\u201cRecent events underscore the need for a reformed reading of Islam. But such reformation will not be brought about by stigmatizing Islam or Muslim communities, as the French president did. What is needed is to challenge Muslim institutions to take a clear position on Islamic jurisprudence justifying violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIt was a policy statement about cracking down on \u201cradical Islamist\u201d influence among French Muslims to prevent their transformation into a \u201ccounter-republican\u201d community. However, Macron\u2019s bizarre remark that Islam \u201cis in crisis all over the world today\u201d unsurprisingly got most of the attention in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWhat was meant to be a debate about combating Islamic radicals in France turned into an outcry against \u201cMacron\u2019s stigmatization of Islam.\u201d Nuanced Muslim voices got lost in the noise.The Macron fiasco didn\u2019t overshadow the problem of violence in the name of Islam for long. The beheading of a schoolteacher, Samuel Paty, on Oct. 16 for showing his students images of a caricature depicting Islam\u2019s prophet came as a crude reminder of the problem. Calling it an isolated act, as the grand mufti of Egypt did, doesn\u2019t cut it any longer. Nor does the lamentation over French atrocities in Algeria half a century ago. The problem of violence motivated by a certain interpretation of Islam is real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cThree key premises held by the Islamic Salafist tradition lie at the source of the problem. First, the idea that sovereignty lies with \u201cGod,\u201d not the people, restricts the role of legislatures to enacting Islamic law, which is also understood in its most literalist interpretation. Rulers who don\u2019t uphold this principle are deemed idolatrous. Second, Muslims\u2019 \u201capostasy,\u201d often defined as having a different interpretation of their faith, is punishable by death. Third, when Muslim leaders fail to enact these rules, individual Muslims have a duty, under certain conditions, to carry them out themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These interpretations of Islam underpin most of the violence in its name, since the Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb wrote his call for Jihad more than half a century ago, all the way to the Islamic State and \u201clone wolves\u201d violently punishing those who \u201cinsult Islam\u201d today. Islamic institutions such as Al-Azhar often denounce that violence and insist that its perpetrators do not represent \u201ctrue Islam,\u201d as Egypt\u2019s mufti just did. Yet they rarely address the intellectual foundations of these belligerent interpretations of Islamic texts.
Independent-minded Islamic thinkers have long been advocating more clement readings of Islam, its laws and its relationship with non-Muslims. From Muhammad Abduh in the 19th century to Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohammed Arkoun and many others more recently, thinkers have critically reviewed Islamic jurisprudence to show its emphasis on reason, individual freedom and equality. But religious institutions and movements did not follow their lead. And political leaders, including those of the so-called secular regimes, hedged their bets and walked a fine line between reformers and Salafists. Decades of social, economic and political decay, foreign encroachment and military interventions, along with Saudi support, helped Salafi thought grow. Today, Salafi thought is no longer a fringe: It has penetrated mainstream religious institutions as well as the Islamist movements that had started off as modernist, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those who are interested in promoting a reformist vision of Islam should challenge the foundations of Salafism within these institutions and movements \u2014 not \u201cIslam\u201d as a whole, as Macron did, nor the already stigmatized Muslim minorities who are struggling with racism and discrimination in Western countries.Instead, Islamic institutions and movements should be pressed to come up with unambiguous answers to the key questions that Salafism poses: Does their interpretation of \u201ctrue Islam\u201d allow Muslims to use violence against others? Does it allow Muslims to uphold modern political institutions and their laws? Does it allow Muslims to live peacefully with people they consider apostates or infidels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Challenging these institutions and movements will help, not undermine, the debate among Muslims over what Islam is \u2014 the debate that will shape the future of Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n