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| Our Islamic Fine-Tuning
Project Omid Safi This essay is adapted from the introduction of a new book, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). A major public conversation among American Muslims has emerged since September 11: Is there room for progressive Islam? Progressive Islam has emerged since
September 11 as a major public conversation about the faith of nearly a
billion people worldwide, and Muslims in the United States especially. The
conversation is a result of what some American Muslims see as the urgent
need to raise the level of conversation, and to get away from the standard
apologetic presentations of Islam. Progressive Muslims represent
intellectuals and activists who want a just and pluralist society, and
whose understanding of Islam has been shaped by the study of Islam in the
West. Walk into any Islamic center, and there is likely to be a table featuring pamphlets bearing titles like "The Status of Women in Islam," "Concept of God in Islam," "Concept of Worship in Islam." Printed in pale yellow, pink, and green shades, they promise truth in black and white. I hate these pamphlets. I think Muslims are in imminent danger--if
we are not there already--of succumbing to "pamphlet Islam," the
fallacy of thinking that complex issues can be handled in four or six
glossy pages. A few years ago, when I started teaching at
an undergraduate college in New York, I was the only Muslim faculty
member. I was advisor to the small group of Muslim students, about six of
them at that time. As we went around introducing ourselves, one student
gushed: "What I love about Islam is that it is so simple!" "Islam is simple" is a slogan
used as an excuse to avoid discussion, and even disagreement. Islam is not
simple because Muslims are not simple. We argue, we disagree, we joke, we
walk away mad, we come back, we compromise. But we do not, and will not
ever all agree on one interpretation of Islam. And that is why there is progressive Islam. Our movement is an attempt to help Islam
swim through the rising waters of our world. We intend to work through our
traditions of thought and practice--even though some interpretations of
Islam are part of the problem. On the other hand, we want to come up with
solutions to new problems. For progressive Muslims, an essential part
of our struggle is to challenge the great impoverishment of thought and
spirit brought forth by Muslim literalist-exclusivists (popularly known as
fundamentalists). Groups such as the Wahhabis have bulldozed over not just
Sufi shrines and graveyards of the family of the Prophet in Arabia, but
also whole structures of Islamic thought. Wahhabism started as a movement
in what is today Saudi Arabia in the late 18th century, and over its
existence has deemed illegitimate all other interpretations of Islam
except its own. There is an urgent need for progressive Muslims to resist
and replace the lifeless, narrow, and oppressive ideology that Wahhabism
poses to Islam. I view Wahhabism--amplified by hundreds of
billion dollars in petrodollars and supported by the same U.S. government
that claims to support democracy and freedom in the Muslim world--as the
single greatest source of the impoverishment of contemporary Islamic
thought. Yet ours is not simply an "anti-Wahhabi"
Islam. It is equally important to avoid the trap of dehumanizing Wahhabi-oriented
people. We have to engage them as well, and offer them an opportunity to
join us on a higher ground. By contrast, our aim is to envision a
socially and politically active Muslim identity committed to social
justice, pluralism, and gender justice. The aim here is not to advocate
our position as uniquely "Islamic" to the exclusion of the last
1,400 years of Islamic thought and practice. This is not an attempt to
insist that we finally "got it right"! No, warts and all, from
its glorious nobility to sexism, there has always been a spectrum of
interpretations in Islam. At the heart of a progressive Muslim
interpretation is a simple yet radical idea: every human life, female and
male, Muslim and non-Muslim, rich or poor, has the same worth. The
essential value of human life is God-given, and isn't connected to
culture, geography, or privilege. Central to our idea of a progressive
Muslim identity are a few fundamental values that we believe are essential
to a vital, fresh, and urgently needed interpretation of Islam for the
21st century. An important part of being a progressive
Muslim is the determination to hold Muslim societies accountable for being
fair and open. It means resisting and overthrowing injustice. It means
contesting gender apartheid (practiced by groups such as the Taliban) as
well as the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities (undertaken by
Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, for instance). It means exposing
violations of the rights to speech, press, religion, and dissent in Muslim
countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, and
others. More specifically, it means embracing and implementing a different
vision of Islam--a vision we are still working out, particularly here in
the United States—from that offered by Wahhabi and neo-Wahhabi groups. A vital corollary of our critique entails
standing up to practices in Western societies that we also deem to be
unjust from a global perspective. And yes, as much as it makes some
Muslims-especially first-generation immigrants to the United
States--uneasy to hear this, it means challenging certain policies of our
country and other countries that put profit before human rights, and
"strategic interest" before people's dignity. Our steps must be undertaken patiently--we
strive to be social critics, not outright revolutionaries. Yet being a progressive Muslim also means
being critical of the idea that we must all march toward the end game of
modern Western civilization. Indeed, this is one important way in which
progressive Muslims differ from "modernist" Muslim thinkers in
the late 19th and much of the 20th century. We no longer look to the
prevalent notion of Western modernity as something to be imitated and
duplicated. In fact, we direct our critique just as much to the West as to
Muslim societies. A recent policy paper released by the White
House titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of
America, for example, is riddled with disturbing instances of hubris.
