Islam at a Crossroads: splitting along conservative or liberal lines

Queen Rania of Jordan, a very progressive Muslim, is arguably on of the most powerful women in the world.

Editor's note: This is the second in an occasional series.

In this part of the series, we will examine the idea of a possible future split in the religion of Islam through the scope of differences in religious ideology. In a secular society, no one wants to speak of religion and politics in the same breath. Predictably, however, they are mentioned in relation to each other quite often because while they are separate entities, they share many similar traits.

One of these traits is the existence of a conservative/liberal spectrum within them both. The political spectrum in the United States has reached what many would agree are historic levels of polarization. Simply put, most of the time, but not always, when you meet someone that is against gays in the military, you can accurately predict where they stand on the majority of the other issues from gun control to the economy.

The people called “the moderates” almost don’t exist anymore. If you fight fiercely for your second amendment rights, and are also for the legalization of marijuana (and aren’t a drug dealer on the south side of Chicago), then you are part of a dying breed.

While these people disappear on the American political scene, their equivalents may be dying on the global Islamic scene as well. It is much more difficult to determine how a pan-national, pan-cultural worldwide religion is behaving as a whole, but many signs point to a growing wave of polarization.

More Muslims are leaving the “middle” of the spectrum and migrating toward either the conservative of liberal end. It once again must be stressed that this is not indicative of a future of American Muslims vs. the rest of the world extremist Muslims. That is not unlike predicting that the future of United States politics will essentially devolve into the craziest part of the tea party vs. all the fiercely Marxist citizens of our country.

The collective members of religions, like political groups, act like a eukaryotic cell. There are forces within the cell working toward its survival, while other forces work toward cell division, which results in two completely separate living organisms.

While these two new cells share the same DNA, once they are separate they are subject to their own reality and fate. On a long enough timeline, differences in religious ideologies and practices work as the forces within a faith system to successfully cause a split. Historically, we see this occur every couple of centuries if not more often in recent human history.

The Arabic term fitna refers to the idea of secession or religious upheaval. There have been many examples in Islam’s history of this, such as the numerous civil wars fought for control of the caliphate in the 7th century CE soon after the founding of the religion. The cell known as Islam underwent its first mitotic moment during this period as the Sunni and Shia became separate individual cells. So is another period of upheaval coming? And will it be strong enough to cause a universally recognized split?

Some Muslims in the west, like these girls in Illinois, are farther towards the conservative end of the spectrum than even some Muslims in the east, such as Queen Rania pictured above.

Photo courtesy of amnation.com

While it should ideally be looked at as a political revolution, the current ongoing events in Cairo serve as a perfect example of the forces within Islam. Many Americans fear that the power struggle in Egypt will ultimately be won by the “untapped reservoir of Islamist rage” to replace Hosni Mubarak’s so called democracy. It is clear that the Muslim Brotherhood wants and would love control of the country. How attainable that goal is for them, is another issue completely.

Egypt is home to a soon to be deposed leader that is delusional in staying to fight the inevitable instead of fleeing to his enjoy an ex-dictator’s dream retirement known as exile in the south of France. Because he is staying to fight for his power, he is continually using tactics like propaganda and the distortion of the truth by the media to fight the masses who want him dead or gone. Many of the pro-Mubarak mobs are paid to go out onto the streets and grab media attention to exaggerate the level of support for him in the country.

The majority of protesters are the youth of the country. Many of these Muslims are liberals even by American standards. They protest male and female alongside each other. This is essentially a revolution of young Egyptian people who went to college, got an education, graduated and saw no reward or hope for social mobility due to the current system of government. In their anger, they began the upheaval of the Egyptian government through protests organized on Facebook and Twitter.

The extremist ultra-conservative end of the Islamic spectrum isn‘t forward thinking enough to put Facebook or Twitter for such a use. Women play a very important part of these protests, many protest organizers are female, and some estimates predict as much as 50% of certain crowds to be female. If extremists from the Muslim Brotherhood were leading these protests, there would most likely be no women in sight, let alone in positions of power. Also, it would have caused a heavy public or covert intervention by the United States.

If the people of Egypt overthrow the current government and set up a new legitimate democracy, the much more (comparatively) liberal members of the faith will help to establish it — the functioning word being legitimate.

Back to the subject at hand, however, the fact that the liberal ended protesters, as well as the conservative parts of the Muslim Brotherhood, exist within the same country lends more evidence for an increasingly apparent polarization in Islam. This polarization can be characterized on a global scale using sweeping generalizations like the assumption that most Muslims in the western world are, on average, more liberal than Muslims in the east.

While there are many exceptions to this rule, certain countries like Saudi Arabia are home to an ultra-conservative form of Islam, especially in comparison to Muslims in a community like Ann Arbor. The existence of these two communities in the same world, both claiming to prescribe to the very same religion is not something that can stand the test of time. This, as well as the implications of Islamic practice in Pakistan (where I’ll actually be for the next few weeks), will be the topic of discussion in future pieces in this series.

Ahmed Chaudhry was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the Michigan in 1994. As a recent graduate of Albion College, where he received a degree in biology and religious studies, he plans to pursue a career in public health. Email him at anc1659@gmail.com.