The Reformation and Islam
A recurring element of much analysis is the claim that "Islam needs a Reformation" or that "Islam is waiting for a Luther". What we have here is an analogy, between the state of Islam today and that of Latin Christianity in the later fifteenth or early sixteenth century, which leads to a diagnosis, that what is needed is a movement within Islam similar in nature to the Protestant upheaval of the sixteenth century. This analogy is deeply misleading in a number of ways. In particular it misunderstands the nature of the actual events of the sixteenth century and of mainstream Protestantism. It leads to a fundamental misreading of the nature of Islamist movements and ideas, and of their likely consequences. However, a corrected version of this analogy, which draws upon more recent developments in our understanding of the history of Latin Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later, not only gives an insight into the nature of the ideological conflict that has been going on since at least the 1920s, but also provides hints as to what strategy should be adopted to deal with Islamist movements and ideas.
The notion of contemporary Islam standing in need of a Reformation reflects a particular view of both Protestantism and pre-Reformation Catholicism that has become part of the folk memory of the educated in most of the historically Protestant nations, particularly the US and UK.
In this perspective the late medieval Church was backward, obscurantist and dogmatic. The Reformers burst open this closed system of thought and opened up dogma to individual judgment and criticism. The Reformation is thus connected with freethought, individualism, and the decline of religious authority in the secular sphere. To this way of thinking there is a direct connection between Protestantism and the later emergence of modern liberalism.
In fact this radically misunderstands the nature of mainstream Protestantism and the motives and ideas of the majority of Reformers. It also caricatures the actual condition and quality of late medieval Catholicism. It makes more sense to see the Reformation, not as a 'progressive' movement but as a conservative reaction to the humanism, rationalism and scepticism of the Renaissance, and also as a response to the increased contact between Europe and other parts of the world. The Reformers saw the Church as too worldly, contaminated by pagan survivals and philosophy, and too interested in abstract reason rather than faith. They wanted literally a Re-Formation, a restoration of the church to its original pristine and apostolic condition. They also wanted to purify society and to use the secular power to enforce Christian practices and ethics upon the general population. Where they had power, as in Geneva, the result was a theocracy. They did argue against the need for a distinct clergy, but this did not mean support for unrestrained individual judgement. Rather it meant submission to the consensus of the learned and the rule of the 'Elect'.
In fact, far from contemporary Islam being like the late medieval Church and in need of a Reformation, it makes more sense to apply the analogy in a different way. Islam, we may say, is having a reformation right now. Islamists like Sayyid Qutb are in the same position as Luther or Calvin (or perhaps Jan Hus, given Qutb's fate) and if there is an analogy to be made it is between contemporary Islamism and sixteenth and seventeenth century Protestantism. The Islamists' view of contemporary Islam and the historical mainstream of Islamic civilisation is very similar to the view of Catholic Christianity taken by reformers such as Calvin. Like the Reformers, they wish to restore an imagined pristine and uncorrupted original version of their faith. There are other similarities as well, such as the fervent iconoclasm, the stringent personal morality and the demand that it be imposed by the civil power, and the declaration that many nominal believers are in fact infidels. If we apply this kind of analogy, what conclusions might it lead us to?
One is that the most likely consequence of this movement is dissension and civil war within the Islamic world as much as conflict between the Islamic world and the rest of humanity.. The desire to create a purified version of the religion, free from what are seen as accretions, leads to a rejection of many actually existing practices and forms of worship which then have to be suppressed. It also means that there will be increasingly bitter divisions within the Islamist movement itself as well as between it and both the mainstream of Islam. Moreover the example of the impact of the Reformation on European thought suggests that one consequence will be a subsequent reaction within the Islamic world against literalist and strict versions of the faith, with an emphasis instead upon personal piety, in the way the reaction against the religious enthusiasm of Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to the appearance of pietism and natural theology among groups such as the 'Moderates' who came to dominate the 18th century Church of Scotland.
However the most important conclusion that we might draw from a revised analogy of this kind is that what the Islamic world actually needs is an Enlightenment rather than a Reformation. One of Bertrand Russell's favourite remarks, which he made in several of his works, was that Christianity was a religion that had 'lost its nerve'. By this he meant that it had made critical concessions to the universalist and rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment and above all that it no longer took seriously some of its central claims, in particular the claim that the Christian faith was the only way to salvation with the only alternative eternal damnation. This should lead to the conclusion that the thing to do is to argue for secularism and rationalism and most importantly, to encourage the critical analysis of the text of the Quran. The Islamist movement in politics and ideas is best thought of as a reaction within the Islamic world against the main elements of modernity, which responds to the challenge posed by modernity and the Enlightenment in the same kind of way that Reformers responded to the impact of the Renaissance.