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...

ANOUAR ABDEL-MALEK (1924-2012): FIRST CRITIC OF ORIENTALISM

Although technically he does not qualify as a 'critical Muslim', because he was a Marxist thinker of Coptic descent, the sociologist and philosopher Anouar Abdel-Malek deserves to be mentioned in these annals, if only for the fact that he beat a fellow Arab Christian in criticizing the Western discourse on Islam and the Muslim world by a full fifteen years. This week, the doyen of social scientific analysis of Arab societies passed away in a Parisian hospital. The French capital had been his home since the 1950s.

Anouar Abdel Malek

As early as 1963, Abdel-Malek wrote an essay entitled 'L'Orientalisme en Crise', in which he critically examined Western approaches to the study of non-Western societies, and the Muslim World in particular. Written in French it never received the same exposure as Edward Saids' more extensive and illustrative Orientalism, but Abdel-Malek's examination has  impacted on Said's own investigations into this field.

In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Abdel-Malek became one of the foremost commentators and critics of social and socio-political developments in the Arab world, including his native Egypt. One of his most famous books is a study on the role of the military in Egypt (Egypt: Military Society). Against the background of the aftermath of last year's Arab Spring, the subject has not lost any of its currency and relevance.

As indicated by his study of Orientalism, Abdel-Malek's interests were much wider; encompassing the Third World-at-large. In that sense his work formed part of the now obsolete discourse of Tiers-Mondisme, somewhat awkwardly translated as 'Third-Worldism'. This strand of thinking emerged from the 'Spirit of Bandung', set free at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung. Tiers-Mondisme found its political translation in the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, which -- aside from the conference host, Indonesian President Sukarno -- also included among its founders, Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, and China's Zhou En Lai.

Syed Hussein Alatas

In the early eighties, Abdel-Malek worked together with Syed Hussein Alatas (1928-2007), an Indonesian-born scholar of Hadhrami (southern Yemeni) descent who later worked at universities in Singapore and Malaysia (he is the brother of Syed Naguib al-Attas, the scholar of Islam who established the Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, ISTAC, see also post of 21 January 2012). Trained in Amsterdam as a sociologist of religion, Alatas' interests were more in the domain of intellectual history. During his student years he edited and published a periodical called Progressive Islam. Later he made name with The Myth of the Lazy Native,  a study of Javanese, Malay and Philipino intellectual traditions, and a book on the role of intellectuals in developing societies.

What united Abdel-Malek and Alatas was a critical attitude towards the overeasy dismissal of non-Western ways of thinking as intellectually less rigorous than the European tradition of reason which began its global spread from the Enlightenment Era onwards. The fruits of the collaboration led to the introduction of a notion of 'endogenous intellectual creativity' (For a comparative study of Abdel-Malek and Alatas, see Mona Abaza's Debates on Islam and Knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt).

Hamza Qinawi

Although, with the advancement of years, he became less prominent, Abdel-Malek never let go of his interest in other non-Western civilizations, as became clear as recent as 2006, when he talked about his enduring interest in China as an emerging (or, more accurately, re-emerging) power, when he was interviewed for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. More recently, there was a bit of furor over a book, entitled The Intellectuals (المثقفون) written by Abdel-Malek's former assistant, Hamza Qinawi. It was said that the book was unduly critical of Abdel-Malek's thought and that, again allegedly, it had greatly upset the nestor of Egyptian sociology. Qinawi has denied this in a piece in Al-Ahram in 2009. To dispell any lingering impressions of hard feelings between the two, Qinawi contributed this obituary.

 

WAGNER IN ARABIA: IS THE ARAB SPRING DOOMED?

Tunisian philosopher Mohamed Turki

The uncomparable German Qantara website covering the World of Islam again provides an interesting take on the dramatic changes that have been taking place in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world over the last year or so, by showcasing the views of thinkers and intellectuals who are often receiving far too little attention in the Western media. In an interview Tunisian philosopher Mohamed Turki offers his insight into the Arab Spring that began in his country with the 'Jasmin Revolution', only to turn into a hot and bloody Summer.

Turki sees a real danger that developments are only foreshadowing a Götterdämmerung or Wagnerian 'twilight of the gods'  as campaigns for democratization, respect for universal human rights standards, and more transparency of murky politics are brutally crushed.

