Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East)

ISLAMIC REFORM“Toward an Islamic Reformation” by Abdullahi Ahmend An-Na’im is a seminal study; it investigates a clear pathway towards the introduction of reformed modern Islamic law, Shari’a, that can exist without conflict visa vie International Law and Human Rights.Abdullahi was an associate of Usdath Mahmoud Mohamed Taha in the Sudan, the reformer of Islam who established that Shari’a law was based on the early jurists’ interpretation of the verses of the Qur’an revealed to the Prophet in Medina and associated Sunna; those verses had by the use of nadskh (Arabic for abrogating or repealing) repealed the verses revealed to the Prophet in Mecca, verses that Taha described as representing true Islam. This created an Islamic Law for the purpose of supporting the formation of a political entity in an aggressive cultural environment. Taha proposed that the Medina verses are now no longer applicable in our modern environment of peaceful coexistence of disparate members of the community.Abdullahi, in concert with Taha, proposes in his book that the process of nadskh should now be reversed, and the Medina verses be now replaced by the ones revealed in Mecca, as they represent the original religious and socially true Islam. The study goes into comprehensive detail in reasoning the inevitable need for this reform to take place not only on the basis of Human Rights, but also to make it possible for modern Islamic Nation-States to be able to establish constitutions that comply with international law and allow them to be accepted into the international community of nations. Such reforms are a major change to an entrenched and historic religious worldview and will most likely be possible only over a generational timespan. One could expect that it may not be possible to achieve the universal and true consensus he would like to see.Nevertheless, it may be possible to start such reforms in countries with a large Muslim population where Western law has already replaced and overruled those aggressive parts of Shira’s, paving the way for Muslim believers to accept Abdullahi’s proposals to reform Shari’a itself, and that this may promote changes in other countries, hopefully even Islamic Nation-States, who are under international pressure to accept international standards of law.Social and political thinkers have to some extent prepared the ground for such processes: John Rawls (Political Liberalism), Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action), not to mention Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right), Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Die Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) and John Locke (Two Treatises of Government).Such changes would require not only internal consensus within the Muslim communities, but communicative action in a national and international forum between religious, legal, and political leaders albeit with intimate knowledge of Islam and Shari’a and their history.I thoroughly recommend this book to readers interested in creating a peaceful world.

An Na'im's "Toward an Islamic Reformation" is a fascinating excursion into the evolutionary aspect of Islamic law. Without repeating previous comments, I will get to the core of his thesis and the problem with it. In essence, he states that since Islamic law evolved from a Makkan to a Madinan stage, it can "de-evolve" back to the Makkan stage. It was in Makkah where the Prophet gave his statements about tolerance and freedom of religion, while in Madinah those concepts were withdrawn. As Islamic jurisprudence argues that earlier revelations that are contradicted by later ones are abrogated, An Na'im is arguing for reverse abrogation, stating that the Madinan stage of Islam was necessary then, but is not needed now. This is the core of his argument.Now the problems. First, An Na'im is asking for Islamic jurists to ignore 1,300 years of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) to engage in reverse abrogation. One must ignore a good portion of the writings of al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Qayyim, al-Mawardi, not to mention large sections of hadith collections (al-Bukhari, Imam Muslim, al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, etc). While not wishing to appear as a nay-sayer, this is simply an impossible task. He simply has no Qur'anic or hadith basis for saying that Islam can backtrack and abrogate much of the Madinan message.This highlights the second problem he encounters is the amount of abrogation. For anyone who has even done a casual examination of the hadith and Qur'an regarding war and jihad, one can see that there would be large sections of both (more of the former) that would require abrogation. Large portions of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet and his Companions (the "Salafi") would have to be virtually ignored. Considering the fact that the Prophet on numerous occasions indicates that one must follow his sayings and deeds to live his Islam makes this extremely difficult.But the third problem is possibly the most damning... and dangerous. Let us say it succeeds. Let us speculate that, yes indeed, Islam engages in reverse abrogation and the violent and warrior sections of the hadith and Qur'an are now ignored. What is to prevent an abrogation of the reverse abrogation in the future? What is to stop a group of Imams and other leaders from standing up later and calling for the re-imposition of the Madinan passages calling for war and jihad against those who refuse to give their Islam? Islamic law, rather than a higher law such as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is really a series of juristic pronouncements, with the schools of law having difficulty finding agreement on anything. For example, the schools of law cannot even agree on how many phrases are in the adhan (call to prayer), let alone anything else. Thus, there is no core law that can prevent a return to the Madinan stage. This may buy us time, but will present no permanent solution. The world will see a temporary respite, and then a return to more violence, more killing, and more devastation, all in the name of the expansion of Islam.In reality, we have seen such a reversal before. For the last 300 years, prior to the Islamic Resurgence Movement (starting about 50 years ago), Islam was relatively contained. With virtually no money they had little influence in the world as a whole. Thus we saw virtually no Islamic terror operations and the like. But now that Islamic organizations have money and wealth, the jihadists have surged forward on the offensive. Thus, we have been down this road before, and a philosophical attempt to reform Islam, while well-intentioned, is stillborn from the beginning.I simply do not see how An Na'im's thesis, intriguing as it is, can prevent this in the future.

Il libro in questione esplica un punto di vista rivoluzionario nel rapporto tra Islam e diritti umani universali, propugnando la tesi secondo la quale il conflitto Islam-diritti umani è risolvibile revisionando e adattando i precetti del Profeta alle circostanze attuali. Un libro da leggere per chi crede che sia possibile far convivere l'universalità dei diritti dell'uomo con i valori religiosi.