Author Name : Murad W. Hofmann
Book Name : Islam
2000. 2nd rev. ed ( ISBN 0-915957-70-1)
Pages
: 72
Price
: USD 6.95
Publisher
: Amana Publications, USA 14118/1997.
Murad Hofmann is a German convert to
Islam. He has had a distinguished career as a scholar-diplomat. He has
graduate degrees in law from Munich and Harvard, and has served for over
thirty years in the German foreign service; for several years he was Germany’s
ambassador to Algeria and Morocco. He embraced Islam in 1980. He is retired,
and makes his home in Istanbul. Islam 2000 is one of his several
works on Islam.
In the Preface, the author states
the thesis and approach of his book: He intends to describe ‘where the
Muslim world is at the threshold of the twenty-first century and what it
takes to make Islam the relevant religion for that century – worldwide’,
and to this end he has had ‘to be severely critical of both the Occident
and the Muslim world’. Seven pithy chapters follow. The first, entitled
‘A Bit of Muslim Futurology,’ outlines three Muslim views of Islamic history:
one pessimistic (Islam has constantly been declining since the Prophet’s
period), one optimistic (Islam has constantly been progressing), and one
middle-of-the-road (there have been ups and downs). Each view, he says,
can be supported with reference to the fundamental sources of Islam. Hofmann
himself leans towards the optimistic view, for the next chapter is entitled
‘A bit of Optimism’, in which he cites several facts to show that Islam,
whose viability as a religion was doubted by nineteenth-century Western
thinkers, has in the twentieth century become ‘the most topical media subject
of the last quarter of this century’ (p. 7). In contrast to Islam, ‘Christianity
is going through a virtual change of paradigm, and the so-called "project
of modernism" is failing under their own very eyes’ (p. 9).
In Chapter 3, ‘Christology Revisited’,
Hofmann holds Christianity responsible for the rise of atheism and agnosticism
in the West, and, citing the radical interpretations of the status of Jesus
by several modern Christian thinkers – Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and
Karl Rahner – speculates that ‘For the first time in fourteen centuries
there is a very real chance that Christian teaching will conform to the
Jewish, Christian and Qur’anic images of Jesus’ (pp. 15-16).
Chapter 4, ‘What Islam is Up Against,’
opens with the statement that it is ‘likely that the imminent collapse
of the established Christian churches will increase, in our multireligious
supermarkets, the demand for esoteric experiences’ (p. 17). This possibility
leads him to think that ‘Islam in the United States and in Europe … will
most likely have to face in the twenty-first century the very mixture of
attitudes so typical of Makkah at the time of our Prophet: neopaganism,
agnosticism, atheism, neopolytheism, and ethnocentrism (‘asabiyyah),
namely, people who worship idols like cocaine, astronomy, Boris Becker,
or Claudia Schiffer’ (ibid). The new battle line will be between
‘a minority of God-believing people – Muslims in the original sense of
the word -- [and] the majority of people for whom the notion of God has
increasingly become irrelevant and meaningless’ (ibid). After the
collapse of communism around 1990, we are witnessing the rise of a monoculture
– Western in origin. ‘If the Islam world does not want to live in such
a monoculture it must make a monumental effort to realise, against so many
odds, a twenty-first century Daru’l-Islam, i.e., a theocentric –
not Eurocentric – society in which God’s word is law and Islamic civilisation
can again be brought to a flowering’ (p. 20). Muslims can accomplish this
goal by reconstructing Islamic thought and practice ‘to a point where the
Muslim world can withstand the tide of postmodernism on all fronts: education,
communications, political science, law, economy, and technology’ (ibid).
Hofmann dismisses the notion that the West wants a dialogue with Islam:
‘Why should the West be interested in reopening questions of transcendental
character with Muslims after it has succeeded so splendidly in banishing
such questions from its own agenda?’ (p. 21) Hofmann develops this view
further in Chapter 5, ‘Islam and the West: Another Showdown?’ Here he observes
that, in the West, ‘Islam is the only religion that cannot count on
benign neglect or sincere toleration’. (p. 27; author’s emphasis).
