Shariatic Islam cannot be reformed

Submitted by Concerned European (Lithuania), Jan 12, 2007 at 04:16

[The majority of those who talk of the possibility of reforming islam at a glance have NO IDEA OF WHAT HAPPENED IN HISTORY 50 years ago, not to mention 1400.]

To make a short summary - Islam in its classical shariatic form (that what has been called by by the Sudanese liberal thinker Mahmoud Muhammed Taha "the First Message of Islam") cannot be reformed. It contains too many elements which were normal in the middle ages but not nowadays, while its system perhaps was capable to adapt itself to the slow medieval pace of changes, but not to that of our epoch. It can only be replaced by the "the Second Message of Islam", ie. by a liberal form of post-Islam which stresses morality and spiritual perfection of man and society, while at the same time discards obsolete legal codes of the 7th century.

I see problems even with the country as Turkey where generals having forcibly removed Sharia from the public life, became complacent and saw no need to defeat Sharia ideologically. In result, although Turkey is a secular state, there are still lots of Turks believing in Shariam therefore a pressure from the Army is needed to contain pro-shariatic elements and there is danger that Sharia still can make a comeback.

As for moderate, liberal post-Islam I am both optimist and pessimist. I see a sufficient number of seedlings of liberal Islam in both Islamic history and in current reality, yet unfortunately these seedlings are under a thick shade of the forest of the conservative and political Islam, even thicker today as it was in the Middle Age. And hardly these seedlings will prosper without an axe which would undercut that forest. Unfortunately many people in the West only give more fertilizers to the trees of the forest.

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