Islam and the Age of Reason

It has often been remarked to the effect that the Middle East has missed out on the Enlightenment, and its reactionaries want to keep its villages in the Dark Ages.

Well, there's an important article by a beautiful Muslima woman named Irshad Manji called "Islam Needs an Age of Reason" that I'd like to draw your attention to. Manji is a senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, and founder of Project Ijtihad.

Manji writes of the Islamic concept of ijtihad, which is the equivalent, I would suggest, of a hermeneutic approach to the Qur'an. It seeks to reinterpret the Qur'an, rather than resting upon traditional interpretations. She uses the example, first of all, of an imam who has given a religious argument for allowing intermarriage between religions, and says, "What this imam did goes beyond matters of the heart. It reflects the power of using the mind to reinterpret the Qur’an for contemporary times. He has captured the spirit of ijtihad (pronounced ij-tee-had), Islam’s own tradition of creative reasoning. As globalization persists and pluralism spreads, both Muslims and non-Muslims need to know that Islam offers a positive alternative to the tribal mentality."

She goes on to speak of a woman's movement in Islam being possible because "the Qur’an states that women are subject to men’s authority only if men spend money to 'maintain' women. So if a woman earns her own assets, as did the Prophet Muhammad’s beloved first wife, Khadija, she can make decisions for herself."

Manji cites an example of a woman in Egypt starting her own business, reading the Qur'an for herself, and then gaining liberation from a previously abusive husband by citing passages she had discovered in the Qur'an.

We cannot stand still in our interpretation of texts. Jesus encouraged us to embrace the living law rather than a law written in stone, and this is what Irshad's ijtihad is doing. Sacred texts speak to the time when they're addressed most literally. But they speak to later generations through the spirit of the text.

As I've been saying elsewhere, there are few core principles that are most important, and the major religions all agree on them. So, "A-salamu aleikum" (Peace to you). The core of Islam (the peace that is found through submission to the source of peace that flows through us all) is peace.