Critical Muslims

Reviving the 'Islamization of Knowledge' Project?

2012-01-21T09:29:00.001Z

A few days after former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister -- but now opposition leader -- Anwar Ibrahim's acquittal of a second round of sodomy charges, I visited the leading intellectual Osman Bakar in Kuala Lumpur. One of my PhD students, the Malaysian university lecturer Azizan Had, is writing a dissertation on Bakar's contributions to the Islamization of Knowledge, so I was curious to meet the man for myself.

Originally trained at the University of London as a mathematician, Bakar dropped his plans for doctoral studies in that field, opting instead for a more philosophical subject: An examination of the epistemological aspects of the relation between science and religion, in particular Islam. In 1987 he completed a PhD in Islamic Philosophy at Temple University under the supervision of the Iranian-born scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr (himself a graduate of MIT).

Osman Bakar

Within a few years of his return to Malaysia, where he began teaching courses in philosophy and religion, Bakar found himself pulled into university administration and he ended up as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. After his mandatory retirement in 2000, he left for the United States and spent five years at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Following this stint overseas he again came back home and took a position at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC).

In 2008 he was tapped by then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi to give shape to the latter's conceptualization of Islam Hadhari or 'Civilizational Islam', a notion that strikes me as not that dissimilar from the ways in which religion can be given a space in the contemporary Muslim public sphere explored in neighbouring Indonesia under the designations 'Civil' or 'Cultural Islam'.

Aside from this immediate context, Osman Bakar's continuing concern with the relationship between science and knowledge must be seen against the background of the 'Islamization of Knowledge' project which took off in the 1970s and 1980s. The term was coined in 1978 by Bakar's fellow Malaysian Syed Naquib al-Attas (b. 1931) in 1978, but it was also claimed by the Palestinian Isma'il Raji al-Faruqi (1921-1986). Consequently, these two intellectuals soon fell out over accusations of stealing the other's ideas and what had the potential of starting out as a unified endeavour bringing together Muslim thinkers from across the Muslim world became a much more fragmented field.

In spite of these birth pains, Muslim intellectuals greeted the 'Islamization of Knowledge' Project with considerable enthusiasm. Soon other scholars, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and activists like the British-Pakistani Ziauddin Sardar also began weighing in. In Malaysia the project received the backing of the rising political star Anwar Ibrahim, the former firebrand student leader turned government minister and -- some whispered -- a possible successor of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The viability of 'Islamization of Knowledge' seemed further assured as the project also began tasking institutional form: In the United States in the shape of Ismai'l al-Faruqi's International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and in Malaysia by the establishment of the earlier-mentioned ISTAC, founded in 1987 by Syed Naquib al-Attas, but since then incorporated into the International Islamic University Malaysia.

Osman Bakar has written prolifically about the Islamization of Knowledge and related subjects, beginning with The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science (1989), which was re-republished a few years later under the much better known title Tawhid and Science. Since then it has been translated in a number of languages. In 1992 he co-authored with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Classification of Knowledge in Islam. Other titles include: A Critique of Evolutionary Theory and Islam and Civilizational Dialogue.

In spite of the initial optimism, by the late1990s the project seemed to have run out of steam. In my discussion about this, Professor Bakar opined that this was due to the over-politicization of the project at the expense of its academic rigour. According to him, the epistemological aspects surrounding the issue of how religion and science relate to each other have not been pushed far enough. That is why,following Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's request in 2008 to help implementing and shaping Islami Hadhari, Bakar responded positively as he saw it as an opportunity to blow new life into the Islamization of Knowlegde Project.

The personal brainchild of Badawi, a Malaysian conceptualization of the notion of al-lslam al-Hadhari conceived by Arab intellectuals in the 1980s was introduced at the government party's 55th congress in 2004. Badawi's ideas were further developed in two books: Islam Hadhari and Pembangunan Modal Insan, both published in 2006.

Bakar teamed up with a former colleague, the Afghan jurist Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Together they founded the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS), with a guarantee from the Prime Minister's Office for three years of financial support, as part of the administration's attempt to turn Islam Hadhari into government policy.

right to left: Prof. Osman Bakar (IAIS), Dr Carool Kersten (King's College London), Azizan Had (PhD student, King's College London)

The institute's objective is to reshape and revamp the I'slamization of Knowledge' project, by shifting the accent to a holistic epistemology that gives a prominent place to cultural contexts. Since its establishment in 2008, it has hosted or co-hosted a number of conferences and workshops, while Kamali and Bakar also travel the world to take part in other events to promote their ideas. The institute also publishes a journal: Islam and Civilizational Renewal.

With the resignation of Badawi as Prime Minister in 2009, it is unclear how much alive the notion of Islam Hadhari still is (the official government's website, for example, is currently inactive). It will be interesting to see how successful IAIS will be in keeping a Malaysian variant of Islam as a civilizational concept alive.

Naguib Mahfouz Centenary: chronicling Egypt's short twentieth century

2011-12-17T14:11:00.000Z

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

This week it was one hundred years ago that the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was born. On occasion of the centenary of the only Arabophone Nobel Prize laureate, the Qantara website commemorated him as a writer of an imaginary historiography of Egypt's 'short twentieth century'. It traces Mahfouz's development as an author through the various literary guises he assumed during his literary career: pharaonist, chronicler, seismograph, allegorist, and -- finally -- a cultural monument.

This iconic status could not protect him from a violent assault in 1994, when a religious zealot attempted to assassinate the octogenarian because of his controversial views on religion. A self-described secularist, others interpreted his convictions as atheism. This was also the alleged reason for Mahfouz's transfer, earlier in his career as a civil servant, from the Ministry of Religious Affairs to the Ministry of Culture.

Generally regarded as a realist who tried to faithfully depict the life of ordinary Egyptians in extraordinary circumstances, Mahfouz also tried his hand at more metaphorical approaches. It was in his manifestation of allegorist that caught the ire of the self-appointed guardians of 'true Islam'. They were particularly irritated by The Children of Gebelawi (also known as Children of the Alley):

The novel depicts a microcosm in a city, easily recognisable as Cairo, in which usurpers use material and physical violence to suppress and torment the population. There are many attempts to rail against this tyranny, each of which crystallises around individuals whose life stories and lines of reasoning point to Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. Each of the three manages for a short time to achieve the best result for his supporters and takes it upon himself to fulfil the wishes of the patriarch Gebelawi, who lives in a villa somewhere outside the city – Old Paradise. The fourth "saviour" no longer defers to this ancestral figure, but sets out to fathom his secret, which eventually leads to Gebelawi's death. This pseudo-realistic portrayal casts doubt on the legend, on the myth. The author voices quite explicit and pronounced doubts over the sustainability of old and new messages of salvation, a doubt that also includes the modern sciences –

To read the whole article, click here

The Circulation of Ideas in the Muslim World: Systematic Thought or Organizational Skills?

2011-12-11T12:13:00.008Z

In my research on contemporary Islamic intellectual history, I focus on the more innovative and progressive, and therefore often controversial, currents of thought, which I have coined in provocative terms such as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘heretical’. In discussing the trans-regional aspects of these alternative Islamic discourses, I am increasingly drawn to the notion of the ‘circulation of ideas’. This in itself somewhat amorphous expression strikes me as suitable for capturing the complex, multi-layered – even messy – nature of these contemporary trends of Muslim intellectualism. Already fruitfully employed in, for example, Indian Ocean Studies, I have become more convinced that it can also be aptly applied in research on contemporary Islamic intellectual history when I had a chance to listen to the anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen, emeritus professor and former holder of the ISIM Chair at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands.

This week Aga Khan University in London hosted this specialist in the history of Islam in Turkey and Indonesia, as well as their present-day societies, for a talk entitled ‘Indonesian Muslims and their Place in the Larger World of Islam’. In his presentation, van Bruinessen concentrated on finding an explanation for the fact that Indonesian Islam still remains little known to Muslims from outside Southeast Asia. It certainly is not that the way Islam is interpreted, experienced and practiced in this largest Muslim nation-state is not interesting or has nothing to offer to the rest of the Muslim world, almost the contrary.

Van Bruinessen recalls an observation made in 1986 by the famous Pakistani scholar of Islam and modernist Islamic intellectual Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988). At the time, the latter was of the opinion that the two Muslim countries to watch for the emergence of innovative ideas and alternative trajectories in the Muslim world were Turkey and Indonesia. It was probably no coincidence that Fazlur Rahman, who was then Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, was supervising numerous postgraduate students from these two countries, many of whom would rise to becoming prominent religious and political leaders in their respective home lands.

One of the possible reasons why the often interesting ideas developed by Indonesian Muslims did not catch on elsewhere is a matter of form. Generally, Indonesian intellectuals present their ideas in speeches, seminars, talks, newspaper columns, magazine articles and other forums. These are later published in often voluminous collections, but rarely – if at all – do they find their way into any systematic presentation of their thoughts. An explanation for this seemingly unstructured style is that many Indonesian Muslim intellectuals are also activists, who tend to live out their ideas rather than theorize about them. On the other hand, to have an impact new interpretations not only need ideational coherence but require also efficient dissemination. Here, as shall be seen below, the Indonesian Muslim knack for organization comes into play.

Also historically, Indonesia or, for that matter, its predecessor -- the Dutch East Indies – never produced the equivalent of single, towering intellectual figures such as Shah Waliullah al-Dihlawi, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, or Abu Alaa Maududi. Yet, in the past, ulama from Southeast Asia, including regions which now form part of the Indonesian republic, were present in the Haramayn for centuries, teaching and instructing visiting pilgrims and students in things Islamic. However, although they formed by far the largest contingent of non-Arab Muslims in the holy places, they did not profile themselves explicitly as ‘Indonesians’.

Also today, Indonesian Muslims continue to display a voracious appetite for learning about Islam. There is a vibrant ‘translation industry’ of books on Islam and the Muslim world written by Muslim scholars and other intellectuals from across the Muslim world, as well as Western scholars of Islam. According to van Bruinessen, knowledge from abroad has always been highly valued in Indonesia. One explanation for this eagerness for ideas from the outside – aside from centuries of participation in the Islamic scholarly networks connecting the region to centres of Islamic learning on the other side of the Indian Ocean, in India, Yemen, the Hijaz, and Cairo – is Indonesia’s colonial experience, when Western knowledge percolated into the Dutch East Indies, opening up yet another epistemological realm.

Martin van Bruinessen

Consequently, the traffic of ideas has remained one-directional -- from other parts of the Muslim world and the West to Indonesia, whereas the ideas of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals have had very little exposure abroad. The only exceptions cited by van Bruinessen are former President Ahmad Sukarno and the one-time leader of the now defunct Islamist Masyumi Party, Muhammad Natsir. These were Indonesian Muslims who -- at one tim -- had an international profile with a global reach: Sukarno as a founding member of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries in the 1950s, and Natsir as a key figure in the Muslim World League and most prominent Southeast Asian representative of Islamic reformism of the Salafi schnitt. In Natsir’s view, the benchmark for what constitutes ‘real Islam’, is provided by medieval Middle Eastern Islam. In the lively debates in Indonesia between ‘Westernizers’ -- who saw no contradiction between Islam and modernity, nor any fundamental incompatibilities with the other Abrahamic religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity -- and the ‘nativists’ who took issue with both Islamic and European influences, Natsir actually disagreed with both, neither did he approve of the advocates of a culturally specific traditional Indonesian Islam.

This lack of interest in or attention for the development of Indonesian Islam, does not mean that the country has nothing to offer to the rest of the Muslim world. To return again to Fazlur Rahman’s view of the potential of both Turkish and Indonesian Islam, van Bruinessen also notes that, when comparing the two countries, another factor that needs to be taken into consideration is the matter of temperament. As another prominent non-Arab segment of the Muslim ummah, Turks have been more assertive in establishing themselves as significant and distinct from the Arabs than the evidently more modest and subdued Indonesians. At the same time, as I have discussed elsewhere, there are remarkable parallels between the Turkish and Indonesian experiences with Muslim intellectualism and the place of religion in public life in these two countries during the last twenty five years or so. These developments contain important lessons for alternative trajectories in the post-Arab Spring Middle Eastern parts of the Muslim world (see my posts of 5 February 2011 and 30 July 2011)

Among the aspects identified by van Bruinessen as having something to offer to the wider world of Islam is first of all the high level of organization among Indonesian Muslims. The country is home to what are not only the oldest and largest Islamic mass movements, they also manifest a longstanding and rich democratic tradition reaching from the local all the way to the national level. The political and legal framework of the Dutch East Indies, enabled Islamic modernists and traditionalist Muslims to establish organizations which focussed on emancipation through educational and charitable initiatives and steered well clear of explicit political activities.

On all levels, both the modernist Muhammadiyah, founded as early as 1912, and its rivalling traditionalist counterpart Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) established in 1926, are run by elected governing bodies. Thus they have gained lengthy experience with selecting and electing leaders at national congresses which are held every five years, and the chance to develop a tradition of grassroots level democracy stretching back decades. This makes the Muhammadiyah and NU much more transparent than, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In regards to the organizational and institutional dimensions of Indonesian Islam, another interesting example is provided by Hizbut Tahrir. In Indonesia, this movement can command a disproportionately large following among the country's vast Muslim student population. On the other side of the Islamic political and intellectual spectrum, van Bruinessen also observed a very widespread and solid presence of contemporary Sufi orders such as the Naqshbandi-Haqqani, whose leadership is currently based in the United States. He even ventured a speculation that, given the pressures on Muslims in America, it would not be inconceivable if the current leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, would decide to select Indonesia as the most suitable location for the organization’s future headquarters.

Then there is the flourishing of progressive and liberal interpretations of Islam. While it is true that, as explained earlier, the inspiration often comes from abroad, at the same time and in contrast to many parts of the Muslim world, Indonesian engagement with innovative and often controversial ideas is not only more intense, but also receiving support from wider segments of society. From the 1970s until the late 1990s, this was manifested through what Indonesians refer to as ‘cultural Islam’. During this period the ideas of thinkers such as Hasan Hanafi, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, as well as Shi’ite intellectuals like Shariati and Mutahhari were translated into Indonesian and integrated into the Muslim discourses circulating in that country..

Martin van Bruinessen in discussion with Kathryn Spellman of Aga Khan University

If there is one area where it could be argued that Indonesia has actually managed to influence developments elsewhere, it would be Islamic feminism. Here again, the origins came from the outside, in this case from the American-Pakistani women rights activist Riffat Hassan. But Indonesia was the only Muslim country where she was permitted to give an address at an Islamic university. Aside from Riffat Hassan, also the ideas of the Sudanese jurist and theoretician of human rights Abdullahi an-Na'im, and the latter's mentor Muhammad Mahmoud Taha, are an important ingredient for Islamic feminist activism in Indonesia.

There is no Muslim country where Islamic feminism is so deeply rooted and supported on grassroots level than Indonesia. Its success does not depend on any prominent figures, but rather on the broad support and widespread activism by scores of Muslimas working in the women’s branches of mass organizations such as the NU and Muhammadiyah. The international dimension of Indonesian Muslim feminism is evidently visible in the Musawah network. Although a Malaysian and Iranian initiative, the Indonesian experiment with Islamic feminism soon caught the attention of the initiators and has left its mark on this international body for coordinating Islamic women’s rights activism worldwide.

What became manifestly clear from van Bruinessen's discussion of indonesia's Islamic scene is that, aside from a store of interesting, progressive ideas presented in a coherent and systematic fashion, the successful dissemination of such ideas also depends on effective organization, and here Indonesian organizations such as the NU and the Muhammadiyah have a track record that has -- so far -- remained unmatched in the Muslim world.

Hereunder are some of van Bruinessen's writings, for more materials also check his personal website.

Germany stimulates critical Islamic thinking with new postgraduate programme for Muslim theologians

2011-11-26T15:00:00.030Z

The Germany-based Qantara website, which covers news from the Muslim world and 'diasporas' in the West, draws attention to a German initiative that seeks to stimulate critical Islamic thinking through a new postgraduate programme intended for Muslim scholars with an ambition to specialize in Islamic theological thought. Published under the adamant title 'Muslim theologians are instigators of change', the article argues that the 'advancement of research from below wll provide new perspectives on Islam and produce new insights so that Islam may establish itself within a German context'.

The nation-wide project will in first instance enable fifteen young researchers from seven universities to meet regularly at workshops and conferences to exchange ideas. The programme is financed with a 3.6 million Euro grant from the Mercator Foundation, which also organized this years Young Islam Conference in Berlin.

Islamic theology is still a very new academic discipline at German universities. It is hoped that a new nationwide post-graduate programme will boost its development, lead to increased representation of Muslims in Germany, and lay the groundwork for the training of state schoolteachers of Islam.

Mouhanad Khorchide

The project is coordinated by the Lebanese-Austrian scholar of religion Mouhanad Khorchide, currently associated with the Wilhelm University in Westphalia in Münster. Says Khorchide.:

The programme is promoting the same aim that the federal government has been pursuing since last year with the creation of four Centres of Islamic Theology. The political expectations are obvious. It's all about an appropriate integration policy and creating the conditions for "the necessary dialogue of cultures", as the Federal Ministry of Education has put it on several occasions.

Another scholar involved in the project is Professor Harry Harun Behr of the Interdisciplinary Center for Islamic Study or Religions (IZIR) at the University of Erlangen, who observes that:

Harry Harun Behr
Muslim theologians move along borders in order to be able to translate between different systems of knowledge management. [...] Muslim theologians should also have an effect within the Muslim community. Cautious provocation is part of the trade. Muslim theologians are instigators of change.

The fifteen academics involved are all young immigrants of the first or second generation addressing subjects such as They include subjects such as feminist Islamic theology, the re-discovery of forgotten early Islamic theologians, the historical-critical study of Koran manuscripts, or the role of language, script and reason in the interpretation of the Koran and the prophet's sayings. All are using critical methods and approaches:

many of the projects question overly simple concepts of a literal understanding of the canonical sources and might well end up angering conservative Muslims.

Just as with controversial subjects, the young academics show little fear of making contact with Christian traditions of theology and religious educational theory.

Also other prominent Muslim scholars of Islam currently based in Germany have weighted in with their support for the initiative:

Ömer Özsoy
The establishment of Islamic theology (in Germany) can no longer be undone (Ömer Özsoy, Professor of Exegesis, University of Frankfurt).

