The Gertrude Bell Jar

Shift That Paradigm Why Don't You

So I was reading along in Albert Hourani's excellent A History of the Arab Peoples yesterday, and out jumped this paragraph:

On matters of substance as well as on principles of interpretation there were some differences between the various madhhabs [schools of Islamic law], but most of them were of minor importance. Even within a particular madhhab there could be differences of opinion, for no code, no matter how detailed and precise, could cover all possible situations. A maxim often repeated declared that from the tenth century onwards there could be no further exercise of individual judgment: where consensus had been reached, 'the door of ijtihad [interpretation] is closed.' There seems to be no clear evidence, however, that this precept was ever formulated or generally accepted, and within each madhhab ijtihad was indeed carried on, not only by judges who had to make decisions, but by jurisconsults (muftis). A mufti was essentially a private scholar known for his learning and his ability to give rulings on disputed questions by means of the exercise of ijtihad. The opinions (fatwa) given by a famous mufti could be incorporated in authoritative books of fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] after a time, but the activity of giving fatwas had to continue. From perhaps the thirteenth century onwards rulers appointed official muftis, who might receive salaries, but the private scholar, who was paid a fee by those who sought a ruling from him, and was under no obligation to the ruler, had a position of special respect in the community.

The notion that the "door of ijtihad" closed long ago in Sunni Islam (and stayed open in Shia Islam, constituting one of the more irreconcilable differences between the two branches) has been repeated uncritically in every book I've read so far that touches on the subject, regardless of its ideological orientation. I have in my turn repeated it uncritically here and in verbal discussions with people because, hey, I only know what I'm told. But in retrospect it should have been obvious that this wasn't true, what with Al Azhar having issued useful new opinions every other day to sanction government policies during the nationalist period, to pick only one example from those that tumble into consciousness now. (The Faridah should have been denounced as a heretical exercise on its face rather than answered on points if this type of argumentation itself really were forbidden in the Islamic world, to pick another). Yet I have no reason to believe that any of the Muslim authors I've been reading were lying on purpose in this regard; there would be more rather than less hope for Mernissi's agenda, for example, if ijtihad were regarded as an acceptable, living practice.

Instead this is perhaps one of those lies that civilizations tell themselves, and believe. If I had to lay odds, I'd think it probably dates from the late 18th Century, right around when Islamic civilization began to lose confidence in itself in the face of challenges from the West. I would speculate that the purpose of saying that interpretation ended in the 10th Century might have been to shore up contemporary beliefs and sources of authority by giving them an age-old pedigree, to pretend that what goes on now is authentic because it always has been thus, as well as to wall the existing order off from divergent intellectual influences (or at least to make it appear as if it had been). It may have been a defensive as well as an authoritarian move, in other words.

The actual answer is probably in this book Law and Power In the Islamic World by Sami Zubaida, but I don't know if I'll manage to get it read before I have to return it, since it has been recalled, dammit. But while I still have it on hand, I give you this Quote of the Day:

As we have seen, many Muslim and Western commentators see 'Muslim society' as being impervious to secularization, and view the recent Islamic resurgence as an indication that religion is the only ideology which can animate the masses. My argument is that the recently resurgent political Islam is directed precisely against the secularization and the secularizing reforms that have occurred extensively in the region for two centuries, and which are irreversible. In Egypt, Turkey, Iran and most other countries, we see this secularization in government and its institutions, in the law, in education, in the economy and, most important for our argument, in the cultural fields. Print media, radio, cinema, television and most recently the internet have all acted as secularizing media. Even when the media relay religious messages they contribute to its secularization, because religion in them features alongside news and music, films and soaps, and as such loses its aura of sanctity. It is 'banalized.' It is related that soon after the installation of the Islamic Republic in Iran and the Islamization of television, the most popular programme featured a senior cleric answering practical questions from viewers in terms of fiqh rulings. Viewers derived pleasure and amusement in getting the cleric to rule on obtuse questions of sexuality. Egyptian clerics currently broadcast homilies of morality and order, and warn of the torments of the grave, much like their Christian counterparts in the U.S. But these are not dedicated channels, and the sermons alternate with films and soaps.

