Islam needs a Martin Luther

Martin Luther classified Pope Leo X as the true Satan (the Devil) or the anti-Christ and the Church of Rome as the ultimate Kingdom of Hell. Because of his very ferocious attack on the Church, Martin Luther was reprimanded by the Pope and was eventually excommunicated for his protesting. His followers soon became known as Protestors and the movement called the Protestants.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I have actually said this a number of times before: Islam needs a Martin Luther. But it took 1,500 years before Christianity reformed. Since Islam is only about 1,400 years old, we may, therefore, have to wait till the year 2100 before Islam’s Martin Luther comes along.

On Saturday, I wrote an article called ‘About the Crusades’. In that article I spoke about the Christian versus Christian Crusade, which eventually evolved into the Catholic Inquisition against ‘deviant’ Christians.

Let me continue my story from there.

There were actually two Inquisitions. We had the ‘Medieval Inquisition’ of the early second Millennium soon after the Norman invasion of Saxon England and then there was the ‘Modern Inquisition’ of the Renaissance period of the 1500s.

Now, the Catholic Inquisition cost a lot of money and it was draining the coffers of the Vatican. They needed to drastically raise money so a scheme was implemented to raise this money through the selling of Indulgences.

This moneymaking scheme was approved by Pope Leo X and basically involved the sale of ‘forgiveness’, which soon became a considerable source of revenue for the church. This meant that absolution from sins or the pardoning of sins could be bought for a certain amount of money — meaning trading of salvation for money.

This was one bone of contention for many Christians of that time who believed that there was no such thing as absolution from sins, even by the Pope, and especially not for money.

Further to that, Pope Leo X, the ‘seller’ of absolution, owned a lucrative brothel in Rome. He also had mistresses or concubines and a number of illegitimate sons. (On the positive side, he was also patron to Raphael and Michelangelo, which saw the Renaissance period emerge in Europe).

This was the second bone of contention.

In fact, Pope Leo’s predecessor, Pope Julius III, had three daughters and was known for his passion for prostitutes and boys. He also issued a bull to establish St. Peter’s whorehouse in Rome.

Even earlier than that, during the time of Pope Innocent VIII, the Archbishop of Canterbury had complained about the shameless and immoral lifestyle of the people of the cloth but the Pope had replied, “It is so widespread among the priests and the curia, you will hardly find one without his concubine.”

The most notorious of the Popes however, was Rodrigo Borgia of Spain, or Pope Alexander VI (Pope Innocent VIII’s successor), who had four children. His mistress (he also had a wife) was Gulia Farnese, the 15-year old granddaughter of Pope Innocent VIII. Gulia’s brother went on to become Pope Paul III and was nicknamed Cardinal Petticoat because of his many mistresses.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, despised the Pope and the Vatican and hated the sheer hypocrisy of Catholicism, which he considered ‘the root of all evil’. No seat could be closer to the Devil than the Papal Throne, said Martin Luther. And the resemblance of Hell is the Vatican City, he said.

Martin Luther classified Pope Leo X as the true Satan (the Devil) or the anti-Christ and the Church of Rome as the ultimate Kingdom of Hell. Because of his very ferocious attack on the Church, Martin Luther was reprimanded by the Pope and was eventually excommunicated for his protesting. His followers soon became known as Protestors and the movement called the Protestants.

Martin Luther’s attempt to clean out the church rapidly gained international support. This triggered a widespread Reformation movement that saw the birth of an alternative Christian society beyond the control of Rome.

In spite of the effort of the Catholic Church to clamp down on this breakaway movement, the Protestant Reformation completely undermined the authority of the Holy Roman Empire and split Europe into two — Protestants on one side and Roman Catholics on the other.

This movement soon enough spread to England and the Protestant-Catholic conflict that started with Henry VIII in the 1500s did not end until the English Civil War about 100 years later, but only after the loss of many lives.

It took one man, Martin Luther, to stand up and oppose the corruption and evil in the church. But it took 1,500 years before this could happen and sanity could be restored to Christianity. But the cost to this was that Christianity was split into two with both sides calling each other heretics and apostates (shirik and murtad in Islam).

We hope, one day, a Muslim Martin Luther will emerge and who will also reform the Muslim ‘church’. God knows Islam is in dire need of reforms. Will ‘mainstream’ Islam, one day, be considered the Catholicism of the Muslim world with an alternative or competing Islamic reform movement opposing it?

If it does happen and if it happens, say, by 2100, I will certainly no longer be around. However, it cannot but happen. If Muslims are to continue the way they are currently going, such as what is happening in Malaysia, Islam will one day be seen as what Catholicism was perceived 500 years ago — the anti-Christ and the Kingdom of Hell.

Yes, we Malaysians talk about change. We scream that we want reforms. But change of the political system alone is not enough. Change has to extend beyond just politics. It must be an absolute cultural, mental, and attitude change that involves more than just politics and touches even religion.

In short, we need an Islamic Renaissance period just like what we saw in Europe 500 years ago.