If there’s one lesson I’ve
taken to heart in my time at University it’s to not only become content with
giving a satisfying answer to a difficult question but to discern whether the
question being asked is itself entirely legitimate. This was sometimes a
jarring idea for newcomers to grasp and runs contrary to the conventional
notions of “learning” whereby a student is simply seeking out some ethereal “knowledge”,
untainted by context or interpretation. This is of course now the basis and an
essential component of modern social sciences, to challenge the basis in which
assumed “knowledge” is founded. This principle, however, is rarely applied to a
larger context, and it was around a few years ago that I began to notice that
in popular discourses surrounding the ever pertinent topic of the Middle East
and Islam, its bad questions, not bad answers which tend to perpetuate a stale,
reductionist rhetoric based more on established narratives rather than
insightful observation on whatever issue happens to be in the spotlight. In
light of the recent fiasco with Sam Harris and Ben Afleq on Islam as a uniquely
oppressive religious tendency, I’d like to draw attention to some of the ever
prevalent notions surrounding such discussions which are neither substantiated
by evidence nor contribute to our understanding of what is no doubt a cardinal
issue.
Whenever popular
commentators speak of Islam, whether from an antagonistic or sympathetic
perspective, the question that inevitably arises is how best to reform the religion
itself or the context (i.e. “Islamic world”) in which it is contained. The assumption
being that the current Islamic mentality is somewhat displaced from modernity,
stagnant in the face of changing values and the rapid erosion of traditional
social institutions. From the new atheist’s perspective; Islam and more
specifically its fundamentalist tendency is a relic of a bygone era, the past
haunting the present, a bizarre reactionary movement characterised by its total
rejection of Western liberal values. Sam Harris refers to the explosion of
Islamic fundamentalism as a portal to a medieval mentality. The reformists,
perhaps best represented in the west by figures like Tariq Ramadan whose
ideology often coincides with that of progressive liberalism as well as
identity politics, similarly lament traditional Islamic institutions which
supposedly hinder the religion from harmonising effectively with modern
society. This liberal reformist movement often co-opts existing progressive
paradigms (LGBT, Feminism, and Scientism), arguing cases for Islamic reform in
light of said values.
An unfortunate outcome of
this thinking is that it unwittingly legitimises claims by Islamic
fundamentalists as champions of Islamic orthodoxy while overlooking nuances in
the history of modern Islamic thought which have created our current
predicament. The undeniable fact that tends to be ignored in popular discourses
is that the Islam that proposed by the fundamentalists is itself a product of
modernist reformism, not traditional orthodoxy. Much like evangelical
Christianity, what can broadly be defined as modernist Islam is barely a
hundred years old. While the new atheists and liberal reforms may attack the
established clergy for being out of tune with modern thinking, the
fundamentalists are attacking the same clergy on the very same basis. This is
the tragic irony that places both critics of Islam, proponents of liberal
reformism and fundamentalists on the same boat, and it’s one which is constantly
overlooked by the tired line that the likes of ISIS championing a “medieval
ideology” which in actuality bears about as much similarity to Islamic medieval
theology as Pat Roberson does to St. Francis.
