The Second Enlightenment does not require any religion including Islam to become a reality. But it doesn’t mean they can’t co-exist. There is a place where the Second Enlightenment and Islam and practicing Muslims could meet, a junction where people of different cultures and religious beliefs and diverse political and sexual orientations can harvest coexistence and share space and freedom.

While a zealot Muslim (fundamentalist) aims to influence, morally obligate, humiliate, or provoke with other intimidating and divisive acts, such people are in fact are the militants who seek theocracy. There are plenty of people today who believe Islam can be reinterpreted and lifted out of its medieval parochialism, harnessing the principles which are based on a broader and inclusive level of reasoning. A great number of modern and secular thinkers with open, enlightened minds are capable of bringing Islamic societies into constructive and peaceful dialogues. The greatest common sense in the New Enlightenment enterprise is that people of all beliefs can be who they want to be, without damaging the common interests of society as a whole. Theocratically-inclined Muslims need to be reminded that this is the age of inclusivism, with liberation from old-school, enforced religious duties.

No Single Class Can Rule

 Key to the Second Enlightenment is the principle that no single class of people should have superiority over others (ethnocentrism), no one has the authority to tell other people what to do, and no one can use the language of intimidation and primacy (logocentrism) to control others. The equal rights and equal value of all ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups are to be upheld and protected. This process requires abolishing the rule of one single class, thus banning dictatorship of one group of theologians or one tribal-royal family, and monolithic politics.

However, to some obedient and faithful Muslims, such an ideal can feel like a threat to their belief systems and way of living. But practicing Muslims should not worry – the content of the Koran can in fact remain intact. The secularization process involves pressuring the theocratically-inclined Muslims to give up their theological militancy, and instead allow individual freedom in beliefs, proceeding with collective and democratic decision-making. A fundamentalist may think Shariah law may be ideal for himself and his family but he would be required to reflect more vigorously: are these laws suitable for others who do not think like him, in the very same society where he lives alongside secular Muslims, non-believers, free-thinkers, religious minorities and other socially marginalized or even ostracized groups? For a profoundly civil and mature society, isn’t it more rational to have a system of laws that holds equality and freedom of belief and expression in high regard? The process of the Enlightenment, hence, requires rational thinking whether Muslim, Christian or any other religious or social designations. Rationality and equal treatment of others are the supreme prerequisites.

In a paradoxical twist, this new era can in fact be an opportunity for Muslims to save their cherished Islam from the abuses of single theologian or authoritarian custodians of theocracy. Secularism can rescue God from demise, removing God from the sociopolitical manipulations that theologians often perform under the guise of God, and instead making protected space for beliefs in God which help people in their lives and communities (rather than religion being used to control or limit people). For example, the work of Martin Luther and the Reformation movement in post-16th century Europe made the environment conducive for the Enlightenment to take form, supporting individual rights. In this way, Martin Luther and his movement actually saved Christianity and God from a vehement social rejection of the institution of Church, especially after centuries of repressive and draconian religious politics. In another example, the majority of early European and American enlighteners who wrote secular constitutions were devout and practicing Christians. But despite their beliefs, they saw the wisdom in keeping God and Jesus outside of their constitutions.

It must be acknowledged that some of these enlighteners and ‘good’ Christians not only did not abolish slavery but they even biblically justified and endorse it. It is only later that the shift in the church and antislavery movement ended slave-owning saga – it even cost the U.S. a full-blown civil war in order to be forced in accepting abolition of slavery. In the same process of paving the way for equal rights by the freethinkers, the suffragette gained momentum and so the women attained their natural rights, otherwise religion had no plans to change its stance vis-a-vis slavery, women’s suffrage or the conditions of other ostracized minorities. The enlighteners of the Islamic world can in a similar fashion keep God and Islam outside of the ideals of the Second Enlightenment and the democratization process without fearing that they are sacrificing their religious beliefs and practices. Secularism and religion can in fact coexist – even Islam.The freethinkers of the Islamic world can even learn from the shortcomings of the early enlighteners of the West and bypass the hurdles of the first Enlightenment and move on to the establishment of the Second Enlightenment.

Some attribute inequality between individuals and communities to be God-ordained as some have justified their own hegemony, but the root of discrimination against and suppression of others is designed by the arrogant. Among other types of inequalities and discriminations, slavery was openly practiced in many Islamic regions and countries for centuries. It was finally global antislavery movement brought an end to the slave trade in the Islamic countries in early and mid-twentieth-century, since God had no plans to ban slavery, nor Islam was against it. These subservient categories of the Islamic societies were freed because of the work of the freethinkers, human rights activists and the international pressure. On the other hand, the issue of complete and absolute gender equality is still another important and pending dilemma that need to be addressed and dealt with pan-culturally. So, the destiny of and life conditions in the Islamic countries lie in the hands of their progressive and modern thinkers. Let us look at it this way, in having the disenfranchised people gain equal rights, it would give historians of the future the courage to applaud those who countered dogma and meanwhile pioneered in implementing the universal emancipation and equal value for all creeds and groups in the Islamic world.

