Muslims have produced a considerable body of liberal movements within Islam or “progressive Islam”. Muslims believe in the basic tenets of Islam, such as the Six Elements of Belief and the Five Pillars of Islam. They consider their views to be fully compatible with the teachings of Islam. Their main difference with more conservative Islamic opinion is in differences of interpretation of how to apply the core Islamic values to modern life. It should be further noted that the liberal Muslim’s focus on individual interpretation and ethics, rather than on the literal word of scripture, may have an antecedent in the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism.
Liberal Islam has come about through two issues which we believe serve as a basic portal to rapprochement ‘Islam and the West’, and ‘Islam in the West’. We will go into some detail on the second issue, representing the liberal movement within Islam in the West. It is the issue of the relationship between Islam and the West and the resulting modernization of the concepts, ideas, perceptions, and community relations between the entities in each society in addition to the character of the international relations and social, cultural, economic and political growth that we encounter from the West.
Wahhabis, as they are known by non-Wahhabis, are a more recent group. They prefer to be called the Ikhwan, or Brethren, or sometimes Salafis (the term implies a return to the origins of Islam, the pure, earliest days) or muwahiddun (Unitarians). Wahhabism is a liberal movement within Islam founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab in the eighteenth century in what is present-day Saudi Arabia. They classify themselves as Sunni and follow the Hanbali legal tradition (but exclusively, without consulting other schools). However, some regard other Sunnis as heretics. They are recognized as the official religion of Saudi Arabia and have had a great deal of influence on the Islamic world due to Saudi control of Mecca and Medina,
There are several significant liberal movements within Islam that aim to create authentic Muslim societies, including governmental and legal systems, such as the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood) founded by Hassan al-Banna (1906 – 1949), the Jamaati-i-Islam (community of Islam) founded by Abu’l A’la Mawdudi (1903 – 1979) and the hizb-ut-tahrir al-islami (Islamic Liberation Party) founded by Taqiuddin an-Nabhana (1909 –1977). All these have, at different times and in various Muslim countries, had some electoral success. Jamaati members have held (or hold) Cabinet posts in Pakistan and Bangladesh
Another trend in modern Islam is sometimes called progressive, liberal, or secular Islam. Followers may be called Ijtihadists. They may be either Sunni or Shi’a, and generally favor the development of personal interpretations of the Qur’an and hadith often rejecting the notion of an “Islamic state.” Pioneers of liberal Islam include Muhammad Iqbal (1877 – 1938) and Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849 – 1905) (for their writing, see Kurzman 1998; for progressive Islam, see Safi 2003). One contemporary scholar, Farid Esack, describes progressive Islam as an Islam that seeks to transform unjust societies into just ones, and people as objects of exploitation into “subjects of history.”
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