The
Rational Argumentator
Does Islam Need a Reformation?
One of the common refrains in commentary about the Islamic Middle
East, especially since September 11, is that Islam needs a Reformation.
The Church also presided over the intellectual life of Europe. Its monasteries and universities were centers for education, preservation of manuscripts, and active debate on philosophical and scientific as well as theological issues. In the 13th century, scholars had rediscovered the works of Aristotle, thanks largely to Latin translations from Arabic versions. Aristotle’s views on nature, man, knowledge, and ethics were a massive intellectual challenge to Christians. Here was a thinker who was obviously capable of profound insight and powerful reasoning. Moreover, the Christian West had had Aristotle’s logical works for centuries; they had learned their methods of analysis and disputation from him; and now they discovered that his vision of the world was radically different from theirs. It was secular, based on reason, man-centered, with a virtuous happiness as the highest moral aim.
This analogy with the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe is intended to suggest that a similar movement within Islam would counter the fundamentalism of Islamic extremists, strengthen religious freedom, and lead to something like the separation of church and state.
Salman Rushdie, target of a death edict from Ayatollah Khomeini for his Satanic Verses, put it this way: “What is needed is a move beyond tradition—nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadi ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows of the closed communities to let in much-needed fresh air.” Robin Wright, a journalist who writes frequently about the Middle East, describes Iranian philosopher Abdol Karim Soroush as the Martin Luther of Islam, “shaping what may be Islam’s equivalent of the Christian Reformation.” Soroush rejects the fundamentalism of the ruling mullahs, advocating democracy and a fuller scope for reason in religion. “With haunting similarity to the Reformation, Prof. Soroush’s arguments in effect divide the roles and powers of church and state. That would be a stunning shift for Islam . . . .” Some Islamic reformers see themselves in the same light. Saudi activist Mansour al-Nogaidan, for example, says, “Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther . . . . Muslims are too rigid in our adherence to old, literal interpretations of the Koran. It’s time for many verses—especially those having to do with relations between Islam and other religions—to be reinterpreted in favor of a more modern Islam.” The historical analogy, in other words, is that modernist, tolerant, reformist Muslims are to the fundamentalists as the Protestants of the Christian Reformation were to the medieval Catholic Church. The call for an Islamic Reformation presumes that the theocratic rulers of Iran and Saudi Arabia—and the wannabe theocrats in al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood—are the counterparts of the medieval Catholic Church; and that reformers who oppose them are the contemporary equivalents of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Protestant reformers.This is very nearly the exact opposite of the truth. It is the
Islamists who most resemble the early Protestants. Those who employ the
analogy are seeing the Reformation through the lens of later
developments: the growth of religious freedom and tolerance that
culminated in the Enlightenment two centuries later. While the
Reformation played a limited and indirect role in that development, it
was certainly not what the Protestant leaders intended. They called for a
return to the spirit and practices of the early Christian community,
without the formal organization or intermediation of the Church—just as
Islamists call for a return to the simple faith of Muhammad and the
“rightly-guided caliphs” who followed him in the seventh century. Like
the Protestant reformers of the 16th century, Islamists today are
fundamentalists. The Protestants wanted to abandon the edifice of
scholastic thought, the efforts by Catholic theologians and philosophers
to make sense of the religion, and return to a literalist reading of
the scriptures—just as Islamists want to bypass the edifice of learned
interpretation in “the dusty, stifling seminaries of the
traditionalists” in favor of reliance solely on the Qur’an. In
philosophical terms, both the Protestants and the Islamists represent
movements away from the values of reason, the pursuit of happiness in
this world, and political freedom.
In short, Islam does not need a Reformation. The problem is that it’s having one now. What it needs is an Enlightenment.
Church and Reformers
On the eve of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church
presided over the spiritual life of Western Europe. It had survived the
fall of the Roman Empire and separated from the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Its domain now included Spain, from which Muslims (and Jews) had
recently been driven. The Church was a wealthy institution, owning vast
properties throughout Europe. Though formally distinct from the
political states, it wielded a great deal of de facto temporal power.
The Church also presided over the intellectual life of Europe. Its monasteries and universities were centers for education, preservation of manuscripts, and active debate on philosophical and scientific as well as theological issues. In the 13th century, scholars had rediscovered the works of Aristotle, thanks largely to Latin translations from Arabic versions. Aristotle’s views on nature, man, knowledge, and ethics were a massive intellectual challenge to Christians. Here was a thinker who was obviously capable of profound insight and powerful reasoning. Moreover, the Christian West had had Aristotle’s logical works for centuries; they had learned their methods of analysis and disputation from him; and now they discovered that his vision of the world was radically different from theirs. It was secular, based on reason, man-centered, with a virtuous happiness as the highest moral aim.
