The January 6, 2008 edition of the
New York Times Book Review
was devoted to "Islam," as the header for the edition boldly proclaims.
The edition aims to highlight some of the most relevant historical,
literary, political and theological issues informing contemporary
discourse around the topic of Islam, as it is found in recent
literature. The effort to shed light on such an important subject is
laudable. What follows are my comments on the various articles and
essays. They follow the order presented in the
Book Review. 1. This issue of the
Book Review begins with Tariq Ramadan's excellent essay
Reading the Koran.
Ramadan is able to capture in a concise essay both the simplicity and
the nuanced complexity of the Koran (Qur'an). Its simplicity is rooted
in its ability to singularly address the believing heart. At this level
the Qur'an is simple and universally accessible. Each person finds in
its message, filtered through the prism of his or her personal
experiences, knowledge, joy, pain, triumphs and setbacks, a distinct
intimacy. At this level, the message requires "no intermediary." This is
the basis of what Ramadan refers to as the dialogue that exists between
the Qur'an and its reader. Ramadan beautifully captures the spirit of
that dialogue.
However, the Qur'an is also nuanced and its message
can be quite complex at another level, a more complex one that seeks to
accurately understand the legal, social, and moral implications of the
message. Here, the challenge, Ramadan informs us, is "to derive the
Islamic prescriptions that govern matters of faith, of religious
practice, and of its fundamental precepts." Here literalism and dogma do
not take one very far, although they inform much of the contemporary
polemics surrounding discussions of the Qur'anic messages in the
pontification of both Muslims and non-Muslims.
As Ramadan
mentions, this is a domain that requires the specialized methodological
tools of the Qur'anic scholar. It is those tools that allow for the
productive application of reason to the divine text. That such an
application is possible is illustrated throughout the long history of
Islam, and captured in the rich literate we have inherited from the
great Qur'anic exegetes. These methodological tools, would include a
deep knowledge of the poetry and language of the Arabs, grammar,
rhetoric, logic, knowledge of the Meccan and Medinan verses (signs) of
the Qur'an, and other sciences that Ramadan does not mention.
Possession
of those tools is augmented by the possession of a final, critical one
that Ramadan does expound on-a deep spirituality that creates an
inseparable fusion between the heart and the mind. It is this fusion
that really opens the door to a faithful and deep understanding of the
guidance contained in the Qur'an. In Ramadan's words, "Reason opens the
Book and reads it-but it does so in the company of the heart, of
spirituality."
In our day the need for a deeper reading of the
Qur'an has perhaps never been greater, for the vast difference between
the society that witnessed the original revelation of the text and the
time we live in has never been greater. Hence, there is a tremendous
need for a harmonizing between the text and our context, a harmonization
that is impossible as long as there is not a deep harmony between the
heart and the mind. Ramadan makes this point quite emphatically. If we
Muslims are able to effect a reconciliation between our hearts, which
are oftentimes blinded by the sometimes luminous, sometimes dark glare
of the modern condition, and our minds, which are oftentimes numbed by
the seductive illusion of certitude, then perhaps we can help to effect a
reconciliation between not only the text of the Qur'an and the context
we endeavor to apply its guidance in, but also between the various
people vying for preeminence, or simply trying to survive in an
increasingly interconnected world.
2. Irshad Manji's review of John Kelsey's,
Arguing The Just War in Islam,
is plagued by two of the tendencies that characterize her own
works-namely, a strong ideological bias and the lack of a deep
understanding of Islamic Law, exegesis, and methodology. Both of these
tendencies work to undermine the seriousness of her scholarship and the
veracity of her conclusions.
An example of the former is
illustrated by her comment on Kelsay's statement that in the light of
classical Islamic legal reasoning civilian deaths may be justifiable
"when an enemy's military resources are deployed in the midst of a
civilian population. ...Soldiers whose actions take place under such
conditions are excused from the guilt associated with unjust killing."
Manji comments, "That ruling would let Israeli Defense Forces of the
hook for collateral damage in their 2006 war in Lebanon, since Hizbollah
deliberately operated in residential Beirut." Manji's defense of the
IDF would be more credible, but no more acceptable, if the destruction
caused by the IDF during the war was restricted to the slums of southern
Beirut. However, it does little to excuse the killing of hundreds of
Lebanese civilians in areas where there was no Hizbollah presence, the
wanton destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and the dumping
of hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs on Lebanese fields and arable
farmland. Are these to be glibly dismissed as forms of collateral damage
that Muslims have no moral or theological authority to question because
of a perceived loophole in classical Islamic strategic thinking?
