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Contemporary Islam
Editorial Advisory Board
Zafar Ishaq Ansari, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado, Boulder
John L. Esposito, Georgetown University
Azizah Y. Al-Hibri, University of Richmond
Ali A. Mazrui, State University of New York, Binghamton
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, George Washington University
Sulayman S. Nyang, Howard University
Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Youngstown State University
William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
Abdulaziz Sachedina, University of Virginia
Tamara Sonn, College of William & Mary
John E. Woods, University of Chicago
Editor
Mustansir Mir, Youngstown State University
Production Manager
Joseph A. Marino III
Publisher
Center for Islamic Studies
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Contents
Articles
Review Essay
Book Reviews
i
Daruish Zahedi, The Iranian Revolution Then and Now:
Indications of Regime Instability 137
Faegheh Shirazi
ii
Studies in Contemporary Islam 10 (2008), 1–2: 1–41
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1See Said.
2Turner, 27–29.
3Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, 4.
4Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, 164.
5Some of the hadd punishments (i.e. those prescribed in the Qur’an and/or Sunnah)
2
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3
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7While the general findings of that research were written up in my book British
Muslim Converts: Choosing Alternative Lives, the issue of discrimination was only briefly
touched on therein. I am indebted to the British Academy and to the School of
Oriental and African Studies for providing, respectively, financial support and
research leave which helped to make the empirical research on Muslim converts
which is referred to in this article possible.
8Daniel, 302.
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The image of Islam that emerged in the Romantic era was not
infrequently an attractive one; for example, Thomas Carlyle’s famous
1840 lecture on “The Hero as Prophet” rejected the widespread ideas
that Islam was spread by the sword and that Muhammad was an
“impostor,” and idealized the Arabs (including Muhammad) as “a
swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men…a gifted noble people; a
people of wild strong feelings,” etc.10
The colonial period gave rise to more geographically- and
politically-oriented forms of Orientalism; anti-Muslim discourse now
embraced a new function which has been amply documented in
Said’s Orientalism: the justification of the imperial project, with a
corresponding need to show the irrationality, barbarity, obscurantism
and backwardness of Muslims and Islam (and therefore their need to
be “civilized” and “enlightened”). Ernest Renan’s famous lecture on
“Islam and Science” (delivered at the Sorbonne in 1883), depicting
Islam as antithetical to reason, progress, creativity and reform, was an
early example of such attitudes.11 In the postcolonial period,
postmodernism has had conflicting and contradictory results, its
9Rodinson, 59.
10Carlyle,
54.
11Hourani, 120–121.
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14Kabbani, 85.
15Zebiri, Muslims and Christians Face to Face, 188.
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8
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19See Cesari.
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biased and unfair.20 In 2002, the EUMC reported that there was a real
possibility of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism becoming acceptable
in European society.21 The far right, both in Europe generally and in
Britain, have in the last few years begun focusing on religion rather
than just race, often singling out Islam.22
Muslims have been particular targets for hostility in recent years
for a number of reasons. In the wake of 9/11 and the July bombings,
more questions have been raised about their commitment to core
European values such as democracy and gender equality, and there
has been a new emphasis on social cohesion, with the blame for lack
of integration sometimes being placed on Muslims rather than on
racism and discrimination.23 Exacerbating factors have included
recent UK foreign policy, and the fact that a high proportion of
asylum-seekers and refugees are Muslims.
Modood sees anti-Muslim prejudice as a form of cultural
racism, and uses the term “Islamophobia” interchangeably with other
terms such as “anti-Muslimism” and “Muslimophobia.” He describes
cultural racism as a “two-step racism . . . with colour racism being
the first step.” In other words, culturalism combines with color
racism in a sort of “double whammy” which can be particularly
potent (as with the combination of nationalism and racism);24 this is
to be understood in light of the fact that two-thirds of British
Muslims are of South Asian descent. Modood maintains that
“Muslimophobia is at the heart of contemporary British and
European cultural racism.”25 His description of the way in which
20The follow-up report in 2004, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, found that
while there had been some improvements, levels of anti-Muslim prejudice had
increased in certain quarters.
21Anwar, 31.
22Chris Allen, 54. There have also been some positive developments in the wake of
9/11, such as a new openness in some sections of the media (and generally
responsible reporting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), new opportunities for
dialogue between Muslims and government, and new Muslim initiatives to combat
extremism. See Hussain, 125–126.
23Tariq Modood, “Foreword,” viii.
24Idem, Multicultural Politics, 8.
25Ibid., 37.
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26Ibid., 38–39.
27Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, 4.
28Ibid., 12.
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and generalized to have much explanatory value. The fact that, like
the term “fundamentalist,” it is often used uncritically and seldom
problematized, only adds to the difficulties.
Controversy over the term “Islamophobia” turns on at least
three different axes. Firstly, and most straightforwardly, there is
discussion of the relative merits of this term as opposed to
alternatives such as “anti-Muslimism” (with some fearing that
widespread use of the term “Islamophobia” may lead to restrictions
on criticism of Islam or on academic freedom in the study of Islam).
Secondly, there is disagreement over the extent to which it is valid or
helpful to treat Islam and Muslims as a special case, as opposed to
subsuming them under a more general category such as “cultural
racism.” Thirdly, and related to the second axis, there is a debate over
the extent to which it is helpful to promote “Islamophobia” as a
centrally organizing concept which informs and shapes the
opposition to hostility and discrimination against Muslims. Some
point to the danger of promoting a “victim mentality” or to the
inevitable backlash when one group is seen as receiving special
treatment. The second axis is the most relevant to the present
discussion, since the view of Islam as a special or unique case often
goes hand-in-hand with the belief that anti-Islamic prejudice is a
perennial, entrenched phenomenon and that Orientalist modes of
discourse are relatively constant over time. This stance is all the more
powerful because it reflects vested interests: a Huntingtonian view of
divisions along cultural fault-lines can be used to justify certain
foreign and domestic policies, but it is also convenient for Muslim
leaders who wish to enhance their own position by invoking threats
and stirring up hostility.
Those who see anti-Muslim feelings as being engrained in the
Western psyche tend to underestimate the importance of contingent
factors while overemphasizing the importance of Islam as an
explanatory factor. They also tend to downplay or ignore the fact that
both historically and in the present, other foes such as Jews, gypsies
or rival Christian sects, have been equally demonized at different
times.29 In relation to the portrayal of “folk devils” in the media,
29See Joseph.
12
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Muslims can be seen as just one in a long line which has included,
among other things, punks, welfare scroungers, teenage mothers,
gypsies and travelers, and different groups of immigrants.30 Halliday
cautions against exaggerating the continuity between the medieval
and the contemporary polemic, arguing that focusing on contingent
causes is more conducive to change than attributing hostility to
entrenched historical positions.31 It is clear from the thematic
overview above that although anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic sentiment
may have existed to varying degrees through the ages, its discursive
content has changed dramatically according to the historical context.
The media is arguably one of the most powerful driving forces
of anti-Muslimism in Britain. For most non-Muslim Britons, the
media is the primary source of information about Islam and Muslims;
and Poole’s research shows a close correspondence between
representations of Islam in the press and public opinion.32 The 2007
report commissioned by the then Mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone, The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and
the UK Media, found a prevailing view that “there is no common
ground between the West and Islam, and that conflict between them
is accordingly inevitable.”33 The overall picture in the media is that
globally, Islam is “profoundly different from, and a serious threat to,
the West, and that within Britain Muslims are different from and a
threat to ‘Us.’”34 Muslims are depicted as “challenging ‘our’ culture,
values, institutions and way of life.”35 The report, which examined
press material from the year 2006, identifies several components of
the dominant narrative. These include the failure of Muslims to
integrate, their unreasonable demands, their mixed loyalties and
support for extremism, their obscurantism, and the incompatibility of
their values and interests with those of mainstream society.36 Other
30The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media, 119.
31Halliday, “‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered,” 895.
32Poole, Reporting Islam, 240 and 250.
33The Search for Common Ground, xiii.
34Ibid., 18.
35Ibid., 30.
36Ibid., 103.
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37For details, see fn. 5 above. Poole has also published a follow-up article dealing
with more recent developments: “The Effects of September 11 and the War in Iraq
on British Newspaper Coverage,” in Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson, eds.,
Muslims and the News Media, 89–102.
38Miles and Brown, 164.
39Poole, Reporting Islam, 252.
40Poole, “The Effects of September 11,” 100.
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to the three themes may be “in the air” even when not expressed
verbally.
