Radical Reform1

Tariq Ramadan’s latest book, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation consists of 16 chapters divided into three major sections: “On Reform,” “Classical Approaches of the Fundamentals of Law and Jurisprudence,” “For a New Geography of the Sources of Law and Jurisprudence” and “Case Studies.”

The author commences by criticizing the process of ijtihad as it currently exists. Although it made things progress for centuries, he finds that ijtihad is highly inadequate, has not resolved the crises faced by Muslims, and has not produced the expected renewal. As far as taqlid is concerned, Ramadan argues that the imitation of past scholars makes Muslims believe they can avoid today’s challenges by taking refuge in the past.

Ijtihad, believes Ramadan, has always been behind the times, simply seeking to interpret Islamic law in light of new changes and developments in society. He is critical of literalist, traditionalist, conservative, and culturally-based interpretations of Islam. The Arab culture, he points out, is not the sole culture of Islam. Hence, if Islam is truly a universal religion, then it must provide its followers with the means to approach cultural diversity.

The author provides an intelligent criticism of Salafism which confuses eternal principals with historical models, reducing the universality of Islam to the dream of an impossible return to the past, and an irresponsible “nostalgia of origins.” As the author points out, many Salafi reductionists are unable to distinguish between religion and culture, viewing diversity and socio-cultural evolution as religious innovations. Not only is Ramadan critical of most traditional approaches to the ijtihad, he is critical of virtually every Islamic movement when it comes to their methods of implementing Islamic law.

Having dismissed the various existing approaches to ijtihad, Ramadan proposes moving from “adaptation reform” which requires religious, philosophical, and legal thought to adapt to evolutions in society to “transformational reform” which requires a mastery of all fields of knowledge in order to anticipate the complexity of social, political, philosophical, and ethical challenges. Adaptation fiqh simply responds to change while transformational fiqh questions, criticizes, and challenges, aiming to change the order of things on the basis of Islamic ethics.

In order to achieve “transformational reform,” Ramadan believes that text scholars, namely, the traditional religious scholars, and context scholars, namely, scholars in every other field, work together on equal footing to set off this radical reform. Although he insists that the Qur’an and the Sunnah should be the primary sources of law,

he believes that they must be supplemented by other sciences since there exists two Revelations, the Qur’an, and the Universe, that need to be read and understood in parallel.

Although he agrees that authority over the fundamentals of faith and worship must remain with the jurists, since they are exclusively determined by the text, he believes that other specialists should be equally involved in the interpretation of social, economic, and scientific issues. It is imperative, he argues, to distinguish between immutable principles, and principles which are subject to change. Considering the complexity of problems facing Muslims in the modern world, it is impossible for a text specialist to be able to assimilate the whole range of those sciences, not even a council of religious scholars would suffice, since those fields of knowledge are largely outside of their own area of expertise.

Ramadan describe the attitude of religious scholars to his theory as defensive, one of reactionary resistance and protection, the natural response of their inability to master the sciences concerned with humankind, societies and the Universe. As the author points out, religious scholars live in autarchy, well removed from research in the exact, experimental, and social sciences, relying on scanty information to issue legal rulings about realities and contexts that are inevitably more complex than they can understand.

In order to Islamize modernity, as opposed to modernize Islam, Ramadan believes that it is urgent to organize equal-representation, egalitarian, and specialized research and fatwa committees. Not only should Muslim jurists work with Muslim specialists in other fields, non-Muslim context scholars should also sit on such committees. In Ramadan’s estimation, all Muslim intellectuals, thinkers, and specialists should be considered as ‘ulama’. Although he believes that all Muslims scholars and scientists should contribute to transformational fiqh, he strongly opposes the exercise of free ijtihad proposed by “progressive” circles who seek to “reform” Islam.

Although he blames Muslim jurists for maintaining a backwards approach to jurisprudence, he also blames Muslims in general for failing to demand more of their scholars. According to Ramadan, many Muslims seem content with adaptive tactics which comfort them rather than acting as agents of transformation in a world that constantly challenges the global ethics of Islam. In this regard, the section on “Case Studies,” which addresses some of the ethical issues facing Muslims in the West, is particularly relevant.

While Ramadan’s theory may seem novel to some Muslims, he has merely borrowed it from Christian Liberation Theology. In fact, he seems to have drawn the idea from Roger Garaudy, the Christian-Communist turned Islamist, who believes that revolutionary writings and scientific studies represent an extension of Revelation. Although it is true that the Creation is also a Revelation, Ramadan is wrong to believe that Islamic jurisprudence can be transformed by ordinary jurists and scientists when the sole authority capable of doing so is Imam al-Mahdi.

Ramadan also confuses jurisprudence and ethics which are two separate fields. The field of jurisprudence establishes the limits of what is permissible and what is forbidden while the field of ethics addresses what is morally ideal. The author also confuses Shari‘ah and fiqh. He argues that Shari‘ah is of divine origin while fiqh is the product of human intellectual effort. Shari‘ah is Islamic law, and Islamic law is regulated by fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence.

Although there are elements in the Shari‘ah which are immutable, many of the laws are the results of ijtihad. As such, there is not a single Shari‘ah or system of law in Islam. There are Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi‘i, Hanbali, and Ja‘fari legal systems, among other interpretations of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Although the Sunni Shari‘ah became stagnant for centuries as a result of the closing of the doors of independent interpretation, the Shi‘ite Shari‘ah has continued to evolve over time.

Considering the condition of the Muslim Ummah, Ramadan’s claim that there exists no Islamic alternative to the dominant neo-liberal model is disheartening. His image of al-Andalus as a place of cultural diversity and religious tolerance is as idealistic as it is erroneous. While there were periods of tolerance towards Jews and Christians, there were periods of persecution. Considering that the Umayyads, the Almoravids, the Almohads, and the Nasrids imposed Maliki Sunnism as the only legal school of law in al-Andalus, life was perilous for non-Maliki Sunnis, Sufis, Kharijites, and Shi‘ites.

Whether one agrees with all of his arguments or not, Tariq Ramadan’s Radical Reform is sure to stimulate discussions and debate in many intellectual circles.

• 1. This review of Tariq Ramadan’s Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009) was originally published in AJISS 26.4 (Fall 2009): 108-110.