My friend and Reaction guest blogger Sean Aqui of Midtopia has written an excellent post on Islam’s Reformation — see here. He argues that “what we are seeing today is Islam passing through the same painful adolescence that both Judaism and Christianity endured centuries ago,” which is to say, we are witnessing “Islam’s bloody transition from its medieval origins to modernity.”
Sean’s conclusion: “Our job… is to encourage and support the moderate reformers while opposing and undermining the medievalists. It will take patience, money, intellectual firepower and an acknowledgement that it will proceed in fits and starts. But the entire world will benefit from Islam shedding its medieval past. If ever there was a project well worth undertaking, this is it.”
It is tempting to view the world-historical event surrounding 9/11 and Iraq in purely Huntingtonian terms, that is, as a clash of civilizations. To an extent, that’s right. This isn’t just about American bases in Saudi Arabia and the existence of Israel. It’s also about jihadism that doesn’t stop at Islam’s political borders, about a political expression of Islam (both state-oriented and not) that seeks to annihilate its enemies, including Israel. And, of course, it’s also about the spread of Western Civilization and the global dominance of American culture. The conflict was brought to American soil, to New York and Washington. The jihadist perpetrators want the U.S. out of the Middle East, off Muslim soil, but they also want America wiped out. This should prompt us not only to fight back but to think about ourselves, our values, our ideas, our culture, our civilization, and the place of all of those things in the world beyond our shores. We must defend ourselves. When necessary, we must attack. But we must also engage in some serious self-reflection. Without in any way justifying the actions of the jihadists, surely we can admit that we aren’t perfect.
And yet: There is also a civil war raging within Islam itself. These are religious growing pains akin to what Christianity went through during its own reformation, the Reformation. As with the Christian one, the Islamic Reformation is not without its complexity. There aren’t simply the moderates and conservatives, just as there weren’t simply the Protestants and Catholics. But Islam must go through this, and it must go through it largely on its own. This is where I part company with Sean. I agree with him that we need to encourage and support Islam’s “moderate reformers” and to oppose and undermine its “medievalists”. In theory. In practice, how is that to be done? Yes, we need to engage ourselves in the war of ideas in terms of the larger clash of civilizations, but how can we possibly engage ourselves in the war of ideas that is raging within Islam? It simply isn’t our place to involve ourselves in Islam’s own crisis.
Of course, we may (and should) engage with “moderate reformers” wherever and whenever we can. Perhaps there are some indirect ways to show our support. Opening up dialogue with the reformers in our own countries could help to tilt the balance in their favour. However, it seems to me that any overt engagement will be seen by all sides as interference. And if there’s anything that could unite the various elements of Islam, it’s opposition to interference from the West. That’s part of the problem already: This theological civil war is raging even as a political war is being fought in Iraq, even as the United States and the European Union are contemplating their next move with respect to the Iranian nuclear crisis, even as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes on.
This is not a call for disengagement. Iraq is what it is, like it or not, something needs to be done about Iran, Israel needs our continued support, rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan need to proceed, and, of course, political and economic engagement with the entire Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia, cannot be halted — indeed, it is surely in our long-term interests to strengthen that engagement. But we must be aware that such political and economic (not to mention military) engagement is not without its consequences. And one of them is that Islam’s civil war will continue to be fought out within a context that encompasses more than theological minutiae. If nothing else, we need to be sensitive to that reality.
Such are my thoughts for now.
Make sure to read Sean’s post in its entirety. You may or may not agree with him, just as you may or may not agree with my response here, but it’s a thoughtful, provocative post. And it’s an issue that deserves our serious attention.
There’s a bit more here, including comments from Sean and me on the recent vote in Kuwait.