The Circulation of Ideas in the Muslim World: Systematic Thought or Organizational Skills?

In my research on contemporary Islamic intellectual history, I focus on the more innovative and progressive, and therefore often controversial, currents of thought, which I have coined in provocative terms such as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘heretical’. In discussing the trans-regional aspects of these alternative Islamic discourses, I am increasingly drawn to the notion of the ‘circulation of ideas’. This in itself somewhat amorphous expression strikes me as suitable for capturing the complex, multi-layered – even messy – nature of these contemporary trends of Muslim intellectualism. Already fruitfully employed in, for example, Indian Ocean Studies, I have become more convinced that it can also be aptly applied in research on contemporary Islamic intellectual history when I had a chance to listen to the anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen, emeritus professor and former holder of the ISIM Chair at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands.

This week Aga Khan University in London hosted this specialist in the history of Islam in Turkey and Indonesia, as well as their present-day societies, for a talk entitled ‘Indonesian Muslims and their Place in the Larger World of Islam’. In his presentation, van Bruinessen concentrated on finding an explanation for the fact that Indonesian Islam still remains little known to Muslims from outside Southeast Asia. It certainly is not that the way Islam is interpreted, experienced and practiced in this largest Muslim nation-state is not interesting or has nothing to offer to the rest of the Muslim world, almost the contrary.

Van Bruinessen recalls an observation made in 1986 by the famous Pakistani scholar of Islam and modernist Islamic intellectual Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988). At the time, the latter was of the opinion that the two Muslim countries to watch for the emergence of innovative ideas and alternative trajectories in the Muslim world were Turkey and Indonesia. It was probably no coincidence that Fazlur Rahman, who was then Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, was supervising numerous postgraduate students from these two countries, many of whom would rise to becoming prominent religious and political leaders in their respective home lands.

One of the possible reasons why the often interesting ideas developed by Indonesian Muslims did not catch on elsewhere is a matter of form. Generally, Indonesian intellectuals present their ideas in speeches, seminars, talks, newspaper columns, magazine articles and other forums. These are later published in often voluminous collections, but rarely – if at all – do they find their way into any systematic presentation of their thoughts. An explanation for this seemingly unstructured style is that many Indonesian Muslim intellectuals are also activists, who tend to live out their ideas rather than theorize about them. On the other hand, to have an impact new interpretations not only need ideational coherence but require also efficient dissemination. Here, as shall be seen below, the Indonesian Muslim knack for organization comes into play.

Also historically, Indonesia or, for that matter,  its predecessor -- the Dutch East Indies – never produced the equivalent of single, towering intellectual figures such as Shah Waliullah al-Dihlawi, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, or Abu Alaa Maududi. Yet, in the past, ulama from Southeast Asia, including regions which now form part of the Indonesian republic,  were present in the Haramayn for centuries, teaching and instructing visiting pilgrims and students in things Islamic. However, although they formed by far the largest contingent of non-Arab Muslims in the holy places, they did not profile themselves explicitly as ‘Indonesians’.

Also today, Indonesian Muslims continue to display a voracious appetite for learning about Islam. There is a vibrant ‘translation industry’ of books on Islam and the Muslim world written by Muslim scholars and other intellectuals from across the Muslim world, as well as Western scholars of Islam. According to van Bruinessen, knowledge from abroad has always been highly valued in Indonesia. One explanation for this eagerness for ideas from the outside – aside from centuries of participation in the Islamic scholarly networks connecting the region to centres of Islamic learning on the other side of the Indian Ocean, in India, Yemen, the Hijaz, and Cairo – is Indonesia’s colonial experience, when Western knowledge percolated into the Dutch East Indies, opening up yet another epistemological realm.

Martin van Bruinessen

Consequently, the traffic of ideas has remained one-directional -- from other parts of the Muslim world and the West to Indonesia, whereas the ideas of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals have had very little exposure abroad. The only exceptions cited by van Bruinessen are former President Ahmad Sukarno and the one-time leader of the now defunct Islamist Masyumi Party, Muhammad Natsir. These were Indonesian Muslims who -- at one tim --  had an international profile with a global reach: Sukarno as a founding member of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries in the 1950s, and Natsir as a key figure in the Muslim World League and most prominent Southeast  Asian representative of Islamic reformism of the Salafi schnitt. In Natsir’s view, the benchmark for what constitutes ‘real Islam’, is provided by medieval Middle Eastern Islam. In the lively debates in Indonesia between ‘Westernizers’ -- who saw no contradiction between Islam and modernity, nor any fundamental incompatibilities with the other Abrahamic religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity -- and the ‘nativists’ who took issue with both Islamic and European influences, Natsir actually disagreed with both, neither did he approve of the advocates of a culturally specific traditional Indonesian Islam.