Indeed, an examination of the last century or so proves Muslims in the Islamic world all too susceptible to foreign influences, often tragically so. I've been eavesdropping on a discussion in D.'s journal about whether Iraqis have the right "mentality" for democracy, with a German national who says no, and denies any parallel between the German and Iraqi occupations, since Germans were after all Europeans, and hence much more like their occupiers than the Iraqis are. (Assuming I am reading this correctly: I don't put that much faith in Babelfish, which is why I'm not arguing with him). He appears to be blissfully unaware of the tremendous and doleful impact a pair of Germans had on the largely failed theory and practice of Arab post-colonialism. The philosophies of Marx and Hitler ultimately failed the West too; perhaps we are all much closer than he thinks. I don't know what the polite way of discussing the legacy of Nazism in the Middle East with contemporary Germans might be, but I do wonder how any of us can go on regarding Islamic terrorists as at all alien when we keep learning things like, for example, the fact that the murderer of Daniel Pearl could recite entire pages of Mein Kempf from memory. That Islamism is fundamentally and authentically Eastern is a twin fallacy to the notion that democracy and the idea of human rights is exclusively Western. Amartya Sen recently published a nice summary debunking the latter (and could have gone on in much greater detail regarding the Arab world; as always, if you'd like to see it without registering, email me for a copy). If anybody has seen a good single source eviscerating the former, I'd appreciate a reference; I find the counter-argument for that one has a tendency to hide in the margins.

D. replied: I arrived at the same conclusions, so either (1) Babblefish is better than I though or (2) my m@|> gEr|\/|E|\ $k1LLz aren't as m@|> as I thought. His reply, btw, was basically, "I think the Iraqis should have democracy, but not democracy imposed from without." Even after all our discussion, I'm not sure whether this opinion stems more from Orientalist essentialism or extreme pacificism. I just can't get past the idea that leaving Iraq alone to develop at its own pace, no matter how many generations of suffering that entails, is morally superior to violently-enforced regime change. I simply don't have the appropriate spiritual orientation to accept that. If only I could believe there were an afterlife/rebirth in which the injustices of this bleeding world were rectified and that it wasn't up to us fallible humans to attempt it.

Two Faces of Islam/Stephen Schwartz

The Two Faces of Islam : the House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz.

This is an impassioned representation of the political conflict between radical Islamists and moderate traditionalists as a struggle for the soul of Islam. The author initially traveled to the Balkans to research the history of Jewish communities, and (I gather from other news sources) converted to Sufism as a result of his experiences with Bosnian Muslims there. Schwartz traces the history of a violent, repressive tendency in Islam from the Khawarij who threatened and were deafeated by the ummah (community of Muslims) in the early days of Islam, through the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, and the ability of that sect today to write itself over traditional Islam through the vast cultural influence occasioned by its oil wealth and its control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Schwartz is not exactly an objective observer (in discussing the origins of the Saudi's double-edged policy toward the West, he writes "To arrive at an understanding with the British, with the goal of transforming the ummah into a community of Wahhabi fundamentalists, was a concept so daring in its perversity it would seem to have sprung from the brain of a demon, not a man") and the book suffers somewhat by his apparent conflation of the culturally European and spiritually Sufi Bosnian Muslims with the mainstream Muslim community in the Middle East, which is Arab and mostly Sunni and a good deal more conservative and less tolerant than he would like to admit. Wahhabism is nonetheless as fully perverse and destructive as he paints it, even as compared to the most conservative mainstream Islamic traditions, and his detailed account of the history of Wahhabist cultural imperialism, particularly with respect to Saudi interventions in trouble spots like Afghanistan and Kosovo, and American obtuseness regarding same, is an important and largely neglected story.