The
latter tendency is illustrated by her concluding remarks surrounding
the Qur'anic verse that "tells believers that slaying an innocent is
like slaying all of mankind unless it is done to punish villainy." She
goes on the mention the incumbency of "reform-minded Muslims"
reinterpreting this verse. She then concludes that the nature of that
reinterpretation "could well be the next chapter in reclaiming Shariah
reasoning and the richness of Islam itself." To reduce the reform of
Islamic legal thought to the reinterpretation of a single verse,
particularly the one is question is a highly untenable proposition.
Although
Kelsay's work is probably quite insightful, it is indicative of a genre
of writing about Islam that is highly problematic. That literature
seeks to explain developments in the Islamic world based on easily
sensationalized cultural variables that pale in the face of the
analytical strength of other more nuanced ones. In this case the
cultural variable is religion. Manji quotes Kelsay as saying, "Those who
wish to argue that Islam has nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 or
the tactics of Iraqi 'insurgents' will find no comfort here..."
The
implicit assumption underlying this statement is that if we can
understand Islam, specifically its legal reasoning, then we can
understand why 9/11 occurred or why the Iraqi insurgents choose the
tactics they do. I would argue that Islamic legal reasoning has little
to do with understanding either. If suicide terrorism is the issue to be
explained then Islam would give us little insight into what motivated
the Tamil Tigers when they were engaging in arguably the
prototypical-and to date the most successful-suicide terror campaign in
history. If car-bombing is the tactic to be explained then Islam will do
little to explain the ruthless campaigns of the Zionist Stern Gang in
Palestine during the 1940s, or the highly effective campaign of the Viet
Cong and their supporters during the American campaign in Viet Nam
during the 1960s. How does Islam inform the tactics of contemporary
Islamic radicals who employ such methods in ways that differ
fundamentally from the two groups mentioned above? As Robert Pape
demonstrates in the case of suicide bombings it would be far more
productive to consider other variables.
If any one thinks that the
application of "premodern precedents" goes further in explaining
contemporary acts of violence in the Muslim world than globalization,
foreign occupation, economic marginalization, inadequate education, and a
host of other factors, then that misunderstanding will not only inform
flawed policies for dealing with the current crisis, it will also help
to perpetuate the type of ignorance that lends public support to those
policies.
It is interesting the
Book Review did not choose to highlight a publication that deals with the types of explanations I mention above. Pape's,
Dying to Win, Michael Scheuer's,
Imperial Hubris, and Olivier Roy's
Globalized Islam
are examples of works that could have been mentioned in this regard.
This is not to argue that Kelsay's thesis has no validity. However, its
true relevance is highly questionable.
3. Jeffrey Goldberg's,
Seeds of Hate, is a review of Matthias Kuntzel's,
Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11.
Goldberg echoes Kuntzel is seeing the poorly packaged nonsense that is
at the basis of Jew-hatred that does exist in the Muslim world as
"scandalously ubiquitous." The Muslim world is quite expansive, and it
would be a stretch of the imagination to think that the sort of
anti-Jewish hatred that appears in pamphlets littering some of the
bookstores of the Arab heartland of Islam is widespread in places like
Muslim West Africa, the Muslim nations of Central Asia, or the Southern
Philippines. Even Goldberg realizes that we are not talking about a
ubiquitous phenomenon and more accurately states at the end of his
article, "Still Kuntzel is right to state that we are witnessing a
terrible explosion of anti-Jewish hatred in the Middle East..."
The
dubious nature of Kuntzel's claim along with an indication of the
nature of the scholarship supporting it is found his allegation that (in
Goldberg's words) "two Muslim leaders in particular willingly and
knowingly carried Nazi ideology directly to the Muslim masses." These
two leaders are the Palestinian, Amin al-Husseini, and the founder of
the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna. During his
lifetime, to say nothing of today, it would be difficult to find a
Muslim outside of Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia who
had even heard of Amin al-Husseini. Although Hasan al-Banna's ideas
would be indirectly influential in the programs of some Islamic
organizations, such the Jamaati Islami of India and Pakistan, that
influence was largely confined to a few countries outside of the Arab
heartland of Islam, and did not extend beyond the Western-educated elite
that formed the backbone of such movements. The masses in those lands
were always attached to more traditional types of Islamic organizations
such as the Sufi brotherhoods.