This lack of interest in or attention for the development of Indonesian Islam, does not mean that the country has nothing to offer to the rest of the Muslim world.  To return again to Fazlur Rahman’s view of the potential of both Turkish and Indonesian Islam, van Bruinessen also notes that, when comparing the two countries, another factor that needs to be taken into consideration is the matter of temperament. As another prominent non-Arab segment of the Muslim ummah, Turks have been more assertive in establishing themselves as significant and distinct from the Arabs than the evidently more modest and subdued Indonesians. At the same time, as I have discussed elsewhere, there are remarkable parallels between the Turkish and Indonesian experiences with Muslim intellectualism and the place of religion in public life in these two countries during the last twenty five years or so. These developments contain important lessons for alternative trajectories in the post-Arab Spring Middle Eastern parts of the Muslim world (see my posts of 5 February 2011 and  30 July 2011)

Among the aspects identified by van Bruinessen as having something to offer to the wider world of Islam is first of all the high level of organization among Indonesian Muslims. The country is home to what are not only the oldest and largest Islamic mass movements, they also manifest a longstanding and rich democratic tradition reaching from the local all the way to the national level. The political and legal framework of the Dutch East Indies, enabled Islamic modernists and traditionalist Muslims to establish organizations which focussed on  emancipation through educational and charitable initiatives and steered well clear of explicit political activities.

On all levels, both the modernist Muhammadiyah, founded as early as 1912, and its rivalling traditionalist counterpart Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) established in 1926, are run by elected governing bodies. Thus they have gained lengthy experience with selecting and electing leaders at national congresses which are held every five years, and the chance to develop a tradition of grassroots level democracy stretching back decades. This makes the Muhammadiyah and NU much more transparent than, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In regards to the organizational and institutional dimensions of Indonesian Islam, another interesting example is provided by Hizbut Tahrir. In Indonesia, this movement can command a disproportionately large following among the country's vast Muslim student population. On the other side of the Islamic political and intellectual spectrum, van Bruinessen also observed a very widespread and solid presence of contemporary Sufi orders such as the Naqshbandi-Haqqani, whose leadership is currently based in the United States. He even ventured a speculation that, given the pressures on Muslims in America, it would not be inconceivable if the current leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, would decide to select Indonesia as the most suitable location for the organization’s future headquarters.

Then there is the flourishing of progressive and liberal interpretations of Islam. While it is true that, as explained earlier, the inspiration often comes from abroad, at the same time and in contrast to many parts of the Muslim world, Indonesian engagement with innovative and often controversial ideas is not only more intense, but also receiving  support from wider segments of society.  From the 1970s until the late 1990s, this was manifested through what Indonesians refer to as ‘cultural Islam’. During this period the ideas of thinkers such as Hasan Hanafi, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, as well as Shi’ite intellectuals like Shariati and Mutahhari were translated into Indonesian and integrated into the Muslim discourses circulating in that country..

Martin van Bruinessen in discussion with Kathryn Spellman of Aga Khan University

If there is one area where it could be argued that Indonesia has actually managed to influence developments elsewhere, it would be Islamic feminism. Here again, the origins came from the outside, in this case from the American-Pakistani women rights activist Riffat Hassan. But Indonesia was the only Muslim country where she was permitted to give an address at an Islamic university. Aside from Riffat Hassan, also the ideas of the Sudanese jurist and theoretician of human rights Abdullahi an-Na'im, and the latter's mentor Muhammad Mahmoud Taha, are an important ingredient for Islamic feminist activism in Indonesia.

There is no Muslim country where Islamic feminism is so deeply rooted and supported on grassroots level than Indonesia. Its success does not depend on any prominent figures, but rather on the broad support and widespread activism by scores of Muslimas working in the women’s branches of mass organizations such as the NU and Muhammadiyah. The international dimension of Indonesian Muslim feminism is evidently visible in the Musawah network. Although a Malaysian and Iranian initiative, the Indonesian experiment with Islamic feminism soon caught the attention of the initiators and has left its mark on this international body for coordinating Islamic women’s rights activism worldwide.


