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In fact, this approach as demonstrated by its most recent champions has encouraged reference to text and classical theology but with a view to re-read them in a ‘modern’ light. Most advocates believe this will make Muslims more comfortable with the outcome particularly if they’re engaged throughout the process or, better-still, if the process is led by ‘qualified’ Muslims. To the unqualified who are duped by pseudo-theologians (broadly government officials who compete over their ignorance of Islam) this may appear plausible if not a good strategy, but to those a bit more familiar with the territory it’s a dead end.
Why is this approach problematic? Well, the problem is quite fundamental and has afflicted many who have attempted to follow this route previously: the weight of Islamic orthodoxy, of classical Islamic jurisprudence, simply emerges triumphant. Better to bypass Islamic texts and declare it pre-modern than to try and play Islam at its own game and on its own sources. Islamic texts, practices, scholarly debate embodied in material over 1400 years becomes fairly apparent and difficult to dodge unless you’re willing to make some quite drastic re-interpretations but which then lose credibility due to there sheer absurdity.
Ideas such as the Caliphate, the Shariah, the Islamic criminal code, dress code and the like, whilst not in favour in the west, are deeply orthodox, dominate Islamic history and still carry broad support today. It is difficult to argue these are un-Islamic ideas or that they need to be re-interpreted as Islamic texts are quite unequivocal as to where they stand on these issues.
In addition to this difficulty, it is also hard to understand whether Islam and secular liberalism can ever be reconciled. The philosophical route and starting point of each is quite different and no matter how some of the branches of each may be shaped to resemble each other, they are fundamentally different at source.
As Anshuman Mondal points out in a Prospect Magazine essay. ‘Liberal Islam’, that with Islam we have “the belief in an originating point of knowledge, a sacred text…Here knowledge returns to its point of origin, the metaphysical absolute that guarantees truth” whilst the foundations of secular liberalism “has no point of origin and its trajectory is quite different. It is a text that is always liable to be rewritten.” He goes on to say “if the Rubicon that no Muslim worthy of the name would cross is belief in the absolute omniscience and omnipotence of Allah, then it becomes hard to accommodate secularism. Very few Islamic thinkers have self-consciously espoused secularism, even among those who passionately desired modernity”.
If this were the start of the process of attempting to re-form Islam in the image of western secular liberalism, some may argue that these are natural difficulties one may expect when trying to change the status quo. But after a century and half of high profile attempts that have failed, that expectation is a little out of place.
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