Katajun Amirpur

There is certainly an underlying expectation that this discipline will make Islam compatible with democracy and help reduce problems with Muslim,s [...]: We're not engaging in contract research here and won't invent some kind of integrated Islam for you. (Katajun Amirpur, Professor of Islamic Theology in Hamburg)

The young researchers involved in the project include Serdar Kurnaz(New philological, theological, and legal phiolsophical approaches to Islamic jurisprudence); Nimet Seker (Gender-equitable approaches to the Qur'an); Tolou Khademalsharieh (Early textual history of the Qur'an); and Fahimah Ulfat (Islamic religious educational theory). Watch this space for more news on their future academic exploits.

Where are the Arab Intellectuals?

2011-10-30T20:56:00.060Z

In his news analysis of 29 October 2011 published in the Sunday Review section, New York Times staff writer Robert F. Worth examines the relative silence of intellectuals from the Arab World during this year's 'Arab Spring'. It looks at the disappointment of Syrians due to the absence of any bold challenges by the famous poet Adonis in his open letter to Syrian President Asad.

Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis

This makes Arab intellectuals look meek in comparison to their European, Asian and American intellectual predecessors like Vaclav Havel, Mao, and Thomas Paine. According to Worth it reflects the climate of repression under which many intellectuals in the Arab world live and work, but it is also symptomatic of the post-ideological era in which we live with much less room for 'unifying doctrines' and 'grandiose figures'.

Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

Worth continues: 'To some extent the intellectual silence of the current uprising is a deliberate response to the revolutionary rhetoric of previous generations... [...] The protesters who led the Arab Spring had grown tired of the stale internationalist rhetoric of their forebears'. There is a perceptible shift from ideological grandstanding to a more realistic and pragmatic concern with human rights and democratization. Thinkers such as the Syrian philosopher Sadik Jalal al-Azm joined other Syrian intellectuals to sign the 'Declaration of the 99'. But then again:

But in recent years their voices often went unheard, because their secular language had little resonance in societies where political Islamic was becoming a dominant force. nor did Islamic reformers fare much better when they tried to cast their political critique in religious terms. The Egyptian scholar Hassan Hanafi, for instrance, in the 1980s began calling for the creation of an "Islamic Left", a socialist ideology rooted in religion. He was branded a heretic and had to seek police protection after receiving death threats from jihadists. His work gained an audience in Indonesia, but not in his own country, said Carool Kersten, a lecturer at King's College London who has written on Islamic reformers.

It appears intellectuals throughout the Arab world are struggling to find a way for giving voice to the frustrations, ambitions and expectations of its citizens. To read the full essay click here.

* those who read Arabic click on this link.

Curing 1000 years of amnesia: Europe's (re)discovery of Arab Culture

2011-10-25T21:52:00.009+01:00

Britain's venerable Royal Society (dating back to the 1660s) hosted Professor Charles Burnett of The Warburg Institute, University of London, for a talk entitled 'The European Discovery of Arab Culture'. A medievalist by training, Charles Burnett has been Professor of Islamic Influences in Europe since 1999 and is the founder of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE). Although there appears to be a cavalier conflation of 'Arabic' and 'Islamic' in these designations, in his introductory remarks, Professor Burnett took care to underscore the importance of making a clear distinction between the two.

The lecture, co-hosted by the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization, was held as one of the closing events celebrating an exhibition of Muslim contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge throughout the Middle Ages at the Royal Society's headquarters on Carlton House Terrace.

Bettany Hughes

The exhibition and lecture were conceived to cure what has been dubbed the collective 1000-year amnesia which has made the West forget the significance of Arab and Muslim achievements in science and knowledge in general for the development of European civilization. The event was MC'ed by the historian and renowned broadcaster Bettany Hughes, while the lecture was chaired by Jim al-Khalili, a Professor of physics at the University of Surrey and also a well-known TV figure actively engaged in the promotion of the sciences and the significance of inter-civilizational contacts for the development of human knowledge. Words of welcome were also spoken by Professor Lorna Casselton, the Society's Foreign Secretary, and Professor Salim al-Hassani, Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization (FSTC) -- a British-based non-profit organization established to promote the contributions of Muslim civilization and its role in the advancement of humankind through scientific knowledge and its technological application. It seeks to promote awareness of Islam as a civilization and stimulate interest in the multicultural aspects of scientific progress through the centuries by supporting a wide range of activities including the online based initiatives, MuslimHeritage and the global 1001 Inventions Project.

Prof. Salim al-Hassani

In his talk, Charles Burnett sketched how, up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, European scholars eagerly learned Arabic in order to access the Islamic depositories of knowledge. Meanwhile merchants were encouraged to carry manuscripts from the eastern bassin of the Mediterranean and from North Africa to the southern shores of Europe. What is remarkable about the exchange is that European curiosity was generally limited to the exact or natural sciences. However, by the 1300s, this interaction reached its conclusion as Europeans became of the opinion that also in these fields nothing new could be gained from Arab and Islamic scholarship. This closing of the mind lasted until the sixteenth century, when interest in the Orient was rekindled. In contrast to the earlier ages, now there was an expressed interest in Arab and Islamic culture and civilization. The first chairs in Arabic were established in Paris, Leiden, Cambridge and Oxford with the objective of expanding the knowledge of Semitic languages in order to come to a deeper and better understanding of Jewish and Christian scriptures. In this development, Arabic was treated as an auxillary to the study of Hebrew and the seeds for a polemical engagement with Islamic religious doctrine were laid as well.

Prof. Jim al-Khalili (L) and Prof. Charles Burnett

The evening's programme was closed by Dr Rim Turkmani, a Syrian-born astrophysicist at Imperial College, who helped curate the 'Arabick Roots of Knowledge' exhibition. In her presentation she showcased some of the main exhibits.

'Arabick Roots' Exhibition at the Royal Society

Dr Rim Turkmani

While it is debatable whether the scholars from the medieval Islamic world would qualify as critical Muslims in a contemporary sense, what becomes evident from both the Royal Society exhibition and Prof. Burnett's lecture is that these Muslims were certainly critical to the development of Western civilization and the subsequent emergence of modernity.

Arab Spring: Is there a critical Islamic discourse in Saudi Arabia?

2011-10-18T19:02:00.003+01:00

On 17 October 2011, my colleague Madawi al-Rasheed, Professor of Social Anthropology at King's College London, gave a talk in the Middle East Seminar convened by the London School of Economics (LSE), under the title 'A Saudi Spring of Sand Storms; Signs of Domestic Turbulence'. The chair of the event, Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at LSE, introduced Prof. al-Rasheed as one the most renowned scholars on present-day developments in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, and certainly the foremost critical voices on current affairs in the Kingdom. She is the author of a number of books on Saudi Arabia.

Madawi al-Rasheed

In her preliminary remarks, Prof. al-Rasheed already foreshadowed a more pessimistic account when compared to seismic shifts which have occured elsewhere. Alluding to the metaphoric associations employed by Egyptians and Tunisians, who refer to the Spring as the season of blossoms and jasmine flowers respectively, in Saudi Arabia the arrival of Spring is accompanied by often vicious sand storms. Accordingly, the trajectory of the Arab Spring in the Arabian Peninsula in general has been less than promising. The Sunni-controlled government of the neighbouring miniature island state of Bahrain has clamped down, without mercy, on expressions of dissent by its disenfranchised majority Shi'a population -- rapidly and readily assisted by Saudi troops in armoured vehicles sent across the strategic King Fahd causeway by the government in Riyadh. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia' s southern neighbour Yemen teeters on the brink of civil war as the protests against Abdullah Ali Saleh are turning increasingly violent and bloody.

Saudi Arabia itself, like many other Arab kingdoms (Jordan, Morocco, Oman), makes every effort to present the monarchical system in the most benign ways, alleging it offers a favourable contrast to the nasty republican regimes that seem to be falling like dominoes. As a critical note, Prof. al-Rasheed observes that this rosy image is swallowed without question, and even spread further, by external stakeholders in regional Gulf stability. these interested parties are no longer confined to America and Western Europe, but now also include Russia and China. Their willingness to side with the incumbent regime is motivated by the need for access to Saudi oil reserves and the prospects of lucrative arms deals.

But, the sand storms of the Spring of 2011 are harbingers of growing domestic turbulence, Prof. al-Rasheed insists. As one of her informants has it: 'The events of early 2011 have propelled Saudi Arabia ten years ahead of its own pace of development'.

There is widespread dissatisfaction in Saudi Arabia, but Saudis express their grievances and frustrations differently than elsewhere. Again, al-Rasheed refers to the explanation offered by a disaffected activist within the Kingdom she is in contact with: If Saudis would be confronted with the kind of humiliation suffered by Egyptians or Tunisians at the hands of security forces, their temperament and cultural conventions would force them to respond in kind. In a country where weapons are readily available, violence would rapidly spirall out of control. So instead, critics of the regimes and opponents of the present political order have taken recourse to their conventional way of addressing complaints to the government: sending petitions.

Since the mid-1990s, when foreign troops taking part in Operations 'Desert Shield' and 'Desert Storm', assembled on Saudi soil to fend off the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Saudi opposition has issued a dozen or so petitions demanding reforms and change. In general, these addresses studiously avoided any direct criticism of the king or other members of the royal family. And whereas, the ruling monarch, the crown prince, and the grand mufti -- as leader of the religious establishment -- still retain near sacred status, the latest petitions contain thinly veiled criticisms of the highly umpopular minister of interior, Prince Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz. Heading a vicious security apparatus and himself an epigone of political conservatism and authoritarian repression of any democratic reforms, Nayif is nevertheless best positioned to succeed the aging king and ailing crown prince -- both of whom have spent extended periods of time in hospital during the last few years.

The government, in turn, has responded with its time-tested counteroffensive: financial mumificence. This time around the key beneficiaries were, first of all, the armed forces. All serving members were promoted one rank, while also receiving the cocomitant rise in pay. In addition, another 60,000 new positions will be created. Whereas this will only lead to a further militarization of Saudi society, Madawi al-Rasheed took care to note that the armed forces are by no means a united front. In fact, the loyalty of the various branches is fragmented and divided between key senior members of the royal family. The religious establishment too benefited from royal generosity, receiving additional budget for its activities. Combined with the third strategy: a further curtailment of the press, the Saudi regime has -- for now -- taken the sting out of the protest movement.

But aside from a combination of repression and largesse on the part of the government, there is another reason why protests in Saudi Arabia have remained relatively subdued when compared to other Arab countries. Calls for a 'day of rage', scheduled for 11 March, were generally ignored because there is no consensus among the protesters on the agenda for reforms. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has no tradition of civil activism. In order to prevent the development of such a sense of civil society or the articulation of shared citizens' concerns, the government also plays up tribal belonging and sectarian divides: pitching regions and tribes, and Sunnis and Shi'ites, against each other.

Saudi Arabia's 'day of rage' (11 March 2011)

However, it cannot be denied that Saudi society is sick, and the key ailments include not just the repression of the Shi'ite minority (not only 'Twelvers' or 'Imamis' in the Eastern Province, but also the often forgotten Ismaili community in the southern border province of Najran). Then there is the denial of equal rights to women; the continued detention of large numbers of political prisoners; and -- above anything else -- the rampant unemployment of the Saudi youth. According to some estimates, the level of joblessness in Saudi Arabia is only topped by Gaza and Iraq. In the face of such challenges, Saudi society increasingly resembles a pressure cooker ready to explode.

Shi'ites protesting in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province

External factors also play a role in defining the future prospects for a Saudi Spring. According to Prof. al-Rasheed the world is rapidly moving, if it has not already, from a one-super power post-Cold War order to a multipolar world, in which varies powers are vying for influence, including orchestrating developments in the strategically so important Persian Gulf Region. On a global level these include the USA, Russia, China and India, on the regional level Saudi Arabia itself, Iran, and Turkey. Each of these players tries to direct developments into a direction that serves its own interests.

Whereas some Arab countries are looking to Turkey for inspiration, it is highly unlikely that this will be a useful model for Saudi Arabia, at least in the short term. Its lack of a sense of civil society and tradition of feminist activism currently deprive it of the necessary preconditions. This lack of civil action also severely limits the likelihood of a 'facebook' or 'twitter' revolution -- which al-Rasheed also considers a misnomer in the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria.

However, what is not an unlikely scenario is that continuing turbulence and the persistence of critical questions being directed at the government could destabilize the regime to such an extent that a fragmentation of the Kingdom is not entirely inconceivable. Most likely candidates for a breakaway would be the oil-rich Eastern province and the Asir and Najran provinces on the border with Yemen.The lack of a tradition of civil disobedience also makes a violent turn of events a very likely option.

According to Prof. al-Rasheed the current initiatives of the government to respond to the demands of the protesters are insufficient. Although Saudi Arabia's economy continues to expand it has never managed to absorb the country's rapidly growing population; for that the government has always relied on expanding the civil service, which is seen as inefficient and corrupt. Women's issues are primarily addressed in response to foreign criticism, but Madawi al-Rasheed is adamant that the kind of emancipation introduced by the Saudi regime will not undermine its authoritarian grip on power. Playing up sectarianism often expressed by pandering to a sense of 'Iranphobia' will also not contribute to the creation of a sense of nationhood. However, according to al-Rasheed there are signs that leading figures among the citizenry in the Western Hijaz province, a more cosmopolitan region with a historical tradition of plurality where also the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina are located, are trying to build bridges between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

Even though the Saudi government has been pushing for years for a military intervention in Iran, al-Rasheed thinks that in the current multi-polar world a sustained military campaign against Iran is highly unlikely, and Saudi Arabia definitely lacks the means to go it alone.

King Abdullah

However, the key to any future scenario for Saudi Arabia is the succession question. At present there are five key princes, representing various factions within the royal family. Aside from the King and Crown Prince, and their sons, there is the governor of the Eastern Province, Prince Muhammad bin Fahd, the oldest surviving son of the late King Fahd (1982-2005), and the governor of Mecca, Prince Khalid bin Faisal, as the most senior member among the descendants of King Faisal (1964-1975). However, as she mentioned earlier, at present Madawi al-Rasheed considers the powerful interior minister, Prince Nayif -- a half-brother of King Abdullah and full brother of Sultan, the ailing crown prince and defence minister -- as the most likely future king. This does not bode well for the prospects of any drastic reforms.On the other hand, it is never certain what the 33 most senior members of the royal family will decide. What is certain is that the opportunities for a horizontal succession -- for brother to brother -- will soon be exhausted. How this will play out the next level, the sons of the leading royal members of government, is anybody's guess.

Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayif

In Madawi al-Rasheed's mind, for any drastic change to occur -- and this is only likely in the long run -- it will be absolutely vital that freedom of expression and organization are widely expanded; without the creation of a viable public space any attempts for real political reforms are doomed. That is exactly why the regime continues to stress tribal and sectarian affiliations;why it makes sure to kepp foreigners away from the native population by confining them to their walled compounds and labour camps; and why universities are closed enclaves keeping young Saudis isolated, under strict surveillance, while exposing them to skills training rather than an education which would enable them to articulate their critical faculties. Critical Muslims are the nemesis of a regime composed of a well-entrenched royal family and collaborating religious establishment as the self-appointed custodians of a narrow-minded intolerant interpretation of the Islamic tradition.

Refashioning the Study of Islam: Muslim contributions

2011-09-15T18:38:00.000+01:00

Kristian Petersen, the new host of the Islamic Studies and Religion section of New Books Network (NBN) interviewed this blogger about the contributions of three Muslim intellectuals to finding new approaches to the study of Islam. The talk is based on the book Cosmopolitans and Heretics examinations of the writings of Indonesian Islamicist and public intellectual Nurcholish Madjid, the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi, and the French-Algerian historian of Islam Mohammed Arkoun.

Often when we read about new Muslim intellectuals we are offered a presentation of their politicized Islamic teachings and radical interpretations of theology, or Western readings that nominally reflect the Islamic tradition. We are rarely introduced to critical Muslim thinkers who neither abandon their Islamic civilizational heritage nor adopt, wholesale, a Western intellectual perspective.

Click here to listen to the whole interview. And the the image below to buy the book.

This year's Arab Spring in London (2) - Internet entrepreneur

2011-08-24T18:11:00.021+01:00

In the wake of the epochal changes that are currently affecting North Africa and the Middle East, London was the scene of the launch of a new website advocating freedom of expression in the Arab world.

Arabs.com is an initiative of Thunayan Khalid al-Ghanim. Although he had already built up a reputation as one of the most prolific and expansive buyers of online domain names, the Kuwaiti-born internet entrepreneur was a bit of enigma. In late June, the once secretive internet pioneer, also known under the alias elequa, stepped out of anonimity. A member of a prominent Kuwaiti business family, which is also active in politics, often in opposition to the ruling family, Thunayan al-Ghanim was educated in Europe and the United States. Before turning to exploring and exploiting the opportunities offered by the internet revolution, he pursued an artistic career as a painter and sculptor.

Art work by Thunayan al-Ghanim

Future Media Architects (FMA)

Through a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands named Future Media Architects (FMA) he has managed to take control of literally tens of thousands of domain names. Although he professes no interest in politics, the Arabs.com initiative does make a political statement, as its website's subtitle reads 'Freedom of speech is a human right'.

Arabs.com launch

Taking place in 40/30, the top floor bar & restaurant in the Swiss Re Building, better known as 'The Gherkin', the launch of Arabs.com was given an appropriate allure. The event was organized by Orient Consulting Services and hosted by its CEO Lina Tayara.

Lina Tayara with Arabs.com founder Thunayan Khalid al-Ghanim

The evening also featured Chris Cobb Smith, a former military officer turned press security consultant, as keynote speaker. Not long ago he made headlines during the recent troubles in Libya, when he -- together with BBC Arabic Service journalist Feras Killani and cameraman Goktay Koraltay -- were captured by Gaddafi's forces and subjected to torture and coercion. Subsequently, the trio was awarded the 2011 MBI Award for Press Freedom.

Keynote speaker Chris Cobb-Smith

In the fringes of the launch, which attracted representatives of the media, the world of publishing and communications, as well as publicists and academics working on the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, there was a screening of a brief documentary film, entitled 'A Story Seldom told' and produced by the Zenith Foundation.

