Recapturing Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Youssef Rakha on Contemporary Muslim Identity in a Post-Enlightenment World

The 2011 regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are not only transforming the political stage, but also impacting on the cultural scene, articulated  through what Hamid Dabashi calls the ‘indexical utterances’ of a new ‘language of revolt’.  Street art and poetry may first come to mind as media for these alternative expressions of creativity, because novels need a degree of critical distance to evolve and mature. And yet, an upcoming generation of younger writers is using the new opportunity space that has opened up in the wake of the Arab Spring to also take the novel into unexplored directions.

Youssef Rakha

One such author is the Egyptian Youssef Rakha, who admits that he was actually overtaken by events when the publication of Kitab al-Tugra: Gharaib al-Tarikh fi Madinat al-Marikh (Book of the Sultan’s Seal: Strange Incidents from History in the City of Mars)[1] coincided with the ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Although years in the making, this novel prefigures some of the concerns that led to the uprisings in the first place, as Rakha explains in an essay entitled ‘Islam and the Caliphate’:

Towards the end of 2009, I completed my first novel, whose theme is contemporary Muslim identity in Egypt and, by fantastical extension, the vision of a possible khilafa or caliphate. I was searching for both an alternative to nationhood and a positive perspective on religious identity as a form of civilisation compatible with the post-Enlightenment world. […]. I was searching for Islam as a post-, not pre-nationalist political identity[…] Such modernism seemed utterly unlike the racist, missionary madness of European empire. It was, alas, too little too late.

Perhaps Youssef Rakha is a bit too harsh on himself, because the paradoxical juxtapositions he makes seem to reflect the turbulent social and political changes, indicative of the concomitant polarization in Arab societies:

the Arabic edition of The Sultan's Seal

I placed the Wahhabis, against whom the Pasha had fought on behalf of the Sublime Porte, in the same camp as Mustafa Kemal, whose military nationalism my protagonist saw as the other side of the Islamists’ totalitarian coin. Kemal—and Egypt’s own Gamal Abdel Nasser with him—were more like jihadis, Al Qaeda, Salafis and, yes, Muslim Brothers than the sultans.

The aggressively secular orientation of Kemalism had after all broken with even the highest peaks of Muslim heritage; and it was such severance and complete identification with Europe that eventually gave rise to Islamism. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in response to Kemal abolishing the caliphate altogether in 1924 (following which several attempts to reinstate it across the Muslim world all failed).

To my protagonist, both Kemal’s and the Islamists’ collective self-definitions were forms of glorified provincialism. […]

[…] how inward-looking and small-minded is the fellahin-oriented legacy of both Nasser and his successor, Anwar Sadat. Neither father of the nation truly introduced the judicial and institutional rigour modern Egypt had always lacked; neither adequately replaced the far less pretentious patriarchy founded by Muhammed Ali, or lived up to the standards he set for economic development.

The reference to Muhammad Ali -- the Albanian officer who took control of Egypt on behalf of the Ottoman empire after the British had evicted Napoleon, but in effect becoming an autonomous ruler to whom then fell the task of ousting the Wahhabis from Islam’s Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina – reminded me of a conversation I had with a London-based Egyptian corporate lawyer. When asking him whether it was al-Sisi’s ambition to become a second Nasser, he opined that it was more probable the field marshall wants to emulate this Ottoman viceroy.

The alternative Rakha seeks to recapture is reminiscent of what Abdelwahab Meddeb set out to do in his novel Talismano. The latter’s hallucinatory journey through Tunis and other Mediterranean cities is not dissimilar to the itinerary of the protagonist in The Sultan’s Seal, both of which tap into the rihla genre which offers an appropriate trope for celebrating a past that was much more sophisticated and cosmopolitanism than the coarse essentialism of nationalist, Pan-Arabist and Islamist ideologies.

For the full essay, click here.

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[1]An English translation will appear in the Fall of 2014 under the title The Sultan’s Seal – not to be confused with a Jenny White’s book published under the same title as part of her Kamil Pasha detective series.

