Muslims as Actors: Islamic Meanings and Muslim Interpretations in the Perspective of the Study of Religions [Reprint 2012 ed.] 3110191423, 9783110191424

Citation preview

Jacques Waardenburg Muslims as Actors

w DE

G

Religion and Reason

General Editor

Jacques Waardenburg, Lausanne Board of Advisers R. N . Bellah, Berkeley - M . Despland, Montreal - W. Dupre, Nijmegen S. N . Eisenstadt, Jerusalem - U. King, Bristol - K. Rudolph, Marburg L. E. Sullivan, Notre Dame (USA)

Volume 46

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · N e w York 2007

Jacques Waardenburg

Muslims as Actors Islamic Meanings and Muslim Interpretations in the Perspective of the Study of Religions

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

2007

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

ISSN 0 0 8 0 - 0 8 4 8 ISBN 9 7 8 - 3 - 1 1 - 0 1 9 1 4 2 - 4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Waardenburg, Jean Jacques. Muslims as actors : Islamic meanings and Muslim interpretations / by Jacques Waardenburg. p. cm. - (Religion and reason ; 46) Includes index. ISBN 9 7 8 - 3 - 1 1 - 0 1 9 1 4 2 - 4 (alk. paper) 1. Islam - Research. 2. Islam - Study and teaching. 3. Orientalism. I. Title. BP42.W33 2 0 0 7 297.2-dc22 2007028701

Bibliographic

information

published by the Deutsche

Nationalbibliothek

T h e Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at .

© Copyright 2 0 0 7 by Walter de Gruyter G m b H & Co. K G , 1 0 7 8 5 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this b o o k may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin Disk conversion: Fotosatz Voigt, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. G m b H , Göttingen

Preface The essays contained in this book propose a fresh way of looking at and studying Islam. It should be studied not only as a religious system or ideology that imposes itself on people accepting it. We should also study it in terms of the ways diverse Muslim authorities, particular Muslims, and specific Muslim groups have read and interpreted it and what they have done with it. Hence the title Muslims as Actors. This approach has several implications. Scholars need to study the various meanings that Islam as such and particular elements of it have had for adherents in given contexts. Such meanings emerge from more or less authoritative texts and forms of group behavior. Furthermore, Muslim statements about Islam are not factual but interpretative. Adherents have interpreted Islam in practice in various ways while recognizing that they have one and the same Islam as a faith in common. They have given numerous readings and interpretations of their Islam: spiritually and ideologically but also socially and politically, individually and as groups or societies. Islam is the Islam of the Muslims; their interpretations of Islam and Islamic data need to be made the subject of impartial scholarly research. This is all the more true since the meanings that specific Islamic data— not to speak of Islam itself—have for particular Muslims at given moments are poorly known. True scholarship on Muslim societies and Islam should view them as impartially as possible. Non-Muslims have often viewed and judged Islam on the basis of their own particular faith, political stand, specific conviction, or view of the world. For centuries Islam as such was judged in Christian cultures sans gene on the basis of authoritative Christian doctrine. In more recent times, Islam has been and is still regarded, with much ignorance and even fear—in accordance with Western political interests and public anxieties—as a political, social, even cultural enemy. Intellectuals have approached the subject of Islam in accordance with models of religion and enlightenment that were current in the West in their time. There is something strange in the distance and lack of normal communication between Western experts on Islamic matters and ordinary Muslim people. One might have expected more

VI

Preface

reflective academic curiosity and more self-critical reflection in the encounter with people of a different but not too different culture. There is also something strange in a certain neglect of the academic study of Islam as a living faith and community. Formerly, it was mostly left to theologians and missionaries—as "specialists" in religious matters—to study Islam as a religion. Precisely among these "professionals", however, Islam as a religion tended to evoke negative feelings and judgments, just as Westerners in general contrasted Muslim societies and ways of life unfavorably with European culture and religion. Although certain people sensed what the Islamic faith could mean concretely to Muslims, only a few scholars seem to have been able to view and study Islam realistically as a faith and religion, a moral way of life, and a social order of people "like us", without instinctively reacting against it. The colonial situation and present-day geopolitics have stood in the way of getting to know Muslim people as they are and of grasping what their Islam means to them. Interestingly, the study of Islamic religion, apart from its formative period and the major works of the classical medieval period, has largely been left to Orientalists, but they have not necessarily been interested in religion. The relative neglect of Islam in the scholarly study of religions is remarkable indeed. Apart from Sufi spirituality, Islam as a religion, a social order, or a moral system seems hardly to have attracted researchers before the mid-20 t h century. Still nowadays, on a popular level and in the media, Islam has continued to be associated with submissiveness, authoritarian regimes, political conflicts, violence towards outsiders, and discrimination of women, rather than with faith, moral sense, and sociability. Spontaneous curiosity about Islam—apart from practical interests—is still lacking and good books by Muslims on their faith and reflective studies are scarce. In the present-day West, Islam is largely " k n o w n " through simplistic generalizations and wrong stereotypes. It is only an image! Fortunately, the need for information, encounter, cooperation and dialogue beyond religious, ideological, and political "borders" is increasingly felt. Many of the foreign features of Muslims and Muslim societies that in the past were ascribed to an unknown " I s l a m " turn out to have in fact quite ordinary social and psychological causes, beyond religion and culture. This book is also concerned with the academic study and theorization of religions in general. The approach advocated here views religions as open signification systems, duly constructed and parallel to language systems. It seeks to explore religious as well as other meanings as human expressions. The term "Islam", for instance, is a key element in

Preface

VII

Muslim discourse. It is a core of signification, highly instrumental for communication among Muslims who are dedicated to it. The term, then, has an authoritative and nearly sacred quality, but its meanings are fluid. The scholarly approach adopted in this book is guided by an interest in meanings, including constructions of meaning. After establishing facts and looking for explanations for them, we have to pay attention to the particular meanings people give to these facts. Throughout the research, justice should be done to what the people concerned say and do themselves, with a view to communication rather than confrontation. We should be attentive to the links that exist between specific readings, interpretations and practices that appeal to Islam, on the one hand, and particular human life conditions, situations, and contexts of the Muslims concerned, on the other. In the many new contexts of the Muslim world, new constructions of Islam have arisen. In Muslim discourse of Islamic "revival" we find a clear demarcation between the Muslim and the Western world. In Western discourse of a "clash" of civilizations we find a similar contrast between the Western and the Islamic civilization. The present book does not deal with the rise, forms, and effects of contemporary Western hegemony and domination. This is a subject for historians, economists and political scientists. Here I simply take this hegemony for granted and inquire how Muslim people have reacted to it. My hypothesis is that present-day Muslim interpretations of Islam have been conditioned largely by the fact of Western hegemony. Here is a major key to explain present-day interpretations of Islam and to understand the rise of new constructions of meaning. Like the two preceding volumes 1 , this one is the fruit of one person's intellectual interest in Islam in an increasingly complex context. The years 1 9 4 5 - 2 0 0 7 have been a crucially important period for the Muslim world and Islam. In my approach, I have been carried along on the waves of abstract thinking. The reader will find fewer facts and footnotes here and less engagement with publications of colleagues than is usual in scholarly work. I should stress that my approach does not belong to a particular school; 2 there are no authorities behind it, it is my own work and its results are open to discussion and debate.

1

2

Jacques WAARDENBURG, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives and Muslims and Others: Relations in Context. (Religion and Reason 40 and 41), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2 0 0 2 and 2 0 0 3 . Not even to the phenomenology of religion, where I started as a "beginner" in the science of religions some fifty years ago. It is a long, long way to enlightenment . . .

VIII

Preface

Bibliographies have been added to the book to give it more concrete substance. Each chapter has a list of "Selected Literature" which includes details about publications mentioned in the footnotes. The "Further Reading" at the end of the book lists publications on method and theory in Islamic Studies and the study of religions generally. I am grateful for the intellectual and moral support I have received from people of several continents. I feel indepted to my family, who let me work, although they have been its first victims. I have had the opportunity to work in philosophical tranquility, visiting various places such as Cret Berard near Lausanne and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. I could spend here three months in 2004, living outside disturbing conflicts. May the result lead to reasonable discourse. The book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, to my sister and brother, to my wife Hilary, and to our sons George and Johannes. Lausanne, March 15, 2007 (24 July 2007)

J. D. J. W.

Contents Preface

V

Introduction 1. Some Biographical Notes 2. The Present Book 3. Some Perspectives

1 1 17 20

Selected Literature

21 Part One: Two Questions

Chapter 1 Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam? ..

25

1. Islamic Studies in Context 2. Studying Islam as a Religion 3. The Science of Religion Contributing to the Study of Islam . . . 3.1. The Term "Islam" 3.2. Objective and Subjective Meanings 3.3. Statements on Islam Studied as Interpretations of Islam .. 3.4. Ways of Interpreting and Constructing Islam 3.5. Islam Viewed as the Order of Creation 3.6. Islam Studied as an Interpretative System that is itself Continuously Interpreted 4. Studying Constructions of Islam 4.1. Variety of Constructions 4.2. Claims of Universality 4.3. Cultural Heyday of Islam 5. Islam under Construction

25 27 29 29 30 31 32 33

Selected Literature: The Study of Religions

37

Chapter 2 Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

40

1. Introduction 2. The Concept of a Signification System 3. Subjective Meanings

40 41 42

34 34 35 35 36 36

X

Contents

4. Interest in Meanings 5. Islam Studied as a Signification System 6. The Proposed Approach Summarized

45 46 48

Selected Literature: Islamic Studies

50

Part Two: Issues in Islamic Studies Chapter 3 Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Introduction Islamic Studies and the Historical Study of Religions Islamic Studies and the Comparative Study of Religious Data .. Islamic Studies and Discussions on Method and Theory in the Study of Religions Studying Religious Aspects of Islam Some Basic Distinctions The Study of "Religion" in Islamic Studies The Role of Religion in Muslim Societies The Role of Religion in Inspiring Muslim Spirituality Conclusion

55 55 58 62 66 70 72 74 79 80 81

Selected Literature

82

Chapter 4 Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

86

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

Introduction The Humanities The Social Sciences Social Scientific Research on Muslim Societies since World War II 4.1. Anthropology 4.2. Sociology 4.3. Political Science A Plea for Impartial Research on Religion and Politics Contributions of the Social Sciences to Islamic Studies 6.1. Theoretical Contributions 6.2. Empirical Contributions Representing Islam as a Religion Conclusion

Selected Literature

86 88 90 92 93 95 97 97 99 99 101 103 104 106

Contents

XI

Chapter 5 Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

108

1. Introduction 2. Some Contexts of Islamic Studies Before 1950 2.1. Rapid Survey of Historical Contexts 2.2. Politics 2.3. Religion 2.4. Education 3. Islamic Studies in Context 3.1. Islamic Studies 3.2. Modern Trends in Islam 3.3. Muslim Apologetics and Criticism of Islamic Studies 4. Muslims in the West 4.1. Islam in the West 4.2. Muslims in Colonial Societies 4.3. Muslims in Western Societies 5. Differentiation in Islamic Studies 5.1. Academic Islamic Studies 5.2. Muslim "Study of Islam" 6. Conclusion

108 109 110 112 113 115 116 116 117 119 122 122 123 124 125 125 128 131

Appendix:

134

Personal Reflections on an Anti-Cultural World

Selected Literature 1. Intercultural Relations and Islam 2. Muslim Discovery of Europe 3. Muslims in Europe and North America 4. The Muslim World and the Western World

136 136 137 137 139

Chapter 6 Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

141

1. Introduction 2. Presuppositions and Assumptions 2.1. Presuppositions 2.2. Assumptions 3. Islamic Studies 4. Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

141 141 143 145 147 148

Selected Literature 1. General Approaches and Methods 2. Interpretative Approaches

151 151 153

XII

Contents

Part Three: The Practice of Islamic Studies in History Chapter 7 Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

157

1. Louis Massignon. Life and Work 1.1. Spirituality 1.2. Research 1.3. Politics 1.4. Legacy 2. Research on Islam as a Religion 2.1. Al-Halläj 2.2. Islam 2.3. Dedication 3. Impact on Islamic Studies 3.1. Immediate Influences 3.2. Impact on Islamic Studies 4. Three Groups of Followers 4.1. Catholic Orientalists 4.2. Muslim Intellectuals 4.3. Arab Christians 5. A Scholar's Mind 6. Conclusion

158 159 159 161 163 163 164 165 166 168 168 171 171 171 174 175 176 179

Selected Literature 1. Bio-bibliography 2. Scholarly Publications 3. More Personal Writings 4. Main Publications about Louis Massignon

182 182 183 185 185

Chapter 8 Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

189

1. Looking Back on Islamic Studies 2. The Study of Early Islamic History 2.1. Studying Muhammad in his Society 2.2. The Qur'än Studied as Text 2.3. Hadith Studies 2.4. The Medinan Period 3. Islamic Thought and Spirituality 4. Historical Encounters between Islam and Other Civilizations and Religions 5. Observing Islamic Studies 5.1. Studying Muslim Societies 5.2. Scholarly Procedures

189 193 193 194 197 198 198 200 202 202 204

Contents

XIII

6. Islamic Studies: Changes 6.1. Changes in Perspective and New Orientations of Study .. 6.2. Looking Forward in Islamic Studies 6.3. Scholars of Islamic Studies 7. Contexts of Islamic Studies

206 206 208 210 211

Selected Literature: Some Subjects of Research Since 1950 1. History of Islamic Studies as a Field 2. Early Islamic History 2.1. The Rise of Islam 2.2. Muhammad 2.3. Qur'änic Studies 2.4. Hadlth Studies 2.5. Early History and Historiography 3. Islamic Thought and Spirituality 3.1. Medieval and Later 3.2. Contemporary 4. Encounters with Other Civilizations 4.1. Encounters with the West and Christianity 4.2. Encounters with Other Cultures and Religions than the Western Ones

213 213 214 214 215 215 216 216 217 217 218 218 218

Chapter 9 Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

219

221

1. Introduction 2. Wilfred Cantwell Smith: Conceptualization in Islam and in Islamic Studies 3. Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum: Islam as Medieval Culture 4. Annemarie Schimmel: Islam as Deciphering the Signs 5. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Islam as "Traditional" Islam 6. Mohammed Arkoun: Rethinking Islam 7. Conclusion

221 223 229 231 235 243 249

Selected Literature: Bibliography, Books on Islam, Articles, Discussion and Research 1. Arkoun, Mohammed 2. Grunebaum, Gustave Ε. von 3. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 4. Schimmel, Annemarie 5. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell

251 251 253 256 257 259

xrv

Contents

Chapter 10 Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold War

262

1. Conflicts and Ideological Distortions 2. Two Opposing Views of Islam 2.1. The USSR 2.2. The West 2.3. Islamic Studies 3. Some Corrections Imposed on Distorted Views of Islam 4. A Visit to the USSR 5. The Study of Religions in East and West 6. Conclusion

262 263 264 266 267 268 271 275 279

Selected Literature

280

Part Four: Studying Religions Chapter 11 Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research 1. Issues of Research at the Beginning 2. The Attraction of a Science of Religion 3. Some Western Views and Constructs of the Study of Religion 4. Empirical Research into Religion 5. Schemes of Interpretation of Religion 6. Religion as an (Un)known Subject of Study 7. Development of Theoretical Thinking 8. Explanatory Theory 9. Hermeneutic Orientations 10. Conclusion

285 285 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295

Selected Literature 1. History of the Field 2. Some Questions of Method and Theory

297 297 300

Chapter 12 Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1920-1950

302

1. The Problem 2. Image Formation of Religions Before the Phenomenological Movement 3. Image Formation in Classical Phenomenology of Religion

303 305 307

Contents

4. Image Formation of Particular Religions Among Dutch Phenomenologists 5. The Presentation of Religion in Dutch Classical Phenomenology of Religion 5.1. Classical Phenomenology of Religion and the Emancipation of 'Religionswissenschaft' 5.2. Classical Phenomenology of Religion: Aims and Results 5.3. The Context of the Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1918-1939 6. G. van der Leeuw's Conceptualization of Religion 7. Conclusion

XV

309 312 314 316 321 323 324

Selected Literature

325

Chapter 13 Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

331

1. Mircea Eliade. Life and Work 1.1. Biographical data 1.2. Eliade Studying Religion 2. The Study of Religions. Construct and Reality 2.1. The Study of Religions up to Eliade 2.2. Some Critical Remarks on Eliade's Approach 3. Conceptualizing Religion after Eliade 4. Eliade's Time and Ours

331 331 335 338 339 341 342 345

Selected Literature 1. Bio-bibliography 2. Main Publications in English, with Years of their First Appearance 3. Some Monographs about Eliade 4. Some Collective Works about Eliade 5. Some Articles about Eliade 6. Some Contexts of Eliade's Work

349 349 350 352 353 354 355

Part Five: Muslims and Their Islam Chapter 14 Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

359

1. 2. 3. 4.

359 362 365 368

Believers as Potential Actors A Philosophical Intermezzo. Meaning and Significance Significance and Subjective Meanings Research on Subjective Meanings

XVI

Contents

5. Toward Understanding Subjective Meanings. Intentions 6. Conclusion

370 372

Selected Literature 1. Muslim Life 2. Islam in Literature 3. Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights in Islam 4. Encounters Between Believers 5. Believers' Identities 6. Religion in the World

373 373 374 374 375 376 376

Chapter 15 Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

377

1. Introduction 2. Kinds of Reform and Forces Opposing It 2.1. The Term "Reform": Three Meanings 2.2. Three Kinds of Movements of Reform 2.3. Religions Developed from Reform Movements 2.4. Social Reforms and Religion 2.5. Forces Opposing Reform 3. Islamic Reform and the Shan a 4. Studying Reformers and Reform 5. Reflecting on the Notion of Reform

377 378 378 379 381 383 384 386 388 390

Appendix: A Note on Reading Scriptures 1. Religious Readings 2. Literary and Historical Interpretations 3. Common Structures of the Scriptural Religions 4. Common Structures Around the Scriptures 5. Reform Movements and their Reading of Scripture

392 392 393 395 396 397

Selected Literature 1. Initiatives to Reform and Renewal in Islam Before 1970 2. Present-Day Thinking on Renewal of Islam 3. Reinterpretations of Islam in Terms of Reform 4. Islamic Resurgence and Politics 5. Islam in/and the West 6. Worldwide Islam 7. Ideas and Developments in Contemporary Islam 8. Situation and Future of Women 9. Situation and Role of Religious Authorities 10. Some Subjects of Current debate

398 398 399 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 407

Contents

Appendix: A Note on Reading Scriptures 1. Scripture in general 2. Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam 3. Scripture in Islam 4. New Kinds of Muslim Qur'än Exegesis, Reading, and Interpretation 5. Some Studies about New Kinds of Muslim Qur'än Interpretation

XVII

408 408 408 409 409 410

Part Six: Further Reading (Bibliography) 1. Middle Eastern Responses to Islamic Studies. The Orientalism Debate 2. Religion(s) and the Study of Religion(s) 2.1. The Concept of Religion 2.2. Discussions around a Science of Religion. Method and Explanatory Theory 2.3. Anthropology of Religion 2.4. Comparative-Historical Research 2.5. Sociology and Psychology of Religion 3. Interpretative Studies of Religion 3.1. The Phenomenology Debate 3.2. Scholarly Hermeneutic Orientations 3.3. Some Comprehensive Reflections 4. Gender and the Study of Religion 4.1. Gender and Religion in General 4.2. Gender and Islam 5. The Study of Religion(s) in Various Countries 6. Islamic Studies in Various Countries

413 421 421 422 431 433 436 436 436 441 446 447 447 449 451 456

Indexes 1. Index of Persons 2. Index of Subjects 3. Index of Concepts (Problem-Oriented)

460 463 468

Introduction The essays brought together here deal with somewhat unusual subjects—the study of Islam as a religion and the academic study of religions. A critical reader may well wonder what hidden motives led to the choice of such abstract and heavy topics, what could be the background of an author who deals with Islamic religion and its problems? So let the author start by saying something about himself and his interests, before introducing the themes of this book.

1. Some Biographical Notes Youth I was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1930. My father was a Protestant minister, devoted to his many tasks with faith and ethical and spiritual commitment. He had broad interests in culture and scholarship, and possessed a large library. My mother was a qualified engineer and would later teach mathematics. She was a person of reason and faith, socially committed and engaged in organizational work for women in the Church and society. They were a hard-working couple with faith in their hearts, strength in their minds, and a strong sense of responsibility. We were three children in the family. We grew up in a large house with a huge garden. I happened to be the eldest and liked reading. The world around us had its problems, from the Depression with its unemployment to political radicalization ending in war. My parents were involved in relief efforts. For Holland, the war started in May 1940. Two years later my father was arrested and spent a month in prison. Though there was no fighting in our part of the country, hardship grew with an ongoing foreign occupation and less and less food. Churches were full on Sundays and religion was relevant. My father was close to me and I helped him when he asked. A movement had started to overcome the rigid denominational, social, and political divisions that had plagued the country. The war ended in May 1945. I remember a shared elan in rebuilding the country and coming to a more normal life. After three years of con-

2

Introduction

fusion, with debates and military action, the Netherlands accepted the independence of Indonesia, its former colony, in 1948. My mother, more progressive, supported it; my father's attitude was more conservative. I was rather serious at the time, introverted and not going out; at home I withdrew into my own study. After much hesitation about what course I should take and though I was attracted by the sciences, in the end I decided to become a minister and thus to study theology. My father squarely opposed the idea and held that I was not suited for such a profession. Some critical student friends, too, discouraged this inclination. As a result, for one year I studied law, but then I turned to theology. I was at the University of Amsterdam, which was known to be progressive. I enjoyed a student's freedom and was interested in the science of religions; I took an intellectual attitude toward religious matters and was little concerned about future work and social responsibility. I could pursue my last two years of study (out of six, 1948-54) thanks to a government grant, and I was free to choose my own program: Science of Religions, Existentialist Philosophy, and Early Church History, in particular of the Eastern Churches. It was a lonely venture, since hardly any students had chosen this combination, and there were few graduate courses at the time. France:

Islam

In 1953, following up a serious suggestion from elsewhere, I decided to concentrate on studying Islam and to learn Arabic. I graduated in Amsterdam in July 1954 and in September began studying Arabic in Leiden. It might be late, but slowly my life was taking shape now, in foreign contexts. For some fifteen months I lived at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. In a way, it was a start to living "abroad" in what was like a foreign enclave on Dutch soil, with graduate students from developing countries. At the Institute I followed a suggestion made by Chris van Nieuwenhuijze, who was working there, to analyze some Western scholars' approaches to Islam and the images of this religion resulting from their work. This would be the subject of my thesis. Some Frenchmen suggested to me to apply for a fellowship to study in Paris. I arrived there in January 1956 and stayed for a couple of months. I met the eminence grise Louis Massignon who had retired in 1954 and I decided to include him among the Orientalists I was studying. He had his own spiritual world of thought and I had to find my way in it as a student of religion, taking notes on his stream of ideas and memories. With the French fellowship I had the chance to visit Tu-

Introduction

nisia immediately after independence in March 1956. It was the first Arab country I got to know and was joyfully celebrating its independence. On my return to Amsterdam, my supervisor, C. J. Bleeker, urged me to start writing. In November 1957, I again went to Paris with a fellowship, swearing that I would not return to Holland without having finished my dissertation. That would be in June 1959. I had now become a wandering Dutchman, working and reflecting descriptively on Islam and also on religion in general, along phenomenological lines. The years in Paris had been crucial. The Islam and the Muslims I discovered in Paris between January 1956 and July 1959 had various human and political faces. Most visible were the Algerian workers who survived on the margins of France's empire and the French labor market. I had no direct experience of them, but obtained documentation about their situation from the White Fathers. Reports leaked through about the repressive measures directed by the French police and CRS against Algerians in France and about what was happening to Algerians in their own country during the war (1954-61). The Algerian War was the second aspect of Muslim realities I saw, though only from a distance. It had started in November 1954, six months after the French defeat in Vietnam, and would get worse year by year. I had not done military service myself and could only observe from the outside. The French recruits called up to go to Algiers reminded me of the Dutch recruits I had seen setting off by ship for Batavia between 1945 and 1948. That was only a short time after Holland itself had been liberated from foreign occupation. Confidential reports spoke about the French army's torture of Algerians, but they were denounced vehemently by French officials and trusting citizens alike, who saw them as insults to the honor of the French army. I saw how the army and the war were sacralized and was impressed by French militants who vehemently opposed it. In 1958 I witnessed the threat of a coup by the army in Algiers against the government in Paris. Islam had a number of other faces, too. It was a subject of research and study, primarily at university institutions with a scholarly tradition. It was a spiritual force to which Louis Massignon and the Badaliya community devoted meditation and prayer. There was also an Islam of interest to French business, in the Near East, starting from Beirut and in North Africa, centered on Algiers—not to speak of the Islam reinforcing struggles for independence. In 1956 alone, the two French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia acquired independence and Egypt defended itself against three aggressors in the Suez War. Algeria's bloody war ended with independence in 1962. Sensitive observers discovered many more faces of Islam still, once they had met Muslims and listened to them.

4

Introduction

Last but not least, indeed, there was the Islam of communication. I was interested in meeting Muslim intellectuals, and many of them had gravitated to Paris from North Africa and the Near East. Paris offered space to a French-speaking Muslim intelligentsia that could develop intellectual ferment and social activity there. From Paris in the late 1950s I remember people like Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi from Morocco, Osman Yahya from Egypt, Muhammad Hamidullah from India, and Nadjm oud Din Bammate at UNESCO, of Caucasian origin and possessing, so the rumor went, an Afghan passport. I also met the open-minded Hassan Hanafi from Egypt, who was then working on his doctorate at the Sorbonne. Islam hardly emerged as a living religion in the context of the French Republic's Ιαϊάίέ. The modest Mosquee de Paris, expressing French gratitude to its Muslim conscripts in the First World War, was an exception. Only a few French-language Muslim books existed at the time, such as Vocation de l'Islam by the Algerian Malik Bennabi. He addressed the French public with his personalized and well-articulated version of Islam, replacing the collective Islam of tradition. In France I found certain repetitive views of Islam everywhere. Given the ideology of France and its empire, French civilization and its blessings, not to speak of the insistent voice of French settlers in North Africa, Islam was broadly perceived as something retrograde, belonging to the past. It had to be vanquished by a great nation and subdued within a higher civilization. The French at the time, with a few exceptions, had little direct experience of Muslims themselves, considered as equals, and their various ways of life. So much for the Islam and Muslims I found in Paris. There was so much more to know about Islam and my curiosity was awakened. France:

Religion

But there were also religions other than Islam. The religion of the Christians I found in Paris during that same period (1956-59) also had various facets. I was struck by what was different from the Christianity I had known in Holland. Our own family included several Protestant denominations, but in Paris I discovered Catholics, and rather good ones. I remember a lively student group run by a Jesuit, a Dominican stretching out an ecumenical hand toward Orthodox Christianity, and a group of White Fathers doing humanitarian work among Algerian workers. In Holland, notwithstanding the separation of Church and State, Protestants lived with what they called at the time the "Catholic danger", which they saw as striving for political and other kinds of power in society—including banning mixed swimming pools. In the 1950s the

Introduction

5

Catholic Church obliged its members to vote for the Dutch Catholic People's Party in the elections. In France, the Catholic Church was a private association in a secular state, and that was a far better situation. Just as France had its culture and its intellectuals, the French Catholics I met had their cultural and intellectual resources as well as their particular faith. In the encounters I remember offhand, they distinguished themselves by self-confidence, a certain flair for reasoning, and human warmth. I found similar warmth among Orthodox Christians I met, who were mostly of immigrant origin and possessed of a profound soul and a peaceful imagination. That was different from northern Protestant Christianity. These observations of religion in France were deepened when I came into contact with Louis Massignon as a scholar and a kind of spiritual witness. He had retired in 1954 and must have been about 73 then. I had never before met such a person or encountered that kind of spirituality. Massignon seems to have understood religion as fundamentally compassion and sacrifice for the sake of others, as imitatio Christi. It implied intercession for those who suffer and communication with them by way of compassion. In this spirituality, developed around the experience of human suffering, he saw Islam as a kind of suffering "by exclusion". By remaining consciously outside the Divine, Muslims—unlike Christians—fatally lacked a direct access to God. Christians, however, could intercede for them. Members of the Badaliya ("substitution") community, which Massignon had founded in 1934, saw it as their vocation to stand in for Muslims spiritually. This was more than prayer or intercession in words. Christians would intercede spiritually for Muslims so that they could become instruments for the salvation of Muslims in a nearly sacramental way and so that the latter might find the God of grace. In response to a deep longing, Massignon himself was ordained as a priest in the Greek Catholic (Melkite) Church in Cairo, in 1950. It was not to be publicly known. This kind of compassionate Christianity, without evangelization or a call for Muslims to convert, and with an almost sacramental view of Muslim life and Christian prayer, was completely new to me. In Massignon's view, substitution was the essence of relations between Christians and Muslims on the deepest level. Though I was struck by Massignon's spiritual dedication, I kept my distance from his idea of substitution. It went against my notion of human persons bearing responsibility for themselves and for others, but without confusion between individuals. Another aspect of Massignon's religiosity struck me, besides his spiritual insight into communication by way of sacrifice and substitu-

6

Introduction

tion. H e was also a man of sharp intellectual distinction and militant action when necessary, though without physical violence. In the 1 9 5 0 s , critical years for France, committed Catholics like Francois M a u r i a c and Louis Massignon could be ferocious in their unmasking of the hypocrisy, lying, and diplomatic subterfuges of the government. They demanded unconditional justice for those w h o were trampled down, exploited, and deprived of human dignity. Yet they did not make an ideological program of it. F o r M a s s i g n o n , Gandhi was the model of effective nonviolent opposition to naked power. I had heard about a militant Christian faith mainly from sermons, from missionary accounts, and from what I had heard of the resistance of certain Christians during the Second W o r l d W a r . I hated violence. Joining collective demonstrations and running the risk of being beaten up by the police force, as happened to M a s s i g n o n , was foreign to my nature and mental universe. Massignon had admirers, but also enemies of his thought and spirituality in very different sectors of society, including his own Church. T o me, the way he contributed, through humility, to bring a rigid ecclesiastical hierarchy to revise significantly both its doctrine and its practice concerning Muslims and Islam is simply admirable. N o t only about Islam and Christianity, but also about the Vatican and the Church, he knew more than most other Christians. So much for the religion I found in Paris, with its opportunities for meeting independent m i n d s — a m o n g scholars and philosophers, authors and artists. Creative exchange and interaction awoke further curiosity and stimulated further searches in the following years. These Parisian observations and reflections on Islam and religion in general changed the views I had k n o w n in younger years. T h a n k s to this experience, my mind started to move and to open up more. Underneath, however, remained some elementary notions of religion I had acquired at home. They included a sense of grace and destiny or predestination, an awareness of the responsibilities and demands placed on human beings, and a singular feeling of guidance accepted from and extended to others. O n e had to accomplish many tasks in life, to be alert to possible opposition and to seek ways and means to survive mentally and spiritually in a pitiless world.

Introduction

7

Study and Work: Contexts Amsterdam History of Religions and Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Amsterdam were taught by Professor C. J. Bleeker (1898-1983), himself a specialist in the religion of ancient Egypt. Bleeker's view of phenomenology was oriented less toward experience in religion and art than toward a schematization of religion, simpler and more distant than that of G. van der Leeuw (1890-1950) in Groningen. Neither van der Leeuw nor Bleeker were philosophers—nor did they claim to be. But van der Leeuw had been influenced by German scholar-theologians like Rudolf Otto and Rudolf Bultmann, and Bleeker by Swedish historical research like that of Geo Widengren. Both had been students of W. B. Kristensen (1867-1953) in Leiden and worked for a phenomenological approach to religion(s). Existing theological judgments and debates about religion and religions, in their view, should make way for a scholarly study of the phenomena concerned, based on text studies. The stress on differences between religions and on the uniqueness of Christianity should make way for comparative studies of all religious data and systems. Bleeker's stand had nothing to do with Husserl's or Heidegger's phenomenological philosophy, and his views about what is essential in religion(s) had less to do with Husserl's Wesensschau than with his own liberal Protestant position. Whereas van der Leeuw was fond of depth, Bleeker was less. In the composite theological context of the Netherlands in the period between the two world wars (1918-1939), the phenomenological attitude fulfilled a cultural function. It offered a positive view of the diversity of religions and called for transcending the historical boundaries of one's own religion. This kind of phenomenological attitude corresponded with the need for tolerance, but at the price of an unproblematic idea of religion. As a student, I was interested in examining critically the presuppositions of this phenomenology and of the study of religions in general, not to mention the assumptions of the religions themselves. I learned from Fokke Sierksma's experiences—even in Leiden—that the time was not ripe in Holland for such critical questioning. The case was different with analyzing presuppositions and assumptions in Islamic Studies, carried out in a French intellectual context. In my thesis I tried to combine a phenomenological description of scholarly representations and images with a keen analysis of conceptualizations and the value orientations underlying them. These were due to the personal, that is subjective, background of individual scholars, the context in which they had grown up and been educated, the cultural and

8

Introduction

scholarly milieu in which they worked, and of course the major problems of the time. My search was for noticeable and in fact unavoidable "subjective" factors in the work of five scholars of Islam who had focused on Islamic religion. I defended my thesis at the University of Amsterdam in 1961 and it was published as a book in French in 1963, with an expanded edition in 1970. It reflects the critical cultural context in which it was thought out and written. Arab

Universities

I owe much to French culture, scholarship, and collegiality. They enabled me to work extensively on Louis Massignon, opened doors to the Arab world, and encouraged my own research project on the history and current situation of universities in the Arab world. Jacques Berque supported the project at the CNRS and I could carry it out by visiting Arab countries in the course of 1963-64. The underlying problem was the role of universities in the development of Arab countries. This work brought me into contact with the concerns of Arab intellectuals between 1959 and 1964. The resulting book, published in French in two volumes in 1966, treated a neglected subject relevant for the future of Arab societies and their intelligentsia. Montreal I had the chance to work for a year as a Research Associate at the Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University in Montreal (1962-63). Interesting things were going on there. W. Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion appeared in spring 1963, at the end of his stay at McGill before he left for India and before his appointment at Harvard University in 1964. This penetrating and erudite study represented something of a revolution in science of religion. The author argued that the very concept of religion was inadequate and should be replaced by the two complementary concepts of "cumulative tradition" and "faith". This conceptual innovation should lead to a new way of studying religions better able, in his view, to grasp what religion is all about. This proposal forced us, colleagues and students, to think about what we are doing in studying religions and why. It put relevant questions and breathed fresh life into the still rather tradition-oriented ways of thinking about religious matters and the study of religious texts. When he introduced the concept of "faith" as a subject of scholarly inquiry, he broke away from positivist and empiricist scholarly traditions

Introduction

9

in the field. What could be Smith's philosophical and theological agenda for the study of religions? Was it not an empirical discipline? Cantwell Smith was honest and endowed with a splendid mind, intent on discussion and debate. During the Second World War he had lived and worked in what in 1947 would become West Pakistan. In these years he wrote Modern Islam in India, an innovative study of the social basis of new Muslim presentations of Islam in what was still British India. After his appointment for Comparative Religion at McGill in 1950, he developed additional approaches in Islamic Studies. Not imposing himself but reflecting with others, Smith could communicate rather well with people from Asia and the Middle East, giving them a forceful incentive to develop their own ideas. Cantwell Smith's way of analyzing the occurrence and meanings of basic religious concepts—indicating the "faith" dimension—in Islam and elsewhere was typical. It was further refined in Toshihiko Izutsu's seminar on semantic analysis of the Qur'än that year and in his later publications on semantic research. Cantwell Smith's way of identifying and bringing rational arguments to bear on problems in the study of Islam and religions in general was persuasive. He committed himself to the Study of Religions and to Islamic Studies in particular as a study of persons. The positive response in certain Protestant quarters to such an appreciative, all-encompassing approach of religion suggested another climate of research on religion than the one I had known in Europe. I admired Cantwell Smith as an intellectual but I must admit that his particular theological questioning and argumentation were not always convincing or even clear to me. I happened to meet Cantwell Smith again several times afterwards. With all the criticism his approach evoked in social scientific circles, his thinking about religious data and ideas was original and brilliant. Later on, we would publish his Selected Papers on Understanding Islam on his request in the series "Religion and Reason". I remember how he prepared the manuscript with the highest demands on himself and the utmost precision.

Los

Angeles

My first regular job in life was at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), when I was 34. I stayed there for four years, teaching Arabic (1964-65) and Islamic History (1965-1968) and also pursuing my earlier quests on the history of Islamic Studies. Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum (1909-1972) was an Austrian-born Orientalist who migrated to the USA in 1938. After having taught at the Asia Institute in New York and the University of Chicago, he became Professor of History at

10

Introduction

UCLA and was appointed Director of its newly established Near Eastern Center in 1957. He then launched a major MA and PhD program in Islamic Studies there. Von Grunebaum had studied Oriental languages in Vienna and Berlin and obtained the Habilitation with a study on pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. In the US, his interests broadened to take in Islamic history and civilization, including compared with other civilizations. He also paid attention to developments in the 19 th - and 20 t h -century Muslim world. His was the weight of immense erudition and a persistent questioning, on a theoretical as well as a factual level. Educated in Vienna, he had a Central European cultural outlook. European culture meant much to him and he kept up contacts with many colleagues in Europe. By then, California and Los Angeles were no longer on the far edge of the world. In the 1960s, von Grunebaum used to invite scholars and researchers from Europe and the Middle East to research and teach at UCLA. Consequently, its Near Eastern Center became an international meeting point stimulating young researchers. The University Library built up its holdings of books on Near Eastern and Islamic Studies. It was well equipped, and research facilities at UCLA were better than in most European countries. In 1967 von Grunebaum created the bi-annual Levi della Vida Prize at UCLA for scholars of eminence in Islamic Studies. Themes chosen by the prizewinners were the subject of international scholarly meetings. Besides his vast scholarship, von Grunebaum was a gifted organizer and administrator. During those "Golden Sixties" California was prosperous. Since the 1940s, if not earlier, Europeans of various backgrounds had been settling there, not only prospective filmstars but also authors, artists, scholars, businessmen, and people of means. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were still unexpected possibilities in the air and success stories attracted young people to go west. The educational system was good. European scholars contributing to education and culture were welcome. But there were other sides to California, too. I remember the hippy culture in Southern California of the 1960s, but also violent ethnic clashes in Los Angeles. Protest meetings against the Vietnam War were increasing. The war was escalating and men were being called up; student pacifist demonstrations met with police violence. Ronald Reagan emerged as a political figure. Starting out as a movie actor, he became Governor of California in 1967. Gustave von Grunebaum suggested that I put together an anthology of medieval Muslim texts in English translation that would show interesting Muslim contributions to the study of religions. I indeed collected a number of relevant texts, both medieval and more recent, but then abandoned the idea of an anthology. I did not have sufficient philologi-

Introduction

11

cal training to do the translation work. But the subject itself—Muslim views of other religions—continued to haunt me. In 1991 I organized a workshop on the subject in Lausanne. The book that resulted from it offers, besides specialized papers, a historical survey of such Muslim views and a bibliography as complete as possible at the time. It was published in 1999, but not many scholars seem to know of it. My own experience of four years in California was one of hard work. It certainly led to attachments but less to fundamental thought or wisdom. In 1968 I had the US immigrant green card; I could have had a permanent job and become a Californian for life. At the decisive moment, however, my choice was for Europe. But it was not without pain, and for several years I went on dreaming of New World efficiency, including scholarly creativity. All in all, the five years' experience of work in Montreal and Los Angeles had been precious. I had become another man, but somewhat lonely, too. I wanted to remain an observer, not fully participating in American society. But the New World kept me in being and saved my independence of mind over against received ideas. Just as France had stimulated my intellectual interests, North America structured my desire to innovate.

Back to

Holland

As of July 1, 1968, I was appointed Senior Lecturer for Islam and Phenomenology at the University of Utrecht. After the loss of the East Indies, the Netherlands no longer needed colonial administrators and experts on Islamic affairs. But Islam slowly became a subject of attention again. This had to do with growing interests in the Middle East and in developing countries worldwide. Since the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Christians had been encouraged to enter into dialogue with Muslims, side by side with Protestants. Most important for the country itself, however, was the arrival of Muslim "guest workers" from Mediterranean countries like Turkey and Morocco and Muslim immigrants from Surinam, which became independent in 1975. At the University of Utrecht, the communicative gifts, spirited animation, and organizational initiatives of Professor D. J. Hoens made for the development of the Study of Living Religions. Besides regular research and teaching, we started a multi-disciplinary working group of science of religions. Among the participants were scholarly authorities from the colonial period, fresh minds in their twenties, and scholars from other Dutch universities. Utrecht was well-known for Indology, directed by Professor J. Gonda. But Islamic languages were studied as well: Arabic, Berber lan-

12

Introduction

guages, Turkish (with specializations in Ottoman Turkish and Turkic languages), Persian (including Old Persian) and Urdu. Courses were offered on 20 th -century developments in Muslim countries and on Islam as a religion. All of this would still expand during the 1970s and early 1980s. At the time I was actively involved in the yearbook Humaniora Islamica, two issues of which saw the light of day in 1973 and 1974. I became interested in questions relating to Islam among Muslim immigrants in Europe in general and in the Netherlands in particular. On a theoretical level my search has been for a framework within which to read Islamic data of different times and places in terms of one relatively open system designated "Islam". The hours spent with scholars like Massignon, Cantwell Smith, and von Grunebaum bore fruit in this respect too. The concept of a "signification system" has proved to be useful for studying meanings of Islamic data and Islam. Such a system is loosely composed of elements that are significant for adherents in general and for specific groups in particular. It allows for numerous interpretations and applications, religious and cultural as well as social and political. Viewing and studying Islam as a relatively open signification system permits a more systematic approach to the ways Islam has been "constructed" by Muslim individuals and communities in given contexts. This approach to Islamic religious data has proved to be more fruitful than merely applying Western concepts of "religion" to Islamic materials. Islamic realities in the Middle East started to become more pressing, with the "revitalization" of Islam starting in the 1970s if not earlier, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the civil war in Lebanon, the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s, and the wars in Afghanistan starting in 1979—and in the background the everlasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the interests involved. In 1974-75 I had the opportunity to work at the NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study) in Wassenaar on Muslim perceptions of other religions. At that time I married. My wife is a specialist in Arabic literature. In Holland I had more direct social concerns for the first time. They had to do with Islam in the shape of some hundred thousands of Muslim immigrants who were to become part of Dutch society. I listened to what these people told me about their experiences. I tried to explain to the authorities that Islam is a serious religion and that they must meet certain basic needs of Muslims if they wanted to achieve any integration. Evidently, Dutch society had not been prepared to make room for Muslims as fellow citizens; people had to be informed about what Muslims are, what Islam may mean to them, and what life in Turkey, Morocco, or Surinam is like. Besides social problems there were political problems, too: the direct or indirect influence of foreign governments,

Introduction

13

the need for a common representation of the various Muslim organizations, the interests of Dutch political parties in attracting votes either from the immigrants or from those who would have liked to send them back to their countries of origin, and relations between existing Muslim organizations, not to mention urgent problems of refugees and asylum seekers. I had energetic Dutch friends with practical qualities and experience of life, some of them researchers, often connected with Churches, who committed themselves to the cause of Muslim and other immigrants. I served on two government committees. My own first interest was in what Muslims would do here with their Islam and how younger generations would articulate their identity. Although there was some discrimination on a popular level, when I left in 1987, the country as a whole was still acting in accordance with its tradition of tolerance toward immigrants who contribute to economic life and respect public order. I could not have imagined that figures like Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh with their behavior toward Muslims would ever enjoy popular sympathy. But by then I was living outside the Dutch borders and I was no longer involved. My assignment in Utrecht was not restricted to Islam but also included Phenomenology, specifically the Phenomenology of Religion. At that time it was largely considered the systematized descriptive and comparative study of religious phenomena of past and present-day religions. Since my student days, if not earlier, I had felt called upon to explore the sensitive field of true scholarly, non-normative research on religion^) and to delve into the foundations of such research. Like the study of art and literature, of history and of culture in general, that of religion—as of psychology—should adhere to scholarly standards and arrive at conclusions of general validity. With the confessionalization of research according to a scholar's own religion, its fragmentation in a number of disciplines, and ever-increasing specializations, there is a crying need for a more coherent view of this field of study based on solid theory. It should not be a philosophy of religion but should study religion in terms of human expression. I started to set out my own course here, at the beginning under the flag of phenomenology. The first task was to encourage scholarly publications on the subject. In 1970 I succeeded in establishing the "Religion and Reason" series of monographs and collective works devoted to the study of "Method and Theory in the Study and Interpretation of Religion", as the subtitle read. It had a board of distinguished advisors with different scholarly orientations and was published by Mouton in The Hague and Paris. The second task was to link present-day theoretical and methodological concerns with the views that the "founding fathers" had for-

14

Introduction

mulated when they designed the scholarly study of religion(s). So I prepared an anthology Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods, and Theories of Research, with a historical introduction and a separate, extensive bibliography. Compiling it was an onerous task some fifteen years before the introduction of computers at the university. The two volumes appeared in 1973 and 1974 and were well received. A paperback edition of the anthology appeared in 1999. In 1973 a first international conference on method and theory in the study of religion was held in Turku, Finland under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Religions. Typically for the time, only Western scholars were invited. The proceedings of this conference, edited carefully by Lauri Honko, the organizer, and published in "Religion and Reason" in 1979, give some useful insights into the discussions of the subject among scholars at the time. Debates on method and theory in the study of religions also took place in the Netherlands. In the late 1960s, Prof. T. P. van Baaren in Groningen started an interdisciplinary working group on the study of religion. It was more specifically oriented toward the application of approaches current in the social sciences—in particular cultural anthropology—in the study of religions. This constituted an alternative to the stress on studying religious texts, as commonly applied in the history of religions. Broadly speaking, the working group stood for a study of religions taking into consideration the social and other contexts in which religious data and religions occur. This was not new in itself, but what was new in the Dutch context at the time was the stress on the importance of anthropological theory and the formalization of theory to arrive at maximal validity. Typically for the dualism current at the time, van Baaren himself developed systematic science of religion as an alternative to systematic theology. Science of religion and theology, taken as disciplines, represented two different camps. At about the same time, Dirk Hoens started a similar interdisciplinary working group in Utrecht. It had a greater variety of orientations and specializations, including in the social sciences, than the Groningen group. This led to more informative presentations by members about what they were actually doing and to a different kind of scholarly exchange. I participated in both groups, and several of their publications appeared in the series Religion and Reason. During the 1970s, cooperation among younger researchers at Dutch universities increased. International contacts also grew, stimulating for younger researchers and sometimes leading to common research projects. In the 1970s, for instance, I took part in a German study group on "Theorizing Religion", which led to an invitation from a German publisher to write an introduction to Religionswissenschaft. I felt honored, but the task of

Introduction

15

synthesizing my thinking in a readable paperback was more demanding than I had anticipated. The book, which appeared in 1986, pleaded for a particular hermeneutical approach to religious data and for a kind of phenomenology concentrating on what these data mean(t) for specific groups. It regarded religions as signification systems that can be interpreted in different ways. The various meaning constructions resulting from such different interpretations are a fascinating subject of study. The book was later translated into several languages. In the late 1970s universities in the Netherlands and elsewhere came under increasing budgetary restrictions. Our department in Utrecht, for instance, simply lost its two chairs when the two professors took early retirement and were not replaced on the same level. That of course meant an extra burden for the few younger scholars who remained. The same thing happened in other European countries. This situation made me look for a possible way out. In 1986 rumors circulated that university professors would have to work in their offices and clock in every day. I realized that it was time to pack my bags. I applied for a position in Lausanne and was lucky enough to be accepted. Ria Kloppenborg, a specialist in Buddhism, became my successor for the study of religions, the first woman professor on the faculty. Ghassan Ascha, from Syria, was appointed for Islam, the first Muslim scholar with tenure to teach Islam at a Dutch university. So my departure created two jobs. Some fifteen years later, the Department of the Study of Religion changed its name to pursue more formally the orientations toward dialogue that Dirk Hoens, Ria Kloppenborg, Jan Platvoet, and I had started with people of non-Western faiths in those Golden Seventies.

Visitor to Switzerland As of September 1, 1987, I was appointed for science of religions (science des religions) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. I would have only eight years before the retirement age of 65 and had to use my time well. Within a year, the scholars of religion working at the university established a Department for the History and Science of Religions that involved three faculties and would attract an increasing number of students. In these years I wanted to concentrate on Islam, in particular past and present relations between Islam and Christianity, and relations between Islam and the West in the 20 t h century. My old research project on Muslim views of other religions was rounded off with an international workshop in Lausanne in 1991, resulting in a book that was re-

16

Introduction

leased in 1999. Our department organized several scholarly workshops on the themes mentioned, with both Muslim and non-Muslim participants. On a scholarly level, they were an initiation to dialogue as well. The proceedings of these workshops were published. From Switzerland I was able to travel abroad more often. This enabled me to have more contact with other researchers studying relations between Muslims and Christians. I could now collect books and documents on these subjects and also on the situation of Christian minorities in Muslim countries and Muslim minorities in the West and elsewhere. I also collected material about the history of Islamic Studies, recent debates on Orientalism that reached a peak with Edward Said's Orientalism of 1978, and recent changes in mutual perceptions between Muslims and non-Muslims. Coming from a country relatively open to the outside world, I experienced Switzerland as the opposite in many respects. Many Swiss regarded Europe as something beyond Swiss borders, and when we arrived a well-developed system of spying on all those who could be suspected of leftist tendencies was in place. The country was not a member of the United Nations and kept aloof from the European Union. Swiss conscientious objectors were sent to prison, banks could be more powerful than government, the situation of women was backward and that of workers from abroad was lamentable. Without much bad conscience I kept aloof from Swiss society with its particular problems and withdrew into academia. I had come to do here intellectual work largely on my own, and Switzerland let me do it in peace, both at the university (1987-1995) and after retirement (1995) when I stayed here. Since September 1995 I have enjoyed the status of emeritus professor of the University of Lausanne, tackling new tasks and finishing texts already underway, including two books of selected papers that appeared in 2002 and 2003. Since 2003 I have been working on and off on this book. As I mentioned, my search has been for a theoretical framework making it possible to grasp the lived meanings that people assign to their religions or to elements of them in various situations and contexts. My basic interest is in people as actors, in what persons and groups of people themselves see or construct as meaningful, rather than what an existing theory, philosophy, or theology has to say about meaning and significance—though that too is relevant for this kind of research. Phenomenology in this connection is not only a kind of inner reflection of what is meaningful, but also training in listening to, observing, and discerning what other people mean when expressing themselves. Present-day Islamic religion, lived in a turbulent world of tensions and conflicts, is a field where such an open approach is desperately

Introduction

17

needed, for scholarly reasons as well as others. In the present-day context, the results of research are constantly put to the test, on several levels and from various angles. A number of approaches are applied now to the study of "Islam" in general—especially politics—and some to the scholarly study of religious aspects of Muslim societies and of "Islam" as a religion. Which of these approaches will be most reliable to stand all critical tests best—not only those of media preferences or usefulness for policy makers? The present book proposes a reasoned and reflective approach to Muslims and Islam, respecting the faith of the first and the facts of the second.

2. The Present Book The book consists of five parts, each with a particular heading and containing essays written at different times, independently of each other. They can all be read separately for their own sake. If an earlier published version exists, it has always been revised and sometimes completely rewritten before being published here. Part One: Two Questions poses two basic questions underlying the book. The first question concerns the science of religions, in particular how this field of research can render service to the study of Islam. The second question is how we should study elements of Islam not only separately but as parts of a larger system that constitutes a whole, is significant in itself, and communicates "meanings". Such a signification system can be read, interpreted, and applied in many ways, for instance religiously, esthetically, legally, socially, politically. Such readings can overlap, be ideologized, and absolutized. The readings and interpretations given of the system vary in accordance with situations and contexts, the tradition and school of particular groups, and of course the guiding interests and intentions of the interpreters themselves. All such readings and interpretations imply a particular vision of Islam. The answers that are given to further questions in the book depend in part on the answers given to these first two basic questions. Part Two: Issues in Islamic Studies concentrates primarily on issues that have become relevant in the second half of the 20 t h century. Chapter 3 discusses the nature of Islamic Studies and some specific relations between this field and the Study of Religions in general. Chapter 4 describes some social scientific orientations in Islamic Studies.

18

Introduction

Chapter 5 deals with Islamic Studies and intercultural relations. Can Islamic Studies be seen as part of intercultural relations, for instance between the Western and the Islamic worlds? In what way can these studies be relevant for such relations? What has been the general role of Muslims themselves in Islamic Studies? What is the contribution of Muslim scholars in more general "Islamic Studies" and in typically Muslim "Studies of Islam"? The final Chapter 6 tries to identify some presuppositions and assumptions that underlie academic Islamic Studies and to determine their implications for scholarship on Islam as a religion. Part Three: The Practice of Islamic Studies in History looks at some achievements of Islamic Studies in the recent past. Chapter 7 focuses on the work of the French scholar Louis Massignon (1883-1962) and indicates the circles in which his impact has been most palpable. He studied particular religious aspects of Islam and interpreted it in terms of the particular spirituality that was his own. A general problem that also underlies his work is that of the attitude that non-Muslim and Muslim scholars respectively may take toward Muslims and Islam in their work. What are the consequences of a scholar's private attitude for a scholarly—that is, generally valid—interpretation of Islam as a faith and religion? When does a private attitude open up fruitful perspectives for research and when does a private attitude on the contrary block fruitful research? Chapter 8 sketches some trends in Islamic Studies as carried out by Western scholars in the second half of the 20 t h century, in particular studies of the early history of Islam. It seeks to identify certain changes in scholarly orientations and in practical interests among scholars during the period. It gives only a general survey, not addressing developments in the study of particular Muslim regions or particular aspects of Islam. Chapter 9 describes scholarly presentations of Islam as a religion given since the mid-20 th century by five recognized scholars of Islam, with different approaches, orientations, and personal backgrounds. Because of their particular presuppositions, conceptualizations, appreciations, and contexts, these scholars throw different kinds of light on Islam. They also present different views of the relations between the Western and the Muslim world. Chapter 10, the last chapter of Part Three, discusses the impact of the Cold War and its Middle Eastern aftermath on Islamic Studies as well as on the study of religions in general. The Cold War had a sizable impact on the field on both sides of the Iron Curtain and affected Islamic Studies even afterwards.

Introduction

19

Part Four: Studying Religions deals with the academic study of religions to the extent that it is relevant to the study of Islam as a religion. This depends, among other things, on how one views the specific tasks of the study of religions. Chapter 11, "Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research" describes the emergence of the academic study of religions, especially as a philological and historical discipline, about a century and a half ago. It pays attention to the dichotomy that arose somewhat later between "explaining" and "understanding" in the study of religions, indicating some of the consequences of this dichotomy, and making proposals to avoid a rigid dualism in the practice of these two approaches. Chapter 12 discusses the Phenomenology of Religion that arose in the Netherlands in the first half of the 20 t h century. It tries to see it in its historical context and hints at its cultural function by relativizing the religious and specifically theological differences that were stressed by leaders and theologians in the religions themselves. Chapter 13 takes the work of Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) as a kind of landmark in the history of the field in the period between the 1930s and the 1980s. Eliade was still capable of projecting in his work one basic coherent vision of the nature, history, and morphology of religions. This vision implied a particular view of reality and hermeneutics. Eliade's creative work should be seen in its contexts: Romania before and after the First World War, Europe before and after the Second World War, Western Europe until the late 1950s, and the USA from the 1950s until the late 1980s. Eliade distinguished himself by a particular commitment and a singular combination of scholarly and creative literary work. With his particular presuppositions about the idea of religion and his particular hermeneutic, he neglected, however, "prophetical", "scriptural", and "law" religions such as Islam. The chapter calls—unlike Eliade—for studying religions as constructs of meaning. Part Five: People and Their Islam concentrates on ways Muslim people should be studied with their Islam, in various countries, in particular contexts, and situations. Chapter 14, "Believers in Focus. Exploring Subjective Meanings in Religions", discusses the presence of subjective meanings in religion, that is to say what a given religion or religious phenomenon in fact means to people and how various groups of people actually read their religion. Together with existing traditions, subjective meanings are an important element in the various readings and interpretations people tend to give of religions and religious phenomena in particular situations and contexts. People are inclined to assign subjective meanings to phenomena to which they feel attached, to the religion of which they feel part, or to religion in general as an especially significant reality.

20

Introduction

The study of subjective meanings can also be relevant, for instance, for the study of religious encounters and conversions. Chapter 15, "Islamic Reform and Renewal", applies this approach to some movements of renewal and reform that occurred in Islam—as they did in Christianity and Judaism—in the course of the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries. There have been "rediscoveries" of Islam by Muslims who, as persons, became actors with regard to their religion and faith. This chapter also draws attention to the significance of Scripture as providing a kind of authoritative truth, generally accessible in these three religions. Movements of renewal and reform present new readings and views not only of particular texts but also of the significance of a given Scripture as such. The interpretations of a particular religion are intimately connected with the views held on and the interpretations given to its Scripture.

3. Some Perspectives The book has several concerns that have become relevant nowadays. We should study Islam in connection with the people living with it in given times and places. We should concentrate specifically on those religious normative aspects of Islam that, in practice, are recognized by the people (groups and individuals) we study. We should then analyze the relations between these validated normative (religious, ideological, etc.) aspects of people's life, on the one hand, and the material, social, and political realities in which they have to organize their lives, on the other. We should look for the relationships that exist between the different readings, interpretations, and uses particular groups and individuals make of Islam, on the one hand, and the concrete conditions of life, situations, and contexts to which these readings and uses of Islam constitute a response, on the other hand. Ideas about Islam are linked to the human condition of those who develop them. Messages of Islam are perceived by those who in given situations are sensitive to them. Islam offers individuals and groups in given situations networks of meaning. This often happens in particular discourses—like khutbas (sermons)—that deserve serious study. We should seek for the coherence between the various meanings that individuals and groups attribute to Islam in given situations. If Islam to them is a norm and ideal, what does it "mean" to them? One of the keys to knowing the concerns of present-day Muslims is to pay due attention to the growing differentiation of the meanings they give, as individuals and groups, to Islam and especially the Qur'än. These meanings are especially interesting if they are given in different situations and contexts, both in Muslim and Western countries.

Introduction

21

The uses made of Islam and the readings and interpretations given of it should be studied not only as forms of social and political behavior. They should also be viewed as human operations to give meaning to things. Islam has an important function as a resource of significance and meaning for Muslims. Scholars of religion are able to recognize Islam as the common reference of these assignments of meaning. It is a reference that is valid for all Muslims and from which they can derive meaning and significance. In given human situations, Islam as such, or specific elements of it, can be perceived as particularly meaningful. Both Islam itself and the various elements of it are significant for Muslims and they admit a great number of interpretations. Like other religions and ideologies, Islam is lived—read, interpreted, and practiced—by actors, in this case Muslim actors. Our fundamental question is: H o w do they read, interpret, and practice Islam in given situations? What kind of actors are they?

Selected

Literature

Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985. ARMSTRONG, Karen, Islam, London: Modern Library, 2 0 0 0 . J4S Others See Us. Mutual Perceptions, East and West, ed. by Bernard LEWIS, Edmund LEITES, and Margaret CASE. Special issue of Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 13-14 (Fall 1985-Spring 1986), New York 1986. AYOUB, Mahmoud M., Islam. Faith and History, Oxford: Oneworld, 2 0 0 4 . Defining Islam. A Reader, ed. by Andrew RIPPIN, London and Oakville: Equinox, 2007. Islam and Inter-Faith Relations, ed. by Perry SCHMIDT-LEUKEL and Lloyd RIDGEON, London: SCM Press, 2007. Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim N A N J I (Religion and Reason 38), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. Mircea Eliade. A Critical Reader, ed. by Bryan RENNIE, London and Oakville: Equinox, 2006. The Myth of Religious Superiority. Multifaith Explorations of Religious Pluralism, ed. by Paul F. KNITTER, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. Religious Harmony, Problems, Practice, and Education, edited by Michael PYE et al., Proceedings of the Regional Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, Yogyakarta and Semarang, 2004 (Religion and Reason 45), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006.

Part One Two Questions

Chapter 1 Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam? 1. Islamic Studies in Context As in other fields of scholarship, research on Islam and Muslim societies has become ever more specialized. 1 The same holds true for the science of religion, but the approaches taken here are generally less known and less academically recognized. The study of religions, like political science, is often thought to be linked to ideological concerns. Especially if scholars of religions are attached to faculties of theology or divinity schools, they can easily be suspected of a hidden denominational or missionary agenda. Or they are suspected of taking a particular normative view of religion as axiomatic for their work, thus invalidating its general scholarly validity. Actually, most research on religious data today simply applies general literary, historical, or social scientific procedures to religious texts and statements, reports from the past, communal life, or religious behavior. In Islamic Studies, scholars formerly concentrated less strictly on one particular subject matter within a specific disciplinary perspective than they do today. They widened rather than restricted their horizons. In the USA, where specialization is taken far, Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum ventured into numerous subjects beyond his own field of Arabic literature, proposing what he called an anthropological view of Islamic culture and formulating questions of comparative cultural research on medieval Islam, the Greek East, and the Latin West. Marshall G. S. Hodgson placed Islamic history within world history, while refining research concepts in Islamic Studies. Last but not least, Bernard Lewis still amazes his readers, including those who do not agree with his propositions and conclusions, with his broad erudition, his historical perspicacity, and his ideas on relations between Islam and the West.

1

An earlier version of this paper appeared in Unterwegs. New Paths in the Study of Religions. Festschrift in Honour of Michael Pye on his 65th Birthday, ed. by Christoph KLEINE, Monika SCHRIMPF, Katja TRIPLETT, Munich: Biblion, 2 0 0 4 , pp. 2 0 7 - 2 1 7 .

26

Two Questions

In recent decades, the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) has given increasing attention to the contexts of the academic study of religions. At two IAHR conferences held in Warsaw in 1979 and 1989, scholars of religion from Western and Eastern European countries, including the Soviet Union, met across the political divide. In 1988, an IAHR conference held in Marburg was devoted to describing the various cultural and religious contexts in which the scholarly study of religion is pursued nowadays. Less than a decade later, in 1997, an IAHR conference was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on the impact of the Cold War on the academic study of religions. I would like to make a few observations about the broader context in which the academic study of Islam developed in Europe. An important factor was the growing perception of Islam as a civilization and religion. With scholars like Adriaan Reland (1676-1718) and George Sale (ca. 1697-1736), Islamic Studies took off in the spirit of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Further philological and historical scholarship followed, and in the second half of the 19 th century several important universities recognized the study of Islam academically as part of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish Studies. But interest in Islam has always had certain ambiguities in Europe. If medieval Islam was praised for its remarkable civilization, this now belonged to the past, like classical Greek and Roman culture. Present-day Islam seemingly could not measure up to the scholarly, cultural, and social developments Europe had known with its Renaissance, Humanism, and Enlightenment. In comparison, the Muslim world was seen as a backward part of the world. Some Europeans tended to view Muslim misery with compassion and committed themselves to religious missions and social work in Muslim countries. The political aspects of this perception were even more serious. In the colonies, natural resistance to foreign European occupation of and rule over Muslim lands expressed itself also in Islamic terms, being taken as an insult to Islam. As a result, many Europeans tended to perceive Islam and Europe as fundamentally antagonistic. Hegemonic situations have a profound influence on the ways the other party's society, culture, and religion are perceived. To the European public, tensions with subjected Muslim countries and societies were ascribed to the aggressive nature of Islam, with its doctrine of jihäd, rather than to the European drive to expand. In a similar vein, Islam, with its doctrine of the treatment of Christians and Jews as protected dhimmls in Muslim societies, was held responsible for the oppression of non-Muslims in Muslim societies, while anti-Semitism and the sad treatment of minorities in Europe at the time was probably willingly ignored. Just as the army in the colonies relayed information about Islam's insurgence

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

27

through its call for jihäd, Christian and Jewish minorities in Muslim countries spread information about Islam's oppression of dhimmis. To Europeans, Islam seemed not only backward, but inhuman. This dualistic construction of Islam as antagonistic to Europe was of course simplistic. It tended to recede after World War II, except where a colonial situation of domination continued. But it indirectly influenced the academic study of Islam, which preferred to concentrate on past creativity rather than present-day traditionalism in Muslim culture. And it gave an ideological twist to most views of Islam outside the still small circles of scholars and researchers who looked for impartial knowledge, that is to say scholarly truth. Political events and developments since the 1990s have again led to rather simplistic perceptions and constructions of Islam as opposing the West. In colonial times it was the military and economic expansion of Europe that was the real cause of tension and subsequent Muslim resistance. At present it is the economic interests of the West, the gulf between the richer and the poorer countries, along with the Western hegemonic behavior and support of Israel that are the main causes of tensions between the Western and the Muslim worlds. In both cases, Islam has played an important role, less as a cause of trouble than as a cause of ideological confusion. Besides contrasting political commitments, current Muslim as well as non-Muslim ideologizations and politicizations of Islam dominate present-day discourse on Islam, and not only in Muslim countries. This context, unfortunately, affects Islamic Studies as a field of academic research. What, then, is the situation today of the study of Islam as a religion, whether as a part of Islamic Studies or as part of the science of religion?

2. Studying Islam as a Religion For a long time, the study of Islam within the history of religions has been pursued like that of other religions, along a pattern current in the discipline. Its scripture and other religious texts were edited and studied, historical facts were established, and legal and doctrinal developments were traced. Scholarship on Islam as a religion concentrated on it as a religious system of doctrine and law, with references to texts from Qur'än and Sünna that had been elaborated in commentaries, as well as to writings by religious authorities of the first centuries. Muslim scholarly authorities on religion identified Islam with this system, elaborated in the recognized Islamic "religious sciences" (ulüm al-dtn), which adherents were to follow. Western scholars mostly followed this identification of Islam with the said system.

28

Two Questions

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western researchers on contemporary Muslim societies, often in colonial government service, tended to study the extent to which the Islamic religious system, in fact religious law, was applied in practice and the procedures and legal problems involved. Western scholarship's legal and doctrinal concept of Islam corresponded to a large extent with the ways Muslim ulamä' and fuqahä' had conceptualized their religion. This concept of Islam also suited the colonial administration of Muslim societies, which was mostly intent on respecting the religion of the people, provided it was deprived of its political aspects and possible political implications. Knowledge of the Islamic religious system was then supplemented by studies on Islamic mysticism, the Sufi orders with their social and spiritual orientations, and further expressions of Islamic spirituality. A third subject of study was popular local forms of living religion that were not part of "official" Islam and could be in tension with it. Research on the popular forms of Islam, in particular, required fieldwork carried out among the people, with attention paid to their society and way of life. I must leave aside here the obvious limitations of such a conceptualization of Islam, which may have been useful in Muslim scholarship and in colonial contexts at the time, but was no longer suitable for post-colonial studies of Islam as a religion. In this approach, Muslims were hardly perceived as actors, able to bring about new articulations of Islam and to organize Islamic movements. The social and political aspects of these subjects were neglected in textual Islamic Studies, whereas their religious aspects were often neglected in political science and in sociological and anthropological work. Since World War II, however, the study of Islam as a religion has moved in new directions. Examples include the work of Henry Corbin and other students of Louis Massignon in France, of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and William Montgomery Watt in the English-speaking world, and of Annemarie Schimmel and Josef van Ess in Germany. Seyyed Hossein Nasr from Iran and Mohammed Arkoun from Algeria, as well as social scientists like Clifford Geertz and Talal Asad, should be added to the list. It is no accident that these scholars applied new approaches in the study of Islamic religion mostly in the years 1 9 5 0 - 9 0 . This was the time of change in which existing and new Muslim states cherished national and other ideologies and pursued economic and social development with international support. Many of them were ready for a rapprochement with a West that was willing to support them. A start was made with cooperation and dialogue between Muslims and Christians.

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

29

While protesting against certain pretensions of the West, its protection of Israel, and its support for Israeli policies before and after 1 9 6 7 , these states could obtain assistance from the West in the context of the Cold War. Although left-wing ideologies were popular in most Muslim countries, as in Third World countries in general, only a few of t h e m — Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq—in fact received significant assistance from countries of the Soviet bloc. After the end of the Cold W a r , however, and in connection with the wars in the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq, relations between most Muslim countries and the USA became politically tense. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of the United States in it exacerbated this. Islam is now viewed largely in political terms and, whereas much has been written recently about "political" Islam, the study of present-day "religious" Islam has seen few new impulses during the last years.

3. The Science of Religion Contributing to the Study of Islam The scholarly study of religions can make a contribution to Islamic Studies when it deals with the religious aspects of Islam by viewing certain problems and issues from the perspective of the study of religions. M y aim is not to elaborate a particular theory of religion—much less a philosophy or theology—and then to apply it in Islamic Studies. Rather, I am concerned with observing, describing, and analyzing Muslim life, Islamic data, and interpretations and practices of Islam in all their variety as precisely as possible. I am particularly interested in the relevance and significance that Islam and particular elements of it have for particular groups of people and what they do with them. H o w can we grasp and explain the interpretations and applications that specific Muslim communities and movements give to particular Islamic data and Islam itself? I will summarize the contribution that the study of religions can make to dealing with some more theoretical problems in the following six points.

3.1. The Term

"Islam"

One day, the Dutch ambassador to an important Muslim country told me that he had often asked his Muslim visitors what exactly " I s l a m " was in their view. He complained that he had never received a satisfactory answer to this question. He concluded that, for Muslims, " I s l a m " is something vague that cannot be specified, an ideal, or a product of the imagination. His words set me thinking.

30

Two Questions

When Muslims and non-Muslims use the term " I s l a m " in ordinary discourse, we are dealing with a kind of construction. They consider "Islam" valid as a norm and value and as something ideal but also real. It is vital to look for the nature of this construction, "Islam", and to grasp the meaning the word has in a particular discussion or statement in a given situation. If we call the ordinary unreflected use of the term " I s l a m " with its many meanings a "construction", the use of the term in scholarly research is more reflected and indicates a particular meaning. I prefer to call it a "construct", that is, a special kind of construction with a particular intended meaning. This distinguishes it from the ordinary use of the term "Islam", which has many meanings, not only in Arabic but also in English. Islamic Studies should not only investigate "Islam", but also reflect on the term " I s l a m " in the context in which it is used, whether by Muslims or others, to clarify it. Otherwise the term mystifies the mind and leads, not to conceptually clear scholarly language, but rather to a symbolic, religious, and even mythological kind of language. I see Islam, in the first place, as an empirical historical and social reality linked to the presence of Muslims who made and maintain it. Furthermore, especially where the study of Islam as a religion is concerned, I see it as a set of norms (religion, morality, and law) of what I call "normative Islam". But third, I also see Islam as a tapestry of meanings and values by which people communicate with each other and that is spread over reality, giving it social meanings. Islam functions in this way not only as a law or doctrine, but also as a "signification system" consisting of a number of elements that convey meaning as signs and symbols of things that may become a subject of "Islamic" discourse. To recognize the fundamentally "constructed" character of any statement about Islam—whether in ordinary or in scholarly discourse, whether by Muslims or by non-Muslims—is the beginning of understanding Islam as a human expression. In other words, Islam is under continuous construction.

3.2. Objective and Subjective

Meanings

Apart from its worship and other forms of ritual behavior, Islam as a religion constantly has recourse to religious texts. They are mostly in Arabic (Qur'än, hadlths) and can be recited, listened to, and also read in silence. W h a t do these texts in fact mean to the people concerned? We are used to objectifying and studying texts, to discerning the meaning of the words and phrases by means of philological and literary

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

31

scholarship, and to grasping what may be called their "objective" meaning or significance. This is not the same thing, however, as the "subjective" meaning that the same text has for those who read or recite it or for those who consciously interpret it, although the two are related. This observation, of course, is valid for the meaning not only of religious texts and data, but also of any texts or other data with which people live. There is a specific difference—and there can even be a "rupture"—between the "objective" meaning of religious data and the "subjective" meaning of the same data in the way particular persons and groups assign relevance and meaning to them in specific situations and contexts. The "objective" meaning of religious data and religions has been studied and ascertained reasonably well in scholarship, although there are always problems of interpretation. But we can obtain access to the "subjective" meaning of such data only in so far as the people concerned give an interpretation of them and are prepared and willing to give us a glimpse of what these particular data mean to them. The subjective meaning of things is mostly not explicated. As a consequence, most of what Islam or particular elements of it actually have meant or mean to persons or groups living with them remains largely unknown, unless people tell us about it of their own free will. On this subject, general questionnaires will not always be helpful. Only in favorable cases can we deduce something of what particular religious data mean to groups or larger collectives from the way they respond to general questions. Only researchers who are thoroughly familiar with the life and culture of the people concerned—and whom, moreover, the latter trust— may perceive some religious or other meanings that certain things have for them.

3.3. Statements on Islam Studied as Interpretations

of Islam

If the latent significance that Islam or elements of it have for particular persons or groups is not easy to know, the meanings that people consciously assign to particular Islamic data and to Islam itself in specific situations and contexts is more accessible. Such meanings show up in the statements they make about them, even if they simply repeat what others have said. A "scholarly" understanding of a statement made by a Muslim person or group about Islam implies that we recognize the "interpretative" nature of the statement and are spotting its intention(s). If a variety of people express themselves on the same subject, this normally entails a variety of interpretations. It is striking how many interpretations of Islam have been developed during the last decades and how many persons and groups have called on Islam or particular

32

Two Questions

texts from Qur'än and Sünna to support their ideas. In Muslim discourse, the number of interpretations and applications of Islam multiplied in the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries. This is all the more so, since Islam as a religion does not have one central religious body that can issue a definitive judgment on given interpretations of Islam. Such interpretations should not be contrary to the shahäda, of course, but in principle they are free and can be discussed with reference to Qur'änic texts. The variety of Islamic movements with their different ideologies that have arisen especially since the mid-20 th century indicates an ongoing discussion among persons and groups to identify the relevance and significance of Islam for them. It leads to further and sometimes new constructions of Islam that are more than just social or political facts. They should also be studied as carriers of meaning. The perspective of the scholarly study of religions can be helpful hereby. There is an ongoing discussion among Muslims on Islam and the perspective of the scholarly study of religions is helpful for its understanding.

3.4. Ways of Interpreting

and Constructing

Islam

There are various ways religions like Islam tend to be interpreted and "constructed" by believers. In fact, there are certain fundamental options how to read, interpret, and construct religions, with practical consequences for the believers. One option is the "fundamentalization" of a religion. Its "fundamental" principles and elements are identified and the believers are expected to adhere strictly, even anxiously, to them to avoid mistakes about essential religious truths. In the course of time, this option has led to a range of "Islamic fundamentalisms" that define and defend the "fundamentals" of Islam in various ways. Closely linked to the search for fundamentals is the urge for purification, the search for a pure form of religion and the elimination of elements that stand in the way of religious purity. Many reform movements of Islam have a puritanical character, and they mostly lead to a puritanical attitude in life and toward other religions and worldviews. Another possibility is what may be called the search for a religion's rational character. Such an interpretation has a more philosophical character than the preceding two and can lead to presentations of Islam in terms of its conceptual coherence or even in terms of general metaphysics. Islam is conceived here as a profoundly rational system, of which the Qur'än may be called a metaphorical expression. A fourth possibility is the ideologization of a religion. Here, too, we find a rationalization, but not for the sake of rationality alone. Ideologization of a religion implies its transposition into a particular strategy. A

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

33

religion is then mobilized to achieve or reach particular aims and purposes in social and political life. Especially during the second half of the 20 t h century, Islamic movements have arisen with particular "Islamic" ideologies, or at least ideologies claiming to be in agreement with Islam. The ideologization of a religion can have immediate practical effects. The idealization of a religion, as a fifth option, is quite different. It has no direct political aims, but opens up a spiritual view. It testifies to the attachment people have to the values of their religion, but also their tendency to idealize and embellish it. In the 20 t h century, for instance, Islam has often been idealized as a perfect social system, a definitive moral law, a sublime mysticism, an absolute religion. These constructions often reveal an apologetic tendency in response to Western attacks on Islam. As a rule, idealizations tend to pay little attention to the problems of realizing the ideal system, law, mysticism, or religion in actual practice. They also tend to underplay or hide the darker sides of the empirical reality of a religion, the tension between its ideal and its social aspects, not to mention its instrumentalization and possible use for political and other self-interested purposes. A last option is the thorough spiritualization of a religion or of religion in general. In this case, attention focuses on the spiritual enrichment that can be reached through a religion. The question here is what kind of answers the religion in question can offer to people's deeper personal and communal quests concerning human life and destiny, suffering and evil, life and death, God and the world.

3.5. Islam Viewed as the Order of Creation Like any other religion, Islam has certain aspects that are left open as "mysteries" to believers and scholars alike. They constitute so to speak the axioms of the religious system, left to further elaboration—or silence—by the believers. Thus, Islam assumes creation and the existence of an eternal order in this creation, the order of nature and, for human beings, the order of law. Islam presents itself as the natural religion of human beings, teaching them the rules that humankind should follow. Humankind is assumed to have an absolute origin given with its creation and to have an eternal destiny at the end of time. Definite knowledge about Islam as order, law, and rule is contained in texts considered "signs" (Ar. äyät) of divine origin, brought together in a scripture, the Qur'än. Islam viewed as the order of creation is held to be the primordial religion of humanity, to be adhered to and followed by all people, leading to order in social and personal life and to ultimate salvation. As a religious structure, Islam is comparable to other prophetic religions. As its name (Ar. isläm·. "abandonment, surrender") indicates, its

34

Two Questions

own message is to call people to surrender themselves to the divine power that created them and to follow the order of things as indicated by the äyät of the Qur'än. In this way, Islam has its own potential to direct and give meaning to human life, specifically by giving a range of prescripts on how to live individually and socially.

3.6. Islam Studied as an Interpretative System that is itself Continuously Interpreted We can study religions like Islam as interpretative systems that enable people to view and interpret reality, society, and life in a meaningful way. They are also systems for action in that they give people directives how to live in conformity with these views. The elements of a religious system—texts conveying truths and rules, reported events, particular kinds of behavior, etc.—can be studied as literary, historical, and social facts, each for its own sake. However, they can also be studied in their contexts, in relation to each other, and as part of the system as a whole. In the latter case, the elements are studied in accordance with the particular reading, interpretation, or "sense perspective" given to the system as a whole. The verses of the Qur'än (Ar. äyät: "signs, symbols"), for instance, give orientations for viewing reality and life and for acting in them. But like other elements of Islam, these verses have been read and interpreted mostly from a particular "sense perspective" (intention) on the part of the reader. Behind an interpretative activity lies, I assume, a particular intention or "sense perception" of the reader in a particular situation or context. If Islam offers an interpretation of reality, a student of Islam, Muslim or otherwise, will interpret it in his or her particular way. Studying Islam as an interpreted interpretation of reality, a signification system that is continuously interpreted, is like putting together pieces of a puzzle. Such a study tries to (re)construct the meanings of reality and life as particular believing groups and individuals have seen and expressed them. If Islam interprets reality, it is itself continuously reinterpreted by its believers, adherents, and sympathizers.

4. Studying Constructions of Islam I submit that the term "Islam", as ordinarily used by Muslims as well as non-Muslims, should be studied as a construction with numerous meanings. In the course of history, a number of constructions of Islam, more or less tolerant of each other, have developed. Revisions of traditional constructions as well as largely new constructions have been made,

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

35

especially since the second half of the 20 t h century. Groups that are competing with each other and that refer to Islam tend to construct Islam in their own way and defend the construction they have made.

4.1. Variety of

Constructions

As a matter of principle, Muslim communities, groups, and movements are free to present and actualize their constructions of Islam as providing significance and meanings, provided they respect the shahäda and the Qur'än's authority. Some of them live with their Islam as an unquestioned religion and culture. Other more specifically "religious" groups stress the relevance and significance that Islam has for them as a religion. They may be moved by more spiritual quests, as can be found in Sufi communities. More "social" groups have convictions about the contribution of Islam to life in society, advocating social reforms and promoting justice. They may organize themselves as social movements. Political interests will construct Islam as an instrument of power and use it to legitimize the aims and purposes they have proclaimed. Communities, groups, and movements consciously living their Islam will refer to particular texts of Qur'än and Sünna and other elements of Islam in relation to their particular projects. Although there are of course ethnic, national, cultural, and other differences, Islam constitutes a world community, and common concerns can now easily be communicated within this community. Notwithstanding existing varieties of interpretation, one can speak of the globalization of Islamic discourses and the crystallization of ideals of a Muslim commonwealth. Despite the existing differences in its "construction", the idea of Islam itself represents a faith, a common discourse, a set of prescriptions and doctrines, a kind of moral code, and particular notions of social order and social relations.

4.2. Claims of

Universality

Like other missionary religions, Islam claims to offer a definite religious truth of universal validity. With current experiences of threats, discrimination, and oppression—within and outside Muslim states—Muslims searching for guidelines to confront this all tend to turn to Islam. As in other religions, however, truths are only valid for adherents. Solutions derived from Islam are in principle valid only for people who identify themselves as Muslims and who want to follow Islam, as it has authority for the particular community of which they are a part.

36

Two Questions

Adherents of world religions tend to claim universal validity for the views and rules accepted by their communities. On the other hand, all religious leaders tend to defend their communities and their religions, especially if the survival of their own community is at stake. Muslims claim to outsiders the universal validity of the Islamic faith, calling people to join the community. At the same time, they are members of a particular community with religious rules they are obliged to follow, keeping to the fundamentals of Islam, and not losing their Islamic identity. Though Islam has a vision of universality, its human reality is one of particularity.

4.3. Cultural Heyday of Islam In a time of apparent cultural decline, it is appropriate to pay attention to those periods of cultural creativity in history when people were hungry for knowledge, prepared to learn, and ready to recognize and correct mistakes. From this perspective, periods of cultural, intellectual, and practical creativity in the history of Muslim civilization, with its particular constructions of Islam in particular historical contexts, deserve to be studied attentively. In this light, there is all the more reason to inquire about the kinds of creative social and cultural contributions Muslims have made in modern times and to examine the degree to which Islam was a reference for them. W h a t kinds of literature and other cultural expressions can be found in and outside Muslim countries? W h a t efforts have Muslims made toward promoting a civil society defending human rights and, for instance, honoring the contributions of women to realizing such a society? Where are initiatives toward constructive cooperation between different Muslim groups themselves or between Muslims and others, with visible results? W h a t kinds of insight and creative constructions of Islam have resulted from the ongoing battle for human dignity in Muslim countries or among Muslim minorities elsewhere?

5. Islam under Construction One contribution that the scholarly study of religions can make to the study of Islam is to pay attention to the ways Islam as a faith, with its particular resources, has furthered endurance and creativity in its community and given meaning to people's lives in often trying situations. Periods of social and cultural creativity, but also those of hardship and suffering, led to new visions and interpretations of human life with reference to Islam. In this light, Islam, like other living civilizations and

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

37

religions, should be studied not only as a more or less closed entity living from the past but also as something under constant construction. In connection with the continuous construction of Islam, I would like to mention three initiatives taken by present-day Muslims in which Islam plays a role and that deserve closer attention. First, in contrast to the earlier mostly authoritarian, patriarchal structure of traditional Muslim societies, new alternative social structures are arising in new contexts. A growing percentage of working women, for instance, bears social responsibilities and plays an active part in public life. H o w do they interpret and envisage Islam? Second, good education, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is a prerequisite for all people to have a better future. Where are "religious" or "secular" arguments used in favor of personal instruction and study, as opposed to the following of existing traditions and rules? Where have growing knowledge and insight led to self-criticism and creativity, including in the realm of Islamic thought and practice? Third, initiatives taken and commitments made in support of human causes are of general importance for the wellbeing and future of humankind. What kind of initiatives and commitments of this kind have been taken or supported under the inspiration of Islam? Did they also benefit non-Muslims?

Selected

Literature

The Study of Religions Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter CONNOLLY, Foreword by Ninian SMART, London and New York: Continuum, 1999. Approaching Religion. Symposium Abö 4 - 7 August 1997 (Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis XVII, 1 and 2), ed. by Tore AHLBÄCK, 2 vols., Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1999. Bridge or Barrier. Religion, Violence, and Visions for Peace, ed. by Gerrie TER H A A R and James J. BUSUTTIL, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank W H A L I N G , Vol. 1: The Humanities; Vol. 2: The Social Sciences (Religion and Reason 27 and 28), Berlin etc.: Mouton, 1983 and 1984. Paperback edition of selected chapters: Theory and Method in Religious Studies. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank WHALING, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. STONE, pb. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark C. TAYLOR, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

38

Two Questions

Europe in the Orient - The Orient in Europe, ed. by R . KIRSTE, P. SCHWARZENAU, U. TWORUSCHKA (Religionen im Gespräch 9), Balve: Zimmermann Verlag, 2006. FITZGERALD, Timothy, The Ideology of Religious Studies, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. FLOOD, Gavin, Beyond Phenomenology. Rethinking the Study of Religion, London and New York: Cassell, 1999. Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. by Willi BRAUN and Russell T. M C C U T CHEON, London and New York: Cassell, 2000. How to do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals, ed. by Rene GOTHONY (Religion and Reason 44), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Human Rights and Responsibilities in the World Religions, ed. by Joseph RUNZO, N a n c y M . MARTIN, a n d A r v i n d SHARIMA, O x f o r d : O n e w o r l d , 2 0 0 3 .

The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion. A Reader, ed. by Russell T. MCCUTCHEON, London and New York: Cassell, 1999. JENSEN, Jeppe Sinding, The Study of Religion in a New Key. Theoretical and Philosophical Soundings in the Comparative and General Study of Religion, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2003. KIPPENBERG, Hans G., Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. MASUZAWA, Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions. Or, how European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., Religion and the Domestication of Dissent. Or, How to Live in a Less than Perfect Nation, London and Oakville, Conn.: Equinox, 2005. Modern Societies and the Science of Religions, ed. by Gerard A . WIEGERS and Jan PLATVOET, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2002. New Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, Randi R. WARNE, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches (Religion and Reason 42), Vol. 2: Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches (Religion and Reason 43), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. PADEN, William E., Interpreting the Sacred. Ways of Viewing Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, ed. by Armin W. GEERTZ a n d R u s s e l l T . MCCUTCHEON w i t h t h e a s s i s t a n c e o f S c o t t S . ELLIOTT,

Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000. The Pragmatics of Defining Religion. Contents, Concepts and Contests, ed. by Jan G. PLATVOET and Arie L. MOLENDIJK, Leiden: Brill, 1999. Religion and Cognition. A Reader, ed. by D. Jason SLONE, London and Oakville: Equinox, 2005. Religion in the Making. The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion, ed. by Arie L. MOLENDIJK and Peter PELS, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 1998. Religious Harmony. Problems, Practice, and Education, ed. by Michael PYE et al., Proceedings of the Regional Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, Yogyakarta and Semarang, Indonesia, Sep-

Can the Science of Religion Render Service to the Study of Islam?

39

tember 27-October 3, 2004 (Religion and Reason 45), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. SHARPE, E. J., Comparative Religion: A History, London: Duckworth, and La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1975, 2 n d enlarged edition 1986, 1991. SMITH, Jonathan Z., Relating Religion. Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. SMITH, W . Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963. Pocket edition New York: Harper & Row, 1978. —, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, London: SCM Press, 1993. The Study of Religions in Africa. Fast, Present and Prospects, ed. by Jan PLATVOET, James Cox, and Jacob OLUPONA, Cambridge, UK: Roots and Branches, 1996. Themes and Problems of the History of Religions in Contemporary Europe, Proceedings of the Int. Seminar Messina, March 30-31, 2001, ed. by Giulia Sfameni GASPARRO, Cosenza: Ed. Lionello Giordano, 2002. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research, Vol. 1: Introduction and Anthology, Vol. 2, Bibliography (Religion and Reason, 3 and 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973 and 1974. A paperback edition of Vol. 1 appeared in 1999 (New York and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). WASSERSTROM, Steven M., Religion After Religion. Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Some

Reference

Works

Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, 15 volumes, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. The first edition appeared under the title The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE Editor in Chief, 16 volumes, New York: Macmillan, and London: Collier Macmillan, 1987. New Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, Randi R. WARNE, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches; Vol. 2: Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches (Religion and Reason 42 and 43), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. World Christian Encyclopedia. A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, ed. by D. B. BARRETT, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, 2 n d ed. 2001. World Religions, ed. by Willard G. OXTOBY, TWO volumes: Eastern Traditions; Western Traditions. Toronto, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Chapter 2 Can We Study Islam as a Signification System? 1. Introduction The question underlying this paper is how to conceptualize what is common to and unites Muslim people, communities, and societies that are separated from each other in time and space? 1 If we consider Islam the unifying bond of Muslims, which concept of Islam do we use here? The concept of Islam proposed here distinguishes itself in several respects. First, it indicates what elements and underlying structures are common to Muslim people, communities, and societies. This should be made operational in the study of the people and societies concerned. It should bring to light a deeper commonality or even unity than the sheer presence of empirical facts. Second, this concept enables us to study the numerous articulations of Islam that have been made at different times and places, as varieties of an underlying structure. Third, it makes it possible to integrate the knowledge acquired by various disciplines doing research on Islamic materials. These disciplines work from their own perspectives, with their own methodologies, and with many specializations. A common concept of Islam, reasonably developed, would contribute to making Islamic Studies a distinct field of scholarly research, with approaches that can also be found in parallel fields of study like Indology, Chinese, and Jewish Studies. Fourth, this concept of Islam is not historically or anthropologically oriented, but applicable to Islam in various times and places including the present time, wherever evidence is available. Numerous concepts of Islam have already been proposed, corresponding with particular views of it. G. E. von Grunebaum, for instance, wanted to interpret and study Islam primarily as a culture and civiliza1

T h i s p a p e r g o e s b a c k t o a n article entitled " I s l a m Studied a s a S y m b o l a n d Signification S y s t e m " , p u b l i s h e d in Humaniora Islamica, vol. 2 , T h e H a g u e a n d Paris: M o u t o n , 1 9 7 4 , p p . 2 6 7 - 2 8 5 . T h e text of the article h a s been revised a n d shortened.

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

41

tion. In the end, he sought to understand Islam through a historically oriented cultural anthropology. 2 W. Cantwell Smith, on the other hand, viewed and studied Islam as a historically developed cumulative religious tradition, interpreted and practiced by faithful adherents. J Concepts of Islam and the views underlying them have deeply affected Islamic Studies, not only in empirical research but also on a more theoretical level. M y approach here does not take as its starting point a particular discipline, like textual, historical, or social scientific research, or even the science of religions. It moves on a more theoretical level, in search of a conceptual framework that could give more coherence to the many different approaches in Islamic Studies nowadays. It should be useful for Islamic Studies as a field in asking what we mean by "Islam" in academic Islamic Studies. I hope that my at first sight rather theoretical suggestions can be useful in the ongoing discussion about Islamic Studies as a field of scholarly research like Indology, Chinese, or Jewish Studies.

2. The Concept of a Signification System M y point of departure is the concept of a symbol system in cultural anthropology, which has made symbols and symbol systems of particular societies an object of study. Pursuing this line, I suggest that we can speak in certain cases of a broader, "second-level" kind of symbol system that would supersede various concrete "primary-level" symbol systems that use a common symbolic reference and identify themselves by it. "Islam", for instance, serves as a common reference for a number of very different Muslim groups and societies and their particular symbol systems. There is reason to consider Islam such a "second-level" symbol system. It super2

3

G. E. V O N G R Ü N E B A U M , "An Analysis of Islamic Civilization and Cultural Anthropology", Chapter III of the author's Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, pocketbook edition Vintage Book V-248, New York: Alfred A. Knopf and Random House, 1964, pp. 4 0 - 9 7 . The same essay has appeared in a slightly shorter form in the Actes du Colloque sur la sociologie musulmane (September 1 1 - 1 4 , 1961), published in the series "Correspondance d'Orient", No. 5, Brussels: Centre pour l'Etude des Problemes du Monde Musulman Contemporain, 1962, pp. 19-74. A German translation with some revisions appeared under the title "Analyse der islamischen Kultur und Kulturanthropologie" in G . E. V O N G R Ü N E B A U M , Studien zum Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islams, Zurich and Stuttgart: Artemis, 1969, pp. 1 4 5 - 1 8 0 , 3 5 1 - 3 6 5 . Wilfred Cantwell S M I T H , The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963, pocketbook edition Mentor Book M T 575, New York: The American Library, 1964. See especially Chapters 6 - 8 .

42

Two Questions

sedes the "primary-level" symbol systems of concrete Muslim societies that may differ considerably, but that nevertheless all identify themselves as "Islamic". To make a clear distinction between such a "second-level" and the component "first-level" symbol systems, I suggest we call the first one a "signification system". An overall signification system, consequently, comprises or supersedes a number of particular symbol systems that all use the common signification system as a reference. General terms like Islam and Christianity indicate signification systems. Specific Christian or Muslim communities have specific forms of Christianity or Islam as their symbol systems. The term "signification system" suggests that people, though living under different conditions, in different societies, and at different times and places, still have a basic orientation in common to deal with problems of the world, of society, and of human life. That is a "signification system". It contains basic views, rules, and practices that have obtained a certain permanency through the formation of tradition. These basic views, rules, and practices reinforce the cohesion of people within a given civilization or religion. They may have a common orientation, for instance, as to the notion of what is absolute as opposed to matters that are relative, or the tension between the ideal and the real, or between norm and practice. In the signification system there will be historical, social, and other variations. They constitute "symbol systems". The concept of signification system seeks to do justice to the signifying or symbolic aspects of those signs and symbols that have universal, all-encompassing claims. The concept of a symbol system seeks to do justice to the signifying aspects of signs and symbols in cultures and societies that have more restricted, often only local cultural claims. Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, for instance, are examples of signification systems with universal claims. The meanings of their signs and symbols in concrete situations and contexts can be studied empirically. The conceptualization of Islam as a signification system centered on the notion of islam is particularly useful in the study of meanings in Muslim life and society where Islam is the principal reference.

3. Subjective Meanings Our concern here is the relationship between "objective" significance and "subjective" meaning. I understand by "significance" the—explicit or implicit—relevance that particular data can have for a given group or person as a receiving party, so that as data they become significant and potentially meaningful to them, him, or her. And I understand by

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

43

"subjective meaning" the specific meaning that a particular group or person, as an active party or "actor", assigns to something or recognizes in something. I leave aside here the question of the "objective meaning" of things. At this stage, my sole concerns are, on the one hand, the significance that data can have for people and, on the other hand, the meanings people themselves can assign to—or recognize in— those data that are significant to them. We can see these meanings, for instance, in the ways people read or interpret particular data, or in which they behave and act towards them. A "subjective meaning" is never isolated. It always occurs as a part of broader patterns of meaning that people assign to reality. Mostly, people are not very conscious of such meaning patterns; they usually take them for granted. Meaning patterns assigned to reality occur around certain structures if they have an "impersonal" character, and they arise around certain intentions if they have a "personal" character. The occurrence of subjective meanings of certain data implies a relationship between the person or group concerned and the data that are significant to the person or group. This may also lead to mutual communication between various people for whom particular data are significant and who assign (subjective) meaning to them or recognize (subjective) meaning in them. The assignment of subjective meaning to something often also leads to a particular behavior toward it. From these premises, I would like to submit some observations about the study of meanings in intercultural research, for instance Islamic Studies carried out by Westerners. (1) Social and cultural life implies accepting certain codes of meaning. These may be related to what are considered the highest values of a society, but they may also be attached to commonly accepted kinds of human behavior. One function of symbol systems and signification systems is to maintain those codes of meaning that imply respect for particular values and norms, normative realities, and authorities guiding the life of society and its members. The system cements the internal unity of the society, providing communication channels between groups and individuals. The values and norms, realities and authorities to which the system refers enable members of the society to perceive meanings in daily life and human life in general. Understanding a society and its culture implies the ability to grasp to a certain extent the ways people assign meaning and order to lived realities. (2) Within symbol and signification systems, symbols play a key role. They are vehicles of meaning and even constitute certain "cores" of

44

Two Questions

meaning of the symbol system or the signification system itself. Whereas signs tend to signify something that is transcendent of empirical reality and human experience, symbols tend to invite people to active participation and to experiences of subjective meaning. (3) As a rule of thumb, I would submit that significances and meanings are "religious" to the extent that they convey something absolute, unconditional, and authoritative to people who are not able to withdraw themselves from it. In religious communities, specific symbols and signs can give religious significance and meaning to the life of the people concerned. They signify something that may be called beyond—or transcending—common sense and daily life. But the difference between religious and non-religious signification systems is open to discussion. Recognizable religious systems can be read in secular ways, just as nonreligious signification systems can be absolutized. In the study of a culture, we should pay special attention to transcendent references or significations that occur in it. A scholar may even develop a certain sensitivity to the meanings conveyed by transcendent references and to the intentions they evoke in people. (4) Religious signification, of course, is not restricted to institutionally or socially recognized symbols and signs. Other data may also take on a religious meaning. Signification itself has a kind of radiation effect by which a set of seemingly arbitrary data can be seen as internally coherent, revealing a certain meaning pattern. Religions remain bound to empirical realities, but these realities may become transparent for or pregnant with transcendent significations. The scholarly study of any religion in terms of "meaning" basically requires at least two things to start with. On the one hand, one should pay attention to the signifying character of religious data and transcendent references. On the other hand, one should make an effort to grasp what people mean when they speak of religious data. (5) Religions can be said to be "alive" for people to the extent that such people actually accept the transcendent references of their religion as self-evident and accept the validity of what is signified. A living religion is inextricably linked to people who recognize significance in it and assign meanings to it. It seems to be in the nature of a religious symbol system or signification system to present something absolute and eternal while sacralizing it. The system may even claim that it itself is absolutely true and eternally valid. Nevertheless, the history of religions bears evidence of the continuous rise and decline, influencing and change, confrontation and succession of symbols and signs, and even of complete symbol systems and

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

45

signification systems. There are times when, for whatever reasons, a given symbol system or signification system loses its meaning for and grasp on people and evaporates. There are also times when a new set of signification pervades a society, giving it the vitality and meaning of a new start or beginning. Perhaps it is a feature of our time that people tend to conceptualize their own signification system as one whole, to objectify it, and to view it in terms of "ideas". We then have to do with a process of objectification and ideation of one's own—and other people's—religion. As a result, symbol systems and signification systems are now less subjected to religious authorities. They can change more easily than in the past and they can be reinterpreted and adapted, but also used and manipulated on a scale unknown before.

4. Interest in Meanings A crucial question, of course, is how to obtain knowledge of the meanings of symbol systems and signification systems, that is to say what they meant or mean to particular people or groups of people. To be scholarly known, meanings, like facts, require a maximum of evidence, be it through direct witnesses, documents or otherwise. Scholarly intuitions need to be verified to the largest extent possible. Subjective meanings can be known or understood only through the intermediary of people's expressions, in the context of the cultural forms current in a particular place and time. The search for subjective meanings is legitimate; much then depends on what kinds of sources exist to uncover such meanings. In any case, if certain human expressions are not available, subjective meanings cannot be grasped. But even the interpretations that are demonstrably present in the materials at hand are themselves expressions of subjective meaning. As a general rule, the search for subjective meanings demands that we may study historical, social, and other scholarly data first as objects apart from their context and from people living with them. In a next step, however, we have to study them in their context and in relation to the people who lived or had to live with them. Only then will it be possible to get to know something of their significance, the meanings these data had for the people concerned, that is to say "subjective meanings". There certainly is a point in the reproach sometimes made to Orientalists, historians of religions, and other scholars in cultural and intercultural studies that they tend to "kill" the cultures studied, if not by conscious action, then by studying them as "objects" apart from the people living with them. This reproach has come mostly from people originat-

46

Two Questions

ing in the cultures studied. A similar reproach has been made to scholars of religions, with the charge that they tend to "kill" the religion studied, by not taking into account its significance, its signifying function, and its subjective meanings for the people concerned. It is worthwhile to ask whether it is scholarship itself that makes something a " d e a d " object, or whether the latter is due to something else—for instance considering and using knowledge as a kind of power—that may have accompanied certain research projects but that is not necessarily part of scholarship itself. It is probably needless to remind anyone that the study of meanings does not imply declaring them to be "true" or "false". In scholarship, the question of the "ultimate" truth or reality of what is signified in our objects of study is suspended or bracketed off. But a conscientious scholar will seriously consider the question what the signified reality he or she investigates may have meant or may mean to particular people at given times and places, in given circumstances or specific contexts, in a particular culture and religion. Their study of Islam has misled some Western students who felt obliged to take sides for or against the signified values and realities of Islam, on the basis of their own norms and values, or their Western culture and religion. In doing so, they left scholarship. The often absolute claims of religious materials that we find in Islam, as in other religions, should themselves simply be made a subject of study and inquiry, in a search for explanation and understanding. That search is what I see as a scholar's task, not to take sides for or against Islam.

