Islam and the Question of Reform

By Melbourne University Publishing Ltd

Reform, by definition, is not a complete break with tradition, but a determination by scholars, activists, politicians and critical thinkers to re-claim the tenets of their faith. Muslim communities have historically displayed a tendency to preserve the status quo.

By contrast, the individuals and movements in Islam and the Question of Reform are determined; often at great personal risk; to push aside existing political and social elites and the historically accepted interpretations of Islam and its place in society.

The perspectives examined in this volume avoid superficial or apologetic examinations of Islam's political and social role. Instead, they meticulously scrutinise the religion's public role, often questioning the validity of dogmas that have acted as tools of empowerment for existing elites for centuries.

Islamic Studies Series - Volume 1

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Dec 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9780522859201

Book preview

Islam and the Question of Reform

MUP ISLAMIC STUDIES SERIES

The Islamic Studies Series (ISS) is aimed at producing internationally competitive research manuscripts. This series will showcase the breadth of scholarship on Islam and Muslim affairs, making it available to a wide readership. Books in the ISS are based on original research and represent a number of disciplines including anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and political science. Books in the ISS are refereed publications that are committed to research excellence. Submissions on contemporary issues are strongly encouraged. Proposals should be sent to the ISS Editor.

Associate Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh

ISS Editor ([e-mail])

Board of Advisors

Associate Professor Syed Farid Alatas

Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

Professor Howard V. Brasted

School of Humanities, University of New England

Professor Robert E. Elson

School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland

Professor John Esposito

Director, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian

Understanding, University Professor of Religion and International Affairs,

Georgetown University

Emeritus Professor Riaz Hassan AM, FASSA

ARC Australian Professorial Fellow, Department of Sociology,

Flinders University

Professor Robert Hefner

Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University

Professor Michael Humphrey

Chair, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Philosophical

and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney

Professor William Maley AM

Director, Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University

Professor James Piscatori

Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East and Central Asia),

Australian National University

Professor Abdullah Saeed

Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies, Director, National

Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne

Professor Amin Saikal AM

Director, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East and Central

Asia), Australian National University

Associate Professor Samina Yasmeen

Director, Centre for Muslim States and Societies, School of Social and Cultural

Studies, University of Western Australia

Islam and the Question of Reform

Critical Voices from Muslim Communities

Edited by Benjamin MacQueen, Kylie Baxter and Rebecca Barlow

Foreword by Shirin Ebadi

Foreword

God has made humankind into different races and colours. Different religions and beliefs guide humans onto the straight path; although the routes are different, the objective is prosperity for all. Different cultures and religions have many similar roots. But it is possible for them to maintain their own unique characteristics while trying to understand and respect the viewpoints of other cultures, to discover their similar needs, to implement similar regulations and to follow them.

Democracy and human rights are the common needs of all cultures and societies. Respect for human life and honour is praiseworthy in all cultures and religions. Terrorism, violence and humiliation of humans are condemned in all communities and religions. People who fail to adhere to human rights and democracy hide behind the excuse of cultural relativity; these people are tyrants and backward thinkers who hide behind the guise of culture to mask their own dictatorship. In the name of religion and national culture, they intend to violate the nation’s rights.

Human rights are the essence of civilisations and different religions, and can be implemented in all communities and religions. Therefore, the followers of a certain religion cannot separate themselves from the value of human rights and cannot also establish a new definition of ‘Human Rights’ for themselves. Being a devout Muslim, I declare that Islam is a religion that accepts the notion and concept of human rights. We can be Muslim as well as respect human rights.

In the nineteenth meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, held in Cairo in 1990, an Islamic human rights declaration was adopted. If this declaration was considered as a method for the implementation of international human rights laws, it is not wrong. However, if we consider this declaration as an opposition to or exclusion from the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, I register my dissent from the Islamic Declaration on Human Rights; because, there is no need for this declaration. Muslims can follow the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and this is not opposed to Islam.

We should also remember that if Muslims want to exclude themselves from the liability of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and establish human rights laws on the foundations of their religion, it is obvious that they should appreciate this right for other religions as well. If we had such a situation, then we might have as many as 5000 different types of human rights declarations in the world because of the number of different religions. This could result in nothing but the deterioration of human rights. Consequently, we accept only one universal human rights declaration and we want to follow this declaration. The world will be in peace only when humanity follows the human rights laws.

I look forward to that day.

Shirin Ebadi

2003 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Tehran, Iran

June 2007

Contents

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction

Benjamin MacQueen

1. Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na‘im and the Hermeneutics of Reform in Islam

Benjamin MacQueen

2. Shirin Ebadi and the Question of Women’s Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Reform or Reconstruction?

Rebecca Barlow

3. Muslim Democrats: The Changing Face of Political Islam in Malaysia

Sven Alexander Schottman

4. Defending Religious Freedom in Indonesia: Muslims, Non-Muslims and Legislation on Houses of Worship

Ismatu Ropi

5. Contemporary Islamic Discourse in Europe: The Emergence of a ‘Euro-Islam’?

Kylie Baxter

Index

Acknowledgements

This volume is based on discussions held at the ‘New Directions: Contemporary Muslim Thinkers and the Question of Reform’ workshop hosted by Monash University in November 2006. The editors would like to thank Monash University’s School of Political and Social Inquiry for funding and hosting this workshop. They would also like to thank the Monash Asia Institute and the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University for their cooperation and participation. In addition, the editors would like to thank Associate Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh for his assistance in the organisation of the workshop and this resultant volume.