The launch was also covered on the technocrati website.
Follow Arabs.com on Twitter

This year's Arab Spring in London (1) - A Syrian contribution

2011-08-23T18:46:00.006+01:00

The next few posts will present a number of events that have taken place this Spring and Summer in London, confirming that the city is still in many respects at the centre of critical developments in the Arab and wider Muslim world.

Aziz al-Azmeh at AKU

On 21 June the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilization (ISMC) at the Aga Khan University (AKU) hosted the renowned Syrian Scholar of Islam Aziz al-Azmeh, who delivered a lecture under the title The Relevance and Irrelevance of Muslim Political Traditions. Beginning with an unexpected quote from Paul's Epistle to the Romans that there is 'no authority but God' and other references to the view of the Gospels that we must obey God rather than man, he provides some contrast with the perhaps more often cited statement in Matthew of rendering unto Caesar in order to challenge the generally held assumption that , unlike Islam, Christendom clearly separated State and Church.

His objectives in this talk were not to compare Islam and Christianity or oppose them to each other, but to reflect critically and present some purposeful discriminations. Al-Azmeh declared the argument that Scripture prescribed Europe's political system absurd, because it flies in the face of sociological evidence: Dogma and practice have always differed.

Sociological thinking insists that political systems cannot be reduced to cultures and that cultures cannot be reduced to Scripture. The great transformations of modernity have made social, political and cultural diversity and complexities only greater. This observation, al-Azmeh insists, that applies as much to the Muslim world as it does to the West.

However, regarding the latter, al-Azmeh discerns the same disinterest and lack of analytical rigour among Muslim and Western observers when studying Muslim societies. The prevailing presumption still is that the Muslim world in the 21st century is only just emerging from the Muslim traditions which require a religious legitimation for political structures. Muslims are 'frozen' into their traditions and the what he terms as 'Super Muslims' like to perpetuate this stultified view.

The profound changes in Muslim societies in the course of the last few centuries are still 'bracketed', in spite of the fact that -- although they may be unevenly distributed -- are very real. These changes may have been of European provenance, but they have been indigenized and adapted to local contexts.

Through his analysis of the characteristics of these changes in Muslim societies, al-Azmeh wants to transcend the tendency of coining the description of Muslim society and the history of the Muslim world in dogmatic terms.

In his responses to various questions, al-Azmeh rejected the contention that there are textual prescriptions for the organization of Muslim society or depiction of Islamic history in the Qur'an, as if Muslims are afflicted with some congenital nomocratic disposition . He wants to contest and break-down the 'logocentric clichés' which hold the analysis of Muslim societies captive. Prior to the nineteenth century, such articulations were unknown to the Muslim mindset, and al-Azmeh contends they are the result of the influence of both Catholic and Protestant traditions.

In this respect, he argues that the Islamic concept of ijma' -- the consensus of the community of religious scholars -- was as multilayered as early Christian Patristics. Islamic theological traditions have been very diverse and were often in conflict with each other. Muslim history manifests different caliphates, Sultanic traditions, and other political systems.

He does not deny that the emphasis on scripturalism has been enormously influential, but, to further clarify the point he wants to make, this must be seen as a 'Protestant inflection' -- which can in turn be explained through its disenchantment with Catholicism. Subsequently, this view has been transplanted and transposed into analyses of the Muslim world.

Pushing his argument even further, al-Azmeh maintains that there is no evidence of a specific political reading of the Qur'an prior to the twentieth century. In his view, the fuqaha' or legal scholars were practical men, and only ideologically disposed in a secondary sense. This demands a rethinking of Islam as jurisdictional and nomocratic -- at least in the reductionist fashion in which it is generally presented. The praxis of law in the Muslim world was complex, and very distinct from classical Islamic legal theorizing. Consequently, he dismisses the notion of Shari'ah as an 'artificial gloss'

The violence involved in imposing Islamic law in the way the Islamic Republic of Iran has tried to do it is at odds not only with standards of equity and justice in the contemporary world, but also at variance with both Islamic historical practice and legal theory. The way in which Islamists are implementing Islamic law makes for what al-Azmeh calls a 'bizarre spectacle'

Aziz al-Azmeh

Commenting on Muslim reformism, al-Azmeh does not deny that it tends to be apologetic and that there is a lot of 'social engineering' going on on the basis of an Islamic variety of scripturalism which some perceive as 'authentic'. In addition, aside from the emergence of political islamism along 'intellectually rudimentary' Salafi lines, social conservatism has also grown. The social salience of Salafism has pushed genuine reforms to the margins. Al-Azmeh dismisses its claim of being representative of the tradition as false, rejecting the 'scripturalist' reshaping of Islamic tradition as an unnecessary interpretational mode.

Interpretations such as those put forward by the likes of Abu'l-Ala al-Maududi or Sayyid Qutb would have been inconceivable to the medieval scholars who were truly intertextual in their outlook. Maududi and Qutb are products of modernity and their ideas do not reflect a revival of Islamic authenticity. In fact, there is no univocal answer to that constitutes a genuine 'Islamic tradition'. It was never fixed for all times, on the contrary: tradition has to be understood in the context of spatio-temporality.

It can be taken as a self-description, it can constitute religiosity as a personal belief and participation in certain rituals, it can be regarded as adhering to a 'minumum of social practices', or a more rigorous modification of personal behaviour and language reflecting a deeper piety. Finally, when the latter is reflected in political and social behaviour it can become stuck in a political framework and leading to a complete resocialization.

The same applies to the term 'Muslim' as used by al-Azmeh in the title of his lecture. This also requires a 'situational' understanding.

In this presentation al-Azmeh positioned himself in a discourse shared by other Syrian intellectuals such as Sadiq Jalal al-Azm (1) and Bassam Tibi (even though the latter and al-Azmeh himself have been working for decades in the West as 'exilic intellectuals'). Their work calls into question the overeasy pigeon-holing of Western thinking as somehow more susceptible to secularity than the Muslim intellectualism. Hopefully, it will be not for too long, before these kind of ideas are allowed to flourish again in Damascus and elsewhere in long-suffering Syria, ansd beyond.

(1) For an earlier appeal by al-Azm, dating back to 2005, calling on the Baath Regime to allow a 'Damascus Spring', click here.

The Arab Spring: Intellectual Underpinnings

2011-07-30T13:37:00.003+01:00

The newly launched Fair Observer Website has published an essay by yours truly on the intellectual discourses underlying the current social volatility and changes in the political landscape in North Africa and the Middle East.

the outside world appears to be realizing that the region’s future is not limited to a choice between authoritarian strong-man regimes providing a precarious stability, or the uncertainties associated with an Islamist take-over. But what is still missing in analyses of these peoples’ revolutions - driven by rising Arab middle classes - is how political pluralism depends on intellectual openness. This is not only because policy makers, political pundits and other Middle East watchers focus primarily on the antagonism between existing regimes and their Islamist detractors.

The article showcases Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi as an example of what Mohammed Arkoun called the chercheur-penseur or 'scholar-thinker', whose contributions to a rethinking of Islam as a civilizational legacy were considered suspect by the political elites and controversial by the religious establishment and Islamists.

Hasan Hanafi

A former Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, by 1960 Hanafi had already moved away from the Islamist agenda, focusing instead on the potential of Islam’s wider intellectual legacy for the emancipation of not just the Middle East but the Third World in general, from regressing into a theocracy. Hanafi was no stranger to controversy. Because of his revolutionary reinterpretation of Islamic thinking along the lines of Latin American liberation theology, he had been in trouble with both Egypt’s state security apparatus and the Islamists before.

The ‘Heritage and Renewal’ Project which he has been developing for the last thirty years envisages a new way of thinking for citizens of Egypt, the Muslim world, and eventually the entire Developing World, by critically examining the failings of their heritage as well as the shortcomings of the West. Unfortunately for Hanafi, it caused not only suspicion among the state authorities, but his criticisms of atrophied traditional Islamic learning and rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood slogan ‘Islam is the Solution’ also caught the ire of the Azhar establishment and the Islamists.

However, it appears that these progressive ideas are now finally percolating through to the growing middle classes of increasingly better educated and critical young Egyptians and Muslims elsewhere.

Amr Hamzawy, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment whose name briefly circulated as the new minister of youth after Mubarak’s fall, used the Islamist attacks on Hanafi to illustrate Egypt’s lack of intellectual freedom.

Amr Hamzawy

Only now, in the wake of the February 25^th revolution, is there a chance for the openness Hanafi has advocated for decades. In an article for al-Arabi Weekly, entitled ‘The Awakening of the Giant’, he noted that: “The people broke the barrier of fear. They jumped forward along the historical path.”

It seems that the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world are catching up with other countries, where the space for lively intellectual debate has been less constricted:

Ironically, many of these thinkers have found more receptive audiences elsewhere in the Muslim world, in particular in Indonesia and Turkey [..]It is interesting to note how Indonesia and Turkey, two countries careful to avoid any direct reference to Islam in their constitutions, also appear to be the most open to lively debates on the place of religion in public life. This intellectual vibrancy is a crucial factor in the remarkable political transformations of the most populous Muslim nation-state in the world and the largest Muslim country in the Mediterranean. Indonesia and Turkey, too, suffered under military dictatorship while witnessing an increased display of personal Muslim piety. However, this is no longer pursued through political Islamic doctrines. Instead it has been translated into an agenda advocating economic development, universal standards of human rights, and democracy compatible with a moral compass based on Islamic values.

Hasan Hanafi in Indonesia

The read the full article, click here

The Legacy of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: One Year On...

2011-07-08T19:02:00.018+01:00

A year ago this week, the leading Egyptian Islamicist Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd died rather unexpectedly in Cairo (see my post of 6 July 2010). The Qantara website carries two articles to commemorate the event, the first one reports on the conference organized by Navid Kermani and Katajun Amirpur, bringing together scholars such as the Syrian scholars Sadiq al-Azm and Aziz al-Azmeh, the Iranian intellectuals Abdolkarim Soroush and Muhammad Shabestari, South Africa's Farid Esack and Amina Wadud from the USA.

But the fact that this conference with its star-studded guest list took place in Essen and not in Cairo, Tehran or Lahore is an indication of the lack of acceptance with which innovative approaches are met within the Islamic world. It is also a reminder of the fact that Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was declared divorced from his wife against his will in 1995 as a result of his very cautious attempts to stimulate reform in Egypt.

To read the whole article click here.

The other contribution was Yoginder Sikand's last interview with the Egyptian scholar.In response to the question how he sees his work, Abu Zayd replied:

I see it as part of my long interest in Islamic hermeneutics, the methodology of understanding the Koran, the Sunnah and other components of the Islamic tradition. Of particular concern for me are certain assumptions in popular Islamic discourse that have not been fully examined, and have generally been ignored or avoided. Thus, for instance, Muslim scholars have not seriously reflected on the question of what is actually meant when we say that the Koran is the revealed 'Word of God'. What exactly does the term 'Word of God' mean? What does revelation mean?

In a historical understanding of the Koran one would also have to look at the verses in the text that refer specifically to the Prophet and the society in which he lived. Some people might feel that looking at the Koran in this way is a crime against Islam, but I feel that this sort of reaction is a sign of a weak and vulnerable faith. And this is why a number of writers who have departed from tradition and have pressed for a way of relating to the Koran that takes the historical context of the revelation seriously have been persecuted in many countries.

I think there is a pressing need to bring the historical dimension of the revelation into discussion, for this is indispensable for countering authoritarianism, both religious and political, and for promoting human rights

For the whole interview, click here

Intellectual historian Ibrahim Abu-Rabi' dies in Amman

2011-07-03T12:35:00.001+01:00

M. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi'

M. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi', a leading expert on contemporary Muslim thought passed away in Amman on 2 July 2011. An academic with appointments as Professor of Islamic Studies and co-Director of the Duncan Black MacDonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut and at the University of Alberta in Canada, Abu-Rabi' began making a name as a specialist in the intellectual history of the present-day Muslim world in the mid-1990s.

A graduate of Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, Nazareth-born Abu-Rabi' held two MAs from the University of Cincinnati and Temple University, where he also completed his PhD in the study of religions. His studies of the writings and ideas of contemporary thinkers and scholars from the Arabic-speaking parts, published under the titles Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World and Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History are now regarded as seminal works on the intellectual history of the modern Middle East. He also edited the Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought.

More recently, Abu-Rabi's interests turned to Turkey, focusing in particular on the writings of the leading 20th-century thinker and Sufi, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (ca. 1875-1960) and Fethullah G ü len. This shift prefigures the new awareness among Arab-Muslim activists associated with the recent seismic shifts in North Africa and the Middle East of the relevance of developments in Turkish civil society and its intellectual underpinnings for the further unfolding of the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 (cf. also my blog post of 5 February 2011). Sadly, Abu-Rabi' will no longer provide us with insights and reflections on what will most certainly be recognized in future assessments of these developments as both a political watershed and intellectual paradigm shift of magnitude even greater than the traumatic events of 1967.

For links to Abu-Rabi's publications, click on the images below

India's Picasso: M.F. Husain (1915-2011)

2011-06-10T10:16:00.000+01:00

M.F. Husayn (1916-2011)

Religion Dispatches carried an obituary of Indian painter Maqbool Fida Husain, written by Bruce Lawrence, Professor of Religion at Duke University and an authority on South Asian Muslim culture. As an Indian artist of Muslim background, throughout his career Husain Sahib was concerned with the sheer humanity of Indian life. Yet, as an octogenarian he managed to cause controversy with his depictions of Hindu Deities, forcing him into foreign exile, ironically in the conservative Gulf emirates of Dubai and then Qatar. Thus, his twilight years parallel the tribulations of many other Muslim intellectuals.

What this 'Indian Picasso' has tried to do is reach out across the divides of religious and cultural traditions, writes Lawrence: "For students of Abrahamic religion, there are few modern paintings as evocative as M.F. Husain’s enormous acrylic triptych which appeared at the entrance to the gallery at the MIA [I.M. Pei Museum of Islamic Art in Doha]".

Cross-Cultural Dialogue (M.F. Husain, 2008)

Labeled “Cross-Cultural Dialogue”, it is a painting I describe at length in my essay that appears in the only academic study of Husain, a book edited by my Duke colleague and dedicated to the artist: Sumathi Ramaswamy, Barefoot across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India (Routledge 2010). The holy book looms large, in three different forms or versions, as do three figures of religious agency, and then there is the faceless woman. In a sidebar, M.F. Husain refers to her as “the Queen of Qatar, forging ahead riding a red horse” but elsewhere a faceless woman can be, and often is, Mother Theresa. The intention is, in the artist’s words, “to see in that empty face all the faces of those whom she has assisted.” And so the empty space is not the lack of space but the encompassing of a greater space, and the same could be said for the empty face in “Cross-Cultural Dialogue”, alluding to future alliances, options and convergences to be initiated by Sheikha Mozah but not yet imagined or planned.

The complete article can be read here. For an interview with M.F. Husain conducted by Bruce Lawrence, click here.

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi and the 'anthropological turn' in Muslim thinking

2011-05-28T18:00:00.004+01:00

This week's edition of Qantara, the Germany-based website covering current political, cultural and intellectual affairs in the Muslim world draws attention to the work of the Moroccan philosopher and poet Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993) and the latter's important contributions he has made to developing an Islamic-philosophical anthropology through his 'Muslim personalism'.

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993)

The German theologian and philosopher, Pastor Dr Markus Kneer, has recently published an annoted German translation of Lahbabi's Le Personnalisme Musulman under the title Der Mensch: Zeuge Gottes: Entwurf eine islamischen Anthropology. In an interview he discusses some aspects of Lahbabi's work. Motivated to find a new way of engaging in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Kneer was looking for a Muslim thinker who could be presented with reference to Western anthropologies:

It seemed to me that localising what is to a great extent a Christian and Occidental concept of the individual within a Muslim context harboured the potential for a dialogue on the Christian and Islamic images of man – potential that should by all means be tapped. Lahbabi's "Muslim personalism" consists of just such an articulation of the human individual from Islamic sources. His points of reference in European philosophy are the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) and Jean Lacroix (1900–1986) as well as the life philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859–1941).

Admitting that Lahbabi's ideas are very much grounded in the intellectual climate of the 1950s and 1960s, Kneer argues that, against the dramatic changes in the political landscape in North Africa, the time is ripe for a new appreciation of some of the ideas that had come to fruition in that time frame:

Today, personalism has largely been replaced by other discourses. Nevertheless, contemplation of the human as person is more intense today than in past decades, and what Paul Ricœur already predicted thirty years ago now seems to be coming true: "Personalism will die, but the person will return!"

This concept after all bundles together other values that are of great importance for the articulation and ethical analysis of human life: e.g. dignity, freedom, responsibility. And I think it's no accident that in recent official publications of the Arab League on the subject of human rights the Arabic equivalent of person, "shakhs", frequently appears.

Although two generations have passed since North Africa shook off the yoke of political imperialism, the Muslim world's intellectual emancipation has only been partially realized. Recently, its progress has been obstructed by the positing of unhelpful theses, such as Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History', and dangerous polarizing ideological paradigms for a new post-Cold War world order, like the 'Clash of Civilizations', advocated by the likes of Samuel Huntington. It seems in many parts of the Muslim world the time is ripe for challenging these remnants of Western hegemonism, thus giving new currency to the ideas Lahbabi developed a few decades ago. As Kneer explains:

The historical and practical reasons why Lahbabi chose to analyse the process of becoming a person can be found in the identity crisis experienced by the colonised populace during the colonial era – in particular by the intellectuals. Lahbabi described how the colonial system had depersonalising effects for him and many others. Instead of experiencing language, communication and mental life as fields for personalisation, his generation suffered from speechlessness, non-communication and a feeling of inner emptiness. He wondered for a long time whether he was a person equal to the others, in other words, to the Europeans. The role of the Other in becoming a person and a human is thus not unproblematic.

