Protestantism, Catholocism, and Islam

There is a very interesting parallel to be drawn, I think, between Protestantism and salafism/wahhabism on the one hand, and Catholicism/traditional sunni Islam on the other.

Catholicism and traditional Islam share a belief that religion and religious law is an enormously complicated subject that only the well-qualified are truly capable of judging. In Catholicism, only the priesthood is well-enough qualified. In Islam, the definitions are a bit fuzzier, but the religious scholars, those capable of making judgments, dedicate their lives to unraveling the complexities of the law. One scholar of the Shafi'i school responds to a question from a believer, who has made an independent judgment about a Shafi'i ruling on the basis of his independent reading of the Sunnah, and says:

[Your question] is welcome on account that it indicates a desire to live as close as possible to the Quran and Sunnah; but worrisome because it initially oversimplifies matters of considerable complexity, and subsequently develops into the passing of judgment by persons, that if truth be told, are vastly unqualified for the task.

In direct contrast, Wahhabism claims that religious judgments are obvious. If you read the foundation texts, the answers will be obvious. The education that young Saudis get here on religion is learning by rote: there is only one correct answer, and generally it is backed up by nothing more than a quote from the Qu'ran. Likewise, most of the people I talk to believe that they do completely understand their religion. There's no questioning, no time spent pondering essential questions about the soul and the meaning of the universe. There is no understanding of the complexity of the issues involved, or that Islam has always adapted to meet the needs of the reality in which it found itself.

Protestantism makes many of the same claims. Hence all of the early fights about translating the Bible so that it would be readily accessible for easy interpretation.

Many people have already drawn this parallel. The most famous may be Samuel Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, who makes what is perhaps the first such analogy. Steven Schwartz, in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly, makes the argument that, not only are Wahhabism and Protestantism congruent, but that Catholicism (and its Muslim parallel, traditional Islam), are preferable beliefs because, as he says:

In Islam, there has always been the argument that Wahhabism arose directly as an imitation of Protestant Christianity. And there are Wahhabis who do make this comparison. They say, "We are creating a Protestant Islam." I used to respond to this by saying to Wahhabis, "If you're looking for models from the Christian world, the Catholics are much better models." If I went to Jerry Falwell and asked him how he thinks the poetry of William Blake relates to theology, it is very doubtful he would even know what I was talking about. If I were to go to Pat Robertson and ask him what he thought of John Milton as a representative of Protestant culture, it's very doubtful he would have an intelligent comment. But I can go to a Catholic priest anywhere in the Catholic world and talk about philosophy and poetry, literature and art, because Catholicism is a whole civilization. If you want a Protestant-style Islam, fine, I can't stop you from wanting that, but Protestantism begins with John Milton and ends with Jimmy Swaggart. A Protestant-style Islam would be stripped down, with no spirituality, no sense of Islam as a civilization or a culture, no love of poetry, of mysticism, of religious philosophy, no beautiful mosques.

Steven Schwartz's view of Wahhabi Islam and of Protestantism is clearly not very positive, but even he does not think the parallel is perfect:

There is one extremely important difference, however. Protestantism did not attempt to enforce conformity. Protestantism fostered pluralism.

While I think there are certainly important issues with this parallel, I think Mr. Schwartz's example is flawed.

First of all, the original Protestantism did not at all foster pluralism. You can't even call it "Protestantism" because each individual Protestant had his own beliefs and his own flock of believers. The early Calvinists took over Geneva and exiled or killed those who disagreed and those who did not behave in "proper" fashion. There were enormous arguments between different Protestant sects, each of whom believed theirs was the only path to salvation. (Many Protestant sects still believe theirs is the only path to salvation). What Protestantism did that Catholicism failed to do was to separate religion from the heirarchy of the Church and to make each individual responsible for their own religious education.

The pluralism of Protestantism, then, came directly from the fact that it allowed and promoted an individual interpretation of religion, and it only happened over time, and largely in response to religious persecution by Catholics in Europe. Similarly, although currently Saudi Arabian religion is controlled fairly tightly by the state, there is hope that the spread of Wahhabism through petrodollars might foster the same sense of individual responsibility and individual interpretation, and might lead to a similarly pluralistic form of Islam. It might, however, require persecution similar to that the Puritans met in England, for example, in order to wind up resulting in a recognition of the value of pluralism and religious tolerance.

You could also argue that Islam did not need this sort of breakaway from authority in the first place, because in fact the hierarchy of religious scholars in Islam is only advisory; no one presumes to speak the whole truth, or to know all of the answers. In fact, traditional Islam is fairly pluralistic to start with. It is only recently that Islam began to be seen as uncompromising, and that is mostly due to the growing influence of Wahhabism. But certainly, there are similarities between the Catholic system, where priests are the only ones qualified and educated enough to speak on an issue as complicated as religion, and the traditional Islamic system that depends on men who spend their whole life becoming qualified to speak on issues that they see as incredibly complicated. Protestantism and Wahhabism, on the other hand, see religious decisions as simple ones; just look back to the original text, and the answers are there for any well-intentioned believer to see.

For an interesting discussion of this analogy, see this article.

I should mention as a postscript that most "Wahhabis" see that term as derogatory. They prefer just "Muslims". They practice, after all, the only right form of Islam. Similar to Protestants much? I think so. But for lack of a better term (unless you want to use salafi - one who goes back to the roots - or puritan, but both of those predicate a bit of knowledge of Islam and religion which I don't want to assume).