Aslan outlines impact of Islamic Reformation

Sept. 12, 2006

Important insights on the influences that are shaping the modern Islamic world were shared this week as one of the country's brightest voices spoke Tuesday at Presbyterian College.

Reza Aslan, the author of No god but God: the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam opened the Southeastern Center for Intercultural Studies’ yearlong look at Islam with an eye-opening lecture on its current state in the minds and hearts of Muslims around the world.

Islamic factions are not 'one giant enemy'

Aslan, who was born in Iran, began with an analysis of the term "Islamo-fascism" often used in speeches by U.S. president George W. Bush. Aslan warned against lumping all Islamic factions - even terrorist groups like Al Quaeda - into "one giant enemy."

"Not only do you lose track of precisely what kind of war we're embroiled in but you have the far more detrimental problem of losing the very concept of what Islam means and the role it plays in this current war on terror," he said. "Are we indeed embroiled in a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West or is there something else going on?"

Generations from now, Aslan said, historians will look back on this period in history and compare even men like Osama bin Laden to Christian reformists of the 16th Century - "as one in a long but unsavory line of so-called Reformation radicals who have pushed the principle of individualism, almost militant invidualism, to its terrifying extremes."

Islam going through Reformation

Aslan said he and other scholars of Islam refer to what is going on today as more of an internal battle within Islam. While the term "Reformation" has Christian and European connotations, a direct comparison is not applicable. Still, he said, there is an important point of comparison between the Christian Reformation and its Islamic counterpart.

"(The Christian Reformation) was an argument over who has the authority to define faith," he said. "Is it the institution or is it the individual? That same argument is taking place right now within the Islamic world - with similarly catastrophic results."

There are differences, however. Aslan said that, in Islam, there is no central authority - no "Islamic pope" - and a Muslim cleric does not have the same authority as a priest. Historically, the authority from Islamic clerics comes from their credentials as scholars of the Koran, their ability as learned men to interpret its scriptures, and a monopoly over religious education.

Individual believers interpreting Koran themselves

Today, however, thanks to an increase in literacy and education, the advent of technology like the Internet, and a "swelling sense of individualism," the authority of Islamic clerics and their schools of law are being challenged as never before and the institutions are becoming more and more marginalized, Aslan said.

In the past, for example, a person who had a question about Islam would go to a mosque and question an imam, who would issue a legal ruling - or fatwa, Aslan said. Now, anyone can go to any number of websites to access any number of rulings, which allows believers to search for rulings they like themselves.

"This scattering of interpretations has led, precisely as it did during the Christian Reformation, to a whole host of competing ideologies," he said. "(There are) groups or individuals or institutions who are literally killing each other to maintain the loyalty and the following of the world's Muslims, just as the Protestant Reformation opened the door to multiple, sometimes conflicting and often baffling interpretations of Christianity, so has the Islamic Reformation created a similar situation in which you have voices competing with one another to be heard.

"Again, since there is no single voice - no pope who speaks for the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world - it is, as you might imagine, the loudest voices that get heard. Frankly, nothing is louder that the voice that rams planes into skyscrapers."

Terrorists seize authority over ideology

As this authority was seized by individuals, it was inevitable also that men and women with radical ideas of Islam would surface - men like bin Laden who have killed more Muslims in pursuit of their goals but who have also taken on the West, which has given rise to the misperception that the West is his primary target, said Aslan.

Bin Laden's own messages have referred to the West as the "far enemy," while his immediate foe is anyone who doesn't share his puritanical version of Islam," he said. Bin Laden, who is not a cleric or a scholar, issues his own fatwas deliberately to challenge the authority of the clerics and he has found a following of disaffected young people, particularly second generation Muslims living in Western countries.

"Osama bin Laden tries to make you believe that he has the authority - that he is a cleric," said Aslan. "And it has worked well for him."

Reform is inevitable

There has been a sort of counter-Reformation in Islam, evidenced by a meeting of nearly 200 leading Islamic scholars who issued a number of fatwas - denouncing violence against Islam and claiming their sole right to issue legal rulings on the Koran.

In the meantime, in a vacuum of authority and in the midst of fighting to fill that vacuum, Aslan said, there are many who are seizing the authority for themselves - some who are enlightened and modern and others who are puritanical and bigoted.

"It's hard to say which will win," he said. "But I have hope. A tiny minority use violence and terrorism to gather power but the vast majority have already accepted the movement of reform."