The awareness of this philosophical problem is also reflected in Lahbabi's stance towards the place of reason in human thinking and how this can be accommodated within a Muslim Personalist philosophy:

Lahbabi is not talking about an absolute reason of the word, divorced from the religious context, but rather a reason that illuminates and lends dynamics to this context. In other words, ijtihad, the term used in Islamic theology to describe the personal and rational adoption of faith, must be rehabilitated as the fundamental method of theological work. Lahbabi's profound criticism of taqlid, the blind mimicking of and adherence to opinions passed down by the great Muslim scholarly authorities, is connected with this stance. Only shahada (profession of the one and only God, the Muslim creed) that reflects true ijtihad has personalising value, says Lahbabi.

With his dynamic concept of reason, Lahbabi takes up a position within value hermeneutics that mediates between the cultural and religious sources of values and their universal validity. In the process of transcending the bounds of the self, culturally inflected values become understandable against the horizon of other value traditions, and their universality can be tested. One-sided culturalism or universalism is not possible with Lahbabi.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Dr Marien van den Boom

Kneer is not the first Western scholar to draw attention to Lahbabi's thought. In 1984, the Dutch scholar Marien van den Boom published a PhD thesis in which he juxtaposes Lahbabi with the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi. Written in Dutch, De Bevrijding van de Mens in Islamitisch Perspektief (The Liberation of Man from an Islamic Perspective) unfortunately went largely unnoticed. To my knowledge, it was -- and still is -- the only detailed examination of the anthropological turn by two Muslim philosophers, who are not only united by this anthropocentric focus, but also by their ambition to develop a kind of Islamic liberation theology as a contribution to the liberation of the entire 'Third World'.

Of course, other thinkers from the Muslim world, such as Hichem Djait, Mohammed Arkoun, and -- in Indonesia -- Nurcholish Madjid have also developed personalist and humanist ways of thinking, drawing on concepts such as Kardiner's 'basic personality structure' or advocating new epistemologies that make a clear distinction between theological and anthropological approaches to the study of religious phenomena. For a more detailed discussion of the contributions of Arkoun, Hanafi and Madjid to these debates, see my Cosmopolitans and Heretics, which has just been released by Columbia University Press.

The Muslim World in 2011: Another landmark Event

2011-05-02T17:21:00.006+01:00

Mark Juergensmeyer's article, published by the Religion Dispatches website, carrying his first commentary on the death of Osama bin Laden and its impact on the future of radical Islamism and Muslim political extremism reiterates the point he made in an earlier essay on the impact of Egypt's 25 February 2011 Revolt and other uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa: That the war on terrorism was not won by US special forces or high-tech intelligence operations, but tweeting youths in the Arab world and elsewhere. It confirms the underpinnings of the Critical Muslims blog that -- in the long run -- the ideas of progressive, cosmopolitan and liberal-minded Muslims will outlast the nihilism of Islamist agendas. Here are a few excerpts corroborating this position:

Osama bin Laden 1957-2011

The imagined war of the Bush era may indeed be over. And the jihadi insurrection associated with bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization may also be dead. But I suspect that the real perpetrators of their deaths may not have been the elite American military cadre some hours ago in Pakistan, but the legion of cell-phone toting protestors earlier this year in Tahrir Square. They have helped to complete the erosion of legitimacy that has undermined the jihadi activists in recent years within the Muslim world.

What brought down the tyrants in Egypt and Tunisia, as it turned out, was about as far from jihad as one could imagine. It was a series of massive nonviolent movements of largely middle class and relatively young professionals who organized their protests through Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of electronic social networking.

The religiosity of Tahrir Square is far from the religion of radical jihad. Rather than separating Muslim from non-Muslim, and Sunni from Shi'a, the symbols that were raised on impromptu placards in Tahrir Square were emblems of interfaith cooperation; they showed the cross of Coptic Christians together with the crescent of Egypt's Muslims in a united religious front against autocracy.

Tahrir Square is a profound anti-jihadi lesson, and its significance has spread around the world. It has ignited similar nonviolent protests elsewhere in the Middle East, and it may also have altered the thinking of activists in other cultures as well. Intense discussion is underway in Palestine, where the Hamas-dominated strategy of strategic violence has been largely counterproductive; will a new nonviolent and non-extremist movement of young educated Palestinian professionals create a different kind of impetus for change in their region of the Middle East?

Read the entire essay by clicking here.

Mark Juergensmeyer

The above assessment echoes his earlier observations on the Tahrir Square phenomenon in the Huffington Post:

What brought down Mubarak, as it turned out, was about as far from jihad as one could imagine. It was a massive nonviolent movement of largely middle class and relatively young professionals who organized their mass protests through Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of electronic social networking. No doubt the passivity of the Egyptian military was also a critical factor; the army did not forcibly resist the protests, as the military has in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Yet one cannot underestimate the importance of Tahrir Square, and similar protests in Alexandria and throughout Egypt. Clearly, they constituted the catalyst for change. The rallies at Tahrir Square often seemed more like rock concerts than like urban warfare, and when fighting did break out it was largely promulgated by thugs hired by the Mubarak regime rather than the anti-government protestors. Perhaps not since the peaceful overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines has the world seen such a dramatic demonstration of the power of nonviolent resistance. The protests were not the weapons of jihad, nor were the voices of opposition the strident language of Islamist extremism.

Cairo's Tahrir Square, 25 February 2011

Here are his musings on Bin Laden's reaction to recent events in the Arab World -- not that these conjectures matter anymore:

Imagine what Osama bin Laden must have made of all of this as news trickled into the cave or cellar or whatever lair in which he is hiding. Imagine even more the puzzled chagrin of someone like bin Laden's primary lieutenant, Zawahiri, the Egyptian medical doctor who joined the most extreme Islamist jihadi movement years ago, convinced that only violent guerrilla warfare would topple someone like Mubarak. Tahrir Square clearly showed that Zawahiri was wrong.

However, he also added a cautionary caveat:

Does this mean that al Qaeda is finished, and the radical struggles of jihad will fizzle into history?Perhaps, in part. It is unlikely, however, that the al Qaeda organization, such as it is, will be abandoned. The small group of people who comprise the inner circle of the bin Laden organization will no doubt harden its resolve. Like the followers of millennarian movements who become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs when the prophecized end of the world does not terminate on schedule, the true believers of al Qaeda will soldier on. (The whole essay can be found here).

In today's commentary he repeated that warning:

The rise of a new nonviolent popularism in the Middle East may seriously undercut the viability of the jihadi image of violent social change. On the other hand, a significant number of failures of nonviolent resistence may lead to a violent backlash once again.

Indeed, we are not there yet...Specialists in religiously inspired violence such as Juergensmeyer will have their work cut out for many years to come, but so will the analysts of the alternative discourses on the other side of the spectrum. 2011 may very well enter history as the watershed year for the amplification of those other voices.

For some of Juergensmeyer's books, click on the images below:

What makes a Progressive Muslim?

2011-04-02T22:08:00.002+01:00

The following text was taken from the notes section on the facebook page of Dr Imtiyaz Yusuf, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the Assumption University in Bangkok It recapitulates how the Indian activist and scholar Asghar Ali Engineer, Head of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, defined a 'progressive Muslim':

Asghar Ali Engineer

In the AMAN (Asian Muslim Action Network) assembly which took place in Pattani, Thailand in the last week of February 2011 a discussion took place as to who is a progressive Muslim and what are its characteristics. I was asked to throw light on this subject. I am presenting here what I spoke there. I had the following to say.

A progressive Muslim is one who is firmly grounded in the Qur’anic values of truth (haq), justice (‘adl), compassion (rahmah), wisdom (hikmah) and does service to others rather than being served by others. A progressive Muslim does not believe in sectarian Islam (sunni or shi’ah or Isma’ili or Deobandi or Barelvi or ahl-e-hadith or salafi Islam but rises above all these sects and gives importance to Qur’an above everything else.

A progressive Islam not only does not adopt sectarian approach but is respectful of entire humanity and human dignityas per Qur’an (17:70). He leaves mutual differences, ideological and theological to Allah alone and does not condemn anyone who differences from him/her as kafirs as often sectarian Muslims do. It only widens differences and intensifies conflict. A progressive Muslim uses, as per Qur’an, wisdom (hikmah) and goodly words (maw’izat al-Hasanah) in discussion and leaves rest to Allah. He does not try to be judgemental.

A progressive Muslim is least influenced by personal prejudices and always gives more importance to knowledge than his opinion. Qur’an condemns prejudiced opinion (zan) and promotes knowledge (‘ilm). Also, openness of mind is a seminal quality and avoids arrogance born more out of ignorance than knowledge. Those who have little knowledge are more arrogant and those who have greater degree of knowledge know limitations of their own knowledge and hence tend to be humble.

A progressive Muslim first of all studies his/her own religion in depth and tries to understand, as objectively as possible, the causes of differences between different religions and shows full respect for others beliefs. It is those who do not know their own religion, much less those of others, who condemn religion of others. The Qur’an says, “And abuse not those whom they call upon besides Allah lest, exceeding the limits they abuse Allah through ignorance.” (6:109). Further in this verse Allah says, “Thus to everyone people have We made their deeds fair-seeming; then to their Lord is their return so He will inform them of what they did.” Thus ultimately it is Allah who will judge. We human beings when we judge, we judge more out of ignorance and arrogance of our ego than knowledge and selflessness.

The key words in this verse are that for every people We made their deeds fair-seeming to them. Then who are we human beings to condemn others beliefs and deeds. Let then Allah alone to judge who is right and who is wrong.

Also a progressive Muslim celebrates diversity as diversity is creation of Allah and if Allah desired He could have made entire humanity one community. (5:48). The Qur’an also says, “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colours. Surely there are signs in this for the learned.” Thus a progressive Muslim will never have any prejudice against any language or colour of skin or any colour for that matter as these are all creations of Allah.

Also, both men and women are creation of Allah and both need to be treated with same degree of dignity. Allah has created all species in couples and it is necessary for survival of all species. No species will survive unless it is created in couples. Thus feminine of the couple is as important as masculine and in human beings both gender must be treated equally. Moreover gender is social and cultural construct. Whereas sex is natural gender is social and cultural.

A progressive Muslim knows this very well and treats both men and women with equal dignity and believes in giving equal rights to both. And in today’s context gender equality becomes a crucial test for a progressive Muslim. Female servitude was purely feudal cultural creation and Islam opposed it and pronounced the doctrine of gender equality in clear terms (2:228) A progressive Muslim knows that certain Shari’ah provisions establishing male superiority were in response to cultural needs of a patriarchal society than based on Qur’an and hadith.

Thus a progressive Muslim will give more importance to Qur’anic pronouncements of gender equality than feudal female servitude and would not consider these [provisions of Shari’ah laws as eternal and unalterable. A progressive Muslim, therefore, would reconstruct Shari’ah laws in this respect and accord equal rights to women who are also believers. One believer cannot be superior to another believer. Male superiority is a human construct and human construct cannot override divine injunction. Also, functional differences i.e. bearing children should not result in distinction of superior and inferior.

A progressive Muslim would accord seeking knowledge highest priority as knowledge has been equated with light (nor) and ignorance to darkness (zulmat) and Allah brings out believers from darkness to light. And the Prophet (PBUH) has said that a moment’s reflection is more important than whole nights worship (‘ibadat). Thus knowledge has priority over worship.

Thus these are the characteristics of a progressive Muslim and those who imbibe these characteristics would survive all the challenges of all the times and would not face any difficulty in keeping pace with the changing times.

Check also this link for a collection of essay by Ashgar Ali Engineer. Hereunder are links to a selection of his books:

Literature and the Future of North Africa

2011-04-02T09:51:00.001+01:00

The Qantara Muslim world news website carried a feature article on Jewish Moroccan writer Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010). Last year the anti-colonial freedom fighter and patriot had been laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery of his native Essouira. He was taken there in a coffin draped with the Moroccan flag by the royal advisor André Azoulay, the historian Hassan Aourid, the director of the National Library Driss Khrouz and artists Hassan Bourkia and André El Baz. Not a state funeral, but almost...

He had specifically requested to be buried there among "all these graves which, exposed to the rank growth, the wind, and the ravages of the ocean, silently enclose the Hebrew inscriptions and mysterious symbols." And indeed it is surprising to see the emblem of the Punic goddess on the weather-beaten columns, an indication that Jews have lived in Morocco since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, when they escaped Babylonian captivity on Phœnician merchant ships. El Maleh's headstone merely adds to the linguistic confusion. He insisted on having four scripts: Arabic, Berber, Hebrew and French. It was a reflection of his attitude to life and his sense of belonging, an attitude that rejects any insistence that identities have to be one-dimensional

Described as a 'thorny humanist and lateral thinker, critic of Zionism and supporter of the Palestinians', it should also be noted that El Maleh was highly respected in the new Morocco for the fact that he, a French assimilated Jew, never denied his Arab-Berber roots'.He came relatively late to literature and his depictions of a 'multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-voiced Morocco' betray influences of other cosmopolitan writers such as Elias Canetti and Walter Benjamin, as well as Kafka and Proust. In fact, El Maleh saw 'himself as a thief of stories and a protector of words', unexpectedly weaving 'words and phrases from Jewish-Arabic, Berber, English, and Spanish into his work'.

Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010)

Characterizing El Maleh's linguistic style through which he tried to remain true to Morocco's plural identity, the Spanish author Juan Goytisolo is said have likened his the influence of the Moroccan dialect to 'a tattoo on the skin of the French used by this author, this Nestor, this great outsider on the fringes of Franco-Moroccan literary scene, an author who remains to be discovered outside Morocco'.

In neighbouring-Algeria, novelist Maïssa Bey, who has written extensively on her country's turmoil of the last few decades, insists on dealing honestly with uncomfortable truths of the past:

Without an honest reappraisal of the past there can be no democratising process in society or in the political structures. "We will never achieve anything in Algeria until we get the truth out into the open and begin acknowledging facts," [...] This is something that has to involve everyone: victims, perpetrators, those politically responsible for the violence and the authorities who have imposed a total blackout on the lives of hundreds of thousands of families".

Although many are clamouring for change, she also notes that despite serious social injustice and corruption many Algerians prefer the fragile stability represented by President Bouteflika.

There is, of course, fear that a revolution could again end in chaos and violence [...] I have heard many people from my own neighbourhood talking like this. But I believe that Algeria has learned from the experiences of the 80s and 90s. The Algerians now know that Islamism is not the answer. This is a realisation that puts us a stage ahead of other revolutions in the Arab world.

She is less than impressed with the attitude of Europe:

Maissa Bey

It is really bizarre that Europe is only now wakening up. I find this absolutely intolerable. As an Algerian citizen, I can tell you that we didn't need any Wikileaks to tell us what was going on. Everybody knew that the Arab leaders were illegally amassing large fortunes for themselves and allowing their people to suffer. How can it be that this Europe, that so prides itself on its ideals of human rights and liberty, kept so quiet for so long, and only opened its mouth after the people themselves had risen?

The Europeans are so sure that democracy is a civilising value that belongs essentially to Europe, Bey explains. "The Arabs, on the other hand, they are, allegedly, just tribal societies where people bite off one another's noses. We intellectuals expect nothing more from Europe. I think it is too late for that."

Read the full interview here.

Who is next? As revolutionary virus sweeps the Arab world, eyes are on Saudi Arabia

2011-03-06T11:11:00.008Z

Although this blog is not conceived as a forum for current affairs in the Middle East, it can't be denied that recent seismic shifts in the political landscape of the region will also have a more long-term fall-out for the intellectual climate in this part of the Muslim world, and probably beyond.

Last week, my colleague Madawi al-Rasheed, a renowned anthropologist of religion and -- as a born Saudi -- one of the most knowledgeable experts on the situation in Saudi Arabia, published an assessment of the prospects of the revolutionary virus spreading to the desert kingdom in the online Foreign Policy Magazine. Here are a few relevant selections:

Saudi Arabia is ripe for change. Despite its image as a fabulously wealthy realm with a quiescent, apolitical population, it has similar economic, demographic, social, and political conditions as those prevailing in its neighboring Arab countries. There is no reason to believe Saudis are immune to the protest fever sweeping the region.

So far young Saudis have occupied their own "Liberation Square" on a virtual map. In the 1990s their exiled Islamist opposition used the fax machine to bombard the country with messages denouncing the leadership and calling for a return to pristine Islam. Later, a wider circle of politicized and nonpoliticized young Saudis ventured into Internet discussion boards, chat rooms, blogs, and more recently Facebook and Twitter to express themselves, mobilize, and share grievances. These virtual spaces have become natural homes for both dissenting voices and government propaganda. Recently the king's private secretary and chief of the royal court, Khaled al-Tuwaijri, launched his own Facebook page.

Saudis thought that they were safe in their virtual world, but the regime has been determined to trace each and every word and whisper that challenges its version of reality. Young bloggers, writers, and essayists have been jailed for asking simple questions like: Who is going to be king after Abdullah? Where is oil wealth going? Who is responsible for corruption scandals associated with arms deals? Why do the king and crown prince take turns leaving the country? Why are Abdullah's so-called reforms thwarted by his brother Prince Nayef? And who is the real ruler of Saudi Arabia? All unanswered taboo questions.

Of course, it's not just liberals who are demanding change. A couple of weeks before the king's return, a group of Saudi academics and professionals announced the establishment of a Salafi Islamic Ummah Party and launched a web site. Reformist Salafists are calling for democracy, elections, and respect for human rights. Five of the founding members were immediately put in jail.

Here is a video, featuring one of the party founders, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Sa'd Al Mufrih

To date, 119 activists have signed the petition calling for constitutional monarchy. More petitions signed by a cross section of Saudi professionals, academics, and journalists are circulating on the Internet. A broad swatch of Saudi society is now demanding political change.

If Saudis do respond to calls for demonstrations and rise above the old petition syndrome, the majority will be young freethinkers who have had enough of the polarization of Saudi Arabia into two camps: a liberal and an Islamist one, with the Al-Saud family presiding over the widening gap between the two.

It seems that the kingdom is at a crossroads. It must either formulate a serious political reform agenda that will assuage an agitated young population or face serious upheavals over the coming months. [...] Many Saudis are disenchanted with both official and dissident Islam. They want a new political system that matches their aspirations, education, and abilities, while meeting their basic human, civil, and political rights.

Now is the time for the United States and its allies to understand that the future does not lie with the old clique that they have tolerated, supported, and indulged in return for oil, security, and investment. At a time of shifting Arabian sands, it is in the interest of America and the rest of the world to side with the future not the past.