5. Islam Studied as a Signification System For nearly fourteen centuries, Islam has extended over a number of countries and societies of considerable variety and has constituted a unifying factor for people in these countries. It comprises elements held in common, like the Q u r ' ä n and Sünna, worship and other rituals, basic prescriptions of the Shart'a and principal arguments of kaläm, and those fundamental views of the human being, the world, and God that have found general acceptance in Muslim communities. M y proposal is to view these and other elements of Islam as signs and symbols in a signification system that, as such, makes sense to adherents and gives guidance and meaning to their lives. This system is to be taken as a subject of scholarly research. Whatever differences there may be in the way of life practiced and in the interpretations given, all under the name of "Islam", the system as a whole is common to all Muslim communities and societies, past and present. Moreover, the

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

47

consciousness that Muslims have of constituting a privileged religious community (umma) sharing the faith of Islam gives the system an important symbolic role in social and personal life. Considering the rather loose coherence of its elements, each of which, taken in itself, has its own relevance and significance, the concept of a "signification system" is particularly suited to the case of Islam. Islam is not a hierarchically organized community or a rationally constructed system. It is composed of elements that enjoy a religious legitimation and that show certain structures. I submit for consideration that the system as a whole and its various elements has for Muslims a signifying function, hinting at a particular way of life. Studying the factual realities of Muslim life and recognizing "Islam" as a signification system that makes sense to Muslims and gives meaning to life in various circumstances are complementary approaches in Islamic Studies. Viewing Islam as a signification system is not just applying a general theory or a Western model of religion to Islamic materials. It is developed through the practice of Islamic Studies. It is not a particular philosophy or theology prescribing what Islam should or should not be and judging it. It is born from the desire to understand Islam in a scholarly way, descriptively; doing justice to the variety of ways Muslims have constructed it. The term "signification system" offers a descriptive framework to explore through factual data what Islam and its elements have meant to its various adherents. It allows us to capture its significance of providing a common bond between Muslims, while doing justice to varying interpretations and practices. From this perspective, Islam is a kind of system, but it is not a logical system of rationalized prescriptions and doctrines. It indicates a way of life, but not in terms of a dualism between what is religious and what is secular. It displays and admits a great variety of cultural and religious expressions and forms, but within certain normative boundaries. So I prefer to view Islam as a "signification" system signifying transcendent norms beyond social ones, a transcendent reality beyond empirical ones. Through the Qur'än, it provides certain fundamental insights and basic meanings to which believers can have recourse. Last but not least, it conveys a particular discipline to the life of its adherents. Certain other basic orientations of life—in particular idolatry, dualism, or atheism—are forbidden, since they are in conflict with the Islamic one of tawhld (God considered as one and unique). In Islamic Studies, we are primarily concerned with texts and factual data in historical, social, and other contexts. A number of them function in one way or another as elements of the Islamic signification system. Such elements emerged in particular historical and social situa-

48

Two Questions

tions, obtained "Islamic" meanings for the people living with them and should be studied in relation to these people too. Many of these elements continued to exist in new historical and social settings. In Islamic Studies we come also across new interpretations of Islam that have occurred under the influence of new contexts or new developments, inside or outside Muslim countries. Such new interpretations arise especially outside established Islamic institutional settings and are due to new subjective meanings, religious as well as otherwise, that things obtain for particular groups and persons. Ordinary and religious meanings interplay here. In terms of our approach, what fundamentally constitutes a bond between people is less the presence of common facts or even of simple material interests than that of shared meanings linked to life experiences. This is also true for Muslims. Islamic data are to be studied not only for themselves, but also in relation to the people who live with them. This is a key to understanding the bond that exists between these people. The concept of Islam as a signification system superseding the local symbol systems opens paths of research on such meanings shared, not only by individuals, but also by communities and whole societies, even if they are not in direct physical contact with each other. We need more research on common Islamic patterns of meaning. It should do justice to the objective significance of Islamic data found in Muslim societies as well as to the subjective meanings particular Muslim persons and groups have assigned to them or recognized in them. If much historical and social scientific research tends to stress the diversity and the variables of distinct groups and movements in the Muslim world, research on culture, art, and religion tends to look also for what Muslim people hold in common. The same is true for the study of Islam. Some schools—Muslim and non-Muslim—stress the existing diversities in Islam. Others look at what people have in common and are open to a plurality of interpretations of Islam. It is not fair to interpret relations within the Muslim world only in terms of personal or factional rivalries and opposed material interests. Relations between Muslims should also be seen in terms of shared values and common orientations in terms of the Islam held in common. The basic question is then to know how Muslims themselves interpret their diversity and unity.

6. The Proposed Approach Summarized A first concern of this approach is to identify data that have an Islamic significance, not only according to doctrine but also in the practice of life in Muslim societies. Such data function as signs and symbols in

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

49

Muslim social life and we should explore the meanings people assign to them. This holds also true for Islam itself, as viewed by Muslims. A second concern is to study Islamic data first of all on a factual level, as far as the source materials allow. We should establish facts and their causal relations, analyze historical and social processes, and also bring to light recurrent structures between certain facts. The available data are studied here as facts, in terms of their literary, historical, and social contents as well as contexts. Third, the question has to be raised of the relevance and significance of Islamic data for the people living with them. We should distinguish the often considerable varieties of meanings that particular facts, structures, and processes have for different groups of people. Through discourse analysis and hermeneutic research, for instance, we can grasp something of the "subjective meanings" that particular elements of Islam or Islam itself have or have had for particular persons and groups. A fourth and basic concern is to study contemporary Islam, as much as possible without current political, ideological, or religious biases. We are interested in those activities, ideas, values, and norms that have a clear significance for contemporary Muslim communities and societies and we inquire what kind of meanings people assign to them. Current Western opinions or ideas and traditionally held scholarly views of Islam should be radically bracketed. It is not our definition of Islam, but the meanings that people recognize in Islam and ascribe to it that is the starting point of our research. Islam is a common reference and a core concept in the life of Muslim people, and its meanings are manifold, as a faith, a religion, a way of life, a law, a faith, a moral code, and ideology, but also as a community, a social order, a human cause. This calls for research. The interest in "subjective meanings" of Muslims has increased over the last decades, not least through the presence of Muslim immigrants in Western countries. We have a kind of indirect access to subjective meanings in Islam through the way Muslims read, interpret, and practice it. If there is open communication, subjective meanings in Islam will become better known. It is then less Islam itself than the interpretation and practice given to it by contemporary Muslims that become the focus of research. Our approach is fundamentally problem-oriented. There is a legion of general ideas among Westerners about the religious, political, and other meanings of Islam. But these ideas are Western generalizations. They are hardly receptive to what various groups of Muslims in specific situations and contexts say among themselves about the "subjective" meaning Islam has for them. Especially after September 11, 2 0 0 1 , Western ideas about Islam have become dangerously emotional, Western-

50

Two Questions

centric, superficial, and confused: largely because of fear of this "Islam". Our approach may be a remedy. We have in the first place to listen to Muslims if we really want to know, what Islam is, prescribes, and means to them. A basic virtue of the concept of "signification system" is that it is and remains open to the study of very different interpretations. In Islamic Studies, for instance, we should not only study the religious and cultural, but also the various social and political, ideological and combative, post-modern and ethical interpretations that have been given to it. The concept is useful because here Islam is not studied as a particular religion or socio-political system, but in terms of the various meanings that Muslims have given to it and that are interconnected. Religion is not studied here primarily as a separate domain, but as one kind of meaning alongside other kinds of meaning that people recognize in things or assign to things. Working with a concept like that of "signification system" is the reverse of making overall generalizations on the basis of chosen samples. On the contrary, the concept allows us to explore, distinguish, and grasp minutely what things mean to people according to their own expressions. As such, it is a much-needed instrument in an approach in Islamic Studies that is keen on knowing and studying Muslim societies in their own terms, according to their own meaning constructs, and on recognizing Muslims as authentic actors in their own right. Beyond facts and beyond the individuality and heterogeneity of so many elements of Islam, we also need to pay attention, first of all, to meanings and meaning patterns with which people live. Part of them may reflect norms and values of normative Islam; another part may be much more in the line of popular feelings and meanings linked to harsh experiences of life. The interrelations between traditional meaning patterns and the tough realities most Muslim people find themselves in today have hardly been studied until now. They may possibly result in new creative views, not only of Islam but also of life.

Selected

Literature

Islamic Studies ABU ZAYD, Nasr Hamid, "Rethinking the Qur'än: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics", Islamochristiana, Vol. 30 (2004), pp. 25-45. AHMED, Akbar S., Discovering Islam. Making Sense of Muslim History and Society, pb. London and New York, Routledge, 1990. Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985.

Can We Study Islam as a Signification System?

51

ARKOUN, Mohammed, Rethinking Islam. Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1989, 2 nd ed. 1992. —, (dir. by), Histoire de l'Islam et des musulmans en France du Moyen-Age a nos jours, Paris: Michel, 2006. —, Art. "Islamic Studies. Methodologies", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. by John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 332-340. ASAD, Talal, Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. BONNEY, Richard, Jihäd. From Qur'än to bin Laden, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pocketbook edition, 2006. Defining Islam. A Reader, ed. by Andrew RIPPIN, London and Oakville: Equinox, 2007. Ess, Josef VAN, The Flowering of Muslim Theology, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. HOURANI, Albert, Europe and the Middle East, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. —, Islam in European Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. IRWIN, Robert, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies, London: Penguin, 2007. Islam in the Era of Globalization. Muslim Attitudes towards Modernity and Identity, ed. by Johan MEULEMAN (Series INIS Vol. 38), Leiden: University (Indonesian-Netherlands Cooperation in Islamic Studies, INIS), 2001. Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980. KAiMALi, Muhammad Hashim, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2003. Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI (Religion and Reason 38), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. MARTIN, Richard C., Art. "Islamic Studies. History of the Field", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. by John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 325-331. MONNOT, Guy, "Connaissance et estime des religions dans l'islam", Islamochristiana, Vol. 30 (2004), pp. 77-96. NANJI, Azim, Art. "Islamic Studies (Further Considerations)", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 nd ed., Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 7, pp. 4721-4724. RAMADAN, Tariq, Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 2001/1421 H. —, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. SIDDIQUI, Ataullah, Islam at Universities in England. Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future, Report to the Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, 10 th April 2007 (115 p.). SPEELIMAN, Ge, Keeping Faith. Muslim-Christian Couples and Interreligious Dialogue, The Hague: Meinema Publishers, 2006.

52

Two Questions

WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Changes of Perspective in Islamic Studies over the Last Decades", Humaniora Islamica, vol. 1 (1973), pp. 2 4 7 - 2 6 0 . —, "Islamic Studies", Art. in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan, 1987, Vol. 7, pp. 4 5 7 - 4 6 4 . Repr. in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2ND ed., Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, Vol. 7, pp. 4 7 1 5 - 4 7 2 1 . With "Further Considerations" by Azim NANJI, pp. 4 7 2 1 - 4 7 2 4 . —, Art. "Mustashrikün" (Orientalists), in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 n d ed., Vol. 7, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993, pp. 7 3 5 - 7 5 3 . —, "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", in ID., Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft, Würzburg: Echter, and Altenberge: Oros, 1993, pp. 1 8 1 - 1 9 5 . —, "Muslim Studies of Other Religions", in Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions. A Historical Survey, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 1 - 1 0 1 . —, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives (Religion and Reason 40), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. —, Muslims and Others: Relations in Context (Religion and Reason 41), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. Additional on Islam, traditional religions, and Cristianity in the Dutch East Indies (Colonial Period): STEENBRINK, Karel, Catholics in Indonesia, A Documented History, 2 vols. ( 1 8 0 8 - 1 9 0 3 a n d 1 9 0 4 - 1 9 4 2 ) . L e i d e n : K I T L V Press, 2 0 0 3 a n d 2 0 0 7 .

Some Reference

Works

The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New (2 nd ) Edition, prepared by a number of leading Orientalists, 12 volumes, Leiden: Brill, 1 9 6 0 - 2 0 0 4 (Index to follow). Index Islamicus. A Catalogue of Articles on Islamic Subjects in Periodicals and Other Collective Publications. First Volume 1 9 0 6 - 1 9 5 5 compiled by J. D. PEARSON, London, Heffer, 1958. Successive volumes have appeared first every five years, later yearly. Present-day publishers: E. J. Brill, Leiden. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. John L. ESPOSITO, Editor in Chief, 4 volumes, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Part Two Issues in Islamic Studies

Chapter 3 Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures 1. Introduction The scholarly study of religious data aims at knowledge, acquired by rational inquiry into facts, that can be demonstrated to have general validity. 1 For each statement, evidence should be adduced on the basis of empirical data and rational argumentation, and although either the first or the second may be stressed, both elements should always be present. As a consequence, the conclusions of such research must be acknowledged by scholars of different specializations and persuasions, provided that they are aware of the assumptions and presuppositions in this area of study. They should not dogmatically hold to one particular set of assumptions and presuppositions as exclusively true at the expense of other theoretical starting points. When we, as students of religious data, strive for scholarly impartiality and even objectivity, we try to know, explain, and understand data—facts and meanings—as they are, and not as we or others would like them to be. In this field of research we deal with data that have certain religious meanings for particular societies or communities, or for certain groups or individuals within them. So from the point of view of the Study of Religions, it is a primary methodological requirement that Islamic Studies must take into full account what is understood by "religious" and "religion" in various Muslim societies and by particular Muslim religious scholars. Research examines the precise linguistic expression, the literary dependence and ramifications, the historical causes and effects,

1

A first draft of this essay was read at an international symposium on "Islam and the History of Religions" at Arizona State University, Tempe, January 1980. An earlier version of this paper appeared under the title "Islamic Studies and the History of Religions: An Evaluation" in Scholarly Approaches to Religion, Interreligious Perceptions and Islam, ed. by J. WAARDENBURG (Studia Religiosa Helvetica, Jahrbuch, Vol. 1), Bern: Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 413-451. Also in Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 180-219. The original paper has been completely revised.

56

Issues in Islamic Studies

the social functions and processes, and other empirical aspects of the data under investigation. A second requirement of method is to give full weight to what has been or is at present the particular "religious" meaning of the data studied for the Muslim people concerned. It may then be possible to determine if and how such data, when organized into sets, constitute patterns that, as such, have a religious meaning for these people. A third requirement of method is to recognize that all religious meanings have their specific empirical vehicles and that, whatever the religious meaning of particular phenomena, the same data also have historical, social, cultural, and often also political aspects. Consequently, in their empirical forms, religions are always part of given overall historical and social settings of particular communities. There is a growing awareness of the variety of scholarly approaches in the field of Islamic Studies and a concern about the problems resulting from this variety.2 One can distinguish, for instance, philological, historical, anthropological, and sociological approaches. In some cases, one scholar may combine several approaches. Within each approach, however, different methods are again possible, some more critical than others, and certain methods can be applied within more than one approach. A historian analyzing al-Shahrastani's description of the religions of India has to investigate the literary sources used in this description, 3 but if he wants to trace, for instance, the medieval Muslim trade routes via Eastern Europe to Scandinavia, he would do well to analyze the Arab coin hoards left on the way. 4 Solving a particular problem will require a specific method, and a specific method will often lead to a specific use of available sources. In Islamic Studies there is a multiplicity of approaches and of methods in these approaches, methods that sometimes cross and bypass each other or that may occur within more than one approach. Until recently, Islamic Studies was part of what was called Oriental Studies. "Orientalism" was a response to what was felt to be the appeal of the Orient, and it has been noted that this implied hegemonic views of

2

3 4

See Charles J. ADAMS, "Islamic Religious Tradition" (1976). Pages 3 4 - 3 5 provide a survey of approaches in Islamic Studies. See also ID., Art. "Islam" (1977). These two contributions give a good survey of the progress of Islamic Studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Cf. J. WAARDENBURG, "Changes of Perspective in Islamic Studies over the Last Decades", Humaniora Islamica, The Hague: Mouton, 1973, I, pp. 2 4 7 - 2 6 0 . Bruce L. LAWRENCE, Shahrastani on the Indian Religions (Religion and Society 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1976. This was the subject of a Congress of Arabists and Islamicists held at Visby and Stockholm in August 1972.

I s l a m i c Studies a n d the Study o f R e l i g i o n s and C u l t u r e s

57

non-Western societies, including Muslim societies. 5 The unequal power relations between Western states and Muslim countries have influenced the way Muslim societies and "Islam" have been viewed and judged in the West. 6 Prevailing positions of power and ethnocentric attitudes in the West have distorted perceptions and interpretations of other societies and cultures. Analysis has shown that certain theories held in the West about Islam and other non-Western cultures were not so much detached scholarly theories, but rather are explainable by political and other material factors, with great social and psychological consequences. 7 Nonetheless, among the Orientalists of the past century were many scholars who were profoundly motivated by the ideal of dispelling Western ignorance of and prejudice against the Muslim Orient. Even apart from the cultural and religious differences that often separate scholars from the societies they study, scholars personally have always had their own views of humankind and the world at large, and they personally live by different philosophical or moral, esthetic, and religious convictions. Such presuppositions sometimes affect directly, but often indirectly, the specific inferences drawn from given facts. In the study of religious data in particular, such as the Qur'än, religious poetry, or mystical texts, and specifically in the interpretation of their religious meanings, scholarly conclusions tend to differ, even if the same approaches and methods are used, because there are different presuppositions and sensitivities at play. A similar situation prevails in the study of religions and cultures other than Islam, and the present generation of scholars of religions has become more conscious of this state of affairs than previous generations were. Islamic Studies in any case has become the subject of scrutiny and soul-searching. A growing interest has arisen not only in the history of this kind of study, but also in the intrinsic relationship between the concept of Islamic Studies and the conceptualization of Islam. 8 This also holds true for specialists who are not particularly interested in the history of religions, but who are working in the broad field of Islamic 5

Edward W . SAID,

6

M a x i m e RODINSON, " T h e Western image and Western studies of Islam" ( 1 9 7 4 ) . See ID.,

Orientalism.

Europe and the Mystique of Islam. 7

C. H . BECKER, " D e r Islam im R a h m e n einer allgemeinen Kulturgeschichte"; Η . Η . SCHAEDER, " D i e Orientforschung und das abendländische Geschichtsbild"; J . W. FÜCK, "Islam as an Historical Problem in European Historiography since 1 8 0 0 " ; J ö r g KRAEMER, Das Problem der islamischen Kulturgeschichte. Compare Α. BAUSANI, "Islam as an Essential Part of Western Culture".

8

See, besides Μ . RODINSON'S publications mentioned in note 6, Jean-Paul CHARNAY, " J e u x de miroirs et crises de civilisations: Reorientation du rapport Islam/Islamologie", Archives de Sociologie des Religions, 3 3 ( 1 9 7 2 ) , pp. 1 3 5 - 1 7 4 . Compare Bryan S. TURNER, Marx and the End of Orientalism, London: Allen & Unwin, 1 9 7 8 ; and his article "Orientalism, Islam and Capitalism", Social Compass, 2 5 ( 1 9 7 8 ) , pp. 3 7 1 - 3 9 4 .

58

Issues in Islamic Studies

Studies.9 In recent years, a reassessment of Islamic Studies from the point of view of the study of religions has begun. 10 In the following pages, I will examine three approaches in the study of religions. First is the historical study of religions and religious data; second is the comparative study of such data and religions; and finally I shall deal with some discussions of method and theory in general in the study of religions, especially with a view to the study of religious meanings. These three approaches in the study of religions will be discussed in relation to Islamic Studies.

2. Islamic Studies and the Historical Study of Religions The historical study of religions stands in contrast to the mostly ahistorical self-view held by adherents—in the sense that the latter disregard historical sources and explanations, adhering to a different notion of truth than the historical one. A historical study of religions could only establish itself academically after texts, archeological remains, and other types of historical evidence had become available. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the history of religions became a recognized discipline at several universities. One of the major figures working in Islamic Studies, partly within the context of the history of religions— itself part of the general study of the history of culture(s)—was Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921). 1 1 It is significant that he first applied the historical approach and historical criticism to his own religious tradition, Judaism, before applying it to that of Islam. He also did thorough work in the field of Arabic language and literature in the broad sense of the term. Because Goldziher was aware of developments in the general his-

9

Jean-Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'lslam dans le miroir de l'Occident, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 3 r d ed. 1 9 7 0 [hereafter abbreviated as L'lslam]; F. MEIER, "Methods of Approach", in Unity and Diversity in Muslim Civilization, ed. by G. E. VON GRÜNEBAUM, Chicago, 1 9 5 5 , pp. 3 8 - 4 6 ; Robert BRUNSCHVIG, "Situation de l'lslamologie", in Actes du Colloque sur la sociologie musulmane, Brussels, 1 9 6 2 , pp. 7 5 - 8 3 (reprinted in the author's Etudes d'islamologie, 1, Paris, 1 9 7 6 , pp. 3 9 - 4 7 ) ; C. CAHEN and C. PELLAT, "Les etudes arabes et islamiques", Journal Asiatique, 2 6 1 ( 1 9 7 3 ) , 8 9 - 1 0 7 .

10

See Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN. Cf. W. A. BLJLEFELD, "Islamic Studies within the Perspective of the History of Religions", The Muslim World, 6 2 ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 1 - 1 1 ; Charles J . ÄDAIMS, " T h e History of Religions and the Study of Islam" (1967).

II

GOLDZIHER was interested in general problems of the history of religions. See his " L e culte des saints chez les musulmans" in Gesammelte Schriften—Collected Works, Hildesheim, 1 9 7 3 , VI, pp. 6 2 - 1 5 6 ; and, „Le culte des ancetres et le culte des saints chez les Arabes", ibid., pp. 1 5 7 - 1 8 4 . For bibliographical data on GoLDZIHER's work, see J. WAARDENBURG, L'lslam, pp. 3 3 2 - 3 3 8 . A unique personal document is his diary: Ignaz Goldziher, Tagebuch, ed. by Alexander ScHEIBER, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1 9 7 8 .

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

59

tory of religions, he could place Muslim saint veneration and the cult of the dead within a much broader context than that of Islam. Similarly, an anthropologist like E. A. Westermarck (1862-1939) could place data on Moroccan Islam within the broader context of similar forms of religious behavior elsewhere.12 Such breadth of view, however, characterized only a few Islamicists. Most scholars working on Islamic data had only a limited interest in the general history of religions. Like Judaism, Islam was very different from the religions of Antiquity and of non-literate people, which were at the center of interest of historians of religions at the time. So, although several Islamicists paid attention to the historical relations between Islam and Judaism, or between Islam and Christianity, they could not find much profit in working on the history of ancient Mediterranean, Indian, or Far Eastern religions. Second, the demands of linguistic specialization in Islamic Studies became ever more severe, given the abundance of texts available in Arabic, Persian, and other "Islamic" languages, which had to be collected, catalogued, and edited before they could be studied properly. Third, scholars of Islam mostly had to teach the so-called "Islamic" languages in university programs. This left little time for interests beyond the Islamic orbit, with the exception of the Semitic languages in some cases. A fourth reason for Islamicists' relatively scanty interest in the general history of religions is that, on the whole, their interest in religion at large— and consequently in the religious aspects of Islamic materials—was limited. General historians of religion often focused on the Greek or Roman religion, or on religions to be found in the environs (Umwelt) of the Israelite religion and of early Christianity. Scholars concerned with the Umwelt of the Bible worked mostly in theological faculties. Nevertheless, some Islamicists kept track of the general history of religions and the development of this discipline. Some of them actively carried out research on religions other than Islam. Several Jewish scholars of Islam studied Judaism and Jewish influences on Islam, 13 Louis Massignon (1883-1962) considered Christianity and Indian religions in his study of Islamic mysticism, 14 Tor Andrae (1885-1947) examined the

12 For bibliographical data on E. A. WESTERiMARCK's work, see J. WAARDENBURG, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, II, Bibliography, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1974, pp. 3 1 2 - 3 1 3 (Hereafter abbreviated as Classical Approaches, II). 13 For instance, Abraham G E I G E R , Was hat Mohammed aus dem judenthum aufgenommen?, 1833. Engl. tr. judaism and Islam, London, 1898, repr. New York, 1970. Also Charles C. T O R R E Y , The Jewish Foundation of Islam, 1933, repr. New York, 1967, with Introduction by Franz ROSENTHAL. Cf. Bernard LEWIS, "The Pro-Islamic Jews". 14 For bibliographical data on L. M A S S I G N O N ' S work, see J. WAARDENBURG, L'Islam, pp. 3 5 1 - 3 5 8 ; ID., Classical Approaches, 11, pp. 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 .

60

Issues in Islamic Studies

Christian (Syriac) and Manichean context of early Islam, 15 and Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was interested in the Zoroastrian background of Persian Islam. 16 The other way around, there have been only a few professional general historians of religion who have shown an active interest in Islamic religion. An exception was the Swedish scholar Geo Widengren (1907-1996), who, thoroughly familiar with ancient Near Eastern, including Iranian, religions, did original research on Islamic materials and showed the continuation of certain motifs of ancient Near Eastern religious traditions persisting in the area after its Islamization. 17 For most other historians of religions, who were less familiar with prophetic and book- and law-based religions, Islam was either uninteresting, profoundly foreign, or technically inaccessible because of the subtleties of the Arabic language. Perhaps Islam was also somewhat looked down upon. Roughly speaking, historians of Islamic religion approached their materials with the same historical methods and research procedures as those applied in the study of religions other than Islam. Historians of religions had not only a common historical approach, but also substantial unity in method. One may think of the internal and external textual criticism applied to Qur'än, hadtth, and early historical texts, or of the historical explanations in terms of outside influences that were given to numerous Islamic textual and other data. One may also recall the debates on the historical origins of mysticism in Islam and the discussions of the influence—often through polemics—of Christian theology and Greek philosophy on the development of kaläm and falsafa. Looking back, one is struck by the hypercritical tendencies of some scholars who endeavored to explain Muhammad's ideas and actions completely in terms of Christian or Jewish influences, to the neglect of Muhammad's originality or the socio-political context in which he lived. Such historical criticism, however, can also be observed in research on religions other than Islam, where historical truth is contrasted with what people believe. In extreme cases, if the historical reality of something could not be proved, it was simply denied. On the whole, it is fair to say that Islamicists may have been victims of a certain degree of ethnocentricity but they wanted to study Islamic religion at least within the context of Islamic civilization and culture. They thereby avoided hasty comparisons, stressed the logic of internal reli15

For bibliographical data on Tor ÄNDRAE's work, see J. Waardenburg, Classical Approaches, 11, p. 16. 16 For the bibliography of Henry CORBIN up to 1976, see under CORBIN, "Liste des travaux et publications d'Henry Corbin" and Henry Corbin, ed. by Christian JAMBET. 17 For the bibliography of Geo WIDENGREN up to 1972, see Widengren, "Bibliography" prepared by Kaarina DRYNJEFF.

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

61

gious developments once the foundations of Islam had been established, and defended the uniqueness of Islam within the religious history of humankind. It is because of meticulous historical investigations that we now know much more about Islam than we did a century and half ago. But Islamic studies are by and large still at the stage classical studies reached around the seventeenth century. At that time only the most important texts had been published and only the most obvious archeological remains had become known. Only a relatively small part is now known of what potentially can be known of worldwide Islamic religious history. The history of religions in its precise historical sense, then, can make a contribution to Islamic Studies. Leaving aside more critical approaches, it can delineate the life of Muhammad and his message, the growth of the prophetic movement into a religious community developing its own tradition, its institutionalization as an independent religion, and its interaction with other religious groups. The history of Islam is basically the religious history of a broad community (umma) that defines itself as earthbound—and of the numerous local communities constituting it, each with its particular cultural and religious traditions. A religion like Islam by and large fell outside the interest of those historians of religions who were keen on the supernatural, the holy, or myths and symbols as subjects in themselves. The historical study of Islamic religious data proceeds, then, on at least two levels. On one level, the historical contexts and the network of conditions, causes, and effects of what has happened are described and analyzed. On another level, the problems specific Muslim communities and their leaders have confronted in particular periods are analyzed and the different solutions that were proposed are studied. It will be of interest to know whether and in what ways Muslim leaders with the solutions they proposed referred to Islam and to what they considered to be specifically Islamic values. A closer analysis should then seek to determine whether such references to Islam really provide a clue to the chosen solution. Or were they simply used as a religious legitimation for a solution that could be fully explained without taking religion into consideration? Moreover, when particular Muslim groups and their leaders appealed to Islam, what features of Islam did they have in mind? The historical approach also opens the door to study interactions of Muslim and non-Muslim communities. What specific order and dynamics may be associated with the fact that a given community was Muslim and entered in contact with others?

62

Issues in Islamic Studies

3. Islamic Studies and the Comparative Study of Religious Data The study of religions also comprises comparative studies. Broadly speaking, this means that besides the historical approach to data in their uniqueness, a comparative approach can be used to discover parallels and differences between religious data. Such a comparative study of religious data, as distinct from the historical study of developments and influences, seems to have yielded its best fruits for Islamic Studies in the realm of Semitic religions, Judaism, and Christianity. Biblical scholars like Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) and W. Robertson Smith (1846-1894), well-known for their historical-critical studies of the Old Testament, were not only aware of the affinities between Hebrew and Arabic, they also looked at present-day Bedouin practices with the hope that some clues could be found to solve particular problems of ancient Israelite religion.18 A. J. Wensinck (1882-1939) not only threw light on factual parallels between West-Semitic religions and Islam, and certain structural elements they share. He also drew attention to a number of historical and literary connections between early Islam and its Syriac Christian environment (Umwelt), and to the ascetic climate within which Eastern Christian and early Muslim spirituality developed from the fourth to the eighth centuries C.E. 1 9 This scholarly tradition has been maintained by scholars familiar with Arabic, who are interested in the history of Christian communities in the Middle Eastern Muslim context. Comparisons between religious data can be made, of course, in different ways and also with different aims. If, for instance, the significance of certain data in one religion is not well known but that of analogous data in a religion belonging to the same cultural area is well established, then a comparison between these data may elucidate the significance of the lesser known. On a larger scale, one can make structural comparisons between religions, for instance Islam and Judaism, to understand the distinctive character of each, or to demonstrate the existence of a common underlying pattern. Structural comparisons between Islam and Christianity can clarify distinctive differences in a better way

18

For bibliographical data on the works of J. WELLHAUSEN and W. Robertson SMITH, see J. WAARDENBURG, Classical Approaches, II, pp. 3 0 8 - 3 1 1 and 2 6 5 - 2 6 6 respectively. On Robertson SMITH, see Τ. O. BEIDELMAN, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion. 19 For bibliographical data on A. J. WENSINCK'S work, see J. WAARDENBURG, Classical Approaches, 11, pp. 3 1 1 - 3 1 2 . See in Dutch also W. C. VAN UNNIK, "Prof. Dr. A. J. Wensinck en de Studie van de Oosterse mystiek", in Woorden gaan leven: Opstellen van en over Willem Cornells van Unnik (1910-1978) (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1979) pp. 2 3 8 263.

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

63

than by pursuing polemical confrontations of theological doctrines. 20 As a prophetic religion, Islam can be considered one variation within the larger pattern of prophetical religions that developed scripture and law. 21 Attempts have also been made to describe and compare larger patterns of meaning that encompass individual phenomena like sacrifices. This could lead to broader considerations, such as the significance of sacrifice in general. In 1967, Charles Adams rightly observed that the phenomenology of religion as developed up to the 1960s, with its descriptive classificatory surveys of a broad range of religious phenomena, had been of little use to Islamic Studies. Among the reasons for this is that religions such as Islam and Judaism in their normative forms cannot be analyzed according to the phenomenological scheme: "conceptions of the Divine, conceptions of humankind, and interaction between the Divine and humankind". 22 It is striking how relatively poor these two religions, at least in their official normative forms, are in concrete and visible phenomena, compared with the rich stock of symbols, myths, rituals, and other religious expressions of the religions of Antiquity, India, or peoples with an oral culture. In fact, Islam has been one of the marginal religions for "classical" phenomenologists, who traditionally studied religious fields that included pantheons of divinities, multitudes of souls, and complicated communications between the natural and supernatural. With the exception of Geo Widengren's Religionsphänomenologie,2j largely based on the author's own sourcework, no previous phenomenology of religion has done justice to Islamic religious phenomena. To do that, another approach should be taken so that not just visible phenomena are treated. The fervent quest for general religious phenomena, themes, and structures such as myth and ritual, sacred kingship, or even monotheism has led to a better understanding of a number of religions, but not of Islam. Islam does not seem to fit into the current idea of what religions are, and Islamic data do not seem to correspond well to what are held to be religious phenomena at large. An exception is forms

20

W i l f r e d C a n t w e l l SMITH, " S o m e Similarities a n d Differences Between Christianity a n d Islam: A n Essay in C o m p a r a t i v e R e l i g i o n " . M . G . S. HODGSON, " A C o m p a r i s o n

21

I s l a m a n d Christianity

as a F r a m e w o r k

WATT, Muslim-Christian

Encounters:

for R e l i g i o u s L i f e " . W i l l i a m

Perceptions

and

of

Montgomery

Misperceptions.

See, for instance, J a c q u e s WAARDENBURG, ' " L e b e n verlieren' oder ' L e b e n g e w i n n e n ' als Alternative in p r o p h e t i s c h e n R e l i g i o n e n " , in Leben und

Wirklichkeit,

and

Tod

in den

Religionen:

Symbol

ed. by G . STEPHENSON, D a r m s t a d t , 1 9 8 0 , pp. 3 6 - 6 0 .

22

C h a r l e s J . ADAMS, " T h e H i s t o r y o f Religions a n d the Study o f I s l a m " . See N o t e 1 0 .

23

G e o WIDENGREN, Religionsphänomenologie,

Berlin: W a l t e r de G r u y t e r , 1 9 6 9 . T h i s is a

t r a n s l a t i o n o f the s e c o n d Swedish edition, with considerable revisions.

64

Issues in Islamic Studies

of popular religion, but they do not have a recognized normative character. Islamic data are not readily available to general historians of religions who do not know the languages in question. Attempts to explain religion with the help of theories developed from comparative studies of non-literate religions have been of little relevance to Islamic Studies, whether these attempts relied on theories of animism, dynamism, magic, or even primal monotheism. Is Islam the great exception to the religious life of humankind, or does Islam as well as Judaism demonstrate some inherent limitations of the phenomenology of religion that developed in the period between the two world wars? I submit that Islam, like some other prophetic religions, has "revolutionary" aspects, or at least protests against non-monotheistic religions. It rejects a number of religious phenomena that are usually recognized and studied, such as gods, spirits, devils, souls, myths, elaborate rituals, and quite visible symbols. It replaces them, however, with new ones of a different sort, such as the appearance of prophets and scriptures, elaborate traditions and moral-juridical prescriptions, particular forms of piety and fraternal communal life, a great number of social and political concepts of the just society, and a relatively small number of theological doctrines. Consequently, to do justice to these Islamic phenomena and to phenomena of puritanical protest, rejection of idolatry, prophetic reform, and puritan iconoclasm that Islam shares with a few other religions, the phenomenology of religion should be readapted. In addition, comparative studies, as distinct from the study of historical developments and derivations and also distinct from a simple categorization of religious phenomena, can make a contribution to Islamic Studies by taking contexts into account. H o w did Islamic movements arise, what kinds of religious change have taken place in Muslim and in other societies in the course of the 1 9 t h and 2 0 t h centuries? 2 4 Some examples may suffice as illustrations. (1) Comparative studies of charismatic prophetic figures, including Muhammad, and of the rise of religions, including Islam, based on revealed messages, should take into account the conditions under which prophets arose and the significance such messages had for their societies. (2) The development from prophetic word to scriptural canon, from oral to written tradition, and concurrent processes of sacralization in Islam should be compared with similar developments elsewhere. Other

24

M o r e than previously in classical phenomenology of religion, comparative studies of religious data that occur in different religions should take into account the historical and social contexts, causes and meanings of these data.

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

65

religions, too, show a development from prophetic activity, including preaching, to a broader social movement. This can lead to an institutionalized religion that claims universality, consolidating itself with scripture and law. One may think of the Bahä'I and the "Mormon" religion. (3) Attention should be given to the rise and further development of spiritual trends and orientations of a puritanical, mystical, gnostic, or philosophical type within Islam as compared with similar trends and orientations in other religious traditions. Such studies should include the social and cultural context in which these trends and orientations arise and the ways in which they appeal to the given canon and tradition, legitimizing themselves by such appeals. Consider, for example, those trends in the monotheistic religions that want to bypass established tradition and to nourish themselves again with the original revelation laid down in a Holy Scripture, such as the Karaites, Kharijites, and early Lutherans in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity respectively. (4) Specific elements of the Islamic religious structure like scripture and tradition, as they function in particular Muslim communities, can be compared with elements that perform an analogous function in other religious structures and in varying types of societies. The Sünna in Islam, for instance, might be compared with normative traditions in other religions and their role in non-literate and literate, agricultural and urban, politically and intellectually oriented societies. (5) There is a need for comparative studies of the treatment of specific problems of ethics, jurisprudence, and theology in the Islamic, Judaic, and Christian traditions. This may lead to a better insight into the specific ways such problems have been seen and formulated in each religion (or have not been seen at all), the solutions envisaged, and the particularistic or universalistic nature of such solutions. (6) In the course of history, different thinkers and groups have given various interpretations of Islam. The resulting self-interpretative process in Islam lends itself to comparison with similar self-interpretative processes in other religions and ideologies in comparable contexts. Of particular interest are processes of construction and deconstruction, rediscovery and rejection, sacralization and desacralization of specific elements of the traditions involved. 25 (7) Movements within or in reaction to Islamic religious tradition and practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be validly compared with similar movements in other religious traditions like Judaism in the same period. Such comparisons can lead, for instance, to a better understanding of the various positive and negative kinds of 25

For the historical process of self-interpretation in religions, see, for instance, The Cardinal Meaning. Essays in Comparative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity, ed. by Michael PYE and Robert MORGAN (Religion and Reason 6), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973.

66

Issues in Islamic Studies

religious responses to modernization processes. 26 They may also bring to light different kinds of secularization, new developments of existing religious traditions, or even the construction of "new" religions on the basis of older ones. Comparative studies of the rise and fall of parts of tradition or of entire traditions over a particular period of time can reveal striking changes in meaning patterns. Sacralizing tendencies in religious and cultural traditions in different contexts and the role played in them by political and other interests, deserve attention and can be compared with each other.

4. Islamic Studies and Discussions on Method and Theory in the Study of Religions In the field of the study of religions in the broader sense, there have always been undercurrents of a sometimes very sharp questioning of methods to be used. They move between the extremes of, for instance, critical historical research and philosophical phenomenology. In all disciplines there is an ongoing quest for the right method to explore particular sources or to obtain data for a particular inquiry. This includes questions of research techniques, problems of definition, the elaboration of a hypothesis or theory, or simply the development of an adequate theoretical interpretative framework. In the study of religions, this quest has been complicated by the fact that the concept and meaning of "religion" itself has long been determined by meanings and evaluations given by Western religion, refined by theological and philosophical interpretations. It has taken a long time to deprive the concept of "nature", for instance, of its ancient metaphysical and theological connotations. Similar observations can be made about concepts such as "culture" and "society", which have been determined for a long time by Western notions and ways of thinking. The phenomenology of religion has rendered a service to the study of religions by insisting that religion should be described and studied without immediate philosophical or theological evaluations. Although religious and ideological impulses have continued to play a role in the study of religions, the 20 r century witnessed the growth of a science of religion (Religionswissenschaft) as a field of studies which has its own autonomy and integrity. 27 26 One of the first scholars applying this approach was Robert N. BELLAH, editor of Religion and Progress in Modern Asia, Glencoe, 111., 1965. See, for instance, "Islamic Tradition and the Problem of Modernization", in his Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World, New York, 1970, pp. 146-166. 27 On early discussions of method and theory in the study of religions, see Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by L. Honko, containing the Proceedings of the

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

67

On the whole, there do not seem to have been such intense epistemological debates in Islamic Studies. From the beginning, the main effort in Islamic Studies was devoted to textual research: philology in the best sense of the word and historical inquiry into written and archeological sources were the disciplines to be mastered. Islamic Studies, like Indology and Sinology, developed more or less on the pattern of Classical Studies, though with a broader notion of culture and a greater awareness of the plurality of cultures and civilizations. Yet other currents have emerged in Islamic Studies, too, mostly incorporating textual research within a larger perspective. Louis Massignon's involvement in the Sufi spirituality he studied indicates that his scholarly aims went beyond philology and history for their own sake. 2 8 W. Cantwell Smith analyzed modern Islam in India and looked at the Muslim socio-political interests. He came later to what may be called a personalistic interpretation of Islamic life and thought and of religion in general, with a personal involvement as well. 2 9 W. Montgomery Watt arrived at a new view not only of the origins of Islam, but also of its early history and its theology, by analyzing religious phenomena within their socio-political context, using findings of the sociology of knowledge in his interpretation of Islamic thought. 3 0 In 1 9 6 1 , C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze asked whether sociology might not be the next phase in the development of Islamic Studies. j l At the same time Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum envi-

I.A.H.R. Conference held in Turku in 1 9 7 3 (Religion and Reason 13), The Hague: M o u t o n , 1 9 7 9 ; On Method in the History of Religions, ed. by James S. HELFER (History and Theory no. 8), Middletown, Conn., 1 9 6 8 ; and Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Robert D. BAIRD, Chico, Calif., 1 9 7 5 . For an overview of the history of religions up to the 1 9 8 0 s , see Ugo BIANCHI, "History of Religions" in The Encyclopaedia of Religion ( 1 9 8 7 ) , Vol. 6, pp. 3 9 9 - 4 0 8 , and especially Gregory D. ALLES, "Study of Religion. An Overview" in the Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d ed., M a c millan Reference USA, 2 0 0 5 , vol. 13, pp. 8 7 6 1 - 8 7 6 7 . This article is followed by surveys of the development of the history of religions in a number of countries (pp. 8 7 6 7 8796). 28

J . WAARDENBURG, L'lslam,

29

Wilfred Cantwell SMITH, Modern Islam in India: Λ Social Analysis (1943). See Id., The Meaning and End of Religion ( 1 9 6 3 ) , Faith and Belief (1979), On Understanding Islam (1981).

pp. 2 5 7 - 2 6 3 , 2 8 3 - 2 8 9 , 3 0 0 - 3 0 3 , 3 0 6 - 3 0 8 .

30

For the bibliography of W. Montgomery WATT, see Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge, ed. Alfred T. WELCH and Pierre CACHIA, Edinburgh, 1 9 7 9 , pp. 3 3 1 - 3 4 7 . See also his Early Islam: Collected Articles, Edinburgh, 1 9 9 0 .

31

C. A. O. VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE, " T h e Next Phase in Islamic Studies: Sociology?", Actes du Colloque sur la sociologie musulmane, Brussels, 1 9 6 2 , pp. 3 9 3 - 4 2 9 . Cf. ID., " T h e Trend in Middle East Studies—As Illustrated by the Dutch Case", in Middle East Studies—Whence and Whither, M . O . I . Publication no. 1, Nijmegen, 1 9 7 8 , pp. 1 1 - 3 7 . Questions of method and theory in Islamic Studies became subject of scholarly discussion those years. See, for instance, the papers of a methodological panel discussion, "Methodology: On History and Anthropology in the Study of Islam", Humaniora Islamica, vol. 2, The Hague: Mouton, 1 9 7 4 , pp. 2 0 7 - 2 9 9 .

68

Issues in Islamic Studies

saged Islamic studies in the broader context of the study of the various cultural (including religious) orientations of humankind. 3 2 Marshall G. S. Hodgson viewed Islamic history in the wide context of world history, denounced current eurocentrism and paid attention to scholarly terminology in Islamic Studies. j3 Clifford Geertz, studying living symbolism in specific Muslim societies, initiated the study of patterns of meaning current among particular Muslim groups and communities. 34 All of these scholars—and they are not the only ones—have shown considerable methodological concern. Epistemological concerns in Islamic Studies have been due especially to a growing awareness of Islam as a living religion and faith. As the second-largest world religion in terms of number of adherents, Islam has an impact on the present-day world scene. This is most visible in its political aspects, as in the independence movements and the resurgence of Islam in Muslim states. It shows up in tensions and conflicts in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent; in "Islamic" movements and revolutions; and in critical attitudes taken toward the West. Classical Islamic Studies was obviously not equipped to explain the role of Islam in these contexts; new approaches needed to be developed. A second impulse to recognize favorably the importance of Islam as a living religion and faith has come, paradoxically, from circles connected with Christian missions. The fact that, considerable efforts up to the Second World War notwithstanding, no significant number of Muslims converted to Christianity forced the recognition of Islam as a religious identity with its own distinctive life and continuity. When Christian and Muslim leaders then became increasingly aware of common problems confronting all believers with regard to the future of humankind, new ways of communication were sought, more or less aptly expressed in a call for intercultural dialogue.

32 See, for instance, G. E. VON GRUNEBAUM, "An Analysis of Islamic Civilization and Cultural Anthropology". Cf. ID., "Islamic Studies and Culture Research", in Studies in islamic Cultural History, ed. by ID., 1954, pp. 1-22. 33 Marshall G. S. HODGSON, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago, 1974); ID., Rethinking World History. Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History (Cambridge, UK, 1993). 34 See, for instance, his Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven, 1968). See also ID., The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973); ID., Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983); ID., After the Fact. Two Centuries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist (Cambridge, MA, 1995); ID., Available Light. Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics (Princeton, NJ, 2000).

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

69

Epistemological discussions in Islamic Studies were only indirectly related to the questions of method and theory that were raised in the study of religions in general. The interest in Islam as a living religion with a significant cultural record, in addition to being stimulated by the media, has also been enhanced by teaching programs in world religions and civilizations at colleges and universities. Teaching Islam as a world religion has forced general historians of religions and scholars of Islam to present Islam not only as a story of the past whose greatest moments were its formative and classical periods, but also as a history that is still being made. 20 th -century Muslim interpretations of the Qur'än and Sünna35 and of legal and political issues,36 as well as new Muslim religious and social movements, have become further subjects of interest. Consequently, the nature of Islamic Studies has become a focus for scholarly discussion in which Muslim scholars are also actively participating. This concerns especially questions like the distinctive features of Islamic Studies, whether or not such studies constitute a whole, and what kinds of scholarly and unscholarly concerns play a role in these studies. Most interestingly, perhaps, the question of the nature of Islam has been formulated anew. In what sense is Islam a subject for scholarly research? Is it a law, an ideology, a system of symbols, a tradition, a faith, or something quite different? 37

35

J . M . S. BALJON, Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation, 1880-1960, Leiden, 1 9 6 1 ; J . J. G. JANSEN, The interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt, Leiden, 1 9 7 4 ; J. JOMIER, Le Commentaire coranique du Manar: Tendances modernes de l'exegese coranique en Egypte, Paris, 1 9 5 4 ; G. H. A. JUYNBOLL, The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature: Discussions in Modern Egypt, Leiden, 1 9 6 9 , and ID., Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship in Early Hadith, Cambridge and New York, 1983.

36

See, for instance, Malcolm H. KERR, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1 9 6 6 . For law reforms in the Maghrib, see Maurice BORRMANS, Statut personnel et famille au Maghreb de 1940 a nos jours, Paris and The Hague, 1 9 7 7 . M o s t studies of present-day movements in Islam and interpretations of the Shari'a concentrate on particular countries.

37

Such questions present themselves in a more acute way in debates and discussions between Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam. This was already sensed by C. A. O. VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE, "Frictions between Presuppositions in Cross-Cultural Communication" written in 1 9 5 7 and republished in ID., Cross-Cultural Studies, The Hague, 1 9 6 3 , pp. 1 9 2 - 2 2 1 . An extensive literature on the subject has developed in connection with the debate on Orientalism. Present-day interests in the history of Islamic Studies are linked to the discussion of the nature of Islamic Studies. The volume Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Μ . H. KERR ( 1 9 8 0 ) , contains the papers read at the seventh Giorgio Levi Delia Vida Conference held at UCLA on April 2 2 , 1 9 7 9 . Although none of these is devoted specifically to the study of the religious aspects of Islam, the volume as such is relevant to the discussion of the nature of Islamic Studies.

70

Issues in Islamic Studies

5. Studying Religious Aspects of Islam Of immediate interest to us here is the problem how the religious aspects of Islam ought to be studied and interpreted. This question has led to a revived interest in the function and meaning of religious behavior, ideas, expectations, movements, norms, and values in present-day Muslim societies. Such inquiries were already made in the colonial period under the pressures and limitations of that time, but they have benefited tremendously from the swift development of the social sciences since 1945, in particular cultural anthropology and sociology. So it has become possible now to study the meaning of ideologies and movements, events and processes in Muslim countries against the background of a social, cultural, and religious Islamic framework. Three problems are paramount in these studies: 1) What kinds of groups support and transmit various interpretations of Islam, and who are the leaders ('ulamä', shaykhs, and "lay" leaders) and the adherents of these groups? 2) How do particular changes that occur in the religious institutions— or in institutions legitimated by religion—relate to changes in society at large? What are the consequences of the changes in these institutions for the societies concerned? 3) What political or social role or function do specific Islamic ideas and practices play or perform in particular Muslim groups and societies? What is the impact of the specifically Islamic meanings of these ideas and practices for believers? Such questions can also be asked about Muslim societies of the past, provided that there are enough historical data available to answer them. In any case, it is a mark of scholarly progress that nowadays a number of subjects can be examined in Islamic Studies that some fifty years ago were excluded, not because the phenomena in question did not exist, but because the methodological tools to handle them were not yet developed. We are now more aware of certain general political, social, and economic processes that have an impact in Muslim societies, as they do in other developing countries. We also now pay more attention to the social, cultural, and religious Islamic framework within which particular practices and ideas are significant for Muslims. In the same vein, the notion of tradition, whether great or little, has attracted new attention in Islamic Studies, both in history and in anthropology. In Islam, religious tradition in the widest sense of the word is now some fourteen centuries old. Claiming to go back ultimately to the origin of Islam as

Islamic Studies a n d the Study of Religions a n d C u l t u r e s

71

articulated in the Qur'än, this tradition contains a great number of tributaries that have nourished successive generations of Muslims. One difficulty is how to study the various historical elements not only separately, but also as an integral part of a larger tradition that has moved on through Muslim history. The normative character of at least a number of elements of the Islamic tradition has been recognized throughout the history of Islam. One thinks of the discussions about the validity of baditbs, certain parts of the Sbart'a such as the religious duties ('ibädät) and the regulations on personal status, elements of philosophical theology (kalämj8), certain practices of piety that could be further elaborated in tasawwuf (mysticism), and certain paradigmatic figures, periods, and episodes in Islamic history. 39 The idea of Islam itself is also such a basic normative element: as a spiritual reality, as the true law and order of things, the supreme value on earth, the absolute religion. To the study of the elements of the normative "great tradition" should be added, for each region, numerous elements of the local "little traditions". 4 0 They include legendary events in the history of the region, deeds and blessings of particular saints, the meritorious character of particular local practices, and so on. All official doctrine notwithstanding, when particular charismatic men or women have served a mediating function in local "popular" religion, their authority has often become part of that religious tradition as well. This aspect of the "little tradition" is one of the prisms through which life's meanings are refracted. It is an epistemological advance in Islamic Studies to take cognizance of the fact that successive generations of Muslims have interpreted their lives, world, and history through the spectrum of the religious tradition in which they stood and of the religio-socio-cultural framework of the society into which they were born. The history of religions can show the religious aspects of historical social continuity and human solidarity as they are found in Muslim societies and elsewhere.

38 39

40

For instance, discussions on the "unity" of God (tawbid), prophethood (nubuwwa), the Qur'änic miracle (i'jäz al-qur'än), and the creeds (aqä'id). For instance, the model of the life of M u h a m m a d and the early Muslim community. For the Sunnis, this means the period of al-kbulafä' al-räshidün, the "rightly guided" caliphs; for the Shl'Is, it is the life of Ali, the events around Karbala, and the history of the Imams. Discussions of the relationship between the "great" and the "little" traditions in Muslim societies have largely remained restricted to anthropologists. Cf. J. W A A R D E N B U R G , "Official and Popular Religion in Islam", Social Compass, Vol. 25 (1978), nr. 3 - 4 , pp. 315-341.

72

Issues in Islamic Studies

6. Some Basic Distinctions We may look, then, at Islam as the religious tradition and the religiosocio-cultural framework of a number of concrete Muslim communities with all kinds of variations of both this tradition and this framework. 41 Before proposing a way to study the religious aspects of Islam in particular, we should first make some more or less self-evident distinctions. First of all, we should recognize that the word "Islam" itself is used in very different senses. First, it is used by Muslims who may have different ideas of what is religiously normative and who have developed a panorama of discourses about Islam that must remain out of consideration here. Second, by scholars of Islam (with different approaches) as their general subject of study and as a "symbol" of their concrete subject of inquiry. Third, in ordinary discourse—also of politicians and journalists—in the West, with quite different views of what in Islam is felt to be "foreign" if not opposite to the West. 42 Second, a sharp distinction should be made between "normative" Islam and "practiced" Islam. Normative Islam consists of the prescriptions, norms, and values that are recognized as mandatory by the community. These are taken from the basic normative texts, mostly with what is held to be their authoritative interpretation by 'ulamä' and fuqahä'. Practiced Islam comprises all those forms and movements, practices, and ideas that in fact, empirically, have existed in Muslim communities in different times and places and that have locally been considered "Islamic" and consequently legitimate and valid. 43 Third, an equally sharp distinction should be made between the empirical Islamic data or facts as available to someone who seeks to know them for the sake of scientific or scholarly truth, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ideals that Muslims or groups of Muslims attach to these data, the meaning they assign to them, and the norms or the 41

42

43

Empirical research, of course, is carried out on such communities separately. From the point of view of Islamic Studies, all these communities, however different they may be, have Islam as the highest norm and ideal in common and identify themselves as "Muslim". They should therefore be seen as being part of the Muslim umma, though with significant variations and differences. In scholarly research, a precise terminology is needed. See M . S. G. HODGSON'S proposal to distinguish "Islam" and "Islamdom" as nouns, and "Islamic" and "Islamicate" as adjectives in The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, pp. 5 7 - 6 0 . Cf. " A Note on Terminology in the Study of Religion" as Appendix 1 of J . WAARDENBURG, "Official and Popular Religion in Islam", Social Compass, vol. 2 5 (1978), 3 3 3 - 3 3 4 . Compare Fazlur RAHMAN, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Both normative and practiced Islam is a valid subject of scholarly study. In the past, scholars of Islamic Studies working on authoritative texts tended to concentrate on the first and anthropologists working on Muslim societies on the second.

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

73

truth they recognize in them. 4 4 This distinction between practice and ideal, fact and (subjective) meaning of a religious datum is necessary not only for the purpose of analysis, but also as a condition for making valid comparisons. Research into the hajj may serve as an example. One should distinguish the practice of the hajj as it actually takes place from the norms, values, and ideals attached to it by the participating pilgrims themselves and from the general religious prescriptions they should follow; all three should be studied. 45 In any comparison between the hajj and other pilgrimages, one will have to juxtapose the practice of the hajj with the practice of pilgrimages elsewhere, the ideals Muslims have of their hajj with the ideals existing in other religious communities about their pilgrimages, and the rules governing the hajj with those governing other pilgrimages. In scholarly work, one should avoid comparing the practice of one kind of pilgrimage with the ideal of another pilgrimage. The distinction to be made between ideal, actual practice, and formal rule holds true for all scholarly comparisons between religious data. Fourth, a similar distinction should be made when comparing different Muslim societies or groups with each other. We can very well compare the factual data and actual practices of one society with those of another one, or particular values, ideals, and rules of one society with those of another society. But from a scholarly point of view, we have no reason a priori to say that one specific society represents Islam as a norm and ideal better than another. Unless all Muslims agree that one particular group or society is the best Islamic one—and one still needs to know what is understood by "best"—we must proceed by reporting that in one group certain ideals, practices, and rules of Islam prevail, while in another other ideals, practices, and rules can be found, and by trying to explain this difference and to see its implications.

44

This seems to be a crucial point in discussions between Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam. Since a believer will not readily admit that he or she "attaches ideals to facts", a starting point for such discussions would be to say that—apart from scholarship—the same data may have different "subjective meanings" for different scholars as persons, depending on their sympathy or antipathy, degree of participation and commitment, etc.

45

See William R . ROFF, The Wandering Thoughts of a Man. The Life and Times of Haji Abdal Majid bin Zainuddin, Kuala Lumpur, 1 9 7 8 , J. VREDENBREGT, " T h e Haddj: Some of its Features and Functions in Indonesia", in Bijdragen tot de Taal-Landen Volkenkunde, vol. 118 (1962), pp. 9 1 - 1 5 4 ; J. M . S. BALJON, De motivatie van de Moslimse pelgrim, inaugural address, Leiden, 1972. Compare M . HAMMOUDI, Une saison a la Mecque, Paris: Seuil, 2 0 0 4 .

74

Issues in Islamic Studies

7. The Study of "Religion" in Islamic Studies A major epistemological problem in Islamic Studies is the correlation between the scholarly categories of description, analysis, and interpretation, on the one hand, and the adequate translation and conceptualization of Islamic realities on the basis of the texts and raw data themselves, on the other. Another major problem is subjectivity. Studies of the image of Islam presented in scholarly work have shown the tremendous role that the "subjective" values and norms of a scholar play in his or her study of a foreign culture and religion. 4 6 Such "subjective" values and norms can in part be traced back to objective cultural and ideological factors that determine the relationship between the scholar and his or her "foreign" object of study. But they are also due to scholarly presuppositions and personal preferences and evaluations, which are sometimes difficult to explain or understand. I have written about these more objective factors and more subjective values as respectively "assumptions" and "presuppositions" in Islamic Studies. 4 7 Since "Islam" is not an empirical datum in the same way as concrete texts, practices, or even explicit ideals are, what is held to be the "reality" of Islam largely depends on the concepts and categories a particular scholar works with. Certain sets of concepts and categories will even lead to the denial of any "reality" of Islam, or at least the denial that any such "reality" can be known in a scholarly way, since it is not empirical. This does not mean that one can not do important work in Islamic Studies, but rather that the concept of "Islam" makes little scholarly sense. Given such problems, I would like to present some proposals for obtaining a better understanding of what may be called "religion" in Islamic Studies, or better, the "religious aspects" of Islam. These proposals are particularly applicable to Islam, but they are in principle valid for the study of all religions and ideologies. They will have to be developed, then, according to the specific data of each particular religion or ideology. Until now, as far as I know, Islamic religion has not yet been studied systematically from this angle. To the extent that Islam is a religious tradition taken from—or ascribed to—the past and also a religio-cultural framework of present-day communal life, it is linked to all people, societies, and communities identify-

46

This holds true not only for historians of religions or scholars of Islam, but also for social scientists. See, for instance, Bryan TURNER, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study, London and Boston, 1974, and somewhat later, his Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London and New York, 1994.

47

Jacques WAARDENBURG, "Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies". See Chapter 6 in this volume.

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

75

ing themselves as " M u s l i m " . Whereas texts, social practices, monuments, and so on, sacred or profane, somehow exist as data in themselves, this is not the case for Islam. "Islam" apparently exists first of all as a meaning for people, not only for Muslims but also for outsiders, including non-Muslim scholars of Islam. 4 8 If a particular scholar works on texts and discovers what he or she may call the essentials of Islam as a religion, this remains a scholarly construction, containing both objective and subjective elements. The work of scholars like Louis Massignon, Henry Corbin, and W. Cantwell Smith has opened up dimensions of mystical experience, gnostic spirituality, and personal faith in Islam. It would be untenable, however, to pretend that any one of these dimensions "is" Islam. They are rather to be seen as aspects of Islamic religion or religious aspects of Islam. I would like to draw some conclusions from this state of affairs, in the hope that this may lead to further discussion. M y starting point is this: what is a religious fact for one person is not necessarily a religious fact for another person, unless both happen to belong to the same religious community. Even then, the "subjective" meaning of this fact will be different for each person. O r , put in more abstract terms: religious meanings are not inherent in particular facts. 4 9 As scholars we are concerned with data that convey religious and other meanings to particular people and tend to become sacralized in particular communities that focus on these data. These communities themselves then acquire a "religious" character. As a consequence, in the empirical analysis of Islamic data, one is advised to avoid using such general terms derived from Western parlance as "religion", "world view", "ideology", "faith", and so on. An accurate scholarly study of the religious aspects of Islam starts by looking at those data that clearly possess significance for a number of Mus48

49

The way we view Islam determines largely the way we establish the foundation for Islamic Studies, and vice versa. Whereas Islamwissenschaft has often been based first on cultural history, and later also on cultural anthropology, in what follows I shall make an attempt to base the study of Islam rather on the study of religions, Religionswissenschaft, focusing on problems of religious and other kinds of meaning. The interest of scholars of Islam—Islamicists—in Islam is articulated in terms of scholarly research on Islamic data. Whether or not a scholar of Islam happens to be a Muslim is secondary to the question whether he or she is a good scholar of the materials under study. The point is that we study such religious data as rituals, myths, and sacred texts as facts, but that they are much more than mere facts for the people concerned. They are rather signs and symbols for them, and they are read and associated with each other in particular ways, partly consciously, partly unconsciously. People may subjectively perceive coherence in them, orient themselves toward and through them, and acquire an identity through them as signs and symbols they live with.

76

Issues in I s l a m i c Studies

lims. It then pays special attention to those data to which M u s l i m s — subjectively—assign a religious meaning, largely in their own terms. Such religious data have a sign or symbol value for the people concerned. 5 0 It is fair to say that the primary and intrinsic religious datum for Muslims is the Qur'än, since only the words of the Qur'än and their meaning are considered to have an immediate divine origin and thus to be absolutely authoritative. Given the fact that Western scholars of Islam use empirical research methods and are mostly not Muslims themselves, they study the Qur'än only on a factual level, as a text. As a consequence, the religious dimension of the Qur'än, as Muslims perceive it, is bracketed off and thus bound to be neglected in Western academic Islamic Studies. The same observation applies to the understanding of Christ by scholars who are not Christians themselves and who study data about Jesus on a factual level. They, equally, cannot but bracket off and neglect the religious dimension of Christ, as Christians perceive it. T h e persistence of Islam as a religion may be ascribed to the Muslim community's continued recognition of divine revelation in the Qur'än, apart from the shared rituals and other duties. Equally, the persistence of Christianity may be ascribed to the Christian community's continued recognition of divine revelation in Christ, apart from the organization, creeds, and authority of the Churches. 5 1 50

Whereas a sign in principle has one main meaning, a symbol by definition has more than one meaning: the referent of a sign is situated "outside" the sign itself, whereas the referent of a symbol is in principle part of the symbol. Whereas a sign is much less ambivalent than a symbol, there are borderline cases where a sign can function as a symbol; symbols also can become signs. In what follows, the concept of " s i g n " then also implies the meaning of "potential symbol". Whereas over the last fifty years considerable attention has been given to religious symbolism, the role and use of "signs" in religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity has less been studied. O n symbolism, including religious symbolism, see for instance D a n SPERBER, Rethinking Symbolism, Cambridge, 1 9 7 5 . Signs and symbols are bound to recognizable facts, often linked to auditive or visual perception and ritual activity. They not only convey meanings and provide communication; they also play a primordial role in the constitution of identity, inasmuch as recognition of a sign or symbol can give to the person or group concerned further identity. In actual experience, religious signs and symbols entail both a social and cultural, this-worldly identification and a religious identification beyond space and time.

51

If a fundamental problem for Christians has been h o w to respond to the words and deeds of Jesus, recognized as Messiah or Christ, a problem for Muslims seems to have been h o w to respond to the äyät of the Qur'än and to the Q u r ' ä n itself, recognized as Divine Speech. Is the Q u r ' ä n the " s i g n " par excellence in Islam? Apparently this is the case, though some mutakallimün (theologians) hold that the Qur'än is not referential but just " i s " God's Word being spoken. Is äya in the Q u r ' ä n then to be understood as " s i g n " or as " s y m b o l " or even " s a c r a m e n t " ? Apparently it is to be interpreted as "sign", with the understanding that a sign can be used as a symbol, obtain a symbolic content, and end up becoming a symbol itself—with a sacramental value—as may hap-

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

77

Of considerable though not equal authority as the Qur'än are other data that the Muslim community sees as religious and normative: the Sünna and the prescriptions it contains, traced back to the Prophet and his time but not transmitting an immediate divine communication as does the Qur'än. Several scholars have shown the importance of Muhammad as an Islamic paradigm. Put in more abstract terms, the life of the Prophet is a sign for Muslims, although not on the same level as a Qur'änic äya. So is also the shahäda and the prescribed ritual worship. Other Islamic religious data seem to be of somewhat less importance, as far as the community as a whole is concerned. Even if their religious meaning is vividly felt and experienced by particular groups, it is secondary to that of the Qur'än, the Sünna, and the 'ibädät. In the strict sense of the word, Islam, as presented in the Qur'än, can probably best be called a collection or network of signs or even a sign or signification system.52 As a living religion, Islam consists of the right human responses, in acting and thinking, to the äyät, signs that have been provided to humankind in the Qur'än and elsewhere. A Muslim has to draw the right conclusions from these äyät for his or her own life on earth, for the life and order of society, and for eternal bliss. He or she is called upon to abandon himself or herself to the God who sent these äyät and to obey His will as communicated through them. He or she will then appeal to others to follow and understand the signs as well and to recognize the Qur'än itself as the major sign revealed to humankind. The äyät are nexus points of divine revelation and human reflection.5j

pen in Muslim Qur'anic meditation. It is interesting that M . S. G. HODGSON views the Qur'än as a symbol in his article "Islam and Image," History of Religion, vol. 3 ( 1 9 6 4 ) , 2 2 0 - 2 6 0 , pages 2 2 2 and 2 4 1 ; cf. ID., The Venture of Islam, Vol. 2, p. 5 0 4 . According to its own testimony, the Qur'än is a collection of signs and a sign itself, pointing to spiritual truths. But it can function as a symbol socially, or personally through a kind of spiritual assimilation by people. 52

Fundamentally, any religion functions as a sign or symbol system for its adherents, who have their own ways of reading and interpreting it as well as its elements. 1 stressed this state of affairs first in a paper entitled " T h e Language of Religion, and the Study of Religions as Sign Systems" presented at the I.A.H.R. Conference in Turku in 1 9 7 3 (published in its Proceedings Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Lauri HONKO, The Hague, 1 9 7 9 , pp. 2 6 7 - 2 8 5 ) . This scholarly view of Islam, based on empirical facts and theoretical considerations, curiously corresponds with the fact that the Qur'än itself constantly speaks of God's äyät addressed to man. For some consequences of this view of Islam for the scholarly study of Islam, see Note 5 4 below.

53

Islam provides signs, primarily through the Qur'än, but also in other ways, for instance through nature and history. It makes people sensitive to such signs, gives instruction about their meaning, and tries to induce people to behave in accordance with what they read as the meaning of these signs, applying it in ethics and law.

78

Issues in Islamic Studies

There is no reason at all not to call Islam a religion, provided we keep in mind that it is not a religion like others. It has its own particular notion of what "religion" is. Calling Islam a signification system, however, rather than a religion, has definite advantages for research purposes. In the first place, it avoids stamping Islamic data and materials with Western concepts like "religion" that are part of ideals and views, ideologies and rules that are foreign to Islam itself, as Muslims see it. Second, it leads positively to a kind of investigation that runs parallel to the Muslims' orientation and focus of interest. It looks for the Islamic sense of the universe, humanity, and society, and of the Islamic sense of right action—by means of the study of the äyät in the Qur'än and elsewhere. Seen in this perspective, the religious history of Islam is essentially the history of what has been done in the Muslim community with the signs revealed and confided to it, not only theoretically in its religious sciences but also practically in its moral life, social behavior, and political organization and action. In the course of history, the religious sciences were developed with reference to these signs. They formulated the truths, norms, values, and ideals for communal life, providing solutions for the problems Muslim communities confronted. Both theoretically and practically, there have been a number of readings and interpretations of these signs in the Muslim community. They deserve attention and should be studied. 54 A third advantage of approaching Islam as a network of signs is that this leads to exploring certain basic and recurring patterns of meaning in thought and action in Muslim communities. Particular Qur'änic texts, for instance, are often quoted in support of particular solutions to certain problems. The most significant and original elaboration by Muslims of their sign system was probably the attempt to establish a normative pattern of the Islamic social order, i.e., the Shan a. This includes rules and laws, not only to be applied like laws in Western legal systems, but also to be followed as signposts for how life should be lived. The religious meaning of the prescriptions of the Shari'a is to be found—at least in 54 This view of Islam as a sign system, signification system, or collection or network of signs is justified for the study of the religious aspects of Islam, whether we have to do with Qur'änic äyät, particular rites, religious prescriptions, a particular spirituality, morality, or other religious data. Careful empirical philological, historical, and social scientific research must be made of the factual aspects of the data. But also broader scholarly research can benefit from it. Attention has to be given to the various readings which particular Muslim authors or communities have given of the meaning of given data as signs or symbols. As in the study of linguistic signs, one cannot hope, within the boundaries of scholarship, to find out what the essential reality and the ultimate true meaning of the religious data themselves is. This is precisely why they are considered "signs"!

Islamic Studies and the Study o f Religions and Cultures

79

part—in their character of signs pointing to how people and society should be but are not yet. As a religion, Islam consists fundamentally of signs that are recognizable by Muslims and constitute a communicative signification system—even if the interpretations vary in accordance with people and circumstances of place and time. 5 5

8. The Role of Religion in Muslim Societies From a scholarly point of view, there is no justifiable sense in assuming a cause-and-effect relationship between Islam and a particular society. Apart from some common religious prescriptions (e.g. the religious duties [Hbädät] and some basic rules of family law), different societies have different social rules and structures and consequently different empirical forms of Islam. One can of course measure the varying degrees to which particular Sharl'a prescriptions have been implemented in different countries. However, there are more important differences between Muslim groups than those in the application of the Sharl'a. It is, for example, wrong and even misleading to say that Islam is applied in Iran or Saudi Arabia, but not in Turkey or Indonesia; or that Islam as such would be the cause of the underdevelopment of "backward" areas or responsible for undemocratic political behavior. The truth is that the networks of signs that constitute Islam can be read, interpreted, and practiced in different ways in different Muslim societies, depending not only on the intentions of the interpreters, but also on contingent historical, infrastructural, and socio-political factors obtaining in these societies. Interpretations of Islam can legitimate or contradict a particular state of affairs or policy; they can bridge or exacerbate conflicts of interests; and they can oppose or encourage absolutist tendencies. The number of ways signs and sign systems can be interpreted, applied, and used are probably infinite. Yet careful research

55

By definition, each religious data has a semiotic symbolic character; it is only by recognizing this that the "religious" meaning of such data for particular groups or persons can be grasped. It should he stressed that the scholarly study of religious signs and symbols as such has nothing mysterious about it. It implies, first, a careful study of their factual reality and literal meanings; second, an analysis of the subjective meanings such signs have for particular Muslim people with their own ways of reading them, often in particular contexts. A scholar may also ask about their "spiritual" meaning. 1 understand this to be these signs' and symbols' reference to spiritual truths and realities supposed to exist objectively and to have a universal validity. Fundamentally, our approach is scholarly in that it seeks the internal logic of religious data and clusters of such data, considered as signs and symbols. I summarized my theoretical stand in Islamic Studies in my paper "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", first published in 1 9 8 2 and republished in my Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft, Ch. 9, pp. 1 8 1 - 1 9 5 .

80

Issues in Islamic Studies

will be able to identify certain patterns of reading, interpretation, application, and use of Islam when more data will be available. All that can be said in general and with the necessary caution is that this particular religion tends to take the golden mean between extreme alternative solutions and to regulate social relations in such a way that explosions are avoided. In principle, it provides hopes and expectations for masses living under the greatest hardships. In any case, it is never "Islam" as such that is the immediate cause of whatever attitudes and actions Muslim people and groups may take. They may consider certain attitudes and actions to be "Islamic" but the referent is in fact an äya or hadith that is taken as authoritative. Islam is not a "thing", an organization, or a closed system. It is not Islam itself, as a kind of substance 56 that is implemented but only a particular cluster of norms, values, rules, and ideals formulated by leaders and understood by followers as authoritative because of their references to Qur'änic verses and hadtths.

9. The Role of Religion in Inspiring Muslim Spirituality Muslim spirituality in the broad sense expresses itself in very different ways and forms, from more traditional piety to forms of mystical experience, from citing Qur'än verses and hadtths to poetic hints at what is absolute. Although there are in Muslim spirituality always references to the "signs" of God, they are used in different ways. Consequently, it would be superficial to say that Islam, as such, leads to one particular form or type of spirituality. In fact, quite the reverse seems to be the case. In different forms of spiritual life, different elements of the network of signs are used, or people may use the same signs but in different ways with different intentions. We should be able to distinguish certain patterns of Muslim spirituality when more data are available and our insight has increased; here, again, in principle there is an almost infinite number of possible variations. Even forms of spiritual life that go back to the immediate reading and application of the Qur'än show considerable variations. 56 The idea of Islam as a substance or "thing" apparendy has been one of the major obstacles to progress in Islamic Studies. W. Cantwell SMITH, in The Meaning and End of Religion, traced the origins of this idea. Without going so far as to hold that an outsider as such necessarily reifies Islam, it is safe to say that those who consider Islam to be a "thing" have not grasped what Muslims understand by "religion" or religious signs. Refusing on scholarly grounds to reify (verdinglicben) Islam—outside the scientific laboratory—may lead to an epistemological breakthrough in Islamic Studies. Unfortunately, not only non-Muslim observers including journalists but Muslims, too, have been tempted to see and treat Islam as a substance or "thing".

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

81

10. Conclusion Just as religions in a particular cultural context can aptly be described as "symbol systems" in scholarly research, 57 Islam as a world religion can be viewed and approached as a broad and rather loosely structured signification system overarching local symbol systems that are linked to particular cultures and societies. 58 In the strict sense of the word, the äyät of the Qur'än are the only immediate signs that are available. 59 Somewhat more loosely, ancient Sünna, the practice of the 'ibädät, and the main rules of the Sharl'a are also considered signs. Moreover, there are signs of nature and history to which the Qur'än refers as signs of God. In the course of Islamic history, different world views and ideologies, juridical and theological schools, and forms of piety and spirituality developed that all made an appeal to Islam and referred to the signs that inspired them or that were quoted as a kind of legitimation. In particular, the idea of an Islamic social order and the longing for justice through Islam have had practical consequences for social and political action throughout Islamic history. Four direct consequences of this approach for the study of Islamic religion may be mentioned: First, the religious data of Islam in different times and places are facts that should be studied in themselves but also in their connections with concrete social, political, and historical contexts. Second, in the Muslim reading such religious data are signs referring to transcendent realities. They can also be studied as being part of the Muslim view of Islam as the absolute religion. Third, once the main readings Muslim thinkers and practitioners have given of their signs have been decoded and understood, it may 57 58

59

See Clifford GEERTZ, "Religion as a Cultural System" (1966, 1973). On a certain level of abstraction, we can speak of Islam as a world religion with a global sign and signification system. Empirically, however, Islam functions as a symbol system linked to a particular culture. It is the scale that makes the difference. The universal or global sign and signification system of Islam, consequently, consists of symbol systems of particular cultures on the local level. It makes sense to call Islam a religious sign and signification system precisely when we want to explore it in terms of the general significance it has for people and to study the manifold meanings, religious and otherwise, people assign to it. In terms of history, Islam can better be called the religious tradition of Muslim societies. In terms of social reality, Islam can best be viewed as the general religio-cultural framework of Muslim societies. This is held by normative Sunn! Islam. In practiced living Islam there are, of course, many more immediate religious signs, not only in spiritual interpretations of Islam but also in the many shades and varieties of popular Islam. All Muslims agree that the Qur'änic äyät and the Qur'än itself are unique in the sense that they are immediate signs of divine origin and that they have a universal validity.

82

Issues in Islamic Studies

become possible to explore certain basic patterns of meaning that have evolved in the course of Islamic history. 6 0 Fourth, this somewhat discrete scholarly view of Islam as a signification system avoids "imperialistic" approaches that would impose themselves from outside. It is not completely foreign to Muslims, since there is a (scholarly) analogy between the study of Islam as a signification system and the Qur'änic view about reading the "signs of God". This scholarly view allows us to reconsider certain issues in Islamic Studies that touch on the problem of religious meanings. 6 1 The ways in which religious meanings intensify, change, or disappear at the present time is a subject of intellectual concern to students of any living religion. It may become one of the leading problems for the study of present-day religions. For the treatment of this kind of problems, Islamic Studies can make a positive contribution. 6 2 During the last decades various interpretations of Islam have arisen and they are still arising among Muslims. The ways particular appeals to Islam and to specific äyät of the Qur'än have been made—their intentions and their fruits—remain to be explored. 6 3

Selected

Literature

Charles J., "The History of Religions and the Study of Islam", in The History of Religions: Essays on the Problem of Understanding, ed. by J. H. KITAGAWA with the collaboration of M . ELIADE and C. H. L O N G , Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 177-193. —, "Islamic Religious Tradition", in The Study of the Middle East. Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. by Leonard BINDER, New York: John Wiley, 1976, pp. 29-95. ADAMS,

60

T h e search for such patterns o f m e a n i n g should be d o n e in M u s l i m terms. As a rule, n o Western r e a d i n g — w h e t h e r structuralist, M a r x i s t , t h e o l o g i c a l , or " s p i r i t u a l " — s h o u l d be i m p o s e d u p o n the way M u s l i m s read a n d interpret their signs. W e m a y search, h o w ever, for the internal logic o f such M u s l i m readings a n d for relationships between such readings a n d given c o n t e x t s .

61

A basic question in our interest in religious m e a n i n g s in Islamic history is: w h a t kinds o f signs were significant t o people a n d h o w did the people c o n c e r n e d read t h e m in given c o n t e x t s a n d situations? W h a t were the m o t i v a t i o n s a n d intentions b e h i n d their interpretations, a n d h o w did they subsequently act?

62

In the first p a r t o f this essay, 1 m e n t i o n e d s o m e w a y s Islamic Studies have benefited f r o m the Study o f Religions. D u r i n g the last decades, scholars o f Islam like

Guy

MONNOT, A n n e m a r i e SCHIMMEL, W. C a n t w e l l SMITH, a n d W . M o n t g o m e r y WATT have s h o w n that the scholarly Study o f Religions as a field o f studies c a n also benefit f r o m research carried o u t in Islamic Studies. 63

In the study o f Islamic religious data, their polyvalence a n d f u n d a m e n t a l polyinterpretability as signs a n d symbols is t o be recognized.

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

83

—, Art. "Islam", in A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions, ed. by Charles J. ADAMS, New York: The Free Press and London: Collier-Macmillan, 1 s t ed. 1965, pp. 2 8 7 - 3 3 7 , 2 n d ed. 1977, pp. 407-466. Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985. BAUSANI, Alessandro, "Islam as an Essential Part of Western Culture", in Studies on Islam, Amsterdam and London: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1974, pp. 19-36. BECKER, C. H., "Der Islam im Rahmen einer allgemeinen Kulturgeschichte", in ID., Islamstudien: Vom Werden und Wesen der islamischen Welt, Vol. 1, Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1924, reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967, pp. 24-39. BEIDELMAN, T . O . , W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Corbin, Henry, ed. by Christian JAMBET, Paris: Cahiers de L'Herne, 1981 (with bibliography). —, Bibliography. See "Liste des travaux et publications d'Henry Corbin", in Melanges offerts a Henry Corbin, ed. by Seyyed Hossein NASR, Teheran: Teheran Branch of the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, 1977, pp. III-XXXII. Ess, Josef VAN, "From Wellhausen to Becker. The Emergence of 'Kulturgeschichte' in Islamic Studies", in Islamic Studies. A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1980, pp. 27-51. —, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991-1997. —, The Flowering of Muslim Theology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Essays in Islamic and Comparative Studies, Papers presented to the 1979 Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, ed. by Ismä'll Räjl al-FÄRÜQL, Herndon, Va.: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1402/1982. FüCK, J. W., "Islam as an Historical Problem in European Historiography since 1800", in Historians of the Middle East, ed. by Bernard LEWIS and P. M. HOLT, London: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 303-314. GEERTZ, Clifford, Islam Observed. Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968. —, "Religion as a Cultural System", in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael BANTON, London: Tavistock, 1966. Reprinted in the author's The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, 1973, pp.

87-125.

—, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, 1973. GOITEIN, S. D., Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, Leiden: Brill, 1966, reprinted 1968. —, A Mediterranean Society. The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967-1993.

84

Issues in Islamic Studies

GRUNEBAUiM, Gustave Ε. VON, "An Analysis of Islamic Civilization and Cultural Anthropology", in ID., Modern Islam. The Search for Cultural Identity, New York: Vintage Books, 1964, pp. 4 0 - 9 7 . —, Studien zum Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islams, Zürich and Stuttgart: Artemis, 1969. Bibliography of the author's publications pp. 4 2 7 - 4 4 3 . HODGSON, Marshall G. S., "A Comparison of Islam and Christianity as a Framework for Religious Life", Diogenes, Nr. 32 (1960), pp. 4 9 - 7 4 . —, The Venture of Islam. Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols., Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974. —, Rethinking World History. Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History, edited with an Introduction and Conclusion, by Edmund BURKE III (Studies in Comparative World History). Cambridge and New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1993. Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR. Papers read at the seventh Giorgio Levi Delia Vida Conference, held in Los Angeles, April 2 7 - 2 9 , 1979. Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980. KRAEIMER, Jörg, Das Problem der islamischen Kulturgeschichte, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1959. LAROUI, Abdallah, "For a Methodology of Islamic Studies. Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum", Diogenes, Nr. 83 (1973), pp. 12-39. Reprinted in ID., The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual. Traditionalism or Historicism?, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976, Chapter 3. LAZARUS-YAFEH, Hava, "Some Differences between Judaism and Islam as Two Religions of Law", Religion, Vol. 14 (1984), pp. 1 7 5 - 1 9 1 . LEWIS, Bernard, "The Pro-Islamic Jews", Judaism (New York), Vol. 17, Nr. 4 (1968), pp. 3 9 1 - 4 0 4 . —, The Jews of Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, edited by Hava LAZARUS-YAEEH, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999. MARTIN, Richard C., "Islam and Religious Studies. An Introductory Essay", in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by ID., Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp. 1 - 1 8 . NEUSNER, Jacob, and SONN, Tamara, Comparing Religions through Law. Judaism and Islam, New York and London: Routledge, 1999. RODINSON, Maxime, "The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam", in The Legacy of Islam, 2 n d edition, ed. by Joseph SCHACHT and C. E. BOSWORTH, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 9 - 6 2 . —, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, Translation by Roger VEINUS of the author's La fascination de l'islam, Paris: Maspero, 1980, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1987. SAID, Edward W., Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, pocketbook edition London: Penguin, 1995, 2 n d ed. 2005. SCHAEDER, Hans Heinrich, "Die Orientforschung und das abendländische Geschichtsbild", Welt als Geschichte, Vol. 2 (1936), pp. 3 7 7 - 3 9 6 . SiMiTH, Wilfred Cantwell, Modern Islam in India. Α Social Analysis, Lahore: Minerva, 1943. Revised edition London: V. Gollancz, Ί 9 4 6 ' (must be 1947). Reissued Lahore: Ashraf, 1963 and 1969; New York: Russell, 1972. A pirated edition appeared in Lahore (Ripon), 1947.

Islamic Studies and the Study of Religions and Cultures

85

—, "Some Similarities and Differences between Christianity and Islam. An Essay in Comparative Religion", in The World of Islam. Studies in Honour of Philip K. HITTI, ed. by James KRITZECK and R. Baily WINDER, London: Macmillan, 1959, pp. 4 7 - 5 9 . Reprinted in On Understanding Islam (see below), pp. 2 3 3 - 2 4 6 . —, The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963. —, On Understanding Islam. Selected Studies (Religion and Reason, 19), The Hague and New York: Mouton, 1981. —, "Islamic Studies and the History of Religions", in Essays in Islamic and Comparative Studies. Papers presented to the 1979 Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, ed. by Ismä'll Räjl al-FÄRÜQI, Herndon, Va.: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1402/1982, pp. 2 - 7 . TURNER, Bryan S., Weber and Islam. A Critical Study, London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983, pp. 1 9 7 - 2 1 1 . Revised text published in the author's Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft (1993), Ch. 9, pp. 1 8 1 - 1 9 5 . —, Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft, Würzburg: Echter, and Altenberge: Oros, 1993. WAINES, David, "Cultural Anthropology and Islam. The Contribution of G. E. von Grunebaum", Review of Middle East Studies, Vol. 2 (1976), pp. 1 1 3 123. WATT, W . Montgomery, Muslim-Christian Encounters. Perceptions and Misperceptions, London and New York: Routledge, 1991. —, Early Islam. Collected Articles, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990 (with Bibliography). WIDENGREN, Geo, Hochgottglaube im alten Iran. Eine religionsphänomenologische Untersuchung, Uppsala and Leipzig: Lundequist and Harrassowitz, 1938. —, The Ascension of the Prophet and the Heavenly Book, Uppsala and Leipzig: Lundequist and Harrassowitz, 1950. —, Muhammad, the Apostle of God, and his Ascension, Uppsala and Wiesbaden: Lundequist, 1955. —, Mani und der Manichäismus, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961. English translation by Charles KESSLER: Mani and Manichaeism, London: Weidenfeld &c Nicolson, 1965. "Bibliography" prepared by Kaarina DRYNJEFF, in Ex Orbe Religionum. Studia Geo Widengren oblata, ed. by Jan BERGMAN C.S., 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972, vol. 2 ("Bibliography", pp. 4 5 1 - 4 6 4 ) .

Chapter 4 Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies 1. Introduction In the West, the academic study, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, of Islam as a civilization and religion and of Muslim peoples and societies throughout history has a venerable past. 1 In 1 8 3 4 , the first scholarly printed edition of the Qur'än saw the light of day, prepared by the German scholar Gustav Flügel. The history of Islamic Studies has been given in outline several times, but a comprehensive study of it has still to be made. 2 Although it is recognized that a great amount of scholarly knowledge has been assembled, discussions have arisen during the last decades about the methods that scholars have used and the various presuppositions, motivations, and intentions underlying their w o r k . ' Often it has been difficult to combine textual studies with fieldwork in Muslim 1

2

This essay is a revision of "Humanities, Social Sciences and Islamic Studies", published in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 1, Nr. 1 (1990), pp. 6 6 - 8 8 . It includes some passages from a paper, "Social Sciences and the Study of Islam", published in Studies on Religions in the Context of the Social Sciences. Methodological and Theoretical Relations, ed. by Witold TYLOCH, Warsaw: Polish Society for the Science of Religion, 1990, pp. 1 8 6 - 2 0 4 . For the history of Islamic Studies until the First World War, see Gustav PFANNMÜLLER, Handbuch der Islam-Literatur, Berlin and Leipzig, 1923. On the history of Islamic Studies in general, see Maxime RODINSON, Europe and the Mystique of Islam (1987) and Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif., 1980. For the history of Arabic Studies, see Johann FÜCK, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1955. For a closer study of some prominent scholars of Islam, see Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident: Comment quelques orientalistes occidentaux se sont penches sur l'Islam, et se sont forme une image de cette religion: I. Goldziher, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. Becker, D. B. Macdonald, Louis Massignon, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 3RD ed. 1970. This may be supplemented with the essay "Changes in Perspective in Islamic Studies over the Last Decades" by the same, Humaniora Islamica, Vol. 1 (1973), pp. 2 4 7 - 2 6 0 . Cf. ID., Art. "Islamic Studies" in The Encyclopaedia of Religion, Vol. 7, 1987, 4 5 7 - 4 6 4 ; ID., Art. "Mustashrikün" (Orientalists), in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New (2ND) Edition, Vol. 8, Leiden, 1993, pp. 7 3 5 - 7 5 3 .

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

87

societies. Social and cultural values current in the West—both in Europe and North America—turn out to have played a more important role in scholars' understanding of Islam than most of them were aware of, particularly in the colonial period. Certain sweeping statements and even judgments of Islam as a whole have often been a projection of the particular faith and spirituality—or lack of spirituality—of the author concerned, rather than reflecting a scholarly concern with the available data and an interest in Muslim ways of life. My purpose here, however, is not to pass judgment on the past of Islamic Studies. Rather, I am concerned with its present-day achievements and future possibilities. For this purpose, it is useful to ask what kind of contributions the humanities and the social sciences make to Islamic Studies. They turn out to be complementary and both are indispensable for the study of cultures and religions, not least for the study of Islam. The main part of this essay will be devoted to these two kinds of approach. I shall conclude by outlining the study of Islam within the broader field of religious studies, the study of religions, the science of religions, or whatever other English term is chosen to translate the German Religionswissenschaft.4 This field is distinguished by asking certain ques-

3

Critical questions have been posed in particular, but not only by researchers and scholars coming from Muslim countries. See, for instance, A. L. TIBAWI, English-Speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism, Geneva: Islamic Centre, 1385/1965 and ID., Second Critique of English-Speaking Orientalists and Their Approach to Islam and the Arabs, London: The Islamic Cultural Centre, 1399/1979. Cf. Anouar Abdel MALIK, "The End of Orientalism", Diogenes, Nr. 44 (1963), pp. 103-140; Abdallah LAROUI, "For a Methodology of Islamic Studies. Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum", in ID., The Crisis of Arab Intellectuals: Traditionalism or Historicism?, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, Ch. 3. See also, of course, Edward SAID, Orientalism, New York, 1978, with the many reactions following it, of which 1 note only Sadiq AL-ÄZM, "Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse", Khamsin, Vol. 8 ( 1 9 8 1 ) , p p . 5 - 2 6 .

On methodological issues in Islamic Studies, see, for instance, Jacques Waardenburg, "Islam Studied as a Sign and Signification System". Humaniora Islamica (Mouton Publishers), Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 267-285 and "Assumptions and Presuppositions in Islamic Studies". Rocznik Orientalistyczny (Warsaw), Vol. 43 (1984), pp. 161-170. Ch. 2 and 6 in this book are revised versions of these two articles. 4

Several scholars have complained that the Study of Religions is so distant from Islamic Studies. See Charles J. ADAMS, "The History of Religions and the Study of Islam" in The History of Religions: Essays in the Problem of Understanding, ed. by J. H. Kitagawa, M. Eliade, and C. H. Long, Chicago, 1967, pp. 177-193; W. A. BIJLEFELD, "Islamic Studies within the Perspective of the History of Religions", The Muslim World, Vol. 62 (1972), Nr. 1 - 2 , pp. 1-11. Cf. Jacques WAARDENBURG, "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag. 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin: Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz Steppat, Wiesbaden, 1983, pp. 197-211. Republished with revisions in J. WAARDENBURG, Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft, Würzburg: Echter, and Altenberge: Oros, 1993, Ch. 9, pp. 1 8 1 -

88

Issues in Islamic Studies

tions and developing a certain theoretical framework that most other researchers working within the humanities and the social sciences tend to neglect.

2. The Humanities According to an old distinction going back to the ancient Greeks, the arts are distinguished from the sciences by the fact that they study human culture, its history, and the variety of its expressions, rather than nature and its laws in natural processes. The humanities are thus largely identified with the study of languages and literatures, arts and philosophy, and history, in particular cultural history. Only in the course of the nineteenth century did the social sciences emerge as a third kind of field dealing with human society. They made their breakthrough in the educational systems only in the course of the twentieth century. The following appear to be the humanities' most important contributions to the study of Islam: (1) By learning Arabic, Persian, and Turkish—the three classical languages of Islam, as important for scholars of Islam as Latin and Greek are for classical scholars—researchers acquired access to the basic texts of Islam as a civilization and religion. In the 19 th century, Urdu became an important Islamic language, too. (2) At the same time, elaborate searches were made to study manuscripts of important texts, to a large extent in the heartlands of Islam, but also in the larger Oriental libraries in Europe, Central Asia, and North America. Subsequently, a number of manuscript holdings have been catalogued. Microfilms made for research purposes have replaced the older handwritten copies of manuscripts. (3) Gradually, critical editions of the more important texts have been made on the basis of the surviving manuscripts. So far, however, only a minor part of the many existing Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu manuscripts has been printed and even fewer have appeared in a critical edition. Only a fraction of these texts has been made available to the broader Western public through translation with a scholarly introduction and commentary. (4) With the increase in knowledge of available texts, it has become possible to establish the outlines of the historical development of different kinds of texts, mainly literary, historical, and religious. The various texts have been put in the broader social and cultural history of particular regions of the Muslim world. It has been possible 195. For an application, see the same, "L'Islam: une religion" in L'Islam: une religion, ed. by Pierre Gisel and Jacques Waardenburg, Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1989, pp. 17-50.

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

89

to trace the main stages of the development of the Islamic religious sciences ('ulüm al-dtn), and so of normative Islam in general, and to supplement this with the history of religious literature such as mystical texts, religious poetry, and more popular religious writings. 5 The "humanities" approach to Islamic materials requires that much technical work be done in the field of philology and the analysis of sources. This involves a broad range of problems. First of all, the researcher has to learn to grasp the meanings of particular expressions and understand the relevant texts not only from an outside perspective, but also on their own terms, against the background of the cultural and religious tradition of which they are part. Second, the historian has to place the social, cultural, and religious history of Muslim regions in the context of what is known of their broader economic, social, and political history. In general it is not easy to find the relevant data about the "infrastructure" in which culture and religion developed and in which people expressed themselves culturally and religiously. Third, there is the recurrent problem of interpreting the contents of Islamic life and thought in its historical development, with questions formulated or hinted at, ways of reasoning often with reference to Qur'änic texts and hadtths, and solutions arrived at. The study of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), in particular, poses serious problems for the Western researcher who has no similar discipline in his own cultural heritage. Besides historical problems including that of relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims in different times and places, there is also the problem of the relationship between normative Islam, as formulated by the ulamä', and the practiced living Islam of the people. A characteristic problem in the humanities, apart from acquiring the necessary knowledge of factual data, is that of their interpretation. This is a problem of hermeneutics: the right understanding of texts or other data studied either in themselves and in their contexts, or in response to particular well-conceived questions the researcher wants to pose to the available materials. 6

5

6

In distinction to normative Islam, which prescribes how Muslims should live and how Muslim society should be organized, we call practiced or living Islam (islam vecu) the way particular Muslim groups and persons in fact live "their" Islam and the ways they view and interpret Islam in general and normative Islam in particular. Hermeneutics, as the art of understanding what other people mean—the art of "reading" their expressions—appears to be one of the basic concerns of the humanities. It should be distinguished from philosophical hermeneutics as developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricceur, which reflects on more theoretical problems underlying the practice of understanding. Scholarly hermeneutics is concerned primarily with the

90

I s s u e s in I s l a m i c S t u d i e s

3. The Social Sciences The social sciences make an important contribution to Islamic Studies. 7 If in scientific research the key to interpreting and explaining data often lies in their context, for the social sciences the key is to be found in the social context of the data studied. There are, of course, other contexts in which religious data can be studied, such as the physical and technological context, specific cultural and historical contexts, or general themes of human life and thought. Religious experience can be studied in the psychological context of a particular life-history or in the context of a particular religious tradition, but also in the broader context of similar experiences by other people at given times and places. Psychoanalysis, structuralism, discourse analysis, and semiotics have developed their own particular notions of context as the general constituents of a fact or the general conditions under which it occurs or exists. Contexts make data scientifically explainable in terms of general rules. The social sciences address in particular the general social conditions of given data. As a "religion", Islam presents a challenge to current definitions both in the humanities and the social sciences. According to all definitions of the term, Islam is a religion or a faith, but this does not mean that it is only a religion or a faith. Islam is also a civilization, a social structure, a way of life, a cultural tradition in the broadest sense of the word, articulated differently in different contexts. This is widely recognized, but research should not stop short here. Some historians of religions neglected the social aspects, and some social scientists neglected the religious aspects. The reasons why aspects are neglected may vary, but in both cases the unavoidable result is a one-sided representation of Islam. This is also true for the media that shape public opinion. At present, for instance, the Western public has been nourished by political information and this has led to strongly politicized images of Islam. Before the Second World War, interest in Muslim societies had not yet reached the scholarly level demanded by present-day norms. Travelers visiting Muslim countries from the sixteenth century on could be very interested in Muslim traditions and customs and in Muslim communal understanding of other people's expressions in their o w n terms, rather than with the scholar's self-understanding in his or her o w n terms. 7

For an anthropological a p p r o a c h to Islam, see, for instance, Michael GLLSENAN, Recognizing Islam: An Anthropologist's Introduction. For a particular sociological a p p r o a c h to Islam, see Jean-Paul CHARNAY, Sociologie religieuse de l'lslam. Preliminaires. See also the chapters on " A n t h r o p o l o g y " by R . T. ÄNTOUN, D . M . HART, and C . L. REDMAN and " S o c i o l o g y " by G. SABAGH in The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. by L e o n h a r d BINDER, N e w York, 1 9 7 6 .

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

91

life and society generally, but their interest was mostly of a personal nature. Colonial administrators paid attention to the social and political structure of Muslim societies, their composition, and their leadership. But this attention chiefly served the typically colonial interest of maintaining and expanding a particular Western country's influence and power outside the West. The starting point here was political and economic interests. Yet some remarkably objective studies of Muslim societies were made in this period by independent researchers, like the Finnish scholar Edvard A. Westermarck ( 1 8 6 2 - 1 9 3 9 ) , who did research in M o r o c c o . Western interests in economic resources and political structures—not to speak of matters touching strategic interests and security—could be extremely ethnocentric and egocentric. They hardly served the benefit of the members of the Muslim societies concerned and rarely the sake of scholarship alone. M o s t anthropological research at the time was conducted on the assumption that the colonial situation would continue or in view of strengthening the Western hold over other territories and peoples. The Western public may have been interested in the exotic aspects of Islam and the Orient, but it was keen to find jobs and other economic opportunities outside the borders and rivalries of Europe. Yet one has to admit that an enormous amount of knowledge about the Muslim regions of the world was assembled. From time to time, missionaries, travelers, researchers and visitors expressed a moral protest against the prevailing lust for colonial exploitation of what we have become used to calling the Third World. 8 In a way, the humanities with their focus on studying texts and history were less affected politically. They had been established with the humanistic tradition and were somewhat protected against the unfavorable prejudices about Islam prevailing in Western societies at the time. Some scholars educated in Islamic philology and history sympathized with Muslims, were good observers, and produced remarkable ethnographic work. 9

8

9

See Edith FINCH'S biography Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 1840-1922, London, 1938. Christiaan Snouck HÜRGRONJE ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 9 3 6 ) came increasingly into conflict with Dutch colonial policies in Indonesia. In France, Louis MASSIGNON ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 ) after World War 11 increasingly protested against French policies in the Arab World. For instance, C. Snouck HÜRGRONJE: Mekka, vol. 2., Aus dem heutigen Leben, The Hague, 1889; Engl, tr., Mecca in the latter part of the 19th century, Leiden and London, 1931; Bilder aus Mekka: Mit kurzen erläuternden Texten, Leiden, 1889. Snouck HURGRONJE also wrote The Achenese, 2 vols., Leiden, 1906, an ethnographical study of which the Dutch original was published in two volumes in 1893 and 1894.

