Revealed Libertarianism

Minaret of Freedom tries to square the Quran with the free market. A Reason interview

Tim Cavanaugh | July 28, 2003

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The case of Hashem Aghajari in Iran was described as a call for "Islamic Protestantism." That would probably make some sense in Iran, where there is a real clerical hierarchy, but elsewhere it seems as if Islamist movements—Wahhabist movements in particular—echo Protestantism in important ways: They're iconoclastic and puritanical, hostile to the traditional clergy, opposed to cults of the saints, and so on. And they're driven by the expansion of literacy and a renewed emphasis on reading original texts. Is there any scenario under which Islamist movements might eventually (and even unintentionally) lead to a greater emphasis on individual conscience, as Protestantism did in the West?

I'm a little reluctant to use terms taken from Western history and apply them to events in the Muslim world, so let me address your question by using some Muslim terms instead: The opposite of taqlid is ijtihad. This is the struggle by the individual scholar for understanding. In the first few hundred years of Islamic history, it was one of the tools of jurisprudence. However, starting in about the 12th Century and, at least in the Sunni world, the 16th century, it had been replaced by taqlid, just blind imitation of whatever the previous generation of scholars had concluded. I believe this process of ijtihad needs to be revived in the Muslim world. And it is being revived. We need original, rational, critical thinking. To the degree that we have it, I would be optimistic about what you would call Islamic Protestantism.

I don't particularly care for the term "Islamic Protestantism." If you look at western history, the establishment of Athanasian Christianity in Europe coincided with the advent of the Dark Ages. Protestantism was part of the transition out of the Dark Ages and into modernity. It was Islam itself that had the same effect on the Arab world, which had been in an age of ignorance. When Islam came it brought about the translation movement of the ancient Greek works, the rise of rationalist philosophers like Ibn Rushd, who had a profound effect on the Scholastic philosophers, and Ibn Tufayl, who had an influence on John Locke. The development of modern science—all these things happened in classical Islamic civilization.

Islamic apologetics always seems to involve reaching far back for great civilization examples from history: "There was a university in Baghdad while your ancestors were painting themselves blue and living in caves," that sort of thing. Is the sort of historical work you do a version of that?

I don't see what I'm doing as apologetics. It's bringing to light the historical record. All you have to do is look at the number of people now calling for Iraq to adopt "Western values." That's a view that's totally ignorant of history. The idea is that Muslim people have always been irrational, mystical, belly-button-staring, whatever. The people making these claims, who are presumably admirers of Aristotle, would not have heard of Aristotle if not for the Muslim philosophers who kept Greek philosophy alive. So my point is not to engage in that kind of polemic but to counter it.

Sure, but if somebody made the case that right now western values are not respected in the Muslim world, I wouldn't argue with that. Even if these values were once held in high regard, does that really matter once they've been dead for centuries?

The question is biased by referring to universal values as western values. They're not just western values, and that's the point. That's why I say you should notice that during this period of time Muslims were engaged in empirical research. Why is that important? Because people are saying only the west was doing empirical research; until the modern west, nobody knew that was of any importance. It's really a kind of ethnocentrism that is absurd.

But we're assessing contemporary problems in the Muslim world. So how relevant is this to contemporary reality?

There it has a relevance that may not be what you're thinking of. When I bring these things up, it's not only to educate non-Muslim westerners to a part of history they may not be familiar with, but also to do a kind of preaching or sermonizing to Muslims, to say this is not the Muslim world today. And I think, to go back to your original question, my purpose is the opposite of apologetics. I'm not trying to make Muslims comfortable but uncomfortable, and to get them to change their ways. You can't recapture that lost glory by reminiscing. You have to rehabilitate yourselves.

You say there is positive potential in political Islam, but where is it? There certainly doesn't seem to be anything encouraging coming out of Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or even Egypt.

Egypt is actually a mixed case. Take a look at Carlyle Murphy's book Passion for Islam. It's not what we'd like to see, but there are signs of hope there. Where we see more signs of progress is in Turkey. The Islamist movement in Turkey started out as a neo-Ottoman movement. They were people who looked to the great position the Ottoman Empire had in the world and wanted to reclaim that. But in the process of having to fight against the Turkish military that has repeatedly taken them out of power despite their success in the elections, they have become more sophisticated, and are more sincerely engaging these modern liberal ideas. The Justice and Development Party has as its main plank human rights rather than the reclaiming of an ancient glory. Earlier versions of the Islamist party had talked only about the rights of Muslims. Now they're talking about the rights of all citizens in Turkey.

In your review of Bernard Lewis' book What Went Wrong, you note an interesting point: that Islamic societies misinterpreted the French Revolution as an anti-Christian movement rather than a disestablishment of state religion. We see some of the same thing today, in the misconception that America's separation of church and state makes the U.S. an irreligious society; bin Laden himself has made comments about that. Where do you come down on the matter of separation of church and state, and of mosque and state?

First we have to define the term secularism. There are two different versions of secularism: an American version and a French version. The American version is the view that the state has to maintain absolute neutrality on questions of religious belief. In the American system this manifests itself in the two parts of the freedom of religion clause: free exercise and disestablishment.

The French version is different, in that it says there should be no role for religion in public life. This I find is a very un-libertarian and oppressive concept.

As far as my view, I favor the American version, although I would tolerate one that only implemented the free exercise of religion and ignored the disestablishment. That's what you have in England, where the Anglican Church is established as the state religion. I think the American system is better than the British system, but I would not impose the American system on the British. Therefore I think it's mandatory that Muslims insist that their governments allow total free exercise of religion. I don't insist that Muslim countries not establish Islam as the religion of the state, although I think it would be better for them not to do so. Because I think all history has shown that to the degree the state gets entangled in religion, it's harmful to religion.