Islam and modernity: how to be Muslim and modern today

By Shaanti Kapila

On May 3, 2006 Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West and NYU’s Institute of French Studies (IFS) presented, “Islam and modernity: how to be Muslim and modern today?“ a roundtable discussion at La Maison Française of NYU. The roundtable was jointly moderated by Dialogues’ Director Mustapha Tlili and IFS Director Ed Berenson and featured Abdelmajid Charfi, Emeritus Professor of Arab Civilization and Islamic Thought at the University of Tunis; Hamadi Redissi, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tunis; and Boutheina Cheriet, Professor of Sociology at the University of Algiers, and Algeria’s former Minister in charge of Women’s Affairs and the Family. The event was made possible by the generous support of Air France.

Ed Berenson began the evening by welcoming guests to the roundtable, the second event in a series co-sponsored by Dialogues and IFS and supported by Air France, featuring innovative thinkers from the Francophone Muslim world. Mustapha Tlili then introduced the three panelists and emphasized the importance of their contributions to the slowly emerging, yet important trend of self-criticism within Islamic intellectual circles. Tlili emphasized self-criticism as a necessary means to reconcile Islamic heritage and scripture with the challenges of modernity.

Abdelmajid Charfi spoke first and began by underlining what he sees as the three essential contrasts that define modernity versus pre-modernity: (i) the dominance of authority in pre-modern thought and practice versus the individual rights and freedoms upon which modernity is based; (ii) the prevalence of faith and superstition in pre-modern times compared to the predominance of rationalism in modern times; and (iii) the closed nature of the pre-modern world in contrast to the openness of the modern world to innovative ideas and knowledge.

Insofar as religion is concerned, Charfi proposed that while religiosity today may not be so different than it was in the past, the shift from traditional to modern religiosity has proven complicated in Muslim societies, where vast economic, social, and political disparities cause many Muslims to look to religion as a source of legitimacy and identity. The important task for Muslims today is to chart a path by which they can be faithful to their religion and live in modern times.

Muslim thinkers, Charfi insisted, must meet the challenge of constructing a new interpretation of Islam that is compatible with modernity and that ensures that the religious experience of the Prophet has meaning today. This should lead to a new reading of Islam whereby the Prophet will remain the model, but many of the traditions attributed to him since the Revelation will lose their normative, constraining aspects. According to Charfi, the Prophet, through the Revelation, opened new horizons for man that enabled him to assume liberty and responsibility for himself and entrusted him with adapting to changing situations using his own free will. For example the Qur’an explicitly states that man has complete liberty with regard to belief. Charfi emphasized the centrality of the notion of the prophecy in Islam, Mohammed being the final in a long line of prophets revered in the Abrahamic tradition; therefore, Muslims believe that in transmitting the Qur’an, the Prophet Mohammed has transmitted the final word of God.

Charfi concluded by adding that Muslim thinkers must renounce the institutionalization of religion, which has again and again proven detrimental in the history of Islam. The Islamic faith cannot flourish in the 21st century, Charfi said, if Muslims do not eschew the institutionalization and dogmatization of religion.

Boutheina Cheriet spoke next and began by describing the recent turbulent political history of Algeria. During a bloody civil war that lasted throughout the 1990s, the country was terrorized by radical Islamist groups that sought to create an ideal, pure Islamic state free from all Western influence. The Islamist groups — with FIS (the Islamic Salvation Front) at the helm — had particularly conservative views on the rights of women, confining them to strictly domestic roles. Cheriet traced the origins of this harsh gender bias to the first moments of Algeria’s independence when the country was plunged in a modernizing socialist movement that was Islamic in outlook. In Algeria, as in other Arab and Muslim countries, the political elites embraced Islam’s role in modernization, without permitting public debate concerning what elements of religion should remain salient in Algerian life. As in most Muslim countries, women in Algeria were never considered equal, Cheriet said. Although the first post-independence governments encouraged women’s participation in all domains, they did not introduce perfect legal equality for women. The Algerian Family Code adopted in 1984 evidences women’s inequality within the family, for example with regard to divorce and in matters of inheritance.

Cheriet attributed the gender bias against women in Algeria, and Muslim societies in general, to a reverence of the houri (the virgins of Paradise described in the Qur’an). Women will never be permitted to be completely liberated and modern so long as they are linked to a mythological “pure” standard, she said. Cheriet agreed with Abdelmajid Charfi that it is Muslim thought and not Islam itself that is resistant to modernity. Once Muslims begin to modernize Islamic thought on a broad scale, radical groups professing an ideology of Islamic salvation will lose their appeal, she said.

The final panelist to speak was Hamadi Redissi, who summarized the thesis from his book, l’Exception islamique (Paris: Seuil, 2004). He maintained that it is not Islam per se, but rather the ways in which Muslims have interpreted and instrumentalized Islam that have led to the current schism between Islam and modernity. Redissi offered four points about the “exception” to which he refers in his book. First, the “Islamic exception” is a historical, theological statement. Because it was in the interest of early caliphs to cloak political activities under the mantle of religion, Islamic polities tended early on toward a theocratic form of government. Second, Islamic societies have not fully incorporated the tenets of modern capitalism, which creates an exception to the prevailing norms of the international economic system. Third, ideas like democracy were introduced into the Islamic world in an authoritarian manner (for example with the Napoleonic invasions of Egypt, or European colonialism), and were therefore greeted with skepticism. Fourth, Islam has been interpreted as a total way of life and thus non-religious elements, like culture and political systems, tend to become synthesized to conform to an “Islamic” standard.

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