What became manifestly clear from van Bruinessen's discussion of indonesia's Islamic scene is that, aside from a store of interesting, progressive ideas presented in a coherent and systematic fashion, the successful dissemination of such ideas also depends on effective organization, and here Indonesian organizations such as the NU and the Muhammadiyah have a track record that has -- so far -- remained unmatched in the Muslim world.


Hereunder are some of van Bruinessen's writings, for more materials also check his personal website.

Egypt: Islam in the Insurrection

The Religioscope website carried an excellent article by Husam Tammam and Patrick Haenni (both associated with the Francophone Centre for Economic, Judicial, and Social Study and Documentation or CEDEJ), on the ambiguous role played by religion in the dynamics of the recent people's uprising against the Mubarak Regime. Here are a few excerpts.

“Arab anger” in Egypt was no more Islamist than it had been in Tunisia a few weeks earlier. Islam was an ingredient, but no more than that. The various religious groups played a role that was politically very conservative.

The religious establishment, like all the political actors, was forced to respond to the uprising as it unfolded. Positions were varied, but no religious actor stood as guarantor of the “revolution”, and most were distrustful of it. Therefore an Iranian-type scenario is unlikely: religious leaders and the street have not yet reached a moment of communion.

Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib

 The official religious institutions, both Muslim (al-Azhar and Dar al-Fatwa [sic!]) and Christian (the Coptic Church), had ties of allegiance to the regime, and were even further from grasping the new revolutionary spirit.

The political dependence of the leadership of the clerical institutions – both Christian (the Coptic Church) and Muslim (al-Azhar) – was very badly received by the people, and risked jeopardising their relations with their bases over the long term.

The Salafist movement condemned the protests; the Muslim Brothers first retreated, then got sucked in by the dynamism of the dispute, then tried to open up a negotiation process which the demonstrators, bolder in their demands, didn't want. Though that was not necessarily the position of all Egyptians, many of whom would have settled for a compromise, with Mubarak running the transition and the demand for democracy postponed until the next elections: the voice of the street isn't necessarily the will of the people. The Islamist groups were without doubt the most detached. Among these, various parts of the Salafist movement condemned the demonstrators very clearly from the time of the first appeals....

The Salafist nebula of groups found itself deeply at odds with the dynamic of the street. From the start, and up to now, its position has been unequivocal: the protest movement must be boycotted because protest means chaos. Better to choose the iniquity of the regime than the void which opposing it might open up (the Salafists base themselves on a fatwa by the medieval Islamic thinker Ibn Taimiyya, affirming that 70 years of iniquitous rule are worth more that one day without rule).

There was one single discordant note in this loyalist Salafist concert: the position of the “reformist Salafist” current, which emanated from Saudi Arabia as part of an attempt to fuse Wahhabite conservatism with Muslim Brother activism. This trend, though very small in Egypt, has a presence through personalities such as Gamal Sultan, and the project of a political party, the “reform party”. From the start, it has unambiguously supported the movement for democratic reform.

The [Muslim] Brothers in Tahrir Square, truly mobilized and strongly influenced by the other groups who started the protest movement, continued to call for Mubarak's departure ahead of any negotiation. But on 5 February, their leadership began talks with then vice president Omar Suleiman.... This exasperated the young Brothers out on the street.

Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad Badie

 Unlike other Islamist movements, which have clarified the structural dilemma of Islamism (as a movement of preaching or of political participation), the Muslim Brothers are based on the concept of shumuliyya, globalism: this makes them not just a political organisation, but one which is also religious, social and economic. And this confusion between politics and religion is out of place in an insurrection whose spirit is above all political.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

 This is notion of shumuliyya is very central in the ideas of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the maverick 'alim of Al Jazeera fame, who returned to Egypt after almost half a century in exile in Qatar.

Strangely, it was the person everyone had thought to be the least inclined to get involved in politics, Amr Khaled, the cool young preacher and religious conscience of the Muslim middle classes, who supported the protest movement the most openly.

