CULTURAL DYNAMISM AND
THE LOGIC OF ISLAMIC REFORM

The recent interest in studying the compatibility of Islam with human rights came as a result of the increasing reassertiveness of Islamic beliefs and values in Muslim societies in the last three decades, a phenomenon widely studied under the rubrics of Islamic resurgence, Islamic revivalism, or Islamic fundamentalism. The reawakening of religious consciousness in Muslim societies has been most visible in the political sphere, and has led to the increasing demand by Islamist groups throughout the Muslim world for the reconstruction of the political and legal systems so as to bring them into accord with the rules of Islamic law (Shari’a).

But while the various groups and individuals advocating the return of Islam as a source of public norms, are united in advancing this common goal, they are disparately divided in their varying visions as to what constitutes an Islamic public order. The diversity in orientations and visions of Islamic advocates complicates the task of scholars and writers interested in examining the phenomenon of Islamic resurgence and assessing its social impacts and political ramifications. Faced with the overwhelming complexity of Islamic reassertiveness, some scholars chose to ignore the differences that separate various Islamic groups, opting for a simplistic approach in which the more radical views are taken as representative of Islamic resurgence. This approach is more popular among international-relations specialists because, it seems, it coincides with the-worst-scenario analysis favored by national security analysts. The problem of this approach, though, is not only that it reinforces prejudices and distorts realities, but it also prevents the development of effective foreign policy and undermines the ability of American policy makers to influence developments in the Muslim world.

The bulk of scholars devoted to studying Islam and the Muslim world have managed, however, to convey the complexity of Islamic resurgence by grouping the variety of views and positions into a number of major trends. A wide range of terms have been used by various authors. The classification list includes such terms as traditionalists, radicals, fundamentalists, modernists, moderates, liberals, etc. Still, the picture which emerges out of an honest and faithful efforts to depict reality at a specific historical moment can be as misleading and deceptive as the picture of an acrobat taken few moments after hitting a springboard. The acrobat appears forever suspended in the air. A person unfamiliar with the gravity force, say a citizen of an eternal spaceship, would fail to realize that what he observes is a rare moment in the life of human beings; even a person familiar with the law of gravity would be at loss to determine whether the framed acrobat is moving upward or downward. Determining the dynamism and direction of cultural reform in Muslim society, and the positioning of Islamic forces in the course of societal change, is essential for understanding whether an Islamic political and legal reform is compatible with human rights.

Unfortunately, most of what has been written by human rights scholars on Islam’s compatibility with human rights overlooks the question of cultural dynamism and reform direction. Thus we find that an insightful and penetrating work as Mayer’s Islam and Human Rights succeeds only in revealing the tension over the issues of political reform and human rights, but not its direction. Her conclusion, therefore, appears ambivalent, if not perplexing. "[T]he diluted rights in Islamic human rights schemes examined here," she argues, "should not be ascribed to peculiar features of Islam or its inherent incompatibility with human rights." Islam seems to be the source of both liberation and restriction, of both reformation and stagnation. The question thus arises as to where does Islam stand in the context of cultural change?

To begin with, we should recognize that the drive for Islamic reform has intensified as a result of the realization by Muslim intellectuals that developmentalism ideologies, advocated by Muslim ruling elites, have not led to any meaningful political or social progress in Muslim societies, but have instead resulted in the entrenchment in power of a self-serving ruling class whose main goal is to maintain a lavish lifestyle. In post-colonial Muslim societies, ruling elites have worked hard for, and succeeded in, creating for themselves and their cronies islands of plenty in the midst of oceans of poverty. Many Muslim intellectuals, alienated by the high-handed strategies of developmentalism, became convinced that the only viable political and legal reform is one rooted in the moral commitments of the Muslim community.

Since its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century, Islamic reform movement has rejected the traditionalist interpretations of Islam, and embarked on an ambitious reform project, aiming at relating Islamic beliefs and values to modern life. The works of Afghani, Abduh, and Redah ? the founders of what has been termed the reform school — present us with an unmistakably egalitarian and liberal discourse, emphasizing openness and tolerance. Early reformists rejected the anti-intellectual approach of traditionalist jurists, and advocated a rational and critical reading of the works of classical Muslims. They rejected, for instance, the restrictive role assigned by traditionalist jurists to women, emphasizing the importance of women’s education and
social participation. Indeed, as early as the 1930, Muhammed Rashid Ridah not only did advocate the right of women to education and social participation, but also their right to political participation. Similarly, al-Kawakibi attributed cultural decline of
Muslim society to denial to women the right to education, and stressed the importance of their public involvement for their ability to provide proper guidance and sound upbringing for children.

