Are We Watching Islam’s Reformation Right Now?
Many conservatives, myself included, have opined that Islam’s main problem is that it has never experienced a major modernization movement comparable to Christianity’s Reformation. This appealing but admittedly simplistic theory looks good on a time line: The Reformation started about 1500 years after Christ, and Muhammed made the first pilgrimage to Mecca in 629 AD. Add 1500 years to that date, and we’re pretty close to it right now. Many people hope that the current struggle between Islam and Christianity will help push Islam into a modernization, which they assume will bring Islamic values closer to our own.
Mark Steyn offers a slightly different theory: He accepts the premise that Islam is headed for a major modernization, but he doesn’t share common assumptions about what that modernization might look like:
The Islamic “reformation” is, in a sense, the opposite of Christianity’s. The Saudis have used their vast oil enrichment to promote themselves as a kind of Holy See for Muslims, and the Wahhabization of previously low-key syncretic localized Islams in almost every corner of the planet is testament to their success. . . .
And at one level the Islamist “reformation” makes perfect sense. After all, they look at Christianity’s reformation and see that everywhere but the United States it led to the ebbing of faith and its banishment to the fringes of life. The jihadist reformation is, as they see it, a rational response to the Christian one.