Salon today has a really interesting lead article about the practice and politics of Islam in the modern world. Steve Paulson--who, in addition to being a Templeton-Cambridge fellow for journalism in science and religion, is also the executive producer of Wisconsin Public Radio's "To The Best of Our Knowledge"--has been putting out a series of interviews in Salon with prominent intelectual figures in the religion vs. science debate. (Past interviewees include Karen Armstrong and Richards Dawkins.) For this month's edition, he spoke with prominent Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan. The article is titled "The Modern Muslim", and it's actually a very non-confrontational, informative read. I actually did not know much about Ramadan before reading the interview; he's evidently a very well-known critic of both conservative Muslim practice and xenophobic European policies and attitudes towards Islam. Here's a quote from interview:

Paulson: The picture you present of Mohammed is someone who had a very forward-looking attitude about the status of women. What lessons can Muslim women take away from Mohammed's life?

Ramadan: First, he was really treating women as women -- and not only as mothers, or sisters or daughters in Islam. Women are equal before God and have the same rights and duties. More than that, he was so respectful. He taught people the way they have to deal with women. When his daughter came to him, he stood up and welcomed her, talked to her, respected her, kissed her in front of the people. At that time, to have a daughter in this Arab tribe was quite a dishonor. It was not valued in society. And he was welcoming women in the mosque, letting them enter and talk in the mosque. Today, in the 21st century, people don't even let women come into the mosque and practice their religion. He was promoting knowledge. His own wife, Aishah, was a scholar. This is something that we cannot forget about his life.

Paulson: So if you look at Mohammed's own life, you're saying the rules prohibiting women from entering the mosque are just wrong.

Ramadan: Yes, exactly. This is wrong. This is coming from two main mistakes. The first one is the literal reading of some of the verses. We are forgetting to put things into context. More important than one verse is understanding the overall message of Islam. This is one mistake. We are also confusing Arab cultures, which are historical, with the universal principles of Islam. I really think we have to come back to the Prophet's example to understand the way he was promoting the status of women. He wanted them to be involved at the social level, the political level, the scholarly level, but also within the mosque. Today, we need to come back to this and say, it is not Islamic to prevent Muslim women from entering mosques. Preventing them from getting knowledge is not Islamic. Forced marriages are not Islamic. And even domestic violence: You can't just quote one part of a verse in the Quran, forgetting that the Prophet himself never beat a woman. He was so respectful. So if he is our example, we cannot accept domestic violence. This is not Islamic.

Paulson: There are also verses in the Quran that call on the wives of Mohammed to cover up. Do you read these as prescriptions for how women should dress? For instance, is there a commandment for Muslim women to wear the head scarf?

Ramadan: The head scarf is an Islamic prescription but it cannot be imposed. So it's an act of faith. We never had one woman forced to wear the head scarf during the Prophet's life. It's a choice. This is why I'm always saying it's against Islamic teaching to force a woman to wear a head scarf. But it's also against human rights to force her to take it off. It should be a free choice. Now, the discussion we have in some Muslim countries is not about the head scarf; it's really about what we call the "niqab" -- veiling the face of the woman. This is something which was specific to the Prophet's wives and not to all women. And this is why we must have an intra-community debate about veiling the face -- to say this is not Islamic. There is no compulsion in these matters. We really have to respect the choice of the woman.

Now, at first I thought he was being a bit of an apologist for the practice of niqab (which is very different from a head scarf, or hijab), particularly with that line, "This is something that was specific to the Prophet's wives". But then he goes on to make a very interesting distinction between a spiritual practice and an understanding of religion and its place in everyday social structures: "More important than one verse is understanding the overall message of Islam. This is one mistake. We are also confusing Arab cultures, which are historical, with the universal principles of Islam...For Muslims, the Quran is the very word of God. The Quran is what was revealed. But we still need our intelligence, our reason and our mind to understand what was said to us...when it comes to understanding the Quran in social affairs, we need our mind and our intellect to understand the meaning of the verses in order to implement them in a new historical context".

On the one hand, I do think that it is a bit of a false distinction to say that a religious principle can be completely divorced from the cultural traditions that gave rise to it. On the other hand, as I've said on this forum before, there are many different traditionally embedded ways of following a faith, and the fact that Islam originated in the Middle East is no reason to privilage our image of the Middle Eastern Muslim practice as definitive of the religion. Tariq seems as critical of the strictures of Muslim practice in countries like Saudi Arabia as he is of France's policies banning head scarfs in schools. (Although he is quick to point out that pragmatism should win out when it comes to any young woman's education: "My position is it may be a wrong law. It may be discriminatory. But if a young Muslim girl has to choose between school and the head scarf, go to school. Go to school and learn.")

Check out the article and let me know what you think.