Islam: faith & ideology
Hussain, Jane
But it is pointless to go through a catalogue of videos, since there are so many of them. Rock and the cinema have both grown into fantastically, perhaps even grotesquely, high-tech forms of...
...in mid-February of 1981, the State Department issued a White Paper blaming the Soviet Union and Cuba for the insurgency in El Salvador...
...1250...
...But the two forms have made inevitable union in the new art of the video -- utilizing yet another distinctively modem technology, TV, and generating a form which is perhaps as close as the cinema has come to the impressionism of the lyric poem, and as close as rock has approached to the status of symbolism...
...In most religions, including Islam, one is searching for revealed Troth...
...But only national debates held under conditions of guaranteed human rights can produce stable but flexible frameworks...
...Elsewhere in the book, Fazlur Rahman complains that the "Americans' experience of state secularism made them utterly ill-tuned to a country like Pakistan (notwithstanding Israel...
...Thus the interpretation and application of the teachings of the Quran actually got off to a bad start...
...One of the chief difficulties in getting democratic processes to function in such places is the lack of a concept of "loyal ~apposition...
...Most people are not Fazlur Rahman and never will be...
...To both of these readerships, Edward Mortimer excuses himself from drawing any relevant conclusions whatsoever...
...This review was written over the Muslim festival of Eid...
...The administration countered by setting up a bipartisan commission, chaired by Henry Kissinger and charged with recommending both short- and long-term policy for Central America...
...This "minimal Islam" of the religious establishment, which emphasizes the individual's ritual obligations and neglects the Quranic imperatives to build a good and just social order, results, according to Fazlur Rahman, from an unduly literalistic interpretation of the Quran...
...The preacher had focused on the dangers of giving our children a secular education...
...Islam is a religion which offers itself to the whole world...
...This bending over backwards may be the stance Edward Mortimer finds suitable to his identity as a non-Muslim, but I think it goes far beyond objectivity (which is a commendable feature of this book) and is appropriate only to an extremely wellconnected and highly respected journalist unwilling to antagonize any of his important sources...
...Fazlur Rahman, who is a Muslim, has a FAITH AND POWER THE POLITICS OF ISLAM Edward Mortimer Random House, $19.95, 432 pp...
...Edward Mortimer ends with an anticonclusion: There is not one but many islams...
...I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I _9 I I i i i i Books: THE COMBUSTIBLE MIXTURE m O N DECEMBER 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan suggested to a group of visiting high school students that some of the political murders attributable to right-v/,ing death squads in El Salvador might actually have been the work of leftist guerrillas...
...If by progressive interpretation of Islam we mean an emphasis on social justice rather than on personal law, then it is difficult to see how such an interpretation, cutting across the perceived interests of the maulvis, can gain ground, given the restrictions placed on freedom of expression in almost every Muslim country...
...This leads to two inevitable, albeit unintentional distortions: we receive an Commonweal: 214 exaggerated impression of the centrality "punitive Islam" of the "neoof the position of politics in the thought revivalists" in the countries now underof various important Muslim intellectu- going so-called "Islamization...
...If the art is still in its infancy -- ten years ago there were no videos -- and still struggling with elemental clumsinesses, that is no reason to doubt its validity, its interest, or the degree to which it reaffirms the perennial ability of popular culture to resuscitate itself...
...A majority of the commissioners would condition military help to El Salvador upon improvements in the human-fights performance of its government...
...In Pakistan these days, the local preacher or maulvi is the only political orator allowed to use loudspeakers...
...Thus the institution of such rules, in other words, a viable constitution, is a first priority in Muslim as in other politics...
...People everywhere, both for better and for worse, have the tendency to vote from the stomach...
...Opposition parties tend to be seen as enemies of the state, or of its ideology, rather than as necessary critics of current policies...
...Conciliatory compromises invite ever more outrageous demands and obnoxious behavior...
...I am afraid that I am an incurable pessimist...
...I think that Islamic (like Christian) values should be used to measure artd criticize a government's efforts, or lack of effort, towards building a good and just society...
