Is Islam having its 16th/17th Centuries?

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First of all, quite literally no because this year is 1420AH.

What I mean is Is Islam having its reformation/counter-reformation? Can the current schisms in Islam be paralleled with the Schisms and wars of religion of Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages?

It seems that since the fall of the Ottoman empire and an established orthodoxy over much of the muslim world, people and groups have been striving to put forward their own theological take on islam, in much the same way as western european Catholicism disintegrated when the authority of the popes was compromised at the end of the middle ages.
Can direct parallels be drawn between sects

Wahabis-Jesuits
Turkish pragmatism - Anglican post reformation
Al Qu'aida - Jesuits/Inquisition/Puritans

...between fundamentalist terror
Al Qu'aida - Europeans obliterating any number of civilizations in the americas
Wahabism's repression of dissident voices within Saudi Arabia, zealous imposition of 'religious law' - Pogroms, convert or die, inquisition, England's repression of catholics and non-conformists alike, France's repression of the Hugenots

If this is so what can be learnt, if anything?

― Ed (dali), Friday, 8 November 2002 13:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the sect comparisons are good. And Shia is Eastern Orthodox, Ishmaeli is Coptic. Sufis are Quakers - and like Quakers, some are fire-breathing fundos and some are so liberal they barely have a definable 'religion' at all.

But I don't think the historical comparison works. Before the Ottomans there were other periods when most of the Uma was united under one empire, and other periods when there was no unity; throughout, there have been a wide range of beleifs, and constantly changing beliefs, 'on the ground'.

In some ways you could compare Islam now to Europe in the c10/11: feeling under threat from an apparently unstoppable and dominant 'other'.

What's really different is the relationship to 'The Word'. In Christianity it is possible to differ over the truthfulness of the Bible and still remain Christian. In Islam, while interpretation of the Qu'ran and the Hadith etc allows a lot of room for debate, at the end of the day it is a given that the word of the Qu'ran is the word of allah. As the Qu'ran includes some quite specific directives about how to live, that presents a problem to any modernising project, and perhaps explains why the faith is NOT in the c16/17.

But I'd love to discuss this further. That's just a lunchtime break theory. I think a 'modernised' Islam a la reform Judiasm or liberal Christianity could be a real force for good in the world. Not that mainstream Sunni/Shia Islam isn't.

― jon (jon), Friday, 8 November 2002 13:50 (twenty-three years ago)

In some ways you could compare Islam now to Europe in the c10/11: feeling under threat from an apparently unstoppable and dominant 'other'.

― jon (jon), Friday, 8 November 2002 13:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Can't wait to see how long it takes them to figure out how many dervishes can whirl on the head of a pin

― dave q, Friday, 8 November 2002 14:01 (twenty-three years ago)

What I mean is Is Islam having its reformation/counter-reformation? Can the current schisms in Islam be paralleled with the Schisms and wars of religion of Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages?

the main split in Islam is between Shia and Sunni. This dates back to within a century of the Prophet's death. Probably even less, as the main parties to the split were alive when Muhammed was.

I agree with Jon that you can't really map Islamic sects onto Christian ones.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 8 November 2002 14:47 (twenty-three years ago)

More compare than map.

Surely Sunni and Shia are as jon says more akin to the Orthodox/Roman split.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 8 November 2002 14:53 (twenty-three years ago)

the reformation wz catalysed culturally, politically AND financially by the not-yet-quite-colonial encounter w.the new world

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 8 November 2002 14:58 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't know enough about history to comment intelligently, but I won't let that stop me. The problem with such comparisons is that Islam didn't develop in isolation on some separate planet. It developed alongside other religions, Judaism and Christianity notably. Medieval Islamic philosophy was pretty similar to medieval Christian philosophy, and anyhow, it was the Muslims (well, the Arabs, not necessarily the same thing) who introduced the classics into Christian thought. Part of what I am saying is that Islam learned (one way or another--maybe not what we would like it to have learned) from what came before, and in certain phases it was intellectually in the vanguard, ahead of Christendom.

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 8 November 2002 16:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Absolutely. And one of the ways it learned was to create a holy book about which there could be no argument, which has few internal inconsistencies, and which refutes some of the more irrational ideas (trinity, anyone?) of its main monotheistic competitors in the region at the time.

But I'm guessing too. Open-minded Muslim to thread.

― jon (jon), Friday, 8 November 2002 16:38 (twenty-three years ago)

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