What has become one of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that Islam is not a monolithic religion. There are many ways Islam has manifested in history, both in its normative forms, but also in its secondary and under-represented forms. Just as it would be wrong to form one’s understanding of Christianity by looking to Christian slave-owners in the 19thcentury (even if they could have appeared as normative to many looking to the Christian faith at that time), so it is wrong to form one’s understanding of Islam based upon 21stcentury radicals. Just as it is wrong to read an anti-Catholic polemical tract to understand Catholicism, so it is wrong to read anti-Muslim polemical tracts to understand Islam (even though the tracts will indeed “quote from legitimate sources” they will do so carefully, cherry-picked for the most shock value, and without a legitimate hermeneutical approach to help the readers properly understand the context of the quotes themselves). It is for this reason that one must approach Islam from Islamic sources if one wants to understand it. This doesn’t mean one will have to accept all that one reads, nor that one can’t be critical after you have studied it: but you will then be able to be critical of something which is true and representative of the faith, not something made up. It is in this spirit that I offer up the rather unusual, although controversial, writings of Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy, as put into the book, Against Islamic Extremism: The Writings of Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy. Ed. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2001).
You’ve never heard of Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy? That’s no surprise. Although he has often been quoted by Western sources, the media likes to give more airtime to extreme, militant Muslims than one of the leading, rational thinkers coming from the Islamic faith. Before retiring, Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy was the chief justice of the High Court of Cairo. His specialty is in Islamic and comparative law, and he has become a major spokesman for reform in the Muslim faith. He wants to help Islam find its way out of the traps of the past. He wants to help Muslim nations become true dialogue partners with other nations on the world stage. Because of this, he is critical of the fideist tendency in the fundamentalist movement – in part because it detracts from human rights which he believes are guaranteed in the Koran, but also because he believes they have taken a later, historical tradition to be authentic Islam when that later tradition was, in all actuality, a corruption of what Muhammad did and said. Indeed, he believes that the Koran’s religious views are more in favor of an inclusivistic form of religious pluralism than the exclusivism which developed: “Thus, in the authentic concept of Islam we all have one religion and we are all one community of the faithful. But every teacher, messenger or prophet had or has his own Shari’a – path, method or way – in teaching the people how faith and righteousness should be lived in accordance with their state of mind, culture and customs. There is a verse in the Qur’an that reads, ‘We [God] gave you [teachers, messengers, and prophets] one religion, but we gave every one of you his own Shari’s path, method, or way’ (Sura 4:84)” (56). This leads him to say, “One religion, many paths, several interpretations, changeable law and flexible jurisprudence to suit man’s activities without disturbing him or harming his spirit, his mind, activities, freedom and ambitions. Humanity must not neglect anyone because no person has been created in vain or without meaning. Every woman and man is the prophecy of the future and they were created to express a particular meaning, perhaps the one that no one else could express. Each woman and man’s perfection and salvation can be attained only if no one is left out” (57).
Certainly Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy’sexpression of religion can be said to be within the “liberal, Enlightenment” tradition. And yet there is something of a Nicholas of Cusa within him as well. The foundation of his religious expression is Egyptian: he looks at religion starting with early Egyptian monotheism. He sees it as a precursor to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and believes it had a tremendous amount of influence on later religious traditions. And this is because God was at work, even back then, and ancient Egyptian religion, even before Akhenaton, understood the “One God” over all the “gods.” Implicit in Egyptian polytheism was the hidden, monotheistic God. One can, and probably will, find much to criticize in his history of monotheism as he saw it move out of Egypt. Nonetheless, what he says is not exactly new in Islamic sources, even if they appear new to the Western reader (how else can one explain the fact that Islam was able to accept Hindus as one of the peoples of the book except for the fact that Hindu theology in the Upanishads pointed to the “one God” over all the other gods?).
