User:Louis P. Boog/sandbox/Conservatism in Islam

Conservatism in Islam Islam has sometimes been described as having reformist and conservative tendencies. For example those opposing reform at Al-Azhar university in the nineteenth century where known as muhafizun (from the root "h-f-z" for "preserve" although the muhafizun themselves did not give themselves a name.)

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/273388/can-islam-be-reformed-dennis-prager

Conservatism in the form of preferring traditional religious practices to contemporary "universal" norms or values such as human rights. keeping traditional Islamic strictures on such things as hijab and unequal rights for women, traditional hudood punishments, ban on interest disassociation with non-Muslims, beliefs in supernatural, etc.

Arch Orientalist Lord Cromer, the British Proconsul-general and de facto ruler of Egypt from 1877-1907, wrote "in dealing with the question of introducing European civilisation into Egypt, it should never be forgotten that Islam cannot be reformed, that is to say, reformed Islam is Islam no longer, it is something else".

Maliese Ruthven argues that contemporary Sunni Islam, is decentralized, and decentralized religion is conservative. Contemporary Sunni Islam religious leadership is by and large in the hands of the ulema, whose power is based on their knowledge of scripture rather than any kind of centralized hierarchy. "Generally, decentralized religious authority (as in American Protestantism) tends towards conservatism. Without a cult of divinely inspired leadership the text becomes paramount, and even if the text itself is deemed to be divine, interpretation is most likely to proceed in the safety of well-worn grooves".

"Muslims themselves, even those who aren’t particularly religiously observant, seem so attached to the idea of Islam being unusually uncompromising and assertive)." https://muftah.org/skeptic-discusses-islamic-exceptionalism-shadi-hamid/#.WTWjlZIrKov

Examples of conservatism
Examples of conservatism among modern mainstream Islam

al-Ghazali
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali has been called the "single most influential" Muslim after the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Hassan Hassan, "Academics have long maintained" that al-Ghazali, "steered Islamic culture away from independent scientific inquiry towards religious fundamentalism." (Hassan himself blames a later Muslim figure -- Nizam al-Mulk, a Turkish grand vizier, and not al-Ghazali -- for turning Muslims away from independent inquiry towards religious doctrine.) Al-Ghazali was famous for arguing that any given quantity of combustible material does not burn when a lit match is applied to it because of natural laws, but because God wills it to, and for his emphasis on the absolute necessity of ritual observance in not only prayer and fasting but "eating, sleeping, entering the lavatory."

Co-opting of Modernism
The Islamic modernism movement sought such to achieve such non-conservative goals as a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence" and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis (Tafsir) to reconcile Islamic faith with modern Western values such as nationalism, democracy, civil rights, rationality, equality, and progress. The term "salafiyya" was used to refer to the attempt at renovation of Islamic thought by Modernists. "Early Salafiyya" (Modernists) influenced Islamist movements like Muslim Brotherhood and to some extent Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Brotherhood is considered an intellectual descendant of Islamic modernism. The Brotherhood's founder Hassan Al-Banna was influenced by Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida who attacked the taqlid of the official `ulama and insisted only the Quran and the best-attested ahadith should be sources of the Sharia, and Al-Banna was a dedicated reader of the writings of Rashid Rida and the magazine that Rida published, Al-Manar. Yet now the Brotherhood is known as "fundamentalist" and "illiberal" organization, and salafi is now synonymous with Islamic traditionalism and conservatism.

Malise Ruthven explains that as part of the tendency for Islamic Modernist beliefs to be "co-opted" by secularist rulers and "official `ulama", the Brotherhood moved in a traditionalist and conservative direction, "being the only available outlet for those whose religious and cultural sensibilities had been outraged by the impact of Westernisation". (He notes Feminism inspired buy Qasim Amin, a disciple fo Abduh's "eventually became the banner under which upper-class women imitated the style and fashions of European women" so that women's emancipation became "inextricably intermingled" with Westernisation.)

