RENEWING ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
The Distinctiveness of Islamic Civilization
Islamic civilization during its middle periods (10th to 16th centuries) was the most expansive civilization and had the greatest influence on other civilizations. As Marshall Hodgson pointed out in the 1960s, its reach was not only due to its central location but the result of cosmopolitan, egalitarian, and anti-traditional values that the peoples of Afro-Eurasia willingly embraced. As more cultures were being integrated within a vast commercial network, they were attracted to Islamic civilization’s international sophistication. What’s more, it provided a flexible political model that well suited societies with large population centers, a division of labor of some complexity, and class distinctions.
This civilization centered around Islam also demonstrated how religion could contribute to a more humane society that was culturally creative. This was possible because the Muslim religion played a greater role than the state in furthering the civilizing project. Although the military governments were authoritarian, their ability to impose social control was limited by strong religious influence and the existence of more than one center of power.
The different social groups, the religious scholars, Sufis, merchants, urban residents, and landowners, through their activities within the public sphere, were able to offset the power of the military and the state institutions. People were induced to act morally by the religious culture of Islam more than fear aroused by the forces of domination controlled by the state. In this case, culture tended to discipline power to a greater extent than political and military power regulated cultural expression and intellectual life.
In the High Middle Ages, when the cultural brilliance of the Islamic world was at its height, Europe was on the receiving end of much that it found to be of value, contributing to its own economic, political, and cultural rise. Major transmission points were Muslim Spain, Sicily, and the Crusader-controlled areas. Arabic-language materials in astronomy, mathematics, science, and medicine, and especially works in philosophy including Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle, had considerable impact on the Western medieval world.
Italy during the late Middle Ages experienced a flourishing maritime trade with Islamic societies and benefited from their artistic and technological innovations as well as by what they had preserved from Greek and Roman antiquity. Examples are the Islamic contributions to glassblowing and ceramics in Italy which were then further developed during the Renaissance.
The Chinese inventions of gunpowder, the compass, and printing were necessary elements of the modern rise of the West, but we should not neglect the role of the Islamic traders. They set up the worldwide routes of commerce that the West was later to make use of as capitalism became a global system.
A Liberal Approach to Renewal
Since Islamic civilization appeared to have lost its way as Western colonialism overwhelmed it and religion lost its central place in the modern world, Muslims had to discover where things went off track and how to make Islam at least an equal partner in the creation of our future global civilization. There have been four major types of answers to this question that emerged, but two of them, in my view, have been discredited. The first is the Eurocentric approach where the only way out is for Islam to follow in the West’s footsteps by becoming fully westernized. The second is to separate Islam from the rest of the world and go back to a politicized version of what Islam was like at the time of Muhammad and during the rule of the first four caliphs.
The two approaches that I take seriously are what can be called the liberal and traditionalist ones. Khaled Abou El Fadl is an Egyptian scholar of Islamic law teaching at UCLA who believes that the Quran, although it does not prescribe any type of government, is more in harmony with democracy than any other political form. The values specified in the Quran that must be the basis of any Muslim political system are justice achieved through social cooperation and mutual aid, governing through consultation and participation rather than authority, and mercy and compassion in public affairs. He sees consultation as an intrinsic value which must be supplemented by private and individual rights and carried out in order to realize the highest ethical principles of Islam. Furthermore, dissent must be accepted as part of the Islamic mandate to bring about a just society.
According to the Quran, humans are God’s vice-regents in this world. They must interpret sharia through legal study while recognizing that their views are fallible and subject to revision. The Quran is the source of value but it is humans that determine how its injunctions are to be put into practice and debate and trial-and-error. Abou El Fadl points out that the reliability and accuracy of the interpretations depend on the moral level of the interpreter. Constitutional democracy is the best political system for realizing a just society in harmony with the Quran, since it protects individual freedom, the rule of the majority, and human rights. These are the preconditions for creating a political order that facilitates the realization of Islamic teachings; the imposition of sharia by the ruler treats it as a rigid formula rather than as an ideal for humans to aspire to.
Abou El Fadl praises the traditional role of Muslim jurists who were the guardians of tradition, the teachers and living examples of how to live morally, and a counterweight to ruling classes that oppressed the people and acted as tyrants. They also required that rulers consult with them on matters of Islamic law. The demise of Islamic social and political institutions came when colonialism produced a Western-educated elite that no longer was responsive to the jurists, taking a secular approach to government while undermining their authority and influence. Inasmuch as they lacked democratic ideals, the ruling elite did not apply the best that the West had to offer, its democratic and humanitarian values, viewing them as inappropriate for their own societies.
A Traditional Approach to Renewal
Ali Allawi is an articulate advocate of the traditionalist approach. Allawi has written on the crisis of modern civilization, focusing on the moral weaknesses of modern societies and viewing a revitalized Islam as the antidote to the spiritual hollowness at their core. For him, there is a need for the spiritual and moral foundation that Islam once provided so that new perceptions and convictions of what constitutes a good life can transform people’s lives from the inside out. Otherwise, Islamic societies will merely conform to the ideology of materialism and economic growth that dominates liberal societies and there will only be cosmetic differences from Western nations.
Surface behaviors such as no consumption of alcohol or observation of certain dress codes may serve as badges of identity and as proof that Islamic societies are culturally different. But the condition of these societies resembles that of Western modernity: rampant consumerism, raging inequality, social alienation, environmental destruction, and vast sums spent on armaments. In other words, political Islam does not offer a truly Islamic alternative to modern life.