Hidden Face of Eve/Nawal el Saadawi

The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World by Nawal el Saadawi.

A fire-breathing Marxist-feminist account of the history and status of women in the Arab world, from the advent of Judaism to the present day (1980 at the time of writing), by Egypt's former Director of Public Health. (She lost her position and was jailed for a while by Sadat for publishing her political activities, particularly involving women). Her work as a doctor brought her into a great deal of contact with a variety of hidden or denied issues in Egyptian society regarding women's health and welfare, like virginity tests, female circumcision, pedophilia and incest. She touches on the full range of women's issues in contemporary Egyptian society, and summarizes the history of feminism in Egypt. Saadawi's materialist analysis makes this by far the most familiar sort of read on this subject for Western feminists that I've come across, and indeed this appears to be the one book on Muslim women they are most likely to have read.

Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Mr. Bell Jar suggested the title "The United Methodist Muslim" as a good title for a review of this book, and that does about sum it up. Nasr is a mainstream, traditionalist Muslim (touted as "the world's leading Islamicist" on the back cover) taking up the difficult task of representing his faith to a general English-speaking audience in the wake of 9/11. Unfortunately, he has chosen the easier option of simply glossing over many of the more difficult issues, in nearly complete denial, for example, that jihad ever meant holy war, or that the condition of women in Muslim societies is maybe not so good, or that Sufism is not exactly a central religious movement in the Middle East, or that there is ever any question among Muslims that the Sunni and Shia faiths are equally orthodox versions of Islam, or that there is any relationship whatever between the rather noticeable trend towards Islamization throughout the Islamic world, and the emergence of the sometimes violent Islamist political movement. He is not so much lying outright as permitting the reader to infer that his opinion about how things ought to be is the reality, and that all else is Orientalist or sensationalistic slander against Islam. This sort of dishonesty doesn't help in the long run, particularly since it takes a trivial amount of research or acquaintance with the subject to see the many bobbles in the text. He does present a good overview of the civilizational history of Islam, and a good discussion of Sufism as a spiritual practice. Points off for the whiff of anti-Semitism in his habit of referring to Israel as Palestine throughout the text, and for presenting, bang in the middle of his discussion of Islamic tolerance for the wide range of ethnic diversity among Muslims, a reference to the sizeable minority of Jews and Christians who used to live in Arab countries "until 1948," without a word of explanation as to what happened there, exactly.

The Veil and the Male Elite/Fatima Mernissi

The Veil and the Male Elite : a Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam by Fatima Mernissi.

This is a thorough re-interpretation of the Koranic sura and hadith related to women, premised on placing the words of the Prophet within their political and historical context. It is for the most part a persuasive reading of the sources, at least for a non-Muslim. It should be noted that this kind of original interpretation (which Mernissi pursues along much the same lines as does Abou el Fadl, mentioned above) is somewhat heretical in modern Islam, the door to ijtihad having been closed for Sunni Muslims at the completion of the work of the Islamic jurists near the end of the Abbasid period (although for Shia Muslims this door has never closed). Published in 1987, this book appears to be a foundational text for most Islamic feminists, but is also well worth reading for the very detailed description of the life of the Prophet and the history of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs alone. What a story! It's too bad that depicting the life of Muhammad is the sort of thing that can get a person killed, because this drama has everything: sex, romance, political intrigue, family squabbles, colorful pagans, assassinations, and war, war, war, all with deadly important religious and political implications that echo down through the ages to the present day. The movie would totally kick The Ten Commandments to the curb if it were given a proper budget.

What Went Wrong/Bernard Lewis

What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.