On beginning my research I anticipated that the nature of the
hostility encountered by converts would be broadly similar to that
encountered by born Muslims, with the possible added dimension of
“betrayal” – whether cultural, political or racial - when they are
targeted as converts to Islam. While discourse related to foreignness
(e.g., “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”) could be
expected to be less prominent, at least in the case of white converts, I
expected that there could be an element of “racism by proxy,” as
described by Franks.41 She found that some of her white Muslim
respondents experienced racial abuse; she explains this with reference
to the fact that these Muslims are “linked by association” with
Pakistani or South Asian Muslims.42 She suggests that converts are of
particular interest in this context: “As white Muslims in Britain,
located at the intersection of religious and ‘racial’ boundaries, their
experience of wearing the hijab in a liberal democracy draws attention
to the issues of religious tolerance and discrimination.”43
4. Methodology
In all, thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted
between August 2005 and July 2006.44 Potential interviewees were
contacted mainly through snowballing and convenience sampling,
and some effort was made to ensure a spread which reflected the
makeup of British converts as a whole (insofar as this is known) in
terms of gender, age, ethnic background, and Islamic orientation. The
interviewees comprised twenty women and ten men (possibly
corresponding to the male-female ratio among British converts
generally, though this is not known for sure), between the ages of 19
and 59, with an average age of 34. The length of time that they had
41Franks, 926.
42Ibid., 922.
43Ibid., 918.
44Seven out of the thirty interviews were conducted by my research assistant, Aisha
Masterton.
15
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and who had spent nearly all her adult life in Britain.
46Interviewee numbers were too small to be able to discern any significant regional
16
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17
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18
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50Maha al-Qwidi found that all twenty men in her sample dressed in European style
(210); similarly, in Ali Köse’s study of conversion to Islam in Britain, only three out
of fifty men radically changed their dress (131).
51In addition, three of the men wore Islamic dress on an occasional basis, for
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him being “a large, black guy.” His wife, who was present during the
interview, said that she sometimes received verbal abuse when she
was on her own, but never when she was with her husband. For
whatever reason, the types of experiences reported by the men were
largely to do with getting job interviews or jobs (in the case of those
who used their Muslim names in that situation), or being promoted at
work. One man who felt he’d been “left out of the loop” at work
commented that he never went to the pub when invited, adding: “I
may have inadvertently excluded myself.” As Modood points out,
cultural racism can affect groups which do not accept mainstream
norms, including, as in this case, those who abstain from drinking
alcohol in a social context, as well as those who choose to dress in
distinctive ways.52
The women’s experience differed markedly from that of the
men. For example, almost half of them reported definite incidents of
verbal abuse. None of the women had actually been physically
assaulted (though some knew of women who had been). Probably
the most traumatic-sounding experience reported was someone who
had been attacked by a woman in the street, seemingly out of the blue
and without provocation: “She was going with her fists as though she
was gonna punch me in the face…and then she made the sound of a
bomb.” At the time this convert had been pregnant and accompanied
by her toddler, so felt particularly vulnerable and unable to challenge
the attacker as she normally would have done. She said that she had
been reluctant to go out with her children for some time following
that incident.
Women also described more subtle forms of prejudice. Several
had noticed whispering, funny looks, or felt they were stared at when
they took on the hijab.53 One woman said that she often had people
look her up and down from head to toe; sometimes she would smile
at them, at which point they would usually look away or get
embarrassed. She compared this to the experience of people with
20
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visible disabilities: “People forget that you’re not just an object.” The
women who did not wear hijab, of whom there were three, tended to
experience the same kinds of discrimination as the men, i.e. work-
related. One of these described a similar form of social exclusion to
the man quoted above who had refrained from going to the pub with
his workmates. She had previously worked in the City, and said that
she had experienced “bullying” in the form of pressure to go to the
pub and drink at lunchtime. She had found that there was “a very
heavy pub culture, and if you don’t comply you do get the sense that
you’re not being considered one of the gang…You lose chances.”
Another woman who did not wear hijab spoke of “sarcastic
comments” at work, but ironically perhaps felt that people would not
dare to make them if she did wear the hijab (possibly an implicit
reference to new legislation against religious discrimination in the
workplace).54
7. Thematic Analysis
Gender and Hijab
This theme provides perhaps the richest set of motifs, arguments and
images, both in media coverage and the popular imagination, Islamic
gender norms being represented in much of the discourse as
challenging or negating some of the most cherished and recently-won
“Western” values of human rights, female emancipation, and sexual
liberation. While it is not surprising that press coverage is mainly
devoted to politics, violence and terrorism, themes related to gender
are given an airing whenever current events (such as the Jack Straw
niqab affair) allow the opportunity.55 Issues such as female
circumcision, arranged/forced marriages (the two sometimes being
conflated) and honor killings have periodically become prominent in
of the House of Commons), and Tony Blair, which strongly implied that the niqab
(face veil) represented an obstacle to the integration of British Muslims.
21
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22
Zebiri: Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia
23
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61Bullock, xv.
62al-Khattab, 87.
24
Zebiri: Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia
63Franks, 920.
64Robert, 127.
65Ibid.
25
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Violence
26
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27
Studies in Contemporary Islam
73SeeSewell.
74SeeKeegan. Both Sewell and Keegan were quoted in Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges
and Action, but I have chosen slightly different quotes from the original articles.
28
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Foreignness
75The scene of this happening was actually shown on Newsnight, 3 August 2005.
Aisha Masterton had been walking along the road talking to the Newsnight
interviewer with the cameras rolling when the incident happened.
76http://www.nujglasgow.org.uk/understandingislam.html (accessed 11 November
2006).
77E.g., Poole, Reporting Islam, 98.
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“foreign” values into Britain.78 Islam and Muslims are thus still seen
as a foreign phenomenon. The permeability of the boundaries
between domestic and foreign Islam/Muslims contributes to the
sense of the Muslim presence in, and immigration to, the UK as
threatening. Indeed, both Richardson and Poole found that British
Muslims, like other Muslims, are strongly Otherized, to the extent
that they are excluded from Britishness, either because of values or
characteristics they are perceived as lacking, or because of those that
they are perceived as having (namely “Islamicness”).79
Both the Honeyford and Rushdie affairs in the 1980s had a
strong foreign dimension (pertaining to pupils’ extended visits to
Pakistan and Khomeini’s so-called fatwa respectively), and with the
rising specter of “Islamic fundamentalism” and then “Islamic
terrorism” in the 1990s, specific connections were made between
events abroad and the infiltration of Islamists into Britain (bringing
right-wing criticism of Britain’s relatively liberal immigration and
asylum policies). The link between foreignness and violence is made
even more explicit in stock images of cartoonists who, in recent
years, have depicted an enemy who resembles bin Laden – complete
with beard, turban, robes, Kalashnikov and hooked nose.80 Bin Laden
is of course just one of a number of obligingly foreign-seeming and
bellicose “folk devils,” including Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri
Mohammed.
As indicated or hinted at above, a major motif in Muslims’
perceived foreignness is their allegedly alien culture and values. A
certain emphasis on education in press coverage of Muslims,
especially in the 1990s, arose from the recognition of the key role
which education plays in transmitting cultural values and social
norms to the younger generation.81 This strand of discourse resonates
with Huntington’s famous “Clash of Civilizations” thesis. In much
30
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31
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people did not see her as “one of them,” but “just as a refugee or
someone who’s just come over, she’s ‘other.’”
The assumption of foreignness was not always accompanied by
hostility. A rather less pernicious experience of women wearing hijab
was that of being spoken to slowly as if they didn’t speak or
understand English very well (and subsequently of encountering a
shocked reaction when they answered in an
English/Welsh/Irish/Scottish accent). One female interviewee said
on the subject of adopting the hijab: “You became an ethnic
minority…not that many comments but odd looks and also people
treating you like you’re stupid,” adding: “I kind of miss those days
because now you get treated like you’re evil.” Generally speaking, the
kindly indulgence and efforts at sympathy which South Asian
Muslims with their “foreign ways” may sometimes encounter (as in
Jacobson’s description of a white woman expressing concern for a
fasting Pakistani girl: “Are you feeling alright? You must be careful,
you know”)87 are less likely to be on offer to white converts.
8. Conclusions
The following description, in the Runnymede Trust 2004 follow-up
report, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, of some common
symbols in cartoon imagery illustrates the complex ways in which
different Orientalist or Islamophobic motifs are interrelated, often
intertwined, and mutually reinforcing
87Jacobson, 130.
88Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, 17.
32
Zebiri: Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia
89See
Beattie, cited in The Search for Common Ground, 12. For an in-depth study of the
symbolic versatility of the veil, see Shirazi.
33
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90Franks,
920.
91PninaWerbner, 8.
92Kabbani, 26.
34
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93Werbner, 8. Werbner explains this with reference to the fact that this particular
35
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96Robinson, 178–179.
97See, for example, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges
and Action, and The Search for Common Ground.
36
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98Gilman, 240; see also 17. Jungian concepts which embrace both the individual
and the collective (in particular archetypes, the shadow and the collective
unconscious) could provide an alternative approach.
99For further details, see Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain.
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society.”100 Reactions to the hijab bring this out particularly clearly: the
subjugation of women, the covering of womens’ bodies and the
restrictions on sexuality, or maybe just old-fashioned “family values”
whereby the wife takes care of home and husband, all conjure up a
past which for some people is still a living memory. The “threat” of
Islam is perhaps all the greater because it conjures up such a recent
past.101
References
100Werbner, 8.
