Winds of Change.NET: Is Islamic Studies Waking Up?

September 28, 2002

Is Islamic Studies Waking Up?

by Joe Katzman at September 28, 2002 1:40 PM

Rick Heller of Smart Genes reminded me of this one. I had seen Danny Postel's Chronicle of Higher Education article before, but had been too pressed to blog it. "This deserves wider readership," Rick said. Upon reflection, he's right.

"Mr. Hashemi and other dissident Muslim thinkers - including Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2001) - oppose not only the authoritarian regimes that rule most Muslim countries, but also the Islamist movements that have risen to prominence in recent decades. These scholars, who regard such movements as reactionary rather than liberating, call for a radical transformation in the very structure of Islamic civilization - an opening up of Islamic societies to dissent, toleration, political pluralism, women's rights, and civil liberties."

And that's just for starters. More promising still, the shift has a strong generational component. It's worth your time to go and read the whole thing. There's also a transcript of a live, online discussion with Khaled Abou El-Fadl, a professor at UCLA and one of the good guys. I've covered him before.

I don't honestly know if a culture of democracy and liberty (as opposed to a veneer of same) are possible in Arab Islamic culture as it exists today. This much I do know, however: we must try. Success in that endeavour would do more than almost anything else to protect us against Islamic fundamentalism, especially if it's accompanied by the liberation of women. If acceptance of that transition is to happen, it will require the help of people who can speak to the culture from within its own frame of reference.

That's the great service people like El-Fadl, Hashemi et. al. are performing.

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#1 from Tufail at 3:21 am on Nov 21, 2005

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