Is Judaism a Good Model for Islamic Reform?

[TexasTowelie]

[font color=330099]I posted this article in the Religion Group. I was requested to repost the article in this group for further visibility.[/font]

Mustafa Akyol‘s recent New York Times column, “What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims,” bravely broaches one of the most important issues today: reform in Islam. The separation of church and state, the position of women, the role of violence— all of these factors and more must be addressed for the Muslim world to experience its own form of “modernity,” characterized by freedom of individual conscience and movement.

Akyol points to two pivotal experiences in Jewish history, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and territorial dispossession and the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) of the 18th and 19th centuries, as offering guidance for Islam. These are useful points of reference, but are only starting points.

What came in between suggests why Jewish models may, or may not, be useful for Islamic reformers. Jews, both before and after the fall of the Jewish Commonwealth, were always a minority in the larger Greco-Roman world. This forced adaptability as a cultural trait, a continual process of weighing concepts and innovations of others, looking outward and inward, all around Rabbinic leadership that was at once conservative and progressive.

Jews being a minority in the Greco-Roman world forced adaptability as a cultural trait.

Halacha (Jewish law) has always been a simultaneous process of redefining the boundaries of Judaism, balancing both reason and tradition. It is both philosophical and legal, and was influenced by a plethora of outside thinkers: Greeks, Christians, Muslims, and Europeans in turn.

Read more: http://www.yonkerstribune.com/2017/02/is-judaism-a-good-model-for-islamic-reform-by-alexander-h-joffee

[DetlefK]

1. That desire for outside-ideas has to come from within. It can't be forced.

Christianity had a philosophical reform parallel to the Lutheran Reformation: the Renaissance.

Up until about 1600/1700, the mindset among christian scholars in Europe was that the older a source, the correcter it is.
The Bible was very old and therefore true. (Some jewish scriptures were even older, but Christians were always reluctant about the veracity of jewish sources, because they were a threat to the legitimacy of Christianity as a separate religion from Judaism.) In early 15th century, trade-routes with the Byzantine Empire brought the greek "Corpus Hermeticum" back to Europe (which was actually written by 3rd century greek Christians, but was misdated to be from mosaic times).
The Corpus Hermeticum was a syncretic religious work and contained also non-christian religious ideas. But as they partly matched the Bible (and as the Corpus Hermeticum was thought to be many millenia old), these non-christian ideas became legitimate.





My point is:
The desire for old sources was already there. The "old" sources that suddenly became available (again) infused the thinkers with roman, greek, jewish, egyptian, persian ideas.
These non-christian ideas were amplified and spread via art and became a part of the general european culture.

I do not see a similar curiosity/desire for new ideas in contemporary Islam in general.
Nor do I see a willingness to accept religious ideas that are clearly non-islamic.
Nor do I see a chance how such non-islamic ideas could gain islamic legitimacy.

The only chance for change I see is a change of the non-religion part of culture, which would then indirectly change the belief by changing the believer.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I'd say that Sufiism is a good model for Islamic reform.

Sufiism is equivalent to Judaism's Kaballah, mystical worship.

My brother converted from Judaism to Sufiism. He follows Islamic law as far as praying, diet, worship. It isn't a blind devotion and he uses reason just as regularly as before his conversion. He may wish that I "follow the path," but he isn't bothered that I haven't converted as well. Actually he and his wife are wary about ISIS and the Caliphate as Sufis are targets are "infidels" to fundamentalist militants.