Read the whole article by clicking here

Books by Madawi al-Rasheed

Egypt: Islam in the Insurrection

2011-02-24T11:01:00.001Z

The Religioscope website carried an excellent article by Husam Tammam and Patrick Haenni (both associated with the Francophone Centre for Economic, Judicial, and Social Study and Documentation or CEDEJ), on the ambiguous role played by religion in the dynamics of the recent people's uprising against the Mubarak Regime. Here are a few excerpts.

“Arab anger” in Egypt was no more Islamist than it had been in Tunisia a few weeks earlier. Islam was an ingredient, but no more than that. The various religious groups played a role that was politically very conservative.

The religious establishment, like all the political actors, was forced to respond to the uprising as it unfolded. Positions were varied, but no religious actor stood as guarantor of the “revolution”, and most were distrustful of it. Therefore an Iranian-type scenario is unlikely: religious leaders and the street have not yet reached a moment of communion.

Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib

The official religious institutions, both Muslim (al-Azhar and Dar al-Fatwa [sic!]) and Christian (the Coptic Church), had ties of allegiance to the regime, and were even further from grasping the new revolutionary spirit.

The political dependence of the leadership of the clerical institutions – both Christian (the Coptic Church) and Muslim (al-Azhar) – was very badly received by the people, and risked jeopardising their relations with their bases over the long term.

The Salafist movement condemned the protests; the Muslim Brothers first retreated, then got sucked in by the dynamism of the dispute, then tried to open up a negotiation process which the demonstrators, bolder in their demands, didn't want. Though that was not necessarily the position of all Egyptians, many of whom would have settled for a compromise, with Mubarak running the transition and the demand for democracy postponed until the next elections: the voice of the street isn't necessarily the will of the people. The Islamist groups were without doubt the most detached. Among these, various parts of the Salafist movement condemned the demonstrators very clearly from the time of the first appeals....

The Salafist nebula of groups found itself deeply at odds with the dynamic of the street. From the start, and up to now, its position has been unequivocal: the protest movement must be boycotted because protest means chaos. Better to choose the iniquity of the regime than the void which opposing it might open up (the Salafists base themselves on a fatwa by the medieval Islamic thinker Ibn Taimiyya, affirming that 70 years of iniquitous rule are worth more that one day without rule).

There was one single discordant note in this loyalist Salafist concert: the position of the “reformist Salafist” current, which emanated from Saudi Arabia as part of an attempt to fuse Wahhabite conservatism with Muslim Brother activism. This trend, though very small in Egypt, has a presence through personalities such as Gamal Sultan, and the project of a political party, the “reform party”. From the start, it has unambiguously supported the movement for democratic reform.

The [Muslim] Brothers in Tahrir Square, truly mobilized and strongly influenced by the other groups who started the protest movement, continued to call for Mubarak's departure ahead of any negotiation. But on 5 February, their leadership began talks with then vice president Omar Suleiman.... This exasperated the young Brothers out on the street.

Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad Badie

Unlike other Islamist movements, which have clarified the structural dilemma of Islamism (as a movement of preaching or of political participation), the Muslim Brothers are based on the concept of shumuliyya, globalism: this makes them not just a political organisation, but one which is also religious, social and economic. And this confusion between politics and religion is out of place in an insurrection whose spirit is above all political.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

This is notion of shumuliyya is very central in the ideas of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the maverick 'alim of Al Jazeera fame, who returned to Egypt after almost half a century in exile in Qatar.

Strangely, it was the person everyone had thought to be the least inclined to get involved in politics, Amr Khaled, the cool young preacher and religious conscience of the Muslim middle classes, who supported the protest movement the most openly.

Amr Khaled

..we are clearly seeing a revolutionary spirit take shape which could hardly be further from the political culture of the Brothers: it is not programmatic; it does not prefer one ideology over another but demands a transparent framework for political competition; it is anti-authoritarianism; it is democratic and not religious; it functions in a loose logic of networks, spirit of Facebook, transparency (the reverse of a pyramid structure, of secrecy and submission). It bypasses the existing political players in their entirety

The entire article is found here.

After Mubarak: Assessing the 'Islam Factor' in Egypt

2011-02-05T14:37:00.002Z

In times of uncertainty 'imagination is more important than knowledge', Albert Einstein once said. Imagination is exactly what both political policy makers and pundits appear to lack when asked about their projections for Egypt's future. Pragmatists and advocates of maintaining some sort of a status quo, which will not shake the current power configurations within Egypt and in the Middle East too much, can only see another military strong man taking over. The other -- and, to their taste, unpalatable -- alternative is an Islamist take-over by the Muslim Brotherhood, the subsequent foundation of an Islamic state, and the introduction of Sharia law....

This view seems particularly prevalent in American political circles, where, in a recent interview, former presidential candidate Senator John McCain demonstrated how entrenched the opinions and positions of the policy-making elite are. When asked if he could envisage the Muslim Brotherhood becoming a partner in negotiating a new political order for Egypt, McCain categorically rejected that possibility, stating that the Muslim Brotherhood supports terrorism (questionable), has connections with Hamas (not untrue), and will introduce Sharia Law (not at all clear what that means), which is, according to McCain, per definition undemocratic. Confronted with the question that area specialists regard the Muslim Brotherhood as representing a broad spectrum of political views and not a monolithic bloc, and that politicians associated with organization can command the support of about one fifth of the electorate, he said that he still refuses to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood and that he does not give a hoot about expert opinions or votes cast for an organization he does not like. Such lack of appreciation of the complexities of the political playing fields in non-Western cultures is only too often encountered in political power circles in Washington, London, and elsewhere. Now, given its high degree of organization and after decades of patiently infiltrating professional organizations and other parts of civil society, the Muslim Brotherhood simple cannot be ignored or sidelined.

As for the pro-democracy protesters currently holed up on Tahrir Square: In spite of the posturing of its spokespersons (more likely self-appointed than able to demonstrate a sizeable constituency) as unadulterated secularists, it is difficult to gauge what exactly is their common ground -- apart from ousting Mubarak. The big unknown is how much critical mass the alternative political ambitions harboured by the urban middle classes who are now in Tahrir Square will be able to muster and bring together.

So what are the alternatives to unabashed Islamist and secular agendas? For an indication of where to look, it is interesting to note that Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan was included in the list of four world leaders President Obama consulted by telephone before making his statement on 1 February. Taking Turkey into consideration makes not only sense because it is the most populous Muslim country in the Mediterranean and Middle East region, there are other reasons too.

Like Egypt, Turkey has a military with a high political profile. Since the 1920s it has presented itself as the defender of the constitution and frequently intervened in the political process when developments took a direction its leadership did not like. Unlike Egypt, Turkey has allowed experiments with Islamist politics and reconnoitered the boundaries of the tolerable and acceptable. That is why, in 1997, the army decided to oust the coalition government led by the Islamist Welfare Party in a 'velvet coup'. Subsequently part of its constituency reinvented itself as the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won the 2002 elections and has managed to stay in power through a policy focusing on economic development, democratic reforms, and religiously-inspired social conservatism rather than an active agenda of implementing what are regarded as the conventional elements of Islamism

AKP policy is reminiscent of Turkey’s Motherland Party, led by Turgut Özal in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the wake of the 1980 coup, this technocrat formulated what came to be known as the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (TIS), tacitly condoned and at times more explicitly acknowledged by the military strong man at the time, General Kenan Evran (see also the post of 8 May 2010). Its combination of a liberal economic course combined with social conservatism -- expanded by the AKP with bolder democratic reforms -- has shown itself to be remarkably resilient. It is a delicate balance to strike, but, by all appearances, it seems to go down well with large segments of Turkish society. While the core of AKP support lies with an enterpreneurial class mainly based in the towns of Anatolia, its majority betrays a broader constituency of urban middle classes of whom it is by no means certain they would remain loyal if more religiously-coloured policies are introduced, such as curtailing the consumption of alcohol (cf also post of 31 July 2010).

Outside of the immediate political realm, the AKP's success also relies on the influence of the Gülen Movement. This amorphous phenomenon with no apparent hierarchical structure has managed to penetrate Turkish society with an aggregate of media conglomerates, think tanks, and -- most importantly – a network of schools and universities. Also beyond its cohort of mostly volunteer activists, it is appreciated for the excellent education it provides, its charity efforts and initiatives in the domain of community cohesion, both inside Turkey and abroad.

Some, and they include prominent political scientists, would argue that Turkey is an exceptional case. I beg to differ. Because very similar developments have taken place in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation-state in the world and a country that is culturally very different from Turkey and which has its own political history. Yet, there are some striking parallels. Although Indonesia’s constitution is not as staunchly secular as Turkey’s, political Islam has been kept at arm’s length by avoiding any explicit reference to Islam in the constitution, while its military apparatus too has always assumed an active political role. Since independence in 1945, successive regimes have frustrated the attempts of Islamist parties to make Islamic law applicable to its Muslim citizens. At the same time, the military regime led by General Soeharto, which ruled the country with iron fist for thirty years, was accommodative to the development of what has alternately been called civil, cultural or cosmopolitan Islam.

This was largely developed through two of the world’s largest Muslim mass organizations, one representing Islamic modernists (the Muhammadiyah), the other the more traditionalist Muslims (Nahdlatul Ulama or NU, for short). Both were founded during colonial times and each claims to have more than 30 million followers (thereby dwarving the Muslim Brotherhood in numerical terms). After the fall of Soeharto in 1998, both the NU and Muhammadiyah rallied behind political parties supportive of the country's democratization process, while more radical Islamist parties only gained a small percentage of the votes, or did not make the electoral threshold at all. Although some concessions were made through the devolution of power to provincial authorities, which were then used locally to introduce elements of Islamic law in Islamist strongholds, the central government remains committed to internal democratization and economic development. On the international stage, the incumbent president, retired general Susono Bambang Yudhoyono, has positioned Indonesia as a bridge country connecting the Muslim world to rest of Asia and the world at large.

If this is possible in two sizeable and culturally such diverse Muslim countries as Turkey and Indonesia, it becomes more difficult to maintain that these are merely coincidental exceptions. Of course, Egypt’s history is different; Muslim organizations have not had the maneuvering space they were given in Turkey or Indonesia. Therefore, the big question to be answered is: has or can the Muslim Brotherhood transform itself into a civil society force instead of positioning itself as political party with an overt Islamist agenda? The outcome of the present political crisis in Egypt has not just massive impact on power configurations in the Middle East but also for the tectonic shifts which will take place in the world order in the coming decade. Jakarta and Ankara are already jockying for position, what will Cairo do?

How to Meet Muslims

2011-01-07T09:47:00.045Z

Religion Dispatches carried an interesting piece on how films can help dispel religious bias against Islam, arguing that if you do not have an opportunity to meet 'real-life' Muslims, maybe they will soon feature in a theatre near you.

The most effective way to counter a prejudice is to know someone about whom the prejudice is supposed to apply. Those who personally know Muslims are far less likely to have negative thoughts and feelings about Muslims — but in a country of now almost 310 million Americans and only several million Muslims, this advice remains wishful. Add to it that Muslims, unhelpfully, are not distributed evenly across the country [...] what more can be done?

The next best thing to a living, breathing Muslim is an approximation of one. That is, the silver screen (had you said robots, I’d counter: Muslims will be the last people on Earth to come up with robots). Why not? Movies explore the lives and experiences of Muslims in a format that can be watched.

Read on, as Haroon Moghul insisted you must consider yourself uncultured if you do not know his selection of films discussed here.

Mecca Openings? Islam's Holy City at the Mercy of Urban Developers

2010-12-31T16:54:00.008Z

The New York Times is carrying an article by Nicolai Ouroussoff, with a biting criticism of the architectural monstrosity which is disfiguring the holiest city in Islam. With the blessing of Saudi Arabia's government, an eyesore called Abraj al-Bayt in Arabic and referred to as the 'Mecca Royal Clock Hotel Tower' has been constructed on a hill near the Haram al-Sharif or Great Mosque. According to Ouroussoff:

It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam’s architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.

Abraj al-Bayt Towers in Mecca

Ouroussoff is not alone in his rejection, he is joined by Sami Angawi , a Saudi architect who founded a research center that studies urban planning issues surrounding the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and has been one of the development’s most vocal critic. Mincing no words, he has called it “It is the commercialization of the house of God.” Angawi also features in another piece on this Arabian nightmare.

Dr Sami Anqawi

In Ourousssof's assessment:

The city’s makeover reflects a split between those who champion turbocharged capitalism and those who think it should stop at the gates of Mecca, which they see as the embodiment of an Islamic ideal of egalitarianism. “We don’t want to bring New York to Mecca,” Mr. Angawi said. “The hajj was always supposed to be a time when everyone is the same. There are no classes, no nationalities. It is the one place where we find balance. You are supposed to leave worldly things behind you.”

The government, however, seems unmoved by such sentiments. When I mentioned Mr. Angawi’s observations at the end of a long conversation with Prince Sultan, the minister of tourism and antiquities, he simply frowned. “When I am in Mecca and go around the kaaba, I don’t look up.”


Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud

This from the man who once hitched a ride on the Space Shuttle.....

New Journal on Islamic and Social Sciences

2010-12-21T20:13:00.002Z

IUR Press, the publishing arm of the Netherlands-based Islamic University Rotterdam (IUR) has launched a new academic journal. The maiden issue of the Journal of Rotterdam Islamic and Social Sciences (JRISS) was released recently. According to the journal homepage, IUR seeks to corner part of the higher education market catering to Muslim chaplains and moral guides, which was increasingly appropriated by the secular universities. The university sees it as its task to help educate and integrate Muslims into Dutch society through programmes taught by both Muslims and non-Muslims (see the podcasts of lectures (in Dutch) on such topics as the Mu'tazila and Hadith criticism broadcast by uirtv). The journal was founded as an outlet for the university's research findings and to act as a bridge between the Muslim world and Western countries by impacting on public opinion and engage in public debates.

Although the university and its journal appear to be initiatives primarily run by educationists of Turkish origin, cooperation with non-Muslims is also reflected in the composition of the journal's international advisory board, which includes scholars such as Professor Colin Turner of Durham University, Karel Steenbrink, Emeritus Professor of intercultural theology at Utrecht University and for many years associated with Indonesia's Islamic State Universities (UIN) in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, and Dr. Jan Peters, an Islamicist and former vice-chancellor of Radboud University Nijmegen, who also serves on IUR's supervisory board. The university's principal (or 'rector' in Dutch), Prof. Dr. Ahmet Akgündüz, is the journal's editor-in-chief.

Aside from an editorial and keynote article by the chief editor, the first issue contains contributions by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars on the Qur'an and on the origins of Islam, Islamic law (Maqasid al-Shari'a or objectives of Islamic law; Islamic law of tort), and Sufism (the notion of dhikr; and articles on the ideas and works of Said Nursi and Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi).

The journal website contains a very extensive and useful list of links to academic societies, institutions, universities, and journals dealing with Islam and the Muslim world or religious studies worldwide, as well as organizations active in the integration of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands and in the field of interfaith dialogue.

NEW ACADEMIC SOCIETY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

2010-11-19T11:50:00.002Z

On 16 November 2010, four US-based scholars launched the Society of Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World (SCTIW). Alina Gharabegian, Seema Golestaneh, Jason Mohaghegh, and Lucian Stone want to 'promote new directions in scholarship and creative activities related to the interface of Eastern and Western movements' by establishing a multi-disciplinary network of 'professional academics representing a diverse array of fields'. This diversity is already reflected by the backgrounds of the initiators, New Jersey City University Assistant-Professors Gharabegian and Mohaghegh work in the fields of English literature and World literature respectively, but their interests also include contemporary Armenian literature, 'Middle Eastern interpretations of the elegy', and contemporary avant-garde circles in the Middle East. Seema Golestaneh is a PhD candidate in social anthropology at Columbia University working on contemporary Sufism in Iran (see also the post of 27 August on this blog). Stone, now an Assistant-Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota is not only a specialist on the philosopher Simone Weil, but was also involved in the Library of Living Philosophers project, contributing to the volume on the Iranian-born thinker Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Although its geographical remit indicates that the society wishes to showcase developments in the Islamicate world, the Society regards it as 'a kind of limitless zero-world, a vast territory of thought, experience, and imagination'. This open interpretation combined with the involvement of scholars not confined by the philological-historical inclinations which for so long determined the way Islam and the Muslim world was studied holds great potential of innovative and original ways of engaging with the pluralist civilizational heritage of the Muslim world.

At present membership is free, to register click here.

For a flavour of what might be in store for the future, here are some of the publications by members of the steering committee:

SECOND THOUGHTS? AN ASSESSMENT OF ISLAM AND STATE IN INDONESIA

2010-11-10T12:27:00.005Z

LSE IDEAS, the centre for the study of diplomacy, international affairs and strategy at the London School of Economics, hosted a seminar on Islam and the State: A Southeast Asian Perspective, featuring Dr. Bahtiar Effendy, a lecturer at State Islamic University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, with Prof. Gilles Kepel, Director of the Moyen/Orient/Méditerranée Programme at Sciences Po in Paris and holder of the Phillipe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs, acting as discussant, and Tan Sri Dr Munir Majid, head of the Southeast Asia International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, in the chair.

Dr Effendy's talk was largely based on his book Islam and the State in Indonesia (2003), a published verion of his PhD thesis at Ohio State University, defended in 1994. Notwithstanding the fact that Indonesia's political landscape has changed unrecognizably since the fall of Soeharto's New Order Regime, Effendy's study has only been updated with a relatively brief 'post-script' containing just a summary discussion of developments from 1999 to 2000. While earlier parts of the book contain valuable discussions of the role of a new Muslim intelligentsia in creating the 'New Islamic Intellectualism' of the 1970s and 1980s, which transformed the debate on religion and politics from a legal-formalist and exclusivist into a substantialist and inclusivist discourse, there is no mention of the rise of two ensuing generations of Muslim intellectuals, consisting of scholars from the State Islamic Universities in Jakarta and Yogyakarta (including Effendy himself) and younger intellectual-activists connected through networks such as the Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL, Liberal Islam Network) or associated with the young cadres of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), referred to as NU Muda. Part heirs, part critics of the pioneers of this substantialist Islamic discourse they have been instrumental in the further shaping of an Indonesian variant of Islamic civil society.

