Islamicist scholar Ebrahim Moosa said Tuesday night that the ideological tension between tradition and modernity in Islam could benefit from a more critical look at holy texts.
Moosa, a native of South Africa who served as a consultant on Islamic affairs to former President Nelson Mandela, spoke about imagining Islam beyond Eastern and Western world views to about 25 Northwestern students, faculty and community members in Harris Hall.
An associate research professor at the Center for Study of Muslim Networks at Duke University, Moosa said the holy texts of Islam should be examined critically, even though a literal interpretation is traditionally followed.
“There’s an inherited tradition that you want to hold on to, but some of which you will have to let go,” Moosa said.
Stressing a critical view of the Koran, the holy text of Islam, he said the most current applications of the book are based on ancient interpretations that surfaced after the death of Mohammed, Islam’s central prophet.
Moosa said the tradition of strict interpretation will be hard to alter.
“There will have to be a revolution in education,” said Moosa, who was educated in a madrasa, a traditional school for Muslims.
Moosa began questioning Islam’s inequalities toward women after the end of apartheid created a new racial equality, he said. This led him to ponder the literal reading of the Koran and favor a more modern approach to the interpretation of holy texts.
“Modern (Muslim) thinkers are challenged not only to be innovators,” Moosa said. “They also must grapple with tradition.”
Moosa’s lecture remained mostly theoretical, and only when questioned did he address the implications of the current situation with the Bush administration and Iraq.
Moosa also spoke about the appeal of Osama bin Laden to the Muslim world. Moosa said bin Laden is popular because his diatribes against America and the West “lock into established narratives,” or cultural attitudes. In the same way, President Bush is able to rally Americans using an established notion of Muslims, colored by Jihad, or holy war, Moosa said.
Weinberg senior Noor Riaz said she thinks Moosa’s points were valid, and they made some Muslims justifiably nervous.
“It’s very simplistic to say the Islamic world is not modern,” she said. “They’re not Western.”
Weinberg senior Tehseen Ahmed, who said she saw Moosa speak before, agreed with the speaker’s proposal for change.
“I agree that the way for Muslim Americans to produce a new narrative for self-identity will happen with American and European scholars leading the way,” Ahmed said. “And I think that the rest of the world will follow.”