According to the first sentence of this document, there is now "a
single sustainable model for national success," based on the
essential components of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise. Not many
people would argue against freedom and democracy, but many progressive
Muslims would point out that the foreign policy record of the United
States is less than stellar in its support of democracy around the world.
Time and again, the United States has supported and armed tyrannical
rulers who have oppressed their own pro-democracy citizens. One could
point to the U.S. support of the Mujahidin fighters (including Osama bin
Laden) in Afghanistan during the 1980s, or the $1.5 billion given to
Saddam Hussein's regime during the Iran-Iraq War. Democracy would indeed
be a worthy goal if we in the United States actually pursued it globally,
and if we truly believed that other people should have the choice to
decide for themselves whether or not they should embrace it. I've described what we're against. But what
are we for? Women's Equality. Far too often, Muslims
forget that gender injustice is not just something that oppresses
women--it also debases and dehumanizes the Muslim males who participate in
the system. We don't mean to focus exclusively on the hijab (head covering
worn by some Muslim women). The hijab is one important marker of identity
for many Muslim women who choose either to wear or not to wear it. It is
also an important marker of social regulation when many Muslim women are
forced to wear it. But it is futile to engage in conversations about
gender that reduce all of women's religiosity and existence to the hijab.
The human and religious rights of Muslim women cannot be
"granted," "given back," or "restored"
because they were never ours to give - or take - in the first place.
Muslim women own their God-given rights by virtue of being human. We strive for what should be legitimately
recognized as Islamic feminism. If that strikes some people as an
oxymoron, we suggest it is their definition of Islam that needs
rethinking, not ours. I want to point out that gender justice is
crucial, because gender equality is a measuring stick of the broader
concerns for social justice and pluralism. No doubt this heavy emphasis on
issues of gender--issues far too many Muslims would rather shove under the
rug--will strike some as unbalanced. But it is way past the time to be
squeamish. Social Justice. There have long been
Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, and others
involved in social justice. Increasingly, they are joined by Muslims. The
term "social justice" may be new to some Muslims, but justice
lies at the heart of Islamic social ethics. Time and again, the Qur'an
talks about providing for the poor, the orphans, the downtrodden, the
wayfarer, the hungry. It is time to translate those social ideals in a way
that Muslims and non-Muslims can understand. This is crucial because, as Muslims, we
must be responsible for the well-being of all humans. To borrow a metaphor
from our Christian friends, we are all our brothers' and our sisters'
keepers. And so, we stand up to those who perpetuate hate in the name of
Islam. We stand up to those whose God is a vengeful monster issuing death
decrees. We stand up to those whose God is too small, too mean, too
tribal, and too male. We stand up to those who apologetically claim that
the beautiful notions of universal brotherhood and sisterhood in the
Qur'an have somehow made Muslim societies immune to classism, sexism, and
racism. The time has come to stand up to those who
look down at others through an imperialist lens, those who favor
"globalization" that benefits multinational corporations at the
expense of ordinary citizens. Pluralism. Years ago in graduate school, I
had the pleasure of driving a famous speaker to the airport after his
talk. An expert on religious fundamentalism, Gilles Kepel had given a
lecture comparing Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalisms. We had
some time before his plane took off, so we talked. He reminisced about his
interactions with various Abrahamic fundamentalists. At one point he
leaned over and said, "You know what all three groups have in
common?" I feverishly raced through my mind to find the most
