One of the most heated debates concerning Muslims but mainly involved in the West, is the need for adaptation of Islam towards modernity
First, I think it is appropriate to thank Jesus and his multiculti-Radio Association for inviting me to come here today to the studio from which he develops and produces his radio activity. It is a great alternative for me to express myself through a medium like radio. For this reason, I also take this moment to thank the Youth House in Cordoba for the adequacy and the provision of these facilities, including space to encourage and promote dialogue between different cultures and ways of thinking that swarm scenarios in this global society. Finally, I welcome the listeners for your interest and attention.
The issue before us that demands and attracts our interest is Islam. In other words, Islam and some of the considerations and perspectives that revolve around it as a phenomenon that goes beyond what a "simple" religion.
As the audience would know, regardless of their beliefs or their cultural affinities, Islam is seen as one of the monotheistic religions that was established in the world since long time ago. Thus, another of the traditions revealed to mankind through the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Its main reference sources are the Qur'an and Sunnah, in them we can find all the knowledge necessary for the inception of Islam as such. The Qur’an is the message that God revealed to the Prophet during a series of life experiences along a mature stage of its existence. A message that would be transmitted gradually to his near and loved ones, who conformed the first Islamic community of the story itself. The Qur’an, as Muslim holy book, contains all the principles and foundations that shape and govern Islam. What is called Din of Islam.
However, the Sunna refers to the Prophet's life. The latter, collected and made by the traditionalists, his companions and followers, through complex mechanisms and rules that have come to constitute the so-called Science of Hadith. Some of those fans spent much of his life compiling the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (saw), which are basically consistent with the revelation, but they are completely different from it.
Such is the nature of Islam in its pristine conception. It is not possible to ascribe divinity to other than God, not as a matter of idolatry, association, or fanaticism, but because it completely clashes with the nature of the message that it integrates. For this reason the prophet has a purely human condition and, therefore, it is not possible to attribute him any quality or characteristic of God.
Well, just noted that Islam as such is, in accordance or analogy with Judaism or Christianity, one of the revealed traditions. That is agreed from a historical point of view. On the other hand, there are always disputes and debates about the ontological character of the Qur’an, however, this is a slippery slope, where only faith can provide answers. We will not enter here into the intricacies of a theological debate. Perhaps we can recall briefly the rise of Islam would inevitably accompanied by a number of intrinsic processes that would lead to the birth of a new sociological scheme, a new anthropological structure, a new social organization and a new political order.
That is, the original Islam in the community of Medina, in its inertia and its desire to transcend the borders of the desert and its inhabitants, was spreading to other regions of the Arabian peninsula and beyond those boundaries, but no longer as a philosophical or metaphorical knowledge alone, but as an idea, vague and rudimentary at first and then, over the years and dynastic successions, developed from what should be a partnership, a government, a system as a whole.
This final transition, resulting from the historical processes that affect mankind, has continued to modify the idea of "Islam" throughout the centuries. At all times there have been approaches of all types and attempts to describe Islam as a whole, as a final and complete message, but the result always ends up imposing similar, more or less valid interpretations, more or less appropriate, more or less accepted. For this reason, there are still gaps and differences among Muslims, as there are among the Jews themselves in their reflection on what is Judaism or among Christians. That is because religion cannot be understood or deployed outside the context, but every time you try to describe or define Islam, dialectics provides only multiple possibilities.
Is Islam what a person thinks and does that identified himself as such? Is Islam what an imam says or teaches in a mosque? Is Islam what we read and understand from the Qur’an? Is Islam the way government is organized in Saudi Arabia or Iran? Is Islam the way the Egyptians live? Is Islam what the Turks say it is? Is Islam the way a Muslim relates in Europe or the U.S. with the society around him? Is Islam a late religion?
The reflections that one can do if you want to delve into the matter are so many and so diverse that it would never end. So we can focus on the last question to pursue this action.
It remains remarkable that after 1400 years since Islam arose, one of the most heated and frantic debates concerning Muslims (being the West the one mainly involved with its thinking patterns and precedents) is the need for adaptation of Islam, the mentality and thinking of Muslims to the dictates of modernity, as is understood in some industrialized countries.
Is Islam capable of modernity? Is it possible to reconcile Islam with the principles and values, rights and duties of a modern society? Is Islam compatible with the laws of a modern state?
Some arguments are the subject of debate to which we have alluded, and so now I bring it up. Of course, the answers can be offered to these questions are not definitive nor univocal, nor decisive. Moreover, there are multiple ways to address these questions and to answer these doubts.
However, my interest is in pointing to the fact that Islam, though a religion with a strong and unchanging "Arab accent" and unavoidable " East substrate", has increased its presence or it is more obvious its presence in other countries out of Asia or Africa. Muslims in Europe, USA and Latin America are also part of the Ummah.
In that sense, their projections, their contributions and interventions represent a layer of the vast sediment that involves Islam. Moreover, in the race to understand Islam through the prism of the media and academic and scientific institutions in these countries, the discourse of Muslims belonging to these same societies should lead to a benchmark impact and a more significant and influential repercussion, especially if they pursue results that shed light on "Islam in context."
