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Islam needs Reformation: Rushdie
ISLAM needs to go through a new Reformation to bring the faith into the modern era, novelist Salman Rushdie wrote in a British newspaper today. Rushdie said a broad-minded interpretation of the religion would lead to better relations with Western communities and lessen the alienation which led young British Muslims to become the alleged suicide bombers who killed 52 innocent people in London in July.Rushdie was forced into hiding after the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in February 1989, calling for his execution because of alleged blasphemy and apostasy in his novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie, Indian-born into a Muslim family, had a $US2.8 million ($3.68 million) bounty placed on his head by a Tehran-based foundation. "What is needed is a move beyond tradition - nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age," Rushdie wrote in The Times. "A Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadi ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows of the closed communities to let in much-needed fresh air." Rushdie wrote that many Muslims in Britain lead lives apart from the rest of the community, and in such insular circles, "young men's alienations can easily deepen". The novelist said very few Muslims had been permitted to study the Koran as an historical document and it was "high time" believers could. "The insistence within Islam that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical scholarly discourse all but impossible. "Why would God be influenced by the socioeconomics of seventh-century Arabia, after all? "If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. "Laws made in the seventh century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st. The Islamic Reformation has to begin here, with an acceptance that all ideas, even sacred ones, must adapt to altered realities." The novelist's forthcoming tale, Shalimar the Clown, concerns a young Muslim boy who is guided by a radical mullah to become an Islamic terrorist. Posted by: tipper 2005-08-11 |
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