Edip Yuksel is a Kurdish American Muslim author and adjunct philosophy professor at Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona.
Yuskel was in the ranks of the Islamic movements in Turkey, in the 1980s, together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he was imprisoned for his radical Islamist views. But later, in 1986, Yuskel had a change of heart, and parted ways with Erdogan and his comrades, after embracing Quranism (the sole Quran reliability).
Today, he is an exponent of the modern Islamic reform movements and is known for his criticism and rejection of both Sunni and Shiite versions of Islam.
While the title of Yusel’s work, Manifesto for Islamic Reform, pledges an interesting but difficult possibility, the contents do not fulfill the promise. The author’s main argument is merely his modified ad fontes view of Islam. He stipulates the Quran as the only authentic source for understanding real Islam. He often disparages as “so-called” Muslims who follow ahadeeth (Muhammad’s statements) and sunnah (traditions) and sira (life) and ijma (consensus of Muslim elite) or any of the traditional madhahib (schools of Jurisprudence).
His argument is untethered from history. It requires an idealized view of the Quran as being both fully sufficient for all matters; spiritual and social and perfectly perspicacious. Yuskel pretends that all the leading ideals of the Western pluralistic, politically free, democratic and just society are provided in the Quran; while the backward, repressive, misogynist and superstitious aspects found so often in Muslim Majority societies are distortions of Islam that are imported from non-Quranic sources: either pre-Islamic Arabia or Jewish, Christian, or secular sources.
This is the tired rhetoric of what I may call Muslim dawagandists (dawa; Arabic for proselytization and propaganda), not reformers. Yuskel repeatedly follows a hermeneutic of the Quran that simply takes a Western (Judeo-Christian or Enlightenment) moral or social ideal and asserts that this ideal is clearly expressed in the Quran.
Nothing in his book demonstrates any significant wrestling with the Text. Instead, he seems to shoehorn the ideal into a selected Quranic text.
Here are three examples; many others can be adduced. He claims that Islam/Quran:
- Promotes scientific inquiry regarding the evolution of humankind on earth. That sounds good, but then he then references Sura 29:20 as the Quranic evidence for his claim. ”Say: ‘Travel in the land and observe how He originated creation. Then God shall bring about the other genesis. Truly God has power over all things.”
In what sense does that equate to scientific enquiry of the evolution of humankind? Yuksel has smuggled his apologetical aim for Islam being into what is alleged to be an argument for reformation of Islam.[i]
2.) “Requires election of officials based on qualifications and principles of justice.“[ii]
Electing officials on the basis of their qualifications also sounds good to most of us. He supports this assertion by referencing sura 4:58. “Verily, God commands you to restore trusts. And when you judge between people, that you judge with justice. Excellent is the admonition God gives you. God is ever Hearer, Seer.” No election of officials is mentioned or implied in the Quranic text. Hence, Yuksel transfers the Western democratic ideal into the Quran.
3.) “Acknowledges the right of citizens to publicly petition against injustices committed by individuals or governments.”[iii] This is a sentiment of which Jefferson or Madison would be proud. Yuksel claims to find this embryonic version of United States Constitution’s First Amendment, right to petition, in Sura 4:148, “God does not like the utterance of evil words out loud, unless a person has been wronged. God is ever Hearer, Knower.” Huh?
Yuksel spends a lot of time in his book arguing for a Quran-only version of Islam. He anticipates objections from traditional Sunni and Shia perspectives. But he betrays bias in his approach to the hadith when he says, “What is worse the actions and words ascribed to Prophet Mohammed have depicted him with a character that is far from exemplary. The hadith books portray the Prophet as a phantasmagoric character with multiple personalities [sic] that character is more fictitious than mythological gods and goddesses…You find numerous conflicting personalities presented as an exemplary figure [sic] choose whichever composite character you like out of thousands of different examples… hadith books contain almost anything you wish especially about Mohammed.” [iv]
So Yuskel does not relate to the hadith based on any evaluation of their historical credibility, but instead on whether or not they comport with his idealized version of Muhammed.
Obviously, Yuksel favors the undefined and ambiguous Mohammed of the Quran, precisely because he is an empty vessel that he, and Muslims like him, can fill with what they prefer a prophet to be. In any case, this Quran-only view leaves us with the absurd position that the text of the Quran, in itself, is not problematic. It is not basis of the views and traditions that Yuksel would jettison from Islamic practice. Yet, it is common to see ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Laskar e-Taib or al -shabab holding placards with Quranic texts on them as declarations and justifications of their Jihadi motivations.
Yuksel offers no useful Reform to Islam or Muslim practice. His book is a barely disguised apology for his idealized Islam. It is nothing as profound as the early work of Muhammed Mahmud Taha of Sudan or as bold as the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
[i] Yuksel, Edip, Manifesto for Islamic Reform, Brainbow Press 2009. p.9
[ii] Ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] Ibid p. 52