Progressive Islam remains immature: Scholar

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Islamic progressive movements need to drop their superficial, segregated attitudes and instead put their energy into pluralism, equality and democracy, according to one Muslim scholar.

Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of Islamic studies from Duke University in the United States, said that the Islamic progressive movements have been too simplistic in emphasizing their campaign against extremism.

"Progressive Islam is still at a very, very early stage, and is often very simplistic. Nouveau clerics and young scholars sipping lattes at Starbucks, or writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times," Moosa bemoaned during a discussion held by the International Center for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP) on Thursday.

While there is nothing wrong with those things per se, the South African-born scholar said that religion should be understood in the wider social context.

He said it was an issue of interpretation, for which Islamic teachings need to be scrutinized so as to be contextual. Clerics have lost contact with original Islamic values that emphasize human values rather than ceremonial rituals.

"The big task is critical questioning. Progressive Islam is more about methodological interrogation, with concerns about pluralism, equality and democracy. Progressive Islam must have a strong antenna on political oppression," said Moosa, a prolific writer on Islam, who used to be a lecturer at prestigious Stanford University before moving to equally prestigious Duke.

He said that modernist Islam was facing a problem with a very superficial understanding of modernity.

"The modernists in Islam tend to refer to the European model of rationality, that is, if they want to modernize Islam, it has to be through a European model. Whereas that cannot work in every country," explained Moosa.

He pointed to filmmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch Muslim woman whose film Submission sent shockwaves throughout extremist communities as it depicts Koranic verses written on the body of a nude Muslim woman's body, and on the body of another woman scarred from beatings by her husband.

The film's director, Theo van Gogh, was later brutally murdered last year on a street in Amsterdam by a Muslim extremist.

Moosa condemned Hirsi Ali as a mere exhibitionist without a political mission to fight authoritarianism. "Islamo-phobia in Europe is much more serious than the rednecks in the U.S.," he said, using the derogatory term for farmers, which generally means an ignorant, white person.

What Hirsi Ali did was different from the much-controversial work of Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led an Islamic prayer service for men and women in March.

It was a breakthrough in the fight for gender equity, but unfortunately, Moosa said, it was done without proper strategy.

"There was so much hype about the event that it caused a negative image abroad, as if it was the American government's way to change Islam. Whereas, Amina herself, is against the Bush administration," Moosa explained.

He said there was still much more work to do to push for an Islamic intellectual renaissance.

However, it would take a sweeping cultural transformation since the social context is different in each country. In South Africa, for instance, there are questions about wealth distribution and the HIV/AIDS crisis.

"If you want to play the role in the Islamic society, there's a rule in it. If you don't obey it, it won't buy you credibility. I can't use the term of Islamic progressive to my grandmother because she won't understand," Moosa said.

He asserted that progressive Muslims must not stray away from traditionalists, saying that despite their different interpretations, the traditionalists have some kind of authenticity and continuity with old Islamic teachings.

Progressive Muslims also need to push for real interfaith dialogs, which so far, according to Moosa, are akin to "band-aid diplomacy" with no significant impact in creating understanding on pluralism.

"Interfaith dialog should be a critical dialog where everybody says what they feel about each other, but in a respectful way. That actually can be done."