Javier Arías Miguez

ESSAY “100 QUESTIONS ABOUT ISLAM”

The following essay will aim to analyze the work “One Hundred Questions about Islam.”
The book is structured like an interview, so we cannot attribute the merit of writing it to a single
person. The interview was conducted with Samir Khalil Samir (an internationally renowned
Islamologist) by Giorgi Paolucci and Camille Eid (two journalists who are dedicated to the study of
issues related to Islam and the coexistence of different faiths). The title of the book perfectly defines
what we are going to find in it; it is made up of a total of 111 questions about aspects of Islam,
accompanied by an introduction and a documentary appendix.

The main objective of the work is to provide the greatest number of people with a tool
rather than a book. They try to make known a reality to which a large number of men and women
belong who, over the years, have become our neighbors. The authors are aware that they are
subject to certain limitations, but they have made a fairly successful approach to Islam, which we
will now examine in greater depth.

Beyond being divided into questions, since it is an interview (which makes reading easier
and the book much more comprehensive), we can differentiate five essential parts in the work: “The
foundations”, “Can Islam change?”, “The challenge of rights”, “Islam among us” and “Islam and
Christianity: The inevitable encounter, the possible dialogue”.

The first part establishes the foundations of Islam. That is, it approaches the beginnings
and principles of the Islamic religion. It was the last of the monotheistic religions to appear between
the years 610 and 632. Islam developed in the two main cities of the Arabian Peninsula: Mecca and
Medina. The only prophet of the Islamic religion was Muhammad and the way in which he preached
the new creed was inherently violent; the first years of Islam's development were accompanied by
war and, as we will see, rigidity and violence are still present in it.

What did Muhammad preach? His message in Mecca is clear, simple and markedly religious: to
believe in one God, Allah, and in the Day of Judgement when each person will be judged according to
his or her actions and, consequently, destined for hell or paradise; to implore God's forgiveness of sins;
to perform the two prescribed prayers (morning and evening prayers); to stay away from adultery; and
to reject the Arab custom of burying newborns alive. He also preaches social justice for the widow, the
orphan and the poor, through detachment from wealth, with accents reminiscent of the prophet Amos
of the Old Testament. But what Muhammad claims above all is that he is the prophet chosen by God to
communicate the final revelation to humanity.

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A revelation that has been transmitted to him through the archangel Gabriel. (Eid, Khalil and Paolucci;
2016:18)

This preaching is recorded in the Koran, which was a text defended about Muhammad.
The text is the literal transcription of a Quran that has always been with God and has been revealed
to Muhammad in the form of a historical Quran for his preaching. The fact that the Quran has
descended leaves no room for any possibility of critical or historical interpretation of any of its
aspects; one of the main reasons for the rigidity of this religion. Having to strictly follow a text
conceived 16 centuries ago makes Islam as rigid and retrograde as we will observe during the
essay. The beginnings of Islam left behind five fundamental pillars of faith:

Islam is based on five pillars: the profession of faith in Allah and his prophet (shahada), ritual prayer
five times a day (salãt), the offering of ritual alms (zakal), fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm)
and, finally, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which must be made at least once in a lifetime by those who have
the possibility to do so (Hajj). (Eid, Khalil and Paolucci; 2016:31)

The second part deals with the adaptability of Islam. As we have said before, Islam is a
very rigid religion; that is, changing the principles that support it is practically impossible. So,
broadly speaking, chapter two of the book revolves around the difficulty of Islam in implementing
change. Instead, we can see how in certain Islamic regions they have implemented certain
precepts that contradict the principles of Islam. Territories such as Morocco show a small capacity
to adapt to Western culture.

The rigidity of this religion comes largely from the origin of the sacred texts. Since these
texts are conceived as descended, it is not possible to change them and what they impose must be
respected:

For Muslims, the Koran is not the work of Mohammed, but of God himself; consequently, it is
something timeless, which cannot be confined to the seventh century; it is the divine word, which
must be preserved unchanged over time. The orthodox (and with particular emphasis on the
fundamentalists) maintain that each Quranic verse has absolute value, that is, that it is valid at all
times and for every Muslim, regardless of the context; the liberals, however, propose a
contextualized reading and interpretation, not separated from space and time, and consequently,
they emphasize the need to proceed with the work of updating the letter to the history, to the
present and, ultimately, also to modernity. (Eid, Khalil and Paolucci; 2016:65)

