Any thoughts on this one?

http//www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1871_0_25_0_M

The Death Of "Progressive Islam"

In 2004, a Progressive Muslim movement swept into mainstream North American press and claimed to stand up for the "moderate majority" of Muslims. Yet, less than three years later the same "moderate majority" has almost completely sidelined the Progressive Muslim community. Even those who previously identified themselves as Progressive Muslims do not now wish to be so affiliated. The flagship organization of the movement Progressive Muslim Union of North America has lost almost 90% of its board members. MuslimWakeUp!, the primary organ of the movement, is neither frequented nor active, often going weeks without publishing new content. It has gotten so bad that Mohja Kahf, one of the initiators of the controversial "Sex and the Ummah" columns on MWU!, will not even allow herself to be known as a Progressive Muslim, and states that she did not advocate in her personal life the activities she described in writing. Among American Muslims, to say that Progressive Islam is dead isn't shocking; it is anachronistic.

The broad outline of what Progressive Islam stood for intellectually was perhaps best stated by Dr. Omid Safi, who likened it to a sort of "Islamic Humanism". The problem that Progressive Muslims were not able to address satisfactorily when questioned by the friendly members of the "moderate majority" was why any Muslim had to redescribe her "Islam" as "Islamic Humanism." Most Muslims believe that Islam, on its own, concerns itself with social justice, equality, rule of law and fairness. To say that this correct version of Islam ought to be termed Islamic Humanism (or at least implicitly acknowledged as such), smacked most Muslims as a lesser form of self-hate. As such, when "Islamic Humanism" came to be recognized as redundant, so did the "Progressive Muslim" agenda.

The more hostile members of the "moderate majority" began to describe Progressive Muslims as "pro-regressves" - accusing them of taking Islamic discourse back to a state of pre-Islamic jahiliyya (ignorance). Such disfavor stemmed from the fact that Progressive Muslims were declared to be sexually loose, excessively critical of Muslim scholars from the past, and unconcerned with Islamic ritual. My personal belief is that there was, in fact, a sustained campaign of demonization by many conservative Muslims to paint Progressive Muslims as illicit, lewd, and insulting of Islam, and that campaign was successful because the conservative discourse is sadly receptive to such rhetoric. In an article written to prevent female Quranic expert Amina Wadud from leading a group in prayer, GF Haddad, a prominent conservative scholar, likened Progressive Muslims to Dajjal, the Muslim anti-Christ. Conservatives could get away with such blatant demonization. Progressives, on the other hand, were accused of being subversive if they tried to mock such rulings.

However, that smear campaign was aided by the fact that Progressive Muslims allowed themselves to be identified with Neo-conservatives in DC, and because they seemed more interested in publicity stunts than hands-on work with communities. The North American "moderate majority" did not take too well to Ahmed Nassef, a board member of PMUNA, going on Fox News, which is considered presumptively anti-Muslim. Nor did it appreciate Irshad Manji attending conferences organized by right-wing think tanks (despite the fact that Irshad Manji never held herself out as a Progressive). Nor did it appreciate Asra Nomani posting her 95 theses at a West Virginia mosque as if she was some kind of Muslim Martin Luther. Finally, there was the issue of Tarek Fatah, one of the prominent organizers of the Progressive movement. He alienated so many Progressive Muslims that some of them turned against the P-word themselves, and then exposed other negative facts.

My own stint as a Progressive Muslim lasted a few short months, and I terminated my relationship on my own initiative due to what I thought was an insurmountable problem with the Progressive Muslim movement. Islam, like Judaism, is a juridical religion. The primary sources of Islam - the Quran and Sunnah - are pulled together to create religious law (Shariah) which provides guidance to Muslims. I was faced with the stark fact that there was no such thing as a "Progressive" Muslim jurisprudence, neither in theory nor practice; nor would there ever be one. There certainly were vaunted scholars whose opinions were consistent with the aims sought by the Progressive Muslims, but those scholars did not want their opinions appropriated by the Progressives, partly because they had bought into the conservative smear, and partly as a matter of pride because they considered their harmony with Progressives a consequence of their affirmation of tradition, not a sign of their break from it. At the end of the day, all practicing Muslims turn to some kind of juridical authority. The fact that the Progressives did not have one to offer was a great cause of concern for me, and I packed my bags.

Today, the "moderate majority" of North American Muslims flows freely through a number of popular channels, such as the website Eteraz.Org States of Islam, which I launched, Islamica Magazine, and altmuslim.com, as well as the traditional organizations like MPAC and CAIR. Even former progressives have reconstituted themselves so that they no longer claim to speak for a Progressive version of Islam but for that other progressivism - the political one.

The P-word comes up from time to time, but almost no one wears it anymore.

The game is over. Progressive Islam is dead. It has ended before it even really began. Like a one timer cult, it is at one moment increasingly popular, than all of a sudden loses it steam and dies out. Such is the fate of all movements that have no divine authority.

Very interesting article from the New York Times today. Does anyone know more about Mohammad Akram Nadwi's work?

A Secret History

By CARLA POWER
Published February 25, 2007
New York Times

For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the stock image of an Islamic scholar is a gray-bearded man. Women tend to be seen as the subjects of Islamic law rather than its shapers. And while some opportunities for religious education do exist for women ? the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo has a women?s college, for example, and there are girls? madrasas and female study groups in mosques and private homes ? cultural barriers prevent most women in the Islamic world from pursuing such studies. Recent findings by a scholar at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies in Britain, however, may help lower those barriers and challenge prevalent notions of women?s roles within Islamic society. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a 43-year-old Sunni alim, or religious scholar, has rediscovered a long-lost tradition of Muslim women teaching the Koran, transmitting hadith (deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and even making Islamic law as jurists.