101As Werbner comments, it is not only difference which is threatening in the Other,
but also resemblance. Werbner quotes Julia Kristeva: “the Other, the alien producing
animosity and irritation, is in fact my own unconscious, the return of the
repressed” (ibid.).
38
Zebiri: Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia
39
Studies in Contemporary Islam
Miles, Robert and Brown, Malcolm D., Racism, 2nd ed. (London and
New York: Routledge, 2003).
Modood, Tariq, “Foreword,” in Abbas, ed., Muslim Britain:
Communities Under Pressure (London: Zed Books Ltd, 2005), viii–
xii.
______, Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
Poole, Elizabeth, “The Effects of September 11 and the War in Iraq
on British Newspaper Coverage,” in Elizabeth Poole and John
E. Richardson, eds., Muslims and the News Media (London:
I.B.Tauris, 2006), 89–102.
______, Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims
(London: I.B.Tauris, 2002).
Qwidi, Maha, al- “Understanding the Stages of Conversion to Islam:
The Voice of British Converts.” Ph.D. diss., University of
Leeds, 2002.
Richardson, John E., (Mis)representing Islam: The Racism and Rhetoric of
British Broadsheet Newspapers (Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publications, 2004).
Robert, Na’ima, From My Sisters’ Lips: A Unique Celebration of Muslim
Womanhood (London: Bantam Press, 2005).
Robinson, Benedict Scott, Islam and Early Modern English Literature: The
Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007).
Rodinson, Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, new ed., trans.
Roger Veinus (London: I.B.Tauris, 2002).
Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media
(London: Greater London Authority, 2007). Commissioned by
the Mayor of London.
Sewell, Brian, “A Noose Around the Globe,” Evening Standard 22
October 2002.
Shirazi, Faegheh, The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001).
Turner, Bryan, “Orientalism, or the Politics of the Text,” in Hastings
Donnan, ed., Interpreting Islam (London: Sage, 2002), 20–31.
40
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41
Studies in Contemporary Islam 10 (2008), 1–2: 43–88
Introduction
Over the past ten years or so, Tariq Ramadan has been preaching a
message, here called pan-Islamic salafiyyah, for European Muslim
youth. This article seeks to explore this salafiyyah through a three-
stage analysis: (1) through the concepts “globalization”,
“fundamentalism,” and “Sufism,” (2) by placing it in historical
continuity with a particular Neoplatonic genealogy of “reform,” and
(3) by comparing Ramadan’s message with those of his selected
predecessors, the pan-Islamic champion al-Afghani and his own
grandfather Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Society of the Muslim
Brothers.1 The main argument is that this is a “globalized” salafiyyah,
whose proponents are concerned with the meaning and implications
of being Muslim in global society, and who use “global” concepts
from nationalism and European philosophy in order to communicate
their messages as broadly as possible.
Musulman).
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2See Buruma. Regarding the U.S. residence permit, see also Ramadan’s personal
44
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
Globalization
3See Bechler. On British foreign policy, see Ramadan’s article in The Guardian titled,
“Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign policy,” and
writings posted on his website under the menu “Articles,” http//
www.tariqramadan.com/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=43&lang=en, accessed 8 April
2008.
4For the view that Ramadan seeks to promote conflict between Muslim youth and
“society at large,” see, for example, Fourest. Olivier Roy, on the other hand, sees
Ramadan not as provoking conflict but rather trying to address and alleviate the
alienation that already exists among Muslim youth; see especially Secularism Confronts
Islam. In addition to these studies, numerous postings about Tariq Ramadan can be
found on the Internet.
5See Beyer, 10.
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Studies in Contemporary Islam
If, for instance, this book finds its way to Montreal, Melbourne,
Murmansk, Mumbai, Mombassa and Montevideo; and it is read
and understood there; then that suggests that the society of which
it is a component reaches to all those centres. Considering the
amount of communication in today’s world that has this sort of
reach, it becomes easy to understand how, from a Luhmannian
perspective, most of us today live in a global society. The passage
to global observation is comparatively straightforward. We do not
have to think alike; we do not have to share the same set of values
and norms; we simply have to be participating in the same web of
imparted and understood communication, something that
includes the possibility that we might be trying to kill each other.
Whatever else the destruction of the World Trade Center in New
York did, it certainly made a statement! Indeed, this horrific
example shows how, on this communicative model, society is not
a matter of solidarity or consensus, of similarity at some basic
level like worldview or sense of belonging. It is only about the
interconnectedness of communication.6
6Ibid., 34 f.
46
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
7Ibid., 34–49.
8Ibid., 51.
9Ibid., 51.
10Ibid., 49–53.
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48
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
the ideal of the pious ancestors as found in the Qur’an and the
Prophet’s Sunnah, but he turned it into a well-functioning
organization, the Society of the Muslim Brothers;13 Tariq Ramadan,
again, is (probably) affiliated with the Muslim Brothers but leads a
youth movement, not an organization. These systemic differences are
reflected in the three leaders’ messages: we find a correlation between
movement and calls for a “united Islamic nation,” and between
organization and a more pragmatic focus on Islamizing nation states.
All three leaders are well integrated members of global society.
In al-Afghani’s lifetime, the modern social systems and function
systems had set roots in the Islamic world. His pan-Islamic
movement depended on the ideology of nationalism, and on such
global function systems as mass media and growing public literacy.
This implies that the three leaders’ messages cannot be understood in
exclusively “Islamic” terms, for even though al-Banna and Ramadan
refer to their programs as salafiyyah, their messages seek to
communicate with as many members of global society as possible,
and they, therefore, used the terms most suited to that purpose. A
further implication is that the messages of the three leaders are not
reactions to a system outside of them, but are parts of a system. This
will be further explored below, through definitions of
fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism
Brynjar Lia.
14See Fourest.
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50
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
51
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Sufism
52
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
Damascus, who lived during the Mongol onslaught just to the east of
Syria. In 1258, the Mongols had killed the Abbasid Caliph in
Baghdad, and effectively abolished the Caliphate. In this context,
with no Caliph as symbol of Muslim unity (which, in reality, never
existed), Ibn Taymiyyah emphasized the need to unite Muslims,
across the divides of legal and theological schools and Sufi
brotherhoods, under the Mamluk sultans. In return for the
ideological support, the sultans were expected to rule “justly,” that is,
in accordance with the Shari‘ah (siyasah shar‘iyyah). This would require
a unified legal system, which would be achieved by basing jurisdiction
not on the traditions of the several schools of law, but on the
scriptures in the broader sense, that is, the Qur’an and hadith from the
Prophet and his Companions, and the rulings of the second
generation of scholars, the Followers; these first two generations
being as-Salaf as-salih, “the pious ancestors.” Reason should then be
applied to the scriptures in order to deduce legal principles. In this
way, Ibn Taymiyyah hoped to create a “middle ground” (wasat)22 of
legal science, constituted by a fusion of the three traditional
sciences—rational theology (‘aql), Prophetic and legal tradition (naql),
and the Sufi quest for insight (irada).23 The fusion involved stripping
the traditional forms of all three sciences of what Ibn Taymiyyah
termed “innovations”: in Ash‘arite rational theology, the science of
God’s essence and attributes and the doctrine of predestination; in
legal tradition, the rulings of the legal schools after the Followers’
generation; and in Sufism, Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of “unity of being”
(wahdat al-wujud). The criterion for what should be rejected as
innovation was compatibility with the Qur’an and the Prophet’s
Sunnah.24
Ibn Taymiyyah’s critique of Ash‘arite rationalism did not mean
that he rejected reason in jurisprudence; on the contrary, he came
very close to the Mu‘tazilite method of deducing law exclusively from
scripture, only he added the tradition of as-Salaf. In this exercise of
22From Qur’an 2:143: “And thus We have made you a middle-way community
(ummatan wasatan), so that you may bear witness unto mankind, while the Messenger
bears witness unto you” (Fakhry tramslation).
23Weismann, 263–265.
24Ibid., 266 f.
53
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25Ibid., 267.
26Ibid.
54
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27Ibid.,
268–270.
28Sedgwick,The Heirs, 10–16.
29Bernd Radtke et al.
55
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‘Attas.