...One can imaginetwo major types of readers for Mortimer's book: Westerners who are wondering about Islam as a geopolitical force in world affairs, and inhabitants of the Muslim world who are wondering about Islam as a political force in their own lives...
...The fundamentalist political parties have managed to leap into the vacuum created by the religious ignorance of the Westernized elite on the one hand and the practical ignorance of the traditional Muslim establishment on the other...
...In the meantime, I feel that calling for the enforcement of "Islamic ideology" in pre-democratic conditions is almost sure to do more harm than good...
...Commonweal: 216 I N EDWARD MORTIMER'S historical background material, or indeed in almost every history text, two features regarding religious fanaticism emerge again and again: the conspicuousness of both decadent lifestyles and puritanical religious fanaticisms in times of great stress and social instability, and the willingness of religious extremist groups to use any and all means to make their influence felt...
...Standard present-day interpretations hold that Muslim thought had become generally stultified by this time, but usually emphasize the political and economic circumstances accompanying the decline of the Abbassid Caliphate...
...the party of God, or Allah, and the party of Satan, or Shaitan...
...In Iran these days, exponents of several progressive interpretations of Islam are being brutally suppressed by a government composed of the traditional religious establishment (see Commonweal, Feb...
...25, 1983...
...i wish that Fazlur Rahman had given more than passing reference to "democratic process...
...This is ground on which Edward Mortimer declines to tread...
...Instead, he proposes to gradually "Islamisize"the present legal systems by enlightening public conscience.Thus, just when the ulema are terribly excited about their new or revived role in society, Fazlur Rahman would limit their role to teacher and advisor rather than lawyer and judge...
...Religious extremists will always try to exploit ideological slogans in order to gain disproportionate power and influence for themselves...
...whenever this becomes impossible, the next best approach is to muddle facts...
...It would be more convenient for the president to ignore the grisly horrors which have become commonplace in our client states in Central America...
...He assumes that if he were a Muslim, he would be obliged to pick and choose...
...But for those of us living today amidst the winds of the "Islamic resurgence," and attempting to make ourselves useful -- to teach, learn, do research, and educate 6 April 1984:217 our children inside these Muslim countries -- Fazlur Rahman's suggestions seem almost as irrelevant as .Edward Mortimer's assurances...
...The problems posed by religious extremists are especially severe in societies like Pakistan in which democratic traditions have so far failed to establish a firm foothold...
...In these few sentences, Fazlur Rahman appears to contradict and counteract so much of the message of his entire book -- the necessity for free thought, if only to enable the ongoing reihterpretation and reapplication of divine truths to everchanging circumstance...
...He concludes his section on Pakistan's intellectual prospects with the observation that free thought and thought are synonymous, and one cannot hope that thought will survive without freedom...
...Fazlur Rahman's version is bound to antagonize more than a few of his coreligionists...
...In spite of its disunity, however, Communism, both in terms of its professed ideals, and in terms of various governments and groupings, has of course continued to have tremendous impact on world events...
...But both states have drifted slowly towards greater "religification," and in both, small religious parties have attained an importance out of proportion to their backing among the populace, by playing on the fact that religion is seen as the raison d'etre for both states' existence...
...I think that Islam, for all its divergency, will also continue to play an important if not major role on the global stage...
...to find the possibility of meaningful utterance in the very stuff of contemporary mechanism, the ghost in the machine...
...Although there is no recognized clergy in islam, the ulema have come to form a powerful international interest group with almost one thousand years of political experience...
...Even in this capacity, however, the book has certain limitations...
...A major preoccupation of every government in the Muslim world, whether colonial, nationalist, secular, or ideological, has been the handling of religious extremist groups...
...Should I take this as a sign that time is on the side of the intellectual Muslim reformers like Fazlur Rahman, and against both the militant neo-revivalists and the traditional religious establishment...
...In Pakistan, for instance, the phrases "Islamic ideology" and "ideology of Pakistan" are used incessantly to justify the suppression of every sort of opposition and criticism...
...The head of any religious party, or of any religiously oriented government, feels that he represents God's will, and that all political and/or ideological opponents are working against Islam and must therefore be crushed by whatever means necessary...