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This inability to change what Islam dictates poses a problem regarding rights, and this is
what the third part deals with. Since it is a belief that texts must be ignored, a certain part of what
they dictate cannot be abandoned or interpreted in a more modern way to respect human rights.
During the third chapter, several rights are discussed that are fairly well established in the West, but
in the Islamic world, due to the rigidity of the creed, there is still a great difference in areas such as
religious freedom or equality between men and women.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is the reaction of these countries to the signing of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It is true that this declaration was born in the
West with our thinking instilled in most of its articles, but all the proposals it makes from the
perspective of dignity are fairly logical. The Islamic world, as it did not respond to what its religion
established, drafted another declaration:

The universality of such a declaration is questioned by the Islamic side. The rights stated therein would
actually be the fruit of Western culture and the political and economic capacity that the West has had to
impose them on the international scene as valid for all. This is why the "Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in Islam" was promulgated on the occasion of the 19th Conference of the 45 Foreign
Ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held in Cairo in 1990. (Eid, Khalil and
Paolucci; 2016:65)

The next part of the book is about Islam becoming part of our reality. Due to globalization,
there are an increasing number of religions and cultures coexisting in the same territory. The fourth
part shows how in the West we have begun to live with the Islamic tradition for years and how this
phenomenon is evolving.

In the West, in recent decades, due to globalization, Islam is increasingly being presented
and there are different ways of conceiving it. Islam can be understood as trying to take over Europe
from a multi-religious point of view. But there is something that cannot be denied and that is how it
is increasingly present and we have to assimilate this phenomenon. The book proposes four
models of integration: assimilation, the melting pot, the multicultural society and meaculpism.

Mosques and Islamic customs are becoming more and more prevalent in Europe; one of
the consequences of globalisation is being addressed quite correctly, as it is now possible for
different religions to coexist in a respectful manner. On the other hand, the Islamic world is not able
to reach this level that we have in the West. In a fundamentally Islamic territory there is no freedom
of religion, it is not possible to be a Christian freely there. Sometimes it is even illegal to do so
privately.

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The last of the parts is directly related to this last idea that I have explained. Globalization
and the evolution of humanity are demanding communication between Islam and Christianity. Islam
has a difficult relationship with other religions because it believes they are subordinate. Only the
monotheistic ones are respectable because the Quran dictates that the polytheistic ones must be
eliminated by death or conversion. However, Christianity and Judaism can come to understand it.
But communication between them is somewhat complicated for the following reasons:

Deep down, Muslims remain convinced that Islam is the ultimate and definitive revealed religion,
that the Koran contains both true Judaism and true Christianity, and that Jews and Christians
have altered their Scriptures. For someone who already possesses all the truth, what new things
could he learn by practicing interreligious dialogue? It is clear that this position weighs heavily on
the possibility of building an authentic dialogue, although the reasons in favour of an encounter
in truth, which I have illustrated above, remain valid. We must pray for them to prevail, being
aware that, as John Paul II said in Assisi, praying "does not mean evading history and the
problems it presents. On the contrary, it is choosing to face reality not alone, but with the
strength that comes from Above, the strength of truth and love whose ultimate source is in God.
(Eid, Khalil and Paolucci; 2016:173)

Although it is highly complex to establish a fruitful conversation between Christianity and

Islam, the fourth part of the book shows how this is happening in certain areas. The interviewee
himself uses himself as an example of a way to facilitate dialogue. He says that Islamic people
converted to Christianity serve as a bridge between the two.

Once the content of the book has been seen in a very schematic way, it is time to extract
the central idea from it. Obviously the central theme of the work is Islam, but limiting ourselves to
such a definition would be poor given the number of topics it encompasses. In my opinion, “100
Questions about Islam” is about the ability of a religion as rigid as Islam to adapt to a world as
changing as ours.

As we have seen in the brief summary we have made of the book, Islam is a very rigid
religion due to the impossibility of interpreting and modifying its precepts. The Islamic world lives
under rules that were promulgated in the 6th century and, since they are considered to have come
down from the hand of God, no being has the power to interpret or modify them; they must be
complied with as they were.

The problem is that 15 centuries have passed since then and the world has evolved a lot. Where
there used to be many small, poorly connected territories, we now have large, interconnected and
mutually dependent nations. Therefore, the principles of Islam have to be modified in order to
continue advancing. Christianity has already Page 4 of 7
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The United States has shown great adaptability to the global situation, but it is not enough for the
West to give in to this phenomenon; all faiths must change in some way. Instead, the impossibility
of change is at the very backbone of Islam.

