The Place of Tolerance in Islam

by Abou El Fadl, Khaled

• ISBN13: 9780807002292
• ISBN10: 0807002291
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-08
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

We suddenly find ourselves with very little knowledge of a religion and culture that continues to have an enormous impact on our world. Through a close reading of the Qur'an, Khaled Abou El Fadl shows that injunctions to violence against nonbelievers stem from misreadings. Even jihad, or so-called holy war, has no basis in Qur'anic text or Muslim theology, but instead was an outgrowth of social and political conflict.Reading the holy text in the appropriate moral and historical contexts shows that Islamic civilization has long been pluralistic, and even usually tolerant of other religions. Leading scholars of Islam offer nuanced commentary.

Author Biography

Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law at UCLA and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law.

Table of Contents

Contents

Editors’ Preface by Joshua Cohen and Ian Lague

1

Khaled Abou El Fadl: The Place of Tolerance in Islam

2

Milton Viorst: Puritanism and Stagnation

Sohail H. Hashmi: A Conservative Legacy

Tariq Ali: Theological Distractions

Abid Ullah Jan: The Limits of Tolerance

Stanley Kurtz: Text and Context

Amina Wadud: Beyond Interpretation

Akeel Bilgrami: The Importance of Democracy

Mashhood Rizvi: Intolerable Injustices

John L. Esposito: Struggle in Islam

Qamar-ul Huda: Plural Traditions

R. Scott Appleby: The Quandary of Leadership

3

Khaled Abou El Fadl: Reply

Notes

About the Contributors

Excerpts

Editor's Preface Joshua Cohen and Ian Lague Since September 11, Western discussions of Islam have typically been conducted through a contest of caricatures. Some analysts present Islamic extremism as a product of a "clash of civilizations" that pits Eastern despotism against Western individualism. Others see such extremism as a grim "blowback" of America's cold-war foreign policy. Engagement with Muslim faith commonly takes the form of simplistic pronouncements about "essence" of Islam: Osama bin Laden either represents the true message of the Prophet or corrupts a "religion of peace." As Khaled Abou El Fadl points out, these discussions are driven more by Western concerns-"are Muslims dangerous or not?"-than by a serious effort to understand Islam and the place of toleration and moral decency in its conception of a proper human life. In his lead essay for this volume, Abou El Fadl opens such a conversation. A professor at UCLA, theorist of Islamic law, and prominent critic of Islamic puritanism, Abou El Fadl works to reclaim the "moral trust" of Islam by recovering the Qur'an's universal principles from the historical and social context in which the text was received. He interprets Qur'anic verses about the treatment of women and non-Muslims in light of scriptural passages that call for mercy, kindness, and justice, and that emphasize the essentially plural nature of the human community. Abou El Fadl's engagement with these theological issues is enriched by a broad historical perspective. He points out that intolerant sects have traditionally been marginalized by Islamic civilization. But Islam, he argues, currently faces a crisis of religious authority owing to the political exploitation of Islamic symbols and the stagnation of civic and economic life in Muslim societies. That crisis has facilitated the rise of puritanical sects who interpret the Qur'an literally and ahistorically. Abou El Fadl acknowledges that the Qur'an itself, like other ancient religious texts, cannot forestall such interpretations: interpretation is an act for which readers must take moral responsibility. In the end, religious texts provide rich "possibilities for meaning, not inevitabilities," so "the text will morally enrich the reader, but only if the reader will morally enrich the text." While a majority of respondents accept Abou El Fadl's critique of Islamic puritanism, they take issue with this general conception of the debate and with his specific arguments. Some respondents contend that Abou El Fadl's brand of Islam will only appeal to Westerners and students in "liberal divinity schools" and that religious dialogue in the Muslim world will be useless unless it is accompanied by dramatic social and political reform. Other respondents argue that theological debates are irrelevant and that the focus should be on the Western sabotage of such reforms. A different group of respondents criticizes these same policies as part of an exploitative program of Western secularization, and argues that calls for Islamic "tolerance" betray the Qur'anic injunction for Muslims to struggle against their oppressors. These disagreements demonstrate that a discussion of tolerance in Islam cannot take place in isolation from debates about the distribution of political power and economic resources. But they also underscore the enduring challenge posed by religious morality in a pluralistic age: how can we retain the richness and intensity of conviction provided by a religious outlook while participating in what Abou El Fadl calls "a collective enterprise of goodness" that cuts across confessional difference