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.

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi and the 'anthropological turn' in Muslim thinking

This week's edition of  Qantara, the Germany-based website covering current political, cultural and intellectual affairs in the Muslim world draws attention to the work of the Moroccan philosopher and poet Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993) and the latter's important contributions he has made to developing an Islamic-philosophical anthropology through his 'Muslim personalism'.

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993)

 The German theologian and philosopher, Pastor Dr Markus Kneer, has recently published an annoted German translation of Lahbabi's Le Personnalisme Musulman under the title Der Mensch: Zeuge Gottes: Entwurf eine islamischen Anthropology. In an interview he discusses some aspects of Lahbabi's work. Motivated to find a new way of engaging in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Kneer was looking for a Muslim thinker who could be presented with reference to Western anthropologies:

It seemed to me that localising what is to a great extent a Christian and Occidental concept of the individual within a Muslim context harboured the potential for a dialogue on the Christian and Islamic images of man – potential that should by all means be tapped. Lahbabi's "Muslim personalism" consists of just such an articulation of the human individual from Islamic sources. His points of reference in European philosophy are the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) and Jean Lacroix (1900–1986) as well as the life philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859–1941).

Admitting that Lahbabi's ideas are very much grounded in the intellectual climate of the 1950s and 1960s, Kneer argues that, against the dramatic changes in the political landscape in North Africa, the time is ripe for a new appreciation of some of the ideas that had come to fruition in that time frame:

Today, personalism has largely been replaced by other discourses. Nevertheless, contemplation of the human as person is more intense today than in past decades, and what Paul Ricœur already predicted thirty years ago now seems to be coming true: "Personalism will die, but the person will return!" 

This concept after all bundles together other values that are of great importance for the articulation and ethical analysis of human life: e.g. dignity, freedom, responsibility. And I think it's no accident that in recent official publications of the Arab League on the subject of human rights the Arabic equivalent of person, "shakhs", frequently appears.

Although two generations have passed since North Africa shook off the yoke of political imperialism, the Muslim world's intellectual emancipation has only been partially realized. Recently, its progress has been obstructed by the positing of unhelpful theses, such as Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History', and dangerous polarizing ideological paradigms for a new post-Cold War world order, like the 'Clash of Civilizations', advocated by the likes of Samuel Huntington. It seems in many parts of the Muslim world the time is ripe for challenging these remnants of Western hegemonism, thus giving new currency to the ideas Lahbabi developed a few decades ago. As Kneer explains: 

The historical and practical reasons why Lahbabi chose to analyse the process of becoming a person can be found in the identity crisis experienced by the colonised populace during the colonial era – in particular by the intellectuals. Lahbabi described how the colonial system had depersonalising effects for him and many others. Instead of experiencing language, communication and mental life as fields for personalisation, his generation suffered from speechlessness, non-communication and a feeling of inner emptiness. He wondered for a long time whether he was a person equal to the others, in other words, to the Europeans. The role of the Other in becoming a person and a human is thus not unproblematic.

The awareness of this philosophical problem is also reflected in Lahbabi's stance towards the place of reason in human thinking and how this can be accommodated within a Muslim Personalist philosophy:

Lahbabi is not talking about an absolute reason of the word, divorced from the religious context, but rather a reason that illuminates and lends dynamics to this context. In other words, ijtihad, the term used in Islamic theology to describe the personal and rational adoption of faith, must be rehabilitated as the fundamental method of theological work. Lahbabi's profound criticism of taqlid, the blind mimicking of and adherence to opinions passed down by the great Muslim scholarly authorities, is connected with this stance. Only shahada (profession of the one and only God, the Muslim creed) that reflects true ijtihad has personalising value, says Lahbabi.

With his dynamic concept of reason, Lahbabi takes up a position within value hermeneutics that mediates between the cultural and religious sources of values and their universal validity. In the process of transcending the bounds of the self, culturally inflected values become understandable against the horizon of other value traditions, and their universality can be tested. One-sided culturalism or universalism is not possible with Lahbabi.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Dr Marien van den Boom

Kneer is not the first Western scholar to draw attention to Lahbabi's thought. In 1984, the Dutch scholar Marien van den Boom published a PhD thesis in which he juxtaposes Lahbabi with the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi. Written in Dutch, De Bevrijding van de Mens in Islamitisch Perspektief (The Liberation of Man from an Islamic Perspective) unfortunately went largely unnoticed. To my knowledge, it was -- and still is -- the only detailed examination of the anthropological turn by two Muslim philosophers, who are not only united by this anthropocentric focus, but also by their ambition to develop a kind of Islamic liberation theology as a contribution to the liberation of the entire 'Third World'.

