Islam New Perspectives

Beyond the Wall
of Fundamentalism
The primacy of the person over the group, the feminist question within the Islamic world, and testimonies of those who build bridges of dialogue and encounter

by Giorgio Paolucci

Say the word “Islam” and instinctively you think of a compact world that resists all change, impermeable against any contamination. But reality speaks a different language; it encourages you to take off the skewed glasses you’re looking through. Behind that word, “Islam,” there isn’t an army of automatons, clones of the Koran. There are Muslims, there are people: A billion and 300 million men and women who carry in their hearts the same entreaty for happiness, the same hope for fulfillment that dwells in the heart of every person, at every latitude of the earth. Many of them are forced to deal dramatically with a nihilist ideology that has transformed religion into a project of power, and God into the general of an army, but all of them are animated by the desire for freedom–the freedom to use reason as the instrument of knowledge of reality and as a window on Mystery, freedom of conscience, and freedom between man and woman. The Meeting offered some significant and moving testimonies of this fact, indicating new directions for reflection, encounter, and work to do together.

The challenge of the converts
“In order to face modernity fully, Muslims must take the crucial step of recognizing the primacy of the person over the group,” admonishes Samir Khalil, an internationally recognized Jesuit scholar of Islamic studies, and Professor at Beirut’s Saint Joseph University. “Islamic societies are pervaded with a deep yearning in this direction, but this desire cannot pierce the heavy pall of religious and political power, and does not determine civil life. The primacy of the person is a foundational value to which the West must continue to testify, working for its affirmation in the international community.” The fact that Muslim converts to Christianity must live in secrecy–there are thousands throughout the world, even though little or nothing is said or written about them–is one of the consequences of the prevalence of the group over the individual. Conversion, the gesture of freedom of the heart and mind, is seen as a betrayal of the Islamic community, like a weakening of society. This is why it “must” be persecuted, not only on the religious level, but on the juridical one as well, to the point of the death penalty, which is still part of the laws of six Islamic nations. A sin is treated as a crime.

Springtide of feminism
The question of women is another exposed nerve of contemporary Islam. Elham Manea, from Yemen, a researcher at the University of Zurich, says so without mincing words: “If I say that the human being is born to be free, if I say that this is a natural right, something that belongs to men and women as persons endowed with reason, I express a ‘prohibited thought.’ When I affirm that I do not intend to turn to religious texts to demonstrate my position, but I want to use my reason, I can be viewed as godless, as someone who casts doubt on my religion. Isn’t this, instead, the negation of the human? This is precisely what the fundamentalists want, those who dream of the return to the origins like something magical, that can do without reason.” Valentina Colombo, writer and university professor of Arab Language and Literature, discussed the intellectual and human discoveries she has made on the Internet, where it is possible to find the richness and vivacity of Arab literary production (above all, women’s), often obscured in the author’s country. She invited listeners to look at some of the signs of the “springtide of feminism” that have manifested themselves, for example, in Tunisia’s statutes on the person and Morocco’s family law.

True integration
The Tunisian Raja Ben Slama appealed, “Look at us from close up, and you’ll discover how much diversity there is in our societies, how many among us want and work for democracy, pluralism, and the emancipation of women.” And, she adds, perhaps women are precisely the ones through whom authentic change of the Islamic world can begin, because the woman is the primordial other, the first “other” a person sees, and teaches us that one cannot fully say “I” without thinking of a “you,” because every affirmation of identity needs a relationship with the other in order to be able to be totally fulfilled.
Souad Sbai, President of the Association of Moroccan Women in Italy, confirmed Slama’s words and continued, speaking of the Arab-Islamic communities that have established roots in other countries and over whom the long shadow of radicalism looms: “The weakness of society strengthens extremism, invigorating those who want to build a state within the state, a community that is extraneous to the land in which it lives. The more deeply you are rooted in your history, the more you will help the great majority of foreigners who want to live peacefully to leave the ghetto and build true integration together with you.”