92

Issues in Islamic Studies

4. Social Scientific Research on Muslim Societies since World War II As far as I can see, the first book on Islam with a theoretical framework derived from the social sciences was Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis by the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. It appeared in 1943 and marked a breakthrough in the study of Muslim societies in recent history. It related the presentations of Islam by Muslim authors in British India at the time to the economic, social, and political context, both of the country itself and in its relation to Great Britain. The importance of the social context of religious data for their proper study was not discovered all of a sudden. In the field of historical studies, it had been recognized for a long time, but some time passed before this view gained a foothold in the history of religions. One of the reasons was that acquiring access to the available documents about this context and interpreting them correctly was time-consuming. Further, historians of religion tended to consider research that did not directly have to do with religion as being extraneous to their scholarly task. They were not well equipped for it. A good example of a contextual approach in the history of Islam as a religion is the two volumes Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammed at Medina by William Montgomery Watt. They appeared in 1953 and 1956 respectively and opened a new period in the historiography of earliest Islam. So new was the approach for Orientalists at the time that G.-H. Bousquet mockingly spoke of a "Marxist" interpretation of Muhammad by a "clergyman". 10 It should be noted that, in the years of the Cold War, reproaches of being under Marxist influence (for scholars in the West) or under bourgeois capitalist influence (for scholars in East European countries) were serious obstacles to scholarly progress, even in a field seemingly as remote as that of Islamic Studies. Most Western scholars of Islam who had received their training in Oriental Studies before the Second World War were good philologists. They were less good, however, at establishing links between a given text and the social milieu it represented, in which it had arisen and in which it was effective. Attention paid to such links was quickly perceived and judged as ideologically motivated. Another study that made a breakthrough toward the social dimension of Islam was Louis Gardet's La cite musulmane (1954). The author took Islam as a particular social entity, a community, as his point of departure. He then tried to establish, on the basis of available texts, an ideal-typical structure of this community in terms of its leading 10

G.-H. Bousquet, "Une explication marxiste de L'Islam par un ecclesiastique episcopalien", Hesperts, Vol. 41 (1954), pp. 2 3 1 - 2 4 7 .

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

93

norms and values and its relevant institutions. Such a vision of Islam, not as a system of ideas, as a legal construction, or as a basic political structure, but as a community with its own particular rules, corresponded with a certain French sociological tradition. The communal aspects of Islam had already been stressed in France by scholars such as Louis Massignon and by researchers working in the French colonial administration. Let us now look at the progress made by anthropology and sociology in the broad field of Islamic Studies since the Second World War. The laurel wreath, I think, goes to anthropology, insofar as it studies peoples and societies within the framework of their own social institutions and cultural traditions, the values by which they live. The effort was all the more successful when anthropologists went into the field themselves, trying to understand people as these people express themselves on the basis of their own cultural roots. Most anthropologists, by the nature of their inquiry, developed sympathy for the people they studied. They represented an attitude contrary to that of the typical colonial administrator, who could not identify himself with the "aborigines". Anthropologists, however, mostly did research among people living in non-literate societies. Relatively few of them went to Muslim regions, and then often because these regions were accessible as part of the country's colonies. Some anthropologists went out of free choice, for instance some Scandinavian anthropologists doing research in the Arab world. 11

4.1.

Anthropology

Let me give some examples of anthropological research: (1) research on traditional social groups (peasants, nomads) or geographical units (villages, regions with a homogeneous culture). Such research described the traditional culture in the framework of the prevailing conditions of life and social structures. It was often open to the study of popular culture, including popular religion and art; 1 2 11

12

For instance Hilma GRANQVIST, Birth and Childhood among the Arabs: Studies in a Muhammadan village in Palestine, Helsinki, 1947; Id., Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village, 2 vols., Helsinki, 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 5 ; ID., Child Problems among the Arabs, Helsinki, 1950; Id., Muslim Death and Burial. Arab Customs and Traditions in a Village in Jordan, Helsinki, 1965. Edvard A. WESTERMARCK ( 1 8 6 2 - 1 9 3 9 ) did research in Morocco. See also Henry Harald HANSEN, Investigations in a Shi'a Village in Bahrain (Copenhagen, 1967). The French anthropologist Germaine TLLLION, author of Le harem et les cousins, Paris, 1966, worked in Algeria, defending justice during the Algerian war. For instance The Central Middle East: A Handbook of Anthropology and Published Research on the Nile Valley, the Arab Levant, Southern Mesopotamia, the Arabian

94

Issues in Islamic Studies

(2) research on processes of change, focusing on the social and cultural aspects of such changes as the sedentarization of nomads, urbanization of peasants, improvement of education, access to the media, etc. Such research often took into account particular development strategies in the newly independent countries;13 (3) research on religious institutions (mosques, educational institutions, etc.) and religious groups (Sufi orders and other Islamic communities). Such research studied the function and meaning of religious celebrations and customs upheld by tradition, for instance of shrines and of sacred places in nature. It examined the role of religious authorities such as sbaykbs (dervishes, marabouts, pirs), 'ulamä', and mullahs.14 Besides monographs, some larger works in the field of the folklore and anthropology of Muslim cultures have been published, such as R. Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des Islam, in two volumes (1962). Richard V. Weekes (ed.), Muslim Peoples: Λ World Ethnographie Survey (1978) is a mine of information about the various peoples adhering to Islam. Joseph M. Cuoq wrote his survey Les Musulmans en Afrique (1975). Such works offering general information on Muslim societies may be called a continuation of the earlier editions of the Annuaire du monde musulman prepared by Louis Massignon from 1924 to 1954. Broader social processes in Muslim societies, including religious responses, have become a subject of inquiry, too. Studies have been made of processes of modernization and their repercussions on traditional religion, of processes of interaction and exchange resulting from the meeting of different cultures (with acculturation and inculturation), as well as of various kinds of socio-religious movements (tanqas as well as puritanical, reform, and "fundamentalist" movements)15.

Peninsula, and Israel, ed. Louise E. SWEET (1968); Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, ed. by ID. (1970). 13 For instance Jacques BERQUE, Les Arabes d'hier a demain, Paris, 1960; 2 n d ed. 1969; Fahim QUBAIN, Education and Science in the Arab World (1966); Jean-Jacques WAARDENBURG, Les universites dans le monde arabe actuel: Documentation et essai d'interpretation (1966). See also Post-Traditional Societies, ed. by S. N. ELSENSTADT, New York, 1974, especially pp. 1 3 9 - 2 4 9 . 14 For instance Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Institutions since 1500, ed. Nikki R. KEDDIE (1972). 15 The annotated English and French Bibliographie de la culture arabe contemporaine deals with publications (also in Arabic) on Muslim, in particular Arab societies. It presents the state of research up to ca. 1980 and was prepared under the direction of Jacques BERQUE. J . WAARDENBURG was responsible for the listing of publications in English, German, and Dutch.

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

95

Already in the 1960s, Ernest Gellner and Clifford Geertz treated more theoretical issues in the study of the religious aspects of Muslim societies, leading to scholarly discussion and debate 16 . General questions like culture, cultural expressions, and relations between explanation and interpretation have been extensively treated. Although relatively few trained anthropologists of religion specialized in Islam and Muslim regions at the time, cultural anthropology has now become a key discipline in the study of contemporary Muslim societies and cultures. This holds true both for Western and for the now dated Soviet studies of Muslim societies and cultures. 17

4.2.

Sociology

Another discipline studying Muslim societies is sociology. It focuses on processes taking place within given groups and societies and on interactions between different groups and societies. Like anthropology, sociology studies Muslim societies as varieties of human society in general, subject to the same general laws and rules. Let me again give some examples of sociological research: (1) research on the social structure, organization, and leadership of traditional societies, including their religious elements; 18 (2) research on the implications of economic and social development for vital sectors of society such as the family, social organization, education, mobility, etc.; 1 9 (3) research on the impact of social change and development on religious traditions and institutions and the impact of religious and political regimes on society; (4) research on Islamic resurgence and revitalization. A major issue here is the relationship between the socio-political and the religiousideological aspects of such movements in Muslim societies; 20 16 Ernest GELLNER, Saints of the Atlas (1969); ID., Muslim Society (1981); Clifford GEERTZ, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968); ID., The Religion of Java, Glencoe, 111., 1960; ID. together with Hildred GEERTZ and Lawrence ROSEN, Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays in Cultural Analysis (1979). 17 For Soviet studies on Muslim societies and cultures in the former USSR, see the bibliography in Alexandre BENNIGSEN and S. ENDERS-WIMBUSH, Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide, pp. 2 5 3 - 2 7 8 (1985). 18 For instance, Jacques BERQUE, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas (1951). 19 For instance, C. A. O. VAN NLEUWENHUIJZE. Sociology of the Middle East: A Stocktaking and Interpretation (1971). 20 Michael GLLSENAN, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion, Oxford, 1973; Morroe BERGER, Islam in Egypt Today: Social and Political ASPECTS of Popular Religion, London and New York, 1970.

96

Issues in Islamic Studies

(5) research on the many ideological articulations of Islam in Muslim countries and societies, their impact and capacity to mobilize the people. 21 Larger sociological works concentrate on particular regions. On the Middle East, C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze wrote his large Sociology of the Middle East: Λ Stocktaking and Interpretation (1971), which paid some attention to religion. A comprehensive handbook in the mid1970s was The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, edited by Leonard Binder (1976). It also contains detailed information on social scientific studies of Islam in the region. An updated sociological survey of Muslim societies is badly needed. With regard to the Arab world and Arab Islam, reference must be made to the work of Jacques Berque. 22 The sociological study of religion has not dealt as extensively with theoretical issues in the study of Muslim societies as has cultural anthropology. Not many sociologists of religion specialized in Islam before the 1980s. More than anthropological research, sociology of religion, with its search for general rules governing the life of societies, has run the risk of taking Western societies as a starting point and remaining ethnocentric. This is especially the case when general rules, instead of being obtained inductively from the empirical study of different societies, are derived from what is current in one's own, mostly Western society or from a researcher's particular views of—or ideology about—society. Sociological approaches to Islam are then liable to have a more marked ideological direction. Like anthropology, sociology has had a healthy influence on Islamic Studies in that it has shown Islam, as a religion, to be only one of the forces at work in Muslim societies and not necessarily the most important one. An outdated view took Islam as the key to understanding Muslim cultures and societies in their particularity. Anthropology and sociology have shown, however, that Muslim cultures and societies could and should be studied and explained in the same way and on the same terms as other cultures and societies. In both cases, due attention has to be paid to infrastructural factors. Their Islamic features are then understood as specific responses, culturally and religiously conditioned, to given situations and problems.

21

22

There is a massive literature on Islamic ideologization and later "fundamentalism". A good bibliographical introduction up to 1 9 8 2 is Asaf HUSSAIN, Islamic Movements in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran: An Annotated Bibliography (1983). See Franjois Papillon, "Bibliographie de Jacques Berque" (1997).

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

4.3. Political

97

Science

Political science offers a third important social scientific approach to Muslim societies and Islam. It has proved its validity for the recent past with its analysis of structures existing during the colonial period, of the rise of movements for independence, and of protest movements once independence had been achieved. But I am more cautious if political science is put in the service of Western interests, especially on the present-day scene. Quite a few publications by political scientists treat weighty issues—the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts and the hidden interests and forces behind them, the civil war in Lebanon, the wars in Afghanistan (since 1979) and Iraq, US economic and geopolitical interests, issues like terrorism and war-on-terrorism, oppression and extremism in general. This literature strikes me as being written for a certain public, presenting Islam as a danger or an enemy as in colonial days. There is little thoughtful self-criticism to be found in it and it is often subject to easy constructs, political loyalties, existing prejudices and Western assumptions. It clearly is difficult for Westerners to study contemporary political developments in Muslim societies, states, and regions in their own right, without taking current Western interests as a reference and norm. 23 Evidently, an impartial, scholarly study of Muslim countries and societies in the field of political science is difficult. Publications in this touchy domain still tend to be tuned to official Western positions and policies. Without much self-criticism a Western public opinion tends to perceive Muslim policies as per se antagonistic to the West—very much in the same way that, a century ago, Islam was seen as per se inimical to Christianity. Islam has always been ideologized by Europeans, and the present-day need to arrive at a more impartial, objective study and knowledge of both the political and the religious aspects of Muslim societies living under pressures is all the greater. We have to struggle to be scholarly in both political science and the science of religion when studying Muslim societies and Islam.

5. A Plea for Impartial Research on Religion and Politics In the social sciences, and to some extent in the science of religion, intense debates have been going on since Karl Marx, Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, and Karl Popper about the desirability or undesirability, possibility or impossibility of value-free scholarship, and its consequences. It is unavoidable that, when speaking about the study of 23

See, for instance, Jacques WAARDENBURG, "The Rise of Islamic States Today" (1987).

98

Issues in Islamic Studies

religions in the context of political science, discussions can sometimes become heated. The difficulty of developing an impartial study of politics in the Muslim world runs parallel to the difficulty of developing an impartial study of religion in this world. It is as difficult, for instance, to assess correctly the relationships between political movements and their presentation of Islam as it is to assess correctly the relationships between Muslim religious movements and their political stand. Moreover, just as it is difficult to make the study of politics into a real science rather than a tool of one's own foreign or party policy, it is difficult to make the study of religion into a real science rather than a religiously or antireligiously motivated enterprise. Yet scholarship demands that we try to achieve a study of religion and politics that is as impartial, objective, and universally valid as is humanly possible. At least three major objections are usually made to such an effort to develop an impartial study of religion and politics. (1) The first argument is that political constellations and religious beliefs and practices cannot be observed neutrally, but demand that the scholar take a position and express a commitment. Against this objection, I maintain that it is possible to study a political situation or a religious phenomenon with a maximum of self-discipline, leading to scholarly concentration and scientific precision. It is and remains possible to disengage the scholarly enterprise—which is critical and precise—from a particular political or religious stand. Our task as scholars is first of all to observe what really happens or happened, and then to look for explanations and interpretations. Our task as researchers is not to preach what we think ought to happen. (2) The second argument is that researchers and scholars are so determined by the structures, norms, and values of their own societies and idea systems—including ideologizations—that it is not possible for them to liberate themselves and reach an impartial standpoint. Against this I contend that we can distance ourselves very well from empirical reality—as well as from ourselves—and critically perceive existing interests and ideologies that want to impose themselves on us. The fact that a person is able to become intellectually and morally conscious of a given situation and to take action implies that we are not so totally determined by our society as assumed. Moreover, a serious study of societies, cultures, and religions other than one's own should lead to a more distant and critical view of one's own society or idea system. Too much concern and identification with one's own society and culture works against perceiving and accepting alternative possibilities of living.

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

99

(3) The third argument to deny the possibility of impartial study is that fields like politics and religion are irrational and cannot be made the subject of rational research. To this I would answer that many phenomena long appeared to be irrational—in nature, society, human behavior—but that scholarship, looking for explanation and understanding, mostly did find rules and even laws for them in the end. A scholar's task is to look for rationality even in those phenomena—including political and religious ones—that at first sight seem to be irrational. As a consequence, the three arguments that question the possibility of a scholarly study of religion and politics, and thus of the religious and political aspects of Islam, are simply not true: a) the study of Islam does not imply that the student should pronounce himself for or against Islam as such; b) in the study of Islam, the student can very well submit his or her own society, ideology, or religion to the same questions that he or she poses to Islamic society, ideology, and religion; c) for a student who looks for rationality in the way Muslim groups interpret and apply Islam in given situations, there is no reason to assume a priori that Islam itself is something irrational. After this renewed plea for a scholarly study of Islam as it has been interpreted, practiced, and used by people in Muslim societies, we have to ask how the social sciences can help make this study most adequate.

6. Contributions of the Social Sciences to Islamic Studies 6.1. Theoretical

Contributions

The social sciences can act as a possible remedy for particular handicaps felt in the study of Islam, as well as other religions, over the last decades. One such handicap arises in part from the Western and in part from the Islamic religious tradition, insofar as these traditions have developed a concept of religion that turns out to be inappropriate for an academic study of religions. (1) In the Western religious tradition, religion has very often been considered a spiritual entity or reality opposed to material reality, the sacred being opposed to the profane, the religious to the secular, the ideal to the material. Whatever the reasons for this conceptual dualism may have been, it does not help us very much in understanding Islam. Such a concept of religion tends to prevent us from doing justice to the interaction Islam prescribes between religious

100

Issues in Islamic Studies

norms, views, and practices, on the one hand, and everyday life realities, on the other. Any general a priori idealization or spiritualization of religion prevents the scholar from perceiving correctly what happens when Muslims express themselves religiously in ordinary life situations. (2) In the Western cultural tradition, Islam has often been perceived and studied as a social and political system. It could be seen as a kind of "political religion" intent on self-affirmation and self-aggrandizement, that is, in pursuit of political aims. Whatever the reasons for this political view of Islam may have been, it stands in the way of perceiving Muslims' resources of morality and spirituality. It does not help us understand Islam's religious aspects, for instance the intentions of Muslim references to the Qur'än and Islam. A more careful study of Muslim communities and societies shows that Muslims can use the notion of Islam in very different ways. Two may be mentioned here. On the one hand, the concept of Islam itself as well as particular elements of the Islamic system can be instrumentalized and used for specific social and political aims and purposes. This happens in all religions, as a social scientific analysis demonstrates. On the other hand, careful research on Islamic discourse and expressions in Muslim communities shows multiple references to particular norms and values meant to direct social and political life. One should not dismiss such references without further ado just because one does not believe that these norms and values are valid or true. In the study of religious expressions, we are not asked to agree or not to agree with their content. We should rather take into account that certain people in certain situations have such beliefs, norms, and values and that, consequently, they then have a moral rather than a political view of Islam. If it is true that Islam like other religions has lent itself to political manipulation, it is equally true that many Muslims with a moral outlook have protested against such a politicization of Islam. Throughout Islamic history, there have been, side by side, social and political as well as moral and spiritual readings of Islam by Muslims. Western judgments should take the presence of both readings into account, without spiritualizing or politicizing Islam as such. (3) In the Muslim religious tradition, it has been commonly held that Islam provides a kind of unity of all spheres of life and all sectors of society. Such a holistic idea of religion is typical of those who believe in their religion and want to make it all encompassing. They absolutize and tend to impose it. Social scientific analysis, however, shows a tension in all religions, including Islam, between the religious truths, norms, and ideals that are believed in and more or less

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

101

absolutized, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the human, practical life reality of the believers. Believers tend to absolutize religion, just as artists tend to do with art and scientists with scholarship. That Muslims tend to have an absolute idea of their religion is part of their faith, but such a claim of absoluteness should be subject of critical research. We know the human tendency to absolutize what one truly believes: If Muslims do this with Islam, it shows that they in a certain way "believe" in Islam. Another more theoretical contribution of the social scientific study of religions and religious societies is that attention is directed toward the social realities of Muslim societies. As a religion Islam, both in history and at the present time, has functioned in social realities. Very often, the profession of religious norms and ideals by Muslim groups and individuals has been a way of complaining about and protesting against the sad conditions under which people had to live. 2 4 References to Islamic or general human norms (such as human rights) imply a call for justice with a religious reference. To do justice to normative references in Muslim societies, one must use another concept of religion and Islam than those that have been current in more "idealist" Western cultural and religious traditions. If we study Islam as a signification system,we have to do with concrete elements that have different meanings for different groups of people. 2 5 These meanings of particular elements of Islam for particular people should be made a subject of inquiry. Such a study can throw some light on what Islam means to particular Muslims in specific contexts.

6.2. Empirical

Contributions

I would like to mention a few areas where the social sciences in general and cultural anthropology in particular contribute directly to the study of Muslim societies and Islam. By focusing on the groups that keep to particular religious ideas and practices, we can obtain better insight into what Islam means in particular societies and groups. (1) Religious traditions alive in a community have links with particular social structures (family and clan relations) and institutions (including patterns of leadership). By studying such links, we can see the role and function of such traditions in social life.

24 25

Jacques WAARDENBURG, "Islam as a Vehicle of Protest" (1985). Jacques WAARDENBURG, "Islam Studied as a Sign and Signification System", Humaniora Islamica, Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 2 6 7 - 2 8 5 . Chapter 2 in this volume offers a revised version of this text.

102

Issues in Islamic Studies

(2) When societies modernize, their cultural and religious traditions change. Which elements of existing tradition are maintained? Do they obtain a new meaning and function? Are new elements of lifestyle proposed? (3) Social science research often works with models. One of the dominating models for encouraging and studying development of Muslim societies was the Western experience of increasing secularization brought about by technological and economic modernization. It was held, for instance, that taking a secular attitude is the best way of responding to a social crisis. At a later stage it was held that such a crisis can also be overcome—at least for a certain time—by revitalizing certain elements of the given tradition. Through an ideological mobilization, with a new articulation of given religious truth and common efforts, people can overcome a critical situation and prepare for a new future. A revitalization of Islam has not necessarily religious roots. (4) Muslim activists call for the application of religious law (Shari'a) in Muslim societies. However, different legal schools (madhähib) and scholars have different interpretations of its content, and different political regimes and experts also have different views about applying Shari'a rules in modernizing Muslim societies. The social sciences make us study the social reasons for existing differences of opinion about applying the Shari'a. In this way, we will be cautious about making generalizations about the role of Islam and the Shari'a in modernization processes. (5) The cultural and social traditions of Muslim societies, under the force of circumstances, are in practice more liable to change than both the traditional authorities of Islam and modernizing secularists are mostly willing to admit. 2 6 The social sciences can analyze what kinds of changes can and do occur in traditions and they can perhaps foresee some of their consequences. Not only modernization but also present-day movements of "fundamentalization" in Islam— as in other religions and ideologies—represent a break in current traditions. This does not mean the end of Islam, but rather a change that can lead to more puritan and militant orientations and to grater power of the state. 27

26 Jacques WAARDENBURG, "The Islamic Religious Tradition and Social Development" (1984). 27 ID., "The Puritan Pattern in Islamic Revival Movements" (1983); ID., "Fondamentalisme et activisme dans l'islam arabe contemporain" (1989).

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

103

7. Representing Islam as a Religion The images presented by different scholars of Islam exhibit a striking variety. This is due in part to the impact of norms and values the scholars themselves adhere to and that have been current in the scholarly and cultural circles or in the societies they belong to. 2 8 In part it is due to fixed ideas about Islam and a lack of flexible thinking. A deconstruction of such fixed images should not only apply to certain Western images of Islam in the past but also to certain current Muslim images of Islam. Recognizing behind such images the existence of human intentions leading to constructs of Islam may clear the way for innovating research on Islam as a living religion. It has usually been assumed that what makes Islam a religion is its claim to be based, through the Qur'än, on revelation, that is to say a communication from beyond. From a scholarly point of view, however, it would be more correct to say that, before anything else, it is the Muslims' belief in the Qur'än as absolute revelation and their belief in Islam as absolute religion, that makes it a religion—for them. For scholarship, no religion is a religion "in itself": it always is a religion for those who, from their point of view, consider it to be so: believers, theologians, some non-believers, and... scholars of religion. This holds true for all religions. It is a particular—religious—interpretation and institutionalization that makes something a religion. When we want to study Islam as a religion, fundamentally we should take into account this particular kind of construction, that is to say religious interpretation of Islam as a religion. Such a religious interpretation may be explicit, for instance when Muslims testify to it in their shahäda. It may also be implicit or latent, for instance when the recognition of an Islamic religious authority or tradition implies acceptance of the religious claims of Islam. A third possibility is that of Muslims who, in daily practice, consider Islam simply a set of rules, a social system, or an ideology. Such people may be considered "social" Muslims but still they are Muslims. This will clarify an important issue for the scholarly study of religions. In the final analysis, it is people's religious intentions, of a social or a more personal nature, that make certain entities like Islam "religions" for them, rather than simply worldviews, social systems, or ideologies. For them, Islam refers to something absolute: it is a religion. As historians of religions we are accustomed to consider religions to be more or less specific entities, each with its own history. In fact, however, what we call "religions" are not only particular institutions but 28

See my L'lslam dans le miroir de l'Occident,

mentioned in Note 2.

104

Issues in Islamic Studies

also communities and persons following rather complex—cultural and religious—traditions, with some form of institutionalization. It is not the whole tradition that is equally religious; it contains many more cultural elements than typically "religious" ones. The other way around, we find in most cultural traditions elements that function as signs or symbols that may convey some kind of religious meaning. Within a given cultural tradition, particular religious "core" cultures may arise around specific religious "core" elements. Some people are especially concerned with them and this may lead to their emergence and institutionalization. What we should regard as "religion" in Islam, then, is not a static and fixed system. There is an immense variety of social and cultural settings in the Muslim world and a corresponding variety of Muslims from different backgrounds. Within the broader social and cultural traditions of Muslim societies, we should recognize the presence of particular religious "core" cultures and traditions. They have their own authorities (ulamä'); a certain institutionalization, for instance around mosques, madrasas, and tanqas; and their own charismatic ("holy") men and women. Such religious "core" cultures function as religious subcultures in the overall culture of society. The leaders of such religious subcultures like to spread their views and practices to further Islam as the common authoritative religion. To summarize these remarks: (1) things religious in Islam are so because Muslims consider them to be so; (2) religious elements of Islam are part of broader social and cultural traditions, where they have as "core" cultures a particular religious significance; (3) studying Islam as a religion is basically a study of the meanings Islam has for Muslims. That is to say, the ways Muslims read, interpret and practice Islam: how they live with their Islam.

8. Conclusion I would now like to summarize the main implications of this social scientific approach in Islamic Studies. (1) The "religious" elements of Islam (including Qur'änic texts, hadlths, ritual elements) should be studied as social facts. They are, however, also signs and symbols that function as elements of a wider signification system that provides orientation. They constitute a kind of religious language common to Muslims who communicate with each other. The system and its elements can be interpreted in various ways, for instance socially, morally, spiritually, but also legally, politically, or ideologically.

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

105

(2) Through its religious elements Islam offers Muslims a sort of social and spiritual commonwealth. They share certain fundamental elements and orientations, but the system allows considerable variations on the basis of mutual recognition. (3) Whenever problems arise in a Muslim community, they can be discussed with reference to precedents in Islam and in terms of the Islamic signification system. Solutions are then sought in analogy to the solutions found to similar problems that occurred in the past. Larger, unprecedented problems, however, present a seething new challenge to the system as a whole. Such problems can be discussed, of course, in terms of the signs and symbols of the traditional Islamic system, as Khomeini did in Iran. But they can also be dealt with in terms of a new and different system, as Mustafa Kemal did when he pursued secularism and Turkish nationalism in Turkey between the two world wars. Between these two extremes of discussion—either in Islamic or in secular terms—a third possibility is to combine a traditional Islamic discourse and a modern system of thinking—technological, economic, political, or otherwise. (4) The particular signs and symbols of the Islamic signification system have been interpreted in different ways throughout history. This is also true for the signification system as a whole. As a result, in the course of time Muslims have given various responses to problems of ethics and law while referring to the authoritative sources of Islam. Differences have become greater when "modern" solutions could be envisaged without reference to Islam. (5) Traditional or new interpretations and applications of the Islamic signification system always have underlying motivations and intentions. These may vary from practical interests and political necessities to moral and social considerations, and to religious and spiritual intentions but the result will be legitimated with the help of references to the authoritative sources of Islam. (6) The search for Islamic solutions to the problems of Muslim societies is a search between two poles. On the one hand, there are the living interests, motivations, and intentions of particular institutions, groups, and persons. On the other hand, there is normative Islam: one should know the implications of particular Qur'änic texts, badttbs, and other authoritative elements of the Islamic system. The aim is to find the right "Islamic" solution by using elements of Islam as an authoritative "code" or "signification system". A solution is found by assigning the right "Islamic" meanings to specific situations and events. It is a search for an Islamic interpretation of the situation and for an adequate response to it. Such efforts and procedures are insufficiently known and understood in the West.

106

Issues in Islamic Studies

Selected

Literature

ANTOUN, Richard T., with HART, David M. and REDIMAN, Charles L., Art. "Anthropology", in The Study of the Middle East. Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. by Leonard BINDER, New York: John Wiley, 1976, pp. 137-228. BENNIGSEN, Alexandre, and ENDERS-WIMBUSH, S., Muslims of the Soviet Empire. A Guide, London: Hurst, 1985. BERQUE, Jacques, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951. —, The Arabs. Their History and Future. London: Faber &c Faber, 1964. —, French North Africa. The Maghrib between Two World Wars, London: Faber & Faber, and New York: Praeger, 1967. —, Egypt, Imperialism and Revolution, London: Faber & Faber, 1972. For BERQUE'S Bibliography, see under: PAPILLON, Francois. Bibliographie de la culture arabe contemporaine—Bibliography of Contemporary Arab Culture, dir. by Jacques BERQUE, Paris: Sindbad, 1981. The Central Middle East. A Handbook of Anthropology and Published Research on the Nile Valley, the Arab Levant, Southern Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Israel, ed. by Louise E. SWEET, 2 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968. (Nowadays of historical interest) CHARNAY, Jean-Paul, Sociologie religieuse de l'Islam. Preliminaires, Paris: Sindbad, 1977. New edition Paris: Hachette, 1994. —, Expansion de l'islam en Afrique occidentale, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980. —, La vie musulmane en Algerie, d'apres la jurisprudence de la premiere moitie du XXe siecle, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991. —, Lettre desolee a un ami arabe, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1994. —, La Charta et l'Occident, Paris: L'Herne, 2001. —, Regards sur I'islam., Freud, Marx, Ibn Khaldun, Paris: L'Herne, 2003. GEERTZ, Clifford, Islam Observed. Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968. —, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973; London: Fontana Press, 1993. —, Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology, London: Fontana Press, 1993. —, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. —, Available Light. Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. — together with Hildred GEERTZ and Lawrence ROSEN, Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society. Three Essays in Cultural Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. GELLNER, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas, London and Chicago: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969. —, Muslim Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. GILSENAN, Michael, Recognizing Islam. An Anthropologist's Introduction, London and Canberra: Croom Helm, 1982.

Some Social Scientific Orientations in Islamic Studies

107

HUSSAIN, Asaf, Islamic Movements in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran. An Annotated Bibliography, London: Mansell, 1983. NIEUWENHUIJZE, C . A . O . VAN, Sociology of the Middle East. Λ Stocktaking and Interpretation, Leiden: Brill, 1971. PAPILLON, Franjois, "Bibliographie de Jacques Berque", in Enquetes dans la bibliographie de Jacques Berque. Parcours d'histoire sociale (Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Mediterranee. Serie Histoire, N o 83-84), Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1997, pp. 21-43. Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, ed. by Louise E. SWEET, 2 vols., Garden City, N.Y., 1970. (Nowadays of historical interest) QUBAIN, Fahim, Education and Science in the Arab World, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. RODINSON, Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1987. SABAGH, Georges, Art. "Sociology" in The Study of the Middle East. Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. by Leonard BINDER, New York: John Wiley, 1976, pp. 511-566. Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions since 1S00, ed. by Nikki R. KEDDIE, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. Paperback 1978. The Study of the Middle East. Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. by Leonard BINDER, New York: John Wiley, 1976. Symbolische Anthropologie der Moderne. Kulturanalysen nach Clifford Geertz, ed. by Gerhard FRÖHLICH and Ingo M O R T H , Frankfurt a . M . and New York: Campus, 1998. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Les universites dans le monde arabe. Documentation et essai d'interprdtation. Vol. 1: Texte, Vol. 2: Statistiques, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1966. —, "The Puritan Pattern in Islamic Revival Movements", Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie/Revue Suisse de Sociologie, Vol. 9 (1983), pp. 687-701. —, "The Islamic Religious Tradition and Social Development", in Current Progress in the Methodology of the Science of Religion, ed. by Witold T Y L O C H , Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1984, pp. 271-289. —, "Islam as a Vehicle of Protest", in Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists and Industrialization. The Southern Shore of the Mediterranean, ed. by Ernest GELLNER, Berlin and New York: Mouton, 1 9 8 5 , pp. 2 2 - 4 8 . —, "The Rise of Islamic States Today", Orient (Hamburg), Vol. 28 (1987), pp. 194-215. —, "Fundamentalismus und Aktivismus in der islamisch-arabischen Welt der Gegenwart", Orient (Hamburg), vol. 30 (1989), nr. 1, pp. 39-51; French version: "Fondamentalisme et activisme dans l'Islam arabe contemporain", in Pratique et theologie. Volume publie en l'honneur de Claude BRIDEL, Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1989, pp. 91-108. —, Islam. Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. WESTERIMARCK, Edward Α., Ritual and Belief in Morocco, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1926.

Chapter 5 Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations 1. Introduction The presence of Muslims in Islamic Studies is self-evident at the present time. Yet their role became active only after World War Two. At the start, these studies were more concerned with Islamic texts and history, Islamic societies and politics, than with Muslim individuals and peoples as actors in their own right. By the middle of the 1 9 t h century, scholarly interest started to include living Muslim peoples, too, as subject of study. Since World War Two, Muslim researchers have taken an increasingly active part in Islamic Studies as pursued in Europe and North America. The term "Muslims" here comprises at least four categories of people: (1) Scholars and intellectuals from a Muslim background working on academic Islamic Studies; (2) Scholars and intellectuals from a Muslim background working on Muslim studies of Islam; (3) Western scholars and other people interested in Islamic Studies who have converted to Islam; (4) Muslim people in general, not connected with Islamic Studies, who live in Muslim or Western societies. I do not want to make a scholarship dichotomy between Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic Studies. The question whether good scholars happen to be Muslims and if so what kind of Muslims are they, are questions in the private domain and should not be our problem. T h e fact remains, however, that from the beginning, a number of Muslims have practiced learning the Qur'än and viewing Islam as their own religion, which they want to know, without necessarily being interested in scholarly research. Non-Muslim Western researchers, on the other hand, study Islam as a civilization and religion foreign to them. I am not speaking here of people who do not really know what scholarship is and may be opposed to Islamic Studies. On the one hand, some Muslims may be against ways of studying Islam that use critical

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

109

scholarly methods. On the other hand, some Westerners may be against Islamic Studies because they are opposed to Islam itself. Islam, for them, is not worth so much attention and should rather be refuted. Neither case leads to scholarship and knowledge. I take the term "Islamic Studies" here in a broad sense. It puts high demands on the scholars concerned, comprises at least four wide fields of research, and applies various approaches in its studies: (1) The Qur'än, 'Um al-hadlth (study of tradition), and other recognized 'ulüm al-dtn (Islamic religious sciences), including the study of law (fiqh), theology (kaläm), and also spirituality (tasawwuf). (2) The history of Islamic civilization and religion. (3) The study of Muslim societies past and present. (4) Relations between Islam and other civilizations/religions and between Muslim and other societies/communities. Academic Islamic Studies developed in the West in specific historical and social contexts and can be seen as a form of intercultural relations. There rise will be the subject of Part 2 of this essay. Part 3 deals with more recent Islamic Studies in Context. Part 4 deals with Muslims in the West. Part 5 concerns the relations that have developed between academic Western Islamic studies and the Muslim Study of Islam. Part 6 presents some observations on Islamic Studies in an intercultural perspective. The chapter ends with some more personal reflections.

2. Some Contexts of Islamic Studies Before 1950 Just as European scholars have studied Islamic culture and religion as an "Oriental" civilization fundamentally different from their own, Muslim travelers and scholars have viewed Europe and the West as a foreign and strange world. 1 Yet it was known that there had been connections between both worlds in the past. Recently, some Muslim scholars pleaded for developing a kind of "Occidentalism" as a study of the West, parallel to the "Orientalism" Europeans had developed as a study of Eastern cultures.2 For a long time, Islamic Studies have been considered part of "Oriental" studies. Their being recognized as part of inter-

1

Abu-LüGHOD, Ibrahim, Arab Rediscovery of Europe; L E W I S , Bernard, The Muslim covery of Europe; LOUCA, Anouar, Voyageurs et ecrivains egyptiens en France au siecle.

2

Thomas, Emanzipation oder Isolation vom westlichen Lehrer? about "Occidentalism" as a discipline proposed by Hasan Hanafl. Compare Mumayiz, Ibrahim al-, " T h e Urgent Need for a New Orientalism and a New Occidentalism". HILDEBRANDT,

DisXIXe

110

Issues in Islamic Studies

cultural studies—without less demanding standards for the quality of research—is recent. Few fields of intercultural studies have been so exposed to the influence of their contexts as Islamic Studies. Western interests in dealing with Muslim countries and people have been particularly prominent. These have included business interests linked to trade and investments, political interests linked to economic benefits and political expansion, religious interests linked to missionary work and support given to nonMuslim minorities, and cultural interests linked to the spread of Western technology, education and culture. Some Western countries have had important direct interests in particular regions of the Muslim world. In roughly historical order, and excluding the Vatican, these include Spain, Italy, France, Britain, Austria, Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA.

2.1. Rapid Survey of Historical

Contacts

The beginnings of Islamic Studies in Europe were linked to contacts resulting from conquests. From the 11 t h century, with the conquests of Sicily and Spain, and during the Crusades, a small number of Europeans acquired a certain practical knowledge of Arab and Muslim ways of life. The translation of Arabic scholarly texts into Hebrew and Latin (11th—13th centuries) and missionary work during and after the conquest of Spain required a good knowledge of written Arabic. Local Christians and converted Muslims rendered important services here. From the 15 t h century on, contacts with the Ottoman Empire including North Africa developed, in particular for trade. A practical knowledge of Ottoman Turkish as well as Persian and Arabic was needed to establish relations, and local Christians served as interpreters. Further contacts were established with Morocco and Iran. At the end of the 16 t h century, Jesuits established contacts in India. At several places, convents were established in Muslim territory and support was given to Christian minorities. Several travelers from Europe published descriptions of their experiences in Muslim countries. In a new phase, scholars sought knowledge about the history and present situation of the Ottoman Empire, and of Islamic religion and civilization, on the basis of texts. From the mid-16 th century, Arabic was increasingly studied in Europe. Scholars started to buy and collect manuscripts that were the subject of further study. Some Arabic and Persian literature, such as the " 1 0 0 1 Nights", was translated and well received in cultural circles.

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

111

With the increase of contacts, European scholars would go to centers of Muslim culture to study on site. The French scholars who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his expedition to Egypt in 1797 started preparing an elaborate description of Egyptian culture, both in history and as they found it during their stay. The 19 t h century was of crucial importance for relations between Europe and the Muslim world. It saw the European subjugation of most of the Muslim world, with the exception of the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Yemen. Colonization had started. Leaving aside its political and economic aspects, this period saw an intense thirst in intellectual circles in Europe for knowing more about the East and its history; it witnessed the rapid growth of Oriental Studies with the study of texts in Eastern languages, and direct exploration of the world outside Europe. Scholars continued to search for manuscripts. Here and there, research institutes were established. Other scholars were interested in current life and wrote descriptions of Muslim societies as they found them, getting to know the local people more directly. A third type of scholar worked in the service of European governments to study contemporary Muslim societies and gather information of use to the colonial administration. Religious institutions too had a lively interest in knowing more about Islam and the Muslim world. Catholic orders established themselves, doing teaching and research, such as the Jesuits in Beirut, the White Fathers in Carthage, and the Dominicans in Jerusalem and Cairo. American Protestant missionaries worked in various places in the Middle East, paying attention to the education of Christian and Muslim children. Catholics and Protestants came into direct contact with local Muslim people and wrote about them. This kind of local account can be used now as a source of direct information on Muslim life at that time. Protestant scholars such as Hendrik Kraemer and J. Spencer Trimingham, both connected with missionary work, carried out study missions in Indonesia and Africa. An important role fell to young Westerners who went to teach at schools in Muslim countries. American teachers had the advantage of not being involved in the colonial enterprise and of being more readily trusted and accepted by the people. The American Universities in Beirut and Cairo, for instance, were founded by Protestant Christians and were known at the time for their openness to students' questions and discussions. They were important meeting points for local Arab and Western culture, as were the various French educational institutions. Scholars studying Muslim societies and Islam could play the role of bridge-builder between cultures, whether working in the Muslim world or teaching about it in their own countries.

112

Issues in Islamic Studies

The steady increase in Westerners who stayed in Muslim territories for longer or shorter periods meant that people in Europe and North America received some information about Islam. Yet these Westerners' views of Muslim societies were conditioned to a large extent by the attitudes they took in the prevailing colonial situations. Their views depended very much on the kind of Muslims with whom they came into contact, the relations that developed between them, and the kind of information the Muslim people gave to them. Looking back, these Westerners' views also seem to have depended very much on haphazard events that "overcame" them and on unexpected meetings with people of all kinds who passed on their ideas and interests to the mostly naive Western listeners. For Westerners in Muslim countries, it was difficult to know what was really happening there, and for many of them "the East" seemed to be irrational and chaotic.

2.2. Politics Although there were trade relations and accounts by travelers, among European people Muslims were mostly a subject of the imagination and Islam a kind of "beyond". Like the Spanish Moors and Russian Tatars in earlier times, the Turks were a source of anxiety. Only with the peace treaty of Karlowitz (1699) did the Ottoman military threat to Central Europe end. Curiosity about Islam and the Muslims living around Europe and far beyond developed in the 18 th century. However, this more open attitude gave way to military and political appetites when Islam started to be viewed as the enemy of a self-affirming and expansionist Europe. The colonial period may be said to have started with the French occupation of Algeria from 1830. For about a century, most Muslim territories would be under European countries' rule or control. With the exception primarily of the Ottoman Empire and Iran, though they offered resistance, the Muslim countries were subdued. The role of Muslims in Islamic Studies, as this field developed during the 19 th century, was largely silent and passive. They had become the subjects of Western rule and "Orientalism". Some Europeans interested in "living" Islam, saw it at that time in colonial contexts. Others saw it during the decline of the last two independent Muslim empires, which in the 1920s were transformed into modernizing Turkey and Iran. Europeans on the spot saw Islam largely as the traditional, and in fact outdated, religion of subdued—but still self-aware—people. The military and political domination of Muslim countries by European nations ended after World War Two. Economic domination, however,

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

113

strengthened by the USA, continued. Two issues were most important to Western interests: control of the oil resources and economic development of the now independent nations. Islam was seen as a political challenge in the Cold War and the Muslim world as a challenge for Western economic interests. The West supported economic development also in defense against influences from Eastern-bloc countries. However, with the exception of the sparsely-populated oil-producing countries, the foreign debts of Muslim countries rose continuously, so that the latter became in fact economic losers. As a rule, Islam became more and more the religion and way of life of the poorer peoples of the world or, exceptionally, the religion of the very rich oil sheikhs. As in the colonial period, during the Cold War Islam became increasingly associated with conflicts. 3 The Gulf War of 1991 sealed American hegemony in the Middle East, but has led many Muslims to resent Western domination and to call for Islam for the sake of justice. In the USA in the 1990s, Samuel Huntington wrote about a forthcoming "clash" between the Western and other civilizations including the Islamic one. A certain American warlike discourse had started to speak of "Islamic fundamentalism" as a threat to the West, without clearly defining it. The same happened with what was later called "international terrorism", widely associated with Islam. In the war declared against this new enemy, again badly defined, Muslims were too easily suspected of being in the service of militant extremists. The present-day economic and political context, with the West chasing its perceived enemies, is a key to explaining the political turn much of the heavily subsidized research on present-day Islam has taken. In an number of Western countries, it is studied now primarily as a political phenomenon, for political reasons, and in a certain political light.

2.3.

Religion

Similar remarks can be made about the impact of the religious context on Islamic Studies. European interest in the study of Islam as a religion started in Spain, in connection with missionary work in the Muslim territories of al-Andalus that had been conquered from the 11 t h century. 3

The Cold War dominated the world scene, inciting conflicts in sensitive areas. Some bloody confrontations took place in which Muslim people were involved: before and especially after the establishment of Israel and its occupation of the whole of Palestine, between Pakistan and India, and also between Iraq and Iran, and in the Sudan. After the Cold War, the American armed forces operated in the Gulf, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. A number of upheavals took place in Muslim countries, some of them violent, nearly all of them against oppressive regimes that awakened oppositional forces, mostly under the banner of Islam.

114

Issues in Islamic Studies

The link between conquest, missionary work, and Islamic Studies was clear and would continue. In Europe, conquests of Muslim territories annexed by Italy, Spain, Russia—and later also Austria and several Balkan countries—were usually followed by the departure of most Muslims. The Orthodox and Catholic Churches then made efforts to convert those who stayed. Outside Europe, Muslims generally stayed in the territories that had come under colonial rule. Christian missionary work in Muslim countries, however, was only rarely directly connected with the use of violence by colonial powers. Before the colonial period, Catholic religious orders had already established themselves in Muslim territory, in particular in Palestine and in places where local—Oriental—Christians needed support. These orders and Protestant missions started public preaching in the 19 t h century, when Western rule was established or protection assured, as in the Ottoman Empire. The Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, then greatly increased, but the colonial authorities forbade missionary activities in certain Muslim areas to avoid inciting unrest. Depending on the local situation, various missionary strategies were developed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Protestant missionary societies working in Muslim countries. Missionary work required a basic knowledge of Islam as a religion. The presence of Islam in the colonies consequently stimulated a certain interest in Islam among Western Christians, but mostly in a spirit of confrontation. Some scholar-missionaries studied the religious impact that Islam, compared with Christianity, had on particular regions. Although missionaries were paid by private sources, there are certain parallels between their interests and those of scholars who worked for colonial governments interested in the socio-political impact of Islam. In the colonial context of the time, scholars who studied the impact of Islam, particularly in the Middle East, were easily suspected by local Muslims of "spying", that is to say, of serving Western political interests with the information they gathered. In practice, Western religious and political interests could support each other in colonial contexts. After the independence of Muslim countries, traditional missionary attitudes changed. Dialogue rather than confrontation became a concept for relations between Christians and Muslims. This change of attitude has had a considerable influence on Islamic Studies as conducted by Christians. It has fostered more sympathetic studies of Islam as a religion and has led to a more friendly teaching of Islam at Christian schools. Muslim religious feelings have been increasingly respected. The new mental climate has promoted communication and practical coop-

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

115

eration between Christians and Muslims, also in their respective studies of Islam and Christianity.4 Both colonial rule and Christian missions presupposed and strengthened confrontation. Both tended to identify and stress features of Islam that made it clearly distinct from, and opposed to, Christianity and the West. This did not only concern doctrinal differences. The close connections seen between Islam as a religion and the traditional social structures and social order in Muslim societies were mostly viewed as the deleterious impact of a bad religion on politics and social life, in particular on gender relations. These features struck many Western observers precisely at the time when Western societies themselves were undergoing secularization and when the West's own patriarchal structures were questioned. It is fair to say that many "liberal" Europeans at the time tended to recognize in Islam what they wanted to overcome in Europe. In addition to the well-known doctrinal differences between Islam and Christianity as religions, Muslim societies were seen as fundamentally different from Western culture. In the Eurocentric view of the time, which lacked sound self-criticism, major differences were largely ascribed to that negative force seen as the opposite of blessed Europe, that is to say Islam.

2.4.

Education

At the beginning of the 20 t h century, colonial regimes saw an interest in educating certain groups from the countries they ruled who would be able to work with the European rulers. This corresponded to a new trend in colonial policies to strengthen the links between a colony and its mother country. More attention was paid to education in the colony, so that the culture of the mother country would be better known among the indigenous population. Further education was opened for indigenous clerks in the state apparatus. Forms of higher education were created for the future higher-ranking officials, professional people, teachers at colleges, and potential leaders from good local families. The number of students from colonial territories pursuing higher education in the European mother country increased considerably between the two world wars.

4

It should be noted that, already in the 1 9 * century, a number of missionary colleges and schools respected the Muslim faith to a certain extent, but ignorance and prejudice about Muslims and Islam continued to prevail in missionary circles and among local Christians. Difference of religion was a barrier between people.

116

Issues in Islamic Studies

Muslim students from the colonies attending European universities distinguished themselves clearly from unschooled immigrants. On the whole, they were conscious of representing their country and were prepared to learn, study, and work for its future, if necessary its struggle for independence. It was among these students that nationalist ideas, feelings, and commitments developed. They saw themselves already as future leaders in the construction of their countries, once independence had been achieved. They upheld their Islam and kept the essential features of their own cultural traditions, even if they took up Western ideas and could be in contact with more or less progressive Western circles. Last but not least, they awakened sympathy for their countries cultivating personal contacts in Western societies. In the long run, the independence of Muslim countries after the Second World War had a healthy impact on Islamic Studies in Europe. With the disappearance of the study programs for future colonial administrators, Islamic Studies was no longer "colonially" oriented and started to become de-politicized. Moreover, students from the new independent countries were no longer obliged to pursue further studies in the "mother country". They could choose other countries as well. This opened up a new freedom and a more international orientation. Students who preferred to study in North America rather than Europe could apply for fellowships in the New World.

3. Islamic Studies in Context 3.1. Islamic

Studies

Within the confines of scholarly circles, Islamic Studies were carried out in a rather peaceful perspective. In the 15 th century, when the Ottoman Turks pushed forward, some studies written by scholars of Islam testified to a longing for peace between Christians and Muslims, beyond the political and religious struggles raging at the time. In the 18 th century, when the wars of religion in Europe were over, Enlightenment thought fostered a new interest in knowledge and reason. Scholars with this outlook developed an interest in bygone cultures with a glorious past and in present-day cultures with a cultural legacy, such as Islam. My guess is that the number of scholars of Islam who wholeheartedly supported current colonial policies was small. In the second half of the 20 t h century, scholarship in general, including the study of other cultures, became an increasingly "technical" enterprise with ever more refined methods and instruments of research. Yet at the same time, not only in the West but also in other cultures, more

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

117

reflective interests arose. They concern the postulates of cultures and religions and their contribution to human life and its values. People are forced to reflect on present-day ethical problems and may look for solutions proposed by other cultures. More attention is given nowadays to problems of communication and cooperation between people from different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Last but not least, Islam is now seen in its global dimension and presents problems to the West. Social concerns on a world scale are apparently more pressing on present-day scholars than they were half a century ago. Of special interest is the increasing participation of Muslim researchers and scholars in Islamic Studies. North American scholarly institutions took initiatives resulting in a growing recruitment of Muslim scholars in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Right from its beginnings in the early 1950s, the graduate Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal established a rule that efforts should be made to have an equal number of Muslim and non-Muslim staff, and also of Muslim and non-Muslim students. Different from the Middle East "area study centers" created in the USA in the 1950s, this was the only institute in North America focusing on Islamic culture and religion. North America gave opportunities to Muslim scholars to make Islam and the Middle East better known to the American public. When interreligious dialogue started and the Middle East was full of conflicts, Islam was an "in" subject. In the 1950s and 1960s a number of North American universities engaged Muslim researchers and teachers in new programs in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.

3.2. Modern Trends in Islam Intercultural relations between Muslim and Western—in particular European—countries in the field of higher education started with the arrival of students from Muslim countries, first of all from Egypt in the 1830s, and later also from other countries. Most of them came for practical areas of study such as medicine or engineering, but they could also meet European scholars of Arabic. European scholarship in this field was received positively and even admired by several Muslim scholars. Occasionally, a Muslim visitor attended an Orientalist congress. During their stay in Paris in the 1880s, Jamal al-Dln al-Afghänl and Muhammad 'Abduh had contacts with French scholars. Already before World War One, European scholars of Islam taught Islamic subjects to Muslim students in places like Cairo and Lahore. Through the presence of Muslim students, Islamic Studies would become a pivot in cultural relations between Europe and the Muslim world.

118

Issues in Islamic Studies

From the 1860s in India and the 1880s in Egypt, reformist interpretations and ideas that had found their way into Muslim thinking about Islam became known in the West. The reformist movement showed Islam to be less passive than Europeans had assumed until then, and the rise of modernist ideas with secular orientations in Muslim countries would confirm this development. Interactions between the Muslim world and the West would show up, for instance, in new Muslim interpretations of Islam. In the first decades of the 20 t h century, the "modern trends" in Islam with a range of new interpretations and constructions became a subject of interest and research. Muslim thinkers who had studied European thought would respond to Western thinkers, wanting to enter into discussion with them. They started to develop more critical views about the West and responded to it from their own background. In this way, intercultural exchanges increased. The colonial context contributed to this development. A number of European scholars of Islam came from nations that had been ruling Muslim territories. Islamic Studies had largely been institutionalized because of the need for expertise on Islam. After independence these institutions would further develop their research interests. Islamic Studies as pursued in the West have had an important side-effect in Muslim countries. A growing number of people there became interested in the history and culture of their countries, including Islam. Orientalists had written about these subjects and interested Muslims could learn from their findings about the classical Islamic civilization they were heir to. And there was more than that. Egyptians could be proud of their Pharaonic and Lebanese of their Phoenician past, Iraqis learned about their ancient Mesopotamian and Iranians about their ancient Persian roots. This gave historical consciousness to these peoples, something that contributed to their national identity and pride. Historical knowledge also led to more critical attitudes to the West. The Crusades were viewed as a model of foreign intrusion by the West, preceding the later stages of Western aggression i.e. colonialism, missionary efforts, Zionist claims and land appropriation. Muslim authors developed highly critical views about perfidious Western strategies. Unavoidably, cultural relations may lead to confrontations when people are hurt by new facts and react in self-defense. At the same time, cultural relations led to discoveries on a level where Muslims could be a new kind of actor. With the increase of contacts, they could impress Western people with their religion, already in the way they testified to their faith and performed the rituals of Islam, and further rules. More spiritual figures, belonging to the tartqas, spoke

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

119

of Islamic mysticism. Here and there, Westerners converted to Islam or rediscovered their own faith. In Islamic Studies, sympathetic scholarly research could result from this kind of spiritual openness. This, too, is a kind of cultural interaction.

3.3. Muslim Apologetics

and Criticism of Islamic

Studies

On the subject of intercultural relations, Western readers would see a more defensive and militant Islam in the stream of apologetic literature that Muslims published about Islam during the 20 t h century. Defending and glorifying Islam, these writings were a response to much denigration expressed in Western discourse about it, also in publications meant for Muslims. A number of Europeans, with rather simple, uncritical views of their own culture and religion and not very knowledgeable about Muslim life had, for instance, loudly claimed the superiority of their European civilization and of their Christian religion. The Muslim defensive response was unavoidable and should be seen in the context of affirming Islamic values and religion by presenting one's religious identity, parallel to affirming one's political identity in the national independence movements. In both cases there was an upsurge of something in Muslim people that had been profoundly affected and was clearly connected with Islam. There have been few Western studies that view and analyze 20 th -century apologetic discourse about Islam in its broader social and political context. This is partly because the intellectual quality of these writings is poor and repetitive, unattractive to Western readers but they have appeared in most Islamic languages and have had a wide readership all over the Muslim world. These writings should be known, their structures should be brought to light, their intentions grasped, and their argumentation analyzed. A distinction should be made between Muslim apologetic literature addressing Muslims for internal use, so to speak, and often written in the local language, and apologetic literature meant for outsiders, nonMuslims, and mostly written in English or French. All these writings try to demonstrate the distance, if not the gap, between those who are Muslim and those who are not and who are supposed to attack Islam. It is a dualistic scheme and little effort is made to arrive at an understanding of the other party. The intention is to affirm that things are alright with Muslims and perfect with Islam. Consequently, the reactions of most Westerners to these writings have been hostile, even haughty, whereas Muslims have been moved emotionally by them. I would speak of a basic clash between sensitivity and a lack of sensitivity, between imagination and realism. A current realistic Western re-

120

Issues in Islamic Studies

sponse is that Muslims may have fancy ideas of Islam, but that the historical and social reality has been very different from what they think and say—as one can learn from historical writings written by Muslims themselves. Defending Islam against what is felt to be false representations and mistaken judgments by the West has also been a strong motivation for Muslim criticisms of Western studies of Islam. But something more serious has been at stake. Critical literary and historical research on the Qur'än and Muhammad touched something considered sacred or taboo by Muslims. They could be deeply hurt and they could perceive this kind of research as a kind of blasphemy. There was also a political dimension. A number of Muslims perceived Western critical scholarship on Islamic texts, history, and societies as a deliberate attack on Islam itself, carried out by Western Orientalists and Christian missionaries. Their final aim was nothing less than to deprive Muslims of the moral force given by their religion, to subjugate them and bring them definitively under Western domination. Some Muslim critics went as far as denying non-Muslim scholars the right to study and analyze and thus to dissect the Qur'än scientifically as an object of profane research. In this vein, some Muslims denounced fundamentally the intentions of Islamic Studies as developed in Europe. They distrusted the possible cultural, social, and political implications of Western Islamic Studies for the Muslim part of the world and Muslims in general. In the end, it was to them a struggle for life or death. On an intellectual level, too, the very enterprise of Islamic Studies, as conceived and practiced in Western scholarship, was subjected to scholarly criticism. Western critics had already questioned the scholarly and intellectual orientation of current Oriental Studies, but they had addressed scholarly details. N o w there came wholesale accusations, with anger and resentment, about the level on which Islam was studied in the West and the presuppositions and assumptions of these studies. This is reminiscent of the refutations of scholarly Biblical criticism by fundamentalist Christians. I see a fundamental paradox in the fact that the labors of those who had studied Islam for the sake of scholarly knowledge, and had brought to light the largely forgotten treasures of Islamic civilization and spirituality, could so thoroughly enrage Muslims living and identifying with Islam. This was a reaction not only of people with a different culture and religion but of people whose culture and religion had been dominated by a foreign power. They defended their culture and religion by ideologizing and absolutizing it. It was a bitter reaction to being dominated, with religion used as a weapon. Against Western politicians known to be on the side of evil,

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

121

Muslim intellectuals may have had hopes of being understood and defended at least by scholars who knew their history and society. They may have felt betrayed when they became aware that the latter had studied their culture but had not understood and loved it, and certainly had not defended it. Should knowledge not lead to understanding, to sympathy and support? In a context of confrontation due to colonization, there were bitter experiences of misunderstanding and of being misunderstood, on both sides. In this sense it is appropriate to consider Islamic Studies not only in terms of its scientific value and achievements, but also of its role in intercultural relations. An objectifying approach that looks for scientific knowledge in sensitive matters such as the role of religion and culture in constituting human identities is a delicate enterprise. Handling such a subject in the most adequate way presupposes a sensitivity to what can be most precious to people. Being taken as an object of rational analysis without having been asked, by people who have rational power and affirm their domination without further explanation is a humiliating and even alienating experience. Such research creates distrust, and possibly hatred toward those who do it without any sign of sensitivity. M o s t scholars in Islamic Studies, raised in the colonial era, ready for confrontations, and writing for their own Western academia and culture, were children of their time and in fact unprepared for the task. They were not really aware of their own presuppositions and assumptions, of the implications their work had for others, and of the social and political risks of their craft, certainly when dealing with the cultures and religions of people who were not treated with respect. They had been trained intellectually neither in problems of method and theory, nor in those of knowledge and power, as is needed in serious scholarship of living cultures. Worst of all, they tended to interpret others according to the ideas they had grown up with, without listening much to what these others had to say. And they were certainly not ethical heroes. One wonders what kind of communication existed between insensitive researchers and sensitive Muslims or between insensitive Muslims and sensitive reseachers. Misunderstandings existed on both sides and were tragically intensified as a result of political conflict and shrewd manipulation. Just as the presence of Westerners and the West must have been a problem for Muslims throughout the 1 9 t h and 2 0 t h centuries, the presence of Muslims and their Islam has brought still unresolved problems to Western countries. Delving here into problems of intercultural alienation, I have neglected the fruits of intercultural cooperation and dialogue. I have not alluded,

122

Issues in Islamic Studies

for instance, to the many positive responses by Muslim scholars and intellectuals to Islamic Studies in the West. In colonial times, several Muslim scholars contributed to the Encyclopaedia of Islam and quite a few urged cooperation with European scholars in Islamic Studies. The initiative taken to publish a scholarly Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam was crowned with success and a second, much enlarged edition will be finished in a few years. Scholarly cooperation in the field of Islamic Studies has greatly increased during the last fifty years.

4. Muslims in the West A new phase in intercultural relations between the Western and the Muslim world started with the arrival of a number of Muslim immigrants in Europe and North America in the second half of the 20 t h century. Their presence would leave its mark on Western societies and have practical implications for life in these societies. It would be a test for the living side-by-side of Muslims and Westerners and lead to calls for dialogue between Muslims and Christians, Muslims and Westerners, and between the Muslim and the Western world. 5 It would also have consequences for Islamic Studies in the West.

4.1. Islam in the

West6

Muslims are no longer far-away people and so their ways of life have become better known. They are no longer inhabitants of and possible insurgents in colonies ruled by European countries, but have acquired freedom. Islam itself can no longer be viewed as a passive and fatalistic, or possibly an aggressive and violent religion. Like other religions, it is subject to social, economic, and political conditions. And Muslims can no longer simply be identified as puritan believers or possibly fanatics and fighters under a global rigid regime of Islam. They are human and very different from each other, like all human beings. The Muslim workers who arrived in Europe from very different regions turned out to be serious but simple people, some of whom could hardly read and write. Living under often trying material conditions, they mostly had high moral standards. The following generations adapted to 5

Chretiens

et musulmans

en dialogue,

dir. by V. FEROLDI; Muslims and the West, ed. by

Z . 1. ANSARI a n d J . L . ESPOSITO.

6

Convergences musulmanes, ed. by F. DASSETTO; L'Islam et les musulmans dans I'Europe elargie, ed. by B. MARECHAL; Muslims in Europe, ed. by J . MALIK; S. LATHION, Musulmans d'Europe; J . CESARI, Etre musulman en France.

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

123

Western societies while keeping their Muslim identity. Most important in our context is that Muslims and their Islam have now become visible to Westerners. One can meet Muslims easily nowadays and start a conversation. If one asks them about their Islam, they will answer. Like the autochthonous population, they have to find their way in a continent that is experiencing profound changes. In this context, "Islam in the West" has become a kind of extra branch of Islamic Studies. It implies the study of Muslim communities living in Western societies, with attention to the various interpretations and practical effects they put forward of their Islam, including problems of ethics and morality. This field of research is no longer a separate domain accessible only to scholars specialized in difficult Oriental languages who study Islamic civilization of the past. It is a field of research for sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists, that is to say social scientists who are mostly practically oriented and derive their knowledge of normative Islam largely from secondary sources. It implies kinds of research that some scholars will hardly count as belonging to "Islamic Studies". 7

4.2. Muslims in Colonial

Societies

This new field of research asks important questions. A first one concerns the relations between the objective conditions under which Muslims live and the subjective ways they identify themselves and articulate their Islam. A second question concerns the nature of Islamic Studies and its place in society, including societies in which Muslims live. The second question dates back to the colonial period. Experts trained in Islamic Studies, including languages, were often asked to provide practical information about Muslim societies living under a Western administration. Looking back, one may question to what extent these experts were competent to do justice to the complexities of such societies. They looked at the local people from a dominant position and only a few of them were trained social or cultural anthropologists. The situation became even more delicate when these experts were expected to give their opinion about government policies or even to advise the colonial authorities. Western policy's first aim, of course, was to maintain law and order according to the rules of the mother country. The expert was in government service and he had to assist the 7

Research on Muslim life in Europe has raised the question what Muslims "do" with their Islam. See, for instance, Matthias Rohe, Der Islam—Alltagskonflikte und Lösungen; Nikola Tietze, Jeunes musulmans de France et d'Allemagne; Nadine B. Weibel, Par-delä le voile.

124

Issues in Islamic Studies

authorities in achieving this aim. But there were further aims as well. The expert's task was also to help replace the old traditional social order by a new, modern one adapted to the colonial setting. What should be done if the scholar-expert had different thoughts about how to administer Muslim populations or if he questioned whether there should be a Western administration at all? My point is that scholars of Islam at that time could—nolens volens, without knowing or wanting—become implicated in government policies, missionary strategies, or economic pursuits in the colonies simply because of the knowledge they had or were thought to have. The colonial situation itself must have been a problem for certain experts as human beings—leaving aside the moral and ethical problems that arose in this situation.

4.3. Muslims in Western

Societies

The study of Islam in Western societies nowadays is naturally very different from what it was in colonial societies a century ago, but there are certain interesting analogies. An important difference is that the Muslims in colonial societies were, of course, at home and that the expert was a foreigner, keeping a distance from the people. With a few exceptions, the expert did not participate in the Muslim society and its totally different culture. Moreover, the expert belonged to the rulers. Muslims living in present-day Western societies are closer to those who do research on them. There is no colonial barrier. In many cases, both Muslims and researchers can be recognized individually and further contact between them is usually possible. One of the main problems now is to increase the degree of participation and integration of immigrants in Western societies. As in former colonial societies, some Islam specialists have been asked to act as experts and to provide information and possible advice for implementing government policies of integration. Such information and advice is publicly accessible. The task could be extended to advice on immigration restriction and security research. This advice is more confidential. Compared with the colonial situation there is now a new group. There are Western converts to Islam, and they constitute a type of Muslims that was hardly known in the past. Their presence destroys the old dualist scheme of dominated Muslims and dominating non-Muslims in the colonial period, but also today's dualist scheme of foreign Muslims and indigenous non-Muslims. Converts to Islam constitute a group in between. In colonial times they hardly played any role. Researchers on Islam in the West have the opportunity to see Islam here "under construction", so to speak, in an experimental situation. There

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

125

is a great variety not only of Muslims from different regions but also of Western societies, with numerous political, sociological and other contextual factors at work. 8 Possible models for constructing a "European Islam" have been proposed. 9 More than was possible in the old colonial situation, the study of Muslim communities living in the West nowadays requires the participation of researchers who happen to be Muslim themselves. 10 During the past few years, the situation, including the legal and human rights status of Muslims living as minorities in several Western contexts has deteriorated. This situation deserves full attention, also from experts. The increase in the Muslim population in the West has also had consequences for programs of Islamic Studies at Western universities. Muslim students may want to learn here more about their Islamic cultural and religious heritage and to study Islam as their religion and a culture with which to live. They may also want simply to become better Muslims. A good number of these students may foresee the needs of Muslim communities, for instance by rendering social services, teaching Islam, or becoming imams. Others may immerse themselves in contemporary Muslim thinking or follow their own spiritual inclinations. The presence of Muslim and non-Muslim students in classes of Islamic Studies can enrich discussion and stimulate common learning on Muslim societies and Islam. The social and political context, which allows a search for intercultural dialogue transcending existing fears, can play an important role in further forms of communication and search for knowledge. Perhaps more than before, Islamic Studies require openmindedness.

5. Differentiation in Islamic Studies 5.1. Academic Islamic

Studies

The relations between the Muslim religious tradition of the "Study of Islam" and the Western secular tradition of "Islamic Studies" are not always clear and call for investigation. Western scholarship of Islam as 8

See Seyyed Hossein NASR, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World. A first care of Muslim workers arriving in Europe was to preserve their Islamic identity and Islam. See Torsten JANSON, Your Cradle is Green; Islamic education became a matter of concern. 9 For broader views on the role of Muslims living in the West and on the future of Islam, see for instance Tariq RAMADAN, Islam, the West and the Challenge of Modernity and ID., Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. 10 See, for instance, Farhad KHOSROKHAVAR, L'islam dans les prisons; ID., L'Islam des jeunes.

126

Issues in Islamic Studies

a religion has been much indebted to the Muslim "religious sciences" ('ulütn al-άϊη), which it has objectified, historicized, and studied in their contexts. Yet Western scholarship has hardly developed a real original approach to Islamic religion in accordance with a model of the scholarly study of religions in general. What can be said about the relations between the existing secular "Islamic Studies" and the Muslim "Study of Islam"? On the one hand, for a long time Oriental Studies, including Islamic Studies, have been viewed as a typical and even unique achievement of Western scholarship and as part and parcel of Western civilization. On the other hand, this "Western" kind of Islamic Studies has been bound to "Western" secular principles of scholarship and, in the view of many Muslims, it furthers Western interests. In such views, Western "Islamic Studies" can even be seen as directly opposed to the Muslim "Study of Islam". However, if it is true that science and scholarship should base themselves on universally valid principles, a dichotomy between the two kinds of study cannot be considered absolute in itself. The difference between Western Islamic Studies and the Muslim Study of Islam is rather to be ascribed to a number of practical differences in: commitments, concepts and postulates of scholarship, views of sources and norms of scholarship, kinds of mental training and, of course, social and cultural, including religious, particularities. They are also linked to particular views concerning relations between the Islamic community and the Western world. Historically speaking, present-day Islamic Studies arose in a Western culture and were part of it. Yet, as a creation of the mind, based on empirical data and reason, all science and scholarship—whether Mesopotamian, Chinese, Indian, or Greek—from the beginning has had an intercultural dimension. Results did not remain confined to one particular community or culture but could be "translated" into other cultures as well. To the extent that Islamic Studies will continue to pursue such an intercultural course, it will not be bound specifically to Western culture. Such a development will be enhanced by the active participation of Muslim scholars in Islamic studies. The European discovery of the Islamic civilization through Islamic Studies can even be appreciated as the rediscovery of the strong cultural links that existed between the historical Arabo-Muslim civilization and the emerging European one in the 12 th century. They went their own ways around the time of the 14 th -century Renaissance, when European culture oriented itself increasingly toward the Classics. In the growing European consciousness, the Arabo-Muslim civilization was then felt to be something more distant. Only a certain cultural elite, in particular in

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

127

France and Italy, remained conscious of it, respected it, and studied it. As Montesquieu's Lettres persanes suggests, the world of Islam could still function as a mirror thanks to which Europeans could recognize and eventually correct themselves. Attempts have been made in the last half-century to delineate a common "Mediterranean" history of countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It seems to have been in the course of the 18 th century that Europeans developed a feeling of cultural superiority over the rest of the world, including the world of Islam. This feeling was strengthened politically by the decline of the Ottoman Empire and economically by the growing worldwide trade of which Europe had become the center. With the Enlightenment, European thinkers formulated new, "modern" norms and values, which they universalized with an appeal to reason. Islam was judged to be backward wherever it conflicted with these norms and values. This was the case, for instance, in its treatment of women, its authoritarian power structures, its collectivism, and its particular concept of revelation. Although Europe's own failures in these four domains have now been recognized, the judgments passed on Islam—without much curiosity and without adequate knowledge—persisted in the 20 t h century. Many Westerners hint at the humiliating treatment of women, the lack of an independent judiciary and the absence of full democracy in Muslim countries, the current violence of Muslim regimes and their opponents, the lack of good education, violations of human rights throughout the Muslim world, and certain conflicting relationships with the outside world. The absence of sound self-criticism in the West has led to rather simplistic categorical condemnations of Islam itself, judged to be the true cause of this miserable state of affairs. For a cultural and religiously-interested elite in Europe, the poetic and mystical values found in Islam have provided a certain correction to this largely negative image of it. Yet, with the course of events since the Gulf War and the hegemonic ambitions of the West, negative Western attitudes to Islam have persisted and negative Muslim reactions to the West have increased. Differences are now stressed. Islamic Studies arose as a scholarly enterprise in this largely unfavorable context. Its aim has been and remains to obtain a maximally impartial and objective knowledge of Islam in the broadest sense of the word, in accordance with the criteria recognized by the scholarly disciplines involved in Islamic Studies. Similar methods have been applied in the study of other Asian, Middle Eastern, and African civilizations, cultures, and religions. Current presuppositions and assumptions of Islamic Studies have increasingly been subject to critical reflection and necessary adaptations.

128

Issues in Islamic Studies

5.2. Muslim "Study of Islam" Since the beginnings of Islam, Muslim scholars have studied their religion in what were called the Islamic "religious sciences" ('ulüttt al-dm). They have concentrated on the study of the Qur'än and the Qur'än exegesis (tafslr), tradition (hadlth), jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (kaläm), and mystical thought (tasawwuf) on the basis of a comprehensive epistemology of usül al-dm (lit. "the roots of religion"). In the 19 th century, with the need to modernize Muslim society, some Muslim intellectuals developed new ways of studying and interpreting Islam. They started with the acceptance of particular "reform" principles, such as recourse to the foundational texts (Qur'än and hadlth). This led, for instance, to the reformist movement of Seyyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) in India and that of Muhammad 'Abduh (1849-1905) in Egypt. At the time, the reformist movement was largely restricted to an intellectual elite. Later, however, the new independent Muslim states applied certain recommendations from this movement in their legislation, including parts of family law. In contrast to the reformists who applied reason in their Qur'än exegesis, more strictly textoriented traditional and "fundamentalizing" currents kept to a literal reading of the Qur'än and hadlth and a more restricted use of reason. The modernization of Muslim societies also brought about institutional changes in the teaching of Islam. Venerable ancient Islamic mosque institutions such as al-Azhar in Cairo, al-Zitouna in Tunis, al-Qarawiyyln in Fes, and madrasas in Qum were modernized. New Islamic institutions of research and teaching of Islam were created with public or private funding (or both), often accepting students from abroad. This happened for instance at the universities in Riyadh and Mecca, in Islamic training institutes in Indonesia, and in Malaysia. New international Islamic universities were established in Islamabad and Kuala Lumpur. With the migration of Muslims to the West, Muslim teaching institutions developed here, too. For the training of imäms and other practical needs of the Muslim communities, Muslims established colleges in Britain and North America. In England, the traditional Indian Där al-'ulüm schools were established in new locations. New modernized educational Islamic institutions were created in England, for instance in London and Markfield near Leicester, and in the USA, for instance in Herndon, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. High-level Muslim research and teaching institutions of Islam were founded in Oxford and London; they are also visited by Western scholars of Islam. These private institutions have different orientations and develop their own networks with Muslim countries. Continental Europe offered fewer possibilities for private Islamic research institutions.

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

129

Looking back, one observes a general trend since the late 1 9 6 0 s to establish Muslim institutions in the West where Islam is studied and taught from an Islamic perspective, for a particular Muslim community and responding to its needs. These institutions have grown alongside existing Western universities and other institutions that provide Islamic Studies in terms of academic scholarship. This institutional extension implies a diversification of the concept of "Islamic Studies", analogous to similar diversifications in Judaic and Christian Studies. The difference is that between a committed normative and an academic empirical study of a given religion. Whereas the normative study of a religion such as Christianity in a denominational perspective is pursued in Faculties of Theology, Divinity Schools, and Seminaries, public state universities offer study programs of religion from a non-denominational perspective, as in the academic study of religions or the science of religion. Two current approaches in a Muslim "Study of Islam" deserve mention here. One approach is based on the program of an "Islamization" of knowledge. 1 1 Initiated by Ismä'll R ä j l al-Faruqi, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and other Muslim scholars in the 1 9 7 0 s , it seeks to put Muslim thought and scholarship on the basis of what are called Islamic epistemological principles. Such an Islamic epistemology should take the place of the traditional usül al-dtn. The wider aim of this approach is to lead to a properly "Islamic" civilization, distinct from the Western one, which is perceived as being based on secular principles. This kind of Muslim "Study of Islam" is opposed to any academic Islamic Studies that could be harmful to Muslim commitments to Islam. An Islamic epistemology aims to guide and direct Muslims' acquisition of knowledge in an Islamic sense. The project reminds of the aims of founding Catholic universities and the prominent place given to Thomism at the time, as underlying a typically Catholic knowledge of things. Similar denominational views of education and study exist in certain Protestant and Jewish institutions. The other approach to be mentioned in a Muslim "Study of Islam" accepts critical academic methods and theories as developed in the humanities and social sciences and seeks to apply them in the study of Islam. The vision here is that the study of Islam, like that of Christianity, should go through the rigors of empirical critical scholarship of texts, history, society, and nature and that it should stand the test of

11

I. R. AL-FARUQI and A. H . Abu SULAYMAN, Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Workplan, Herndon, Va.: HIT, 1981, new ed. 1989. See Leif STENBERG, The Islamization of Science. Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity, Stockholm; Almqvist & Wiksell, 1996.

130

Issues in Islamic Studies

reason. A Muslim Study of Islam pursued in this way aims to have an enlightened effect on Islamic religious thinking. In this view, religions— Islam as well as any other religion, and also religion in general—should be studied empirically and critically with the instruments offered by the humanities and social sciences. In a next phase, there will be systematic thinking but it should be based on this scholarly knowledge. As I see it, this view is at the back of Mohammed Arkoun's research commitments including an "applied Islamology". Both kinds of Muslim Study of Islam demand dedication and intensive scholarly training. In addition to these two approaches to a Muslim study of Islam, an increasing number of new Muslim reflections on Islam and on Muslim approaches in the study of Islam have seen the light of day during the last years. Some of them are based on a particular hermeneutic of the Qur'än and other religious texts, others are linked to new general orientations such as postmodernism. Muslim reflections on Islam and the study of it are not only of a theoretical nature; they are meant to be applied in the Muslim way of life. They appear as possible "models" of Islam that respond to existing needs in the community, to new particular views of society and the role of religion in it, and to the demands for norms and values in personal and social life. Applying such models has practical consequences for Muslim communities, both in Western and in Muslim contexts. A "Muslim" Study of Islam represents an approach that differs from "academic" Islamic Studies in several respects. First of all, a Muslim scholar participates in Islam and its tradition as something accepted as true, with which he or she is familiar. This is his or her point of departure. Non-Muslim Western scholars perceive Islam as "different" to a greater or lesser degree from their own society and commitments. They objectify it and take it as a subject of study and research. They will not say without further question that Islam as such is "true". The two approaches are also different in another respect. A Muslim Study of Islam seeks for knowledge born from or based on an Islamic sense of God, humankind, and reality. A Muslim Study of Islam aims to make Muslims better Muslims, something that cannot be said of academic Islamic Studies. A Muslim Study of Islam, in the end, is consciously normative, but remains based on texts that are generally accessible for reading and study. Academic Islamic Studies only recognize scholarly norms; they claim to be academic, based on facts and the use of reason. It is left here to the individual scholar to develop—if he or she

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

131

wants to—his or her own thoughts about the Islamic materials studied, including their value and truth. 12 Whether or not these two approaches, of a Muslim "Study of Islam" and of academic "Islamic Studies", will develop separately in a kind of basic dichotomy or whether there will be some kind of mutual recognition is an open question. The extent to which exchanges and cooperation will take place in the future between—sensitive—scholars from these two approaches will largely depend on personal competences, attitudes and choices. Exchanges may occur between a Muslim and a nonMuslim scholar, or between two Muslim scholars—one choosing the "Muslim" and the other the "academic" way of studying. The academic way is the most general, open to intercultural dialogue, but in practice this will largely depend on the people involved and their commitments. Whatever happens, an open exchange of knowledge and ideas is always fruitful for those engaged in it.

6. Conclusion The Muslim debate with a hegemonic West and with a Western Orientalism, if on an appropriate intellectual level, is not as destructive as it seemed to many Westerners and Muslims at first sight. Academic and Muslim communities value debate as a contest of minds and a search for truth. Islam remains, of course, a sensitive issue in such a debate, but so is intellectual honesty. On a more popular level, a whole arsenal of arguments has been advanced in favor of Islam, to prove its truth and virtues and to defend it against attacks, ideological or otherwise. On a more intellectual level, the assumptions of academic Islamic Studies have been questioned. In some quarters they are denounced as a priori Islam-critical. On the other hand, a Muslim Study of Islam has been considered sectarian. Academic Islamic Studies claim to have a universalistic inspiration and to enjoy general validity. At the back of much Muslim debate with the West I see a constant affirmation of Muslim identity—ethnic, national, and personal—with a strong moral dimension. Muslim intellectuals, who often live under hardship and pressures in their countries, may feel at a distance from the West and its outlook, not to mention its facilities. They may have mixed feelings about those coreligionists who chose what seems to be 12

On the relevance of Islamic Studies for Islam itself, see Fazlur RAHMAN, "Islamic Studies and the Future of Islam" in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1 9 8 0 , pp. 1 2 5 - 1 3 3 .

132

Issues in Islamic Studies

the easier way: living and working in and with the West. They may worry about those people's commitments and identity. Muslims who stay at home insist that, whatever happens, Muslims in the West should remain Muslims. There may be moments of envy, but in the context of present-day Western-Muslims tensions, those who remain in their countries maintain a certain pride. Muslim immigrants in the West, living now under numerous pressures, exhibit independent attitudes that testify to human dignity and self-respect. An older Muslim generation clung to the particularities of its tradition. The younger generations, though, have to be more flexible and encompassing in their way of life. At the present time social, cultural, economic, and political differences are perhaps less absolute than previous generations thought. At this point, there is reason to plead for more exchanges and cooperation in Islamic Studies. It was a good initiative, for example, to involve editors of various backgrounds in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'än project. 13 For some time there were only a few Muslim scholars who had been trained in critical textual and historical scholarship. That situation is slowly changing now for the better. For a number of subjects, the active participation of Muslim scholars is badly needed. They are more alert to nuances of meaning and better able to identify the intricacies of past and present interpretations than scholars who did not grow up in a Muslim tradition. In their research, they may be more sensitive than relative outsiders to connections between their particular subject of study and the wider world of Muslim life and thought. As far as teaching is concerned, Muslim institutions should, of course, rule in their own house. Yet, in educational institutions, providing information and communication to students has become a rule of behavior. It would be a pity and even a handicap for students if they could never listen to scholars from backgrounds other than their own. Academic standards, of course, are to be maintained in all better institutions, whether academic or sectarian. There is a need for scholarly quality precisely in the field of the study of religions. That means in the first place a need for good teachers as well as good students. Achieving good quality requires basic facilities, such as a good library and technical equipment, including computers, sizable classrooms, and space for individual study. Original research work is to be encouraged in personal contacts. All of this demands funding, beyond decent salaries paid to the staff: scholarships for gifted but needy students, subsidies for

13

Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, Jane Dämmen den-Boston-Köln, 2 0 0 1 - 2 0 0 6 .

MCAULIFFE,

General Editor, 5 vols., Lei-

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

133

further research or special training, and participation in scholarly meetings, perhaps also inviting guest speakers and teachers. It should be clear to all those involved that Islamic Studies aim neither to destroy nor to impose Islam or a particular reading of it. Muslim students should not be afraid of critical scholarship as long as it stays within the limits of reason. Scholars should recognize the search for knowledge and insight as the common purpose of students and teachers. Those who participate should be aware that they are all in a learning process in which feelings of superiority or inferiority should not count. Scholarly exchange and cooperation between researchers in the field of Islamic Studies and Study of Islam also offer an alternative to fruitless debates between the Muslim and the Western world. They allow Muslims to be actors in contact with Westerners. Existing barriers have been in part the result of Western hegemony. Present-day models, methods, and theoretical developments in Islamic Studies have been largely developed in the West but they have become accessible now. M u c h of their know-how, scholarly instruments, and technical tools nowadays lies in the West but it has become available for scholars elsewhere. There is a tremendous knowledge of Islam assembled in the West and it is available to all seriously interested researchers. There are computerized databases accessible through the Internet, with corresponding scholarly networks. In many academic circles in Europe and North America, there is a real drive toward knowledge, with a refusal to consider anything taboo for scholarly investigation. Scholars have developed an analytical sharpness that seeks to lay bare the processes and mechanisms of sacralization, construction, ideologization, and politicization, in the case of Islam as in that of other cultures and religions. Anything can be made the subject of research and nothing is absolutized except, at least in some quarters, the scholarly enterprise itself. Researchers from Muslim countries—also in the study of Islam— should have more opportunities—to work in Europe and the West in general. But let us now look also at the other side of the coin of scientific progress. In the present thorough rationalization of scholarship, the very concept of "Islamic" Studies and even that of "Islam" risks losing the somewhat ideal meaning, the value it has had until now. Fact finding is the rule. Factual research dominates. In Islamic as well as other cultural and intercultural studies of the humanities and social sciences, the demand is now for professionalism and productivity. Doing Islamic Studies is tending to become a research job like any other. Some deeper questioning, a more reflective vision of Islam, a more personal insight into Islamic norms and values, or a broader view of the place and role

134

Issues in Islamic Studies

of Muslims among humankind, may be original and true. However, it does not as such help researchers to find a job and to survive the rigors of the present-day job market. Fortunately, there are always inquisitive minds and researchers who work not only for their daily bread but also for the sake of true knowledge as an aim in itself. Whatever their personal motivations, scholarly subjects, and wider aims, it is among such motivated scholars, whatever their background, that cooperation is needed, sought, and will bear fruit. The time is over when Muslims were mere informants for Western scholars, simply translators or language instructors. Increasingly, scholars with different backgrounds have started doing research together. Western scholars have to learn about the intricacies of intellectual life in Muslim societies. In Islamic Studies many subjects require research that only Muslim scholars can design and carry out adequately. Muslim participation in academic Islamic Studies should avail itself of more research and teaching appointments at Western institutions. Openness to qualified scholars from outside is the best alternative to scholarly "Apartheid", at the cost of brains and minds. 1 4

Appendix Personal Reflections

on an Anti-Cultural

World

After the preceding lines on Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations I would like to express some personal reflections about the world in which we have to build up our intercultural relations. Political developments since the late 1 9 8 0 s have affected Islamic Studies most unfavorably, after the positive inspiring upsurge that started in the 1 9 5 0 s and lasted some thirty years. At that time brilliant scholarly minds were active and people were open to cooperation and dialogue. Since then, however, various critical negative factors have appeared and made us work in a world where culture is yielding now more and more to barbarism. I will mention here a few examples of what stands in the way of true intercultural relations, of people respecting creativity and culture.

14

There is an increasing need for qualified teachers of college level, both for Muslim and other students. training of such teachers, the competences required For Germany, see for instance, Islamische Theologie,

Islam at the secondary school and Attention should be given to the and the pedagogy to be followed. ed. by Ursula NEUMANN.

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

135

First of all, there is the deep-rooted and protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict, involving increasing oppression and violence. The past sixty years have shown that the two sides have not shared the same vision of a solution to the conflict. If Israelis are said to be afraid of peace, Palestinians must be said not to like war. After sixty years, at least we know all the ways in which the problem cannot be solved, unless both parties change their stand. Those responsible for continuing the conflict are also responsible for the disastrous consequences it has had for life and culture of the two peoples concerned, and for the situation of the Middle East as a whole. Whose interests does this conflict really serve? Who have been responsible for making so many innocent victims and causing so much material and immaterial destruction? Who are the ones to blame and who should be judged some day for their crimes? Who wants to perpetuate this conflict? Who really wants to end it? Since forty years the Israeli settler movement with its lust for land and covered by a religious ideology has been supported by the state of Israel, at the cost of the Palestinian population. There are the Islamist movements with their ideologization of Islam, leading to political absolutization, human abuse, and violence. There are tensions between Muslims and the West. Since the Gulf War of 1991, if not earlier, and with an increase in Western claims and ambitions, there has been reason to speak of a real crisis in dialogue between the Arabs and the West. This has intensified since 2 0 0 1 and 2 0 0 3 , adding itself to other Muslim people. There is current American foreign policy with its aim of economic empire, approval and protection of any Israeli action, belief in military solutions, pride in the US national interest, and spirit of provocation on the international scene, that have induced tensions and conflicts. All of this reminds me of 19 th -century empires in Europe and their drive toward colonization at other people's cost. In fact, it led to their own end. There is the war on terrorism, that recalls the Cold War. There is terrorism now, just as there used to be communism, but a wise man seeks to know their different forms and various causes to be able to cope with them. A war on terrorism that upsets legal order, defies rationality, and defames Muslim people and their Islam cannot be won. It creates a cry for justice, and its lack of justice creates anxieties, anger and hatred on all sides. The consequences of this war for the ordinary people who are its victims, numb the mind, as do all wars waged by superpowers. Finally, if Islam is constantly given a negative connotation in Western countries and on the international scene, of what use will Islamic Studies be, apart from serving strategic and security concerns?

136

Issues in Islamic Studies

More than ever, we need Islamic Studies understood to be a responsible scholarly task shared by Muslim, Western, and other scholars with a desire for knowledge and who are fond of cultural creativity and relations between people of different cultures.

Selected

Literature

1. Inter cultural Relations and Islam Richard W., The Case for Islamo-Cbristian Civilization, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Chretiens et musulmans en dialogue. Les identites en devenir (Travaux du G R I C , 1 9 9 6 - 2 0 0 3 ) , dir. by Vincent FEROLDI, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2 0 0 3 . Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Perceptions? In Search of Common Ground for Understanding, Granada: World Policy Institute Dialogue, 2002. CRESPI, Gabriele, L'Europe musulmane, Paris: Zodiaque, 1 9 8 2 . GHANI, Cyrus, Iran and the West. A Critical Bibliography, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1987. Israel and Ishmael. Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations, ed. by Tudor PAREITT, Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2000. LOUCA, Anwar, L'autre Egypte. De Bonaparte ä Taha Hussein (Cahier des Annales islamologiques no. 26), Cairo: Institut Franjais d'Archeologie Orientale, 2006. Muslim-Jewish Encounters. Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics, ed. by Ronald L . N E T T L E R and Suha TAJI-FAROUKI (Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations), Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. Muslims and the West. Encounter and Dialogue, ed. by Zafar Ishaq ANSARI and John L. ESPOSITO, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, and Washington, D.C.: Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, 2001. The New Crusades. Constructing the Muslim Enemy, ed. by Michael A . SELLS and Emran QURESHI, New York: Columbia University Press, 2 0 0 3 . NIEUWENHUIJZE, C. A. O. VAN, Cross-Cultural Studies, The Hague: Mouton, 1963. —, "Frictions between Presuppositions in Cross-Cultural Communication", in ID., Cross-Cultural Studies, pp. 192-221. —, "Oriental Studies as Intercultural Studies", Orient, vol. 22 (1981), pp. 113120. —, "Islam and the West: Worlds apart? A Case of Interactive Sociocultural Dynamics", Arabica, Vol. 42 (1995), pp. 380-403. SIKAND, Yoginder, Muslims in India since 1947. Islamic Perspectives on InterFaith Relations, London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004. Der Westen und die islamische Welt. Eine muslimische Position, Berlin: Europäisch-islamischer Kulturdialog des Auswärtigen Amtes, Stuttgart: IFA, 2004. ZAKI VALIDI, Ahmed, "Considerations sur la collaboration scientifique entre l'Orient islamique et l'Europe", Revue des Etudes Islamiques, vol. 9 (1935), pp. 249-271. BULLIET,

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

2. Muslim Discovery of

137

Europe

ABU-LUGHOD, Ibrahim, Arab Rediscovery of Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963. HANAFI, Hasan, "De l'orientalisme Ä l'occidentalisme", Peuples Mediterraneens, vol. 50 (1990), pp. 1 1 5 - 1 2 0 . HILDEBRANDT, Thomas, Emanzipation oder Isolation vom westlichen Lehrer? Die Debatte um Hasan Hanafls "Einführung in die Wissenschaft der Okzidentalistik" (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 212), Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1998. LEWIS, Bernard, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982. LOUCA, Anouar, Voyageurs et Scrivains egyptiens en France au XIXe siecle. Paris: Didier, 1970. MUIMAYIZ, Ibrahim al-, "The Urgent Need for a New Orientalism and a New Occidentalism", Conference on Orientalism, Amman, 2 2 - 2 4 October 2002, ed. by Sami A. KHASAWMH, Amman: The University of Amman, 2004, pp. 47-56.

3. Muslims in Europe and North

America

BARI, Muhammad Abdul, Race, Religion and Muslim Identity in Britain, Swansea: Renaissance Press, 2005. BENCHEIKH, Soheib, Marianne et le Prophete. L'islam dans la France laique, Paris: Grasset, 1998. BRODEUR, Patrice, "The Changing Nature of Islamic Studies and American Religious History (Studies)" (Two Parts), The Muslim World, Vol. 91 (Spring 2001), pp. 7 1 - 9 8 ; and Vol. 92 (Spring 2002), pp. 1 8 5 - 2 0 8 . BUYS, F . J . and J . RATH, Muslims in Europe. The State of Research, New York City: Rüssel Sage Foundation, 2003. CESARI, Jocelyne, Etre musulman en France. Associations, militants et mosquees, Paris: Karthala and Aix-en-Provence: Iremam, 1994. —, "Les identites musulmanes en Europe et aux Etats-Unis", in L'Europe des Religions. Elements d'analyse des champs religieux europeens, ed. by Richard FRIEDLI and Mallory SCHNEUWLY PURDIE (Studia Religiosa Helvetica, Jahrbuch, Vol. 8/9, 2002/03), Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 6 9 - 9 3 . Convergences musulmanes. Aspects contemporains de la presence musulmane dans I'Europe elargie, ed. by Felice DASSETTO, Brigitte MARECHAL, Jörgen NIELSEN, Paris: L'Harmattan, and Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant, 2001. DASSETTO, Felice, La construction de l'islam europeen. Approche socio-anthropologique, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996. FETZER, Joel S . and J. Christopher SOPER, Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. La formation des cadres religieux musulmans en France. Approches socio-juridiques, ed. by Franck FREGOSI, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998.

138

Issues in Islamic Studies

HADDAD, Yvonne Yazbeck, Not quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States, Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2004. —, and T . L . ADAIR, Islamic Values in the United States. A Comparative Study, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Islam and the European Union, ed. by Richard Ροτζ and Wolfgang WIESHAIDER, Leuven: Peeters, 2004. L'Islam et les musulmans dans I'Europe elargie: Radioscopie. A Guidebook on Islam and Muslims in the Wide Contemporary Europe, ed. by Brigitte MARECHAL, Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant, 2002. Islamische Theologie. Internationale Beiträge zur Hamburger Debatte, ed. by Ursula NEUIMANN, Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung, 2002. IZETBEGOVIC, Aiija Ali, Islam between East and West, Indianapolis: American Trust, 1984. JANSON, Torsten, Your Cradle is Green. The Islamic Foundation and the Call to Islam in Children's literature (Lund Studies in History of Religions, 18), Lund University: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies; Stockholm: Almqvist, 2003. KHOSROKHAVAR, Farhad, L'Islam des jeunes, Paris: Flammarion, 1997. —, L'islam dans les prisons, Paris: Balland, 2004. LATHION, Stephane, Musulmans d'Europe. L'emergence d'une identiti citoyenne, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. LEONARD, K., Muslims in the US. The State of Research, New York City: Russel Sage Foundation, 2003. MODOOD, Tariq, Multicultural Politics. Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Muslim Communities in the New Europe, ed. by G. NONNEIMAN; T. NIBLOCK; and B. SZAJKOWSKI, Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1996. Muslim European Youth, Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, Culture, ed. by S. VERTOVEC and A. ROGERS, Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998. Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, ed. by Stefano ALLIEVI and Jörgen S. NIELSEN, Leiden: Brill, 2003. Muslims in the Enlarged Europe: Religion and Society, ed. by Brigitte MARECHAL, Stefano ALLIEVI, Felice DASSETTO, Jörgen NIELSEN (Muslim Minorities, vol. 2). Leiden: Brill, 2003. Muslims in Europe. From the Margin to the Centre, ed. by Jamal MALIK (Religionswissenschaft: Forschung und Wissenschaft 1), Münster: Lit, 2004. Muslims on the Americanization Path?, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Muslims' Place in the American Public Square. Hope, Fears, and Aspirations, e d . b y Z . H . BUKHARI, S . S . NYANG, M . AHIMAD, a n d J . L . ESPOSITO, W a l n u t

Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2004. NASR, Seyyed Hossein, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World, Cambridge (UK): The Islamic Texts Society, 1993. The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe, ed. by T . GERHOLIM and Y . G . LITHMAN, London: Mansell, 1988. Paroles d'Islam: Individus, societes et discours dans l'islam europien contemporain; Islamic Words: Individuals, Societies and Discourse in Contemporary

Islamic Studies and Intercultural Relations

139

European Islam, ed. by Felice DASSFTTO, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2000 (Contributions in English and French). RAMADAN, Tariq, Les musulmans dans la la'icite. Responsabilites et droits des musulmans dans les societes occidentales, Lyon: Tawhid, 1994. —, To be a European Muslim, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1999. French edition: Etre un musulman europäen, Lyon: Tawhid, 1999. —, Islam, the West and the Challenge of Modernity, Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2001. —, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. French edition: Les Musulmans d'Occident et l'avenir de l'islam. Paris: Actes Sud, 2003. RATH, J . ; R . PENNINX; K . GROENENDIJK; A. M E Y E R , Western Europe and its Islam. The Social Reaction to the Institutionalization of "New Religion" in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom, Leiden: Brill, 2001. Religion - ein deutsch-türkisches Tabu? Deutsch-türkisches Symposium 1996, Hamburg: Körber Stiftung, 1997. ROALD, Anne Sofie, Women in Islam. The Western Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. ROHE, Matthias, Der Islam - Alltagskonflikte und Lösungen. Rechtliche Perspektiven, Freiburg, etc.: Herder, 2001. SAYYID, Bobby, A Fundamental Fear. Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism, London: Zed Books, 1997, 2 n d ed. 2003. SEDDON, Mohammad Siddique, "The Infidel Within": Muslims in Britain since 1800, London: Hurst & Company, 2004. —, with Dilwar HUSSAIN and Nadeem MALIK, British Muslims Between Assimilation and Segregation. Historical, Legal and Social Realities, Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2004. SPERBER, Jutta, Christians and Muslims. The Dialogue Activities of the World Council of Churches and their Theologial Foundations, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000. Taking Back Islam. American Muslims Reclaim their Faith, ed. by Michael WOLFE, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2002. TIETZE, Nikola, Jeunes musulmans de France et d'Allemagne. Les constructions subjectives de l'identiti, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. Turkish Islam and Europe/Türkischer Islam und Europa, ed. by Günter SEUFERT and Jacques WAARDFNBURG (Beiruter Texte und Studien 8 2 ) , Istanbul: Deutsches Orient Institut, and Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999. WFIBFL, Nadine B., Par-delä le voile. Femmes d'islam en Europe, Paris: Complexe, 2000.

4. The Muslim World and the Western World Arabs and the West. Mutual Images, Papers of a Seminar at the University of Jordan, April 3-5, 1998, ed. by J. S. NIELSEN and S. A. KHASAWNIH, Amman: The University of Jordan, 1998. BECKINGHAiM, C. F., Between Islam and Christendom, London: Variorum Reprints, 1983.

140

Issues in Islamic Studies

BULLIET, Richard W., The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Perceptions? In Search of Common Ground for Understanding, Granada: World Policy Institute Dialogue, 2002. CoRiM, Georges, L'Europe et l'Orient. De la balkanisation a la libanisation. Histoire d'une modernite inaccomplie, Paris: La Decouverte, 1989. DJAIT, Hichem, Europe and Islam. Cultures and Modernity, Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1985. Euro-Arab Dialogue. The Relations between the Two Cultures, Acts of the Hamburg Symposium, April 11th to 15th, 1983, London, etc.: Croom Helm, 1985. HOURANI, Albert, Islam in European Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Islam and Christianity. Mutual Perceptions since the mid-20th Century, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven: Peeters, 1998. LEWIS, Bernard, Islam and the West, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Muslim-Christian Perceptions of Dialogue Today. Experiences and Expectations, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven: Peeters, 2000. Muslims and the West. Encounter and Dialogue, ed. by Zafar Ishaq ANSARI and John L. ESPOSITO, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, and Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, 2001. The New Crusades. Constructing the Muslim Enemy, ed. by Michael A. SELLS and Emran QURESHI, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. NIEUWENHUIJZE, C. A. O. VAN, "Islam and the West: Worlds apart? A Case of Interactive Sociocultural Dynamics", Arabica, Vol. 42, 1995, pp. 380-403. RODINSON, Maxime, "Le monde musulman et l'Europe. A propos d'un ouvrage de Bernard Lewis", Turcica, Vol. 15 (1983), pp. 349-363. SHABAN, Fuad, Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought. The Roots of Orientalism in America, New York: Acorn Press, 1991. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Islam et Occident face a face. Regards de l'histoire des religions, Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1998. —, "L'Europe dans le miroir de l'Islam", Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, Vol. 53, 1999, pp. 103-128. —, "Reflections on the West", in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI and Basheer M . NAFI, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004, pp. 260-295. WATT, W . Montgomery, Muslim-Christian Encounters. Perceptions and Misperceptions, London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Der Westen und die islamische Welt. Eine muslimische Position, Berlin: Europäisch-islamischer Kulturdialog des Auswärtigen Amtes, Stuttgart: IFA, 2004.