56
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same cause.33 But they also appear in Twelver Shi‘ite thought. The
Shi‘ites, too, were struggling with the same questions related to
religious authority, and in a politically turbulent context: by the
beginning of the nineteenth century, Shi‘ism had sustained great
losses at the hands of the Wahhabis in eastern Arabia, Sunnite
Afghans in Iran, and Russian and English power politics. In the
writings of the Twelver Shi‘ite shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i (d. 1826) from
Bahrayn, the symbols of alchemy and the divine light, and the
significance of visions, all appear. The ideas have a long past in Shi‘ite
gnosis (‘irfan), but al-Ahsa’i gave them a new twist. Like Ibn Idris, al-
Ahsa’i did not assume the traditional role of shaykh because he, on
principle, rejected the notion of some humans being closer to God
than others. Yet the hearts of some men, notably the shaykh of each
age, were repositories for the light emanating from the occult Twelfth
Imam, who, in turn, was the prism through which the divine light
was refracted. According to Juan Cole, al-Ahsa’i broke with
traditional Shi‘ite legal thought, even in its illuminationist forms,
because singling out the individual shaykh as the repository of the
divine light is more in line with Sufi concepts of authority, notably
the Shi‘ite Ni‘matullahi tariqah, which had just emerged and become
very popular. The idea is similar to Ibn Idris’ belief that, in the state
of waking union with the Prophet, he himself became a repository of
God’s light. The difference is that, while Ibn Idris thought that this
state could be taught to others, al-Ahsa’i limited it to the shaykh, that
is, himself.34
Because of his self-acclaimed role as a savior of some sort, al-
Ahsa’i was, after his death, acclaimed as founder of the Shaykhi
movement. In a study of his cosmology, Juan Cole points out that,
much like contemporary postmodernists, al-Ahsa’i conceived of the
world as constituted in written language.35 Al-Ahsa’i assumed, in
Neoplatonic fashion, that there was an immediate, organic
relationship between the written Arabic alphabet, as revealed in the
33Ibid., 18.
34Regarding Ibn Idris on this matter, see ibid., 24; on al-Ahsa’i, see Cole, “Shaykh
Ahmad al-Ahsa’i on the Source of Religious Authority.”
35Cole, “The World as Text,” 145–163.
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36Ibid., 156 f.
58
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tolerated the many without excluding them from the faith; but the
“Wahhabis” carried out violent campaigns, as they excluded “the
many” from Islam. Al-Afghani, al-Banna and Ramadan all fall within
the first category. They are open to Western ideas and to political
alliances with non-Muslims, and, thus, they are in line with Olivier
Roy’s characterization of neofundamentalists: they do not live
“within the confines of a sect or a ghetto but in a process of
negotiation with the authorities and the dominant society,” and,
therefore, they look for “compromise but not concessions, because
dogma is never put into question.”37 The central dogma is the belief
that the Qur’an as scripture is the repository of the One, which is the
source of complex reality, and that scripture must, therefore, be the
point of reference for all human action, individual as well as social
and political. This is also intégralisme, the belief that all aspects of life
go back to the One as true reality. While this approach can, as in the
case of Tariq Ramadan’s message, focus on the individual’s life as the
unit to be integrated, focus can equally well be enlarged to society, as
in al-Banna’s thought; the difference is quantitative, not qualitative.
Both challenge the concept of religion as a distinct function system.
From the believer’s point of view, the distinction between religious and
nonreligious is unreal, because reality is the One. Put in terms of the
popular idiom of “religion and politics”: if the ideal One is “religion,”
then religion is all of reality.
In the following, the definitions furnished so far will be applied
to al-Afghani, al-Banna and Ramadan. The objective is to bring out
both continuities (the Neoplatonic genealogy) and change (global
concepts).
Al-Afghani
59
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60
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The remarks made above are from the end of al-Afghani’s life. But
even earlier on, he was well acquainted with nationalism and theories
about the relationship between religion and science in modern
nations, a subject which had concerned political theorists and
philosophers since the Enlightenment. Al-Afghani was familiar with
the writings of Ernest Renan (1823–1892), professor of Semitic
languages in Paris and historian of religions, with a strong interest in
nation-building and nationalism. Renan was a proponent of the
concept of “natural religion,” first coined by David Hume (d. 1776)
in The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion. According to Hume, religion arose as primitive man’s
attempts to give rational explanations of natural phenomena. From
there, it developed via animism, polytheism, and monotheism into
dogmatic systems of superstition. At this later stage, reason was
employed not to explain nature but to prevent explorations of nature,
because such explorations would undermine dogma; in other words,
what began as primitive science developed into superstition. Modern
rational sciences were, in a sense, the logical development of that
first, primitive “natural religion,” in that they drew on the human
desire to explain nature, the difference being that they employed
empirical methods. Once society was organized and governed in
accordance with the empirical sciences, superstitious, institutionalized
religion would cease to exist; its superstitions were functional in “the
old order” but would have no place in modern society.
Compared with Hume, Renan gave “natural religion” a positive
and, indeed, necessary role for science and the progress of modern
nations. Modern empirical science was the prerequisite for progress.
Historically, Renan argued, science derived its impetus to seek the
truth about things from philosophy. Now, when traditional,
institutionalized religion had become an obstacle to both
philosophical and scientific quests for truth, since it was principally
43Al-Afghani in recorded conversations from the last years of his life, with and by
his friend Muhammad al-Makhzumi, Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, 257; cited by
Haim, 504 f.
62
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47Ibid., 13 f.
48Ibid., 143.
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Would that I had sown all the seeds of my ideas in the receptive
ground of the people’s thoughts! Well would it have been had I
not wasted this fruitful and beneficent seed of mine in the salt and
sterile soil of that effete Sovereignty! . . . Nature is your friend,
52Ibid., 128 f.
53Beyer, 7.
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Hasan al-Banna
Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) was the son of an imam from the town
of Mahmudiyyah in Egypt, who had studied at al-Azhar during
Muhammad ‘Abduh’s tenure as chancellor of the institution. Al-
Afghani’s pan-Islamic, modernizing project may, thus, have shaped
the young Hasan’s knowledge about Islam from the very beginning.55
According to Brynjar Lia, the two most important influences on
Hasan as a teenager were Sufism and nationalism. Hasan became a
member of the Hasafiyyah tariqah around the age of thirteen, and
displayed unusual zeal in supervising other members’ dress codes and
morals. But, in spite of his fervent religiosity, he went against his
father’s wish that he become a religious scholar and enter al-Azhar,
and instead chose teachers’ training college in Cairo. Like most young
men at the time, he was enthusiastic about Sa‘d Zaghlul’s revolution
in 1919 against the British. These two streams, Sufism and
nationalism, conjoined in the organization he founded together with
other members of the Hasafiyyah: The Hasafi Welfare Society. Its
objective was to educate the Egyptian people morally as part of the
67
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56Lia,
25 ff.
57Haddad, “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era.”
58Landau, 224, referring to al-Banna’s lecture, “The Stand of the Muslim Brethren
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The title “Under the Banner of the Qur’an” signifies that the Qur’an
is the principal source of the divine guiding light. However, the
Qur’an as external source corresponds to the divine light of the heart.
There are many instances where the Qur’an refers to God’s light, and
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it is rather self-evident that al-Banna got the symbol from there.61 But
there is also a tenuous link between al-Banna and one of the
brotherhoods coming out of Ibn Idris’ tariqah Muhammadiyyah, with
its strong emphasis on God’s light. At some point, al-Banna met with
one ‘Abd al-Wahhab, son of the murshid who initiated in Egypt the
Dandarawiyyah Ahmadiyyah tariqah from Ahmad b. Idris. Al-Banna
and ‘Abd al-Wahhab were both concerned over the poor state of
Islam in Egypt, and agreed to spread Islam each in their own field
and in their own manner.62
Al-Banna also changed his view of Sufism during the course of
developing the Society of the Muslim Brothers. As a young man, he
was happy to swear allegiance to the Hasafiyyah shaykh, but as leader
of the Society, he came to see Sufi brotherhoods as detrimental to
Islamic unity and reform. This shift coincides with him assuming
spiritual authority for himself as guide of the Brethren. In al-
Ma’thurat, we find the collection of al-Banna’s awrad (Quranic
readings) and dhikr, which he, like a Sufi shaykh, had composed for
his disciples. It is, thus, possible that he came to see the Society as the
organizational vehicle for achieving tariqah Muhammadiyyah on a
societal level; for example, in the opening blessing in al-Ma’thurat, al-
Banna wrote:
May God bless our lord Muhammad, most favoured among those
who recall God (al-dhakirina), master of the thankful (al-shakirina),
imam of the messengers, seal of the prophets, and leader of the
nobles, and for his family and all of his companions, and for those
who follow their path (waman salaka tariqahum), until Judgement
Day.63
One of the first Quranic passages which al-Banna prescribed for wird
contains two significant terms: al-‘urwah al-wuthqa, “the most
trustworthy link,” which refers to the divine contract and was the title
of the journal which al-Aghani and ‘Abduh published in Paris (1884)
61Al-Banna, al-‘Aqa’id, 51, referring to Qur’an 24:40: “He to whom God has not
granted a light will have no light.”
62Sedgwick, The Heirs, 152, referring to al-Banna, Memoirs, 136–142.
63Al-Banna, al-Ma’thurat, 7.
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and which referred to Islam as the unifying principle and the divine
light:
From this, you learn that Islam does not put limits to thought or
impair reason, but rather points out its limitations and makes it
conscious of how little it knows, and orders it to expand its
knowledge; as the Sublime has said: “You have only been given a
little knowledge” (17:85), and: “Say: ‘Lord, increase my
knowledge’” (20:114).65
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Tariq Ramadan
Alongside the issue of creating Islamic societies and government,
struggle to prevent the establishment of a Jewish nation state in
Israel/Palestine was part of the objectives of al-Banna’s Society at
least since 1936. And after the founding of Israel in 1948, the
liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem’s sanctuaries, and official non-
66Ibid., 78.