Amr Khaled

..we are clearly seeing a revolutionary spirit take shape which could hardly be further from the political culture of the Brothers: it is not programmatic; it does not prefer one ideology over another but demands a transparent framework for political competition; it is anti-authoritarianism; it is democratic and not religious; it functions in a loose logic of networks, spirit of Facebook, transparency (the reverse of a pyramid structure, of secrecy and submission). It bypasses the existing political players in their entirety

The entire article is found here.

Death of an Averroist: Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (1936-2010)

Only today I learned of the death of the Moroccan philosopher Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (a.k.a. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri). The fact that it went largely unreported in Western media is indicative of the lack of interest in intellectual developments in the contemporary Muslim world. A similar observation was posted on the blog of the Angry Arab News Service:


 If you look at the Western press today, you would not know that the most important and renounced Arab contemporary thinker/ philosopher has died today. Muhammad `Abid Al-Jabiri is dead. This Moroccan thinker is by far the most discussed among Arab and Islamic intellectuals.

However, some websites did pay attention to al-Jabiri's passing away. One is the German blog Kritik der arabischen Vernunft, dedicated to al-Jabiri's philosophy, another one the -- also Germany-based -- website Qantara. Here are some excerpts from Sonja Hegasy's* obituary:

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri was without doubt one of the most significant social theorists of the Arab world. His dissertation on Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer of modern sociology, in 1970 brought him the first doctorate awarded by the University of Mohammed V in Rabat following Moroccan independence. It was the first of a total of over thirty works.

Al-Jabri was both a critical philosopher and a proponent of a left-wing programme of social policy. From 1959 onwards, he worked with the Moroccan opposition politician Mehdi Ben Barka in the Socialist Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP). And he remained committed to education, initially as a teacher, then as a school inspector, a writer of school books, a university teachers and mentor.

Drawing on the history of non-orthodox Muslim movements, such as the Kharijites, Ismailis, Shiites or Sufis, he called for an oppositional mode of thought. Al-Jabri saw himself in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, in that he called on his readers to insist on their right to define the world on the basis of their observations, and not on the basis of pre-defined, traditional or out-of-date authorities.

According to al-Jabri, two main elements in the history of political ideas continue to have an influence in the Arab world and are responsible for its continuing stagnation: imitation rather than critical thought has become the main form of awareness, and rulers are counselled but they are not controlled. To counter that influence, Al-Jabri wanted to strengthen the rational, intellectual tradition in Muslim thought and drew on the Andalusian commentator of Aristotle, Averroes or Ibn Rushd, as his authority.

Here I have to add a caveat. While in the West, Ibn Rushd's reputation is indeed largely due to his commentaries on Aristotle, which were instrumental to the further development of late-medieval Scholasticism and the onset of the Renaissance, in the Muslim world his influence was based on his attempts to reconcile rational thinking with revelation, succinctly expounded in his 'Definitive Statement' (Fasl al-maqal fima bayna al-hikmah wa-al-shariah min al-ittisal).

But aside from the academic philosopher, there was also the public intellectual al-Jabiri, as Hegasy continues:

Al-Jabri's attack on conventional authority is as explosive socially as the works of the Egyptian Farag Foda, who was killed by an Islamist group in 1992, or those of the Sudanese scholar Mahmud Mohammed Taha, who was hanged in 1985.

It is because of this audacity that, according to Hegasy:

The Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi once wrote that, to judge from the heated debates in which students are everywhere continuously engaging, al-Jabri was probably the philosopher who was most read by young people in the Arab world.

This interest goes beyond the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world. In Indonesia, for example, he has a large and  attentive audience among young Muslim intellectuals associated with a strand of thought known as Postra, an acronym for 'Post-Traditionalists' (progressive thinkers who engage critically with the Islamic heritage without dismissing its significance). Witness this 'In Memoriam' on the website of the country's Muslim Students Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam, HMI).

In this detailed assessment al-Jabiri is said to belong to a category of intellectuals who is 'prone to be selective in invoking inspirations from both tradition and modernity in order to find a kind of authentic Arab modernity', which sets them apart from Salafi reformists and liberal thinkers:

The first and the second groups of Arab intellectuals do not reflect a creative engagement with tradition or modernity. Their project is merely reviving the tradition (turath) to be applied in the present or blindly adopting Western values and practices into Arabic contexts. The third group of intellectuals whose project is searching for an authentic modernity of Arab is more interesting because they are more creative and critical in dealing with both tradition and modernity.

