad, that is to say the fight for women's rights; Some liberal theologians and thinkers have a different approach from that of most Traditional Islam . Scott Siraj Al-Haqq Kugler shows that the rejection of homosexuality by traditional Islam is put to a great extent on account of mistaken exegesis There is no doubt that the "verse of the sword", ordered to kill the pagans while the "verse of the war" engages in mortal combat against Jews and Christians. But, "said Abdelwahab Meddeb , "we should get rid of the cult of the letter reduced to an unequivocal meaning: this vector leads to violence. It should also identify as meaningful in the context of his show " . This critical tradition does not fall from the moon in the writings of liberal thinkers. It is rooted in the Enlightenment tradition of interpretation of Islam. For example, criticism of the dogma of "insuperabilit" also called "inimitability" the Koran is a challenge faced since the tenth century by authors such as Abu 'l-'Ala' al-Ma'arri (d. 1058) Although the currents have a more fundamentalist interpretation exclusivist, the traditional interpretation of the Koran allows a Muslim to recognize the legitimacy of other spiritualities. In particular, these verses are involved: In this case, the idea that Islam is "the best of religions" is understood in relative terms. Islam is the best religion, because it is more suited to his times. But an absolute point of view, all religions are equal, to the extent they are effective ways to achieve the Goal. In particular, the verse XIV, 4 opens up infinite: it can be considered as legitimate forms of spirituality or prophets are not mentioned in the Koran. Islamic Feminism
Feminism in the Muslim world
Associations feminist
Homosexuality
Relations between religion and state
Religious Pluralism
The classical theological foundations
the perspective of liberal thinkers
Notes and References
Quranic quotes
Explanatory Notes
Bibliography
General aspects of the problem
Societal aspects
Sources philosophical
Aspects exegetical
See also
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