Exploratory Workshop on The Islamic Caliphate in the Contemporary Muslim World

Three scholars from King's College London have been awarded a grant by the European Science Foundation for an exploratory workshop entitled Demystifying the Islamic Caliphate: Advocates, Opponents and Implications for Europe. This conference will be hosted by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, bringing together scholars from various European countries to discuss the contemporary relevance of the historical caliphate as well as new interpretations across the Muslim world.

In their proposal, workshop conveners Madawi al-Rasheed, Carool Kersten and Marat Shterin noted that from London to Moscow, Sarajevo to Jakarta, Istanbul, and Baghdad, the concept of the Islamic Caliphate is theorised by religious scholars, invigorated by political activists, and condemned by some Muslim and non-Muslim politicians. While few Muslims insist on its centrality to Islam, many Muslims have not only rejected it but also contributed to its historical downfall. With globalization and the re-imagining of the Muslim umma as a multi-ethnic diverse community, the ‘Caliphate’ is today a contested concept among many actors in the Muslim world, Europe and beyond. As the Muslim world has known the rise and fall of several caliphates until the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the reinvention of the Caliphate in the twenty first century may appear puzzling. However by exploring the idea of the Caliphate, its contemporary genealogy as a ‘modern’ Islamic political-religious concept, the debates between advocates and opponents, the modern contexts in which Muslims imagine it, and the virtual forums in which it is invoked justifies an engagement with the phenomenon that moves beyond historical perspectives.

Muslims, both in the ex-European territories of the Ottoman Empire and in the Muslim world at large, have had to rethink Islamic governance in the contemporary world. The majority sought the model of the nation-state and aspired towards independent and sovereign entities that more or less corresponded to newly drawn territorial boundaries. Some Muslim scholars, for example Egyptian Azharite Ali Abd al-Raziq wrote a religious treatise that de-emphasized the centrality of the Islamic Caliphate and justified the shift towards national states, by definition smaller entities configured on the basis of a homogenous national culture rather than faith. Other Islamic scholars and activists, however, lamented the fall of the Islamic Caliphate and wrote counter treatise calling for its revival. One such obvious advocate was Taqi al-Din al-Nabahani, a Palestinian activist who founded Hizb al-Tahrir. In India, the Khilafat movement developed in the shadow of the British Empire and became active in the 1920s. Similar movements emerged in South East Asia, among Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Even though none of these movements gathered momentum or achieved their objectives throughout the twentieth century, in the new historical conditions prevaling today calls for the return of the Caliphate are revived among some sections of the Muslim population. It is this revival that constitutes the main focus of this workshop which will try to address issues that can contribute to a clarification and explanation of the contemporary revival of Muslim thought about the Caliphate.

By opting for an interdisciplinary project that brings social scientists and humanities experts together to discuss the revival of the concept of the Caliphate among diverse Muslim groups, the conference organisers anticipate to show the interconnections between text and context among increasingly literate and connected Muslims from Indonesia to London. Special attention will be drawn to how old theorisations of Islamic governance are redefined and reformulated by contemporary Muslims and for what purposes.

Through case studies drawn from different parts of the Muslim world and the European context, this exploratory workshop will first of all highlight the interconnection and continuity of Islamic discourses. At the same time it will take care to situate the object of study in the transnational realm rather than the confined locality of individual countries. Secondly, it will emphasise that increased mobility in the age of globalisation and migration enables Muslims and the ideas they hold to travel beyond traditional boundaries of nation and state. Third, it will underscore the role of highly mobile non-state actors in the Muslim world and the diaspora in defining the public sphere and setting agendas that may or may not correspond to the agenda of all Muslims. A focus on both material and intellectual conditions in diaspora situations and the access to both old and new media that are perhaps still more available to Muslims in Europe and North America than those in the Muslim world will yield a better understanding of the revival of the concept of the Caliphate among young Muslims in the West. It is no longer possible to examine political mobilisation among Muslims without taking into account these important developments that contribute to increased connections, mutations in thought and activism, and the movement of ideas and people.

Scheduled to take place at King's College London in November 2010, the conveners intend to release an edited volume of the various contributions by keynote speakers and panelists.