Islamic Reformer or Sectarian?

 

        Islamic Reformer or Sectarian?  

 

A look at the ideology at Submitters and Islamic “reformers”

 

The need to return to the teachings of the Qur’an by passing theological assumptions and tradition  is recognized by all thinkers who believe the Islamic world is need of a reform. The sentiment to return to the Qur’an is a sentiment shared by many who may not consider themselves simply religious and not part of an intellectual enterprise. The degree of over coming tradition in favor of the Qur’an various between different currents in the Islamic world who may be classified as “Islamic intellectuals”, reformers, and non reformist-idelogicial oriented folks.  These broad categories include more specific trends on the ideological spectrum. Reformers for example could range from those who are politically and socially progressive to those who take a conservative approach. Not all the currents could be classified as “reformers.”  Some Islamic thinkers may dislike tradition but not be proponents of reform. There are those who take an individualistic approach to the Qur’an  and feel they could safely ignore the stagnation in the Islamic world. Then there are those who may or may not claim to be reformers but take a purely ideological approach.  Some of latter would be classified as “fundamentalist” even if they are not “traditional” adherents of orthodox Islam.

 

All these groups may agree that the need for serious Muslims to rethink the position of the Qur’an and Islam but they differ in the degree to accept one thing (the Quran) and reject the other.  Most  of the Islamic intellectuals and reformers  believe that the Qur’an’s position should be placed above secondary sources of Islam which include traditions, scholarly opinions, hadith, sunnah, sirat, etc.  They are more than willing to reject certain hadith that contradict the Qur’an, clash with reason, found to be dubious according to modern critical-history. These reformers people who may reject “all” hadith simply because it does not fit well into those categories, and not for any other ideological reason.  However, there are those who reject “all” hadiths for ideological reasons. In practice their ideology is based on the belief that the acceptance of hadith deems one an idolater.  This particular category believes that the Qur’an actively rejects any and all hadith. For them the Qur’an is not the primary source of religion but the “only” source.   They could not be classified as “reformists” since they reject Muslims and the need to “reform “ them. We will explore this more in detail.

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa and his heirs spend a lot of time talking about “sects” and use words like “sectarian” often. One can look through the early issues of Muslim Perspectives and see Dr. Khalfia referring to the sunni and shia as “sects.” Dr. Khalifa was correct in his assessment that sectarian strife plagued the Muslims world and hindered intellectual as well as spiritual development.  Edip Yuksel, one of Dr. Khalifa’s students and one deemed to rebellious by others, uses the word “sectarian” a lot on his 19.org website. Yuksel refers to other qur’an translations as “sectarian.” Yuksel has a webpage called a “sect-o-meter” which is supposed to measure how sectarian one is. The questions on the sect-o-meter unsurprisingly give precedent to those who reject hadith and concede to the mathematical ‘miracle.’  Not surprisingly, the ‘sect-o-meter’ has a limited amount of choices and not able to reflect different views among people subscribing to the Islamic faith.

 

What is the understanding of sectarianism according to Khalifa and Yuksel? Both characters as well as other Qur’a-only adherents constantly call traditional muslims (be it sunni, shia, etc) as idolaters or Muhamadans. They include in the category of idolaters those that would say the name of Muhammad (or any other person) in prayer. The students of Khalifa even refer to the belief that hadith has religious value, even in subordination to the Qur’an as “idolatry.”    Khalifites adamantly believe that all those are going to hell for the perceived idolatry attributed by Dr. Khalifa to them. In my discussions with people from this group I tried to understand their definition of sect. They basically referred to anyone as a sect who adopted a name for themselves other than “submitter”  or has perceiving left that the Qur’an centered notions for other views.  This understand is no helpful as we shall see.

 

What is sectarianism from an academic view? A google search defines the term as “excessive attachment to a particular sect or party, especially in religion.”’ This obvious definition is helpful but not enough to show us the dynamics of sectarianism.  To make our enquiry worthwhile we need to see how sectarianism manifests itself in practice and how it is dealt with by others.  Returning to Rabbi Google, we learn that many of the discussions about sectarianism involve the strife in Iraq between the sunni or Shia for example but there is also interesting information on the conflict in Ireland that historically existed between Catholics and Protestants.  What is noteworthy from some of the academic literature is that sectarianism is not adequately defined. One study I read on Irish violence related that legislation dealing with sectarianism did not define the term very well.  With regards to Iraq there were studies that advocating reframing discussions about political and religious identities to “groups” instead. Another study advocated that sectarianism equates racism (Defining Sectarianism and Sectarian Hate Crime. Neil Jarman August 2012. In practical legislation I managed to find one example in the USA for laws against sectarianism, The New York services Non-discrimination compliance defined sectarianism as a tendency to  "serve a particular religious group or to promote the doctrine of a particular religion in general.” The point of this policy was to ensure state funding was not provided on a sectarian or discriminatory basis.

 

The most helpful understanding of sectarianism I found in academic literature dealt with the Northern Irish conflict.  Higgins and Brewer defined sectarianism as  “the determination of actions, attitudes and practices by practices about religious difference, which results in them invoked as the boundary marker to represent social stratification and conflict’ (THE ROOTS OF SECTARIANISM IN NORTHERN IRELAND Gareth I. Higgins and John D. Brewer Queen’s University of Belfast) Brewer also discusses the ,” cluster of ideas, beliefs, myths and demonology about religious difference which are used to make religion a social marker”(ibid.) There are other studies that I have yet to read that discuss the Charismatic movement of American Christianity which I do not have access to.  Nevertheless I think Brewer and Higgins did a good job in bringing light to explaining sectarianism. From this basis we can better analyze  the claims of Qur’an only adherents.