The West, he says, continues to be implacably hostile to Islam and Muslims.
‘Bosnia’, he says, ‘is not the last but only the most recent crusade… In
fact, the age of the Crusades never ended’ (p. 31: author’s emphasis).
In Chapter 6, ‘How to Avoid Catastrophe
and Serve Islam,’ the author outlines his program of reform for the Muslim
world. Reform effort needs to be made in the following areas: ‘education
technology, women’s emancipation, human rights, theory of state and economy,
magic and superstitious practices, and communication (p. 41). The reforms
are predicated upon a clear distinction between ‘Islam as a religion and
Islam as a civilisation,’ between ‘sound and fabricated Ahadith,’
between Shari‘ah and Fiqh, and between ‘Qur’an and
Sunnah’ (ibid). Among the issues that are harming the Islamic
cause in the West are the issue of women’s status and rights in Islam and
the issue of human rights. Hofmann writes several pages to discuss these
issues (pp. 44-51). He also touches upon aspects of the Islamic political
and economic doctrines (pp. 51-56), and takes a critical look at Sufi cultic
practices and divination among Muslims (pp. 57-59). He makes a call for
Muslim unity, but adds that he is not calling for Muslim uniformity (p.
61). He allows different interpretations of Islam that might be offered
by Muslims of various geographical regions, but he warns that there can
be no German or American Islam, even though one may speak of an Islam in
Germany or the United States (p. 62). He concludes the chapter by observing
that ‘the Muslim world would seems to be particularly inept to portray
itself attractively. An unshaven Yasir Arafat with a pistol on his belt
on television is about the best propaganda anti-Arab forces could wish
to have, and that for free’ (p. 63). He thinks that only Muslims who have
been raised in the West can competently engage the Western audience in
conversation (p. 64).
Chapter 7 is entitled ‘The Task ahead
of US: What a Task!’ Here Hofmann stresses the need to distinguish between
the essential and the marginal in Islam (p. 66), ‘to distinguish between
the small number of eternal and unchangeable divine decrees found in the
indisputable text of the Qur’an from the bulk of rules and ordinances,
man-made and based on less secure textual material, found in the legal
treatises of the venerable Fuqaha’ (p. 70). He is of the view that
the most important work for the rejuvenation of Islam in the twenty-first
century will be done by Muslims living in the West (pp. 71-72).
I have provided a rather detailed
summary of the book because I consider it an important work. The book contains
a valuable analysis of the religious and intellectual scene of the Muslim
world. The author seems to have a sound command of the traditional Islamic
sources, and he is obviously at home in the Western intellectual tradition.
Not everything he says is new; and he himself acknowledges his deep debt
to Muhammad Asad (the Austrian covert to Islam, formerly Leopold Weiss,
who distinguished himself as a Muslim scholar) and others. But Hofmann
has a gift for aptly summing up religious trends and intellectual movements,
and his comments on a number of subjects – such as issues in Christology
and modernity – are worth pondering, just as his program of reform for
the Muslim world powerfully reinforces similar programs proposed by other
modern Muslim thinkers. True to the promise he makes in the Preface, he
is unsparing in his critique of both the West and the Islamic world. His
observations, which are often perceptive and trenchant, are made with a
candor that must evoke the reader’s admiration. A few criticisms are offered
below.
1. Hofmann represents those Muslims
who believe that the possibility of genuine dialogue between Islam and
the West does not exist – not because Islam is unwilling to hold such a
dialogue, but because a secular West, having already gotten the better
of one religion – Christianity – would be least interested in discussing
with Islam issues of a transcendental nature. But here one might ask whether
such issues are the only possible subject matter of such a dialogue. Is
it not possible for Muslim civilisation (assuming that such an entity exists
and can be identified as such) to interact with Western civilisation on
other grounds and work for a common cause? Second, if Western culture is
unwilling to take the initiative and meet Islam half way, can Islam take
the initiative and meet the West half way? Must Islam be reactive? Does
it have, or can it evolve, a creative or proactive agenda of its own? Third,
even though Western culture today is the dominant culture in the world,
it is not the only culture Islam has to contend with. How does Islam propose
to deal with such non-western cultures as Buddhist or Hindu? One might
argue that what Muslims need is a ‘general theory’ of non-Muslim civilisation
– a theory whose factual base does not consist solely of data gathered
from the study of a single – Western – civilisation.
