Islam & Europe: Crises are Challenges

An-Na`im and His Work Toward AnIslamic Reformation: A Short Introduction

75 an-nàIm and hIs work TOWARD AN ISLAMIC REFORMATION: a short IntroductIon* Jean-Yves Carlier The works of Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nàim contributes greatly to intercultural dialogue and discussion of the place of Islamic law, especially in western societies. His first book, Toward an Islamic Reformation (1990), defends a modernist interpretation of Islam that combines respect for the foundations of Muslim identity and basic principles of democratic societies. His latest book, Islam and the Secular State (2008), lends broad support to the effectiveness of a neutral State from the standpoint of religion. His works as a whole attest to the vitality of innovative thought within Islam. This also represents a major (scholarly) contribution to both intercultural dialogue and integration of Islamic law into international development of law; in particular, international human rights law. Rigorously scientific, a man of dialogue, committed to the defence of fundamental rights, an audacious reformer of Islam, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nàim deserves to be better known in Europe, since it is in the process of building into an “ethnic society”, to use the words of Albert Bastenier.1 This article will be limited to a general introduction of the author and an analysis of his first work, Toward an Islamic Reformation, even though the subsequent articles are more focused on his latest work, Islam and the Secular State, which will only be mentioned briefly at the end of this article, to distinguish it from his preceding work. An-Nàim Professor An-Nàim was born in Sudan in 1946. He studied law at the universities of Khartoum (1970), Cambridge (1973) and Edinburgh (1976). Since 1995, he has been professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), after having served as Executive Director of the African division of Human Rights Watch in Washington D.C. * This is a revised edition of a text published in French: “An-Nàim pour une réforme du droit musulman”, in La Revue nouvelle, Brussels, December 2008, n° 12, p. 75 (www.revuenouvelle.be). 1 A. Bastenier, Qu’est-ce qu’une société ethnique?, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2004. 76 Jean-Yves Carlier In 1968, while still a student in Khartoum, he became a member of the Republican Brotherhood, whose leader Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, was executed in 1985 by the regime of Sudanese president Jafar Numayry. Numayry’s regime, in turn, fell later that same year. Taha’s reform-oriented thinking and these events had a profound influence on An-Nàim, who frequently quotes him as someone he holds, according to Islamic tradition , to be a revered master (ustadh). In 1987, he translated Taha’s main work, The Second Message of Islam, initially published in 1967. In the interim, An-Nàim was lecturer at Khartoum University Faculty of Law from 1976 until 1985. He had become a leading spokesman for Taha’s ideas, the latter being banned from speaking in the country. President Numayry, who had seized power in 1969 through a coup d’état by young socialist soldiers, succeeded in establishing his power by negotiating an agreement in the 1970s that ended the civil war in Sudan between the Muslim North and the non-Muslim South. However, influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, the government hardened its stance. It forcefully imposed Islamic law in 1983, thus reopening the conflict between North and South. Taha, moderate Muslim reformer, was openly opposed to the forced Islamisation of Sudanese society. He was arrested along with more than 400 members of the Republican Fraternity, including AnNa `im. With An-Nàim himself serving as their lawyer, all members of the group were released except for Taha, who was tried for sedition and apostasy, sentenced to death and executed. Later, the Sudanese Supreme Court, to which Taha’s daughter had appealed the case after Numayry’s fall, quashed the death sentence due to procedural defects but did not rule on the legal basis for the crime of apostasy. Earlier, the movement had been dissolved and An-Nàim had gone into exile. He held temporary teaching positions in various universities in the United States, Canada, Sweden and Egypt while hoping one day to return to his country. An-Nàim eventually reconciled himself to a long-term exile after seeing the evolution of the Sudanese regime towards fundamentalist Islam after the 1989 coup d’état. Thereafter , he accepted more stable positions, joining Emory Law School in 1995. His Work The scholarly works of Abdullahi Ahmed...