Tag: tariq ramadan

Dagens citat: Koranen

Tariq Ramadan, i hans bog Radical Reform (OUP 2009, s. 91-92):

The revealed Book neither stifles nor directs the mind, it liberates it at the heart of the Universe: the world speaks by itself, autonomously, and it is human intelligence’s task to understand its language, its vocabulary, its semantics, its rules, its grammar, and its order. The written Revelation is not a science book, but it calls on the human mind to engage all its critical, analytical and scientific potential in its quest for knowledge. Nothing is less present in the Quran than the fear or rejection of knowledge, whether sacred or profane, and this is what early scholars or scientists had felt and understood perfectly when they engaged in all the fields of learning (from philosophy to the exact and experimental sciences), confident that the absolute freedom of their reason in those fields in no way hampered the reasons and the essence of faith.

Og denne tolerante og åbne grundholdning i den tidlige islamiske civilisation var det også, som ansporede dels periodens store bidrag til videnskaber som matematik og astronomi, dels dén rolle somme kustoder af den antikke kulturarv, som araberne endte med at komme til at spille, og som senere fik en stor betydning for den eurpæiske renæssance.

Denne holdning blev senere afløst af en betydelig intellektuel stagnation, som intelligente moderne tænkere som for eksempel Tariq Ramadan forsøger at bryde blandt andet ved at vende tilbage til de første århundreders “åbne” læsning af Koranen og dens forhold til omverdenen.

Dagens citat: Tariq Ramadan

Fra bogen The Messenger (Penguin Books paperback, 2008), s. 22:

Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating this requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer’s conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them.

Men hvad så med forestillingen om rettroenhed og om, at ikke-muslimer eller ikke-kristne er vantro alle til hobe? Som Ramadan ser det, er islam “by no means a closed value system at variance or conflicting with other value systems”:

The Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions.

Pragmatisk tolerance og plads til alle, med andre ord, så længe man tror på lighed, retfærdighed og menneskelig værdighed – et elementært sæt af værdier, som mange af verdens kyniske magthavere blæser på, også (naturligvis) i den islamiske verden, hvilket Ramadan utvivlsomt er meget bevidst om. Men smukt udtrykt, det er det.