CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES

The following diagram illustrates the broad divisions that exist within Islam today. There are, firstly, those who adhere to the traditional schools of law and schools and scholarship (Madhabs) - traditionalists. They are increasingly in a minority and cling to forms of Islam from the classical period. The Schools themselves have tended to stagnate and became heavily compromised during the colonial period. The geographical integrity of legal blocs has been disrupted. Most modern Muslims have an eclectic approach and take bits and pieces from various schools.

Then there are the Salafis, or the so-called "fundamentalists", who have become the dominant, or at least the most vocal, form of Islam in the 20th C. largely through the wholesale promotion of Salafi puritanism by Saudi Arabia. Although growing out of hardline Hanbalite Law, the Salafis reject the traditional schools of law and advocate a return to the pristine purity of primitive Islam. To a large degree Salafism is synonymous with neo-Arab puritanism.

Then, thirdly, there are the modernists and progressives. They reject the traditional schools of Law as well but instead of seeking to return to some mythical purity of primitive Islam they embrace a new era of "ijtihad" (opinion) and think that Islam should "get with the times".

The Madhabis are mainly found in Islamic nations outside of the Arab world. The Salafis are mainly found in the Arab world, but their reach extends much further due to Arab money. And the Ijtihadis are mainly found in Muslim communities in the West or among the pro-Western middle and upper classes in parts of the Muslim world.

Madhab = school of Law. Clerics form opinions on religious matters. The Madhabs stagnated and were compromised during the colonial period and the dispersion of Muslim populations in modern times has further disrupted the traditional schools. The question is: What is to replace the Madhabs?

Salaf = early generations of Muslims. Individuals and clerics follow the example of the early Muslims. Wahabis prefer to be called salafis. They maintain that the cause of the humiliation of the colonial period was deviation from the early, pure (and therefore Arab) forms of Islam. The rise of Salafism has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of Arab revivalism and nationalist aspiration.

Ijtihad = to form an opinion. Individuals form opinions on religious matters. Modernists and progressives see the post-Caliphate era as a 'New Era of Ijtihad'. Like the Salafis, they regard the Madhabs are beyond repair.

To the Salafis we must say: Your idolization of the early Muslims is shiirk. It is an invention, a pious myth, and your dream of restoring primitive Islam is a vain hope.

To the Madhabis we must say: The classical era is over. If we hang onto it it will crumple in our hands. And its glories can never be reconstructed.

To the Ijtihadis we must say: the new era of Ijtihad has come upon us because of spiritual decline, not because of "progress". We are cut off from the spiritual wellsprings of the past, removed from the source of revelation. Don't be naive - modernity and science threaten to reduce man to a godless machine.

The point of view taken in this website is that regressive fundamentalism is the unwelcome influence and a blight upon the faith and that the way forward is through constructive engagement between the modernists and traditionalists in a united front against fundamentalist extremism. The Traditionalists must concede that trhe world has moved on and a new era of ijtihad is upon us, for good or for bad. The past can never be regained. But the Ijtihadis, the modernists, must desist from their contempt for the treasures of tradition and their naive, uncritical embrace of all things modern - now is the time to look back upon the classical era, to take stock, and confront modernity in the light of the wisdom of the past.

In many ways these three camps are found in all modern religions. In Christianity, too, there are modernists, traditionalists and fundamentalists. And in Christianity too modernists and traditionalists fight between themselves while the fundamentalists prosper.

 

The Rose at Dusk - A Manifesto of Muslim Reform

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