Puritanism and Islamism. On some aspects of the protestantisation of Islam

Authors

  • Piotr Stawiński Krakowska Akademia im. Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15633/ochc.1000

Keywords:

Islam, Islamism, Puritanism, Protestantism, protestantisation

Abstract

The transformations within modern Islam are more and more often compared to the situation prevailing in Christianity during the Reformation. However, it seems necessary to substantiate the comparison of a Muslim to a Puritan. It may be assumed that both a 17ᵗʰ century Puritan and a modern Muslim may have been regarded as people facing modernity. It is the reaction to modernity, although it takes different forms (ranging from fundamentalism to secularism) that may constitute the grounds for making comparisons. Puritanism as a lifestyle characterized by maintaining Puritan virtues draws parallel to Islamism, which is also treated as a lifestyle understood in terms of return and renewal. Puritans strongly stressed contact with God which was nonmatrixed by clergy or sacraments and the necessity to constantly fight one’s weakness and sin (not in terms of saving merits, however, as such do not exist in Calvinist theology). They were constantly concerned with the religious state of their own souls, hence constant introspection – examining your own self, an obsessive (as some put it) fear of depravity. It can safely be called “Puritan jihad” in its most noble meaning given to the spiritual struggle by the Prophet and the first Muslims.

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Published

2009-12-01