ISLAM IN NEED OF REFORMATION

In her Wall Street Journal essay (3/21/15) well known author and former Muslim, Ayyan Hirsi Ali, says Islam is in serious need of reformation. She says Islam is at a crossroads. It needs to make a conscious decision “to confront, debate and ultimately reject the violent elements within” its religion.

Judaism and Christianity have undergone Reformation, and so must Islam, says Ali. And she names five areas that require amendment.

First, Muhammad’s semi-divine status should be challenged. He was a historical, fallible man who succeeded in uniting Arab tribes in a seventh century pre-modern context that cannot be replicated in the 21st century, as Muslim fundamentalists want to do.

In that same light, the Quran should be viewed as a book shaped by human hands and not as the literal word of Allah. Much of the Quran (which means “recitations”) reflects tribal values of the 7th century Arabian Peninsula. The spiritual values of the Quran should be separated from that.

Secondly, Ali suggests Muslims reform their ideas of the supremacy of life after death. This would help diminish the notion of martyrdom where extremist men are promised immediate entrance into Paradise (by–passing judgment) and the delights of 72 virgins.

Thirdly, says Ali, Muslims should learn to reform and rethink the laws of Shariah in a modern context. And that is at the core of the problem: adapting Islamic laws to modernity. (See Bernard Lewis’s fine book, What Went Wrong, for an excellent overview of the challenge of modernity to Islam.)

Fourthly, individual Muslims should not have the right to be religious vigilantes to enforce Islamic law. And fifthly, the imperative to jihad, or holy war, where Islam is to be enforced by the sword, should be given up. Then it may be, says Ali, that Islam will become a religion of peace. (By the way, Islam means submission or surrender, not peace.)

Ali herself has been on a pilgrimage. Raised as a Muslim in Somalia and Kenya, she escaped an oppressive arranged marriage, eventually arrived in the Netherlands, and won a seat in the Dutch Parliament. She disavowed Islam, made a short film with Theo Van Gogh (Vincent’s grandson) where she, at prayer, looked up to Allah for dialogue rather than submit. In reaction, Theo was murdered by a Muslim extremist, and a fatwa, (religious death warrant) was pronounced upon Ali. She now lives in America under constant security threats. Ali says her pilgrimage has been from Mecca to Medina to Manhattan!