67Al-Banna, Tahta Rayat al-Qur’an, 23.
68Ibid.
72
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69Mitchell, e.g., on Palestine and Zionism under al-Banna, see 55–58, 267–269; on
Zionism and Western cultural imperialism, especially in Sayyid Qutb’s
formulations, see 227–231; on al-Banna’s Society and Palestine, see also Lia, 237–
247.
70Gräf, 47.
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world; hence the imagery on his old website, which has the sun rising
in the West:71
71web.archive.org/web/20051110064745/www.tariqramadan.com/rubrique.php3?i
does not use the term pan-Islamic salafiyyah, but “Salafi reformism.”
74
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74See Lewis.
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76
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76Ramadan, La foi, 75 f.
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are stirring their society and from which they are currently largely
absent. Few of their fellow-citizens know that the principles held
by Muslims are essentially opposed to the economic logic of
today’s world and that they are, in heart and mind, opposed to its
dominance. It is for Muslims to explain and make themselves
heard. Overall, they need to develop a global vision of the stakes
involved in their presence on the economic scene and to make
sure that the adaptations proposed to them by scholars from here
and there do not become a safeguard that allows the emergence of
a new caste of “highly integrated” Muslim citizens in the style of
new capitalists interested primarily in owning houses or shining
financially in the world of productivity and returns. . . . Contrary
to the old theories, there are no longer two separate worlds,77 and,
whether here or there, our rejection of the dominant economic
system is radical by nature. The reality that may force us to interact
does not in any way force us to give up.78
Paulo Coelho, in his novel The Alchemist, has brought in one of the
most traditional and deep teachings of Sufism (Islamic mysticism).
Go, travel the world, watch, look for the truth and the secret of
life—every road will lead you to this sense of initiation: the light, the
secret, are hidden in the place from which you set out. You are on
your way not toward the end of the road but toward its beginning:
to go is to return; to find is to rediscover. Go! …You will return.
The apparent paradox of spiritual experience is the lesson that the
constant effort, the jihad, that we make in order to purify, control,
and liberate our heart is, in the end, a reconciliation with the
deepest level of our being (al-fitra)—there where the spark gleams
that God originally breathed into our heart, there where our
conscience weds our being and gives in to peace (salam). The
78
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The problem today is not one of “essential values”, but of the gap
between these values and everyday social and political practice.
Justice is applied variably depending on whether one is black,
Asian or Muslim. Equal opportunity is often a myth. Young
citizens from cultural and religious “minorities” run up against the
wall of institutionalised racism. Rather than insisting that Muslims
www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3%3Fid_article%3D912+%22Pour+la+Palesti
ne,+un+secret+...%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
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Also in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Ramadan makes it clear
that “integration” on conditions set by non-Muslims and the
neoliberal system is constraint, and must be resisted. He rejects
economic integration for Muslims on systemic terms, such as
becoming property owners, as an end in itself; and, therefore, he
denounces as “patchwork” fatwas permitting Muslims to take loans
against interest, and which come out of, for example, al-Qaradawi’s
European Council of Fatwa and Research. For Ramadan, the end is to
change the system:
82Ramadan, “Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign
policy.”
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Conclusions
In this article I have analyzed the pan-Islamic salafiyyah, represented
by al-Afghani, al-Banna, and Ramadan, with reference to three
concepts—those of “globalization,” “fundamentalism,” and
“Sufism”—and by placing them within a historical genealogy of what
is commonly called “reform” (islah) or “renewal” (tajdid), from Ibn
Taymiyyah to the Sunnite Sufi tariqah Muhammadiyyah, and in Twelver
Shi‘ism (on more arbitrary grounds, admittedly) with al-Ahsa’i as
example.
Regarding the “reform” genealogy, my focus has not been so
much on its innovative aspects as on its “unifying” approach.
“Unity” is both metaphysical and social. The Neoplatonic belief that
reality is the One and that the Many represent devolution, not
evolution, is reflected in the critique by the “reformers” of the many
disciplines, schools, and brotherhoods. Ordinarily, quests for
82
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83
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84
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References
85
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86
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993; first published 1969).
Radtke, Bernd et al., eds., The Exoteric Ahmad b. Idris: A Sufi’s Critique
of the Madhahib and the Wahhabis: Four Arabic Texts With
Translation and Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999).
Ramadan, Tariq, “Blair can no longer deny a link exists between
terrorism and foreign policy,” The Guardian, Monday, 4 June
2007.
______, Aux sources du renouveau musulman: D’al-Afghani à Hassan al-
Banna un siècle de réformisme islamique (Paris: Éditions Tawhid,
2002).
______, La foi, la Voi et la résistance (Paris: Éditions: Tawhid, 2002).
______, The Messenger: The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad (London:
Penguin Books, 2007).
______, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
Renan, Ernest, “L’Islamisme et la science,” Journal des Débats, 19 May
1883; reprinted in Ernest Renan, Œuvres complets, Tome 1 (Paris:
Calmann-Levy, 1952), 945–965.
______, “Mahomet et les origines de l’islamisme,” Révue des Deux
Mondes, 12 (octobre-décembre 1851), 1063–1101. Reprinted in
Philippe-J. Salazar, ed., Mahomet. Récits francais de la vie du Prophète
(Paris: Klincksieck, 2005), 171–194
______, L’Avenir de la science (Paris: Flammarion, 1995; first published
1890.
______, La vie de Jésus. Préface de Jean Gaulmier (Paris: Gallimard, 1974;
first published 1863.
Roy, Olivier, Globalized Islam: In Search for a New Ummah (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004)
Roy, Olivier, Secularism Confronts Islam (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007).
Salazar, Philippe-J., ed., Mahomet. Récits francais de la vie du Prophète
(Paris: Klincksieck, 2005).
Sedgwick, Mark, “The Heirs of Ahmad Ibn Idris: The Spread and
Normalization of a Sufi Order, 1799–1996,” unpublished Ph.D.
diss., University of Bergen, 1998.
87
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______, Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the Rashidi Ahmadi
Sufi Order (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004).
Utvik, Bjørn Olav, “Religious Revivalism in Nineteenth-Century
Norway and Twentieth-Century Egypt: A Critique of
Fundamentalism Studies,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations,
17 (2006), 2: 143–158.
Weismann, Itzchak, Taste of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in
Late Ottoman Damascus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000).
88
Studies in Contemporary Islam 10 (2008), 1–2: 89–120
89
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3Kurzman, 5.
4Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 18.
5Safi, “Challenges and Opportunities.”
6Ibid.
90
Duderija: Construction of the Religious Self and the Other
7Ibid.
8For example, Hasan Hanafi in Egypt, A. K. Soroush in Iran, M. H. Kamali in
Malaysia, the late Nurkolich Majid in Indonesia, Ali Ashgar Engineer in India, Enes
Karic in Bosnia, Abdul Qadir Tayob in South Africa, Amina Wadud, Kecia Ali,
Asma Barlas in the United States, and Z. Mir-Hoseini in the United Kingdom, to
name but a few.
9See the list of the contributors to Safi, Progressive Muslims, and n. 8, above.
10Safi, “Challenges and Opportunities,” 7.
11Moosa, “Transitions in the ‘Progress’ of Civilization,” in Cornell, 5:115–118.
12Ibid, 118–120.
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13Ibid, 119.
14Azam, 13.
15Karamustafa, 109–110.
16It is not implied, however, that these do not play an important role in the way the
PM worldview is constructed.
17Moosa, “Transitions,” 126.
92
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18Majid,323.
19Moosa, “Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” 112.
20Abrahamov, vii.
21Moosa, “Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” 122.
22Phrase used in Soroush. Cf. Amirpour, 20–21.
23Rahman, Islam.
24Emon, 3.
93
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25Jackson, Introduction.
26Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 7.
27Azam, 8
28Asad.
29 Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 7.
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30Ibid.
31Ibid.
32Ibid,7–9.
33Safi,Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 2, 8, 16.
34Taji-Farouki, Introduction, in Taji-Farouki, 12–16.
35That is, approaches in which the primary sources of the Islamic Weltanschauung
and the derivative body of knowledge comprising the cumulative Islamic tradition
are considered of no value, have no authority or normativeness, and are not used as
points of reference.
36As in the writings of Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Rebecca Chopp.
37As exemplified in the works of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky.
95
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96
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Islamic tradition.
49Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 8.
50For more on this, see section 4 of this paper.
51El-Fadl, in Safi, 35.
52Ibid.
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Furthermore:
53Moosa, Poetics, 3.
54Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 8.
55Ibid.
56Moosa, “Transitions,” 126.
57Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 3.
58Ibid.
98
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59See, for example, Ali, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 175–182; Moosa, “The debts and
burdens of critical Islam,” in Safi, 120–126; and Safi, Introduction, in Safi,
Progressive Muslims, 20–22.