...But in this nation's one free and fair electioh in December 1970, the militant Jamaat-iIslami party won only 2.9 percent of the seats in West (present-day) Pakistan, while the two ulema-based parties obtained 5.1 per cent each...
...Suppression by force helps lead to resurgence years later...
...I think that we in the Muslim world must lend our support to those who are struggling for democracy and universal human fights...
...Both books deal with past and present trends in Muslim thought and each looks at some half dozen Muslim areas repeatedly, at different periods in time...
...While Fazlur Rahman sees the main duty of an Islamic state as the pursuit of social justice, the ulema tend to acknowledge a state as Islamic in proportion to the importance accorded them in enforcing personal law...
...This initial tendency to, wards rigidity was compounded with the gradual bifurcation of religious knowledge from practical knowledge, a process which was complete by around A.D...
...This bracketing of Pakistan with Israel is, I am afraid, appropriate...
...While Alan Dowty (see Commonweal, July 15, 1983) assures us that there is little likelihood of a theocratic state developing in Israel, he refers to the tendency among Jewish religious fundamentalists to feel that they are morally justified in using illegal and sometimes violent means...
...The Pakistani people, for instance, have never yet really discussed nor demanded an ideological state...
...The fundamentalists tend to have grandiose aims Of introducing a dictatorship of the "true believers," while the ulema parties often act as interest groups ready to form coalitions with any powerful group recognizing their role and status...
...The document absorbed withering criticism from the press (even the Wall Street Journal riddled it) and failed to marshal either congressional or internaINEVITABLE REVOLUTIONS THE UNITEB STATES IN CENTRAL AMERICA Walter LaFeber Norton, $18.95, 357 pp...
...He is very unhappy with what he calls the Fazlur Rahman places the blame for the present-day dominance of the neorevivalist mentality throughout the Muslim world squarely on the shoulders of the Westernized elites of those countries...
...The maulvi, or officiator at the local mosque, is often as ignorant of Islam as any fundamentalist...
...It considers its message to be potentially attractive to everyone...
...In the Muslim world today, it is fashionable for all religious politics, whether Shia, Sunni, fundamentalist, or ulema, to refer to the existence Of only two possible political parties...
...Nevertheless, the notions that external forces are responsible fc;r unrest in the region and that Cuba, acting under orders from Moscow, is the main source of the problem remained as centerpieces of United States policy toward the region...
...Both were born out of terrible communal violence...
...The Reagan administration was but several weeks old when it made public its interpretation of the violence convulsing Central America...
...It is in the interpretation of events in the following period, that of the ascendancy of the Seljuk Turks and Ayyubids, that I would beg to differ with plains about the deficiencies in their Fazlur Rahman...
...It is an interesting question, in fact, whether more sheer expenditure of effort and power is involved in making a full-length film, or mounting a tour for a group like The Who or Led Zeppelin...
...It must thus consider itself answerable to general word opinion and to universally held standards of human behavior...
...Fazlur Rahman takes a long view...
...When father-in-law, husband, and son returned from Eid prayers, they summarized the day's sermon for me...
...Therefore, Islam should not be thought of as a geopolitical force in the II JANE HUSSAIN, a writer and educator in Pakistan, where she has lived for many years, is the author of two volumes of An Illustrated History of Pakistan (Oxford University Press...
...950...
...He also writes that the problem of religious interference in the daily lives of non-orthodox Jews may in time become a very serious issue...
...I am distressed, however, by Fazlur Rahman's bracketing of Pakistan, as a would-be ideological state, with Russia, China, and Israel...
...He feels that his refusal to choose the "true Islam" from among the many versions which he has come across in his two years of travel and research is appropriate to his identity as a non-Muslim...
...And members of the ulema often Call for measures as draconian and punitive as those demanded by the fundamentalists...
...the true Islam is always under construction...
...While reading both of these books, the uppermost question in my own mind was whether an ideological state necessarily evolves towards suppression, or whether it is possible to build a pluralistic, liberal, ideologicallybased society...
...That is, when does "art" become waste...