In mentioning the role of Hasan
al-Banna in transferring those hideous ideas from their European
birthplace to the Muslim world, Kuntzel gives too much weight to a yet
to be resurgent Islam. The role of Arab nationalism, and nationalist
thinkers such as Sati al-Husri during the 1930s and 1940s in that
transferal is far more significant. Those were the heady days of the
Arab nationalist revolution, and nationalist thinkers such as al-Husri,
Michel Aflaq and others saw far more to be learned from the mass
mobilization techniques, the manipulation of nationalist symbols, and
the racist propaganda of Mussolini and Hitler than Islamic figures like
al-Banna ever did.
Kuntzel's use of the word "Jihad" in his title
is also significant. The juxtaposition of "Jihad" and "Jew-Hatred" seems
to suggest that somehow Jew-hatred has something to do with motivating
the actions of 21st Century jihadists. Such a linkage would be very
difficult to prove. Most analysts of contemporary jihad movements note
the almost total neglect both Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have given
to the Palestinian problem. When it is mentioned by them or their
cohorts, it is usually done so in a language that bespeaks of tokenism.
Why then use such language? I would argue that it is an emotive way of
obscuring the real issues pushing some Muslims to violence.
The
same could be said by the inclusion of the phrase, "...and the Roots of
9/11," in the subtitle. Even those who accept the woefully inadequate
official version of the events of that day seldom if ever mention the
hatred of Jews as being one of the factors motivating those implicated
in carrying out the attacks. It is again curious that Kuntzel would make
such a linkage.
Kuntzel does point to a real problem. However, he
appears to be overly simplistic in his analysis of its origins, and by
implication its solution. To his credit, Goldberg points out this
oversimplification. As he implies, the "excess and cruelty" of Israel
has to be seen as a factor in the emergence of virulent Jew-hatred in
parts of the Muslim world. That does not excuse it. However, it is
certainly a factor in explaining it.
4. Fouad Ajami's essay dealing with Sam Huntington's
Clash of Civilization
thesis is his acknowledgement that Huntington was right all along. It
took the events of 9/11 to lead Ajami to see the light. As Ajami states,
"Those 19 young Arabs who struck America on 9/11 were to give
Huntington more of history's compliance than he ever could have
imagined." He further observes that those radicals and their ilk had
"overwhelmed the order of their homelands..."
All of this strikes
me as strange. As far as I can see it is authoritarian business as usual
in all of the Muslim countries that have witnessed the threat of
radical Islam. Egypt dutifully crushed Ayman Zawahiri and his minions,
forcing them to seek refuge in the caves of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia
has survived the challenge of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda without even a
minor disruption in the flow of oil. Even in Pakistan, a land where the
radical Muslim youth are seen as most menacing, far from being
overwhelmed, President Musharraf, along with the military and feudal
land-owing elites he serves as a front for are firmly in charge. No
informed observer would believe otherwise. Musharraf has been able to
skillfully use various Islamic groups to give the impression of an
exaggerated Islamic threat to his western backers; and of course, he is
the only one capable of dealing with that threat.
In the most
secular of Muslim countries, Tunisia, the vanquished Islamic movement,
and its exiled leader, Rashid al-Ghanoushi, show little signs of a
comeback. Even in Turkey, where Ajami places an exaggerated emphasis on
the Islamists roots of the current ruling party, it is clear that the
politicians, regardless of their Islamist origins, tow the army's line
and have been forced to engage in many embarrassing compromises to
prevent the direct intervention of the avowedly secular military into
the political arena. In the Central Asian Muslim republics, brutal
repression prevents the emergence of even a peaceful Islamic movement.
