{"id":46453,"date":"2015-09-05T16:13:54","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T16:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=46453"},"modified":"2015-09-05T16:13:54","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T16:13:54","slug":"is-islam-in-need-of-a-reformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=46453","title":{"rendered":"Is Islam in need of a Reformation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — perhaps it’s not Wittenberg but Westphalia we should be praying for ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"Reformation<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Ayaan Hirsi Ali <\/strong>clearly believes we need an Islamic Reformation, and she’s not alone. That much Mehdi Hasan<\/strong> concedes in a Guardian piece titled Why Islam doesn\u2019t need a reformation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In recent months, cliched calls for reform of Islam, a 1,400-year-old faith, have intensified. \u201cWe need a Muslim reformation,\u201d announced Newsweek<\/a>. \u201cIslam needs reformation from within,\u201d said the Huffington Post<\/a>. Following January\u2019s massacre in Paris, the Financial Times nodded to those in the west who believe the secular Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, \u201ccould emerge as the Martin Luther of the Muslim world<\/a>\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hasan’s piece was evidently written in answer to the Guardian’s take on Hirsi Ali’s latest book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali \u2013 review<\/a>, and is subtitled, Those who are calling for a \u2018Muslim Martin Luther\u2019 should be careful what they wish for<\/em>. His reason? <\/p>\n

Martin Luther<\/strong>..<\/p>\n

Luther did not merely nail 95 theses to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg in 1517, denouncing clerical abuses within the Catholic church. He also demanded that German peasants revolting against their feudal overlords be \u201cstruck dead\u201d, comparing them to \u201cmad dogs\u201d, and authored On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, in which he referred to Jews as \u201cthe devil\u2019s people\u201d and called for the destruction of Jewish homes and synagogues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

On the other hand..<\/p>\n

William Polk<\/strong> proposes what seems a powerful analogy in his December 2013 piece, Sayyid Qutub\u2019s Fundamentalism and Abu Bakr Naji\u2019s Jihadism<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

I have described elsewhere the movements of \u201cpurification\u201d inspired by such men as the Arabian Ahmad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the Algerian\/Libyan Muhammad bin Ali al-Sanusi, the Sudanese Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, the Iranian activist Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian theologian Muhammad Abduh. In a fundamental aspect, their teachings and movements resembled those set off in northern Europe by Luther and Calvin. These Christians and Muslims shared a belief in the absolute authority of the unalterable word of God as set out in the original texts. Their task was to go back to discover the \u201cpure\u201d message and lead their followers to implement it. However much they differed, both the Muslims and the Protestants were in this sense salafis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To my mind, that’s a far more persuasive analysis. <\/p>\n

Perhaps what we’re seeing today is an Islamic version of the European Wars of Religion<\/a>, following <\/em>a Salafist “Reformation”?<\/p>\n

In which case it might be time to work and pray for an Islamic Peace of Westphalia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — perhaps it’s not Wittenberg but Westphalia we should be praying for ] . ** Ayaan Hirsi Ali clearly believes we need an Islamic Reformation, and she’s not alone. That much Mehdi Hasan concedes in a Guardian piece titled Why Islam doesn\u2019t need a reformation: In recent months, cliched calls for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[602,621,360,205,526,497,1078,1047,753,1154,1,18,1286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16th-century","category-17th-century","category-21st-century","category-al-qaida","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-is","category-isis","category-islam","category-reformation","category-uncategorized","category-war","category-westphalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46453"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46467,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46453\/revisions\/46467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}