A biannual journal of the Oasis International Foundation published in four editions: Italian, English, French and Arabic. YEAR 13 – No. 26 – DECEMBER 2017 Both Muslims and Christians prize their places of prayer, as oases where they meet the All Merciful God on the journey to eternal life, and where they meet their brothers and sisters in the bond of religion JOHN PAUL II Speech at Damascus in the Omayyad Mosque, 6 May 2001 oasis 26 MUSLIMS, FAITH AND FREEDOM LEADER A Quest Throughout Islamic History • Oasis 7 The Authors 10 FOCUS Jesus in the Qur’an and the Third Way between Extremism and Secularism • Mustafa Akyol 14 A great prophet in Islam, Jesus preached reform of the religious law in a non- literalist sense that can become a source of inspiration for today’s Muslims. God’s Rights vs Human Rights: Islam under Strain • Omero Marongiu-Perria 24 The medieval ulama thought of religious freedom within a hegemonic paradigm. Nowadays, they often seek to re-propose this paradigm in the positive law of Muslim states. Muslims and Free Will • Maria De Cillis 33 The nature of human actions has always been at the centre of Islamic theological reflection. Indeed, the Qur’an appears to support both God’s omnipotence and human responsibility simultaneously. MUSLIMS Intellectual Freedom and the Study of the Qur’an • Emran El-Badawi 42 For centuries, clerics have considered historical study of the sacred Text to be a form of heresy of Western derivation: that has not prevented the development of critical thought. The Paradox of Islamist Democracy • Michele Brignone 51 The Arab uprisings of 2011 brought Islamist groups to power in various Muslim countries, making the debate on the relationship between Islam and political freedom and the differences between Islamic political systems and liberal democracies both topical and concrete. Tunisia: between Freedom of Conscience and Protection of the Sacred • Mohamed-Chérif Ferjani 63 The Tunisian Constitution reflects the power relations presiding at its drafting: it guarantees the secularists freedom of conscience and accords the Islamists protection of both religion and the sacred. The Eastern Christians’ Role in the Creation of a New Social Space • Salim Daccache s.j. 71 Al-Azhar’s declaration opens the door to a new concept of citizenship that unites Christians and Muslims. A beginning, but not yet a turning point. Islamic Monotheism and the Struggle of Opposites • Muhammad Jābir al-Ansārī 79 An essential feature of Arab-Islamic civilization is its straining towards the unification of created reality and the divine. In a world that tends towards contradiction, this ideal translates into a quest for the concordance of opposites that modernity has thrown into crisis. CLASSICS When Islam Discusses Freedom • Martino Diez 88 The Caliph and the Ascetic • Hasan al-Basrī 94 Hasan al-Basrī, a spiritual master from the first century of Islam, warns the Umayyad sovereign ‘Abd al-Malik to keep to the verses of the Qur’an that describe human beings as responsible for their own deeds. oasis 26 FAITH AND FREEDOM God’s Foreknowledge Does Not Constrain Human Action • Theodore Abū Qurrah 101 Using the same methods as his Islamic contemporaries, the bishop of Harran seeks to convince an imaginary champion of predestination that it is human beings who determine their own actions. Despotism, or the Corruption of the Prophet’s Ideals • ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Kawākibī 105 A political refugee living in Egypt, the Syrian intellectual al-Kawākibī launched a vehement appeal against tyranny. The implied target was the Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid II. An Islamic reformist manifesto that continues to inspire contemporary Arab thinking. REPORTAGE Tunisia: “We Want to Be Free, But Don’t Call Us an Exception” • Rolla Scolari 114 The Tunisian President wants to cut family law free from sharia and dispel the taboo regarding gender inequality in inheritance: one of the last taboos in the Arab-Muslim world. REVIEWS “Neither Liberal nor Fundamentalist” • Michele Brignone 130 Where the Islamists’ theory of political freedom comes from. The Crisis of the Sunni Compromise • Martino Diez 133 The dangerous promise of an Islam recreated from scratch. The Springs of Nonviolence • Andrea Pin 136 Why the peaceful nature of the 2011 Arab uprisings was revolutionary. Between ISIS and the Aga Khan: Islam’s Political Theology • Chiara Pellegrino 138 In Muslim history, religious doctrines and political ideologies overlap. Women Looking for Trouble (and Freedom) • Emma Neri 140 Female Arab directors tell of ideological and religious battles peeping out from personal stories and hidden tensions. Editor-in-chief Rolla Scolari Scientific Editor Martino Diez Managing Editor Michele Brignone Editorial staff Chiara Pellegrino Editorial Consultants