Fast forward
Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: a Muslim case for liberty, New York: Norton Press, 2013. pp.352,
Reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah
Mustafa Akyol's timely and seminal work possesses the notable virtue of originality. The subject has been tackled before, most notably by the late Egyptian intellectual Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd whose impressive studies Imam Shafei and the Founding of Medieval Ideology and The Critique of Religious Discourse are truly pioneering manuals, indeed Vade mecum par excellance. The Egyptian intellectual was declared an apostate and he eventually fled Egypt because his very life was threatened. has composed a narrative that was considered too controversial to contemplate in relatively more conservative Egypt.Turkey, on the other hand, even if currently ruled by an Islamist government is as yet much more liberal on such matters and is essentially a secularist state.
The author of Islam without Extremes does not delve too deeply into such controversial topics as Abu Zayd, and yet the scope and range of his subject does echo the late Egyptian philosopher and distinguished academician. Both battle for liberal Islam.
Akyol, like Abu Zayd, set out to illustrate that pristine Islam is essentially an open-minded and liberal religion devoid of fanaticism. Akyol cites the example of the controversy surrounding the satirical Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed published in Jyllands-Posten and the defensive attitude of hardliners as an example of the intolerance that has come to characterise Muslims, rightly or wrongly in the West in particular and the world at large more generally. Then there was the fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini against the British-based writer Salman Rushdie after daring the publish Satanic Verses, and the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh. The impression was that Muslims are contemptuous of the views of others and uncharitable towards their adversaries. Akyol, in sharp contrast explains how Islam was from its inception a religion of accommodation.
"There is no compulsion in religion," Islam states categorically. In other words, no one is forced to become a believer. Only by a deep conviction is an individual a true Muslim. "The Quran also introduced to Arab society the concept that individuals have inalienable rights. Justice was at the core of Mohamed's social message, and justice meant not just punishment for those who commit crimes but also protection from those who could violate others' rights. This was grounded in the Quranic message of protecting the weak against the strong," Akyol extrapolates.
The author goes on to explain what in his opinion went drastically wrong. Indeed, much of the material cited in Akyol's work is familiar to historians of Islam, but not necessarily so to the layperson.
The most delectable titbits in this book is the minutiae of most interesting information often lost on the academicians. The problem is hardly the raw material.The world by and large perceives Islam mistakenly as militant Islamist terrorism and this particular work explains the confusion. Islam is not terrorism and most Muslims are anti-terrorists.
Yet this book is not without its blemishes. The focus on Turkey is understandable, nevertheless the experience of contemporary Islam goes far beyond the Turkish pattern.
An entire chapter is devoted to the Prophet Mohamed and the genesis of Islam. "Are all things that Mohamed did normative for Muslims? Or do some of them reflect not the everlasting rules and principles of Islam but rather those of the Prophet's time and milieu?"
But, if his perfectionism bordered on pedantry, Akyol states categorically that the Prophet Mohamed continues to inspire great loyalty. We need, the author insists, to put the prophet in proper perspective. "The Prophet brought a message relevant for all ages, in other words, but he lived a life of his own age," Akyol expounds.
Strands of Islamic thinking include "the freedom to sin" as the author so aptly puts it. And, even more poignantly, "freedom from Islam". These concepts were enshrined in the authentic Islamic doctrine that was later corrupted. Akyol, intriguingly draws parallels between Islam and Judaism. An entire chapter entitled "Romans, Herodians and Zealots" is peoccupied with this particular parallelism.
"God's people under siege, then and now" is intensely revealing. "The late Turkish social psychologist Erol Gungor offered one of the best interpretations of this trauma [Islamism, the reactionary ideology created in the name of Islam, and jihad, its terrorist offshoot]. Inspired by British historian Arnold Toynbee, Gungor likened the crisis of Islam in the twentieth century to one that had occurred two millenniums earlier: the plight of the Jews during the time of Christ".
"The Jews, like Muslims, believed that they were God's chosen people, and they had an inherent sense of superiority over the Gentiles. But this belief in what ought to be conflicted strongly with what is, as Jews gradually lost power in the Holy Land and became totally subjugated by the infidels," explains Akyol.
"Consequently, Israel was turned into a Roman provinceruled by the client kingdom of the Herodian dynasty, a secular collaborator of pagan Rome that persecuted its own people," Akyol notes. "Every revolt by the Jews launched to get rod of foreign rule was brutally crushed. Even worse, the political and military superiority of the invading infidels was accompanied by their cultural seduction."
Hellenized Jews in ancient times, like contemporary Westernized and secular Muslims, metamorphosed into "sinners" and wicked ungodly men". The author goes on to explain that the ways Muslims reacted to this crisis also mirrored those of the Jews of yesteryear.
