Is the Face of Islam Changing?

In the aftermath of September 11, South African scholar Farid Esack has become one of the most sought-after interpreters of Islamic thought in the United States. A progressive Muslim theologian who cut his teeth in the anti-apartheid struggle, Esack received his theological education in Pakistan. While studying in some of the same Karachi schools that also educated the leaders of the Taliban, he became increasingly disillusioned with both the narrow Islamic ideology and the oppression of Christians he encountered there. The Pakistani Catholics he met in the 1970s and early '80s introduced Esack to the ideas of liberation theology.

Currently a visiting scholar at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he is the author of

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Like most religious movements, we claim we've always been there and that there have always been strands of it in Islam. But progressive Islam has never been in the forefront, has never been the accepted official theology. To be honest, we are a small minority in different parts of the world, but the current crisis seems to be pushing people into a greater understanding and appreciation of progressive Islamic theology.

We Muslims often argue about what the Prophet Muhammad did or didn't do, or about whether something was sanctioned by the Prophet or by early Muslims. Such theological precedents are very important to us.

Shortly after the bombing happened, as I was teaching a class and talking about Muhammad's life in Mecca and Medina, it occurred to me that it is a problem for us Muslims that we have only two theological paradigms and precedents on which to base our lives, and that that limitation is in part responsible for the mess that we are in. The one is the paradigm of a community of oppressed people in Mecca, and the other is of a Muslim community that is in control in Medina. What we don't have is a model for coexisting with other people in equality.

But there is a third way, what I call the "Abyssinian paradigm," which refers to the time when the Prophet sent a group of his followers from Mecca to go and live in Abyssinia. They lived there peacefully for many years, and some of them did not return, even after Muslims were in power in Mecca. They did not make any attempts to turn Abyssinia into an Islamic state. They sent good reports back about the king under whom they were living, and how happy they were living there.

This is the third paradigm that Muslims today more than ever need to revive because it is crucial for the sake of human survival and coexistence. Until recently the notion of coexistence and cultural tolerance was pretty controversial for mainstream Islamic thinkers, but I was surprised at a recent Muslim conference to hear more and more people talking about the need to revive this Abyssinian paradigm.

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