Classifying Muslims

Abstract

Classifying Muslims Mohamed Mosaad Abdelaziz Mohamed Since September 11, 2001, politicians, law enforcement, media, and academics have been trying to find the perfect classification of Muslims. The simplistic and unspoken but true question that lies in the heart of this classification is basically how we can distinguish the good Muslims from the bad Muslims. Equally important: Can we identify a set of markers that may help us predict a turn of a once a good Muslim into a terrorist? I will start this paper by exploring common classifications that have been proposed, propagated, and widely used in the West. Demonstrating the futility of these approaches, I will explain the epistemological principles on which Muslims classify themselves. Western classification of Muslims Several concepts have been used to describe “good” Islam—the kind of Islam that would create a good Muslim. Those concepts had, in fact, been used long before September 11, 2001. One must recall here concepts such as liberal, interpretive, modern, moderate, Sufi, and folk Islam. Liberal Islam, as presented by Charles Kurzman, has three tropes: liberal Šarīʿah, silent Šarīʿah, and interpreted Šarīʿah. On liberal Šarīʿah, Kurzman writes, “The liberal shari'a argues that the revelations of the Qur'an and the practices of the Prophet command Muslims to follow liberal positions” (Kurzman , 11). The world religion of Islam that emerged more than 14 centuries ago is supposed to match “liberal positions.” By silent Šarīʿah, Kurzman refers to the argument “that the shari'a is silent on certain topics—not because divine revelation was incomplete or faulty, but because the revelation intentionally left certain issues for humans to choose” (12). Šarīʿah, in this sense, seems more like a set of limited legal injunctions rather than rules, principles, traditions, debates, objectives, and discursive articulations of historical realities. Finally, interpreted Šarīʿah, another supposedly desirable character, is akin to what I call interpretive Islam. Interpretive Islam is perceived as an opposite to literalist Islam, a classification that emerged probably from the problems of Christian history in the West. The opposition hardly speaks to the reality of Muslims, for Islamic scripture has always been subject to interpretations. Except for the marginal Ẓāhirī School in Islamic law, one can find a variety of schools that have had different approaches and methods of interpreting the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth. A more subtle definition of interpretive Islam was proposed by a number of modern Muslim intellectuals, such as Arkun, Hanafi, Soroush, and Abu Zayd. Here, scripture is articulated as a historical and human piece of literature. Those intellectuals do not necessarily deny a metaphysical dimension of scripture, but they insist that this dimension is not accessible to the human labor of interpretation. Humans can only treat scripture objectively and rationally as literature. Saba Mahmood offered an excellent critique of these approaches, which she called secular hermeneutics: “Underlying this hermeneutical project is a secularized conception of religion in which religion is understood to be an abstracted category of beliefs and doctrines from which the individual believer stands apart to examine, compare and evaluate its various manifestations” (Mahmood , 341). Since the nineteenth century, Western scholars have questioned Islam's compatibility with modernity. Surveying Western articulation of this question, Armando Salvatore and Muhammad Masud wrote: Western scholars were nevertheless divided on the question whether Muslim societies can be modernized. One group maintained that “Islam is in its very nature incapable of reform and progressive adaptation to the expansion of human knowledge” (Stoddard 1921, 33). In their view, Muslim societies could not survive in the process of global change. Others believed that Muslim societies have no choice but to modernize. However, they could do so only by adopting to the Western model. (Masud and Salvatore , 39–40) Accordingly, we seem to have two essentialized forms, that of “modernity” and of “Islam,” and they are deemed incompatible. The term “moderate Islam” might be the most confusing term reference to good Islam. Muqtedar Khan writes that moderate Muslims “argue that Islam embodies a message of compassion and peace sent by God to civilize humanity and to give human existence a transcendent and divine purpose. They are aghast at—and reject—the use of Islam to...