Secularism and the Islamist Challenge

By Greg Noakes

Throughout the 20th century, Muslim societies have been torn between the impulse of secularism and the attraction of Islamic renewal. Both systems are seen by their proponents as the key to solving the Muslim world's social, political and economic problems. Secularism has yet to be accepted by most Muslims, however, while the Islamic revival has yet to live up to its heady promises.

Contemporary Islamic thinkers have seized upon the concept of ijtihad, or individual intellectual effort, in order to reinterpret their religious and cultural traditions, meet the challenges of modern life with solutions that draw upon Islam for their source, and fulfill the aspirations of their coreligionists.

"Islamic secularism" is a concept which plays well both in university lecture halls and the give and take of a council of ministers charged with administering a modern nation. In such environments, many scholars and analysts see Islam as a brake on society, impeding the economic and social development of Muslim states.

In the West, the notion that religion should guide society was weakened during the Renaissance, dealt a crushing blow in the Age of Enlightenment and drew its last gasp as the French Revolution put a dramatic end to the "divine right of kings." The course of progress in Western historiography mirrors the story of secularization; man assumes his role as the measure of all things and religion becomes a matter of private devotion.

For a number of modern thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, Islamic society, too, is badly in need of a reformation, or better yet a renaissance, to break religious shackles that keep the Muslim world backward and ignorant. If Muslims are to develop, the secularists argue, Islam must be relegated to the private sphere and rational humanism allowed to guide society.

So much for the lecture hall. In practice, secularization has yet to succeed to any significant degree in most of the Muslim world, though not for lack of effort. Non-Muslims attempted to impose secularism in the Soviet Union and Communist China as a policy directive of the highest order. China's Muslims remain oppressed, but the rapid resurgence of Islam as a faith political platform and source of sociocultural identity in Central Asia after seven decades of Marxist-Leninist rule indicates the failure of Communism to stamp out the "opiate of the people."

The l950s and '60s were the heyday of modernization theory in the West, and particularly in the U.S. Where Moscow and Beijing sought to tear Muslims from their faith, Washington expected they would wean themselves voluntarily from "reactionary" Islam.

In the post-World War II era, modernization theorists talked about the educational power of mass media, surveyed individual attitudes toward social change and "modernization" and generally attempted to remake the Muslim world in the West's image.

Naive "Modernization"

Daniel Lerner, a leading architect of modernization theory, rather patronizingly wrote that the West would transform the Arab world through "a rationalist and positivist spirit against which Islam is absolutely defenseless." Some 35 years later, modernization theory is a curious relic of a bygone age of naivete, shattered by realities it had failed to take into account.

Some Muslim rulers adopted the secularist model as well, following either the authoritarian or liberal path to "modernity." Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's scorched earth Westernization of Turkey in the 1920s is an example of the first approach. Turks were forced to use a European alphabet and wear European clothes, shrines and religious brotherhoods were closed and the number of mosques limited by government decree. Resistance to such enforced secularization was met with repression, and occasionally with death.

In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba followed a kinder, gentler program. While Mustafa Kemal proclaimed Turkey a secular republic, Islam remained the state religion in Tunisia. Bourguiba built mosques rather than closed them. Yet he also dissolved the Zitouna University, a seat of Islamic learning since the Middle Ages; prohibited women from wearing the hijab ("veil"); and in 1961 called on Tunisians not to observe the Ramadan fast—one of the five pillars of Islam—in order to wage "the struggle against underdevelopment."

The policies of Ataturk and Bourguiba transformed their nations. Eventually, however, they also produced two of the more active and organized Islamist movements of the past 20 years. Again the seeds of secularism fell on barren ground.

The strength of attachment and depth of feeling that most Muslims associate with their faith dispelled the secularist dream, at least for the foreseeable future. The victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the first round of Algeria's aborted parliamentary elections came as a surprise only to those observers whose social circles were limited to the garden of the Hotel Aurassi in Algiers. Talking to ordinary Algerians, one sensed strong support for the FIS, not because of specific policy proposals but "because we are Muslims and we must have Islam" to solve the country's problems.

Muslims are fond of saying that Islam is applicable in all places in all times. The problem is: Which Islam? Is it the anachronistic legalism of a scholarly tradition which declared the "door of individual interpretation" closed a millennium ago, the ethereal Islam of the mystics, or perhaps Islamic modernism, "fundamentalism," liberalism, conservatism or traditionalism?

Proclaiming, as many contemporary Islamist groups do, that "Islam is the solution!" is really no solution at all. Slogans don't repay foreign debts, build housing and infrastructure, feed the hungry, spark investment, regulate societies or solve foreign policy disputes. The problem of Muslim decline, seized upon by the secularists with such alacrity, is a real dilemma that must be addressed. The answers, unfortunately, are not ready-made.

How can Muslims, confronted by modern challenges yet clearly opposed to the secular solutions of the West, respond? The answer most contemporary Muslim thinkers propose is that of ijtihad, the "individual intellectual effort" opposed by conservative sheikhs for so long.

Ijtihad comes from the same Arabic root as jihad, and both have the sense of "effort" or "struggle." Ijtihad is an intellectual struggle to use reason and knowledge to arrive at an appropriate solution to a given situation or question. Originally the term applied to Islamic law, but contemporary Islamists have extended it to all forms of religious discourse and thought: politics, economics, social affairs and, of course, law and theology.