In response to suggestions that what Palestinian-Lebanese historian Hisham Sharabi (1927-2005) has called 'neo-patriarchy' or French-Algerian scholar of Islam Mohamed Arkoun (1928-2010) referred to as 'dogmatically closed systems' remain resilient and resistant to change, Turki noted: 

The neo-patriarchal system – which may look modern from the outside, but is in fact patriarchal – holds fast to certain consolidated structures of rule and resists any change in the balance of political power. This is why these neo-patriarchal structures – which may seem modern, but are in fact nothing more than modernistic – remain a sham. It takes more than this to be modern. Being modern is a project that has many facets and necessitates many changes too. It begins with the rule of law, includes human rights and goes right up to economic, political and social structures, which should all be open. This is not the case with either neo-patriarchates or patriarchates.

Real progress can only be made by transforming the economic, social, and political spheres. Without that the status quo will persist and the political system will continue to remain immune to structural changes. There are also inter-cultural and intellectual dimensions to this process:

The most important thing is that we work together and not against each other. Interculturally and transculturally: these are the elements that bring us forward, not Manichaeism, thinking in terms of black and white or thinking in terms of opposites. Ultimately, the West is a product of historical developments, just as the Arab-Islamic cultural heritage is.

As a philosopher interested in existentialism, Turki has published a book on such interfaces between humanism and inter-cultural dialogue:

In a further elaboration of how to avoid or leave behind the age-old assumed dichotomy between East and West, notwitstanding his own reference to Kant's theory of 'man's emergence of self-incurred immaturity', Turki stresses the need for collapsing such binaries: 

I consider it necessary that we speak here of a process that carries humanity, that brings us forward in the spirit of a society where everyone is equal, is recognised, can voice their demands and can in turn be criticised so that the project can be improved. This project must not be Western or Eastern. It must be universal. And that, basically, is the most important aspect of enlightenment, which, incidentally, did not start in the eighteenth century, but in the Arab-Islamic world avant la lettre, as the saying goes, in other words in the eleventh century with Avicenna and in particular Averroes.

To read the whole interview, click here.
 

IRSHAD MANJI IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE STORY CONTINUES...

After various incidents in Indonesia,  Allah, Liberty and Love,the latest book by the Canadian writer Irshad Manji continues to stir up controversy in Southeast Asia. The launch of a Malay translation under the title Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur also drew the attention of Muslim critics who allege it contains positions that are contraductory to the teachings of Islam.

Irshad Manji at the launch of the Malay translation of her latest book

Abu Seman Yusop

Malaysian newspaper The Star reported that the country's home ministry has decided to ban the book 'under Section 7 (Subsection 1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984'. According to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop, because:

  [....] the contents have elements that can confuse the public and contain words that insult Islam.

the Ministry was acting on the advice of The Islamic Development Department (Jakim) which has examined the book. Its Director-General Datuk Othman Mustapha said:

We will be getting copies of the book soon. Once we have gone through and find reasons why it should be banned, we will propose this to the ministry [...]. The decision to ban the book is the prerogative of the Home Ministry. We (Jakim) can only advise them as our analysis found that the book is dangerous for the Muslims

 As a result of this decision, various media outlets also carried news that copies of the book had been confiscated by the authorities: 'Enforcement officers from the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) have confiscated seven copies of the book. Chief senior assistant director of Jawi’s enforcement division, Wan Jaafar Wan Ahmad, said the raid at a bookshop in a well-known shopping complex here was conducted at 8.45pm yesterday':

We have received information that 500 copies of the translated edition of the book have been printed and are available nationwide. We are still tracking them [...]

 In a response to these decisions and actions, publisher ZI Publications questioned their legality. Said owner and director Ezra Zaid (follow on twitter):

 We published this book in the spirit of free inquiry – incidentally, something which Islam itself cherishes – and acting strictly in accordance with our right to free speech and expression as guaranteed by Article 10 (1)(a) of the Federal Constitution.'. While such constitutional rights can be 'regulated', Ezra contended that the Act cited by the authorities is unconstitutional as the Constitution does not permit them to restrict free speech and expression.

Watch this space for further developments.
 

AFTER IRSHAD MANJI: FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN INDONESIA

Irshad Manji

The controversies surrounding the visit to Indonesia by the Uganda-born Canadian journalist and activist Irshad Manji has thrown into sharp relief the growing antagonism between Islamists and proponents of liberal and progressive reinterpretations of the Islamic heritage in the world's largest Muslim nation-state. Manji was in Indonesia to promote the Indonesian version of her latest book Allah, Liberty and Love.

On two occasions, Manji's appearances were disrupted. On Friday, 4 May, Manji's talk at the Salihara Cultural Centre in Jakarta was stopped by the police, acting at the behest of the Islamic Defence Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI).This led immediately to critical reactions. Yenny Wahid, the daughter of the late President Abdurrahman Wahid, deplored the police intervention. Other commentators expressed their concern over the excessive influence the FPI appears to be able to exercise. The question were raised whether the FPI was not merely beyond the law, but even able to intimidate the police. One MP, Eva Kusuma Sundari, stated that the police is simply 'powerless' against the FPI. A member of the national parliament's human rights committee, Sundari is not stranger to controversy herself -- earlier this year she was persecuted by Islamists for speaking out in favour of the constitutional rights of Christians in the name of religious pluralism.