Of course, as Allawi acknowledges, in a liberal society with basic individual and cultural freedoms, movements can arise that advocate a more ethical society based on virtue. In contrast, freedom of thought is suppressed in rigid Islamic societies run along puritanical lines and ruled by authoritarian governments. In both liberal societies and those under the rule of political Islam, though, there are no signs of the creative energies that allow Islamic civilization to regenerate itself in a modern setting. Allawi emphasizes that it was Islam’s message of humanity’s connection with the transcendent which infused and imbued its civilizational achievements: the vast commercial empires, the splendid cities, the architectural brilliance, the scientific probes, the inspiring poetry, the philosophical sophistication, and the high arts.
Since one of the major causes of Islam’s civilizational decline was the intrusion of the modern West with its vastly superior economic, technological, and military power, could Islamic civilization regenerate itself in the present unfavorable, even hostile, environment? The traditionalists assert that the majority of the population in the Islamic world still upholds the faith, in spite of the perilous and desperate condition of Islamic civilization. But Islamic civilization can disappear, even though many Muslims remain, while the Muslim religion survives as a private matter with little social impact. This situation would itself be a departure from Islam, since in Islam, there is no separation between the sacred and the profane, the public and the private.
What has changed is that there is no longer a tension between the divine revelation with its ethical imperatives and the practical demands of the political realm. It was this tension that kept Islamic civilization on course over the centuries. But under difficult circumstances of foreign invasion, the tension was broken as the world of the elite decision makers lost its connection with the wellsprings of Islam. Why weren’t the Sufi orders, the guardians of Islam’s spiritual message unable to resist?
The Sufi orders had been leaders in spreading the faith abroad as well as expanding its reach to the middle and lower classes. They had kept the faith vital, and metaphysical Sufism had provided much of the civilization’s dynamism, especially in the arts and philosophy.
Allawi notes that the colonial governments were able to get the Sufi brotherhoods to retreat to the inner world and ignore social developments. The colonial powers were often successful in recruiting leaders of the Sufi orders willing to collaborate with them, ensuring that the Sufi brotherhoods would not be a potential source of opposition. This was part of a divide-and-conquer strategy which set the Sufi orders deeply at odds with radical modernists hostile to the Western colonizers. Even today, many Muslims oppose Sufism because they believe that Islam’s regeneration must come from a more muscular and politically oriented approach to the faith.
A Way Forward
The liberal and traditionalist views appear to diverge about the most effective approach to the renewal of Islamic civilization. On the surface at least, the liberal position is that authentic Islam and Western modernity are compatible, whereas the traditionalists think they are opposed. The traditionalist critique of Western modernity as being spiritually impoverished and mired in materialist pursuits is persuasive, but is that the only form that modernity can take? Allawi discusses the need for an alternative modernity, one which realizes its positive potential. I would include reason, science, economic development, democracy, and the individual as potentially positive modern values. The danger is when these creative outcomes are turned into idols and worshiped at the expense of their complements: intuition, art, spirituality, the rule of the wise, and community.
Modernity brought all the leaders of all non-Western nations face-to-face with a dilemma — they dreamed that their nation could become powerful by catching up with the West economically but at the same time they wanted to preserve their own cultural values. This meant that the ruling elites themselves sought Western education and pursued Western lifestyles. Yet, the masses of people held on to the older ways and values, not playing the role of modern citizens. So they needed to be taught how to be modern by adopting Western ways of thinking and acting. At its extreme in Ataturk’s Turkey of the 1920s, this meant eliminating Islam from the public sphere.
The endeavor to become powerful while retaining one’s cultural values, religious ones in particular, is torn by a basic contradiction. The military buildups required to demonstrate sufficient strength to confront the West on its own ground go against core religious values. How Islamic in character is it for Pakistan to build nuclear weapons? Isn’t this a betrayal of what Islam stands for? Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written that at the heart of Islam is the spiritual virtue that enables us to see God everywhere and to be the eyes, ears, and hands of God in this world. Imitating the West’s quest for power implies renouncing wisdom, the warmth of compassion, and the love of humanity.
The lack of freedom of religion and speech and of political rights in many Muslim countries goes against classical Islamic teachings. As Nasr points out, many tyrannical governments in the Islamic world are supported by the Western powers for geopolitical reasons and if free elections were possible, these dictatorial regimes would be voted out. This sad condition is due to the effects of colonialism and its aftermath, including the destruction of many traditional institutions and the setting up of governments that do not reflect the culture and religion of the people. The Muslim religion had once been a protection against tyranny but this is no longer the case in most Muslim countries.
My understanding is that the conflict between the teachings of Islam and Western liberalism is not fundamentally over rights; it stems from the Muslim emphasis on one’s primary responsibility being to God, whereas in the West it is the state to which one owes ultimate allegiance, religion being relegated to the private sphere. Nasr agrees that the social practices of Islamic countries have often fallen far short of its ideals but the solution is to live up to the ideals, not adopt Western secular ones. There has been a religious revival everywhere outside Europe in recent decades; in the Islamic world, this has led to movements in defense of the religion. When they turn violent and innocent people are killed, they go against the spirit of Islam and the majority of Muslims oppose them.
Might a renewal of Islamic civilization flourish within the hostile environment of globalization which spreads materialism and consumerism associated with Western civilization at the expense of higher values? Could Muslim leaders and people sufficiently imbibe their religion’s teachings to resist this worldwide trend? Or would such a movement only be possible in cooperation and collaboration with similar spiritual movements all over the world?
