RELIGION, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Whereas the Qantara website used the anniversary of 9/11 as an opportunity to assess the progress in  democratizing the Muslim world, in the very same week a YouTube clip of an obscure, badly edited and poorly acted alleged parody of the Prophet Muhammad led to virulent reactions in a number of countries in North Africa and the Middle East against perceived anti-Islamist conspiracies orchestrated by the West.

The essay The End of the "Anti-Thesis" argues that 'After a decade, 9/11 is over. Its main legacy – the idea that Islam is fundamentally opposed to Western democratic values – has finally lost its power of persuasion. What is making this antithesis untenable is the Arab Spring, which is revealing rather different sides to both Muslims and what the West has stood for in the past'. It surveys the rise of Islamophobia fed by rightist politicians in Europe and debates among academics on promoting national culture and the extent to which foreign contributions must be recognized:

And so the message of 9/11 has permeated political and intellectual discourse, parties and voters as well as scholars and opinion makers. Strikingly, its most vocal proponents have been anti-Islamists as well as Muslim extremists. If there is anything that al-Qaeda and Geert Wilders actually agree on, it is that there is a deep-seated Clash of Civilisations – that Islam and the West are indeed fundamentally opposed. And between them we have all been captured by that theme.

While this may have been an accurate statement of accounts for a number of years, now it must be balanced against the seismic shifts in the political landscape of the Arab world over the past two years:

Quite unexpectedly, the claim of the fundamental antithesis is ceasing to sound so self-evident. All of a sudden, the drum of Islam versus Western values has begun to lose its beat. It looks as if 9/11, after all, was not the start of a whole new era, but merely the beginning of one decade – a decade that is now coming to an end.

What made this transformation happen is not the death of Osama Bin Laden – his leadership had withered long before he was shot. Nor was it caused by Barack Obama – his speeches have promised outreach and reconciliation, but his foreign policy yet has to deliver. What has really undermined the 9/11 antithesis are the popular uprisings of the current Arab Spring. It is these revolutions that have shown that the dichotomy of Islam and Western values does not actually hold.

Unfortunately events in the second week of September 2012 appear to set things back again. It is not inconceivable that governments in North American and European capitals will get second thoughts after having taken leave of autocrats they had propped up for decades and the -- by and large reactive, not pro-active --enthusiasm with which they greeted 'people's power' in the Middle East. This is also corroborated by Bassam Haddad's much darker assessment for Jadaliyyah

Although it is still a matter of debate who exactly is behind the amateurish 'The Innocence of Muslims', in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, rumors that the clip was the work of Israeli and American film-makers led to large-scale protests, attempts to storm the embassies of the USA and European countries, and eventually  the tragic death of several American diplomats, including the ambassador to Libya. From a detached and dispassionate point of view it is puzzling how such a badly edited and poorly acted little film can result in such violent responses. At face value it only appears to show how very sensitive Muslims have been become to any media coverage or depictions that are perceived as anti-Islamic. But is that really all there is to it?

'Innocence of Muslims' screenshot

The fact that in various Arab countries 'Innocence of Muslims' was immediately associated with America is certainly a worrying indication of strong anti-Western sentiments simmering just below the surface among large parts of the population, which are ready to explode at any moment. Evidently, it takes only the slightest provocation to ignite these negative feelings, leading to developments that quickly spiral out of control.

However, the fact that the most heated responses came from three Arab countries which have recently experienced violent regime changes seems to me more relevant than the fact that they are also Muslim countries. Yes, there have also been protests as far away as Southeast Asia, but Indonesian Muslim leaders, for example, have stated that the film does not deserve any attention. Therefore, it appears more likely that accusations of anti-Islamic conspiracies must be understood as a catalyst for political frustrations among the population with the way things have been going since the disappearance of the dictators. In that case religion can NOT be considered the root cause of the current frenzy affecting the mobs in Cairo, Benghazi and Sanaa. Unfortunately, it is often very difficult for political actors in the Muslim world to keep these things apart and for outside observers to interpret developments correctly.

The Religion Dispatches Website has made an effort to establish the identity of the maker of this film, while Bruce Lawrence, a respected historian of religion specializing in Islam, wrote a first measured commentary under the title 'YouTube Terrorism', assessing the effects the information era is having on political and religious debates. Different angles are provided by Omid Safi, in what one commentator described as a  twelve-point 'manifesto for sanity', and by Juan Cole in his widely read blog Informed Comment.

Tom Holland

With heated mass protests raging across the Muslim world, a domestic controversy in the United Kingdom on another instance of perceived anti-Islamic media coverage quickly disappeared from the headlines. As embassies and consulates were torched and diplomats met with a violent death in Egypt and Libya, Britain's Channel 4 pulled the repeat airing of a documentary on early Islamic history after writer and presenter Tom Holland had received threats. 

Although some media erroneously reported the programme's title as 'Islam: The Untold Truth', what Islam: The Untold Story tried to do was to present a thesis developed in the 1970s by a number of historians, at the time based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), but since then transferred to Princeton. Their point of departure that since there is no indigenous written records dating back to the first centuries of the Islamic era, therefore Islam itself did not yet exist, has been challenged as selective and one-sided. After all, the fact that documentary evidence in Arabic has not survived does not mean it never existed. Moreover, circumstantial evidence can also be pieced together from archaeological remains or materials from the surrounding areas such as the Byzantine Empire and Persia. In any case, from the perspective of professional historians and other academics working on Middle Eastern history it remains an interesting hypothesis to put to the test, but the documentary was not very successful in bringing that particular point across; that it was a scholarly exercise by a number of academics which has met with increasing criticism and rejection by their peers.

