Editor's Note:
The Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service would like to thank Jon
Mandaville for permission to share his paper with our readers. This
paper was presented at the Saudi-U.S. Relations Symposium at Portland State
University on January 26, 2004.
Religious Reform, from American and Saudi
Perspectives
By Jon Mandaville
A scant month and a half ago, 60 Saudi
citizens � men, women, clerics, academics, and policy makers, all of national
stature � gathered in Makkah to conduct a national dialogue on the theme
�Excess and Moderation� � not a bad theme for the presidential campaign
currently underway in the United States.
Over the past year or two, it has been the conventional wisdom of American pundits to suggest wisely, �The problem with
Islam is that it never had our Christian age of Reformation.� And, some are
suggesting that we are now seeing the beginning of that reformation. Nothing
could be further from the truth, and it�s a good thing too.
Let�s keep our history straight. There is no
parallel at all between Christianity�s Reformation and reform in Islam,
however much we may want to write other people�s religion into our own
terms. The Reformation was a rebellion against a highly centralized and
structured church grown corrupt. Some fundamental theological issues were at
stake; a few have never disappeared. But, the main struggle was over reform of
the institutions of religion. The result of that struggle was the
decentralization of the church into state religions (for example, Lutheran
Prussia, Anglican England), utopian communities, a plethora of stand-alone
churches, and the radical Anabaptists of Munster.
Islam has never had a church or a pope, never
had a centralized institution of religion against which to conduct such a
rebellion. It still doesn�t and isn�t likely ever to have. For that
reason alone, we will never see a Reformation, in the European sense, in
Islam. That doesn�t mean that we have not seen religious reform there. The
1,400 years of the history of that religion, in fact, is the
history of reform after reform and constant adjustment to changing times. The 18th
century reform movement of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab of present-day Saudi
Arabia was only one of several reforms underway in Islam at the time. It�s
not surprising that there is a reform or rethinking underway today in Saudi
Arabia of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab�s precepts, just as there is reform of churches
constantly underway in the United States.
In these current reforms, we have some shared
issues. There is, for example, the matter of reforming the institutions of
religion. In the United States, we see the movement to ordain gay priests or
ministers and the threatened secession of one piece of the Anglican Church
when that reform is applied there. In Saudi Arabia, there is no church
institution per se, but the institution of the mutawa�in (or
�religious police�) certainly functions like one. This is a venerable
Islamic institution more often known as ihtisab; its history runs back
to the 7th century of our era. It was intended to protect the public
welfare by ensuring fair business practice in the marketplace and discouraging
immoral behavior there. There is an effort now underway to reshape this
institution to better-fit present-day life in Saudi Arabia.
Related to this is another basic shared issue
-- the question of how social morality might be maintained if not by the state.
However much we might insist that the government of the United States is not
involved in morality, in essentially Christian issues, one need only to look
at the laws on the books here which legislate against pornography and gambling or most recently gay marriage. The same laws apply in Saudi Arabia.
Implicitly or explicitly, religion is entangled in both states; and in both
states, debate and demands for reform of this relationship are part of
today�s scene.
The debate itself is a shared issue -- freedom of speech. We both wrestle with the same problem. Are we obliged to
give Satan his five-minute television ads and expect that our children (and
some adults are children) will have been taught well enough in good moral
behavior to turn their backs on his temptations? Both Islam and Christianity
hold firmly to the human capacity for free will, believe that God leaves it to
us to chose � or not � salvation. Does not a government, which dictates
choice � or censures it � take away that ultimate individual
responsibility?
Dealing politically with these issues is
enormously risky. Many politicians in the United States and Saudi Arabia would
rather not touch them. Crown Prince Abdullah did in December with his
sponsorship of the National Dialogue on Excess and Moderation. Out of this
four-day long debate and discussion came some quite extraordinary resolutions
-- a public call published and discussed in the Saudi press for government and
religious adjustments to a changing Saudi society.
In the realm of governance, the resolutions
call for citizen participation in government policy. Talked about for years,
this is a trigger for elections at both the municipal and national levels
likely within the next three years. There is a call for a separation of
powers. An independent judiciary is fundamental to Islamic government systems
and is nothing new to Saudi Arabia. A
judge is answerable to the law and to God, not (at least in theory) to the
government. An independent legislature to balance against the other two
branches of government also falls in the tradition of Islamic government,
which requires (again, in theory) the bay�ah and advice - now, through the
Majlis al-Shura - of community leadership for legitimacy. Broadening these
principles through the elective process and building them into a fundamental
code of government to fit modern Saudi society surely makes good sense.
Other suggestions for government reform
include transparency for government budgets and economic planning and the
institutionalization of the process of national dialogue, an indirect call for
free political discussion in a better educated Saudi Arabia.
What of religious reform? Religious
institutions, says one resolution, should come to agreement on the definition
of such divisive terminology as the word �terrorism.� Language from the
pulpit should be modernized to conform to the times. Above all, there is a
call for the rejection of independently issued fatwas, religious legal
opinions, on public issues. In effect, there is a call for return to respect for ijma�,
which is a consensus of the religious community.
These are all suggested reforms in the
direction of moderation and away from excess. Many would say these are
laudable goals of religious reform for America, torn apart too often as it is
by the fiery individual fatwas of national religious leaders like
Robertson, Falwell and officers of the Southern Baptist Convention. Crown
Prince Abdullah praised the resolutions. He also said they must be approached
carefully, cautiously � with moderation.
Excess and moderation -- both of us, the
United States and Saudi Arabia, have choices to make. Excess is saying, �You
do it our way and become like us or take the consequences.� Excess is Osama
Bin Laden � a man of no country for good reason � saying �Do it my way
or you�ll die.� Excess is General Boykin, the man in charge of training
Special Operations teams for work in Iraq [U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of
Defense for Intelligence], saying to church congregations
around the country, �I know that God is with us, a nation of Christians. I
know with certainty that we are fighting a tool of Satan, Satan himself.�
There are more than enough reforms to sponsor
in both countries and work to do by religious leaders and their communities,
teachers like us and their classes. In both countries, materialism and its
self-centered values threaten the moral underpinnings of society. In both
countries, there is reasonable concern that money is eroding the political
system.
Moderation is the willingness to listen to
others, learn, acknowledge their point of view, accept that there may be more
than one way to skin a government, more than one way to live a moral and
religious life, and more than one way to approach God.
I�m not proud of the fact that one of the
Christian congregations addressed with those distasteful words by General
Boykin was in my own town of Tigard, Oregon. I know members of that
congregation who were horrified to hear them. I also know that such
exclusivist excess is most often a product of ignorance of the other � the
other people, the other religion.
We have our work cut out for us in both of
our communities, breaking down ignorance of each other�s religion and way of
life, encouraging discussion as we are doing here today. Education for
religious understanding, religious moderation, may be the most important
religious reform for both of us. There may be room for righteous anger at
perceived follies in both countries. There is no room at all for the excess of
self-righteous war.
Jon Mandaville is a professor in the
History Department of Portland State University.
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