Rate of Change

The secularisation of Islamic societies is not completely out of the question, is Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour's response. But one should not force abrupt changes.

To take up both points in one answer, I think Islamic countries have been able to adjust to the norms of democracy to some extent. So, it is possible that they could also adjust in the future to the norms of political secularism.

It is, though, very important to emphasise that such a step – if it were to occur – should emerge out of their natural development, rather than being enforced from outside by foreign influences employing boycotts and other coercive methods. To add a comparative element, many African societies seem incapable of establishing the Western model of democracy, because of their internal or tribal divisions. Forcing the pace of change would end up with systems that would benefit no one.

I have seen the Cairo document, and I disagree with many of its articles. But why should it be impossible to include many Islamic standards and ideas in our version of universal human rights – which may, in any case, overlap with those of other theologies?

Take, for example, the controversy over cutting off the hands of thieves. This practice was designed to stop robbery. If it does not in fact stop robbery, then it may be concluded that while it may once have been useful, it no longer works. This is not an article of faith.

A more difficult example might be homosexuality. This practice is very offensive to Muslims, and I cannot imagine rights for homosexuals being included in any Islamic definition of human rights. Homosexuality is punished by death in Muslim societies. But suppose that there are as many as 80,000 homosexuals in Iran. How then is society going to address the phenomenon? Perhaps its attitude will begin to shift; while homosexuality will still be regarded as a social disease, it will cease to be a legal offence.

What Western societies are currently doing in Muslim societies is to control the rate of change, rather than letting that change happen naturally. That is dangerous. If, by contrast, we allow a natural social development to take place, I believe that many of the most seemingly intractable issues between us could come to a reasonable conclusion.

A Christian can easily put Christianity aside and follow secular social rules. But a Muslim cannot say this at the moment. Instead, we have to find a way of finding a peaceful settlement between sharia and social law. And this is not possible as long as countries are prevented from having their own debates in their own time.

The debates going on in Iran at the moment seem to me very fruitful indeed, provided that we don’t politicise them, cheering from the sidelines for one side or the other. Let them take their own time and develop in their own way. Otherwise, people will retreat into their dogmatic certainties, making proper dialogue impossible.