Of course, other thinkers from the Muslim world, such as Hichem Djait, Mohammed Arkoun, and -- in Indonesia -- Nurcholish Madjid have also developed personalist and humanist ways of thinking, drawing on concepts such as Kardiner's 'basic personality structure' or advocating new epistemologies that make a clear distinction between theological and anthropological approaches to the study of religious phenomena. For a more detailed discussion of the contributions of Arkoun, Hanafi and Madjid to these debates, see my Cosmopolitans and Heretics, which has just been released by Columbia University Press.

The Muslim World in 2011: Another landmark Event

Mark Juergensmeyer's article, published by the Religion Dispatches website, carrying his first commentary on the death of Osama bin Laden and its impact on the future of radical Islamism and Muslim political extremism reiterates the point he made in an earlier essay on the impact of Egypt's 25 February 2011 Revolt and other uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa: That the war on terrorism was not won by US special forces or high-tech intelligence operations, but tweeting youths in the Arab world and elsewhere. It confirms the underpinnings of the Critical Muslims blog that -- in the long run -- the ideas of progressive, cosmopolitan and liberal-minded Muslims will outlast the nihilism of Islamist agendas. Here are a few excerpts corroborating this position:

Osama bin Laden 1957-2011

The imagined war of the Bush era may indeed be over. And the jihadi insurrection associated with bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization may also be dead. But I suspect that the real perpetrators of their deaths may not have been the elite American military cadre some hours ago in Pakistan, but the legion of cell-phone toting protestors earlier this year in Tahrir Square. They have helped to complete the erosion of legitimacy that has undermined the jihadi activists in recent years within the Muslim world. 

  What brought down the tyrants in Egypt and Tunisia, as it turned out, was about as far from jihad as one could imagine. It was a series of massive nonviolent movements of largely middle class and relatively young professionals who organized their protests through Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of electronic social networking.

  The religiosity of Tahrir Square is far from the religion of radical jihad. Rather than separating Muslim from non-Muslim, and Sunni from Shi'a, the symbols that were raised on impromptu placards in Tahrir Square were emblems of interfaith cooperation; they showed the cross of Coptic Christians together with the crescent of Egypt's Muslims in a united religious front against autocracy.

Tahrir Square is a profound anti-jihadi lesson, and its significance has spread around the world. It has ignited similar nonviolent protests elsewhere in the Middle East, and it may also have altered the thinking of activists in other cultures as well. Intense discussion is underway in Palestine, where the Hamas-dominated strategy of strategic violence has been largely counterproductive; will a new nonviolent and non-extremist movement of young educated Palestinian professionals create a different kind of impetus for change in their region of the Middle East?

 Read the entire essay by clicking here.

Mark Juergensmeyer

The above assessment echoes his earlier observations on the Tahrir Square phenomenon in the Huffington Post:

What brought down Mubarak, as it turned out, was about as far from jihad as one could imagine. It was a massive nonviolent movement of largely middle class and relatively young professionals who organized their mass protests through Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of electronic social networking. No doubt the passivity of the Egyptian military was also a critical factor; the army did not forcibly resist the protests, as the military has in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Yet one cannot underestimate the importance of Tahrir Square, and similar protests in Alexandria and throughout Egypt. Clearly, they constituted the catalyst for change. The rallies at Tahrir Square often seemed more like rock concerts than like urban warfare, and when fighting did break out it was largely promulgated by thugs hired by the Mubarak regime rather than the anti-government protestors. Perhaps not since the peaceful overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines has the world seen such a dramatic demonstration of the power of nonviolent resistance. The protests were not the weapons of jihad, nor were the voices of opposition the strident language of Islamist extremism.

Cairo's Tahrir Square, 25 February 2011

Here are his musings on Bin Laden's reaction to recent events in the Arab World -- not that these conjectures matter anymore:

Imagine what Osama bin Laden must have made of all of this as news trickled into the cave or cellar or whatever lair in which he is hiding. Imagine even more the puzzled chagrin of someone like bin Laden's primary lieutenant, Zawahiri, the Egyptian medical doctor who joined the most extreme Islamist jihadi movement years ago, convinced that only violent guerrilla warfare would topple someone like Mubarak. Tahrir Square clearly showed that Zawahiri was wrong. 

 However, he also added a cautionary caveat:

Does this mean that al Qaeda is finished, and the radical struggles of jihad will fizzle into history?Perhaps, in part. It is unlikely, however, that the al Qaeda organization, such as it is, will be abandoned. The small group of people who comprise the inner circle of the bin Laden organization will no doubt harden its resolve. Like the followers of millennarian movements who become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs when the prophecized end of the world does not terminate on schedule, the true believers of al Qaeda will soldier on. (The whole essay can be found here).

