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An Ill-Fitting Suit? Islam vs Secular Government and Individualism
In part one we saw how Islam’s golden age of open inquiry and science personified by Almohad Spain’s Ibn Tufail and Averroes and the Egyptian historian, geographer polymath, Ibn Khaldun, gave way to an Islamic not invented here syndrome. The West’s teacher, by the 18th century, was shocked that it had become an innovation-resistant student. Islam’s 21st century Ibn Khalduns, Averroes and Ibrahim Muteferrikas, such as Medium’s H.S. Burney, who asked when Islam will join the modern world, encounter stubborn resistance when they trespass into advocating social and not just technological innovation,
As with the 18th century Sultan and his scribes, the Imams and Ayatollahs still resist having the peasants read the Koran for themselves. The Iranian professor Hashem Aghajari’s call for an Islamic reformation similar to Martin Luther’s got him got him condemned to death for apostasy in 2002.
“ In June 2002 Aghajari gave an address in Hamadan commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Dr. Ali Shariati, criticized some of the present Islamic practices in Iran as being in contradiction with the original practices and ideology of Islam, and calling for “Islamic Protestantism” and reform in Islam.”
“A lecturer in history at Tarbiat Moddaress University in Tehran, Professor Aghajari…