While reformist scholars were, and continue even today to be, outnumbered by their traditionalist counterparts, they have exerted a profound and far-reaching influence on contemporary society. Their impact can be seen in the increasingly more open views adopted by leading figures within the traditionalist schools. Several influential and widely respected jurists within traditionalist circles are on record in supporting democracy, human rights, including the right of women to compete equally with men for public office. The views they express today, and teach in public, and in shari’a departments of traditional Islamic colleges, would have been sufficient for them to be branded as heretics just a century ago. Leading scholars of the Azhar University, such as Muhammad Abu Zahra, Mahmoud Shaltoot, Muhammad al-Ghazali, and Yusuf al-Qardawi, have been emphasizing equality between men and women, and between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The views of reformers continue to mature in the direction of recognizing human dignity and reciprocity in society. Most recently, Fahmi Huwaydi, a leading journalist in the Arab World and respected Muslim reformist, addressed the question of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in a book entitled Muwatinun La Dhimiyun (citizens not dhimis). Huwaydi rejected the dhimmi classification of non-Muslims as a historically relevant concept, and demonstrated, by referring to Islamic sources, that non-Muslims in a Muslim political order enjoy full citizenship rights on par with Muslims. The views advanced by Huwaydi is supported by the views of the founder and leader of the main Islamic opposition in Tunisia who stresses that non-Muslims enjoy equal citizenship with Muslim majority. Al-Ghanoushi also advocates the right of women to participate on equal footing with men in public life. "There is nothing in Islam," he writes, "that justifies the exclusion of half of the Muslim society from participating and acting in the public sphere. In fact, to do this is to do injustice to Islam and its community in the first place, and to women [afterward]." Similar arguments for gender equality can be seen in the writings of leading Shi’i jurists including Murtada Mutahiri, Muhammad Khatami, and Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin.

Given the continuous expansion and maturation of Islamic reformist views, focusing on the views of the traditionalists, or on "middle-ground positions" is bound to distort the reality of cultural reform in the Muslim society, and obscure the direction and dynamism of social change. To doubt the potential of Islamic reform ? despite the overwhelming evidence of gradual change of views toward a more liberal and egalitarian position advocated by reformists ? because of the shortcomings of current reality is tantamount to doubting the liberating ethos of the declaration of independence at the time of its promulgation because the American society did not include women and blacks in the notion of "the people". It took almost two centuries, and a lot of struggle on the part of countless individuals who strongly believed in human dignity, to bring these ethos to bear on the reality of social practices.

Again, despite the breathtaking cultural changes that took place in the twentieth century Muslim societies, we still find scholars who want to convince us that there is such a thing as a never-changing "Islamic culture". Thus Tibi is able to make sweeping generalizations on Islam and Muslim cultures; he writes:

If Muslims are to embrace international human rights law standards full-heartedly, they need to achieve cultural-religious reforms in Islam ? not as faith but as a cultural and legal system. In fact, Islam is a distinct cultural system in which the collective, not the individual, lies at the center of the respective world view. The concept of human rights, as Mayer rightfully stresses, is "individualistic" in the sense "that it generally expresses claims of a part against the whole." The part pointed out by Mayer is the individual who lives in a civil society and the whole is the state as an overall political structure. Islam makes no such distinction. In Islamic doctrine, the individual is considered a limb of a collectivety, which is the umma/community of believers. Furthermore, rights are entitlements and are different from duties. In Islam, Muslims, as believers, have duties/fara’id vis-à-vis the community/umma, but no individual rights in the sense of entitlements.

We are told in one breath that (1) Muslims are in need for cultural-religious reform, (2) Islam is not a set of values and beliefs that ? like other religions ? give rise to various cultural forms, but a “distinct cultural system,” and (3) Muslims have only duties towards the community, but "no individual rights in the sense of entitlements."