Rifaat Bader Marco Bardazzi Bernardo Cervellera Camille Eid Rafic Greiche Claudio Lurati Graphic Design and Layout Massimiliano Frangi English translation Paola Bernardini Catharine de Rienzo OASIS is also available in Italian, French and Arabic. Cover price Italy € 15,00 [abroad € 19,00] Yearly subscription Italy € 25,00 [abroad € 35,00] Three-year subscription Italy € 65,00 [abroad € 85,00] OASIS is also available in pdf and ePub Yearly digital subscription € 14,99 [2 issues] Information on subscriptions and back issues [email protected] tel: +39 041 53.121.00 / +39 02 38.60.97.00 ©2017 by Marsilio Editori® s.p.a. in Venezia First edition: December 2017 ISBN: 978-88-317-2962-8 ISSN: 2532-8905 www.marsilioeditori.it Up to 15% of this book may be photocopied for personal use by readers provided they pay the SIAE the fee established by art. 68, clauses 4 and 5 of Law no. 633 of 22 April 1941. Photocopies for professional, economic or commercial purposes or in any way different from personal use may be made, but only after obtaining specific authorization from the Centro Licenze e Autorizzazioni per le Riproduzioni Editoriali (CLEARDI), Corso di Porta Romana 108, 20122 Milan, e-mail [email protected] and web site www.clearedi.org Printed by Mediagraf SpA, Noventa Padovana for Marsilio Editori® in Venice edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 © 2017 by Marsilio Editori® s.p.a. in Venezia First Digital edition: December 2017 ISBN: 978-88-317-4259-7 www.marsilioeditori.it [email protected] www.fondazioneoasis.org No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. OASIS is a transdisciplinary journal of cultural information. The authors’ freely expressed opinions in the articles published herein do not necessarily reflect the orientation of the Oasis International Foundation, and therefore must be considered as the exclusive responsibility of each contributor. Registration Tribunal of Venice No. 1498 of 12/10/2004 This edition of Oasis was realized with the support of: www.fondazioneoasis.org Fondazione Internazionale Oasis @fondazioneoasis Leader A QUEST THROUGHOUT ISLAMIC HISTORY We will hear talk of jihadism for many years to come. However, this edition of Oasis wants to look beyond it, at a Middle East that, after decades of Is- lamist cultural hegemony, is seeking to turn the page. Even in Saudi Arabia the crown prince, Muhammad Bin Salman, has announced a new season, economically and politically but also at the cultural and religious level. The feasibility of the Saudi proclamation still needs to be proven, but it is un- likely that the religious reform invoked by so many will be truly achieved if it does not take seriously the demand that surfaced in 2011: “freedom”. After years of jihadist violence, sectarian politics and neo-authoritarian drifts, this is the only point of departure. Otherwise, there will not be any depar- ture at all and the current situation will disintegrate into total war. In reality, this demand has accompanied the last century and a half of Arab and Islamic history, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when reformist thought centred its reflections on how to restrain arbitrary gov- 7 ernment. The most significant text from that period was the Syrian ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Kawākibī’s book-manifesto on despotism, an excerpt from which we are proposing in the Classics section. It was to remain a point of reference for subsequent generations and fuelled the political theory of an entire generation of Islamist ideologues and intellectuals. The antidote to tyranny that Islamists propose – a system bound to di- vine law, deemed to be the most solid guarantee to human freedom – ends up in the blind alley of theocracy, however. And so, precisely in reaction to the Islamist pressure, the reflection on freedom is seeking new pathways now- adays. One of these leads in the direction of an epistemological break with what the French Muslim intellectual Omero Marongiu-Perria calls the he- gemony paradigm: a world vision structured around dominating and dom- inated people. Developed during the Middle Ages, this paradigm still condi- tions the positive law in contemporary Islamic countries. Emran El-Badawi, executive director of IQSA (International Qur’anic Studies Association), proposes a variation of this renewal formula: an opening of Qur’anic studies (and Islamic scientific output more generally) to the modern instruments of critical enquiry that, thwarted by the official institutions, have found a channel for expression on internet and the social and satellite networks. And then there is also the “secular” solution proposed by those who do not necessarily suggest new readings of Islam but entrust the protection of civil and political liberties to the mechanisms of the modern legal tradition.