Are we seeing an Islamic Reformation?

With news coming through that Daesh, the Islamic State, has taken Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the coalition of states defending against them is only having a limited impact. For a time, it appeared the tide was turning. But Daesh has adapted to the air strikes and various groups fighting against them on the ground, and is once again on the offensive.

The failure to contain Daesh is surely weighing on the minds of those in charge of defeating them, but for those of us not in that position we cannot help but wonder if our leaders actually understand Daesh yet.

When the Caliphate was proclaimed, the language used to deride it indicated that there was not much understanding of the intention or beliefs of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his followers. Daesh was not merely an insane cult on the fringes of Islam, and as young men (and women) continue to emigrate to their territory, it seems itself insane to continue to call it such. 

Academically, there appears to be an increasing recognition that the ideology of Daesh has a significant basis to it, and that it wasn't dreamt up to justify their actions in the past couple of years. The rather unwieldy name being used to describe their ideology is 'Salafi-jihadism'. Salafism has had a few notable scholars in its favour over the years, including Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, from whom the Saudi Wahhabism takes its name. Jihad is, of course, a relatively well known concept, having been used to justify terrorism over past few decades. The combination of this interpretation of Islam and this tenet of Islam appears to have taken root some time in the mid-90s, and it is from this combination that Daesh has come.

In the years to come we may well need to come up with a better name for this ideology, because what it proposes is so radical, yet so internally consistent and therefore so appealing to those it targets, that it is very likely to be hanging around for quite some time to come. We may well be seeing not merely the rise of another strand of Islam, but a genuine Islamic Reformation.

The idea of a reformation for Islam is not a new one. It, and Judaism, have both had within them attempts since the 19th century to reform the religion from the inside, in much the same way Christianity had done in the 16th century. What is curious about both these movements, though, is that they seem to be based around the end result of the Protestant Reformation, not the process. Both Islamic and Jewish reform have been based on the idea of liberalising the religion, and freeing those within it. This has been particularly true of Islam in the West, which has had to juggle the laws of the land in which they live with the laws of the religion they follow. But neither of those reforming movements should really be called a reformation. They do not have the same background to them, and are quite rightly defined as being liberalising movements, rather than actually starting over, as a reformation does.

'Salafi-jihadism' is different. In fact, the similarities (important and trivial) of its occurrence with the Protestant Reformation are somewhat surprising. Let me give a description:

Occurring around 1500 years after the religion's foundation, this movement found its first proponents to the north of the centre of the religion. At first, the movement was mostly ignored, bunched together with other small heresies and the like that had popped up over the years, but thousands began listening to the message being preached, and they became followers. The message they were proclaiming was that the religion had become lost in its ways, and they had to go back to the original texts to understand what God had truly meant for them to be doing. In order to assist them in proclaiming their message, new forms of media which allowed rapid dissemination of texts were used, and their message rapidly spread out from where it had first come.

So, what was I referring to? Well, you could make a good argument either way, and an even better argument that I am referring to both. hat the end result of these two reformations should appear to be so different does not matter in deciding whether or not they are both reformations. The point of a reformation is surely to re-form - to start over, to begin again, to create anew the belief that is meant to be followed. That is what happened in Christianity in the 1500s, and it is what is happening here.

If Islam wishes to combat this reformation, the countries and people must work together to do so. The question, though, is who will lead it. Saudi Arabia isn't interested, as their beliefs aren't too different from Daesh's. Iran is irrelevant, as their Shia Islam is in much the same position as the Eastern Orthodoxies. Turkey is too caught up in its own internal difficulties, with those in the country varying from ardent secularists to Daesh supporters. Nowhere in the region is there one voice that would be willing to lead, as the Vatican was able to, for every country has its own problems. It may be in the end that the western creation of nation-states provides the power vacuum in which the self-proclaimed Caliphate is both created and fills.

Or Daesh may collapse in a year. Who really knows?

The dueling songs of Nusakambangan

If you had been on the island of Nusakambangan, just south of Java, at around midnight last night, you may have heard a familiar sound.

Voices, singing harmoniously, to a familiar tune.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.

Upon hearing this, you may have headed towards the sound, to discover what it was that had made this chorus of people sing to the Lord. Perhaps some folks came out on holiday, and are enjoying creation.

As you made your way through the rain forest, things may start to seem out of place. Barbed wire. A fence. Concrete. Bright spotlights.

Getting through all this, you find the people you're looking for.

They aren't all around a fire, camping in the wilderness.

They are in a prison compound, unable to move. They are tied to stakes in the ground, wide-eyed, staring across to the other side of the compound, where soldiers wait with guns at the ready. They are facing death.

They are singing.

In the last minutes of their lives on earth, they sing of eternity in heaven.

When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.

Then a new song begins.

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Then, when death has played its song, silence is the sound of Nusakambagan. 

In the distance, you hear other songs. The wailing of family and friends, knowing that their loved ones are with them no more. The rumbling of vehicles, coming to take away the bodies that had minutes before housed a living soul. The muttering of soldiers, having performed their duty for the country. The flashes of photographers, capturing the moments of emotional pain that will sear into memories for decades to come.

But beyond this earth, there is another song. It is a chorus of people, singing the first song of an eternity spent with their Lord.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.