Visiting Egyptian Scholar Talks about Reforming Islamic Thought

Left to right: Professors Tarif Khalidi and Nasr Aby Zayd

In a lecture delivered on April 14 at West Hall, a leading Egyptian scholar refuted the prevailing view that Islam and modernity are mutually exclusive, saying there is a great need to rethink Islam, particularly in view of the wave of terrorism-branding now dominating the world today. Organized by the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at AUB, the two-hour talk was entitled "Reformation of Islamic Thought: Limits and Possibilities."

Professor Nasr Abu Zayd, who had been forced into exile in the mid-1990s after his writings had offended Egyptian clerics who decreed he should divorce his Muslim wife, is the first of the University's Sheikh Zayid visiting professorships, which will bring two scholars per year to share their knowledge on the modern Middle East with AUB students. He was introduced by the center's Professor Tarif Khalidi, who remarked, "Professor Abu Zayd is right at the forefront of contemporary Muslim thinkers...who provoke us, challenge us to rethink Islamic thought."

At the start of his lecture, Abu Zayd said, "I feel the need to send a very urgent message to Europe where I live and to Muslims everywhere. Rethinking one's beliefs is not optional, it has to happen. Otherwise any religion, any culture, would die."

Abu Zayd also sent a more oblique message, saying that throughout history whenever Muslims felt that their identity was being threatened, they reverted to a traditional rather than a reformist discourse, since human nature is about surviving and protecting one's existence. As a result, he fears the threat of the "American neo-colonial policies in the Middle East" will weaken the case for reformists in favor of extremists.

Abu Zayd believes that modernity and Islam are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in the preface to his 2006 book on reformation of Islamic thought, he wrote: "The rise of Islamic activism since the 1970s and, more recently, Muslim terrorist attacks in the West, have pushed Islamic exclusivism and (violent) fundamentalism once again squarely into the public limelight. As a result, for many non-Muslims across the world, Islamic culture and religion are now closely associated with authoritarian rule, cruel traditions, and human suffering. Sadly, these non-Muslims actually share the Muslim fundamentalist convictions that the 'real Islam' is simply incompatible with modernity, democracy, and respect for human rights."

In his lecture, Abu Zayd surveyed the history of Islam and noted that reformist thought was prevalent in Islam before the emergence of movements that called for restoring the Muslim Caliphate, which was abolished in 1924 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. "There was a trend to modernize Islamic tradition," said Abu Zayd., "but after the abolishment of the Caliphate, the trend was for Islamizing modernity."

Abu Zayd said that Islam was not solely based on the sharia before the nineteenth century, but had other philosophical, theological, and mystical facets that were dropped in favor of legal theory. "Islam became focused on what is allowed and what is prohibited for Muslims, while neglecting the depth of theological and mystical debate," because for a period of almost four hundred years and particularly after the Mogul invasion, Muslims had fallen into decadence, and thus found themselves compelled to revert to legal theory [sharia] to define and protect themselves. As a result, sharia-based Islam took precedence.