Post-Islam or Cultural Islam?

Abstract

The paper seeks to sketch cultural Islam as a possible ground for rethinking of traditional anthropological perspective in Islam. Muslims, like any other religious group, face contemporary challenges like secularism. Peoples of the Muslim countries are primarily concerned with social rather than religious issues. The question then arises, can secularism in the Islamic East be compared to so-called “post-Christianity” of the West, “death of religion”, or tendency that reject all forms of religious faith and worships? Whether the secular processes in Muslim societies could be described as “post-Islam”?

There are two ways to define the term secularism. According to “positive secularism”, man does not need God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), a German pastor and theologian, held that there is a new era in Christianity and believed that, through scientific knowledge and de-mystification, the world moves toward disbelieving in God as hypothesis to explain the meaning of reality. He called it “the coming of age of humanity”. According to another approach, advanced by Gianni Vattimo, an Italian philosopher and politician, secularization is a natural step in the evolution of Christianity in post-metaphysics and post-mega-narratives situations. From this point of view, secularism is a further step of Christianity adapted to the modern society. Gianni Vattimo considers that secularism help to differentiate the West from other cultural regions around world.

Far from ignoring scriptures and religious doctrines, the author places an emphasis on the main religious ideas and conceptions, operative in Islamic communities, as situated in space and time. The thesis of the “created” Quran advanced by the Mu’tazilites, early Islamic theologians, and other important events in the history of Islam provides some support for the conceptual premise that Muslim societies and the West develop and progress the same way.

All human societies – without exception – undergo social change all the time. This doesn’t mean that we have to treat secularism as atheism. Secularism, in my view, is separation between religion and state. In many countries, for example, in Russia, the Muslims are the bearers of a secular culture and education, and no one will be able to bring them back to the Middle Ages. In other words, many Muslims accept Islam as tradition, as part of national culture, as a historical form of existence of moral standards of their people.

This proves that in fact the Muslim world is consistently moving in the direction of secularism and the secular society. Today their main task is to preserve cultural and national identity and join Western nations in social and economic competition. All this suggest that political Islam can only grow weaker as time passes, while cultural Islam is equipped to meet contemporary challenges.

Cultural Islam in my definition rests on two postulates. The first is an adherence to the principles of justice and reason. The early Islamic rationalist theologians, the Mu‘tazilites, identified God with omnipresent regularity, harmony, justice and reason. The second postulate of cultural Islam is the categorical imperative of doing good in the light of saying of Prophet Muhammad: “ Love for the people what you love for yourself ” . Relying on these two postulates allows representatives of the Islamic world to perceive the problems of the world, problems of democracy, human rights and women’s rights, as their own problems.

This study has shown that secularization in the Islamic world leads to the establishment of cultural Islam. The deepest crisis of religious worldview doesn’t automatically entail a break with Islam, the world’s largest religion after Christianity, and doesn’t destroy its continuality.