Akram embarked eight years ago on a single-volume biographical dictionary of female hadith scholars, a project that took him trawling through biographical dictionaries, classical texts, madrasa chronicles and letters for relevant citations. ?I thought I?d find maybe 20 or 30 women,? he says. To date, he has found 8,000 of them, dating back 1,400 years, and his dictionary now fills 40 volumes. It?s so long that his usual publishers, in Damascus and Beirut, have balked at the project, though an English translation of his preface ? itself almost 400 pages long ? will come out in England this summer. (Akram has talked with Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia?s former ambassador to the United States, about the possibility of publishing the entire work through his Riyadh-based foundation.)

The dictionary?s diverse entries include a 10th-century Baghdad-born jurist who traveled through Syria and Egypt, teaching other women; a female scholar ? or muhaddithat ? in 12th-century Egypt whose male students marveled at her mastery of a ?camel load? of texts; and a 15th-century woman who taught hadith at the Prophet?s grave in Medina, one of the most important spots in Islam. One seventh-century Medina woman who reached the academic rank of jurist issued key fatwas on hajj rituals and commerce; another female jurist living in medieval Aleppo not only issued fatwas but also advised her far more famous husband on how to issue his.

Not all of these women scholars were previously unknown. Many Muslims acknowledge that Islam has its learned women, particularly in the field of hadith, starting with the Prophet?s wife Aisha. And several Western academics have written on women?s religious education. About a century ago, the Hungarian Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher estimated that about 15 percent of medieval hadith scholars were women. But Akram?s dictionary is groundbreaking in its scope.

Indeed, read today, when many Muslim women still don?t dare pray in mosques, let alone lecture leaders in them, Akram?s entry for someone like Umm al-Darda, a prominent jurist in seventh-century Damascus, is startling. As a young woman, al-Darda used to sit with male scholars in the mosque, talking shop. ?I?ve tried to worship Allah in every way,? she wrote, ?but I?ve never found a better one than sitting around, debating other scholars.? She went on to teach hadith and fiqh, or law, at the mosque, and even lectured in the men?s section; her students included the caliph of Damascus. She shocked her contemporaries by praying shoulder to shoulder with men ? a nearly unknown practice, even now ? and issuing a fatwa, still cited by modern scholars, that allowed women to pray in the same position as men.

It?s after the 16th century that citations of women scholars dwindle. Some historians venture that this is because Islamic education grew more formal, excluding women as it became increasingly oriented toward establishing careers in the courts and mosques. (Strangely enough, Akram found that this kind of exclusion also helped women become better scholars. Because they didn?t hold official posts, they had little reason to invent or embellish prophetic traditions.)

Akram?s work has led to accusations that he is championing free mixing between men and women, but he says that is not so. He maintains that women students should sit at a discreet distance from their male classmates or co-worshipers, or be separated by a curtain. (The practice has parallels in Orthodox Judaism.) The Muslim women who taught men ?are part of our history,? he says. ?It doesn?t mean you have to follow them. It?s up to people to decide.?

Neverthless, Akram says he hopes that uncovering past hadith scholars could help reform present-day Islamic culture. Many Muslims see historical precedents ? particularly when they date back to the golden age of Muhammad ? as blueprints for sound modern societies and look to scholars to evaluate and interpret those precedents. Muslim feminists like the Moroccan writer Fatima Mernissi and Kecia Ali, a professor at Boston University, have cast fresh light on women?s roles in Islamic law and history, but their worldview ? and their audiences ? are largely Western or Westernized. Akram is a working alim, lecturing in mosques and universities and dispensing fatwas on issues like inheritance and divorce. ?Here you?ve got a guy who?s coming from the tradition, who knows the stuff and who?s able to give us that level of detail which is missing in the self-proclaimed progressive Muslim writers,? says James Piscatori, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University.

The erosion of women?s religious education in recent times, Akram says, reflects ?decline in every aspect of Islam.? Flabby leadership and a focus on politics rather than scholarship has left Muslims ignorant of their own history. Islam?s current cultural insecurity has been bad for both its scholarship and its women, Akram says. ?Our traditions have grown weak, and when people are weak, they grow cautious. When they?re cautious, they don?t give their women freedoms.?

When Akram lectures, he dryly notes, women are more excited by this history than men. To persuade reluctant Muslims to educate their girls, Akram employs a potent debating strategy he compares the status quo to the age of al jahiliya, the Arabic term for the barbaric state of pre-Islamic Arabia. (Osama Bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb, the godfather of modern Islamic extremism, have employed the comparison to very different effect.) Barring Muslim women from education and religious authority, Akram argues, is akin to the pre-Islamic custom of burying girls alive. ?I tell people, ?God has given girls qualities and potential,? ? he says. ?If they aren?t allowed to develop them, if they aren?t provided with opportunities to study and learn, it?s basically a live burial.?

When I spoke with him, Akram invoked a favorite poem, ?Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,? Thomas Gray?s 18th-century lament for dead English farmers. ?Gray said that villagers could have been like Milton,? if only they?d had the chance, Akram observes. ?Muslim women are in the same situation. There could have been so many Miltons.?

Carla Power is a London-based journalist who writes about Islamic issues.