Chapter 6 Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies 1. Introduction When we do scholarly work on texts, or other evidence, to gain true knowledge of reality—or at least certain aspects of it—we are basically striving to " d o justice" to reality. 1 This holds true not only for the facts we have to establish with the critical tools at our disposal, but also for the meaning these facts had, or still have, for the people concerned, showing us something of their expressions, views, and problems. The search for generally valid knowledge is constitutive for scholarship. Those who are led by particular principles or ideals—even of the highest kind—tend to ignore data that fall outside the scope of those principles and ideals. Both the skeptic and the idealist, for instance, tend to distort reality. It is to know how things really are or were that we interrogate the available data. We cannot afford to have presuppositions and assumptions that would either make research meaningless, or replace critical verification by preconceived dogmas and ideas.

2. Presuppositions and Assumptions What should be understood by "presuppositions" and "assumptions"? Both have to do with the conditions under which knowledge is pursued. Whereas assumptions are held implicitly, not necessarily consciously, presuppositions are the conscious starting point from which a scholar pursues knowledge, thereby rejecting alternative points of departure or approaches. Such presuppositions may, but need not be ideological; many of them are methodological and theoretical and some of them are only technical. It is essential that presuppositions be articulated, in one way or another, as axioms underlying the investigation. ι

Reworked text of J . WAARDENBURG, "Assumptions and Presuppositions in Islamic Studies", Rocznik Orientalistyczny, Vol. 43 (1984), pp. 1 6 1 - 1 7 0 .

142

Issues in Islamic Studies

They may be articulated not only in the course of the scholarly work itself, but may also be expressed in more incidental remarks about what a scholar considers society or culture, religion or civilization—or simply the human being—to be. Assumptions, on the other hand, are implicit. From time to time the scholar may become aware of some of them in a passing flash of insight. Assumptions appear to be related to the external conditions under which a scholar works and his social and cultural context. I became interested in these matters that underlie and precede our actual research work when preparing my doctorate dissertation, which analyzed the scholarly images of Islam presented in the work of five distinguished Islamicists who wanted to study Islam impartially. 2 It was interesting not only that each scholar had a different overall image, but also that each interpreted significant details of Islam in a different way. It became clear that, in these cases, the details of a civilization such as Islam were often seen in relation to an overall picture or idea of it that developed during their research. Moreover, both the overall image and the interpretation of details arose in the perspective of a specific discipline and they were to a large extent variables of what a particular scholar understood as "civilization" and "religion" in general. In other words, in the study of Islam as carried out by these first-rate scholars between roughly 1880 and 1950, we have to do not only with their own concrete findings, but also with the particular framework of reference they used. Their findings found their place and could be appreciated within this framework. So there appears to be every reason to relate a creative scholar's findings, especially if ideas are concerned, to the overall image he or she develops of his or her subject matter. Subsequently, one should relate this overall image not only to the "real" facts and state of affairs of the subject matter under investigation, but also to the methodology and theoretical framework the scholar used and to his or her cultural or acultural and religious or non-religious presuppositions. The next step is to relate these scholarly presuppositions to the scholar's implicit assumptions, linked to the social context, the working conditions, and the broader cultural situation he works in. When I looked at the work of some scholars of Islam in the past, trying to establish the relation between each scholar and "his" Islam, I was not only interested in the history of scholarship and in past situations. By knowing something of how their work was conditioned by their 2

Jean-Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'lslam dans le miroir orientalistes occidentaux se sont penches sur l'lslam religion: I. Goldziber, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. signon, 3 r d revised edition, The Hague and Paris: 381 p.

de l'Occident. Comment quelques et se sont forme une image de cette Becker, D. B. Macdonald, L. MasMouton Publishers, 1970, X I V +

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

143

time, I was curious to discover some rules of the conditionings that apply to our work too, so that we can obtain insight, draw conclusions, and adopt an attitude. But there is more to it than that. I have always had the impression that some prominent scholars of Islam whom I have been able to meet, such as Louis Massignon, Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, worked by questioning the available materials they studied in particular ways. Their questions can be traced back to a kind of basic framework of reference and interpretation. It had to do with the culture in which they lived and with an interest in various basic outlooks on human beings and life. It is this way of studying Islamic history or Muslim societies that makes their work as a whole more interesting than the sum total of their concrete investigations. To put it in my terms, these scholars showed that they had minds of their own.

2.1.

Presuppositions

With regard to the problem of scholarly presuppositions in Islamic Studies, an analysis of the work of five Islamic scholars of the "classical" stage of these studies—all five educated in the academic culture of Western Europe before World War I—proved to be fruitful. The differences between these five images of Islam could be explained not so much by checking the image against what we now know of Islamic realities, but by taking each scholarly work as a whole and analyzing its inner coherence. First, I was interested in the basic intentions of the work taken as a whole, the most important or innovating concepts that each used, and the concrete results obtained, as well as the relationship between intentions, concepts, and results. Second, I became aware of the role of certain assumptions in scholarly work that are rooted in the context in which a scholar works and of which he or she is not always conscious. Third, I concentrated on the subjective elements in a scholar's image of Islam. These cannot be explained by the subject matter under investigation, but—as intentions and presuppositions—only by the personality of the scholar. There indeed turned out to be a direct correlation between a scholar's intellectual and scholarly "position" and the perspective from which he views his subject matter. It is precisely this perspective that shows itself in the image the scholar develops of the subject matter of his investigation and that can be drawn from his work. At three moments, at least, the scholar's subjectivity plays an important role: in his own stand or position at the point of departure of his re-

144

Issues in Islamic Studies

search; in the process of his gradual "discovery" of Islam; and in his recognition of its inherent values. The relation between a scholar and the "Islam" he studied proved to be important in several respects: (1) when a scholar is striving for knowledge and understanding, a certain relation crystallizes between him and his now better-known subject matter; (2) his presuppositions and his attitude towards an unknown object are of fundamental importance for obtaining knowledge; (3) this relation and this attitude gain in significance the more deeply engaged he is in knowing his subject matter. In the case of the five scholars under consideration, we carried out four tasks: (1) traced their presuppositions and approaches with their disciplines, methods, and theoretical frameworks; (2) compared their attitudes toward their subject of studies; (3) explored the relations between the scholar and " h i s " Islam; (4) searched for the meaning Islam took on for each particular scholar, that is to say, the impact of the discovered object on the subject. An interesting result was that, at least in the five cases analyzed, apparently in creative scholarly work the role of a scholar's presuppositions is immense. Let me sum up the conclusions reached about the problem of the role of presuppositions in scholarly work, including Islamic Studies, in five points. (1) On the basis of a scholar's written work and biographical data, it is possible to reconstruct to a large extent the genesis and elaboration of a scholarly work in its historical development. (2) On the same basis, and taking into account possible oral accounts and communications, it is possible to disentangle the basic intentions of a scholarly work. One should take this work as a whole and pay attention to those aspects that reveal such intentions, such as the concepts used, the inner coherence of the work, and also particular statements made by a scholar on subjects such as scholarship, science, history, society, religion, reason, etc. (3) It is possible to reconstitute and analyze the image a scholar presents of his object of study in relation to the "subjective" elements of the image that cannot be explained by the nature of the object itself. Closer analysis of such subjective elements shows that they contain not only intentions but also value judgments, and types of factual relationship. They have to do with aims of research, recognized values, and applied general concepts. Presuppositions and intentions reveal themselves in particular interpretations of the subject matter.

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

145

(4) On the basis of these "subjective" elements, it is possible, at least in principle, to establish the epistemological position of a particular scholar and to correlate this with the perspective from which the subject matter was viewed and that shows in the image developed by the scholar. A scholar's position is supposed to be existential—having to do with his life—and can be checked against biographical data about his personality. It goes without saying that the subjective elements and the scholar's existential position can be known only approximately. Theoretically speaking, they enter into a scholar's growing interest in the subject matter which then becomes "his", in his gradually discovering the subject matter, in the values and structures he recognizes in it, and of course in the final result of his research. This can usefully be compared with the initial point of departure of his research. (5) Though all of this may be valid for all scholarly work or research, it is particularly relevant if the object of study has a "human" aspect—as in the humanities and social sciences. Here the "human" side of the scholar becomes involved in the learning process, perhaps less in his knowledge of facts than in his understanding of their meaning. Any analysis shows that, professionally, a scholar is first and foremost centered on discovery and invention. Lofty as these words and ideas may sound, they constitute the focus of his mental activity, the direction of his mind. The particular sector to which the interest is applied may vary, but the movement itself aims at the unknown and what—in some way or another—attracts. On an intellectual level, this leads to a desire to know. It is clear that, without certain presuppositions, a scholar would not only not be able to discover anything; he would also not even exist as a scholar. Indeed, he would have no motivation to do research at all.

2.2.

Assumptions

Unlike presuppositions that orient research on a conscious level and that we can spot through analysis of a given scholarly work, assumptions are of a less personal nature and occur on a less conscious level. They are largely determined by the circumstances of a given time and place, by the social context in which scholars work, and by the broader cultural and political situation. I would like to give three instances of situations that were reflected in studies of Muslim realities. First, the Middle Ages and still later times in which, in the Christian West, Islam was seen as a danger or at least as a power to be reckoned with. In addition to the people who wanted to fight this power mili-

146

Issues in Islamic Studies

tarily, politically, or ideologically, there were also those who wanted to investigate it and to discover the sources of its power, specifically its religious sources. Like many other things, Islamic Studies at that time were largely born out of fear: the scholar of Islam studied an enemy about whom, as with other enemies, available data were scarce. Second are Islamic Studies in Europe during the century (1850-1950) in which European nations—England, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain—had political control over nearly all Muslim territories. The major political decisions about the future of these peoples were largely made in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and The Hague. Islam, at that time, belonged to the indigenous populations who did not participate in modern Western civilization or in the Christian religion. Islam as a straightforward enemy had been subdued, but remained a danger in an indirect sense. In so-called pan-Islamic or nationalistic movements, local uprisings could take place that would appeal to Islam, to conduct jihäd. This meant that much research on contemporary Islam during this century was done in the context of Western colonial policies. Research could be completely subservient to the intelligence services through which Western governments were informed about the actions of religious leaders and religious agitators. But research could also lead to binding advice in juridical matters, such as the application of Shan a law, the use of adat law, the introduction and practice of Western law, problems of codification, etc. It could also lead to more political advice about what was going on among the Muslim population. More subtly, in certain cases the colonial government also determined the questions research was to address. On the whole, the image of Islam was rather bleak and the average scholar working in the field tended to see Muslims as moving toward a dead end, their societies as doomed to stagnancy, their beliefs and practices as survivals from the past and their religion as a tradition that hindered development. For most Europeans at the time, it was simply not possible to see a "future" for Muslims and their society outside the colonial relationship. However, opposing this majority group of skeptical researchers in each "colonial" country there was also a small group of better-informed scholars of Islam. They not only had a certain knowledge of contemporary Muslim societies and of the history of Islamic civilization, but they also, for some reason, took a more sympathetic stand toward Muslim populations under Western rule. It is typical that, apart from a few scholars working on contemporary Islam, a much greater number of others devoted themselves to studying Islamic history, philology, or historical literature. Unless I am mistaken, this withdrawal of

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

147

scholars from the realities of the contemporary scene may have had something to do with an atmosphere of tension, unreality, or alienation, in the colonies whenever the question of the vitality and future of the indigenous religion was raised. The question of the political future of Muslim countries must have been present in the minds of Europeans living in the colonies and must have caused uncertainty. The third example is more recent and more ideological. This is the stress in the West on cooperation, understanding, and dialogue with Islam, especially between the 1960s and the 1990s. This is partly a reaction to earlier negative attitudes, such as missionary efforts made without much regard for what Muslims themselves were, believed, or thought. It is partly also the opening up of a dimension of common human needs and solidarity among people of different cultural and religious traditions. This change in attitude during the last sixty years also has to do with important changes in the world situation and in the mentalities of both Muslim and Western people. Whereas sixty years ago Islam was generally held to be responsible for the state of underdevelopment in those countries, it is now acknowledged that situations of stagnation, tension, and conflict are too complex to be ascribed solely to religious views and practices. In scholarship we have to look for empirical earthly antecedents and causes.

3. Islamic Studies After these examples of actual presuppositions and assumptions, let us turn to what this means for Islamic Studies. Let us frankly say that the term "Islamic Studies" itself is, of course, an intellectual construct and demands interpretation. Many scholars who research specific subjects in language and literature, history and social sciences concerning Muslim cultures would be astonished to see their work classified as "Islamic" studies. They rather see themselves as working on particular subjects or within the confines of a particular discipline, applying its methods and techniques to the subject of their choice. Other scholars would criticize the term as entailing a deformation of the facts. Most data of Muslim societies have many more aspects than just the "Islamic" one, and they often have nothing to do with Islam. Much depends on what we understand by "Islamic" and what we call "Islam". Many scholars consider a term such as "Islamic Studies" simply a formal organizational umbrella for study programs, teaching centers, and research institutes that touch upon Islam, but not much more. What would one expect, for instance, "Buddhist" or "Christian" Studies to be? Such terms are simply too broad and pretentious.

148

Issues in Islamic Studies

If we want to retain the expression "Islamic Studies", I suggest that we leave the meaning open to the researchers themselves, but they should explain what they understand by it and make their aims and presuppositions as clear as possible. It should not be the purpose of these studies to ascertain what "Islam" really is on earth and in heaven, in ideals and in practice, with its metaphysical or theological implications, as if it were a thing or a kind of entity in itself. We should study what people think it is, how they "construct" Islam. I also have reservations about studying Islam as a "religion" or as a "civilization", since scholars often apply particular models for this while neglecting those aspects that we cannot classify under a general category such as "religion" or "civilization", but that are essential for understanding the data. Summaries of the doctrines (articles of faith) and prescripts (religious and social duties) of normative Islam are useful, but the realities of living Islam and Muslim life practices in context are then neglected. It makes more sense to ask what ways of life Muslims had and have, either as a view of life as such, or as the way they lived under specific conditions and circumstances. It also makes sense to ask what Muslims mean when they speak of their Islam as their highest norm and what they themselves consider to be their own norms and values. But although such a definition of Islamic Studies may make sense, it is still too broad and comprehensive. It would imply studying all that Muslims in various times and places have done, thought, and believed. Personally, I suggest distinguishing three dimensions in the expression "Islamic Studies". First of all, it should imply the study of Qur'än and hadtths in their contexts and the development of the religious sciences (usül al-din) in Islam. Second, it should be the study of what Muslims and Muslim societies have in common, including the acceptance of "Islam", people's selfidentification as "Muslim", and the qualification of things as "Islamic". Third, it should imply an exploration of the meanings various groups of Muslims and Muslim thinkers, especially since the 19 t h century, have given to Islam. The significance of Islam in religious, cultural, social, and political matters should be made clear according to the interpretations Muslims have given to it.

4. Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies There are various kinds of presuppositions and assumptions we can distinguish when we study the expressions of people who identify them-

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

149

selves as Muslims—if we take this to be the distinguishing mark of this field. This is already a presupposition in itself. We are concerned here with data relevant in terms of their "Muslim" if not "Islamic" quality. The first set of assumptions centers on the mostly unreflected identification of "Islam". What kind of idea, picture, or value judgment emerges when the notion of "Islam" comes to the mind of a scholar? It will often start with the current associations of the term in the immediate context in which the scholar lives and works, since such old "pre-scholarly" notions continue to play a role. The same is true for the particular training of a student, or even a particular teacher's attitude toward Islam. It may sound somewhat ridiculous, but there have been trends in Islamic Studies that considered "Islam"—whatever it meant—outdated, something negative from a social, cultural, philosophical, or religious point of view. More "sympathetic" trends saw its positive sides. Such evaluations arose especially in countries that ruled over Muslims. Even if such pre-scholarly and often irrational notions were partly or wholly corrected by scholarly research, there could still remain something of them on the level of feeling and emotion—especially if the scholar had visited Muslim countries. The second set of assumptions goes back to the way a particular scholar's country or society has been related to some part of the Muslim world. One may think of the question Orientale in Europe in the 19 th and early 20 t h centuries and of the current Middle East conflict. Most European interest in Islam, especially in recent and contemporary history, has been directed by underlying political and other relationships. If France saw as its task to bring civilization to the Arabs, the Turks, and the Persians, French Islamicists tended to be interested in Islam in cultural terms; if they were interested in Islam in other ways too, it was all the more remarkable. If a scholar nowadays chooses an explicitly anti-Arab or anti-Israel stance, this will determine to a large extent the direction of his or her own interests; it will also condition his or her interpretations. It is all the more remarkable when a scholar in Islamic Studies maintains a professionally well-informed and independent attitude toward existing tensions, conflicts, and religious and social pressures and tries to do justice to the views of all parties involved. In most cases, scholars will tend not to take part in conflict situations, but to adopt a moral stand and carry out their research as their first duty. The third kind of examples have to do more with personal presuppositions than with structural assumptions; they concern the way scholars interpret what is unique and specific and what is humanly universal in Muslim societies. One extreme is to claim uniqueness for anything Muslims do, think, or believe, or, for that matter, what Islam contains as a

150

Issues in Islamic Studies

culture and religion. The other extreme is to deny any distinct intrinsic quality in Islamic phenomena, except the pretension, often made by Muslims, that Islam is unique. The debate between these two extremes is not merely academic. If someone wants to study Islamic realities without relating them to what other cultures or general disciplines offer, he or she consequently fails to see what universal human features appear in the Islamic orbit. Another researcher will play down specifically Muslim features and tend to derive Islamic realities historically from outside or preceding influences or from general social scientific rules. He or she may deny any specific structures in Islam, or special kinds of relationship between Muslims and other people, as if there were no cultural "worlds" fundamentally distinct from each other. The issue becomes still less academic when considering the distance a scholar may perceive between his or her own culture and society, on the one hand, and "Islam" as a culture and society, on the other. Scholars who hold Islam to be unique tend to see this distance as infinite; those who deny any essential differences tend to neglect any distance. They may disdain their subject matter or identify themselves with it. The question of what one considers to be specific, and what universal, in Islamic realities seems to be a key question in Islamic Studies. The fourth kind of presuppositions and assumptions includes all those private values, beliefs, and convictions of the scholar, in the light—or darkness—of which he or she gives a certain evaluation, consciously or unconsciously, of Islamic phenomena. This is the frame of reference within which evaluations are made: in the case of some scholars quite explicitly, in most cases in a less explicit way. It is not only the study and evaluation of individual facts, but also, and especially, the way such facts are connected with each other—their relationships and the interpretations of these relationships—that reflects the total framework of a scholar's reference and evaluations. The only escape from this would be to eliminate rigorously from the very outset the scholar's subjectivity through a complete formalization of the research. However, this would result in an obvious lack of understanding both of the content and quality of the studied phenomena and of the meanings people assign to them. Every effort to understand Islam as a particular civilization, religion, or social system introduces certain unforeseeable side effects due to the scheme of reference that the scholar applies—(self-)critically or not. These imponderables lead to the most interesting interpretations. The debate, therefore, is not whether or not there ought to be a scheme of reference, but rather which one is the most suitable for a given research project. The fifth and last kind of presuppositions and assumptions to be mentioned here is on the most subjective level, that of curiosity and human

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

151

interest. T h e question here is whether and why a particular scholar is interested at all in discovering some " I s l a m i c " meaning beyond the pure facts. W h y is a scholar particularly interested in Islamic phenomena, and what are his motivations for pursuing Islamic Studies? W h y should one study Islam at all? In this field t o o , realists and idealists have different interests, and it is relatively rare that someone is "interested" in something just for its own sake. In most cases, however, it is difficult to trace interests and motivations beyond the intentions that can be found in scholarly w o r k . This difficulty seems to indicate that it is here we really come to the heart of the presuppositions and assumptions in Islamic studies. Let me dismiss at once a possible conclusion from the foregoing, namely that all presuppositions and assumptions are wrong. In that case, any curiosity and interest—and anyone being interested—would be impossible. Goldziher would not have studied Islam the way he did if he had not had his liberal Jewish religious and historical cultural outlook. M a s s i g n o n would not have studied the life and w o r k of al-Halläj the way he did if he had not had his Catholic Christian religious concerns, his delicate dedication to this spiritual figure, and his particular hermeneutics of spiritual truth. In these and other cases the scholar's presuppositions and assumptions distorted the subject matter only to a certain extent. M o r e important is that these same presuppositions and assumptions led to the discovery of new subject matter and that a new field was opened for research. One problem is that, under certain conditions, a particular scholar has presuppositions and assumptions that close him or her off from part of the real world, and that under other conditions certain presuppositions and assumptions give access to reality. It is our presuppositions and assumptions that largely condition what kind of questions we ask.

Selected 1. General Approaches

and

Literature

Methods

Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C . M A R T I N , Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985. A R K O U N , Mohammed, Rethinking Islam. Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1992. —, Art. "Islamic Studies: Methodologies", The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, John L. ESPOSITO Editor in Chief, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 2, 1995, pp. 3 3 2 - 3 4 0 . BRUNSCHVIG, Robert, "Situation de l'Islamologie", in Actes du Colloque sur la sociologie musulmane (1961), Brussels, 1962, pp. 7 5 - 8 3 . Reprinted in ID.,

Issues in Islamic Studies

152

Etudes d'islamologie, Vol. 1, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976, pp. 3 9 47. BURKE III, Edmund, "The Sociology of Islam: The French Tradition", in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR (7TH Georgio Levi della Vida Conference), Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980, pp. 73-88.

Defining Islam, A Reader, ed. by Andrew RIPPIN, London and Oakville: Equinox, 2007. [In five Parts: Theology, Social Sciences, Religion, Civilization, The Media], FÄHNDRICH, Hartmut, "Invariable Factors Underlying the Historical Perspective of Theodor Nöldeke's Orientalische Skizzen", in Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft (UEAI), ed. by A. DIETRICH, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976, pp. 146-154. Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning. Comparative Studies of Muslim Discourse, ed. by W. R. ROEE, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980. KOREN, J., and NEVO, Y. D., "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", Der Islam, Vol. 68 (1991), pp. 87-107. LAROUI, Abdallah, "For a Methodology of Islamic Studies. Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum", Diogenes, Nr. 83 (1973), pp. 12-39. Reprinted in ID., The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual. Traditionalism or Historicism?, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976, Chapter 3. Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI (Religion and Reason 38), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. MEIER, Fritz, "Methods of Approach", in Unity and Diversity in Muslim Civilization, ed. G. E. VON GRUNEBAUM, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 3 8 - 4 6 . "Methodology: On History and Anthropology in the Study of Islam", Humaniora Islamica, Vol. 2, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1974, pp. 2 0 7 - 2 9 9 . NIEUWENHUIJZE, C . A . O. VAN, "The Next Phase in Islamic Studies: Sociology?", in Actes du Colloque sur la sociologie musulmane (1961), Brussels 1962, pp. 393-429. RODINSON, Maxime, "The Western Image of Islam and Western Studies of Islam", in The Legacy of Islam, 2 n d ed., ed. by Joseph SCHACHT and C. E. BOSWORTH, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 9 - 6 2 . —, Europe and the Mystique of Islam. Translation of the author's La fascination de l'Islam, Paris: Maspero, 1980, by Roger VEINUS, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. ROSENTHAL, Franz, "Die Krise der Orientalistik", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, (ZDMG Supplement V), Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983, pp. 10-21. RUDOLPH, Ekkehard, Westliche Islamwissenschaft im Spiegel muslimischer Kritik. Grundzüge und aktuelle Merkmale einer innerislamischen Diskussion (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 137), Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1991.

Presuppositions and Assumptions in Islamic Studies

153

SCHÖLLER, Marco, Methode und Wahrheit in der Islamwissenschaft. Prolegomena, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000. English summary by J. WAARDENBURG in Bibliotheca Orientalis, Vol. 61, No 1-2 (January-April 2004), pp. 228-235. SCHULZE, Reinhard, "Orientalistik und Orientalismus", in Der Islam in der Gegenwart, ed. Udo STEINBACH and Reinhard SCHULZE, München: C . H. Beck, 4 th ed. 1996, pp. 707-717, 5 th ed. 2005. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht" in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, (ZDMG Supplement V), Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983, pp. 197-211. Revised text published in the author's Perspektiven der Religionswissenschaft (Religionswissenschaftliche Studien 25), Würzburg: Echter, and Altenberge: Oros, 1993, pp. 181-195. —, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives (Religion and Reason 40), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. WAINES, David, "Cultural Anthropology and Islam. The Contribution of G. E. von Grunebaum", Review of Middle East Studies, Vol. 2 (1976), pp. 1 1 3 123.

2. Interpretative

Approaches

ADAMS, Charles J., "The Hermeneutics of Henry Corbin", in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN, Tucson, Ariz.: The University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp. 129-150. ALGAR, Hamid, "The Study of Islam. The Works of Henry Corbin", Religious Studies Review, Vol. 6 (1980), pp. 85-91. HANAEI, Hasan, "Hikmat al-ishräq wa-flnüminülüjiya" (Illuminative Philosophy and Phenomenology), in ID., Diräsät Islämiyya (Islamic Studies), Beirut: Dar al-TanwIr, 1986, pp. 209-261. HEATH, Peter, "Creative Hermeneutics. A Comparative Analysis of Three Islamic Approaches", Arabica, vol. 36 (1989), pp. 173-210. KOPF, David, "Hermeneutics versus History", Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 3, Nr. 3 (1980), pp. 495-506. MUJIBURRAHMAN, "The Phenomenological Approach in Islamic Studies", Der Islam, Vol. 68 (1991), pp. 87-107. NASR, Seyyed Hossein, "The Philosophia Perennis and the Study of Religion", in ID., The Need for a Sacred Science, Albany, Ν.Υ.: SUNY Press, 1993, pp. 53-68. ROYSTER, James E., "The Study of Muhammad. A Survey of Approaches from the Perspective of the History and Phenomenology of Religion", The Muslim World, vol. 62 (1972), pp. 49-63. SCHIMMEL, Annemarie, "The Sufis and the Shahäda", in Islam's Understanding of Itself (8th Levi della Vida Conference, May 1-3, 1981), ed. by Richard G. HOVANNISIAN and Speros VRYONIS, JR., Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1983, pp. 103-125.

Part Three The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Chapter 7 Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962) Since his death in 1 9 6 2 , some twenty-five volumes and innumerable articles have appeared about Louis Massignon's work and life. 1 In addition to his biography and the context in which he lived, much attention has been given to the spirituality that constituted the background of his life and work and fascinated his followers. Scholars have viewed Massignon's studies and presentation of al-Halläj and Islamic mysticism in general as a landmark of research in this area of Islamic Studies. Massignon's personal vision of Islam and Muslims and of the relations between Christians and Muslims, as well as his spirited defense of Muslim causes, have both inspired and irritated numerous people. He was dedicated to creating new kinds of attitudes by Christians toward Muslims and new kinds of relations between both groups of believers, on the basis of what must be recognized as a singular personal vocation. These efforts extended not only to the official teachings about Islam, as promulgated in the Vatican and current in the Catholic Church at the time, but also to French colonial and foreign policy, in both cases up to the highest levels. I had the privilege of meeting Louis Massignon quite regularly during the last six years of his life ( 1 9 5 6 - 6 2 ) in connection with my doctoral dissertation on some Orientalists' views of Islam as a religion. In this essay I would like to present his work in the context of Islamic Studies. I begin by giving some bio-bibliographical data on Massignon. In the second part I discuss the way he studied Islam as a religion. To understand his scholarly approach, we have to explore its underlying intentions and the scholar's particular vision of Islam and Muslims. T h e 1

Address delivered on October 2 n d , 1997 at a conference on Louis MASSIGNON held at Notre Dame University. Part of it was published in French under the title "L'impact de l'ceuvre de Louis Massignon sur les etudes islamiques" in Louis Massignon au cceur de notre temps, ed. by J . KERYELL, pp. 2 9 5 - 3 0 4 . The text of 1997 has been considerably revised and enlarged, first as an article "Louis Massignon ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 ) as a Student of Islam" in Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 45 (2005), Nr. 3, pp. 3 1 2 - 3 4 2 (without bibliography), then to the present text (with bibliography).

158

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

third and fourth parts deal with the impact of Massignon's work and particular groups of followers. Finally, I tentatively mention some original features of Massignon's work and some aspects that will remain a subject of discussion and debate in Islamic Studies, especially the study of the religious aspects of Islam.

1. Louis Massignon. Life and Work 2 Louis Massignon was born into a cultivated French family, in Nogentsur-Marne, not far from Paris, on July 25, 1883. His father had studied medicine; as an artist (sculptor) he was actively involved in Parisian cultural life. During his schooldays, Louis developed an interest in the world of what was then called "the Orient", where France was implanting itself at the time, in particular in North Africa. After his secondary school final examination, he traveled to Algiers in 1901; this was his first acquaintance with the Muslim world. Massignon's studies at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1901 concentrated on history, archeology, and geography. His interests also extended to India, and he started to learn Sanskrit with Sylvain Levy. In 1904 he made a trip to Morocco. There he had an experience of mortal danger. He decided to learn Arabic. After his university studies, at the age of 23 Massignon had the good fortune to be attached to the French Archeological Institute in Cairo for the academic year 1 9 0 6 - 7 . There, he studied Arabic texts intensively and explored local Cairo society. Egypt further awakened the young man's passion for experience, his thirst to discover other ways of life, and his desire to have further access to the social and cultural universe of Islam. The following year (1907-8), he spent some seven months on a scholarly mission in Iraq, at that time still under Ottoman rule. The purpose of his mission was historical and archeological research, and he spent much time reading Arabic manuscripts he had discovered 2

The most complete bibliography of works by MASSIGNON appeared in Youakim MouBARAC, L'ceuvre de Louis Massignon, pp. 7 - 8 9 . To this should be added the 2 n d , revised edition of La Passion de Husayn Ihn Mansür Halläj (1975) and its English translation mentioned in Notes 4 and 5, as well as reprints of some books and articles. A succinct bibliography was given in Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'lslam dans le miroir de l'Occident, 3 r d ed., pp. 3 5 1 - 3 5 8 . A short bibliography can be found in Presence de Louis Massignon. Hommages et temoignages, ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON, pp. 2 8 5 - 2 8 9 . For biographical data, see (in English) Mary Louise GUDE, Louis Massignon. The Crucible of Compassion·, (in French) Christian ÜESTREMAU and Jean MONCELON, Louis Massignon·, (in Italian) Giulio BASETTI-SANI, Louis Massignon (1883-1962). Pierre RO CALVE'S study Louis Massignon et l'lslam contains a most valuable Table de concordances, chronologically arranged, of the main biographical data (pp. 1 4 9 - 1 9 3 ) .

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

159

partly in private libraries. As he had done in Cairo, he explored Baghdad and its local society, living in the Arab quarter. Here he became friends with the Alusi family, known for learning and scholarship. They familiarized him with Baghdad's past and present culture. After conducting an archeological expedition to the ruins of Ukhaydir castle south of Baghdad, Massignon came to be in a critical situation suffering physical illness, external threat, and moral despair. After returning to Baghdad and being taken to hospital, he lived through experiences that made him—as he later used to put it—"discover God". 3

1.1.

Spirituality

In the wake of this experience among Muslims, Massignon considered himself a convert living with what one may call a special vocation to the cause of Muslims and Islam. Besides his scholarly self-discipline, he put himself under a rigorous religious, even ascetic discipline, with vows made and kept for the rest of his life. He was close to other converts such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Claudel, and Jacques Maritain. Charles de Foucauld asked Massignon to join him and live among Tauregs in Tamanrasset following his Christian vocation. Massignon decided, however, to stay in the world and have a professional academic career while keeping his vows. He married and later took up public responsibilities besides his research and teaching. In 1933 Massignon became a Franciscan Tertiary. In 1934 in Cairo he founded the Badaltya, a group dedicated to the cause of Muslims and Islam and in particular to a kind of spiritual substitution by Christians for Muslims. Massignon reached the peak of his religious vocation when he was ordained as a priest in the Greek Catholic ("Melkite") Church in Cairo in 1950. He retired in 1954 and died on October 31, 1962, at the age of 79.

1.2.

Research

In his research on Islamic religion, Massignon concentrated from 1908 on the study of early and medieval mysticism. He felt particularly drawn to the Süfl al-Halläj who, accused of heresy, had been executed in Bagdad in 922 A.D. Encouraged by Goldziher, he involved himself in an in-depth study of al-Halläj's life, experiences, and teachings in 3

Daniel M A S S I G N O N , "Le voyage en Mesopotamie et la conversion de Louis Massignon en 1908". Cf. C. D E S T R E M E A U and J . M O N C E L O N , Louis Massignon, Ch. 3 "Vers un audelä indestructible" (pp. 4 2 - 8 1 ) .

160

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

their precise historical, cultural, and religious contexts. This would become a model of what can be achieved through sympathetic research open to the message of mystical experience in Islam. The study was supplemented by a highly technical analysis of the terminology used in early Islamic mystical writings. Further research focused on the development of Islamic religious experience and thought, in particular of Süfl practices. He also traced the reception of al-Halläj's teachings after his death in particular Süfl communities, notwithstanding the fact that alHalläj had been officially banned by Islam. Massignon's research resulted in two substantial theses d'Etat defended at the Sorbonne in May 1923. In 1 9 1 3 - 1 4 , at the suggestion of C. Snouck Hurgronje, Massignon was invited to present lectures in Arabic at the Egyptian University, founded on a private basis in Cairo in 1908. His subject was the history of Islamic philosophy and religious thought. This academic assignment allowed him to renew his earlier Egyptian contacts and establish new ones. Tähä Husayn, for instance, attended these lectures and a friendship developed between the two men. After his doctoral dissertations, Massignon published several books. They comprised editions of mystical texts with a few French translations, some booklets on Islam for a wider public, and some writings on religious subjects for private circulation. His scholarly work also includes a number of articles on a great variety of subjects, specifically pertaining to Islam and its spirituality. He found this spirituality in particular figures, such as al-Halläj, Salmän Päk, and Fätima, or in what he saw as significant encounters between Muslims and Christians, such as the Mubähala, when Muhammad received a Christian delegation from Najrän. He looked for religious links between them, for instance in common rituals, and he was also keen on finding religious connections between Jews, Christians, and Muslims through Abraham. He was particularly interested in archeological findings of religious interest in this sense, for instance at Ephesus. He saw it as his task to view and study Islam as a religio-cultural entity with a wide range of aspects and paid particular attention to the growth and apogee of Islamic civilization in medieval times. For some forty years, he continued to work on a second, enlarged edition of his study on al-Halläj, his "second self", whose life and work appealed to him as being that of a true religious vocation and life in a Muslim context. At the same time, however, Louis Massignon increasingly pursued a continuous interest in what was happening in the contemporary Muslim world and the Arab world in particular. He collaborated actively in the flourishing Revue du Monde Musulman, a French scholarly journal

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

161

founded in 1907. In the early 1920s, he was commissioned to do extensive research on Muslim corporations or "guilds" in Morocco. During 1923-4, he published the first volume of his Annuaire du Monde Musulman, an encyclopedic handbook on the Muslim world, the first of its kind. It offered extensive information, difficult to obtain at the time, about the contemporary situation of Muslim peoples and communities, countries, colonies, and regions. Though Massignon had numerous contacts with people able to give him the necessary information, this was basically a one-man achievement. Three further editions of the handbook appeared, in 1926, 1929, and—in collaboration with Vincent Monteil—1954. The combination of scholarly interests in Islamic mysticism and religion, in medieval history, and in 19 th - and 20 t h -century developments throughout the Muslim world by one scholar, on an academic level, had been rare in Islamic studies and became impossible with increasing specialization. Besides his personal dedication to Muslims and Islam, Massignon was concerned with the situation and the particular vocation of Christians living in Muslim societies, especially in the Middle East. His scholarly career paralleled his research interests. In 1919, Massignon started teaching on Muslim societies as a suppleant at the College de France in Paris. In 1925, at the age of 42, he became Professor of the Sociology of Islam at this venerable French institution. In 1933, he was also appointed Directeur d'etudes of Islam at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, in the 5 t h Section, Sciences Religieuses. After the demise of the Revue du Monde Musulman in 1926, Massignon founded a new Revue des Etudes Islamiques in 1927, which also published book review issues called Abstracta Islamica. He was actively involved in the Institut d'Etudes Islamiques that was set up as part of the University of Paris in 1929. After the Second World War, in 1946, this Institute was reorganized with a new team of scholars, including Regis Blachere, E. Levi-Provencal, and Robert Brunschvig. Massignon later became Director of the newly founded Institut d'Etudes Iraniennes, also part of the University of Paris. At the end of his career he was President of the Agregation examinations for Arabic. For reasons of age, he retired from these official scholarly appointments in 1954.

1.3. Politics Massignon's missions to Egypt and Iraq (1906-08) implied official scholarly appointments. At a later stage, he would also have certain political responsibilities. In 1917, for instance, he was attached to the delegation of Georges Picot, who pursued negotiations with the British represented by Mark Sykes. This was a follow-up to the secret Sykes-

162

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Picot treaty of May 1916, which foresaw establishing mandate states in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire once the war was over. This contradicted earlier plans and promises to create a large Arab kingdom in the Near East. In 1919, he took part in negotiations between Georges Clemenceau and the Arab Emir Faysal ibn Husayn on the future of Syria. Faysal had to withdraw from Syria, but became king of Iraq. In 1930, Massignon was involved in the Centenary celebrations of the French taking of Algiers in 1830. It is fair to say that, from the First World War, Massignon was in steady contact with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the Second World War, he had a French diplomatic passport. Yet, as a scholar at the College de France, he held his own opinions and judgments, and these could be outspoken, even more so after his retirement in 1954, when he was no longer in state service and felt free to speak out. After World War II, especially from 1948, Louis Massignon could give critical views and judgments about French policies as few French Orientalists before him had done. He could do this directly to his government when he was a member of a government committee or in charge of a diplomatic mission. Sometimes, however, he opposed specific French policies publicly, for the sake of justice or for humanitarian reasons. Massignon was concerned with French late-colonial policies, especially in North Africa. He was also very concerned with the future of Palestine after the end of the British Mandate, and with the way the Palestinians were treated first during the 1948 war and then under Israeli rule. He was in contact with Jewish colleagues in Israel but was strongly opposed to the Zionist policies. He was especially shocked by French politics and behavior during the Algerian war (1954-1962), a traumatic experience for France after its defeat in Vietnam. During the 1950s, as he aged from 66 to 76, Louis Massignon stood out as a public protest figure calling for justice. He defended the Moroccan sultan Muhammad V, whom the French had exiled to Madagascar, and he denounced the torture practiced by the army in Algeria. He also denounced weaknesses and betrayals of his Church on several occasions, in particular during the Algerian war. Massignon suffered bitterly because of the public and private views, attitudes, and practices taken in France toward Islam, Muslims in general, and Algerians in particular in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. They were squarely against his religious vocation sealed by his conversion of 1908, Badallya of 1934, and ordination of 1950. As I remember, he worked during those last years under great tension.

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

1.4.

163

Legacy

Louis Massignon died in Paris on October 31, 1962. A great number of admirers and pupils, friends and colleagues wrote individual reminiscences and appreciations or contributed to collective publications after his death. His son Daniel took care of the archival materials available to the family and Massignon's intellectual legacy. He organized several conferences on his father's work and edited their proceedings. Jacques Keryell collected part of Massignon's correspondence. The correspondence between Massignon and Mary Kahil, considered private, was given to the Vatican Library. In Lebanon Youakim Moubarac collected material on Massignon's work. At his death, Massignon left the unfinished manuscript for the second edition of his life's work, La Passion d'al-Halläj. Thanks to the concerted efforts of those who had been near to him—specifically meticulous work carried out on this manuscript for years by his daughter Genevieve, his colleague Henri Laoust, and his disciple Louis Gardet— this piece of Islamic scholarship was published in four volumes in 1975. 4 With dedication, vision, and above all, endurance, Herbert Mason succeeded in making a complete English translation of the work, also published in four volumes in 1982. 5 This monument of creative scholarship in Islamic Studies thus became available to the Englishspeaking world.

2. Research on Islam as a Religion By the beginning of the 20 t h century, several scholars had already worked on Islamic mysticism. They had studied the relevant texts and put forward various hypotheses about the historical origins and early development of mysticism in Islam. What was new in Massignon's research was the technique he applied in his study of these texts, dissecting them to consider their linguistic elements. Starting out from the Arabic vocabulary used in the texts, he made lists of the technical terms each author had used in his spiritual writings. By establishing the roots and derivations of these terms, by identifying their place in specific contexts, and by comparing their use and interpretation by different authors, he presented an in-depth analysis of the precise terminology of early mystical texts in Islam. At this stage, he did not consider or inquire into the possible deeper spiritual meaning of these texts.

4 5

Louis MASSIGNON, La Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansür Halläj Louis MASSIGNON, The Passion of al-Halläj (1982).

(1975).

164

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

In this way, Massignon not only found the occurrences and linguistic meaning patterns of each term, but also discovered that a number of them went back to the Qur'änic vocabulary. His conclusion was that early Islamic mystical thought, as expressed in Arabic, must have had its main source in meditation on texts from the Qur'än. As a rule for research, he demanded that one should first establish the precise "literal" meaning of each technical term used in a text, before tackling the problem of the meaning of the text as a whole. Massignon was the first to apply this technique consistently in the study of Islamic religious texts. This led to the problem of the further meanings of mystical texts. For Massignon, these texts, beyond their literal and also metaphorical meaning, had a deeper spiritual meaning that he called "anagogical" (sens anagogique) which would have arisen from the inspiration moving the author who had produced the text. Mystical texts, he said, should be considered and studied as inspired texts and the search should then be for their "anagogical" meaning. To find this, the scholar has to make a kind of mental displacement and participate in what can be called the "movement" that the text conveys. This demands conscious experience. A student of literature can understand his texts better by "experiencing" them and thereby also enriching himself or herself by them. In an analogous way, a student of mystical texts should undergo them "experientially" to arrive at a more profound understanding. He or she can then also become spiritually enriched by them. To grasp the meaning of a mystical text, Massignon strove for a kind of mental application by the scholar of what he considered to be the underlying inspiration of the text. Massignon's basic concern was to find the particular message and significance of the texts he studied. His efforts in this direction were supported technically by refined linguistic research and psychologically by sensitivity to religious meanings. They were motivated by the conviction that such texts had positive meanings and that some kind of "grace" was their inspirational origin. This research presupposed but transcended the empirical study of literal and metaphorical meanings ascertainable and verifiable by scholarly methods. It implied, however, the search for another, deeper kind of meaning that affected the scholar. To do full justice to a mystical text, its content and meaning should be deciphered for the message it conveys, the truth to which it refers.

2.1.

Al-Halläj

Among the texts Massignon studied, certain utterances of the mystic al-Halläj in Baghdad (d. 922 C.E.) affected our scholar deeply. They

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

165

testified to his adoration of and even mystical union with the Divine, but also to suffering and self-sacrifice. He had to pay with his life for certain mystical declarations made in public and became in this way a "mystical martyr" (martyr mystique). Massignon fell under the fascination of al-Halläj from the time when he "discovered" him—or was "grasped" by him—in 1907. Subsequently, he collected and studied all al-Halläj 's surviving texts and was moved to carry out a passionate historical investigation of him as a person. He traced the events of his life, the contexts in which he lived, the conflicts of interest of which he became a victim, the reasons why he was imprisoned and later sentenced to death, and his spiritual legacy, a source of inspiration for his followers and admirers. Any information about this figure, any interpretation given of him and of relevant events in Baghdad society at the time, any legal or religious text that could throw light on al-Halläj 's life, work, and message were carefully collected and checked as pieces of a puzzle of more than ordinary human dimensions. In this investigation, Massignon proved himself to be a careful and critical, even diffident historian. But as in his study of mystical texts, here too, beyond the biographical data and the surviving texts, he reached out in a quest for the deeper spiritual, "anagogical" significance of this particular man, his life, and his death. In this case it was not only particular texts but also a specific saintly person in whom the scholar perceived that a kind of "grace" had been at work. In this way he arrived at a particular, personal kind of understanding of al-Halläj. In Massignon's approach, mystical texts were seen as revealing particular movements of a "grace" that was at their origin. Similarly, the mystic al-Halläj was perceived as a figure of saintly dimensions through which a kind of grace had been at work. If mystical texts conveyed spiritual truth, the mystic al-Halläj became a spiritual model. Although esthetical aspects are not absent, Massignon's approach seems to imply that a true scholar is to be affected personally or engaged existentially in the subject matter of his research.

2.2. Islam These studies of Islamic mysticism and in particular of al-Halläj led to a particular vision of Islam, with a particular kind of mystical experience being viewed as its core. On the other hand, these studies were themselves the outcome of an approach in which one person's scholarly interest was intimately linked to that scholar's personal inclinations and intentions. In Massignon's case, these interests, inclinations, and intentions seem to have been the fruit not only of exceptional gifts but also

166

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

of unique life experiences. All this led to far-reaching intellectual exploration, a spiritual search and a new striking root, and a project of life fundamentally different from that of other Christians at the time. In this light, the case of Louis Massignon is unique in Islamic Studies, and so is his particular view of Islam. There is evidence to support the view that Massignon, with his re-conversion in 1908, not only reacted against the rising secularism in French society at the time, but also against the then-accepted opposition between Christianity and Islam, Christians and Muslims. This sort of reconciliation was due to the highly personal experience of having found "God" through Muslims and Islam and then being reconverted to Christianity. This scholar had been "Arabized" in his desire to live an Arab life in an Arab environment and "Islamicized" in assimilating values and norms derived from a Muslim context. But was Massignon not a Christian? He certainly had been and became so again, or—according to his own statements—he became so and wanted to be so for ever more. However, he had a quite personal understanding of Islam as a faith and religious experience and he had a personal dedication to Muslims, especially of Arab descent. This means that he deeply believed and seriously bore witness that he "knew" Islam—something that cannot be said of most other Orientalists studying this subject. His statements about Islam as a valid religion and Arabic as a privileged language go in the same direction. Massignon must have passed through a personal knowledge, experience, or insight of what he considered to be "Islam". This produced a kind of dual identity and led to a vocation unique at the time, bridging the standard opposition between Christians and Muslims. Identifying himself as a Christian who was converted in a Muslim context, Massignon then dedicated himself as a Christian to Muslims. This implied—among other things—a passionate study to know and understand them with their Islam and the rejection of a Christian-Muslim confrontation as proclaimed and imposed at the time by religious and political authorities on both sides.

2.3.

Dedication

Massignon's particular dedication expressed itself in numerous ways, starting with his pursuit of "Islamic Studies", focusing on mysticism as the religious core of Islam with al-Halläj as its central religious figure. It also shows in his attentive following of and concern with developments in Muslim societies during his lifetime. It expressed itself explicitly in his exchanges with other Catholic converts and in his further commitments.

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

167

He became a Franciscan Tertiary in 1933 and a year later founded the Badallya as a group of Christians with the supreme goal of substituting themselves spiritually for Muslims. In 1950 he was ordained in Cairo as a priest of the Greek Catholic Church. He pleaded passionately with the Roman Catholic Church to recognize Islam as a valid religion instead of confronting and defaming it. All his life, he defended Muslim people's dignity. Especially in the turbulent years after World War II, with injustice done to Muslims, he demanded that politicians treat them justly and equitably. He protested publicly against French practices during the Algerian war and opted for non-violent action, following Gandhi's example. Massignon's compassion for those who suffer, his call for substituting sacrifice, and his own longing for the priesthood must have had deep roots. His final ordination to the priesthood in a Near Eastern Church must have been the fulfillment of a vocation that started with his re-conversion in 1908 and led to an exceptional life. Much of it remains veiled. I tend to see Massignon with his particuar dedication as a victim of the many tensions and antagonisms in which Christians and France, on the one hand, and Muslims and Islam, on the other, were involved during his lifetime. These antagonisms were most visible in political and religious contexts, but also in social and cultural ones. They hinted at deeper tensions and conflicts, such as that between the cause of Islam and that of Christianity, concretely the Catholic Church; between the discourse on Christian truth and European civilization, on the one hand, and the lived realities of domination, oppression, and exploitation, on the other; between the French and the Arab national causes. Throughout these conflicts, Massignon lived dramatically, sometimes speaking about the forces of power as perverse realities. Massignon's creative life and work should be seen not only in the concrete contexts in which he lived but also in the wider French and international context of the time. During his earlier years the French Empire had already been established, in particular in Muslim regions. Paris was not only the City of Light and French culture but also the center of imperial expansion. France became a secular state antagonistic to Muslim religious societies. Massignon's orientation implied a living protest against this state of affairs and its consequences for Muslims living under French rule. The latter part of Massignon's life coincided with a period of decline in the values he had lived with, especially since his re-conversion in 1908. The empire was breaking up; French self-confidence was hurt in various lost wars; the cultural universe in which his mind had matured was vanishing; the Church in French society was on the defensive.

168

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

A historical account of Massignon's life has to assess the painful experience of this waning of an imperial age, of a triumphalist Church, and of a self-confident culture and society. Especially in the growing tensions between France and its Muslims—and Muslims in general—Massignon developed a nearly cataclysmic view of history. The wider international scene was just as desperate. The creation of Israel and its further policies became an agony for the Palestinian population. Western attitudes to Islam and the treatment of Muslims went squarely against the norms underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Oppression and death became rampant in a number of countries he had known in peace during his lifetime.

3. Impact on Islamic Studies 3.1. Immediate

Influences

Massignon's own interests were too personally motivated and too involved in his own life history to lead to broader academic cooperation with his immediate colleagues. Scholars in the French context, including Orientalists, were individualists. This context, moreover, was one of official laiciti, secularity, leading to a scholarly attitude that looked down on the kind of mystical religiosity that Massignon studied and to the value of which he testified. In the positivistic tradition, as it prevailed in France throughout Massignon's lifetime, conscientious scholarship had reason to be suspicious of any "religious" motivations in scholarship. On his appointment to the College de France, Massignon had committed himself not to misuse his teaching to defend particular religions or denominational standpoints and ideas. Moreover, certain of his character traits did not help to bridge differences of opinion or to overcome deadlocks in communication. In fact, his manifold testimonies about his conversion, a monological way of presenting his ideas and convictions, and an inflexibility in his judgments—though rationally defended—could create serious misunderstandings. However, the intellectual capacities and the erudition of the scholar had to be recognized. The Parisian research context—with its ambitions of scholarly and other prestige and with its social and cultural hierarchies—needs to be taken into account to do justice to the way Massignon carried out his tasks here. The same remark is valid for the contexts of the Muslim countries Massignon used to visit. They all had their complexities, including Egypt. Looking back, it is hard to imagine Massignon working, say, at a German university or at an Oxford or Cambridge College, not to mention an American university. His position at the College de France, pri-

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

169

marily a research institution with considerable public prestige, gave him precisely the freedom he needed to trace and follow his own path. It made him also more or less unassailable in his academic—and sometimes not-so-academic—ways of teaching and pursuing research interests. When he was asked about his own masters, he specifically mentioned Ignaz Goldziher, who had encouraged him to go on with his research on al-Halläj. He spoke with respect of Snouck Hurgronje, who also supported this study. He hardly mentioned his French teachers, with the exception of Sylvain Levi, with whom he studied Sanskrit for some time and the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who directed the French Institute in Cairo to which he was attached in 1906-07. The latter's son Henri Maspero and Louis Massignon had been close friends since secondary school. However, some scholarly contacts with colleagues abroad deserve mention. In Germany, for instance, Helmut Ritter admired him; Hans Heinrich Schaeder was impressed by his study of al-Halläj. In the early twenties, Massignon took issue with the Spanish scholar Asin Palacios on the dilemma of historical research looking for outside influences to explain religious phenomena or, alternatively, focusing on spiritual originality, as Massignon did. Palacios was known for his studies of Muslim influences on medieval Christian culture and spirituality. In the thirties, Paul Kraus, a refugee scholar from Germany, worked with Massignon in Paris on Halläjian and other medieval texts. All these scholars seem to have had a touch of genius in common. Before and after World War II, generations of French Arabists and Islamic scholars must have attended Massignon's lectures as students. They seem to have kept at a certain distance, however, and not completely without reason. According to hearsay—after 1955—they may have been overwhelmed but also frightened by his soliloquies, his often absolute statements, and his apparently digressive style of lecturing at the College de France, though less so at the research seminars at the Ecole Pratique. Among his American students, George Makdisi was wellknown. Students from Muslim countries also came to listen to him; Massignon used to encourage them to study assiduously their history, civilization, and religion. Mohammed Talbi from Tunis is a well-known name here. Some names of his French students and later colleagues may be mentioned too. Massignon gave Henry Corbin the incentive for his innovating studies of Suhrawardl Maqtll and Shl'l spirituality as a distinct field of research. The latter had far-reaching philosophical interests and was open to the study of gnosis in Islam, a subject to which Massignon felt less attracted. Another of Massignon's important students was Henri

170

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Laoust, who wrote his these d'Etat on Ibn Taymiyya and became Massignon's successor at the College de France. Gaston Wiet was Massignon's colleague here for Arabic language and literature. Henri Masse, of Massignon's own generation, was his colleague for Persian at the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, which he directed in the 1950s. Massignon had friendly relations with Maxime Rodinson, who started out as a Semiticist and did important research on Islamic and Arab history, including historical research on Muhammad. Rodinson questioned, however—and with reason—Massignon's precision in translating Arabic texts; the latter's interpretations were mostly guided by a spiritual vision. Rodinson wrote a critical account of the history of Islamic Studies which puts the field in a much wider social and cultural perspective than the usual disciplinary histories of specialists. It was published in 1974, before Edward Saids Orientalism (1978). 6 Massignon supported Jacques Berque in his research on the social history of North Africa and the Arab Near East; Berque was appointed at the College de France a few years after Massignon's retirement. He also strongly encouraged Vincent Monteil's linguistic and other researches on Muslim cultures and societies. Most important perhaps, for Christian-Muslim relations, he profoundly affected the vocation of Youakim Moubarac, a Maronite priest and scholar from Lebanon. Moubarac had gone to Paris in the mid1950s to study with Massignon, who appointed him to edit the Abstracta Islamica of the Revue des Etudes Islamiques. Moubarac was closest to Louis Massignon during the latter's final years, both personally and in their search to revise the current ideas and practices of relations between Christians and Muslims. Their efforts turned out to be effective during the Second Vatican Council, just after Massignon's death. Not without reason, Moubarac could claim a certain responsibility for Massignon's intellectual and spiritual legacy. Besides his own scholarly work, he edited the three volumes of Massignon's Opera Minora and—before passing away—organized an archive of Massignon's writings, as yet, unfortunately, not accessible. Until the end, Massignon remained a shining star among orientalists. When he was seventy, he gave the Haskell Lectures in Chicago, which remained unpublished. At the same time, he was a lonely sun in the firmament of French creative minds and scholarship, yet inspired both fundamental and detailed research by scholars of very different backgrounds.

6

Maxime Rodinson, "A Western Image and Western Studies of Islam", in The Legacy of Islam (2 nd edition), ed. by J. S c h a c h t and C. E. Bosworth, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 9 - 6 2 .

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

3.2. Impact on Islamic

171

Studies

Massignon's impact on Islamic studies was not only in his links with individual scholars but also through his influence in specific groups. All is not gold that glitters. Louis Massignon did not like the Arabists of the University of Algiers for example. They tended to view Arabs and Islam very much with the eyes of colonials (pieds noirs). In general, Massignon tended to distrust—and even to defame—those who judged Islam in terms of critical scholarship only and who in his eyes were inclined to denigrate Islam. Massignon's private views in conversation, for instance of J. Schacht's and G. E. von Grunebaum's scholarly work, could be somewhat strange. He obviously did not appreciate critical scholarship of Islam for the sake of scholarly discipline alone. His judgment of their motivations and intentions was simply wrong; probably he perceived them as contrasts to his own dedication to Muslims and Islam. They for their part criticized some of his interpretations as nonscholarly and must have had strong reservations about Islamophilia as an attitude in scholarship. A number of people, however, were influenced by Massignon to a greater or lesser extent. Their names can be arranged in three groups: French-language Catholic scholars and spokesmen on Islam, Muslim scholars and intellectuals, and Arab or "Arabicized" Christians.

4. Three Groups of Followers 4.1. Catholic

Orientalists

First of all, it was among French-language Catholic Orientalists, some of them converts or re-converts, that Massignon's authority was firmly established and his impact is most clear. Most important perhaps was his bringing Louis Gardet (a pseudonym) and Georges Anawati (from Egypt) to the study of Islamic thought and spirituality. The first became a Petit Frere de Jesus following Charles de Foucauld, the second became a Dominican in Cairo. They made a concerted effort to study and bring together Christian and Islamic thought and experience. In numerous publications they studied historical connections in the medieval period, and engaged in dialogue with Muslim scholars and authors. Both were philosophically and theologically trained along Thomist lines. They were probably Massignon's closest disciples, and they could put his experiential studies of mysticism in a Catholic framework of thought. An important pupil of his in the fifties was the classical scholar and philosopher Roger Arnaldez, who addressed himself to Arabic thought,

172

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

concentrating on Ibn Hazm. He was concerned with Muslim-Christian relations and with parallels and differences between the two religions. Massignon knew Jacques and Rai'ssa Maritain and Gabriel Marcel, Catholic philosophers of renown, well. He enjoyed considerable prestige among French Catholic intellectuals, and his direct and indirect influence on Catholic students must have been great. In a society given to secularism and secularity (lai'cite), especially in intellectual and academic life, Massignon's testimonies were like those of a witness of the Absolute. It is difficult to assess the extent of his scholarly influence on the Catholic orders. His relations with them seem to have been complex; much depended on common commitments. Charles de Foucauld, himself reconverted and living at Tamanrasset until his death in 1916, had been a spiritual father to Massignon since 1908. With Joris-Karl Huysmans, de Foucauld was one of the main sources of Massignon's spirituality. Massignon was involved in establishing the "Association Charles de Foucauld", from which numerous vocations have arisen. He published the Directoire written by de Foucauld which contained the rules followed by the "Brothers" (Petits Freres) and "Sisters" (Petites Sceurs). They live among the poor and devote themselves to giving assistance in situations of despair. Massignon had many contacts with them and encouraged their callings. He also had a certain alignment with learned Dominicans whose scholarship he respected. The Egyptian Georges Anawati considered himself a disciple of Massignon. Serge de Beaureceuil followed his scholarly example in studying Islamic spirituality through the works of a medieval mystic, al-Ansärl al-HarawI (d. 1089 C.E.). He lived and taught for years in Kabul. The Dominicans had founded an Institute of Oriental Studies besides their convent in Cairo (Abbasiya), animated by Anawati and with scholars of Islam such as Jacques Jomier and Guy Monnot. Massignon visited the convent regularly during his yearly stays in Cairo for the Academy of Arabic Language. In Paris, Jean de Menasce from Egypt taught Iranian religions at the 5e Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. A scholar of Jewish descent, he had become a Dominican convert and was a loyal friend to Massignon. Of the Franciscans, the first name to be mentioned is 'Abd al-Jalll, who came from Fes in Morocco and converted as a student in Paris in the 1920s. He became Massignon's godson and remained very close to him. 7 Giulio Basetti-Sani from Florence, a Franciscan posted to Egypt, 7

M u h a m m a d Ben 'Abd al-Jalll, a member of an old family of Fes, converted to the R o man Catholic Church in 1 9 2 8 and became a Franciscan. T o what extent Massignon's influence may have been instrumental in this conversion—as in some others—is open to question. At the end of his life, which was not without serious health problems and

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

173

started to appreciate Islam as a religion under Massignon's guidance and became a close follower. He developed a specific Christian vision and interpretation of the Qur'än and Islam. Massignon's relations with the Jesuits were perhaps more aloof intellectually on both sides. Scholars such as Michel Allard in Beirut and Paul Nwiyah, of Lebanese origin, had studied with him. The latter scholar's research on the terminology of the Qur'än and Muslim spirituality had been inspired by him. He became Massignon's successor at the Ecole Pratique in Paris. Apparently, Massignon had more distant relations with the White Fathers, a missionary congregation in Africa, dedicated to education and established by Charles Lavigerie in 1868. Their views of Islam in North Africa in the 1920s and 1930s were somewhat disdainful and they did not particularly like Massignon's fraternizing approach. Massignon thought they were too ideologically trained and eager to obtain conversions. These, as he often said, " . . . could only be God's work". Yet he respected their educational and cultural work pursued, for instance, at the Institut de Belles Lettres (IBLA) in Tunis. This was founded and led by Andre Demeerseman in 1937 to obtain and spread a better knowledge of Tunisian culture and society by Tunisians themselves. He took an independent attitude toward the French presence. In the 1960s and 1970s, also in Tunisia, Robert Caspar worked in the same spirit, both in his textual studies and in his personal contacts with Tunisians, intellectuals and others. He was one of the founders of the GRIG, Croupe de Rechercbes islamo-chretien, in 1977. Generally speaking, Massignon detested a certain pettiness and lack of inspiration, purpose, or even curiosity about Muslim life, as he found in various French orders that worked in Muslim countries in the first half of the 20 t h century. Their knowledge of Islam could be particularly poor and their communication with the local population was sometimes deplorable, fitting within the established colonial pattern. Though the "hardliners" could not appreciate Massignon's "mystical" approach, for many of those who had taken their vows and lived in a Muslim society, he was the undisputed master in Islamic Studies. For a number of them, he was also a personal guide in their vocation and spiritual commitment to Muslims. Some of Massignon's followers had a considerable influence on the relatively benevolent way Islam, with Judaism, was looked on at the Second Vatican Council, in particular in the declaration Nostra Aetate disillusionments, 'Abd al-Jalll is said to have felt, together with his faith, a growing nostalgia for the Islam of his youth. The biographies of people who were in close contact with Massignon deserve attention. Cf. C. DESTREMAU and Jean MONCELON, Louis Massignon, pp. 2 3 1 - 2 4 3 .

174

T h e Practice o f Islamic Studies in History

of 1965. In fact, Louis Massignon seems to have been one of the few "laymen" able to move the Vatican in unforeseen ways regarding Islam, up to the Second Vatican Council. 8

4.2. Muslim

Intellectuals

A second group of people who were inspired by Massignon's views of Islam and Islamic Studies were Muslim intellectuals. He encouraged the studies of a number of them, especially through personal contacts with them in Paris. Through the example of Louis Massignon, some of them discovered unsuspected riches in their cultural heritage. Quite a few started doing original research, for instance Ibrahim Madkour in Egypt on the history of Muslim philosophy and science, Mohammed Talbi in Tunisia on North African history, and Osman Yahya in Cairo and Paris on Ibn al-'Arabl. Yahya would later work with Henry Corbin. Massignon maintained close contacts with Egypt, in particular Cairo, where he had done research in 1 9 0 6 - 0 7 and taught in 1 9 1 3 - 1 4 . From 1934, he and some other European Orientalists participated in the yearly January sessions of the Egyptian Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo. His numerous contacts in Egypt for more than half a century would be worth a study in itself. Here too, he encouraged younger scholars at the time, including Tähä Husayn, and later, for instance Mahmüd al-Khudayri to pursue research on Egyptian and Arabic intellectual history. Massignon's relations with established Muslim authorities and institutions, for instance at al-Azhar, but also with Muslim activists including the Muslim Brotherhood, need to be further explored.9 Egypt was the place where he must have felt spiritually most at home. In Cairo he was in close contact with his disciple Georges Anawati and other scholars at the Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales and his devoted collaborator, admirer and personal friend Mary Kahil. Together they founded the Badallya in Cairo in 1934 and encouraged contacts and discussions between Christians and Muslims. For Arab Muslims, and perhaps Muslims in general, Massignon seems to have been a phenomenon. How strong his personal impact may have been on sensitive "Oriental" minds can be guessed from the description the 8

Pius X I knew him well; Mgr. Montini had participated in the Badallya before his election as Pope Paul VI. The relations between L. Massignon and the Vatican, including the latter's exact attitude toward his ordination to the priesthood in the Greek Catholic Church in 1 9 5 0 , need a careful and impartial study. The documents most relevant to the subject are not yet accessible to scholars. See Guy HARPIGNY, Islam et Christianisme selon Louis Massignon. But see also the original text of his important dissertation: Le sacerdoce selon Louis Massignon (1883-1962). Attitude ckretienne devant I'lslam (Louvain la Neuve, 1978). Youakim MOUBARAC was the Directeur de these.

9

The same holds true for his contacts with the Salafiya and perhaps certain Sufi orders.

M a s s i g n o n as a Student of Islam

(1883-1962)

175

Iranian thinker 'All Sharl'atl later gave of his "experience" of Massignon. 10 Muslim views of Massignon and his work deserve attentive study. 4.3. Arab

Christians

A third group of people on whom Massignon's learning had a special impact was Arab Christians. The Greek Catholic ("Melkite") community in Egypt in particular seems to have been, of all Christian communities in the Middle East at the time, the most open to encounters with Muslims and to a spiritual rapprochement with Islam. During his annual stays each January, especially after the Second World War, Massignon regularly gave lectures at the Dar al-Saläm center in Garden City, Cairo, which was patronized by some Melkite families of means. Lectures given there were attended by mixed Christian and Muslim audiences. The discussions afterwards were a Christian-Muslim dialogue on a cultural level. Already in the 1940s, during the war, Egypt offered possibilities for members of both communities to meet around common subjects of interest. This was strongly encouraged by people such as Louis Massignon and Mary Kahil. The Lebanon, too, has had a long history of Christian-Muslim encounters and it had its own links with France, cultivated especially by the Maronites. I mentioned the name of Youakim Moubarac as one of Louis Massignon's major spiritual heirs. 11 Among the Arab Christians who were impressed and influenced by Massignon's particular approach to Islam and Muslims, he has a place of honor. Besides his work with Massignon, he was a scholar in his own right, working in France and later in Lebanon and publishing a number of studies. Deeply affected by Massignon's death in 1962, Moubarac continued studying the history of Christian theological thought on Islam and the history of Christian-Muslim relations, always in a spirit of rapprochement. He published several studies on these subjects and defended the cause of Massignon's spiritual legacy, as he defended that of the Christian Arabs and that of the Palestinians. Massignon himself had been immersed in these causes since the end of the First World War, while keeping communication open to all sides. In his later years, Moubarac was tragically involved in the Palestinian struggle for recognition and independence, the civil war in Lebanon, and first the Israeli and then the Syrian partial occupation of the coun10 π

See M i c h e l CüYPERS, " U n e r e n c o n t r e mystique, 'All S h a r i ' a t i - Louis M a s s i g n o n " ( 1 9 9 7 ) . T h e r e are others, t o o , o f course. T h e spiritual i m p a c t o f M a s s i g n o n deserves t o be t r a c e d in various circles.

176

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

try. In the end, he was blocked by internal Lebanese politics. There is a certain analogy between the later years of Moubarac in the Lebanon and those of Massignon, who had become wrapped up in the North African struggles for independence, specifically the Algerian war, and also the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both suffered from the absence of the very justice and dialogue to which they had been devoted. There have been some important publications with a number of reminiscences about Massignon during the last decades. 1 2

5. A Scholar's Mind Not only the extent of Massignon's researches, but also their radical commitment is amazing. In a way, he committed himself personally to what he discovered of value and truth in another religion and culture. He considered the problems of the authors he studied to be "true" problems, to be taken seriously. Sometimes he could passionately take sides in debates and conflicts that were not really his own. He did not do this naively, however, or on an abstract level only. More than most researchers in Islamic Studies at the time, Massignon was aware of the relative weight of the issues at stake. He used his acute intelligence to analyze the proposed solutions one after the other and reason them out to the bitter end. His own orientations made him decide what was at issue in given cases. To clarify this, he tended to make critical distinctions. But Louis Massignon was a man of passion, whether he believed something, defended a cause, or unmasked what he considered lying or evil. For him there was conviction or religious engagement everywhere, his own as well as other people's. Given this state of affairs, the scholarly world was on its guard. Massignon not only transcended the given textual, historical, and social facts and asked questions about their possible meanings. He also perceived reality itself in a particular normative, seemingly absolute light. He could make absolutist affirmations, in contrast to the critical or relativizing statements of empirical scholarship. In the end, a well-disciplined Islamwissenschaft and Religionswissenschaft as autonomous fields of scholarship became subordinated here to this particular scholar's spiritual έΐαη. This could easily lead, however, to interpretations and judgments beyond scholarship. 12

Four of these publications deserve mention here: Louis Massignon et ses contemporains, dir. by Jacques KERYELL; Presence de Louis Massignon. Hommages et ίέmoignages, ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON; Louis Massignon et le dialogue des cultures, ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON; Louis Massignon, ed. by Jean-Franjois Six.

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

177

This frame of mind must have made Massignon an unusual colleague in the scholarly world. On the one hand, people could recognize in him a certain genius. On the other hand, he did not share current assumptions about academic style, discretion, and critical scholarship, at least not in the study of religious matters. His presentations could lead to practical problems of communication and understanding. It was almost impossible to stop him when he was speaking. If a serious question had been asked, his answer was often far from straightforward. His argumentations were rational, but rarely lucid and distinct (clair et distinct, as the French say) and not devoid of ambiguities. In his lectures at the College de France—I have this from hearsay because I only met him after his retirement—he could apparently digress on matters that had hardly anything to do with the subject treated. With a few exceptions, his particular style of French writing was dense, staccato. It sometimes made me think of Arabic. There are occasions when even the most erudite and benevolent reader cannot grasp with precision what exactly is meant in a Massignonian text. We are in need of a critical analysis of Massignon's various kinds of discourse, as laid down in his texts. A discourse analysis of Massignon's writings may also reveal something of importance about the presuppositions and assumptions, intentions and "anagogical" meanings that underlie his work. Massignon's osuvre does not present a closed model or system and leaves the reader with many questions. He gave no clear view of his hermeneutical procedures or his epistemological starting points. He had no rational view of historical processes, often hinting at "transhistorical" chains of events. He did not analyze the impersonal infrastructural forces that condition so much of social and political life. In fact, Massignon was ready to see incursions from beyond, signs of transcendence, and symbolic realities as real and permanent possibilities. For him, "religion" seems to have been worldly reality, continuously moved or perforated by transcendence. And he lived with it. For most of us, the scholarly search for rules—the truth of reason—behind the apparent disorder of empirical reality is an incentive to scientific research. For him, this was only the first step in a much broader search for connections that transcend the empirically verifiable ones of cause and effect. This search gave a religious underpinning to his scholarly work. Given such presuppositions and assumptions, it is not surprising that his work has hardly led to lengthy scholarly or philosophical discussions. Massignon had his own framework of interpretation, and it was not entirely based on rational premises. Consequently, some of his con-

178

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

elusions—often expressed in rather absolutist terms—cannot be verified and simply lie outside scholarly discussion. They constitute a discourse of a different kind, difficult to grasp. One could only raise questions. His premises were of a highly personal nature and went back to experiences hardly anyone else knew. It seems to me that a deeper solitude underlying his life and work was the ultimate reason for his relative isolation among his fellow men. He developed into a spiritual man in his own way, beyond loneliness. This must have enabled him to relate to others, Muslims and Christians and their religious life. Historically speaking, Massignon's religious views date largely from before the First World War. There is first a layer of teachings he received in his youth at home and of wisdom he learned from his father's Christian friends. Then comes a layer of views and practices that seem to have implanted themselves decisively in the years following his re-conversion of 1908 which unleashed a deeper religious elan and intentions that made him return to the Church in which he had been educated and where he must have practiced until about 1903. After his re-conversion, Massignon apparently developed his earlier religious views, sometimes sharing them with other (re)converts in a highly personal way. The new religious views he developed soon after this experience—in a Muslim context—probably contain the key to understanding Massignon's most personal insights in the relationships between the Christian and Muslim faiths, spirituality, and view of life. Massignon often asserted that his views were based on a decisive experience of God, beyond doctrine. Massignon's world seems to have been largely a man's world. Apparently, women played a part in it mostly on a moral and spiritual level, and that role may have been important. Louis Massignon was extremely sensitive to the sufferings of others. He often spoke of a call to sacrifice. As a Christian, Louis Massignon was always anxious to be available to his Muslim neighbors (Nächsten)—as his immediate "others". He practiced compassion, substitution, and sacrifice for the sake of that Christ who was the Other to him. Needless to say, this outlook was singular in the French context of the time. It referred to a kind of experiential reality difficult to assess in rational terms. In France, such a stand by a prominent intellectual implied a subversion of the official ideology of laicite, which was strongly upheld in academic quarters. How should we interpret this? Was Islam for Massignon a sign of utter rejection of the secularist ideology? Was it a symbol of longing for the pre-modern world in which it had been better to live? Or was it a militant symbol of protest against being imprisoned in a rationalized world? What was the significance of Islam

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

179

to him? What could have been the relationship between his own decisive religious experience, the Islam of al-Halläj, and the Islam practiced by Muslim friends? I am afraid we shall never know the answer to that. Massignon, as I remember him, lacked certain classical virtues attached to a scholar, such as simplicity, modesty, and above all discretion. He could disclose certain aspects of his private self to an occasional interlocutor who would feel most uncomfortable about this information. It was as if he had been subjected to something we cannot know, something strange but to which he had to testify. Louis Massignon was very religious. But he was religious in a strange way. Those are some of my first memories of him.

6. Conclusion The life and work of Louis Massignon constitute a challenge for a student in the scholarly study of religions, especially when working in Islamic Studies. We cannot take all of Massignon's statements about Islam at face value, nor are we able to check them against the sources. This situation may lead to scholarly diffidence and even distrust of the religious and ideological roots of his work. For concrete subjects of specialized research, scholarly debate is possible on an empirical basis. But the case of general presentations, statements, and appreciations of Islam is more complex. Here we should take into account the roots of a scholar's representation of Islam with its presuppositions and assumptions. To carry out such a task in the case of Massignon's representation of Islam, we would have to inquire into his own religion and faith. But it is a delicate enterprise to make a scholar of religion subject to inquiries about his own religion. In any case, instead of letting oneself be overwhelmed or inspired by such a spirituality, in scholarship we have to study it as attentively and sympathetically, but also as impartially as possible, without necessarily following it. This approach may enable us to explain—and possibly to understand—particular features and curious biases in this scholar's Islamic studies. In addition, we can set the results of solid empirical studies of Islamic materials against Massignon's statements. M y own conclusion from all this is that in scholarship we have to be careful, if not critical, about any simple transposition of Massignon's work in future Islamic Studies and scholarship in general. It is not only the texts quoted or referred to and the historical and social facts presented, but especially the significance attached to them, the meanings

180

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

assigned to them, and the interpretations given to them by Massignon that need critical verification and further reflection. Because of its particular way of interpreting, exaggerating or even constructing the significance and meanings of particular Islamic data from a particular kind of religious—partly Catholic—perspective, Massignon's work poses a real challenge for any scholarly study of Islam concerned not only with empirical facts, but also their significance and meaning on a scholarly basis. As a fundamental rule, in scholarship we have to separate scholarly findings and conclusions of general validity from all kinds of private opinions, convictions, beliefs, or loyalties held by particular scholars. This is particularly true in the science of religion. As a lesson from Massignon's work, I submit that a properly scholarly study of Islam and Muslim societies should include the examination not only of empirical facts but also the significance and various meanings that specific data had or have for particular persons or groups of people, including the ways they interpreted them. This implies that the researcher distance himself or herself from Louis Massignon's private religious views, while respecting them. This is needed especially whenever he developed interpretations of Islam and Islamic data on the basis of his private rather than scholarly views. On the one hand, sound scholarship and intellectual honesty should recognize that views such as his private ones should be respected, but not necessarily considered valid for others doing scholarly research. On the other hand, the views themselves can and should be made a subject of research. The same rule holds true for particular ideological and religious Muslim views of Islam and Islamic data. In the study of Islamic or any other religion, researchers should work on the basis of empirical data, also when examining meanings. Any theoretical framework and any system of scholarly interpretation used should have as much general scholarly validity as humanly possible. Just as there has been a transition from pbilologia sacra to scholarly philology, and from historia sacra to scholarly history, a transition needs to be made from religio sacra to the scholarly study of religions, including Islam and Christianity with their denominations. This implies replacing the religious and ideological frameworks of Islamic Studies— however noble or persuasive they may be—by scholarly ones of general validity. This is a rule to be applied in any academic study of religions. lj 13

I see the Science of Religions (Religionswissenschaft) as an academic discipline in which scholars of different backgrounds can cooperate. In my view, there is not a particular Islamic or Christian Religionswissenschaft. The scholarly knowledge acquired should be of general validity, beyond cultural, religious, or ideological differences. See, for example, as an introduction, Jacques WAARDENBURG, Des dieux qui se rapprochent. Introduction systematique a la science des religions, Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1993. For its

Massignon as a Student of Islam ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 )

181

Once problems in Islamic Studies have been formulated in general scholarly terms, and once research in this field has been carried out on a scholarly basis, it will be instructive to look back at certain Massignonian interpretations and their merits. This holds true, for instance, for the idea of Islam as a kind of "signification system" whose elements convey meanings to Muslims and Muslim communities and societies. It also applies to the notion of a continuing process of interpretation and application of Islamic prescriptions and doctrines, texts and forms of behavior, by Muslims of various orientations in different situations, times, and places. Such an approach to Islam and Christianity as "signification systems" and to their processes of interpretation is particularly needed for the study of relations between Muslims and Christians. It gives insight into the various ways in which both communities have constructed their own and each other's religion in particular historical, social, and political contexts. There is an urgent need for one or more independent scholarly institutions to patronize and fund ongoing academic research on MuslimChristian relations in this sense. This should pay special attention to what people considered their own and the other people's religion to be, what they made of them individually and socially, and how they practiced their prescriptions. Should research on relations between believers not be guided by the classical motto and rule ut altera pars audiatur: give the other party a hearing? In a scholar's life, there are more aspects than the purely scholarly ones. Louis Massignon can be considered one of the most remarkable minds in 20 th -century Islamic Studies, with a touch of genius. He was the product of a great French cultural tradition, but also of a rich Christian one. From his 25 t h year, his life seems to have been attracted and conditioned by two contrary poles. On the one hand, he lived as a Catholic in the French world, in close contact with other Catholic converts or reconverts staying together in an officially secular society and state. On the other hand, he was a scholar of Islam perfectly at home in the Arab world, a Muslim society with Christian enclaves. For centuries, the gap between the two worlds had been articulated in terms of an opposition between Christianity and Islam. All of a sudden, this near to absolute opposition was bridged for him by a religious experience in which the One Absolute imposed itself upon him as "God" beyond the said opposition. Subsequently, holding to his Christian faith for the rest of his life, he devoted it to Muslims and Islam. As a person, he lived with values, norms, and truths derived from both application to Islam, see ID., Islam et sciences des religions. Huit lefons au College de France, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998.

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

182

religious worlds and to which he was passionately attached. H e saw them incarnate in Christ and represented in al-Halläj. Louis Massignon's further w o r k and life meant a radical break with the inflexible antagonistic structures accepted at the time of " I s l a m " versus "Christianity", or " I s l a m " versus " E u r o p e a n civilization", or "Islam versus the W e s t " — w h i c h implied rigid value judgments. It seems to me that a m a j o r scholarly—but also philosophical—problem is h o w to liberate Massignon's w o r k from later authoritative interpretations given to it. W e should be able to grasp its wider, generally valid significance. T o achieve this, the interpretation of his w o r k should be freed from particular French Catholic, Arab M u s l i m , and other conditionings that were unavoidably given with the c o n t e x t in which he worked. Massignon's writings can then become relevant and fruitful for further research by scholars of various backgrounds. M a y b e it can also contribute to revising tradition-bound ideas of fixed structures in M u s lim-Christian and Western-Muslim relations. His w o r k should thereby be taken on its own merits, without undue idealizations or defamations. As it stands, Massignon's life and w o r k were too many-sided to be claimed for one particular cause to the exclusion of others, or be appropriated by one particular group in opposition to others. It is a universe in itself, a religious universe, that—notwithstanding certain absolutizations—makes sense. This sense should be further e x p l o r e d . 1 4

Selected 1.

Literature

Bio-bibliography

1.1.

Biography

Christian and Jean M O N C E L O N , Louis Massignon, Paris: Plön, 1994. GUDE, Mary Louise, Louis Massignon. The Crucible of Compassion, Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Louis Massignon, ed. by Jean-Franfois Six (Cahier de l'Herne, 13), Paris: Ed. de l'Herne, 1970. DESTREMAU,

14

One of Massignon's secrets was that of knowledge and love. In this connection, the last word about Louis Massignon may be given to the French author F r a ^ o i s Mauriac: " Q u ' u n savant, qu'un professeur illustre soit devoue ä une cause humaine, qu'il lui consacre la meilleure part de sa vie, nous en connaissons plus d'un exemple. Mais il est rare que la science soit, au degre ou eile l'etait chez Massignon, feconde par un immense amour et qu'en revanche cet amour s'enrichisse de la science et qu'il y trouve ses plus profondes raisons. Tout ce que Louis Massignon nous a appris de l'Islam, nous le retrouverons dans ses livres. Mais cette transmutation qui rendait vivante la lettre morte, qui de ses disciples en a herite le secret?" (Les Lettres Frangaises, No 952 (152 1 novembre 1 9 6 2 ) , p. 1).

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

183

ROCALVE, Pierre, Louis Massignon et l'Islam. Place et role de l'Islam et de l'islamologie dans la vie et l'osuvre de Louis Massignon (Collection Temoignages et Documents, No 2), Damascus: Institut Frangais de Damas, 1993. (See especially "Table de concordances" of MASSIGNON'S life, pp. 149-193).

1.2.

Bibliography

Youakim MOUBARAC published a Bibliography of MASSIGNON'S work in his L'txuvre de Louis Massignon which appeared as Volume 1 of his Pentalogie islamo-chretienne, Beirut: Editions du Cenacle Libanais/Librairie Orientale, 1972, pp. 7-89. It is followed by a shortlist of Publications about MASSIGNON, pp. 9 0 - 1 0 7 .

Shorter and more accessible bibliographies of MASSIGNON'S publications appeared in: (1) Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'islam dans le miroir de I'Occident, 3RD edition, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1970, pp. 351-358; (2) Presence de Louis Massignon. Hommages et temoignages, ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987, pp. 285-289. An extensive bibliography of materials about Louis MASSIGNON and his immediate contexts is to be found in Guy HARPIGNY, Islam et christianisme selon Louis Massignon (Series Homo Religiosus, Nr. 6), Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981, pp. 2 9 5 - 3 1 8 .

2. Scholarly

Publications

1906 Tableau geographique du Maroc dans les quinze premieres annees du XVIe siecle, d'apres Leon I'Africain, Alger: Jourdan, 1906, 305 p. 1910-12 Mission en Mesopotamie 1907-1908, 2 vols., Cairo: Institut Franjais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1910 and 1912. 1913 Ta'rlkh al-istilähät al-falsaflya al-'arabtya (History of Arab Philosophical Doctrines), Lectures given at the Egyptian University, Cairo, 1913. New edition by Z. EL-KHODEIRY, Cairo: Institut Frangais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1983.

1913 Text edition Kitäb al-Tawäsm de Halläj, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1913. 1914 Text edition Quatre textes relatifs a la biographie d'al-Halläj, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914. (Contains also the Akhbär al-Halläj). 1922 La Passion d'al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Halläj, martyr mystique de l'Islam, execute ä Bagdad le 26 mars 922. Etude d'histoire religieuse, 2 vols., Paris: P. Geuthner, 1922. 2ND enlarged edition: La Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansür Halläj: Martyr mystique de l'islam, 4 vols., Paris: Gallimard, 1975, 1944 p. English translation of the 2ND edition: The Passion of al-Halläj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, Translated by Herbert Mason, 4 vols. (Bollingen Series XCVIII), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, CXIV + 1791 p. 1922 Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1922. 2ND 2ND enlarged edition Paris: J. Vrin, 1954, 302 +

184

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

104 p.; 3 r d edition ibid. 1968; 4 th edition Paris: Cerf, 1999. "Presentation" and "Preface" Louis MASSIGNON, "Avant-Propos" Roger ARNALDEZ, "Liminaire" Daniel MASSIGNON. 1922-1954 Four editions of Annuaire du Monde Musulman·. 1ST ed. 1922-1923 (Revue du Monde Musulman, vol. 53, 1922-23, 358 p.). Published as one volume, Paris: Leroux, 1924, 356 p.; 2ND ed., Paris: Leroux, 1926; 3RD ed., Paris: Leroux, 1929; 4TH ed. together with Vincent MONTEIL, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954, 429 p. 1929 Recueil de textes inedits concernant l'bistoire de la mystique en pays d'Islam, Paris: Geuthner, 1929. 1931 "Le Diwan d'al-Halläj. Essai de reconstitution, edition et traduction", Journal Asiatique, No. 218 (January-March 1931), pp. 1-158. Also as a separate publication Diwän d'al-Halläj, Paris: Geuthner, 1931, 2 n d enlarged edition 1955 (with Arabic text). A 3 rd edition, without the Arabic text, appeared also in 1955 (series "Documents spirituals"), Paris: Cahiers du Sud, 1955. A 4TH edition, also without the Arabic text, appeared in 1981, Paris: Seuil, 1981. 1936 Akbbar al-Halläj. First edition in Quatre textes relatifs a la biographie d'al-Halläj, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914; 2 n d edition (in collaboration with Paul KRAUS), Paris: P. Geuthner. 1936; 3 rd edition 1957. A 4TH edition appeared in 1975 under the title of Akbbär al-Halläj. Recueil d'oraisons et d'exhortations du martyr mystique de l'Islam, Paris: Vrin, 1975. 1962 Parole donnee. Texts by Louis MASSIGNON, edited by Vincent MONTEIL; "Introduction" by Vincent MONTEIL, corrected by Louis MASSIGNON, Paris: Julliard, 1962. Pocket edition Paris: UGE Collection 10/18, 1970. 3 rd edition with a new personal Introduction "Entretiens" by Vincent MONTEIL, Paris: Seuil, 1983, pp. 10-61. 1963 Opera Minora de Louis Massignon, ed. by Y. MOUBARAC, 3 vols., Beirut: Dar al-Maaref, 1963; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. 1972 L'oeuvre de Louis Massignon, ed. by Youakim MOUBARAC. Bibliography published in Vol. 1 of his Pentalogie islamo-chretienne, Beirut: Editions du Cenacle Libanais/Librairie Orientale, 1972. 1981 En Islam, jardins et mosquees. Paris: Ed. Le Nouveau Commerce, 1981, 2 n d edition 1994, 33 p. 1983 Louis MASSIGNON, Cours d'histoire des termes philosopbiques arabes, Preface Ibrahim MADKOUR, Cairo: Institut Frangais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1983. 1989 Testimonies and Reflections. Essays of Louis Massignon, ed. by Herbert MASON, Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. 1992 Examen du "Präsent de l'Homme LettrS" par 'Abdallah Ibn Al-Torjoman, Translation and commentary by Louis MASSIGNON, "Avant propos" Daniel MASSIGNON, "Liminaire" P. Henri CAZELLES, "Observation" P. Albert (M. J.) LAGRANGE (Studi arabo-islamici, Pontificio Istituto di Studi Arabi e d'Islamistica (PISAI), no 5), Rome: PISAI, 1992, 134 p. 1994 Halläj - Mystic and Martyr. Translated, edited and abridged by Herbert MASON (Bollingen Series), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 292 p.

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

185

1995 Sur l'Islam (Collection "Confidences"), Paris: L'Herne, 1995, 127 p. (Contains seven texts from Opera Minora, Vol. 1). 1998 La Guerre Sainte supreme de l'Islam arabe (Collection Hermes), Paris: Ed. Fata Morgana, 1998, 51 p. 2 0 0 0 Les Allusions instigatrices (Collection Hermes), Paris: Ed. Fata Morgana, 2000, 51 p.

3. More Personal

Writings

1929 La Friere sur Sodome 2nd edition 1949. Private publication. 1935 L'Hegire d'Ismael with Note Liminaire. Private publication. 1949 "Les Trois Prieres d'Abraham, Pere des Croyants", Dieu Vivant, vol. 13 (1949), pp. 15-28. 1973 Correspondance CLAUDEL - M A S S I G N O N (1908-1914), ed. by M . M A L I C E T , Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1973. 1980 Correspondance Max Van B E R C H E M - Louis M A S S I G N O N (1907-1919), ed. by W. VYCICHL, Leiden: Brill, 1980. 1987 Louis Massignon - L'Hospitalite sacree. Textes reunis par Jacques KERYELL, Paris: Editions Nouvelle Cite, 1987. 1993 L'aventure de l'amour de Dieu. 80 lettres inedites de Charles de Foucauld a Louis Massignon, ed. by Jean-Frangois Six, Paris: Seuil, fevrier 1993, 344 p. 1997 Les trois prieres d'Abraham, Paris: Cerf, 1997 (in fact: 1998). 2 0 0 4 Autour d'une conversion. Lettres de Louis Massignon et de ses parents au Fere Anastase de Bagdad. Textes choisis et annotes par Daniel M A S S I G N O N , Preface de Maurice BORRMANS, Paris: Cerf, 2004, 112 p. 2 0 0 7 Correspondance M A S S I G N O N - ABD-EL-JALIL, parain et filleul 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 6 2 , ed. by Frangoise JACQUIN, Paris: Cerf, 2007.

4. Main Publications about Louis

Massignon

Les Annales du Colloque Massignon, Cerisy la Salle, 1990 (Private publication). Au cosur de l'Orient. Relectures contemporaines de l'ceuvre de Louis Massignon, Actes du Colloque, Universite du Caire 1 3 - 1 5 mars 1999, Le Caire: Universite du Caire et Centre Frangais de Culture et de Cooperation, 2004. BALDICK, Julian, "Massignon: Man of Opposites", Religious Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 (1987), pp. 2 9 - 3 9 . BASETTI-SANI, Giulio, Louis Massignon Orientalista Cristiano, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1971. English translation: Louis Massignon (1883-1962). Christian Ecumenist, Prophet of Inter-Religions Reconciliation, ed. by Herbert M A S O N and Alan H. C U T L E R , Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974. —, Louis Massignon, 1883-1962. (Series Italia, Oriente, Mediterraneo 2), Firenze: Alinea ed., 1985. —, "Louis Massignon, Christian Islamologist", Hamdard Islamicus, vol. 8 (Spring 1985), pp. 5 5 - 7 9 .

186

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Patrice, "Vincent Monteil: courbe de vie et relations avec Louis Massignon", Bulletin de ΓAssociation des Amis de Louis Massignon, No. 18 (decembre 2005), pp. 125-137. Combats pour I'homme. Centenaire de la naissance de Louis Massignon (18831962) Islamologue, Paris: UNESCO, 1983. CUYPERS, Michel, "Une rencontre mystique, 'All Sharl'atI - Louis Massignon", in Louis Massignon et ses contemporains, ed. by Jacques K E R Y E L L , Paris: Karthala, 1997, pp. 309-327. DESTREMAU, Christian and Jean M O N C E L O N , Louis Massignon (Collection Biographies), Paris: Plön, 1994. D R E V E T , Camille, Massignon et Gandhi. La Contagion de la Verite, Preface Y. M O U B A R A C , Paris: Cerf, 1 9 6 7 . G U D E , Mary Louise, Louis Massignon. The Crucible of Compassion, Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. HARPIGNY, Guy, Le sacerdoce selon Louis Massignon (1883-1962). Attitude chr0tienne devant I'Islam, These de Theologie, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Faculte de Theologie, 3 vols., 1978, 545 pp. —, Islam et christianisme selon Louis Massignon, Preface by Y. MOUBARAC (Series Homo Religiosus, Nr. 6), Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre d'Histoire des Religions de Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981, 335 p. —, "Louis Massignon. L'Hospitalite et la visitation de l'etranger", Recherches de Science Religieuse, vol. 75, no. 1 (1987), pp. 39-64. HOURANI, Albert, " Τ . E . Lawrence and Louis Massignon", in I D . , Islam in European Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 116-128. INSTITUT DU M O N D E A R A B E , Hommage a Louis Massignon, Paris, 1 9 9 2 . KERYELL, Jacques, Louis Massignon. L'hospitalite sacree, Paris: Nouvelle Cite, 1987. —, Jardin donne. Louis Massignon a la recherche de l'Absolu, Paris and Fribourg: Ed. St-Paul, 1993. LAUDE, Patrick, Massignon interieur (Collection Delfica), Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 2001. LAURENS, Henri, "La place de Massignon dans la politique musulmane de la Troisieme Republique" and "Le Chätelier, Massignon, Montagne - politique musulmane et orientalisme". Both texts (of 1995 and 1997) published in ID., Orientales, vol. 2, Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005. Louis Massignon (Cahier de l'Herne, 13), ed. by Jean-Frangois Six, Paris: Ed. de l'Herne, 1970, 520 p. Louis Massignon au cceur de notre temps, ed. Jacques KERYELL, Paris: Karthala, 1999. Louis Massignon et le dialogue des cultures. Actes du colloque organise par l'UNESCO, l'Association des amis de Louis Massignon et l'Institut international de recherches sur Louis Massignon. Maison de l'UNESCO, 17 et 18 decembre 1992, ä l'occasion du 30e anniversaire de la mort de Louis Massignon (1883-1962), Textes reunis par Daniel M A S S I G N O N , ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON, Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1996, 371 p. "Louis Massignon et le Maroc". Dossier reuni par N. M A S S I G N O N , Bulletin de l'Association des Amis de Louis Massignon, No 18 (decembre 2005), pp. 4 120. BLACQUE-BELAIR,

Massignon as a Student of Islam (1883-1962)

187

Louis Massignon et ses contemporains, Preface de Maurice de GANDILLAC, dir. by Jacques KERYELL, Paris: Karthala, 1997, 384 p. Louis Massignon. Mystique en dialogue (Question de, no 90), Paris: Albin Michel, 1992. (See for instance Franjois Angelier, "Louis Massignon: Une courbe de vie (1883-1962)", pp. 224-253). Mason, Herbert, Memoir of a Friend: Louis Massignon, Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. French translation Massignon, chronique d'une amitii, Preface Andre MiQUEL, Paris: Desclee De Brouwer, 1990, 182 p. MASSIGNON, Daniel, "Le voyage en Mesopotamie et la conversion de Louis Massignon en 1908", Islamochristiana, Nr. 14 (1988), pp. 127-199. MAURIAC, Francois, Memorial article on Louis Massignon, Les Lettres franQaises, N o 952 (15-21 novembre 1962), p. 1. Memorial Louis Massignon, Cairo: Dar El-Salam, 1963 (French and Arabic texts). MONCELON, Jean, Massignon: I'Ami de Dieu, These de doctorat, Universite Nanterre, 1990. M O N T E I L , Vincent, "Entretiens". Introduction to Louis MASSIGNON, Parole donnee (1963), 3 r d edition with a new personal Introduction by Vincent MONTEIL, Paris: Seuil, 1983, pp. 10-61. —, Le linceul de feu, Paris: Vega Press, 1987. MORILLON, Jean, Massignon, Paris: Classiques du XXe siecle, 1964. MOUBARAC, Youakim, L'txuvre de Louis Massignon (Pentalogie islamo-chretienne, Tome 1), Beirut: Ed. du Cenacle Libanais, 1972-73. PIERUNEK, Eve et Yann RICHARD, Louis Massignon et l'Iran (Travaux et Memoires de l'Institut d'Etudes iraniennes), Paris et Leuven: Diffusion Peeters, 2000, 130 p. Presence de Louis Massignon. Hommages et temoignages. Textes reunis par Daniel Massignon ä l'occasion du Centenaire de Louis Massignon, ed. by Daniel MASSIGNON, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987, 300 p. ROCALVE, Pierre, Louis Massignon et l'Islam. Place et röle de l'islam et de l'islamologie dans la vie et l'oeuvre de Louis Massignon (Collection Temoignages et Documents, 2), Damascus: Institut Frangais de Damas, 1993. SAID, Edward W., "Islam, the Philological Vocation, and French Culture: Renan and Massignon", in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1980, pp. 53-72. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident. Comment quelques orientalistes occidentax se sont penches sur l'Islam et se sont forme une image de cette religion. I Goldziher, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. Becker, D. B. Macdonald, Louis Massignon, Preface J. PEDERSEN, The Hague and Paris, M o u t o n , 1961, 3 r d ed. 1970. —, "Louis Massignon. Notes for Further Research", The Muslim World, vol. 56, nr. 3 (1966), pp. 157-172. —, "L. Massignon's Study of Religion and Islam. An Essay a propos of his 'Opera Minora'", Oriens, vol. 2 1 - 2 2 (1968-69), pp. 136-158. —, "L'approche dialogique de Louis Massignon", in Louis Massignon et le dialogue des cultures. Actes du colloque organise par I'UNESCO, Γ Association des amis de Louis Massignon et l'Institut international de recherches sur

188

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Louis Massignon. Maison de l'UNESCO, 17 et 18 decembre 1992, ä l'occasion du 30e anniversaire de la mort de Louis Massignon (1883-1962), ed. by Daniel M A S S I G N O N , Paris: Cerf, 1 9 9 6 , pp. 1 7 7 - 2 0 0 . —, Art. "Louis Massignon", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition. Lindsay Jones Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 9, pp. 5 7 7 4 5775. Youakim Moubarac, edited by Jean STASSINET: Dossier H, Paris and Lausanne: L'Äge d'Homme, 2005, 607 p.

Chapter 8 Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950 1 1. Looking Back on Islamic Studies2 In the first half of the 2 0 t h century, Islamic Studies, as a distinct field of scholarly research and teaching in Europe and North America, largely continued along the lines that had been laid down when it was established at some major universities by the end of the 19 t h century. It was combined with the study of Arabic, which developed in Europe in the 16 t h century, and whenever possible also with Persian and Ottoman and modern Turkish. Islamic Studies were part of what were called "Oriental Studies", the scholarly study of cultures of the East, intended to be pursued independently of immediate political and missionary interests. Like other branches of Oriental Studies, Islamic Studies at the time consisted mainly of the study of textual materials and historical documents. Although visits to local libraries were encouraged for the study and acquisition of manuscripts, fieldwork in Muslim societies was hardly considered a part of Islamic Studies. Muslim regions were not always easily accessible at the time. Up to World War II, scholars like IGNAZ GOLDZIHER ( 1 8 5 0 - 1 9 2 1 ) , CHRISTIAAN SNOUCK HURGRONJE ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 9 3 6 ) , (1876-1933),

ARENT

JAN

WENSINCK

CARL HEINRICH BECKER

(1882-1939),

DUNCAN

BLACK

MACDONALD ( 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 4 3 ) , and Louis MASSIGNON ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 ) developed their comprehensive views of Islam as a religion and civilization. J After World War II, such comprehensive views including Islamic religion were developed by scholars such as HENRY CORBIN ( 1 9 0 3 - 1 9 7 8 ) , 1

2 3

This contribution is a revised and enlarged version of a paper read at the Conference on "Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures" held in Amman, October 2 2 - 2 4 , 2002. The Proceedings were edited by Dr. Sami A. KHASAWNIH, Amman: University of Amman, 2 0 0 4 . The original text was published under the title "Developments in Islamic Studies in the 20 t h Century" in the Proceedings of the Conference, Amman, 2004, pp. 3 7 4 406. R. C. MARTIN, Art. "Islamic Studies. History of the Field" (1995). Cf. J. WAARDENBURG, Art. "Mustashriktin" (1993). J. WAARDENBURG, L'islam dans le miroir de l'Occident, 3 r d ed.1970.

190

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

GUSTAVE Ε . VON GRUNEBAUM ( 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 7 2 ) , H E N R I LAOUST

(1905-1983),

HELMUT R I T T E R ( 1 8 9 2 - 1 9 7 1 ) , WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH

(1916-2000),

a n d WILLIAM M O N T G O M E R Y W A T T

(1909-2007).

