Gamal al-Banna Promotes Islamic Reform
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Egypt Gamal al-Banna?s quest for religious change
http//www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=4072&CategoryID=6Gamal al-Banna is a Muslim scholar and younger sibling of the Muslim Brotherhood?s founder, but his controversial vision of Islamic reform puts him at odds with the religious establishment in Egypt.
Banna, 75, does not believe that the donning of the headscarf is prescribed in the Koran, nor does he believe there is an explicit ban on smoking during the fasting month of Ramadan.
This adversary of violent Islamists and the Azhar establishment, the highest seat of learning in Sunnite Islam, believes the history of Protestant reform should serve as an example to help what he calls Islam?s ?downward spiral?.
Muslim intellectuals have an opportunity to do what ?Martin Luther achieved for Christianity 500 years ago,? he says.
It is in his office in Abbasiya in central Cairo, surrounded by 13,000 books, that Banna welcomes the views of the religious and the secular.His elder brother, Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, from which the modern Islamist movement was born. The Brotherhood is now the largest opposition force under the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Gamal al-Banna speaks disapprovingly of the ?pretentious? Muslim Brotherhood and of the prospects of an Islamic state, and he describes his grand-nephew, the Swiss intellectual Tarek Ramadan, as ?upright but impulsive? and criticises him for not condemning the stoning of women.Banna calls for a return to basics. ?Let?s go back to the Koran, only the Koran but all of the Koran?, he says adding that one must not deny the book?s contradictions, or its difficulties of interpretation.
His call for a re-evaluation of Islamic law has caused a widespread controversy in the Muslim world.
The Azhar banned his last book in 1994 in which he said that ?Islamic jurisprudence is a total failure in relation to the real world?.He believes it is time to reevaluate the Ahadith, the words and actions attributed to the Prophet Mohammad and which shed light on the contents of the Koran and constitute a guide for Muslims.
Another issue for Banna is the conversion of a Muslim to another faith, which is strictly prohibited by Islam.
He argues that the prohibition of such an act is wrong, quoting a verse of the Koran which says ? no compulsion in religion?. -
See http//www.free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=5391.0