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NOTES:
Preface
1) Examine extent Islam shapes intellectual practice in Muslim societies
2) Give Islamic culture greater prominence in postcolonial and multicultural
theories
Progressive Islam - human solidarity
Critique of capitalism, which entails a call for a change in the “rules that
frame our thoughts and behaviours” (p.viii)
Introduction: Villainies Veiled and Unveiled
“Eurocentric vocabulary is remarkably common and transcends most ideological
boundaries” (p. 2) – secularism, origins in European enlightenment
“The tone of ‘reasonableness’ and the exalted virtues of the scholarly sang
froid and emotional detachment that the secular attitude embodies often hide
the controversial origins of the secularization process and its inextricable
connection to a wider body of thought that continues to assume the naturalness
of bourgeois social and political organisation” (p.3)
Secularization, subset of modernisation theory
Secularization – mostly state imposed, in both Muslim and non-Muslim nations
Secular scholarship “intensified the opaqueness of a Muslim subjectivity
shrouded in a different ‘regime of truth’” (p.3)
BUT such premises barrier to theories of inclusion and encourage notion of
cultural conflict as reason for global dystopia, instead of recognising that
cultures are being “constantly battered by the capitalist system” (p.3)
Not suggesting an alienating melting pot cosmopolitanism
Suggesting multiple cultures of equal stature sharing the planet on the basis
of a progressive vision based on the notion of human solidarity
Challenging Eurocentric assumptions about Islam, without dismissing either
culture as outdated or irrelevant or opprobrious, at the same time as
challenging capitalisms de-culturizing political economy
Problems of challenging free market hegemony, e.g. associations with Marxism,
capitalism assumed to be intrinsic to the US “freedom package” (p.6)
Problems of discussing Islamic culture, which has been thoroughly ‘othered’
Kaplan (1994) thesis: “The breakdown of traditional communities that are
forcibly integrated into the global economic system encourages a sort of
anarchy and lawlessness that states are increasingly unable to control” (p.7)
Critiques Sammy Huntington ‘clash of civilizations’ - Orientalist/Culturalist
thesis which mythologizes and homogenises nations of the global North by
ignoring their diversity, persistent internal racism, internal conflicts, etc.
(as well as defining Islam=monolithic)
Amin, S. (1996) Imperialism and culturalism complement one another,
Monthly Review, June 1996 [48] p.1-11
“The problems confronting the world are more complex than the simple ‘us’
versus ‘them’ syndrome” (p.12)
Points to demographic and technological divisions between rich/poor nations
Critique of corporate, global capitalism:
Barnet, R. J. and Cavanagh, J. (1994) Global Dreams:
Imperial Corporations and the New World Order (NY: Simon and Schuster)
Koren, D. C. (1995) When Corporations Rule the World
(Kumarian Press)
“Capitalism’s danger to human life is now starkly evident everywhere in the
world.” (p.14)
“The persistence of long-discredited Orientalist and social science paradigms
into the twenty first century has perpetuated a cultural impasse that must be
superseded if scholarship is to reclaim its explanatory powers and its
long-term view of human histories.” (p.19)
“That postcolonial theory has been particularly inattentive to the question of
Islam in the global economy exposes its failure to incorporate different
regimes of truth into a genuinely multicultural vision.” (p.19)
Problem of essentialising secular liberal values
Alludes to governmentality in drawing attention to failure of postcolonial
studies to analyse e.g. nationalism, esp. Arab nationalism “…whose effect to
sever the Arabic speaking peoples from a larger ecumene” (p.20)
“I contend that Islamic cultures…could help ‘provincialize’ the West and offer
other ways to be in the world.” (p.21)
“Behold! We have created you all from one male and
from one female, and have made you unto nations and tribes so that you might
come to know one another.” Al-Qur'an, 51:13