Dr Bahtiar Effendy

Also from Effendy's presentation it was difficult to get a clear sense of where he sees Indonesia going. Having identified the early twentieth-century, the end of the Cold War, and post-9/11 as three key moments when the discussion of the relation between Islam and modernity and between religion and politics became particularly acute, he then restricted his discussion primarily to the domestic Indonesian context.

Throughout the Soekarno and Soeharto years, Islamic political parties were considered as potential contenders for political power and were therefore clamped down on. Only in the 1950s, when a system that can be described as liberal and democratic was allowed to briefly flourish, were Islamic parties able to profile themselves uninhibitedly. This was reflected by their unsurpassed success in the 1955 elections, when the four Islamic parties together received 43% of the vote --- still, not a majority in a country that is 85-90% Muslim. Evidently, even then, large segments of Indonesia's Muslim intelligentsia did not want Islam as the basis for statehood.

The New Order Regime approached the Islam with the same suspicion as Soekarno had in the 1940s and during the 'Guided Democracy' of his later years. Islamic Parties were generally reduced to an outsider role in the political process It was not until the 1970s, when this earlier mentioned new generation of intellectuals and technocrats formulated a non-formalist alternative Islamic discourse. Because it was no longer regarded as explicitly anti-state the state allowed more room for this kind of activism. In fact, the Muslim intelligentsia were not only co-opted in the government's development policies; eventually the state itself saw the usefulness of religion for driving its own objectives. and began boosting its own Islamic credentials. The power of Islamic courts was strenghtened in regards to personal and family law, the country began experimenting with Islamic banking, and the government established a kind of Islamic think tank, the 'Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals' (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim se-Indonesia, ICMI), led by Minister of Technology and later Vice-President and President B.J. Habibie.

In the democratic transformation that followed the fall of Soeharto in 1998, more than 181 new political parties emerged, of which 42 bore an Islamic or Islamist signature. It also spelled the return of the legal-formalist political and religious discourse. There was a sense of deja-vu, as it became clear that the Islamic parties still bore a historical stigma, according to Effendy. The majority of the Muslims preferred a substantialist understanding over the legalist interpretations associated with political Islam. As an explanation for this hesitation, Effendy suggests that three factors played a role: the fear it may thwart Muslim social mobility, the fragmentation of the community due to the competition between a plethora of Islamic parties, and the sense of alienation felt by younger generations of Muslims, who never experienced the struggles during the first fifty years of independence. Again, elections results reflected these sentiments. Between 1968 and 1998 support for Islamic parties oscillated between 15 and 30%. In the three free elections that have been held since then the Islamic parties received 37% (1999), 38% (2004) and 24% (2009) of the votes.

Effendy concludes that the intellectual transformation effectuated between 1970 and 1990 still dominates at the expense of the advocates of a legal-formalist Islamic model: The Jakarta Charter of 1945 (forcing Muslim citizens to abide by Islamic law) was never inserted into the constitution and only select elements of Islamic law have been implemented. As long as Muslim politicians do not disrupt the idea of a nation state they wuill be allowed some maneuvering space, but the exact place of Islamic principles in the political constellation is still not defined. Whereas Effendy expresses the hope that political and religious elites will reach an appropriate settlement, he gives no indication what such an agreement should encompass. Nor did he tell anything about the vibrant intellectual milieu in which younger scholars, intellectual-activists, and writers current discuss possible scenarios for a future civil Islam.

Prof Gilles Kepel

As the author of Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Gilles Kepel responded by providing a wider context by drawing on examples from other parts of the Muslim world. Comparing developments in Indonesia with those in Turkey and Algeria, he sees similarities in the implicit association of Islam by its detractors as threatening to the nation-state and a step backwards, or their use of political Islam as the scapegoat hampering state-building and development. However, when political opponents of authoritarian regimes want to challenge the incumbents they often opt for employing an 'Islamic vocabulary', although this must not be automatically equated with legal-formalist aspirations.

In the same vein, Kepel further suggests that Turkish civil society-building has more of a 'Muslim' dimension than that it envisages an Islamic -- let alone Islamist -- agenda. It is important to acknowledge the sheer diversity of Islamic discourses, with civil society movements on one end and totalitarian Islamist ideologies on the other end of the spectrum. Given this multitude of voices, the questions to ponder are: Who controls Islamic discourse?; Why do so many different groups feel the need to take recourse to rhetoric coated in Islamic idiom and symbolism?; What are the reasons for the resurgence of cultural Islam? Returning to the Indonesian situation, Kepel ventured the speculation that, notwithstanding all the criticisms, whether there is not something to Clifford Geertz's (in)famous taxonomy distinguishing between between Santri (pious, practicing Muslims) and Abangan (syncretic Javanese belief and practices professing nominal allegiance to Islam).

In response to a query whether aside from the legal-formalist aspirations of Islamic parties and the substantialist view of the proponents of cultural or civil Islam, there are no initiatives on the part of Muslim activists to address other 'substantial' issues such as economic developments, generic human rights, justice etc., Effendy claimed that this was not the case. According to him, those driving the Islamic agendas continue to subscribe to legal-formalist interpretations focussing on ritual practice and symbolism. The Chair Dr. Munir Majid doubted whether this is so. Invoking the distinction between the Islamic notions of fard ayn (individual obligations) and fard kifaya (collective obligations), he admitted the former tend to be overamplified, but the later offer a vehicle for social activism and civil society building.

Yours truly was also surprised that Effendy did not recognize the remarkable parallels, rightly noted by Kepel, between the historical trajectories in Indonesia and Turkey (apart from an anecdotal reference to the personal friendship of ex-President Habibie with former Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan --dating back to their student years in Germany). Perhaps it is a lack of familiarity with developments in the latter country, that prevented Effendy from detecting the undeniable commonalities in the Indonesian and Turkisch experiences with Islam in the public sphere and the accommodation of religion and politics.

In spite of his discussion of the intellectual trends circulating among Indonesian Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s, Effendy's presentation missed an updated account of developments during the past turbulent decade and failed to venture beyond a narrow focus on the issue of statehood and Islamic parties role in the formal political process, and unpack the development of substantialist Islamic discourse. For an intellectual from a generation who can be considered to have inherited the legacy of 1970s New Islamic Intellectualism he almost seemed disenchanted and having doubts whether it had all been worth the effort..

FEATURED REVIEW: POSTCOLONIAL PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

2010-10-29T15:21:00.011+01:00

Routledge has included my review of Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion in its selection for the American Academic of Religion (AAR) Article Collection, which will be featured at the upcoming Annual Convention of the (AAR) in Atlanta from 30 October to 1 November 2010. The review is freely accessible until 31 December by clicking on the banner below.

For more information on Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion edited by Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew B. Irvine click on the image below.

Assessing Sayyid Qutb: The Importance of 'Thick Description'

2010-10-19T16:39:00.003+01:00

In a recent lecture at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics on the prominent Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), Dr. John Calvert, Associate Professor of History at Creighton University and an expert on radical Islamism, stressed the importance of taking into account the complex identity of such figures associated with political Islam, especially in view of caricaturistic representations in the media coverage of this phenomenon.

Although radical Islamist ideologies and their exponents are not within the ambit of this blog, as it seeks to introduce 'critical Muslims' provided alternative visions of the place of religion in the Muslim world, a number of remarks made by John Calvert in his talk at LSE merit mention here -- as they can be considered helpful in acquiring a more balanced and nuanced impression of the multilayered personality of Sayyid Qutb. Not least also because the impact of his ideas on contemporary Islamic discourse can hardly be exaggerated. Moreover, when taking into consideration the full width of his intellectual legacy, Sayyid Qutb can be considered as a 'critical Muslim' in his own right, notwithstanding the vast differences between his vision and the outlook of other progressive and though-provoking intellectuals with more liberal dispositions.

To understand what motivated individuals such as Sayyid Qutb, and those present-day and equally controversial exponents of Islamic radicalism and extremism who draw their inspiration in no small measure from his writings, a degree of empathy for their way of looking at the world is required, if we are to get even an inkling of what makes such activists (including those perpetrating despicable acts of violence) tick. In order to account for both 'the objective circumstances and subjective experiences' of a figure like Sayyid Qutb, Dr Calvert argues that it is necessary to engage in 'thick description' --- a term used by one of America's leading anthropologists of the late 20th century, the late Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), who applied this approach to his own research in the field of the anthropology of religion.

No matter how controversial the ideas they expound may be or how objectionable the actions they perpetrate or condone, if we are to comprehend the authors of radical Islamist discourses and make sense of what they stand for, these Islamist ideologues and activists must be studied on their own terms.

In the case of Sayyid Qutb this evinces a gnostic disposition that suffuses all his writings, including the radicalized ones of the final years of his life, which -- as as it was cut short by his execution in 1966 -- has left us with what Calvert refers to as an 'open-ended Islamism'. This in my view very apt characterization points at one of the most problematic aspects of Sayyid Qutb's Islamist ideology -- namely what his often self-proclaimed heirs have done with his legacy. It raises important questions as to the extent to which authors can be held responsible for what others say or claim to do in their name or on the basis of their writings.

In the course of his presentation, Dr Calvert explained how the doctrinal anchorage of Sayyid Qutb's ideas regarding the need for a radical transformation of Egypt, and indeed all Muslim societies, was grounded in his abiding interest in humankind's spiritual disposition and his personal preoccupation with the Transcendent. It was on these grounds that Sayyid Qutb consistently argued that Muslim identity eventually trumped all other loyalties or human associations.

The transformation of a bookish writer preoccupied with literary and broader cultural interests into a radicalized political-religious ideologue must, according to Calvert, be primarily attributed to the torture Sayyid Qutb suffered at the hands of the Nasser Regime during his lengthy incarceration between 1954 and 1964 . It was this life-changing experience that is presented as an explanation for Sayyid Qutb's shift from his discussions of the dichotomy separating a spiritual East from a materialist West towards another binary opposing 'true Muslims' to those sleepwalking through existence with the false consciousness associated with the state of 'Jahiliyya'. Originally referring to a specific period in Arab history, namely the time prior to the mission of Muhammad and the revelation of the Qur'an, Sayyid Qutb interpreted it as a primordial disposition afflicting those unfamiliar with the true meaning of the Islamic teachings. Contrary to many of those appealing to the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the man himself did not take the step of condemning individual Muslims as infidels or apostates, but used it as a notion describing the collective state of mind in which contemporary Muslim communities find themselves.

For a detailed account of this fascinating figure of modern and contemporary Islamic thinking, read John Calvert's latest book: Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (For more information click on the image below).

Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010): Trailblazer for new approaches to the study of Islam

2010-09-15T17:39:00.020+01:00

After Mohammed Abid al-Jabiri (cf. blog post of 16 May 2010) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (cf. blogpost 6 July 2010), a third innovative Muslim intellectual has just passed away as well. Mohammed Arkoun died yesterday in Paris at the age of 82.

Carool Kersten with Mohammed Arkoun (London, October 2009)

An Algerian Berber educated in French and Arabic in Oran and Algiers, in 1954 Arkoun moved to France in for postgraduate studies. In Paris, he studied under eminent scholars such as Jacques Berque, Robert Brunschvig, Louis Massignon and Paul Ricoeur, while his teaching duties in Strasbourg brought him into contact with Claude Cahen, who in turn introduced Arkoun to the historians of the Annales School, which had emerged in that city a quarter of a century earlier. This proved to be a revelation which left an indelible mark on Arkoun's scholarship. Notions like the 'history of mentalities' and the 'unthinkable' developed by the school's founders Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, or Braudel's conceptualization of the Mediterranean as a 'geo-historical space' found their way into Arkoun's pioneering historiographies of Islamic thought.

Coinciding with the Algerian war of independence and the student uprisings of 1968, Arkoun's postgraduate studies overlap with the Aufbruch of the French political, cultural and academic scene. His years as a doctoral student are also framed by global events like the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the crushing of the Prague Spring twelve years later, thus matching almost exactly with what Patricia O'Brien has called 'the milestone dates in the chronology of dislocation’ characterizing the intellectual upheaval in the postwar era.

In his subsequent scholarship, which must primarily be regarded as setting a new agenda for the study of Islam as a field of scholarly inquiry, Arkoun has drawn from across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences, using the latest advances made in the Western -- and in particular the French -- academe. Aside from the Annales school, the structural linguistics and anthropology developed by Saussure, Benveniste and Levi-Strauss, the semiotics of Greimas, the sociology and political philosophy of Cornelius Castoriades, Foucault's discursive formations, as well as his archaeologies of knowledge and power, or Derrida's poststructuralist deconstructions; have all left their traces in Arkoun's rethinking of Islamic studies.

Initially conceived as a 'Critique of Islamic Reason', he moved on to a more constructive proposition for a new research programme for studying Islam and the Muslim world. Presented under the name 'Applied Islamology'., this project envisaging a collaborative effort requiring the participation of international teams of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, was not only inspired by the French ethnographer Roger Bastide's 'Applied Anthropology', but also informed by the Luso-Tropicology (Tropicalism) of the Brazilian social scientist Gilberto Freyre.

Arkoun's ability to draw all these different strings and strands of thought together into a coherent whole betrays the influence from yet another of his intellectual mentors, Paul Ricoeur. Just as the latter's generous or charitable interpretations had enabled him to reconcile conflicting philosophical positions on knowledge and understanding, Arkoun adhered to a similar catholic approach. Following his master through the 'narrow gate' of structural-linguistic analysis, Arkoun's insistence that 'accurate description must precede interpretation; but interpretation cannot be attempted today without a rigorous analysis, using linguistics, semiotic, historical, and anthropological tools’, reflects Ricoeur's hermeneutic adage that 'to explain more is to understand better'.

In the final years of his career, Arkoun repeatedly expressed regret that his methodological suggestions often fell on deaf ears among scholars of Islam. But that did not deter him the least. In fact, in the last ten years or so, he actually expanded his horizons from the study of Islamic thought to a critique of all forms of reason and rational thinking, proposing an almost Kantian philosophical recalibration, which he called the 'Emerging Reason Project' and continued to advocate and propagate until the very end.

Last year, in October 2009, the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) in London organized a symposium in honour of Arkoun's efforts to renew the study of Islam (cf. blog post of 11 October 2009). For links to some of Arkoun's publications, click on the images below.

Scholars of Religion Discuss Alternative Islamic Discourses

2010-08-27T00:35:00.003+01:00

The recently held conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) featured a panel on 'Alternative Islamic Discourses and the Question of Authority'. Hosted by the University of Toronto, the IAHR's 20th world congress was dedicated to religion as a human phenomenon. As part of the academic programme, Dr. Susanne Olsson of Södertörn University and current chair of the Swedish Association for the History of Religions and Dr Carool Kersten, lecturer in Islamic Studies at King's College London, convened a panel that brought together seven scholars from universities in Sweden, Britain, and the United States, to introduce and discuss innovative ways of engaging with Islam as a religious and cultural tradition which are currently developed in different parts of the Muslim world.

Conveners Susanne Olsson and Carool Kersten

Co-convener Susanne Olsson examined the influence of the Egyptian TV preacher Amr Khaled. Her presentation focused on the careful trajectory he must navigate in the tense political-religious climate of Egypt and the wider contemporary Muslim world . His interpretation of Islam could be described as promoting a personal piety and an individualistic understanding of responsibilities and duties. This has made him a potential threat to both the Egyptian regime as well as representatives of the so-called Establishment Islam. He also faces the challenge of having to negotiate between the demands of Islamic tradition and a globalizing world confronted with the complexities of modernity and secularisation. This forces Amr Khaled to accommodate his reinterpretation of Islam in a way that can be regarded as authentically Islamic while avoiding accusations of innovation and Westernisation.

Nida Kirmani

Nida Kirmani from the University of Birmingham has expanded her fieldwork in India to other parts of the Muslim world in order to assess the extent in which Islam can play a role in the advocacy of women's rights. Although the promotion of women's rights tends to be regarded as a 'secular enterprise', Kirmani argues that various forms of 'Islamic feminism' have been emerging in the last two decades: A variety of non-governmental organisations and members of women's movements have drawn on these ideas and have, either by necessity or choice, begun to engage with Islamic discourses and actors in their efforts to promote women's rights on a variety of issues, especially in relation to reproductive rights and family laws.

Ann Kull

The phenomenon of 'Islamic feminism' was further explored by Ann Kull of Lund University, in a paper on gender-sensitive interpretations of Islam in Indonesia. Part of the discursive framework of Islamisation processes emerging in the 1980s, the Indonesian variant is firmly rooted in the country's 'cultural Islamisation' as opposed to the explicitly politicized versions developing elsewhere. Moreover, its liberal characteristics are informed by the emphasis on context in the interpretation of religious texts, while the level of penetration in society is also aided by the particularities of Indonesia's system of higher Islamic education and the relatively high levels of participation by women.

Carool Kersten

Remaining in Indonesia, Carool Kersten's introduction of the country's Islamic Post-Traditionalists builds on his earlier research into new Muslim intellectualism emerging in the final decades of the 20th century. At the start of the new millennium, an upcoming generation of intellectuals with a dual secular-religious education began presenting an alternative to existing indigenous Indonesian Islamic traditionalism, transnational currents of revivalism in both its moderate and radical manifestations, and classical Islamic reformism and modernism represented by the heirs of figures like Muhammad Abduh. Born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this new generation even challenges the synthesis of Islamic modernism and traditionalism developed by their immediate predecessors, such as Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005) and Abdurrahman Wahid (1940-2009). Steeped in poststructuralism and postcolonial studies, these upcoming intellectuals use the ideas of the French-Algerian historian of Islamic thought Mohammed Arkoun (cf. the blog entry of 11 October 2009), the Moroccan philosopher Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (blog entry 16 May 2010), and the Egyptian text critic and semiotician Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (blog entry 6 July 2010), as well as Western thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida to subject all forms of Islamic thought to a rigorous discourse critique reflecting the primacy they accord to epistemological concerns, as opposed to the political considerations dominating other strands of contemporary Islamic discourses.