Tibi is not the first to argue that the emphasis in Islam is on duty rather than rights. Donnelly advances similar arguments when he contends that, "Muslims are regularly and forcefully enjoined to treat their fellow men with respect and dignity, but the bases for these injunctions are divine commands that establish only duties, not human rights." Yet these assertions only reflect the lack of awareness, and possibily access, to the
hundreds of voluminous works in Islamic law which elaborate various rights, and judicial procedures for protecting those rights, in the historical Muslim society. Suffice it here to give one example from the work of the classical Muslim jurist al-Mawardi (d. 450 A.H./1086 A..C.). Recognizing people’s right to form their own views, and to disagree with the prevailing views and dominant social and political beliefs, he stresses that "if a group of Muslims rebelled by disagreeing with the views of the community, and forged their own ideology, they are to be left alone and should not be fought, and the rules of justice should be applied to them in accordance with their rights and obligations." Further, Muslims were able always resort to the numerous courts of law established to enforce the rules of law in the areas of family, commercial, and criminal laws. They were also able to appeal to a high court, the court of mazalim, whenever they were not satisfied with ordinary courts rulings, or their rights were violated by governors or public officials.

Tibi’s statement that "Muslims … have duties … but not rights in the sense of entitlement" is a true description of contemporary Muslim society, but not "Islamic culture" throughout Muslim history. Contemporary Muslims do not enjoy rights not because these rights are not on the books, but very often because they are ruled by authoritarian regimes and police states that have very little respect to the idea of the rule of law. The "Islamic culture" in which the individual is lost in the crowd of the collectivity is that of authoritarian Muslim regimes who have entered into an unholy alliance with contemporary Islamic traditionalists against Muslim reformers. Authoritarian Muslim rulers have found it more convenient to cooperate with traditionalist jurists, whose agenda does not include such items as political participation, or constitutional and legal reforms, in their fight against reform ideas and their advocates.

UNIVERSALISM AND THE IMPERATIVE
OF CULTURAL MEDIATION

I have argued so far against a static and ahistorical approach to understanding the Islamic position on international human rights adopted by many human rights scholars critical of views held by Islamic traditionalists. I have maintained that such an approach inevitably distorts reality, since it fails to uncover the dynamism and direction of cultural reform currently underway in Muslim society. My contention is not that Muslim cultures have already achieved the desired political and legal reforms, or that they have already brought about effective protection of individual rights and social justice. For from it. I rather contend that Islamic reform has been a positive force in liberating Muslim consciousness from both the crushing and oppressive ideologies of developmentalism, and the limiting practices of Islamic traditionalism. I turn in this section to explore the relationship between moral universalism and cultural relativism, and to underscore the need for, even the imperative of, cultural mediation of any meaningful legal reform. The argument in this section paves the way for introducing, in the subsequent section, a slightly modified approach to cross-cultural dialogue.

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, and the subsequent empowerment of the UN Human Rights Commission to monitor and ensure compliance of state members in 1976, the question of the universality of international human rights has been hotly debated. Two main positions can be clearly distinguished: absolute universalism and absolute relativism. The former holds that culture is irrelevant to the moral validity of human rights, while the latter insists that culture is the only source of moral validity. Both positions fail to capture the full scope of the intercourse between culture and universal values, and both have been used to advance self-serving interests.

Absolute (or radical) cultural relativism cannot be theoretically maintained, given the fact that one can hardly find today a society which still maintains a homogenous culture. Besides, considering the dynamic nature of culture no community can claim that the cultural tradition it espouses is either eternally static, or is not involved in a process of cultural exchange with outside cultures. Absolute cultural relativism is often advanced by authoritarian regimes to shut off external criticism of the excessive use of power to silencing internal opposition. Absolute moral universalism, on the other hand, is oblivious to the fact that moral values and legal systems are the outcome of the rationalization of a specific charismatic vision or worldview. Practically, radical universalism could be turned into an instrument in the hands of hegemonic cultures, and could be used for imposing the morality of one culture on another, as Donnelly explains:

The dangers of the moral imperialism implied by radical universalism hardly need be emphasized. Radical universalism is subject to other moral objections as well. Moral rules, including human rights, function within a moral community. Radical universalism requires a rigid hierarchical ordering of the multiple moral communities to which individuals and groups belong. In order to preserve complete universality for human rights, the radical universalist must give absolute priority to the demands of the cosmopolitan moral community over all other ("lower") moral communities.

The radicalism of the two positions discussed above can be avoided by recognizing that for legal reform to succeed, it must coincide with cultural reform. That is, one must recognize that culture is the only mediating milieu for restructuring individual and social consciousness so as to make them receptive to, and supportive of, international human rights. Yet even when cultural reform results in acknowledging the universal validity of human rights, a reasonable degree of cultural relativism must be allowed so the universal principles are interpreted from within the specific socio-political context of society, and are brought to bear on the particular circumstances of the various communities. An absolute universalism which ignores the essential role played by culture for the moral development of the individual suffers from "normative blindness" and is detrimental for both the dominant cosmopolitan culture, and the indigenous cultures it intends to reform. The devastating effects of the experimentations undertaken in Australia, Canada, and the United States to assimilate the aborigines illustrate the impossibility of achieving moral development apart from the cultural tradition to which an individual belong. They also illustrate the arrogance of the developmentalist outlook which equates moral superiority with economic and technological advancement.

