On February 21, 2012, Professor Asma Afsaruddin, William & Mary’s 2012 Kraemer Middle East Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, spoke at the law school. In her talk, titled Competing Visions of the Shari’a: The Real Clash Within the Islamic World, she described competing discourses within the Islamic community.
Western societies do not understand this, says Afsaruddin, and instead view Islam as a monolithic religion with no divides. This view was especially popularized after 9/11, when “any concepts involving a battle of ideas have been construed as a clash between the West and Islam, rather than within Islam.” According to Afsaruddin, there are two major competing schools of thought in Islam, “modernist,” or “reformist,” Muslims and the more militant “hard-liners,” or “traditionalists."Appropriately enough, states Afsaruddin, traditionalist Muslims are usually associated with “radical Islamists” who oppose the United States and its War on Terror.
Asma Afsaruddin is professor of Islamic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Johns Hopkins in 1993 and previously taught at Harvard and Notre Dame. She specializes in religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith, Islamic intellectual history, and Islamic views on gender. An author of six books, Afsaruddin writes on topic regarding Islam and women for the Oxford Encyclopedia.
According to Afsaruddin, the traditionalist Muslims can be compared to strict constitutionalists in the United States, following the same practices and interpretations of the first generation of Muslims. Afsaruddin stated this is due to a perception among traditionalists that this generation followed the Quran flawlessly without disagreeing with one another and without leaving any issue unaddressed. Whereas modernists tend to see Islam as nothing other than a faith, traditionalists see Islam as a revolutionary system of government, one that represents a large shift from all political movements of the past. To the traditionalist Muslim, Islam demands political hegemony.
Modernists, on the other hand, tend to see Islam as diverse and multifaceted. In their view, the medieval scholarly interpretations of the Quran, which were starkly militant, can be explained as reactions to a violent world. While Afsaruddin places herself firmly in the modernist camp, she elaborates on how one could reinterpret Islamic law for modern uses without violating traditional views. This process is known as “fiqh”, or “deeper understanding,” which allows a scholar to arrive at an “itjihad,” or “interpretation.”
Afsaruddin uses gender relations as a key example where “fiqh” could be used to reinterpret Islam to be more egalitarian and progressive. In the past, Islamic scholars and governments reference certain verses in the Quran that emphasize spiritual equality, but legal inequality, among genders. Specifically, Afsaruddin says, the verses suggest men have an “advantage” over women, thus demanding that they take a lead role in the family. Afsaruddin construed the rationale behind this to be due to the economic dynamics of the time, which may have necessitated the need of such a disparity. During the Prophet Muhammad’s time, women were kept ignorant and poor, and thus were less productive than men. Since women now have comparable productive capabilities to men, legal inequality is no longer required. Thus, this disparity was only functional and not inherent.
When asked which school of thought will achieve intellectual victory, Afsaruddin acknowledged that she did not know. “In matters such as these,” Afsaruddin said, “It’s not a matter of who is right, but who is left.” This, she continues, will be decided by the Muslim people themselves, who will decide who has won over their hearts and minds.
