It has been said that one of the problems with the Islamic community is that Islam hasn't experienced a Reformation or Enlightenment which would help constrain the power and attractiveness of fundamentalism. This isn't entirely true: there have been reform movements in Islam; their problem is that these movements occurred when Islam was weak and, therefore, attracted little interest.

In the February, 1990 issue of Political Quarterly, Tariq Modood writes:

It is worth noting, if only to puncture the arrogance of European progressivism, that Islamic enlightenment in the form of Shah Waliullah’s historical contextualism preceded its European counterpart. These reform movements were, however, born at a time of political weakness: Muslim power in India was being threatened by the rising religious and political militancy of the Hindu Marathas and the Sikhs (itself partly a reaction to Islamic reassertiveness) and within the next 100 years virtually the whole Muslim world was to come under European hegemony and, in the case of India, colonial rule.

From that point onwards Muslim thought, whether reformist or conservative, was mixed up with a response to the West. Modernist reform came to mean acceptance of existing political realities and adoption of a Western framework of ideas. The response of the more orthodox as well as the uneducated, on the other hand, was a retreat into a dogmatic citadel in order to hold on to something uncorrupted by the West in the context of comprehensive political subordination.

For the first time in history the Muslim world found itself totally unable in the realm of ideas to defend itself against the aggressor, let alone to impress the aggressor with any form of living, as opposed to historical, brilliance. In the last two centuries Islam, in so far as it was capable of putting up any show at all, seems to have lost all the intellectual and ideological battles.

The Economist makes similar points, explaining the Muslim reactions to European imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:

Out of those shocks came, first, a movement called Salafism, which insisted that only the Prophet himself and the two generations that followed him should be relied on for spiritual guidance. Salafism is not necessarily violent, but became so when allied with the stark, puritan, uncompromising variety of Sunni Islam, known as Wahhabism, practised by the Saudi clergy. To that potent Egyptian-Saudi mixture was added the galvanising experience, for many young Muslims, of joining the American-backed war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Al-Qaeda’s two main leaders personify that story: Mr bin Laden, the pampered son of a wealthy Saudi clan who found a new persona in Afghanistan, and Mr Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor whose ideological roots lay in the Brotherhood and in resistance to his own country’s secular regime. Mr Zawahiri is an example of one part of the Brotherhood’s transition from peaceful struggle to violence — at first against the Egyptian government and other secular Arab regimes, and then by extension against the West.

No reform movement in Islam is likely to gain any attraction so long as it is, is perceived as, or can be painted as little more than a submission to Wester hegemony, imperialism, and secularism. Because all that’s necessary is for authoritative religious leaders to be credibly claim that the reforms would lead to Western domination, this effectively eliminates almost all sorts of reform right from the beginning. The only sorts of reform that will get anywhere are those which can be credibly portrayed as being indigenous — as tapping into authentic Muslim traditions without also giving up anything important.

At least, that’s the most likely scenario so long as the Islamic world and Muslim countries remain less powerful than Western nations. Were the situation reversed, with Muslim nations dominating the West, they might feel more comfortable with borrowing certain elements of Western traditions without thinking that they were losing their faith. They didn’t do this very often in the past when they did dominate other cultures, but it’s vaguely possible.

Neither scenario seems very likely. Islamic fundamentalism is a guarantee that most Muslim nations will remain scientifically, technologically, economically, and militarily far behind the West. A few, like Turkey and Indonesia, will adapt and move forward, but their example doesn’t seem to be inspiring anyone else and because the bulk of the Muslim world will remain behind, few Muslims will feel like they are the equal of the West. Internal reformation is perhaps a little more likely, but the counteracting forces of fundamentalism seem much stronger.

 

Quick Poll: Do you have any hope that Islam will reform, adapt, and modernize in the future?

1. Yes, and it hopefully won't take too long.
2. Yes, but it will probably be quite distant in the future before it's complete.
3. I'm hopeful, but not confident and not counting on it.
4. No, not at all - individual Muslims may change, but Islam overall won't.
5. I don't know.
6. I don't care.

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