A couple of interesting developments in Islam

One of the concepts we hear a lot about has to do with coming up with a form of Islam more comfortable to non-Muslims in the US and Europe: "European Islam," "Western Islam," or a Reformation for Islam. Such terms can have serious meaning in the context of Muslims relating religious concepts to governmental and legal standards

But they are also used in politics and Islamophobic propaganda by non-Muslims in a clash-of-civilizations sense as synonyms for "Muslims are the Others" or "Muslims are violent and uncivilized."

Meanwhile, real existing Islam is a living, vibrant, constantly evolving religious tradition producing some results more humane and constructive than others.

James Dorsey write about some of those actual developments in The battle for the soul of Islam: Will the real reformer of the faith stand up? Responsible Statecraft 09/26/2021.

Dorsey talks about how the current Saudi monarchy is currently shifting its approach the Wahhabi version of Islam for which it has been the chief sponsor for decades. The clash-of-civilization narratives often carelessly make Saudi "Wahhabism" into the chief culprit for jihadism like that practiced by the Islamic State following in the Bin Laden/Al Qaida tradition. That's a very oversimplified, lazy, and misleading approach.

Wahhabism is certainly a very conservative approach to the faith. But Dorsey writes:

“Wahhabism has refracted into three broad groups since the early 1990s: a left that has developed a discourse of civic rights, a centre occupying official posts of state (dubbed ‘ulama al-sultan’ or the ruler’s clerics) that has put up some resistance to the loosening of their powers in the social, juridical and media spheres, and a Wahhabi right sympathetic to the jihadist discourse of al-Qaeda and its focus on questions of foreign policy,” said scholar Andrew Hammond.

And this is an interesting development:

The [Saudi] crown prince [Mohammed bin Salman], since coming to office, has radically cut back on the investment of tens of billions of dollars in the propagation of religious ultra-conservatism across the globe, most effectively in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has also sought to balance Wahhabism with Saudi ultra-nationalism and shave off the rough social edges of the kingdom’s austere interpretation of the faith. His subjugation of the clergy, and incarceration of adherents of the Wahhabi left and far-right, put an end to a 73-year long power-sharing agreement between the ruling Al-Saud family and the clergy. [my emphasis]

The Western powers should have learned from the experiences in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan) over the last 40 years that trying to pick and foster a "good" version of Islam is a particularly tricky business. But Saudi investments in mosques and religious institutions abroad has been an important exercise of "soft power" on their part. And the results of the radicalizing elements in those activities has sometime produced more than "soft" results.

That's also something to keep in mind with another development that Dorsey describes, the Indonesian group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which he calls "the only non-state player in the battle for the soul of Islam," whatever that may mean. NU has been a separate political party since 1952 in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world. (Indonesians elected a woman President in 2001, Megawati Sukarnoputri, an occurrence which has not yet come to pass in the US.)

There is a very recent article by Ahmet Kuru describing the "Humanitarian Islam" advocated by the NU: How the world’s biggest Islamic organization drives religious reform in Indonesia – and seeks to influence the Muslim world The Conversation 09/23/2021.