Edip Yuksel is a Kurdish American Muslim author and adjunct philosophy professor at Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona.
Yuskel was in the ranks of the Islamic movements in Turkey, in the 1980s, together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he was imprisoned for his radical Islamist views. But later, in 1986, Yuskel had a change of heart, and parted ways with Erdogan and his comrades, after embracing Quranism (the sole Quran reliability).
Today, he is an exponent of the modern Islamic reform movements and is known for his criticism and rejection of both Sunni and Shiite versions of Islam.
While the title of Yusel’s work, Manifesto for Islamic Reform, pledges an interesting but difficult possibility, the contents do not fulfill the promise. The author’s main argument is merely his modified ad fontes view of Islam. He stipulates the Quran as the only authentic source for understanding real Islam. He often disparages as “so-called” Muslims who follow ahadeeth (Muhammad’s statements) and sunnah (traditions) and sira (life) and ijma (consensus of Muslim elite) or any of the traditional madhahib (schools of Jurisprudence).
His argument is untethered from history. It requires an idealized view of the Quran as being both fully sufficient for all matters; spiritual and social and perfectly perspicacious. Yuskel pretends that all the leading ideals of the Western pluralistic, politically free, democratic and just society are provided in the Quran; while the backward, repressive, misogynist and superstitious aspects found so often in Muslim Majority societies are distortions of Islam that are imported from non-Quranic sources: either pre-Islamic Arabia or Jewish, Christian, or secular sources.
This is the tired rhetoric of what I may call Muslim dawagandists (dawa; Arabic for proselytization and propaganda), not reformers. Yuskel repeatedly follows a hermeneutic of the Quran that simply takes a Western (Judeo-Christian or Enlightenment) moral or social ideal and asserts that this ideal is clearly expressed in the Quran.
Nothing in his book demonstrates any significant wrestling with the Text. Instead, he seems to shoehorn the ideal into a selected Quranic text.
Here are three examples; many others can be adduced. He claims that Islam/Quran:
- Promotes scientific inquiry regarding the evolution of humankind on earth. That sounds good, but then he then references Sura 29:20 as the Quranic evidence for his claim. ”Say: ‘Travel in the land and observe how He originated creation. Then God shall bring about the other genesis. Truly God has power over all things.”
In what sense does that equate to scientific enquiry of the evolution of humankind? Yuksel has smuggled his apologetical aim for Islam being into what is alleged to be an argument for reformation of Islam.[i]
2.) “Requires election of officials based on qualifications and principles of justice.“[ii]
Electing officials on the basis of their qualifications also sounds good to most of us. He supports this assertion by referencing sura 4:58. “Verily, God commands you to restore trusts. And when you judge between people, that you judge with justice. Excellent is the admonition God gives you. God is ever Hearer, Seer.” No election of officials is mentioned or implied in the Quranic text. Hence, Yuksel transfers the Western democratic ideal into the Quran.
3.) “Acknowledges the right of citizens to publicly petition against injustices committed by individuals or governments.”[iii] This is a sentiment of which Jefferson or Madison would be proud. Yuksel claims to find this embryonic version of United States Constitution’s First Amendment, right to petition, in Sura 4:148, “God does not like the utterance of evil words out loud, unless a person has been wronged. God is ever Hearer, Knower.” Huh?
Yuksel spends a lot of time in his book arguing for a Quran-only version of Islam. He anticipates objections from traditional Sunni and Shia perspectives. But he betrays bias in his approach to the hadith when he says, “What is worse the actions and words ascribed to Prophet Mohammed have depicted him with a character that is far from exemplary. The hadith books portray the Prophet as a phantasmagoric character with multiple personalities [sic] that character is more fictitious than mythological gods and goddesses…You find numerous conflicting personalities presented as an exemplary figure [sic] choose whichever composite character you like out of thousands of different examples… hadith books contain almost anything you wish especially about Mohammed.” [iv]
So Yuskel does not relate to the hadith based on any evaluation of their historical credibility, but instead on whether or not they comport with his idealized version of Muhammed.
Obviously, Yuksel favors the undefined and ambiguous Mohammed of the Quran, precisely because he is an empty vessel that he, and Muslims like him, can fill with what they prefer a prophet to be. In any case, this Quran-only view leaves us with the absurd position that the text of the Quran, in itself, is not problematic. It is not basis of the views and traditions that Yuksel would jettison from Islamic practice. Yet, it is common to see ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Laskar e-Taib or al -shabab holding placards with Quranic texts on them as declarations and justifications of their Jihadi motivations.
Yuksel offers no useful Reform to Islam or Muslim practice. His book is a barely disguised apology for his idealized Islam. It is nothing as profound as the early work of Muhammed Mahmud Taha of Sudan or as bold as the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
[i] Yuksel, Edip, Manifesto for Islamic Reform, Brainbow Press 2009. p.9
[ii] Ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] Ibid p. 52
CogitoErgoSum says
How does he explain Quran 9:29? What other verse abrogates this one or, if not abrogated, when did it ever expire (on what date and by what event)? Or …. was the Quran corrupted by men at some point in history and can nothing in it be trusted to be the truth?
