The Future of Islam

"The future is the best place to find whatever you are looking for. Why? Because you can’t change the past. You can interpret it, rediscover it, draw lessons from it, but you can’t change it. Neither can you change the present. Change is not instantaneous; it takes time. So by the time the present has been changed, it is already the future. So I see the future as the only arena where real change – positive or negative – is possible. But I look at the future not in the singular – as the future – but in the plural, as futures. Futures are an arena for numerous possibilities – where all kinds of alternatives to the present can be envisaged and developed. I am not too interested in predicting the future, although forecasts and predictions are a very significant and important part in our world. I am much more interested in shaping the future. Futures of Islam, like futures of most cultures, are open to numerous pluralistic and democratic possibilities. The emphasis of my own work has been on shaping pluralistic and sustainable futures for Muslim societies. But I have to admit that Muslims, as a whole, are not very good at looking towards the future or exploring alternative futures paths. We tend to be nostalgic about the glories of our history and fatalistic about our current problems. It should not come as a surprise to discover that the first book on the future of Islam was written by an Englishman: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Blunt was an accomplished Orientalist, and wrote a numbers books on the Middle East. He was also a close friend of Jamaluddin Afghani, the famous 19th-century Muslim reformer of Egypt. The Future of Islam was written as a series of essays for the Fortnightly Review in the summer and autumn of 1881 and published as a book in the following year. As a supporter of Arabs, Blunt was aggressively anti-Ottoman: he thought the Ottoman Empire was an impediment to the emergence of ‘progressive thought in Islam’. Considering the period the essays were written, The Future of Islam is a very perceptive book, with a genuine futuristic understanding of the political and intellectual trends of the time. Yes, indeed, Blunt made many predictions, and quite a few turned out to be true. He predicted the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the transfer of Islam’s ‘metropolis’ from Constantinople to Mecca, the emergence of independent Muslim states, and a movement of liberal Islam in Egypt, even the arrival of a ‘Mahdi’ in the Sudan! I think Blunt was spot on when he argued that the future survival of Islam depends on an internal reform of law and ethics. But he was sensible enough to suggest that such reforms are best undertaken by Muslims themselves. ‘I would urge,’ he wrote, ‘that it is to Mohammedans themselves that we must look to work out their ultimate regeneration according to the rules of their own law and conscience.’ The Future of Islam has its biases and prejudices, but it is worth reading, even almost 130 years after its publication, for Blunt’s perceptive insight into Muslim politics and his awareness of the general direction Islam has been moving during the past century."