Jazzak Allahu khayr for your contribution. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this topic in the future.

I have something to say about the point in your second paragraph but I guess I should read your link first.

About you third point, I did (try at least) to read Soloveitchik’s work but realized I would have to understand philosophy a bit better before I really understood it. I resisted studying philosophy at all for a long time, and I’m still not sure if it’s really worth my time, but its definitely necessary if one wants to understand many religious thinkers historically in the Muslim tradition as well as currently.

I think your last sentence is possibly true but in a way this is just begging the question. Muslims have had plenty of thinkers who attempted moves with regard to the inherited tradition that were extremely dynamic but often times they were not fully accepted. It all depends what is considered as part of the tradition. There have been thinkers who considered themselves within the Islamic tradition which developed doctrines of almost every conceivable variety, even those which contradicted the seemingly unalterable core of Islamic thought, challenging the oneness of God, attributing divinity to humans, declaring people after the Prophet (saw) to be prophets, declaring that the Sharia’h no longer has to be observed, etc. etc. This is without even mentioning modern secular Muslims who would challenge some of the assumptions of Islamic thought (Qur’an is literal word of Allaah, etc.)

I am not calling for including all of this as legitimate Islamic thought, but I’m just saying that if we are going to exclude certain thought as beyond the bounds of the traditiion (which I think we should) and then say that “Muslim thought” has not been as dynamic as Jewish thought we should realize that this is at least partially due to the fact that we consciously reject certain products of Muslim civilization as being outside of the tradition, or at least outside of orthodoxy.

The real difference that remains may be attributable at least in good part to the difference between the orthopraxic nature of Jewish orthodoxy and the orthodoxic nature of Muslim orthodoxy. As I said, more to come, inshAllah.

I’m noticing this very interesting exchange quite late in the game, of course, but a few people who’ve written quite insightfully on the parallels and differences between Islam and Judaism are Tamara Sonn, William Brinner and Mustansir Mir.

I don’t think orthodox, religiously practicing Muslims should or are obliged to surrender the normative high ground as to what constitutes a Muslim in the full sense of the word, but postmodern demographic realities must also be recognized, as well. Not that it’s a particularly significant statement, but I did write something about the need for a better balancing act between upholding normative ideals of traditional Islam and respectingnon-practicing and/or “less-orthodox” Muslims’ legitimate claim to be part of Islamic civilization. http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2265/

Despite the obvious and profound parallels in belief as well as practice, it can be surprisingly challenging to apply the same categories and values to both Orthodox Jewish and Orthodox Sunni thought. That’s not to say they’re not kindred (and far more so than either are with Christianity once you strip out cultural idioms), but even Orthodox Judaism is to Muslim thinking very “modernistic” in some important ways, as a reading of the as Joseph Soloveitchik’s THE HALAKHIC MAN shows. The relationship between Jews and their inherited tradition has always been extremely dynamic (unquestionably more so than Muslims).

Let me just say a couple of things, which I don’t think contradict what you’re saying, but which come to my mind when I hear what you’re saying.

First, of course there will be debate and tension. There can still be an orthodoxy and still have tension within that orthodoxy regarding certain specifics. In fact, the kind of orthodoxy we are talking about here is very broad and involves questions of methodology and sources rather than specific outcomes. The clearest example is the four madhaib or legal schools. Each of these schools is universally considered to be orthodox — this does not in any way mean that there is not debate within each school and debate among the various schools. This debate certainly at certain times and places has even risen to the level of tension. So, saying that certain broad trends are “orthodox” and others are not does not imply that there is one strict list that defines orthodoxy and there is no further room for discussion.

My second point, and this may simply be a reflection of my own ignorance…is that what I think one sees in Muslims approaching this discussion for the first time is a strong tendency to see orthodox as being positive and normative. No doubt this is what someone like myself would both agree with and also desire to take advantage of by labelling strands I find to be acceptable or correct as “orthodox.” Still, this is not “all” that is going on and there is at least some room for an outside, objective picture of what have been the long term accepted understandings regarding certain issues. For example, even as someone who doesn’t necessarily strictly follow any one of the four schools of law, I can still “admit” that these are the four orthodox schools of law and even “admit” that the Orthodox opinion among Muslims has been that generally a non-scholar should follow one of these four madhabs. So, what I’m saying is that there is a resistance to claiming one’s own ideas as non-Orthodox here that one does not necessarily see among Jews at least at this point. Certainly people who follow reform Judaism believe it is a correct, and perhaps the most correct understanding of Judaism but that doesn’t mean that they can’t acknowledge that what they are following is a “reform” understanding and that they are not following the “orthodox” understanding.

Of course, while an Orthodox Jew may assert that they are following the “traditional” understanding…a scholar of religion will see Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and other denominational movements within Judaism all as different responses to the particular challenges faced by the Jewish community in adjusting to post-Enlightenment, post-Emancipation Europe and then to the United States.

Allaah knows best.

I am just noting that any proposed definition of ‘orthodoxy’ will be challenged. I don’t think they are fixed labels. I don’t really buy into the divide between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’.

In terms of ‘traditions’, I view them as permanently under tension internally and externally. There is always debate.

I don’t have any problem with the term and old school is no insult for me. There wasn’t much substance to my comment really, what little substance there was was simply to point out that outside of people who have read Hodgson (and obviously your blog) the term is unknown.