ISLAM DOES NOT NEED A POPE


In a fascinating but thoroughly flawed essay, Edward Feser makes the argument that Islam, rather than needing a reformation, needs a Catholicization. There are three fundamental errors in Feser's argument. First, there is the Catholic revisionist claim that the Protestant Reformation far from being the central event towards the creation of liberal democracy in the West, was a step backwards from the perspective of reason and freedom. Second, that Islam is like Protestant Christianity – devoid of a legal tradition and therefore is prone to religious totalitarianism. Finally, that the cause of Islamic nations current lawlessness is Islamic heterodoxy, not orthodoxy.


The first mistake Feser makes is historical (or more likely polemical) – the limiting the consequence of the Reformation to simply the creation of Protestantism. The legacy of the Reformation goes far past that of Luther, Calvin or Henry VIII. The real fruits of the Reformation – religious toleration and separation of church and state – came later, as a result of the Dutch Revolt, the 30 years war and the English Civil War (and Glorious Revolution). So while the humanism of Michaelangelo’s Rome may compare favorably to Calvin’s Geneva, it pales in comparison to Spinoza’s Amsterdam or Locke’s London.


The second mistake is an ignorant portrayal of Islam. It is ironic that such an admirer of Aquinus does not recognize how much Aquinus's work parallels and builds upon the great medieval Islamic thinker, Ibn Rashid and Ibn Sina. Feser, however, is too committed to his patently false linkage of Islam as Protestantism, and lumping the two together in opposition to legalistic, rational Catholicism. While Islam lacks a centralized hierarchy, it very much has "an effective mechanism for an application of the principles of an ongoing Tradition to new circumstances." Sharia is no less a legal system than canon law than is Anglo-American common law less a legal system than code-based system. For centuries the system (at least as practised in the Sunni world) was extraordinarily effective at adapting to different cultural contexts without fracturing the unity of Islam. Feser's critique is somewhat more accurate for Shi’a Islam in that it invests more authority in individual leaders, and thus is prone to Protestant-like splintering in a way Sunni Islam is not, but Shi'a leaders must still justify their innovations as within the bounds of sharia.


The problem faced by Islam is not that there does not exists a mechanism to react to change, but that modernity posed such dramatic change that traditional tools of sharia could not address. Thus, it is a uniquely modern problem that Islam's center is unable to de-legitimize radical movements. This weakening of the traditional centers of Islamic jurisprudence has been combined with the political success of the radicals – who have in turn used alliances with authoritarian regimes to suppress and co-opt the traditional centers of Islamic learning and jurisprudence. Thus is it is not the lawlessness of Islam that led to the lawlessness in Islamic states, it is the lawlessness of Islamic states that has led to a lawlessness within Islam. One needs to look no further than strictures placed on women in Wahhabi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan – which can not be justified under traditional sharia.


In some respects, the idea of an Islamic Pope, who can issue the equivalent of a Vatican II is appealing. In some ways, this is precisely what the Aga Khan has done for the Ismailis, greatly improving their condition. But this is not only unrealistic, it distracts from the core need for both Islam and the Islamic world – to separate state and religion. For Islam to truly adapt to the modern world – its various movements must be required to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and no longer rely on allied regimes to quash their theological rivals. What Islam needs is not a Pope, nor a Luther, but a Locke.