October 28, 2020

The Conflict Between Islam and Modernity

The Conflict Between Islam and Modernity

Many within the Muslim community have long taken issue with the international organisation Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The declaration, these critics attest, was created by colonial powers with a history of gross human-rights violations, and amounts to one more attempt by some Western players to impose their will upon Muslim countries. Islamic conservatives and fundamentalists go further, as they declare that no human invention can equal — much less supersede — jurisprudence, which amounts to the word of God.

This clash between the U.N.’s secular human-rights standards and Muslim religious doctrine mirrors the broader conflict between Islam and modernity — a conflict that has left some citizens of Muslim countries, including women and non-Muslims, highly vulnerable. Fortunately, an emerging school of Muslim thought addresses the question during a new way, emphasizing that the Quran, like every religious writing, must be interpreted — which those interpretations can change over time.

In fact, the Quran does defend principles like liberty, impartiality and righteousness, which indicates a fundamental respect for justice and human dignity. the matter, as emphasized by the Iranian theologian Mohsen Kadivar, is that several parts of jurisprudence are linked to pre-modern social structures, which deny women or non-Muslims the identical protections as Muslim men receive.

It doesn't help that, as George Mason University’s Abulaziz Sachedina points out, men are those to interpret Islam’s holy texts. This, instead of those texts’ true content, is that the root reason behind legal discrimination against women in Muslim countries.

The theologian Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Fazel Meybodi points out that jurisprudence regarding punishment — which has brutal practices like stoning and amputation — originates from the will. Islam failed to invent these punishments; they were simply the prevailing practices of the time.

As societies progress and evolve, so must the foundations and standards that govern them. because the Iranian theologian Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari of the University of Tehran emphasizes, many of the ideas related to justice and human rights, as we understand them today, were completely “un-thought” within the pre-modern era. But Muslims cannot simply disregard such ideas on the grounds that humans had not developed them at the time the Quran was written.

With the abandonment of outdated notions of tiered justice and also the recognition of the freedom and dignity of all individuals, Shabestari believes that it'll become possible to comprehend the Quran’s message that there should be no compulsion in religion. People’s religious decisions should be driven by their sense of religion, instead of their desire to retain their civil rights.

According to the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, this distinction between religious beliefs and civil rights should be obvious. But interpretations of sharia law have traditionally been so focused on questions on mankind’s various duties that they need didn't recognize it. For Soroush, however, the denial of human rights supported “a person’s beliefs or absence of belief” is undeniably a “crime.”

The school of Muslim thought promoted by these scholars, who come from both Sunni and Shia backgrounds, offers the way forward for Islam. Its adherents know that key Islamic concepts, beliefs, norms and values may be harmonized with modern social structures and understandings of justice and human rights. By recommending ways to try and do so, they're reaffirming the sturdiness of the core Islamic tradition. To use the language of the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, they're creating “saving translations,” whereby a language, conceptual apparatus and system are updated to reflect progress in human reason.

Such saving translations in Islam are emerging for a substantial period of your time. Indeed, the late Iranian writer and philosopher Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri fell out with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, after being designated his successor, over policies that he believed infringed on people’s fundamental rights and freedoms. In defending freedom of speech, Montazeri cited a Quranic verse stating that God taught humans the way to express themselves. “How can God, on the one hand, teach humans the flexibility of expression and, on the opposite hand, limit it?”, he asked. the plain conclusion, he declared, was that “no one should be condemned for heresy, libel, or insult only for expressing his or her opinion.”

Montazeri, like today’s innovative Muslim thinkers, chose to stay receptive alternate interpretations of the Quran, instead of becoming trapped by accepted tradition. The saving translations that these figures have offered demonstrate that modern global norms just like the UDHR aren't only compatible with Islam; they're deeply embedded within it. Reinterpreting — or maybe abandoning — antiquated rules rooted in outdated social structures doesn't amount to subverting the word of God. On the contrary, it proves actuality depth of Islam’s sacred texts.