Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism by Omid Safi Page B

all agree on one interpretation of Islam.
    This is why I so dislike “pamphlet Islam” – and what seems to be taking its place now, “web Islam.” 27 I do not want to hear about Islam from an authoritarian who hides his or her own views under a grand title like “The Islamic Position on Jesus.” I would prefer each author to tell me about her or his own position, identify his or her own argument and sources, and mention where they fit in a wider intellectual spectrum. When I mentioned this to some intellectual friends, they replied, “You have become too corrupted by post-modern thinking. That type of self-positioning only comes up in late modernity.” Is that so? I do not dispute that many schools of anthropology, post-colonial theory, and feminist hermeneutics have advocated such self-positioning. Indeed, many of us progressive Muslims have benefited from the fruits of those disciplines. But this self-positioning also seems to me to be one of the characteristic markers of the writings of many, though not all, pre-modern Muslim scholars like the famed Ghazzali.
    We can do better than “pamphlet Islam.” We must. From time to time, of course, there is a need for concise articulation of Islam for ourselves and others. But let us do it honestly, without burying the dazzling array of interpretations that have always existed in Muslim thought and life.
    Let me demonstrate how urgent a non-apologetic, progressive presentation of Islam can be by tackling two of the most pressing issues that have dominated the public discourse on religions in general and Islam in particular: the need for tolerance, and the positing of Islam as a religion of peace.

    Islam beyond “tolerance”
    Since September 11, 2001, we have been told time and again that our task as global citizens is to increase tolerance towards one another and to achieve a more tolerant society. Many Muslims have also emphasized that there are great strands of tolerance in Islam that must be articulated more clearly.
    I beg to differ. I am not interested in teaching or preaching “tolerance.” Naturally I don’t want to see us kill and oppress each other. But words are powerful vehicles in shaping our thoughts, and there are often many layers of meaning embedded in words. The connotations of “tolerance” are deeply
    problematic. Allow me to elaborate this point: the root of the term “tolerance” comes from medieval toxicology and pharmacology, marking how much poison a body could “tolerate” before it would succumb to death. Is this the best that we can do? Is our task to figure out how many “others” (be they Muslims, Jews, blacks, Hindus, homosexuals, non-English speakers, Asians, etc.) we can tolerate before it really kills us? Is this the most sublime height of pluralism that we can aspire to? I don’t want to “tolerate” my fellow human beings, but rather to engage them at the deepest level of what makes us human, through both our phenomenal commonality and our dazzling cultural differences. If we are to have any hope of achieving anything resembling a just peace in the future, that examination needs to include both the greatest accomplishments of all civilizations, and also a painful scrutiny of ways in which the place of privilege has come at a great cost to others. That goes equally for both the Islamic civilization and for the Western powers of today.
    In short, progressive Muslims do not wish for a “tolerant” Islam, any more than we long for a “tolerant” American or European society. Rather, we seek to bring about a pluralistic society in which we honor and engage each other through our differences and our commonalities.

    Islam beyond “religion of peace”
    After September 11, 2001, almost every Muslim I know, including myself on a number of occasions, found himself or herself repeating something akin to this phrase: “Islam is a religion of peace. The actions of these terrorists do not represent real Islam.” And yet for