This article is not about Abu Zayd’s theory about the interpretation of the Koran. Other people have discussed it exhaustively. This article aspires to draw parallels between lives of two intellectuals of Islam, who lived ten centuries apart from each other, but their crimes were the same; and their retribution from the authoritarian guards of the sacred texts was an extended forced exile.

The death of Dr. Nasser Hamid Abu Zayd is not a family matter nor is it a matter that should only concern the intellectuals and scholars of religion. Abu Zayd’s death is a loss for humanity as a whole and a bigger loss for people in the Islamic world, who believe in the importance of freedom of thought as one of the tenets and prerequisites of modernity, democratization, rule of law and human rights. Abu Zayd has always cherished these values and they became his road signs in his study of Islamic texts. It was not easy for him to be the only swallow in a winter of traditionalism that he fought by using his pioneer role to debunk the institutions that established the intellectual guardianship over society.

Abu Zayd, in his unconventional free-thinking approach to Islamic religion and religious texts, did not only reify the organic intellectual’s role as a driving force for change in society, but he also showed the importance of logical-rational thinking and the importance of the application of a scientific method in the study of the most important foundation of any religion—or at least religions of the Book—which are the holy books, namely the holy book of Islam. Studying the holy book in the light of scientific thinking does not diminish its religious importance nor does it reduce its holiness; it is the opposite. I think a scientific approach protects the religious texts from misinterpretation and misuse by fervent enthusiastic believers. When we talk about misinterpretation or even misuse of the religious text, Abu Zayd fully knew what it meant. The ordeals that he experienced in the last sixteen years of his life, from the people who established themselves as guardians of the pure religion, were facets of this misinterpretation. It is also the same misinterpretation of the religious texts, which Abu Zayd fought all his life from a deep scholarly perspective, that led to different ‘ijtihads’ whose far-reaching negative consequences are everywhere to be seen today.

It is exactly this latter point that I find interesting in Abu Zayd’s work, protecting religion from religious people’s strict orthodox interpretation of the holy text. It might sound weird and pretentious at first glance that there would be any need for a scholar to attract our attention to the importance of protecting the sacred from the ‘’unsacred actions’’ of people who believe that they are doing a service for their faith. But Islamic history abounds with examples of groups and individuals who decided to interpret the religious texts in ways that serve their zealotry or by taking the religious text away from its context and ‘misuse’ it to serve mostly political, hidden agendas. The main issue in Abu Zayd’s ijtihad was exploring the possibilities of a modern interpretation of the sacred texts. Abu Zayd’s approach sees the religious text from a dynamic perspective which does not exclude the societal, cultural and linguistic dimensions in which the religious texts evolve and develop. His was a call for a new global exegesis of the fundamental religious text of Islam. An approach that does not contradict the spirit of the religion itself, being a religion that has always urged its followers to think, reflect and look for God’s ayats and signs in the universe to strengthen their iman.

The story of Abu Zayd has many parallels with Averroes’ death in Marrakesh. Averroes, himself a rationalist, committed the crime of thinking. His strictly rationalist views on religion collided with the more orthodox views of the political institution established by the Almouahads in Morocco. The Moroccan ‘ulamas at the time considered him an apostate, like the Egyptian ‘ulamas considered Abu Zayd an apostate, and months after his burial in Marrakesh his body was exhumed and sent on a journey. Abdelfattah Kilito depicts this life changing journey when his corpse was carried on a mule going towards Spain. Averroes’ remains were in one side of the basket panniers and his books on the other side. The image was very expressive and sums up the experience of a whole civilization with intellectual production. The journey started from Marrakesh up-north to Spain, the same way Abu Zayd’s journey started from Egypt to the Netherlands.

The gist of both journeys is full of sarcasm because when we try to draw parallels between the two migrations, one of a dead body and the other is of a person alive, we see that the journey is the same. The starting point is the Orient, the crime is ‘’daring to think’’ and the destination of any person that commits that hideous crime is the West. The remains of Averroes eventually found a resting place in Andalusia but his books continued their journey to eternity. Averroes suffered from all sorts of machinations, and so did Abu Zayd, but ten centuries later, the seeds of his thought, sowed in his books, continue to germinate in other territories where ideas matter.

Instead of shedding our sympathy on Abu Zayd, I think we should think of him as worthy of our happiness, the same way Averroes is worthy of our happiness for having made the journey. Had his corpse not been forced to make that journey, his intellectual legacy would not have reached us. Had his skeleton not crossed the strait of Gibraltar, his pearls of wisdom would not have attracted the attention they got through the years. I would say the same thing for Abu Zayd. His forced exile was an open door for his ideas to see the light of freedom where freedom matters and where thinking is not only a burden, or a source of danger, but a haven where people find solutions for the most complicated issues. Until factions and established institutions in the Islamic countries learn to fight each other with ideas and intellectual production, exile will be the lot of their best intellectuals. As long as the ruling classes and the religious clerics in their thralls do not see their nations as a piece of colorful fabric where everyone could have a place, the journey towards the West will continue.

Ten centuries later, Averroes’s enlightenment dissipates the darkness of our minds thanks to the diligent work of scholars who dissected his work and made sure it passed on. It was even applied in the West to modernize Catholicism to a great extent. Most of us do not even know the name of the Moroccan king who sent his corpse to exile in death, while in reality he was sending him to eternal life. His books have had acquired a life of their own and through this life, they give everlasting life to their generator. The same could be said of Abu Zayd’s ideas, they will be chinks in the gloom and a crack in the tick wall that cloaks minds, and hearts, thwarting their natural propensity to think and generate questions.

Abu Zayd and Averroes before him, thanks to their reform inspiring ideas, cracked the walls of traditionalism and blind mimicry. The price they paid was immense because the ruling classes and their constellation of religious clerics sensed the long term dangers of free thought, and especially of a modern interpretation of the Islamic religious texts. A modern interpretation, in Abu Zayd’s way, would not only reconcile Muslims with their world and their time, but it would also undermine all the stratified relations of power, domination and subjugation that religion has been implemented to justify.

The Muslim world has lost in Abu Zayd a thinker and a mujtahid who tried to reconcile Islam with modernity. In Averroes, Muslims lost the Muslim who tried to reconcile Islam with Philosophy which was at his time the height of modernity. Both losses, ten centuries apart, incite us to believe more than ever that destiny of the umma of Mulsims is in not only interpreting the religious texts in the way Abu Zayd defended, but also in Muslims shouldering the heavy responsibility of finding ways to be more efficient in their presence and standing among nations; representing a religion that has always given its followers enough space to think, reflect and decide. These are, in my eyes, the three elements that the oppressors, self-appointed guardians of religion, of Averroes and Abu Zayd have tried to confiscate.

Disappointingly for the forces of oppression, Averroes continued to think and to be thought about even after death. Abu Zayd continued to raise the most difficult questions and address them with students from diverse backgrounds in an open academia. His books will inspire other books, deeper ideas and many of his students will disseminate his teachings. After ten centuries from now, people will remember Abu Zayd while his oppressors in oblivion will be forever dwell.