Many have called for a reformation in Islam the way Christianity underwent a Reformation 500 years ago. The presumption is that returning to the roots of a religion constitutes improvement. Well, that was the way it was in Christianity, but the nature of the roots of Christianity and Islam make the results of reformation very different.
Dinesh D'Souza explains that Islam is in the midst of a reformation that many people are calling for. The misunderstanding Westerners often have is that returning to the roots of Islam leads to the extreme fundamentalism. And in his explanation we can see why "religious fundamentalism" per se isn't the problem, as many who object to Christian fundamentalism, too, claim because the fundamentals of Christian and Islam are starkly different. The problem isn't that someone is zealous in what they believe; the problem is what they place that zealous belief in. The problem isn't the strength of someone's religious belief or that they think they're right; the problem is the content of what they believe. That is why a Reformation in Christian and a reformation in Islam lead to very different results.
The big story in the Muslim world is that for the past several decades a religious revival has been sweeping across the 22 or so countries of Islam, affecting the lives of nearly a billion Muslims. This revival is by no means confined to the Arab world. Its impact can be seen in Turkey, in India, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, and in North Africa. Even Muslims in Western countries have become more religious, praying more regularly, celebrating Muslim feasts, adopting Islamic dress and diet, and defining themselves in private and public in terms of their religious identity.
Islamic “fundamentalism,” or more accurately the Islamic radical movement, is a product of this religious revival. It arose out of, and to some degree in resistance to, traditional Islam. It has been gaining traction and strength for the past few decades. And the central argument of the Islamic radicals is strikingly similar to that of the early Protestants. The Islamic radicals argue that Islam has over the years become diluted and corrupted. True Islam stagnates, they argue, while Muslim leaders and Muslim clergy sell their souls to maintain their position and power. The radicals’ solution is to call for a return to the original, seventh-century Islam that the Prophet Muhammad established.
Why then, some Western readers might wonder, do Islamists not follow the lead of the Protestants and proclaim “the priesthood of the individual believer”? Why is separation of church and state such an alien concept, resisted so fiercely by the Islamist leaders?
The answer to this question is very simple: in returning to their origins, the Muslims are going back to a very different starting point than Christians did.
Christianity was formed out of a different mold than Islam. Christianity from the beginning separated the realms of religion and government. This was not an American invention. Christ himself instructed his disciples to render unto Caesar and to God their separate dues. And throughout Western history the church and the state generally performed distinct functions.
By contrast, Islam from the outset united church and state. The prophet Muhammad was during his lifetime both a prophet and a Caesar. He established an Islamic society in which the sharia or holy law governed not only religious duties but also divorce, inheritance, interest rates, and the rules of warfare. The sharia is a comprehensive Islamic law that covers constitutional, civil and commercial matters in additional to spiritual or religious ones.
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