Islam or hegemonising metanarrative?

There is a view of Islam that it constitutes some kind of hegemonising metanarrative, but I am coming to believe that this is an historically conditioned, social construct which is amenable to, and actually demands, radical change.

This is to say that Islam is commonly understood an presented as an explanation of everything which itself requires no explanation, i.e. a ‘meta-narrative’, a discourse which contains all other discourses while itself being contained by none other. A set of explanatory principles which are foundational in the sense that they are self-evident and cannot, logically, rather than simply as a matter of inexplicable fact, be proven, supported or justified by reference to more important or foundational principles outside of Islam itself.

On this first point, it is, on the other hand, common to find Muslim thinkers today who would accept concept of Islam as a metanarrative while rejecting the idea that there is no evidence and argument to support it. This is a confusion brought about by the mixing of Greek metaphysics with the semitic religious tradition and is incoherent at a certain point. It is explicitly rejected by the teachings of Islam which claim that it is impossible for human beings to understand Allah in more than a general and imperfect sense and that it would be folly to think that human beings themselves can invent a system of thought which would be able to explain, prove or justify faith in Allah.

Not a few early Muslim scholars condemned the attempt to do this, otherwise known as theology, often in very strong language. Early Muslim mystics merely found it irrelevant.

So the concept of a metanarrative is confused in itself and begs the unsolvable problem of what supports the foundations. Modern philosophy is increasingly at home with this nod in the direction of irreducible complexity, leading to a potential rapprochement with Islam, if only Muslim would recognise their own tradition as similarly somewhat less than completely black and white, either through an evolution of theology towards a more existentialist form or through a re-appropriation of mysticism in its original sense (or both, being more or less the same thing).

The hegemonising aspect alludes to the political dimension of Islam which, in the past, has theoretically, though not practically, sought world domination. Theory is not a good way of looking at things and is another paradoxical Greek concept. It is based on the Greek word meaning ‘to see’ and yet refers to what is supposed to be most invisible of all: the hidden, inner structure of phenomena which somehow explains their outward appearance.

By recognising theory as more of a metaphor of practice than an explanation of its somehow truer or more essential reality, we can free the phenomenon of Islam from the idealistic and abstract project of arriving at an absolute, universal and timeless form and recognise the importance of contextual factors in the way that Islam is expressed in different social situations without the unnecessary fear that we might risk losing the baby with the bathwater. We can change without losing our identity.

This has important applications in the area of determining the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims and our understanding of innovation. These two key dimensions of Islamic practice held sway in very different ways during the lifetime of the Prophet, when the Muslims were a small minority against an almost overwhelming number of violently opposed fellow Arabs, the whole culture being politically and economically outside, peripheral to and unknown by the vast majority of other human groupings on the planet. And secondly, at a time when Islam itself was the, continuously unfolding, innovation.

This situation had not changed significantly by the time of the death of the Prophet, when revelation ceased his sunnah came to an end.

How we go from there to here, 21st century London, is worth thinking about.

If the concept of a hegemonising meta-narrative is theoretical and paradoxical to the point of meaninglessness, shall we have another go at re-conceiving our situation in terms of a different hermeneutic?- a different paradigm of understanding what it all might mean?