Aside from al-Jabiri, the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi fits into this category. Dismissing the latter's ideological positions as ' as too encyclopedic, cerebral and theoretical', the author considers al-Jabiri's epistemological approach more promising 'not only in terms of understanding the turath [Arab-Islamic intellectual heritage] and the present Arab situation, but also in terms of searching for the future identity of Arab modernity'.

However, also al-Jabiri's positions are not immune to criticism. In his advocacy for an Andalusian resurgence (see also my post of 11 October 2008) and promotion of Averroist philosophy, he appears to side with Western scholars who singled out the tenth-century theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali as the main culprit responsible for killing off the philosophical tradition in Islam. The South-African born Islamicist Ebrahim Moosa (now teaching at Duke University in North Carolina) disagrees:

Many scholars from the Muslim world also buy into the anti-Ghazali anti-Ashari libel, as the cause of the death of reason in Islam.  It is part of a trend in lazy scholarship, a ridiculous assumption that Mu'tazilite reason is compatible with modern modes of reasons, but it is all part of what I call a "scapegoat historiography." The latter is a kind of after the fact search for the causes of the decline of Muslim political fortunes in a post-empire world of the late 19th and early 20th century milieu.  Among the scapegoats, is Ghazali and a claim that he opened the door for a retrograde sufism to inhabit Muslim intellectual streams; don't ask me how!. All this is largely unproved but makes for great reformist stump speeches.  Among the folk who advance variants of these claims (I refuse to give it a respectability of a thesis!!) is Hasan Hanafi of Egypt, Hussein Atay of Turkey and in a more sophisticated way, the late Muhammad Abid al-Jabri of Morocco in his multiple writings. I tried to offer some push back to these claims in my Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination but it was certainly only in passing and clearly, not enough. 

As a result of the relative lack of attention, only very few of al-Jabiri's books - who wrote almost exclusively in Arabic -- have been translated into European languages. In the secondary literature on contemporary Muslim thought there is also still a paucity of works. Aside from chapters in surveys and handbooks, and two studies in German, the only English-language project I have come across was conducted in The Netherlands, but without any reference to a resulting publication.

*Sonja Hegasy contributed the chapter 'Ex Okzidente Lux: Der arabische Aufklaerer Mohammed Abed al-Jabri' to Kritik der arabischen Vernunft.

Here are some further reading suggestions for works available in English:

Islamic Sexshop online

NRC Handelsblad was the first to report on it, now it has also been picked up by the Qantara, the Germany-based website offering news on the Muslim world and Muslim communities in the West.


Abdelaziz Aouragh opened the world's first halal shop for sexual enhancement products. It is but one indication that many young Muslims are charting their own course in managing adherence to a faith whose sexual morals historically have been interpreted by arch conservatives.

Aouragh, a 29-year old Amsterdam-born practicing Muslim of Moroccan heritage with the instincts of a Dutch trader, hardly fits the profile of a purveyor of sex articles such as capsules that "increase male performance, desire and pleasure," pills to heighten women's desire, stimulators for him and her and cocoa butter, water and silicon-based lubricants.

Not knowing whether his religion would allow the trade in sex products, Aouragh visited an imam, who in turn consulted a Saudi sheik. It was allowed, he learned, as long as the products were halal and meant to improve sex within marriage. "There is even a fatwa on the subject."

Yet, in a faith community perceived as repressive of women and severely restrictive of intimate gender relations, Aouragh's online El Asira webshop – the world's first halal (religiously-endorsed) shop for sexual enhancement products – is a booming success. So popular in fact, that Aouragh had to take the shop offline four days after its launch and move it to a new Internet service provider because his original California-based host GreenGeeks was unable to accommodate the traffic volume it generated – 60,000 hits a day.

El Asira – Arabic for The Society – is but one indication that many young Muslims like their counterparts in other monotheistic religions are charting their own course in managing adherence to a faith whose sexual morals historically have been interpreted by arch conservatives.

While Aouragh errs on the side of caution relying on conservative interpretations by Saudi religious authorities, a host of contemporary Muslim artists, many of them women, have recently opted to paint naked models despite widespread belief by Muslims that the Koran bans nudity as well as life-like portraits of human beings. "We are promoting this dialogue," Aouragh says although he asserts that Muslim artists who portray nudity lack a correct understanding of Islam.

