The Muslim Reformation

Under the caption “Unreformed Barbarism,” the National Post’s editorial board has today opined that “Every day that Gillian Gibbons remains in a Sudanese jail is … further proof that Islam is in dire need of a reformation of the kind Christianity underwent in the 16th century.”

The implication is obvious—and incredibly offensive: that, before the Protestant reformation of the 16th century, Christianity itself was “unreformed barbarism.”

Any Catholic must beg to differ.

Islam has already, in fact, been through its own Reformation. It happened in the 18th century. As in Christianity, it was prompted by mounting foreign and secularizing influences, and saw itself as a return to base principles and primitive piety in the face of general corruption. The parallels are striking and systematic: like the early Calvinists, for example, it opposed music and dancing. It disapproved of the cult of saints. It opposed images as idolatry. It rejected mysticism and monkish withdrawal from the world.

That Muslim Reformation movement is called Wahhabism. It is the doctrine followed by the government of Saudi Arabia, one of those criticized in the editorial. It is also influential in the government of Sudan, also criticized here. Osama Bin Laden is nominally an adherent.

Good or bad, I doubt that more of the same would produce the resolution the National Post’s editorial board desires.