Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

7 0Islam i n World Cult u r e sof judgment. It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women, andcivilians. It is courageous to protect freedom; it is courageous to defend oneselfand not to attack” (ibid.).Endless contemporary examples of the polyvocality of Islamic law couldbe cited. Does Islam, traditionally suspicious of representational art, allowphotography? Some scholars see no problem; after all, everybody needs anID card. But others class it with the evil of idol-worship. Music? Some say theProphet forbade it; others merely see it as frivolous; others even support it asa means of d a ’ w a . Democracy? Some claim that it misappropriates legislativepower from God; others see the Qur’an and the sunna approving it in theform of consultation between ruler and ruled and decisionmaking throughcommunity consensus, on the model of the activities of the Prophet’s earlycompanions. But neither the continuity of Islamic scholarship—nor therather different tradition of wealthy warlords like Osama bin Laden claimingreligious credentials—represents the main trend of change in Middle EasternIslam.The main trend of change is the expansion of education and the consequententry of increasing numbers of citizens and subjects into informed discussionand debate of Islamic ideas and practices. In Egypt, the leftist physicianMustafa Mahmud rediscovered Islam in the late 1960s and gained afollowing over the succeeding decades by writing Qur’anic commentaries, novels,and articles blending Islam, science, and everyday experience. Since hehas been the host of a television series called Science and Faith, his following hascontinued to grow, allowing him to found a large private mosque along with aclinic and other social service institutions in one of Cairo’s western suburbs(Salvatore 2001). The Syrian civil engineer Muhammad Shahrur studied inboth Moscow and Ireland before publishing, in 1990, a bestseller called T h eBook and the Qur’an, in which he reinterpreted sacred scripture without seriousreference to the preceding fourteen centuries of scholarship, bypassing earlierwork as irrelevant to the modern condition. In a more recent work, his I s l a m i s tC h a rt e r, Shahrur writes thatIslam is a covenant between God and the whole of humanity, and . . . faith is acovenant between God and the believers who specifically follow Muhammad’sp r o p h e c y. Hence we declare ourselves as Muslims first, and second as believerstrusting in God, a conscious trust free from compulsion. This leads us to talkabout freedom, knowledge, and legislation. No one has the right to claim a monopolyor exclusive possession of them, because these concepts belong to all thepeoples of the world, and without them any given society would descend to thelevel of beasts. Hence what distinguishes human society is knowledge, legislation,ethics, [and] freedom as described in the Qur’an as viceregency and trust.All these are God’s gifts to mankind. (Shahrur 2000)