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Your letters - posted March 29, 2007

Posted in Q & A on Mar 29, 2007

Posted March 29, 2007

Below is an interesting challenge from a Saudi woman who says that Islam can’t be reformed because it’s inherently problematic. But if a terrorist can be transformed by ijtihad, isn’t there hope for the majority of Muslims who aren’t violent? Read my exchange with the Saudi skeptic and decide for yourself.

“Irshad, let me start by saying I read your book more than once. I was born in Saudi Arabia, the heart of orthodox Islam. I know more than most about the religion. I had my independent readings as well and I read and educated myself about religion as a whole. I came a long way since then, as I acquired higher education in the West, took a medical degree, two postgraduate degrees and traveled a lot. I am now an American citizen.

Being a woman with two daughters did not help me much to sympathize with Islam. Of course I know about ijtihad, but I am not sure how far ijtihad can go to change the religion and make it different in a way that my mind can accept.

The Quran is full of many issues that cannot be modified or addressed in any other way. It states the inferiority of women and reflects the sixth century thinking in a non-biased way. It supports a culture that controls women and puts them down, way down. How can that be changed?

You will say that Islam was revolutionary in the seventh century, that it lifted women out of a worse situation. But I have discovered that Islam did not actually free women. In the fifth and sixth century, women had wide economic, social and sexual freedom. Women were acknowledged in poetry by name and they could marry several men simultaneously and choose who would be the father of the child. I am not talking about prostitutes. I am talking about women with tribal standing. Before Islam, women could trade, keep their money, and receive an inheritance that would be equal to, rather than half of what a man gets. Remember Khadija, the prophet’s first wife? Well, she was a woman born into what Islam calls “jahilliya” or “age of darkness.” But she made a fortune for herself during that time. I wonder which one was the age of darkness?

Muslims always say it was not the religion but the way it was used and abused. Guess what? If religion did not allow it by having tools within the system itself that could be used and abused, then people would not able to do so.

All in all, Irshad, you are trying to fix something that is unfixable. I tried for many years to fix it because I wanted so much to unify my many parts and rest my conflicts. I am a very stubborn person and I usually fight for a long time before letting go of anything I believe in, but with this one I truly failed. I respect you for trying to see the light. I hope we can both see it one day.” - May

Irshad replies: May, I can hear your frustration. Many a morning I wake up feeling it too. But I also feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that you and I live in a part of the world where we can imagine real change, educate ourselves about how change has happened in history, and then go for it in our own time.

I’m enough of a historian to know that dissidents within Christianity were told (mostly by the Roman Catholic Church) that their religion is immovable. What if they had listened to the status quo apologists who urged them to give up? Would Wycliffe and Huss have ever set the stage for Luther to spark the Reformation - a reformation that, for all its bloody flaws and unfinished business, nonetheless created a “priesthood of believers” and thereby stripped the Catholic Church of its monopoly on truth?

Fast forward to the days of American slavery, when Christians far and wide uncritically read the Bible to support slavery. People of faith who interpreted the Bible as a call for the unconditional end to slavery were often mocked. Take William Lloyd Garrison, the late 19th-century abolitionist whose newspaper, the Liberator, never had a circulation of more than 3,000. His detractors labeled him a dreamer, a radical, an unholy antagonist. Yet Garrison held fast to his conscience, making the following statement:

“I am aware that many will object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm. Tell him to moderately rescue his wife… Tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen. But do not urge me to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

Hell, Martin Luther King Jr. took heat from Black clergy who accused him of creating “needless tension”, and Lillian Smith, an outspoken opponent of racial segregation, had to be smuggled onto university campuses because her fellow white liberals found her too extreme in the cause of human rights.

Yet in each case, the champions of change prevailed.

May, believe me when I say that I’m not acting from innocent faith alone. I’m also acting from a knowledge of how social change frequently happens. In the middle of change, we sometimes don’t notice what’s actually shifting. It feels as though the status quo is calcifying and that we’re headed for failure. Only after the change comes into focus do we absorb the fact that a process unfolded to get us there.

It’s possible that this is what’s taking place in Islam today. Reform-minded Muslims don’t yet have a movement, but we do have momentum. That’s evident in the evolution of the emails that I’ve received over the past three years. In addition to reading my book, may I humbly recommend that you review the letters archive on this website?

Momentum also shines through in the fact that reform-minded Muslims are now getting together openly, which shows other reform-minded Muslims that they’re not alone. One such group is the Democratic Muslims of Denmark, which recently organized ground-breaking gatherings about secularism and freedom of expression. The Project Ijtihad website, now under construction, will post video clips from these conferences.

Finally, we’re headed in the right direction when angry young terrorists such as Hassan Butt can be transformed and ultimately reformed by the concept of ijtihad. Watch the story of Hassan’s violent past. Then listen to my interview with 60 Minutes about what Project Ijtihad plans to do with Hassan as a way of introducing Muslims everywhere to a brighter future.

Until more experimenting is done with the delicious and deliberate ambiguities in the Quran, it’s premature to conclude that Muslims are beyond reform. I’ll continue pushing the rock up that hill because, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I must confess I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly opposed violent tension but there is a type of constructive non-violent tension that is necessary for growth.” Without agitation, there is no tension – and no growth. If causing tension is the miniscule contribution I make to restoring reason and humanity to Islam, may God be pleased with me.