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What is Religion and How
Flexible is It?
Intl 440 / Murat Somer ©
• What is religion?
– Magic?
– Supernatural and mysterious
– Social ideology?
• Durkheim:
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• “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things, things set apart
and forbidden—beliefs and practices which united
into one single moral community called a Church,
all those who adhere to them.”
• R is simultaneously based in:
• Sacred(God*)
• Social (god)
• *: or sacred axioms like the four Noble Truths and NirvanaSalvation in Buddhism
• Durkheim: Religion cannot be based in
supernatural (assumes there is a natural order) or
mystery (should offer order and predictaibility for
social life, not arbitrariness)
• Kierkegaard: Religion needs to be unbelievable so
that it can become believable: “If I am capable of
grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but
precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”
• How can R based in the sacred reinvent itself
to adapt to social change?
• How can people reinterpret religion to make
room for modern values (such as gender
equality, democracy, secularism, human
rights) and pluralism?
• Bayat: Muslims and Christians adapt to
democracy, not Islam or Christianity. But:
• Theological constraints
• Political constraints
Religion as Text
• Each major Eurasian traditon has some
authoritative text.
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Ancient Greeks – Homer
Jews and Christians – Bible
Muslims - Koran
Zoroastrians – Avesta
Hindus – Vedas
Buddhists – Tripitaka
• How can any religion reinterpret its authoritative
text (Cook)?
• Athetizing: question the authenticity of a specific
part of text. Claim it is spurious.
• Abrogation: play one principle against another
• Read text metaphorically
• The phenomenion of soft belief: residual
religiosity (only believe those aspects not
disproved by science)
• Higher criticism of the Bible: philologically
interpret holy text just like literature, any other
text from the past
• Cook claims:
• Islamic world least affected in the world by
soft belief and higher criticism of the Bible,
espcially the latter
Question of “creation”
1. Holy text uncreated: direct word of the Divine, literal
interpretation. Only athetizing possible.
2. Holy text created by the Divine to engage a historical
society:
athetizing; metaphorical reading; abrogation;
transposition. All deals with the explicit meanings of the
text.
3. Holy text created as a cultural product of a historical
society:
athetizing; metaphorical reading; abrogation; higher
criticism of the Bible (hermeneutics, deconstruction, also
seeks the hidden meaning of the text, the intentions of
the “author”)
• Cook: “Traditional Islam has not been resistant
to the notion that the revelation reflected the
milieu in which it was revealed….But TI could
never have made the leap from the idea of a
scripture which engages the society in which it
was revealed to the notion of one which is a
product of it.”
• Cook: Higher criticism of the Koran is not
acceptable in Islam
• But there were exceptions (İnalcık):
• İmam Ghazali: Everything has one visible-outer
(zahr) and one invisible-interior (batıni)
appearence.
• => every verse in the Quran has one literal-visible
and one hidden-batıni meaning
• Fakhruddin Razi used philosophy, sophism and a
combination of Ash’ari and Mu’tazilla schools in
interpreting the Quran.
• Most Sunni ulama rejected Razi’s interpretations
but was widely used in Ottoman Turkey
• Mu’tazilla (rationalist) school: Quran created
How do we interpret the Quran?
• Is Quran created?
• Which view would be preferred by states?
• The debate between the Muslim theologian
and jurist Ibn Hanbal (780-855) and the
Caliphs l-Ma’mun and al-Mu’tasim
• The Caliphs wanted to uphold the Mu’tazila
view that the Koran was created. Ibn Hanbal
opposed this view and was called before
Mihna (Inquisition)
• Quran uncreated and inimitable.
– Tabari: “whoever claims otherwise, you can shed
his blood.”
• Similar debates in Hinduism and Christianity.
• Early Muslim period: Muslim jurists used both
qiyas (analogical deduction) and taqlid
(precedence) in ijtihad (independent
reasoning to interpret the Koran).
• Early 900s: Most Sunni jurists agreed
• Closing of the door of ijtihad. Only taqlid from
then on.
• Piscatori: “But a great sea-change began to set
in from 18th century on.”
• Traditionalist Akhbari school (Iran): “any
individual’s judgment fallible.”
• Usuli school (Iran): “learned people can
interpret and offer opinions.”
• Muhammad al-Wahhab (Arabia): “Muslims
have been passive. Go back to original
principles. Taqlid wrong.”
• Al Sadia al-Mahdi: “Taqlid has undermined the
vitality of Muslims and opened them to
foreign domination.”
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Open the door of ijtihad
Martaza Ansari
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
Muhammad Ab’duh
Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi
Muhammad Iqbal
Hasan al-Banna
Isma’il Mazhar
Ali Suavi
Namık Kemal
Abdullah Cevdet
Musa Kazım
Ziya Gökalp
İsmail Bey Garpinskii
Halide Edip Adıvar
• Examples:
• Muhammad Ahmad Khalafallah (1947): Quran is
literature in a sense which abandoned the claim
that they embodied literal historical truth. God’s
concern was to move the Arabs of the day to
embrace Islam
• Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1992): Quran “cultural
product” reflecting historically specific aspects of
the culture and language of the time
• Cook: How do modern commentators of the
Koran respond to the challenges of modern
times (e.g. positive science, religious
pluralism, gender equality?)
• Play one verse against another
• Accept the principle but limit its practice
Example 1: Science
• Koran as science book (risky)
• Muhammad ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida and Sayyid
Qutb:
• Koranic text as metaphor
• Metamorphosis implies social exclusion
• God’s custom implies natural law
Example 2: religious pluralism
1. The sword verse: “slay the polytheists..”
(Q9:5)
2. The tribute verse: peace with “people of the
book” who pay a tribute. (Q9:29)
3. “There is no compussion in religion. Rectitude
has become clear from error.” (Q2: 256)
Fundamentalists focus on 1 and 2, modernists on
3.
• Catholic Church: opposition to religious pluralism
and liberal political principles until the Second
Vatican Council in the 1960s..
• “Give to Ceasar to what is Ceasar’s and to God
what is God’s” (Matt 22:21)
• Vs.
• “You could have no power at all against me unless
it had been given you from above” (John 19:10)
• Lapidus: religious and political institutions in
Muslim countries are separate in practice but
maybe not in theory
Example 3: gender equality
• Modernists claim men are superior to women and
husbands superior to their wifes.. but this does not
apply to everything.. Not to faith, or property rights for
example..
• Ambiguity similar to Southern Baptists’ declaration on
family life in 1989: wives should “graciously submit” to
the “servant authority” of their husbands.
• But justification of full equality would require higher
criticism of the Koran?
• Why do male Islamist modernists abrogation
vis-a-vis religious pluralism but not vis-a-vis
gender equality?
Example 4: Democracy
• God is the abolute sovereign
• “and seek their counsel in the matter.” (3:159)
• “And (Muslims’ affairs are decided in)
consultation among them.” (42:38)
Kurzman
• Traditional Islam
• Modernist Islam ( c.a. 1840 – 1950)
• Secularism (c.a. 1950 – 1970) and Islamic
revivalism (c.a. 1950 - )
• Liberal Islam?
New answers to:
• Who can speak for Islam?
• Why speak now?
• What to speak?
• How to speak?
Modernist Legacy
• To what extent has Islamic modernism
affected the subsequent developments
throughout the Islamic world?
– Iranian Revolution
– Pan Arab nationalism
– Turkey