While earning money and building an empire, Aouragh hopes that his business will contribute to cross-cultural understanding. "Everybody is talking about Islam in a negative way. I am trying to get something positive out of the dark," he says. The El Asira website adds: "Muslims have to deal with stereotypical prejudices by some non-Muslims on the topic of sexuality within the Islam. We want to share with other Muslims in a positive way our contribution to a broader view of sexuality and eroticism within the Muslim community for Muslims themselves, as for others."

Initiatives like these are not limited to the West. In Morocco women host discrete 'tupperware parties' catering to the needs and desires of their friends. Read more on casawaves.

Smooth Operator: Anwar Ibrahim on Religion and Pluralism in a Divided World

On Thursday, 18 March, the London School of Economics (LSE) hosted former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition Anwar Ibrahim for a brief lecture and Q&A session.

That this was a last-minute event became clear from a somewhat rambling introductory talk in which quotes from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets on humankind's limited capacity for coping with reality featured alongside excerpts from Rumi's Masnavi ('The lamps are different, but the light is the same') and references to religious scholars such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350CE). All for the purposal of showing Ibrahim's support for an inclusivist Islam as found in Indonesia. Presenting Indonesia as an example worthy of emulation is in itself an interesting position for a Malay-Muslim politician who rode to power on a much less tolerant Islamist ticket in the 1970s and 1980s.

This point was also raised during the discussion, when one interlocutor asked if his own first-hand experience with imprisonment under the draconian ISA (Internal Security Act) had something to do with this transformation from his firebrand Muslim activist rhetoric as leader of the Muslim student organization ABIM to the mellower tone of today. In a rare moment of straightforwardness, although he hoped he would still be considered a firebrand, Ibrahim attributed his erstwhile militancy to youthful idealism.

For the rest he excelled in evading any direct answers to the questions that were posed to him. Instead he generally sufficed with repeating the mantra that Southeast Asian Islam has historically been characterized by inclusivism in regards to the various strands of thought and practice found among Muslims, and the embrace of pluralism in its attitude towards non-Muslims. In the Datuk's view this was also true of Malaysian Islam and he deplored the recent hardening of positions, such as the controversial claim that the name 'Allah' may only be used by Muslims, not by adherents of the other Abrahamic religions; Judaism and Christianity.*

Although he supported the application of Islamic law in Malaysia for its Muslim citizens, he opined that Shari'a courts had no business in interfering in the affairs of other religious traditions. In response to a question what his position is on apostasy, Anwar Ibrahim suggested that the guidelines should be provided by the Maqasid al-Shari'a or Core Objectives of Islamic Law. Explicitly defined by such scholars as al-Ghazali (d. 1111CE) and al-Shatibi (d. 1388), these principles safeguard freedom of conscience, the sanctity of life and property, the dignity of men and women, and the freedom of expression. Although as a Muslim he would never encourage a fellow Muslim to leave the faith, he agreed with Taha Jabir Alalwani, who in a lecture at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) had said it was ultimately up to the individual. Adding that forcing someone to lie and hide his or her true conviction would only turn them into hypocrites he also referred to the Quranic injunction that there can be 'no compulsion in religion' (2: 256). However, he avoided making any clear statement on what he expected religious courts in Malaysia to do when cases of apostasy were brought before them.

In evidence of his own disagreement with religion-inspired intolerance he frequently referred to his book The Asian Renaissance, which he insisted was grounded in the Quranic injunction that God had created humankind's ethnic and religious multitudes so 'that ye may know each others' (Sura al-Hujarat 49.13).

For the rest he used every opportunity to criticize the incumbent government of Malaysia and the failure of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to instill democratic governance and values among its member states, in particular Myanmar. Ever the jocular and smooth political operator, he said that, instead of pursuing a 'constructive engagement' with the Burmese junta, most countries in the region seemed more interested in engaging in construction projects. In the same context, however, Indonesia was again presented as a rare positive exception, where general elections had been restored after decades of 'elections of generals'.