Ajami's
effort to lend credence to Huntington's thesis leads to an incredible
lack of analytical depth. He cites for example the fact that the
percentage of the world's population under the direct political control
of the west has fallen from 40 percent in 1900 to 15 percent in 1990,
whereas Islam's share has risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in
1990. Even if we discard the fact that most of the growth in the Islamic
realm can be attributed to disproportionately high population growth
rates, Ajami's failure to grasp the nature of neo-colonization is
telling. The premise of the new colonization is that it no longer
requires expensive and politically-damaging direct control. The details
of the working of new relationships of domination and control are well
known, and their impact on the developing world is well documented.
Ajami's
analysis also ignores the economic realities of the current global
system. If we were to look at the economic domination of the former
colonial powers we would surely find that the forms of economic
dependency in the former colonies, and wealth sharing patterns between
them and their old vassals has actually worsened. The nature of
globalization has rendered whole sectors of the population of many
developing countries structurally unemployed or unemployable, even in
places like India where a relative handful of people have benefited by
the "outsourcing" of IT services.
To make his case Ajami must
overlook other critical developments, such as a pervasive
western-orchestrated globalization that is just as severe in the Muslim
world as it is elsewhere. The young Arabs and Muslims Ajami sees as the
"shock-troops of a new radicalism" are wearing blue jeans, blazers and
communicating via cell phones and the internet. Their frustration in
many instances is bred by the lack of control they have over their life
chances because of the vagaries of the global economy.
9/11
notwithstanding, Huntington's clash of civilizations is bad history and
it is bad social science. From a historical perspective it would be
difficult to argue that Islam and Christianity are two distinct
civilizations. They both spring from common roots and are integrated by
the dynamics that have forged the peoples of the Mediterranean region
into an integrated if oftentimes conflicting whole. The diet, language,
dress, and social mores of a Palestinian Christian differ little form
those of a Palestinian Muslim. To posit that religion alone somehow
casts them into divergent civilizations, civilizations defined by
culture no less, is not a sound proposition. If somehow European
Christians are distinct from their Latin American or Middle Eastern
brethren, something that Huntington seems to suggest, then those
differences likely have nothing to do with religion.
The clash of
civilization thesis is based on many conclusions that do not stand up to
facts. For example, Huntington claims that sharing a common
civilization will mitigate conflicts that do occur. Yet the two world
wars, fought primarily between the Christians of Europe were the
bloodiest and most costly conflicts in history. More recently in the
Muslim world the Iran-Iraq War, which raged from 1980 until 1988,
leading to the deaths of well over one million combatants, was the
bloodiest war in the history of the region despite the fact that both
sides were Muslim. Sharing a common "culture" was no mitigating factor
in these conflagrations.
Furthermore, the neat fault lines
Huntington draws up are not so clear on the ground. Was the 1991 Gulf
War an example of a clash of civilizations? The Christian American and
Brits teamed up with the Muslim Saudis and Kuwaitis to destroy Muslim
Iraq. How do we draw the fault lines in looking at that conflict?
Ajami
grudgingly concedes, "I still harbor doubts about whether the radical
Islamists knocking at the gates of Europe, or assaulting it from within,
are bearers of a whole civilization." I can assure Mr. Ajami that they
are not even the bearers of a partial civilization. As Olivier Roy
points out they are the children of globalization. Furthermore, unlike
the Ottoman Turks when they twice besieged Vienna, they are not knocking
at the gates of Europe, and unless some European country grants them a
visa they can get no where near the estate.
5. William Dalrymple's review of Ghalib Lakhnawi and Abdullah Bilgrami's
The Adventure of Amir Hamza
is a welcome addition the Book Review's collection. Such works go a lot
further than any number of speeches or educational initiatives to
humanize the Muslim world. With so much attention given to the bloody
things that lead in the headlines of the coverage given by the western
media to the Muslim world, it is refreshing to read about a great work
of literature. Dalrymple's concise overview of the development of this
genre of writing is lucid and insightful.
His review is also
saddening, for as he points out, this art form, along with virtually of
all the classical Islamic arts-with the notable exception of
calligraphy-are almost dead. In this context, Dalrymple issues a subtle
challenge to Muslims when he states, "If the Sackler's "Hamzanama"
exhibition was the first time a Western audience has been exposed to the
Hamza story, it also served as a wake-up call to Urdu and Persian
scholars. It quickly emerged that this epic, said to be the longest
single romance cycle in the world, has been almost forgotten." The
wake-up call Dalrymple mentions extends far beyond scholars of Persian
and Urdu. It is one that should be heeded by all Muslims.