See also: Bobby S. Sayyid (1996) A Fundamental Fear:
Eurocentricism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed Books)
Chapter 2: Millennium without Arabs
Arab identity – imagined community
Mohamed ‘Abid al-Jabri located the
“…structure of the ‘Arab Mind’ in the early Abbasid period” (p.52) when
expanding Islam + universal message of Islam = eroding ethnic priveledge and
political supremacy of Hejaz Muslims
Age of recording – ‘asru tadween “…an attempt to recuperate the once
deliberately annulled and superseded traditions of the Jahiliya” (p.52)
“…the vulgar Bedouin , the ‘al-a’arabi of the Jahiliya, was transformed into
the cultural legislator of a long tradition” (p.53)
Al-Jabri
“Arabness is a fictional ethnicity invented as a political ploy to contain
dangerous foreigners attracted to the egalitarian and liberating promise of
Islam” (p.53)
Colonialism – Arab nationalism: nationalist notions of vernacular; Arab elites
Arab nationalists as ‘surrogate colonialists’
Desacrilization of Arabic in the Levant
“Moralizing efficiency and ranking nations according to their degree of
technicalization have forced Muslims and the world’s indigenous peoples to
deny their own ethnocide by claiming that they are only importing skills and
technologies, not values and ideologies” (p.61/62)
Jalal Amin
Egyptian economist
Suggested “…the recuperation of a liberating economic model is ultimately
inseparable from the rediscovery of self-confidence and energy in tradition”
(p.62)
Underdevelopment/Imperialism – two sides of the same coin
Amin/Mansour - Arab Muslim social and legal ossification due to capitalism
Orientalism
Anthropology – need to examine historical origins of ideas and
power structures in which such discourses take place
Philology – see Edward Said’s
‘Orientalism’
Al-Azmeh - Orientalism’s overriding
need to speak ill of Islam
Bryan S Turner – reading of ‘Others’ as
list of absences; transfer of West’s anxiety’s to Orient; metahistorical
schemata; ‘homo Islamicus’
Fred Halliday – false myths perpetuated by
Said and Islamists, but “…fails to consider the balance in global relations in
which the dissemination of information and the deployment of power are very
much a one-sided affair” (p.60)
Fazlur Rahman – (Islam and Modernity)
History/Philosophy – Qur’an “…while the Shariah needs to be continually
reinterpreted, it must ultimately flow from the normative values of the
(historical) Qur’an” (p.69)
Leonard Binder – “realizes that the
monolithic and universalizing assumptions of liberal development theory and
the fundamentally essentialising views of Islam have prevented scholars ….
From taking local and culturally specificities into account” (p.69) (but
thinks capitalism for Arabs inevitable)
Majid critiques corporate global capitalism, etc
and suggests revival of progressive Islam may challenge new thinking on global
capitalism
“A postnational, Islamically progressive identity can contribute not only to
Muslims’ autonomy but also to the forging of new cultural solidarities in a
polycentric world” (p.72)
C4: Women’s Freedom in Muslim Spaces
Issue of how gender is used a tool of analysis in attacking Muslim resurgence.
Issue of negative impact of Western paradigms in talking about gender justice
within Islam
But…
“…the recovery of long obfuscated egalitarian conceptions of Islam, together
with an effort to reconceptualise a progressive Islam for the future, are
necessary undertakings if one is to go beyond a negative critique of
homogenized Islamic cultures and rethink a possible indigenous path to women’s
emancipation” (p.100)
“…critically redefine and thoroughly reassess Islamic traditions…
categorically reject all coercive and intolerant practices…” (p.100)
Leila Ahmed
Historicity of Islam
Ahmed, L. (1992) Women and Gender in Islam: Historical
Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press)
“Clerical Islam is no more problematic than the ideologically suspect
discourses of unexamined Western social science theories” (p.101)
Marnia Lazreg
Lazreg, M. (1988) ‘Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman
on Women in Algeria’ Feminist Studies 14, Spring
1988 p.??-??
“The feminist question in Islam is necessarily implicated in the cross
currents of several contestory discourses and ideologies” (p.102)
Muslim feminism – indigenous alternatives
Problem – writings of Ben Jelloun “…illustrates the complex impact feminism
has had on certain Muslim novelists” (p.104)
Championing women’s rights in Islam
-versus-
a) “deadwood of orthodoxy” (p.104)
b) “biased interpretations of much of Western scholarship” (p.104)
Women’s place in anti-colonialism
Women’s place in a “…stagnant, apolitical and mostly reactionary Islam”
(p.105)
Fatima Mernissi
“Understands that colonialism has had the unintended effect of
suppressing the legitimate struggle of women by subsuming it into an
uncritical Islamic ideology of resistance” (p.105)
Mernissi, F. (2003) Beyond the Veil: Male-female
Dynamics in Muslim Society (Saqi Book)
“if the ‘ulama and the co-opted intellectuals of feudal, patriarchal regimes
in the Islamic world, late capitalism has created its own set of privileged
intellectuals and theories which, I contend, have not been sufficiently
examined by Muslim feminists or Western scholars writing on feminism in the
Muslim world” (p.107)
Challenge to Mernissi – Mervat Hatem
Hatem, M. (1987) ‘Class and Patriarchy as Competing Paradigms for the Study of
Middle Eastern Women’ Society for the Comparative Studies of Society and
History 29 (October, 1987) p.816-818
“The Struggle in the Islamic world today is … over democratizing decision
making and wrestling the state from the hands of regimes that have ossified
religion and turned it into a tool of political control” (p.108)
Islamists can be pro-democratic
Kramer, G. ‘Islamist Notions of Democracy’ Middle East Report 23, July-August
1993, p.2-8
Majid asserts that petit bourgeois reactionary Islamism needs to be
‘thoroughly critiqued’; Marxist critique of Islamic fundamentalism:
Marshall, P. (1988) ‘Islamic Fundamentalism: Oppression and Revolution’
International Socialism 40, Autumn 1988, p.1-51
Around the general topic, see also:
Maxime Rodinson
Rodinson, M., Matthews, J. [Trans] (1981) Marxism and the Muslim World (New
York: Monthly Review Press)
“…depending on how it is done … the recovery of an Islamic past … can be
useful to women fighting for freedom in the Islamic world” (p.109)
Nawal El Saadawi
“El Saadawi’s indictment of the unholy global alliance between Western
imperialism and reactionary Islamic jurisprudence and customs to maintain an
inferior status of women is, however, complex enough to allow for a
progressive Muslim agenda” (p.110)
El Saadawi supported Iranian revolution as “essentially liberating” (p.110)
Main issue for esp. Arab women is freedom from foreign domination
Supports preservation of Arab people’s cultural heritage free from
de-culturing tendencies of capitalism
Veil
Ahmed, L. (1992); Dwyer (1992); Melman (1992); Najmabadi (1993); Walther, W.
(1993); Marsot (1996); Young (2003)
Meaning and history complex, and contemporary symbolism often misunderstood
Today veil = symbol of rejection of secular values
NB. Promises of colonialism and Western led modernisation often
counterproductive to women’s social, economic and cultural freedoms in the
modern world
Pro-emancipation of women – Ibn al-’Arabi (1165-1210); Ibn Rushd (1126-98)
Contra women’s emancipation – Umar ibn al-Khattab; Al-Ghazali (1058-1111)
Position of women pre-colonial depending on a range of factors, including
ethnicity
“It is rather tragic that the emergence of the status of women as an issue of
major social concern would be ensnared by the reigning discourses of modernity
and its antithetical defensive Islamic responses” (p.114)
Qasim Amin (1899) The Liberation of Women – see Ahmed (1992)
“The process of Western hegemony stimulated reactionary tendencies within
Islamic cultures and delays women’s emancipation from the clutches of clerical
Islam” (p.115)
Helped on by the fact that…
“…the most privileged and Westernized classes in Arab society eagerly
surrendered to the cultural imperialism that was an integral part of the
colonial process” (p.115)
Public unveiling instigated by Reza Shah Pahlevi
See Najmabadi, in Kandiyoti (1999) on women under the last Shah
Female affirmation in Islamic organisations “largely unchronicled” (p.116)
"Secularism is not a separation between religion and state, as propagated in
both Western and Arab writing. Rather, it is the removal of absolute values -
epistemological and ethical - from the world such that the entire world -
humanity and nature alike - becomes merely a utilitarian object to be utilized
and subjugated. From this standpoint, we can see the structural similarity
between the secular epistemological vision and the imperialist epistemological
vision. We can also realize that imperialism is no more than the exporting of
a secular and epistemological paradigm from the western world, where it first
emerged, to the rest of the world." Abdulwahab al Masseri, 'The Imperialist
Epistemological Position', American Journal of Islamic
Social Scientists 11 (Fall 1994) p.403
Critique of nationalism
“…no agency has succeeded in oppressing peoples of the third world more than
the state” (p.119)
Eroding local cultures and economies
Call for restoration of “the dynamic relationship of ijtihad and ijma”
(Esposito, 1982, p.116)
Human rights and Islam – Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Mayer, A. E. (1995) Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics, 2nd Ed.
(Boulder: Westview)
“…expanding the sphere of political freedom is still strategically
indispensable but to regard this as an end in itself, or assume that political
rights will be translated into better social conditions is an unproven
proposition” (p.121)
Muslim identity
Need to “…examine the historical and cultural background of the prevailing
capitalist equation of the individual with what Saud Joseph called in a
different context “an autonomous contract making self” (p.122) where the self
is conceived as property.
Muslim notion of individual – Mahmoud Monshipouri
Monshipouri, M. (1994) ‘Islamic Thinking and the Internationalisation of Human
Rights, Muslim World 84, July-October 1994 p.??-??
Problematizing use of patriarchy
Sadowsky, Y. (1993) ‘The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate’ Middle
Eastern Report 23, July-August 1993, p.14-21
Taha - Second message - Abandoning of
Shariah, New law based on Meccan revelation
Na’im – less radical
See Muslim Feminism in Iran: Tohidi, N.
(1994) ‘Modernity, Islamization and Women in Iran’, in Moghadam, V. M. [Ed.]
Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in
Muslim Societies (London: Zed Books); Ziba Mir-Hosseini (1996)
‘Stretching the Limits: A feminist Reading of Shari’a in post-Khomeini Iran’
in Mai Yamani and Andrew Allen [Eds.] (1996) Feminism
and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives (NY: New York University
Press)
Conclusion
I will simply give reference to topics covered, since most have been
discussed or touched on previously and are worthy of deeper exploration. I
simply include references to books mentioned by Majid, plus books by the same
author which might be worth exploring further:
Samir Amin (2004)
Obsolescent Capitalism : Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder (Zed
Books)
Samir Amin, Russell Moore (1989) Eurocentrism
(Monthly Review Press)
Samir Amin, Michael Wolfers [Translator] (1990)
Delinking : Towards a Polycentric World (Zed Books)
Amin is co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives:
http://www.alternatives.ca/en
Critique of Western/capitalist assumptions of rights discourse:
Winin Pereira (1997)
Inhuman Rights: The Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse (Goa:
Other Indian Press)
Heiner Bielfeldt (1995) ‘Muslim Voices in the Human Rights Debate’, in
Human Rights Quarterly 17(4), p.???-???
Serge Latouche; Martin O'Connor, Rosemary
Arnoux and Martin O'Conner [Trans] (1993)
In the Wake of the Affluent Society: An Exploration of
Post-development (Zed Books)
Serge Latouche, Rosemary Morris [Trans] (1996) The
Westernization of the World: Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive
Towards Global Uniformity (Polity Press)
Islam and Third Worldism:
Sohail H Hashimi (1996) ‘International Society and Its Islamic Malcontents’
Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 20, Winter-Spring
1996, p.??
Harvey Cox (1999) ‘The Market as God’ Atlantic,
March 1999, p.18-23
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