In today's commentary he repeated that warning:

 The rise of a new nonviolent popularism in the Middle East may seriously undercut the viability of the jihadi image of violent social change. On the other hand, a significant number of failures of nonviolent resistence may lead to a violent backlash once again.

Indeed, we are not there yet...Specialists in religiously inspired violence such as Juergensmeyer will have their work cut out for  many years to come, but so will the analysts of the alternative discourses on the other side of the spectrum. 2011 may very well enter history as the watershed year for the amplification of those other voices.

For some of Juergensmeyer's books, click on the images below:

What makes a Progressive Muslim?

The following text was taken from the notes section on the facebook page of Dr Imtiyaz Yusuf, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the Assumption University in Bangkok  It recapitulates how the Indian activist and scholar Asghar Ali Engineer, Head of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, defined a 'progressive Muslim':

Asghar Ali Engineer

In the AMAN (Asian Muslim Action Network) assembly which took place in Pattani, Thailand in the last week of February 2011 a discussion took place as to who is a progressive Muslim and what are its characteristics. I was asked to throw light on this subject. I am presenting here what I spoke there. I had the following to say.

A progressive Muslim is one who is firmly grounded in the Qur’anic values of truth (haq), justice (‘adl), compassion (rahmah), wisdom (hikmah) and does service to others rather than being served by others. A progressive Muslim does not believe in sectarian Islam (sunni or shi’ah or Isma’ili or Deobandi or Barelvi or ahl-e-hadith or salafi Islam but rises above all these sects and gives importance to Qur’an above everything else.

A progressive Islam not only does not adopt sectarian approach but is respectful of entire humanity and human dignityas per Qur’an (17:70). He leaves mutual differences, ideological and theological to Allah alone and does not condemn anyone who differences from him/her as kafirs as often sectarian Muslims do. It only widens differences and intensifies conflict. A progressive Muslim uses, as per Qur’an, wisdom (hikmah) and goodly words (maw’izat al-Hasanah) in discussion and leaves rest to Allah. He does not try to be judgemental.

A progressive Muslim is least influenced by personal prejudices and always gives more importance to knowledge than his opinion. Qur’an condemns prejudiced opinion (zan) and promotes knowledge (‘ilm). Also, openness of mind is a seminal quality and avoids arrogance born more out of ignorance than knowledge. Those who have little knowledge are more arrogant and those who have greater degree of knowledge know limitations of their own knowledge and hence tend to be humble.

A progressive Muslim first of all studies his/her own religion in depth and tries to understand, as objectively as possible, the causes of differences between different religions and shows full respect for others beliefs. It is those who do not know their own religion, much less those of others, who condemn religion of others. The Qur’an says, “And abuse not those whom they call upon besides Allah lest, exceeding the limits they abuse Allah through ignorance.” (6:109). Further in this verse Allah says, “Thus to everyone people have We made their deeds fair-seeming; then to their Lord is their return so He will inform them of what they did.” Thus ultimately it is Allah who will judge. We human beings when we judge, we judge more out of ignorance and arrogance of our ego than knowledge and selflessness.

The key words in this verse are that for every people We made their deeds fair-seeming to them. Then who are we human beings to condemn others beliefs and deeds. Let then Allah alone to judge who is right and who is wrong.

Also a progressive Muslim celebrates diversity as diversity is creation of Allah and if Allah desired He could have made entire humanity one community. (5:48). The Qur’an also says, “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colours. Surely there are signs in this for the learned.” Thus a progressive Muslim will never have any prejudice against any language or colour of skin or any colour for that matter as these are all creations of Allah.

Also, both men and women are creation of Allah and both need to be treated with same degree of dignity. Allah has created all species in couples and it is necessary for survival of all species. No species will survive unless it is created in couples. Thus feminine of the couple is as important as masculine and in human beings both gender must be treated equally. Moreover gender is social and cultural construct. Whereas sex is natural gender is social and cultural.

A progressive Muslim knows this very well and treats both men and women with equal dignity and believes in giving equal rights to both. And in today’s context gender equality becomes a crucial test for a progressive Muslim. Female servitude was purely feudal cultural creation and Islam opposed it and pronounced the doctrine of gender equality in clear terms (2:228) A progressive Muslim knows that certain Shari’ah provisions establishing male superiority were in response to cultural needs of a patriarchal society than based on Qur’an and hadith.