Western patronage
During the 1970s and sometimes later, Western and pro-Western governments often supported sometimes fledgling Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies. Islamists were considered by Western governments bulwarks against—what were thought to be at the time—more dangerous leftist/communist/nationalist insurgents/opposition, which Islamists were correctly seen as opposing. The US spent billions of dollars to aid the mujahideen Muslim Afghanistan enemies of the Soviet Union, and non-Afghan veterans of the war returned home with their prestige, "experience, ideology, and weapons", and had considerable impact.

Although it is a strong opponent of Israel's existence, Hamas, officially created in 1987, traces back its origins to institutions and clerics supported by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Israel tolerated and supported Islamist movements in Gaza, with figures like Ahmed Yassin, as Israel perceived them preferable to the secular and then more powerful al-Fatah with the PLO.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – whose policies included opening Egypt to Western investment (infitah); transferring Egypt's allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States; and making peace with Israel—released Islamists from prison and welcomed home exiles in tacit exchange for political support in his struggle against leftists. His "encouraging of the emergence of the Islamist movement" was said to have been "imitated by many other Muslim leaders in the years that followed." This "gentlemen's agreement" between Sadat and Islamists broke down in 1975 but not before Islamists came to completely dominate university student unions. Sadat was later assassinated and a formidable insurgency was formed in Egypt in the 1990s. The French government has also been reported to have promoted Islamist preachers "in the hope of channeling Muslim energies into zones of piety and charity."

Islamic revival
In so far as a religious revival seeks to purify a religion and return it to the practices of its founders (in the case of Islam, following the practices (the Sunnah) of a prophet (Muhammad who lived 1400 years ago) is by definition conservative, Islamic revival is a source of conservatism in Islam.

The most recent Islamic revival is thought to have begun roughly sometime in the 1970s (although strong movements began earlier in the century in Egypt and South Asia) and is a reversal of the "Westernization" approach common in Arab and Asian governments earlier in the 20th century. It followed the quadrupling of oil prices in the mid-1970s – which financed billions of dollars of conservative Islamic books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques around the world; and the 1979 Iranian Revolution which undermined the assumption that Westernization strengthened Muslim countries and was the irreversible trend of the future.

The revival has been manifested in the growth of Islamism movement, and in "re-Islamisation" from above and below: in the opening up of official radio stations and journals to fundamentalist preaching, changes in laws to follow the sharia; and in greater piety and in a growing adoption of Islamic culture (such as increased attendance at Hajj ) among the Muslim public. Among immigrants in non-Muslim countries, it includes a feeling of a "growing universalistic Islamic identity" or transnational Islam, brought on by easier communications, media and travel. The revival has also been accompanied by extremism and attacks on civilians and military targets by some Islamist groups.

Causes of resurgence of Islam
The resurgence of Islamic devotion and the attraction to things Islamic can be traced to several events.
 * By the end of World War I, most Muslim states were seen to be dominated by the Christian-leaning Western states. It is argued that either the claims of Islam were false and the Christian or post-Christian West had finally come up with another system that was superior, or Islam had failed through not being true to itself. Thus, a redoubling of faith and devotion by Muslims was called for to reverse this tide.
 * The connection between the lack of an Islamic spirit and the lack of victory was underscored by the disastrous defeat of Arab nationalist-led armies fighting under the slogan "Land, Sea and Air" in the 1967 Six Day War, compared to the (perceived) near-victory of the Yom Kippur War six years later. In that war the military's slogan was "God is Great".
 * Along with the Yom Kippur War came the Arab oil embargo where the (Muslim) Persian Gulf oil-producing states' dramatic decision to cut back on production and quadruple the price of oil, made the terms oil, Arabs and Islam synonymous—with power—in the world, and especially in the Muslim world's public imagination. Many Muslims believe as Saudi Prince Saud al Faisal did that the hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth obtained from the Persian Gulf's huge oil deposits were nothing less than a gift from God to the Islamic faithful.
 * As the Islamic revival gained momentum, governments such as Egypt's, which had previously repressed (and was still continuing to repress) Islamists, joined the bandwagon. They banned alcohol and flooded the airwaves with religious programming, giving the movement even more exposure.