At present, however, few Western scholars would be prepared to present such an encompassing view of Islam. As in other fields of research, scholarship in Islamic Studies has become highly specialized, and generalizations are avoided. Throughout the 20 t h century, various currents and tendencies in Islamic Studies concentrated on particular aspects or dimensions of Islamic civilization, such as languages and literature, history, social realities, and religion. They were connected not only with particular scholarly disciplines, but also indirectly with themes and interests current, and considered of general validity, in European societies and culture before World War II. One tendency emerged in more spiritually oriented approaches and concentrated on subjects such as religion and spirituality. Some wellk n o w n n a m e s here are ARTHUR J . ARBERRY ( 1 9 0 5 - 1 9 6 9 ) , HENRY CORBIN ( 1 9 0 3 - 1 9 7 8 ) ,

Louis

MASSIGNON ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 9 6 2 ) ,

ANNEMARIE

SCHIM-

MEL ( 1 9 2 0 - 2 0 0 3 ) , a n d SAMUEL STERN ( 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 6 9 ) .

Another current concerned Islamic history, including its social and economic aspects, and Islam's role in the broader historical process. CLAUDE CAHEN ( 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 9 1 ) , HAMILTON A . R . GIBB ( 1 8 9 5 - 1 9 7 1 ) , M A R SHALL HODGSON ( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 6 8 ) ,

BERNARD LEWIS ( " 1 9 1 6 ) , GEORGE M A K -

DISI (1920-2002) should be mentioned in this connection. A third current is sociological and anthropological research on contemporary Muslim societies. Well-known names are those of JACQUES

BERQUE ( 1 9 1 0 - 1 9 9 5 ) , CLIFFORD GEERTZ ( 1 9 2 6 - 2 0 0 6 ) , a n d C . A . O . VAN NIEUWENHUIJZE ( * 1 9 2 0 ) .

A fourth focus of attention has been the broader cultural movements and socio-political forces in Muslim societies in recent times, with their interpretations of Islam as a tradition, an ideology, and a socio-political i n s t r u m e n t . T h e n a m e s o f ALBERT HOURANI ( 1 9 1 5 - 1 9 9 3 )

and

MAXIME

RODINSON (1915-2004) are well-known also among a wider public. There are other tendencies and orientations, too, but these four seem to me to be the most important. They focus on the cultural, historical, anthropological, and socio-political aspects of Muslim societies and Islam. 4 4

A useful survey of the broad results of historically oriented Islamic Studies in the second half of the 20 t h century can be found in the 2 n d edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, which has appeared in 12 volumes (Leiden: Brill, 1 9 6 0 - 2 0 0 4 ) , with the Indices still to come. The first edition was completed just before World War 11. For the modern period, we now have the practical Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World in 4 volumes, ed. by J. L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

191

The nature of Islamic Studies has been the subject of much discussion. I see it as a multi-disciplinary field of research in the humanities and social sciences. It comprises normative Islam and also considers what has a religious meaning for Muslims, in general and for specific groups. Let me briefly delineate how the field of Islamic Studies looks in this light. First we should ask: what is the backbone of Islamic Studies, what is the core of this field? I would suggest the following subjects as the most important ones from a systematic point of view: 1) the main data of the Qur'än and Sünna ( text, history, use, and interpretations), as sources. 2) the main rules and practices of normative Islam. 3) various ways normative Islam has been interpreted. 4) the ways particular elements of life in Islamic civilization as a whole, and also in particular Muslim societies and cultures, have taken Islam as a reference and been considered part of the Islamic way of life including popular Islam. 5) various kinds of Islamic discourse in different groups, on different levels and in different times and places. 6) specific developments in Muslim societies in the 19 th and 20 t h centuries that have led to new interpretations and reinterpretations of the Qur'än, Sünna and Islam itself. Second, we should ask: what are the fundamental scholarly questions in Islamic studies? I would suggest the following as the most important ones, especially in recent times: 1) Various views of the nature, interpretation, and application of the founding texts of Islam, in particular contexts. 2) The particular ways particular persons or groups have viewed and practiced Islam in various contexts. 3) The social and political conditions in which particular Muslim communities have lived at different times and in different places. 4) The ways people have led an Islamic way of life, have constructed their Islam, have developed views of Islam, and have referred to it in particular situations and contexts, especially at the present time. 5) Various concepts of "Islamic Studies" and "Study of Islam" developed, by non-Muslim and Muslim scholars, in the West and in Muslim countries, in the 19 th and 20 t h centuries. With the presence of Muslims in the West in recent times, the scope and aims of Islamic Studies have been increasingly discussed.5 Both methodologically and in the practice of research and teaching, Islamic Studies nowadays is a multidisciplinary field of research com5

ÄRKOUN, M., Art. "Islamic Studies: Methodologies" (1995); Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Μ . H. KERR (1980); WAARDENBURG, J., Art. "Islamic Studies" (1987). See also NANJI, Α., Art. "Islamic Studies - Further Considerations" (2005).

192

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

posed of autonomous specialized disciplines. Disciplines of the humanities and social sciences that have a general orientation, such as linguistics and anthropology, can be highly relevant for research in Islamic Studies. Increasingly, specific themes are studied by research groups in which specialists of various disciplines cooperate. Islamic Studies is not a closed domain. Much more research is done on Islam and Muslim societies than that contained in formal programs of Islamic Studies. Many researchers do not consider themselves professional "Scholars of Islam" or "Islamic scholars" but study or use Islamic materials in their particular disciplines, for instance in history or the social sciences, literature or the arts. Empirical, rational, self-critical scholarship of Islam with its scientific demands distinguishes itself from ideological interpretations and political applications. Scholars will have their own motivations and aims in their research, but the overall aim of the research enterprise is to discover, acquire, and promote new knowledge that is valid generally and that can persuade others intellectually. At the present time specialized research has a pragmatic orientation, concentrates on fact-finding and, with its modern techniques, tends to become a kind of intellectual engineering. As a consequence, a number of relevant wider issues, unfortunately, in fact take a back seat. These concern, for instance, how to read and study the data of history and society, religion and civilization in general. These issues touch upon more theoretical problems of research but also certain ethical and social problems of the world in which we live. Such concerns were topical and drew attention when I was a student. Theoretical concerns can be very relevant to scholarly exploration and research on a civilization and religion such as Islam. "Islamic Studies" as a scholarly enterprise emerged in the 18 t h and 19 t h centuries in the perspective of the Enlightenment. In the Netherlands, it led to Reland's two-volume scholarly work " O n the Muhammedan Religion", published in Latin in 1705. Islamic Studies understood as the study of Islamic civilization and religion would probably not have existed in Europe without the background of 18 th -century Enlightenment thought and 19 th -century critical scholarship. Of course, the study of Islam by and for Muslims had started soon after the religion began and was developed in Muslim countries by Muslims studying their religion in an Islamic spirit. This Muslim "Study of Islam" continues in Muslim countries and at present also at Muslim scholarly institutions in the West. "Islamic Studies" as a broader academic enterprise established itself at European universities in the second half of the 19 th century. It has enabled students and scholars who are not Muslims themselves to in-

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

193

quire into Islam and obtain scholarly knowledge of it. As the study of other religions, it is conducted through sustained reading of the sources and further textual, historical, and social scientific studies, working with critical methods on an empirical basis. Muslim researchers and scholars participate in this kind of Islamic Studies. At present, Muslim students can acquire knowledge of Islam the way they prefer, at Muslim institutions for what I call the "Study of Islam" or at academic institutions for what I call "Islamic Studies". Islamic Studies here should be scholarly, open-minded and have no ideological bias. There is a broader vision behind such scholarly openness. As in the study of other civilizations, scholars need more than books and technical facilities to do creative work. They need a mental climate in which they are free to learn, think, and exchange views; in short, to communicate. "Islamic Studies", like other kinds of cultural and intercultural research, is no longer the "Western" prerogative it was a century ago, but is becoming part of growing intercultural thinking and scholarship.

2. The Study of Early Islamic History 2.1. Studying Muhammad

in his Society

In the second half of the 20 t h century, important research was carried out on the rise and early history of Islam. Until mid-century, research on Muhammad's life focused on his development as a person. In contrast to this biographical approach, the Scottish scholar William Montgomery Watt studied the existing historical Muslim sources in an attempt to reconstruct the social, economic, and political aspects of the society in which Muhammad's life and work should be placed. 6 Watt delineated the socio-economic situation and problems in Mecca, Medina, and the wider Arab society in the Hijäz at the beginning of the 7 th century. He pointed to the need for change and interpreted Muhammad's message and work as a particular kind of response to the challenges to Arab society at the time. Watt's historical approach to and his conclusions on Muhammad's dealings with contemporary society in Mecca and Medina have been widely accepted. Some twenty years later, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook took a much more critical attitude toward the existing Arabic sources.7 They were not the first to question the reliability of the historiography of early Islam and to consider Ibn Ishäq's Sirat al-nabi, in the later version of Ibn Hishäm, a construction of later times. They pursued this histori6

W. M . WATT, Muhammad

7

P. CRONE a n d M . COOK, Hagarism

in Mecca

(1953) and Muhammad (1977).

in Medina

(1956).

194

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

cal criticism methodically, gathering and questioning all available sources on the subject and asking which data represent true historical reality. In this critical scholarly view, the historical person of Muhammad turns out to be largely inaccessible, as are the historical Moses, Jesus, and Buddha. We know infinitely more about history than we did 200 years ago, but we have also become much more aware of the narrow limits of true knowledge. An important contribution of Crone and Cook was that they looked for outside sources and consulted Syriac, and other non-Muslim texts from around the same time, that scholars of Islam had not used previously. Robert G. Hoyland continued this research. In 1997, he published extensive English translations of the earliest extant seventh-century sources on Islam written by non-Muslims as well as Muslims.8 Anthropologists also made important contributions to our knowledge of ancient Arab society. The Lebanese scholar Joseph Chelhod9 and the German scholar Joseph Henninger10 and others studied available materials to learn about the ancient structures and views of life among Arabs. Much of this still functioned in early Islamic times in Arab Bedouin, oasis, and urban societies. In 1967, Dale Eickelman, an American anthropologist, published an article about Musaylima, an "alternative" prophet who lived in Eastern Arabia around the same time as Muhammad in the Hijäz. 11 Uri Rubin pursued further research on the beginnings of Islam. 12 2.2. The Qur'än Studied as a Text During the 20 t h century, research on the Qur'än as a written document, a "text", developed in unforeseen ways. Various approaches were taken. In 1856, the German scholar Friedrich Nöldeke made a critical study, published in German in 1860, of the history and composition of the Qur'änic text. A second, much enlarged edition of this study was prepared with the help of some younger scholars and appeared much later (1909-1935) in three volumes.13 This has become a reference work for R. G. H O Y L A N D , Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (1997). J. C H E L H O D , Introduction a la sociologie de l'Islam: De l'animisme a I'universalisme, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1958; and Les structures du sacre chez les Arabes, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1964, 1986. ίο J. H E N N I N G E R , Arabia Sacra (1981). 11 D. F. ELCKELMAN, "Musaylima. An Approach to the Social Anthropology of SeventhCentury Arabia", JESHO, Vol. 10, 1967, pp. 17-52. 12 See especially his study on the way the early Muslims saw Muhammad: U. RUBIN, The Eye of the Beholder (1995). 13 Th. N Ö L D E K E , Geschichte des Qoräns. Reprinted in one volume Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1970. 8 9

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

195

further historical research on the text of the Qur'än. It tried to establish the chronological order not only of süras, but also of fragments of the süras and individual ay at in the course of Muhammad's lifetime. The Scottish scholar Richard Bell addressed the same problem of the chronological order of the Qur'änic texts and the composition of the Qur'än as a whole and offered his own solution, slightly different from that proposed by Nöldeke. 14 A quite different approach to Qur'änic studies was taken by the Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu in the 1950s and 1960s. His concern was not to find the historical order, but the meaning of Qur'änic texts, by identifying the fundamental concepts found in the Qur'än. 1 5 He applied a semantic analysis of Qur'änic texts. A number of concepts occur in pairs that either complete and affirm each other or that are in opposition or contrast to each other. By analyzing relations between concepts, Izutsu was able to establish certain fundamental patterns of meaning in the Qur'änic text. Moreover, as other scholars had done already but less systematically, he compared the use of particular concepts in preIslamic poetry and in the Qur'än, analyzing the nuances, differences, and changes of meaning in the literary and the Qur'änic usage of such concepts. Izutsu also demonstrated that Meccan texts often have a universal intent that distinguishes them from the Medinan ones, which largely address particular practical problems in the community. Izutsu was less interested in historical and chronological questions and studied the Qur'än as a self-contained text, as one meaningful whole. Some ten years later, in the 1970s, the American scholar John Wansbrough applied a quite different, critical analysis of Qur'änic texts. 16 Using well-defined literary and stylistic criteria, he sorted out what may be called blocks of texts cognate with each other. He then tried to establish a chronological order between them and sought to determine which were the earliest verses and which must be considered to be later reworkings. In the 1930s, the German scholar Rudolf Bultmann had already devised such a method of "form criticism" in the study of New Testament texts. It was the key to establishing which texts were the oldest and what should be considered later additions or reworkings of the original texts.

14

R. BELL, The Qur'an Translated, 2 vols., Edinburgh: Clark, 1937 and 1939. See also W. M . WATT, Bell's Introduction to the Qur'än, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970. 15 T. IZUTSU, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung, Tokyo, 1964; repr. New York: Books for Libraries, 1980; Ethico-religious Concepts in the Qur'an, Montreal: McGill University, 1966. 16 J . S. WANSBROUGH, Quranic Studies (1977).

196

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Wansbrough applied this method in his critical research on the Qur'änic text, as it had already been applied previously in Old and New Testament research. Given that we do not know of complete copies of the Qur'än text before the 3 r d century of the Hijra, he hypothesized that some passages may have been added at a later stage. Just as Crone and Cook applied a critical scientific approach in their study of history, Wansbrough applied a critical scientific approach in his study of texts. In a next stage he addressed more historical problems, doing research on Muslim historiography of the early days of Islam. He found that the Muslim view of those days implied a kind of Islamic "salvation history" and presented a reconstruction of this view. 1 7 Scholars have also wrestled with the problem of determining the oldest version of the Qur'änic text. Already in the thirties, German scholars— Gotthelf Bergsträsser, August Fischer and E. Beck—had collected reports in Arabic texts about the early readings of the Qur'än and about the oldest versions of Qur'änic texts. Some new light can perhaps be thrown on this problem once the early Qur'änic manuscript fragments that were found in a mosque in Sanaa (Yemen) in the 1 9 7 0 s are published. The problem of the oldest version of the Qur'än has been a subject of linguistic research. In the thirties, the American scholar Arthur Jeffery made a study of the words occurring in the Qur'än that cannot be considered truly Arabic terms. In fact, Muslim scholars of Arabic in the early time of Islam had already wondered about the nature and the precise meaning of these words. In 1 9 3 7 and 1 9 3 8 , Jeffery published the result of his research. 1 8 On linguistic grounds, he attributed a Syriac origin to most of the "foreign"—in the sense of "non-Arabic"—terms in the Qur'än. This led to further research in the next decades. A number of these terms indeed occur in Syriac liturgical texts that were used in Christian communities in Syria and Iraq in the 5 t h and 6 t h centuries. H o w is the presence of these Syriac terms in the Qur'än to be explained? Were they perhaps known in the Hijaz at the beginning of the 7 t h century? If this is the case, who could have used them there? And how can their presence in Qur'änic texts be explained? The problem has attracted attention and has also led to speculation. In the early 1 9 7 0 s , Günter Lüling submitted the hypothesis that there may have been an " U r - Q u r ' ä n " , an older corpus of texts of Syriac Christian origin, at the basis of certain Meccan passages in the Qur'än. He could not provide convincing evidence, however. Some twenty-five years later, in 2 0 0 0 , a book appeared in which the author, who used a 17 J. WANSBROUGH, The Sectarian Milieu ( 1 9 7 8 ) . 18 Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran, ed. by A. JEFFERY, Leiden: Brill, 1937 and ID., The Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938.

S o m e Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

197

pseudonym, presented side by side specific Syriac and Qur'änic Arabic text sequences that showed close parallels. This parallelism asks for explanation. Such problems have meant Qur'änic studies are enjoying a kind of boom at the moment. As a result of cooperation between scholars of different backgrounds, a new international publication of Qur'änic studies, the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'än, has been brought into the light. 19 2.3. Haditb

Studies

Already in the 1880s, critical historical questions were raised in the study of hadtth literature. First Ignaz Goldziher and later Joseph Schacht contested the historical authenticity of a great number of haditbs. Their contents could not date from the time of the Prophet or the Companions, even though they sometimes had flawless isnäds. The Dutch scholar Gauthier Juynboll and others continued this line of critical historical research. In the 1980s, they showed how a number of isnäds must have been constructed and they gave possible motivations for such constructions. Certain hadtths, for instance, are linked to particular Muslim spokesmen of the early days whose authority the "constructors" must have wanted to affirm. Computerized analysis brought to light the existence of networks that stressed the names of particular early traditionists and used particular kinds of haditbs.20 As in the study of the Qur'än, also in that of haditbs, other approaches were applied where historical criticism was not the primary aim. In 1977, for instance, the American scholar William A. Graham published a study on the various kinds of authority that hadtths enjoyed in early Islam and the various ways in which they functioned in the religious practice of the community.21 He noted that the hadtth qudsl traditions, that were considered immediately inspired, or "revealed", had a prominent place in the early community, though they were not part of the Qur'än. This fact was already known, but Graham drew the relevant logical conclusion that the notion of "revelation" must have been broader and more fluid in earliest Islam than in later times. He also stressed that, certainly for the first generations of Muslims, the individual äyät (verses), as well as the Qur'än as a whole, func19

Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, Brill, 2 0 0 1 - 2 0 0 6 .

20

G. H. A. JUYNBOLL, Muslim Islamic Hadtth (1996).

21

W. A. GRAHAM, Divine

General Editor J . D. McAuLIFFE, in five volumes, Leiden: Tradition

( 1 9 8 3 ) and Studies

Word and Prophetic

on the Origins

Word in Early Islam

(1977).

and

Uses

of

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

198

tioned as spoken, not written words. These verses constituted a "Scripture" (kitäb) that was orally recited, not a book in the modern sense of the word. The originally oral nature of sacred texts, the various ways they were recited, and the implications of such facts for our understanding of Scriptures have often been neglected. Western studies of Scriptures saw them as written texts and were mostly philologically oriented. 2.4. The Medinan

Period

The complex history of the first thirty years after Muhammad's death in 632 C.E. has from the beginning been a subject of debate between SunnI and Shl'I' historiography. In Muslim SunnI historiography, for instance, the Medinan period of the "Rightly Guided Caliphs" (632-661 C.E.) has mostly been depicted as a model of the true Islamic society. Historical reality, however, differed considerably from the historical traditions held by the parties concerned, with their particular interests and perspectives.22 Wilferd Madelung's study of the succession to Muhammad shows, for instance, that the movement in favor of 'All was much more significant in the early Muslim community than SunnI historiography has admitted. 2j Arab historiography in general has become a subject of critical historical research. 24

3. Islamic Thought and Spirituality A great number of studies on Islamic exegesis (tafsw, 'Um al-hadith), thought (fiqh, kaläm, falsafa), and spirituality (tasawwuf, ',irfän) were published between 1950 and 2000, and I can mention only a few names here. Henry Corbin, moving into the largely unknown territory of medieval and later Iranian thought, opened up the richness of Shi'i Twelver spirituality.25 In the 1960s, the French scholar Henri Laoust, a specialist of Ibn Taimiyya and Hanbali thought, gave a comprehensive

22

History and Historiography in Early Islamic Times, ed. by L. I. CONRAD (1994). Cf. A. NOTH and L. I. CONRAD, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition (1994).

23

W . MADELUNG, The

Succession

to Muhammad

(1997).

24 See, for instance, A.-A. DtJRl's study, The Rise of Historical

Writing Among the Arabs

(translation f r o m the Arabic original) ( 1 9 8 3 ) .

25

On CORBIN, see the Cahier de l'Herne Henry Corbin, ed. by C. JAMBET, Paris: Ed. de l'Herne, 1981, and D. SHAYEGAN, Henry Corbin: la topographie spirituelle de l'lslam iranien, Paris: Ed. de la Difference, 1990. See also J. L. VLELLARD-BARON, "Henry Corbin (1903-1978)", Etudes Philosophiques, 1980, pp. 73-89. In 2003 a colloque was held at the Sorbonne in Paris resulting in the publication Henry Corbin. Philosophies et Sagesses des Religions du Livre, Turnhout: Brepols, 2005.

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

199

p r e s e n t a t i o n o f the variety o f I s l a m i c t h o u g h t in the c o n t e x t o f the social a n d p o l i t i c a l h i s t o r y o f the h e a r t l a n d s o f I s l a m . 2 6 T h e G e r m a n s c h o l a r J o s e f v a n Ess m a d e a definitive study o f t h e first t w o centuries o f I s l a m i c t h o u g h t in a f i v e - v o l u m e w o r k t h a t a p p e a r e d in t h e 1 9 9 0 s . 2 7 F o r s o m e f o r t y y e a r s , t h e British s c h o l a r W . M o n t g o m e r y W a t t presented his b r o a d k n o w l e d g e o f I s l a m i c religious t h o u g h t in the s o c i a l c o n t e x t o f the t i m e . H e a l s o p a i d a t t e n t i o n t o p r e s e n t - d a y M u s l i m t h o u g h t . 2 8 T h e A m e r i c a n s c h o l a r o f S y r i a n origin, G e o r g e M a k d i s i , c o n c e n t r a t e d his r e s e a r c h o n m e d i e v a l H a n b a l i t h o u g h t , discovering links b e t w e e n H a n b a l i s c h o l a r s a n d S u f i s m . H e t r a c e d the h i s t o r y o f e d u c a t i o n a l institutions in m e d i e v a l I s l a m a n d s h o w e d their i n f l u e n c e o n E u r o p e a n d t h e E u r o p e a n R e n a i s s a n c e . 2 9 A n u m b e r o f studies appeared on medieval M u s l i m culture.30 T h e Canadian scholar W . Cantwell S m i t h m a d e s o m e p e n e t r a t i n g inquiries i n t o m a j o r c o n c e p t s o f Islam i c religious t h o u g h t . 3 1 P r e s e n t - d a y M u s l i m s c h o l a r s h a v e b e e n actively e n g a g e d in studying a n d r e t h i n k i n g I s l a m . M o h a m m e d A r k o u n , a s c h o l a r o f A l g e r i a n origin w o r k i n g in Paris, h a s f o c u s e d o n the h u m a n i s t t r a d i t i o n o f t h o u g h t a n d c u l t u r e in I s l a m . H e calls f o r a r e n e w a l o f M u s l i m t h i n k i n g a n d urges s c h o l a r s o f I s l a m i c Studies t o p r o f i t in their w o r k f r o m c u r r e n t p r o g r e s s in the h u m a n i t i e s a n d the s o c i a l sciences, also in r e l a t i o n t o w h a t he calls a n " a p p l i e d I s l a m o l o g y " . 3 2 Seyyed H o s s e i n N a s r , o f I r a n i a n origin a n d n o w w o r k i n g in the U S , h a s d e v o t e d his life t o the study o f I s l a m in t e r m s o f spirituality, c o m b i n i n g S h f l t h i n k i n g a n d Süfl p r a c t i c e in a gnosis perspective.j3 T h e Sudanese scholar Abdullahi Ahmed a n - N a ' i m , a s t r o n g defender o f h u m a n rights, is e n g a g e d in revising t r a d i t i o n a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s o f the SharT'a. ' 4 O t h e r s t o o study fiqh literature a f r e s h . E l i z a b e t h W a r n o c k F e r n e a is in s e a r c h o f I s l a m i c f e m i n i s m 3 5 a n d F a r i d LAOUST, Les schismes dans I'Islam (1965). See also his Pluralismes dans I'Islam (1983). On Laoust, see G E O R G E M A K D I S I , "Henri Laoust (1905-1983)", Journal Asiatique, nr. 272 (1984), pp. 219-222. 27 J. VAN Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra, 6 vols. 26

H.

(1991-97).

28 W. M. WATT, Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity, London: Routledge, 1988; Id., Muslim-Christian Encounters (1991). 29 G . M A K D I S I , The Rise of Colleges ( 1 9 8 1 ) . 30 E.g., G . E . V O N GRÜNEBAUIM, Medieval Islam (1946); A . M I Q U E L , La geographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu'au milieu du lie siecle, 4 vols. (1967-88). On VON GRUNEBAUM, s e e C h . 9 . 31 32

W. C. S M I T H , On Understanding Islam (1981). On S M I T H , see Ch. 9. M. A R K O U N , Rethinking Islam, transl. by R. D. L E E , Boulder: Westview Press, O n ARKOUN, see C h .

33

9.

O n NASR, see C h . 9 .

34 A. A. an-NA'IM, Toward an Islamic Reformation (1990). 35 E . W. F E R N E A , In Search of Islamic Feminism, New York: Doubleday,

1998.

1994.

200

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Esack from South Africa works on an Islamic liberation theology based on the Qur'än. 3 6 Many other names could be added of scholars developing Islamic thought nowadays. For several scholars, Islamic spirituality has a special attraction. The study of Islamic mysticism, specifically in South Asia, was the life work of the German scholar Annemarie Schimmel; she also published on a number of other aspects of Islam. 3 7 The history of Shfl spirituality, especially in the Iranian tradition, was the field of the French scholar Henry Corbin. He also paid attention to the spirituality of prophetism and monotheistic thought in general and had a predilection for esoteric thinking beyond denominational and religious borders. j 8 Shfl thought and spirituality are at the root of the work of the Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr mentioned above.

4. Historical Encounters Between Islam and Other Civilizations and Religions The second half of the 20 t h century saw an increasing number of studies of historical and other relations between Islam and other civilizations and religions. Several studies appeared on the situation of dhimmls in the history of Muslim societies, in particular in the Middle East. Among them, the work of S. D. Goitein has a place of honor. On the basis of careful research on the so-called Geniza fragments found in Cairo, he published a five-volume work on the life and situation of Jewish communities in Egypt and other Muslim Mediterranean countries in the 11 t h and 12 t h centuries. He thereby paid special attention to the Jews' relationships with the Muslim majority population at the time. ' y The historical links between the medieval Muslim and European (both Latin and Byzantine) cultures became a subject of increased scholarly interest. Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum called for detailed comparative research. 40 George Makdisi established parallels between Muslim and Christian educational institutions south and north of the Mediterranean and hypothesized influences of the former on the latter. 41 In 1948, Louis Gardet and Georges C. Anawati had already drawn attention to similarities in the composition of Muslim and Christian handbooks of

36

F . ESACK,

37

O n SCHIMMEL, s e e C h .

Qur'än, Liberation,

and Pluralism, Oxford: Oneworld,

9.

38

H.

39

S.

40

O n G . E . VON GRUNEBAUM, see C h .

41

See Note 29.

CORBIN,

D.

En Islam iranien. See Note 25. A Mediterranean Society, 6 vols.

GOITEIN,

9.

(1967-1993).

1997.

201

S o m e Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

theology. Both authors worked in the sense of reconciliation and dialogue between Christianity and Islam. 4 2 The historical relations between what he called Islam and the West interested Bernard Lewis, a British historian and specialist in Turkish history. He continued working and publishing in the USA, giving here also his own views concerning the West, the US, Israel, the Arabs, and Islam. He may be considered one of the last very Western-centered "Orientalists" that Europe has produced, with a critical view of Islam. 4 3 Albert Hourani, a historian of Lebanese descent and familiar with the Middle East, carried out research on developments in the Arab world, especially from the 18 t h century on. Working in Oxford, he paid attention to relations between Europe and the Middle East. He stimulated further research on this subject with an open attitude and from various angles. 44 In the first half of the 2 0 t h century, in connection with the colonial situation, Western interests in Islamic Studies widened in scope. The historical expansion of Islam became better known and an interest developed in the situation of Muslim societies outside the heartlands of Islam, which until then had been the focus of attention. In the early 1940s, W. Cantwell Smith started his research on Islam in South Asia and the historical relations between Muslims and Hindus. Somewhat later, Aziz Ahmad published on South Asian Islam 4 5 and J. Cuocq and J. Spencer Trimingham on Islam in Africa. 4 6 The establishment, history, and present situation of Muslim communities in non-Muslim environments have also become a subject of study. After World War II, scholarly interest developed increasingly in intercultural and interreligious relations. In 1 9 6 7 - 6 9 , Arthur J. Arberry, a specialist in Muslim mystical thought and poetry, edited a large twovolume work on the history and present-day situation of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle East. He also paid attention to their mutual relations. 47 The French scholar Guy Monnot 4 8 and others studied medieval and later Muslim perceptions, descriptions, and judg-

42

L. GARDET and G. C. ANAWATI, Les grands ( 1 9 4 8 ) and Mystique musulmane (1961).

43

For B. LEWIS, see his Festschrift The Jewish (1999).

44

See A. A. al-SUDAIRI, A Vision of the Middle East. An Intellectual Biography of Albert Hourani, Oxford and London: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1 9 9 9 (with bibliography).

45

A. AHMAD, Studies

46

J . CUOCQ, Les musulmans in Africa (1968).

in Islamic

47

Religion

48

G. MONNOT, Islam

in the Middle

Culture

en Afrique

problemes Discovery

in the Indian

de la theologie of Islam,

Environment

ed. by M . KRAMER

(1964).

(1975); J. S. TRIMINGHAM, The Influence

East, ed. by A. J. ARBERRY ( 1 9 6 7 - 6 9 ) .

et religions

(1986).

musulmane

of

Islam

202

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

ments of religions other than Islam. 49 The contributions made by Ibn Hazm, al-Shahrastänl, al-Blrünl, and others such as al-Mas'üdl to the medieval Muslim knowledge of other religions became a new field of study. 50 This led to a more general interest in the developments of Muslim and Christian perceptions and constructions of their own and other people's religions. 51 The subject of "self-views" and "views of others" is not only significant from a scholarly point of view. It is also relevant to current efforts to improve understanding, cooperation, and dialogue between Muslims and other people. The concept of "construction" of religions leads to further epistemological and philosophical questions.

5. Observing Islamic Studies 5.1. Studying Muslim

Societies

After earlier mostly incidental travel accounts, reports from traders, and political intelligence, scholarly fieldwork on Muslim societies started in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the colonial context of the time. French, British, Russian, and Dutch researchers were sent out or supported to obtain information about regions of interest to their governments, and to study the areas their countries had occupied. There were some independent researchers, too and in the 20 t h century, anthropological and sociological fieldwork detached itself more and more from immediate Western political interests. Social scientific fieldwork in Muslim countries increased sharply after World War II, when these countries gained independence and faced problems of development. The social sciences have given a powerful impetus to the study of living Islam by focusing on the empirical reality of Muslim societies. Research in cultural anthropology, as in the social sciences in general, does not seek to reify Islam and is opposed to any "essentialism" in Islamic Studies. Its concern is to study social reality, laying bare the rules that underlie a given social order and the social meanings alive in a given society. Muslim practices and beliefs are studied as they are embedded and lived in social reality. This encourages a search for the 49

Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions. A Historical Survey, ed. by J. WAARDENBURG (1999). 50 See, for instance A. SHBOUL, Al-Masudl and bis World (1979). C. PELLAT edited and translated Mas'odl's MurOj al-dbabab, Beirut: Universite Libanaise, and Paris: Geuthner, 1 9 6 6 - 1 9 9 1 . Thanks to UNESCO, three French scholars could make a complete translation with commentary of ShahrastänI's Kitäb al-Milal wa'l-nibal: Livre des religions et des sectes, 2 vols. (1986 and 1993). 51 J. WAARDENBURG, Muslims and Others. Relations in Context (2003).

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

203

interdependence between social structures, traditions, and movements, on the one hand, and various kinds of references to Islam, on the other. Clifford Geertz, for instance, in his publications on Indonesian and Moroccan Islam, was attentive to the symbolism, meaning patterns, and life values in the communities he studied. According to this approach of "symbolic anthropology", research on Muslim societies, their prevailing traditions, and present-day changes and movements must not confine itself to the "hard" political and economic aspects and the often disturbing ethnic, social, or other conflicts. It also has to pay attention to the "soft" aspects, such as the meanings of symbols, cultural achievements, and "spiritual" orientations. These can contribute to overcoming tensions and potential conflicts. Social scientific scholars with theoretical interests have been keen to analyze the structures of Muslim societies in terms of their theoretical approaches. Scholarly research in political science is primarily concerned with the study of power structures and the use of various kinds of power, which can lead to situations of tension and conflict. In the study of contemporary Muslim societies, political science has been attentive to the struggle for survival of Islamic groups and institutions, such as religious scholars and Sufi orders, but also to Islamic movements and Islamist activists. The latter defend themselves against secular influences, but also against the attempts of states to increase their control over society. In situations of tension, Islam can be interpreted and used by the groups concerned in various ways, if only to mobilize people for their particular interests. This was already the case in the independence movements, but the political use of Islam then receded in the fervor first of strong nationalist, and then of critical left-wing, ideologies. However, Islam took on increasing relevance in public political discourse in the 1970s. An appeal made to Islam turned out to be a useful instrument for political mobilization and action, not only against Israel, the West, or communism, but also for the political debate in Muslim countries. Islam could be used by conflicting parties to support or legitimate their respective points of view. The result was a kind of "battle for Islam", an effort by different parties to win the people over to their own particular interpretation and application of Islam. They used Islam for their own aims and purposes, rather than practicing or studying Islam for its own sake. The political use different parties made of Islam led to politicization of Islam and in extreme cases to a "political Islam". This could not but lead to tensions among Muslims and confusion in the West about what Islam is all about. The last thirty years have seen the emergence of a number of new ideologies that articulate Islam, appeal to it, or claim to represent

204

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

and realize it. These ideologies play an important political role. Some of them are elaborate systems constantly referring to Qur'änic texts and hadiths, toward which they say people should orient themselves. Political science can be useful for Islamic Studies if it is able in concrete cases to make connections between current ways of ideologizing Islam and existing social, economic, and political forces. It can also be useful by making a distinction between ideologies that legitimate a given state of affairs—for instance by recognizing it as an Islamic order—and ideologies that protest against a given state of affairs—for instance because it is contrary to Islamic justice. Both practically and theoretically, Islamic ideologies tend to consider power as something that is basically positive and anyhow indispensable to reach practical goals. Süfl circles are more hesitant about the use of power. Since Muslim populations have suffered much under the misuse of power, there is a certain ambiguity toward it. Sometimes the shana has been imposed or an Islamic state proclaimed to legitimate a new regime which took its own course. The analysis of the ways political authorities establish and maintain power when they are supported by Islamic authorities, and equally the ways opposition groups seek to obtain and increase power when they legitimate themselves through Islamic ideologies, is an important field of political science research.

5.2. Scholarly

Procedures

"How do you establish or collect facts relevant for your research?", "What questions do you ask of the facts?", "Do you work on the basis of a particular theory?", "Are you developing a hypothesis?", "What is your concept of religion, history, society?" These were the questions that we young researchers in Amsterdam or Paris asked each other some fifty years ago. We called it methodology—a fairly new term then—and considered, besides knowledge of facts, theoretical clarity and rational argumentation a requirement of scholarship. During the last fifty years this has proved to be true also in Islamic Studies. Let me make a few remarks in this respect. The questions are still valid. However, with the diversification of disciplines and of scholarly theories, the methods of research have evolved and been refined, also in Islamic Studies. It makes quite a difference whether we are occupied with textual research, historical inquiries, the study of cultural and religious expressions, anthropological fieldwork and analysis by political science, or comparative studies on various scales.

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

205

There has been, moreover, a progressive technologization of research, and networks have been established among scholars engaged in teamwork. Eccentric individuals in Oriental Studies have become rare, no authorities remain unquestioned, and self-criticism is encouraged. In connection with questions of method and theory, issues of conceptualization and clear terminology have become pressing. To carry out scholarly work and to be understood, we have to define the terms with which we work. The use of a clear terminology is an essential condition for communication and interdisciplinary work. Moreover, the techno logization of scholarly research increases the need for formal, technical concepts. Especially the presentation of findings should be generally accessible and understandable. Although new fields of textual and historical research have also led to new kinds of questions, the social sciences in particular have introduced more abstract theories and concepts in Islamic Studies. They should be clarified, however. A relative outsider should be able at least to grasp the problem that is treated, even if the particular way of solving it may be less easy to understand. However, I would like to go a step further. In any research, sound realism and reflection rather than authority, ideology, or tradition should precede and accompany the study of facts. Considerations that are not based on, and expressed with clear concepts and rational argumentations do not reveal reality, but tend to veil it. In Islamic Studies as elsewhere, the clear conceptualization of a problem, however complicated it may be, is evidence in itself of an acute mind, initiates communication, and arouses hopes that a solution will be found. Especially in markedly "reflective" research—for instance on Islamic social and intellectual thought and spirituality and their connection with social and more general human realities—we need conceptual clarity, not only in the texts we study but also in our own minds. In Islamic Studies, it is of fundamental importance to pay attention to the concept of "Islam" that is used in research. Scholars from different disciplines tend to give different answers when asked what Islam is. We must know how the concept is defined, where it contains evaluative elements and to what extent the scholar concerned associates Islam with particular values or vices—varying from faith to fundamentalism, or from self-discipline to terrorism. There is still too little clarity about the scholarly use of the concept of Islam, even among professional scholars. We are keen to inquire about the concept of history accepted among historians, the concept of text used by scholars of literature, and the concept of social reality used by social scientists. Where scholars of Islam are concerned, we should

206

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

inquire, and they should inform us, about the particular notion or concept of Islam that they use. In Islamic Studies as elsewhere, reasoning is a condition of scholarship. It includes giving a reasoned account of the concept of Islam we apply in our research. Otherwise, Islamic Studies will contribute to the mystification of Islam we find in much public discourse today.

6. Islamic Studies: Changes 6.1. Changes in Perspective

and New Orientations

of Study

To the extent that contemporary Muslim societies and cultures themselves refer to Islam, studying them can be considered part of Islamic Studies in the wider sense, like the study of their history. Both studies are relevant to each other. In the history of the study of contemporary Muslim societies and their references to Islam over the last half century, I distinguish four phases. The first phase started after World War II and followed the colonial period. The Muslim societies studied were no longer under European rule. The social sciences had a central place in the study of the newly independent countries. Their focus of attention was on processes of modernization and development, sometimes identified with "Westernization". The impact of Western culture on Muslim societies was stressed, though the role of Islam indicating cultural identity in the Muslim world was recognized. A new, second phase started in the later 1950s, when important social and economic changes of a sometimes revolutionary nature took place in a number of Muslim countries. Besides its role as a religion, different actors presented Islam as a social system and ideology and used it to justify particular social changes. The social functions and impact of Islamic institutions, doctrines, and practices became a focus of further inquiry. A third phase started in the 1970s with the growing affirmation by Islamic movements of Islam as a norm and value system in its own right, incumbent on Muslim societies not only as a social but also as a religious ideology. With the rise of Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and especially Iran, and the rising impact of Islamic movements at the time, scholarly interest addressed the role of Islam as an ideology, religion, and faith in specific social contexts. As an absolute reference, Islam could serve as an appeal against injustice, economic deprivation, and political oppression. Islam could also be seen and lived as a source of identity, for instance for Muslim immigrants in the West. Among scholars of religion, the religious aspects of such appeals to Is-

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

207

lam drew attention. Political scientists inquired more about their political aspects. A fourth phase in the study of contemporary Muslim societies and cultures started in the 1980s, when more militant articulations of Islam arose, addressing themselves against the West. Islam was used now in various quarters as an instrument for political action. Especially when first France and then the USA felt threatened by violence coming from "political" Islam, Islam was increasingly perceived as a potential political and security threat and research concentrated on the consequences of its gradual politicization. The danger of terrorism was stressed and "Islamic Studies" was used by Western governments for intelligence purposes. Disturbing news in the media about some Muslim societies added to a certain paralysis in Western societies with regard to Islam. This last orientation implied a confrontation rather than the cooperation between the Western and the Muslim worlds that had been proposed by the "dialogue" orientations between the 1950s and the 1980s. A certain lack of realism appeared among those striving for cultural and religious dialogue apart from economic and political interests, but also among those in favor of pure Realpolitik. The latter spoke of a clash of civilizations and the dangers Islam represented for the Western world. Hardly anyone at the time mentioned, however, the possible scenario of a West in crisis, or decline, resorting to brutal power and neocolonial policies toward the rest of the world, in particular the oil producing countries with Muslim populations. In retrospect, these changes of orientation in the study of contemporary Muslim societies and cultures and their reference to Islam have been linked to fundamental geopolitical shifts. The wider political and economic context has largely conditioned Western perceptions of Islam and programs of political Islamic Studies. I may mention here some features without going into details. 1. Up to World War II, the Muslim world was by and large under Western control. Islam as a religious system and social structure was largely identified as the traditional pattern of Muslim societies, a rather static traditional Islam. Above it, a modern superstructure should develop for which the West would provide the model. With the rise of various movements of reform and national independence, however, this view had to be corrected. Intellectual breakthroughs against the static image of Islam came from scholars as different as H. A. R. Gibb, L. Massignon, W. Cantwell Smith, M. Rodinson, C. Geertz, and many others who saw Islam as a tradition but capable of movement and change under the impact of Western modernity. 2. After World War II, with the end of the colonial empires and the rise of Muslim nation states, it was recognized that Muslim societies have

208

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

their own internal dynamics, but that they can receive impetus from the West. The relatively backward condition of the Muslim compared with the Western world in the 18 th , 19 th , and beginning of the 20 t h century cannot be attributed primarily to Islam. It was largely due to the political, economic, and social conditions prevailing in Muslim countries. Scholars such as Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum and many others held that, with increasing economic and social development, the role of Islam would recede in Muslim societies, ending up in the private domain of the believers. 3. Since the 1970s, when the older nationalist ideologies had lost their attraction and when leftist ideologies were considered as dangerous, Islam offered a recourse for Muslim countries. The Islamic identity of Muslims and Muslim societies was asserted in new ways. This had unforeseen effects, such as the Iranian revolution of 1979 which came as a surprise to many political scientists and scholars of Islam at the time. In the Muslim world as well as in the West and in Eastern bloc countries, scholars of Islamic Studies who worked on contemporary developments had to reorient themselves. Most of them focused on political developments, but some started paying attention to Muslim self-identifications and the appeals to Islam made in Muslim discourses. Islamic identity, for instance among Muslim immigrants in the West, has become a new field of research. 4. In my own orientation, Islam is to be studied in accordance with the interpretations and practices that Muslims have given to it in recent times. This has led to new views of Islam. The subject matter of Islamic Studies has turned out to be more dynamic than was thought. Muslims have turned out to be more active actors than they were considered to be. The view of Islam as one all-encompassing historical, social, or ideological system that imposes itself on its adherents is outdated. Islam is a more open system that Muslims can interpret and practice in different ways, depending on choices and contexts. Using violence has become an option.

6.2. Looking Forward in Islamic

Studies

In the light of the foregoing, I would like to make a few remarks on our involvement in Islamic Studies. 1) First of all, we need a certain theoretical framework so that we can pay more attention to questions of meaning, including subjective meaning, in Islamic Studies. Islam, like any other religion, is not just an empirical entity consisting of facts to be established once and for all,

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

209

although it can be reified by adherents and outsiders and be objectified by scholars. From a scholarly point of view, Islam consists of texts and ways of behaving with which Muslims live and which are meaningful to them. They can give various interpretations to these data, with different views of the ideal society, Islamic lifestyle, and correct action. New generations and groups of Muslims can formulate new nuances of norms, values and ideals. That is to say, we always have to do with an Islam interpreted, applied, and used by Muslims as actors. Moreover, as a subject of scholarly inquiry, Islam cannot be categorized without further questioning. We know that it has religious, legal, moral, social, political, and other aspects. Consequently, it has been considered as a religion, a law, a moral system, a social structure, a political entity. All of these, however, are views of Islam. They are not Islam itself. Just as Muslims who live with Islam always interpret it, scholars who study Islam always see it from a particular angle. 2) As a starting point for Muslim identity, Islam is first of all a faith. Through Islam, people can identify themselves socially and religiously as Muslims with their own community. Furthermore, it consists of an infinite number of empirical elements, textual, ritual, social, and otherwise. These elements make sense: in relation to each other, as part of the life of Muslim communities, and as constituting one whole. It may be said that Muslims "construct" their Islam as a meaningful whole, something significant. The nature of this significance depends on the readings given to Islam in particular contexts. 3) The approach chosen here can lead to a better scholarly view of Islam. Islam is then seen for instance as an encompassing but open system, a box that contains many elements such as Qur'än verses, hadtths, ritual conduct, oral traditions, etc. A scholar who wants to study the religious aspects of Islam can best study these elements as kinds of signs or symbols that are significant for Muslims. He or she will study the ways particular persons or groups in their life situations have interpreted these elements and acted accordingly, referring explicitly to Islam. Certain connections of these elements of Islam with the context and structures of Muslim life will then come to light. Islam itself, however, obtains for Muslims an overall meaning far beyond the sum of the meanings of its elements. Just as the elements of Islam convey various meanings, Islam itself also conveys various meanings, depending on the people. In practice, people live with their Islam in very different ways. Although Muslims have a strong sense of unity, in the course of the 20 t h century Muslim societies, communities, and individual believers have gone through processes of differentiation. As a consequence, the readings and interpretations given of Islam have diversified in accord-

210

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

ance with different people, their practical interests, their intentions, and the conditions under which they live. If we want to study the religious aspects of Islam, we should not only concentrate on its elements, but also on the overall meanings Islam has for people in given situations. 4) Underlying this approach is the vivid awareness that Islam and its elements are meaningful to Muslims and that this allows for particular forms of communication between them. Particular texts and practices are vehicles of meaning and allow communication between people. Islam itself, as a signification system, is also a communication system for its adherents. By approaching Islam as a communicative signification, sign, and symbol system, we avoid two extremes. We do not reduce Islam to an eternal essence, neglecting the people and the conditions under which they live. We also do not either measure Islam completely against material forces, neglecting the moral and spiritual resources it offers to people's lives. If we want to study Islam as a religion, the focus of attention should be the readings, interpretations, and usages that Muslim people have made and make of "their" Islam and its elements, religiously and otherwise. We can then grasp something of the significance—religious and otherwise—Islam has for many of our fellow human beings.

6.3. Scholars of Islamic

Studies

This approach puts high demands on a scholar of Islamic Studies. Let me briefly indicate three of them. (a) One of the most pressing problems in Islamic Studies is the way a particular (Muslim) reading, interpretation, and application of Islam— or elements of it—can be seen as an "Islamic" response to a particular historical situation or social context. H o w can the study of specific interpretations of Islam be linked to the study of the societies and groups in which these interpretations were made or accepted? Are there certain links between particular readings of Islam on the one hand, and particular social situations on the other? Each particular view of Islam is part of an ongoing process of interpretation and construction of Islam, in response to the particular challenges of a society to Muslims. We should see the connections between the social history of a society and the history of its articulations of Islam. (b) There is a need for scholars in Islamic Studies to acquaint themselves with wider developments in the humanities and social sciences,

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1 9 5 0

211

including the science of religions, which are relevant for their research. Such developments often take place now across the boundaries between specialized disciplines. Too exclusive a concentration on one discipline—philology, literature, history, or anthropology—leaves too little room for inquiry about what can be learned from other disciplines. It runs the risk that Islamic Studies be cultivated in a kind of apartheid, or at least as a closed field of research, that is not directly related to other fields of scholarship. (c) Islamic Studies will greatly benefit if its research problems were formulated on a somewhat higher level of abstraction than only in terms of day-to-day "technical" research work. Reflection on problems of method and theory, strategies of research, ways and means to reach particular scholarly goals, can benefit Islamic Studies on the level of scholarship. I would like to submit that, in the course of the 20 t h century, the classical but rather simple Western image of Islamic civilization as a more or less closed entity—separate from the West and uniting religion, culture, and politics—has been destroyed by critical scholarship, though it survives in certain ideologies. Successful efforts have been made now to place Islamic history and Islamic cultural and religious expressions within the broader history of humankind. In this vein, special attention has to be paid first to the historical interactions between Muslim and other societies. Second, attention should be given to the similarities and differences between such societies, to underlying structures, and to common aspirations and spiritual motivations. To understand contemporary developments and the role of Islam in Muslim societies better, it will be fruitful to view the people as actors with their particular intentions and subjective meanings. We can make comparisons between these societies and view them in the wider context of present-day developments of Asian and African societies in general, with people who are actors in their own right.

7. Contexts of Islamic Studies We should also take note of the contexts in which Islamic Studies have been pursued during the last half century. After World War II, America's financial and technical resources allowed it to make up for a certain lag in the knowledge of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African countries and cultures. The Cold War stimulated an interest in Muslim countries in the West, just as the Iranian revolution made the Eastern bloc countries discover Islam as a potential revolutionary ideology. Muslim immigration in Europe and North America pushed the study of Muslim

212

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

minorities and their constructions of Islam in the West. Efforts at dialogue led to a more conciliatory study of relations between Islam and the West than had been possible in the colonial period. Islamic Studies in the West happened to grow at a time when the Muslim world went into political decline. This reinforced the tragic interplay between European political domination, economic exploitation, and scholarly hegemony—all three linked to the worldview of "Orientalism" to which Edward Said drew attention. During the colonial period, Islamic Studies found themselves in an ambiguous and conflictual situation, and not only in Europe. Nowadays Islamic Studies still risk being pursued, taught, and used within a typically Western political horizon. This is especially the case when Islamic Studies are expected and designed to see Islam as a potential or real danger, to view it as something to be subdued to Western control, and to promote those forms of Islam that will be favorable to Western political and economic interests. Obviously, such political management of research is not what I call Islamic Studies for the sake of "true" knowledge. However, contexts can also play a positive role in Islamic Studies. I am thinking of the search undertaken by a few Christian scholars of Arabic and Islam for rapprochement and communication in terms of dialogue with Muslims. This search has led to more and better studies of Islam as a religion: by Massignon and his pupils Anawati, Gardet, Moubarac, and others in the Catholic world; by Montgomery Watt, Cragg, and others in the Anglican world; by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Anton Wessels and others in the Protestant world. Interests in rapprochement have also come from the Muslim side. The initiatives taken in Amman by the Al al-Bait Foundation and by the Royal Institute of Interfaith Studies ought to be mentioned with gratitude. Scholarly meetings with dialogue have taken place in several Muslim countries during the last years. Other contexts that have promoted Islamic Studies were connected with human, moral and practical concerns. The defense of human rights, for example, has led to numerous studies of Islam in relation to these rights—including the rights of women—and their application in Muslim societies. The presence of Muslim communities in the West has stimulated meetings with these groups and led to sympathizing studies of their interpretation and practice of Islam. Even the debates on sensitive subjects such as jihäd, the position of women, and relations between state and religion—as well as civil society, human rights, and democracy—have led to more interest in and thinking about Islam. Among specialists and in wider circles of Islamic Studies, the interest in hearing the other—Muslim—side's voice has been steadily increasing.

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

Selected

213

Literature

Some Subjects of Research Since 1950 1. History of Islamic Studies as a Field ARBERRY, Arthur John, Oriental Essays. Portraits of Seven Scholars, London: Allen & Unwin, 1960. ARKOUN, Mohammed, Art. "Islamic Studies: Methodologies", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. by John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 9 9 5 , vol. 3 , pp. 3 3 2 - 3 4 0 . BÄR, Erika, Bibliographie zur deutschsprachigen Islamwissenschaft und Semitistik vom Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts bis heute, Vol. 1 (Publikationen lebender Gelehrter), 1985, Vol. 2 (Verstorbene Gelehrte), 1991, Vol. 3 (Verstorbene Gelehrte), 1994, Wiesbaden: Reichert. BATUNSKY, Mark, "Recent Soviet Islamology", Religion, Vol. 1 2 ( 1 9 8 2 ) , pp. 365-389.

J. and F. SCHRÖDER, Arabic Studies in the Netherlands, Leiden: Ε. J. Brill, 1979. "Cinquante ans d'orientalisme en France 1922-1972", Journal Asiatique, No. 261 (1973), pp. 89-107. Ess, Joseph van, "From Wellhausen to Becker. The Emergence of 'Kulturgeschichte' in Islamic Studies", in Islamic Studies. A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1980, pp. 27-51. FÜCK, Johannes W., Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1955. —, "Islam as a Historical Problem in European Historiography since 1900", in Historians of the Middle East, ed. by Β. LEWIS and P. M . H O L T , London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 303-314. HERIMANSEN, Μ . K . , "Trends in Islamic Studies in the United States and Canada since the 1970s", American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, vol. 10, 1993, pp. 96-118. HOURANI, Albert, "The Present State of Islamic and Middle Eastern Historiography", in ID., Europe and the Middle East, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 161-196 and 209-216. Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. KERR, Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980. The Jewish Discovery of Islam, ed. by Martin KRAiMER, Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1999 (in honor of Bernard LEWIS). KAPLAN, Robert D., The Arabists. The Romance of an American Elite, New York etc.: The Free Press, 1993, pb. 1995. LAMBROPOULOUS, Yassilis, The Rise of Eurocentrism: Anatomy of Interpretation, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. LITTLE, Douglas, American Orientalism. The United States and the Middle East since 1945, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003. BRUGMAN,

214

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI (Religion and Reason 38), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. MARTIN, Richard C., Art. "Islamic Studies. History of the Field", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. by John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 325-331. Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art, ed. by Tareq ISMAEL, New York: Praeger, 1990 NANJI, Azim, Art. "Islamic Studies (Further Considerations)", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d Edition, Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 7, pp. 4721-4724. Paths to the Middle East: Scholars Look Back, ed. by T. NAEF, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993. PFANNMÜLLER, Gustav, Handbuch der Islam-Literatur, Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923. REIG, D., Homo orientaliste. La langue arabe en France depuis le XIXe siecle, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1988. RODINSON, Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam. English translation of ID., La fascination de l'islam, Paris: Maspero, 1980, by Roger VEINUS, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1991. SMITH, Jane I., "Trends in the Study of the Religion of Islam: Recent Works in English", JUSÜR. The UCLA Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 6 (1990), pp. 41-67. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, L'islam dans le miroir de l'Occident. Comment quelques orientalistes occidentaux se sont pench0s sur l'islam et se sont forme une image de cette religion: I. Godziher, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. Becker, D. B. Macdonald, Louis Massignon, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1961, 3 r d , revised edition 1970. —, "Changes in Perspective in Islamic Studies over the Last Decades", Humaniora Islamica, The Hague: Mouton, Vol. 1, 1973, pp. 247-260. —, Art. "Islamic Studies", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan and London: Collier Macmillan, 1987, vol. 7, pp. 457-464. Reprinted in the 2ND Edition, Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 7, pp. 4715-4721. —, Art. "Mustashrikün" (Orientalists), in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New (2 nd ) Edition, Leiden: Brill, 1993, pp. 735-753.

2. Early Islamic

History

2.1. The Rise of Islam The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, ed. by Averil CAMERON and Lawrence I. CONRAD, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, Vol. 1: Problems in the Literary Source Material (1992); Vol. 2: Land Use and Settlement Patterns (1994); Vol. 3: States, Resources and Armies (1995); Vol. 4: Patterns of Communal Identity (not yet published); Vol. 6: Elites Old and New in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (2004).

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

215

Fred M., Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writings, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1998. —, "From Believers to Muslims. Confessional Self-Identity in the Early Islamic Community", Al-Abhäth, Vol. 50-51 (2002-3), pp. 9-53. To be published also in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Vol. 4 (see above). HAWTING, G . , The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam. From Polemic to History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. H E N N I N G E R , Joseph, Arabia Sacra. Aufsätze zur Religionsgeschichte Arabiens und seiner Randgebiete (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 40), Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981. H O Y L A N D , Robert G . , Seeing Islam as Others Saw It. A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1997. DONNER,

2.2.

Muhammad

Uri, The Eye of the Beholder. The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims. A Textual Analysis, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995. SCHIMMEL, Annemarie, And Muhammad is His Messenger. The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. SCHOELER, Gregor, Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Uberlieferung über das Leben Muhammads, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. W A T T , William M., Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953. —, Muhammad at Medina, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956. W E L C H , Alford T., "Muhammad's Understanding of Himself. The Koranic Data", in Islam's Understanding of Itself, ed. by Richard G. HOVANNISIAN and Speros V R Y O N I S , JR., Malibu: Undena Publications, 1983, pp. 15-52. RUBIN,

2.3. Qur'anic Studies Nasr, "Rethinking the Qur'an. Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics", Islamochristiana, vol. 30 (2004), pp. 25-45. Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur'an, ed. by Andrew RIPPIN, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Approaches to the Qur'än, ed. by Gerald R. HAWTING and Abdul-Kader SHAREEF, New York and London: Routledge, 1993. B U R T O N , John, The Collection of the Qur'an, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. KASSIS, Hanna, Concordance of the Qur'an, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. The Qur'än as Text, ed. by Stefan W I L D , Leiden: Brill, 1996. RIPPIN, Andrew, The Qur'än and its Interpretative Tradition (Variorum Collected Studies), Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. ABU ZAYD,

216

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

WANSBROUGH, John S., Quranic Studies. Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, London: Oxford University Press, 1977, 2 n d edition New York: Prometheus books, 2004. WELCH, Alford T., Art. "al-Kur'än", in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New (2 nd ) edition, vol. 5, Leiden: Brill, 1986, pp. 400-429.

2.4. Hadith

Studies

BURTON, John, An Introduction to the Hadtth, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. GRAHAIM, William Α., Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1977. JUYNBOLL, Gautier Η. Α., Muslim Tradition. Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship in Early Hadith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. —, Studies on the Origins and Uses of Islamic Hadtth, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996.

2.5. Early History and

Historiography

The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, ed. by Averil CAIMERON and Lawrence I. CONRAD, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, Vol. 1: Problems in the Literary Source Material (1992); Vol. 2: Land Use and Settlement Patterns (1994); Vol. 3: States, Resources and Armies (1995); Vol. 4: Patterns of Communal Identity (not yet published); Vol. 6: Elites Old and New in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (2004). CRONE, Patricia, Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. — and COOK, Michael, Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. DONNER, Fred M., Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1998. DURI, 'Abd-al-'AzIz ad-, The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs, ed. and tr. by Lawrence I. CONRAD, Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 1983. History and Historiography in Early Islamic Times. Studies in Perspective, ed. by L. I. CONRAD, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. MADELUNG, Wilferd, The Succession to Muhammad. A Study of the Early Caliphate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. N O T H , Albrecht and L. I. CONRAD, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. Λ Source Critical Study, English edition in collaboration with Lawrence I. CONRAD, translated from the German by Michael BONNER, Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1994. QADI, Wadad al-, "Non-Muslims in the Muslim Army in Early Islam. A Case Study in the Dialogue of the Sources", in Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures (Conference Amman, 2 2 - 2 4 October, 2 0 0 2 ) , ed. by Sami A. KHASAWNIH, Amman: The University of Jordan, 2 0 0 4 , pp. 1 0 9 - 1 5 9 .

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

217

WANSBROUGH, John, The Sectarian Milieu. Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. WATT, William M., Early Islam, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.

3. Islamic Thought and Spirituality 3.1. Medieval and Later ARKOUN, Mohammed, Essais sur la pensee islamique. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973. CORBIN, Henry, Histoire de la philosopbie islamique, 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

—, L'imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d'Ibn 'Arabi, Paris: Flammrion, 1958; English translation Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. —, En Islam iranien. Aspects spirituals et pbilosophiques, 4 vols., Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 7 1 - 7 2 .

—, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. From Mazdaean Iran to Sbiite Iran, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. —, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, Boulder, Col.: Shambala, 1978. Ess, Josef VAN, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991-1997. —, The Flowering of Muslim Theology, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2 0 0 6 .

GARDET, Louis, La citi musulmane:

vie sociale et politique,

Paris: Vrin, 1954,

1969.

—, L'Islam, religion et communaute, Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1967, 1970. —, Les hommes de l'islam. Approche des mentalitis, Paris: Hachette, 1977 — et Georges ANAWATI, Les grands problemes de la tbeologie musulmane; Dieu et la destinie de l'homme, Paris: Vrin, 1948, 1967. —, Mystique musulmane; aspects et tendances, experience et techniques, Paris: Vrin, 1961, 1968. HODGSON, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam. Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols., Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974. —, Rethinking World History. Essays on Europe, Islam and World History, Introduction by Edmund BURKE III, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Der Islam (Series "Die Religionen der Menschheit", Band 25, 1-3), 3 vols., ed. by W. Montgomery WATT, A. ScHiiMMEL, and others, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980-1990.

LAOUST, Henri, Les schismes dans l'islam. Introduction ä une Stüde de la religion musulmane, Paris: Payot, 1965, 2ND ed. 1977. —, Pluralismes dans l'islam. Paris: Geuthner, 1983. LAPIDUS, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

218

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. by Hava LAZARUSYAFEH, Wiesbaden: Harrassowiz, 1999. MAKDISI, George, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981. MIQUEL, Andre, La geographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu'au milieu du lie siecle, 4 vols., Vol. 1—3: Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1967-1980. Vol. 4: Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1988.

SCHIMMEL, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. SMITH, Wilfred Cantwell, On Understanding Islam. Selected Studies (Religion and Reason 19), The Hague etc.: Mouton, 1981. Also in paperback edition. WATT, William M., The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973.

3.2.

Contemporary

HADDAD, Yvonne Yazbeck, Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1982. HOURANI, Albert H., Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, London: Oxford University Press, 1962, etc. KEDOURIE, Elie, Islam in the Modern World, and Other Studies, London: Mansell, 1980. LEWIS, Bernard, Islam in History. Ideas, Men, and Events in the Middle East, New York: The Library Press, 1973. NA'IM, Abdullahi Ahmed an-, Toward an Islamic Reformation. Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990. NIEUWENHUIJZE, C. A. O. VAN, Paradise Lost. Reflections on the Struggle for Authenticity in the Middle East, Leiden: Brill, 1997. Les ordres mystiques dans l'Islam. Cheminements et situation actuelle, ed. by A. POPOVIC and G. VEINSTEIN, Paris: Ed. de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1986. SCHULZE, Reinhard, Islamischer Internationalismus im 20. Jahrhundert, Leiden: Brill, 1990. —, Α Modern History of the Islamic World, New York: New York University Press, 2 0 0 2 .

4. Encounters with Other

Civilizations

4.1. Encounters with the West and

Christianity

Arabs and the West. Mutual Images. Papers of a Seminar at the University of Jordan, April 3 - 5 1998, ed. by J. S. NIELSEN and S. A. KHASAWNIH, Amman: The University of Jordan, 1998.

Some Developments and Trends in Islamic Studies Since 1950

219

BECKINGHAIM, C. F., Between Islam and Christendom, London: Variorum Reprints, 1983. CoRiM, Georges, L'Europe et l'Orient. De la balkanisation a la libanisation. Histoire d'une moderniti inaccomplie, Paris: La Decouverte, 1989. DJAIT, Hichem, Europe and Islam. Cultures and Modernity, Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1985. Euro-Arab Dialogue. The Relations between the Two Cultures, Acts of the Hamburg Symposium, April 11th to 15th, 1983, London, etc.: Croom Helm, 1985. HOURANI, Albert, Islam in European Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Islam and Christianity. Mutual Perceptions since the mid-20th Century, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven: Peeters, 1998. LEWIS, Bernard, Islam and the West, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Muslim-Christian Perceptions of Dialogue Today. Experiences and Expectations, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven: Peeters, 2 0 0 0 . NIEUWENHUIJZE, C. A. O. VAN, "Islam and the West: Worlds apart? A Case of Interactive Sociocultural Dynamics", Arabica, Vol. 42, 1995, pp. 380-403. Religion and Human Rights. A Christian-Muslim Discussion, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1996. Religion, haw and Society. A Christian-Muslim Discussion, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1995. SHABAN, Fuad, Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought. The Roots of Orientalism in America, New York: Acorn Press, 1991. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Islam et Occident face ä face. Regards de l'histoire des religions, Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1998. —, "L'Europe dans le miroir de l'Islam", Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, Vol. 53 (1999), pp. 103-128. —, "Reflections on the West", in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI and Basheer M . NAFI, London and New York: I. B . Tauris, 2004, pp. 260-295. WATT, W . Montgomery, Muslim-Christian Encounters. Perceptions and Misperceptions, London and New York: Routledge, 1991. ZEBIRI, Kate, Muslims and Christians face to face, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997.

4.2. Encounters with Other Cultures and than the Western ones

Religions

ADANG, Camilla, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, Leiden, etc.: E. J. Brill, 1996. AHMAD, Aziz, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. —, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857-1964, London: Oxford University Press, 1967. CUOQ, Joseph, Les musulmans en Afrique, Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1975.

220

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

A Mediterranean Society. The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols., Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967-1993. JAHN, Karl, Rashld al-Din's History of India. Collected Essays with Facsimiles and Indices (Central Asiatic Studies 10). The Hague, etc.: Mouton, 1965. LAWRENCE, Bruce B., ShahrastänJ on the Indian Religions (Religion and Society 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1976. MONNOT, Guy, Penseurs musulmans et religions iraniennes. Abd al-Jabbär et ses devanciers (Etudes musulmanes 16), Paris: Vrin, 1974. —, Islam et religions (Islam d'hier et d'aujourd'hui 27), Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986. Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions. A Historical Survey, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. RASHID AL-DIN, World History. Four German translations with commentaries by Karl JAHN, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1969-1980. Religion in the Middle East. Three Religions in Concord and Conflict, ed. by A. J. ARBERRY, 2 vols., Vol. 1: Judaism and Christianity, Vol. 2: Islam and The Three Religions in Concord and Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967-1969. SACHAU, C. Edward, Alberuni's India: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Titerature, Geography. Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Taws and Astrology of India about 1030, 2 vols., translation with notes and indices, London: Trübner, 1888, etc. SHAHRASTÄNI, Tivre des religions et des sectes. French translation of the author's Kitäb al-milal wa'l-nihal, with introduction, notes, and bibliography, prepared by Daniel GIMARET, Guy MONNOT, and Jean JOLIVET (Collection UNESCO d'ceuvres representatives, Serie arabe), 2 vols., Leuven: Peeters, and Paris: UNESCO, 1986 and 1993. SHBOUL, Ahmad, Al-Masudt and His World. A Muslim Humanist and his Interest in Non-Muslims, London: Ithaca Press, 1979. TAHIMI, Mahmoud, T'Encyclopedisme musulman ä l'äge classique. Te livre de la creation et de l'histoire de Maqdisi, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1998. TRIMINGHAIM, J. Spencer, Islam in West Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. —, Islam in East Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. —, The Influence of Islam upon Africa (Arab Background Series), London: Longmans, Green & Co., and Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Koranisches Religionsgespräch", in Liber Amicorum presented to Prof. Dr. C. J. Bleeker, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969, pp. 208-253. —, "Muslim Studies of Other Religions", in Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions: A Historical Survey, ed. by ID., New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 1-101. —, Muslims and Others. Relations in Context (Religion and Reason 41), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. GOITEIN, S. D . ,

Chapter 9 Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam 1. Introduction This essay looks at how Islam as a religion is presented in the work of five scholars of Islam of the second half of the 20 t h century. 1 They come from different countries and backgrounds, had different kinds of education, were intellectually shaped in different cultural settings, and had different scholarly careers. Their scholarly approaches are quite distinct. One of them is a woman, and two of them are Muslims. My approach here is phenomenological in that I address the work of these scholars with their particular orientations in a descriptive way, without passing conscious judgment and without imposing a particular theory. My first concern is to reconstitute the interpretations, constructs, and evaluations these scholars have given of Islam as a religion in their scholarly work. However, apart from the materials they studied, the technical aspects, and the concrete results of their work, I am also looking for possible deeper aims and intentions underlying it. The interpretations, constructs, and evaluations they gave are not only the result of careful factual research. They are also expressions of motivations, aims, and intentions in the scholar's mind that, in the final analysis, cause Islam to be presented coherently in the way it is. The scholars had certain presuppositions and assumptions that made them pose certain questions to their materials. My question is why they presented Islam as they did. Besides the subjective elements, there are also more objective factors at work. Their scholarly work must be seen against their own social and cultural background and in relation to the social and political context in which they lived and worked.

1

I read a first version of this paper at a conference on Phenomenology of Religion, held in Zurich, March 2000. 1 earlier treated more extensively similar questions for the work of five earlier scholars of Islam. See J. W A A R D E N B U R G , L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident, Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1961, 3 r d ed. 1970.

222

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

As a consequence, I do not study here empirical Islamic data from the sources; nor do I claim to know what Islam as a religion really is. I simply describe "Islam" as it is presented in the work of the scholars studied, the image they give of it. In phenomenological terms, I take Islam as a religion to be the "intended object" of the research of these scholars. All five of them, in their own ways, show certain aspects of Islam according to their own particular approach. My main task is to find and identify their perspectives. I have chosen five scholars who were not only specialists in particular disciplines, addressing particular aspects of Islam, but who have also tried to conceptualize Islam as a religion or at least to view it as a whole. They were trained in textual, historical, and to some degree social scientific research; they devoted the major part of their research to Islamic Studies and can be called scholars of Islam or "Islamic" scholars, though they were not necessarily Muslims themselves. They were interested in what may be called Muslim thought and spirituality—also in ritual behavior—as it developed in Islamic civilization. They studied it on the basis of texts while being open to the present-day living Muslim discourse about Islam. Most important, they viewed and studied Islam as a coherent whole and had a certain vision of it. Islam was significant to them. For purposes of analysis, I distinguish several levels of scholarly work: 1) scholarly work as competence in a scholarly discipline, a craft to be learned and mastered. That is to say, everything one has to learn to be able to carry out empirical research. This implies, for instance, bringing new facts to light in accordance with a particular discipline and questioning their meaning or meanings. 2) scholarly work on a theoretical level. That is to say, the art of recognizing, identifying, and formulating particular scholarly problems and deciding what approach should be taken to solve them. This can be done, for instance, by developing a hypothesis that can lead to a theory. Or it can be done by designing a theoretical or an interpretative framework that can lead to a scholarly explanation or interpretation of a given problem and to a way of solving it. The scholarly concepts used are important. 3) scholarly work on a more fundamental level. That is to say, being led by certain guiding background questions at the back of one's mind, beyond technical and theoretical scholarship. Basic background questions can give an impetus to scholarly research and can influence the direction such research will take. Fundamental questions can even imply the

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

223

search for a new view not only of a problem but also of the context within which it arises. In this essay I am most concerned with the second, theoretical level of research. This kind of work has quite a few presuppositions. Let me mention three of them. First, I take a scholar's work at face value, as he or she presents it, without simply putting it in a particular category or immediately criticizing or depreciating the thinking contained in it. My attitude is a basic trust, the main question being how a particular scholar went about in his or her research, what this scholar has to say as a result of the research done, how he or she supports this with scholarly evidence, and what this research's original contribution to scholarship is. Second, axiomatic for any scholarly research is that it should lead to reliable, generally valid knowledge based on empirical data and the use of reason. It should be able to withstand scholarly criticism. In such research, certain rules of scholarship have to be followed and scholarly communication has to take place on the basis of these rules. Third, various extra-scholarly factors can be present and have an impact on the problem as it is formulated, the research procedure, its results, and its presentation. This is certainly the case in the humanities, but also in the social sciences. The institution, the research group, or the communicative network in which a scholar works, the society in which he or she lives, the circle(s) and culture(s) of which he or she is part, economic possibilities and technical facilities, administrative and socio-political structures, not to mention social and political contexts, and worldwide geopolitical forces, and also personal preferences and intentions, particular loyalties and idiosyncracies will give his or her scholarship a particular tone. These subjective factors cannot be eliminated, but they can be adjusted and scholars can become conscious of them. Let us now look at the work of the scholars under consideration. 2 . Wilfred Cantwell Smith: Conceptualization in Islam and in Islamic Studies Born Canadian, Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000) studied Theology and Oriental Languages in Toronto and Cambridge, U.K. During the Second World War he taught and did research in British India, since 1941 in Lahore. In 1943 he published his Modern Islam in India and in 1948 he obtained his PhD in Oriental Languages at Princeton University.

224

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Cantwell Smith was then appointed to a new Chair of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal. In 1949 he founded here a graduate Institute of Islamic Studies. From 1964 until 1985 he taught at Harvard University, with an interlude at Dalhousie University from 1973 until 1978. After his retirement, he lived and worked in Toronto until his death in 2000. Cantwell Smith had a comprehensive view of the world religions. He was a specialist in Islamic Studies and encounters between Islam and other religions. He paid particular attention to 19 th - and 20 t h -century developments in Islam as a living religion and always sought cooperation with Muslim scholars and students. In the end, his focus of research was the dimension of personal faith in relation to a given religious tradition, as the core of Islam as well as of religion in general. Smith's work was inspiring: questioning, innovating, and committed. In the course of his forty years of active research, Cantwell Smith's concept of Islam developed considerably. At the outset, in Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (1943) he showed the impact of socioeconomic conditions in Indian Muslims' presentations of Islam to Western readers. In the 1950s and 1960s, he stressed Islam as a moral force and religious faith. He would increasingly stress "faith" as underlying all human religious and moral endeavor. He would put this finally in the wide perspective of what he called a "World Theology" covering the major religions of humankind. In this systematic approach, his work always referred to primary and secondary sources, with constant attention to the terminology used in the texts he studied. Smith was alert to the fact that Islam as a tradition and faith has always tended to become reduced to a reified system, a "thing". Throughout his work, he was conscious of the relevance of conceptualizations in religion and sought their implications in Muslim thinking, both in history and at the present time. In his work he was keen on an adequate terminology of research and thinking, in Islamic Studies as well as the Study of Religion in general. In his own searches for an adequate conceptualization of Islam and "religion" (he rejected the term) his starting point and argumentation were quite rational. Provided the right concepts were used, he was convinced that research would take the right direction and he made definite proposals along this line. Throughout Cantwell Smith's work—in Islamic Studies, the Comparative History of Religions, and his philosophico-theological views that grew out of them—the human person is a fundamental category. Smith was critical of self-absolutizing claims of impersonal, including scientific, truth.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

225

Wilfred Cantwell Smith's publications cover a wide field; three books deal explicitly with Islam. 2 The last of them, On Understanding Islam (1981), which I shall concentrate here on, is a collection of papers on a number of subjects. It gives clues to his way of studying Islam and his thinking about Islam as a faith. The author calls himself here "an observer of the Muslim community" (p. 85) who wants to do his research as much as possible in contact with Muslim scholars of Islam. I would like now to make some observations about the development of Cantwell Smith's perspective on Islam. (1) In his work on wider Islamic history Cantwell Smith views Islam —especially since the 1950s—fundamentally as an ideational forced Although he recognizes contextual conditionings, he sees, as in the case of art, also in that of Islamic history an intimate connection of the material and the "transcendent" as two basic dimensions. Historical studies should take both dimensions into account; Smith fundamentally rejects regarding the historical and the transcendent as two separate categories. In Islamic history, as in history in general, what Smith calls "non-historical" elements—for instance the "non-historical" dimension of human life—are historically operative. Historians of Islamic history should make an effort to grasp what Muslims perceive as the transcendent dimension in their history. One should consequently distinguish two different kinds of historical awareness. The one "from outside" tends to neglect or eliminate the transcendent. The one "from within" is open to transcendence. This becomes clear in Smith's first two books, Modern Islam in India (1943) and Islam in Modern History (1957), which are historical studies representing the two approaches, respectively. (2) From about 1960 on, Cantwell Smith has been studying more systematically various ways religious matters have been conceptualized, that is the rise and history of particular concepts. A good example is his study of the concept of islam in the Qur'än and in Arabic book titles throughout Islamic history. 4 He wanted to show that the term islam5 evolved from being a personal religious act of surrender to be-

2

3 4 5

For his bibliography up to 1981, see the author's On Understanding Islam. Selected Studies, pp. 3 3 5 - 3 4 4 . His books on Islam, besides the one just mentioned, are Modern Islam in India: A social analysis and Islam in Modern History. Other books by this author include The Meaning and End of Religion: A new approach to the religious traditions of mankind·, Faith and Belief; Towards a World Theology; What is Scripture?. See the bibliography, pp. 2 5 9 - 2 6 1 . Chapter 1, "Islamic History as a Concept", pp. 3 - 2 5 . Chapter 3, "The historical development in Islam of the concept of Islam as an historical development", pp. 4 1 - 7 7 . In Arabic grammar, islam is a masdar of Form IV of SLM.

226

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

coming member in a particular community, and from being a religious normative reality to becoming a socio-historical empirical reality. Among Muslims, the latter use of islam established itself definitely in the first decades of the 20 t h century, but the other meanings did not disappear completely. In many publications, Cantwell Smith examines the occurrence of particular concepts. He then analyzes their meanings and the significance of the very occurrence of these concepts in given historical contexts. 6 His own research on concepts used by adherents of religions and by scholars in the study of religions has drawn attention to a new field of study, that of the meaning of concepts in and about religions. 3) Such minutious work on concepts, both of scholarly research and of the object of research, leads to further reflections on the effort of trying to understand a civilization different from one's own. Cantwell Smith insists on the need thereby to transcend one's own (Western) preferences and to be self-critical about one's own (Western) concepts and the assumptions implied in them. One should therefore be continuously aware of the danger of subordinating the cultural data studied to the ideational pattern or ideology of one's own worldview, for instance, what Smith calls current "this-worldly naturalism" in the West. In particular, the effort to understand a religion that is not one's own " . . . requires a fairly serious revision of many of our terms and concepts" (p. 59). As a consequence, the study of Islam demands new approaches. One should study Islam, for instance, not only as an objective historical phenomenon, but also pay attention to the ideal that lies behind its realizations in history. Not only the overt and visible behavior of people, but also the inner aspirations of the heart deserve attention. As Smith suggested earlier, a religion cannot be properly understood if the scholar concerned does not have an effective awareness of its transcendent dimension. The Western way of approaching and studying Islam "objectively" as a purely mundane phenomenon and as a historical or social actuality has not done justice to Islam. Because of this approach, the term "Islam" itself is understood in the West nowadays as something entirely part of the empirical world. This "objectmeaning" is very different from the meanings Islam has had for Muslims. It is these meanings that should be the subject of interest. So Smith can affirm " . . . that to write about Islam is a sensitive and deeply responsible undertaking" (p. 78).

6

See in particular The Meaning and End of Religion (1963).

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

227

(4) Characteristically, Islam for Cantwell Smith is first of all a major way of being human, rather than of being religious. Islam should be studied as a human involvement and not solely as "a religion", that is to say an abstract system separate from human realities or one factor in life besides others. It should be studied rather as a pattern of elements that function as signs and symbols and that convey coherence and meaning to life and the universe. One should pay attention to the ways people see these elements and to the particular significance that life and the universe acquire if viewed in the light of such signs and symbols. Their meaning varies, since what Smith calls the "Islamic spirit"—or pattern—expresses itself in many ways. (5) In two papers, Cantwell Smith makes important distinctions that are based on his analysis of early Islamic concepts. The first distinction concerns the concepts of sharl'a and sbar'. Most students of Islam have treated sharl'a and sbar' in terms of law and legal prescription. Smith contends, however, that especially in the first centuries of Islam, these terms had a much more moral and personal character. There existed a clear distinction between law and moral order, and we have to do here often with moral rather than "legal" prescriptions. 7 Whereas the noun sharl'a is currently a much used—and ideologized—term, in the first centuries of Islam it was not a central concept at all. It simply indicated a communal particularity, the sharl'a of a given community. Sbar' (as a masdar), however, is something different. It refers to the process or act by which God assigns moral quality and responsibility to the human being and human life. Smith submits that the adjective shar'l meant primarily "moral", not "legal". The second distinction the author makes and which he describes as a major and nearly "shocking" experience, is that between "belief" and "faith". 8 In current translations, the Qur'anic concept of iman usually has been rendered as "belief", which has a kind of intellectual tone in relation to the object of belief. One "believes" a certain statement to be true and not another one. Smith contends that Imän should rather be translated as "faith", that is to say something that is more fundamental and less intellectual than what is expressed by the Western term "belief". Faith has to do with the way a person "situates" himself or herself. The distinction made between faith and belief has been of major importance for Cantwell Smith's further development of the concept of "faith". In the end, it indicates a universal orientation that underlies religious life and meaningful life in general. 7 8

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

5, 6, 7, 8,

"Islamic Law: Shari'ah and S h a r " , pp. 8 7 - 1 0 9 . "Faith, in the Qur'än; and its relation to belief", pp. 1 1 0 - 1 3 4 . See also "Faith, in later Islamic history; the meaning of tasdlq," pp. 1 3 5 - 1 6 1 , and "Faith, in later Islamic presentations; the meaning of arkän", pp. 1 6 2 - 1 7 3 .

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

228

Along this line, Cantwell Smith wants to replace the concept of "religion" by the two concepts of "cumulative tradition" and "faith". 9 The latter term implies a particular commitment that contains certain presuppositions and also certain "beliefs" in the plural that are assumed but not necessarily elaborated. The term shahäda, for instance, has to do with "faith", not "belief". It is first of all a witnessing and proclamation of a conviction, commitment and faith; it is not a "creed" in the Western sense of the w o r d . 1 0 As an act of bearing witness to and proclaiming God, it implies a rejection of idolatry and polytheism, as well as human tyranny and the pursuit of merely worldly goals. (6) In his research on conceptualizations in religions, Cantwell Smith pays much attention to the processes of reification of religious concepts and the rigidification of meanings. Cantwell Smith's research by and large intends to grasp the earlier, original meanings that concepts must have had before they were reified. Such a search for earlier meanings demands a careful reading of the oldest texts available. Smith submits that all world religions underwent a process of reification when they were systematized in a conscious way; in Islam, this process would have started already at the end of M u h a m m a d ' s lifetime. Cantwell Smith says the aim of his own research is the striving toward a general non-reificationist understanding of religious life. (7) As suggested earlier, our author describes his effort to understand Islam as discerning, on the one hand, the "transcendent" element or dimension in Muslim conceptualizations and, on the other hand, the "historical" element or dimension as the process by which a conceptualization took place. This distinction is fundamental for what Smith calls " . . . the intellectual task of an outsider's representing to himself and to his fellows the Islamic, and by extrapolation any religious or human, movement". 1 1 Such an effort not only leads to a new "consciousness" for the "outsider" student; it also implies a new "self-awareness" for the "insider" participant of the tradition concerned. For Cantwell Smith, the distinction between outsider and insider is essential for any effort of understanding as a human endeavor. One does not need to agree with the Muslim view, but one should try to understand it. 1 2

9

See N o t e 4 .

10

C h a p t e r 2 , " T h e S h a h ä d a h , a s y m b o l i c representation of M u s l i m s ' f a i t h " , p p . 2 6 - 3 7 .

11

P. 87. T h a t is to say, " r e p r e s e n t i n g I s l a m " , w h i c h is the subject of this essay.

12

" O f c o u r s e , I a m n o t a s k i n g that o n e a g r e e with the M u s l i m view on these matters. I myself a m n o t a M u s a l m ä n , after all; a n d a m n o t a s k i n g that a n y o n e be ... I do h o l d that it is d e m a n d e d of u s , as w e c o n t e m p l a t e that history (Islamic history, J W ) , n o t that w e a g r e e with their view, b u t that w e u n d e r s t a n d it." (p. 2 5 ) C a n t w e l l Smith a d m i t s implicitly that there is revelation " f r o m G o d " in Islam.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

Throughout Cantwell Smith's work, the attentive reader nize the workings of a Protestant—Presbyterian—mind. It is stitution but the person, the person's mind, and the personal God that truly counts. God is described in terms of such relationship.

229

can recognot the inrelation to a personal

3. Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum: Islam as Medieval Culture Born and raised in Vienna, Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum (1909-1973) studied Near Eastern languages and literatures here and in Berlin. He obtained, after his doctorate in 1931, the Habilitation in 1937 with a study on ancient Arabic literature. In 1938 he migrated to the USA and taught Islamic History and Arabic and Persian languages and literatures first at the School of Asian Studies in New York, then at the University of Chicago (1943). In 1957 he was appointed at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) for Near Eastern History and Director of the Near Eastern Center. Von Grunebaum continuously widened his interests, from Arabic literature to Islamic history, from Islamic to cultural history, and from cultural history to cultural anthropology in a broad sense. He gave increasing attention to comparative cultural research and to contemporary developments in Muslim countries. I would like to mention some features of his scholarship that are relevant for his approach to Islam as a religion. 1) Von Grunebaum was a historian and is best known for his studies of Islamic civilization and culture, which he started to publish in Chicago in 1946. Although he was knowledgeable about the general history of the Muslim world, his own research focused on the history of the Arab world as part of Middle Eastern history. He published much on the cultural and religious history of medieval Islam up to the 14 th century. He then also started to publish on 19 th - and 20 t h -century developments, especially in the heartlands of Islam. In comparative studies, he used to take Islamic civilization as a historical reference. His historical work focused on Islam as one of the world's major civilizations. Von Grunebaum envisaged Islamic Studies as a coherent field of research and brought the relevant disciplines together under this title. Inspired by the anthropological work of A. L. Kroeber, he looked for an encompassing theoretical framework with a historically and philosophically oriented "Cultural Anthropology" (Kulturanthropologie) at the center. Von Grunebaum was one of the first scholars of Islam to pay attention to the various self-views that have existed in Islamic culture in the course of history, especially in the modern period.

230

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Von Grunebaum brought much material together on the subjects of his interest and analyzed them from comparative and theoretical points of view. This allowed him to move beyond the specializations of Islamic Studies in the narrower sense of the word. 2) When dealing with 19 th - and 20 t h -century developments in the Muslim world, von Grunebaum was particularly interested in problems of Westernization and acculturation of Muslim societies in general and the Arab world in particular. Taking the secular West as his point of departure and model, he envisaged Islam becoming in the future a private, personally oriented religious faith and practice in societies modernizing along Western lines. Public life in Muslim societies would then have fewer visible Islamic elements. Von Grunebaum may be called one of the last towering monuments of erudition of Islamic Studies in the tradition of continental Europe. He represented a Western-perspective elite Orientalism, attached to European cultural history and humanistic values. At the age of 30 he became an American immigrant, adapting himself as well as possible to the new environment. From the 1950s on, his work shows—besides the fruits of Central European culture—social and political orientations along lines that were alive in the U.S.A. at the time. They had to do with American relations to the outside, including the Islamic world in the first decades after World War II. Von Grunebaum combined a typical European cultural awareness with American pragmatism in his vision of relations between Islam and the West. His work contains interesting personal reflections. 3) Most of Von Grunebaum's own research work dealt with what he used to call medieval Islam, in which he recognized and stressed the central place and fundamental role of religion. Medieval society distinguished itself precisely by the typically religious legitimation of prevailing rules. Von Grunebaum recognized the same "medieval" structure in Byzantine and Latin culture. He thereby opened a perspective for further comparative studies of these three medieval cultures and their structures. 4) Von Grunebaum, as I remember him, was above all a European, a man of culture, erudite in the literature and history of Islam, familiar with European culture, especially from the Renaissance on. He had also an interest in more distant cultures in Asia and Africa. Von Grunebaum had a refined feeling for nuances in cultural expressions and he was keen to discern influences, common trends, and aspirations between cultures. His interests were multifarious and extended from theological discourses to testimonies of dreams and miracle experiences, in various cultural contexts.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

231

5) Last but not least, Von Grunebaum was a good organizer of larger and smaller scholarly meetings on subjects of scholarship and culture. I remember him as one of those European minds of the late 1930s, somewhat lonely, who found refuge in the New World. They remained strangely true to the values of their European—in his case Viennese— cultural roots. Von Grunebaum, born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, represented to me something of what Vienna may have been before 1938 or even before 1914.

4 . Annemarie Schimmel: Islam as Deciphering the Signs Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) was born and raised in Erfurt, Germany. She studied in Berlin and Marburg and would later keep her home in Bonn as a permanent place of return. In the 1950s she taught the History of Religions at the University of Ankara, after which she obtained a teaching position at the University of Bonn. In the 1960s she was appointed Professor for South Asian Islam at Harvard University, with the arrangement that her duties would be concentrated in one semester of teaching. This gave her time for her many travels throughout the Muslim world. As a specialist in Islamic literatures and Islam in South Asia, Annemarie Schimmel devoted herself to studying—always from the textual sources—an infinite number of religious, poetic and other direct expressions of Muslim life, piety, and mysticism, from past to present. lj I shall refer here to the Gifford Lectures of Edinburgh in 1992 in which she gave an overall presentation of Islam as a religion. They were published under the significant title Deciphering the Signs of God. A Phenomenological Approach to Islam}4 (1) The author's aim in her study of Islam is " . . . to try to decipher some of the signs, or äyät, which through their infinite variety point to the One Truth" (p. VIII). She wants to do justice to Islam as a religion poorly known in the West for too long and to embed it in the general 13 For her bibliography up to 1993, see "Annemarie Schimmel Bibliography" compiled by Maria Eva S U B T E L N Y and Muhammad a l - F A R U Q U E . Her main presentations of Islam in English are contained in Gabriel's Wing: A study into the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal; Mystical Dimensions of Islam; The Triumphal Sun: A study of the works of jaläloddin Rumi; Islam in the Indian Subcontinent; As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam; And Muhammad is His Messenger: The veneration of the Prophet in Islamic piety. 14

Annemarie S C H I M M E L , Deciphering the Signs of God: A phenomenological Islam, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994.

approach

to

232

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

history of religions, where it has had a marginal position for a long time, too. She acknowledges a certain personal bias that " . . . certainly leans more towards the mystical and poetical trends inside Islam than towards its legalistic aspects, which, in any case, is not the topic dealt with here . . . " (p. XII). One may add that she does not deal either with theological or other forms of systematic thought in Islam. She does not either apply social scientific approaches in Islamic Studies or immerse herself in more abstract methodological and theoretical problems. Gifted for languages, she tuned herself to hear the voices of the poets she read, listened to, studied, and translated for the Western public. (2) As the subtitle indicates, the book wants to offer "a phenomenological approach to Islam". The author elaborated it on the model that Friedrich Heiler—with whom she worked and to whose memory the book is dedicated—used to describe and study religion in general. 15 In his book of 1961, Heiler distinguished four levels of religious phenomena, namely those of (a) "outer manifestations" (outside the human person), (b) religious imagination (by the person), (c) religious experience (of the person), and (d) divine reality (to the person). In her book of 1994, Annemarie Schimmel distinguishes three levels, namely (1) religious phenomena, (2) human responses to the divine, and (3) the "center" or sacred core of religion. Schimmel's category (2) covers Heiler's categories (b) and (c). (3) Schimmel describes Islam here as a "sign system". The author submits that for the Muslim everything can serve as a sign (äya), in which the sensual and the spiritual meet. Such signs may show up in objective reality outside the individual person, for instance in nature or history; they can also occur in a person's subjective experience. In the Muslim view, the world is like a book consisting of signs; they guide the human being from the external and peripheral to the center; that is to say the Creator of what is. 16 By its sheer existence, everything created signifies and praises the Creator and is muslim as such. (4) Schimmel distinguishes and treats successively six kinds or levels of phenomena that received a religious or even sacred connotation in Islam:

15

Friedrich HEILER, Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1 9 6 1 . HEILER ( 1 8 9 2 - 1 9 6 7 ) was Professor of Comparative History of Religions and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Marburg and the Doktorvater of Annemarie SCHIMMEL.

16

" T h e world is, as it were, an immense book in which those who have eyes to see and ears to hear can recognize God's signs and thus be guided by their contemplation to the Creator Himself" (p. XII).

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

233

(a) phenomena of nature and culture; (b) phenomena of space and time; (c) forms of religious activity, subdivided into the three "mystical" ways of the via purgativa (purification), via illuminativa (exchange of baraka, blessing), and via unitiva (eros-oriented forms of religion); (d) the word about, from, or to God; together with sacred Scripture (the Qur'än as " Word Inlibrate"17); (e) religious individuals and religious groups; (f) various ways to understand God, His creation, angels and spirits, death, and eternal destiny. These six kinds of phenomena together constitute what may be called the Islamic universe of which Annemarie Schimmel gives a somewhat "angelic" presentation. As she puts it, she wants to describe the elements of the Islamic universe in their singular purity, outside specific contexts and isolated from the everyday life of the human beings for whom they acquire significance, implying subjective meanings and significations. In this approach, Schimmel follows Heiler, whose spiritual description of religious phenomena as manifestations of the divine (deus absconditus) falls within the parameters of "classical" phenomenology of religion. 18 (5) The last chapter of the book poses the fundamental question how to approach Islam. The author draws attention to increasing efforts made in the West nowadays to understand and interpret Islam, especially its mystical aspects or dimensions. She sketches very briefly what she sees as the main stages of the development of Islam. It started as a reform movement. Then an ethical dimension crystallized in it. At a later stage, discussions arose on religious subjects like predestination. In the history of Islam there has always been an interplay between established tradition (sunna) and innovation (bid'a). In the 19 th century, modernity from the West appeared in the Muslim part of the world; important changes were the result. Summarily Schimmel draws attention to a basic shift that occurred in religious consciousness in the 19 th and 20 t h centuries; she considers this shift most important. In certain cases it led to a return to figures of the mystical tradition in contrast to learned religious orthodoxy or state politics. The Western impact on Muslim societies is irrevocable; here and there, post-modern constructions of Islam are now emerging.

17 18

The Word Inlibrate is an expression coined by Harry WOLFSON, corresponding to the Word Incarnate of the Christian faith (p. 151). For a somewhat critical evaluation of HEILER'S "classical" phenomenological approach, see J . WAARDENBURG, "Friedrich Heiler und die Religionsphänomenologie. Eine kritische Würdigung", Marburger Universitätsreden 18, Marburg, 1992.

234

T h e Practice o f Islamic Studies in History

(6) In her overall description of Islam as a religion, Annemarie Schimmel mentions some basic tensions inherent in it. She refers, for instance, to tensions between the normative legalistic and the popular, mystically tinged forms of Islam, between the prophetic and the mystical experience of the numinous, between the exoteric and the esoteric reading of religion, between nomos-oriented and eros-oriented attitudes and experiences, between the expectation of eternal bliss (post mortem) and the stress put on the immediate experience of love—that is to say, the touch of the divine here and now. In the immense variety of forms of religion and religious experience that can be found in the Islamic universe, Annemarie Schimmel views mysticism—and within it mystical love as expressed in mystical poetry—as the highest value and true meaning of Muslim spirituality. The book ends by examining briefly the relations between God and the human person in Islam. Whatever be the quality of such relations, the author reminds the reader that in Islam God in the end always remains able to overpower and annihilate the seeker after Him. 19 (7) Schimmel's survey of the immense variety of "signs" that occur in the Islamic religious universe is the result of her extensive and intensive reading of many texts in many languages of the Islamic world. Annemarie Schimmel seems to have had a kind of resonance with the meanings of the texts she read, studied, and took inspiration from. This way of enjoying religious poetry is itself a virtue well-known among Muslims. Schimmel's facility in grasping such meanings undoubtedly was due to her openness of mind, scholarly training, and memory gifts. But it took root in her empathic way of studying what attracted her attention. It was enriched by her dedication to the Islamic religious universe and by her many friendships with Muslims, often around poetry. For Annemarie Schimmel, the study of religious testimonies implied a neverending discovery of mystical love. Behind this presentation of Islam, a reader can sense a harmonious Goethean religious awareness of the Absolute, a Protestant kind of direct personal relationship between the soul and the Divine, and a scholarly mind graced with a Sufi touch. 20 19

"Therefore the human being who can live without God and does not undertake any effort is not a real human being; but if one could comprehend God, then that would not be God. That is the true human being: the one who never rests from striving and who wanders without rest and without end around the light of God's beauty and majesty. And God is the One who immolates the seeker and annihilates him, and no reason can comprehend Him." ROMI, Fihi mä fihi, end of ch. 10 (Quoted on p. 256).

20

1 may be allowed to add a few personal remarks on the title of the English edition of the book as: " D e c i p h e r i n g the Signs of God. A Phenomenological Approach to Islam". In conversations with Professor SCHIMMEL in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I had mentioned the need for a phenomenological approach to Islam, and suggested as one

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

235

5. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Islam as "Traditional" Islam Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1 9 3 3 in Iran) has dealt with numerous aspects of Islamic civilization, science, religious thought and practice. 2 1 He has also treated more general philosophical and metaphysical problems, in contrast to modernity. 2 2 Nasr has often published in English, but much of his work has then been translated into Arabic and other "Islamic" languages. We may assume that the author wanted to present Islam both to a Western readership that is culturally and spiritually interested in Islam and to Muslim readers wanting to enrich themselves spiritually and intellectually. 2 j In the following, I shall mainly refer to his book

of its key concepts the notion of "sign" rather than that of "religious phenomena". She sympathized with the idea and, in a way, applied it. At present, however, some thirty years later, I cannot subscribe to an idealistic interpretation of religion which presents itself as "phenomenological". Interestingly, the title was changed for the German edition: " D i e Zeichen Gottes. Die religiöse Welt des Islam". The book does not claim then to represent a "phenomenological approach". The book gives a wide survey, a reconnaissance of religious phenomena in the Muslims' world, with an angelic vision rather than a human presentation of religion and a spiritual rather than an empirical presentation of Islam. In the present state of research, rather than speaking of "the" Islamic universe, we should take into account the great variety of readings, interpretations, and practices of Islam held by very different Muslim groups and believers socially and personally, religiously and politically. The book stresses religious experience and a particular spirituality, but Islam nowadays is more than that. Readers may want to be informed, for instance, about the various religious and moral responses—including the call for justice—which Muslims have given to the often frightful socio-political problems with which they have been and are confronted. The phenomenologies of religion presented by Friedrich HEILER and his brilliant pupil Annemarie SCHIMMEL are monuments of a spiritually oriented, well documented, and enriching study of religious texts, artifacts and other data. They fulfill not only a scholarly but also an edifying, esthetic, and "humanizing" purpose. In this way SCHIMMEL'S work distinguishes itself from nearly all presentations of Islam by Western and also Muslim scholars. Utter sensitivity for religious meanings is linked in it with an extraordinary gift for languages. 21

22 23

F o r S. H . NASR'S b i b l i o g r a p h y , see M . ÄMINRAZAVI a n d Z . MORIS, The

Complete

Bib-

liography of the Works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr from 1958 through April 1993. On Islam, see in particular: An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines; Three Muslim Sages·, Science and Civilization in Islam; (Ed.) SOHRAWARDI, Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, Vol. 2; Sufi Essays; Al-Biruni: An Annotated Bibliography; (with W. CHITTICK) An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science; Islamic Science: An illustrated Study; Sadr al-Din Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy; (Ed.) Islamic Spirituality, Vol. 1: Foundations, Vol. 2: Manifestations; Muhammad: Man of Allah. The Encounter of Man and Nature. The spiritual crisis of modern man (1968); Knowledge and the Sacred. The Gifford Lectures, 1981; The Need for a Sacred Science (1993). For a more general public: Ideals and Realities of Islam; Islamic Studies: Essays on law and society, the sciences, philosophy and Sufism; Islamic Life and Thought; Traditional Islam in the Modern World; A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World.

236

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Islam and the Plight of Modern Man (1976). 2 4 It touches most of the subjects he has dealt with throughout the years and was published before the Islamic revolution in Iran. (1) Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written extensively on Islamic civilization, its philosophical, metaphysical, and religious aspects. He pays special attention to Islamic thought as it developed in Iran since the 1 6 " century, when Twelver Shl'a Islam had become state religion. Nasr points out that Westerners are now paying growing attention to the inner riches of Islam, at the moment when Muslim countries themselves are modernizing in accordance with Western models. He sees a fundamental opposition between Islamic spirituality and the mentality of modern Western man. Nasr locates a deep contrast between both in the ravages caused by Western modernity in cultures and civilizations outside the West as well as in Western civilization and culture itself, and in the destruction of the natural environment on a planetary scale. In this way, the author is not only a scholar of Islam but also a warner of the West. (2) Nasr wants to situate Islamic thought in the broader context of humankind's metaphysical and religious thinking throughout history. In his view, a critical break in the human tradition of metaphysical thinking occurred in the West with the Renaissance. The further historical development of the West bears witness to the loss of metaphysics and shows its serious consequences for Western civilization itself. For Nasr, metaphysics is what he calls "sapiential knowledge", an essential insight based upon the direct and immediate experience of the Truth. Such an insight is given in what he calls "traditional" knowledge, handed down through a primordial sacred Tradition—with a capital Τ—that is present in a more or less hidden way within the existing religious traditions of humankind. There is a fundamental distinction between this metaphysics as a scientia sacra or sacred (divine) knowledge, on the one hand, and philosophy as a human mental activity, on the other hand. The first is based upon the workings of the Universal Intellect, of Divine origin, the second upon the exercise of human reason, ratio. This basic distinction, however, has been blurred or forgotten in the West which opted for philosophy as a rational activity of the mind, neglecting metaphysics (p. 29). 2 5

Seyyed Hossein N A S R , Islam and the Plight of Modern Man. London and New York: Longman, 1976, etc. 25 Metaphysics in the West " . . . has become reduced—thanks to the Occidental interpretation of Aristotle—to a branch of philosophy" (p. 29).