Indicative of his ability to circumvent taking any firm positions and keeping all his future options open was also his response to whether he regarded Malaysia as secular or Islamic state. While he said Malaysia was not strictly an Islamic state in the sense as implied by an overall application of Islamic law, it was certainly Islamic in the sense of the Maqasid al-Shari'a. Besides that, both the notions 'Islamic' and 'secular' were open to a wide range of interpretations. As for the concrete implementation of Islamic law, Anwar Ibrahim concluded that Shari'a courts should only have jurisdiction in family law and moral injunctions pertaining to Muslims, and confine themselves only to cases in which all parties were Muslim.

* see the coverage in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Malaysian Newspaper The Star, Indonesia's Jakarta Globe, and on Juan Cole's Informed Comment

Muslims in the Netherlands: What is the effect of the 'Geert Wilders' Factor?

In his programme 'Islam and Life' on PressTV, Tariq Ramadan discusses the present situation of Muslims in The Netherlands in light of the rise of Geert Wilders and his PVV (Party for Freedom) on the country's political scene:

Who is Geert Wilders (Tariq Ramadan & Carool Kersten) from Carool Kersten on Vimeo.

The Ethos of Islam in the 21st Century

The October 2009 edition of current affairs magazine The New Internationalist will explore the future of Islamic culture.

On 8 September, ASIA HOUSE hosted an event which provided a little preview of what can be expected. In the framework of its Understanding Islam Series, a panel of three UK-based Muslim intellectuals moderated by journalist Hadani Ditmars, Co-Editor of the New Internationalist and author of Dancing in the No-fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq, engaged with the theme 'Knowledge is Light: the Ethos of Islam in the 21st Century'.

Political scientist Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD) (Its website appears currently to be down) and author of a number of books on both the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings and their aftermath, used the occasion to expound his views on the combined efforts of Western intelligence services and corporate interests connected with the oil and gas industry to manipulate politics in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia using the 'War on Terror' as a cover. While addressing very important issues and rightly highlighting the more sinister aspects of big business influencing international policy-making, his narrative was in way somewhat dated: reminiscent of the ideology-laden leftist rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s against the military-industrial complex, updated with the by now equally stale conjectures of conspiracy theorists (as becomes also evident from the titles of some of his books which appear to rehash the same points: The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001; The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism and Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq)

A much more refreshing take on the ethos of Islam and the future of culture in the Muslim world and - perhaps just as important -- among the Muslim communities in Europe and North America, was given by the Indian-born poet and film-maker Mahmood Jamal. He made a case for a bold and courageous questioning of the Islamic tenets, rightly arguing that 'doubt' is almost a sine qua non to keep a culture fresh and retain its vitality. He concluded with a declamation from his collection of poems Sugar-Coated Pill.

You want to speak of War
I want to speak of Peace.
You say Punish
I say Forgive
You speak of God’s Wrath
I speak of His Mercy
Your Quran is a Weapon
My Quran is a Gift
You speak of the Muslim brotherhood
I speak of the brotherhood of Man
You like to Warn others
I like to Welcome them
You like to speak of Hell
I like to speak of Heaven.
You talk of Lamentation
I talk of Celebration.
You worship the Law
I worship the Divine.

You want Silence
I want Music
You want Death
I want Life
You speak of Power
I speak of Love.
You search out Evil
I warm to the Good
You dream of the Sword
I sing of the Rose petal
You say the world is a Desert
I say the world is a Garden
You prefer the Plain
I prefer the Adorned
You want to Destroy
I want to Build
You want to go Back
I want to move Forward
You are busy Denying
I am busy Affirming
Yet there might be one thing
on which we see eye to eye
You want Justice
So do I.


Polymath and prolific author Ziauddin Sardar was conspicuously brief in his comments, only noting that in addition to compassion, which Nafeez Ahmed had very correctly highlighted as a much more important theme in Islamic teachings than the antagonism towards other religions, it is the complex notion of Tawhid or 'Oneness' which holds center stage in Quran. This should not only be understood as referring to the radical monotheism of Islam, stressing the unity and unicity of God or the transcendent, but also to the integrity of creation.
This brought Sardar also to a different reading of khilafa. Instead of interpreting it as an injunction to the establishment of a caliphate or formation of an Islamic state -- used as the affirmation of the inseparability of religion and politics, Sardar suggest returning to the etymology of the word: the vicegerency over creation entrusted to man by God. Such an understanding, turning man into a trustee, would also be helpful in enhancing the awareness of the ecological questions facing mankind -- issues that are not featuring prominently in the thought of most Muslim ideologues. (See also his blogging the Quran).