A few years ago Jonah Golberg[1] got crapped on when he wrote about why Islam needs a Pope. Now, a few weeks ago Aziz Poonwalla tweaked when he noted that another Muslim who supports Dennis Kucinich framed it around whether it was good for the Ummah. This crystallized an idea of mine-Muslims need a Calvin, not a Pope! Unfortunately, the Calvins of Islam tend to be a little wack-but my point is that congregationalism needs to be fostered, not a pan-Muslim identity. Catholicizing Islam under an ecclesiastical elite would only replace the problem of fundamentalism with that of dual-loyalties!
A congregational focus on religious life would diffuse some of the organizing power of a transnational religious international. To me, it is ironic that Islam, which emphasizes the primacy of a unitary god and does not sanction any official mediating structures between the divine and the individual, also fosters a group identity which might trump national loyalties. True, Islam does seem to sanction a mixing of the temporal with the sacred, but, remember that Calvinism began as a theocracy. A tendency that reasserted itself in the New World-but the congregational focus of the Calvinist tradition eventually trumped the ecclesiastical absolutism.
fn1. If you care, though his father is Jewish, Goldberg’s mother is of Irish Catholic background, and his wife is a Catholic as well.
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