Bassam Tahhan Quotes
We should found a new community: the community of Protestant Muslims. Its roots already exist in [Muslim] history. This community would promote a return to the word of God, since the overwhelming majority of prophetic hadiths are subject to serious questioning and suspicion. A Protestant Muslim has only one goal: to track down the truth to its very source. He has only one guiding principle: never to let himself be content with the so-called revealed truth. Freedom of thought is a God-given gift that should be honored by Muslims. The German orientalist Theodor Noeldeke wrote several volumes on the history of the various Korans. Today the Arabic translation of his book is being circulated in secret. Jews and Christians readily accept the different versions of their sacred scriptures. Why shouldn't we? When you examine the different versions from different perspectives - sociological, philosophical, juridical and linguistic - you reveal the Koran's wide range of possible meanings. This breathes new life into [the Koran], instead of petrifying it for all time!
Bassam Tahhan, SyrIan born Islamic French Scholar of Arabic Literature, Islamic Modernist, Telquel (Morocco), Issue 229, June, 2006, Translated in “Muslim Intellectual Calls for ‘Protestant Islam” MEMRI, July 6, 2006’
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Soon after individual inquiry and interpretation was discouraged and then made illegal and punished just as with the Christian Church at the time. Thereafter, the Islamic societies were intellectually closed and deteriorated resembling the Christian state of intellectuality. The Christians began to slowly liberalize and the Protestant Reformation spurred new thinking and Christianity was reinvented by both Catholics and Protestants and Christian intellectual, political, and economic development thrived. Islam has not yet had a reformation but there are modernist Muslims trying. See {623580} .
The major complaints of Muslim fundamentalists then was that “non believers” should never be in government positions of authority over Muslims and that Islamic Law—Sharia—was not the law of the land. The modern and reformist Muslims tried to change the vision of their co-religionists but progress was slow. Over a century later, the same complaints are made by Islamic fundamentalists today and the Muslim reformers are still trying to persuade them that what they want is not desirable.
Ibn al-Nafis was one of the great scientists of all time. He analyzed the human heart, lungs, and circulatory system. This quotation is often given by Muslim modernists and reformers to illustrate that Islam at one time was open to new knowledge, dissent, ideas of all kinds. A century later, Islam closed intellectually and later and even today, Muslims are killed for what became heresy. Truth became determined by the Koran and the words of The Prophet only, Christianity and the Church imposed a similar restrictive view of truth using the Bible and Jesus. However, the Reformation and modernity led Christianity to merge and adopt the more modern and scientific view with the exception of some Christian fundamentalists. Islam had the modern view and abandoned it causing the many educated Islamic reformers and modernists of today great difficulty in changing the culture and laws as a whole.
Rarely has a reformist or revolutionary leader been so candid about the effects of their efforts on their followers.
Toynbee was very active in attempting to reform the Church of England.
“Musalmans” was then another English term for Muslims. At the time, the Hindus and Muslims of India were both under the rule of the British. As bad as Colonial Rule was, it had some advantages for the subjects and their desire to reform government and education. Ironically, there is no Islamic nation today, with the exception of Turkey, where Muslims have the rights, freedom and privileges as they had at the turn of the century in Colonial India.
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
Bassam Tahhan is a Syrian-born French professor of Arabic literature and expert on the Quran. As of 2006 he taught at the Henri IV secondary school in Paris. Tahhan advocates a Protestant reformation in Islam. He defines a "Protestant Islam," as "Islam that allows freedom of thought and permits questioning the Sunna, abrogating hadiths not grounded in the Koran, and reinterpreting the Koran in light of modern values."
