Getting The Terms of Argument Clear

A Deformation of Islam

Let's have a reformation, shall we.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has just published her latest book, entitled Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.  She begs an important question, What is a "reformation"?

Before we get into the details, for those of our readers unfamiliar with Ali, one of the most courageous voices of our day, The Daily Beast provides a brief biography:

Few figures on the intellectual scene today are as controversial or as compelling as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A Somali-born author, speaker, activist, and former politician, Ali, 45, became a hijab-wearing radical Islamist as a teenager in Kenya, then a liberal atheist as an immigrant in the Netherlands; the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 led her to a final break with faith. She became a member of parliament who championed the rights of women and girls in immigrant Muslim communities, drawing both applause and ire with her forceful statements about the role of traditional Islam in their oppression. That theme was at the center of the 2004 short film Submission, on which she worked with gadfly filmmaker Theo Van Gogh—and which led to Van Gogh’s murder by a Muslim man and a death threat against Ali. She lives under heightened security to this day.

In calling for a reformation within Islam, we intuitively understand what Ali is arguing for. She goes on to explain:

 I say that there is one Islam at this moment that is unreformed and that is centered around [the] Quran, the prophet Mohammed, and Islamic jurisprudence. So, if you take Islam as a set of beliefs, a set of ideas, there is one Islam. Of course there is Sunni Islam and there is Shia and all these other distinctions. But I do choose to make a distinction between different types of Muslims [and] the way they approach that doctrine. There’s the Medina Muslims, the ones who take the Quran and Mohammed’s example literally and also put the emphasis on his time in Medina, which is different from his time in Mecca. And then I find the Mecca Muslims, who are struggling to live in the modern world and somehow reconcile their beliefs with modernity. And the most important group, the dissidents of Islam, who are trying to reform the religion from within. I’m calling, instead of us siding with the people who just want to shut debate down, like the honor brigade, let us side with the reformers.

So, unreformed Islam is centred around the Quran, Muhammad and ancient Islamic jurisprudence (sharia law).  Reformed (or reforming) Islam, as Ali understands it, seeks to live in the modern world and reconcile beliefs with modernity.  A lot of freight is packed up and carried in that term "modernity".

It is at this point that we diverge sharply from Ali's position.  She would compare her call for a reformation in Islam with the call for reformation in Western Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Ali wants Islam to re-form around modernity.  But the Christian Reformation had to do with re-forming the Christian faith, doctrine, life, practice, and worship around the teachings of Scripture and the early church fathers--hence Reformation.  The Christian Reformation was a move away from the modernity of its day, back to the ancient, pure Christian faith.  The Reformation was a move back to the fundamentals, to the New Testament, and the Apostles Creed (the earliest extant creedal standard of Christian doctrine.)

A purview of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion will demonstrate the point: Calvin's citations of the Bible are legion.  But coupled with scriptural citations are quotations and citations of the Church fathers (the most oft-quoted being Augustine.)  So, the Christian Reformation was a movement back to a more fundamental and pure past.  Ali's reformation is a call to move away from the historical documents and teachings of Islam into modernity.  Thus Ali is calling for a deformation of historical Islam.  She wants it to become re-formed around secularised or Western values and beliefs.  For example, Ali is silent upon abortion on demand rights for women.  Whether she would call for abortion on demand within Islam as part of her reformation project is unknown, but one wonders how she would resist it as part of a vague "modernisation" project. After all, secularist abortion-on-demand is a very modern value.

The Reformation of Christianity led us back to the fundamentals and scriptural foundations of the Christian faith and Church.  The modern call for the reformation of Islam is a call to repudiate its origins, foundations, and past and move away from the historical fundamentals of that religion. 

At this juncture we are able to draw the strongest possible contrast between the religion of Muhammad and the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Son of God.  The fundamentals of Christianity bring life and light and freedom to all men in all ages and in all societies.  The fundamentals of Islam, however, bring oppression, force, pain and suffering.  That's why Ali's reformation is not a reformation of Islam at all.  She is rather calling for a revolt against Islam.  If the initial revelatory, doctrinal, foundational praxis of the religion is to be rejected, whatever will be left will not be Islam.  We suspect it will be secularism in drag.  No Allah-fearing Muslim would accept that for a moment.  A compromising, secularising Muslim might. 

Ali is calling for a deformation of Islam, not a reformation.