WATERLOO, Ont. - After years of research and writing, Tariq Ramadan recently felt as if he had hit a wall.
Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University in England and arguably the leading advocate of Muslim reform in Europe, had been lecturing and writing books for years.
He had urged the rereading of Islamic texts in an effort to figure out which Islamic legal rulings can be changed and which cannot.
His stated goal was to help Muslims living in secular western countries to face modern challenges while remaining faithful Muslims. But after two decades, Ramadan felt he had reached a limit. Rereading and re-interpreting religious texts, he concluded, isn’t sufficient given the new and complex issues popping up in the world at a dizzying pace.
So Ramadan did what he has done so often in the past - he wrote another manifesto and is again calling Muslims to action.
The book, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation, was released this fall.
In a recent interview in Waterloo, Ramadan explained that it’s not Islam that needs reforming.
“What needs to reform is the Muslim mind,” he said.
“The Muslim conscience ... and Muslim mind today need radical reform in the way we are dealing with scriptural sources.”
In the process of developing Islamic ethics that can be applied to contemporary global problems, it’s not enough for only scholars of Muslim scriptures to be involved, he said.
Rather, it’s up to Muslim experts in all professions to contribute.
Ramadan calls for a shift in what he has dubbed the “gravity of authority.”
“This is a call ... for a more democratic process. More involvement from the community. From all the specialists,” Ramadan said. “Don’t let the knowledge be the property, the ownership of some Muslim scholar of the text.”
Ramadan argues that after years of trying to simply adapt to western society, it’s time for Muslims to get creative and help “transform the world for the better.”
He said he’s calling on Muslims to help raise creative solutions to all types of challenges posed in the modern world - euthanasia, abortion, treating HIV/AIDS, the collapse of financial systems and the ailing environment.
“Where is the creative Muslim mind of today coming with new ideas on ecology?” Ramadan asks before giving an answer. “Nothing!”
Ramadan calls on Muslims to develop applied Islamic ethics that can be used to guide decisions being made in different fields, such as medicine.
The need for formal consultation between text scholars and medical practitioners has been made necessary by the sheer number of advances in medical knowledge, equipment and treatments, he writes in his book.
