Luckily, though, not all. There are still some contemporary thinkers following in the footsteps of the classical intellectuals. The late Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, an Egyptian who died in July 2010, declared that sharia was "man-made" and that the Koran was deliberately manipulated by religious scholars to justify their unquestionable authority. For wanting a more humanistic and contemporary interpretation of the Koran, he was labelled an apostate, required to divorce his wife and hounded out of his country. Similarly, the 69-year-old Abdolkarim Soroush – who has argued that Islam cannot rely on the dogmatic certainties of the past and urgently requires rethinking – has been forced into exile from Iran.
Again, the great Syrian poet Adonis, 85, has been declared a heretic and imprisoned for his beliefs, simply because he wants to re-frame the whole notion of God in Islam. The orthodox, God, he says, is represented as the vengeful patriarch of an Arab tribe. He questions this characterisation of Allah as remote, perpetually angry and without mercy, ever ready to punish even the tiniest deviation from "correct belief" and unable to be depicted lest the gullible masses mistake the portrayal for the real thing. And in his works he seeks a human connection with a God who is always near and merciful.
Today, as in history, all attempts to rethink our understanding and relationship with God, to interrogate orthodox belief, to bring reason back to Islam, are shunned – not just by the fanatics but by the vast majority of Muslims. The manufactured articles of faith seem to have an unassailable hold on Muslim minds. And so the moderate free thinkers' legacy, so vital at this time of sectarian warfare within Islam, is swept collectively under the carpet of accepted, if artificial, doctrine.
This phenomenon is the central problem in all varieties of Islam. In the absence of reason and criticism, the heritage has become toxic. At best, it promotes intolerance and bigotry; at worse, it manifests itself as fanaticism and violent jihadism. And until more Muslims question it, they cannot claim that its manifestations have "nothing to do with Islam".
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=80864.0