This book is based on a series of lectures Lewis gave at the Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna in 1999; a sort of precis of some of the themes of the book are given in Lewis' 2002 Atlantic article entitled "What Went Wrong." Lewis traces the history of Arab awareness of and interactions with the West from the time of the Caliphate to the present day, focusing first on the initial and long-standing preeminence of Islamic Civilization, and then on the Islamic world's selective attempts to assimilate some Western concepts in order to reverse its own decline, and why these efforts have come to nothing, or worse helped to birth a particularly vicious and virulent movement in political Islam. Lewis ends up plumping for actual political freedom in the Middle East, since it is the one thing that has not yet been tried.

(Btw, Lewis' role in advising Dubya in the run-up to the Iraq War is not actually the cause of Said's recent lenghthy ad hominem attack on Lewis as an Orientalist; instead Said has always thought and said this about him. It has been sort of interesting finding so many bibliographical references to Lewis in the works of the Muslim progressives I've been reading lately; I don't know if they're making a point with that or just ignoring the whole thing and relying on Lewis as if his reputation as the preeminent Western historian of the Middle East were unchallenged).

Crisis of Islam/Bernard Lewis

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis.

A concise history of Islam and Islamic lands, from the days of the Prophet through the Caliphate, colonial, and post-colonial periods, tracing the development and rise of "fundamentalist" Islam. This is an expansion of his George Polk Award-winning essay The Revolt of Islam, published in The New Yorker shortly after 9/11; it also revisits some themes from his 1990 Atlantic essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Lewis' lucid analysis and elegant writing style probably accounts for some of his popularity with the general reader, and occasionally busts out into dry wit, for example in this coda to his discussion of the Muslim conquest of Palestine, followed by a Crusader re-conquest, followed by a Muslim re-re-conquest:

The victories of Saladin and his capture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 have long been and are today a source of inspiration to Arab leaders. Saddam Hussein refers frequently to two previous rulers of Iraq whom he claims as predecessors in his mission--Saladin, who ended the Western menace of his day by defeating and evicting the Crusaders, and Nebuchadnezzar, who dealt expeditiously and conclusively with the Zionist problem. On October 8, 2002, the prime minister of France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in a speech to the French National Assembly, told how Saladin was able "to defeat the Crusaders in Galilee and liberate Jerusalem." This interesting use of the term liberate by a French prime minister to describe Saladin's capture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders may be a reflection of present-day realignments or, alternately, a case of extreme political correctness. In some other countries this formulation might be ascribed to ignorance of history, but surely not in France.

Islam: a Mosaic/Vartan Gregorian

Islam : a Mosaic, Not a Monolith by Vartan Gregorian.

This is a good and relatively even-handed overview of the religion of Islam and the history of Islamic lands, if a little squeamish about connecting the dots between various issues that tend to be carefully walled off from each other and from the main text in sidebars. But it's a basically honest and concise account, with the stated purpose of increasing understanding and tolerance of Islam and Islamic peoples, which is of course a Good Thing.

Women & Gender in Islam/Leila Ahmed

Women and Gender in Islam : Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, by Leila Ahmed.

Ahmed is a feminist Egyptian expatriate who at the time of the publication of this book (1992) was a professor of women’s studies and Near Eastern studies at Amherst, and also the director of the women’s studies program there. This book is an attempt to examine how gender works in Islam, beginning with how the advent of Islam affected the status of women in Arabia and other now-Islamic lands, how misogyny was theorized and solidified in Islamic law during the subsequent period of the caliphate (with a particular focus on the Abbasid period, shortly after the conclusion of which the doors of ijtihad, or interpretation, were declared closed, for Sunni Muslims), and how the discourse on gender reflects and complicates modernization and democratization movements in the Muslim world.