Though the Church was initially hostile, it did allow discussion of
Aristotle’s works. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) put together a synthesis
of Aristotelianism and Christianity that the Church could accept.
Aquinas’s outlook was a radical departure from the views of Augustine
(354–430), which had previously dominated Christian thought.
Whereas Augustine held that all knowledge, even of the natural
world, depends on trust in God, Aquinas held that our faculties of
sense-perception and reason are sufficient to give us knowledge of this
world, and that philosophical reason is necessary as an independent
adjunct to faith even on matters of religion.
Whereas Augustine claimed that life in this world is a vale of
tears, a brutal initiation for entrance to Heaven, Aquinas held that
happiness in this life was both possible and worthy as a goal.
Whereas Augustine taught that human nature is inherently corrupt,
and that we are totally dependent on God’s grace for our salvation,
Aquinas held that salvation depends on both grace and man’s free will to
choose the good, act virtuously, and perform good works.
By the time of the Reformation, this synthesis had become a new
orthodoxy within the Church. But the Church did not entirely suppress
debate, at least within the universities, and some thinkers went even
farther than Aquinas in defending reason over faith. (Throughout this
period, the Church did sanction punishment of popular heresies; and in
reaction to the Protestant Reformation, it became much more intolerant,
using the Inquisition and other means to inhibit dissent.)
The Protestant reformers objected to every element of the Thomistic
synthesis and sought a return to Augustine’s outlook. The flash point
of Luther’s opposition to the Church was the sale of
“indulgences”—payments to the Church to ensure a fate no worse than
purgatory for oneself or one’s loved ones. Luther’s critique of
indulgences, the main topic of his 95 theses, is normally interpreted as
an objection to a corrupt practice, a kind of spiritual protection
racket. But Luther’s objection went much deeper. He rejected the notion
that any worldly power could affect God’s choice to save or condemn
people.
Luther’s doctrine of sole fides held that salvation comes
solely through faith in God and Jesus Christ. As historian of religion
David M. Whitford put it, “Instead of storehouses of merit, indulgences,
habituation, and ‘doing what is within one,’ God accepts the sinner in
spite of the sin. Acceptance is based on who one is rather than what one
does. Justification is bestowed rather than achieved. Justification is
not based on human righteousness, but on God’s righteousness—revealed
and confirmed in Christ . . . . For Luther the folly of indulgences was
that they confused the law with the gospel. By stating that humanity
must do something to merit forgiveness they promulgated the notion that
salvation is achieved rather than received.”
In short, Luther opposed any notion of earning salvation by good
works. Calvin went even further. His doctrine of predestination held
that God has chosen the elect—those who were to be saved—regardless of
merit, and that no human action can alter that choice.
Luther, Calvin, and other Protestants rejected the notion that the
Church must intercede between man and God. Luther held that every man is
his own priest, relating directly to God without any middleman. In aid
of this view, Protestants supported the translation of the Latin Bible
into vernacular languages so that ordinary people could read it, and
some were burned at the stake for their efforts. This is one of the
reasons the Reformation has been seen as a movement toward
individualism. But the fundamental rationale was not to promote
individual autonomy. It was to promote another of Luther’s doctrines: sola scriptura.
Luther and other reformers wanted to reject the interpretation of
Christian doctrine by Catholic scholars and priests and return to the
original scriptures as authoritative.
Even when it rests on faith-based premises, the interpretation of
texts and the attempt to explain away apparent contradictions is an
exercise of reason. That exercise was a hallmark of Catholic scholastic
thought. The Protestants wanted to bypass reason and achieve a
transparent understanding of scripture, based on a literal,
fundamentalist reading. At its deepest level, this goal was motivated by
hostility to reason. “Reason is the devil’s greatest whore,” wrote
Luther. If one abandons reason, however, and relies entirely on faith
and authority, there is no possibility of reconciling disputes.
Inevitably, the Reformation produced a plethora of conflicting
doctrines, which led to wars of religion in the century following
Luther, Calvin, and their contemporaries.
These wars were one factor that led to the Enlightenment’s spirit
of tolerance. But the Protestants themselves were not advocates of
tolerance. Luther sought to have the German princes in his region adopt
his version of Christianity as a state religion. Calvin, in Geneva,
instituted theocratic rule, with Christian morality enforced by law and
blasphemy a capital offense. While the wars of religion created an
incentive for toleration as a way to end the bloodshed, it is unlikely
that this would have led to any lasting condition of religious freedom
without other, independent historical factors: the growth in
individualism through trade, art, and other developments; the
simultaneous development of science, which showed the power of reason;
and the arguments of philosophers, like Francis Bacon and John Locke,
who broke the hold of theology over secular thought.