Darrell Pack says
Cogito Ergo Sum,
HE DOES NOT TRY TO EXPLAIN he is simply trying to promote his idealized version of islam.
gravenimage says
Exactly, CogitoErgoSum.
mgoldberg says
This is similar to those who author treatises and texts on real marxist, real socialist societies, goals. They tend to rely on theoretical statements of what a ‘real’ marxist society should look like. They’ve never happened and that should be enough to open the door to real world analysis. Instead, utopianism, and all those who desperately must believe in a world so rearranged despite history, prevail. Likewise, muslim ‘reformers’ and those who disperse a view of a utopian Islam that has never existed, never allow examination of the history of Mohammed, his Qur’an, and its history. Since that is always the case, we should be reminded of this ever present failure of all such utopianism since it is the common currency of the self perception disorder demonstrated by Yusel here, in this case.
Darrell Pack says
mgoldberg, You hit the nail on the head. This is always the case for every golden future-great man utopian groups. These use a highlight reel approach to history. The edits out whatever they find slows their progress to full acceptance in the wider community.
tim gallagher says
I don’t believe that islam can be changed into something humane and decent. It is evil and hate-filled to the core. Whenever I hear about ideas of reforming Islam I always think that that is about as impossible as reforming Nazism so that Nazism becomes a pleasant and humane ideology. It can’t happen and it isn’t ever going to happen. When it comes to islam, people should just leave it behind and help to make the barbaric, garbage ideology become obsolete, which is what should happen to Islam. I feel sure that trying to turn Islam into some kind of benevolent ideology is a futile exercise.
James Lincoln says
You’re right, tim.
It’s analogous to trying to fix up an old poorly maintained house in a bad neighborhood – with framing that is totally rotted out.
Why would anyone spend good money in an attempt to fix up something like that?
darrellpackglobal says
Tim I would be happy if you were wrong, but unfortunately history points to you being right. Mahmud Muhammed TaHa had an intresting effort that he tried in Sudan, They killed him.
tim gallagher says
Thanks for the comments, James and Darrell. I’ll check out the person you mention there, Darrell. Thanks for that information. James, I believe that if you take all the evil calls for endless violence against the non-believers and all the obsessive hatred for non-believers that seem to me to be the essence of islam, there would nothing there at all. I only have the time of day for the brave people who leave Islam, although I do understand how, in some countries, such as , say, Pakistan, it would be virtually impossible to up and leave islam without being murdered by the Muslims who inhabit that place of barbaric darkness. Some things are just so rotten that they can’t be fixed, as your analogy with the house points out. And, no doubt, anyone who tried this impossible task would be slaughtered before long, as Darrell’s example points out.
gravenimage says
Edip Yuksel’s “Manifesto for Islamic Reform”: A Disguised Apology for an Idealized Islam
……………..
This from Edip Yuksel is nothing but Taqiyya. The Qur’an itself is hideously violent–you might be free of a few specific horrors such as stoning without the Hadith and Sira, but you still have the Qur’anic diktats for men to beat their wives and for Muslims slay all unbelievers who do not submit to Islam, just to start.
Further, of course, no mainstream Muslims reject the Hadith and Sira, in any case.
In fact, his mentor, Rashad Khalifa was assassinated by more orthodox Muslims in 1990.
mortimer says
Heartbroken Muslims like Yuksel can no longer bare the VIOLENCE, MISOGYNY and RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY that is INTRINSIC in the Islamic foundational source texts.
But since those texts are PERFECT, ETERNAL and COMPLETE, they NEVER may be altered or else they will become imperfect, temporary and incomplete.
If Allah must be corrected in the 21st century, it is because we are now more moral and kindly than Mohammed or Allah. Our human rights are smarter than Allah. Mohammed is a backward, vicious savage.
If Allah and Mohammed are wrong about so many things, they have nothing to teach us today, and Muslims should simply ABANDON THEM as BACKWARD and STUCK IN THE BRONZE AGE.
Muslims, if you are smarter than Allah and Mohammed, YOU DON’T NEED THEM.
gravenimage says
Mortimer–with all respect–the idea that this is an actual rejection of Islam is mistaken. It is more Taqiyya in action. Remember, he used to be an “Islamist”. I think he has just traded in violent Jihad for the stealth variety.
mortimer says
Response to tim gallagher & James Lincoln : Islam’s central teaching is that Allah hates kafirs and wants Muslims to hate them too. If that is removed, then Islam becomes a tolerant religion, but Muslims would have to remove 60% of the text of the Koran and it would become a very short book.
Why bother saving this desert marauder’s nightmares and fantasies? The Koran is a book of vicious, intolerant dreams.
Why not abandon it?
Blurb1000 says
How do you explain garbage?
jca reid says
Islam cannot be reformed. It’s gotta go.
OLD GUY says
Tucson’s do gooders brought many islamic refuges into neighborhoods of Tucson. I might add not their neighborhood, but other peoples. Those islamic refuges destroyed those area of Tucson and turned them into the highest crime rate areas of the city. Why Pima Community College has the clown on staff is outrageous. Nothing good come from islam in society.