Rumy Hasan is Associate Professor in the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School and Visiting Professorial Research Fellow at the Civitas think tank. A critic of multiculturalism and faith-based identity politics, which he sees as contributing to an increasingly divisive school system, he also monitors the impact of Sharia law and Islamic culture on those countries where they are ascendant.
Muslim nations are generally regarded in the West as doctrinaire, regressive and repressive. They have rarely performed well economically, and none has achieved any significant level of industrialisation.
In response to these perceptions, some Muslim countries have decided that the status quo cannot continue and that meaningful reforms are necessary.
This has been recognised by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world” and constitutes the second-largest global organisation after the United Nations, with a membership of 57 states spread across four continents.
The OIC has acknowledged that modernising society requires Islam to modernise also. In my new book, Modernising Islam: The Limits of Liberal Reform in Muslim Nations, I seek to analyse the policies that have been adopted to achieve this end and delineate the difficulties this has also given rise to.
I note that in 2016, the OIC adopted a “Plan of Action for the Advancement of Women”. Its key objectives were to give more prominence to women in political and economic decision-making, and in society more widely. This was a bold initiative which called on Muslim politicians to step back from the ingrained discrimination of girls and women that they regarded as a requirement of Sharia law.
Also in 2016, the government of Saudi Arabia announced a major programme of economic and social reforms, entitled “Vision 2030”. The guiding force behind the initiative was Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the first child of King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his third wife, Fahda bint Falah Al Hithlain. After obtaining a law degree from his grandfather’s university, he became an advisor to his father in 2009, was appointed deputy crown prince and defense minister after his father became king in 2015, and was then promoted to crown prince in 2017, succeeding his father as prime minister in 2022. Under his guidance, significant reforms were implemented that would previously have been condemned by the Wahhabi clergy as blasphemous, notably—once again—those affecting women, as well as entertainment.
In 2021, the OIC issued the “Abu Dhabi Declaration on Science and Technology”. This proclaimed unambiguously that knowledge and critical thinking— especially in the fields of science, technology and innovation––were the principal drivers of change, not just in terms of accelerating the pace of economic development, improving productivity and competitiveness, but in all human endeavours. My book scrutinises the extent to which those countries that were signed up to the OIC then acted on the Abu Dhabi Declaration.
Because of the authoritarian nature of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, some reforms have been pushed through without being met with overt resistance, though there has certainly been unease. Clerics who have raised concerns have been silenced: in 2018, Sheikh Saleh al Talib, former Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, was arrested and jailed for ten years for condemning concerts and events being held in the country that he said “broke away from the country’s religious and cultural norms”.
However, a cautionary note for the authorities is that the 2023 “Arab Youth Survey” showed that almost two-thirds of respondents felt that their own country’s laws should stay true to Sharia, and believed that preserving their religious and cultural identity was more important than creating a more tolerant, liberal, and globalised society. Over three-quarters said they were concerned about the loss of traditional values and culture.
Apart from Saudi Arabia, the seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have also been able to implement modernising reforms but only by adopting the hardware of modernity (the technological networks, the urban structures, the economic systems) and not its software (the values and culture of modernity) precisely because going further would require their meddling with Islamic jurisprudence, something they have no wish to embroil themselves in.
In stark contrast, in 2019, the religious leaders of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama challenged Islamic tradition by advocating that the notion of the kafir (infidel) should be replaced by the concept of muwathinun or “citizen” to stress that Muslims and non-Muslims have equal status in the country. This directly challenged orthodox Islamic thinking.
In my book I seek to compare and contrast the reforms by which Muslim nations have attempted, or are attempting, to limit the role of Islam in the polity and society. My focus has been on the states mentioned above, plus the Central Asian Republics (CARs).
All are strikingly different. The CARs are unique in that, as former Soviet republics, they continue the legacy of Communism by stressing secularism in their constitutions and making no reference to Islam. The only other country to have enacted such an extensive constitutional and legal realignment was Turkey, under its founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a century ago; for other reforming countries, the suppression of Islam from the drafting of legislation has remained unthinkable: a modernising step too far.
In my earlier book Religion and Development in the Global South (2017), I concluded that not only is Islam unconducive to economic development and growth but, in fundamental respects, it acts as a brake on this endeavour. Despite a seeming softening of literalist Islamic interpretations in some reforming countries, my new book concludes that Islam limits the scope for liberalism and reform in all countries where there is a Muslim majority.
MODERNISING ISLAM
THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL REFORM IN MUSLIM NATIONS
RUMY HASAN
Michael Terence Publishing
Sir Alan Duncan, former UK Foreign Minister
“Rumy Hasan approaches difficult issues in the Muslim world with a sharp intellect and penetrating analysis.”
Prof Sami Aldeeb, Director, Centre of Arab and Islamic Law, St Sulpice, Switzerland
“This book is instructive, precise and well documented. Taking into consideration different Islamic countries, it explains how difficult the reform of Islam is. And when reforms have been adopted, there remains always the danger of cancelling them, as happened in Turkey after Atatürk’s death.”