Islāmic reformist views of Western culture

‛Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis (1889–1940)

Following up on my post yesterday on a translation of a speech credited to the first caliph Abu Bakr used by the Algerian Islāmic reformer ‛Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis (1889–1940) as a response to what he saw as failings of the Ottoman caliphate, an article by Ibrahim Kalin of Georgetown University, Islam and the West: Deciphering a Contested History (available publicly as of this writing), from Oxford Islamic Studies Online describes four main modern response in the Islamic world to Western culture. The approach he calls "critical engagement" is reflected by the Islāmic reformist tradition of which Ibn Badis was part:

From the Ottoman intellectuals Namik Kemal and Mehmed Âkif Ersoy to their colleagues the Iranian Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and the Egyptian Muḥammad ʿAbduh, the reformists sought to unlink the Western value system from the material achievements of Western civilization, that is, science, technology, democracy, and constitutionalism. Their assumption was based on a clear distinction between an objective material civilization, which was represented by the modern West, and spiritual values, which the Muslim world did not need to borrow from the West. While this view is still widely held in the Muslim world, extreme modernization and globalization have made such distinctions impossible. [my emphasis]

The other three positions he calls total adaptation, "outright rejection and denouncement of Western culture as cultural imperialism" (Wahhābīs and Salafīs) and the kind of traditional Islām holding "that a more elevated ethical and spiritual dialogue with the West (and the rest of the world) is possible while maintaining one's [non-Western] cultural tradition."

The jihadist groups like Osama bin Laden's original al-Qa'ida, which scarcely exists any more in the form it did in 2001, are generally extreme manifestations of the Sunni Salafī tradition. Shi'a groups like Hamas, of course, reject the majority Sunni brand of Islām including its Salafī variety.

Kalin also makes this important observation:

The legacy of colonialism continues to make a profound impact on Islam-West relations today. Many Muslim countries fought wars of liberation against European powers but after independence found themselves dependent upon their former colonizers. The current distribution of global power, once wielded by Europe and now by the United States, fuels a sense of alienation, frustration, and mistrust in the Muslim world. In addition to pressing policy issues, Samuel Huntington's implicit claim in his Clash of Civilizations (1996) that there is a collision between the fundamental values of Islamic and Western worlds and that "Islam has bloody borders" was viewed as epitomizing a point of view that justifies the current global power imbalance to the detriment of non-Western cultures and societies. The events of September 11th and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have further increased tensions between various Muslim and Western groups. Many in Europe and the U.S. see extremist groups in the Muslim world as a threat to the existence of international security and to the future of Western civilization. Many in the Muslim world see the "war on terror" as a war on Islam and Muslims. As [John] Esposito and [Dalia] Mogahed show in Who Speaks for Islam (2008), the overwhelming majority of Muslims subscribe to the universal principles of human rights, rule of law, and democracy, which are also Western values. But they also want the West to respect Islamic culture, religion, and tradition. This entails a more reasoned and balanced discussion of Islam-West relations than equating Islam and Muslims stereotypically with terrorism, violence, irrationalism, oppression, or cultural backwardness. In this regard, Islamophobia, the unfounded fear of Islam and Muslims, and the hatred arising from that fear are a major source of tension. [my emphasis]

Tags: albelhamid ben badis, islam