Islam: Beliefs and Change into the 21st Century

Writes Bernard Lewis: "In classical Muslim perception, there is no human legislative function... The legal function of the state is to apply and enforce the divinely given law."

In her book Nomad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes the Islam of her maternal grandmother, a woman who grew up among pastoralists on the Somali Peninsula without the concept of a nation state. Her grandmother identified herself as belonging to a clan and to Islam, not a nation-state. In the mind of Ayaan's grandmother were legends of desert warriors and the superiority of males and sharaf, sharaf, sharaf. Honor, honor, honor. Grandmother, writes Ayaan, said that "through trick and magic illusions... the infidel convinced people... to accept silly fences and imaginary borders." Her grandmother insisted on remaining "loyal first and foremost to God and the bloodline." (Nomad, p. 87)

This remained alive somewhat in the Islam of Ayaan's father, who had become a British citizen as a matter of personal convenience but lectured Ayaan "never to be loyal to a secular state." It was something out of the Koran, originally the book of people of clans in Arabia. According to the Koran, only God has the right to make laws, as in the translation:

Do they then seek the legislation of the Days of Ignorance? And who is better in legislating than God for a people who have Faith? (Holy Koran, 5:50)

And whoever rules not by what God has revealed, those are the wrongdoers." (Holy Koran, 5:45)

The land, all land, belonged to Allah. Caliphs considered Muhammad the Prophet's successors. Clan membership was a part of early successions in a governance that was supposed to be a brotherhood, under interpretations of God's (Islamic) law. But eventually rule went to Muslim conquerors who were not caliphs, and nation states that were Muslim.

According to Bernard Lewis, the first attempts by Muslims to compile and promulgate codes of law began in the mid-19th century, and this was "clearly under European influence." (Islam: the 'Religion and its People, pp 34-35)

Predominantly Muslim states have come into being after Muslim societies won their independence from Western imperialism, for example: Egypt, Algeria and Libya. These states declare Islam as their state religion. Pakistan went further and declared itself to be an Islamic state. Other Muslim societies declared themselves similarly:, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Mauritania and Afghanistan. And there are countries with predominantly Muslim populations that are secular: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Chad, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and Gambia, all of these nation-states impacted in some way by the West and colonialism.

These differences have created acrimony among Muslims as they try to hold to a unified idea as to what Islam is -- vaguely similar to Christianity way back in the 2nd century when it was struggling with its identity.

Some Muslims believe that secularism and Islam are opposing forces. Much wrath has been aimed by Muslims against Kemal Ataturk's secularization of Turkey back in the 1920s. And purist Muslims close to desert traditions have joined in attacking the Saudi Monarchy for its deviations into modernity -- which today includes local elections and reforms regarding women.

Conflict arose with Osama bin Laden objecting to Saudi Arabia allowing "infidel" troops to be stationed on Saudi (God's) territory. Islamic "revivalist" movements want old fashioned governance based on God's law -- Sharia -- rather than the secular laws common to modern Western statecraft. These revivalist have plagued the leaders of various other Muslim states -- Algeria and Pakistan, for example. Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was at odds with fundamentalist Muslims such as the Muslim Brotherhood and with the purist Sayyid Qutb. So too was Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, assassinated by fundamentalists in 1981. And his successor, Hosni Mubarak, struggles to keep a lid on Islamic fundamentalism, to the displeasure of many.

Syria, like Egypt, aspires to some modernity and to be a part of the world that includes non-Muslims, and into the 21st century it has moved to curb Islamic conservatism, including in the year 2010 transferring to administrative duties more than 1,000 teachers who had been wearing the traditional covering, the niqab.

The concept of democracy is a part of the fragmentation within Islam. Iran is called an Islamic democracy with the word co-opted by Islamic conservatives trying to put their purely Islamic state into a modern context. Iran has elections which they view as compatible with the authority of the ayatollahs making decisions that they deem are in accordance with the will of God.

Benazir Bhutto, a Shia Muslim and Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1993 to 1996, addressed the Islam-democracy controversy in a book entitled Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West. She wrote that Islam is committed "to the principles of democracy." that the Koran "says that Islamic society is contingent on 'mutual advice through mutual discussions on an equal footing'."

Bhutto was assassinated by fundamentalists just before her publisher, HarperCollins, distributed the book.

Dr. Sayed Khatab, a Sunni Muslim, wrote a book in 2007, Democracy in Islam, in which he tried to unify modern democracy with the practices of Islam's early caliphs. These caliphs, he held, appealed to popular consent (as have tyrants and monarchs in the West, as far back as the tyrant Pisistratus in ancient Athens). His argument is not acceptable to the Shia, who view the first three caliphs as usurpers.

The founder of Iran's republic, the Shia ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, was a part of these differences of opinions. He was among the more conservative of Muslims. He held that to establish an Islamic state it was necessary to turn to scholars of Islamic law qualified to interpret the Koran and also turn to the writings of the imams.

Geography and cultural tradition were involved in the differences in interpreting what was proper for Islam. Khomeini grew up in Iran. Bhutto was a Pakistani and influenced to an extent by Western tradition inherited from the British. Dr. Khatab was an Egyptian. And, U.S. citizens who were Muslims had absorbed the notion that secular law, democracy and pluralism as practiced in the United States were for them legitimate aspects of being a Muslim.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes Islam as a political ideology with a religious component -- essentially a "constitution" for the spread of political power held by a few strong male leaders. Favoring democracy and the Western tradition of liberty for the individual -- freedom to question and to choose -- she became an apostate under a threat of death. She no longer has to reconcile Islam with liberty and democracy. But there are those who remain Muslims, in the United States for example, who fully and adamantly support the U.S. Constitution, the separatiobn of church religious and state and the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed by the Constitution.

One of them is Dr. M Suhdi Jasser, whose parents were forced to flee Syria when Dr. Jasser was a child. They settled in the United States. Jasser served as a Lietnenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. He is a founding member of American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). In October 2007 he was declared a “Defender of the Home Front” by the Center for Security Policy. In January 2008, he was presented the 2007 Director’s Community Leadership Award by the Phoenix office of the FBI. At an Oslo Forum in 2010, Dr. Jasser spoke of his faith as "guaranteed and protected by government, and yes, a secular government," adding,

Where that government becomes an expression of any one faith it becomes coercion and no longer a laboratory of freedom.

Another "liberal" Muslim in the United States is Khalim Massoud. He has a website called "Muslims against Sharia." On November 13, 2007, he told Front Page Magazine that,

Our organization is created to give voice to moderate Muslims who are virtually ignored by governments and media and to expose the radicals masquerading as moderates. Our goals are,

* to educate Muslims about dangers presented by Islamic religious texts and why Islam must be reformed.

* to educate non-Muslims about the differences between moderate Muslims and Islamists (a.k.a. Islamic Religious Fanatics, Radical Muslims, Muslim Fundamentalists, Islamic Extremists or Islamofascists).

Massoud said to Front Page Magazine that "Islam in its present form is incompatible with modern society." He recognized that his was a minority position among Muslims in the United States and describes moderated Muslims as "not organized ... and unable to speak up in mosques for fear of being kicked out."

Massoud keeps his identity hidden. He told Front Page Magazine:

As you might imagine, Islamists are not particularly happy with our group. According to our poll, over 20% of Muslims want us beheaded. I am perfectly content with my head not being separated from my body and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as I can.

Islam, the State and Freedom