"The Sadducees decided to cooperate with Rome and adopt some of the Hellenistic attitudes, just as some Muslims today have done vis-a-vis the West. The Essenes preferred to renounce the world and devote themselves to a mystical life of isolation, like today's Sufi-minded Muslims. The Third Jewish party, the pharisees, refused to cooperate with Rome and engaged in passive rejectionism, which led them to a very strict observance of Jewish law. This, too, is very similar to what the more conservative Muslims decided to do in the twentieth century: cling strictly to the Sharia and reject anything new and foreign".
"The fourth element among the Jews of the time of Christ was also interesting, and quite relevant. These were the Zealots who decided to wage an armed struggle against not just the Romans but also their Jewish collaborators. And, the Romans probably would have labelled them 'suicide bombers' Akyol envigaes.
The author focuses almost exclusively on the divisions within Sunni Islam. However, he briefly alludes to the rupture between Sunni and Shia Islam. In doing so, he touches a raw nerve. "Only a quarter of a century after the Prophet's time fellow Muslims were spilling each other's blood. What happened to the idea that all believers were brothers in faith? The answer lay not in faith but in another factor that created trouble for Islam from the very beginning: political power," Akyol postulates.
"No theological dispute made enemies out of Ali and Muawiyah. or in a previous dispute, out of Ali and Aisha, the Prophet's widow. Rather, they disagreed over a somewhat mundane question: Who had the authority to rule? Interestingly, the disagreement in politics would gradually create schisms in theology as well. Shias soon developed a doctrine holding that the only legitimate heirs of the Prophet were descendants of Ali. Sunnis argued that no matter who the ruler was, he should be obeyed for the sake of order and stability. This splintering was inevitable because it is in the nature of political power to create rivalries," the author expounds.
As an aside, Akyol delves into the personal. He looks back at his father's prison experience, for instance. The epiode is not directly related to the subject matter of the book. "There was systematic torture at Mamak prison, and most inmates, including my father, were on trial for capital crimes. For what? Well, for nothing but being a public intellectual. As I said, my father was a columnist, one with a particular political line: he was a member of the National Action Party (MHP) and the associated 'nationalist' movement, which was mainly a reaction to the growing tide of Communism in Turkey. So my father wrote books refuting Marxist-Leninist ideology and criticizing 'Soviet imperialism'. In Violence in Politics, he condemned all authoritarian regimes, focusing on the French, Bolshevik, and Iranian Revolutions and their similarities. He also opposed the militant tendencies in his own political camp. Hence, even some of the leftists respected him as a voice of reason on the right. But the coup launched by the Turkish military on 12 September 1980 recognized no such nuances," the author ingeniously extrapolates.
For all the breeziness of his writing, Akyol quotes several writers, Muslim and non-Muslim extensively. As a journalist the author's diction is not hard to understand if the reader knows the milieu.
Yet Akyol does not shy away from tackling contentious issues. The suppression of Muslim women's rights, he contends, was an invention of militant Islamists who gained the upper hand in the course of Islamic history. The recent uproar over the banning of Saudi women from the right to drive is only the latest backlash against Islam. Westerners cannot easily differentiate between Shia and Sunni Islam. Only a select few academicians and those who have lived in Muslim countries for a considerable stretch of time can differentiate between the different strands of Islam. Many imagine that what Muslims understand as Wahabism (the prevailing Saudi Arabian version of Sunni Islam) represents the entire spectrum of Islam.
A profusion of gushing editorials and commentaries reinforce the savage image of Islam in the West in particularly, but increasing also in non-Muslim Asian nations.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party better known by its Turkish acronym the AKP has had a tremendous impact on Islam in the Arab world and beyond. The "Turkish model" was until very recently upheld as ideal.
Between "Muslim nationalism" and "democratic conservatism" the "Turkish model" was studied and in some instances its import and application copied, even though never piecemeal.
Does Akyol share Erdogan's views? Not necessarily. But then the "Turkish model" permits the existence of intellectuals like Akyol, and even Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd. Not so in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, Islam places as much emphasis on moral standing as the West. The predicament is that very often the two civilisations have diametrically opposed views on the prickly subject of moral standing.
In truth, moral values came and went in the Muslim world as they did in Christiandom. For all its hair-raising insights into the theological, political and intellectual developments in the Muslim world Akyol's book ultimately being not so much about how contemporary Islam came to be, but rather as about what the author would like Islam to be.
Western secular liberalism versus Islamist ideology and Islamic theology
It is easy to be romantic about the religious import and application of Islam. And, Akyol insists that Islam is a religion that mankind can learn a lot.
"One day, in my grandfather's library, I came across a prayer book with three quotes on the back cover. The first two quotes were from the Quran... the third quote on the book's cover, which was from another source called the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohamed), was not moving but disturbing. 'If your children do not start praying at the age of ten,' it said, 'then beat them up'."