Ijtihad, for these Islamists, is a method to preserve Islamic principles while still meeting contemporary challenges and adapting Islamic teachings to new situations. In some ways it is a purifying process of reducing Islam to its essence. Some features of modern Muslim society, whether local cultural practices or imported ideological models, can be rejected as un-Islamic. Other elements are value-neutral, and may be retained or rejected according to the needs and preferences of society. There are also elements of Muslim society that are judged to be inherent in an Islamic order, and must be maintained or revivified so that society fosters the expression of Islamic principles and practice.

Again, the theoretical construct works flawlessly in the faculty lounge or the pages of a manifesto. In practice, however, the process is a daunting one, and the advocates of ijtihad are divided over both ideological and utilitarian issues. There is heated debate about what yardsticks should be used to measure Islamic society, how much change can be accommodated, and the methodology through which that change can be implemented.

Even the choice of issues to be debated is open to discussion. Is architecture value-neutral, for instance? If not, what constitutes "Islamic architecture"?

Across the Middle East, men don long white robes and women cover their hair as outward expressions of their commitment to Islam. Yet a leading North African Islamist proclaims that if the Prophet Muhammad were living today he would wear a wool business suit and fly the Concorde. So is traditional clothing, banned by Ataturk and prescribed by some Islamists, an essential element of Muslim society or is it a matter of no particular religious, political or social concern?

The questions being debated among Islamists are as complicated as human society itself. Thinkers and scholars see their theories collapse in the face of complex social realities. An examination of five areas of practical concern for proponents of ijtihad also reveals some of the larger issues with which they are grappling.

One of the fiercest debates among Islamists concerns the compatibility of democracy and Islam. Some argue that democracy is unbelief and denies the sovereignty of God, while others say that the people should have a say in government through the Islamic concept of shura, or consultation, and develop models of how this shura should work and to whom it should apply.

Still other Islamists believe that Western democracy is perfectly compatible with an Islamic state, and in fact is an ideal form of government. The issue of democracy's acceptability, with or without modifications in form or terminology, raises a question about the integration of non-Islamic elements into an Islamic system. If democracy is acceptable or, according to some, essential to the maintenance of an Islamic order, what other theories and systems developed outside of the Islamic system should be adopted?

Attitudes toward women are another issue. Most Islamist thinkers argue that women must participate fully in society, whether in education, professional careers or political activity. The denial of a woman's rights as guaranteed by the Qur'an and the Prophet is unconscionable, and these rights must be reinstated before an Islamic society is realized.

Other thinkers and many rank-and-file Islamists, however, have adopted the attitude that a woman's place is in the home, that public life should be the preserve of men and that women should be subservient. Some base these views on interpretations of Islamic texts, but most refer to traditional sex roles and argue that they should be maintained to protect society.

In matters of gender, there is a clear differentiation between the ideas and rhetoric of the intellectuals, which stress that women must play an active role in national life, and the restrictive attitudes of many ordinary Muslims. This dichotomy within the Islamist movement begs the question of whether the intellectual ideal can be implemented in the face of traditionalist values. Ijtihad is a tool of change, but there are clearly limits as to how much change is realistically possible.

Another issue which Islamists are tackling is the extent to which Islam is applicable in certain fields, and the possibility that certain spheres of activity may be beyond "Islamization." Science and technology are the best examples of this. Physics experiments produce the same results whether performed by a Muslim or a non-Muslim scientist. The process for operating a fax machine, an Abrarns tank or a television set is the same in the Muslim world as anywhere else, and Islamists must decide whether an "Islamic science" really exists, or is just a hollow vanity.

Discussion of economic matters has led Islamists to another dilemma. Islam forbids the payment or acceptance of usury, which most Islamic scholars agree applies to ordinary banking interest. Islamists, so far, have wrestled in vain with the place of an interest-free economic system within an increasingly interdependent global economy based on interest.

At this stage of economic development it is clearly impossible for the Muslim world to break away from the larger worldwide system, but how can the participation of Muslim states, institutions and individuals in that system be squared with Islamic economic principles? There are some external limits to the Islamist project that must be recognized and either acknowledged or overcome by Islamist intellectuals.

Internal Constraints

Finally, there are internal constraints in Middle Eastern society that complicate the practical application of the Islamist agenda. The most obvious is the presence of non-Muslim minorities in many Muslim nations. Most Islamists agree that non-Muslims should not be subject to Islamic law, but are less clear about the relationship between a central Muslim administration and non-Muslim communities.

Some want to resurrect the dhimmi system, where non-Muslims were protected minorities subject to an additional tax but free of requirements like military service. Others see non-Muslims as full partners in an Islamic system where only areas like family life and social customs would be excluded from Islamic rules. There is at best an ambivalence about the issue, but it is a crucial concern in the application of any kind of Islamic system. How the issue is eventually resolved will have an important, probably decisive, influence on the relations between Islamic civilization and nonMuslim societies, virtually all of which have their own Muslim minorities.

The complicated issues of the admissibility of outside concepts, ideological cohesion, scope of activity, and external and internal constraints seem insurmountable to many observers. Islamists, though, argue that any social system or political ideology is subject to the same problems and that Islam is better equipped than most to meet these challenges. By using ijtihad to answer the twin questions of what is Islam and how should it be applied, Islamists believe that they can construct an Islamic system based on eternal principles yet fully capable of meeting the social, political, cultural and economic needs of the contemporary Muslim world.