What Is “Progressive Islam” Anyway?

By Adam Misbah’ul Haqq

Since the emergence of the “progressive” movement within the rubric of the global Muslim community it has drawn criticism and adoration from various arenas of thought. Omid Safi, in his recently published book on this topic goes into some of the distinct ideals held by this “progressive” movement, and I think he does a remarkable job of crystallizing the feelings many Muslims have in their hearts about the future of Islam in a world defined by hostile partisanship. I would like to offer what I understand “progressive” to mean in the Islamic context in the terms of methodology.

Over much of the twentieth century, the term “progress” did not have a positive track record. Much of the tyranny and genocide that marked our last century was clothed in the dogma of “progress” by the ideologies in power. So will “Progressive Islam” bring the same notions of “progress” that led to the world wars and the various secular massacres that followed? Or is this “progress” different, representing a clean break, within the Islamic paradigm, from recent movements that have sought to restrict Islam to a phenomenon that took place in Arabia almost a millennium and a half ago?

In ancient times, most religious traditions agreed on a cyclical articulation of time--time was more or less a series of patterns which expanded and contracted regularly creating a sort of breathing cosmos, hence the rise and fall of civilizations and the birth and death of all living things. Since Darwinism first swept through the industrialized world, people have viewed time from the perspective of evolution—humans began as abominable creatures (possibly an animal or other organism) and then evolved. This view of time sees humans as “progressing” into God. Such an ideology has fueled the ambition to world dominance.

Because the term “progressive” signifies that the goal of the approach is “progress,” we must not only define “progress,” but also identify the goal this “progress” hopes to attain. For instance, the goal of a computer salesman might be to sell 100 computers a month, or an artist to paint one masterpiece in his lifetime. What defines “progress” for the Muslim who considers “Progressive Islam” as more representative of his or her own personal convictions than the alternative denominations and/or schools of thought?

First we must understand that this movement, like almost all movements in history, was not founded by one single personality (scholar or Imam). Even the four schools of thought within the Sunni tradition did not take off simply on the diligence of one individual, but instead the movements fed off of the social and political climates in which the scholars were engaged. This is why you find such intriguing transformations within the schools of thought as they sought to adapt themselves to the needs to the time.

This “Progressive Islam” also arises in a similar context, except that “Progressive Islam” does not command much authority amongst Muslims because it lacks a principal founder to which the ideals can be traced. Another draw-back which the “progressive” movement faces in maintaining the authority necessary for its survival and practicality is that when one thinks of “Progressive Islam” they don’t equate its positions with competent scholarship. Because “Progressive Islam,” which is a Western articulation of “what Islam is potentially,” is equated with the social whims of American Muslims, and because it is not backed up with consistent and principled scholarship there is very little keeping what I believe to be a very healthy direction in Islamic thought from being corrupted, self-serving and counterproductive to that very potential.

If progressive Muslims are serious about their positions, they should begin with the most paramount question, “What does God want?”

In other words, the intention should be fixed upon seeking to define the will of God, because it is for this purpose that our traditional jurisprudence emerged, and it is due to the questions they sought answers to that we even have a tradition of inquiry. The principles which govern “Progressive Islam” must be agreed upon and clearly stated so that the potential for misunderstanding the positions of the movement might be minimized.

The worst thing for a social movement such as this is that it becomes associated with poor academics and capricious conclusions. To avoid this and to remain within the high standards of our scholastic tradition we must engage the source texts (nass) directly. We must develop a methodology which will regulate our research and guide us to safe conclusions regarding the will of God. After all, if we fail in discharging this paramount duty with the utmost diligence, self-restraint and honesty, qualities which result from God-awareness (taqwa), then we will be guilty of negligence before God (a serious crime to say the least).

Our endeavors to flesh out this new direction in Islamic thought must meet not only basic academic standards, but it must also provide the Muslim community with sound results. The advocates of “Progressive Islam” must be transformed individuals themselves, and leaders must surface in this movement to navigate it through the treacherous waters all movements must endure.

It is my conviction that “Progressive Islam” must revolutionize the way that our religion is viewed, understood and realized throughout the world. Because the normative stereotypical imagery of Islam is pompousness, violence, backwardness and hate, images which unfortunately many Muslims themselves manifest, it is of the greatest urgency that “Progressive Islam” emerges to combat this association. However, the movement should not be defined by its ideological opponents, as the modern Sufi and Wahhabis have done. Instead the movement should define itself first and foremost by qualified scholarship and a sound methodology of approach.

The foundational presumptions of that methodology should be rooted in those traditions which illustrate God’s relationship to man and vice versa. For instance, when God poses the question, “Do you love your Creator?” the obvious answer would be an unequivocal “Yes!” God then says, “Love your fellow man first.” In this simple tradition we can draw up several principles about the relationship which must exist between God and His slave, the Muslim.