60Moosa, “The debts and burdens of critical Islam,” in Safi, 121.
61Ibid., 122.
62Duderija, “Delineating Features,” article under review.
63Weiss, 35.
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64Barlas, 22–23.
100
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65Ibid.,
13–19.
66Duderija,“The Nature and the Scope of the Concept of Sunnah,” 269–280.
67For more details, see Duderija, “A Paradigm Shift,” 195–206.
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68For more on this in relation to the concept of “the ethic of pluralism” in the
Qur’an see Miraly.
69Explained later in this section.
70I.e., the mushrikun (“polytheists”), the munafiqun (“hypocrites”), and Ahl-Kitab
(“the People of the Book”—primarily, Jews and Christians). For a lucid discussion
of this issue, see Donner; also, Maghen. Donner writes (267–268): “Islam’s
relationship with the People of the Book has had its ups and downs. The growing
102
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In Muhammad’s first two years at Medina the Jews were the most
dangerous critics of his claim to be a prophet, and the religious
fervour of his followers, on which so much depended, was liable
to be greatly reduced unless Jewish criticisms could be silenced or
rendered impotent . . . . In so far as the Jews changed their
attitude and ceased to be actively hostile, they were unmolested.74
familiarity of the inhabitants of the Arabian Penninsula with the ideas, institutions
and the communities of the surrounding monotheisms followed by the initial and
increasingly intense encounters of the nascent Muslim umma with the same, bred
the complex mixture of attitudes to Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism
discernable through the classical literature of the faith. The seminal texts and
genres—the Qur’an, Hadith, Tafsir, Sharh, and fiqh—evince a multifaceted and
pendulating posture vis-à-vis the religio-cultural “other” that partakes more of
dialectic than dogma.”
71Ambivalence and contextuality are also found in non-Qur’anic elements of the
they had much less economic influence. Thus, the Qur’an’s “complaints” about
Christians pertain primarily to the domain of dogma. For details, see McAuliffe.
73A group of people in Medina who only superficially became Muslims in order to
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75Waardenburg, Muslims and Others, 99.; cf. Waardenburg, “World Religions as Seen
Day of Judgment.
78The latter trend being more prominent in the context of Medinan Muslim
community.
79Zebiri, chapter 1.
80Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 12; cf. Maghen, 268–269.
104
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106
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along with the believers. To the Jews their own religion(din) and to the Muslims
their religion. See ibid., 73.
94Ibid, 31, 51–52.
95“Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow
their form of religion. Say: ‘The guidance of Allah that is the (only) guidance.’ Wert
thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee then
wouldst thou find neither protector nor helper against Allah.”
96“O ye who believe! Take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks; they
will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin: rank hatred has already
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appeared from their mouths; what their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made
plain to you the Signs if ye have wisdom.”
97“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and
protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you
that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people
unjust.”
98“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans
wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in
every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and
practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving,
Most Merciful.”
99“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah., never will it
be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have
lost (All spiritual good).”
100These have been analyzed in Duderija, “The Interpretational Principles
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not dismiss other Qur’anic evidence that might contradict the interpretation based
on the chosen verses but considers it contextually contingent and not part of the
universal injunctions of the Qur’ano-Sunnatic teachings. Thus, a distinction
between contextually contingent and universal Qur’anic injunctions is made as
another delineating feature of PM manhaj.
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Invite (all) to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful
preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most
gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best who have strayed from His
Path and who receive guidance. (16:125)
And dispute ye not with the People of the Book except with
means better (than mere disputation) unless it be with those of
them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say "We believe in the
Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came
down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we
bow (in Islam). (29:46)
Allah forbids you not with regard to those who fight you not for
(your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes from dealing kindly
and justly with them: for Allah loveth those who are just. (60:8)
They are those with whom thou didst make a covenant but they
break their covenant every time and they have not the fear (of
Allah). . . . If ye gain the mastery over them in war disperse with
them those who follow them that they may remember. If thou
fearest treachery from any group throw back (their covenant) to
them (so as to be) on equal terms: for Allah loveth not the
treacherous. . . . Against them make ready your strength to the
utmost of your power. But if the enemy incline towards peace do
thou (also) incline towards peace and trust in Allah: for He is the
one that heareth and knoweth (all things). (8:56–61)
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and iman, and have noted that the kufr/iman relationship in the Qur’a
is far from as black and white, as the adherents of the neo-
fundamentalist Salafi-based approach consider.
We will now consider a body of evidence which the PM, based
upon its interpretational model, considers to be establishing religious
pluralism as the normative paradigm of the Qur’ano-Sunnatic
teachings:117
If their spurning is hard on thy mind yet if thou wert able to seek
a tunnel in the ground or a ladder to the skies and bring them a
Sign (what good?). If it were Allah's will He could gather them
together unto true guidance: so be not thou amongst those who
are swayed by ignorance (and impatience)! (6:35)
If it had been the Lord's Will they would all have believed all who
are on earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind against their will to
believe! (10:99)
(They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in
defiance have right (for no cause) except that they say "Our Lord
is Allah." Did not Allah check one set of people by means of
another there would surely have been pulled down monasteries
churches synagogues and mosques in which the name of Allah is
commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid
117Cf. Miraly.
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those who aid His (cause); for verily Allah is Full of Strength
Exalted in Might (Able to enforce His Will). (49:13)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) and those who follow the
Jewish (Scriptures) and the Christians and the Sabians and who
believe in Allah and the last day and work righteousness shall have
their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear nor shall
they grieve. (2:62)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) those who follow the Jewish
(Scriptures) and the Sabians and the Christians any who believe in
Allah and the Last Day and work righteousness on them shall be
no fear nor shall they grieve. (5:69)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) those who follow the Jewish
(scriptures) and the Sabians Christians Magians and Polytheists
Allah will judge between them on the Day of Judgment: for Allah
is witness of all things. (22:17)
118Ramadan, 202.
119In our terminology, Progressive Muslims. For a definition of moderates, see El-
Fadl, Great Theft, 16–25.
120“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and
made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that ye may
despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who
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In this regard, we may also note the view of Abu Zayd, who
maintains that one major characteristic of Qur’anic discourse, that of
negotiation, an inclusivis mode of discourse, applies to the Ahl al-
Kitab. In fact, he argues that Qur’anic discourse does not repudiate
the scriptures of Jews and Christians, only the Jews’ and Christians’
understanding and explanation of them. The exclusivist mode of
Qur’anic discourse, Abu Zayd maintains further, only applies to the
mushrikun, the Arab polytheists.122 As such, Progressive Muslims are of
the view that religious pluralism is divinely willed and is central to the
Qur’an’s vision of society giving salvational significance to all human
communities.123
8. Conclusion
This article has examined how the interpretational principles
governing the PM Qur’an-Sunnah manhaj result in a particular
construction of the religious Self vis-à-vis the religious Other. It has
been argued that the term “Progressive Muslims” is a heuristic tool
which describes a particular approach to understanding the
cumulative Islamic tradition (turath) and the concept of modernity. I
have maintained that the PM school of thought, as developed by the
contributors to Safi’s Progressive Muslims, is not based on a complete
epistemological break from the turath but on a particular
interpretation of it. I have contended that Progressive Muslims
is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted
(with all things).”
121As in Qur’an 5:48. See also Qur’an 5:2: “Help ye one another in righteousness
and piety but help ye not one another in sin and rancor: fear Allah: for Allah is
strict in punishment.” Y.Ali. Also, El-Fadl, The Great Theft, 207–208.
122Abu Zayd.
123Cf. Miraly, 37.
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References
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______, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (New York:
Harper One, 2005).
______, The Place of Tolerance in Islam (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
2002).
______, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women
(Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2001).
Emon, Anver M, “Toward a Natural Law Theory in Islamic Law:
Muslim Juristic Debates on Reason as a Source of Obligation,”
in Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 3 (2003), 1: 1–51.
Esack, Farid, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective on
Inter-religious Solidarity Against Oppression (Oxford: OneWorld
Publication, 1997).
Gäbel, Michael, Von der Kritik des arabischen Denkens zum panarabischen
Aufbruch: Das philosophische und politische Denken Muhammad Abid
Gabiris. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1995.
Izutsu, Toshihiko, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Quran. Montreal:
McGill Queens University Press, 2002.
______, The Concept of Belief: A Semantic Analysis of Iman and Islam
(Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2006).
Jackson, Sherman A, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam:
Abu Hamid Al Ghazali’s Faysal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islam wa Al-
Zandaqa (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Karamustafa, Ahmet, “A Civilisational Project in Progress” in Omid
Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims (Oxford: OneWorld Publications,
2003).
Kurzman, Charles Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
Maghen, Ze’ev, “The Interaction Between Islamic Law and Non-
Muslims,” in Islamic Law and Society 10 (2003), 2: 267–275.
Majid, Anouar, “The Politics of Feminism in Islam,” Signs 23 (1998),
2: 321–362.