...As the government of El Salvador continued to make little progress in its struggle against Marxist rebels, as United States-backed "contras" operating from Honduras and Costa/Rica attacked the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and as the military rulers of Guatemala indiscriminately killed peasants suspected of supporting subversives, Central America seemed at the brink of regional warfare...
...Fazlur Rahman's book is obviously aimed at a particular readership: Islamic scholars, would-be scholars, and educators...
...Islamic t h o u g h t . . . equally requires a freedom by which dissent, confrontation of views, and debate between ideas is assured...
...But the seeds of intolerance which I find even in Fazlur Rahman's vision of an ideological state reinforce my belief in the advisability of the secular state...
...Fazlur Rahman does recognize freedom of expression as a necessary precondition for the construction of an intelligently thought out and nationally debated Islamic system...
...It is the lack of creative, rational thought and scholarly method displayed in the currently dominant trends which he finds most disturbing...
...632, the Companions of the Prophet generally ruled by the spirit rather than by the letter of the revelations as collected in the Quran...
...Democracy and freedom of expression are moderating forces that can do much to limit the influence of extremists of various sorts...
...I agree that we should raise our children to be deeply in tune with their religious heritage, and that we should encourage some of our brightest young people to study philosophy, religion, classical languages, and history, as well as subjects like engineering and medicine, so that they may contribute constructively to an ongoing debate on the nature of the state in a Muslim society...
...He strongly condemns the fundamentalists' contention that learning is unnecessary and that all moral truths are self-evident given the Quran and tradition, although he agrees with their claim that much of the ulema' s body of learning is stagnant and largely irrelevant...
...I also feel that Western non-Muslims are doing no one a favor by assuming a neutral attitude to what they would otherwise consider violations of human fights...
...ISLAM AND MODERNITY TRANSFORMATION OF AN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION Fazlur Ruhman University of Chicago, $15, 172 pp...
...And it is also an interesting question -- one that could not have been asked before this century -- how far an "art" can presume to expend the dwindling amount of available energy on this planet...
...The madrasah and the ulema trained in them have been inextricably bound up with politics ever since...
...THE CUBAN THREAT Carla Anne Robblns McGraw.Hill, $17.95, 351 pp...
...MUSLIM THOUGHT IN TRANSITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . Islam: faith & ideology JANE HUSSAIN I N STRUCTURE, Faith and Power and Islam and Modernity are quite similar, while their subject matters overlap...
...Complaining about a previous Pakistani regime's "hands off" policy of benign neglect towards private religious educational institutions, he writes, . . . in a state that claims to be based upon the ideology of Islam, what sense does it make to have private institutions that can deal with Islam as they choose...
...The affluent, urban members of Muslim society are often, he points out, even more ignorant of their religious heritage than their less privileged, generally illiterate countrymen...
...Both groups of conservatives often unite to push government efforts to interefere in what many would consider to be the private lives of individual citizens...
...I can't help but wonder: what does the future hold for the Muslim world in 1984...
...As both a Westerner and a long-time resident of the Muslim world, I found this doubly disappointing...
...I AM AFRAID that I do not share Fazlur Rahman's belief in the efficacy of a modem liberal interpretation of Islam in bringing about a modem liberal islamic state...
...Fazlur Rahman is not at all discouraged by the diversity of interpretations to be found over space and time in the Muslim world...
...Edward Mortimer's work, on the other hand, is meant for the general reader...
...He argues that a permanently ongoing process of "rethinking Islam" is necessary to enable its reapplication to continuously changing circumstances...
...Both authors agree that while social justice is a basic aim of Islam, there is no definitive sociopolitical blueprint to be found either in its scripture or traditions...
...For him, a Muslim's duty is not to choose but to think anew...
...In his concern over the impact of the simplistic solutions offered by the openly anti-intellectual fundamentalist militants, I think that Fazlur Rahman makes an overly charitable assessment of the past, present, and potential role of the traditional Muslim establishment -- the "learned men" or ulema, in this book, Fazlur Rahman downplays his differences with the ulema, and mainly cornRahman back to the first centuries of the Muslim era, when Islamic learning "in most cases consisted exclusively of memorizing the Quran, copying down traditions.., and deducing legal points from them...