24

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

237

(3) Nasr repeatedly pleads for a comparative study of philosophy, or rather metaphysics, in East and West and for meaningful intellectual communication, especially between Muslim and Western thinking. He sees Oriental philosophy—which includes the "Eastern" (ishräql) Islamic philosophy—as the doctrinal part of an encompassing spiritual way of life and thought. Oriental philosophy should be studied with reference to its religious background, particularly its postulates concerning the hierarchical nature of man's mental faculties and the kinds of knowledge and modes of knowing that are accessible to him. A comparative philosophy of East and West, as advocated by Nasr, should pay special attention to these features of Oriental philosophy. Nasr views religion as based on revelation and sees religions in philosophical terms as " . . . objective manifestations of the Universal Intellect" (p. 31). A serious comparative study of philosophy in Islam and the West, however, can only be made, according to Nasr, for the period before the European Renaissance, that is to say, before what he sees as the West's break from metaphysics. Since then, in his view, the Western and the Islamic worlds of thinking are poles apart. He sees the post-medieval development of Western philosophy as a gradual decomposition of the concept of Being as metaphysical reality and a gradual estrangement of human reason from its origin, that is to say the light of the divine Intellect. (4) Comparative philosophy—or rather comparative metaphysics—as envisaged by Nasr should also compare doctrines of the various Eastern traditions with each other. Until now, comparative studies of metaphysics were mostly made between the thought of Islam and the West, but they should also be made between the thought of Islam and that of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. A broad comparative study of metaphysics will be fruitful in many ways. First of all, it will enlarge our knowledge of metaphysics and philosophy in the Western, the Islamic, and the more Eastern traditions. It will reveal then differences and similarities between the Islamic and other traditions of thought. In this way, the place and role of Islamic thought and civilization in the history of humankind, and in particular its cosmopolitan function in the medieval period, will become better known. Such a comparative study of metaphysics will be especially important for Muslims, since it will draw their attention to other Eastern traditions, such as those that developed in India and China. Nasr believes these to be near to Islam: " . . . intellectual structures of Hinduism and Buddhism naturally present many resemblances to Islamic intellectuality, since all of them possess a traditional character" (p. 42). The term "traditional", as used by Nasr, refers to what he considers the sacred

238

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Tradition of "traditional Knowledge" or "universal Wisdom" that is concealed inside the various religious traditions of humankind. A comparative study of metaphysics will also make the nature of the Western intellectual tradition since the Renaissance more understandable to Muslims. It can then become an instrument in combating the sense of inferiority that many Muslims feel towards the West, including Western thought. But such a comparative study of metaphysics will also be fruitful for the West. It will be a suitable means to elucidate the Islamic intellectual and spiritual legacy and its relevance for Western man. It will lead to a fundamental criticism of the course Western philosophy has taken since the Renaissance. It will remind the West of truths that once existed within its own Western tradition, including certain sapiential doctrines and forms of spirituality. It will demonstrate the need for and the central role of spiritual discipline to attain any knowledge of permanent value. With the help of the legacy of metaphysics from the East, the West will be able to rediscover and reformulate essential problems of metaphysics. Nasr thinks here, for instance, of the relationship between knowledge and being. The two have been separated too rigidly in the development of scientific thought in the West. The comparative philosophy envisaged by Nasr will put high demands on those who will work on it. It should be carried out by a contemplative intellectual elite from East and West, working in common. (5) Nasr devotes many pages to describing the problematic nature of what he calls "modern" man, as found especially in the West. He sees such a person as becoming increasingly alienated from the Center, Axis, or Essence of Being and from the universe as such. Modern man has become forgetful of his destiny, has lost awareness of the deeper needs of the "inner man", and lacks a spiritual horizon in his life. The reason of this "fall" of modern man is that the human being has lost direct knowledge of himself and of his deeper Self. Especially the rise of scientific knowledge and the rigid distinction—if not contrast—it makes between the subject and object of knowledge has had negative consequences. Scientific knowledge leads to what Nasr calls a "totalitarian rationalism" that runs its own course. It is no longer connected with other kinds of knowledge of the human being and humankind. What is called in the West "scientific objectivity" would be in fact the "collective subjectivity" of an atrophied humanity. Nasr's verdict on Western modernity is categorical. "Modern civilization, as it has developed in the West since the Renaissance, is an experiment that has failed ..." (p. 12) It is based on a profane rationalist philosophy and on " . . . a concept of man which excludes what is most essential to the human state" (p. 12). Western man has lost the trans-

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

239

cendent dimension in his life. As a substitute, he has created an illusory world that is focused on constantly improving one's own material wellbeing. N o t only the West itself, but also the Islamic world and the East in general have become victims of this situation. By imitating the West, the East runs the risk of forgetting the insights of traditional knowledge it still has preserved about man's real nature. Modern man should pass through a spiritual transformation reawakening him to his true and real needs that are given with his deepest nature. The human being is called to return from the periphery to the Center of Being. He can do this by accepting a message coming from the Center. This message restores the link between the periphery of modernity and the Center of true Being. (6) We have to see Seyyed Hossein Nasr's appeal to return to what he calls "Traditional" Islam against this background. He suggests and advocates a spirituality that would be a remedy against a degrading modernity not only for Muslims, but also for Western man. Nasr's use of the term "traditional" is completely different from the concept of "traditional" Islam current in the humanities and social sciences, including Islamic Studies. Regrettably, this cannot but cause confusion. For Nasr, "Traditional Islam" is simply the Islamic form of the primordial sacred Tradition. It is a set of fundamental principles that have descended from Heaven as a particular manifestation of the Divine. These principles are applied by those groups of humankind who search for the "sacred Tradition of primordial knowledge" at different times and places and under different conditions. We are here at the center of Nasr's personal vision of Islam. In his view, Islamic Sufism is the spiritual essence of "Traditional Islam", its esoteric dimension that is only accessible to the initiated. Sufism is not a spirituality on its own, but it is rooted in the context of Islam. To have access to Sufi life and experience, the human being should submit to the message of "Traditional Islam", the universal message from the Center in its Islamic form. Parallel to this, the same universal message from the Center takes Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian forms in the religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, respectively. The said universal Tradition is held to be sacred in itself, both immutable and a living continuity. It is a kind of revelation that contains the knowledge of Ultimate Reality humankind needs to have. It also offers the means to actualize this knowledge in different times and places (p. 48). "Tradition is ultimately a sacred science, a scientia sacra, rooted in the nature of Reality and itself the only integral means of access to this Reality . . . " (p. 49). Sacred Tradition is the call from the "Center" that allows man to return from the periphery to the Center. Nasr gives the

240

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

names of some medieval Sufi authors whom he considers to stand in this Tradition in its Islamic form. They represent what is to be considered a particular gnostic trend in the history of Islamic spirituality and thought. 26 Nasr's presentation of Islam as a sacred tradition allowing salvation by offering knowledge to those who have been initiated is in fact a gnostic interpretation of Islam. Nasr's "Traditional Islam" or "Islam as Tradition" claims to offer a remedy for what he considers the fundamentally evil aspects of modernity. In his view, the future of Islam lies in submitting to "Traditional Islam". This offers the right solution and remedy for the problems of modern man in general. The idea of one universal invisible religion present underneath the many visible religions is ancient. The idea of one universal Traditional Religion behind the multiple historical religious traditions was developed anew at the beginning of the 2 0 t h century by Rene Guenon. It gave a gnostic solution to the problem of the diversity and historical nature of the religions. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in the footsteps of Fritjof Schuon, can be considered one of its adherents. 27 (7) Nasr makes a distinction between the mental—he calls it "psychic"—and the spiritual. Many people worry about their mental life. The real quest, however, should be that for an authentic spiritual life and experience that has to do with the sacred. The hallmark of the truly spiritual is the sacred and the human being should unconditionally surrender to it. The sacred " . . . is related to the world of the Spirit and not of the psyche . . . The sacred, precisely because it comes from God, asks of us all that we are . . . It is only the sacred that can enable man to remove the veil which hides his true nature from himself and makes him forget his own primordial, theomorphic nature (the fitrah mentioned in the Quran) . . . Believers should surrender to the sacred and sacralize their life." 2 8

26

NASR mentions first the following Muslim authors as having conveyed the message of Islamic Sufism on the doctrinal level: ABU MADYAN, IBN 'ARABI, AL-SHÄDHILI (gnostic prayers), and ROMI (p. 48). Later he adds the names of AL-JLLL, SuHRAWARDl, IBN TURKAH AL-LSFAHÄNL, M I R DÄMAD, MULLA SADRÄ (p. 5 6 ) . H e a l s o m e n t i o n s t h e m o r e g n o s t i c t h i n k e r s IBN 'ARABI, IBN ΆΤΑ'ALLAH AL-LSKANDARL, a n d SHABISTARI", a s w e l l a s t h e

27

Sufis 'ATTAR and HÄFIZ, who speak more of love (p. 58). Members of an older generation whom NASR quotes with respect include F. SCHUON, R . GUENON, a n d Α . K . COOMARASWAMY (p. 4 8 ) .

28

"To sacralize life and to reach the sacred we must become ourselves sacred, like a sacred work of art." (p. 54) Nasr refers here to a (spurious) kadltk "God created man upon His Own image." (p. 54)

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

241

(8) Nasr notes that among the spiritual paths of mankind, the Sufi tradition is unique. It unifies what is separate and distinct and it leads to integration of the person. Many Westerners have sympathy for and some understanding of Sufism, but only a few live according to its teachings in actual fact. Living practice requires that one not only studies gnostic treatises, but also strives for spiritual virtues, seeks openness to the inner side of a religious tradition, and follows guidance from an authentic Sufi master while keeping to the discipline of initiatory practice. Because of a lack of good translations of Sufi treatises, the spiritual and universal aspects of Islam have so far not received sufficient attention in the West, according to Nasr. He believes that if the influence of Sufism grew here, it would be salutary for the West on three levels. First, it would provide possibilities of practicing Sufism in a more active way. Second, it would create good will for Islam and promote its spread. "Sufism could help to explain Islam by elucidating its most universal and hence, in a sense, most comprehensible aspect, and therefore making it more approachable to outsiders." (p. 61) And third, it would bring about an anamnesis, a recollection and revival of the West's own spiritual treasures that were still practiced in the medieval past but that nowadays tend to be forgotten in the context of modernity. (9) Seyyed Hossein Nasr does not only address the West. In his work he is also increasingly concerned about the future of Islam. He reflects about the means the Islamic Tradition can provide to respond to the challenges from the West—and modern civilization in general—that present-day Muslims have to face. A first task for Muslim intellectual "iconoclasts" would be to clear the ground of the many false idols that have been erected by the West and modernity in general. The Muslim world today should critically examine what is happening in the modern world and respond to it with conviction. Existing systems of thought are to be subjected to " . . . a thorough criticism in the light of Islamic criteria . . . " (p. 131). The foundations of the many challenges with which the West confronts Islam must be answered " . . . with the sword of the Intellect and the Spirit" (p. 132). To respond to these challenges, Nasr sees it as vital " . . . to adopt a truly Islamic intellectual attitude which would act from an immutable centre and in a positive manner with discernment toward all that the wind blows our way" (p. 136). Nasr takes a critical attitude toward various groups in the Muslim world today. He reproaches present-day Muslim religious leaders and traditional authorities in general (ulamä', Süfls, etc.) for not knowing modernity. And he reproaches Muslim "modernists" for having learned modernity from the West, but at the cost of a sense of inferiority vis-a-

242

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

vis the West, and of being affected by modern forms of idolatry. They tend to become apologetic for Islam or to view it as something belonging to the past. These modernists should become aware, he says, of the inner contradictions of the West. They should critically observe for themselves the present-day floundering of Western civilization and the disintegration of modern civilization in general (p. 135). As examples, Nasr discusses specific challenges posed to Muslims by Western systems of thought, such as Marxism, evolutionism, Freudianism and Jungianism, and existentialism. Against the growing individualistic subjectivism of the modern West, Islam should stand firm in keeping an objective determination and standard of the Truth. The author warns against what he sees as a dangerous tendency in certain Muslim quarters " . . . to interpret Islamic philosophy itself in the light of Western modes of thought, the latest being the existential school" (p. 144). Islam should be viewed on its own terms. In contrast to the kind of freedom hailed in the West, true freedom " . . . can be reached only through the vehicle provided by religion and its sapiential doctrines" (p. 145). Nasr repeatedly warns against the ecological crisis, which he sees as another example of the catastrophic workings of modern Western civilization. 2 9 Islam and Islamic civilization should be defended spiritually against what Nasr sees as a Western onslaught. It takes place not only by political force and economic power, as a lust for domination. It also happens through ideologies that are made into idols and through the horrible image of a two-dimensional man. Nasr's message to Muslims is clear: " . . . a conscious and intellectual defence must be made of the Islamic tradition . . . ; a thorough intellectual criticism must be made of the modern world and its shortcomings." (p. 148) Nasr's advice to follow sacred Traditional Islam, however, demands considerable efforts. It implies acquiring metaphysical insight under the authority of a Master. He should initiate the student into a Tradition held to be sacred and unconditionally true. Our author is convinced that the age-old spiritual trend of gnosis can provide a certain Muslim intelligentsia with a way to defend themselves intellectually and spiritually against the modernization of life that the present-day West is imposing on Muslim societies. j 0 29

T h e crisis started with the Renaissance " . . . when Western man rebelled to a large extent against his God-given religion" (p. 1 4 7 ) . " W h a t Islam in fact did was to prevent the individualistic rebellion against Heaven . . . " (p. 1 4 8 ) , the spirit of Islam being based on submission to God.

30

T h e manuscript of this b o o k was finished on September 8, 1 9 7 4 and the b o o k itself was published in 1 9 7 5 , that is to say several years before the "Islamic revolution" in Iran in 1 9 7 9 . In January 1 9 7 9 , at the time of the Shah's departure from Iran, the author hap-

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

243

6. Mohammed Arkoun: Rethinking Islam Mohammed Arkoun (b. 1928) was born and raised in Kabylia, in what was then French Algeria. He pursued his studies of Islamic history and thought at the Universities of Algiers and Paris. Here he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation (these d'Etat) on the Arab Muslim thinker Miskawayh. He taught in France at the Universities of Lyon, Strasbourg, and Paris IV. He also taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, U.S.A., and in Amsterdam. He gave numerous lectures and participated in a number of conferences and meetings with Muslim, Western, and other participants. Arkoun's work concentrates on Islamic thought, its history, and present-day developments in the Muslim world. He pleads for a more adequate study of Islam and Muslim societies by Muslims, using the methods and instruments of the social sciences and humanities. 31 He envisages what he calls an "applied Islamology". Living in Paris, Arkoun is not only an erudite scholar and philosopher, but also a committed intellectual in both Muslim and European contexts. He continuously stresses the need for independent thinking rather than following traditions, ideological schemes, and authorities, and so becoming the victim of political or other manipulation. Mohammed Arkoun has been much involved in mediating intellectually between the French and the various Muslim cultures. I shall concentrate here on his book Ouvertures sur I'Islam (1989), which is representative for his approach in Islamic Studies. An English translation appeared in 1994 under the title of Rethinking Islam.32

pened to be abroad and subsequently moved to the U.S. Later publications repeat and intensify the argumentation sketched of Islam and the Plight of Modern Man. See in particular the author's Traditional Islam in the Modern World and the remarkable A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World. 31 For a bibliography of ARKOUN'S publications until 2001, see U. GÜNTHER, Mohammed Arkoun. Ein moderner Kritiker der islamischen Vernunft, pp. 223-241. His most important works are: Deux Epitres de Miskawayh. Edition critique; Traite d'Ethique. Traduction franjaise avec introduction et notes du Tahdhib al-akhläq de Miskawayh; Contribution ä l'6tude de l'humanisme arabe au IVe/Xe siecle: Miskawayh (320/325421 = 932/936-1030) philosophe et historien; Essais sur la pensee islamique; Lectures du Coran; Pour une critique de la raison islamique; L'Islam, morale et politique. With an Appendix "Dialogue sur I'Islam et l'Etat" by various authors; Discours coranique et pensee scientifique; Actualit6 d'une culture mediterraneenne. 32 Mohammed ARKOUN, Ouvertures sur I'islam (Collection "Ouverture"), Paris: Ed. Jacques Grancher, 1989; Rethinking Islam: Common questions, uncommon answers, Translated and edited by Robert D. LEE, Boulder, etc.: Westview Press, 1994, XV + 139 pp.

244

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

1. This book presents Islam in a reflective manner, with three characteristics formulated by the author as follows: (1) It offers a dynamic vision rather than a static presentation of Islam; (2) It combines various methods applied in the social sciences, rather than giving one method priority over all others; (3) It prefers a comparative approach to what the author calls an "ethnographic" view that imprisons Islam in its specificity and particularism. Arkoun holds the idea of the specificity and particularity of Islam to be a construct of Western scholarship that identified Islam as a special field of research (Islamwissenschaft), fundamentally different from other civilizations and religions. Such a particularistic view of Islam was then continued and ideologically intensified by Muslim apologists and militants. The author, for his part, wants to pay attention to the broader human context and anthropological connections of Islamic phenomena. He wants to study Muslim ways of behaving and thinking and Muslim social structures as forms of general human phenomena, kinds of behavior, and social structures. 2. Arkoun considers his own "anthropological" approach thoroughly critical. It represents a scholarly battle waged on at least four fronts: (1) It implies a historical and epistemological critique of the ways of reasoning that Muslim authors have used until now; (2) It liberates thinking from what the author calls "dogmatisms", that is to say categorizing theories and images that a particular community's theology projects on the theologies of other, rival communities; (3) It offers an anthropological explanation and discussion of the emergence of beliefs, both religious and secular, in societies; (4) It raises the now available knowledge of Islam to the level of postmodern reasoning critical of the older Enlightenment reasoning. Arkoun describes his efforts as being directed in particular against two mistaken ways of representing Islam. On the one hand, his approach rejects the mythologized and ideologized presentations of Islam currently offered by Muslim militants, apologists, and ulamä'. On the other hand, it is opposed to the static and fragmented portrayal of Islam that has been given by most Western specialists. 3. Arkoun wants to study Islam on the basis of the human sciences, comprising both the humanities and the social sciences. His quest is for a kind of fundamental—cultural, social, religious—anthropology that should work on the basis of the factual data that are brought to light by concrete empirical—linguistic, historical, sociological, anthropologi-

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

245

cal, etc.—research. That is to say, he wants to take data from the social sciences and the humanities as material for a fundamental "anthropological" reflection. In this way, he seeks to raise what used to be called specifically Islamic realities to a more general level of intelligibility. They should be seen and studied as particular forms of general human realities. Such a research program should lead to a new, non-particularistic view of Islam. Arkoun analyzes the ways in which human constructions—including constructions of Islam—emerge and function in specific historical and social situations. Behind everything that is presented as "Islam", including Islamic religious phenomena, there always lies a more general human activity. This is his point of departure and he calls his approach "anthropological". It should lead to new interpretations of religious phenomena such as the Qur'än and Islam itself. However, it is difficult to carry out such research in present-day Muslim societies, where people can hardly step out of what Arkoun calls the "dogmatic closure" of Islamic thought. In contrast to this situation, he pleads for an open, liberal, and critical way of "rethinking Islam" which does not fix it but leaves it open to change. 4. Arkoun distinguishes two kinds of scholarly knowledge of Islam. The first makes an exhaustive factual study of a precise, well-defined sector of reality. It wants to discover or use new data and to explain or interpret them in a new way. The second kind of knowledge, in contrast, "problematizes" a particular field of research. It addresses and analyzes concrete historical and social situations and it "historicizes" the beliefs and "non-beliefs" that existed or arose in such situations. Most importantly, it deconstructs the cognitive systems and ethico-juridical codes, whether religious or secular, of the people concerned. This approach should lead to a reflective activity that allows a scholar to grasp and identify what Arkoun calls the "key concepts" of a particular culture at a given moment of its history. In this way Arkoun hopes to bring to light what he is looking for: the very principles and founding values of Islamic living tradition. This procedure should prevent a mythologization and ideologization of Islam as well as a compartmentalization according to disciplines. 5. Arkoun affirms that, even after two world wars and the collapse of the colonial empires, Western hegemony and claims of leadership continue to prevail. Rather than reorienting itself and changing from within, " . . . Western reason has maintained its pressure on the rest of the world and its refusal to entertain forms of thought coming from the outside" (p. 4).

246

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

By not allowing itself to change its orientation fundamentally and to enter into a dialogue with non-Westerners as real partners, the West maintains its old attitude of domination. In fact, voices protesting against the West are simply suppressed, directly or indirectly. Real solidarity with Muslim peoples is not well thought of in the West. Instead of admitting contrary standpoints, the West encourages other peoples to adopt the values of the West or calls on them to adopt at least an "objective" and "neutral" attitude to the West. Although certain groups have engaged in soul-searching, present-day Europe tends to reaffirm the old idea of the inviolability and universal validity of the European model. Muslim intellectuals in Europe who point out to Europeans the dangers of an uncritical allegiance to existing political and social forces are not listened to. In the present-day USA, the situation is even more critical. In the national interest, blind forces that are indifferent to questions of meaning, norms, and values, decide here on the destinies of whole peoples elsewhere in the world. 6. Again and again, Arkoun calls on Muslim intellectuals to engage more in rational thinking and to oppose the irrational political and ideological forces that prevail in Muslim countries today. He stresses the need for fundamental reflection. Intellectuals should make concerted efforts to think what Arkoun calls "the unthought". They should look critically at Muslim traditions that have been handed down by custom or dictated by authority and that are then simply accepted without critical analysis or reflection. At present, existing ideas, beliefs, and doctrines held in Muslim societies are simply de-contextualized by actors who later re-contextualize them as they see fit. In contrast to such arbitrary selection and manipulation, critical scholarly research should systematically contextualize the ideas, beliefs, and doctrines that people hold and study their emergence, growth, and decline. It should try to identify and explain them, and look at their immediate effects and at the wider consequences for the societies concerned. 7. Arkoun pays much attention to the role of what he calls the imaginative dimension of Muslim culture and society and of relations between Islam and the West. Scholarly research increasingly addresses the images a culture has of itself and of other cultures. The image that Islam and the West have of each other, for instance in the media, is very complex. Most of the negative images are due to confrontations between Muslims and non-Muslim Europeans in the past. A number of them are due to rivalries between communities of the monotheistic religions that have lived for a long time under the rule of mutual exclusion. Other contrasting images can be traced back to conflicting encounters between Muslims and Europeans around the Mediterranean. This area was largely

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

247

under Muslim control from the 8 t h to the 12 t h and then again from the 16 t h to the 18 t h century. The colonial period and its confrontations, also in the domain of culture, gave rise to much imagery on both sides. All these images have become now ideological obstacles to a proper knowledge and an impartial study of historical relationships between groups. Arkoun calls historians and anthropologists to study the reasons for existing mutual misperceptions and ideological deformations. They should open up wider horizons to transcend the old walls of separation. The monotheistic religions, for instance, should be viewed as a kind of religious commonwealth. The Mediterranean area should be recognized as having a history of its own, in which various peoples participated. This happened even if the people concerned were not aware of such a common history and of the many things that their societies and cultures shared. Arkoun has a harsh judgment on the largely negative role of the theologians in this common history and the negative impact of the discourses religious authorities held in their respective communities. He pleads that the recurring religious disputes should become the subject of serious critical research. For a long time, Arkoun has also been pleading for a broadening of current views of Muslim-Western and Muslim-Christian relations. Instead of excluding Islam from Faculties of Theology and Departments of Religion in the West, it should have here its legitimate place as a subject of serious study. And instead of advancing the idea of a common Judeo-Christian tradition, Muslims should be viewed as being part of the monotheistic communities that are in dialogue. Existing prejudices in Europe—and in France in particular—against Islam and Muslims should be denounced and refuted. 8. On the basis of what is known of the social dynamics of religious traditions and movements, Arkoun wants to explore why and how Islam and other monotheistic religions arose, became established, and then from a certain point on rigidified. An important element in his view of the three monotheistic religions and their mutual relations is the concept of "symbolic capital", that is, a community's common stock of signs and symbols. Each religious community has considered its symbolic capital sacred or divine and has given a kind of mythical account of its own founding. In this way, ethno-cultural groups acquired a religious identity. Each group produced its own system of "belief and unbelief" (to use Arkoun's wording) and used its symbolic capital in its own ways for its own purposes. This has enabled these groups to give a religious legitimacy to their desires to acquire power, build empires, and wage wars. 9. Our author believes that his approach will lead to a new interpretation of what he calls the "societies of the Book"—Christianity, Judaism,

248

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

and Islam. It should allow us to see what these societies with their particular religions in fact hold in common and where they are different. 10. In a short flashback, Arkoun summarizes the ideological struggles around Islam that took place in the Arab world in the 20 t h century. It all started with the rise of the "liberals" who broke out of the established Islamic framework in deference to the West, with the rather naive apolitical aim to arrive at a cultural transformation of Muslim societies. Then the more politically oriented nationalists and also reformists pushed the liberals aside and fought for the independence of their countries. The reformists engaged in social and religious reforms. Once independence had been obtained, the new nationalist leaders embarked on more or less illusory political programs for the development of their countries. Increasing opposition to the new political nationalist leaders and the new religious authorities with reformist ideas led to an ideological struggle between those heading for a socialist and for an Islamic model of society. In actual fact, an ongoing process of secularization has been taking place. 11. Mohammed Arkoun's approach is most relevant in that it opens a new kind of critical scholarly research on religions, including Islam. For a long time, both Muslims and Orientalists had represented Islam as the realm of the sacred and the transcendent, in itself fundamentally different from the West. In fact, however, we have to do nowadays with a human instrumentalization of Islam. Religious and political leaders have taken Islam in their own hands and decide about its symbolic function in society. It is human beings, in particular religious leaders, who carry responsibility for what they do with their religions. 12. In this "anthropological" approach to religion and religions including Islam, Arkoun may have had farther-reaching intentions in mind. Freeing societies through the use of reason from false gods and idols extricates the divine from human phantasms, and this will help to liberate the human being to assume responsibilities. Arkoun also draws attention to the concept of revelation as it has been held in the monotheistic religions and to the particular mythical forms in which this concept has been clad and sacralized in them. His interest in the concept of revelation may also have been nourished by theological intentions. Arkoun envisages what he calls a "comparative theology" of the monotheistic faiths, based on the very notion of revelation as it is held in the monotheistic communities. This comparative theology should focus on their claims of revelation. Convinced as he is of the force of reason and argumentation, these should not only be instruments of empirical research. Primarily, reason

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

249

should lead to constructive thinking and to creativity, particularly in terms of cooperation and dialogue between people.

7. Conclusion 1. In the scholarly work of these five authors, Islam as a religion turns out to be a central issue. The scholars describe it in different ways: (a) in its historical dynamics as a tradition interpreted in very different contexts and with various positive faith orientations (Cantwell Smith); (b) in its providing a foundation and structure to societies and cultures, giving a basic legitimacy to the social order and institutions; though present-day historical changes and social developments push religion more and more to the personal and private domain (von Grunebaum); (c) in its endless variety of living forms read as "signs" that designate spiritual realities; with particular attention paid to mystical expressions in poetry and art (Schimmel); (d) in its giving a metaphysical background through a sacred Tradition to a civilization and giving religious insight through initiation to human beings on the authority of a sacred Tradition and further guidance by spiritual leaders. Scholarship on religion should be metaphysically grounded (Nasr); (e) in constructing meaning out of a society's symbolic capital with an "anthropological" denunciation of particularisms: particular truths, beliefs, forms, and rules of behavior. Scholarship on religion should be "anthropologically" oriented (Arkoun) in its research while being based on a new form of enlightenment. 2. For all five scholars, the empirical aspects of religion are accessible to scholarly inquiry; the presence of religious meanings leads to further reflection. 3. All five scholars have an interest that is not limited to Islam, but extends to other religions or to religion: (a) on the basis of the category of faith as a universal human quality (Cantwell Smith); (b) on the basis of comparable religious structures in various cultures and societies (von Grunebaum); (c) on the basis of common religious phenomena and experiences, with mystical experience being the most authentic (Schimmel); (d) on the basis of a common "sapiential" sacred Tradition of Divine origin, hidden inside the various religious traditions (Nasr);

250

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

(e) on the basis of a shared human nature, the ability to shape meanings leading to "symbolic capital", reasoning, and human communication (Arkoun). 4. These five scholars have hardly paid attention to the study of fiqh or the place of ethics in Islamic thought. Allusions to it can be found, however, in Cantwell Smith's and Arkoun's work. In his view of Islamic Studies, Arkoun seems to be the only one who accepts in so many words the results of critical social scientific research wholeheartedly in the study of religion. 5. Apart from Arkoun's and Nasr's criticism of the West, and that of Cantwell Smith in his earlier "Marxian" days, these scholars have paid little attention to actual relations between the Muslim and the Western part of the world. The tendency prevails to present the religion of Islam fundamentally as an experience of mind and soul, within a valid spiritual framework. 6. Most of these five scholars, besides taking Islam as an object of research, also developed their own reflections about it. Cantwell Smith and Nasr developed a reflection that transcends empirical research and extends toward a World Theology, or a primordial and universal sacred Tradition. Arkoun, who is concerned with problems of meaning, has worked on semiotic problems, for instance in the interpretation of religious texts and in the study of sacralizations in given historical and social contexts. He uses reason in a critical way. He advocates the application of the human sciences in Islamic Studies and bases his approach to religious beliefs and practices on "anthropological"—as distinct from "theological"—principles. Von Grunebaum opens a theoretical horizon in the study of cultures, looking for the legitimate place and role of historical religions in them. Of the five scholars, his approach is most Western-centered. Schimmel concentrated on the study of religious texts and themes, supported by direct observation and communication, apparently without particular theoretical concerns. 7. The five scholars identified the religious aspects of Islam quite differently. Annemarie Schimmel was taken up with the mystical dimensions of Islam and concentrated on typically religious literature. Cantwell Smith was much concerned with Islam as a faith and the place given to reason in it. He concentrated on concepts current in Islam and conceptualizations in Islamic Studies. Nasr has devoted himself particularly to the esoteric, gnostic dimensions and the Sufi tradition of Islam, its spirituality with a warning message to the modern, secular West. Arkoun has worked on the religious aspects of Islam in the light of their more general, anthropological dimension, in a framework of rational thought.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

251

V o n G r u n e b a u m ' s r e s e a r c h f o c u s e d o n religious structures in culture a n d society; h e also h a d a n interest in p e r s o n a l religion. All five scholars h a v e b e e n attentive t o f o r m s of spirituality in Islam.

Selected

Literature

Bibliography, Books on Islam, Articles, Discussion and Research Arkoun, Mohammed Bibliography GÜNTHER, Ursula, "Bibliographie" in ID., Mohammed Arkoun. Ein moderner Kritiker der islamischen Vernunft (Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, 5), Würzburg: Ergon, 2004, pp. 223-244. For further literature about A R K O U N and his context, see pp. 244-256 of this book.

Books

on

Islam

1961 Deux Epitres de Miskawayh. Edition critique. Damascus: Institut Frangais d'Etudes Arabes, 1961. 1963 Aspects de la pensee musulmane classique, Paris: Institut Pedagogique National, 1963. 1969 Traite d'Ethique. Traduction frangaise avec introduction et notes du Tahdib al-akhläq de MISKAWAYH, Damascus: Institut Frangais d'Etudes Arabes, 1969, 2 n d edition 1988. 1970 L'humanisme arabe au IVe/Xe siecle: Miskawayh, philosophe et historien, Paris: Vrin, 1970. Revised 2 n d edition 1982. 1973 Essais sur la pens0e islamique, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973, 3 r d edition 1984. 1975 La pensee arabe (Que sais-je? 915), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975, 5 t h edition 1995. 1982 Lectures du Coran, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982, 2 n d enlarged edition Tunis: Alif-Ed. de la Mediterranee, 1991. 1983 Coll. Presence de l'Islam, Paris: Proche Orient et Tiers Monde, No. 7, 1983. 1984 Pour une critique de la raison islamique, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984. 1986 Coll. L'Islam. Morale et politique, Paris: UNESCO & Desclee de Brouwer, 1986, 2 n d edition 1990. 1989 Ouvertures sur l'Islam, Paris: I. Grancher 1989, 2 n d edition 1992, 3 r d edition (revised) L'Islam. Approche critique, 1997. English translation Rethinking Islam (1994).

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

252

1989 Discours coranique et pensee scientifique, Paris, 1989. 1989 Religion et laicite. Une approcbe la'ique de l'Islam. L'Abresle, Rhone: Centre Thomas More, 1989. 1993 Penser l'Islam aujourd'hui, Algiers, Laphomic: ENAL, 1993 (pirate publication). 1994 Rethinking Islam. Common Questions, Uncommon Answers. English translation of Ouvertures sur l'Islam (1989 etc.) by Robert D. LEE, Boulder, Col. etc.: Westview Press, 1994. 1996 Islam, Europe and the West, London: Tauris, 1996. 1998 L'Islam. Approcbe critique, Paris: I. Grancher, 1997. Revised and enlarged 3 rd edition of Ouvertures sur l'Islam (1989). 2002 The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, London: Saqi Books, 2002. 2005 Humanisme et Islam: combats et propositions, Paris: Vrin, 2005. 2006 Ed. Histoire de l'Islam et des musulmans en France du Moyen-Age ä nos jours, Paris: Michel, 2006.

Some Articles 1964 "L'Islam moderne vu par le Professeur G. E. von Grunebaum", Arabica, Vol. 11 (1964), pp. 113-126. 1988 "The Notion of Revelation. From Ahl al-Kitäb to the Societies of the Book", Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 28 (1988), pp. 62-89. Reprinted in Lectures du Coran (1982), pp. 257-281. 1993 "Europe and Islam" (Europa en de Islam). Syllabus of Guest Lectures at the University of Amsterdam (Leerstoel Islam) given January-June 1992, and published in 1993 (76 p.) 1993 "Islam and the Hegemony of the West", in God, Truth and Reality. Essays in Honour of John Hick, ed. by Arvind SHARIMA, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, pp. 72-86. 1998 "Du dialogue inter-religieux ä la reconnaissance du fait religieux", Diogene, No. 182 (1998), pp. 103-126. 1999 "L'Islam actuel devant sa tradition", in Christianisme, Juda'isme et Islam. Fidelite et ouverture, ed. by Joseph DORE, Paris: Ed. Du Cerf, 1999, pp. 103-151. 2001 "Contemporary Critical Practices and the Qur'än", in Encyclopedia of the Qur'än, ed. by Jane Dämmen MCAULIFFE, Vol. 1, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2001, pp. 4 1 2 - 4 3 1 .

Discussion and

Research

AYADI, Mohammed el-, "Mohammed Arkoun ou l'ambition d'une modernite intellectuelle", in: Penseurs maghrebins contemporains, ed. by Benaddi HASSAN et al., Casablanca: Editions Eddif, 1993, pp. 43-71. ESACK, Farid, "Mohammed Arkoun: Deconstructing Revelation", in: Qur'än, Liberation & Pluralism. An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression", Oxford: Oneworld, 1997, pp. 68-73.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

253

GÜNTHER, Ursula, Mohammed Arkoun. Ein moderner Kritiker der islamischen Vernunft (Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, Vol. 5). Würzburg: Ergon, 2004. KOGELGEN, Anke von, Mohammed Arkoun und die islamische Philosophie. Unpublished Μ. A. Thesis, Free University of Berlin, 1990. LEE, Robert D., "Arkoun and Authenticity", Peuples Mediterraneens, Vol. 50 (Jan.-March 1 9 9 0 ) , pp. 7 5 - 1 0 6 . —, "Foreword" to M . ARKOUN, Rethinking Islam ( 1 9 9 4 ) , pp. VII-XIII. MALTI-DOUGLAS, Fedwa, "Arkoun, Mohammed", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, Vol. 1, pp. 139-140. SOURIAU, Christine, "La conscience islamique dans quelques oeuvres recents d'intellectuels du Maghreb", Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Mediterranee, Vol. 29 (1980), pp. 69-107. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Mohammed Arkoun" in ID., "Some North African Intellectuals' Presentations of Islam", in: Christian-Muslim Encounters, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and Wadi Zaidan HADDAD, Gainesville etc.: University Press of Florida, 1995, pp. 366-370 and 371-377. WATT, W . Montgomery, "A Contemporary Muslim Thinker", Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 6, Nr. 1 (1985), pp. 5-10.

Grunebaum, Gustave Ε. von

Bibliography Bibliography of G . E . VON GRUNEBAUM'S publications is to be found in Islam and its Cultural Divergence, Studies in Honor of Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum, edited by Girdhari L. TIKKU, Chicago, London & Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 219-248. See also the "Bibliographie" given in Gustav Ε . VON GRIINEBAUIM, Studien zum Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islams, Zürich & Stuttgart: Artemis Verlag, 1969, pp. 427-443. It is divided into two sections: Books and articles (pp. 427-435) and Bookreviews (pp. 436-443).

A

Books on Islam 1937 Die Wirklichkeitsweite der früharabischen Dichtung. Eine literaturivissenschaftliche Untersuchung (Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 3), Vienna: Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Instituts der Universität, 1937. 1946 Medieval Islam. Α Study in Cultural Orientation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946, 7th ed. 1969. Phoenix Book 1961, 7th ed. 1969. French translation 1962. German revised and enlarged translation 1963. 1947 Az-Zarnüjl: Instruction of the Student; the Method of Learning. Translation with Introduction (together with Τ. M. ABEL), New York: King's Crown Press, 1947.

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

254

1950 A Tenth-Century Document of Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism. The section on poetry of al-Bäqilläni's I'jäz al-Qur'än, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1950. Bengali translation 1964. 1951 Muhammadan Festivals, New York: H. Schuman, 1951. Reprinted 1958. 1955 Islam. Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, Menasha, Wis., and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955, 2 n d ed. with additions 1961. 1955 Kritik und Dichtkunst. Studien zur arabischen Literaturgeschichte, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1955. 1962 Modern Islam. The Search for Cultural Identity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Vintage Book 1964. 1964 French African Literature. Some Cultural Implications, The Hague: Mouton, 1964. 1965 Islam. Experience of the Holy and Concept of Man, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965. 1966 Der Islam in seiner klassischen Epoche, 622-1258 (Bibliothek des Morgenlandes), Zürich 8c Stuttgart: Artemis, 1966. English text Classical Islam, London: Allen & Unwin, and Chicago: Aldine, 1969. 1969 Studien zum Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islams, Zürich & Stuttgart: Artemis, 1969. 1976 Islam and Medieval Hellenism: Social and Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Dunning S. W I L S O N , London: Variorum Reprints, 1 9 7 6 .

Some Articles

on

Islam

1963 "Der Islam: seine Expansion im Nahen und Mittleren Osten, Afrika und Spanien", Propyläen-Weltgeschichte, Vol. 5 (1963), pp. 21-179. 1964 "Parallelism, Convergence, and Influence in the Relations of Arab and Byzantine Philosophy, Literature, and Piety", Dumberton Oak Papers, No. 18, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 91-111. 1968 "Some Recent Constructions and Reconstructions of Islam", in The Conflict of Traditionalism and Modernism in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Carl LEIDEN, Austin: University of Texas Humanities Research Center, 1968, pp. 141-160. 1969 "The Sources of Islamic Civilization", Der Islam, Vol. 46 (1969), pp. 1 52.

Discussion

and

Research

O. P., G. C., "La civilisation musulmane dans l'ceuvre du Professeur Gustave von Grunebaum", MIDEO, Nr. 10 (1970), pp. 37-82. —, "Dialogue with Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum", IJMES, Vol. 7 (1976), pp. 123-128. ARKOUN, Mohammed, "L'Islam moderne vu par le Professeur G. E. von Grunebaum", Arabica, Vol. 11 (1964), pp. 113-126. ANAWATI,

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

255

Amin, " G . E . von Grunebaum. Toward relating Islamic Studies to Universal Cultural History", IJMES, Vol. 6 (1975), pp. 1 4 0 - 1 4 7 . C A H E N , Claude, "Notice necrologique. Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 15, Parts I—II (June 1972), pp. 1 - 2 . G. E. von Grunebaum, 1909-1972. In Memoriam, ed. by UCLA Near Eastern Center, Los Angeles, 1972. "Grunebaum, Gustave Edmund von". In: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres 1933-1945. General Editors: Herbert A. STRAUSS and Werner R Ö D E R . Vol. I I , Part 1 : Α - K The Arts, Sciences, and Literature, München, New York & London: K. G. Saur, 1983, pp. 4 3 0 - 4 3 1 . KEDDIE, Nikki R., in Rubric "Recent Deaths", American Historical Review, Vol. 77, Nr. 4 (October 1972), pp. 1 1 9 8 - 1 2 0 0 . LAROUI, Abdallah, "For a Methodology of Islamic Studies. Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum", Diogenes, Nr. 83 (Fall 1973), pp. 1 2 - 3 9 . Reprinted in his The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual. Traditionalism or Historicism? Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976, Chapter 3. French text: "Pour une methodologie des etudes islamiques. L'Islam au miroir de Gustave von Grunebaum", Diogene, No. 83 (juillet-septembre 1973), pp. 1 6 - 4 2 . Reprinted as "Les Arabes et l'anthropologie culturelle. Remarques sur la methode de Gustave von Grunebaum" in ID., La crise des intellectuals arabes. Traditionalisme ou historicisme? Paris: Maspero, 1974, pp. 5 9 - 1 0 2 . RIEDEL, Dagmar Anne, "Medieval Arabic Literature between History and Psychology. Gustave von Grunebaum's Approach to Literary Criticism", in: Proceedings of the Arabic and Islamic Section of the 35th International Congress of Asian and African Studies (ICANAS), Part One (= The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 19-20) 1998, pp. 1 1 1 - 1 2 2 . ROSENTHAL, Franz, "In Memoriam Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum, 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 7 2 " , IJMES, Vol. 4 (1973), pp. 3 5 5 - 3 5 8 . —, "Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum, 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 7 2 " , in Medieval Scholarship. Biographical Studies on the Tormation of a Discipline, ed. by Helen Danico and Joseph B. Zavadil, Vol. 1: History, London and New York: Garland, 1995, pp. 3 2 5 - 3 3 5 . T I K K U , Girdhari L., "Bibliography G. E. von Grunebaum", in Islam and its Cultural Divergence. Studies in Honor of Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum, ed. by Girdhari L. T I K K U , Urbana, Chicago & London: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 2 1 9 - 2 4 8 . T U R N E R , Bryan S. "Gustave Ε. von Grunebaum and the Mimesis of Islam", in Orientalism, Islam, and Islamists, ed. by Asaf HUSSAIN, Robert O L S O N , Jamil QURESHI, Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books, 1984, pp. 1 9 3 - 2 0 1 . WAINES, David, "Cultural Anthropology and Islam. The Contribution of G. E . von Grunebaum", Review of Middle East Studies, Vol. 2 (1976), pp. 1 1 3 123. BANANI,

256

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein

Bibliography AMINRAZAVI, Mehdi, and MORIS, Zailan, The Complete Bibliography of the Works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr from 1958 through April 1993, Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Academy of Sciences of Malaysia, 1994, X X X I V + 64 p. This Bibliography consists of two sections: "Books" (pp. 1-11) and "Monographs, Articles and Reviews" (pp. 13-64).

Books on Islam 1964 An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, etc. 1964 Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, etc. 1966 Ideals and Realities of Islam, London: Allen and Unwin, 1966, etc. 1967 Islamic Studies. Essays on Law and Society, the Sciences, Philosophy and Sufism, Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1967. 1968 Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968, etc. 1970 Text edition SOHRAWARDI, Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, Vol. 2, Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1970, etc. 1972 Sufi Essays, London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. Reprinted also as Living Sufism. 1973 Al-Btrünt: An Annotated Bibliography. Tehran: High Council of Culture and the Arts, 1973. 1974 Jalal al-Din Rumi. Supreme Persian Poet and Sage. Tehran: High Council of Culture and the Arts, 1974. 1 9 7 5 - 1 9 9 1 (with W . CHITTICK) An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, 3 vols. Tehran, 1 9 7 5 - 1 9 9 1 . 1976 Islamic Science. An Illustrated Study, London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1976. 1976 Islam and the Plight of Modern Man, London and New York: Longman, 1976, etc. 1978 Sadr al-Din Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy, Tehran and London: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978. 1981 Islamic Life and Thought, London: Allen and Unwin & Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1981. 1982 Philosophy, Literature and Fine Arts (Islamic Education Series), Kent: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982. 1987 Islamic Art and Spirituality, London and Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1987. 1987 Traditional Islam in the Modern World, London: Kegan Paul International, 1987, etc. 1987-1991 (Ed.) Islamic Spirituality. Vol. 1: Foundations (1987); Vol. 2: Manifestations (1991). New York: Crossroad Publications, 1987 and 1991. Also London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1992.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

257

1988 Muhammad: Man of Allah, London: Muhammadi Trust, 1988. 1993 A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World, Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society & Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1993. 1996 Religion and the Order of Nature. The 1994 Cadbury Lectures of the University of Birmingham. Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Some Articles and Books on Wider Philosophical

Problems

1968 The Encounter of Man and Nature. The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, London: Allen and Unwin, 1968, etc. Reprinted also as Man and Nature. 1981 Knowledge and the Sacred. The Gifford Lectures 1981, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press & New York: Crossroad Publications, 1981. 1984 "The Philosophia Perennis and the Study of Religion", in The World's Religious Traditions. Current Perspectives in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ed. by Frank WHALING, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1984, pp. 181-200. 1991 Religion and Religions. The Challenge of Living in a Multireligious World, Charlotte, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. 1993 The Need for a Sacred Science, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993. Alternative title of this book: In Quest of the Sacred Science. 1995 "Comments on a Few Theological Issues in Islamic-Christian Dialogue" in Christian-Muslim Encounters, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and Wadi Zaidan HADDAD, Gainesville etc.: University Press of Florida, 1995, pp. 457-467.

Discussion 2001 Some Reflections on the Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed. by Lewis Edwin HAHN, Randall E. AUXIER, Lucian W. STONE, Jr. (The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XXVIII), Chicago and La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 2001 (1001 p.).

Schimmel, Annemarie

Bibliography A Bibliography of Annemarie SCHIMIMEL'S publications up to 1993 was prepared by Maria Eva SUBTELNY and Muhammad al-FARUQUE. It was published under the title of "Annemarie Schimmel Bibliography" in Annemarie Schimmel Festschrift, a special issue of the Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 18 (1994), on pp. V-XXI. A selective bibliography is to be found in Annemarie SCHIMMEL'S autobiography, Morgenland und Abendland. Mein west-östliches Leben, München: C. Η. Beck, 2002, pp. 330-334.

258

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Some of A. Schimmel's Books on Islam 1948 Lied der Rohrflöte. Ghaselen, Hameln: Fritz Seifert, 1948. 1958 Dinier taribine giris (Introduction to the Study of Religion), Ankara: Giiven Matbaasi, 1958. 1963 Gabriel's Wing. A Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963, etc. 1963 Muhammad Iqbal. Botschaft des Ostens, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1963. 1965 Pakistan. Ein Schloss mit tausend Toren, Zürich: Orell Füssli, 1965. 1973 Islamic Literatures of India, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973. 1975 Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill, N.C.: North Carolina University Press, 1975, etc. 1978 The Triumphal Sun. A Study of the Works of Jaläloddin Rumi, London: East-West Publications, 1978, etc. 1978 Denn Dein ist das Reich. Gebete aus dem Islam, Freiburg: Herder, 1978. 1980 Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (Handbuch der Orientalistik, No. 2, Part IV, Vol. III), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980. 1982 J4s Through a Veil. Mystical Poetry in Islam, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. 1982 Islam in India and Pakistan (Iconography of Religions 22,9), Leiden: Brill, 1982. 1983 Der Islam im indischen Subkontinent, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983. 1984 Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, New York: New York University Press, 1984. 1985 Al-Halladsch. "O Leute, rettet mich vor Gott", Freiburg: Herder, 1985. 1985 And Muhammad is His Messenger. The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. 1987 Friedrich Rückert. Lebensbild und Einführung in sein Werk, Freiburg: Herder, 1987. 1988 Friedrich Rückert. Ausgewählte Werke, Hrsg. von A. S C H I M I M E L , 2 Bände, Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1988. 1990 Mein Bruder Ismail. Erinnerungen an die Türkei, Köln: Önel Verlag, 1990. A Life of Learning, Washington D.C. (American Council of Learned Societies). (Biographical account, n.d.) 1994 Decyphering the Signs of God. A Phenomenological Approach to Islam, Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. German edition: Die Zeichen Gottes. Die religiöse Welt des Islam, München: C. H. Beck, 1995. 1994 Terres d'Islam. Aux sources de l'Orient musulman, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1994. 1995 Meine Seele ist eine Frau. Das Weibliche im Islam, München: Kösel, 1995. 1996 Wie universal ist die Mystik? Die Seelenreise in den großen Religionen der Welt, Freiburg: Herder, 1996. 1996 Jesus und Maria in der islamischen Mystik, München: Kösel, 1996. 1997 Die drei Versprechen des Sperlings. Die schönsten Tierlegenden aus der islamischen Welt, München: C. H. Beck, 1997.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

259

1998 Die Träume des Kalifen. Träume und ihre Deutung in der islamischen Kultur, München: C. H. Beck, 1998. 1999 'Attar. Vogelgespräche und andere klassische Texte, München: C. H. Beck, 1999. 2000 Im Reich der Großmoguln. Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur, München: C. H. Beck, 2000. 2001 Das islamische Jahr. Zweiten und Feste, München: C. H. Beck, 2001. 2001 Kleine Paradiese. Blumen und Gärten im Islam, Freiburg: Herder, 2001. 2002 Morgenland und Abendland. Mein west-östliches Leben, München: C. H. Beck, 2002, 4 th ed. 2003 (Autobiographical). 2002 Im Namen Allahs, des Allbarmherzigen: der Islam, Düsseldorf: Patmos, 2002.

Discussion and

Research

AHIMED, Munir D., and Kai HAFEZ, "Das Orient- und Islambild in Deutschland. Überlegungen zum Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels und ein Gespräch mit Annemarie Schimmel", Orient (Hamburg), Vol. 36 (1995), pp. 411-428. KRATOCHWIL, Gabi, "Annemarie Schimmel, laureate controversee du Prix de la paix des editeurs et libraires allemands", Revue des Mondes musulmans et de la Miditerran0e, No 83-84 (1998), pp. 205-215. SUBTELNY, Maria Eva (guest editor), Annemarie Schimmel Festschrift, journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 18 (1994). WILD, Stefan, "Gold, Weihrauch und Myrrhe", Die Zeit, 13. Oktober 1995, 5 9 60. —, "Der Friedenspreis und Annemarie Schimmel. Eine Nachlese", Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 36 (1996), pp. 107-122. —, "In memoriam Annemarie Schimmel (7. April 1922-26. Januar 2003), Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 43, Nr. 2 (2003), pp. 131-142.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell

Bibliography A "Bibliography of the Works of Wilfred Cantwell Smith" is to be found in The World's Religious Traditions. Current Perspectives in Religious Studies. Essays in honour of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, edited by Frank WHALING, Edinburgh, Τ. & T. Clark, 1984, pp. 273-286. A somewhat earlier bibliography, "Publications of Wilfred Cantwell Smith", can be found in his On Understanding Islam. Selected Studies (Religion and Reason 19), The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton, 1981, pp. 335-344.

260

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Books on Islam and the Muslim

World

1943 Modern Islam in India. A Social Analysis, Lahore: Minerva, 1943. Revised edition London: V. Gollancz, Ί 9 4 6 ' (must be 1947). Reissued Lahore: Ashraf, 1963, 1969, New York: Russell, 1972, and a pirated edition Lahore: Ripon, 1947. Ί 9 5 1 ' (must be 1954) Pakistan as an Islamic State, Lahore: Ashraf, 1954. 1957 Islam in Modern History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. 1981 On Understanding Islam. Selected Studies (Religion and Reason 19), The Hague, Paris and New York: Mouton, 1981. Paperback editions Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, and Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1985.

Books on Faith, Religion and

Religions

1962 The Faith of Other Men, Toronto: CBC, 1962. Enlarged edition: New York: New American Library, 1963. 1963 The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963. Mentor Book 1964. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. 1965 Modernisation of a Traditional Society, Bombay, etc.: Asia Publishing House, 1965. 1967 Questions of Religious Truth, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons &c London: V. Gollancz, 1967. 1976 Religious Diversity, ed. by Willard G. OXTOBY, New York and London: Harper & Row, 1976. 1977 Belief and History, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977. 1979 Faith and Belief, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. 1981 Towards a World Theology, London: Macmillan, and Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981. 1993 What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, Minneapolis: Fortress Press and London: SCM Press, 1993.

Some Articles on Islamic

Subjects

1950 "Hyderabad: Muslim Tragedy", Middle East Journal, Vol. 4 (1950), pp. 27-51. 1951 "Islam Confronted by Western Secularism, (A): Revolutionary Reaction", in Islam in the Modern World, ed. by Dorothea Seelye FRANCK, Washington: The Middle East Institute, 1951, pp. 19-30. 1969 "The Crystallization of Religious Communities in Mughul India", in Yädname-ye iräni-ye Minorsky, ed. by Mojtaba MINOVI and Iraj AFSHAR (Publications of Tehran University, no. 1241), Tehran: Dänigäh-i Tihrän, 1969, pp. 197-220. 1977 "Interpreting Religious Interrelations. An Historian's View of Christian and Muslim", Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses, Vol. 6 (1976-77), pp. 515-526.

Recent Scholarly Presentations of Islam

261

Some Articles on Religion and the Study of Religion 1950 "The Comparative Study of Religion. Reflections on the Possibility and Purpose of a Religious Science", in McGill University, Faculty of Divinity, Inaugural Lectures, Montreal: McGill University, 1950, pp. 39-60. 1970 "University Studies of Religion in a Global Context", in Study of Religion in Indian Universities. A Report of the Consultation held in Bangalore in September, 1967, Bangalore: Bangalore Press, n.d. (1970), pp. 74-87. 1971 "A Human View of Truth", Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Vol. 1 (1971), pp. 6-24. 1975 "Methodology and the Study of Religion: Some Misgivings", in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Robert D. BAIRD, Chico, CA: New Horizons Press, 1975, pp. 1-25, with "Rejoinder", pp. 123-124. 1975 "Objectivity and the Humane Sciences. A New Proposal" (4 Dec. 1974), in Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada, 1975, pp. 81-102. 1980 "Belief: a Reply to a Response", Numen, Vol. 27 (1980), pp. 247-255. 1983 "Traditions in Contact and Change. Towards a History of Religion in the Singular", in Traditions in Contact and Change. Proceedings of the XIV th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Winnipeg, 1 9 8 0 , ed. by Peter SLATER and Donald WIEBE, with Maurice BOUTIN and Harold COWARD, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1 9 8 3 , pp. 1 - 2 3 .

Discussion and

Research

Ninian, "Scientific Phenomenology and Wilfred Cantwell Smith's Misgivings", in The World's Religious Traditions. Current Perspectives in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ed. by Frank WHALING, Edinburgh: Τ. & T. Clarke, 1984, pp. 257-269. —, "Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Complementarity", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 4 (1992), Nr. 2, pp. 21-26. WIEBE, Donald, "The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion. A Response to W. C. Smith", Numen, Vol. 26 (1979), pp. 234-249. See also W. Cantwell Smith's reply: "Belief" (1980). SIMART,

Chapter 10 Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold War The Cold War had an important impact on Islamic Studies and the study of religions in general. 1 This impact was not only direct, in research and study programs, with particular approaches and subjects of research being encouraged or prescribed and others forbidden. It was also indirect, since ideological constraints were imposed on thinking both in the East (the "Socialist World") and the West (the "Free World"). During the conflict, many scholars and intellectuals felt trapped; some insisted on the need for direct scholarly communication, and this increased in the 1 9 7 0 s . The following essay contains some facts, a few general observations, and a handful of personal memories. It may stimulate interest in wider questions. H o w did political and ideological conflicts after World War II affect scholarly views and research on Islam and Muslim societies and on religions in general? H o w did scholars of Islam and religions in general—Muslims and non-Muslims—take a position in conflicts in which Islam was involved?

1. Conflicts and Ideological Distortions The Cold War contributed to distorted views of Islam, largely by subordinating the study of it to political interests and ideological categories. This may always be the case in times of war, but the study of Muslim societies and living Islam suffered particularly from conflict situations. After the colonial era, the period of the Cold War offers another good example of the effects that political conflict can have on Islamic Stud-

1

An earlier version of this paper was read at a conference on The Academic Study of Religion during the Cold War, East and West, held in Brno (August 1997). The conference papers were published under the same title, ed. by Iva DOLEZALOVA, Luther H. MARTIN and Dalibor PAPOUSEK (Toronto Studies in Religion 27), New York: Peter Lang, 2001. The earlier version of this paper is on pp. 2 9 1 - 2 1 1 . A few books on postCold War policies, for instance in Afghanistan, have been added to the Bibliography.

Islamic a n d Religious Studies under the C o n d i t i o n s of the C o l d W a r

263

ies. 2 It not only prevents scholars from reading Islamic data and phenomena on their own terms and in accordance with scholarly rules, but also hinders them in inquiring into and taking into account their own presuppositions and assumptions. In the Cold War, political ideologies due to conflict not only threatened the independence of scholarly research in Islamic Studies. There was also the threat that such ideologies would condition views of Islam as a whole, including those held by scholars considered to be experts in the field. During the Cold War at least, the two antagonists' ideologies largely constituted the framework within which Muslim countries and Islam were viewed and judged by the broader public. 3

2. Two Opposing Views of Islam In the Soviet view, Islam was fundamentally a leftover from a feudal and later bourgeois past, in which its traditional orientation played a reactionary social role. In progressive socialist societies, this regressive Islam had no place. It had to be eliminated, its leadership marginalized, and its institutions, including its educational system, destroyed to make way for socialist education, institutions, and leadership. Religion was explained as a conservative ideology used by reactionary political forces, thus becoming a reactionary force itself. Studying religion, including Islam, meant studying an enemy that had to be eliminated from society. 4 In the Western countries, Islam was also mostly seen as a remnant of traditional society and a hindrance to development. But the conclu2

3

4

Confrontational situations that have had an impact on Islamic Studies: (1) a natural resistance of peoples including Muslims to Western hegemony; (2) tensions between different ethno-religious groups and between minorities and majorities, in which Muslims are involved; (3) the Israeli-Arab confrontation, which has many repercussions in the West and elsewhere in the world; (4) terrorist actions directed against civilians and war waged against it. Attention should also be paid to the Cold War's impact on Islamic Studies in Muslim countries, whether non-aligned or aligned to one of the parties involved in the Cold War. I hope that this contribution will encourage serious study using the available sources. During three visits to the USSR in 1973, 1981, and 1984, I collected as many Russian books and periodicals on the study of Islam and religion in general as possible. This private documentation is still waiting to be used. Soviet socialism ("communism") implied a militant political ideologization and a militant political practice. It called continuously for a fight against the great enemy, Western imperialism, linked to the capitalist market system, which enslaved the workers and the "Third World" for its own benefit. The aggressive tone of Soviet publications during the Cold War may surprise the present-day reader, but Western publications about communism and the Soviet Union could also be aggressive. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan stated in public that the Soviet Union was the Empire of Evil.

264

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

sion—drawn partly from colonial experience—was that it was better to encourage the modern development of Muslim societies, thus marginalizing traditional Islam, than fight it and risk its fighting back. In a number of Western countries, the Marxist approach was practically taboo and leftist approaches in scholarship were often considered subversive. However, a number of critical intellectuals in Europe refused to accept the proclaimed dualism of "free world" and "communism". They upheld socialist thinking while rejecting the coercive Soviet political system, particularly after the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1 9 5 6 . 5

2.1. The

USSR

Let us now look a little closer at these two views of Islam. The official Soviet view made a radical distinction between Islam in and outside the USSR. It was held that the Muslim peoples within the Soviet Union, in socialist society, were already on the way to the ideal communist society. Their Islam was no longer a religious phenomenon but had become a fundamentally social and cultural one, with traditions that would disappear as socialism progressed among the younger generations. Continuous atheistic education and propaganda demonstrated the illusory character of Islamic and other religious beliefs. They would lead to the end of Islam as a religion, that is to say a false ideology that had been unmasked by modern science. The official doctrine denied that anything like a living Islam existed within the Soviet Union; there were only ritualistic social and cultural relics. "Islamic Studies" worked on the history of Islamic civilization and Islam outside the Soviet Union, not on a non-existent "Islam" within it. Ethnographers and sociologists interested in it studied what were called "surviving traditions" of bygone times. In socialist states, things Islamic could not be organized outside state-controlled institutions. 6 On the other hand, the existence of Islam outside the Soviet Union was officially recognized, though still considered a delusion. This was largely attributed to the fact that Asian and African societies were not

5

6

Western political discourse described communism as a constant threat against which the Free World had to defend itself. The strength of Communist parties—with their obedience to Moscow—in countries like Italy and France after World War II, the Communist take-over in Eastern European countries including Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Russian blockade of Berlin in 1948, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 fueled these fears. NATO was founded in 1948. In the USSR there were four "spiritual Directorates" as "official" Muslim institutions providing education for the imams of the few remaining mosques, facilities for Islamic worship ('ibädät, especially salät) as far as practiced. They spread propaganda about the situation of Muslims in the USSR, aimed at a public largely outside the USSR.

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold W a r

265

yet socialist societies. Islam was seen as functioning there as a conservative ideology, and as supporting reactionary political forces that should be countered, and in the end overthrown, by a revolution. The study of living Islam outside the USSR was fundamentally a study of the various Muslim societies and countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, with an analysis of the political and economic interests at stake. Liberation and emancipation from Islam should therefore be promoted at the grassroots level in these regions by encouraging people to orient themselves toward socialist criteria. Accordingly, the study of "Islam" outside the USSR came down to studying the socio-economic basis and political relevance of various groups and movements in Muslim countries, while explicitly promoting the socialist ones. An authentic "Islamic" identity was denied, but the ideological and political use Muslim societies made of "Islam" was studied. Within the USSR, the consistent radical policy was to de-Islamize the existing Muslim societies; the discipline of "scientific atheism" should demonstrate that Islam is an illusory ideology unmasked by modern science. The relatively strong economic development of the Muslim republics in the USSR was used as an argument to the outside Muslim world that the socialist system was able to make underdeveloped Muslim societies prosper. In relations with Muslim countries, however, the doctrine and discipline of "scientific atheism" was not mentioned much, to avoid offending and alienating the Muslim world. In a pragmatic way, the USSR made favorable deals with Muslim countries calling for economic, technical, and military assistance, without making too much of Islam. The International Congress of Orientalists held in M o s c o w in 1 9 6 0 was an important political event. On the one hand, Soviet scholars could show off their studies of the classical texts of Eastern civilizations and their intensive research on the recent social history of Eastern societies according to the Marxist-Leninist model. On the other hand, the Congress organizers could attack a kind of disengaged Orientalism whose practitioners did not really care about the current situation and future destiny of the peoples whose religions and civilizations they studied. In contrast, they could present Soviet scholars as defending the legitimate struggle for social justice and equality of the people in the newly independent nations. In the USSR at that time, Islamic Studies was not a recognized field of study and research in itself. There were disciplines such as the study of languages and literatures, history, sociology, anthropology, and political science. There were also regional studies, of the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and so on. The study of Islamic mysticism, if it were judged useful, should take place within a particular regional study, say in the Middle East, and then be the subject of specialized

266

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

literary, historical, and sociological research. Students would certainly be warned about the illusionary character of mystical thought, practices, and experiences, from the perspective of modern science. 2.2. The West In comparison, Western views of contemporary Islam at the time were much more varied and complex. Considerable differences existed between scholars in various European countries and North America. Here I mention only some general traits. Politically, Islam could be viewed and used as an instrument to win friends or as a tool in the struggle against communism. It was hardly appreciated as a value in itself. Generally speaking, in both Western and Eastern Europe, Islam was looked down on, especially by countries that had possessed Muslim colonies. The cultures of these peoples were hardly comparable with European culture. Their religious beliefs and practices, for instance Muslim ones, could scarcely be compared with the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or Protestant forms of Christianity brought by missionaries. The fact that immigrant workers from Muslim countries did not receive much social recognition and had mostly low-paid jobs marked the difference even more. Even the United States, which received betterschooled immigrants and offered more space for personal initiative than continental Europe, showed discriminatory behavior as soon as fears of communism and security arose. All Western states were keen on preserving their economic interests in Muslim countries and securing alliances with Muslim oil-producing states, especially after the oil boycott of 1973. While the USSR established alliances with several Arab countries, the USA secured defense alliances throughout the Middle East. Unlike the earlier paternalistic colonial attitude and the later strategic interest in keeping Muslim countries on the Western side, a number of Western people showed an interest in the newly independent Muslim countries and sought cooperation and dialogue with Muslims. In the 1950s and 1960s a number of initiatives were taken to this end.7

7

To what extent certain official or officially supported Western efforts at dialogue had something to do with the Cold War is for future historians to decide. I think of the American-organized Bhamdoun Conferences in 1954 and 1956 through the Coordinating Committee for Muslim-Christian Cooperation, or the Catholic initiative during the second Vatican Council ( 1 9 6 2 - 6 5 ) to engage in an active Christian-Muslim dialogue. This does not cast doubt on the sincerity of the participants in such "official" dialogues.

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the C o l d W a r

267

Less visibly, some Islamic movements in Muslim countries seem to have enjoyed American encouragement and support as an alternative to existing leftist movements. The fear that these movements might seize power may have made certain Western analysts see Islam as a Godgiven ally against godless communism. The Iranian revolution of 1979, however, showed Islam to be an uncertain factor and even a potential threat to the West. 8 These examples suggest that during the Cold War Islamic Studies could serve not only an ideological struggle against Islam, as in the USSR, but also a strategic flirtation with it, as in the USA. An even more complex political game with Islam was that played by Alexandre Bennigsen and his circle. He viewed Islam as an important disturbing factor within the Soviet Union. Since the number of Muslims there was steadily increasing, Islam, in his view, might play a role in bringing about the end of the USSR. 9

2.3. Islamic

Studies

In the Western scholarly context, Islamic Studies were a hybrid, with meanings varying by country and scholarly tradition or school. In Germany, for instance, Islamwissenschaft was largely an umbrella term covering all research touching elements of Islamic civilization and Muslim cultures past and present. In France, in the 1950s, no courses could be offered on Islam or on other religions, at the state universities. In the USA, the idea of inclusive "Islamic Studies" had been imported by some European scholars, but before 1960 it was almost unknown at universities. The current orientation was that of "Middle Eastern Studies" administered in university centers subsidized by the federal government. Courses on Islam could be offered there, later also in connection with the programs in Religious Studies, mostly initiated in the 1960s. At European universities, the study of Islam has traditionally nearly always been connected with that of Arabic language and literature. "Islamic Studies" at European universities depended very much on the personal research interests of the scholars who had been appointed. Most of them had been engaged, basically, to study and teach Oriental languages, literature, and history, and sometimes also sociology or cultural anthropology of Muslim regions. In Europe, Islamic Studies would 8

To what degree the "resurgence" of Islam in the early 1 9 7 0 s may have had something to do with the Cold War is again for future historians to decide.

9

Whatever the value of BENNIGSEN's hypothesis, he collected extensive materials about developments in Islam in the Soviet Union. This field was hardly known to professional scholars of Islam and his books on the subject were a revelation to the Western public.

268

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

take a new form in the 1980s, in connection with the presence of Muslim immigrants and "Islamically" oriented developments in Muslim countries. In North America, religious interests—Protestant and Catholic— played a role in studying Islam; political loyalties—e.g. in the Israel-Palestine conflict—stimulated a certain interest in the Middle East and Islam, in a positive or negative sense. The Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, founded by W. Cantwell Smith and devoted to research on and teaching of Islam and Muslim countries, with a specialized library, was and is unique and deserves to be mentioned. During the Cold War, as in colonial times, the views both sides held of Islam were largely conditioned by the desire to dominate and to prevent the other party from doing so. On both sides, much research on contemporary Muslim societies had a political significance. There are some analogies with the older colonial setting. Both the colonial situation and the Cold War worked against a study of contemporary Islam and Muslim societies on their own terms. Both were linked to the will to dominate and caused intense rivalries between powerful states in which the Muslim states had little, the Muslim populations nothing, to say about it. The Muslim world lived continuously under pressures from outside. The struggle between the socialist and free world powers and ideologies during the Cold War implied a political and economic struggle for the Muslim world. The USSR tried to win Muslim sympathies by stressing the struggle for social justice rather than religion and pointed to the example of the modernized Muslim republics in the Soviet Union. The West stressed democracy and the struggle for freedom, upholding freedom of religion as part of human rights. Both sides gave military and development aid to a number of Muslim countries. Both sought to avoid hurting Muslim feelings if their interests were at stake.

3. Some Corrections Imposed on Distorted Views of Islam Distorted views of Islam and Islamic Studies in Eastern bloc and Western countries underwent corrections due to events and to reflection. The first correction was brought about by the revolution in Iran and the subsequent establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The Eastern bloc countries, and especially the USSR, had a fixed doctrine about revolutions, their occurrence, and their results. The key formula for action was to organize the proletariat against the socio-economic oppression to which it had fallen victim. By showing the real forces at work in history, by enlightening the people and by engaging in

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold War

269

adequate action, one could bring about a true revolution as M a r x and Engels and the later Soviet leaders including Lenin and Trotzki understood it. In Muslim societies, one had to enlighten people about their Islam, showing that it w a s a kind of illusion. The doctrine implied that Islam itself had no revolutionary potential. So the Iranian revolution w a s a surprise and posed a problem, since Islam turned out to possess a revolutionary potential after all. The Western countries, especially the U S A , had given all possible guidance and support to the Shah's policy of fast economic development, based on a Western model, leading to modernization and secularization. Although critical voices in the country had raised objections because of the social consequences of this policy, the political leadership held that the Westernization of society w o u l d bear visible fruits in ambitious development plans and that Islam should retreat f r o m the public sphere before the forces of modernity. Although in Iran powerful Western political and economic interests were at stake, those in the West w h o furthered them paid hardly any attention to the latent force of religious tradition, the possible effects of its ideologization, and the possibility of popular outbursts in situations of despair. N o serious heed w a s paid to the needs and voices of the people. In this view, economic development and national interest as understood by the Iranian leadership and the U S A were sacred and their rejection in the name of Islam came as a surprise and probably as a blow. Neither the Eastern nor the Western bloc had been able to foresee the Islamic f o r m the Iranian revolution w o u l d take. Interestingly enough, neither political scientists nor scholars of Islam in these blocs were able to explain this "Islamic" revolution in accordance with the current paradigms of Islamic studies. This forced the scholars to revise their schemes and to search for the deeper causes. Research in Western countries was obliged to concentrate less on Islam taken in itself and more on concrete Muslim societies, new " f u n damentalist" movements and the role of social, cultural and religious traditions and their guardians. A number of research programs were developed along these lines. Research in the socialist countries and particularly the Soviet Union n o w had to take into account fields of Islamic Studies that had been utterly neglected. N e w research programs addressed subjects such as the sources of Islam (Qur'än and hadith), the role of puritan and sectarian movements in Islamic history, and various "revolutionary" Islamic movements active n o w a d a y s in Muslim countries. On both sides, a certain distrust and even anxiety developed toward future challenges and potential threats from Islam in the Middle East.

270

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

The second correction concerned the orientation of Islamic Studies. Here and there, a certain self-criticism of the tradition of these studies had already started in the 1950s. Scholars began to look at the history of this field. Some tried to detect the assumptions and presuppositions of Islamic Studies in the West and put them in their historical context, while others made suggestions for new paradigms. This was stimulated by growing criticism which scholars from Muslim countries expressed in the 1960s. In the USSR, Oriental Studies, including "Islamic" research, had been allotted the task of analyzing historical and present-day Eastern societies and supporting the construction of new, socialist ones. Mark Batunsky wrote his doctoral dissertation on Russian and Western Orientalists. Subsequently, he carried out a wide-ranging study of Russian attitudes toward Islam and Muslims in the course of pre-revolutionary history. 10 The history of Islamic Studies in Russia and the Soviet Union has been further researched since the 1980s, but a comprehensive study of it remains to be written. 11 In the West, a similar interest in presuppositions and assumptions underlying "classical" Islamic Studies started at about the same time in the humanities. 12 In the 1950s and 1960s, the social sciences opened up a broader socio-cultural perspective on the study of "non-Western", that is to say, Asian, African, and Latin American societies without ethnocentric starting points. Several historical studies were made of the history and content of medieval and later European attitudes toward Islam. 1 3 First Maxime Rodinson 1 4 and later Edward Said 15 delved into the economic interests, political strategies, ideologies, and dreams un10 Thanks to the efforts of his widow, Mark A. BATUNSKY'S monumental study of the history of Russian attitudes toward Islam from the Middle Ages until 1917 was published posthumously in three volumes. M. A. BATUNSKIY, Rossiya i Islam. Moscow: Progress-Traditsiya Publishers, 2003, 381+596+255 p. Of the 1230 pages of the book, 350 contain notes in small print. 11 Mark BATUNSKY, "Recent Soviet Islamology" (1982); Dimitri MLKOULSKI, "The study of Islam in Russia and the former Soviet Union: An Overview" (1997). A precious biobiographical handbook on Soviet Orientalists was written by S. D. MILIBAND, Biobibliograficheskiy slovar' sovietskikh vostokovedov. Moscow, 1975. A second, enlarged edition on Russian Orientalists in two volumes appeared in 1993. 12 Jacques WAARDENBURG, L'lslam dans le miroir de l'Occident. Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1961, 3 r d ed., The Hague & Paris: Mouton, 1970, XIV+381 p. A survey of the history of Islamic Studies is given by the same author in the article "Mustashrikün" ("Orientalists") in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, New edition, Vol. 8, Leiden: E. ]. Brill, 1993, pp. 735-753. 13 R. W. SOUTHERN, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. Norman DANIEL, Islam and the West: The making of an image, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962; ID., Islam, Europe and Empire, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966. Other detailed studies followed. 14 Maxime RODINSON, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, Seattle and London: University of Seattle Press, 1987. RODINSON started publishing on the history of Islamic Studies in

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold War

271

derlying Western Orientalism in the wider sense. They drew attention to the various kinds and mechanisms of Western domination of the nonWestern world, including those in culture and religion, which had mostly been viewed as being outside politics. This initiated a broader "Orientalism" debate and the proposal of new ways of studying "nonWestern" societies: to abandon European ethnocentrism, leave aside European cultural values, and pay full attention to contexts. One wonders to what extent the colonial domination, the Cold War or other conflicts affecting Muslim countries—such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq-Iran war, the Afghan wars and their "terrorist" legacy, the violence in Iraq—helped to bring about a certain soul-searching in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. 16 New orientations were also needed for the study of Muslim communities in Europe and North America and of the many constructions of Islam by Muslim immigrants establishing themselves in new contexts.

4. A Visit to the USSR I visited the Soviet Union in 1981 at the invitation of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. 1 7 The Leningrad branch, as it then was called, of the Institute of Oriental Studies, an advanced research institute, is housed in one of the old palaces along the Neva. It is renowned for its manuscript collections and its study of the classical texts of Islamic civilization. Here Ignatiy Yulianovich Kratchkovsky and his colleagues struggled to keep up the high scholarly standards of Arabic and Islamic Studies in pre-revolutionary days, and this tradition has continued to the present day. In Moscow, however, where the central offices of the Institute have been housed since the 1920s, research used to be concentrated on the recent and contemporary history of Muslim countries and societies outside the his contribution to The Legacy of Islam, 2 n d edition ed. by J. SCHACHT and C. E. BosWORTH, Oxford 1 9 7 4 , pp. 9 - 6 2 .

15 Edward W. SAID, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 16 As suggested earlier, the Cold War contributed indirectly—together with other factors—to the growing ideologization and revitalization of Islam which, in turn, forced scholars in East and West to revise current ideas and concepts on matters Islamic. Besides political conflicts, many other factors contributed to reorientations in Islamic Studies, such as the development of the social sciences, the growing participation of Muslim scholars in Islamic studies, the increased presence of Muslims in the West, the role of the media, and of course the various new forms of Islamic self-affirmation, different in varying contexts. 17 The invitation was extended after an international Congress on Methodology in the study of religions, for the first time with Soviet participation, sponsored by the International Association for the History of Religions, held in Warsaw in 1979.

272

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

U S S R . It was no secret that reports were written there at the request of the authorities. Yevgeniy Mikhailovich Primakov was the Institute's President for some years around 1 9 8 0 . T h e organization of the Institute was rather complicated; reorganizations t o o k place from time to time. T h e original feature that struck me as positive at the time was the horizontal division into regional studies (research on Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, etc.) and the vertical division into disciplines (languages and literature, history, economics, anthropology or ethnography, etc.). W h e n I went there in early spring 1 9 8 1 , a seminar of specialists working on the role of Islamic ideologies in different Muslim countries had just been formed under the direction of Professor Lyudmila R . G o r d o n - P o l o n s k a y a . 1 8 T h e need for comparative studies of Muslim societies with their various ideologies had become clear after the Islamic revolution of 1 9 7 9 in Iran. Needless to say, all research clearly contrasted progressive and reactionary social forces (religion being a part of the latter), and recent history was interpreted in M a r x i s t terms (liberation from colonialism, struggle against imperialism). M o s t U S S R Orientalists distinguished themselves from many of their Western counterparts by their not necessarily having studied Oriental languages, literature, and history from the beginning. M o s t of them had first received a general training in a specific discipline, for instance as historians, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, or political scientists. They had then become experts on a particular region, learning its language and studying its ideological developments. A much smaller number of scholars were trained from the beginning as specialists in specific languages and their literatures and could be called "Orientalists" in the Western sense of the word at the time. They worked in the humanities rather than the social sciences. In 1 9 8 1 a number of research projects were underway at the Institute, undertaken by ad hoc teams, and planned to culminate in publications. Researchers could participate in different teams. At that time, mostly younger researchers were appointed in M o s c o w . There were far fewer places for researchers in Leningrad, where the existing manuscript collections were objects of pride but could hardly be exploited, since this kind of Orientalism had no political priority. Muslim republics in the U S S R had their own Institutes of Oriental Studies. Oriental Studies in other socialist countries in Eastern Europe at the time were organized in accordance with the model existing in the Soviet Union. At the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Uzbek Soviet Republic in Tashkent, which I was able to visit with some Dutch colleagues in 18

Polonskaya was a specialist in the social history of Pakistan and India and a historian of social thought in Afro-Asian countries in general.

Islamic a n d R e l i g i o u s Studies u n d e r t h e C o n d i t i o n s o f t h e C o l d W a r

273

1984, Uzbek and other Central Asian researchers worked on the rich manuscript collection under the supervision of Russian scholars. At the time of my earlier visit in 1981, a few brilliant Jewish scholars in Oriental Studies had left the USSR and had not been replaced by scholars of the same rank. An example was Yuriy Enokhovich BregeP, a specialist in Central Asian history, languages, and literature who worked in Tashkent and moved via Israel to the USA. There can be no doubt that research connected with the East-West confrontation had funding priority and that projects of contemporary Oriental Studies related to the conflict were heavily politicized, that is, judged according to the political usefulness of their results. Scholars at the Institute must have been under pressure to finish their research assignments, working with discipline and a sense of duty. However, this did not exclude lengthy conversations accompanied by tea and cigarettes; clearly there were many exchanges of views. 19 An interesting feature for a visitor from the West in 1981 and also 1984 was the truly inter-ethnic, intercultural, and international composition of the staff at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. Scholars came not only from all the very diverse parts of the USSR at the time, but also from many other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Apart from possessing texts and Russian books hardly accessible in the West, the Institute was also unique as a center for a kind of progressive scholarly "Third World" gathering. 20 One of the surprising memories I have of the Moscow and Leningrad visit is that of discussions I had (in English or French) with colleagues on several occasions, including a discussion after a paper I presented. Discussion and argumentation about intellectual positions were relished and the hosts seemed to be quite free to talk to visitors. In exchanges with the scholars established there, it was I who—being a guest—was apparently more careful to avoid political subjects. 21 My 19

I had already been told earlier in the West that Soviet institutes of higher learning, and certainly the U S S R Academy of Sciences, admitted much more freedom of discussion and thought than similar institutions in the other socialist countries. Russia has always wanted to maintain a high scholarly and intellectual tradition, and during the Soviet period academicians continued to enjoy relative freedom and high social prestige.

20

Access to public institutions was not always easy. During our visit with a Dutch delegation to Tashkent in 1 9 8 4 , we wanted to visit the public library there, which had a good reputation. Unfortunately this turned out not to be possible on short notice. We were told of the existence of other important libraries, including private ones, in Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara.

21

I did not always realize that, as a guest of the Institute of Oriental Studies, I enjoyed privileges that ordinary visitors from the West did not have. As a matter of fact, outsiders would have little or no chance to visit the Institute without an invitation. 1 was never struck by excessive supervision, but I was accompanied by a younger assistant of the Institute, who undoubtedly had to report on my activities. M y main handicap was that 1 only knew a few words of Russian.

274

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

hosts were not as ignorant of publications in the West as I had supposed. 22 There were modest facilities for photocopying. The reorganization of Islamic Studies in the USSR had political motivations. Following the Iranian revolution of January 1979, the Central Committee of the Party had given instructions that certain "neglected" parts of Islamic Studies in the USSR should be caught up. Thus, at the Leningrad branch of the Institute, which had definitely preserved the philological-historical approach, some young researchers were appointed to be trained in the Qur'än, tafsir and hadtth, tasawwuf and kaläm (less in the field of fiqh), and, of course, in Islamic history. At the Moscow branch, a new research program was initiated on the subject of religious movements in Asian, African, and Latin American countries. As part of this research program, a seminar was created for the study of contemporary Islamic and other movements in Muslim countries. Participants in the seminar knew the relevant languages and were highly motivated. Because of the successful Iranian revolution, religious movements outside the USSR had become a necessary and legitimate subject of study. Even if religion as such was considered reactionary, it was clear that certain religious movements in particular contexts played a progressive and in some cases revolutionary role. Publications of research done on the subject followed, partly as articles in a social scientific journal that had been newly founded for the purpose, and also as monographs on particular countries. The Marxist-Leninist principle was that religion should be studied as a variable or even an epiphenomenon of economic and socio-political determinants. This principle was not abandoned, but it was broadened, so to speak, to encompass politically relevant religious (in Marxist terms: ideological) movements. Around 1980, a new interest in the study of Islam as a religious ideology in concrete contexts sprang up. Probably the invitation I received at the beginning 22

There were older b o o k s from the West in the library of the Institute, but it evidently lacked hard currency to keep up acquisitions. T h e famous Lenin Library in M o s c o w did its utmost at that time to acquire scholarly b o o k s from the West to be consulted on site. Also the scholarly Information Center for the Social Sciences, established in M o s cow in the 1 9 7 0 s , had many Western b o o k s and moreover an impressive modern, computerized cataloguing system. For a number of years I would receive free bibliographical listings of new Russian and also Western b o o k s that appeared in fields such as historical, Middle Eastern, anthropological, and archeological studies, as well as that of "scientific atheism". 1 was told that in the M u s l i m republics of the U S S R some excellent private libraries exist besides the public libraries. T h e owners, in good M u s l i m intellectual tradition, had remained guardians of knowledge and culture throughout the Revolution, the Second World W a r , and the ups and downs of the Cold War. One day the history of the M u s l i m intelligentsia of the U S S R , including the years before 1 9 1 7 and after 1 9 9 1 , should be written as a particular cultural heritage and made available to Western readers.

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold W a r

275

of 1 9 8 1 was part of this extension of the field. 2 3 It gave me an idea of how scholarly research was driven by political necessities and decisions.

5. The Study of Religions in East and West The study of the religious aspects of Islam, and certainly of Islam as a religion, cannot be isolated from the general field of the scholarly study of religions. Here, too, the situation of this field in Eastern and Western Europe was very different. Apart from a few chairs that had survived, for instance in Leipzig and Lublin, the history of religions was not a recognized discipline in the socialist countries. 2 4 Atheism was the official doctrine, and Party members had to subscribe to it. 2 5 The best empirical studies on subjects related to religion that appeared in the USSR 23

24 25

During my two visits to the USSR, I made listings of Soviet publications, in particular books, on Islam and on religion in general. I also compiled for my own use a list of Soviet researchers in Islamic Studies on the basis of books on Islam up to 1981, which were in the central catalogues of the Lenin Library and the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. For the content of Islamic Studies in the USSR up to 1979, see the survey article by Mark BATUNSKY, "Recent Soviet Islamology" (1982). BATÜNSKY'S widow later told me that her husband ( 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 9 7 ) had been involved in a dispute with Y. PRIMAKOV at a scholarly meeting in Tashkent in 1978. The subject of discussion was the nature of the present-day "renaissance" of Islam, with particular reference to Afghanistan. According to Mrs. BATUNSKAYA, the majority of the Soviet Islamicists present at the meeting were of the opinion that war should be waged against the "Islamists" in Afghanistan. BATUNSKY for his part must have said that such a war would be a mistake since these people were religiously motivated. In PRIMAKOV'S view, however, the Islamists represented not a religious but an ethnic-sociological group whose actions were economically and politically determined; Islam should not be considered a religion. According to Mrs. BATUNSKAYA, PRIMAKOV subsequently decreed that BATUNSKY should be dismissed and so he lost his job. Mark BATUNSKY had discovered that our two dissertations (in Tashkent and Amsterdam, respectively) were analogous, treating the work of some outstanding scholars of Islam. We did not know of each other; he discovered my existence and did his utmost to get in touch with me. His bibliography includes some 34 major publications, 11 of them in English. When I talked to BATUNSKY about Soviet scholars of Islam without political aims, he was able to give me offhand thumbnail sketches, sometimes of a political nature, of the authors. He clearly was well informed about current research. He had experienced the reaction of the Party when he had expressed his own unconventional ideas about Islam. That must have marginalized him in the USSR. It may be impossible ever to know the true full history of Islamic studies during the Soviet period. When a review copy of my Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion was sent to a Czech academic journal in 1974, it was simply returned to the sender. Atheism began to be propagated in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. The achievements of modern science were presented as a forceful argument for it, science (as opposed to ideology) being highly respected in Marxist thinking. This appeal to science led in the 1960s to the curious (for the Westerner) term of "scientific" atheism, which was taught at secondary schools and universities. As an example of a "catechism" of scientific atheism with exercises, see P. G. ZELENSKIY, English Readings on Atheism (1977).

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

276

were in anthropology, or ethnography as it was called. 2 6 If religious documents or other sources were studied, this happened in departments of philology (literature) and history, where their more "religious" meanings were largely ignored. At universities, religions as doctrinal systems were taught on a theoretical level under the auspices of "scientific atheism", a discipline considered part of philosophy and obligatory for students. It was taught in the department of philosophy 2 7 and also had an immediate application at the Institute of Scientific Atheism. This Institute was founded in Moscow by the Party as a kind of "missionary" training center in 1964, to give instruction in religions with the clear aim of refuting them. 2 8 As part of the overall struggle against religion, lecturers on scientific atheism—some of whom had been trained at this Institute—were sent all over the USSR to expound the intellectual refutation of religions to various audiences. In the 1960s, the sociology of religion became a recognized discipline in the USSR. Its main task was to analyze the social conditions and roots of the existing remnants of religion. Scholars carried out empirical surveys measuring the degree of "religiousness" and its development or decrease among groups of people in various regions of the USSR. Similar research had been carried out in Western Europe and there were some scholarly contacts between Soviet and Western European sociologists of religion in the 1970s. The psychology of religion was also recognized in the USSR in the 1960s. Its main task was to 26

A r e p u t e d a u t h o r i t y in this field a t t h e t i m e w a s P r o f e s s o r S. A . TOKAREV, w h o m 1 v i s i t e d a t his h o m e in M o s c o w in 1 9 8 1 . H e w a s t h e a u t h o r o f Die Geschichte

der

Völker,

Religion

w h i c h h a d b e e n o r i g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d in R u s s i a n . A

in

der

German

t r a n s l a t i o n first a p p e a r e d in E a s t B e r l i n a n d t h e n later in C o l o g n e in 1 9 7 8 . F o l l o w i n g t h e M a r x i s t s c h e m e , it d i v i d e s t h e h i s t o r y o f r e l i g i o n s i n t o t h e t h r e e p e r i o d s o f o r i g i n a l society, p e r i o d o f t r a n s i t i o n t o c l a s s society, a n d c l a s s s o c i e t y . A t t h e M o s c o w - b a s e d Institute o f E t h n o g r a p h y , m u c h r e s e a r c h w a s d o n e o n t h e m a n y p e o p l e s a n d e t h n i c g r o u p s living in t h e S o v i e t U n i o n . T h e i r r e l i g i o u s beliefs a n d t r a d i t i o n s , a s f o u n d in e m p i r i c a l f i e l d w o r k , w e r e s e r i o u s l y s t u d i e d there. R e s e a r c h in t h e s c i e n c e o f r e l i g i o n c o u l d s u r v i v e h e r e u n d e r t h e title o f E t h n o g r a p h y . 27

D u r i n g m y s t a y in M o s c o w in 1 9 8 1 , I w a s i n v i t e d by t h e P r o f e s s o r o f Scientific A t h e i s m a t t h e S t a t e ( L o m o n o s o v ) University, D m i t r i y M o d e s t o v i c h UGRINOVICH, t o give a lecture a t his s e m i n a r . I still r e m e m b e r t h e v i v i d , o p e n e x c h a n g e o f v i e w s t h a t f o l l o w e d . H e t o l d m e later in p r i v a t e t h a t a R u s s i a n t r a n s l a t i o n o f t h e I n t r o d u c t i o n o f m y cal Approaches

Classi-

h a d been m a d e available to certain Party m e m b e r s , to inform them

a b o u t t h e h i s t o r y of this " W e s t e r n " d i s c i p l i n e . P r o f e s s o r UGRINOVICH w a s i n t e r e s t e d in theories of religion a n d the study of religions, a n d he p u b l i s h e d on the subject. H e g a v e m e a c o p y , w i t h a d e d i c a t i o n , o f a v o l u m e o f his Vorlesungen Atheismus, 28

zum

wissenschaftlichen

w h i c h a p p e a r e d in its G e r m a n t r a n s l a t i o n in 1 9 8 0 .

1 still r e m e m b e r m y l e n g t h y visit o f 1 9 8 1 t o t h e D i r e c t o r a t t h e t i m e , V i k t o r I v a n o v i c h GARADZHA, w h o p r a c t i c a l l y l e c t u r e d m e o n scientific a t h e i s m , w i t h o u t b e t r a y i n g m u c h philosophical depth or awareness of religious problematics. Dr. G a s y m KERIMOV, h i m s e l f a s p e c i a l i s t o n fiqh,

Mamedogly

t a u g h t I s l a m a t this Institute a t t h e t i m e .

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold W a r

277

study the psychological roots of surviving religiosity. The sociology and psychology of religion were applied as instruments of the overall official policy of the struggle against religion. Looking more closely at the ways "religion" was studied in socialist countries, primarily in the USSR, and comparing them with Western studies at the time, I see certain structural analogies and common features. Let me sum up six of these. First, in both cases a great distance separated those scholars who carried out research themselves (studies of texts, fieldwork, excavations, etc.) from those who brought the results of such research into more or less coherent—sometimes even closed—systems. This distinction still exists. The first are craftsmen of the study of religions, whereas the second put the acquired knowledge into place within an overall theoretical, mostly normative, explanatory or interpretative system. Second, in both cases the study of religions tended to be linked to a particular general—ideological or theological—view of religion, making it a system of more or less fixed knowledge to be appropriated rather than a flexible search for new knowledge. In both cases, particular intellectual schools arose. In socialist countries, a scholastic Marxist-Leninist scheme was developed and applied, indicating how religion should be studied within the framework of the struggle of "scientific atheism" against religion. In Western countries, various normative schemes developed in terms of a "theology of religions", a "theology of religion", or other kinds of theology, imposing a normative scheme on the religious data. Confining scholarly researchers within a closed system of thought is, of course, detrimental to original research anywhere, but it is particularly harmful to the sensitive field of the study of religions. Instead of being weighed down in their institutions by the existing religious traditions, norms, and systems with their respective authorities, researchers in this field should enjoy freedom. They should be encouraged to make fresh departures, tackle original problems, and discover something new in religions, on the basis of empirical data and with the use of reason and common sense. Third, in both cases scholars were closely tied to their own culture. It has rightly been said that most Orientalists, with a knowledge of other cultures, tend to become personally rather ethnocentric. Something similar may be true of students of religions. Rather than exploring to the full the roots of other people's views and practices of life and the world, at a decisive point they may retreat into their own little shelters such as the values of their religious and cultural upbringing, and their particular training, the methodology of their craft, or a particular theory about religion.

278

T h e Practice of Islamic Studies in History

Fourth, in both cases institutional authority would threaten those who voiced criticisms or views that deviated from the accepted schemes, or undermined such schemes with new scholarly findings. In the socialist countries, the Party as a political authority gave the final verdict, which could mean the end of a scholarly career, if not worse. In the West, the Catholic Church or some other religious authority often had, and may still have, a say in scholarly appointments concerning religions. The study of religions is still not completely free from a few taboos touching those wanting to work in this field with a critical sense. Such taboos are related to a given religious and intellectual culture. Fifth, in Eastern and Western Europe one could find defensive reactions against the pressures to which students of religions and students of Islam might be exposed. A number of researchers in socialist countries, for instance, tended to focus on subjects that had as few political implications as possible, or to develop a rather abstract way of interpreting the data. The opposite orientation, also in the West, was to explain religions such as Islam in exclusively political or material terms. Sixth, in both cases scholars, ideologists, and philosophers worked with a rather naive "realistic" concept of religion taken as an object of study. This evoked for me nineteenth-century debates between critics and defenders of religion as such. In the USSR, scholars neglected the problem of subjectivity in the study of religion; it was claimed that Marxist thinking had dissolved the problem of human subjectivity. 2 9 In the West, scholars wanted a precise definition of religion rather than a more flexible open concept of it. Are religious data not interesting precisely because of their subjective and sometimes religious readings by the persons and groups living with them? 3 0 Notwithstanding great differences, there were some interesting analogies in scholars' views on the study of religion. In both Eastern and Western Europe, philosophers of religion affirmed that religious data should not only be studied as isolated empirical facts, but also be interpreted within a wider theoretical framework. In both cases, religions were seen as a kind of ideal reality, whether as illusions or as ways leading to a spiritual life. In both cases, the study of religions, including one's own, was supposed to serve not only one's individual pleasure but also, and sometimes primarily, the needs of society. In both cases, adhering to the

29

30

There was little appreciation when 1 said some words in favor of research on the "subjective" dimension of religions. Subjectivity was a dirty word in Marxist thinking. How could it be a valid subject of study and research? My plea for "applied hermeneutics", a search not for the meaning a phenomenon must have for the scholar, but a search for the meaning that it has for someone else—or for a particular community—committed to it, was received with skepticism. Intersubjectivity was a dirty word. H o w could one study what is meaningful for someone else?

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold W a r

279

right doctrine largely determined the place given to the study of religions at scholarly institutions. Interestingly enough, in both East and West I met students, researchers, and scholars who were longing for a "free" study of religions, a study unfettered by the interference of convictions, politics, ideology, or theology. I met on both sides students of religion who nearly "religiously" fought for an autonomous science of religions and who tended to make this science of religions a kind of absolute in itself. In both Eastern and Western Europe, the study of religions was still organized and carried out under pressures of various kinds. Such pressures are not limited to the period of the Cold War and the longing for free research and independent scholarship persists. 31

6. Conclusion I would like to summarize the conclusion of this essay in three points. (1) Like the period of colonial domination, the period of the Cold War affected unfavorably the study of Islam, in particular the cultural and religious aspects of Muslim societies and life. If colonialism was a form of imperialism, the Cold War was a struggle for leadership to the detriment of the rest of the world. The two power blocs were obsessed with each other as rival enemies. As a result, the Third World in general and the Muslim world in particular were largely perceived in terms of their use to the two antagonists. This bias was detrimental to any detached study of what was really going on among Muslim—and other—people, including the study of what their religion meant to them. (2) The ideologies that developed and the policies that were implemented during the Cold War brought about serious breaks in cultural and religious traditions. The Cold War had detrimental effects not only on the practice of religions but also on the academic study of them. Scholars in socialist countries could not pursue their research on subjects that were held to be politically wrong. In Western countries, religion became ideologically relevant in opposition to the materialism and atheism that the antagonist propagated. In a number of cases, the study and teaching of religion tended to become an instrument for advocating or for de31

It should be noted that during the Cold War the call for an independent science of religions—with the possibility of an open discussion between committed parties—was most clearly voiced by our Polish colleagues. 1 think back with great respect to the heroic figures of Professors Zygmunt Poniatowski and Witold Tyloch. And 1 think with regret of all those students and colleagues in the Eastern—but also Western—European countries who wanted to but could not pursue their interests in the study of religions.

280

The Practice of Islamic Studies in History

n o u n c i n g religion in general o r a p a r t i c u l a r f o r m of religion. All of this i m p e d e d t h e s t u d y of religions as h u m a n realities, a n d as a subject of scholarly interest a n d research. (3) In this essay I h a v e s h o w n t h e negative i m p a c t of ideological f a c t o r s d u e t o t h e C o l d W a r conflict o n t h e s t u d y of M u s l i m societies a n d Islam as a religion a n d c u l t u r e in its o w n right. O t h e r conflicts d u r i n g these y e a r s — s u c h as t h e Israeli-Arab o r t h e H i n d u - M u s l i m o n e s — a l s o h a d a t h o r o u g h l y negative i m p a c t o n a c a d e m i c Islamic Studies. T h e e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y E n l i g h t e n m e n t in E u r o p e c a m e a f t e r t h e sixteenth- a n d s e v e n t e e n t h - c e n t u r y w a r s of religion. Let us h o p e t h a t t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y w i t h its g l o b a l conflicts a n d massive d e s t r u c t i o n — a n d its violent a f t e r m a t h — w i l l lead t o a n e w k i n d of E n l i g h t e n m e n t in this twenty-first century.

Selected

Literature

Au, Tariq, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and London: Verso, 2 0 0 2 . BATUNSKY, Mark, "Recent Soviet Islamology", Religion, Vol. 1 2

Modernity, (1982),

pp.

365-389.