up-to-date theoretical articulation, but decided to remain silent. He
leaned over and said (in a wonderfully thick French accent), "They
all have such bad adab!" Adab is the compassionate, humane,
selfless, generous, and kind etiquette that has been a hallmark of refined
manners in Muslim cultures. Almost anyone who has ever traveled to the
Muslim world has no doubt seen great examples of this way of being
welcomed and put at ease. It is precisely this humaneness that is
missing from so much of contemporary Islam. Muslims brand each other as
infidels, oppress each other, cut each other off in speech, and are quick
to anger. Words like kufr (infidelity), shirk (associating partners with
God, i.e. polytheism), and bid'a (heretical innovation) flow far too
easily from our tongues. The finger that used to point up at the end of
prayers towards the heavens now points most frequently at another Muslim.
That same index finger that used to be a reminder of Divine Unity (tawhid)
is now a symbol of accusation. And of course, this is the great challenge
for all humanity: can we find a way to celebrate our humanity not in spite
of our differences but because of them? Can we grow to the point where
ultimately "we" refers to what the Qur'an calls the Bani Adam,
the totality of humanity? Some have asked us if we envision this as a
sort of "Islamic reformation." The answer is both yes and no. Some progressive Muslims argue for the
term. It is true that there are serious economic, social, and political
issues in the Muslim world that need urgent remedying. Much of the Muslim
world is bound to an economic structure in which it provides natural
resources (in the Middle East, oil) to the global market, while remaining
dependent on Western labor and technology. This situation is exacerbated
by atrocious human rights records, crumbling educational systems, and worn
out economies. If you are talking about a reformation that would address
these problems, then I suspect most progressive Muslims would support the
term. However, for some people the term
"reformation" carries more baggage. Many people have in mind the
Protestant Reformation, an understanding that makes us uneasy. We are not
trying to develop "Protestant" Islam distinct from a
"Catholic" Islam. We are not looking to create a further split
within the Muslim community so much as to heal it. Furthermore, embedded
in the very language of "Reformation" is the notion of a break
with the past. We see the progressive Muslim project as a fine-tuning, a
polishing, and a correction. Part of our challenge is to recognize that
there are many ways of talking about all religions, including Islam, in
the public sphere. The majority of Muslim scholars have formed a clear
enough consensus about many theological and logistical questions to allow
us to speak with unanimity. But on other issues--precisely those that many
contemporary Muslims and non-Muslims would be interested in hearing about
and debating--there is a wide range of interpretation. After September 11, almost every Muslim I
know found himself or herself repeating this phrase: "Islam is a
religion of peace. The actions of these terrorists do not represent real
Islam." And yet I am less and less satisfied with this mantra. Let me
be clear here: at a fundamental level, I believe that the Islamic
tradition offers a path to peace, when the Islamic imperatives for social
justice are followed. Yet there is something pathetically
apologetic about turning the phrase "Islam is a religion of
peace" into a mantra. It is bad enough to hear Muslim spokespersons
repeat it so often while lacking the courage to face the forces of
extremism in our own midst. Hiding behind the simple assertion that
"Islam is a religion of peace" does not solve our problems. The Qur'an talks about a prophet, Noah, who found his community surrounded by rapidly rising waters. Like Noah and recalling Bob Dylan, we must accept that we will soon be drenched to the bone. Let us remember that Noah's task did not end when he got on the ark, but continued after he landed on the ground. We ask God to lead us to a blessed landing, one from which our work will continue. The road there starts here, at this very moment, with every one of us.
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