Muslims must begin to concentrate on the central themes which define and govern the religion. For example, God chooses to identify Himself primarily through the attributes of selfless compassion (ar-Rahman) and the distributing of that selfless compassion (ar-Raheem) within the created order (Alam). This can be seen in the formula “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem,” and we are told to recite this before we do anything worth doing. If we extract the origin of this formula we will discover that this attribute of absolute selfless compassion, ar-Rahman, is derived from the tri-literal root R-H-M, and it is this root form which carries the meaning “womb.” The mother’s womb sustains and nourishes the fetus, a parasite that feeds off of the mother’s body and grows thereby, but the mother does not take anything from, nor does she benefit from, the fetus inside her.

This is why I rendered ar-Rahman to be “selfless” compassion, and this throws light onto why this is the attribute God chooses to identify Himself with almost as a royal title. The Arabs were unfamiliar with this word before the revelation, and some claim it has Syriac origin (God knows best), but nonetheless it remains governed by the laws of the Arabic language. The relationship between God and man can then be defined as one of absolute dependence, man is the fetus both in the womb and beyond it.

Now, one of the methods God employs in dispensing this sustaining mercy (rahma) upon His creation is through the medium of revelation. Hence the title given to Muhammad in the Qur’an is “the selfless mercy for all orders of creation” (rahmatun li’l-alamin). If the coming of the Prophet is a source of selfless mercy in the sense that God is nourishing and cultivating us through such a medium, then we would be hard-pressed to construct “Islam” in a way which is defined by harshness and severity. If we apply this “rahma principle,” and granted it must be further articulated, in our engagement with the sources, then we can come to some coherent conclusions about what the goal of “Islam” is, and how best to attain it.

It is this kind of detailed logic which could open up a new direction in Islamic thought. That is not to say that this is the first time this has been examined; quite the contrary, what is meant by this is that by applying a thematic approach to our source texts we can draw up mature conclusions which will then translate into the desired “progress.” Much more would need to be considered of course, and this is only one tiny piece of a massive puzzle, and it is this puzzle we have set ourselves to the task of putting together.

This direction of thought must come to some conclusions about the old constructions of authority, namely the Sunni and Shi’i, and the doctrinal assumptions held by the Muslim majority. We must acknowledge the dichotomy and conflict in the early doctrinal development between these two distinctions, Sunni and Shi’a, and that this conflict has raised real issues not only throughout history but more importantly in the contemporary age where those differences are emphasized at the expense of the similarities in order to fracture their already decaying relationship with each other.

On top of this, the progressivist must come to terms with the traditional lore, traditional interpretations of the Qur’an, traditional jurisprudential and legal issues, and the theological structure from both a practical and philosophically sensible standpoint. The progressivist must study the traditional literature (hadith) and develop revolutionary criteria for qualifying and validating reports, criteria which would take into account all existing collections of traditions and evaluate them on a case by case basis.

Regarding interpretation (‘ijtihad), the progressivist should work within the basic established disciplines while developing new approaches, ones that will ensure that the search for God’s will is taken seriously and with absolute sobriety. Having employed the required disciplines, the progressivist must seek to develop ways of interpreting the Qur’an which will not only engage its audience as did the Qur’an on its initial recital among the Arabs, but ways which will clarify the foundational beliefs and premises (usul). To locate and actualize these foundational beliefs and premises, the interpreter of the Qur’an must extract principles from the text, principles which remain hidden in the Qur’anic discourse, which will aid a defined sense of what “progress” means in Islam. This interpretive endeavor must be calculated and precise, taking full advantage of not only the traditional perspectives, but also acknowledging the research of contemporary Western academics in order to fully understand, on a profound level, what the Qur’an has to say, and ultimately, what God wants.

Now, it is true that Islam is not monolithic, and that it exists as a colorful mosaic of understandings and applications, but if Islam is to function as a viable alternative to modern day world-worship, then it must have an essentially sound theological premise. “Islam” must be defined by someone (here I don’t mean an individual), otherwise it is an abstract concept with no real uniform consistency. What I am advocating here is that “Progressive Islam” as an ideology be strengthened with a sound methodology. The ideological inception of “Progressive Islam” is understandable, but in order for it to become authoritative amongst Muslims, and indicative of the actual will of God as it exists with Him, it must be systematized at least in terms of its foundational premises.

At the beginning, I stated that I would like to propose my own conviction of what constitutes “Progressive Islam” in terms of methodology. Here I would like to touch on a theoretical issue which will come up in every way, shape and form in the context of the development of a structured “Progressive Islam”. That is, to what extent is God’s will contingent on the will of man or vice-versa? To put it differently, can a movement of hearts, in this sense “Progressive Islam,” determine the will of God as it exists with Him?

