Letter from the Editor
John L. Esposito, Editor in Chief
One of the most renowned scholars in the field of Islamic studies in the United States, Editor in Chief John L. Esposito provides a regular commentary for visitors to the site. These letters discuss topics pertaining to this resource and the Islamic world, developments on the site and other issues.
Muhammad Fathi Osman and the Future of Islam
Muhammad Fathi Osman, a trailblazer in Islamic reform, passed away on September 11, 2010, leaving behind a remarkable legacy. Fathi was a man of extraordinary intellect, faith, energy, and commitment. At the same time, while not shrinking from what he believed, he was also one of the most gentle, unassuming and humble men I have ever known. Because of these qualities—as well as the fact that his thinking and perspectives were decades ahead of many who have come after him—the full weight of his contributions are yet to be fully realized. Fortunately, a new book based on his writings and interviews, A Journey in Islamic Thought: The Life of Fathi Osman, by his daughter Professor Ghada Osman of San Diego University, now makes his life, thought, and contributions accessible to a broad audience.
An Egyptian American scholar-activist, Fathi Osman was born in 1928 in Minya, Egypt. As a young man, he earned degrees in History (Cairo University), Law (Alexandria University), and Islam-Byzantine Relations (Cairo University). After several years as a faculty member at Al-Azhar University, Osman emigrated to the US and was among the first generation of Muslims to earn a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
In 1981, Fathi Osman started the magazine Arabia: The Islamic World Review in London. The international periodical was the first of its kind, featuring established as well as young reform-minded Muslim authors whose open and critical writings on contemporary issues and controversial topics led to its banning in 38 Muslim countries.
He later settled in Los Angeles, California, where he established the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World and served as the scholar-in-residence at the Islamic Center of Southern California. In addition to these posts, Dr. Osman also served as a senior scholar at the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement at the University of Southern California and a Fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (now renamed the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding).
The author of 40 books, Fathi Osman taught in Morocco and Saudi Arabia and lectured at universities and conferences around the world. He was widely regarded as among the most influential Muslim voices in promoting Islamic reform and Muslim-Western relations. Rabbi Reuven Firestone, professor of medieval Jewish and Islamic studies at Hebrew Union College, said of his late colleague: "He had two major projects. The first was to make the case to non-Muslims that Islam is a complex civilization and should not be seen as a flat 'other.' The second, directed to Muslims, was to demonstrate through his scholarship that Islam is flexible and can accommodate modernity and still remain authentic to Islamic values and practices."
If many continue ask today, "Is Islam capable of reform or is there an Islamic reformation?" Fathi Osman would answer as he observed in 2005: "Muslims are going now through a genuine reformation according to our understanding of modern times." He was one of its pioneers. Having lived in Britain and for many years in America, Osman wrote extensively on religious pluralism and tolerance, women's status and rights, and democracy and human rights in Islam as well as issues of Muslim identity in the West.
In contrast to many conservatives and fundamentalists who emphasize a monolithic and exclusivist religious vision, Fathi Osman emphasized the Islamic roots for a more global, diverse, and pluralistic worldview. Differences and divisions, religious, ethnic and racial pluralism, were grounded and legitimated in Qur'anic passages such as 30.22 and 49.13 which state that God deliberately made humanity into different nations and tribes so that "you may know one another. The most honored among you in the eyes of God is the one who is the most righteous." Rather than abolishing diversity, he believed that this passage encourages people to learn to handle their differences intellectually, morally and behaviorally, both within a single community and between multiple communities (see Osman's "The Children of Adam: An Islamic Perspective on Pluralism" in CMCU Occasional Paper, 1997, 13. Q 11:110 and 41:45 are also cited in support).
Osman cited the Qur'anic title of "Children of Adam" (Q 17:70) given to all people as God's conferring honor and dignity on all of humanity. He believes that this honor and dignity must be assured through guarantees of freedom of faith, opinion and expression for all people (Osman 18; he also cites Q 2:256 and 2:282). Qur'an 30:22 and 49:13 recognize ethnic and racial pluralism, which Osman interprets as a call for cooperation between different races, ethnicities and social ranks (Osman 21). Since God in the Qur'an spoke about the "children of Adam"—not Muslims, not non-Muslims, not Arabs—he conferred dignity on the children of Adam, and thus Islam and pluralism are compatible. ¬
In addition, because "every human being has his or her spiritual compass and has been granted dignity by God" (Q 7: 172-173), Osman contended that the Qur'an also supports global pluralism, including not only Jews and Christians, but also Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and other faiths (Osman 65).
Writing in the context of a global Muslim diaspora that comprised more permanent Muslim minority communities than at any time in history, Osman also spoke to issues of diversity and pluralism faced by Muslims minorities, in particular Muslims in the West. Immigrant Muslims and their descendants in America, like other religious minority communities, have been challenged to forge a new national identity as Americans while retaining their religious faith, accommodating multiple levels of diversity and pluralism in a secular society that also has a predominant Judeo-Christian legacy.
Fathi Osman responded to concerns that the Islamic tradition emphasized or required Muslims to live in a state guided by Islamic law, and thus those who lived abroad (outside dar al-Islam) should return or live in an Islamic community-state. He affirmed the legitimacy of permanent Muslim minority communities, maintaining that Muslim unity does not mean that all Muslims must live in single state or caliphate guided by religious law.
Osman saw no necessary contradiction or incompatibility of Islam with laws or constitutions rooted in a secular humanism: "By nature, Muslims are the first people loyal to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because they believe in it as faith, not just as law and having to obey only the police and the judges and the courts, but as an obeisance to their conscience, because this is a matter between the individual and God."
A staunch advocate for democratic principles, Fathi Osman believed that Muslim-Western conflicts were best addressed in a free open environment: "If people feel free to express themselves, they don't need guns to enable people to listen to them…Terrorism thrives in despotic regimes where people are deprived of channels for expression." Contrary to the version of religion espoused by extremists, he maintained, Islam encourages critical thinking. "We have to realize that God's law is not an alternative to the human mind, nor is it supposed to put it out of action. Openness is life, while being closed off and isolated is suicidal."
Freedom and democracy, achieving change and reform through the ballot box, not simply suppressed by authoritarian regimes, are the best antidotes to extremism and terrorism: "If people feel free to express themselves, they don't need guns to enable people to listen to them," he wrote. "Terrorism thrives in despotic regimes where people are deprived of channels for expression."
Fathi Osman had an important message for a world in which many continue to speak of a clash of civilizations or cultures or a clash between Islam and the West: "I believe that there are many landmines that Muslims and the West must overcome in order to make both the image of Islam fair and the image of the West fair. Many things can be done if we are sincere in bridging the gap. It is a cultural gap and a conceptual gap, not a physical or social gap. We and the Western people who believe that all humanity is equal and free, we can work together to improve the situation and to bridge this gap."
John L. Esposito
Editor in Chief
Oxford Islamic Studies Online
November 2011
