Change and Changeability: Ethics of Disagreement and Public Space in Islamic Thought (Essay‪)‬

We live in a fantastic century. Lands across the planet have become our neighbors: China is across the street, the Middle East at our back door. Young people with backpacks are everywhere, and those who remain at home are treated to an endless parade of books, documentaries, and visitors from abroad. As Prof. Huston Smith aptly puts it, we hear that East and West are meeting, but it is an understatement. They are being flung at one another, hurled with the force of atoms, the speed of jets, and the restlessness of minds impatient to learn the ways of others. Looking back on our century, historians may remember it most not as the time of space travel or release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously. (1) In the contemporary world of multi-cultural, multi-religious societies and global interaction, where human lives are becoming increasingly closely linked, it has been, and still is, necessary to eradicate gross misunderstandings, presuppositions and stereotypical views about those who are different from us. The globalization process has made humanity aware of the place of others; it also required a response to ethical questions. Ethics thus becomes in itself a question of hermeneutics, when the 'I' meets with 'the other' in the public space. How sacred literature is used in relation to ethical questions is a hermeneutical question as well. In the midst of these diverse manifestations of globalization, there is much discussion about the emergence of Islamism, or Islamic revivalisms. In order to better understand the Islamic ethics of disagreement, we need to understand the motivations and rationale of these revivalist movements, to see whether their understanding of public space originates in an 'extremist' agenda or it is a question of internal hermeneutics. Thus, what matters here is our approach in the study of such revivalist movements. There are currently a large number of books and articles on all aspects of political Islam in the Middle East, but it is rarer to see any explicit theorizing aimed at explaining the Islamic revival itself. In many studies there is an implicit assumption that contemporary Islamic revival is a result of relative deprivation, in particular oppressive state policies and social injustice. A general problem with these assumptions is that they may explain the revival in some countries in the Middle East but not in others. At the moment, there seems to be no single theory that can account for the many "faces" of political Islam in such diverse settings as, for example, Turkey (democratic Islamism or Islamic democracy), Iran (Islamic revolution), Egypt (Islamist opposition) and Algeria (the so-called Islamist terror). As well summarized by Knudsen, (2) there are a range of theories (or rather, theory clusters) which can be grouped under three broad headings: civilizational, social and textual. The first theory cluster is made up of macro-sociological theories aiming at explaining the dynamics of Islamic civilizations internally (dynastic theories), and externally, vis-a-vis an external power (civilisational theories). The second cluster of theories focuses on social processes. They locate the Islamic revival not in religion, but in the social and political context in which it is embedded (crisis theories, cultural duality theories, state culture theories and resurgence theories). The third theory cluster locates the Islamic revival in Islam's founding texts and doctrine as well as in religious worship. In the first instance, Islam is considered a shared discourse (beliefs, rituals and symbols) that is shaped by local socio-political conditions (discursive theories). Alternatively, the starting point would be that Muslim activists are united by a shared belief in Islam as an alternative to secular ideologies, creating a potent socio-political force (textual theories).