It’s not only his pluralism which gets Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy into trouble with militants; it’s his understanding of Islamic history, theology, and the relationship between religion and the state which really raises their ire. Extremists can understand and point out that outsiders who are not Muslim can hold to a more secular world view, but the Islamists really disregard and hate Muslims who, from within, provide any legitimate challenge to their authority and their religious presuppositions. Since al-‘Ashmawy is critical of how Islam developed, believing that it took in non-Islamic, even anti-Islamic, theories in its development, his criticism of the social and religious beliefs which developed as a result of this challenges the core doctrines of the militants in a way which challenges their authenticity. It is not that al-‘Ashmawy believes that one can call the historical practices and the people involved anti-Muslim, but rather, he believes one can and must understand the historical-cultural situation and not try to enforce a failed vision into the contemporary world. “The jurists borrowed what they needed from previous theories of kingship, even if these were against the letter and the spirit of Islam. Their opinions afforded the Caliph great power over people, lands and money […] Such theories of kingship became the basis for Islamic political authority and part of the Islamic heritage. The irony is that these theories contradict the spirit of Islam and the text of the Qur’an. Islam has become distorted by this form of Islamic government and has become completely other than what it was originally” (76).
Of course, he means that this kind of centralization of a false Islam with the power of the government has led to all kinds of corruption, and this explains why it became a predominant from of Islamic government in history – but one which need not be, and should not be repeated. And yet it is. Islamic nations are often a disgrace because of it. “In the Islamic world, the existence of totalitarian regimes and the lack of independent accounting have resulted in a situation where rulers may, with impunity, make use of public funds and foreign subsidies for their own profit. A wave of corruption results” (84). And there is no way to “turn back the clock” to a “pure” worldview of the original Islam, not only because social mores have changed (slavery is now seen as wrong, even by traditionalists), but modern technological advances cannot be addressed by old, outdated ideologies. “For the past three decades the West has been transformed into a global civilization, while the Islamic world has produced little or nothing at all. Paradoxically, many Muslims curse international civilization as a neo-Western invasion, yet surround themselves with Western technology (products, gadgets). Muslims, particularly those in the Gulf, indulged in Western technology in a way that could have been a boon to Islamic power and mind but instead became its bane. The passive acquisition of technology or gadgets, dislocated from the sciences of production, monopolized Islamic activities without refining the mind. Even today this lack of refinement besets the Islamic world” (120-21).
Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy believes that there are two major kinds of Islam one needs to consider in the world today: the liberal and the militant. Both are trying to reform Islam. The first, the liberal, is looking towards human rights*, democracy, and the secular state which respects religion and religious liberty; the second is the militant, trying to engage an outdated, ill-formed, corrupt Islamic tradition into the world. He argues quite well for his position, not just from the secular, Western culture, but from within Islam and shows how strongly the “militant” tradition is, contrary to the popular opinion of many in the West, a corrupt form of Islam. Voices like his are needed, not only to help the West understand the real debate going on in Islam today, but to understand how many assumptions of Islam and its teachings have come from sources which are questionable in their authenticity. And it is also voices like his which are needed to be heard, and encouraged, and aided, in Islamic nations. He is not alone. But when voices like his are ignored, the only one left will be the militant one, and that is not the kind of Islam anyone can appreciate.
The book, as a book, comes often from Muhammad Sa’id al-‘Ashmawy’s lectures, edited together, and one can get a sense of that in how themes repeat in the book. His theories about the development and relationship of world religions are a bit off, and that is sad because it is where one begins when one reads his own writings. Yet, once one gets past that section, and into Islam, his special expertise and understanding helps provide clues to the way Islam can be – and should – reformed, from within, from its own traditions. Because it is a book in translation, the English can be a bit choppy. For style, the book gets 2 out of 5 stars, but for the importance of the work itself, it gets 5/5.
* Included in this, for him, is equal rights for men and women: “Finally, this movement believes that men and women have equal rights – the right to free speech, the right to work, the right to drive a car. Women should never be under the custody of anyone. If humanity has obligations to God, it also has rights. Humanity’s first and major right is to be free, with free mind and free conscience, rather than enslaved by anyone, any political power, any religious group or any false media” (126).
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