Reform is Islam's best kept secret

The Guardian, London

Reform is Islam's best kept secret

Profound homegrown change is under way beyond the stereotype

Ziauddin Sardar

Thursday September 1, 2005

The Guardian

Islam is changing. But if you want to notice this change, you have to turn your gaze away from the threat of terrorism, the horizon of Islamophobic nightmares, the illegal militarised regime change and the morass of enforced democracy building. Islam has actually changed radically. The question is: how is this fact Islam's best kept secret?

Islam originated in Saudi Arabia, birthplace of its prophet, Muhammad. The western image and understanding of Islam has always been shaped by its place of origin. The entrenched conventions of history ensure that Islam is invariably seen through the perspective of events in the Middle East. Today, this means Islam is associated with the ideology of terror, the repression of despotic regimes, the oppression of women and narrow illiberal reflexes of every kind.

Saudi Arabia's adherence to puritanical Wahhabism, with its insistence on a very narrow interpretation of sharia - Islamic law - including public beheadings, lashing and amputations, is seen as indicative of the authentic norms of Islam. And these norms seem an easy stepping stone to the ideology of jihadism that motivates international terror. The intractable problem of the Middle East, the Palestinian issue, has been appropriated by Muslims everywhere. It is taken as a metaphor for continuing injustice across the Muslim world. All this gives the impression of an unchanging Muslim world stuck in medieval times.

But the truth is that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are not Arab, Arabic speaking or located in the Middle East. Over this year I have visited various countries around the fringes of the Muslim world, countries where a majority of the world's Muslims live. In places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey, a profound homegrown change is under way, in part prompted by revulsion at the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Islam. But it is also driven by determination to address the real issues of poverty, underdevelopment and lack of genuine, effective popular democracy that has been the general condition of Muslim existence.

Indeed, in these countries Islam is not only changing but is a force for change. The change under way is towards democracy, gender equality and the development of vibrant civil society. This change is based on an unequivocally moderate, tolerant and open outlook drawing inspiration from the original sources of Islam.

The battle under way to reclaim the soul of Islam is challenging the conventions of tradition and unpicking the issues that have been at the heart of the revivalist agenda for decades: the call for an Islamic state and reintroduction of the sharia law.

The battle is being waged with ideas, debate and scholarship. But most of all it is being propelled by Muslim women. The reason is not hard to find. Over the centuries, in all Muslim homes, women have been the first teachers of religion. If women are demanding a new dispensation for themselves, then at its most basic level society begins to change.

In Morocco, for example, women's activism provoked the king to initiate a wholesale revision of Islamic law related to family affairs. A new sharia, derived from original sources by scholars and fitted for the 21st century, has been promulgated. Published editions of the new Islamic family code are best-sellers and a matter of earnest popular debate.

A similar redrafting of the sharia has been undertaken by a group of reform-minded scholars in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. The end of Suharto's 30-year military rule has seen an outpouring of debate. Groups like the Liberal Islam Network are challenging the most central prop of Muslim movements: the idea that Islam provides a set of ready-made answers for all times and circumstances.

But the Muslim world is not a job lot. In each country, the nature of the debate, activism and its outcomes are determined by the particular and different circumstances of history and national experience. Malaysia's attempt to generate a new "civic Islam" is a good example. By changing their relationship to tradition, it seems, Muslims are recasting the potential of their future.

The evidence of change is in many instances still tentative. These are often fledgling endeavours, still contested, often heatedly. But their diversity and widespread distribution provide a necessary balance to a view of Islam and Muslims that is solely derived from the Middle East and old Islamophobic stereotypes.

It would be folly to suggest that terrorism fuelled by perverse interpretations of Islam is not a threat. It would be naive to argue the conditions do not exist that make such ideology seductive. But the greatest folly would be to base our response to the extremism of the few on the false proposition this is all the Muslim world offers as a vision of its future.·

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005