The author was "horrified". Theoretically, individual rights are guaranteed in Islam. In practice, though, in Muslim countries they are not. "Three decades have passed since those summer days in my grandparents' house, but my gnawing suspicion about the if-they-don't-pray-then-beat-them-up strategy has stayed with me. The more I studied Islamic literature and Muslim societies, the more I found examples of that oppressive mind-set. And, I continued to ask: Is this really what Islam enjoins?"
And, Akyol relates how. "Today, the same question haunts the minds of millions of my coreligionists, and millions of others. Is Islam a religion of coercion and repression?"
Not much of the material in Akyol's work is familiar to the Western, particularly to the American reader, except in certain stereotypical instances. "In November 2006, terrifying news about Khalid Adem, a Muslim Ethiopian immigrant living in Atlanta, shocked Americans. The man was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to his own daughter. What he did, reportedly, was to use a pair of kitchen scissors to remove the clitoris of the two-year old girl. At Adem's trial, his wife sadly explained her husband's logic: 'He said he wanted to preserve her virginity. He said it was the will of God'." This is the tarnished image of Islam in the West.
Akyol proceeds to quote American pundit Warner Todd Huston. "We need to understand just how brutal Islam is in how it treats its most vulnerable members: girls and women."
Aykol traces ideological and historical roots of political Islam, and this aspect of his work I find most fascinating. "So I asked myself , could the authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world stem not from Islam but from the deep-seated political cultures and the social structures in this part of the world, on which Islam is just a topping? In other words, could authoritarian Muslims be just authoritarians who happen to be Muslim?" The author contemplates a most curious question.
"I realized that the authoritarian Muslims in the Middle East and the authoritarian secularists in Turkey shared a similar mindset, and that this illiberal mindset, rather than religion or security as such, is the problem," Akyol reasons.
"Ultimately, I have become convinced that a fundamental need for the contemporary Muslim world is to embrace liberty — the liberty of individuals and communities, Muslim and non-Muslims, believers and unbelievers, women and men, ideas and opinions, markets and entrepreneurs," Akyol states categorically.
Akyol is obviously impatient with what he views as hardline strands of Islam such as the Wahabism, the official ideology of Saudi Arabia, that was inspired by one of the most militant ideologues of medieval Islam, Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, founder of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam.
It was with Ibn Hanbal, Akyol contends, that the reactionary notions of what is "true Islam" began to surface. And, the Sharia based on Hadith (presumably the Prophet's sayings) took precedence over the Quran
"No wonder Hanbal's message found a following not among the merchants and intellectuals of Baghdad, but among the less-educated classes. In short, the war of ideas between Rationalism and Traditionalism in the formative centuries of Islam had much to do with the backgrounds and contexts of the followers of these two camps. The former represented the Islam of the urban cosmopolites, who engaged with different ideas thanks to the dynamism created by commerce. The latter represented the Islam of those who were parochial," Akyol concludes.
"Both camps consisted of devout believers, but they were looking at the world, and their religion, from quite different perspectives," Akyol argues.
"The Rationalists, particularly the Mutazalites, constituted an economic class. Most were merchants, and others were artisans," Akyol continues with his argument. "Their opponents, the Traditionalists were led by the opposite class: the landlords," he surmises.
Akyol quotes Mahmoud Ibrahim professor of Islamic history at California State Polytechnic University. So the war of ideas between these camps was "not merely a theological or doctrinal dispute, but a social conflict fought on an ideological plane".
The Mutazalites, of course, were a distinctive if not a unique school of Islamic theology in early Islam that defended free will and stressed the legitimate role of reason as well as revelation in the pursuit of truth. "Their membership declined after the third century of Islam, but traces of their philosophy survived, most notably, in the Hanafi and Maturidi schools," Akyol extrapolates.
"Once the medieval war of ideas between the Rationalists and the Traditionalists of Islam ended with the latter's dominance, Islamdom entered into an intellectually stagnant age that would last for several centuries,"
As a seasoned journalist, Akyol is essentially interested in the present, as opposed to the past, however. The past is simply a means of understanding the present.
"If the fall of economic dynamism led to the decline of Islamic rationality and liberty a millennium ago, can the rebirth of economic dynamism revive them? To put it another way, can socioeconomic progress in Muslim societies also lead to progress in religious attitudes, ideas and doctrines? We will explore the answer by looking at modern day Turkey as a case study," Akyol notes.
So responsibility for the grinding down and washing away of liberal Islam lay overwhelmingly with Ibn Hambal and his ilk. Nevertheless, decline of Islamic trade and commerce also contributed. "The tragedy is that while women's rights peaked in the West in the twentieth century, in Islamdom it stagnated for centuries and even declined to its current reprehensible state," Akyol spells it out.
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