Seema Golestaneh

The afternoon session of the panel was opened by Seema Golestaneh, a PhD candidate at Columbia University in New York, who discussed the role of Sufism in the development of modernist Islamic discourse in Iran. The focus of her research is on poetry reading groups associated with the Nimatullahi Order, the leading Sufi order in the Shi'ite parts of the Muslim world. In her talk she signaled the paradox of a move towards the esoteric, stressing the the inward -- some would even call it the a-social and a-political -- which in the context of the Iranian Islamic republic has nevertheless important socio-political consequences. Based on her fieldwork in Tehran, Isfahan and Kerman, she argues that the collected data provide valuable insights in the significance of personal interpretations of texts, which stand in contrast to more standardized orthodox practices of Usuli Shi'ism. The experience of intuitive knowledge or erfan offers not a neutral form of mystical or otherwise passive disengagement from the world, but a type of critical practice that simultaneously engages with the personal, social and metaphysical realms. Sufi poetry groups can thus be said to act as points of convergence between religion, literature and identity, offering an unique entry point into current manifestations of modernity in Iran.

Anne Ross Solberg

Moving from Iran to Turkey, the contribution of Anne Ross Solberg, who is completing a doctorate at Södertörn University, looks into the somewhat eccentric author and preacher Adnan Oktar, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya for his publications. Under this alias he has developed into one of the most visible Muslim proponents of creationism. Helped by a staff of researchers he has built up a prodigious internet presence in which he seeks to debunk Darwin's evolution theory, arguing it is an ideological tool for the spread of philosophical materialism and atheism. He calls for Muslim unity under Turkish leadership to counter the continued propagation of what he insists is a defunct scientific theory only upheld through Masonic manipulations. Yahya's creationism is combined with an alternative Islamic eschatology placing himself and Turkey at the centre of a pre-millenarian narrative. In her presentation Anne Solberg posits Yahya/Oktar as an exponent of a new Muslim intelligentsia challenging the authority of 'establishment Islam'. His success is not based on academic credentials but rests on a combination of personal charisma, the effective use of new media and sophisticated marketing techniques. Orthodox and traditional authority figures find themselves struggling in how to counter such alternative discourses.

Zeki Saritoprak, incumbent of the Nursi Chair in Islamic Studies at Cleveland's John Carroll University, closed this series of presentations with an assessment of Muslim reactions to Fethullah Gülen and the eponymous movement (cf. also the blog entries of 12 June 2010 and 8 May 2010). The objective of his paper was to shed some light on the nature of the movement and the environment in which it arose in order to understand the perspectives of those who consider the movement and its purported leader as a threat. Special attention was paid to recent claims that Turkey, or rather Turkish secularism, is in a state of crisis and the role of the Gülen movement in that alleged crisis situation. Assessments of the movements objectives and influence vary greatly; where Le Monde presented it as the largest Islamic movement in the world, Zaman Today -- a leading English-language newspaper in Turkey with links to the movement -- hailed it as a great contributor to the strengthening of the country's democratic process, while others -- such as Newsweek, Foreign Policy and the Middle East Forum expressed concerns of its threat to secularism. In reviewing these various aspects, Saritoprak endeavoured to come to a more balanced understanding of what is undeniably a very influential movement in a country that is positioning itself increasingly as a key player in the Muslim world, strategically located between the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia.

Zeki Saritoprak

It is envisaged that the various contributions to this panel will be published in an edited volume dedicated to the development of new ways of critical engagement with Islam's religious and cultural legacy emerging in various parts of the contemporary Muslim world.

The Two Faces of Turkey's "Neo-Ottoman" Revival

2010-07-31T11:39:00.034+01:00

In spite of its domestic and international political successes, the AKP-led government of Turkey still faces a fair degree of suspicion regarding its real objectives. Even though there are no concrete indications, let alone evidence, accusations of having a secret agenda for the Islamization of Turkey crop up regularly -- not least in other parts of the Muslim world, where the country's rising profile on the world scene appears to breed a degree of envy; its tangible achievements in democratizing the government system and economic development during the last decade stand in stark contrast with the track record of most of the rest of the Muslim world. In the international arena, Turkey has deployed diplomatic initiatives to improve its relations with its neighbours and mediated in conflicts such as Iran's nuclear question (see also my post of 12 June 2010 and 8 May 2010). But the political and economic drive of the AKP also has casualities.

Indicative are two articles appearing at the same time on the Qantara website, the Germany-based news service about the Muslim world.

In an interview cultural historian Gerhard Schweizer points out that:

Erdogan is trying – as no other Turkish Prime Minister before him – to make use of the strategic value of being the only Muslim country to maintain close relations with Western states and Israel on the one hand, and Arab states and Iran on the other. This gives Turkey the opportunity to act as a mediator, both between Syria and Israel and between Iran and the United States.

In response to a question why Pesident Abdullah Gül prefers Turkey to be 'a leading nation in the Islamic world than bringing up the rear in the West', Schweizer observed that:

[he] is seen as a staunch advocate of Turkish entry into the EU. He proved this convincingly during his time as Foreign Minister. His words indicate a certain disappointment that many European countries are delaying entry talks; some are even blocking it altogether. Germany under Angela Merkel and France under Nicolas Sarkozy play a more ambivalent role.

As for the reactions elsewhere in the Muslim world:

The Arab states and Iran are observing Turkey's growing involvement in the Islamic realm with mixed feelings. On the one hand they welcome the fact that Turkey, which until now has maintained ties strictly with the West, is now also seeking to establish contacts with its Eastern neighbours whom the West regards with mistrust, and in doing so it is raising their international standing. On the other hand, though, its relations with these countries are burdened by the weight of history.

Schweizer maintains that the AKP under Erdogan has consistently navigated a pragmatic course:

It would be completely mistaken to believe that Turkey's greater political opening towards to its Muslim neighbours is motivated by religion. It is not their common religion that leads to rapprochement among the Muslim states but their common strategic interests. [...] However, in this instance it is not only Turkey that is being pragmatic, but also Iran. It would be impossible for Iran to form a close alliance with the Turks for purely religious reasons. In this context, may I remind you that Iran, a fundamentalist theocracy, did form a close alliance with secular Syria in the early 1980s, purely based on strategic considerations – an alliance that has lasted to this day.

He therefore adamantly rejects the suggestion that the AKP is motivated by an Islamist agenda:

The accusation that the AKP is trying to establish an Islamist state in Turkey is out of touch with reality. Erdogan does have Islamist roots; his political mentor Necmettin Erbakan was an Islamist. But Erdogan's great success in the polls and subsequent popularity were precisely because he came to power promising to reconcile Islam and the modern secular state, and to overcome intolerant nationalism through the systematic cultivation of democracy.

It is one of the paradoxes of Turkish politics that it is no longer the strictly secular parties, those who orientate themselves towards Atatürk, who are the most emphatic advocates of extending democratic rights. These days it is rather the "Islamic-secular" AKP that is the biggest champion of reforms aimed at paving Turkey's way into joining the EU.

At the same time, Qantara also included a critical article on the shadow side of the entrepreneurial elan that is driving Turkey and which has the full support of the AKP Government: The risk that Istanbul's historical centre will lose its status as a UNESCO Heritage Site as a result of years of mismanagement and flagrant disregard of the pertaining guidelines. Ironically, this news broke while Istanbul is still Europe's Cultural Capital of 2010. As a result:

Nervous tension lies like a pall over the city, disbelief: UNESCO wants to revoke Istanbul's World Heritage status. The Old Town is to be put on the red list of endangered cultural heritage sites. And more than a few people nod to themselves, thinking that's just where it belongs. But what a resounding slap in the face for the authorities, what a scandal if it really happens: now of all times, when the city fathers are still gloating over earning the title of European Capital of Culture 2010.

Apparently there are some sinister motives behind the lack of cooperation by the responsible government bodies in Istanbul:

The municipal administration in Fatih is in charge of this part of the city. When UNESCO arrived with money and know-how, the administration not only didn't lift a finger to support the project – it even did everything in its power to sabotage it. "They insinuated to the inhabitants that this was a clandestine project of the Greek patriarchate", says attorney Aysegül Kaya. "The patriarchate supposedly wanted to set up a second Vatican here with the help of the UN: an independent church state."

Crazy? This country has plenty of practice in fomenting paranoia amongst its citizens. When the UNESCO team fanned out to bestow money and restoration plans on the homeowners, many residents slammed the door in their faces.

However, aside from these less savoury aspects, it is also very much a matter of 'money talks':

The time was ripe for the AKP-led municipal administration to take action. Middlemen swooped down and persuaded owners to sell their houses below market price – threatening that they would otherwise be confiscated.

As one disenchanted architect and government adviser, Korhan Gümüs, said:

"The State does without expert knowledge, without the intelligence available in the society. It acts technocratically. Instead of architects or historic preservationists, it hires construction companies. The results are corruption and injustice. The authorities represent the interests of the most powerful players: the entrepreneurs."

Reflective of these two sides of present-day Turkisch politics and policy making are the media reports on the reopening of an Istanbul landmark, the Pera Palace Hotel, after a four-year refurbishing. The former terminus of the Orient Express, the hotel was the scene of much political wrangling in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Restored it to its former glory but with a contemporary touch, it acts as a symbol for the ambitions of present-day Turkey. At the same time both Associated Press and Arab News also referred to the endangerment of Istanbul's status as a cultural hallmark of world significance. Is this the price to be paid for Turkey's new-found assertiveness and self-confidence through the Neo-Ottoman -- pragmatic rather than religious -- designs of the AKP?

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010)

2010-07-06T00:26:00.005+01:00

The Egyptian Islamicist Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd has died in a Cairo hospital on 5 July 2010. He had only recently returned to Egypt after being diagnosed with a rare viral disease.

Since 1995 Abu Zayd had lived in exile in the Netherlands after his innovative approaches to Quranic studies -- promoting a human-centered hermeneutics and applying methods derived from semiotics, literary theory & criticism to the study of the Islamic scripture -- caused controversy in both academic, religious and political circles. This not only led to him being denied tenure at the University of Cairo, but also resulted in court proceedings initiated by lawyers associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Following a conviction on grounds of apostasy, those prosecuting Abu Zayd went a step further by insisting that the courts also impose a divorce from his wife on grounds that an non-Muslim cannot be married to a Muslim woman.

Because of these developments, Abu Zayd and his wife Ibtihal Younes ( a professor of French literature) considered it prudent to leave Egypt for the more welcoming academic environment in Europe. Traveling via Spain Abu Zayd found refuge in the Netherlands, where he held a number of academic posts at the Leiden University and lastly as the incumbent of the Ibn Rushd Chair at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht. He was also associated with the Wissenschaftkolleg zu Berlin in Germany. In 2005 he was awarded the Ibn Rushd Prize by the Ibn Rushd Fund for the Freedom of Thought

After an absence of almost fifteen year, Abu Zayd started to revisit his home country again. However, his position is still controversial; in December 2009 Kuwait refused him entry in spite of having initially issued a valid visit visa. It was during a recent visit to Indonesia that the scholar fell ill and was admitted to the Shaykh Zayed Hospital in Cairo where he slipped into a coma.

Publishing primarily in Arabic, very little of Abu Zayd's work has been translated into English. The German-Iranian scholar and author Navid Kermani assisted Abu Zayd a number of years ago with the publication of an autobiography in German, which was later also translated into Dutch.

'Zero Problems with the Neighbours': Davutoglu, Erdogan, Gulen and Turkish Foreign Policy

2010-06-12T15:20:00.024+01:00

The recent incident with the Gaza-bounded Flotilla of aid ships involving the vessel Mavi Marmara (operated by the Turkish Islamic charity Isani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) but sailing under Comoros flag) seems to have thrown a stick in the wheels of the AKP government's foreign policy of 'Zero Problems with the Neighbours' as relations between Turkey and Israel have rapidly soured.

Turkey's profile on the world stage has been undeniably heightened through a flurry of activities in international diplomacy. Master-minded by foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, it is indicative of a more assertive Turkish foreign policy. An academic-turned diplomat, Prime Minister Erdoğan's chief international policy advisor carefully handles the Iraq dossier, engineered the rapprochement with Syria and Armenia, mediated in the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2008, and brokered, together with Brasil, a deal on Iran's Nuclear programme. Based on this track record he has already been dubbed 'Turkey's Henry Kissinger'. It has led to a growing attention in both Turkish and international media not only for the man (more here, here, and here), but also for the recalibration of Turkish foreign policy (see the recent coverage in The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Globalist, Newsweek, and New York Times).

Although he rejects the designation 'neo-Ottomanist'* -- preferring to talk instead of 'Strategic Depth' (also the title of one of his books) -- Davutoğlu's activist regional policy reflects the elan underlying the AKP's broader political ethic, which betrays an unmistakable re-appreciation for Turkey's Ottoman legacy. This reorientation has actually been in the making since the early 1980s when the then Prime Minister Turgut Özal managed to coax the uncompromisingly secular military establishment towards the idea of a 'Turkish-Islamic Synthesis' or TIS for short (see also my post of 8 May 2010). Since then, some analysists have ventured that the TIS is now even embraced by right-wing nationalist parties such as the MHP to wrest power away from the AKP.

Although there has never been any formal acknowledgment from both sides, the AKP's reorientation away from the explicit Islamist agendas of predecessors such as the Welfare, Virtue, and Felicity Parties is inspired by the ideas of the somewhat enigmatic Fethullah Gülen, whose spiritual guidance has significantly impacted not only on leading figures in the AKP, but also on the outlook of much wider segments of Turkish society. The organization that bears his name, but to which -- again -- the man himself claims to have no official affiliation, has been tremendously successful in building up what can, for the lack of a better word, be called a very wide civil society network both inside Turkey and abroad, encompassing educational institutions (from nurseries to universities), a media conglomerate, charities, and platforms connecting academics and other intellectuals, diplomats, interfaith activists, business people, etc. The extent of the movement's influence is difficult to gauge, but speculations are that its compounded resources are in the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. For this the Gülen Movement can drawn on a large pool of donors and other benefactors who made their fortunes in the economic boom that began in the 1980s and led to the rise of the 'Anatolian Tigers' -- the outcome of business initiatives deployed by urban and small-town entrepreneurs from Turkey's main cities and the rural interior.

Now there are appear to be signs of a rift as Gülen, in a very rare interview with the Wall Street Journal, criticizes the organizers of the flotilla, saying that their failure:

to seek accord with Israel before attempting to deliver aid "is a sign of defying authority, and will not lead to fruitful matters."

Given the Turkish Prime Minister's very critical remarks in the direction of Jerusalem, reigniting the earlier tiff caused by his rebuff of Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Davos Economic Forum in 2009, Gülen's statements are interpreted as veiled criticism of the government's line towards Israel. Consequently:

Mr. Gülen's views and influence within Turkey are under growing scrutiny now, as factions within the country battle to remold a democracy that is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. The struggle, as many observers characterize it, pits the country's old-guard secularist and military establishment against Islamist-leaning government workers and ruling politicians who say they seek a more democratic and religiously tolerant Turkey. Mr. Gülen inspires a swath of the latter camp, though the extent of his reach remains hotly disputed.

His words of restraint come as many in Turkey gave flotilla members a hero's welcome after two days of detention in Israel. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the ruling Justice and Development Party condemned Israel's moves as "bullying" and a "historic mistake."

Mr. Gülen said he had only recently heard of IHH, the Istanbul-based Islamic charity active in more than 100 countries that was a lead flotilla organizer. "It is not easy to say if they are politicized or not," he said. He said that when a charity organization linked with his movement wanted to help Gazans, he insisted they get Israel's permission. He added that assigning blame in the matter is best left to the United Nations.

This intervention has led to renewed speculations over Gülen's influence and intentions, with the Wall Street Journal observing that 'Mr. Gülen has long cut a baffling figure, as critics and adherents have sparred over the nature of his influence in Turkey and the extent of his reach'. It notes that, on the one hand, he is recognized as a moderate figure propagating non-violence and advocating dialogue between the Muslim world and the West, while on the other hand his 'detractors see him as a cult-like leader whose empire aims to train an Islamic elite who will one day rebuild the Turkish state'. The New York Times followed suit with its own assessment of the movement's influence, citing studies by John Esposito and Hakan Yavuz.

Suspecting such sinister designs is an author writing under the pen name Spengler who, in a piece entitled Fethullah Gulen's cave of wonders', portrayed Gülen as 'a shaman, a relic of pre-history preserved in the cultural amber of eastern Anatolia'.

Such diverging opinions are indicative of the fascination commanded by figures like Fethullah Gülen. Articulating alternative Islamic discourses they differ from the exponents of existing traditionalist, reformist and modernist strands of Muslim thought, thus challenging the corresponding conventional and ingrained views of Islam held by outsiders, and -- perhaps most significantly -- undermining the stale authority structures prevailing in many parts of the Muslim world but called into question by increasingly assertive and sophisticated critical Muslims.

* For more on Neo-Ottomanism (pro & contra), click here, here, here, or here).

For a selection of books on Gülen and current Turkish foreign policy click on the images below.

Who can speak for or against Islam?

2010-06-05T12:50:00.003+01:00

The New Yorker of 6 June 2010 carries an article by Pankaj Mishra, an Indian essayist and novelist, in which he critically assesses the influence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Berman, and Tariq Ramadan -- three individuals featuring prominently in recent debates of the place of Islam in Western societies and the role of religion in Muslim societies.

Here are some excerpts:

Muslims today, Hirsi Ali believes, must be forced to choose between the darkness of Islam and the light of the modern secular West. In her new book, which bears the additional subtitle “A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations,” she takes an uncompromising line with her own relatives, who remain faithful to their benighted religion. [...]

If Hirsi Ali’s rhetoric has earned her critics among Western liberals, she has a fierce defender in Paul Berman, whose new polemic, “The Flight of the Intellectuals” (Melville House; $26), hails her as a “classic example of a persecuted dissident intellectual.” He upbraids such writers as the Anglo-Dutch journalist Ian Buruma and the British academic Timothy Garton Ash, who, he says, “sneered at Ayaan Hirsi Ali for having taken up the ideas of Western liberalism.” Berman also condemns Buruma and Garton Ash for “grovelling” to Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim professor at Oxford University, whose work seeks to integrate observant Muslims into secular Western societies, and whom Berman sees as an apologist for extremism. For Berman, the spectacle of writers attacking Hirsi Ali while embracing Ramadan points to a dangerous “ reactionary turn in the intellectual world” of Europe and America.