The dialogue with Muslims in your own town not only will led you to know Islam, but also your own people. The villages are full of cultures, all equally legitimate and valid. In addition, the cultures are not, at bottom, discontinuous, but they infiltrate into each other and merge into the lives of people, in a kind of cultural continuum. Hence Islam cannot be confronted with the West. Let’s say that one thing is that in a particular situation in which certain political currents of Islamic thought reject or oppose the models and the schemes proposed by the West as a banner of modernity and, a very different issue is that Islam, in its spirit and in its quintessence, lodge a unwavering incompatibility with modernity. One thing is a situation, a politic proposal and a completely different thing is a universal message, which must be open to the future of humanity, the swaying of the times and the influence of intelligence and reason. If it were otherwise, their universality is diluted and ecumenism would vanish.
The image, idea, concept or model of Islam are not built only with the reality of Muslims living in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Morocco, to name a few essentially Islamic countries, but the perception Islam must, and will, be motivated by the task and the passage of Muslims around the world.
In fact, one of the major problems and contradictions that have run Western countries such as Spain, France, England, Germany, Holland and Belgium, has been the historical development of an ideological Orientalism, calculated, markedly influenced by imperialism and the colonization and therefore, denatured. And since Islam is now widespread, and continues to expand in these societies in an emerging and vivid way, we cannot continue any longer to maintain that special image, uniform, foreign, controversial, resulting from the study and description of analysts, scholars and missionaries of the nineteenth century.
On the contrary, reality is what breaks and demystifies these chronics and characterizations, and shows that the approach to build a monolithic and convicted Islam as a cultural reference point is unsatisfactory to build modern, productive societies. Moreover, all this leads us to discover how Islam is also supported on the social and cultural landscape of our towns and cities.
I do not want to turn now to the particular history of Spain, where Islam has played a leading role in the past. I prefer to leave that subject, so hackneyed by the way, for another time.
Also, with the undeniable growth and development of Muslim communities in Europe and USA, both territorial and on the same network, which in turn are adapting their beliefs and their religious and spiritual interests to the mechanisms and management parameters and the politics of the current State, we are attending invariability to a new world order, the birth of a new paradigm. A global picture where Islam, like other religions, must coexist with the heady and overflowing contingencies of modernity. But not as an independent entity, but as intricate phenomena, whereas the subjects and protagonists of history cannot be excluded from this orbit and that context, especially revolutionary. Furthermore, when we realize that this paradigm is triggering within the so-called era of globalization.
Taking advantage of this approach, leaving aside the idea that we have entered a stage beyond modernity (what has been called postmodernism or transmodernity), one of the challenges that the global society faces is to meet the obstacles and setbacks of the socioeconomic system in which we live. And within this context of transformation of society, are the Muslims around the world who have to cope with the forces and contingencies of that change, without compromising their ethical, moral, religious, spiritual and even political and national standards. In this regard, we must also recognize that Muslims live between these extremes, where there is neither consensus, nor a cosensual image.
There are Muslims who see in Islam a doctrine, a legal corpus of principles, norms, rules and rigid laws that should govern all walks of life of individuals and their interaction in social and religious space. This would be the most similar concept to Islam as a religion. Moreover, this ideology is accompanied by the acceptance and assimilation of certain political specifications, giving Islam a political role and organic authority, with the risk that entails in the construction and dissemination of a dominant image of itself, authorized and "Orthodox".
But there are those who perceive Islam as a reference code from which to extract answers and practical solutions to the mundane concerns of daily life. Concerns ranging from how to behave at the table, how to deal with strangers, how to deal with your responsibilities, even the way one should address people or treat personal hygiene. Anyhow, a long and varied range of procedures and attitudes that may favour physical and mental balance.
In that order, there are those who conceive Islam as a spiritual guide, where only interested in the spiritual side, ranging from prayer to the dhikra (supererogatory prayers of remembrance and praise to Allah), reaching even to reject other aspects connected with the ethical-religious intercession.
On the other hand, one might ask the following at the expense of that spectrum briefly described: will the challenges of modernity faced by Muslims alter or blur all these variations? Is there a system that can minimize or even standardize disparities within Islam?
I argue bluntly that the nature of Islam, beyond the revealed "message" represented as a result of a particular and concrete historical fact, operates as a new order of universal aspiration. Now, the duality inherent within requires to understand that, neither is possible a return to the original Islam as some speculate, (at least in the way some suggest), nor will be a possibility to subtract the forces and mechanisms of history, while those forces will transcend the basis of that universal message.
All in all, the evolution of Islam is inextricable in the field of the Islamic community, since it does not live in isolation in a parallel world. This evolution takes place in many ways. We are not talking about the evolution of that original Islam, but the system that fosters. The changes, as occurred in the early centuries of Islam, where the Islamic jurisprudence appeared and strengthen, an extensive legal apparatus emerged and the main institutions were created, who still play a crucial role in the lives of Muslims and their societies, have continued to be made over the centuries. And hopefully there will be more changes as history moves forward.
In this way, Francis Fukuyama's theory about the end of history seems unlikely, because history is cyclical and therefore does not have an end or a beginning defined or definable. Also in this constant process of adaptation, which particularly affects Muslims and not so much Islam, will presumably preserve an unalterable idiosyncrasies and symbolism in the consciousness of Muslims themselves.
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