Scholar says Muslim world in need of religious reform

WAM

Shaikh Mohammad with Shaikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, during the majlis of Shaikh Mohammad in Abu Dhabi.

10/05/2007 01:06 AM | By Samir Salama, Bureau Chief

Abu Dhabi: The Muslim world needs religious reform to overcome the crisis in ties between religion and the state, and between religion and society, a Lebanese scholar said.

Speaking at the majlis of General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Dr Radwan Al Sayed, professor of Islamic studies in the Lebanese University, said the conflict between Islam as a religion and the existing political order has never been so intense as it has been over the past three or four decades.

"The political Islam movements, which emerged in the 1950s, revolted against Westernisation or modernisation and now globalisation. They also revolted against the traditional Islamic establishment.

"The revolution against the West and the traditional religious establishment led to the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hakimiya or the Islamic concept of sovereignty, which means the establishment of an Islamic state as a prerequisite for maintaining Islam," Al Sayed said.

He offered a reading of the current situation of the main political Islam groups.

His principal argument is that there is a conflict over the representation of Islam which is being waged on three fronts - a conflict within Islam itself between the conservatives (generally represented by the religious establishment), the revivalists (who advocate violence as a way of changing the status quo) and the neo-reformists, who work on a new project addressing the role of religion in political order.

A second front has been opened between the State and these groups as to who should have the power to represent Islam and how. And the third dimension to the conflict is the West's intervention in these internal debates about reform and its attempt to impose its own Islam.

Al Sayed, a staunch advocate of the need of Muslims to undergo reforms, does not see an Islamic State as the solution for this crisis "because this solution is based on a false premise that Islam is absent, and has to be revived in our social and political universe."

Holding all parties involved responsible for the crisis, the Lebanese scholar suggested that repression against the Islamic establishment in certain Arab countries under the pretext of setting up a modern state enticed acts of violence.

"Islamists should shun all forms of violence and the State should respect the religious establishment, which should be modernised to respond to the current challenges," he said.