Irshad Manji is taken away from Jakarta's Salihara Centre

Meanwhile, a formal complaint against the way the police handled the whole affair was lodged by the organizers of the event at Salihara, a cultural foundation established by the leading public intellectual Goenawan Mohamad, the founding editor of the respected weekly current affairs magazine Tempo.

MMI activists destroying Irshad Manji's book

Then on Wednesday, 9 May, members of the Indonesian Mujahedin Council (Majelis Mujahedin Indonesia, MMI) attacked an injured Manji, her assistant and several participants during a discussion session of the book at the Institute for Social and Islamic Sciences (LkiS) in Yogyakarta. In response, to this experience,  The Jakarta Post ran a piece under the title Irshad Manji is having second thoughts on Indonesia, in which she noted that -- in comparison to her earlier visit in 2008 -- it appeared there were “more conservative groups in the country this year”. Earlier, the same newspaper reported she was also considering writing a book about Indonesia.

Anti-JIL campaigner

A few days later the same newspaper ran an Op/Ed on the state of affairs in the intellectual debate on Islam in Indonesia. In this article Amika Wardana, an Indonesian research student at the University of Essex, highlights the polarization that has been affecting the Indonesian Muslim scene for quite a while, pitching the proponents for a literalist interpretation of the Indonesian doctrines, such as the FPI, against the advocates of more liberal readings, propagated, among others, by the Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal, JIL) . Earlier this year, the protagonists and antagonists in what is becoming an increasingly confrontational encounter over the place of religion on both public and private life in Indonesia, have launched initiatives to battle each other -- largely online -- under the headings 'Indonesia without JIL' and 'Indonesia without FPI'.

Anti-liberal Islam demonstrators

Whereas the former are mobilizing to free Indonesia from liberal Muslims, the latter reject the FPI's monopolization of what 'real Islam' is, and condemn the front's frequent recourse to thuggery and violence. On the back of the Irshad Manji controversy, 'Indonesia without FPI'  are now threatening the national police with a lawsuit, accusing them of siding with the FPI. The anti-FPI campaign does not only consist of Muslims holding different opinions, in February this year, the Asia Times published an article under the title 'Secular Revenge', reporting on indigenous Dayaks from Kalimantan (Borneo) preventing a visit by FPI leaders to Palangka Raya in the province of Central Kalimantan . Apparently emboldened by this act of valiance, anti-FPI sentiments spread quickly to the Javanese cities of Surabaya and Jakarta.

Anti-FPI rally

The clash between different interpretations of Islam in Indonesia can be traced back to the opening up of the public space after the collapse of the military-dominated New Order Regime led by General Suharto, in the wake of the latter's resignation in 1998. Whereas the ensuing Reformasi Era presented Indonesians with unprecedented opportunities for pursuing their democratic rights, including the exercise of free speech, the other side of that coin also meant that Islamist activism, including its radical, militant, and violent variants, was also able to enter the public arena too. The first signs of growing religious antagonism can actually already be traced to the mid-nineties when the first riots and pogroms flared up as the ageing president began losing control of the political system.

JIL founder
Ulil Abshar-Abdalla

The watershed event was the fateful fatwa no. 7, issued in 2005 by the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) in which this body, dominated by conservative religious scholars, condemned the principles of pluralism, liberalism, and secularism as 'un-Islamic' (The full text in Indonesian is available here. For an analysis in English, click here). This pronouncement was not only directed against JIL, its founder Ulil Abshar-Abdalla and his intellectual mentor Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005).

It is also a barely veiled rejection of some of the key principles of the Pancasila state doctrine which has governed Indonesian politics since independence. Moreover, it was taken by organizations such as the FPI as a license to go after fellow Muslims they deemed as deviants. Since then, liberal and progressive Muslims have been pushed into the defensive. As Amika Wardana observed:

There are at least two major obstacles undermining Muslim intellectualism: The lack of political will and the inability of public officials to preserve the freedom of religion and free speech; and the silence of the majority — moderate Muslims — toward intolerant and violent actions perpetuated by Muslim thugs. [...] In short, while we may lose hope in the current regime tackling the current intolerant and repressive actions campaigned by Muslim thugs, we have to approach the majority of moderate Muslims to stand up against them. 
Only by winning the hearts and minds of the majority will we envisage religiously tolerant environment of exuberance for Islamic intellectualism.