However, in the book we can see how the interviewee repeatedly alludes to movements or
regions that have tried to change certain principles of Islam in order to have greater respect for
what we understand as dignity. Therefore, what we saw as impossible is perhaps more possible
than we thought, even if it is still very difficult. The book is an attempt to analyse; once an approach
to the Islamic world has been made for a Western person, it focuses on the different escape routes
and the capacity for adaptation that Islam could have.

He concludes that Islam is a very maladaptive religion, but although it is very difficult to
change it, it is not an impossible goal. In contrast to other works that I may have read or have
searched for as a result of this work, I must agree with the book. Islam is a very rigid religion, but it
does have a certain adaptive power.

In the work we have analyzed we have seen repeated examples of what we are writing
about in this essay. It deals with rigidity from religious freedom, the situation of women, Islam in the
West, the declaration of universal rights, etc. What it does not address is democracy in Islamic
countries and I find it a good way to contrast the content that we extract in “100 questions about
Islam.” To do this I will use the following fragment from “Islam and democracy”:

The relationship between Islam and democracy in the contemporary world is complex. The Muslim
world is not ideologically monolithic. It presents a broad spectrum of perspectives ranging from the
extremes of those who deny a connection between Islam and democracy to those who argue that
Islam requires a democratic system. In between the extremes, in a number of countries where Muslims
are a majority, many Muslims believe that Islam is a support for democracy even though their particular
political system is not explicitly defined as Islamic.
（…）
The relationship between Islam and democracy is strongly debated among the people who identify with
the Islamic resurgence in the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Some of
these Islamists believe that “democracy” is a foreign concept that has been imposed by Westernizers
and secular reformers upon Muslim societies. They often argue that the concept of popular sovereignty
denies the fundamental Islamic affirmation of the sovereignty of God and is, therefore, a form of
idolatry. People holding these views are less likely to be the ones participating in elections. Many limit
themselves to participating in intellectual debates in the media, and others hold themselves aloof from
the political dynamics

Javier Arías Miguez

of their societies, hoping that their own isolated community will in some way be an inspiration to the
broader Muslim community.

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 Many prominent Islamic intellectuals and groups, however, argue that Islam and democracy are
compatible. Some extend the argument to affirm that under the conditions of the contemporary world,
democracy can be considered a requirement of Islam. In these discussions, Muslim scholars bring
historically important concepts from within the Islamic tradition together with the basic concepts of
democracy as understood in the modern world. (Esposito & Voll, 1996)

This fragment shows us in broad strokes the relationship between Islam and democracy,
which leads us to the same conclusion that the book “100 Questions about Islam” led us to. It
shows us how Islam is a rigid religion and therefore democracy is a challenge. Furthermore, it must
be taken into account that the principles of Islam are not only religious, but apply to social and
political life, making the establishment of democracy more difficult. Although, as in the book, the
fragment shows how certain factions of Islam seek to establish democracy in their territories,
making it clear that although it is difficult, it is possible to achieve a more moderate Islamic world.

To conclude the essay I would like to give an opinion regarding what we have been
discussing in the essay. Islam is a religion that since its origins has been characterized by rigidity
and the exclusion of everything that does not belong to its creed. However, globalization has
advanced to such a point where coexistence between religions and cultures, at least at the Western
level, is a reality and necessary. Talking about nations today may fall a bit short due to the level of
interconnection and dependence we have reached. Many regions of the world have already moved
towards more open and more committed politics of freedom. However, the Islamic world is living in
a state of stagnation because its creed greatly limits its progress and, although for the moment they
can endure the way they have lived until now, there will come a time when change will be
necessary. The Islamic world will have to make an effort to change or its reality based on inequality
will be left behind.

In conclusion, Islam is a religion that lives under unconvertible principles based on

inequality, and the world situation indicates that this situation must change. The world is no longer
made up of many realities separated by borders; globalization has brought with it interconnection
and interdependence, making coexistence between all territories necessary, and for this, freedom is
necessary. Islam faces a challenge that can be overcome in a difficult but not impossible way.

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Literature
Esposito, J. L., & Voll, J. EITHER. (1996). Islam and democracy. Oxford University Press
on Demand.
Khalil, S., Paolucci, G. & Eid, C. (2016). One Hundred Questions About Islam (3rd ed.).
Meeting.

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