CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- On the bookcase of Adel Hussein
sits an odd collection for one of Egypt's leading Islamic thinkers.
Titles like ``Socialist Integration,'' ``On Communism'' and ``Planning in the U.S.S.R.''
speak more of class struggle than the hand of God. The authors themselves -- G. Sorokin,
for instance -- suggest Politburo politics rather than a source for religious ideas.
Hussein is no closet communist, however. Like a surprising number of others across the
Arab and Muslim world, he is a one-time Marxist and nonbeliever who has turned to Islam,
part of a new intellectual generation reshaping the religion.
``I benefited from Marx in both theory and practice,'' Hussein said in an interview at his
Cairo apartment, which is remarkable for its lack of Koranic inscriptions so popular with
other activist Muslims. ``But now, Islam is my starting point and my framework.''
Unlike their predecessors, who spent years immersed in the intricacies of Islamic law,
these thinkers are often more adept at post-modernism than the sayings of the prophet
Mohammed. They speak English and French, are versed in the literature and history of the
West, and follow the latest trends in Western thought.
In a jarring twist, they are the same thinkers who a generation ago drew the ire of
religious Muslims because their Marxist disavowal of God was seen as the biggest threat to
Islam.
Today, they are often the public face of Islam -- writing in leading Arabic newspapers,
speaking at conferences and on television talk shows, enjoying the support of many
younger, more political Muslims interested in their attempts to rethink Islam's
relationship to democracy, minorities and the West.
They bring an overtly activist stance to Islam unlike traditional scholars who tend to be
more concerned with questions of religious law, for example, or what is permissible under
Islam.
``They discuss contemporary issues -- what capitalism does, what consumerism does, what
modern society does to women,'' said Binnaz Toprak, a professor at Bosporus University in
Istanbul, Turkey. ``They're not constantly referring back to Islamic history and the
Koran.''
These thinkers say their change merely reflects reality.
Hussein, for instance, says his goals have not changed. He still believes in social
justice and Third World development. But he now sees Islam, through its ability to
persuade and to mobilize, as the best tool.
Like some traditional Islamic scholars, running through their thoughts is an anti-Western
current. They respect what the West has created, but they resent its dominance over the
economy, culture and politics.
Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, a former leftist with a doctorate in poetry from Rutgers University
in New Jersey, considers everything from pornography to pollution as Western ills for
which Islam must find a solution.
Mohammed Amara, who writes in the prestigious London-based newspaper Al-Hayat, sees
Islam's historical tolerance of minorities as an alternative to what he considers the
West's racism and nationalism.
``You will see that Islam is the one framework that is open to all of us,'' Amara said.
Ali Bulac, a former Turkish leftist now prominent among Islamic thinkers with a following
at universities, takes a similar tack. He uses the prophet Mohammed's ties with Jews as
the basis for conceiving a Muslim community in which religious and ethnic groups have
autonomy.
Sudan's Hassan Turabi, who has tried to fashion an Islamic state in his country, recalls
that in the early 1960s, all his schoolmates were Marxists. Now, he says, they speak the
language of Islam.
In Egypt, the phenomenon is, perhaps, even more widespread.
Hussein, for years one of Egypt's most respected leftist economists, now leads the Islamic
Labor Party, which publishes The People, Egypt's best-known Islamic newspaper.
He and his former Marxist colleagues speak of Islam as the only ideology still viable for
disenchanted Muslims.
Pan-Arab nationalism, they say, was single-handedly discredited by the Six-Day War of
1967, in which Israel devastated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Sye ideologies were like
lightning. They enthralled the people,'' said Amara, sitting in a cramped apartment with
books stacked to the ceiling. ``But until you tried them, you couldn't know that they
wouldn't achieve your goals.''
Many of these intellectuals willingly acknowledge their past beliefs. All born as Muslims,
they speak of their return to the faith -- both religiously and politically -- as a
conversion.
Elmessiri recalls the astonishment of his colleagues when he turned to Islam.
``If anyone would have told me that I would be a Muslim thinker, I would have laughed,''
he said. ``And when I converted, some of my friends fainted. They couldn't believe it.''
The turn to Islam has angered other intellectuals, particularly leftists, who call the
change of heart opportunism or worse.
In this month's issue of the journal Literature and Criticism, a reviewer criticized
Amara, saying that ``he was neither an asset to the Marxists nor is he to the
fundamentalists.''
© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press
