Muslim Cosmopolitanism or Heresy? Lessons for the Aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring

On 6 February, I gave a talk at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE), in which I discussed how three contemporary Muslim intellectuals from Algeria, Egypt and Indonesia have given new relevance to religion in the post-secular and post-Islamist Muslim world of the early 21st century.
 Their ideas appear to provide an alternative to both the hard secularism represented by either authoritarian or more benign regimes and the advocacy of an Islamic state. It appears that this third way resonates with the ambitions and expectations of those involved in the Arab uprisings of 2011.

This talk is based on my book Cosmopolitans and Heretics which has been nominated for the AAR Prize in the category for Best First Book in the History of Religions and the Asia Society's Bernard Schwartz Book Award. 

Click here to listen to a podcast of this presentation

Reviving the 'Islamization of Knowledge' Project?

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

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?

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

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.