Ulema and Islamists
Islam never had a single institution comparable to the medieval
Church. Its clergy were the imams in local mosques, judges of Islamic
law, and scholars in universities such as Al-Azhar in Cairo. Known as
the ulema, they were steeped in study of the Qur’an, of the hadith
(words and actions of Muhammad), and of the endless commentaries and
commentaries upon commentaries produced by previous generations. They
were the religious establishment against whom Islamists rebelled, as
Protestants had rebelled against the Church. As Emmanuel Sivan notes,
the leadership of Islamist groups is “composed for the most part of
university students and modern professionals, autodidacts in religious
matters.” Osama bin Laden, for example, is certainly not of the ulema, yet he claims the authority to issue fatwas
(rulings on Islamic law), just as Luther claimed the autonomy to post
his 95 theses against the Church. In recent decades, the Internet has
made it possible for lay Muslims to learn and discuss Islamic doctrine
outside the establishment in the same way the printing press enabled the
spread of Protestantism in Luther’s day.
Islamists are not reacting against an Aristotelian strain in Islam.
There has not been such a strain since the days of Averroes in
12th-century Spain. The Islamists are reacting against the Enlightenment
modernism of the West, which they see as a threat to Islamic culture;
but their call for a return to an imagined purer state of Islamic
society is analogous to the Protestant goal of freeing Christianity from
the worldly compromises and the scholasticism of the Church. The
philosophical content of Islamist theory is likewise similar to that of
the early Protestants.
There is, first, the opposition to rational inquiry. Islamists are
happy to import Western technology, but not the underlying scientific
spirit of open inquiry that produced it. Sivan reports that “the
radicals voice the all-too-expected complaint that the teaching of
science, though not openly critical of religion, is subverting Islam
quite efficiently, precisely by being oblivious to it.” Speaking of his
opposition to the United States (the “Great Satan”), Ayatollah Khomeini
said, “We are not afraid of economic sanctions or military intervention.
What we are afraid of is Western universities.”
Islamists also oppose the worldliness of Western life, the pursuit
of happiness, prosperity, and pleasure. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian
theorist of jihad, was repelled by what he saw as the materialism of
American life during his studies here in the 1940s. “In what he saw as
the spiritual wasteland of America,” writes Lawrence Wright in a New Yorker
profile, “he re-created himself as a militant Muslim, and he came back
to Egypt with the vision of an Islam that would throw off the vulgar
influences of the West. Islamic society had to be purified, and the only
mechanism powerful enough to cleanse it was the ancient and bloody
instrument of jihad.” Qutb became a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and was executed in 1965—but not before his works had made him one
of the most influential Islamist thinkers.
Islam includes the doctrines of predestination by God’s will and
man’s need to submit to God’s commands. Islamists, like the Reformation
Protestants, typically hold extreme versions of these views. And the
submission must be political as well as personal. The imposition of
sharia, in order to enforce morality, as Calvin’s theocratic rule in
Geneva sought to do, is a central goal.
Enlightenment Now?
Islamism is only the latest call for a return to the original
vision and purity of Islam; there have been waves of such reform
movements throughout the history of the religion. The same is true for
Christianity; the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century had many
predecessors. Both religions were born in the deserts of the Middle
East, predicated on faith in a transcendent God and the hope of
salvation in a life to come. That mystical foundation necessarily
conflicts with any effort to understand the world by reason, or to seek
one’s happiness in the world, or to enrich the world with the secular
values of civilization. In the nature of the case, “reform” will be a
regression by the standards of Objectivism. The most we can expect is
that such movements will shake things up and inadvertently lead to
progress.
Will that happen with Islam? Will Muslims find and embrace their
Enlightenment? Let us hope they will. And let us hope that their
transition from Reformation to Enlightenment will not be as long and
bloody as it was in Europe.
David Kelley is executive director of The Atlas Society, which promotes Rand’s philosophy. He was also a consultant to the movie. Kelley earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1975, and later taught cognitive science and philosophy at Vassar College and Brandeis University. His articles on social issues and public policy have appeared in Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, and elsewhere. His books include Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence; The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand; The Evidence of the Senses, and The Art of Reasoning, one of the most widely used logic textbooks in the country. Kelley is also the founding editor of The New Individualist magazine.
Copyright, The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.
Click to return to TRA's Issue CCLXXXVII Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.Read Mr. Stolyarov's comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.