In his thought-provoking new piece on The Atlantic website, academic Mustafa Akyol argues that Islam does not need its own version of the Christian reformation that arose from mass abuses of power by the Catholic clergy. Instead, he contends, Islam needs an era of enlightenment driven by philosopher saints like John Locke to push the faith past its dogmatic divisions and sectarian strife.
Akyol’s warrant to back this claim is simple: Islam unlike Roman Catholicism has no spiritual head that has the final word on religious doctrine. My key takeaway was his hypothesis that “enlightened despots” in the mold of Europe’s own between the 15th and 17th centuries could catalyze Islam’s age of enlightenment. And in Saudi Arabia’s new Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman, we may have a contender.
Saudi Arabia, it is hard to dispute, figures mightily in any explanation of sustained violence in the Middle East and the spread of militant jihad worldwide. For decades, the kingdom has sunk billions of petrodollars into exporting a parochial interpretation of the Islamic canon called Salafism that inspired both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The Saudis originally did so to pacify the hardline Wahhabis that had helped them conquer Arabia and later as a knee-jerk reaction to revolutionary Iran. Soon enough, Uncle Sam hijacked this project to serve geostrategic ends in the Cold War. Either way, the House of Saud had never before publicly criticized the Wahhabis or Washington. That is until bin Salman appeared and wrested the claim to the throne from his elder relative Muhammad bin Nayef, reportedly in Machiavellian fashion.
Drawing parallels between U.S. President Trump and bin Salman is important as they represent a controversial yet oft-proven theory popularized in the 19th century by historian Thomas Carlyle among others. The “Great Man Theory” forwards the thesis that men with the capacity to change history are born, not bred. Moreover, that they appear when they are most needed.