2. The category of the West is problematic.
In reading Islam 2000, one cannot escape the impression that Hofmann
regards the West as monolithic. But if Islam may not be stereotyped as
a monolithic entity, the West may not be stereotyped as such either. For
one thing, there is a noticeably strong movement, in the West, of conversion
to Islam – as Hofmann himself is proof. For another, one might ask, Which
civilisation in history has always taken a thoroughly compassionate and
conscientious view of others? Put differently, whose responsibility is
it to present a favourable image of a civilisation? The West may be responsible
for stereotyping Islam, but have not Muslims through their apathy and inaction,
aided and abetted that stereotyping? And, incidentally, have Muslims not
stereotyped the West? If stereotyping stands in the way of true understanding
between the West and Muslims, then perhaps more than one party is responsible
for creating the problem.
3. Equally problematic, at least in
the context of this book, is the category of Islam – or, rather, of the
Islam world. Hofmann seems to pit the abstract theory of Islamic religion
against the empirically lived reality of the Western system of life. Needles
to say, any such confrontation – or comparison – can be manipulated to
the advantage of theory, which can be presented as a coherent whole as
opposed to a system in operation that can be shown to the contradiction-ridden.
But, quite apart from the fact that the lived reality of Islam in different
parts of the Muslim world is not exactly marked by a high degree of coherence
or consistency, one can say that the Islam and Western worlds do not, perhaps,
exist as discrete entities. Westernism does not flourish somewhere beyond
the borders of the Islamic world; it exists right in the midst of the Muslim
world, and Western technological models and intellectual systems have,
whether we like it or not, become part and parcel of the life of hundreds
of millions of Muslims. An important part of the homework for all Muslim
thinkers is to figure out how Western modes of thought and culture penetrated
the Muslim world in the first place. The West would not have become dominant
had it not been stronger, but, conversely, the Islamic world would not
have come in last had it not had a few chinks in its armour.
4. Hofmann speaks of radical development
within Christianity – developments that, according to him, have undermined
the very foundation of Christianity. The implication is that Islam has
stood its ground against the winds of modernity. But if Christianity has
been battered by modernity, then it may be because it was this religion
that bore the brunt of the onslaught of modernity. What are the grounds
for predicting that Islam will emerge unscathed from a full-scale war with
modernity? It would be unfair to charge a serious thinker like Hofmann
with triumphalism, but it may be a little early to reach definitive conclusions
about the relationship between religion and science. Twentieth-century
physics may be different from nineteenth-century physics, but it is a moot
point whether modern science has, to use Hofmann’s words ‘reopened the
door for the entry of religion into science’ (p. 23). Anthony Giddens,
author of The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, 1990), powerfully
argues that ‘we are moving into [a period] in which the consequences of
modernity are becoming more radicalised and universalised than before’
(p. 3; see also 47 ff.). As a side note, one may say that Christianity,
in its conflict with science, may appear to be down, but it is certainly
not out, as can be witnessed by the enormous amount of literature that
is continually being produced by deeply committed Christian scholars on
issues arising from that conflict.
In spite of the above criticisms to
which it may be subject, the book is a worthy contribution to the still
small body of what may be called the Muslim literature of self-reflection.
Hofmann raises a number of important issues, and a candid debate on these
issues, both inside the Muslim community and between Muslims and non-Muslims,
can only help to clarify the vision of Muslims as they move into the new
millennium.
(Courtesy ‘Studies in Contemporary Islam’,
vol 1, no 2, fall 1999)
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