Majiid Nawaz… reforming Islam?

[Simon MathewsParticipant]

Majiid Nawaz is an interesting character. He used to belong to the group Hizb-ut-Tahrir which is a radical Islamist group. After a five year imprisonment he underwent a change of heart and has now founded a think-tank called Quilliam which promotes a “reform of Islam”.

Specifically Quilliam attempts to challenge extremism within Islam. It defines the term Islamism:

“It is the belief that Islam is a political ideology, as well as a faith. It is a modernist claim that political sovereignty belongs to God, that the Shari’ah should be used as state law, that Muslims form a political rather than a religious bloc around the world and that it is a religious duty for all Muslims to create a political entity that is governed as such. Islamism is a spectrum, with Islamists disagreeing over how they should bring their ‘Islamic’ state into existence.

Some Islamists seek to engage with existing political systems, others reject the existing systems as illegitimate but do so non-violently, and others seek to create an ‘Islamic state’ through violence. Most Islamists are socially modern but others advocate a more retrograde lifestyle. Islamists often have contempt for Muslim scholars and sages and their traditional institutions; as well as a disdain for non-Islamist Muslims and the West.

Quilliam argues that Islam is just a religion, not a political religion nor an ideology and that ‘Islam is not Islamism.'”
(source: Wikipedia)

Incidentally, Quilliam has received criticism by being funded in part by Sam Harris. Nawaz is a Muslim, not an atheist, and other Muslims have accused him of setting aside his principles for the money.

His attempt to reform Islam appears to be to discourage extremist thinking that takes Islam to be more than “just a religion”, i.e. that Islam is at the centre of all aspects of a society including politics.

This video makes an interesting point about the Qu’ran and how it is different from other religious texts like the Bible in that it prescribes an entire societal framework rather than simply a moral or philosophical one.

Christianity, through it’s various flavours, has kind of reformed itself inch by excruciating inch as society has changed which is what allows Christians (fundamentalists notwithstanding) to pick and choose from the Bible these days. Islam seems to be having more trouble.

My question is do you think it is possible for Islam to be reformed? At the very least Muslims would have to give up the idea that the Qu’ran is infallible because they would be forced to admit that parts of it should not be followed. Is that a mind-set that Nawaz and his ilk can bring about?

[SteveInCOParticipant]

Christianity, through it’s various flavours, has kind of reformed itself inch by excruciating inch as society has changed which is what allows Christians (fundamentalists notwithstanding) to pick and choose from the Bible these days. Islam seems to be having more trouble.

Actually fundamentalists pick and choose as well, it’s just that the scope of what they leave lying on the table is a bit smaller. None of them follow all of the mosaic law. They’ll make some argument about Jesus relieving some of it, but that’s the point–that’s the very escape clause that allows one to pick and choose. They’ll happily bring along the parts about homosexuality being an abomination where others will say “no need to” if they even admit the passage exists at all.

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