A Gentle Identity with a Human Project in Mind

 Many people are assumed to have a Muslim identity because they have Islamic names or were born in Islamic societies, obviously through no choice of their own. Many of us out there who carry the label of a Muslim name have oriented ourselves more toward universalism, secularism and humanism rather than dogmatic religion and its attendant tribalism and separatism. Not all “Muslims” share the same values, even if their names or families are Muslim. This is especially true of non-conformist groups such as atheists, members of LGBTQ groups, feminists who are against religious patriarchy and misogyny, leftist thinkers, rationalist philosophers, and others with non-religious tendencies who have Muslim names or come from Islamic countries and are thus labeled as ‘Muslims,’ but whose ideas are radically different from mainstream Muslims. Lumping such non-conformist individuals together under a fundamentalist religious label does not do justice to the power and legitimacy of their own individual life choices.

However, there is certainly a sense of impracticality in not using any group identities for large communities, whether Muslim or Christian or Hindu, etc. Use identities for people if you must, but it has to be with a constant, vigilant awareness that human identities are only ‘addresses’ to locate people, not to define them as complex beings. Identities such as ‘Muslim’ are simply external addresses.

While there is that danger of labeling and lumping others together, another great danger comes with identifying oneself with a group that sees itself as special. Many, if not most, religions, like to refer to themselves with some variation of being a ‘chosen people’ – chosen by God, given a unique revelation, promised a special future, led by the most important prophet, etc. Embracing a ‘chosen people’ project like this for oneself is just as damaging as labeling and rejecting an outside group. Both are acts of division, separation and stratification.

Instead, in the Second Enlightenment, we will focus on the ‘human project’ – not a ‘chosen people’ project. No group is special; no group is highest or lowest or privileged. In a move of true inclusion, all people are the chosen people!

Footnote: 

Semantics and the Problem of Identity

For the sake of better understanding how to think about people who carry a Muslim identity, it behooves us first to clarify the meaning and usage of the two terms “Islam” and “Muslim.” The next point is that the so-called Muslims are not ‘one’ people. The broad and single historical identity of “Muslim” has been both an anachronistic construction by the Orientalists, and by modern media as if all Muslims think the same way and behave the same way. But in fact, they are of vast and diverse populations and cultures in lands from Indonesia, to India, Central Asia, Middle East all the way to Senegal in West Africa, to Bosnia in Europe. A single universal Muslim identity has little historical basis. Even though Muslims may share the same religion, those who live in far flung geographies have different approaches to their religion, and have set for themselves different layers of loyalties and priorities. There is no fixity to this identity; the adherents of Islam are NOT identical people as it is often believed.

Additionally, Islam as a religion is one thing but being a Muslim can be another. There is clearly a fundamental difference between ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim,’ yet the relationship between the two has often been confused due to an unexamined conceptualization. Let’s examine this formulation:

It is important to remember that “Islam” is a designation for the religion, an abstract scriptural compilation of the Koran and its exegesis including the sayings of Mohammad (hadiths). Islam is not a living organism. The content of Islam is defined by its practitioners in different times and in different geographies. “Muslim”, however, refers to the identity of a living human being. As living beings, Muslims are thinking people with psychologically diverse, circumstantial approaches to Islam. They are architects of their own lives, with different degrees of belief and practice.

A variety of written and oral Islamic transmissions has created alternative interpretations in both non-theocratic and theocratic systems for Muslims to find options that suit their psychological and cultural inclinations. This can range from the extreme end of the spectrum such as a jihadist thinker, to the other end of spectrum such as Sufi poets, artists and transcendent philosophers. There are enough hand-picked Koranic verses, hadiths, and fatwas for some to justify declaring war on whomever they want, and enough other Koranic texts to inspire the transcendent positions of poets and philosophers. And the texts even drove some ‘Muslims’ to become atheists (i.e. Zakariya al-Razi, Omar Khayyam among others).

Despite such clear variations in the nature of ‘Muslims’, the fallacy continues that those who carry the label of ‘Muslim’ are identical, behaving alike and embracing the same Islam, even though “Islam” is itself void of any inherent and absolute definition in terms of universal theology and framework of implantation of Islamic precepts. The term “Muslim” in fact offers only a very thin layer of identity to any given person. “Muslim” identity can spread itself in three sometimes unrelated layers: a nominal and a casual identity in the absence of any other identity; a religious identity; and an identity of militancy and superiority. One identity can easily be mistaken for another.

To be sure, lumping a group of labeled people in a conceptual box and outlining their overarching history is easier than opening up to complex sociological and psychological categories, doing the extra mental work of respecting the differences inherent in any category of people. But this is exactly what a conscious thinker must do: be aware of the tendency to paint all Muslims with the same brush, stop those automatic mental reflexes, and replace such thoughts with slower, more responsible, more reflective ones.

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