Ahmed begins with the question of whether the teachings of Muhammad actually did constitute a net improvement in the status of women in Arabia. This is a central claim of both the "revivalists" and traditionalists who want to claim that Islam as it is grants the greatest protection of woman and respect for her dignity, and the Islamic feminists and other progressives who want to claim that the clear trajectory towards social justice contained in the Koran has been betrayed and undermined by despotism and re-assertion of the Jahilia (pre-Islamic, or "in ignorance") order that Muhammad sought to replace. Ahmed’s answer is, yes and no, and also it depends on which batch of al-Jahilia you’re talking about. She argues persuasively, for example, that Islam represented a final stop on a downward spiral for Egyptian women, but that at the same time, it was, at least, a stop. Her review of customs regarding women immediately before the time of Muhammad and throughout the region exposes both much better and much worse practices. The reality is too messy to summarize here, but my favorite cite in the argument that I think captures some of the contradictions comes from the story (related in ibn Saud’s history of the Arabs some 200 years after it occurred), of Hind bint Utbah, who was well-known to Muslims at the time by her reputation for going among the fallen Muslim soldiers after a battle, finishing them off with a knife, and dismembering the corpses:

In 630 the Muslims took Mecca with little bloodshed. Abu Sufyan, after surrendering at the Muslim encampment, returned to Mecca and called on his people to convert to Islam. His wife, Hind bint Utbah, enraged by his surrender, denounced him publicly and then, realizing the cause was lost, shattered the statues of her gods. Some sources say that Hind was among the three or four women condemned to death and that she saved herself only by hastily converting to Islam, but this may be an anti-Umayyad embellishment of her story. In any event she spiritedly led the Meccan women in taking the oath of allegiance to Islam. Muhammad led, and Hind responded.

"You shall have but one God."
"We grant you that."
"You shall not steal."
"Abu Sufyan is a stingy man, I only stole provisions from him."
"That is not theft. You will not commit adultery."
"Does a free woman commit adultery?"
"You will not kill your children [by infanticide*]."
"Have you left us any children that you did not kill at the battle of Badr?"

*Refers to female infanticide, evidently a common practice.

Ahmed then argues that the misogynist formulation of Islamic law in the aftermath of the death of Muhammad was driven by the need to rationalize the acquisition of hundreds of wives and concubines by the caliph and other notables in the Islamic community, due to the sudden influx of wealth and slaves brought into the community by a series of highly successful wars of conquest. (This argument from sexual privilege rather than ownership of children is in distinction to the argument by modern Marxist feminists that the status of women is driven by the need for patriarchy as a result of the invention of property as it occurred in the Arab context). The final third of the book is taken up with a discussion of how the woman question has become entangled with the notion of authentic Muslim identity in opposition to encroachment from the West, and how that entanglement has helped to thwart progress for women and the notion of democratization in general.

Two most interesting facts: 1. The Arabs have their very own Phyllis Schlafly in the person of Zeinab al-Ghazali, who like our beloved Phyllis advocates wifely submission to the husband and withdrawal from public and economic life for other women while being enabled by her househusband spouse to go forth and hector. Al-Ghazali went so far as to insist that her second husband sign a marriage contract stipulating that he would always support her career, while of course denouncing the very idea that Muslim women be able to stipulate anything at all in their marriage contracts (a much-neglected right supported by only one of the four schools of Islamic law). 2. Qassim Amin’s Liberation of Woman (1899), generally considered the first feminist book by a Muslim, and quoted uncritically throughout a lot of the stuff I’ve been reading lately, is actually a blanket denunciation of Arab culture that pretty much just adopts a racist, colonial viewpoint, describing Egyptians, for example, as "lazy and always fleeing work" and as leaving their children "covered with dirt and roaming the alleys rolling in the dust like the children of animals." Amin was a Western-educated lawyer who had spent little time in his country of origin; the one progressive chapter in the book which is widely quoted in subsequent feminist writings was, according to Ahmed, actually written by respected nationalist Muhammad Abdu (the book itself was the result of a conference of nationalist intellectuals, which is how Abdu’s paper ended up in it). Wrong foot! According to Ahmed the furor this book naturally aroused found its most offended expression in protesting the proposal to revise the status of women. The fact that Lord Cromer (the British Consul General for Egypt) published his own book not long afterwards advocating drastic change in gender customs for the Muslims while opposing reforms for women in England was similarly unhelpful.