The Qur'an and the Secular Mind; A Philosophy of Islam (2008) - Shabbir Akhtar

18 Quranic Islam and the secular mind
according to its dictates wherever it yields the sceptre of influence. Islam satisfies
spiritual needs and stirs many to moral goodness and some to moral greatness.
It remains in the tumultuous Middle East, Islam’s land of origin and permanent
presence, and endures there as the only constant variable, one that explains the
Arabs’ historic rise to permanent prominence long before the ambiguous blessings
of oil. 5
Who was Muhammad? Was he an ambitious and designing sheikh who used
‘revelation’ to have his way? Is Islam genuinely a religion? Or is it, as many who
traduce it claim, an elaborate ideological disguise for political power? What is
modern Islam’s attitude towards its origins and early history? How do Muslims
react to change, especially the drastically irreversible change that secularism fosters,
challenging and threatening all religion as such? What are the practical
consequences of addressing the modern situation of Muslims? Could a Muslim
reasonably ignore or dismiss the secular rational challenge to traditional Islam?
In this opening chapter, we address this apparently motley set of issues and identify
connections between them. For example, the problem of change cannot be
addressed without taking stock of the faith’s formative self-image which, in virtue
of operating at the origins, controls the range of subsequent development. Again,
in matters of moment – in matters of religion – it is irresponsible to inquire theoretically
without also addressing the practical consequences of those theoretical
stances.
After exploring, in Sections 4 to 9, Islam’s foundations and its tense and ambivalent
connection to Judaism and Christianity, ancient and modern, I shall: trace the
emergence of a European secularism which supplies the universal context in which
the rationality of traditional Islam is assessed (Sections 10–11); assess the emergent
and incipient secular presence in the Islamic world and the need to recognize,
acknowledge and engage intelligently with it (Sections 11–12); explore the status
of change and tradition in Islam against the background of its self-image as
‘meta-religion’ of intentionally comprehensive scope from the very day of its twin
birth as faith and empire (Sections 13–19); record and assess the existing official
Muslim response to the crisis precipitated by modern secular challenges to
Islamic tradition (Sections 20–2); and evaluate the pragmatic significance, including
some practical and institutional consequences, of engaging sympathetically
with secularism (Section 23).
4
A pilgrim to Mecca, the sacred hub of Islam, would be surprised to note that there
are no signposts on the path leading to the cave where Muhammad received his
inaugural revelation. Instead one follows the Pepsi cans that litter its modern route.
After a tiring journey in the heat, one is suddenly at the cave in a mountainside
just outside Mecca. It is at first disappointing: one sees only the ungrammatical
and profane graffiti of lovers who boast of having been there already. The cave at
Mount Ḥirā’, where Muhammad received his first revealed fragment (recorded as
Q:96:1–5) 6 , is never mentioned or alluded to in the Quran. It is a hint of the sacred