...I think that Fazlur Rahman is to be admired for his boldness in pushing back the origins of Muslim intellectual stagnation to the earliest days of Islam...
...Over the years, I have become a connoisseur of Friday sermons, while hanging out the laundry...
...world...
...Will Pakistani authorities remain indifferent to it...
...The people of each Muslim country, or federation of Muslim countries, must learn from their mistakes while forging the systems appropriate to their environments and ethos...
...These rulers wanted a religious establishment which would not _9 question their legitimacy or judge them by the moral standards of islam...
...And even if the implications of Edward Mortimer's book were credible -- even if the Islamic resurgence is neither a danger nor a blessing to the West -- it seems very incomplete and off balance not to ask whether this resurgence constitutes a danger or a blessing to the inhabitants of the Muslim world itself...
...Private institutions teaching any sort of ideology, if allowed to exist at all, would be very closely supervised...
...This assertion rested not upon any shred of objective evidence but rather upon the adaptation of reality to a Manichean world view which presently shapes the foreign policy of the United States...
...FRANK McCONNELL (Frank McConnell's most recent book is a novel, Murder Among Friends, Walker, $12.95...
...While conceding that "at present Khomeini's influence is supreme," he optimistically notes that the influence of the more progressive thinkers "upon the younger generation of students is profound and is likely to reassert itself...
...At the same time they do enter the political arena to ensure the continued honoring of the bargain originally struck with the Seljuks and Ayyubids...
...Fazlur Rahman is not at all neutral...
...While acknowledging that the madrasah have, from their origins, handed down a sterile tradition, Fazlur Rahman overlooks the motives of the Seljuks and Ayyubids in founding a system which would do just this...
...I'm not sure that it would be tolerant enough to suit me...
...The founding fathers of both states were secular and Western-oriented...
...He is so cautious, in fact, that he abstains from applying almost any labels (such as "fundamentalist") and refuses to recognize any international trends (although he does point out isolated similarities between countries...
...After the death of the Prophet Mohammed in A.D...
...She is completing an economic history of the region...
...In all of the countries now undergoing "Islamization," the rejection of the Western style judicial systems and their replacement by "Islamic courts" -- enforcing not only what Fazlur Rahman terms "minimal Islam," but also "punitive Islam" -- are seen as basic and fundamental to this process...
...Just as he maintains a studied neutrality as to what is genuinely Islamic, he also carefully refrains from making predictions about the future...
...His sound system is such that not only his congregation but the entire neighborhood cannot help but hear his sermons...
...One cannot help respecting Professor Rahman for his erudition and broadmindedness, and admiring him for his deep faith and unflagging efforts to rekindle the flames of Muslim intellectualism...
...It is in the final chapters of their books that the two authors really diverge...
...As I sit wondering whether my children will turn out to be matricides, patricides, early morning prayer-shirkers, or, heaven forbid, that sort of intellectual, I read in the newspaper that this year, for the first time, sacrificial meat was airlifted out of Saudi Arabia and distributed to poor Muslims, including the Afghan refugees...
...Because Edward Mortimer is a journalist concerned with Muslim thought on politics, his book is more readable and accessible to the average layperson than that of Fazlur Rahman, an Islamic scholar exploring the more esoteric topic of Muslim ideas on thought (and education...
...Fazlur Rahman and the ulema differ on the very nature of the Islamic state, but this difference is nowhere stated and can only with difficulty be pieced together from references scattered throughout the book...
...Similarly, the anti-intellectualism of the "learned men" is traced by Fazlur This is the period in which the madrasah or seminary system became institutionalized under state patronage...
...Joseph A. Page tional support...
...Can Russia or China allow private institutions to interpret communism as they l i k e ? . . . Suppose a private institution is established today in Pakistan with the purpose of teaching, say, Marxism...
...Although his treatments of the six Muslim areas are to my knowledge accurate and objective, Edward Mortimer has of necessity had to provide his history of political thought without either its political or its intellectual context...
...different perspective...
...training...
