Just back from Tariq Ramadan’s speech in Vancouver this evening.  It was his crowd, an overflow audience of appreciative supporters.

The topic of the lecture was reform in Islam – it was interesting to see exactly what he means by it.  Boiled down, and maybe inadvertently misrepresented, he says that the problem in Islam is a misunderstanding of Islam’s history, caused by an insecure and passive populace.  He said that they misunderstand the origins of Koranic law – that they don’t understand that Islamic law was drafted in a context.  With the decline in the Islamic world, the faith became divorced from the wider society – the context – and became frozen, centuries out of place.

In order for Islam to reconcile itself with the modern world, those “passive” Muslims need to ask their Imam’s harder and more challenging questions, and force Islamic “Science” to work with modern, or real science to put the faith in a more modern context.  Islam, he said, should also strive to change its objectives to encompass democratization, and environmentalism.

What I hadn’t heard before, was his idea of where reform should take place.  First off, the problem of Islam are the passive believers.  The reform of Islam should not have anything to do with them though – other than urging them to ask harder questions.  Reform needs to happen at an elite level between Islamic scholars.

So that was the speech – a few quotes which stuck out for me – written in mostly accurate shorthand:

The problem [of Islam] is not in the source but in the minds of believers

To westerners – the starting point of respect is the remember that Islam is as complex as Christianity

A Muslim which is not evolving is not being faithful to Islamic teachings

To forgive is jihad, isn’t it?

Protecting the collective is a goal of Islam – by definition a nation or society should be independent

Don’t say ‘I’m a good Muslim, a moderate’

Do you think of the Muslims in this society as a richness, an asset to the country, or a problem to be solved?

Following the speech he took 4 questions.  The first was from an Iranian woman who described herself as secular and asked what her place was in a debate between conservatives and reformers.  He responded with some talk about civil society, and then by saying that some ‘religious liberals are politically scary’ as scary as Iran’s theocrats.

The next question was from a Bosniak woman who asked him for his support in calling for Islamic prayers to be given in local languages and not just Arabic.  He didn’t give this support, and went in to a lengthy explanation of why the prayers must be in Arabic, and how she and her fellow Bosniaks are too “passive” and should make more of an effort to learn god’s chosen tongue.

Question three, I’ll come to in a minute.  The last question was about 9-11 and Muslim reaction to it.  He said that he met a Muslim in America in 2003 who wore a button that said ‘proud to be Muslim’ – which he thought was wrong-headed and, frankly pathetic.

Now Question three.  The questioner here asked for his views on apostasy.  He gave the right answer as you can see on the video (sorry for the sloppy camera work):

One thing I want to pull out of there though.  In the video, he brings up an article in Newsweek’s “On Faith” website, by the Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Goma’a.  Ramadan says that the Mufti unequivocally condemned the death penalty for apostasy.  Ramadan went on to explain that the death penalty was only originally imposed on army deserters – people who converted to Islam to steal military secrets from the Muslims – then repented and went over to the enemy.  It was really a punishment for high treason.

Makes sense, no?

Here’s what Ali Goma’a actually said:

All religions have doctrinal points that define what it is to be an adherent of that religion. These are divine injunctions that form the basis of every religion, but they are not a means for imposing a certain system of belief on others by force. According to Islam, it is not permitted for Muslims to reject their faith, so if a Muslim were to leave Islam and adopt another religion, they would thereby be committing a sin in the eyes of Islam. Religious belief and practice is a personal matter, and society only intervenes when that personal matter becomes public and threatens the well-being of its members.

In some cases, this sin of the individual may also represent a greater break with the commonly held values of a society in an attempt to undermine its foundations or even attack its citizenry. Depending on the circumstances, this may reach the level of a crime of sedition against one’s society. Penalizing this sedition may be at odds with some conceptions of freedom that would go so far as to ensure people the freedom to destroy the society in which they live. This is a freedom that we do not allow since preservation of the society takes precedence over personal freedoms.

That’s not quite as progressive sounding to a Western audience – and maybe good that he didn’t explain the context, lest he lose the crowd.

Sedition, and undermining society are more broadly defined in Egypt than in a place like, say, Iowa or France.  A recent example – Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer:

On November 6, 2006, Amer was again arrested by Egyptian state security officers for posts on his blog that were considered by authorities to be of an irreligious nature … During the hearing, a lawyer in the court room introduced himself as Mohamed Dawoud, and immediately submitted a claim against Kareem for his “incitement to hatred of Islam”. The new claim was added as a new case that Kareem will be held accountable for, even if he were to be acquitted from all the current charges made against him.

The trial was adjourned to February 1, 2007.   Prosecution arguments in the February 1, 2007 session were given by a team of Islamist lawyers who volunteered to serve as the ‘representatives of the people,’ an arrangement allowed under Egyptian law. The government’s state prosecutors, who drew up the legal case against Nabil, were not present.

In a heated exchange during the court session, prosecution lawyers accused Kareem of being an ‘apostate’ and called on judge Ayman al-Akazi to hand Kareem the maximum punishment. As a result, a heated exchange occurred between the prosecution and defence until the judge demanded order.

Kareem defended himself by saying:

“I don’t see what I have done,” he said from the defendant’s cage. “I expressed my opinion…the intention was not anything like these [charges].”

Defence lawyers argued that crimes related to the Internet were new in Egypt and that the penal code did not cover them.

Prosecution lawyer Mohamed Dawoud told The Associated Press:

“I want him [Nabil] to get the toughest punishment,” Dawoud told . “I am on a jihad here … If we leave the likes of him without punishment, it will be like a fire that consumes everything.”

The trial was adjourned to February 22, 2007 where the judge said Nabil was guilty and would serve three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mr Mubarak.

To go from gallows to the gulag is certainly better than nothing – but it’s disingenuous to say that’s progress in any western sense of the word.

I’m not going to tell you what to think, but I’d recomment looking at the rest of his speech – at the parables he used to illustrate his Islamic environmentalism, his Islamic economics, his Islamic “science”.  I suspect that behind each of those as well, you will find something equally ugly and anti-modern.

FYI: There’s a lot of background to this that you need to read about to see exactly what I’m getting at – if you do want to do that, I’d recommend starting here.

FYI 2: TP from the Covenant Zone blog was also at the lecture.  He has a post up with a more considered take on the lecture here.