December 22,
2006
America has produced many strange things and ideas, but none is as strange as a new category of “Muslims” who call themselves secular Muslims. These made-in-America Muslims can be found throughout the world. In societies where they can safely proclaim to be one, they do not hesitate to announce their presence openly, but in societies where a disclosure is not safe, they keep their beliefs hidden or use a different label such as “liberal Muslim”. In all cases, they are the darlings of Western media seeking to promote a tolerant version of Islam.
Secular Muslims come in various varieties, hues and shades; some are more secular than Muslim, others are more Muslim than secular and there is wide range between these extremes. What distinguishes them from ordinary Muslims is a mystery. They claim that their faith is a private affair and hence any prying into matters related to their beliefs is taboo. But they call themselves Muslim hence one would expect that the least they would accept is the Book of God that all Muslims hold to be an incorruptible revelation, revealed to the Prophet of Islam (SAW) over a period of 23 years at a particular time and place.
This much they do accept—and this is their passport for entry into the community of believers. But their Qur’an is a book that needs to be reinterpreted anew for the twenty-first century. This means that they would like to read the Book in a manner that is different from how it has been read over the last fourteen centuries. In other words, many among them aspire to be a Muslim Martin Luther. In fact, several leading members of this community of secular Muslims are competing for the title of “a Luther of Islam”.
The most important representatives of this community live in Europe and the United States of America where they have found sanctuary in educational institutions. Their research and scholarship stands in stark contrast to the likes of Bernard Lewis; they attempt to demolish the house of Islam from within. To be sure, they are not ignorant about Islam; on the contrary, they often have command over Islam’s primary sources and know various aspects of Islam more than regular Muslims. What is different in their case, however, is the interpretation of some of the most basic concepts of Islam.
The most important area of interest for these “scholars” is Islam’s encounter with modernity. This is a wide open field which provides them the maximum leverage to propagate their beliefs. They appear as harbingers of a new version of Islam from which certain fundamental doctrines, such as Jihad, need to be subtracted. They construct their version of Islam in opposition to what the Western media often calls medieval, reactionary, exclusive, narrow, or madrasah Islam. In contrast, their version is called enlightened Islam. This Islam is elastic; it can co-exist with almost anything.
There are numerous lines of academic research these secular Muslim scholars pursue, but increasingly their area of interest has focused on the Qur’an. As opposed to the Orientalists, they do not openly question the Divine origin of the Qur’an, but they wish to subject it to a “scientific inquiry”. Their methodology is rather simple. First they challenge the authority of Mulla to interpret the Qur’an. Then they attempt to establish their own scholarly authority by using a jargon that makes sense in the Western academy. They ask: “What does it mean for a text to come from God? The Qur’an is a book consisting of some 6000 verses in Arabic language. This is an Islamic credo, and at the same time we have to know that some principles are universal and eternal, but some prescriptions should be understood in the specific context of Arabia of the seventh century.” Having established this principle, they open a wide road for themselves to discard what does not suit their ideological commitments.
At the deepest level, what sets secular Muslims apart from normal Muslims is a deeply engraved and thoroughly disguised pride—a disdain to submit to anyone, including the Creator. This disdain expresses itself in different modes, such as their lack of respect for any authority, their derision for centuries of Islamic scholarship, and their self-claimed role of re-interpreters of Islam. For them, past needs to be destroyed, in order to live in the present and prepare for the future. This means giving up concepts, practices, even laws that do not suit their vision of a 21st century Islam. Thus, concepts such as Muslim Ummah, the community of believers as a distinct social entity rooted in the vision of Islam, is anachronistic. It is incompatible with the global village that the world has become, they claim.
Left to their own understanding, and devoid of any integral links with the tradition, they attempt to understand Islam through their own limited and often flawed intellect, using personal whims, desires, fancies, and interests as the basic criteria to interpret primary sources of Islam. They reject what does not suit their needs, often through a circumvent process. For them, the only way to “progress” goes through a deconstructed Islam in which everything is relativized to the nth degree.
The emergence of secular Muslims on the global scene is a new phenomenon in Muslim history. They are always present in conferences, symposia, workshops, and on talk shows where they present their version of Islam in the context of discussions on a wide range of subjects—from political events to the relationship between Islam and science. Where possible, they often begin their speeches or articles by “Muslim bashing” in the name of revisiting certain basic assumptions of Muslims. Then they go on to recast Islam in their own manner. In doing so, they are attempting to demolish the house of Islam from within. Their success produces more secularized Muslims and the process goes on.
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