Mansour, Iskandar, “The Unpredictability of the Past: Turath and
Hermeneutics” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of
California Riverside, 2000).
McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, Qur’anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical
and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge, U.K., and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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Michael Hart, in his well-known 1978 work, The 100, ranked the most
influential persons in history. In the opening chapter, “The Premise,”
he spells out the three criteria that he used to evaluate thousands of
potential candidates for the one hundred top positions: (1) the person
should have given his/her followers a powerful movement; (2) the
movement should have succeeded in the lifetime of that individual;
(3) the movement should have sustained its original force and
dynamism even today. Using these standards, he ranks Mohammad
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number one, and Jesus number three. Hart was subsequently asked
why he placed Jesus lower than Muhamamd when, today, the number
of Christians in the world greater than that of Muslims. He justified
his evaluation by dividing the credit for the spread of Christianity
between Jesus and St. Paul. According to him, while Jesus’ moral
principles have remained identifiable in theory, it is the practice of
Pauline theology that has actually survived as the Christian religion.
Throughout the history of Christianity, attempts have been made
to restore that religion to its monotheistic roots in the true
Abrahamic tradition. Early Unitarians like Iranaeus (second century),
Tertullian and Origen (second and third centuries), Diodorus, Lucian,
and Arius (third and fourth centuries) made tremendous sacrifices for
setting things right by openly challenging Trinitarianism. During the
European Renaissance and Reformation (fourteenth-seventeenth
centuries), scholars like Servetus in Spain, Francis David in
Transylvania, Sozini (also known as Socianus) in Italy, and Biddle,
Milton, Priestly, and Theo Lindsey in England exposed the
hollowness of the logic behind Pauline theology and the “divinity” of
Jesus (Ata ur-Rahim). However, the pace, frequency, and intensity of
these strikes on Christian dogma have accelerated since the 1945
discoveries of the Gospel of Thomas and Apocalypse of James at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt, and of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in
Palestine two years later.
The Savior-Cult around the personality of Christ, which has
nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus or of his genuine disciples,
has received a political boost on a number of occasions in the past,
and continues to do so even today. Paul, who had never met Jesus
and who, by his own admission, tortured many of early Christians,
originated this cult of Jesus’ dying for the sins of all the past, present,
and future generations of believers. Paul deemphasized the need for
following the Divine Law for the purpose of attaining salvation. He
found, in Antioch, Hellenized Gentiles, ready listeners of his dogma.
The better-informed eyewitnesses of Jesus’ mission in Jerusalem and
its surrounding communities were committed to the Mosaic Law.
Thus, they refused to accept the new accretions to their original faith.
When these disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, like James and Peter,
came to know what Paul was preaching in the name of the Lord’s
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faith, they were shocked. They recalled Paul from his missions back
to Jerusalem to ask him to explain his reasons for supplanting Jesus’
teachings with his own fabrications. Confronted by the early
Christians led by James, brother of Jesus, Paul became rather
defensive.
The situation became so ugly for Paul that some forty Jews,
passionate about upholding the Law, plotted to kill him. Invoking the
need to keep the peace, the Roman authorities apparently took Paul
into custody and ferreted him out of Jerusalem to the safety of
Caesaria, and then to that of Rome itself. With such sure support
from the powers that be, Paul and his followers were now free to
preach a dogma, which was almost totally out of sync with the one
that God had revealed through Jesus.
However, one phoenix-like characteristic of independent
scholarship is that its valid findings, even though they may be
eclipsed for some time, will be vindicated again and again despite the
opposing ideologies thrown up by contemporary political and
economic forces. This is so because the expansion of human
knowledge increases the chances for the truth to be liberated from
redactions, distortions, and misrepresentations of real historical
people, places, and events.
The four authors of the three volumes under review here discuss
this phenomenon by looking into the forces and events that have
been responsible for the prevailing marginalization of the truth in
Christendom. My rationale for considering these volumes together is
manifold. First, they all deal with the same central issue of
suppression of the truth about Jesus’ personality and preaching.
Second, they all are minutely researched and copiously documented.
Third, despite their different faith affiliations, all four authors point
in the same direction and reach the same conclusions on the gap
between the original and the contemporary versions of Christianity.
Above all, in today’s politically and ideologically charged global
climate, these studies have immense potential for contributing to the
much-needed interfaith understanding with a view to avoiding a clash
of civilization.
The background of each of the four authors is interesting and
noteworthy. Maqsood, formerly Rosalyn Kendrick, a British
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Christians; they were followers of Judaism, and they did not interpret
Jesus’ death as divine or tragic, or as a “Savior” event. According to
Q, therefore, the later Christian beliefs about Jesus’ birth and
resurrection are erroneous. The Church is said to have concealed or
destroyed historical records of contemporary events by Tacitus and
Josephus. Strangely also, there is no mention of Nazareth in the Old
Testament. Moreover, the New Testament mentions nothing about
the Essenes or the pious community of Qumran led by James. It is
noteworthy that it was James, and not Peter or Paul, who was the
first head of the early followers of Jesus. Whatever references to
James have survived in the New Testament are negative; they are
even hostile to him.
Maqsood asks why the Church declared heretical some of the
early practices common to Judaism and Christianity, such as: at least
three daily prayers; male circumcision; ablution and bathing for
purity; clean-food habits; charity requirements; and making
pilgrimage to a central Temple? These practices have been preserved,
in their developed form, in Qur’anic teachings. Paul’s tactical or
surreptitious compliance with the Roman occupiers and their
paganism seems to have set the Church along a wrong course, from
which it has not been able to recover.
Maqsood devotes several chapters to discussing various aspects
of each of the above-listed matters, and finally delivers the judgment
in her last, 25th, chapter by underscoring a need for both Muslims
and Christians to make concerted efforts to understand each other’s
beliefs. This, she believes, would enable them to find the truth
leading to world peace. The sole appendix in the book discusses the
contents of the Gospel of Barnabas with a view to resolving some of
the controversies dealt with in the book, and then goes into the
politics behind the Gospel’s suppression by the Church.
Baigent and Leigh, in their classic work further illustrate the
traditional Church’s attempts at suppressing any and all documentary
evidence contradicting the Pauline doctrine, which was officially
supported by the pagan Roman rulers in the first century of the
Christian era. The doctrine continued to enjoy still stronger support
of the emperor Constantine at the ecumenical Church Council
convened at Nicaea in 325. The imperial support for the Athanasian
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The plan could not be implemented then, but no sooner was the
Museum, heretofore an internationally accessible institution, captured
by the Israelis in 1967, than they sadly treated it as “spoils of war.”
The scholars of Hebrew University started using the scrolls as an
invaluable treasure for granting doctoral degrees at their own
institution. Intense wrangling began between the Israelis and the
Catholics scholars under the leadership of Father De Vaux. The two
contending groups exchanged hateful and venomous epithets against
each other. They accused each other of tardiness in processing the
scroll materials for public use.
Baigent and Leigh disdainfully dub the international team as
incompetent; they even accuse them of having arrived at a consensus
to conceal the truth. They assert: “[T]he Scrolls identify the group
known as Christians as a band of fervent theocratic revolutionaries
intent on breaking Roman control of the Holy Land and restoring the
Kingdom of Israel and its rightful Judaic dynasty, of which Jesus
himself was a member.” The two authors, drawing upon Eisenman
and Wise’s (1983, 1986) work, depict the early Christians of Qumran
caves not as a passive, contemplative monkish celibates, but as a
band of Zealots, who revolted against Rome and, thus, led to the
destruction of the Temple. The Christian consensus team brushes
aside the differences between the temperaments of the revolutionary
Qumran community and the meek and peace-loving Jesus and his
followers of the Gospels. They justify their conclusions by dating the
Scrolls to a much earlier period before Christ. On the contrary, the
“independent” and “unbiased” researchers date them to the first
century of the Common Era, when James, called the Just and
Righteous Teacher, leads the early Christians. The latter group of
scholars also finds striking similarities between the beliefs and
practices of Jesus and his followers, on the one hand, and rabbinical
Judaism, on the other. The early Christians, unlike those of the
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Youssef M. Choueiri
University of Oxford
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Children can begin to acquire an ethnic and national identity from the
age of two or three and a conception of an enemy group by age three
or four. The creation of these identities and prejudices does not
happen in a vacuum. Cultures in conflict with each other and with
embedded negative stereotypes of each other begin to mold the
prejudices of their children from a very early age. Professors Bar-Tal
and Teichman, in their scholarly work Stereotypes and Prejudice in
Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society, demonstrate the
negative stereotypes about Arabs in Israeli Jewish culture, tracing,
over the last one hundred years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the
evolution and transmission of these stereotypes.
The first quarter of the four-hundred-plus-page book explains
the theoretical framework of the study and outlines the relevant
definitions. Bar-Tal and Teichman argue that many works that
examine stereotypes focus on individuals’ perceptions without
looking more broadly at the society from which the individuals in
question draw their perceptions. To remedy this problem and in
order to understand and contextualize the formation of Israeli
children’s attitudes toward Arabs, the authors dedicate about half of
the book to a review of research studies that trace prejudices and
stereotypes in Jewish society and culture in the period from before
the creation of the State of Israel to the present day.