Contributors

Rebecca Barlow

Rebecca Barlow graduated with a BA (Hons) in international relations and global politics from Monash University in 2005. Since 2006, she has been undertaking her PhD research and worked as a research assistant focusing on the rights of Muslim women, the international human rights system and Middle Eastern politics. Rebecca’s PhD focuses on the Iranian women’s movement, and the implementation of international human rights law in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Significant focus lies on the ideology and activism of lawyer and Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, a devoted Muslim who has advocated for secular forms of rights-based governance.

Kylie Baxter

Kylie Baxter received her PhD from Monash University in 2008 and a BA (Hons) in Jewish and Islamic studies at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD thesis focused on Islamism in the United Kingdom. Kylie has published widely on Western Muslim communities and the utilisation of Islamist theory by organisations based in the West. Currently, her research focuses on Middle Eastern politics and international Islamism. She is the author of US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Rise of Anti-Americanism (2008).

Benjamin MacQueen

Benjamin MacQueen is an Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne. He received his PhD from Deakin University and a BA(Hons) from La Trobe University. He has published on issues dealing with Middle Eastern politics, conflict resolution in the Middle East, US democracy promotion in the Middle East, and relations between Australia and the Middle East. Currently, his research focuses on the impacts of US foreign policy in the Middle East, United Nations reform, and conflict resolution in the Middle East and North Africa. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Ismatu Ropi

Ismatu Ropi is lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy (Ushuluddin) State Islamic University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, and researcher at Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) UIN in Jakarta. He has written widely on interreligious relations in Indonesia, published in scholarly journals and magazines including Islam–Christian Muslim Relations (UK), Hamdard Islamicus (Pakistan), Studia Islamika (Indonesia) and Inside Indonesia (Australia). He is author of Fragile Relations: Muslims and Christians in Modern Indonesia (2000) and is currently researching on the politics of regulating religion in Indonesia for his PhD degree at the Australian National University in Canberra. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Sven Alexander Schottman

Sven Alexander Schottman was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Germany, Singapore and Malaysia. While living in Kuala Lumpur, he studied at the International Islamic University before obtaining his BA in International Studies from DePaul University in Chicago. He graduated with an MSc in Asian Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He is currently a doctoral student at the Monash Asia Institute in Melbourne, studying Islamic movements and contemporary South-east Asian politics. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Introduction

Benjamin MacQueen

There is an irony in the pronounced attention on Islam and Islamic doctrine over the question of ‘reform’ voiced in recent years. On the one hand, Islamic doctrine, as it is practised in many parts of the Muslim world, contains tenets that appear unresponsive to changes in global normative developments, particularly in relation to freedom of religion, gender rights and political pluralism. On the other hand, Islam as a belief system possesses highly effective tools for reform and adaptation. These tools take on greater significance with the absence of a rigid clerical structure, which has often mitigated reform in Islam’s fellow Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Christianity. With this in mind, this volume aims to unpack what those within and outside Muslim communities mean by ‘reform’.

The assertion of conservative perspectives during the mid-twentieth century or the development of militant and radical ideologies based in the Islamic idiom after the 1960s and 1970s may themselves be seen as ‘reforms’ in the way Islam relates to the political and social domain. The challenging political situation in the Muslim Middle East generated numerous responses and Islam was reinvigorated and reorientated as part of this process. The emergent ‘political Islam’ altered the ways in which Islam was instrumentalised in the individual and communal lives of many in the Muslim world. However, this volume seeks to approach the issue of reform from a different angle. Specifically, it highlights how both elites and non-elites have sought to innovate in how they deal with Islam’s relationship to politics, society and law. Here, this volume has deliberately chosen to emphasise the ‘critical voices’ when examining Islam and the question of reform to highlight the evolving and dynamic discourse that surrounds the question of Islamic reform.

The thematic direction of this volume was largely organic, stemming from a workshop hosted by Monash University in November 2006. This workshop was designed for early career researchers, bringing together scholars in examination of political and social issues in Muslim communities and enabling exploration of the key themes that had initially drawn us to the study of Muslim communities. As a meeting of early career researchers it is perhaps unsurprising that we were drawn to emergent and critical voices that articulated social, political and theological challenges. The theme that links the Muslim thinkers under investigation here is that of change. The individuals and movements considered here, while active in markedly different socio-political climates, all demonstrate the fundamental ethos of reform, a willingness to draw on their own intellectual and cultural heritage while engaging with broader dialogues in the pursuit of revitalising Islam’s political and social functionality.

Reform, by definition, is not a complete break with tradition. Therefore a central element in this dynamic is the determination by scholars, activists, politicians and critical thinkers to re-claim the tenets of their faith. Muslim communities have historically displayed a tendency towards a continuation of the status quo. The individuals and movements under consideration here share the determination, often at great personal risk, to push aside existing political and social elites and the historically accepted interpretations of Islam and its place in society. The perspectives examined in this volume avoid superficial or apologetic examinations of Islam’s political and social role. Instead, they meticulously scrutinise the religion’s public role, often questioning the validity of tenets that have acted as normative tools of empowerment for existing elites for centuries.

A consistent theme that emerges from the papers in this volume is the effort to meaningfully and critically engage with Islam’s sacred texts. This engagement has led many thinkers to reinterpret Islam in relation to the changing historical circumstances. This is highlighted by Benjamin MacQueen, who analyses the role and ideas of Muslims outside Muslim-majority states with his examination of expatriate Sudanese intellectual Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na‘im. In recent years, an-Na‘im has emerged as a leading advocate of the applicability of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Muslim communities. An-Na‘im promotes the idea that Muslim communities must take control of Islamic political and social doctrine to empower themselves in the face of persistent authoritarianism and human rights deprivation. Hermeneutics is a critical element in this process, allowing Muslim communities to peel back the layers of normative