Pre-modern jurists all agreed that their codification of what became associated with divine law (shari’a) was the result of their endeavor to “discover” God’s will. The question that would be at the heart of a methodology defining this movement should be, “How do I discover the will of God?” How does one discover God’s will and negate their own subjective orientation? How do we know the difference between what God wants and what we want?

This question has plagued many great minds. Many concluded that if they stick to the literal aspects of the Qur’anic text and assign the allegorical aspects to the realm of “God knows best” that they would escape their own subjectivity. This however only proved to produce individuals who mastered the art of injecting their own convictions into how the Qur’anic discourse is absorbed, and the results of the literalist construction of the texts is a well known blunder. That is not to say that their convictions were the result of the whispers of Satan, but it is to say something about objectivity versus subjectivity when dealing with a text like the Qur’an.

The Qur’an is a complex phenomenon, soaked in imagery, and revealed during an intense social and cultural upheaval. We lack a sufficient methodology for interpreting the Qur’an taking into consideration its relativity (and that is not to say that the Qur’an, in and of itself, is relative) to its historical or mundane origin. The reason this has never been approached in the pre-modern period is because scholars who toyed with the idea never advanced it, and because of the early Ash’ari dogma of the uncreated Qu’ran (though I personally believe the Qur’an originated in its essence from God, I believe that the spiritual truths which constitute the Qur’an are clothed in mundane language and ideas, regardless of how beautiful the Arabic text is).

This Ash’ari doctrine was upheld because they (the scholars who professed this particular theology) didn’t want to reduce the Qur’an to a passing phenomenon; to safeguard its “otherness,” they refrained from any critical engagement in this direction. That is not to say that the occasions of revelation (asbab’ul nuzul) weren’t considered, but it is to say that their role was considerably undermined by various ideological factors prevalent during the formative period. The scholars of the classical period developed, from their basic assumptions as to what role the Qur’an must play, methods of approach and principles of interpretation. The interpretive communities which arose from this process remained consistent with the doctrinal positions and dogmas espoused by their own schools of thought, and went on to fashion how we read the Qur’an today. Fortunately many contemporary scholars are challenging this traditional approach though they remain unable to effect real change among the masses for the time being. The point I was trying to convey was that we cannot escape our own subjective humanness; however, we can minimize its negative effect and discover the will of God by appealing to our own higher nature, thus rising to meet our humanness. Our “subjectivity” is deplored because it is associated with the lower nature of our being, and “objectivity” is praised because it is associated with our higher nature. This is why I stated that this is a theoretical issue, and it of course involves certain philosophical assumptions about the dual nature of man which could be found in the most basic reading of the Qur’an.

Now, this appeal to the higher nature must, if it is going to produce an approach to the sources seeking God’s will, be refined and ennobled with belief (iman) and God-wariness (taqwa). The question would naturally arise as to how those qualities would exist if the interpretation itself is not complete? The answer to this is that belief in God and wariness of Him in the sense that one believes with a conviction in the heart that they are accountable for everything they do must supercede all interpretive endeavors, even the most basic.

Western scholars, though they may be diligent in their research, often suffer from presumptions about the existence/validity of God which taint their approach. But Muslims approach the text with belief and an awakened consciousness which compel them to follow their heart and the belief within it through to conclusion. Umar ibn Kayyam once described them this way: “[They] do not seek interpretation through meditation or by discursive thought, but through the purgation of their own inner being and the purification of their disposition.” That is, to limit the “subjectivity” which treats the source texts as its own object of manipulation, the interpreter must engage in a systematic purification of intentions and character. We have all seen the terrors of an Islam divorced from spiritual warfare and inner-struggle. “Progressive Islam” must seek to regain this lost element in scholarship by making it an integral part of the interpretive dynamic. It’s time that the advocates of “Progressive Islam” step up to the plate and reclaim their religion, as they say, in a noble and upright manner.

The tasks that face the progressivists are many and the responsibility of discharging these obligations rests upon the whole Muslim community. Each religious tradition retains within its guts its own potential for ruin or survival. It is the followers of a path who maintain its traditions in a manner keeping with the times, and who ascribe interpretations to an otherwise dead history.

When we (Muslims) understand that “we” are “Islam,” then I believe that we will make a more conscious effort in determining what “Islam” is and by extension, who “we” are. Eventually, if this movement is successful, the label “progressive” will be dropped and Islam will once again be associated with progress and beauty. Until then we will wallow in the hell of complacency, and suffer at the hands of the construction of Islam advocated by our despotic and belligerent Wahhabi brothers or rise to the challenges enshrined in this movement. Perhaps just as deadly as the Wahhabi movement in terms of its anti-spiritual, pro-political philosophy is an Islam defined by the whims of post-modern man and his plight to nowhere. Let us all make a supplication that we be given the resolve and certitude of belief necessary to handle the tasks before us. Amin.