Ramadan, a prolific author who has preached a “European” Islam in the heart of secular France, has certainly attracted the attention of journalists and academics, along with those uncompromising secularists who use him as a foil [...] Sooner or later, just about every writer of non-Western background finds himself taken to be a representative of, or spokesperson for, his community, nation, race, or religion. Ramadan, who has solemnly, even pompously, embraced this role, seems no more than one of the many academics struggling to fulfill the West’s post-9/11 demand for “moderate” Islam.

Read the whole article here

Depicting the Prophet Once More: Reactions to 'South Park' & 'Draw Muhammad Day'

2010-05-21T11:29:00.007+01:00

It appears that those seeking gratuitous publicity cannot get enough from what they know fully well works like waving a red rag on a bull: depicting the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons. Once again the issue has generated widespread reactions on the internet and in the media.

The 'Draw Muhammad Day' initiative was triggered by the predictable threatening response of the radical Islamist website Revolution Muslim to the alleged representation of Muhammad in episode 200 of the hugely popular animated sitcom South Park. This was not intended as making a case for free speech. Rather, those hiding behind the initiative (so far they have not been willing to identity themselves) are fully aware their campaign will create a wildfire of reactions and easily snowball into a further antagonisation of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims -- and lest we forget, increasing tensions between Muslims of different persuasions.

A measured response was given by Hussein Rashid in a contribution to Religion Dispatches.

"Today is Draw Muhammad Day. Created in response to two idiots who reacted to a South Park episode, the event signifies that the right to do something should be seen as a license to do something. The South Park episode focused on the failure of censorship. Comedy Central, like the two buffoons from Revolution Muslim, missed the point and focused on the non-representation of Muhammad, causing the episode to be censored.

The response of the supporters of Draw Muhammad Day (DMD) is not to focus on the question of censorship, but on the depiction of Muhammad. In other words, they have chosen to support the two idiots of Revolution Muslim and talk about the depiction of Muhammad that did not actually appear in the episode. The result is that they have, as Shahed Amanullah points out in The Huffington Post, decided to actively insult the millions of Muslims who do not agree with Revolution Muslim and/or who actually understood the point of the South Park episode."

Taking on both sides, Hussein pointedly observes:

"Both RM and the folks behind DMD miss the depth of feeling many Muslims have for their religion and Prophet Muhammad. I think that Eboo Patel has it right in his article in Inside Higher Education; we need to do a better job about talking about religion on college campuses. I do not hold that any depiction of Muhammad is blasphemous, but to treat him as a political tool misses the point of what his life was about."

University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, who achieved both fame and notoriety (depending on where you stand on the political spectrum in regards to US policy towards the Muslim world) with is Informed Comment blog has also added his voice to the debate; widening the issue to other religious traditions by providing examples how other 'jerks' could find easy ways to hurt the sensitivities of Buddhist, Hindus, Christians and Jews, Cole rightly observed:

"The juvenile “draw Muhammad” day has generally been avoided by professional editorial cartoonists. One Islamophobic theme apparent in the writing on it is that Muslims are peculiar in their thin-skinned responses to such assaults on their religious sensibilities and that members of other religions never riot or protest. This assertion is not only bigoted but it is silly. So here are some other needlessly offensive cartoon-drawing days that could be adopted by the jerks bothering Muslims today, just to show that they are jerks toward other communities as well. All these subjects have produced vigorous protests or rioting and violence among members of other religious traditions. Me, I think when you know people have died in violence over some piece of thoughtlessness, it is the height of irresponsibility to repeat it for no good reason."

Another scholar, Professor Ebrahim Moosa of Duke University in North Carolina, made a more introspective observation on his facebook page:

"Start an Honor the Prophet Muhammad Facebook site. I am offended by blanket denouncements alleging Jews are behind this. Be a smart Muslim, not a dumb one. We have enough of the latter. Expose the offensive speech towards Muslims: strengthen your argument, don't raise your shrill voice. Religion, sex, color or sexualit...y does not foment bigotry, ignorance does. Don't we need a, Dumb Things Muslim Say page?"

The final word goes to Hussein Rashid, who referred to the invocation of a well-known saying about Muhammad by another commentator (human rights lawyer Arsalan Iftikhar) writing on the Muhammad cartoon issue: 'The Prophet forgave, he never angered, he did not meet kind with kind, but with kindness.'
Moreover, in the epigraph to his own website Islamicate, it says:

"islam doesn't speak, muslims do | "the ink of the scholar is worth more than the blood of the martyr" - Prophet Muhammad.

Death of an Averroist: Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (1936-2010)

2010-05-16T11:17:00.023+01:00

Only today I learned of the death of the Moroccan philosopher Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (a.k.a. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri). The fact that it went largely unreported in Western media is indicative of the lack of interest in intellectual developments in the contemporary Muslim world. A similar observation was posted on the blog of the Angry Arab News Service:

If you look at the Western press today, you would not know that the most important and renounced Arab contemporary thinker/ philosopher has died today. Muhammad `Abid Al-Jabiri is dead. This Moroccan thinker is by far the most discussed among Arab and Islamic intellectuals.

However, some websites did pay attention to al-Jabiri's passing away. One is the German blog Kritik der arabischen Vernunft, dedicated to al-Jabiri's philosophy, another one the -- also Germany-based -- website Qantara. Here are some excerpts from Sonja Hegasy's* obituary:

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri was without doubt one of the most significant social theorists of the Arab world. His dissertation on Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer of modern sociology, in 1970 brought him the first doctorate awarded by the University of Mohammed V in Rabat following Moroccan independence. It was the first of a total of over thirty works.

Al-Jabri was both a critical philosopher and a proponent of a left-wing programme of social policy. From 1959 onwards, he worked with the Moroccan opposition politician Mehdi Ben Barka in the Socialist Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP). And he remained committed to education, initially as a teacher, then as a school inspector, a writer of school books, a university teachers and mentor.

Drawing on the history of non-orthodox Muslim movements, such as the Kharijites, Ismailis, Shiites or Sufis, he called for an oppositional mode of thought. Al-Jabri saw himself in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, in that he called on his readers to insist on their right to define the world on the basis of their observations, and not on the basis of pre-defined, traditional or out-of-date authorities.

According to al-Jabri, two main elements in the history of political ideas continue to have an influence in the Arab world and are responsible for its continuing stagnation: imitation rather than critical thought has become the main form of awareness, and rulers are counselled but they are not controlled. To counter that influence, Al-Jabri wanted to strengthen the rational, intellectual tradition in Muslim thought and drew on the Andalusian commentator of Aristotle, Averroes or Ibn Rushd, as his authority.

Here I have to add a caveat. While in the West, Ibn Rushd's reputation is indeed largely due to his commentaries on Aristotle, which were instrumental to the further development of late-medieval Scholasticism and the onset of the Renaissance, in the Muslim world his influence was based on his attempts to reconcile rational thinking with revelation, succinctly expounded in his 'Definitive Statement' (Fasl al-maqal fima bayna al-hikmah wa-al-shariah min al-ittisal).

But aside from the academic philosopher, there was also the public intellectual al-Jabiri, as Hegasy continues:

Al-Jabri's attack on conventional authority is as explosive socially as the works of the Egyptian Farag Foda, who was killed by an Islamist group in 1992, or those of the Sudanese scholar Mahmud Mohammed Taha, who was hanged in 1985.

It is because of this audacity that, according to Hegasy:

The Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi once wrote that, to judge from the heated debates in which students are everywhere continuously engaging, al-Jabri was probably the philosopher who was most read by young people in the Arab world.

This interest goes beyond the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world. In Indonesia, for example, he has a large and attentive audience among young Muslim intellectuals associated with a strand of thought known as Postra, an acronym for 'Post-Traditionalists' (progressive thinkers who engage critically with the Islamic heritage without dismissing its significance). Witness this 'In Memoriam' on the website of the country's Muslim Students Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam, HMI).

In this detailed assessment al-Jabiri is said to belong to a category of intellectuals who is 'prone to be selective in invoking inspirations from both tradition and modernity in order to find a kind of authentic Arab modernity', which sets them apart from Salafi reformists and liberal thinkers:

The first and the second groups of Arab intellectuals do not reflect a creative engagement with tradition or modernity. Their project is merely reviving the tradition (turath) to be applied in the present or blindly adopting Western values and practices into Arabic contexts. The third group of intellectuals whose project is searching for an authentic modernity of Arab is more interesting because they are more creative and critical in dealing with both tradition and modernity.

Aside from al-Jabiri, the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi fits into this category. Dismissing the latter's ideological positions as ' as too encyclopedic, cerebral and theoretical', the author considers al-Jabiri's epistemological approach more promising 'not only in terms of understanding the turath [Arab-Islamic intellectual heritage] and the present Arab situation, but also in terms of searching for the future identity of Arab modernity'.

However, also al-Jabiri's positions are not immune to criticism. In his advocacy for an Andalusian resurgence (see also my post of 11 October 2008) and promotion of Averroist philosophy, he appears to side with Western scholars who singled out the tenth-century theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali as the main culprit responsible for killing off the philosophical tradition in Islam. The South-African born Islamicist Ebrahim Moosa (now teaching at Duke University in North Carolina) disagrees:

Many scholars from the Muslim world also buy into the anti-Ghazali anti-Ashari libel, as the cause of the death of reason in Islam. It is part of a trend in lazy scholarship, a ridiculous assumption that Mu'tazilite reason is compatible with modern modes of reasons, but it is all part of what I call a "scapegoat historiography." The latter is a kind of after the fact search for the causes of the decline of Muslim political fortunes in a post-empire world of the late 19th and early 20th century milieu. Among the scapegoats, is Ghazali and a claim that he opened the door for a retrograde sufism to inhabit Muslim intellectual streams; don't ask me how!. All this is largely unproved but makes for great reformist stump speeches. Among the folk who advance variants of these claims (I refuse to give it a respectability of a thesis!!) is Hasan Hanafi of Egypt, Hussein Atay of Turkey and in a more sophisticated way, the late Muhammad Abid al-Jabri of Morocco in his multiple writings. I tried to offer some push back to these claims in my Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination but it was certainly only in passing and clearly, not enough.

As a result of the relative lack of attention, only very few of al-Jabiri's books - who wrote almost exclusively in Arabic -- have been translated into European languages. In the secondary literature on contemporary Muslim thought there is also still a paucity of works. Aside from chapters in surveys and handbooks, and two studies in German, the only English-language project I have come across was conducted in The Netherlands, but without any reference to a resulting publication.

*Sonja Hegasy contributed the chapter 'Ex Okzidente Lux: Der arabische Aufklaerer Mohammed Abed al-Jabri' to Kritik der arabischen Vernunft.

Here are some further reading suggestions for works available in English:

Fantasy Epics and the Muslim World

2010-05-12T10:56:00.008+01:00

The Atlantic Monthly issue of 4 May 2010 contains an article on the comic The 99, a superheroes story inspired by Islamic history. Click on the image below to read:

The 99 appears to be part of a broader phenomenon also issuing from elsewhere in the Muslim World. In fact, Urdu culture lays claim to having launched the very genre of magical fantasy epics with the publication of Hoshruba, which allegedly can be traced back to two prose writers from late 19th-century Lucknow, one of northern India's main centres of traditional Islamic learning and literature.

This massive narrative is loosely based on The Adventures of Amir Hamza, a story cycle inspired by the biography of the Prophet Muhammad's uncle and very popular at the Court of Moghul Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605). An English translation, the first volume of which is published as Hoshruba: The Land and the Tilism, is the brainchild of Musharraf Ali Farooqi, and forms part of the Urdu Project, an initiative that seeks to introduce translations from Urdu to the North American market. Click here to read an excerpt from the translation.

Religion, Politics and Civil Society in Turkey: Transforming the public space

2010-05-08T17:11:00.040+01:00

For the better part of the twentieth century, Turkey was a country enforcing the strictest separation of religion and state in the Muslim world. From the 1920s until the mid-1980s, the state ideology of Kemalism -- named after the first president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal (a.k.a. Ataturk) -- ensured that any expressions of religiosity were not only out of bounds in politics, but actually kept out of the public sphere altogether. In particular the military positioned itself as the guardian of the constitutional limitations on any form of political Islam. However, in two decades or so, Turkey has developed into one of the most interesting 'places to watch' in regards to new ways in which Islam is allowed to feature in the public sphere. Now religion even has found a new place in Turkish political life.

Turgut Ozal

Ironically, it was in the wake of the 1980 coup d'etat that the military itself allowed the creation of what Hakan Yavuz calls a 'new opportunity space' by acknowledging the link between national and religious identity in the form of a 'Turkish-Islamic Synthesis' (TIS). This major shift in political thinking was actively advocated by Turgut Özal (1927-1993), who served as prime minister from 1983 until 1989 when he took over the presidency from General Kenan Evren, leader of the 1980 putsch and the most senior military official to condone the TIS. Although Özal was often hailed as the most influential political figure after Ataturk, it was only three years after his sudden death in 1993 that the so-called Refah or Welfare Party, an overtly Islamic political party, was able to take real political control, even though this was short-lived. Quickly banned following a 'velvet coup' by the armed forces in 1997, it resurfaced first as the Virtue Party (1998) and then, in 2001, as the Felicity Party. But it was not until a younger generation of politicians redrew the map of Turkish politics by establishing the Justice and Development Party ( AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi ) that an Islam-inspired party managed to make more enduring inroads into the country's political landscape.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Since 2002, Turkey has been governed by the AKP party, first under Prime Minister Abdullah Gül and then under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954), a former mayor of Istanbul and the real leader of the AKP (Gül first moved to the ministry of foreign affairs, before winning the presidential elections). In contrast to the Welfare, Virtue and Felicity Parties, the AKP does not promote an overtly Islamic agenda. Its ideological orientation has more parallels with Christian-Democratic parties in Western Europe than with its Islamist predecessors. Although Islam definitely provides AKP politicians with a moral compass, this is translated in decidedly pragmatic political programmes. Their prime focus is on economic policy, democratic reforms, active engagement in international diplomacy, mediation and conflict resolution. All these initiatives are geared towards securing EU-membership.

Aside from these drastic changes in political developments, perhaps an even more interesting development during the same time frame is the emergence of what can be called a Turkish 'civil Islam'. This is most prominently exemplified by the initatives deployed by the so-called Gülen Movement, led by Fethullah Gülen (b. 1941). This former mosque Imam gives direction to a somewhat amorphous and multifarious organisation involved in reshaping Turkish civil society through wide-ranging activities in the fields of education, media, charity and philantropy. His influence has been so pervasive that in a 2008 survey by Prospect Magazine, Gülen surfaced as the most influential global public intellectual. The movement does namely not limit its activities to only Turkey, but is also involved on the international scene, especially in Central Asia, Southeastern Europe, and Western countries with Turkish communities or substantial numbers of citizens of Turkish descent.

Fethullah Gulen with Pope John Paul II

One such international exponent is the UK-based Dialogue Society. Established in 1999, it recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary. During the first decade of its existence it has been highly successful in networking with the political establishment, supporting the foundation of a number of private schools, deploying initiatives towards community cohesion, and organising academic seminars, workshops, and round-table discussions in which politicians, civil servants, academics, social activists and journalists are brought togehter to discuss issues affecting pluralist societies such as those emerging in the UK, in particular in the London area.

The Dialogue Society also facilitates trips enabling participants in its various activities to gain first-hand experience of current developments in Turkey. During a recent visit to Istanbul, I was thus in a position to become acquainted with some of the projects initiated, supported or inspired by the Gülen Movement. Meetings and discussions were held with, for example, representatives of the charity organisation Kimse Yok Mu ('Is Anybody Out There?'), which had started out as a TV programme to raise funds for earthquake victims and quickly developed into a prominent disaster and poverty relief agency.

Media form a very important part in the network of Gülen Movement-associated organisations. These include the Samanyolu TV Station and Zaman Media group. Samanyolu operates a network of satellite stations in Kurdistan, Istanbul and the United States, where it broadcasts as Ebru TV.

The Zaman group publishes an English-language edition known as Today's Zaman. Numerous leading political commentators and academics, including Şahin Alpay,Kerim Balci and Ihsan Yilmaz write columns for this periodical.

On the intellectual front, the Journalists and Writers Foundation connects a plethora of forums and platforms engaged in such activities as interfaith dialogue, gender issues, and the facilitation of relations between Turkey, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. One of its most prominent initiatives is the Abant Platform, envisaged as an alternative to the annual Davos World Economic Forum.

Perhaps the most visible aspect of the Gülen Movement is its worldwide network of private schools, ranging from nurseries and primary education to academically rigorous and highly successful high schools and colleges, and even universities, such as Fatih University on the outskirts of Istanbul. The entire system is privately funded, not only relying on fees, but also on large-scale donations from an increasingly affluent and assertive middle class, with roots in the socially conservative provincial cities and towns of Anatolia and the Black Sea area.

Alparslan Acikgenc

Reflective of this connection with a professional middle class is the fact that these primary and secondary schools are very much geared towards the three 'R's (reading, writing, arithmetic). On the tertiary level too, the curricula focus on the natural sciences, engineering, medicine and law. Fatih University, though, offers also courses in history and languages. Religion is markedly absent from all programmes. The explanation given for this is that it is assumed that religious and moral values are instilled in the home environment. Interestingly, though, very recently Fatih University was actually requested by the education ministry to start developing a programme in divinity. Responsibility for this new venture rests with the vice-rector, Alparslan Acikgenc. A philosopher trained at the University of Chicago under the direction of Fazlur Rahman, he taught at Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara, where he supervised in ther late 1980s the PhD research of M. Amin Abdullah, rector of UIN Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta. Before being appointed to Fatih University in 1999, he spent eight years teaching in Malaysia.

Ihsan Yilmaz

(Photo above) Dr Ihsan Yilmaz during a frank discussion on the careful navigations required for operating a private university associated with the Gülen Movement in Turkey. (Photo below): Final reflection and discussions with political commentator Kerim Balci.

Kerim Balci (R) and Carool Kersten (L)

Recommended readings on recent developments in Turkey and on the Gülen Movement: