Has Sunni Islam as a 'Community of the Middle' died?

Herunder are some excerpts from an article that appeared in The Islamic Monthly. It is from the hand of Mohammad Fadel. An established scholar, currently associated with the University of Toronto, Fadel is also a prolific author and critical debater on things Islamic.

Mohammad Fadel

In the intriguingly entitled 'ISIS, Islamophobia, and the End of Sunnism', he criticizes both media-savvy Islam (or religion in general) bashers such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris, but also presents an introspection into the shortcomings of the Muslim intelligentsia

Saying that their description of Islamic doctrines is reductionist is not responsive to the legitimate concern that certainly some Muslims hold to the doctrines that Harris and Maher criticize, nor does it provide an answer to the question that many people genuinely wish to know, namely, what is the content of authoritative Islamic teaching regarding a familiar range of contentious issues that are held to be important by mainstream liberals?

In a lucid and boldly argued piece, Fadel not only takes 'new atheists' to task for the misconceived views of Islam, but puts the blame also on Muslim intellectuals. He criticizes the latter for failing to come up with convincing counter arguments as a result of their own uncritical rehashing of outdated texts and over-reliance on authority figures from the past.

The profound weakness, or even the non-existence, of a credible institutional expression of Islamic teachings in the modern world means there is no source from which an outsider (or even Muslims) can know what authoritative Islamic teaching is. In the absence of such an expression, one can hardly blame non-Muslims — who wish to “know” what Muslims believe — for turning to the same sources that Muslims themselves do, such as pre-modern treatises of Islamic law that continue to be taught in seminaries in the Muslim world and are also  used by Muslims in the West.

While appreciative of the argument that there is no such thing as 'Islam', and that it makes more sense to talk of 'Muslims', it is methodologically impossible to give exhaustive representative accounts that accurately reflect the full diversity of opinion among the believers:

Such an empirical investigation, at its extreme, would require surveying of millions of Muslim individuals all over the world before conclusions about Islam could be reached. Not only would such a study be practically impossible, we generally don’t demand such precision in empirical studies before we accept the results of social scientific studies

Pointing at the cheap shots taken by new atheists such as Sam Harris, Fadel observes:

It is a trivial exercise to pick up standard works of Islamic law and find ideas that are repugnant to the modern world. But, it is also a trivial exercise to pick up classics of Western philosophy and law and find the same thing. Even Thomas Jefferson the most egalitarian of America’s founders, expressed views on gender equality that would disqualify him today from entering public office, or might even get him dismissed from a public office were he to express them openly. 

It is not just a matter of 'tit-for-tat' in debating the likes of Harris and Maher, the  lack of critical engagement with the Islamic heritage on the part of Muslims themselves is preventing any real tangible change in the generally deplorable political condition of the Muslim world. For example, in relation to the contentious issue of the application of Islamic law, Fadel observes:

..if Sunni Muslims are too indifferent to their law that they fail to articulate a meaningful expression of its content in the modern world, then the best that Sunnis can plead in their own defense is that historical Islamic law is irrelevant to their beliefs and actions. But it is this very nihilism that produces the ethical and political vacuum that authoritarian political regimes, corrupt oligarchies and religious millenarians have filled and created the political circumstances justifying Islamophobia.

Why, after more than a century of theological and legal reform that has generally moved toward greater recognition of rights of women and non-Muslims, for example, has a brutally atavistic movement like ISIS found a home (even if one hopes it is only temporary) in the Nile-to-Oxus region, which was once called the heartland of the Islamic world by the great American historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson? In my opinion, this is not because a reified Islam is teaching Muslims to reject liberal values as such, but is a simple and predictable reflection of the fact that political orders prevailing in the Islamic heartland have no interest in promoting liberalizing political values. 

Cutting to the heart of the matter, according to Fadel's diagnosis, Sunni Islam has failed to live up to its claim as representing the umma-alwasat -- the 'community of the middle':

Sunnism was historically a centrist tradition that rejected the messianism of Shiʿism and the unforgiving puritanism of the Khawārij. Its centrism, however, was not born of a kind of ad hoc reasoning that called on Muslims simply to take middle positions between extremes. It was a centrism based on firm adherence to certain moral principles, including rejection of armed rebellion with a refusal to recognize as valid the illegal conduct of rulers; a readiness to overlook moral shortcomings of individuals constituting the community, whether rulers or ruled, combined with an insistence on holding each person accountable before the law for their conduct

The consequences are dire, because in his conclusion Mohammad Fadel minces no words:

In short, the political theology of Sunnism was centered on the sovereignty of law and respect for authority (not power as such). The historical tradition of Sunnism, however, assumed a certain kind of relationship between political leaders, religious leaders and the public that no longer exists and will not return. Until a new political theology is established that adapts the historical principles of Sunnism to the realities of a democratic age, we can continue to expect the persistence of groups like ISIS and the Islamophobic New Atheists. 

For the full article, click here

Positive Assertiveness: British Muslims write back

A number of British Muslim activists  as well as academics from Muslim backgrounds have developed a new initiative through the Runnymede Trust to resist growing Islamophobia in the United Kingdom. Positioning themselves as positive but assertive citizens, they underline the diversity of Britain's Muslim communities and the discrepancies between outsider and self-perceptions of British citizens and other residents originating from the Muslim world. Hereunder is a clip introducing :

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...

'The Rushdie Affair' twenty years on: Lessons learned?

Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of moderating a panel discussion on occasion of the launch of Professor Paul Weller's new book A Mirror for Our Times: The Rushdie Affair and the Future of Multiculturalism hosted by the Dialogue Society in North London, which deserves to be congratulated for its courage to organize a potentially controversial event.


The timing of the book's release was very appropriate since it was almost to the week twenty years ago that the 'The Rushdie Affair' burst into the limelight, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his now notorious fatwa in response to Salman Rushdie's then latest book The Satanic Verses,which Muslims worldwide thought extremely offensive.

The book is largely based on the author's Postgraduate Research completed in 1996, in which he looked in great detail at 'The Rushdie Affair'. With the advantage of another ten years of 'critical distance', Weller's focuses on the lessons to be learned from issues such as The Satanic Verses affair, as well as the Danish Cartoon controversy or the assassination of Theo van Gogh. In an eloquent presentation Weller first laid out a number of 'learning points' to be derived from such events and the reactions to it.

First and foremost that dead threats are not acceptable and that the fear resulting from it is 'insidious'. On the other hand, Muslim concerns over issues affecting their convictions, including robust opposition to it, is acceptable. The ability of Muslims to be able to express their views is a sine qua non for pluralism. Although no state is entirely free from constraints put on the freedom of expression, these lines are extremely difficult to draw and never final. Many of the counter reactions to the Muslim concerns coming from the 'secular' camp evince a deepseated ignorance of Islam and act as a stimulus for Islamophobia. Weller added the caveat that as a relatively new phenomenon arising out of European wars of religion it is secularity rather than religiosity which needs explaining. These European roots make the whole notion of secularity even more problematic because of the colonial and imperialist connotations attached to it. This is also one of the reasons why it is absolutely essential to retain a global perspective of the impact of controversies such as 'The Rushdie Affair'. One of the most important tasks for Muslims and others is to reflect on this engagement with secularity, because both religiosity and secularism can be set on their heads.

Weller continued to argue that from these ten learning points, we can extract six 'points of challenge':

1. Governments must learn from history that to combat terror with methods that undermine human rights will only strengthen those forces that use terror as a means of advancing their cause.
2. To ignore or deny the reasons that those who use terror to advance their cause give for their actions is unlikely to lead to a resolution of the problems caused by terror.
3. Terror in the name of religion is particularly dangerous both to the wider body politic and to religions themselves, because it harnesses ultimate convictions and commitments in its destructive service.
4. Attempts by the ‘powers that be’, artificially and externally to create a ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate’ Islam (or indeed any other religion), are likely to prove ineffective and may also backfire.
5. Muslims (and indeed people of other religions) have to accept a greater responsibility for combating the dissemination and propagation of ‘enemy images’ among the faithful.
6. For multiculturalism to continue to have a future, governments and societies must acknowledge and tackle Islamophobia, and indeed all other forms of discrimination and hatred on the grounds of religion or belief.

Weller's exposition on the book's intentions and objectives formed the starting point for a discussion involving the two respondents on the panel: Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a Reader in Politics from the University of Westminister's Department of Politics and International Affairs and coordinator of its Programme on Democracy and Islam, and Dr. Sara Silvestri, an academic working on Islam in Europe at the School of Social Sciences at City University London.


Both discussants who had not only listened to Professor Weller's presentation but also had had an opportunity to review the book were by and large in agreement with the author. Dr. El-Affendy expressed some reservations regarding the issue of secularism, adding that religiously-motivated terror is too easy a qualification. Instead he prefers to speak of 'identity-motivated' terror which is never 100% religious. He very much agreed with Professor Weller's insistence on the importance of nuance, in particular in regards to the fact that 'words matter' -- one of the reasons why Weller insists on speaking of 'terror' not 'terrorism'. On the same grounds Weller refuses to dismiss 'colonialism' and 'imperialism' as mere slogans, and underscores the importance of distinguishing between 'secularity' and 'secularism'. He also agreed with El-Affendy that it is important to explore the religion-identity dialectic in detail.

Sara Silversti began by qualifying Weller's latest publication as an expert and proper scholarly account, but that should not deter the general reader because A Mirror for Our Times is at the same time a very readable book. In her further response also Dr. Silvestri recognized 'secularism' and 'religion' as the buzzwords hovering over 'The Rushdie Affair' as the case at hand. In addition she made it a point to explicitly reject the use of the word Islamophobia, because it has resulted in creating a space in which Muslims only reinforce the negative image. Another valid observation was that the attention paid to controversies involving Islam or Muslims has a detrimental effect on other minorities who face challenges in Westerns societies, and who are frequently getting upset about the 'special' attention which Muslim issues seem to receive. Moreover, she also thought it important to note that, like words, also specificity 'matters': those committing acts of terror tend to 'hijack' issues for political purposes which are actual 'societal' issues that need urgent attention.

Two other points arising from the further exchange of views were that in spite of the book's focus on the British situation, and by extension part of the European situation as well, it is imperative not too lose sight of the fact that almost all of the complex issues involving Muslim communities in Britain or Europe have a global aspect as well. Dr. El-Affendy was adamant that the foreign policy dimension can neither be denied nor ignored. Finally it was hearthening for your humble servant and panel chair to note that all panelists agreed that one of the main challenges in discussions centering on issues involving the contemporary Muslim world is to avoid pigeonholing: such as the tendency to search for 'moderate' or 'liberal' Islam as a counterweight for the equally illusive 'Islamic radicalism'.

Suggestions for further reading: