Debating the Faith

In 1985, the Sudanese government executed a theologian named Mahmoud Muhammad Taha for daring to question the Koran. The sages at Al-Azhar University in Egypt had found Taha guilty of apostasy for a thesis he developed in his book, The Second Mission of Islam. Taha argued that the Koran contains two categories of verses: those that the prophet Muhammad recited in Mecca and those recited in Medina. For Taha, the Medina verses, with their emphasis on legal rules, were written in a historical context that no longer exists, so Islam should instead focus on the spiritual and ethical message revealed in Mecca.

	MUSLIM Vs MUSLIM
		CORPORAL PUNISHMENT SHE SAYS "Corporal punishment is a barbarity from a bygone era and no law, however divine it may be, can justify it." HE SAYS "Prison can be a form of barbarity... that can be worse than a hundred lashes." SEX SHE SAYS "What you call 'love' is the act that legalizes male desire and not the relationship, the emotional bond." HE SAYS "Sexual acts must take place within a legal framework." MARRIAGE SHE SAYS "Frankly, whether enforced or not, the very idea that a husband can compel his wife to fulfil her 'conjugal duty' is intolerable." HE SAYS "Violence against women is more a problem of social psychology and of culture than a problem genuinely linked to this Koranic teaching, which authorizes a man to 'chastise' his wife if she fails to respond to her conjugal duty." ISLAMIC LAW SHE SAYS "I do not think that the Koran produced a law; the law is a result of centuries of human effort." HE SAYS "The argument that eliminates Islamic law as an intermediary is among those which, today, are threatening to plunge Muslims into religious anarchy."

Taha's fate demonstrates how, in most Muslim countries, it remains all but impossible to reinterpret for modern times a text considered to be the literal word of God. But in France, home to the largest Islamic community in Europe, an effort is in full swing to separate the eternal message of Islam from its medieval cultural baggage.

Some of the fruits of that effort can be sampled in Loi d'Allah, Loi des Hommes (Law of Allah, Law of Men; Albin Michel) an extended dialogue in which Muslim sociologist Leïla Babès and Tareq Oubrou, rector of the Mosquée de Bordeaux, thrash out their often opposing views on the roles of women and individual freedom in Islam. Although non-Muslim readers may be daunted by the quotations and counter-quotations from hadiths (the reported sayings of the Prophet) that fill so much of any Muslim theological discussion, the book provides a fascinating glimpse of how Islamic traditions are faring in a modern, secular society.

The book reads like a series of e-mail exchanges, in which Babès and Oubrou put forward their own tightly-argued positions and then respond to each other's criticisms. One of the main strands of debate concerns the nature of the Shari'a — Islam's prescriptions for human behaviour. Babès sees Shari'a as a spiritual code of ethics appealing to each believer's individual conscience, not a strict code of conduct to be enforced by an outside authority. Oubrou argues for a more traditional interpretation, in which the expert analysis of religious texts determines the way all believers should act. For Oubrou, free interpretation of the Koran could lead to nothing less than the disappearance of recognizably Islamic values.

Another crucial exchange focuses on who is qualified to interpret the Koran and the hadiths. Babès dismisses the assertion that Sunni Islam has no clergy; although it has no centralized authority, she argues it does have a professional category of scholars who control access to the sacred texts. As a believer, Babès claims the right to interpret the texts for herself. Oubrou rejects this, but does so using an interesting argument. He says it is precisely this disregard for learned interpretation that has enabled terrorists to present their literal reading of certain Koranic verses as a justification for their deeds. "These people read the Koran every day," says Oubrou, "and there's no shortage of passages calling for combat and war."

Babès and Oubrou end up agreeing to disagree. With her focus on individuality and gender equality, Babès is a thoroughly modern Muslim. But Oubrou accuses her of deforming Islam to fit in with Western values, instead of seeking out the essential truth within Islam itself. Nonetheless, Oubrou never denies Babès' right to her opinion. Elsewhere — like Taha before her — she could be facing the hangman's noose.