Thus a progressive Muslim will give more importance to Qur’anic pronouncements of gender equality than feudal female servitude and would not consider these [provisions of Shari’ah laws as eternal and unalterable. A progressive Muslim, therefore, would reconstruct Shari’ah laws in this respect and accord equal rights to women who are also believers. One believer cannot be superior to another believer. Male superiority is a human construct and human construct cannot override divine injunction. Also, functional differences i.e. bearing children should not result in distinction of superior and inferior.

A progressive Muslim would accord seeking knowledge highest priority as knowledge has been equated with light (nor) and ignorance to darkness (zulmat) and Allah brings out believers from darkness to light. And the Prophet (PBUH) has said that a moment’s reflection is more important than whole nights worship (‘ibadat). Thus knowledge has priority over worship.

Thus these are the characteristics of a progressive Muslim and those who imbibe these characteristics would survive all the challenges of all the times and would not face any difficulty in keeping pace with the changing times.

Check also this link for a collection of essay by Ashgar Ali Engineer. Hereunder are links to a selection of his books:

 

Literature and the Future of North Africa

The Qantara Muslim world news website carried a feature article on Jewish Moroccan writer Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010). Last year the anti-colonial freedom fighter and patriot had been laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery of his native Essouira. He was taken there in a coffin draped with the Moroccan flag by the royal advisor André Azoulay, the historian Hassan Aourid, the director of the National Library Driss Khrouz and artists Hassan Bourkia and André El Baz. Not a state funeral, but almost...

He had specifically requested to be buried there among "all these graves which, exposed to the rank growth, the wind, and the ravages of the ocean, silently enclose the Hebrew inscriptions and mysterious symbols." And indeed it is surprising to see the emblem of the Punic goddess on the weather-beaten columns, an indication that Jews have lived in Morocco since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, when they escaped Babylonian captivity on Phœnician merchant ships. El Maleh's headstone merely adds to the linguistic confusion. He insisted on having four scripts: Arabic, Berber, Hebrew and French. It was a reflection of his attitude to life and his sense of belonging, an attitude that rejects any insistence that identities have to be one-dimensional

Described as a 'thorny humanist and lateral thinker, critic of Zionism and supporter of the Palestinians', it should also be noted that El Maleh was highly respected in the new Morocco for the fact that he, a French assimilated Jew, never denied his Arab-Berber roots'.He came relatively late to literature and his depictions of a 'multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-voiced Morocco' betray influences of other cosmopolitan writers such as Elias Canetti and Walter Benjamin, as well as Kafka and Proust. In fact, El Maleh saw 'himself as a thief of stories and a protector of words', unexpectedly weaving 'words and phrases from Jewish-Arabic, Berber, English, and Spanish into his work'.

Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010)

 Characterizing El Maleh's linguistic style through which he tried to remain true to Morocco's plural identity, the Spanish author Juan Goytisolo is said have likened his the influence of the Moroccan dialect to 'a tattoo on the skin of the French used by this author, this Nestor, this great outsider on the fringes of Franco-Moroccan literary scene, an author who remains to be discovered outside Morocco'.

In neighbouring-Algeria, novelist Maïssa Bey, who has written extensively on her country's turmoil of the last few decades, insists on dealing honestly with uncomfortable truths of the past:

Without an honest reappraisal of the past there can be no democratising process in society or in the political structures. "We will never achieve anything in Algeria until we get the truth out into the open and begin acknowledging facts," [...] This is something that has to involve everyone: victims, perpetrators, those politically responsible for the violence and the authorities who have imposed a total blackout on the lives of hundreds of thousands of families".

Although many are clamouring for change, she also notes that despite serious social injustice and corruption many Algerians prefer the fragile stability represented by President Bouteflika.

There is, of course, fear that a revolution could again end in chaos and violence [...] I have heard many people from my own neighbourhood talking like this. But I believe that Algeria has learned from the experiences of the 80s and 90s. The Algerians now know that Islamism is not the answer. This is a realisation that puts us a stage ahead of other revolutions in the Arab world.

She is less than impressed with the attitude of Europe:

Maissa Bey

It is really bizarre that Europe is only now wakening up. I find this absolutely intolerable. As an Algerian citizen, I can tell you that we didn't need any Wikileaks to tell us what was going on. Everybody knew that the Arab leaders were illegally amassing large fortunes for themselves and allowing their people to suffer. How can it be that this Europe, that so prides itself on its ideals of human rights and liberty, kept so quiet for so long, and only opened its mouth after the people themselves had risen?

The Europeans are so sure that democracy is a civilising value that belongs essentially to Europe, Bey explains. "The Arabs, on the other hand, they are, allegedly, just tribal societies where people bite off one another's noses. We intellectuals expect nothing more from Europe. I think it is too late for that."

Read the full interview here.