Unfortunately, the result was once again what the newspaper The Independent called 'another unholy row about Islam'. Fortunately, a number of Muslim commentators also offered critical introspections and suggestions for more constructive responses when such issues arise: 

"It's not anger," says Mohammed Ansar, a Muslim commentator who has been a prominent online critic of Mr Holland's documentary. "Anger is what we're seeing in the Middle East. What we've seen in the UK has been much more measured."

Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, agrees. "I have no time for those who say Channel 4 shouldn't broadcast such a programme," he says. "Every broadcaster and historian has the right to examine the historical origins of any faith. But our objections were more about the quality of the documentary itself and the arguments Tom made."

Tehmina Kazi, from British Muslims for Secular Democracy, is critical of Islam: The Untold Story but says many Muslim groups are too quick to move into an overtly hostile position whenever anything controversial airs about their faith. [...] "The default response was complain, complain, complain."She believes Islamic faith groups need to get better at responding with reasoned debate – something she felt many have done successfully over the Channel 4 documentary. "Respond, don't react," she says.

Evidently, it is possible for these debates to take place in a civilized atmosphere and on a level where sensitivities can be articulated in such a way that both sides are educated about the others' viewpoints. In spite of this week's atrocities in Benghazi, perhaps we have reached the end of the Anti-Thesis...

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

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.

A Cosmopolitan Canopy against Dangerous Dichotomies

The above title refers to two concepts developed by Dr Bruce Lawrence, the Nancy & Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor at Duke University and director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), in his keynote address to the 2009 Biannual International Forum on Asia-Middle East Studies hosted by the US Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis on 16 and 17 October. Revolving around the theme Transcending Borders: Asia, the Middle East and the Global Community, this year's conference was jointly organised by the academy's Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Library of Congress Asia Division Friends Society (LCADFS), and Shanghai
International Studies University (SHISU).

In his talk about 'Minority Citizenship: Lessons from Africa and Asia', Lawrence drew on his recent research in the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia, focussing in particular on his experiences in Indonesia and the Philippines.

His views on the issue of religious and ethnic pluralism are informed by his objection to the 'dangerous dichotomies', which posit 'fundamentalism' or 'Islamism' over and against forms of 'liberal Islam', and his agreement with the argument put forward by the Sudanese-born but US-based legal scholar and human rights theorist Abdullahi al-Na'im that -- also in Islam -- state and religion are separate, for the simple reason that states in their role as key actors in the current world order define what 'Islam' is. On these grounds, say al-Na'im and Lawrence, the conflation of Islam and politics becomes untenable. This in turn has major consequences for the interpretation of minority positions within varuying systems of political order.

Inspired by Peter Berger's The Sacred Canopyand the frequent references in recent social theory to the notion of cosmopolitanism, Lawrence suggests redefining the relationship between Islam and politics within the context of a 'Cosmopolitan Canopy' in which he seeks to accomodate three dyadic contrasts: the nature of the state (secular, not religious, as defined by Rawls), the function of what Habermas has called the 'public square' (agonistic rather than antagonistic), and the scale and scope of citizenship.

On a generic level this is currently developed at Princeton by the Oxford trained political scientis Andrew March as well as the earlier mentioned Abdullahi al-Na'im, who aside from his legal expertise is also a student of the Sudanese activist and Sufi leader Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (see the post of 11 September 2008).

In assessing the role of the extent to which religious beliefs inform experiences of citizenship and belonging, Lawrence proposes a further distinction between a vertical scale of belief/unbelief and a horizontal dimension expressing levels of citizenship. Finally the explanatory model must account for the divides between collective identity and individual voice, expressed in answers to five questions: (1) where am I? Who am I? Who claims me? (family, ethnic group, nation) What do I believe/practice/accept? (religion, language, race) Who represents me? (state, official custodians, or less formalized new voices).

Because of the complexities surrounding the unsuing tensions between collectivity and indnviduality, Lawrence believes that only ethnographies with their 'thick descriptions' can adequately capture the nuances of individual voices. It also provides opportunity for minorities to demonstrate how they see themselves. As a case in point he quoted the Indonesian writer Pramudya Ananda Toer, who once said that 'Indonesia' is not a designation chosen by the inhabitants of that Southeast Asian island republic -- who often use the word Nusantara instead.

In a further discussion of his findings in the Philippines and Indonesia, Lawrence stressed the importance of conceiving of these two nation-states as part of a continuum, a geocultural formation consisting of islands not separated but connected by water. This alternative understanding of insular Southeast Asia makes it easier to appreciate this maritime world as essentially an 'open society'. Such a less strictly circumscribed 'Phil-Indo Archipelago' can also accommodate the pre-Islamic aspects of the region's history. This kind of revisionist historiography can be found in Shinzo Hayase's Mindanao Ethnohistory Beyond Nations and the writings of former Swarthmore College President Theodore Friend.

Based on his own investigations, Lawrence concluded that the public sphere in this Phil-Indo Archipelago is characterized by a top-down, region-directed, centrist approach in which nation-state policies continue to privilege the metropole and its elites at the expense of minority groups often located at the geographical peripheries. In regards to Indonesia he added that the Indonesian 'sense of self' is still far removed from an 'Arab-Islamic' identity -- meaning that the sustained, intensive and enduring connections of Indonesia's Muslims to the centers of Islamic learning in the Middle East are maintained through processes of subtle negotiation.

Bruce Lawrence is the author of the following books: