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Murata, S. and Chittick, W. C.(1996) The Vision of
Islam (London: I.B. Tauris)
I am about half
way through Murata and Chittick (1996) and I am beginning to get an overview
of the text, although in many ways the delight is in the detail. But overall,
I have no reason to disagree with the authors’ claims that this a book about
Islam told from the Muslim perspective. But I would surmise this is also a
book about Islam told from the perspective of conservative Muslim scholars.
And so it should be.
After all, if I was interested in the Christian Liberation Theology, it would
be hard to grasp the half of it without some reference to what went before.
But at the same time, it is a long way from Aquinas (d1274) to Segundo (author
of the 1991 ‘The Liberation of Theology’). Traditional Muslim and Christian
theological interpretations were conceived in completely different societies
to the one I am living in now.
One important thing to know is - what has changed? Clearly, God hasn’t. In
some ways, people haven’t either – although I would argue God knows they need
to! What has changed, rather, is the cultural milieu, and thus the mind and
lives through which I and many other Muslims are trying to realise Islam
within our lives.
Theories of modernity generally plot a shift from the traditional European
societies of the Middle Ages to the political, cultural, and economic forms
that characterize industrialized societies of the present day. For some, this
process implies a fundamental transformation of beliefs about the self and
humankind, even though the very nature of modernity is contested and a core
question underlying the rise of social science itself. Foucault's answer takes
the questioning itself—the interrogation of our condition as modern—as the
fundamental Kantian feature of modernity.
Other theorists identify the rise of a number of key modern features in the
course of the seventeenth century: the discourse of reason and rationality,
with the concomitant growth of science; the emergence of industrial production
and capitalism, accompanied by greater social mobility, an emerging
bourgeoisie, and the spread of literacy; the consolidation of nation-states,
state bureaucracies, and the shift of political legitimacy from divine
monarchical rule toward the sovereignty of the people; the secularization of
society, particularly in Northern Europe; and the development of a new fabric
of selfhood rooted in concepts of individuality, autonomy, and freedom. Then
we have postmodernity, with the ensuing demise of the status of the
meta-narrative, among other things.
One of the limitations of Murata and Chittick
(1996) is that it assumes something of the arrogance intrinsic to pre-modern
theologies, by implying Muslim theosophy to be ‘the mother of all sciences’.
This is evident in their dismissal of social scientific approaches to theology
as faddish at the beginning of the book. Yet even in the book's detail,
particularly the exposition of justice and predestination, there is the
unmistakable sense of reading about ideas conceived within a relatively static
society, and a tremendous contradiction in the anthropology which presents
humans as malleable and diverse against such a singular, safe understanding of
Islam.
Murata and Chittick (1996) is fascinating reading, and an excellent jumping
off point for investigating the Hanafi fiqh more thoroughly. I find
it a constant source for prolonged and considered reflection on key issues.
But the final consolidation of my core understandings of what it means to be a
Muslim is likely to come through contemplating this fiqh in the context of
contemporary notions of self and society, and through exploring the works of
Farid Esack, Khaled Abou El Fadl and Amina Wadud, insha Allah.
My response to this book, on first
reading, is basically twofold.
First, no other book has left me feeling so impelled to enlarge
my understanding of Islam as a believer. I now acknowledge such an
investigation must include a study of traditional fiqh and some of the classic
works of Islam. More than ever, the intention of further study is to more
fully embrace the core understandings of Islam detailed by these scholars and
thus move closer to Allah, insha Allah. I also hope to distil a very
small part of the key teachings described by the authors and include them on
my site, insha Allah.
On the other hand, there is plenty that is peripheral to the core aims of this
book that I intend to disregard completely. In fact, I have never read so many
glib, absolutist and reactionary statements about such things as modernity,
contemporary learning or history in a book written by professional academics.
Some of these grandiose statements are clearly the views of the authors,
although whether they are also a facet of the conservative Muslim worldview
the authors claim to represent is often unclear. I very much doubt they will
ever be mine. |