Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism by Omid Safi Page A

nationalistic defiance to the “other” – a rather vulgar form of obstructionism to the
    hegemony of the Western world. 34 Therefore, instead of Islam being a moral vision given to humanity, it becomes constructed into the antithesis of the West. In the world constructed by puritan modes of thinking and their groups, there is no Islam; there is only opposition to the West. This type of Islam that the puritan orientations offer is akin to a perpetual state of emergency where expedience trumps principle, and illegitimate means are consistently justified by invoking higher ends. In essence, what prevails is an aggravated siege mentality that suspends the moral principles of the religion in pursuit of the vindications of political power, and the symbolic displays of domination as well. 35 In this siege mentality, there is no room for analytical or critical thought, and there is no room for seriously engaging the Islamic intellectual heritage. There is only room for bombastic dogma, and for a stark functionalism that ultimately impoverishes the Islamic heritage. One of the most salient characteristics of this orientation is a rabidly aggressive form of patriarchy that responds to feelings of political and social defeatism by engaging in symbolic displays of power that are systematically degrading of women. In my view, for example, the girls that died in Mecca were the direct victims of the sense of frustration and disempowerment felt by puritan men over the humiliations experienced in Afghanistan and Palestine. Of course, this is one of those associations that are virtually impossible to prove empirically, but, in my experience in studying puritan orientations in modern Islam, I find that women are not targeted and degraded simply because of textual commitments or determinations. 36 Rather, there is a certain undeniable vehemence and angst in the treatment of women, as if the more women are made to suffer, the more the political future of Islam is made secure. Puritan orientations do not hesitate to treat all theological arguments aimed at honoring women, by augmenting their autonomy and social mobility, as if a part of the Western conspiracy was designed to destroy Islam. This is also manifested in the puritans’ tendency to look at Muslim women as a consistent source of danger, and vulnerability for Islam, and to go as far as branding women as the main source of social corruption and evil. 37
    Although it would be rather disingenuous to suggest that demeaning attitudes towards women were invented or exclusively adopted only by modern puritan orientations, it is important to understand the uniqueness and distinctiveness of the current puritan challenge in this specific historical juncture of Islamic history. What makes the puritan challenge today particularly compelling and singularly threatening to the humanistic tradition in Islam is the deconstruction of the institutions of religious authority in the age of modernity. Historically, these institutions played the primary role in undermining and marginalizing the supremacist and puritanical movements of the past. In addition, not only does the primacy of apologetic intellectual orientations within contemporary Islam not bode well for the ability of Muslims to overcome these supremacist and puritanical movements, but, even more, such apologetics are the main undercurrent feeding into such movements. The apologetic orientation
    consisted of an effort by a large number of commentators to defend and salvage the Islamic system of belief and tradition from the onslaught of orientalism, Westernization, and modernity by simultaneously emphasizing both the compatibility and also the supremacy of Islam. Apologists responded to the intellectual challenges of modernity by adopting pietistic fictions about the Islamic traditions, but such fictions eschewed any critical evaluation of Islamic doctrines, and celebrated the presumed perfection of Islam. 38 A common heuristic device of