 

The study of religious sects and cults offers us opportunities to see how sectarian groups operate. In my own studies I noticed that there are more sects the Mormon denomination than any other Christian current. These groups often form based who is perceived to be the leader and they all dismiss each other as being false. The notion of the “one true church” holds dear to groups that do not have more than a handful of people.   Certain cults often form based on what they perceive to be the lack of orthodoxy among the mainstream groups. Jehovas Witnesses would argue that mainstream churches do not adhere to the bible while only they read it correctly.  Many of these groups would fight over doctrine that would seem unimportant to most people.  Early Christianity saw a fight between the monophysits and Chalcedonians over the nature of the man of Christ.  Many informed Christians today would not understand the reason for the split given that both groups accept the Trinity and share the same notion of salvation. Is not this split over a periphery issue?  Yet as in most cases, fights over power are disguised as ideological as we see in both religion and politics.

 

Sectarianism is not confined to religion but any group that manifests some kind of ideology. There are sects across the political spectrum from the far right to the far left but in most cases they are one of the extreme ends.  There are a number of communist parties that identify themselves  based on their perceived orthodoxy to Marxist ideology. They dismiss each other based on whether they adhere to the teachings of Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Lenin,etc. Even among those different currents there are more splits based on some notion of periphery value. As a small example there was a split among the Trotskyists between those who offered critical support to the Soviet Union and those who labeled it “state capitalist.”  The idea that a small group of people who are desperate for resources and influence would split over an idea which is purely theoretical may sound weird to the un-initiated but is the reality of religious and political purists.  Often these groups dismiss each other and label the other as “revisionists”, “opportunists”, etc.  They would even label other groups as “sectarian” for their lack of relationship to the working class when in reality the same group that makes the accusation has no more of a relationship then the other one. Some political groups are more conscious of the danger to sectarianism than others. There are a few groups on the left for example that work with other groups in coalitions and do not have an ideological barometer to disqualify people so easily.

 

The Quranic perspective is pertinent to understanding sectarianism since subject matter relates to groups that identify as believers. The  Qur’an has something to say on the issue of sectarianism to. "[30:32] (Do not fall in idol worship,) like those who divide their religion into sects; each party rejoicing with what they have." The Qur’an tells the believers not to divine from each other and form sects.  The holy writ warns against those that have a false pride in thinking that they are right while everyone else is wrong.  It is with this perspective that we can further analyze the question of seeing where certain Quran-only adherents fall to in the spectrum of sectarian ideologies.

 

People from the Submitter group do not see themselves as a sect.  On paper they appear to be most non-sectarian and quote Surah 2:62 which gives them the appearance of believing everyone is going to heaven. I would argue that the definition of “submitter” is the best non-sectarian name and I agree with them as far as this.  But in reality these people have dismissed everyone as going to hell, other than those who share their faith. Dr. Rashad Khalifa stated a number of times that people who rejected the supposed “miracle” of math things in the Qur’an were doomed to hell.

 

Some of the followers of Dr. Khalifa identify themselves as reformists.  But what type of reformation do we mean? A general definition of reformation concerns the reforming of a specific institution such as a church.  Edip Yuksel considers himself a champion of Islamic reform. Certain views on his website and in the Reformist translation of the Qur’an appear to be progressive more or less. But progressivism is not the opposite of sectarianism. There is a manifesto for Islamic reform on the 19.org website which is very long but gives an idea of what Yuksel understands as reform.  (https://19.org/blog/manifesto-for-islamic-reform/)  Edip Yuksel shares Dr. Khalifa’s views that acceptance of hadith is “idolatry” so could he be considered a reformer?  If someone with those views could be considered a  reformer then we would conclude that sectarian and reformer sometimes collide.

 

With our brief review of academic literature and study of sectarian formations we see that “sectarian” best defined in as an active relationship. How does one group relate to the other? Contrary to what some Submitter folks have told me being a sect is not based on what name someone identifies as. Someone’s  attitude towards the other is what identifies them as sectarian. A Mormon who believes they have the one true church could be considered a sectarian. A mainstream church such as Methodist may have views that some liberal thinkers would find too narrow minded. But if the Methodist church considers denominations other than it’s own as Christian than I would not classify it as sectarian.  In the world of islam, the Salafiyya are arguably the most sectarian because they reject other groups as non-muslim and some actively “takfir”  folks who disagree with them.  The kharijites at one time took the takfiri route but their modern descendants, the Ibadi of Oman, have created the least sectarian Islamic country in existence.

A proponent of Islamic reform would strive to make the Qur’an the center of faith. The focus on what is essential such as getting rid of non-quranic practices, putting ethics in front of blind ritual would be a hallmark of Islamic reform.  In the case of Islam the Qur’an would have to override a hadith on any practical issue and I imagine Edip Yuksel and others would agree with me up to this point.  But what do we make of the hadith?  Many Islamic intellectuals have advocated for putting the hadith in subordination to the Qur’an. They more or less accept the general validity of hadith but reject any hadith that conflicts with the Qur’an.  Some of these ladies and gentlemen may admit privately that they do not believe in any hadith but see the issue is divisive when genuine reform could still be carried out. However, the Islamic “reformers” mentioned earlier argue that the belief putting any legitimacy to hadith deems one an idolater.  These Quran-only adherents would thus be actively against the Islamic reformers who mere want to put the Qur’an first.  The “reformers” have essentially takfired other Muslims whether they progressive or traditional.   But the problem is one you label everyone as non-Muslim (or non-submitter) then you have left the playing field, stepped away from the dialogue table and formed your own group of people.  I could not see how we can call such people “reformists” when they do not wish to “reform” the mainstream but only takfir them.  The issue of hadith is a periphery issue, but like most sectarians and cults, these quran-only adherents raise the issue from the periphery to the center.