Bar-Tal and Teichman note a link between historical events and
the evolution of Israeli perceptions of Arabs. “Israeli public
discourse,” they argue, “is characterized by a continuous negative
stereotyping of Arabs in general and of Palestinians in particular, with
use of delegitimizing labels.” The book recognizes the evolution of
this stereotyping over time: “The dominant presentation of Arabs in
public discourse is related to the threat they are perceived to pose to
the Jewish existence in Israel” (154).
The authors relate that, before the creation of the State of Israel
and in the early years of the existence of that country, Arabs were
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Helene J. Sinnreich
Youngstown State University
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Faegheh Shirazi
University of Texas at Austin
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Daniel L. Smith-Christopher
Loyola Marymount University
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However, India as well as the United States provide perhaps the best
cases to show that democracies are indeed sustainable in diverse
nations.
In Votes and Violence, Steven I. Wilkinson addresses the issue of
ethnic violence in India, chiefly the Hindu-Muslim riots, and its
connection to electoral politics. In the first chapter of the book, he
lays out his fundamental argument that ethnic riots are fomented or
prevented principally due to electoral considerations. Wilkinson
argues, contrary to other leading explanations discussed later, that it is
the electoral competition that drives communal riots. Democracies
protect minorities or inflame passions against them, the argument
goes, if it is in the governments’ electoral interest to do so.
In Chapter 2, the author addresses the town-level variations
relative to ethnic riots. According to Wilkinson, the electoral
incentives at the local level account for much of the variation
concerning the break out of riots. Using data for all communities of
more than 20,000 people in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous
state, the findings show that closeness to an election as well as the
previous margin of victory of less than 5 percent in the state election
significantly increased the odds of a riot, even while controlling for
socioeconomic and demographic variables and prior rates of violence
in the state.
In Chapters 3 and 4, Wilkinson takes on the heretofore two
widely accepted arguments about the causes of communal violence or
the lack of it in India. One notion, posited by Atul Kohli and
discussed in Chapter 3, deals with state capacity to prevent violence.
The argument is that Indian state governments have become
considerably weaker since the 1960s, hence unable to prevent riots
where before they could. However, Wilkinson argues that it is not the
state capacity, for even the least muscular state governments like
those of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh could prevent violence if ordered to
do so by state politicians. The other notion, posited by Arend
Lijphart and discussed in Chapter 4, deals with the idea of
consociational powersharing (meaning, giving minorities a seat at the
table) in preventing violence. The argument here is that, as India has
become less consociational over the decades, ethnic riots have
increased. Wilkinson, however, notes that India has in fact become
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more Hindu support. I would, however, also put more stock in the
economic argument than Wilkinson appears to do. The author does
examine economic variables (economic competition) and finds them
not to be responsible for the incitement of violence. But rather than
economic competition, economic security might be a better indicator.
Violence severely disrupts economic life, costing the majorities more
than the minorities. As economics increasingly drive Indian society,
Indian businesses are unwilling to tolerate any disturbances in
economic growth. In addition, Wilkinson’s “socialization” argument,
made briefly in the last chapter, would also have much validity in
minimizing ethnic prejudices.
The author is to be admired for collecting what appears to be an
unprecedented set of data for this project. Wilkinson relies on a
database of 2,000 riots for the years 1950–1995, along with a separate
database of Hindu-Muslin violence from 1900–1949. These data were
collected from a variety of sources, and represent a remarkable
undertaking. Moreover, this study is empirically well done, and
should serve as a model particularly for graduate students who wish
to conduct quantitative analyses.
I do, however, feel an obligatory itch to raise a few minor
matters of concern about this book. In defining towns, Wilkinson
draws the line at 20,000 people. Of course, going into smaller towns
would make the data collection project even more onerous. But what
happens in towns with populations of less than 20,000? In the United
States, for instance, ethnic disturbances seem more likely to occur in
rural rather than in urban areas. Indeed, if one paraphrases James
Madison’s argument from Federalist No. 10, it is the smaller
communities with homogeneous populations that would be more
troublesome for ethnic minorities. Also, in conducting the town-level
analysis, Wilkinson relies on one state only, the state of Uttar
Pradesh. I wonder if towns in other states would yield similar results.
Last, the author should have provided some summary measures (R2s
or other statistics) for the regression models in the book.
In the main, though, Wilkinson convincingly manifests the
significance of electoral motivations over other causes in instigating
or preventing ethnic violence. On the larger question of the success
of democratic structures in ethnically heterogeneous societies, I
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Sunil Ahuja
Youngstown State University
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Kamran S. Aghaie
The University of Texas at Austin
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remarks that traditional theologies are not only regressive, but also
distorted, conceiving the world in a dichotomous way. In terms of
war and peace, for example, the Islamic theological views can be
“even imperialist,” dividing the world into dar al-harb and dar al-Islam,
with little attention paid to dar as-sulh (“neutrality”) or dar ‘adl (“land
of equity”). Even worse, some of these views confuse the notion of
qital (“fighting”) and that of jihad (37).
For a solution to some of the problems, and rejecting the two
models of the Islamic community, the oppressed Meccan community
and the community of Medina, Farid Esack looks toward a third
community, namely, the “Abyssinian paradigm,” a model of tolerance
and coexistence (16). This suggestion is enhanced by the pluralistic
view of Islam, which is brought to bear on the debate by Shaykh
Ahmed Abdur Rashid and Akbar Helminski. The Islamic community
(ummah), Abdur Rashid says, is not monolithic. Islam is a faith built
around “compassion, mercy, tolerance, patience, love” (41).
Helminski also thinks that Islam is a pluralistic religion and this
pluralism is located in the timelessness of the religion of Abraham,
the first Muslim. Muslims may think that their Islam is closer to the
first religion, but this is not a sufficient reason to deny that other
religions are also valid approaches to God. And here, Helminski
reassures Muslims that Sufism is not eclectic. The source of Sufism,
he says, remains the Qur’an, the character of Muhammad, and the
“compassionate and tolerant viewpoint of all faiths” (175).
The book is a small step on a long journey toward a great
destiny. Though the journey has begun, the destiny remains
uncertain, clouded by a lack of clarity on the fundamental issue in this
debate: freedom. To be sure, freedom is expressed in the very
diversity of the contributions, yet it remains unarticulated. Freedom is
mentioned no more that five times (liberation, once), only to be
avoided. Yet freedom is the very point at which the possibility of
convergence or divergence between Islam and democracy
materializes. It is in the name of this principle of freedom that
democracy demands that Islam be reformed, but it is also in
deference to that same principle that only Muslims are entitled to
speak on behalf of Islam and to choose which form of Islamic beliefs
to adopt. Yet Islam will never be adequately spoken for until sexual
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Ahmed Achrati
University of Illinois at Chicago
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earlier, scientific truths that have long since lost their relevance. He is
also critical of those Muslims and their supporters who have searched
relentlessly for modern science in the Qur’an. Instead, Iqbal sees the
problem in terms of a mismatch between the core metaphysical and
ethical values of Islam, and a modern science that hides a value-less,
atheistic world-view behind a façade of objectivity and universalism.
In his critique, Iqbal would seem to be both descriptive and
prescriptive: the historical failure to assimilate modern science in the
Islamic world is a kind of affirmation of Islamic values, while the
prescription is to continue to resist a mindless acceptance of an alien
ideology.
The book itself is wide-ranging in its approach. The first part
(Chapters 1–4) deals with the early period of the Islamic scientific
and philosophical tradition, when the Islamic world was the leader in
these areas. Until recently, the time period in question would have
been from the ninth until the twelfth centuries, but Iqbal has rightly
followed the newer historians of Islamic science who have pointed to
major developments in the tradition that occurred up to the sixteenth
century and beyond. This brings up the difficult question of decline,
which Iqbal deals with in Chapter 5. Older historians dated the
decline to the transmission of Arabic/Islamic science to Europe in
the twelfth century, but, again, this has been discounted owing to a
number of recent historical findings that Iqbal discusses. He then
moves on, in Chapter 6, to the transmission of Arabic/Islamic
science to Europe. The last part of the book (Chapters 7–11) deals
with the situation of science in Islam in the modern period
(beginning with the eighteenth century).
How well has Iqbal succeeded? To his credit, he has attempted
to provide his readers with a survey of recent literature covering a
long chronological period and a diverse range of subjects. It is
certainly not easy to deal with the early history of science in Islam,
the encounter of Islam with European science in the last three
centuries, and the modern situation of science in the Islamic world—
all in the same book. And he also provides some useful critiques of
recent literature—for example, the deeply flawed work of Toby Huff,
who, contrary to all evidence, sought to find an inherent conflict
between Islam and science, and the work of Ziauddin Sardar, who
163
Studies in Contemporary Islam
F. Jamil Ragep
McGill University
164
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