Being a
viable and competitive nation includes far more than the ability to
produce doctors and engineers, the primary professions most Muslim
parents direct their children towards. Without relevant and engaged
scholars in the humanities and social sciences, it is difficult to see
how the type of Islamic world expressed in the pages of the Hamza tales
will be recaptured. That world is a world rooted in the realities that
are shaped by real people engaging the world on human terms. It is a
world capable of producing great art and literature, a world of
subtleties and nuances, a world of heroes and heroines.
A true
revival of Islamic civilization does not require a return to the
prophetic epoch, nor does it require starting from scratch in the face
of the novel contingencies presented by the modern and now post-modern
conditions. It will require a deep appreciation of the tradition that
emerged from the struggle of Muslims to apply our religion in the world
as much as it will require a rededication to the underlying piety that
drove that engagement. It will also require the creative imagination
illustrated by the many minds that unwittingly collaborated over long
centuries to produce
The Adventures of Amir Hamza, as well as the creative assimilative genius that produced the distinctive Mughal art form displayed in the Hamzanama.
It is interesting, as Dalrymle points out, that
The Adventures of Amir Hamza
begins near Bagdad and unfolds in an area encompassing most of the
Middle East that has become synonymous with conflict and strife.
Bringing about a new day in that region will hinge in large part on how
we in the West envision it. Hopefully works like The Adventures of Amir
Hamza will help us to view the region and its wonderful people in a more
human light.
6.
Beyond the Burka, Lorraine Adams essay
on the state of Muslim women in western literature is a call for the
inclusion of a wider range of voices in literature about Muslim women
currently available in the West. Adams points to the highly politicized
nature of what gets translated, published, and by implication,
effectively marketed. She mentions the case of Hirsi Ali's memoir,
Infidel.
Because Ali's work, whose truthfulness is dubious, reinforces all of
the stereotypes associated with the type of Islam advocated by radical
Islamists, today's enemy of choice, it is a best seller and its author
fitting for a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute.
Adams
then proceeds to mention the likes of Nawal El Saadawi, the longtime
Egyptian feminist scholar and activist, whose scholarship, integrity,
and career accomplishments dwarfs those of Hirsi Ali, but whose
ambivalence towards the American imperial project has relegated her
works-those which have been translated into English-to the back shelves
of obscure British bookstores.
Adams also demonstrates the power of the template by a brief examination of the work of the Iranian émigré Azar Nafisi,
Reading Lolita in Tehran.
The success of that work led to a slew of similar works by Iranian
women. Collectively, those works serve to reinforce the stereotypical
views most Americans have of the Islamic Republic, but do little to add
understanding of the highly complex, highly nuanced Iranian social and
political systems. They also unwittingly deny space for other Iranian
female voices that are telling different types of stories. This is a
dangerous trend in light of the fact that the American public will
probably soon be called on to accept some form of military action
against Iran. In the absence of understanding, blood unfortunately
becomes a very powerful argument.
Perhaps the greatest shortcoming
of Adams essay, one that is almost universal when Western women write
about Muslim societies, is her failure to mention any works by women who
readily and proudly identify themselves as practicing Muslims. She does
acknowledge that "moderate Muslims, practicing but tolerant; and
radical fundamentalists..." exist. However, her overview of the
literature being produced by the women of the Muslim world gives no
indication of any literary output from this quarter. It would certainly
be instructive and enriching to find out what are the factors motivating
such women to take the stands that have taken, and what is their view
of the social reality some consider so insidious and demeaning to their
gender.
Herein is a challenge for practicing Muslim women in the
West, many of whom are fluent in both English and one of the major
Muslim languages. Through original works and through translation let
your stories and the stories of your sisters be known. It is only
through the telling of such stories that the fullness, complexity, and
richness of the Muslim world will come to be known. Only then will we
begin to approach the fulfillment of the vision of Dedi Felman, who
Adams quotes as saying, "We are asking people to recognize the Other not
for what they want it to be or anticipate it to be, but for what it
is." After all is said and done such an attitude is absolutely
indispensable for mutual understanding.
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