Alexandre, and S. Enders WLMBUSH, Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide, London: Hurst, 1985. BRAND, Laurie Α., "Scholarship in the Shadow of Empire (2004 Presidential Address MESA)", Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) Bulletin, Vol. 39 (2005), Nr. 1, pp. 3-18. CARTER, Jimmy, Palestine. Peace Not Apartheid. New York, etc.: Simon &c Schuster, 2006. HOEMANN, Murad Wilfried, "Self-inflicted Damage? The United States and the Consequences of 9/11", The Muslim World Book Review, vol. 25, issue 3 (Spring 2005), pp. 6 - 1 7 (review article). KAPLAN, Robert D., The Arabists. The Romance of an American Elite, New York etc.: The Free Press, 1993, pb. 1995. LEWIS, Bernard, "The Return of Islam", Commentary, January 1976, pp. 39-49. LITTLE, Douglas, American Orientalism. The United States and the Middle East since 1945, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003. MAMDANI, Mahmood, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. MANN, Michael, Incoherent Empire, London: Verso, 2003. MASTNAK, Tomaz, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. MIKOULSKI, Dmitri, "The Study of Islam in Russia and the Former Soviet Union. An Overview", in Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogies, Continuity and Change, ed. by A. NANJI, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 95-107. BENNIGSEN,

Islamic and Religious Studies under the Conditions of the Cold War

281

MILIBAND, S(ofiya) D(avidovna), Biobibliograficheskii slovar' otechestvennykh vostokovedov s 1917 g. I—II (Bio-bibliographical handbook of orientalists of the homeland since 1917), 1 s t edition 1975; 2 n d edition in two volumes, Moscow: Nauka, 1995. QURESHI, Emran and Michael A . SELLS, The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. SAID, Edward W., Covering Islam. How the Media and Its Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, New York: Pantheon, 1981. SHABAN, Fuad, Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought. The Roots of Orientalism in America, New York: Acorn Press, 1991. SCHULZE, Reinhard, A Modern History of the Islamic World, New York: New York University Press, 2002. TOKAREV, Sergej Α., Die Religion in der Geschichte der Völker, Berlin (Ost): Dietz, 1976. UGRINOVICH, Dmitriy Modestovich, Vorlesungen zum wissenschaftlichen Atheismus, Halle-Wittenberg: Abt. Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Luther-Universität, 1980. ZELENSKIY, P. G . , English Readings on Atheism, Moskva: Izdatel'skoye ob'yedineniye "Vysshaya shkola", 1977.

Part Four Studying Religions

Chapter 11 Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research"' In the nineteenth-century, public addresses given by the founders of the science of religion were often full of ideals and promises about what science and scholarship might be able to reach. They justified and praised the new discipline and its philological, historical, anthropological, and especially its comparative research methods. Nowadays when we go through the books of the period about the study of religion, we are struck not only by their optimism, but also by a certain lack of self-criticism. Their authors clearly overestimated the fruits that the scholarly study of religion, and the comparative method in particular, could bear. They worked in the fascination of discovering religion to be not only a source of truths, norms, and values, but also a subject of empirical scholarly research.

1. Issues of Research at the Beginning The emergence of Religionswissenschaft (the scholarly study of religions) came not from heaven, but from earth. It was preceded nearly everywhere by intense debates about its scholarly nature and the appropriateness of formally recognizing and introducing it. In Roman Catholic countries, the Church clearly resisted it. Its introduction in state institutions came about thanks to more liberal thinkers and favorable political constellations. In Protestant countries, it met with resistance from the orthodoxies and could only be introduced thanks to some cultured people and Protestant theologians who took its results seriously. In Orthodox countries, which had hardly known the Western European Enlightenment, it was simply not introduced. However, there was a scattered interest among Jewish intellectuals in an objective scholarly study of religions. Part of this essay was read at a conference on the emergence of the Sciences of Religion, held at the University of Amsterdam in June 1996. Another part was a lecture delivered at the University of Brno in July 1996 and published as "The Emergence of Science of Religion" in Religio (Prague-Brno), Vol. 5 (1997), pp. 1 0 7 - 1 1 6 . Both texts have been revised and shortened, without footnotes.

286

Studying Religions

Religionswissenschaft emerged as a discipline when religion itself was no longer an absolute and generally accepted norm. It became the subject of intense debates. Three aspects of these deserve mention here. (1) There was an ongoing debate in Western Europe about the truth or untruth not only of particular religions but also of religion in general. The debate touched on the question of whether religion represented a positive value or was something to be rejected. In the course of the 19 th century, a coherent criticism of religion developed not only among intellectuals, but also in wider circles. In these debates, different parties had very different ideas, representations, and feelings of what they meant by the term "religion". This increased a certain confusion, but it stimulated the desire to study religion. (2) The question of the true nature or "essence" of religion occupied minds and was closely linked to the question of its "origin". Did religion have a special domain in the soul? Did it have natural or supranatural causes? This led to intense debates on whether religion could be explained scientifically. Scholars who believed so were often accused by their opponents of neglecting the "transcendental" causes of religious life. Such scholars mostly spoke from conviction, without being able to prove conclusively a causal relationship between definite religious and non-religious realities. Yet there was the desire to explain religion. (3) A practical question underlying the debate was that of the attitude to be taken toward Western Christianity, the Catholic and Protestant Churches with their Scripture and their respective traditions and theologies. Should one adopt a Christian way of life? Should one accept, reject, reform, or reinterpret Western Christianity? Opinions differed widely about what Western Christianity was: whether it was a faith, a religion, a cultural legacy, or the basis of European civilization with which one identified. Most of those advocating a scholarly study of religion were liberals or humanists, agnostics or secularists. They could be critical of Christianity as they had met or perhaps experienced it—and of Christian theology, whether they had studied it or not. Scholars in this field did not necessarily express their deepest convictions. They could unite in a scholarly discourse on studying empirical facts and carry out their studies. Their personal attitudes toward Western Christianity and Western culture must have been different. Their interest in religions other than Christianity and in cultures other than the Western one perhaps had something to do with a certain disenchantment with the ideas and practices of religion and culture current in the West. Much more important, however, seems to me to be their curiosity to discover something new: new religions, new cultures, and new civilizations, all representing new values. This curiosity could be connected with an idealization of other religions, a recognition of the

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

287

wisdom of other cultures, and a certain openness toward life and values outside one's own world. Although scholars had to work as objectively and impartially as possible, their discoveries nonetheless could lead to a personal intellectual and sometimes spiritual enrichment. "Discovery" at the time was a matter not only of reason but also of desire. It could become a passion.

2. The Attraction of a Science of Religion I hypothesize that the enthusiasm among a certain elite for the academic study of religion in the latter part of the 19 th century was at least in part a reaction to the traditional claims of Western Christianity. It was part of a process of secularization. A growing number of people must have felt an officially or socially established Christianity to be a kind of burden. Its traditions, claims, and rules were a weight in modernizing societies. They could no longer be accepted by critical minds which had trust in reason and expanding knowledge, rather than in the formulas of religious authority and tradition. The knowledge of other religions and of religion in general offered a kind of alternative to the exclusivist claims of a more or less particularist Christianity. The rise of Religionswissenschaft in the West suggests at least an increasingly problematic situation of religion in Western societies. It had someting to do with the problems that Western Christianity posed for intellectuals at the time. Probably the scholarly study of religions was expected to contribute to solving the problem that Christianity put to thinking minds, not by refuting it but by encouraging the study of religion in general. This helps to explain the enthusiasm for a critical historical study of Christianity, the influence of the Umwelt on the Old and New Testaments, the history of the religions of Antiquity, the non-literate "primitive" religions, and especially comparative studies. The appeal to study and get to know more about the religions of the world, past and present, had a tremendous effect. One should note the fascination of these religions in certain circles in the West at the time. This could lead to esthetic enjoyment, spiritual depths, or rationalization, but also to exoticism or politicization of non-Western religions in accordance with Western needs. The other religions were seen not so much as part of other people's lives, but rather aggrandized—or in some cases demonized—in the Western imagination. There were other reasons as well to explain the success of the appeal. In a world where science was held not only to lead to truth but also to give power, the scientific study of religion could serve to reduce the attraction of irrational religion and to control the uses made of it. There

288

Studying Religions

was a deep search for rationality to explain religion and to make reason " w i n " over irrational religion. In the colonial context, rational knowledge of religions could also play a political role. Knowledge of Islam, the religion of a number of colonized peoples, could help in ruling them, and the same would be true for knowledge of other religions. Motivations to dominate appear, typically, in the way the living religions were studied. They were mostly seen as the end of a glorious past. From a critical angle, it is fair to say that the West tended to perceive non-Western religions in the context of cultural supremacy and political domination and Western Christians tended to perceive them in the context of missionary work.

3. Some Western Views and Constructs of the Study of Religion One difficulty in the emerging science of religion was the elusive nature of its object, "religion", outside concrete texts, facts, and artifacts. H o w was the object defined? What were the aims of the new discipline? Which topics were selected as important? Which questions were asked? H o w did scholars interpret and find "religion" in the materials studied? The question is all the more relevant because at that time not only did the religions of other peoples have to be discovered or constructed, but the discipline itself was also in the process of construction. Religions in other cultures and civilizations could be focused on only insofar as Western researchers recognized "religion" in them. It is fair to say that, together with the making of Religionswissenschaft, there was the making of religion as the subject of this Religionswissenschaft. Non-Western religions could appear and be recognized only insofar as they corresponded with what researchers at the time saw, were able to see, or wanted to see, as "religions". Thus, there is a fair chance that Western researchers overlooked particular religious aspects of other cultures and misunderstood particular religious expressions of other peoples because they did not identify them as "religions". Skeptics may even surmise that a Religionswissenschaft systematically constructed in the West could be an impediment to perceiving correctly the religious expressions of other people in other cultures, since it would construct them according to Western ideas. One conclusion is that only a study of religions that allows for the greatest methodological variety and theoretical flexibility can examine most adequately the ways in which peoples live with their religions.

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

289

4. Empirical Research into Religion At this stage I must indicate what I understand here by "empirical" research. Empirical scholarly research in the wider sense is the critical and self-critical study of data gained by experience. Knowledge and understanding of them should be obtained through reasonable procedures and should have a general validity, in principle verifiable by others. Inasmuch as data are meaningful to people, they are qualified data that are relevant because of particular religious and other meanings they had, or have, for people in particular situations and contexts. In this view, the empirical study of religions comprises the study of facts and their meanings—including religious meanings—to people. Empirical research poses questions to the materials under study. W h a t does a group of people from a particular culture in a particular situation say about the meaning of life and the world? H o w do they act upon it? W h a t role do their representations of and discourses on nonempirical forces and realities play for them? H o w do they assess the deeper quality of human beings and what role do their representations of non-empirical realities play in this? W h a t do they think about the kind of truth of their religion? H o w is this truth conveyed or mediated: through revelations, through particular experiences, through myths, symbols, rituals, etc.? Insofar as our data can help us to answer such questions, they are all relevant. This is what I call empirical research in the wider sense, with no preconceived definition of religion. There is, however, also empirical research in a stricter, narrower sense. In this kind of research, only those data that correspond to a given definition, model, or scholarly construct of religion are relevant. Here particular models determine what is relevant for research, what should be recognized as religion, what kinds of data are to be looked for, and what kinds of questions are to be asked. This kind of research has a particular theoretical framework as its basis. It may serve to test a particular hypothesis, which may lead in turn to developing a particular theory on religion. Both approaches are empirical, since both are based on empirical data and look, with the help of reason, for a knowledge that is generally valid. But there is a difference between empirical approaches in the wider and narrower senses. In the latter case a specific well-formulated definition or model of religion is applied to the data. Data irrelevant to the hypothesis or theory on which that definition or model of religion is based are not considered. In empirical research in the wider sense, many more data are taken into consideration than those pertaining to a particular hypothesis or theory.

290

Studying Religions

5. Schemes of Interpretation of Religion From its beginnings, the aim of the scholarly study of religions (Religionswissenschaft) was to conduct "empirical" research based on facts and using reason. This kind of research was expressed in the term Wissenschaft and stood in critical contrast to "speculative" thought as represented by the philosophy and theology of the time. It was also in contrast to the subjective attitudes, ideas, and judgments of a scholar that would impinge on the impartiality and objectivity demanded of scholarly work. The interest of science and scholarship at the time was in discovering new facts and explaining them; religious data were to be explained and understood in terms of newly discovered empirical facts and the rules governing them. The search was for facts. In this positivist mood, it was said that data should be studied as facts, that facts speak for themselves, and that empirical research is factual research. Consequently, literature and art were studied as facts "that speak for themselves", history was investigated in a search for "historical facts", the study of society had to start with that of "social facts", and the study of a human being had to look for what someone was "in fact". A problem in the study of religions is therefore that a religion, however defined, is more than the total number of facts that can be grasped by empirical research. Empirical comparisons between religious data as facts can be made with various aims: for instance with a view to classifying them or discovering general rules, or finding an overall explanation, etc. Such comparisons have a more than strictly empirical bearing as soon as they touch on "surplus values" of religious data such as religious meaning, spiritual realities, etc., i.e. the non-factual, extra-empirical aspects of the data. We have to do here not only with facts to be explained, but also with data to be interpreted if they cannot be explained. I submit that empirical research on religious data requires interpretation and that certain extra-empirical schemes of interpretation are here unavoidable. We see this already in the problem of how to define empirical "religious data" and how to establish the difference and possible relationships between "religious" and "non-religious" data. In the search for causes and effects, the question is not only how to find evidence of borrowings and influences, but also to account for changes in meaning of facts during borrowing. That is a different question. The problem of defining religion and religions arises with the larger religious frameworks in which the individual data occur, that is to say, the various "religions". We have here the problem of how to define empirical "religion" and "religions". What are the essential features by

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

291

which religious systems distinguish themselves from other regulative or normative systems, such as worldviews or ideologies? What in fact makes the difference? Certain extra-empirical schemes of interpretation are unavoidable and necessary in the study of religions. They are concerned not only with the concepts of "religious" and "religion", but also with other conceptualizations. For the history of religions, it makes a difference if history is seen in terms of evolution or not, and what sort of evolution. For the sociology of religion, it is important whether present-day societies are interpreted in terms of more or less autonomous processes— such as rationalization and secularization—or not. In comparative research, it is important if one assumes that some kind of deeper "essences" exist in or behind particular groups of data, or that such groups of data have particular underlying "structures". For any theoretical model, it is important whether one assumes that reality is organized on different "levels", or whether any distinction between "higher" and "lower" levels of organization is to be rejected from the outset.

6. Religion as an (Un)known Subject of Study One of the most interesting features of the first decades of the science of religion was that various scholars had a sort of direct—though different—awareness of what religion is. This idea stemmed mostly from existing religious communities and was then further developed. Most scholars had a personal conviction about religion. Only later, for instance in the debate about how to define religions, did old certainties about what religion is, increasingly fall apart. Another feature of the early science of religion was that most scholars took for granted that there is a dichotomy—if not opposition—between science and religion. One of the effects of the science of religion was that religion in general came into the scholarly line of vision. The science of religion could be used as an instrument to criticize but also to uncover religion. In contrast, in some quarters, scholarship on religion could be conducted in the service of theology or theological doctrine or it could become a religious exercise or a spiritual venture for the scholar concerned. By objectifying religion and thus taking a certain distance from it as an object of research, scholars implicitly relativized religion. They questioned current authorities on religious matters and current claims of absolute truth in their own and other religions. In those decades, religion was still very much a leading idea in the West, and its difference from other cultural expressions such as art or

292

Studying Religions

morality was stressed. Religion was held to be a domain in itself. Historians of religions at the time hardly posed seriously the question, for instance, of how to distinguish the religious from the social or political aspects of particular empirical realities. Yet this question imposed itself in the study of cultural, historical, social, and political realities with clearly religious aspects. Such questions were important for students of literature, historians, and social scientists who encountered in their research curious mixtures of "ordinary" texts, historical events, and living societies with "religious" aspects, elements, or meanings. Essentialist definitions of religion current at the time were not very helpful for treating these questions, nor were other general schemes of interpretation and judgment of religion. The study of religions at the time had a particular idea or interpretation of religion as a reality in itself. In Western scholarship, this situation started to change in the 1980s and implied a small revolution in the science of "religion" itself. By taking "religion" as its subject matter, the science of religion extrapolated "religion" from its very beginnings from the rest of reality. Consequently, the actual interplay between "religious" and "non-religious" fell practically outside its horizon. The tendency was to construct dualist schemes such as sacred-profane and religious-secular. Apparently, among scholars too, the idea prevailed at the time that religion was a "thing" in itself: an institution, a whole made up of particular beliefs and practices, a spiritual reality, a personal or communal spiritual elevation or salvation, a revelation believed in, a network of symbols and myths giving orientation, etc. Such identifications of religion could support the idea that certain cultures or communities were more "religious" than others, for instance because they were richer in religious symbols, myths, and rites; or because those communities were based on mystical experience or were governed by high ethical norms; or because they had a strong monotheistic orientation with a puritanical lifestyle. In all these cases, the "religious reality" (or "religion") was seen in contrast to "empirical reality". Identifying what may be called "religious" in scholarly empirical research is more complicated than the founding fathers of the science of religion imagined it to be.

7. Development of Theoretical Thinking In the West, different kinds of discourse about religion and the study of religion developed. A discourse on the basis of people's experiences with their religion developed rather freely. Another discourse was that of theologians; this had a more or less rigid normative character, sup-

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

293

ported by reasoned arguments. A third discourse was held by those who subjected religion to critical rational thinking; this was almost the reverse of the preceding kind of discourse. With the development of the academic study of religions, new kinds of discourse arose about their empirical reality. A historical discourse tended to see it in the fact that religions have been lived by people and had palpable consequences in history. In a sociological discourse, this empirical reality was seen in the social character, the social function, as well as the social effects of religion. An anthropological discourse saw it as a sector of culture that fulfilled a particular role or function in that culture. Last but not least, a literary discourse saw the empirical reality of religions as expressed in religious texts, preferably Scriptures recited or read, their interpretation and their influence on other texts. Religious texts refer to both empirical and extra-empirical realities, testifying to values, truths and norms that people should follow. At the beginning of the 20 t h century, a fundamental debate arose in Germany about the study of religion (Religionswissenschaft) and the humanities in general. A major question was whether one should try to explain (erklären, erfassen) religion or try to understand (verstehen) it. In the first case, the goal was to explain religious phenomena and religion by empirical non-religious causes. In the second case, the proclaimed aim of study was to understand religion in its own—religious— terms. In this debate, a nearly absolute dichotomy, was posited between two procedures, that of the Geisteswissenschaften (humanities) and that of the Naturwissenschaften (sciences). Those scholars who wanted to study and understand religions as "humanists", from within, were confronted by those who wanted to study and explain religions as "scientists". They wanted to apply, in the study of religions and other aspects of culture, the same general scientific rules that were applied in the study of nature. Whereas the former would apply hermeneutical orientations in their research, the latter would look for a comprehensive explanatory theory.

8. Explanatory Theory To make particular facts understandable and explain them in general terms, one develops a hypothesis about the rules governing such facts and one look for a more general theory. One can then construct a model on the basis of the hypothesis and apply this model to these and other analogous facts. On this basis, one can reach a conclusion about the validity of the model, the hypothesis and possibly even of the projected theory.

294

Studying Religions

Such a scholarly approach was promising for a science of religion that would look for general rules governing religious data, without being determined by a priori theological or philosophical positions, conditioned by the views of religious institutions, or influenced by the personal convictions of individual scholars. In the search for an objective science of religion, one has to concentrate on the religious data, objectify them to empirical facts, and study the relationship between these and other facts by looking for the rules underlying them. Once explanations have been found for certain kinds of religious data and their relations with other, non-religious data, explanations of other kinds of religious data can be sought. In the end, one may perhaps succeed in explaining religious data in general. In this way, explanatory theories of particular groups of religious data, entire religions, and religion in general have been proposed. Early theories tried to explain religion for instance on the basis of nature, society, and mental processes. It was hoped that in this way the occurrence of particular forms of religion and even the occurrence of religion itself could be explained. This procedure has been and remains one of the cornerstones of scientific progress. The virtue of explanatory theory is its striving for impartiality and objective explanations. It has led to the development of models independent of the scholar's person. The models used serve not only to acquire scientific knowledge but can also lead to practical applications, for instance in technology and medicine.

9. Hermeneutic Orientations Hermeneutics is concerned with the study of human expression, not in terms of the relations between facts and general rules (explanatory theory) but between facts and meanings (in given contexts). As such, hermeneutics concentrates on problems of interpretation. In religious systems, thinkers have always been concerned with the meaning of religious behavior: symbols, myths, texts, etc. in terms of practical social and individual life. In religions with written texts, for instance, certain basic rules were often adopted for the interpretation of these texts. Such rules of interpretation constituted a kind of "religious" hermeneutics. Besides practical concerns in this search for meaning there could also be a more reflective one. There were also more reflective quests to find solutions for wider human problems. In scholarly research, the problem of interpretation is less immediate and less practical. It is no longer a committed quest for the immediate truth of the symbol, myth, or text for the practioner, himself or herself. The scholarly problem is that of the meaning(s) that a religious data

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

295

symbol, myth, or text had—or has—within a given cultural and religious tradition for particular people in given situations. The study of religious data or a religion becomes then the study of the interpretations given of such data or of that religion. The aim is to search what particular data, religious data and religious meant or mean to people. A scholarly hermeneutic approach was already applied by the Humanists in their study of classical Greek and Latin texts. It re-emerged in Oriental Studies and then also in the scholarly study of religions. Here the central question is: what was, has been, or is religiously meaningful to particular people or, what is the meaning of particular religious phenomena or data to those people? Or even further: What did or does their religion mean to particular groups of people or to a particular person? The virtue of this hermeneutic approach is that it investigates data, religious and otherwise, that were or are particularly meaningful to specific people in given situations. It can lead to scholarly knowledge on the presence, of particular kinds of meaning—including religious meanings— in given cultural traditions. And it can elucidate the role of such meanings in intercultural relations. It is unfortunate that these two major theoretical approaches in the study of religions—the search for explanation and the study of meanings—broke apart around the time of World War I. The exaggerated claims of some "hermeneutic" practitioners to have themselves immediate access to religious truths and realities—and to "preach" them—were in part responsible for this. For them, the study of religion was in fact a personal religious activity rather than scholarship. On the other hand, the search for a scholarly theory to explain categorically all forms of religion without asking about their meaning for people in given contexts and without paying attention to cultural variety was in fact simplistic. It seems to me that both theoretical approaches—and probably more—are needed in the scholarly study of religious data, religions, and religion in general, including the study of interpretations given to them.

10. Conclusion In this essay I first mentioned a few of the issues at stake when the study of religions started to be established as an empirical discipline in Europe around the 1870s. I then elaborated on the presence of non-empirical elements in an empirical study of religions. The problem of defining the "study of religions"—and thus "religions", "religion", and

296

Studying Religions

"religious"—and ways of studying them could not be solved by empirical means alone. The field was in need of theoretical thought and methodology. This led to the development of various schools, not only of historical and comparative research but also, for instance, in anthropology and sociology of religion. Some scholars introduced a philosophical or theological questioning. Most scholars worked on fact-finding and the analysis of specific religious data. A number of them were engaged in descriptive and survey work. Relatively few scholars before World War I paid attention to theoretical problems on a fundamental scholarly level. In the development of theoretical thinking I distinguished two main lines or approaches, that of explanatory theories and that of hermeneutic orientations. The two lines diversified especially in German scholarly research in the course of the 20 t h century, but much scholarly work combines elements of both approaches. This reinforced my idea that the protagonists of the two lines were in debate with each other, but that the two lines themselves are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Moreover, other lines of approach developed in the second half of the 20 t h century. The contrast between a "purely scientific" and the "meaningoriented" approach in the study of religions seems to have been stressed not only by purely theoretical interests. Commitments to particular concepts and practices of religion; fundamental theological, philosophical, and ideological orientations; various interests of public and religious institutions, as well as cultural, social, and political contexts all played a role. The formula of empirical research, however, brought the various approaches together and delineated them from normative approaches. With the relativization of the concept of religion, new subjects and new concepts have been introduced in this field of research. Religion is no longer reified or essentialized as a separate reality but studied in connection with the realities of ordinary life. Religious and other meanings interact. On a theoretical level, explanatory and interpretative research is complementary, also in the academic study of religions. Critical debates are indispensable for the sake of scholarly knowledge. They should be kept separate, however, from prevailing institutional, political, and ideological interests.

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

Selected

297

Literature

1. History of the Field Robert, /. G. Frazer. His Life and Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. —, Lhe Myth and Ritual School. J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists, New York: Garland, 1991. BEIDELMAN, Thomas O . , W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. B O S C H , Lourens P. van den, Friedrich Max Müller: A Life devoted to the Humanities, Leiden: Brill, 2002. CAPPS, Donald and Janet L. JACOBS, Lhe Struggle for Life. A Companion to William James's Lhe Varieties of Religious Experience, West Lafayette: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1995. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank W H A L I N G , Vol. 1: Lhe Humanities, Vol. 2: Lhe Social Sciences (Religion and Reason 27 and 28), Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 1984 and 1985. A paperback edition with a selection of seven chapters of the two volumes of the hardcover edition appeared under the title of Lheory and Method in Religious Studies. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank W H A L I N G , Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. DESPLAND, Michel, La religion en Occident. Evolution des idees et du vicu, Montreal: Fides and Paris: Cerf, 1979, 2 n d edition 1988. —, L'0mergence des sciences de la religion. La Monarchie de Juillet: un moment fondateur, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999. D E S R O C H E , Henri, and SEGUY, Jean, Introduction aux sciences humaines des religions, Paris: Cujas, 1970. Dürkheim on Religion. A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks, ed. by W. S. F. PICKERING, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris, Sorbonne). Section des Sciences Religieuses, Problemes et methodes d'histoire des religions. Melanges publies par la Section des Sciences Religieuses ä l'occasion du Centenaire de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. ELIADE, Mircea, "The History of Religions in Retrospect: 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 6 2 " , Lhe Journal of Bible and Religion, Vol. 3 1 ( 1 9 6 3 ) , pp. 9 8 - 1 0 7 . A revised and expanded version of this text appeared under the title of "The History of Religions in Retrospect: 1912 and after", in ID., Lhe Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, ACKERMAN,

1 9 6 9 , pp.

12-36.

Robert, Lhe Making of 'Lhe Golden Bough'. Lhe Origin and Growth of an Argument, London: Macmillan, 1990. Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination. Essays in Affinity and Influence, ed. by Robert FRASER, London: Macmillan, 1 9 9 0 . G R A E , Friedrich Wilhelm, "Kulturprotestantismus. Zur Begriffsgeschichte einer theologiepolitischen Chiffre", Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Vol. 28 (1984), pp. 214-268. FRASER,

Studying Religions

298

—, " M a x Weber und die protestantische Theologie seiner Zeit", Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschickte, Vol. 39 (1987), pp. 1 2 2 - 1 4 7 . The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950): Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik, ed. by Hans G. Kippenberg and Brigitte Luchesi, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1991. ISAIMBERT, Franfois-Andre, "The Early Days of French Sociology of Religion", Social Compass, Vol. 16 (1969), Nr. 4, pp. 4 3 5 - 4 5 2 . JONES, Robert Alun, "Robertson Smith and James Frazer on Religion. Two Traditions in British Social Anthropology". In Functionalism Historicized, ed. by G. W. STOCKING, JR., Madison, 1984, pp. 3 1 - 5 8 . —, "Dürkheim, Frazer, and Smith. The Role of Analogies and Exemplars in the Development of Durkheim's Sociology of Religion", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92 (1986), pp. 5 9 6 - 6 2 7 . JORDAN, Louis Henry, Comparative Religion. Its Genesis and Growth. With an Introduction by Principal Fairbairn. Edinburgh: Τ. 8i T. Clark, 1905. —, Comparative Religion. Its Adjuncts and Allies, New York: Humphrey Milford & London: Oxford University Press, 1915. KIPPENBERG, Hans G., " M a x Weber im Kreise von Religionswissenschaftlern", Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, Vol. 45 (1993), pp. 3 4 8 366. —, "Explaining Modern Facts by Past Religions: The Study of Religions in Europe around the year 1 9 0 0 " , in Man, Meaning, and Mystery, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 3 - 1 7 . —, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft. Von Friedrich Schleiermacher bis Mircea Eliade, ed. by Axel MICHAELS, München: C. H. Beck, 1997. KOHL, Karl-Heinz, "Geschichte der Religionswissenschaft", in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1988, vol. 1, pp. 2 1 7 - 2 6 2 . KRECH, Volkhard, "From Historicism to Functionalism. The Rise of Scientific Approaches to Religions around 1900 and their Socio-Cultural Context", Numen, Vol. 47 (2000), pp. 2 4 4 - 2 6 5 . KÜENZLEN, Gottfried, Die Religionssoziologie Max Webers. Eine Darstellung ihrer Entwicklung, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1980. Man, Meaning, and Mystery. Hundred Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000. MOLENDIJK, Arie L., The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Numen Book Series, Vol. 105), Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. OTTO, Rudolf, Autobiographical and Social Essays. Translated and edited by Gregory D. ALLES, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. PETTAZZONI, Raffaele, "La science des religions et sa methode", Scientia, vol. 13 ( 1 9 1 3 ) , pp. 1 2 8 - 1 3 6 of the

"Supplement".

PEUKERT, Detlev J. Κ., Max Webers Diagnose der Moderne. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989. PICKERING, William S. F., Durkheim's Sociology of Religion. Themes and Theories, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

299

J., Henri, L'etude compareee des religions. Essai critique, Vol. I: Son bistoire dans le monde occidental, Vol. II: Ses methodes, Paris: Beauchesne, 1922 and 1925. PLATVOET, Jan G., "Close Harmonies. The Science of Religion in Dutch duplex ordo theology, 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 6 0 " , Numen, vol. 45 (1998), no. 2, pp. 1 1 5 - 1 6 2 . —, "From Consonance to Autonomy. The Science of Religion in the Netherlands, 1 9 4 8 - 1 9 9 5 " , Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 10 (1998), no. 4, pp. 3 3 4 - 3 5 1 . —, "Pillars, Pluralism and Secularisation: A Social History of Dutch Sciences of Religions", in Modern Societies and the Science of Religions. Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer, ed. by Gerard WIEGERS and Jan PLATVOET, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2002, pp. 82-148. Religion in the Making. The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion, ed. by Arie L. MOLENDIJK and Peter PELS, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1998. REVILLE, Jean, Phases successives de l'histoire des religions, Paris: Leroux, 1909. RUDOLPH, Kurt, "Leipzig und die Religionswissenschaft", Numen, vol. 9 (1962), pp. 5 3 - 6 8 . —, Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1992. SHARPE, Eric J., Comparative Religion. A History, London: Duckworth and Lasalle, 111.: Open Court, 1975; 2 n d enlarged edition 1986. —, Nathan Söderblom and the Study of Religion, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Turning Points in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. by Ursula KING, Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1990. VRIES, Jan de, Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie, Freiburg & München: Karl Alber, 1961. —, The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach, Engl. tr. by Kees BOLLE. New York etc.: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967. New edition under the title of Perspectives in the History of Religions, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977; New York: Harper & Row, 1978. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research, Vol. 1: Introduction and Anthology (also in Paperback), Vol. 2: Bibliography (Religion and Reason 3 and 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973 and 1974. The Bibliography contains relevant publications in the field of the Study of Religion between ca. 1850 and 1950. WACH, Joachim, Essays in the History of Religions, ed. by Joseph M . KITAGAWA and Gregory D. ALLES, New York: Macmillan, 1988. WEBER, Max, "Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology", Sociological Quarterly, vol. 22 (1981), pp. 1 5 1 - 1 8 0 . Weber's Protestant Ethic. Origins, Evidence, Contexts, ed. by Hartmut LEHMANN and Guenther ROTH, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Max Weber's Sicht des okzidentalen Christentums. Interpretation und Kritik, ed. by Wolfgang SCHLUCHTER, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988. WHALING, Frank, "Introduction: The Contrast between the Classical and Contemporary Periods in the Study of Religion", in Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, Vol. 1: The Humanities, ed. by ID., Berlin etc.: Mouton Publishers, 1984, pp. 1 - 2 8 . PINARD DE LA BOULLAYE S.

Studying Religions

300

WINCKELMANN, Johannes, "Die Herkunft von Max Webers 'Entzauberungs'Konzeption", Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Vol. 3 2 ( 1 9 8 0 ) , pp.

12-53.

2. Some Questions of Method and

Theory

Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank WHALING, Vol. 1: The Humanities, Vol. 2: The Social Sciences (Religion and Reason 27 and 28), Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 1984 and 1985. A paperback edition with a selection of seven chapters appeared in 1995.

DESPLAND, Michel, Comparatisme et christianisme: questions d'histoire et de m0thode, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. EVANS-PRITCHARD, Edward Evan, Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. GOOCH, Todd Α., The Numinous and Modernity. An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto's Philosophy of Religion, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000. The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950): Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik, ed. by Hans G . KIPPENBERG and Brigitte LUCHESI, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1 9 9 1 . KIPPENBERG, Hans G., "Explaining Modern Facts by Past Religions: The Study of Religions in Europe around the year 1900", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 3 - 1 7 . Kritik an Religionen. Religionswissenschaft und der kritische Umgang mit Religionen,

ed. by G. M . KLINKHAMIMER, S. RINK and T. FRICK, Marburg: Diago-

nal·Verlag, 1997. KUPER, Adam, The Invention of Primitive Society. Transformations of an Illusion, New York: Routledge, 1988. MOLENDIJK, Arie L., The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Numen Book Series, Vol. 105), Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. New Approaches in the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, Randi R. WARNE, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, Vol. 2: Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches (Religion and Reason, Vols. 42 and 43), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. PETTAZZONI, Raffaele, "La science des religions et sa methode", Scientia, Vol. 13 ( 1 9 1 3 ) , pp. 1 2 8 - 1 3 6 o f the

"Supplement".

S. J., Henri, L'etude comparee des religions. Essai critique, Vol. I: Son histoire dans le monde occidental, Vol. II: Ses methodes, Paris: Beauchesne, 1922 and 1925. PREUS, James Samuel, Explaining Religion. Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Religion in the Making. The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion, ed. by Arie L. MOLENDIJK and Peter PELS, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1 9 9 8 . Turning Points in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. by Ursula KING, Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1990. PINARD DE LA BOULLAYE

Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research

301

WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research, Vol. 1: Introduction and Anthology, Vol. 2: Bibliography (Religion and Reason, Vols. 3 and 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973 and 1974. In 1999 Walter de Gruyter Publishers (Berlin and New York) published a paperback edition of volume 1. —, Reflections on the Study of Religion. Including an Essay on the Work of Gerardus van der Leeuw (Religion and Reason, Vol. 15), The Hague, etc.: Mouton, 1978. —, "The Emergence of Science of Religion. Explanatory Theory and Hermeneutics", Religio (Prague - Brno), Vol. 5 (1997), pp. 1 0 7 - 1 1 6 . WACH, Joachim, Religionswissenschaft. Prolegomena zu ihrer wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundlegung. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1924. English translation Introduction to the History of Religions, by Gregory D. ALLES, ed. by Joseph M. KITAGAWA and Gregory D. ALLES, New York: Macmillan, 1988.

Chapter 12 Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0 This essay takes for granted that the rise of Religionswissenschaft in the second half of the last century was not merely an academic search for historical and scientific knowledge about religions and religion in general.1 It implied also a critical attitude to prevailing orthodoxies and claims of church institutions in Europe. Besides the scholarly interest in religions other than Christianity, a powerful motive for the study of religions was to correct current mistaken ideas and representations of religions and religion, including Christianity in its various Protestant and Catholic forms, by taking into account the findings of modern historical, sociological, and comparative scholarship. When evaluating scholarly presentations of religions between say 1850 and 1950, we should take into account their critical undertone and pedagogical intentions in the context of the time. This meant a confrontation with Churches that had an interest in subordinating the truths of this scholarship to the truth of their own messages, doctrines, and practices. It also confronted not only traditional orthodox but also neo-orthodox theologies that declared scholarly knowledge of "other religions" to be irrelevant to Christian theological thinking. The program of a phenomenology of religion, by taking its distance from current religious norms and values, also implied a certain critical attitude to ideas about Christianity and "other religions" held or spread at the time. These included not only traditional forms of Christianity but also naturalistic explanations of religion and positivistic science. ι

Revised text of a paper read at the conference "The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 5 0 ) " (Groningen 1989). The original paper was published in the Conference Proceedings Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik, pp. 3 1 - 5 6 (1991). For the history of Religionwissenschaft see Eric J . SHARPE, Comparative Religion. A History, 2 n d edition, London: Duckworth, and LaSalle, 111.: Open Court 1986. Cf. "Doing the History of Religion. Eric Sharpe's Comparative Religion" and "Sharpe on the Sharpe Symposium", in: Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 1 (1989), 4 1 - 7 9 and 2 1 3 - 2 2 0 . See also Jacques WAARDENBURG, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religions, 2 vols., The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1 9 7 3 - 7 4 .

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

303

The phenomenological program was part of a search for an integrated view of the phenomenon of religion itself. In this perspective, phenomenological work in the field of religion had a double task. This was to present careful scholarly descriptions of "religious" data and "religions" against unscholarly representations and false images and to lead to a certain understanding of the "religious" aspects and qualities of things which other disciplines neglected, since this was not part of their particular task. As has often been observed, the term "phenomenology" used in Holland either by scholars intent on descriptive work such as P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye and later C. J. Bleeker, or by scholars intent on Verstehen such as W. B. Kristensen and G. van der Leeuw, had little to do with philosophical phenomenology. 2 In fact, one of the weaknesses of the phenomenological movement in the field of Religionswissenschaft (and its charm for outsiders!) was its lack of a critically reasoned approach to religious data. This had to do with its lack of a critical approach to the concept of religion. It isolated religious data from the historical, social, economic, and political contexts within which they occur. It was sensitive to the spiritual aspects of religion, but it paid little attention to religious behavior and meanings in ordinary life. Scholars working within the phenomenological movement in Religionswissenschaft were perhaps too enthusiastic about their findings in matters of religion and religious meanings. They seem to have been blind to explanatory scholarship and the criticism their findings received in the wider world of scholarship, beyond the circles in which they moved and to which they addressed themselves. The scholarly discourse on religions and religion often ended here in a religious discourse of witnessing religious experiences or an ideological one of fighting off theological reflection.

1. The Problem A basic problem in Religionswissenschaft is how religion and religions should be represented in scholarship. Our question in particular is what role phenomenology played in the Netherlands in developing new (re)presentations between 1920 and 1950. We shall not deal here with the ways in which texts and other data have been studied, i.e. with the technical aspects of research. Our concern is rather with the question of how scholars have put together such texts and other data to constitute a whole called "religion". In the field of Islamic studies, for example, at 2

JACQUES WAARDENBURG, "Religion between Reality and Idea. A Century of Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands" (1972).

304

Studying Religions

which point does an Arabist, a Middle Eastern historian, anthropologist or political scientist use his or her factual data as a springboard to say something about Islam as such, its nature or its effect on society? Where does a general concept or evaluation of Islam appear in studies claiming to be purely factual? The same holds true for representations of other religions, or of religion in general, which can sneak into a scholar's work, without his or her being aware that like his or her own field, religion is also a recognized field of scholarship that requires distinctive reflection. I limit myself here to the way in which those scholars who were connected in one way or another with the phenomenological movement conceptualized and constructed—or deconstructed—religions. I shall concentrate on the Netherlands, mainly during Gerardus van der Leeuw's professorship at the University of Groningen ( 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 5 0 ) , and ask two questions. H o w did phenomenology improve the way in which religions had been represented before, and how did it obscure them, for instance by idealizing or spiritualizing them? There are, of course, broader questions involved. Were the categories applied to describe religions of Antiquity and of non-literate peoples also used to describe religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam?· 3 Were these categories largely projections by the dominant European culture of the time onto other cultures? Where was an effort made to overcome Euro- or Christiano-centrism and to do justice to other cultures and religions, of past and present, including their spirituality, in their own right? 4 To what extent did these categories allow attention to be paid to particular articulations and interpretations of religion by particular groups, as in popular religion, religions of minorities, religions of women, adolescents, sick or old people in various societies? 5 H o w were specific groups and religions represented? 6 Similar questions have been 3

Judaism and Islam had a marginal place in the various phenomenological handbooks, with the exception of Geo WlDENGREN's Religionspbänomenologie (German translation 1 9 6 9 ) , where at least the formative period of Islam is referred to. What were striking visible phenomena in other religions was hardly found in Islam and Judaism, and typical phenomena of Judaism and Islam were hardly found in other religions. As to Christianity, it took some time before its phenomena were treated in the same way as other religious phenomena, perhaps through the encouragement of scholars and students who were not Christians themselves.

4

For a long time non-Western spiritualities have been interpreted, admired or rejected according to norms and values, needs and interests current in Western culture rather than for their own sake. Just as anthropologists are trying to overcome ethnocentric biases, scholars of religion should do the same with "religiocentric" ones.

5

Other groups should be added, varying from oppressed peoples and classes to middle classes, intellectuals and artists in various cultures, not forgetting peasants and tradesmen.

6

Apparently, the way in which specific religions or religious groups were represented depended very much on the kind of relationship which existed between a particular

C l a s s i c a l P h e n o m e n o l o g y o f R e l i g i o n in the N e t h e r l a n d s 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

305

raised in other disciplines. Just as we ask ourselves nowadays how to represent religions and religion in the present state of our knowledge, our colleagues ask how, beyond abstract formulas and models, they should represent subjects such as the universe, intra-atomic space, the genetic base of human beings, psychic realities or creativity in the present state of research. We are asked to tell others what we study, and this forces us intellectually to get rid of self-centered views and ethnocentric or religiocentric frameworks. The need for this is particularly great in the science of religion and, for instance, in political science, since these domains tend to be strikingly self-centered. In the history of scholarship on religion we see an alternating movement between the deconstruction of existing images through the findings of new scholarly knowledge, and the ensuing construction of new representations, until these, in their turn, are again corrected by the results of further research prompted by new questions.7

2. Image Formation of Religions Before the Phenomenological Movement Ancient, pre-scientific images of various past and present religions need not retain our attention here. The most reliable were based on precise translations of texts and accurate observations by travellers among foreign peoples and their descriptions of what they saw of customary practices. The least reliable seem to have been the accounts and interpretations by westerners of anything related to I'imaginaire religieux.8 For a long time biblical data, the teachings of the Churches and some classical authors constituted the main sources for representing religions. During the 18 t h and 19 t h centuries, historical and scientific research into mythologies and religions arose, based on empirical facts and the use of reason, and critical of the traditional images of religions. This research affected the European cultural scene and its prevalent ideas and evaluations of Christianity, other religions and religion in general. It demolished the traditional views of Christianity; fascinating other reWestern country and the region concerned. T h e British image of Hinduism, for instance, was largely subordinate to the relations between Great Britain and India. T h e way in which religion as such was conceptualized, however, seems to have depended largely on particular currents of thought in the West itself, often without considering the way in which "religious matters" were conceptualized elsewhere. 7

Interest in the representation and image-formation of other religions and cultures seems to have been awakened only recently. This is probably because it t o o k a long time before wider intercultural and interreligious contacts could take place on a more equal level.

8

T h e expression is used without value judgment, for description and analysis purposes.

306

Studying Religions

ligious worlds appeared on the horizon. 9 In the course of two centuries, literary and historical, anthropological and sociological research accomplished an immense amount of work on all kinds of religious data outside and inside the traditionally Christian world. Until at least World War II 1 0 this research still suffered from handicaps due partly to the political and cultural climate of the time and partly to certain paradigms of the new discipline. Three of these handicaps relevant to the representation of religions may be mentioned here. First, the new knowledge was liable to be seized on quickly by particular religious or anti-religious agencies, movements and ideologies to support their views with regard to religion. 11 Second, within academia, the new kind of research could function as an auxiliary discipline to theology, providing information about the historical Umwelt for Biblical studies, and about other religions for missiology. This could lead to a situation of dependence. It could also become part of other fields of scholarship such as comparative literature, history, anthropology, or sociology. Third, data gathered in Religionswissenschaft were often put at the service of theories developed in other disciplines. They led less to new theories developed from within the field of Religionswissenschaft itself. 12 On the whole, the new discipline produced positive results. Prescientific images and stereotypes were replaced by more scholarly representations based on the study of texts, historical facts and social scientific data. If the relevant facts were available, religions could be described diachronically according to what was seen as their historical development, and synchronically according to anthropological and sociological connections, rules and structures. 13 It was mostly held that the spiritual9

The new findings stimulated further research. As a reaction, however, orthodoxies rejecting the new knowledge arose, condemnations of "modernism" took place and views put forward of other religions as the object of sometimes aggressive Christian missions. Every discovery has its price, even in the science of religion.

10

The years just before and after World War II apparently constitute a turning-point in the study of other religions and cultures. This is particularly the case for the study of living religions adhered to in the newly-established nation-states, where people tried to link up with their pre-colonial cultural and religious heritage. An important factor was the development of the social sciences, which resulted in new views of other societies and cultures.

11

The way in which the results of science of religion can be used to denigrate religions, by Marxist atheism, religious missions, and vain polemics, is disturbing. On the other hand, certain data of the science of religions can be used to recognize particular values in other religions.

12

The relative poverty of original theoretical work within the field of schaft itself indicates that it is still a relatively young field of studies.

13

Just as in anthropology the various cultures can be described according to a given matrix of culture, attempts are made to describe religions according to a given matrix of religion. Different multi-dimensional models have been proposed.

Religionswissen-

Classical P h e n o m e n o l o g y of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

307

ity of a given religion, its "transcendent" dimension and "sacred" core were given basically with the meaning of its religious texts. 14 Among scholars of religion, some wanted to stress the distinctiveness of and the differences between historical religions. Others, while recognizing differences between religions, were less interested in drawing hard and fast lines between them than in drawing attention to certain common structures and features. 15 Thus, the formation of representations and images of religions depended very much on a scholar's particular discipline, his or her interest in making comparisons, his or her search for general rules, his or her feel for the uniqueness of one particular religion. Those who wanted to identify distinct religions—or groups of religions—emphasized their uniqueness or the fact that they constituted organic wholes. Those who wanted to delineate religions from worldviews and ideologies looked for rules pertaining to all religions. Finally, those scholars who did specialized research or worked on general problems did not much care about representing religions as distinct entities.

3. Image Formation in Classical Phenomenology of Religion The phenomenological movement in Religionswissenschaft was part of a broader movement characterized by the fact that certain scholars discovered the "religious" character, so to speak, of the religion they studied. That is to say they discovered, or recognized behind the empirical data, a particular religious universe, and without committing themselves completely to it, they recognized "real" truth in their subject of study, a "foreign" religion. Religious images were then projected, such as W. B. Kristensen's presentation of the ancient Egyptian religion as one of eternal life arising from death, 16 L. Massignon's presentation of Halläjian Islam as a reli-

14

Oral and textual expression in religions privileges the study of meanings. Meanings expressed in other ways are more difficult to grasp in a scholarly way. We have also become attentive to the fact that the meaning of religious texts, as of any texts, is always an interpreted meaning. Texts as such do not give access to the spirituality of a given religion.

15

The description of religions as separate entities or as entities that have certain elements or structures in common has of course its consequences for the way in which religion in general is represented. Beyond scholarly research there are vital interests at work to stress the uniqueness of a particular religion (for instance Judaism or Christianity) or to favor particular representations of a particular religion (for example Islam).

16

W . B . KRISTENSEN,

Livet fra d0den. Studier over Aegyptisk og gammel (Olaus Petri Lectures at the University of Uppsala), Oslo, 1 9 2 5 .

Graesk

religion

308

Studying Religions

gion of heroic martyrdom and saintly love, 17 and Walter F. Otto's presentation of ancient Greek religion as a religion of the eternal word of myth. 18 This was more than personalized scholarship. It resulted in representations of the religion studied that could be as "shocking" to the empirical science of religion as Nietzsche's description of Dionysian religion had been "shocking" to classical philology. This was all the more so since these scholars could not be said not to be basing themselves on critical source-work. On the contrary, knowing their texts well and being thoroughly familiar with their contents, they discovered within them a "religious" dimension with norms and values that ordinary philology had not been able to see. The scholars in question were fascinated by a truth they had discovered, a norm that imposed itself, a value they had to recognize. The religion studied became in a way normative to them. 19 We have to do here with some outstanding examples of a movement in Religionswissenschaft that sought to do justice to the norms and values, including the religious dimension of the materials studied. It reproached contemporary scholarship for having neglected commitment to the truth of the subject under study, in favor of technical research in a strictly philological, historicist, social scientific—mostly positivistic—perspective.20 The phenomenology of religion in the Netherlands was largely part of this broader movement among continental scholars, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, of (re)discovering religious worlds, values, and truths of the past or present time. However, it did not adopt extreme positions of religious or other commitment because of the principle of epoche which—for instance in faculties of theology— implied abstaining from truth claims 21 of whatever religion. The question of truth was bracketed. Consequently, Dutch phenomenologists 17

Louis MASSIGNON, La passion d'al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Hallaj, martyr mystique de l'Islam execute a Bagdad le 26 mars 922. Etude d'histoire religieuse, Paris: Geuthner, 1922; 2 n d edition (enlarged) Paris: Gallimard, 1975. 18 Walter F. OTTO, Die Gestalt und das Sein. Gesammelte Abbandlungen über den Mythos und seine Bedeutung für die Menschheit, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1955. 19 To a lesser extent this also seems to have happened to scholars such as Nathan SöDERBLOM, Rudolf OTTO and Friedrich HEILER. They were also fascinated by the religions they studied but took a more reflective, theological stand towards them. One can also think of scholars who, through intensive study and personal experiences "rediscovered" particular truths of their own religion, such as Martin BUBER for Judaism. In contrast to the sensitive scholars representing a "soft" line in Religionswissenschaft there are "hardliners" defending science such as E. B. TYLOR, M. MAÜSS, M . P. NLLSSON, W . BAETKE, G . WIDENGREN.

20

The opposite attitude is that of researchers (in scholarly research) who are fundamentally opposed to the religion they study. One may think of missionaries who learn about the religions from which they seek to convert people or of researchers on Judaism or Islam who suffer from latent anti-Semitism or anti-Islamism.

C l a s s i c a l P h e n o m e n o l o g y of R e l i g i o n in t h e N e t h e r l a n d s 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

309

represented a moderate wing within the movement of "rediscovering" religion. Moreover, they mostly concentrated on descriptive, classificatory, and comparative work. They were less interested in particular religions. Their primary concern was the study of general religious phenomena, such as myths and their recurrent themes, symbols spread all over humanity, general forms of polytheism or monotheism, and suchlike. There was an interest in what is universal and current usage still speaks of the history of religions and of the phenomenology of religio«. This had consequences for the way in which they represented religion in general. Most Dutch phenomenologists were concerned with religion as a variety of religious phenomena (e.g. C H A N T E P I E DE LA SAUSSAYE). They sought to classify religious data in typologies, morphologies, phenomenologies, and were intent on searching for fundamental attitudes, worldviews, or structures underlying this kind of phenomena. They also tried to identify basic human orientations in religion by linking them to particular conditions of human life as imposed by nature, society, existential life situations, etc. There were also, however, phenomenologists who stressed the typical and original character of particular religions or groups of religions (e.g. W. B. KRISTENSEN). Their "uniqueness" was mostly perceived in opposition to the researcher's own culture and society. A scholar's stress on the unique character of his or her particular religion or culture under study may be due to careful research. It may be the result of grasping particular values of the religion and culture studied that are absent or less visible in the scholar's own society and may be due to a more personal sensitivity. The unexpected discovery of truth in a religion presupposes some notion of truth in a scholar's mind and a certain search for it. This is not necessarily scholarly truth.

4. Image Formation of Particular Religions among Dutch Phenomenologists 22 Dutch phenomenologists were individual scholars with their own interests and no particular a school was formed. Their descriptions of individual religions were mostly historical accounts. C. P. T I E L E (18301902) was historically oriented and wrote historical accounts of the great religions of Antiquity. These were based on textual studies from 21

M a n y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of epocbe h a v e been given. It basically m e a n s t h e w a i v i n g of c u r r e n t o p i n i o n s a n d v a l u e j u d g m e n t s . In theological c o n t e x t s it h a s c o m e t o m e a n a b s t a i n i n g f r o m claims t o religious or a b s o l u t e t r u t h .

22

See n o t e 2.

310

Studying Religions

the sources and on what may be called a morphology of what he considered to have been the development or evolution of religion. P. D. CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE ( 1 8 4 8 - 1 9 2 0 ) used secondary sources for his

historical surveys of religions. W. B. KRISTENSEN (1867-1953) worked from original sources. In his Religionshistorisk Studium (Oslo 1954) he outlined the main religions of Antiquity, drawing attention to particular common features which distinguish these ancient religions from modern culture and religion. In his Livet fra doden. Studier over Aegyptisk og gammel Graesk religion (Oslo 1925) he treated the relation of life and death specifically in the religion of ancient Egypt. This must have been one of the main "messages" of this religion as he saw it. Besides his work on religious phenomena in general, G. VAN DER LEEUW (1890-1950) wrote his doctorate dissertation, and several articles, on subjects from the ancient Egyptian religion. In his succinct histories of ancient Greek and Egyptian religion and in his publications about the religions of non-literate peoples he stressed the internal harmony of these religions. VAN DER LEEUW published extensively on Church History (especially liturgy) and chosen subjects of Christian theology. The sketches he offers of some major religions in terms of man's relationship to Macht (Divine power) in his Phänomenologie der Religion ( 1 9 3 3 ) show something of his views of the religious orientations to be found in these religions. C. J. BLEEKER (1899-1983) was also a specialist on ancient Egyptian religion, about which he published three monographs. He wrote a textbook on the various religions for students' use. His phenomenological work was based on a particular scheme of mankind's religious orientations as they become manifest in the various religions. Κ. A. H. HIDDING had an interest in philosophical anthropology, religions on Java, and Islam. His phenomenology of religion distinguished basic anthropological structures in religions. Th. P. VAN BAAREN (1912—1989) studied ancient Egyptian religion and pursued further research on non-literate religions and cultures. His approach to religious data developed from a descriptive phenomenology to the use of cultural anthropology also on a theoretical level. Fokke SIERKSMA (1917-1977) started studying ancient Greek religion and continued with psychology of religion, with research on religious projection. He then widened his research to religions of non-literate peoples, Tibetan Buddhism, and basic anthropological issues. He had lively research interests in developments and problems in present-day religions. The scholars mentioned worked in theological faculties. Of Dutch scholars of religion at the end of the 19 t h century, only TIELE, KRISTENSEN, and H. Th. OBBINK with his son H. W. OBBINK (both in Utrecht) worked from primary sources.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

311

With the exception of HIDDING, these scholars were specialists in ancient Egyptian religion. Islam and Judaism are strikingly absent from their publications, as are Buddhism and Hinduism. Only Hendrik KRAEMER ( 1 8 8 8 - 1 9 6 5 ) , an independent mind and professor at Leiden ( 1 9 3 7 - 1 9 4 7 ) , did research on Indian religions and Islam, besides his theological work. Up to the 1950s, Islam and Indian religions were studied in practice by orientalists in the Arts Faculties. Looking back one must conclude that, roughly speaking, the phenomenological program influenced the image of particular religions to a very limited extent only. The general presentation of religions was historical. An interesting exception was W. B. KRISTENSEN. Although he claimed to be a historian, he was not one at all by current standards. His descriptions of the religions of Antiquity do not present a historical sequence and his main concern was to discover and present what he called "the belief of the believers". He studied religions as expressions of truth by people of other times and places. Compared with KRISTENSEN, VAN DER LEEUW was more historically— and also psychologically—oriented. His historical work proper is to be found in his publications on early Church history, on the history of Christian liturgy, and on Egyptian and Greek religion. Yet in VAN DER LEEUW'S historical studies too, there is a constant effort to reach some degree of understanding of and to awaken sympathy for human religious experience and its expressions. Other Dutch phenomenologists at the time, however—perhaps less fluent with the pen—gave "drier" historical presentations of religions, without much originality and without much critical sense as to current images of them. The phenomenology of religion did have an indirect influence. Because students of theology became familiar with general categories in religion, such as myth, ritual, sacrament, etc., they were able to recognize such general elements also in Christianity. On the other hand, several scholars who usually are not considered historians of religions were stimulated by certain phenomenological questions and findings. H. WAGENVOORT'S treatment of Roman religion owes something to VAN DER LEEUW, and the same can be said of J. GONDA'S treatment of the religions of India. The taste for empathy with the materials studied, typical of a group of scholars at the University of Leiden during the period under consideration, is also perceptible in the historical work of scholars as different as Johan HUIZINGA on European cultural history and Jan DE VRIES on ancient Germanic culture and religion. 2J 23

The results, however, were quite different. Johan HUIZINGA (1872-1945) on the one hand, well-known author of The Waning of the Middle Ages (Herfsttij der Middeleeu-

312

Studying Religions

5. The Presentation of Religion in Dutch Classical Phenomenology of Religion At the beginning of this essay I formulated the general subject at issue: the way in which religions or religion was presented in the phenomenology of religion between the two World Wars. I have dealt already with the way in which some religions were presented before the rise of the phenomenological movement and by some phenomenologists. I have stressed thereby that the phenomenological movement in Religionswissenschaft in the Netherlands must be seen as part of a larger movement in continental scholarship, aiming at doing justice to the "religious" aspects of religions, in contrast to contemporary naturalistic, positivistic, or ideological approaches. In a way this movement aimed at a certain rehabilitation of religion against the onslaught of demanding scholarship, secular outlooks and political ideologies. But "religion" itself was changing. I now want to look at some aspects of the classical phenomenology of religion in the Netherlands that have been somewhat neglected, and I shall do this under three sub-headings: "Classical Phenomenology of Religion and the Emancipation of Religionswissenschaft"Classical Phenomenology of Religion: Aims and Results" and "The Context of Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands, 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0 " . Again, attention must be drawn to the individual phenomenologists' extraordinary diversity. Unfortunately, there has been a marked tendency, not only in the Netherlands, simply to identify the phenomenology of religion with with what VAN DER LEEUW made of it in the first half of the 20 t h century. This tendency was strongest at the University of Groningen, after VAN DER LEEUW'S death. 24

24

wen, 1919) who counted the historians Jan ROIMEIN ( 1 8 9 3 - 1 9 6 2 ) and Pieter GEYL ( 1 8 8 7 - 1 9 6 6 ) among his students, developed a pessimistic view of the gradual barbarization of Europe, especially by the Nazis. Jan P. M. L. DE VRIES ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 6 4 ) on the other hand, author of the Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (2 vols. 1 9 3 5 - 3 7 , revised ed. 1956-57), believed in Germanic culture and acted accordingly. DE VRIES and HuiZINGA were colleagues in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Leiden before and during the war (1940-45). Whereas HUIZINGA was put under house arrest during those years, DE VRIES accepted high responsibilities in the Ministry of Education; he was deprived of his professorship in 1945. The sympathetic study of religions and cultures does not dispense one from basic responsibilities in one's own context. The immediate posthumous reception of VAN DER LEEUW in Groningen was critical. He had been on the Faculty of Theology for 32 years and there had to be a change in the old guard. His successor Th. P. VAN BAAREN initiated a much more empirical and critical kind of scholarship and severely criticized VAN DER LEEUW'S work on "primitive mentality" and his phenomenology. But there was more in the air: a critical post-war generation breaking with pre-war social, cultural, and religious traditions. Sooner than expected, VAN DER LEEUW belonged to the past. A renewed interest in VAN DER LEEUW'S

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

313

Yet VAN DER LEEUW did not have the last word on the phenomenology of religion. There have been other phenomenological approaches to it as well, in other contexts. In this connection we should see both the work of VAN DER LEEUW and the broader appeal of his particular phenomenology of religion in the social and cultural, as well as the religious and theological contexts of Protestant Dutch society between the two World Wars. The rise of the phenomenology of religion is to be seen here as part of a cultural movement in certain ethical and liberal Protestant circles that were intent on discovering or rediscovering, activating or rehabilitating religion. 25 Among the phenomenological approaches to religion at that time I have already made a distinction between phenomenological work of description and classification (such as that done by CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE and BLEEKER) and that of Verstehen (done by KRISTENSEN and VAN DER LEEUW). I call the first "descriptive" phenomenology and the second phenomenology of "understanding", the first leading to problems of comparison, the second also to problems of hermeneutics. Both together constitute the "classical" phenomenology of religion, which was alive in the Netherlands roughly between 1890 and 1970. It should be stressed that VAN DER LEEUW'S work was different from what the philosopher Edmund Husserl had considered phenomenology to be. 2 6 It represents a rather personal ceuvre, such as Mircea ELIADE'S work some years later. Both scholars were the fruit of early 20 t h century European liberal culture, on opposite sides of the continent. In the "classical" phenomenology of religion, religions and religion as such were presented in the light of the assumption that being religious is a natural property of man. This assumption was shared by nearly all professional scholars of religion at the time. Classical phenomenology of religion was created on this basis, and at Dutch universities it was located in Faculties of Theology. phenomenological work was initiated later in Groningen on a philosophical level by H. G. HÜBBELING. VAN BAAREN'S priceless art collection from non-literate cultures became the substance of the VAN DER LEEUW Museum in Groningen. VAN DER LEEUW'S 100th birthday in 1990 was celebrated with an international conference held in Groningen in 1989 on Religionswissenschaft at the time of VAN DER LEEUW. 25 This "rehabilitation" of religion took a more esthetic character in Religionswissenschaft, which was rather ambiguous compared to the militant Barthian unmasking of religion in theology. The intellectual scene during the interwar period, in Germany and elsewhere, was complex. There is need for more information about how various scholars of religion of the period responded to the rather chaotic European ideological and political scene at the time. Did these scholars of religion have political responsibility? To what extent did they commit themselves socially and politically? 26 It is rather unfortunate that VAN DER LEEUW decided to call his own approach to religion (in between those of history and theology) one of "phenomenology". Apparently he admitted later orally that he could have given his enterprise another name!

314

Studying Religions

However, in the second half of the twentieth century, a new-style phenomenology and other forms of hermeneutical research on religions developed that were not burdened by this theological assumption. They no longer imposed a particular concept of religion or proclaimed a particular vision of the human being. They were more discreet and attentive to what the people concerned had to say themselves.

5.1. Classical Phenomenology of Religion and the Emancipation of "Religionswissenschaft" By claiming that religious data should be a subject of independent academic empirical research, Religionswissenschaft proclaimed itself as an autonomous field of research and distanced itself from theology. This supported Religionswissenschaffs emancipation from theological doctrine and religious custody and promoted a new kind of attention t o — and study of—religious data, religions and religion in general. Because of historical circumstances, the history of religions received recognition and could obtain by law a place at the heart of the leading faculties of theology in the Netherlands already in 1876. 2 7 Whereas it is true that the phenomenology of religion turned out to be more subservient to theology than, for instance, the history, sociology and anthropology of religion, the rise of the phenomenology of religion represented an important stage in the emancipation of the academic study of religion from theology. 28 In their study of religion and religions "classical" phenomenologists were engaged in a search for a kind of truth that was different from present-day conceptions of scientific truth and different from what at that time was considered theological truth. Their scholarly search was motivated by a quest for the spiritual values and "truths" that religions and religion had to offer. By studying texts of various religions the researcher would be able to grasp the truth(s) which these texts attested. Some scholars gave a particular name to what they considered to be the religious reality at work behind or through the empirical data: Rudolf O T T O spoke of das Heilige, VAN DER LEEUW of divine Macht, ELIADE of the archetypal Sacred as opposed to the Profane. Behind the phenomenology of religion prevalent between the two World Wars there lay a real shift in the notion of "truth". The subject of research was the truth of a religion, as presented by its adherents. 27 28

Arie L. MOLENDIJK, The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands. See especially Chapter 111, "Institutionalization" (pp. 4 9 - 8 2 ) . On the history of phenomenology of religion at Dutch universities before World War II, see Arie L. MOLENDIJK, op. cit., "Phenomenology of Religion Revisited" (pp. 3 0 - 4 8 ) and "Chantepie de la Saussaye's Phenomenology" (pp. 1 1 7 - 1 2 2 ) .

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

315

This was neither the truth formulated in Christian theology nor the truth adhered to in positive science. The phenomenologist's task was to study what believers held to be the truth of their religion. By implication, phenomenology's scholarly program could become a religious program as well, when scholarly research was linked to a religious quest. In the classical phenomenology of religion such a mixture was not held in check by a critical methodology. When Nathan SöDERBLOM29 and Gerardus VAN DER LEEUW30 replaced natural theology with the new disciplines of the history of religions and the phenomenology of religion respectively, this promoted the development and supported the gradual emancipation of Religionswissenschaft. Their first concern, against threatening orthodoxies or tempting liberal theologies, was to see Religionswissenschaft recognized as a legitimate discipline with a positive role for theology. They wanted to broaden in this way the horizon of theological students and Church ministers. In a country like Germany this was hardly possible at the time. ' 1 It has been said that VAN DER LEEUW subordinated Religionswissenschaft to theology, but there is a qualification of this. 3 2 He wanted to see the history and phenomenology of religions fully recognized within faculties of theology. But when he spoke of "theology", he meant something different from what is generally understood by it. He created his particular phenomenology of religion as a kind of propedeutic to theology as he saw and constructed it. The relationship between phenomenology and theology in VAN DER LEEUW'S work is quite complex. There is reason to assume that he himself had a kind of inclusive view of them; he put them side by side, as 29

N. SöDERBLOM, Natürliche Theologie und allgemeine Religionsgeschichte, Stockholm/ Leipzig, 1913. 30 G. VAN DER LEEUW, Plaats en taak van de godsdienstgeschiedenis in de theologische wetenchap (Place and Task of the History of Religion in Theological Scholarship), Groningen/Den Haag: J. B. Wolters, 1918. 31 Theologians such as Adolf VON HARNACK and Ernst TROELTSCH opposed establishing chairs of Religionswissenschaft in German Faculties of Theology. Thanks to Rudolf OTTO, the Marburg Faculty of Theology obtained a chair of Comparative History of Religions and Philosophy of Religion in 1922, where Friedrich HEILER was appointed. The Universities in Bonn and Leipzig had chairs of Religionswissenschaft in their Faculties of Arts. 32 On the relation between phenomenology and theology according to VAN DER LEEUW see J. WAARDENBURG, Reflections on the Study of Religion (1978), pp. 2 2 2 - 2 4 1 and 1 9 3 2 1 9 (partly based on J. J. TEN HAM, "G. van der Leeuw: Ontwikkeling en grondstructuur van zijn theologie"). A basic text is G. VAN DER LEEUW, "De twee wegen der theologie" (The two roads of theology), first published in 1941 and translated by John B. CARMAN in his "The Theology of a Phenomenologist. An Introduction to the Theology of Gerardus van der Leeuw" (1965). The subject needs exhaustive treatment by someone familiar with theology and the science of religion in the Netherlands between 1900 and 1970.

316

Studying Religions

two roads, both of which are perfectly legitimate. The very enthusiasm he expressed for his experiential adventure called "phenomenology" in a way made him relativize the doctrinal expressions of "theology" and overestimate the importance of phenomenology. I suggest that he did not want, or was not able to, choose between the two roads but wanted to follow them both to the end. This has caused confusion among his interpreters, scholars of religion and theologians. Consequently, it took time before phenomenological research on religion was fully emancipated from theological bonds. VAN DER LEEUW gave phenomenology of religion quite a personal— first "ethical", then more "liturgical", and finally "existential"—theological perspective. C. J. BLEEKER and Κ. A. H. HIDDING gave it a clear liberal Protestant one. It is fair to say that Religionswissenschaft was really emancipated from theological concerns by Th. P. VAN BAAREN in Groningen and F. SIERKSMA in Leiden who, however, somewhat overdid things, as happens in emancipatory battles. 3j They assumed naively that phenomenological research on religious materials as such is unavoidably tainted with theology, which they saw as an enemy of true science. Assuming, consequently, that phenomenological research can never meet scholarly standards, they simply threw it out altogether from their concept of an autonomous science of religion. Looking back, nearly fifty years later, I must say that both scholars had a rather naive but fixed concept of both phenomenological research and theology. This was largely due to the contexts in which they had studied and worked at the time. As a consequence, their battle was against any domination by what they considered—rightly or wrongly—as "theology".

5.2. Classical Phenomenology of Aims and Results34

Religion:

One of the principal aims of the phenomenology of religion in the Dutch context was to do justice to religion, to the various religions, and to the variety of religious attitudes, practices and ideas past and 33

Both T h . P. VAN BAAREN (in Groningen) and F. SLERKSMA (in Leiden) worked for a transformation of the faculty of theology into a faculty of the science of religion at state universities. Both opposed any kind of church influence in Religionswissenschaft. Could it have been also a certain resistance against religion as such? Not necessarily! The logical outcome of the emancipation and full development of Religionswissenschaft would have been to establish it as an inter-faculty department of research and teaching, but this turned out to be impossible in the Netherlands. We were able to realize the idea later, however, at the University of Lausanne.

34

For a critical treatment see J. WAARDENBURG, Reflections on the Study of Religion ( 1 9 7 8 ) , Part Two ( " A Plea for Methodological Awareness", 5 1 - 8 8 ) , and Ch. 2 ( " R e cent trends in Dutch Studies of Religion", pp. 2 3 - 4 3 ) . Cf. note 2.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

317

present. Phenomenological research could show the presence of fundamental questions and answers—in symbolic or other indirect form—in religious materials. These materials had been studied by literary researchers, historians and social scientists. However, they rarely focussed on their religious aspects. Here then lay a task for Religionswissenschaft, in particular for those phenomenologists who respected the formula Zurück zu den Sachen (back to the data) that had been a catchword of the phenomenological movement. 1. The first aim of the phenomenology of religion—going back to the very data of religion—was achieved in several ways. Religious data needed to be safeguarded from "imperialistic" approaches that would try to explain them away. Numerous data that were not religious in themselves could, if properly questioned, indirectly give certain clues to religious beliefs and practices current in a particular culture and society. This demanded a waiving of prejudices and current opinions, in an attitude of empathy to the subject studied as a human reality, without idealizing or disparaging it. 2. The second aim of the phenomenology of religion was to develop a scholarly method appropriate for studying religious data. CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE carefully compared external features of religious data in an effort to classify them. KRISTENSEN worked with his personal skills to uncover, on the basis of literary and other evidence, the religious meanings of symbols, myths, and ritual actions occurring in the religions of Antiquity he studied and with which he sympathized. VAN DER LEEUW was the first to elaborate on the problem of method, not so much epistemologically as by describing what the craft consisted of. He enumerated what he called the various stages of phenomenological research. Most important for him were solid knowledge of the available data, the researcher's experiential capacities, and the attitude of epoche. This would, after factual verification, lead to understanding (Verstehen) and witnessing (zeugen) of that what had been understood. BLEEKER and VAN DER LEEUW seem to have learnt their aim to reach the religious meaning of the data from the example of their teacher W. B. KRISTENSEN, who had done his utmost to uncover the original, ancient meaning of symbolic expressions and to "get behind" rationalizations by Greek, Hellenistic and later Western philosophy, including the Enlightenment. KRISTENSEN'S spiritual excavations of ancient symbolism, the force of his personality, and the irrefutable arguments with which he supported his sometimes astonishing findings, may have given a strong incentive to VAN DER LEEUW'S phenomenology of religion. For KRISTENSEN, the study of other religions was essentially a search for spiritual worlds presenting an alternative to rationalized modern society. Like

318

Studying Religions

their master, his pupils in their turn went out to unravel vanished religious worlds to which only a few survivors still bore witness. Since the aim was to discover the values of spiritual worlds of former times, KRISTENSEN insisted that there was no generally valid method that could be applied, as existed in other branches of scholarship. The search and its result depended finally on the person of the researcher. Consequently, there was no Dutch "school" of the phenomenology of religion, only a group of individuals setting out on a scholarly discovery venture. There was no general methodology. Each researcher had to navigate an individual course and develop his own hermeneutics according to the materials on which he worked. For this kind of phenomenology, method was a problem. KRISTENSEN himself, at least in his posthumous book The Meaning of Religion,35 could not express himself well on abstract matter and what he wrote about his method is rather opaque. VAN DER LEEUW had literary capacities and a facility for expressing himself verbally. But he was not a sharp systematic thinker either. BLEEKER made an effort to formulate certain basic rules and principles, but he was not familiar with current developments of methodology. He stopped short, for instance, of discussing critically the category of the sacred in scholarship on religion, for whatever r e a s o n / 6 In the end, there was no impersonal method for these scholars, and this was in fact the driving force of their scholarly venture. Each phenomenologist of religion was in his way a frontiersman/ 7 Each one worked out his own approach to religion, and the only way he could prove that he was right was by showing concrete scholarly results that could be recognized by others. 3. The third important aim of the phenomenology of religion was to throw light on the human being as a religious being. This was an anthropological concern. Studying the way in which man had understood himself in other, ancient religions and cultures would, it was held, 35 This book, published in 1960 with a second edition in 1968, was compiled, edited and translated by John B. CARMAN after the author's death in 1953, on the basis of lecture notes. Any final judgment on it should go back to the original notes kept in the University Library in Leiden. 36 C. J. BLEEKER, The Sacred Bridge. Researches into the Nature and Structure of Religion, especially pp. 1 - 5 1 . 37 There were mostly men working in this field. An exception was Eva HLRSCHMANN, who prepared her doctorate dissertation with VAN DER LEEUW, entitled Phänomenologie der Religion. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung von "Religionsphänomenologie" und "religionsphänomenologischer Methode" in der Religionswissenschaft (Diss. Groningen 1940). She describes VAN DER LEEUW'S own work here as the end of a development of preceding works in the tradition of pre-World War 11 German Religionswissenschaft.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

319

deepen understanding of man's nature and potentialities. In fact, the search was for a homo religiosus as an alternative to the rationalized man of secular European societies and the manipulated man of modern ideologies. KRISTENSEN found him in Antiquity before the Greek enlightenment and admired him for his spiritual depth and insights untainted by rationalizations. VAN DER LEEUW found him in ancient Greece, conforming to the classical ideal, and also in primitive societies as the elementary embodiment of any man. VAN DER LEEUW'S fascination with the concept of "primitive mentality" is comparable to KRISTENSEN'S fascination with the concept of "believers" in ancient Egypt and Antiquity in general. HIDDING too, had a marked interest in religious anthropology and developed this also on a philosophical level. Of all phenomenologists, VAN DER LEEUW was by far the most actively and creatively intrigued by religious man as a problem for contemporary secular or manipulated man. Following GOETHE, and reflecting problems current in 19 th and 20 t h century Europe, he was deeply concerned with the Menschwerdung of man—how a human being becomes human—which is a recurrent theme throughout his work. 38 He engaged in a lively search, not only in the field of religion as shown here, but also in the work of contemporary authors and thinkers, including JASPERS and BINSWANGER, LEVY-BRUHL and PLESSNER, BUBER and the existentialists. His wide reading turned around the same theme and evoked his interest in the "inner" life of man, religious and non-religious, a subject that constitutes one of the most original (and well-written) parts of his Phänomenologie der Religion. When he was received in the European-style Eranos circle in Ascona, Switzerland, in the late forties and exchanged views with eminent thinkers of post World War II Europe, there seems to have been among those present a congeniality of thought on the nature and destiny of man. 39 In the Netherlands VAN DER LEEUW'S concern with man "as a problem to himself" was taken over and pursued, though along different lines, by Fokke SIERKSMA,40 a brilliant mind and the only one of VAN 38

39

See for instance his "L'homme et la civilisation. Ce que peut comprendre le terme: evolution de l'homme", Eranos Jahrbuch XVI (1948), Ziirich 1949, 141 ff., and Menswording en cultuurverschuiving. Een anthropologisch problem, Antwerpen, 1948. VAN DER LEEUW gave lectures in Ascona in 1948 ("L'homme et la civilisation", see note 38), 1949 ("Urzeit und Endzeit") and 1950 ("Unsterblichkeit"), published in the Eranos Jahrbücher of those years. Apparently his presence was appreciated and he must have felt himself quite at home in the company of scholars such as C. G. JUNG, L. MASSIGNON, H . CORBIN, M . ELIADE a n d o t h e r s .

40

Fokke SLERKSMA studied in Groningen and prepared his doctorate dissertation with VAN DER LEEUW on the subject of Phaenomenologie der religie en complexe Psychologie (Phenomenology of Religion and Complex Psychology). He argued here for the contribution which in-depth psychology could make to a better understanding of religion. VAN DER LEEUW had approved the text before his death and the doctorate defence took

320

Studying Religions

DER LEEUW'S pupils to have pursued a scholarly career. SIERKSMA was a friend of Th. P. VAN BAAREN who also worked on the diversity of man's cultural and religious expressions within the unity of humankind, especially in oral cultures.41 Let me summarize the aims and results of the classical phenomenology of religion by formulating what may be called the four virtues of the discipline in the Netherlands between 1920 and 1950. The main virtue of this phenomenology was its primary interest in the religious aspects and qualities, in brief the religious character, of the data considered and studied. It raised the question of what makes particular phenomena "religious" and this has remained a basic one in Religionswissenschaft. However, by concentrating exclusively on religious meaning and content as a spiritual reality, researchers were not only tempted to idealize or spiritualize what they were studying, but also ran the risk of becoming prisoners of their own ideas about it. This could have meant the end of research into the reality of other human beings. The second virtue of this phenomenology was its profound interest in the human being, in his or her ways of expressing himself or herself, and in human subjective reality. Here phenomenology could make observations and give interpretations other approaches were not able to give. It raised the question of which meaning certain human expressions have and which meaning particular data have for certain people. Like the first one, this second question has continued to be a basic one in Religionswissenschaft. A third virtue of the classical phenomenology of religion was its rather stern self-discipline with regard to the task of unraveling religious and other meanings, independently of current opinions, ideologies, and worldviews. In this field, as in other fields of qualitative research, researchers should be able to keep themselves under control. The last virtue to be mentioned was the growing concern with hermeneutical questions, that is to say the effort to arrive at a correct reading of religious data and the search for rules to interpret them. KRISTENSEN

41

place in 1951. Some people had wanted to see SlERKSMA as VAN DER LEEUW'S successor but the Faculty of Theology in Groningen appointed Th. P. VAN BAAREN. Subsequently SlERKSMA went to the University of Leiden, where a research post had been created for him in the Faculty of Theology. He later occupied the chair of the History and Phenomenology of Religion in Leiden. See especially Th. P. VAN BAAREN, Menschen wie wir. Religion und Kultur der schriftlosen Völker, Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1964; Dutch edition 1960. Although in the course of some twenty years VAN BAAREN had prepared a second, enlarged edition of the book, the publisher of the first edition, to the author's dismay, finally refused to publish it because of economic risks. SlERKSMA, too, had problems in getting his last manuscripts published; they are now in the Royal (National) Library in The Hague.

Classical P h e n o m e n o l o g y of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

321

and VAN DER LEEUW practiced hermeneutics along the lines of SCHLEIERMACHER and DILTHEY, but they were not always able to hand on their personal skills to others or formulate such rules convincingly in abstract terms. When it did not lead to a critical methodology and palpable progress in hermeneutical reflection, the classical phenomenology of religion in KRISTENSEN and VAN DER LEEUW'S period tolled its own deathknell. It then had to give way to other approaches, with new, more fruitful models and paradigms for studying religious data and religions.

5.3. The Context of the Phenomenology of in the Netherlands, 1918-1939

Religion

We cannot deal here with the reasons why Religionswissenschaft found fertile ground and became an autonomous discipline quicker at Dutch universities than in most other countries. 42 Religious pluralism in the Netherlands, the acceptance of Protestant, Jewish, and other immigrants, the country's contacts overseas with travel and trade, the presence of important colonies, and perhaps a practical sense of human situations and factual reality may explain a certain openness toward other believers and the presence of other religions. But why did the phenomenology of religion become popular in certain circles in the Netherlands during VAN DER LEEUW'S lifetime? Can this be attributed only to the personal charisma and work of VAN DER LEEUW as a scholar and person or does more come into play here? The question has hardly been asked until now and is worth considering. It seems to me that a phenomenology of religion had a definite appeal to people who did not quite fit into the established pattern of rather narrowly fixed confessions and who were open-minded about religious views and lifestyles other than their own. They were particularly to be found within the Dutch Reformed Church to which VAN DER LEEUW belonged. It was the largest Church of the Protestant majority of the population, whose members characteristically held a wide variety of views. Among them, both liberal Protestants and Protestants adhering to an "ethical" theology—with a distinct middle course between the orthodox and the liberals—showed this kind of open-mindedness. The phenomenology of religion had a certain message for people with a personal, even individualistic orientation who were aware of spiritual problems and issues, and who cannot be said to have been se42

Switzerland was an exception. The first chair of the history of religions was established in Switzerland at the University of Geneva, in the Section of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts, in 1 8 7 3 . The first chair of the history of religions in the Netherlands was established at the University of Leiden, in the Faculty of Theology, in 1 8 7 7 .

322

Studying Religions

cularized in their deepest selves. The science of religion gave largely unproblematic information about other religions to this audience and the phenomenology of religion played an important cultural role, especially when it established connections with art and literature, as was the case in VAN DER LEEUW'S work. A quest for spiritual experience may also have been present. Since the phenomenology of religion was essentially uncommitted, it could not offer such experience itself, but it could provide what may be called an enlightened openness to it. I believe the most important point, however, was that the phenomenology of religion offered a way out of the often constricting hold of the highly denominationally segregated Dutch society of the time. It was composed of more or less autonomous socio-religious communities that tried to span as many areas of life as possible. In such a compartmentalized context, the phenomenology of religion could open people's eyes to what lay beyond the frontiers of their own group, as far as religion was concerned. Within the country it represented an indirect protest against narrow-mindedness, theological hair-splitting, absolutist claims by the Churches, and the wide gulf separating Christians from others, including the adherents of other religions, faiths and ideologies. 4 j VAN DER LEEUW often made jokes about this in his work and repeatedly unmasked the mistakes of this empirical Christianity. I would like to submit that the phenomenology of religion as popularized by VAN DER LEEUW functioned in part as an ironical protest against features of Dutch society between the two world wars concerning religion. It was also a pedagogical tool to enlighten the people, in an irenical rather than a militant or aggressive w a y . 4 4 The reception of the phenomenology of religion and a certain popularity of it also suggests that secularization and secular ideologies, as distinct from confessionalism, had not yet pervaded the Netherlands,

43

On this aspect of Dutch society, see J . WAARDENBURG, "Religion and the Dutch Tribe", in: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion Essays in Honour of ]an van Baal, ed. by W. E. A. VAN BEEK and J. H. SCHERER, The Hague: M . Nijhoff, 1 9 7 5 , pp. 2 4 7 -

44

VAN DER LEEUW should also be seen as a social figure and phenomenon. O f modest descent, from a rather traditional Christian and non-intellectual milieu, he had an astonishing career. Yet he seems never to have become an "established" figure and his colleagues from Leiden apparendy viewed him as a singular bird, beyond the paths of established scholarship. VAN DER LEEUW associated with artists rather than professors, liturgists rather than theologians, and in 1 9 4 5 he joined the socialist party rather than one of the recognized "Christian" ones. He had his own ways of provoking the Dutch burgers and he liked to do it. In the final analysis he represents perhaps a kind of protest against the rules of Dutch society. He was a free man who went his own way, not really fitting into the rather rigid structures of Dutch society of the time, and interested in anything new. During his lifetime he had many admirers but apparently few defended him after his death.

279.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 5 0

323

which had stayed out of the First World War and still maintained much continuity with the pre-1914 period. The Second World War, however, brought about radical changes which also had their impact on VAN DER LEEUW'S life and work between 1 9 4 5 and 1 9 5 0 . With the breaking down of the traditional boundaries of society, a progressive secularization of social life and institutions, important political changes, and a thorough break with the pre-World War II cultural tradition, religious, cultural and social needs changed and the cultural role of the phenomenology of religion in society ended. Many people may have broadened their personal horizon through it, but the only visible action to which the phenomenology of religion led, was a liturgical renewal in the Protestant churches into the fifties, again under VAN DER LEEUW'S enthusiastic impulse. The phenomenological attitude of "experiencing" rather than "participating", which was closely linked to a bourgeois lifestyle and an armchair type of scholarship, became obsolete now. An increasing demand began for personal commitment in intellectual circles, a practice of dialogue among believers, a curiosity as to contemporary social developments and an increasing openness to the needs of the new independent nations in the Third World. VAN DER LEEUW'S day was over, ending rather abruptly. With it also disappeared from Holland that broader cultural tradition of pre-World War II Europe, of which the phenomenology of religion had been a part.

6. G.

VAN DER LEEUW'S

Conceptualization of Religion

Throughout his work, VAN DER LEEUW looks at religion in two different ways: as human experience and as Revelation from Beyond. The relation between these determines for him the relation between the phenomenology of religion and theology. Religion is in the first place an experience, that is to say a human phenomenon that can be studied as such. VAN DER LEEUW characterizes this experience as an encounter with Divine Macht (Power) and as a life encompassing meaning (Sinn). Research into the different forms which religious experience has taken in the course of history leads to an understanding of religion from the human point of view. Religion is seen here within the confines of Religionswissenschaft. Religion is in the second place to be considered as revelation. Revelation, however, is not a phenomenon like other human phenomena and cannot be studied as such. It remains basically incomprehensible. However, man's assertion about and witnessing what has been revealed to him is a phenomenon. This can be studied in Religionswissenschaft.

324

Studying Religions

In VAN DER LEEUW'S view, religion is one of the consequences of the fact that man does not accept life as given to him. The human being seeks a power (Macht) in life, something that is superior to him, such as the forces of nature (sexuality) and of overpowering meaning (religion). Man's life extends itself in its existential search for power (Macht), and then acquires its true human dimension. Religion is viewed by VAN DER LEEUW as " . . . the extension of life to its uttermost limit". But VAN DER LEEUW also developed another view of religion. The fact that man does not accept life as given to him, leads to his endeavor to find "meaning" in it, to conduct his life according to this meaning, and to arrange this life into a significant whole. This endeavor is creative: in his search for meaning man creates culture and "seeks ever further for constantly deeper and wider meaning".45 For VAN DER LEEUW, religion as experience is basically Grenzerfahrung, experience of an ultimate border, both as an encounter with Divine Macht and as a search for (revelation of) ultimate meaning. 46

7. Conclusion The preceding pages about the Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands in the time of Gerardus VAN DER LEEUW (specifically between 1920 and 1950) have shown that this scholarly trend was concerned with religion as a domain in itself, rather than as part of the realities of daily life. It was concerned with the world of religious phenomena rather than with specific religions, with religiosity and spirituality rather than with particular religious actions and behavior. One key to understanding the Classical Phenomenology of Religion and its way of studying religion may be to recognize in it a particular spiritual longing. It has features such as a nostalgic search for alternative spiritual worlds, for values of past times and far-away cultures that are in danger of being irretrievably lost under the impact of modernity. Religion offers the means to retrieve these spiritual worlds and values. 45 46

Both quotations from p. 679 of Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1938), the English translation of his Phänomenologie der Religion (1933). VAN DER LEEUW'S concept of religion is complex. Its study should in any case take into account the English translations Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 1938 and Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, New York and London, 1963), the French translations La religion dans son essence et ses manifestations: Phenomenologie de la religion, Paris, 1948, 1955, 1970, and L'homme primitif et la religion: Etude anthropologique, Paris, 1940, the German translation Sakramentales Denken: Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der außerchristlichen und christlichen Sakramente, Kassel, 1949, and in Dutch especially the 2 n d edition of Inleiding tot de theologie (Introduction to Theology), Amsterdam, 2 n d ed. 1948.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1920-1950

325

One should study religion and have a spiritual approach. This was and is the Classical Phenomenology of Religion. 4 7 We may call this approach an "armchair" phenomenology of religion. Phenomenologists at the time hardly entered into lively discourse with believers or adherents of the religions they studied but constructed religions and religion in various ways. The phenomenology of religion was a particular way of constructing and presenting religions and religion.

Selected

Literature

BAAREN, Th. P. VAN, "De ethnologische basis van de faenomenologie van G. van der Leeuw", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 11 (1957), pp. 321-353. —, "De plaats van de theologie in de godsdienstwetenschappelijke faculteit", Ned. Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 14 (1959-60), pp. 1-7. —, "Kort antwoord van de beantwoorde", Ned. Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 15 (1960-61), pp. 8 ff. —, "Science of Religion as a Systematic Discipline: Some Introductory Remarks", in Religion, Culture and Methodology. Papers of the Groningen Working-group for the Study of Fundamental Problems and Methods of Science of Religion (Religion and Reason 8), The Hague: Mouton, 1973. BICKERMANN, E . , "A propos de la phenomenologie religieuse", Revue des Etudes Juives,

Vol. 9 9 ( 1 9 3 5 ) , pp. 9 2 - 1 0 8 .

BLEEKER, C. Jouco, "Zelfportret van de fenomenologie van de godsdienst", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 13 (1958-59), pp. 321-344. —, "The Phenomenological Method", Numen, Vol. 6 (1959), pp. 96-111. Reprinted in ID., The Sacred Bridge, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963, pp. 1-15. —, "Wat beoogt de Studie der godsdiensten?", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift,

Vol. 16 ( 1 9 6 1 - 6 2 ) , pp. 1 - 1 7 .

—, The Sacred Bridge. Researches into the Nature and Structure of Religion, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963. —, "Wie steht es um die Phänomenologie der Religion?", Bibliotheca Orientalis, Vol. 28 (1971), pp. 303-308. Reprinted in The Rainbow (1975), pp. 30-42. —, "The Contribution of the Phenomenology of Religion to the Study of the History of Religions", in Problems and Methods of the History of Religions, ed. by U. BIANCHI, C. J. BLEEKER and A. BAUSANI, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972, pp. 35-45. —, The Rainbow. A Collection of Studies in the Science of Religion, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. —, The History of Religions 1950-1975. Text for the IAHR Congress, Lancaster, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. 47

Such a study of foreign norms and values, spiritualities and spiritual worlds certainly puts the highest demands not only on scholarship but also on the person of the scholars. A primary task n o w is to inquire how such norms and values, spiritualities and spiritual worlds of past and present relate to current problems of the societies and cultures in which they are adhered to and which derive meaning from them.

326

Studying Religions

—, "Die Bedeutung der religionsgeschichtlichen und religionsphänomenologischen Forschung Friedrich Heilers", Numen, Vol. 25 (1978), pp. 2 - 1 3 . CARiMAN, John B., "The Theology of a Phenomenologist. An Introduction to the Theology of Gerardus van der Leeuw", Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Vol. 29, Nr. 3 (April 1965), pp. 13-42. CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE, P. D., Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1 8 8 7 - 1 8 8 9 . English translation by Beatrice S. C O L Y E R FERGUSSON: Manual of the Science of Religion, London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1891. —, "Die vergleichende Religionsforschung und der religiöse Glaube", in ID., Portretten en Kritieken, Haarlem: F. Bohn, 1909, pp. 3 3 7 - 3 6 7 . HAIM, J. J. TEN, G. van der Leeuw. Ontwikkeling en grondstructuur van zijn theologie, Doctoraalscriptie University of Utrecht, Faculty of Theology, May 1973, 107 pp. HEDIN, Dag, "Gerardus van der Leeuw's Construction of a Philosophical Phenomenology of Religion", in ID., Phenomenology and the Making of the World (Studia Philosophiae Religionis 19), Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1997, Chapter 4 (pp. 73-98). HERIMELINK, Jan, Verstehen und Bezeugen. Der theologische Ertrag der "Phänomenologie der Religion" des G. van der Leeuw, Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1960. HIRSCHMANN, Eva, Phänomenologie der Religion. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung von "Religionsphänomenologie" und "religionsphänomenologischer Methode" in der Religionswissenschaft, Würzburg 1940 (Dissertation Univ. Groningen). HOESTEE, Willem, Goden en mensen. De godsdienstwetenschap van Gerardus van der Leeuw 1890-1950, Kampen: Kok Agora, 1997. HUBBELING, Hubertus G., "Das Heilige und das Schöne. Gerardus van der Leeuws Anschauungen über das Verhältnis von Religion und Kunst", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, Vol. 25 (1983), pp. 1 - 1 9 . —, "Der Symbolbegriff bei Gerardus van der Leeuw", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, Vol. 27 (1985), pp. 1 0 0 - 1 1 0 . —, Divine Presence in Ordinary Life. Gerardus van der Leeuw's Two-fold Method in his Thinking on Art and Religion (Communication Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences), Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1986. J A M E S , George Alfred, Interpreting Religion. The Phenomenological Approaches of Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye, W. Brede Kristensen, and Gerardus van der Leeuw, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995. KING, Ursula, "Historical and Phenomenological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Some Major Developments and Issues under Debate since 1950", in Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, Vol. 1: The Humanities, ed. by Frank W H A L I N G , Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984, pp. 2 9 - 1 6 4 . KIPPENBERG, Hans G., Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte. Religionswissenschaft und Moderne, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997. English translation by

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1920-1950

327

Barbara HARSHAV : Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. KRAEMER, Hendrik J., De plaats van de godsdienstwetenschap en godsdienstfenomenologie in de Theologische Faculteit, Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1959, 1960. —, "Antwoord aan prof. Th. P. van Baaren", Ned. Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 15 (1960-61), pp. 1 - 7 . —, "Introduction" to W. B. KRISTENSEN, The Meaning of Religion. Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, 2 n d ed. 1968. KRISTENSEN, W . B . , "De inaugureele rede van Professor van der Leeuw", Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 53 (1919), pp. 2 6 0 - 2 6 5 . —, Symbool en werkelijkheid. Een bundel godsdiensthistorische Studien, Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1954. Paperback edition Zeist, Arnhem, Antwerp: Palladium, 1962. —, The Meaning of Religion. Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion, translated by John B. CARMAN, Introduction by Hendrik KRAEMER, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, 2 n d edition 1968. See "William Brede Kristensen: A Bibliography", in Man, Meanings, and Mystery, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE (Brill: Leiden, 2 0 0 0 ) , pp. 2 8 7 - 2 9 4 . LAMBRECHTS, Pieter, De fenomenologische methode in de godsdienstwetenschap, Brüssel: Academie van Wetenschappen, 1964. LEERTOUWER, Lammert, "Primitive Religion in Dutch Religious Studies", Numen, Vol. 38 (1991), pp. 1 9 8 - 2 1 3 . LEEUW, Gerardus VAN DER, Plaats en taak van de godsdienstgeschiedenis in de theologische wetenschap, Groningen-Den Haag: Wolters, 1918 (Inaugural address). —, Inleiding tot de godsdienstgeschiedenis, Haarlem: Erven Bohn, 1924. German translation: Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, Munich 1925. Second, completely revised Dutch edition under a new title: Inleiding tot de phaenomenologie van den godsdienst (Haarlem, 1948). A German translation of this new text appeared in Munich 1961. —, 'Wegen en grenzen. Studie over de verhouding van religie en kunst, Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1932, 2 n d expanded ed. 1948, 3 r d revised edition 1955 (by E. L. Smelik). German tr. by A. PIPER (Vom Heiligen in der Kunst, Gütersloh 1957) and English tr. by David E. GREEN, with Preface by Mircea ELIADE (Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, New York and London 1963). —, Phänomenologie der Religion, Tübingen: Mohr, 1933, 2 n d ed. 1956, 3 , d ed. T H 1970, 4 ed. 1976. English translation by J . E. TURNER (Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, London 1938). American editions prepared by Hans H. PENNER; 4TH ed., with Foreword by Ninian SMART ( p p . I X - X I X ) , P r i n c e t o n

1986.

—, Inleiding tot de theologie, Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1935, 2 n d ed. 1948. —, De primitieve mensch en de religie. Anthropologische Studie, Groningen: Wolters, 1937. —, Der Mensch und die Religion; Anthropologischer Versuch, Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1941.

Studying Religions

328

—, Sacramentstheologie, Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1949. German translation by Eva SCHWARZ: Sakramentales Denken, Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der außenchristlichen und christlichen Sakramente, Kassel, 1959. —, "Confession scientifique" (Brno, 18. Nov. 1946), Numen, 1,1 (1954), pp. 8 15. See Bibliography of VAN DER LEEUW'S publications by W. Vos, "Dr G. van der Leeuw. Bibliografie zijner geschriften", in Pro Regno Pro Sanctuario, ed. by W. J. KooiiMAN and J. M. VAN VEEN, Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1950, pp. 553638.

Man, Meaning, and Mystery. 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000. MOLENDIJK, Arie L., The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Numen Book Series 105), Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie? Thematic issue of Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, vol. 6 / 7 ( 2 0 0 0 / 0 1 ) , edited by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, and Fritz STOLZ, Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2001. PEPPINK, Th., Gestremde Beweging. Een theologisch onderzoek naar de verhouding tussen geloof en kunst bij Prof. Dr. G. van der Leeuw, Kampen: Mondiss, 1997. PETTAZZONI, Raffaele, Essays on the History of Religion, Leiden: Brill, 1954. PETTERSSON, Olof and AKERBERG, Hans, Interpreting Religious Phenomena. Studies with Reference to the Phenomenology of Religion, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1981. PLATVOET, Jan G., "Close Harmonies. The Science of Religion in Dutch duplex ordo theology, 1860-1960", Numen, Vol. 45 (1998), no. 2, pp. 115-162. —, "From Consonance to Autonomy. The Science of Religion in the Netherlands, 1948-1995", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), no. 4, pp. 334-351. —, "Pillars, Pluralism and Secularisation. A Social History of Dutch Sciences of Religions", in Modern Societies and the Science of Religions. Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer, ed. by Gerard WIEGERS and Jan PLATVOET, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2002, pp. 82-148. Pro Regno Pro Sanctuario, ed. W . J. KOOIMAN and J. M . VAN VEEN, Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1950 (Festschrift G. VAN DER LEEUW, with VAN DER LEEUW'S Bibliography on pp. 555-638). Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik. Beiträge zur Konferenz "The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950)", ed. by Hans G . KIPPENBERG and Brigitte LUCHESI, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1991. SHARMA, Arvind, To the Things Themselves. Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenomenology of Religion (Religion and Reason 39), Foreword by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. SIERKSMA, Fokke, Prof. Dr. G. van der Leeuw: dienaar van God en hoogleraar te Groningen, Amsterdam: Het Wereldvenster, 1951. —, "Van der Leeuw na 25 jaar" in G. van der Leeuw herdacht, Groningen 1975, pp. 2-12.

Classical Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands 1920-1950

329

See about F. SIERKSMA: J . Η . P. M . van IERSEL, Wetenschap als eigenbelang: Godsdienstwetenscbap en dieptepsychologie in bet werk van dr. F. Sierksma (1917-1977). Doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht, 1991. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Religion between Reality and Idea. A Century of Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands", Numen, vol. 19 (1972), pp. 128-203. —, "Grundsätzliches zur Religionsphänomenologie", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie'''', vol. 14 (1972), pp. 3 1 5 - 3 3 5 . —, "Gerardus van der Leeuw as a Theologian and Phenomenologist", in the author's Reflections on the Study of Religion. Including an Essay on the Work of Gerardus van der Leeuw (Religion and Reason 15), The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton, 1978, pp. 1 8 7 - 2 4 7 . —, "Religion unter dem Gesichtspunkt der religiösen Erscheinungen", in Religion als Problem der Aufklärung. Eine Bilanz aus der religionstheoretischen Forschung, ed. by Trutz R E N D T O R E E , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980, pp. 1 3 - 3 5 . —, "Uber die Religion der Religionswissenschaft", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, vol. 26 (1984), pp. 2 3 8 - 2 5 5 . —, "The Problem of Representing Religions and Religion", in Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik. Beiträge zur Konferenz "The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950)", ed. by Hans G . KIPPENBERG and Brigitte LUCHESI, Marburg: Diagonal Verlag, 1991, pp. 3 1 - 5 6 . —, "Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) und die holländische Religionswissenschaft", Jahrbuch Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien (Münster Wf.), vol. 1 (1991), pp. 1 3 3 - 1 5 2 . —, "Friedrich Heiler und die Religionsphänomenologie. Eine kritische Würdigung", Marburger Universitätsreden A 18, Marburg: Pressestelle der Universität Marburg, 1992, pp. 2 1 - 5 1 . —, "G. van der Leeuw en de groei van de godsdienstwetenschap", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 46 (1992), pp. 8 9 - 1 0 3 . —, "Ansätze zu einer religionswissenschaftlichen angewandten Hermeneutik", Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, vol. 77 (1993), pp. 2 1 6 - 2 3 4 . —, "The Emergence of Science of Religion. Explanatory Theory and Hermeneutics", Religio (Prague-Brno), Vol. 5 (1997), pp. 1 0 7 - 1 1 6 . —, Art. "Religionsphänomenologie", in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. 28 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 7 3 1 - 7 4 9 . —, "Religionsphänomenologie 2 0 0 0 " , in Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7 (2000/01), Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 4 4 1 - 4 6 9 . ZUESSE, Evan M., "The Role of Intentionality in the Phenomenology of Religion", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53 (1985), pp. 51-74.