The devastating consequences of the "normative blindness" of absolute universalism advocated by numerous human rights scholars is not limited to non-Western traditions, but extend to the tradition of modernity itself. That is, by attempting to globalize Western modernism in the name of international human rights, the West runs the risk of preventing, or at least delaying, the development of alternative cultural forms which could enrich the culture of modernity itself, and help it overcome some of the acute problems it currently confronts, including the problem of "normative blindness". It seems, though, that for the latter problem to be overcome, a major reform in the dominant Western schools of jurisprudence is needed. As Richard Falk notes, neither in positivist nor in naturalist jurisprudence "does culture enter into the delibrative process
of interpreting the meaning, justifying the applicability, and working for the implementation of human rights."

A cultural reform aiming at liberating the individual from traditionalist interpretations of Islam is already underway, as noted earlier. Reformers are appealing to the values and ethos embodied in the Islamic sources to restore the moral autonomy of the individual, and to develop an egalitarian political culture. The reform is therefore Islamic in nature and intent, and cannot be otherwise. All reform movements that have   brought about profound cultural reform have been religious. The essentially secularist and individualistic modern West owes its genesis, as Weber reminded us in his Protestant Ethic, to the Religious Reformation that took place in the Occident at the dawn of the modern West. The Orient should be allowed to undertake its own reformation, which would inevitably result in the reorientation and rationalization of the religious values and beliefs of the people of the orient, and must hence take the form of a Confucian, Hindu, or Islamic Reformation.

Islam is a religion which has historically given rise to a variety of cultural forms. Like all divine revelations, it emphasizes individual responsibility, and admonish its followers to adhere to its moral code even if that would dismay the larger society to which they belong. While it values social cooperation, it by no means places the collectivity above
the individual. Historically, Islam has given rise to unmistakably individualistic forms of philosophical, literary, and artistic expressions. It has in the past inspired individual creativity that can be seen in the work of eminent figures, such as al-Farabi, Averros, Avesina, and Ibn Khadun, to cite just a few names well known for their contribution to Western scholarship. What is described as collective orientation of the "Islamic Culture", is a relatively new phenomenon in Muslim society, resulting from the rational and moral decline of Muslims in the last two centuries, and effected by the ascendancy in the post-colonial era of authoritarian regimes, demanding total individual conformity in the name of developmentalist ideologies.

Despite a hightened interest in the notion of cross-cultural dialogue, there are very few Western scholars who are engaged in a real dialogue with the advocates of Islamic reform. There are many reasons for this, including the legalistic orientation of the two dominant schools of legal jurisprudence in the West, and the defensive and apologetic approach of Islamic traditionalism. But a true and meaningful dialogue is a must if human rights scholars, who are strategically based in the West, were to have positive influence on the growth and maturation of human rights reform in Muslim societies. It might be worthwhile to quote in this regard the insightful words made by Leonard Binder little over a decade ago:

It may nevertheless be questioned whether any sort of exchange between Western scholarship and the current Islamic movement is actually taking place, since the development specialists seem to be talking to one another while the leading exponents of the Islamic revival have decided to break off the dialogue. In point of fact, the dialogue has not yet been broken off, and most of the present work is devoted to an analysis and critique of some of the more interesting texts in which this cultural conversation is still being pursued. This is not a completely open and reciprocal form of discursive interaction, if only because Western intellectuals read very little of what Muslim intellectuals write. Still, insofar as these [Muslim] thinkers explore Western ideas and confront them with the hegemonic forms of Muslim thought, they carry out the dialogue in their own works. I believe that the further strengthening of Islamic liberalism and the possibility for the emergence of liberal regimes in the Middle East is directly linked to the invigoration and wider diffusion of this dialogue.

The words of Binder are as true today as they were little over a decade ago when he uttered them. Still, it might not be too late for the advocates of Western universalism to abandon their radical universalist position, which has ironically strengthened the radical reletivist position taken by Muslim traditionalists, and to embark on a meaningful dialogue with Muslim reformers. However, for a meaningful cross-cultural dialogue to
take place, a number of conditions must be observed; the elaboration of these conditions is the main concern of the next section.

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