...Mortimer reminds me of the analysts of the sixties who assured us that Communism was not monolithic --thus implying that it was not a great threat to Western security...
...The members of the ulema do not assume a political role as moral critics of government...
...Both Inevitable Revolutions, a study of how the United States has shaped the history of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and The Cuban Threat, which assesses the actual challenge posed by Fidel Castro's regime to the interests of its neighbor to the north, provide essential background Commonweal: 218...
...But when controversies arose, they would try to legitimize their decisions by quoting chapter and verse...
...The Commission calls for increased military aid from the United States and more than $8 billion in economic assistance over the next five years...
...Rock and the cinema have both grown into fantastically, perhaps even grotesquely, high-tech forms of contemporary art...
...The ulema and the fundarnentalists.generally have separate political parties...
...I hope that he is fight...
...The democratic process is a people's premier educational institution...
...Many prefer doctrine to debate...
...In calling their version of Islam a "minimal Islam," he implies that it is incomplete but fairly harmless...
...One hopes that in the gothic calm of the University of Chicago campus, Fazlur Rahman and his colleagues and students are making good progress following his program of reconstruction...
...This difficulty is compounded yet again whenever religion is involved...
...women are not allowed in most of Pakistan' s mosques...
...In the last section of his book, therefore, he presents a suggested program for the reconstruction of the Muslim intellectual tradition...
...The two books differ sharply in viewpoint as well as readability...
...Fazlur Rahman, however, feels that since law-making in the ulema institutions has been stagnant for centuries, it is no longer feasible to dispense with the Western-inspired, secular judicial systems...
...I agree with Fazlur Rahman that the Westernized elites' tactic of sweeping the Islamic ideology issue under the carpet with insincere promises was at best a stopgap solution which is now clearly no longer working...
...als and groups, and an exaggerated im- Nevertheless, he believes that a total repression of the decisiveness of the roles thinking of Islam can enable the estabplayed by the various tendencies of lishment of genuinely Islamic, tolerant thought inactual political developments, ideological states in the Muslim world...
...If, when Fazlur Rahman condemns secularism in our daily lives and in the education of our young people, he is condemning a moral relativism amounting to amorality, then I am with him and against secularism...
...These groups, while always constituting a very small minority of the population, possess fanatical, tightly-knit, and highly disciplined memberships...
...But in actual practice, both groups overlap and sometimes merge...
...Edward Mortimer has already been gently chided (see The New York Review of Books, June 30, 1983) for repeating the long debunked view which blames outside Mongol invaders for destroying all that was best in Muslim culture around A.D...
...Both the ulema and the militant fundamentalists must be obliged to play by the rules of the game...
...In terms of their willingness to master a traditional body of knowledge, Fazlur Rahman contrasts the ulema favorably with the fundamentalists...
...Thus, Fazlur Rahman seems to feel that an ideological state should both censor "alien ideologies" and enforce the teaching of its own version of its own ideology...
...Products of secular education, he warned, murder their mothers and fathers, refuse to get up on time for early morning prayers, and grow up to be the sorts of intellectuals who object to the wastage of tons of sacrificial meat bulldozed under the sand each Eid in Makkah (Saudi Arabia...
...in 'return for silence on social issues, they will be recognized as 6 April 1984:215 arbiters of personal issues...
...In the end, both the totally noncommittal attitude of Edward Mortimer and the total commitment of Fazlur Rahman leave me deeply dissatisfied...
...Disregarding for the moment questions of the nature of Zionism and the problems of the Palestinians, there are parallels between the two youthful states: Pakistan, a state founded as a homeland for Muslims, and Israel, a state founded as a homeland for Jews...
...Attempts to deal with religious extremists have generally backfired...
...Certainly, Faith and Power can be thought of as a useful handbook, an easy reference guide, if you please, to the political thought of the Muslim world, past and present...
...The report of the Kissinger Commission adopts the view that the roots of the crisis are both domestic and foreign, the former stemming from social and economic conditions, the latter attributable to Cuban and Soviet interference...
...Granted, that Fazlur Rahman's Islamic state would be much more tolerant than the Ayatollah Khomeini's...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
