Can Islam and liberalism be friends?

Why is the tendency to stick to medieval punishments so strong in Muslim countries?

The year is 2014. Earlier this year three 16 year old girls studying the relationship between naturally occurring bacteria and certain plants may have found a way to create the potential for increased crop yields that could change the future of worldwide food production (bacteria enhanced plant growth) – a major scientific breakthrough worth celebrating. Across the Atlantic, India just recently sent a space probe to Mars, and even more recently the European Space Agency”s Rosetta spacecraft and Philae lander made history when it successfully made it to the surface of a comet. One could perceive these recent achievements as a sure indication of human progress and how far we have come from those days of ignorance when catching a fever would often be ascribed to a warlock’s magical spell. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The situation isn’t all that bright everywhere. One need only cast a glance over the recent goings on in other parts of the world like Pakistan, where recently a Christian couple was killed by an enraged mob for blasphemy. And more currently, the country’s pop singer turned cleric Junaid Jamshed is fighting blasphemy allegations for saying objectionable things about Prophet Muhammad’s wife Ayesha.

This begs a mind-racking question: How is it that we live in a world in which on one hand we have the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland unravelling quantum mysteries of the universe while at the same time in other places people are being threatened or killed over archaic religious notions? Why is the tendency to stick to medieval punishments so strong in Muslim countries? Why is an overwhelming majority of Muslims (76 percent in Pakistan and 86 percent in Egypt) in favour of punishments like death for apostasy or stoning adulterers?

One can argue that this western conception of morality has had a lot to do with the Protestant reformation of the 16^th century. The privatisation of religious belief that resulted from it paved the way for the Enlightenment which ultimately birthed the notion of a liberal secular democratic state system

To understand this better we need to revisit the concept of morality as is understood in the west as opposed to most Muslim counties. In the west, after the modern period, morality has come to be viewed as something influenced by but best online casino not necessarily limited to religious precepts. So while something like the Golden Rule played a significant part in informing the western conception of morality, it was improved upon by the philosophies of enlightenment thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, and Locke. The founding fathers of America also understood this when they drafted the US constitution declaring certain rights such as life, property and pursuit of happiness as man’s unalienable rights. In recognising this key distinction, the west has, to a degree, been able to conceptualise morality as something that constitutes those actions or deeds that are ends in of themselves rather than being a means to ‘incentivised’ ends — fear of punishment or inducement of reward; heaven or hell. This might explain why societies that largely predicate their morality on scripture/religion are more shame/honour based than guilt based – as is manifestly the case in many Muslim majority countries where honour punishments run deep.

One can argue that this western conception of morality has had a lot to do with the Protestant reformation of the 16^th century. The privatisation of religious belief that resulted from it paved the way for the Enlightenment which ultimately birthed the notion of a liberal secular democratic state system based on universal morality or meta-ethics. But is such a reform even possible in Islam? It appears that in a perverse and accidental way it has already happened. After all, the proliferation of radical groups like ISIS and AQ, each operating under its own interpretation of Islam, is an example of just that. However, unlike the west, this quasi privatisation of religious belief in the Muslim world is not an outcome of several centuries of steady contact with enlightenment and modernity but rather an unintended and bumpy consequence of a combination of events : the breakdown of the Ottoman caliphate and subsequent decentralisation of the Muslim clergy, sustained European colonialism, recurring US wars and western intervention, and of course a wrenching experience with modernity and forced secularisation first at the hands of colonial powers and later by the autocrats and dictatorships that they have historically supported. Add to this the fact that the Christian reformation was accompanied by mass literacy and economic prosperity — equipping people with the necessary tools to apply critical thought and reasoning to private faith – that lead to an organic development of the notion of a liberal secular democratic state; something that hasn’t really happened in the Muslim world. The literacy rates in most of the Muslim world are unenviable and the contribution from Muslim countries in the sciences, wanting. Such a state of affairs is unlikely to yield anything similar to the Enlightenment; in fact it may actually lead to more Salafi oriented groupings.

The literacy rates in most of the Muslim world are unenviable and the contribution from Muslim countries in the sciences, wanting. Such a state of affairs is unlikely to yield anything similar to the Enlightenment; in fact it may actually lead to more Salafi oriented groupings

Yet another factor complicating this scenario is Islam’s distinctness in contrast to other world religions. Like the other two monotheistic religions, Islam enshrines distinct edicts for living a moral life. But what makes Islam different is its claim to scriptural inerrancy. The Quran is not merely considered to be divinely inspired by most Muslims, but is viewed as the verbatim immutable word of God. Furthermore, given that a significant portion of the Quran deals with laws and regulations often laid out in fastidious detail, Islam is not simply a spiritual quest but an all-encompassing way of life – Deen. There is also little precedent in Islam for something like “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar”s”. That renders the ideal of a purely ‘liberal secular democratic state’ — that doesn’t necessarily draw its moral law from religion — challenging. It also raises the question of whether a Muslim majority country can ever be truly liberal.

Perhaps in answering some of these questions, we can get a sense of why in places like Pakistan serious crimes involving real victims often go unpunished while victimless crimes are at times met with the severest of penalties. In light of the disturbing state of affairs in most Muslim countries today, it is probably fair to say that the time for them to revisit and reframe their moral priorities has never been more exigent.