Saudi funding
A Islamic revival is thought to have begun roughly sometime in the 1970s and works to reverse the "Westernization" approach common in Arab and Asian governments earlier in the 20th century. It followed the quadrupling of oil prices in the mid-1970s – which financed billions of dollars of conservative Islamic books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques around the world; and the 1979 Iranian Revolution which undermined the assumption that Westernization strengthened Muslim countries and was the irreversible trend of the future.

Saudi Arabian funding
Starting in the mid-1970s the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports. The tens of billions of dollars in "petro-Islam" largesse obtained from the recently heightened price of oil funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith."

Throughout the Muslim world, religious institutions for people both young and old, from children's maddrassas to high-level scholarships received Saudi funding, "books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built and paid for with money obtained from public Saudi funds over the last 50 years"), along with training in the Kingdom for the preachers and teachers who went on to teach and work at these universities, schools, mosques, etc.

The funding was also used to reward journalists and academics who followed the Saudis' strict interpretation of Islam; and satellite campuses were built around Egypt for Al Azhar, the world's oldest and most influential Islamic university.

The interpretation of Islam promoted by this funding was the strict, conservative Saudi-based Wahhabism or Salafism. In its harshest form it preached that Muslims should not only "always oppose" infidels "in every way," but "hate them for their religion ... for Allah's sake," that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century," that Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims were infidels, etc. While this effort has by no means converted all, or even most Muslims to the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam, it has done much to overwhelm more moderate local interpretations, and has set the Saudi-interpretation of Islam as the "gold standard" of religion in minds of some or many Muslims.

Grand Mosque seizure
The strength of the Islamist movement was manifest in an event which might have seemed sure to turn Muslim public opinion against fundamentalism, but did just the opposite. In 1979 the Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudi Arabia was seized by an armed fundamentalist group and held for over a week. Scores were killed, including many pilgrim bystanders in a gross violation of one of the most holy sites in Islam (and one where arms and violence are strictly forbidden).

Instead of prompting a backlash against the movement from which the attackers originated, however, Saudi Arabia, already very conservative, responded by shoring up its fundamentalist credentials with even more Islamic restrictions. Crackdowns followed on everything from shopkeepers who did not close for prayer and newspapers that published pictures of women, to the selling of dolls, teddy bears (images of animate objects are considered haraam), and dog food (dogs are considered unclean).

In other Muslim countries, blame for and wrath against the seizure was directed not against fundamentalists, but against Islamic fundamentalism's foremost geopolitical enemy – the United States. Ayatollah Khomeini sparked attacks on American embassies when he announced: "It is not beyond guessing that this is the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism" despite the fact that the object of the fundamentalists' revolt was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, America's major ally in the region. Anti-American demonstrations followed in the Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, the UAE, Pakistan, and Kuwait. The US Embassy in Libya was burned by protesters chanting pro-Khomeini slogans and the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan was burned to the ground.

Indonesia
Writing in 2017, "... Indonesia as a whole has drifted in a conservative direction, and Aceh, once an outlier, has become a model for other regions of the country seeking to impose their own Shariah-based ordinances."

Egypt
The spread of Islamic religious conservatism in Egypt from the 1970s was noted in such instances as the one million plus mourners who mourners packed Cairo's streets in June 1998 to mourn one famous preacher (Sheikh Mohamed Metwalli Al-Sharaawi)  Most observers trace the phenomenon to the missionary zeal of Saudi Wahhabism, fuelled by petrodollars in the wake of the oil shock of 1974-5." Even the overthrow of the Islamist Morsi regime, by a general who "promised modernity and vowed religion would not be used in politics" has not brought continued firm conservative policies such as imprisonment for “insulting religion”, and prosecution of homosexual, writers, and bellydancers.