REUTERS: BEIRUT, May 1 (Reuters Life!) - Islamic dogma is narrowing the space for debate in the Arab world, argues an Egyptian professor whose own life was overturned by persecution for free thinking.
Thirteen years after an Egyptian sharia court declared him an apostate from Islam, annulled his marriage and effectively forced him into exile, Nasr Abu Zayd looks back without rancour.
"I define myself as an ordinary Muslim who is able to think," he told Reuters during a recent visit to Beirut.
"Now when some people say 'you are an apostate' or something, I really laugh rather than try to defend myself."
Abu Zayd, a short, portly man whose eyes often gleam with humour beneath bushy eyebrows, said in early Islamic tradition different modes of thinking about the divine were acceptable.
Today, constant claims to a monopoly of Islamic truth by Arab rulers and opposition groups scrabbling for legitimacy have stifled discussion, in contrast to debate flourishing elsewhere in the Muslim world, notably in Iran and Turkey, he added.
"Religion has been used, politicised, not only by groups but also the official institutions in every Arab country," the 64-year-old professor of humanism and Islam at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht, The Netherlands, asserted.
"Nearly everything is theologised -- every issue society faces has to be solved by asking if Islam allows it. There is no distinction between the domain of religion and secular space."
He said ulema (Muslim scholars) were all too keen to deliver rulings on economic, social or even medical issues like organ transplants: "You'll hardly find any scholar who says, 'I'm very sorry, but this is not my business, go consult a doctor'." Dogma Cloys Debate in Arab World [Says] Islamic Scholar >>> By Alistair Lyon
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