Chapter 13 Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986) 1. Mircea Eliade: Life and Work 1.1. Biographical

Data

After the First World War ended in 1918, when the young Mircea was 11, Romania became a great country. 1 This happened not only in terms of size, but also in building up its nationhood, including its culture, in the period between the two world wars, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 3 9 . In one interview, Eliade said that his generation had been privileged historically, the preceding and following ones having been sacrificed during the two world wars and in the subsequent decades. Mircea Eliade made his own contribution to this nation-building around Romanian culture. Already as a boy, an adolescent, and a young man, he showed curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, and intellectual gifts. This was evident not only in his wide reading, in which he familiarized himself with Romanian and European cultural history, but also in that he gave himself to creative writing from the age of fourteen, alternating from pure imagination to precise observation, of the life of insects for instance. Taking the required exams, he could also stand the test of demanding mathematics. When he enrolled at the University of Bucharest, where he studied from 1925 to 1928, his mind was moved by philosophy. Later he would admit that his study of the history of religions had not been guided primarily by the desire to establish facts for the sake of empirical accuracy. He had rather been moved by a passion to find answers to problems of a more fundamental, philosophical nature. Knowledge of the history of thought, culture, and religion and opening to other civilizations was of help in this. Significantly, his university Memoire at the Faculty of Arts was devoted to Italian Renaissance philosophy. Later in life he would extend this theme, calling on humankind for a sort 1

Part of a lecture delivered at the New Europe College in Bucharest, June 2 0 0 3 .

332

Studying Religions

of spiritual rebirth or renaissance, appropriating the spiritual resources of the great Asian religions and the insights that the "archaic" religions had preserved. In the first half of the 20 t h century, these fields attracted great interest in Europe under the headings of Indology, anthropology including its explorations of far-away "primitive" religions, and "folklore", the study of which was flourishing in Europe, including Romania, at the time. Eliade acquired direct experience of Indian life, culture, and religion when he went to study in India at the end of 1928, at the age of 21. The purpose of his three-year stay was to study Sanskrit, explore Hindu thought, and familiarize himself with yoga. Certainly matured and spiritually transformed by his study of the East, he would distinguish himself in life by his creative mind, whatever the circumstances. Eliade returned to Romania before the end of 1931 and completed his military service. He finished his dissertation on yoga and obtained a doctorate at the University of Bucharest in June 1933. At the age of 26 he became the assistant of the Professor of Philosophy at the university, Nae Ionescu, with whom he had studied and who had profoundly influenced him. His assignment was to teach Indian philosophy. During those years, besides scholarship, he continued writing his own literary work and became known for his novel Maitreya, published on his return from India. He also wrote essays and articles on broader cultural subjects of interest in Europe at the time. He organized and animated lively cultural discussions and intellectual debates that attracted large audiences, especially among students. In the 1930s, Mircea Eliade was a critical but creative intellectual wanting to bring a cultural message to the Romanians. Following the trend of the time, he became a Romanian nationalist, but was rather naive regarding the political implications of this. In the 1930s, the political spectrum in Romania was polarizing, as in other countries in Europe. Nae Ionescu had become a political figure as the leader of the right-wing "Iron Guard" of the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" movement. Eliade emerged from his shadow and became politically active. He was suspected of being a member of the "Iron Guard", and like Ionescu he was put under arrest for some time in 1938. He lost his post as assistant and had to live from his writing. Throughout the 1930s, Eliade pursued his research on the history of religions. He was aware of developments abroad and corresponded with Raffaele Pettazzoni in Rome. Besides concrete studies, he developed his own thinking on subjects such as symbolism and myth, "the sacred", and religion in general, publishing mostly in Romanian. It was during these years (1932-1940) that Eliade formulated his fundamental ideas on these subjects.

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

333

During the Second World War Eliade was in the Romanian diplomatic service. He was attached to the Romanian Legation in London in May 1940, and from 1941 to 1945 was cultural attache at the Romanian Embassy in Lisbon. Portugal remained outside the war. After the war, Eliade took up residence in Paris and participated in the cultural and scholarly life there, increasing his already striking erudition. He started to publish, in French, both his scholarly and literary work and participated in international scholarly and cultural activities. Having become a renowned scholar, he was invited to the University of Chicago in September 1956. He lived, and worked strenuously, for some thirty years in Chicago, from October 1956 until April 1986, with annual summer sojourns in Europe. A number of publications date from this period and he was also Editor-in-Chief of the new Encyclopedia of Religion. In 1983, he retired from the University of Chicago. Three years later, in April 1986, he died in Chicago at the age of 79. Eliade's biography was conditioned by the tumultuous historical contexts in which he lived and worked. Romania was among the victors of World War I. The country bordered the USSR, mostly perceived as the enemy of religion and civilization. India, where Eliade was from 192831, was a British colony aspiring to independence. The early 1930s witnessed the worldwide economic depression with its catastrophic political effects. That whole decade saw a political radicalization throughout Europe, the right mostly winning and the left losing. The corresponding ideologization tore apart European bourgeois liberal culture. Beyond Europe, the forces of history raged leading to a complete change in the world scene. European domination of the world was near its end. All of this led to the Second World War, the East-West division of Europe and the world at large, and the conflicts of the Cold War. It also led to the political independence of Asian and African nations, an increasing "Free World" consciousness in the West, and the rising stars and stripes of the USA. After the war, Eliade lived in exile, but he survived well, when compared with those living in the misery descending on Romania, where the intelligentsia was exterminated. From 1945 to 1956, he could at least devote himself—though in the first years under difficult circumstances—to intense reading and writing in Paris. From 1956 to 1986, Eliade was able to work in an environment where freedom, religion, and study were declared values. As in his Romanian years, he spoke of history in terms of terror, but here too he had a message: a hoped-for worldwide humanism linked to a creative transformation of the human being. Mircea Eliade grew up in a European culture with an eye open toward "the East", and this would mark him. He remained a lively homme

334

Studying Religions

d'esprit, a man of culture as found in European countries up to the 1930s. As an author, scholar, and thinker, he "digested" the world as a participant observer, on the edge of society and surviving thanks to his creative mind. There were his never-ending scholarly, literary, and diary writings, his uninterrupted readings of scholarly and other publications and his multiple professional, representative, and personal encounters, which he enjoyed with an open mind. Yet there is evidence that he knew loneliness, misunderstandings, and—until the 1950s—lack of recognition. Eliade does not seem to have been rancorous during his forty years of exile. He denounced the terror spread under communist regimes. As an intellectual, he was fiercely opposed to the suppression of human freedom and personal creativity, reducing human solidarities and the workings of the mind to a historical determinism and material interests. Though cautious, he was helpful to other people. As a Chicago professor, from the age of 50, Eliade enjoyed worldwide recognition, but still received scholarly criticism. Chicago was a place of lively but tough minds. In Europe, Eliade did not fit well into the textoriented tradition of the history of religions. In North America, he was distanced from the empirical turn taken by research and the pragmatic trend of thinking. Generations succeed each other quickly in North America. With the years, younger researchers in the US started to criticize the weak empirical basis and the unproved philosophical assumptions underlying Eliade's scholarly work, especially in his study of religion. His Romanian work of the 1930s was hardly known. Only a few scholars on the established American and even European scene knew the young Eliade's philosophical questioning and the searches underlying his early studies on religions, not to mention his literary work. In the 1970s certain statements and activities of his later Bucharest period—the late 1930s—emerged that led to black-and-white judgments including accusations that Eliade had been anti-Semitic. This, of course, led to a storm generating high waves, and to further queries. The relatively rich material available gives information about how complex a person Eliade was. They also show something of the way he withstood the "terrors" at work in his own history. On the American scene, and in his many personal contacts with students, younger researchers, and scholars in the US, Eliade had his own weight, with an ever enthusiastic and youthful broaching of intellectual problems. He supported all those who were doing research on religion. Few professors in the early 1960s showed an interest in hippies and new religious practices as he did. In Western Europe, he had mostly been seen as an exceptional emigre from Eastern Europe. Apart from Romanian emigres, hardly anyone in the West was familiar with the Romanian language, culture, and reli-

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

335

gion, not to speak of Religionswissenschaft. This was also true for North America, but there he was perceived as a typical European, in his presentations, lifestyle, and way of thinking. During his lifetime Eliade surmounted a range of tests—which he used to call "initiations"—of which other people were scarcely aware. He was able to pass them with his rare kind of mind, having the imagination of an author and the penetration of a scholar—with a touch of genius.

1.2. Eliade Studying

Religion

I would like to distinguish at least three levels of research and commitment in Eliade's scholarly work. On a first level, there is little or no question of religion. Eliade views the human being as creative, with capacities he or she is not fully aware of. Bypassing one's cultural borders, one can learn from other people's cultures. Westerners can gain insights and mental training from Easterners. They can also learn from the archaic, or "primitive" communities that live near the sources of life human beings carry within themselves. Consequently, people need a "dialogue of cultures" to learn from each other and to bring about a renaissance of humankind. On this level, Eliade is interested in the study of the exemplary figures of spiritual force, such as Renaissance philosophers and their teachings, Indian yogis and their training, and Asian shamans and their initiations. This study breaks through the walls erected between cultures on the basis of geographical distance, social and cultural traditions, particular doctrines and practices, or simply the need for communal survival. Human cultures have a number of fundamental philosophical problems in common, to which different answers have been given in different cultural contexts. Philosophy should guide people to understand these problems and also the commonalities and differences in the answers given to them. On this level, Eliade affirmed already in his Romanian period that the West has much to learn from the East that it has been tempted to dominate. On a second level, religion enters the scene. A deeper study of cultures and better communication between them brings to light the presence of spiritual forces that represent and radiate a "sacred" quality for the people concerned. These forces emerge from a source that is felt to be "sacred" itself. Human experiences of deeper significance and meaning may have the same strikingly "sacred" character. Then Eliade's concept of what is "sacred" changes. At first, he used "sacred" as an adjective indicating a particular subjective experience,

336

Studying Religions

but then it becomes a noun hinting at a transcendent reality "out there", held to be the foundation or basis of everyday reality. The next step is the idea that, to be truly human, human beings have to be in relation and in tune with that "sacred" reality. On a third level, the science of religion appears, usually called by Eliade and other scholars at the time "the history of religions". This discipline should study the testimonies we have about particular manifestations of sacred reality in the empirical realities of human life in various cultures, contexts, and situations. It was already assumed that people should learn from the "religious" experiences of others and "study" them in their own personal way, thus transforming themselves. What is new in Eliade's approach is the effort to obtain a valid philosophical and scholarly view of human experiences of true, "sacred" reality. The search here is less for a personal insight than for a generally valid knowledge of the "workings" of sacred, transcendent reality in human cultures and societies in different times and places. This is the "science of religions". In Eliade's view, experiences of sacred reality find expression in particular symbols, myths, and rituals. These should therefore be studied in relation to the ultimate, "sacred", and transcendent reality to which they testify. This is the proper task of the history of religions. Eliade gave examples of a number of specific myths, symbols, and rituals of this kind in particular cultures at particular times and places. As a scholar and philosopher, however, he wanted to demonstrate the existence of more general patterns of meaning in such religious phenomena. The study of religious significances and meanings, and their general validity, then becomes for Eliade a search for the adequate interpretation of religious data such as symbols, myths, and rituals. When someone asked him at an advanced age how he defined himself as a scholar, he answered, "I am a hermeneut" (interpreter). As a hermeneut, he sought the religious significance not only of phenomena we recognize as "religious", but also of a number of other phenomena that are now generally considered non-religious, but that Eliade believed originally had a religious meaning, lost in the course of time. Eliade's persistent searches for religious models and structures underlying "ordinary" social and cultural phenomena implies a kind of "total" concept of religion in which, originally, all human phenomena may have had a religious meaning. This easily leads to a "totalitarian" concept of the study of religion, different from what we understand by an empirical study of religion and religions. In practice Eliade became an apologist for religion and for religious meanings. This caused an unfortunate turn in the debate about the

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

337

validity of hermeneutical research in the scholarly study of religions. Nearly all critics of Eliade's work have denied the scholarly general validity of the hermeneutical procedures he applied in his study of religious meaning. This raises some questions. Does the particular orientation of Eliade's hermeneutics invalidate hermeneutical research as such in the study of religions? To what degree can hermeneutical research be made subject to scholarly rules guaranteeing that its findings have general validity? And the other way round: to what extent are the findings of hermeneutical research dependent on the subjective assumptions and presuppositions of the scholar concerned? Can we recognize at least a relative validity of such findings, that is to say within the particular theoretical framework of the scholar concerned—provided of course that he or she is able to formulate that framework in clear terms? Without referring here to the work of other scholars I submit that Eliade's contributions to hermeneutical research on religious meanings include: - the demonstration of the existence of certain basic models of human representations and forms of behavior; such models often receive a religious legitimacy in "archaic" societies; - a differentiation of various concepts of time, including cyclical time, in "archaic" and certain other societies and the demonstration that such concepts can receive a religious quality; - a morphology of representations of supernatural beings and realities as depicted in various myths and mythologies; - the demonstration of the importance of symbolism in social and cultural life; symbolic meanings can have a religious quality; - the demonstration that the authority of yogis, shamans, and other social leaders can receive a religious legitimacy; - the hypothesis of the existence of archetypes as basic patterns of meaning; as an explanation of recurrent "clusters of meaning" that occur in various cultures and societies and that can receive a religious legitimacy; - Eliade's views and practices of hermeneutical research can be helpful in developing a theoretical framework that allows scholarly research on religious meanings and that should generally valid. I would like to mention two general questions concerning Eliade's hermeneutical research. The first question concerns the preponderant position that Eliade assigns to imagination in the study of myth, symbolism, rituals, and religious meaning in general. Eliade affirms that symbolic and mythical expressions are the result of a creative process involving the imagination of their authors. If we consider creative imagination to be personal and

338

Studying Religions

"subjective"—comparable perhaps to intuition—what would its scholarly status be? A certain scholarly imagination may be an instrument of research in what may be called a "first" approach, but how can we arrive at a scholarly verification of its results so that it becomes part of a truly scholarly approach? A similar problem is that of the role of a scholar's intuition. This can be recognized as relevant in a scholarly way only if there is a scholarly verification of its results. The second question concerns the connections between Eliade's approach to religious data and the presuppositions of his interpretations. Eliade always claimed that he went back to empirical data. Could it be that in certain cases his interpretation of such data is right, but that his general view is shaky and cannot be considered a valid scholarly theory? If we assign a limited validity to Eliade's interpretations within his own philosophical framework, can we condense part of this framework into a hypothetical formula? His scheme of interpretation is understandable in terms of his own philosophical framework, but can it be made relevant in a scholarly way? If I understand him rightly, Eliade wanted to orient the study of religions as a field of interpretative research. His own work does not yet offer sufficient guarantees for the scholarly character of such a "hermeneutical" study of religion and religions. This will be a task for the future. It is a proposition that can and should be discussed in scholarly terms. However, if he claims to work for a "new humanism" or for man's "access to the center", such aims fall outside the scholarly discourse.

2. The Study of Religions. Construct and Reality In the foregoing, I considered the broad lines of Eliade's life and work and his research on religion viewed largely as a universe of myths, symbols, and rituals. This should be supplemented with materials from three "prophetical" monotheistic religions—Islam, Protestantism, and Judaism. Myths and symbols are present here, too, but they have an orientation and structure other than in the Indian religions and in "archaic" societies. Here they have to do with notions such as creation, linear history, textual revelation, vocation, and a critical view of existing religion. Eliade hardly treated myths and symbols as they occur in these "prophetical" religions.

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

339

I would like now to pursue a more systematic question concerning the study of religions of past and present, in the Eliade and post-Eliade periods. What is in fact our subject matter when we study religions (in the plural) and what do we expect or hope to discover through such studies? 2.1. The Study of Religions up to Eliade From a certain moment, and with varying intensity, the existence of other denominations, other religions, and of religions at all started to be a problem for thinkers in Europe and elsewhere. Religion as such may always have been a problem for problematizing minds, especially if concrete human, social and political problems needing solution were linked to religious traditions and structures, doctrines, and various kinds of interests that stood in the way of the solution. Posing the problem of religion as an intellectual one, on an abstract level, opened the way not only for a critical philosophy of religion but also for a critical study of religions. The existence of a plurality of religions may also have been a permanent problem for problematizing minds, especially if people were brought up in what was viewed as the one "right" or true religion. It led to a more critical theological reflection and also to further questioning. The sheer variety of religious communities was an empirical fact that was an incentive to create an empirically-oriented discipline, the scholarly study of religion(s) or science of religion(s) (Religionswissenschaft). Three particular sub-fields of Religionswissenschaft started to develop. The first was the history of religions. Research on this focused on the oldest documents (especially founding sacred texts), the historical rise, and the subsequent history of these religions in their historical contexts. It also addressed the role and function of religions in the societies and cultures where they occurred, in particular at the time the research was done. From this perspective, the study of contemporary "primitive" religions, popular religion, and folklore evoked interest as surviving remnants from a religious past. The other sub-field was the study of contemporary religions in the social sciences of religion, such as its anthropology and sociology. In studying contemporary religions, these two disciplines worked in particular by field observation, mostly in other societies and cultures but also in the scholar's own society. Much attention was given to finding and studying "primitive" religions that had not yet come under Western influence. A third important sub-field of Religionswissenschaft was comparative research on religions and religious data. It started with compari-

340

Studying Religions

sons between complete religions, as entities in their own right, mostly between Christianity and one other religion. This led to a search for differences between them, but also for common elements. Religions were viewed here as consisting of a variety of elements. Further comparative research focused on religious elements rather than on religions as wholes. Concrete religious data were the subject of empirical research, historically, anthropologically, or sociologically, and also in a comparative perspective. This led first to classifications of religious phenomena in a general typology, phenomenology, or morphology. The next step led to the study of particular underlying orientations in a variety of religions that lend themselves to comparative study. Examples from Western religions are the rise of mystical trends, the occurrence of gnosis, and other forms of spirituality with a particular kind of pedagogy and mental training; ascetic, puritan, and "fundamentalist" orientations that, while keeping a certain distance, are aware of the world; and orientations that are very much involved in communal life, social care, and people's well-being. On a more reflective level, but still based on empirical research and data, the question was raised of more general meanings of religious phenomena, beyond their strictly empirical features and contexts. The data were brought together in broader schemes based on a particular vision of religion. G. VAN DER LEEUW wrote his phenomenology of religion in terms of the modalities of religious experience. Friedrich HEILER wrote his phenomenology in terms of the modalities of revelation. When empirical research was combined with a more theoretical reflection, this could lead to the development of an interpretative framework useful in studying not only the significance of religious phenomena in themselves, but also the meanings given to them by various groups of believers or "half-believers". With the help of such an "interpretative framework", a scholar can try to grasp the meanings that certain groups of data have or had for particular groups of people. Mircea Eliade's morphology of religious phenomena is an example of the procedure of assigning meaning to groups of religious phenomena by giving them a place in a particular interpretative framework, while respecting their uniqueness. Eliade did not develop a particular theory to explain religious data or to apply a technique of understanding. He simply developed a particular kind of interpretative framework in which he seems to have "believed" himself. For Eliade it was certainly more than just a scholarly instrument: it must have been a discovery of basic reality.

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

2.2. Some Critical Remarks

on Eliade's

341

Approach

As I see it, Eliade's study of religions and religion inaugurated the science of religion as a field in Romania in the 1930s. Unavoidably, seventy years later it no longer fulfills present-day scholarly criteria. I will just mention a few "Eliadian" assertions with which most presentday scholars in the field will no longer agree. 1) He claims that his work covers the religions of the world. In fact, he makes a particular choice of religious data, neglecting for instance certain groups of religions (for instance Islam and Judaism) and certain developments in Christianity (for instance Roman Catholicism and Protestantism), insofar as they do not correspond to Eliade's notion of "religion". 2) His work postulates not only one ontological reality but several kinds of ontological reality as the basis of groups of particular religious phenomena and religions. This postulate rests on people's faith in such realities and the meanings this faith has for them. Apart from religious testimonies, however, no conclusive scholarly argumentation for the existence of such realities is offered. 3) A particular scheme is chosen here as an interpretative framework in the study of religion and it is suggested that this offers the key to understanding religion itself. In fact, other possible interpretative frameworks that would also allow us to study religions and religious data coherently, are largely neglected by Eliade. 4) An absolute opposition and dialectic of sacred and profane as a decisive scheme to locate and study religious meanings is proclaimed. This is in fact a theoretical scheme imposed on empirical reality. Empirical research shows that sacred and profane do not constitute an absolute opposition in the practice of religious people. The scholarly value of the idea of an absolute opposition and a dialectic between sacred and profane is questionable for empirical research. 5) In his studies of religion, Eliade is looking for religion "behind" religion, rather than investigating the various interpretations different people and groups of believers assign or assigned to religions and religious data. This means, he does not sufficiently take into account the often different meanings religion has for different people or groups of people, that is to say the often radically different interpretations people give to religions and religious data. 6) Since Eliade himself does not distinguish rigorously and on a theoretical level between explaining, understanding, and interpreting—between explanatory theory, the technique of understanding, and interpretative frameworks—misunderstandings have arisen about the scholarly status of his study of religion.

342

Studying Religions

Consequently, what Eliade calls a "hermeneutical" approach, intent on an open and impartial interpretative study of facts and their religious meanings to people, has to be reworked critically. For such a task, we must ask first what we consider the subject matter of the study of religions to be, and second what we hope to discover through such a study of religions. Do we want to discover empirically something new, or do we want to construct an intellectual system that can make sense of the "irrational" aspects of religions? Does such a study have the function of freeing people, for instance, from the weight of an imposed religion or the fascination with a particular religious orientation? Should this study be seen as an instrument for acquiring knowledge about a still largely unknown domain of human life, thereby also improving the understanding of people's religions? Or should the study of religions primarily make a contribution to communication and dialogue between people of different societies, cultures, and religions? In any case, the study of religions is to be respected as a scholarly enterprise, that leads to knowledge that is generally valid.

3. Conceptualizing Religion after Eliade I think we would be on the wrong track in the empirical study of religions if we viewed and studied them as separate from other, non-religious realities. However beautiful and attractive religion in itself may become as an experience through spiritualization and idealization, it should be studied in its contexts and in connection with other human experiences and activities. The term "sacred", for instance, enabled people in Western societies to identify provisionally the presence of religion in a general climate of secularization. It cannot be considered, however, a truly scholarly definition for the empirical study of religions. We should study religions and religious data as empirical meaningful realities, in relation to their wider cultural settings and social and other contexts. It would also be too simple and "ideological" a solution for scholarly research to reject the term "religion" without further ado. In 1963 W. CANTWELL SMITH suggested replacing it strategically by concepts such as "cumulative tradition" and "faith". I think it is better to relativize, de-ideologize, and de-theologize the concept of religion, than to reject it offhand. We can simply use it as a scholarly construct that may be helpful for understanding. In this "common sense" perspective, religions, like worldviews and ideologies, can be viewed and studied as constructs that first open up a particular view and perspective on reality and life, and second offer a particular pedagogy and order of life.

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

343

Each view and perspective in principle allows the people concerned to give their own interpretation and application. If we call Christianity a religion, we indicate that it offers a particular religious perspective on reality and human life and a particular order of life. However, we have to add immediately that such a Christian perspective in fact includes a variety of interpretations, just as a Christian order of life includes a variety of lifestyles. I am not thinking here simply of the denominational division into Oriental Christianity, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Such a division is largely the view of the spokesmen and defenders of the denominations concerned. It is of a normative theological and ecclesiological nature, primarily serving denominational interests, and has little to do with people and their way of life. It is ultimately quite static and of limited use for scholarly research in the empirical study of religions. In fact, quite a few present-day Christian communities in the world are so original that they can be considered not as sects of established Churches, but as Christian communities in their own right. They often define themselves as independent Christian communities analogous to the "independent Churches" in Africa. From a scholarly empirical point of view, there is a fundamental plurality of Christian communities and thus of Christianity. This plurality is too large to be expressed in theological terms or brought into an organizational scheme. From an empirical point of view, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church— which even more than other Churches claims to be the only true Christian Church—is only one variant in the total spectrum of Christian Churches and communities. It perpetuates institutional and symbolic remnants of the era of the Roman Empire, including an imperial structure. The empirical reality of this Church, however, shows worldwide variants which are held together by common doctrine, ecclesiastical organization, and obedience. An empirical study of religions implies much more than studying the beliefs and practices prescribed and upheld by religious bodies. The true interest of this field, as I see it, is to study what people in the course of time have made of their religion, what they have done with their particular religious sources, their traditions, their obligations, or the religious community in which they were born and raised. What is their attitude to its particular leaders, religious authorities, and institutions? What does religion mean to them in daily life? The same question should be addressed to the leaders, spokesmen, and actors in religious matters. Who are they and what do they make of their religion? How do they legitimize the authority they hold? Or in theoretical terms: what sort and kind of religion do they construct?

344

Studying Religions

Many studies have been done on the history of religious doctrines, rituals, and prescriptions, religious traditions and customs, and religious institutions and bearers of authority. There is reason now to pay attention to the intricate links between this "religious" history and the people's wider social and cultural history, including economic and political developments. Here we are not dealing with separate structures and developments—religious, social, political, or otherwise—but with the particular ways in which people lived their lives. The history of religions, in short, should be studied as the history of people, in its many varied aspects. Especially in the study of the realities of Muslim and Jewish life, of Islam and Judaism in history and at the present time, we have to revise certain customary concepts of religion. The study of these two religious communities resists any absolute opposition between what is sacred and profane, religious and socio-political institutions, religion and politics. It also resists any rigorous separation between the science of religions for the study of "religious" realities, and socio-political sciences for the study of "socio-political" realities. The conceptualization of religion as a separate domain, the opposition of sacred and profane, and the division of tasks in scholarly disciplines, current in the science of religions in Eliade's time, should be questioned. They do not really work in Islamic Studies and probably do not work in Judaic Studies either. In Islamic Studies, historians of religions have been tempted to restrict themselves to a separate domain: the study of Qur'än, tafstr, and hadtths, religious law and doctrine, Islamic mysticism, and further religious literature, at most adding popular religion to their agenda. Political scientists have been tempted to restrict themselves to the study of the power formations of groups with rivalries existing between them, of the socio-political institutions and movements, and of the many tensions and conflicts in the course of history where the banner of Islam has been flown. They then tend to focus on those Islamic doctrines that seem to be relevant in conflicts with outsiders (non-Muslims) either beyond Muslim rule (jibäd), or as a tolerated minority situation under Muslim rule (dbimma). But as I see it, a strict separation between the science of religion and political science does not hold in the case of Islam. They may be considered together by those studying social history, but at present, unfortunately, scholars of Islam are not familiar enough with the social history of Muslim peoples. Religions in the context of their cultures turn out to be much more complex and varied than we realize in the West. We can learn from scholars such as Eliade how much "religious" activity people engage in to further their mental growth and social maturity. Much of their energy is in-

Eliade as a Student of Religion ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 8 6 )

345

vested in deepening relations with themselves, communal relations with their fellow human beings, and relations with participation in nature and the cosmos. Very often, these relations find expression in joyful communal life, and it has to do with religion. Such activities, however, are rather different from the more explicitly religious concerns of "prophetical" religions. They do not even necessarily advertise themselves as "religious". Yet it is quite legitimate to speak here—as Eliade does—of "religions". They have their own perspectives on reality and human life, their own ways of dealing with opportunities of life and their own remedies for dealing with the adversities of life. They also have their own communal networks. Nowadays in the West and elsewhere a number of social activities for other people, and commitments to human causes, are not called "religious" either. Yet such activities and commitments display religious aspects in the often total dedication and zeal the people involved give to the causes they support. In my work, I see religions fundamentally as orientations, as basic interpretative perspectives on reality and human life, with a pedagogy and guidelines for conducting life. Religions offer people options for orienting themselves in life, interpreting reality, behaving toward their fellow human beings, and living a meaningful life. It is possible to find in the past and the present, in very different social and cultural contexts, persons and groups without formal status that apparently "personalize" the truth of their religion. These are much more than simply "interest groups", since they have a particular perspective on life and the world. In established "official" religious communities, these persons and groups will be more organized but also more controlled. With increasing communication and contacts between people of different backgrounds, relations and interactions between people within communities or of different communities regain importance. They can take new initiatives by themselves. They become actors.

4. Eliade's Time and Ours I have looked back here on the life and work of Mircea Eliade and his studies of religion, in particular religious myths and symbols. I also drew attention to a group of "prophetical" religions more or less neglected in his work, such as Judaism, Protestantism, and Islam, which have their own basic features of myths and symbols. I pleaded for paying more critical attention to the use of the word "religion" but without rejecting it. Such attention is especially needed for research on the significance that religions and religious phenomena

346

Studying Religions

have for the people living with them. It is also necessary for research on the readings and interpretations these people give to them, the ways they practice these religions, or the appeal they make to them. Such a way of studying religions is distinct from, but not completely foreign to, the way Eliade searched for interpretative understanding. Finally, I would like to mention some typical differences between the science of religion in Eliade's time and in ours. When Eliade was a student, the empirical study of religions had existed in Western Europe for some fifty years. Important discoveries had been made, especially about the religions of Antiquity, the religion of ancient Israel, religion in the first centuries of Christianity, and non-literate religions. Cultural anthropology and other social sciences have made an important contribution to the study of living religion in present-day cultures. Empirical research has been extended immensely and characterizes the field at the present time. I shall not mention the use of new technologies: people are more interesting. Whereas in Eliade's younger days scholars of the history of religions constituted a certain cultural elite, sometimes with private means, at present the majority of researchers are more like workers on a job market. They depend very much on positions becoming available, funding for research, possibilities for publication, and even the way the results of their work are presented by publishers and in the media. During the last decades in particular, the participation of scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has increased, giving a more planetary character to the study of religions. Since the Second World War, contemporary cultures and living religions have drawn increasing interest. The study of ancient religious texts has now become a minor part of the total efforts of the field. Before the Second World War, during Eliade's Romanian period, certain themes and paradigms dominated the study of religions. At present, research seems to have become more diffuse and perhaps more exploratory. Scholars have diversified their methods and introduced new theoretical approaches, especially in the social sciences. One cannot speak of a commonly accepted theoretical framework even for the empirical study of religions nowadays. A number of approaches exist side by side, and what was once called the hermeneutical approach of the Chicago school, in the 1950s and 1960s with scholars such as Joachim W A C H and Mircea ELIADE, has become history now. Methodology and theory formation in this field of study are continuously under discussion. Students in this field have rather different study programs in different countries. In Europe, there are initiatives to arrive at a kind of basic package for programs of study in the history of religions and the academic study of religions in the wider sense. Study programs have be-

Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

347

come more diversified, leaving room for students to pursue special interests. The so-called Bologna rules have changed the university scene, also for the study of religions. Admittedly, the meaning of the term "religion" has become less clear nowadays than it must have been in the Romania Mircea ELIADE grew up in or the India where he did research. ELIADE seems to be indebted to Romania for his notion of religion as cosmic order and deeper personal identity; he probably owes his understanding of religion as a creative force transforming the human person more to India. In the West, the emancipation of the scholarly study of religion from theological and philosophical training implies that more "personal" ventures and more "original" ways of persistent thinking and questioning—as perceptible in ELIADE'S work—have grown rarer among students and scholars of religions. The study of religions in the West has become more and more a formalized "technical" discipline, seemingly without deeper personal searches or commitments by the scholar. With ELIADE, we are in the presence of a scholar and author who was searching in his own way for metaphysical clues and literary images to elucidate religious meanings and spiritual connections. There is no rupture here between the empirical study of religions and reflecting on religion. ELIADE also represents another precious link: that between a scholar of religions and a creative writer, a literary author. Interestingly, ELIADE must have seen himself in his Paris years as an author rather than a scholar or philosopher. Whatever ELIADE'S secret may be, as a Renaissance man, he was exceptional in possessing more than one form of creativity. The difference between ELIADE'S and present-day scholars' cultural contexts is immense, also in Europe. ELIADE himself worked in at least four very different cultural contexts: Romania before the Second World War, India still a British colony, France reborn after the Second World War and engaged in colonial wars, and the USA a world power at the time of the Cold War. Present-day cultural contexts of the study of religions are very different from ELIADE'S time. There is much more interest and participation by non-Western countries. North American scholarship has a much more prominent place and although there is still a variety of local traditions and orientations in the field in Europe, its scholarly study has become more uniform. Certain problems of humankind have made themselves palpable in the study of religions, such as the relations between faiths, Islam and the West, communication and dialogue, justice and human rights, ecology, and women's emancipation. Other problems have perhaps been pushed move into the background, such as secularization, colonialism and neo-colonialism, Religionskritik, a West-

348

Studying Religions

ern-centered "Orientalism", economic and political contrasts between Southern and Northern nations, and numerous kinds of oppression. was so much a child of that far-away pre-war "Eastern" Romanian culture that, in my memory, I still perceive him as coming, fundamentally, from elsewhere, from "another world", appearing in France in 1945 and in the USA in 1956. Still now, I see him primarily as an inspiring person and thinker, and only secondarily as a scholar and author. His authority was apart from official roles. Maybe this should be pursued. One day, someone should give attention to the interactions between ELIADE and his "Eastern" environments after 1928, and between ELIADE and his "Western" environments after 1945—and the efforts made by him and the other side to establish creative communication. ELIADE

There is also a large difference between ELIADE'S time and ours in that religion, and its relation to culture, became so different, especially in Eastern and Western Europe in the second half of the 20 t h century. It became less Platonic or Aristotelian, less cultural and naive perhaps, less idealized and romanticized, more committed and sensitive to injustices but also less pure than our youth memories may portray it. It is fair to say that religion has become bureaucratized, ideologized and also politicized. The end of the European empires, the embattled ideologies, the two world wars, the worldwide East-West conflict, and the present North-South imbalance, new kinds of violence, a new kind of superpower, and serious political mistakes, are political contexts that have greatly influenced present-day ethics and morality, and our feelings concerning religion. Most of the religious thinking and acting that was typical of the time before the world wars, and even still the 1960s, has simply been relegated to the past. The present-day increase in scholarly and other interests in Islam, as a socio-political reality, a multi-faceted ideology, and a religion—but also as a hotbed of possible violence—is another sign of changing times. ELIADE'S works contain only a few references to Islam, like the Ka'aba, some local beliefs and customs, and particular forms of gnostic spirituality, particularly in Shl'a Islam. There are not many references to Judaism. Christianity is presented as a basically cosmic religion without much earthly life. ELIADE'S works do not deal with ordinary Muslims, Jews, and Christians as human beings "like us". In this sense too, he was a child of his time, a time when Orientalists and historians of religions formed small cultural elites in the West that studied past civilizations, foreign worlds, and strange mental universes. The cultural, social, and political relevance of religions for human societies—and the interest of studying this relevance and acting accord-

Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

349

ingly—has become clearer nowadays. More than before, our view of religions takes into account their adherents, their human dignity, and their possible resources for human survival. As a student of religions, envisioning the future, I wonder whether the relations between people from different cultures will develop constructively, or if they will remain blocked by false absolutes, ignorance, self-centeredness, and misinformation—even blatant animosity, defamation and slander. To what extent will people be curious, desirous of communication, and willing to learn from each other? People who have a religious faith are not that radically different from other people, as Eliade's contrast of a homo religiosus and ordinary human beings suggests.

Selected 1.

Literature

Bio-bibliography

1.1.

Biography

KITAGAWA, Joseph M., Art. "Eliade, Mircea" in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan and London: Collier Macmillan, 1987, Vol. 4, pp. 85-90. Also in the 2 n d Edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, Vol. 4, pp. 2752-2757. RENNIE, Bryan S., Art. "Eliade, Mircea (Further Considerations)" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, Vol. 4, pp. 2757-2763. RICKETTS, Mac Linscott, Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945, 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. TURCANU, Florin, Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003.

1.2.

Bibliography

ALLEN, Douglas, and Dennis DOLING, Mircea Eliade: An Annotated Bibliography, New York: Garland, 1980. "Bibliography of Mircea Eliade" in Myths and Symbols. Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade, ed. by Joseph M. KITAGAWA and Charles H. LONG, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 417-433. HANDOCA, Mircea, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Biobibliografie 1907-1986, 3 vols., Bukarest: Editura "Jurnalud literar", Seria "Bibliologica": Vol. 1 in 1 9 9 7 ; nrs. 1 - 2 8 3 1 , 4 1 5 p.; Vol. 2 in 1 9 9 8 : R e c e p t a r e a critica 1 9 2 5 - 1 9 8 6 ; nrs. 2 8 3 2 - 5 9 9 2 , 3 4 0 p.; Vol. 3 in 1 9 9 9 : R e c e p t a r e a critica 1 9 8 6 - 1 9 9 9 ; nrs. 5 9 9 3 - 9 6 2 7 , 4 3 2 p.

Studying Religions

350

2. Main Publications 2.1. More Personal

in English, with Years of their First

Appearence

Writings

Autobiography, Vol. I: 1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. Autobiography, Vol. II: 1937-1960, Exile's Odyssey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Journal I, 1945-1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Journal II, 1957-1969, No Souvenirs, New York: Harper & Row, 1977; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 Journal III, 1970-1978. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Journal IV, 1979-1985, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Mircea ELIADE, Raffaele PETTAZZONI, L'histoire des religions a-t-elle un sens? Correspondance 1926-1959. Texte presente, etabli et annote par Natale SPINETO, Paris: Cerf, 1994. Ordeal by Labyrinth. Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. (Includes "A Chronology of Mircea Eliade's Life").

2.2. Scholarly Books and Some Scholarly

Articles

1950 Review of G. VAN DER LEEUW, La Religion dans son essence et ses manifestations (1948) in Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, No. 137-138 (1950), pp. 108-110. 1952 "Rencontre avec Jung", in Combat, 9 October 1952. 1954 The Myth of the Eternal Return, New York: Pantheon Books, 1954; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. New edition as Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959. 1958 Birth and Rebirth. The Religious Meaning of Initiation in Human Culture, New York: Harper and Brothers; London: Harvill Press, 1958. Reprinted as Rites and Symbols of Initiation. The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth in 1965. 1958 Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York and London: Sheed and Ward, 1958. 1958 Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, New York: Pantheon Books; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958. 1959 Fhe Sacred and the Profane: Fhe Nature of Religion, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959. 1959 "Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism", in The History of Religions. Essays in Methodology, ed. by Mircea ELIADE and Joseph M. KITAGAWA, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 8 6 107. This article was reprinted as "Observations on Religious Symbolism" in the author's Mephistopheles and the Androgyne: Studies in Religious Myth and Symbol, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965. 1960 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. The Encounter between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, New York: Harper and Row; London: Harvill Press, 1960.

Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

351

1960 "Structures and Changes in the History of Religions", in City Invincible, ed. by Carl H. KRAELING and Robert M. ADAJVLS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 3 5 1 - 3 6 6 . 1961 Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, New York: Sheed and Ward; London: Harvill Press, 1961. 1961 "History of Religions and a New Humanism", History of Religions, 1 (1961), pp. 1 - 8 . 1962 The Forge and the Crucible, New York: Harper and Brothers; London: Rider and Co., 1962. Enlarged edition in 1971, with subtitle The Origins and Structures of Alchemy. 1963 Myth and Reality. New York: Harper and Row, 1963; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964. 1963 "Preface", G. VAN DER LEEUW, Sacred and Profane Beauty. The Holy in Art, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963. 1963 "The History of Religions in Retrospect: 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 6 2 " , in The Journal of Bible and Religion, vol. 31 (1963), pp. 9 8 - 1 0 9 . 1964 Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, New York: Pantheon Books; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. 1964 "The Quest for the Origins' of Religion", History of Religions, vol. 4 (1964), pp. 1 5 4 - 1 6 9 . 1965 Mephistopheles and the Androgyne: Studies in Religious Myth and Symbol, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965. Appeared under the title The Two and the One in London: Harvill Press, 1965. 1965 "Crisis and Renewal in History of Religions", History of Religions, vol. 5 (1965), pp. 1 - 1 7 . 1967 From Primitives to Zen. A Thematic Sourcebook of the History of Religions, New York: Harper and Row; London: Collins, 1967 1969 The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969. 1970 "Notes for a Dialogue", in The Theology of Altizer. Critique and Response, ed. by J. B. COBB, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970, pp. 2 3 4 - 2 4 1 . 1972 Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God. Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 1973 Australian Religions. An Introduction, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1973. 1973 "The Sacred in the Secular World", in Cultural Hermeneutics (since 1978: Philosophy and Social Criticism), vol. 1 (1973), pp. 1 0 1 - 1 1 3 . 1 9 7 3 "On the Terror of History", in Dimensions of Man, ed. by H. P. SIIMONSON a n d J . B . MAGEE, N e w Y o r k : H a r p e r & R o w , 1 9 7 3 , p p .

164-168.

1976 Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976. 1976 Myths, Rites, Symbols. A Mircea Eliade Reader, ed. by W. C. BEANE and W. G. DOTY, 2 vols., New York: Harper and Row, 1976. 1976 "Nostalgia for Paradise", Parabola 1 (1976), no. 1, pp. 6 - 1 5 . 1976 "Sacred Tradition and Modern Man. A Conversation with Mircea Eliade", Parabola 1 (1976), no. 3, pp. 7 4 - 8 0 .

352

Studying Religions

1977 "Eliade's Interview for 'Combat'", in: C. G. Jung Speaking. Interviews and Encounters, ed. by W . M C G U I R E and R. F. C. H U L L , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 225-234. (Translation of French text of 1952). 1978 "Literary Imagination and Religious Structure", Criterion, vol. 17 (1978), nr. 2, pp. 30-34. 1978-1985 A History of Religious Ideas. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries (1978; also London: Collins, 1979); Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (1982); Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms (1985). A fourth volume was edited by loan P. CULIANU: Vom Zeitalter der Entdeckungen bis zur Gegenwart, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991. 1986 Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, New York: Crossroad, 1986. 1986 Briser le toit de la maison. La cr0ativiti et ses symboles, Paris: Gallimard, 1986. 1987 (Editor in Chief) The Encyclopedia of Religion, 16 volumes, New York: Macmillan & London: Collier Macmillan, 1987.

2.3. Literary

work

See the Bibliographies by Douglas ALLEN and Mircea H A N D O C A , mentioned above under 1. "Bibliography". Not much of ELIADE'S literary work has been translated into English.

3. Some Monographs

about

Eliade

Douglas, Structure and Creativity in Religion. Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology and New Directions. Foreword by Mircea ELIADE, The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1978. French translation with revisions: Mircea Eliade et le phenomene religieux, Paris: Payot, 1982. —, Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1998. A L T I Z E R , Thomas J. J., Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963. BARBOSA DA SILVA, Antonio, The Phenomenology of Religion as a Philosophical Problem. An Analysis of the Theoretical Background of the Phenomenology, in General, and M. Eliade's Phenomenological Approach, in Particular, Dissertation Uppsala, Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1982. CAVE, David, Mircea Eliade's Vision for a New Humanism, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. CULIANU, loan Petro, Mircea Eliade, Assisi: Cittadella Ed., 1978. DUDLEY III, Guilford, Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade and His Critics, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977. ALLEN,

Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

353

KESHAVJEE, Shafique, Mircea Eliade et la Coincidence des Opposes ou I'Existence en Duel. Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 1993. MARINO, Adrian, E'hermäneutique de Mircea Eliade, Paris: Gallimard, 1981. MÜLLER, Hannelore, Der frühe Mircea Eliade. Sein rumänischer Hintergrund und die Anfänge seiner universalistischen Religionsphilosophie. Anhang mit Quellentexte, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004. OLSON, Carl, The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade. A Search for the Centre, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. RENNIE, Bryan S., Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1996. RICKETTS, Mac Linscott, Mircea Eliade. The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945, 2 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. —, Former Friends and Forgotten Facts, Norcross, Ga.: Criterion Publishing, 2003. SüMiON, Eugen, Mircea Eliade. A Spirit of Amplitude, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. SMITH, Jonathan Z., Map Is Not Territory. Studies in the History of Religions, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978. SPINETO, Natale, Le concept de phinomenes religieux dans l'oeuvre de Raffaele Pettazzoni et de Mircea Eliade, These de Doctorat, Universite Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1999. TURCANU, Florin, Mircea Eliade. Ee prisonnier de l'histoire, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003. WACHTIMANN, Christian, Der Religionsbegriff bei Mircea Eliade, Frankfurt a. M. etc.: Peter Lang, 1996.

4. Some Collective Works about

Eliade

Changing Religious Worlds. The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade, ed. by Bryan RENNIE, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2001. Deux explorateurs de la pensee humaine: Georges Dumezil et Mircea Eliade, ed. by Julien RIES and Natale SPINETO, Turnhout/Tourquain (Belgium): Brepols, 2003.

Imagination and Meaning. The Scholarly and Eiterary Worlds of Mircea Eliade, ed. by Norman J. GIRARDOT and Mac Linscott RICKETTS, New York: The Seabury Press, 1982. The International Eliade, ed. by Bryan RENNIE, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2005.

Mircea Eliade, ed. by Constantin TACOU in collaboration with Georges BANU and Guy CHALVON DEMERSAY, Cahier de L'Herne No. 33, Paris: L'Herne, 1978.

Die Mitte der Welt. Aufsätze zu Mircea Eliade, ed. by Hans Peter DÜRR, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984. Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade, ed. by Joseph M. KITAGAWA and Charles H. LONG, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

354

Studying Religions

Religion and Reductionism. Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward Y O N A N , Leiden: Brill, 1 9 9 4 . Waiting for the Dawn: Mircea Eliade in Perspective, ed. by David CARRASCO and Jane Marie SWANBERG, Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985.

5. Some Articles about

Eliade

BERNER, Ulrich, "Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)", in Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by Axel MICHAELS, Munich: C. Η. Beck, 1997, pp. 343-353 and 409-412. BORGEAUD, Philippe, "Mythe et histoire chez Mircea Eliade. Reflexion d'un ecolier en histoire des religions", Institut national genevois, Annales 1993, Geneve, 1994, pp. 33-49. BRENNEMAN, JR., Walter L.; YARIAN, Stanley O.; in association with Alan Μ. OLSON, "Mircea Eliade: Creative Hermeneutics as a Spiritual Discipline", in the same, The Seeing Eye. Hermeneutical Phenomenology in the Study of Religion, Philadelphia and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982, pp. 57-71. CULIANU, loan P., "Mircea Eliade at the Crossroads of Anthropology", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 27 (1988), nr. 2, pp. 123-131. DUDLEY III, Guilford, "Mircea Eliade as the 'Anti-Historian' of Religions", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 44/2 (1976), pp. 345-359. ELZEY, Wayne, "Mircea Eliade and the Battle against Reductionism", in Religion and Reductionism, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward A. Y O N A N , Leiden etc.: Brill, 1994, pp. 82-94. GIRARDOT, Norman, "Whispers and Smiles. Nostalgic Reflections on Mircea Eliade's Significance for the Study of Religion", in Changing Religious Worlds. The Meaning and End of Eliade, ed. by Bryan RENNIE, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2001, pp. 143-163. KITAGAWA, Joseph M., Art. "Eliade, Mircea (First Edition)", in Encyclopedia of Religion (First Edition, 1987), 2 n d edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 4, pp. 2753-2757. KOLAKOWSKI, Leszak, "Mircea Eliade: Die Religion als Paralyse der Zeit", in ID., Geist und Ungeist christlicher Traditionen, Stuttgart etc.: W. Kohlhammer, 1971, pp. 140-149. LAITILA, Teuvo, "Imaging Meanings: An Eliadean Look at Religion", Temenos, Nr. 35-36 (1999-2000), pp. 67-82. MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., "The Myth of the Apolitical Scholar. The Life and Works of Mircea Eliade", Queens Quarterly, vol. 100 (1993), pp. 642-663. OLSON, Carl, "Mircea Eliade, Postmodernism, and the Problematic Nature of Representational Thinking", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 12 (2000), Nr. 4, pp. 357-385. "Response" by Bryan S. RENNIE, pp. 416-421. PADEN, William, "Before the Sacred became Theological. Rereading the Durkheimian Legacy", in Religion and Reductionism. Essays on Eliade, Segal, and

Eliade as a Student of Religion (1907-1986)

355

the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward Y O N A N , Leiden: Brill, 1994, pp. 1 9 8 - 2 0 9 . PETKOVA, Svetlana, "La 'terreur de l'histoire' dans l'ceuvre de Mircea Eliade: l'exemple roumain", in L'Europe des Religions. Elements d'analyse des champs religieux europeens, ed by Richard FRIEDLI and Mallory SCHNEUWLY PURDIE (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch Vol. 8/9), 2002/3, Bern etc.: Peter Lang, pp. 2 3 1 - 2 4 5 . RASIMUSSEN, David, "Mircea Eliade: Structural Hermeneutics and Philosophy", Philosophy Today, vol. 12 (1968), pp. 1 3 8 - 1 4 6 . RENNIE, Bryan, "Religion after Religion, History after History, Postmodern Historiography and the Study of Religions", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 15, no. 3 (2003), pp. 6 8 - 9 9 . —, Art. "Eliade, Mircea (Further Considerations)", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition. Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 4, pp. 2 7 5 7 - 2 7 6 3 . R I C K E T T S , Mac Linscott, "The Tangled Tale of Eliade's Writing of Traite d'histoire des religions", Archaeus (Bucarest), vol. 4 (2000), nr. 4, pp. 5 1 - 7 7 . R U D O L P H , Kurt, "Eliade und die 'Religionsgeschichte'", in I D . , Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1992, pp. 3 8 1 - 4 1 1 . SIMART, Ninian, "Beyond Eliade. The Future of Theory in Religion", Numen, vol. 25 (1978), pp. 1 7 1 - 1 8 3 . SPINETO, Natale, "Mircea Eliade: Elements pour un bilan historiographique", in Deux explorateurs de la pensee humaines: Georges Dumezil et Mircea Eliade, ed. by Julien R I E S and Natale SPINETO (Homo Religiosus Serie I I , Nr. 3), Turnhout/Tourquain: Brepols, 2003, pp. 1 3 7 - 1 8 2 . STRENSKI, Ivan, "Mircea Eliade: Some Theoretical Problems", in The Theory of Myth: Six Studies, ed. by Adrian CUNNINGHAIM, London: Sheed and Ward, 1973, pp. 4 0 - 7 8 . W A S S E R S T R O M , Steven M., Religion after Religion. Gershom Sholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

6. Some Contexts of Eliade's

work

History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001. Geschichte der religiösen Ideen, Vol. 4: Vom Zeitalter der Entdeckungen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by loan P. CULIANU, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991. This is meant to complete the three volumes A History of Religious Ideas (1978-1986) written by ELIADE. SEBASTIAN, Mihail, Journal: 1935-1944, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. WEBSTER, A. F. C., "Orthodox Mystical Tradition and the Comparative Study of Religion. An Experimental Synthesis", Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Vol. 23, 1986, pp. 6 2 1 - 6 4 9 . BOIA, L . ,

Part Five Muslims and Their Islam

Chapter 14 Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life 1. Believers as Potential Actors During the last thirty years or so, the beginnings and the early development of the scholarly study of religions have received increasing attention. During the same period, new orientations have emerged, not only in terms of factual research but also in methodology and theory formation. The state of method and theory in the study of religions as a whole and in its constituent disciplines is somewhat complicated for those wanting to keep track of developments. In the 1960s, relatively few publications appeared on methods and theories applied in research on religions. In the following decades, their number steadily increased, so that it has become almost impossible to keep abreast of developments and the diversification of thinking on the subject in various scholarly circles. I would like to discuss here some proposals for the study of "meanings" in religions, especially in Islamic Studies and in the study of living religions. When I was a student of Religionswissenschaft in the Netherlands half a century ago, broadly speaking there were three distinct kinds of research into meaning in the study of religions. - The humanities were concerned with what was considered the objective meaning of religious texts and other expressions, mostly in a literary, cultural and historical context. - The social sciences, slowly obtaining a place in the study of religions, focused on the social meanings of religious data in relation to social rules and structures in a given society or culture. - Serious attempts were made to establish the meaning of religious data in the framework of a particular view of religion in general, largely drawing on comparative research on religious data. One example is the view of what may be called classical phenomenology of religion, largely drawing on comparative research on religious data with a particular vision of religion.

360

Muslims and Their Islam

Scholarly inquiry concentrated preferably on the objective, verifiable meaning (Sinn) of religious data. In philology, for instance, this was the precise meaning of religious texts. In cultural history, it was the meaning of cultural subjects such as arts and literature in a historical context. In sociology, it was the meaning of social behavior and events in a given social context, within the rules of social reality. In classical Religionswissenschaft, "meaning" could be seen as the precise meaning of a specific religious text or data, but also as the general meaning of a particular category of religious data or group of religions, within a view of religion in general. The search here was for the objective meaning or significance (Sinn) of religious data as something in itself. Classical phenomenology of religion was an exception in empirical research, in that it recognized the inescapability of a scholar's subjectivity. The problem of finding "objective" religious meanings was felt but hardly critically developed. Religious data could be compared and placed within a particular view of religion. The meaning of particular groups of religious data was then mostly viewed in terms of the definition and meaning assigned to "religion" as such. Scholars of the history of religions assumed that religious data have a kind of meaning that distinguishes them from other data. They studied the meaning of religious data in their literary and historical contexts. Students of Religionswissenschaft at the time, who were interested in questions of meaning in living religion, had to find their own way, especially if they did not want to resort to theological or metaphysical normative starting points, but rather to address available data and people directly. Historians of religions had, of course, wondered what particular religions or religious phenomena had actually meant for people concerned with them. The problem was recognized but was seen as impossible to solve outside autobiographies. It was generally assumed that subjective meanings can be established in a scholarly way only on the basis of documents providing direct evidence from people themselves, written as a kind of personal testimony. However, there are relatively few original independent personal testimonies from believers in the history of religions, especially outside Christianity. Moreover, testimonies that existed were often miracle or conversion stories stylized by particular editors or put into shape by later redactors. If direct sources are rare, one has to resort to indirect ones. Works of art and literature, historical accounts of social life, or factual social, economic, and political data on a particular society can indeed provide keys to religious orientations in the past. However, historians of religions were not trained for research on this kind of documentation.

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

361

Moreover, most of them had an individualistic view of religion and looked for direct testimonies from individuals who had left personal traces. They used to work professionally with "religious" texts and artifacts, rather than with secular sources. But the religious sources mostly represented views with a normative, authoritative, and even official character, conforming to norms upheld in a given community or accepted in society. In European history the available sources of social and cultural history have to be used—besides those of Church history— to obtain empirical evidence about actual religious views and practices. Historians of religions were not alone in having a blind spot for the people in the religions they studied. They could at least justify their silence by the lack of direct evidence. Curiously, however, even observers of contemporary living religions usually did not pay much attention to the meanings religious practices and views had for the people themselves. To a large extent, this was due to the contexts in which they worked. In the age of discovery and during the colonial period, indigenous populations certainly evoked curiosity. However, ordinary handicaps such as a difficult climate, basic differences in lifestyle, insufficient knowledge of languages, and cultural and social distance generally hampered communication with indigenous people and hindered visitors from obtaining reliable knowledge of their religious views and practices. Although there were favorable exceptions, on the whole this remained true during the colonial period when the effects of European power, colonial hierarchies, economic superiority, and cultural hegemony largely conditioned relationships between Westerners and local people. It is fair to say that contextual factors hindered open, direct communication with the believers whose religions provoked the Europeans' interest, even if the latter did not regard the "locals" with the usual disdain. For a cultural elite, moreover, the religions of ordinary people, also in Europe, were often dismissed as simple beliefs or "superstitions" not worthy of serious interest. It took some time before folklore started to attract scholarly interest. Another factor that has stood in the way of a true understanding of the people whose religions had actually evoked Western interest was a particular Western discourse that considered "Eastern spirituality" as the very height of religion and viewed "primitive religion" as its lowest form, though perhaps its basic source. Westerners were probably less interested in the people as they actually lived their lives than in their "religions", which could evoke a rich imagination also among educated Westerners. I gather that often, besides the experience of great social and cultural distance, certain of their own spiritual or intellectual concerns led Westerners either to mystify the religions of the peoples concerned or to consider them simply meaningless. To evaluate their views

362

Muslims and Their Islam

we need to know more about the ways various groups of 19 th - and 20 th -century Europeans living in various parts of the world saw the local people. We should know not only what they did and did not see, but also what they could not see or did not want to see. In religious matters, non-Westerners have had little opportunity to make their voice heard to Westerners with their interests or to engage in dialogue with them on their own terms. There has been ignorance on all sides. For a long time, the study of religions was a Western enterprise, with a Western-centered discourse. Only recently have non-Westerners started to study religions. There may still be a number of apologetic, polemical, and other ideological elements in their writings, but at least the discourse about religions is broadening and religions provoke more scholarly interest. Western findings can be questioned now and Western views about religion are no longer automatically authoritative. Given the current Western scientific ideal and Western research practices, the scholarly study of religions became oriented toward a particular kind of empirical research. This meant establishing the facts of these religions and developing theories about them, but mostly with notions of religion current in the West. In such research, the people themselves and their subjective meanings were not a primary interest. What a particular religion might mean to "its" people or how people meaningfully lived with "their" religion were questions that remained largely beyond the scholarly horizon.

2. A Philosophical Intermezzo. Meaning and Significance In contrast to the study of the objective meaning (Sinn) of religious data and entire religions, I would like to ask the question the other way round. To what extent did religious phenomena and religions have significance for the people concerned? And if they were indeed significant, which groups of people were affected by them in particular? Which groups in a broader religious community can be said to be particularly religious-minded and devoted to religious causes and religion? In what situations did religions have a direct significance for individuals or wider groups of people, at particular times and places, in particular social settings or in critical situations? And who were the people for whom religions apparently had hardly any significance at all or who in fact resisted existing beliefs and practices? A few 19 th - and 20 t h -century historians of religions who lacked the sources for studying living believers, reconstructed them when they studied religious texts. The Norwegian scholar William Brede KRISTENSEN,

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

for instance, worked on ancient Egyptian texts, which contain only few direct testimonies from individual believers. H e intended to try to understand what he called "the belief of the believers". So he constructed the Egyptian believer as an ideal type, and was keen to find out what ancient Egyptian religious data must have meant to such a believer. Other scholars constructed ideal types of ancient Greek, Roman, or Israelite believers. They had an interest in the "believers" of these religions of the past, but they had to construct them, thus tending to idealize the believers' religions. For anthropologists of religion doing fieldwork, the situation was more favorable, at least in principle. They could meet real "believers" and inquire what their religion or a particular religious phenomenon meant to them. But this practice was not that simple. N o t all anthropologists were interested in the religious aspects of the culture they studied. They either developed a specific definition of religion in advance, which they then applied in their fieldwork, without including necessary corrections, or they constructed the religion of the people they studied too naively, for instance taking at face value everything people chose to tell them about it. Some self-critical scholars, like Ε. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD, however, were successful. They were able to grasp certain general structures of the religion they studied while at the same time paying attention to what particular groups of adherents—including dissidents—specifically made of it. EVANS-PRITCHARD clearly saw the problem of the subjective meanings of a religion to its adherents and treated it seriously. In the work of anthropologists too we can find unproven ideas, constructs, and idealizations about the meanings the religion studied had or has for its adherents. Subjective meaning is a difficult subject as long as no clear and reliable statements by the people concerned are available. Even if there is evidence, a researcher has to be careful to work out what it really has to say, to determine its weight, and not impose his or her own preferred interpretation on it. This procedure is not only a technical matter. It presupposes an attitude that recognizes the other party fully in his or her dignity and treats his or her expressions as equal to one's own. Research on the religion of living people demands training and attentive listening. The researcher should have, or acquire, a good knowledge of the language, culture, and social life of the people concerned to be able to understand their religion. Communication may follow. In a number of cases, we owe knowledge of and insight into the religion of local people less to professional social scientists than to missionaries and adventurers who were able to communicate with "their" people and sought to understand them—and even to be understood. During the last half century, the relevance and significance of a religion for its adherents have often changed considerably, and not only in the

364

Muslims and Their Islam

West. This can be due to changes and developments in the religion itself and also to the development of new situations and contexts. A good example is present-day Muslim statements about Islam and Muslim behavior with reference to Islam. To many Muslims and non-Muslims alike, Islam has become significant in ways quite different from those prevalent a hundred or even fifty years ago. They see it not only as a faith, religion, and religious tradition, but also as a social bond, an ideology, a symbol of a distinct way of life, and a motivation. Many Muslims take a less passive attitude toward Islam nowadays than they did in former times. Many of them interpret and deal with Islam in a more personal way. Moreover, for one and the same person or group, Islam tends to have various meanings, the religious ones not necessarily being more prominent than social or political ones. Consequently, Islam has an abundance of subjective meanings for Muslims; one needs only to be attentive to perceive them. For a great number of people, communal Islam makes for communication and provides a recourse for solving problems in life, often in difficult circumstances. For many Muslims, Islam symbolically opens a way of actively involving themselves with others for human causes. To the extent that Islam, like other religions, tends to be absolutized, it encompasses an increasing number of meanings for its adherents. In the kind of research I am pleading for, a major problem is how to recognize and identify those meanings that are hardly known in ordinary Western tradition and experience. For example, it is unscholarly to denigrate certain new kinds of significance that Islam or the Qur'än have obtained for Muslims, by branding them simply and negatively as wholesale "fundamentalism". It is also unscholarly to awaken fears in the West by insinuating that "fundamentalist" readings as such lead to jihäd or "terrorism", just as it is unscholarly to proclaim that Muslims generally see Christians as friends and brothers. In the study of meanings, the risks of misinterpretation—leading to misunderstanding—are high. What seems to be meaningless may have some meaning. As far as I know, the problem of subjective meanings has hardly been discussed as an empirical scholarly problem in the study of religions. Since the question is relevant, not only in the case of Islam, but also in that of other religions, I would like to make some suggestions about it. As noted before, the relevance and significance of existing religions or particular religious phenomena have changed considerably during the last decades. In the case of world religions, the significance one religion has, varies strikingly according to groups and contexts. World religions may stress their global role, but in fact they vary according to their be-

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

365

lievers and may lead to differences among them. Alternative religions and worldviews then have increasing significance. If the impact of religions is changing nowadays, the scholarly view of religions is changing too. If a century ago, religions were often viewed and studied as systems that imposed themselves or were imposed by religious tradition or by religious authorities, present-day scholarship is more discriminating. One religion can have many forms and interpretations. There are many sorts of relationships between societies and their religions. If, a century ago, adherents of religions were often viewed by Western observers as accepting their religious traditions and rules more or less passively, present-day scholarship sees adherents increasingly as actors in their own right and is more attentive to their initiatives. In most of the larger religions, new interpretations have arisen and been intellectually and ideologically developed. They vary from liberation theologies to feminist ones, from a defense of human rights and dignity to open protests against exploitation and oppression. Such ideas can result in action, and vice versa. Constructive projects, solidarity in critical situations, struggle against foreign interference, calls for reform and emancipation and, last but not least, religious protests against abuses of authority or power, have been conducive to an awakening of believers becoming actors.

3. Significance and Subjective Meanings In the foregoing, I referred to the study of "objective" meanings or significances in religion as it is normally carried out in the various disciplines of the scholarly study of religions. I then mentioned the existence of "subjective" meanings—or "subjects'" meanings—as meanings that particular persons or groups assign to a specific religious phenomenon or a religion in a given context. These meanings specifically include the readings people give of them, the ways they interpret them, and the applications they give of them in their activities and way of life. To stress the active role of people in this, we can call them also "assigned meanings". In what follows I shall use the term "significance" as equivalent to objective meaning (Sinn), in contrast to subjective or "subjects'" meaning (Bedeutung) as an assigned meaning. I would like to make some further remarks on this notion of "subjective" or "assigned" meaning. Apparently, a religious phenomenon, and still more an entire religion, has a range of meanings for the person or group who recognizes it as religious. If its objective meaning or significance (Sinn) already shows certain nuances, the number of its subjective meanings (Bedeutungen)

366

Muslims and Their Islam

for a broader public may be as great as the number of people in that public. If it is recognized in particular as "religious" (supernatural, holy, pure, etc.), such a phenomenon, and still more such a religion, becomes a provider of subjective meanings to those who recognize it as authoritative. 1 In any research on subjective meanings in a religion, we should take into account not only the ways people respond more or less directly to doctrines, norms, and duties offered or imposed by that religion, but also a religion's orientations and references to which individual people freely testify, even if they do not actively practice them. Indeed, already the mere mention of such orientations and references suggests that something beyond the realities of ordinary life is ultimately meaningful to people and may have some kind of normative character for them. Meaning, whether "objective" in the sense of "significance" (Sinn), or "subjective" in the sense of "subjects'" meaning (Bedeutung), is not a thing or fact that can be proved to exist by itself. It is rather a quality, a coherence, or structure of something that exists and can be experienced. Discovering meaning is mostly a joyful event.2 As I see it, much in religion as lived by people has to do with guidance and orientation, offered and accepted, so that people can discover meaning.3 We should be aware that (objective) "significance" (Sinn) and (subjective) "meaning" (Bedeutung) are not "given" once and for all, without further ado, to people in a particular culture or religion. They are rather to be learned, to be looked for, to be worked on, or to be assimilated and which people can receive and exchange, for instance, while discussing, working, or living together. I submit that expressions of meaning are communicative. Once found, meaning radiates from the finder and may lead to discussion, which in its turn can be meaningful. While searching for meaning, people may address the culture or religion that tradition has preserved for them as a kind of reservoir of meaning. I would like to distinguish between the ordinary "social" meanings current in a group or society and easily transmitted, and the more original "subjective" meanings. The latter are of a more personal nature, and 1

In a religion such as Islam, for instance, people w h o consider themselves Muslims tend to interpret part of their experience in terms of Islam. Islam carries orientation and reference as well as norms and authority for its adherents.

2

In Western contexts, discovering meaning can offer a new horizon or view of life; intellectually it may give an insight into, or offer a solution to a particular problem.

3

When Muslims, for instance, speak of the meaning of particular Q u r ' ä n texts or of that of Islam as a religion, this suggests giving meaning to experiences of life. People read Qur'änic texts or deal with elements of Islam mostly with particular questions in mind, consciously or half-consciously. They tend to assimilate such texts and elements as responses to experiences or as answers to questions raised by them.

Believers in Focus. Exploring M u s l i m Life

367

privileged persons such as artists, poets, writers, and certain "religious" people (believers) can express them in more or less creative ways. The relationships between original subjective meanings discovered or assigned by individuals and the objective significances offered by institutions, tradition, or society are complex. All religions also have, besides their "objective" official significances (often a doctrinal or moral system), an infinite number of "subjective" meanings for people, especially on a more popular level. Popular religion is rich in "subjective" meanings, often with ritual forms. Research on what "subjective" meanings are alive among people, certainly when touching on religious questions, demands not only perception but also reflection. In such research, expressions of meaning are first to be read critically, on a factual level. The next task is to grasp what people want to express, or how they interpret what other people express. What are they hoping or looking for, what do they fear and avoid, and how do they express this? And what answers do they give in their expressions? As I see it, the search should be for the intentions of people's expressions. Their views and ways of life, ethical rules, spiritual concerns, and possible religious commitments have intentions underlying them, even if the people themselves are not always clear about them. As a rule of thumb, to interpret a religious expression correctly, to grasp its subjective "meaning" for the person concerned—and possible "message" to others—we have to be sensitive to its possible intentions. Intellectually, we can try to decode a religious expression by looking for the question to which that statement apparently offers an answer. 4 Religions can be shaped as rules and laws supervised or reinforced by institutions and their religious leadership or other authorities. This provides the "objective" significance of such religions. However, such an institutionalization or "officialization" of a religion can have adverse effects. Religions have often been constructed as confrontational units that equip their respective communities with mental universes in competition with each other. Like states with their political universes based on power, religions with their mental universes based on authority or tradition can be manipulated. In the worst cases, conflict-brokers and warmongers may use them for destructive purposes. In the best cases, adherents may engage in cooperation and further dialogue with each other. From a scholarly point of view, the variety of religious communities identifying themselves by means of a religion is not as innocent as the all-inclusive term "religion" may suggest. Religions as we know them are sacralized entities to which divine origins, blessings and people's 4

If the answer is given in Islamic terms and within an Islamic framework of reference, it can, of course, only be decoded by someone thoroughly familiar with those terms and that framework.

368

Muslims and Their Islam

destinies are ascribed. But they are also cultural and social institutions to which people can be deeply attached, to which they can be subjected in many ways, and which they will defend. This is all the more so, since religions tend to be absolutized. I would like to add one more philosophical remark. The multiplicity of "subjective meanings" within each religion implies that people are—in the private domain—"religiously" mostly freer than they realize. Believers have individually more choices of interpreting and practicing—or not practicing—their religions than the religious communities usually state. People maintain an inner freedom in dealing with their religions, discovering and constructing meaning. From this perspective, the study of "subjective" meanings discovered and upheld by believers as actors in their religions becomes all the more relevant.

4. Research on Subjective Meanings I see it as one of the tasks of the study of living religions to grasp as far as is humanly possible what various religions and religious phenomena have meant to different people in different contexts, especially in recent times. Such research has a particular relevance at a time of individualization of people, diversification of meanings, and subjectifying of cultures and religions. To explain and understand a diversification of meanings in religions, we should look at the various interpretations different persons and groups are giving to their religions in various circumstances and the beliefs and practices connected with them. We should also pay attention to the more dynamic and sometimes quite original interpretations given to these religions in the past, even if such interpretations have not always been historically, socially, or politically successful. There are two recommendations to be made for such research. The first concerns conceptualization. This kind of research requires the use of clear and flexible concepts. If they are fixed too rigidly in advance, they are less fitting for research on meanings. Grasping subjective meanings in general, and in religion in particular, requires the use of concepts that to some extent correspond to—but are not identical with—concepts that are proper to the religion and culture studied and used by the people concerned. Too rigidly fixed research concepts may serve to survey, analyze and explain the cultural and religious materials studied, but are not suitable for explicating and laying open the views people have themselves, with nuances of meaning. Any reliance on a general theory, however necessary it may be for specific factual kinds of research, re-

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

369

presents a serious philosophical risk for scholarly research on human meanings. The second recommendation concerns the selection of data. Empirical research requires the accurate study of available data, but collecting them does not yet lead to an understanding of their meaning for people. In this kind of research, special attention should be given to the connections and relations between specific data and particular persons or groups of people. One should know, for instance, why people wanted to save specific data, and what particular groups did with them, said or wrote about them, to determine what these data may have meant to them in particular situations and contexts. Accumulation of data for their own sake is likely to blind scholarly research on subjective meanings under the sheer weight of available data. Let me make a few clarifications about the pursuit of this interest in subjective meanings. There are of course various ways of questioning subjective meanings in living contemporary religions. One way is to ask people what religious data and religions are or were significant to them, in what situations, and in what sense. Some people will take a passive, receptive attitude when speaking about what is or was significant to them. Others will actively give their own opinions and interpretations of what it means or meant to them. They may take initiatives in response to what is significant to them, and may give a personal appreciation. Another way is to ask people how they interpret and apply their own religion. Here the focus of research is the different ways people live with their religion and the consequences of it. Some may not really be concerned by their religion. Others may be consciously committed to it. They will all have their ideas about religion. As to procedure, there can be various starting points. One is to look directly at religious data and religions as a subject matter of research, as things taken in themselves. In a next step, however, we can then view religions and religious data as offering people possibilities to discover or construct meanings, so that they can interpret life and reality and deal with it. The interpretative capacity of religions can then be widened to the capacity to function as "signification systems" for the people concerned. Research concentrates here on the ways people can read life and reality through the lenses or elements of their religion, as interpreted by them. Another starting point is to view religious phenomena and religions first as constructions from the past, that is to say in terms of tradition, or as present-day social constructions, in terms of community building. " R e ligions" are spiritual constructions and "religious communities" are so-

370

Muslims and Their Islam

cial constructions. The construction of religious phenomena, religions, and religious communities is an ongoing process. It takes place around a tradition with a mysterious origin and in a community that identifies itself through mysterious parameters from other communities. The believers themselves, however, tend to view and interpret their tradition as a continuum and their community as distinct. Both the tradition and the community are shaped, of course, according to practical needs and interests, but also in accordance with orientations and intentions of the people themselves, or their leaders. As a working hypothesis I would like to submit that "intention" is a key concept for research on subjective meanings. As I see it, intentions are at the heart of human orientations which in turn are at the basis of particular interpretations of reality, including the sacralization of data and the construction of religions. Consequently human intentions are at the root of deeper or higher—subjective—meanings which people assign to reality and of the interpretations they give to their religions. Research on "deeper" or "higher" subjective meanings—as in the case of religious data and religions—implies research on the intentions underlying human orientations.

5. Toward Understanding Subjective Meanings. Intentions Scholarly research on subjective meanings demands an adequate empirical study of the data and people themselves and of their contexts. Further research will try to identify for each case the basic orientations, religious or otherwise, people use for interpreting and confronting reality. Whatever the nature of particular religious views and practices, they imply fundamental orientations in and interpretations of reality, that is constructions of meaning. In this perspective, religions can be viewed as particular frameworks or schemes of interpreting reality, and of acting in it. Assuming that such fundamental orientations are partly based on intentions, our search for intentions then serves as a tool to open up orientations. As a result we may grasp better the particular interpretations that people have more or less consciously given to reality and life. We may also grasp the significance that particular matters may have for particular people in particular situations. H o w do intentions manifest or express themselves? In many cases people are not aware of particular intentions; they apply without further ado the scheme of the particular religion or worldview available to them. Our research interest is awakened, however, when their orientation takes on a more outspoken personal character and direction. We

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

371

may then assume that people have more outspoken personal intentions. A particular coherent interpretation and application of a religious system may be the result of personal efforts and go back to the deeper intentions of the person concerned. One way in which intentions may express themselves is through people's imagination. This is not necessarily an escape from reality into an illusionary world. It may also develop into imaginative projects that lead to taking initiatives in the real world and allow people to cope with reality. People's deeper intentions can express themselves in the personal realm of dreams including daydreams. Free imagination can lead to further creative activity such as for instance art or writing. Imagination is an open stage for intentions. Intentions can also express themselves in religious ways, using models and forms offered by the religious system with which people are familiar. Wanted or unwanted, in religion there are always intentions at stake and a religious system offers certain possibilities for imagination. Religion is a domain in which intentions can be articulated more or less freely, not only in personal but also in communal expressions. One may wonder what these lines on subjective meanings may have to do with Islamic Studies and Islam. Strangely enough, the various uses made of religious constructions in Islam—and other religions—is a neglected area of study. The term "fundamentalism", for instance, has become current in discourses about Islam, now also among Muslims. Generally it has been attributed to political interests and religious irrationalities, from a rational perspective. Very few scholars, however, have problematized possible deeper intentions at work among so-called "fundamentalists". Among Muslim extremists certain interpretations and constructions of Islam come into play, that awaken strong emotions in both Muslim and Western audiences. In 19 t h - and 20 t h -century Islam, not only in Africa and Asia, but also in Europe and North America we find new expressions of Islam and also new overall constructions of it. Current ideas and movements of reform and renewal imply, on the one hand, processes of deconstruction of a number of older views and practices of Islam, and on the other hand new constructions. As a result, well-known Islamic data—and Islam as such—can take on new meanings in different parts of the world. It may well be that what we use to call the "world religions" are now in transformation processes. In the organized religions we can already observe powerful reactions, keen to maintain the status quo of these religions. In this perspective, research on subjective meanings is relevant. It is less concerned with the "original" meanings of Islamic—or other reli-

372

Muslims and Their Islam

gious—data than with new ways such data are interpreted and practiced. Besides the practical—including political—interests, there are also "deeper" intentions at work in the new interpretations and constructions of Islam at the present time. The many readings and interpretations given to Islam, and the uses made of it, should be better known. Such research can lead not only to a better scholarly knowledge of what given religious data and religions have meant and mean to adherents. It can also show the occurrence of new meanings of such data, and new ways in which such religions are now interpreted and practiced today. There seem to be deeper intentions at work—whether we like them or not—in the numerous interpretations, deconstructions and constructions of religions nowadays. In such research, we should try to assess which specific elements of Islam are most significant to particular persons and groups, and we should ask why. We should also see what kind of new readings and interpretations are now given to Islam in particular contexts, and why they are given. We should look at what people know of their own and other religions and what they do with this knowledge.

6. Conclusion The subjective aspects of religions—their subjective meanings for people—require serious attention. More than in former times, such aspects and their underlying intentions can now be studied in scholarly ways. Intentions play an essential role in the construction, reading and interpretation of religions and in people's imagination about religion, individually and as groups. That is to say, intentions are not so much an individual spiritual adventure but they are of eminent communal interest. In religions such as Islam and Christianity, invoking the religious intentions of people has been mostly a communal interest. This leads us to a final consideration. Just as group activities stimulate intentions, these can best be expressed in, situations of communication between people. Active human intentions tend to awaken similar intentions in other people. There is something deeply communicative about intentions, some kind of link between the experience of meaning and the experience of communication. Intentions cannot be considered the private affair of isolated individuals. They are not only of scholarly but also of human interest.

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

Selected

373

Literature

1. Muslim Life Khaled, And God Knows the Soldiers. The Authoritative and Authoritarianism in Islamic Discourse, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001. A B U - Z A H R A , Nadia, The Pure and Powerful. Studies in Contemporary Muslim Society, Reading: Ithaca Press, 1997. A B U Z A I D , Nasr Hamid, Ein Leben mit dem Islam. Erzählt von Navid KERIMANI, translated from the Arabic by Cherifa M A G D I (Herder Spektrum), Freiburg etc.: Herder, 1999. AYOUB, Mahmoud M., "Cult and Culture. Common Saints and Shrines in Middle Eastern Popular Piety", in Religion and Culture in Medieval Islam, ed. by Richard G. HOVANNISIAN and Georges SABAGH (XlVth Georgio della Vida Biannual Conference), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 1 0 3 - 1 1 5 . —, Islam. Faith and History, Oxford: Oneworld, 2004. —, "Prologue. Islam: A Personal Faith?" in ID., Islam. Faith and History, Oxford: Oneworld, 2004, pp. 1-7. BIANCHI, Robert B . , Guests of God. Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. D E N N Y , Frederick M . , "Islamic Ritual. Perspectives and Theories", in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C . M A R T I N , Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp. 6 3 - 7 7 . ESACK, Farid, On Being a Muslim. Finding the Religious Path in the Modern World, Oxford: Oneworld, 1999, 4 t h edition 2002. GRAHAIM, William Α., "Islam in the Mirror of Ritual", in: Islam's Understanding of Itself, ed. by Richard G . HOVANISSIAN and Speros VRYONIS, J R . , Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1983, pp. 5 3 - 7 1 . HAIMIMOUDI, Abdellah, One saison a la Mecque. Recit de pelerinage, Paris: Seuil, 2005. Islam, Communities and the Nation. Muslim Identities in South Asia and Beyond, ed. by Mushirul HASAN, New Delhi: Manohar, 1998. KLINKHAIMMER, Gritt, Moderne Formen islamischer Lebensführung. Eine qualitativ-empirische Untersuchung zur Religiosität sunnitisch geprägter Türkinnen der zweiten Generation in Deutschland, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 2000. KRAiMER, Martin, "The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss)", in The Jewish Discovery of Islam. Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis, Tel Aviv University, 1999, pp. 2 2 5 - 2 4 7 . RAUDVERE, Catharina, The Book and the Roses. Sufi Women, Visibility, and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul, Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 2002 (Distribution: I. B. Tauris, London). A B O U E L FADL,

374

Muslims and Their Islam

2. Islam in Literature Der Islam im Spiegel muslimischer Schriftsteller, ed. by Barbara HUBER-RUDOLF, Walter KETTLER and Franz-Josef PAYRHUBER, Frankfurt a.M.: Eibedo, 2000. LEVIN, Theodore, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God. Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York), Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. QASIM, Abd al-Hakim, The Seven Days of Man. Evanston, 111.: Hydra-Books, 1996. —, Rites of Assent. Two Novellas, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures, ed. by Glenda ABRAMSON and Hilary KILPATRICK, London and New York: Routledge, 2006. WATTAR, Tahir, The Earthquake, London: Saqi Books, 2000.

3. Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights in Islam BENARD, Cheryl, Civil Democratic Islam. Partners, Resources, and Strategies, Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, National Security Research Division, 2 0 0 3 .

Jonathan, and Jerome BELLION-JOURDAN, The Charitable Crescent. Politics of Aid in the Muslim World, London and New York: I. B. Tauris,

BENTHALL, 2003.

Darrell J., and Dell de CHANT, Comparative Religious Ethics. A Narrative Approach, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions. Studies in the History of Religions, ed. by Ria KLOPPENBORG and Wouter J. HANEGRAAFF, Leiden, etc.: Brill, FASCHING,

1995.

A Global Ethic. The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions, ed. by Hans KÜNG and Karl-Josef KUSCHEL, New York: Continuum, 1993. Human Rights and Responsibilities in the World Religions, ed. by Joseph RUNZO, N a n c y M . MARTIN a n d A r v i n d SHARJVIA, O x f o r d : O n e w o r l d ,

2003.

Muhammad Hashim, Freedom, Equality and Justice in Islam, Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2002. KELSAY, John, Islam and War. A Study in Comparative Ethics, Westminster and Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1993. MÜLLER, Lorenz, Islam und Menschenrechte. Sunnitische Muslime zwischen Islamisierung, Säkularismus und Modernismus, Hamburg: Deutsches OrientInstitut, 1996. Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender and Pluralism, ed. by Omid SAFI, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. Religion and Gender, ed. by Ursula KING, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Religiöse Minderheiten. Potentiale für Konflikt und Frieden, ed. by Hans-Martin BARTH and Christoph ELSAS, V . Internationales Rudolf-Otto-Symposion, Marburg. Schenefeld: EB-Verlag, 2004. Religious Diversity and Human Rights, ed. by Irene BLOOM and others, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. KAIMALI,

Believers in Focus. Exploring Muslim Life

375

Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and in Religions, ed. by Leonard SWIDLER, Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, and New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986. ROSEN, Lawrence, The Justice of Islam, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. SARDAR, Ali Shaheen, Equal before Allah, Unequal before Man? Negotiating Gender Hierarchies in Islam and International Law, Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1999. TERGEL, Alf, Human Rights in Cultural and Religious Traditions (Uppsala Studies in Faiths and Ideologies 8), Uppsala: Uppsala University Library, 1998. WALDMAN, Marilyn Robinson, Prophecy and Power. A Comparative Study of Islamic Evidence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Women in the World's Religions. Past and Present, ed. by Ursula KING, New York: Paragon, 1987.

4. Encounters between

Believers

BoRRiMANS, Maurice, Dialogue islamo-chretien a temps et contretemps, Versailles: Ed. Saint-Paul, 2 0 0 2 . Chretiens et musulmans en dialogue: les identites en devenir. Travaux du GRIC (1996-2003), dir. Vincent Feroldi, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2 0 0 3 . Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. by Tikv FRYMER-KENSKY and others, Boulder, Col., and Oxford: Westview Press, 2 0 0 0 . CRAGG, Kenneth, The Privilege of Man. A Theme in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, London: Athlone Press, 1968. How to Conquer the Barriers to Intercultural Dialogue. Christianity, Islam and Judaism, ed. by Christiane TIMiMERiMAN and Barbara SEGAERT (Series Gods, Humans, and Religions, No. 5), Brussels: Presses Interuniversitaires Europeennes - Peter Lang, 2 0 0 5 . Islam and Christianity. Mutual Perceptions since the Mid-20th Century, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 1998. Islam and Other Religions: Pathway to Dialogue. Essays in honour of Mahmoud Mustafa AYOUB, ed. by Irfan A. OiMAR, London and New York: Routledge, 2006. MAGONET, Jonathan, Talking to the Other. Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims, Foreword by Prince HASSAN BIN TALLAL, Afterword by Karen ARMSTRONG, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2 0 0 3 . Muslim-Christian Perceptions of Dialogue Today. Experiences and Expectations, ed. by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 2 0 0 0 . Muslim-Jewish Encounters: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics, edited by Ronald NETTLER and Suha TAJI-FAROUKI, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publ., 1998. NEUSNER, Jacob; Bruce CHILTON; William GRAHAM, Three Faiths, One God. The Formative Faith and Practice of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2 0 0 2 . PRATT, Douglas, The Challenge of Islam. Encounters in Interfaith Dialogue, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2 0 0 5 .

376

Muslims and Their Islam

THOIMA, Clemens, Das Messiasprojekt. Hamburg: Pattloch, 1994.

5. Believers'

Theologie

jüdisch-christlicher

Begegnung,

Identities

"L'identite islamique", in ID. and Louis GARDET, L'Islam hier demain, Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1978, pp. 1 9 9 - 2 1 8 . BARI, Muhammad Abdul, Race, Religion and Muslim Identity in Britain, Swansea: Renaissance Press, 2005. CESARI, Jocelyne, "Les identites musulmanes en Europe et aux Etats-Unis", in L'Europe des Religions. Elements d'analyse des champs religieux europeens, ed. by Richard FRIEDLI and Mallory SCHNEUWLY PURDIE (Studia Religiosa Helvetica, Jahrbuch, Vol. 8/9, 2002/03), Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 69-93. Chretiens et musulmans en dialogue: les identites en devenir. Travaux du GRIC (1996-2003), dir. Vincent Feroldi, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. HADDAD, Yvonne Yazbeck, Not quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States, Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2004. Identität durch Differenz? Wechselseitige Abgrenzungen in Christentum und Islam, ed. by Η. SCHIMIDT, Α. R E N Z , J. SPERBER, D. TERZI (Theologisches Forum Christentum - Islam), Regensburg: Pustet, 2007. SCHOEN, Ulrich, Mensch sein in zwei Welten. Bi-Identität in Sprache, Religion und Recht. Mit einem Geleitwort von Annemarie SCHIMMEL, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2000. TIETZE, Nikola, Jeunes musulmans de Trance et d'Allemagne. Les constructions subjectives de l'identite, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. ARKOUN, Μ . ,

6. Religion in the World Crossing the Gods. World Religions and Worldly Politics, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. La globalisation du religieux, ed. by Jean-Pierre BASBAN, Franfoise CHAMPION, and Kathy ROUSSELET, Paris, etc.: L'Harmattan, 2001. JUERGENSMEYER, Mark, Terror in the Mind of God, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998. Transnational Religion and Tading States, ed. by Susanne HOEBER RUDOLPH and James PISCATORI, Boulder, Col., and Oxford: Westview Press, 1997. Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World, ed. by Mark JUERGENSMEYER, London: Frank Cass, 1991. World Order and Religion, ed. by Wade Clark ROOE, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1991. DEMERATH I I I , N . J . ,

Chapter 15 Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture 1. Introduction I understand here by religious reform the conscious, mostly peaceful transformation of a given religion, reconsidering its truths to be affirmed in the community, or its norms to be applied in behavior, both of which are to improve the human situation in society. 1 Reform of religion has intimate links with critical needs in the society concerned. Reforms do not provide for abandoning or even destroying the religion concerned, but are intended rather to purify its faith and its practice. A religious reform addresses an existing religious tradition. It may be based on a new discovery of the sources of a religion or lead to a fundamental reinterpretation. It can also lead to new fixations of beliefs and practices. It may bring about the transformation of a religion, but can also end in its ideologization. It may be the result of spiritual quests and intellectual discoveries in certain elite groups, but also of movements on a broader popular level and the use of political power. It may be imposed from above by political or religious authorities, but it can also respond to calls from social or religious leaders. It implies assessment of current traditions and a new vision of what is considered "right religion". All reform implies taking a critical distance from what exists. Attempts at reform imply critical thinking and envisaging structural and other changes. Reform movements in 19 t h - and 2 0 t h -century Christianity, Islam, and Judaism mostly appealed to recognized Scriptures. In studying religious reforms and reform movements we should avoid using stereotypes like "liberal", "revivalist", "fundamentalist", or "radical". These terms do not render any services to a serious study of the variety in social radia1

This essay is based on a lecture given at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 1997. A first draft appeared in the Reader prepared for the Summer University course "Reconsidering Islamic Reformism" at the Central European University in Budapest, July 2004.

378

Muslims and Their Islam

tion and interaction, or to an understanding of the interests, motivations, and intentions guiding the adherents. Scriptures have been very relevant to reform initiatives in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Intimate relationships often exist between the community and particular parts of Scriptures. For reformers, chosen scriptural texts not only have individual spiritual significance, but also solidify communal sense and strengthen common orientation. Although religious reform may be based on social, political, or institutional necessities, it is articulated by adherents who can envisage transforming the existing religion. This demands a change in the current religion with an appeal to scriptural texts and the deeper original meaning of the religion. Particular attention is given here to Islam.

2. Kinds of Reform and Forces Opposing It 2.1. The Term "Reform": Three

Meanings

The term "reform", when applied to religions, has at least three different meanings. 1) The first meaning goes back to what is held to be the spiritual source of a given religion or religious tradition. In general, it is assigned to the very beginnings of a religion as the inspirational force, vision, experience, or message that brought it into being. In Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the Scripture is in general considered the most reliable source of religious truth. So "reform" here means first of all: going back to Scripture. Believers should make an effort to arrive at a new discovery and understanding of the truths their Scripture conveys and make a new start in life based on its message. We find this clearly in the isläh movements in Islam that want to go back to Qur'änic texts and to principles recognized in the Qur'än and the early sunna (tradition). Some reform movements want to go back to the texts of Scripture alone. This can end in a literal application of Scriptural texts and a strict application of texts giving particular prescripts (commands or prohibitions). The Taliban in Afghanistan imposed living strictly according to the rules of the Qur'än based on a literalist reading. Many reform movements want to reconstitute the community life held to have been current at the historical beginnings of the religion concerned. In Islam this means during Muhammad's lifetime, or under the first four "rightly guided" caliphs. These trends towards reasoning based on texts and the far past can be seen clearly in Islam, but also for instance in the Protestant Reformation and the Churches resulting from it. Christians were called upon to

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

379

have faith in the revelation of Jesus Christ, to take the New Testament as the norm for religious life and thought, and to take the first Christian communities as a model for Christian communal life. 2) The second meaning of the term "reform" is the adaptation of a given religion with its tradition to present-day contexts. Basically, reform here is the attempt to adapt to new situations, including modernity, with an appeal to Scripture. For Muslim reformists between the 1860s and 1930s, "reform" in the sense of "going back" to Qur'än and sunna was closely linked to "adapting to modern times", for instance by means of education. An example in Christianity is John XXIII's proclamation of an aggiornamento (updating) of the Roman Catholic Church to the present time, which was the basic orientation of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). 3) The third meaning of the term "reform" is the recognition of the positive role of reason in religious matters. In Islam Sayyid Ahmad Khan is a good example of this. Judaism has a branch called "Reform" Judaism. Christianity has a branch of "liberal" Christianity. In this kind of religious reform we find an enlightened interpretation of Revelation, Scripture and Law, with a recognition of personal conscience and selfcritical reason. Scripture should be read and applied with the use of reason. In all three religions, what are usually called "liberal" movements are examples of this third meaning of "reform".

2.2. Three Kinds of Movements

of

Reform

The three different meanings of the concept of "reform" imply different orientations. This allows us to distinguish three kinds of reform movements. 1) Most reform movements advocate going back to the spiritual core or source of a given religion as expressed in Scripture and reconstituting personal and communal life as it would have been in the original phase of the religion. This corresponds with the first meaning of "reform". Karaites, isläh-movements, and puritan Protestants took the strict recourse to Scripture as the sole authority. This attitude has often been one of rejecting overpowering traditions and also resistance against authorities, cultural innovations, and foreign influences. The corresponding puritanical attitude implies a distancing from the secular world but also from other religions and religious communities. This kind of reform movement stresses the particularity of one's religion together with the purity of life in one's community. Outsiders may

380

Muslims and Their Islam

be felt to be "impure". In popular language such movements are now often stereotyped as "fundamentalists". Living according to Scripture and striving for purity demands attentive self-discipline. All Christian Churches have at times contained communities intent on living according to the particular rules laid down by authorities, or on the model of particular religious figures of the past. These communities were intent on having the right way of life and they reproached others for not having or practicing it. These Reform movements do not cultivate traditions broader than their own and want to implement their Scripture as the authoritative source and core of their religion. They are keen to defend their views on it and their particular interpretations of it. (2) The modernizing reform movements understand "reform" basically as an adaptation to the demands of the time, in contrast to history and traditional ways of life. This may start with the acceptance of new technology and business practices and then move forward by the acceptance of social change and definition of "modern" values and be extended to developing programs and organizing the spread of these values. These reform movements often occur in contexts of rapid social change. Besides new orientations in thinking, they entail a certain individualism in contrast to communal ideas and practices sealed by tradition. Modernizing socio-political reform movements developed for instance in Turkey and Pahlevi Iran as well as Egypt and Tunisia, with important consequences for the thinking on Islam. The movements of Sayyid Ahmad Khan in India and Muhammad 'Abduh in Egypt were largely movements of this kind. They had to cope with Islamic traditions standing in the way of development. "Reform" reactions of the first type took place against the modernizing reform of the second type. In Egypt, for instance, the Salafiyya movement around Muhammad Räshid Rldä was a reform movement of the first type, wanting to return to Scripture and the pure Islam of the beginnings. This was even more the case with Hasan al-Bannä's wellknown "Muslim Brotherhood" a generation later. Modernizing reform movements seek to bypass popular cultural and religious traditions that stand in the way of what they see as sorelyneeded educational, socio-political, and economic progress. Puritanical reform movements of the first type also reject popular traditions, but in the name of the purity of religion and true living. (3) The third kind of reform movements appeals to reason and strives for a kind of enlightenment of persons and groups regarding ways of thought and life. They tend to give an important place to reason in religious matters. This orientation is less directed toward reforms of reli-

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

381

gion or society as such than reforms of ways of thought and life, especially in given communities. Reform stands here not for ideas and practices in themselves, but for a critical reorientation of people. For instance, it will accept scholarly research on religions and existing religious ideas and traditions. In critical response, "reform" reactions of the first type have arisen, leading to new "orthodoxies" that fix the correct beliefs and practices they want to preserve in the community or to impose on it. This has happened in all three scriptural religions. In Christianity, Protestant "liberal" reformers were opposed by the orthodox appealing to Scripture and creed. Catholic reform "modernists" met fierce opposition from those appealing to the authority of the Church, Scripture, and Tradition. Judaism and Islam have known similar debates. This third kind of reform group constitutes a kind of cultural elite that wants to give religion a more personal conscious orientation. It sees reform primarily in terms of a reorientation of the mind and attention is given to improving education, studying religious matters, and supporting cultural activities. "Reform" here implies high moral and intellectual demands in a religious perspective. In this climate of thought, a kind of idealism has developed with a rather optimistic view of the future. Religions are seen as representing positive norms and values, but they have to accept the universal values of humankind and accept cooperation and dialogue with people of other faiths. People should work together instead of creating divisions, for the sake of the future of humankind. The three kinds of reform movements sketched here have been prominent in Western Christianity since the 19 t h century. Parallel orientations arose in Muslim and Jewish circles. They all wanted to maintain the existing religions by "reforming" them.

2.3. Religions Developed

from Reform

Movements

Several historical religions developed from various kinds of reform movements. Universalistic orientations played a role in movements that strove to overcome the ethnic and social barriers between communities as well as the cultural and ideological barriers between cultural and religious traditions. Traditions with a particularistic orientation could be "reformed" in a more universalistic sense by charismatic figures. This could eventually lead to a new religion, sometimes acquiring its own Scripture. Below are some examples of new religions that started by being proclaimed as reforms of established ones:

382

-

-

-

-

-

-

Muslims and Their Islam

in Judaism, the messianic "Jesus movement" and especially its Pauline interpretation can be seen as a breakthrough beyond the strictures of a law-and-ethnic-bound Judaism. It proclaimed the arrival of the Endtime with a heavenly Kingdom, accepted gojim (non-Jews) as members, and was largely organized on the pattern of the Roman Empire, with Christ as divine revelation. Christianity emerged from this reform movement in Judaism as a religion in its own right, with universalistic messianic claims. in Mesopotamia, which was a meeting place of various religious traditions, Mani (d. ca. 277) proclaimed a universalizing religion that brought together elements of various religions existing at the time. He held the idea of a succession of prophets sent to different peoples that ended with a prophet, Mani, fulfilling the messages of the prophets preceding him. The result was a kind of Gnostic reform-synthesis of previous religions sealed in a Scripture received and written down by Mani and presented as a final revelation. in Arabia, in a parallel line of thought, Muhammad (d. 632) presented Islam as the universal monotheistic faith brought by Abraham, rejecting polytheistic paganism and becoming a reform movement of Judaism and Christianity in the sense of a universal religion of pure monotheism, with the Qur'än seen as divine revelation. Several reform movements arose from these monotheistic religions and became religions in their own right. in Judaism, Shabbetai Tsevi (1626-1676) in the Ottoman Empire was considered by his adherents as the promised messiah with a Scripture as final revelation. After his death the movement of Shabbateanism continued to spread as a religion in itself. in Christianity, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (socalled "Mormons") in North America proclaimed a new revelation with a Scripture revealed to Joseph Smith (1805-1844). It developed further as a religion. in Islam, the Bäbl movement in Iran proclaimed that the End-time had come with the arrival of the Bäb Sayyid 'All Muhammad (1819-1850), who presented himself as the awaited twelfth Shl'l Imam and brought writings that had been revealed to him. The preaching of the former Bäbl Mlrzä Husayn 'All Nürl, the Bahä' Allah (1817-1892), claiming to stand in the tradition of the prophets of preceding religions, resulted in the emergence of the Bahä'I faith. Continuing from the Bäbl movement, the Bahä'I became a religion on its own, with a Scripture brought by Bahä Alläh and with the universalistic claim of fulfilling the religions of mankind.

These five religions emerged from messianic religious reform movements claiming to correct religious practices that had gone astray, to fulfill the

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

383

messages of preceding prophets, and to bring new revelations. "Reform" is here seen as part of a progressive revelation throughout history. In all five cases, eschatological moods about the end of time prevailed, prophetical figures brought a definite revelation fulfilling the messages that had preceded them, and Scriptures emerged in which the new revelation was canonized. The adherents of the resulting religions considered them mostly as revelations to bring law and order to society as well as salvation to their communities. There have also been a number of spiritual orientations and movements that called for an inner reform of people, beyond the confines of the established religious institutions and systems. Examples are the Freemasons and the Theosophical Society. With regard to Islam, the Tradition-oriented teachings of Rene GUENON ( 1 8 8 6 - 1 9 5 1 )

and later Titus

BURCKHARDT ( 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 8 4 )

and

Fritjhof SCHUON (1907-1998) speak of one primordial Universal Spiritual Tradition in which all religions including Islam participate. This implies a call for the spiritual reform of all existing religions including Islam in the sense of the primordial Universal Tradition. The idea of a primordial Universal Tradition inside the existing religious traditions—such as the idea of a primordial Revelation proclaimed by a succession of prophets—led to various reform movements of the first type. Moreover, at present as in the past, a number of people, communities, and movements accept the universal character of messages and practices revealed to and communicated by particular spiritually-oriented men and women. It is difficult, however, to speak in these cases of "reform", since they do not address a specific community or religion to be reformed.

2.4. Social Reforms

and

Religion

In Muslim societies, calls for their reform have been inextricably linked to Islam. All movements aiming at reforming Muslim societies, for instance in terms of social justice or human rights, are aware that remedying existing injustice and misery implies changing fixed social structures legitimated by Islam as a religion. To make changes acceptable in a society where Islam has taken fixed forms, their defenders often argue that Islam as a religion has a dynamic character, a positive message, and a spiritual power. It had this at its very beginnings. They then tend to ascribe the fixation of particular forms of Islam and the weakening of its original forceful impulse to later human accretions and distortions, influences from outside or political manipulations that have noth-

384

Muslims and Their Islam

ing to do with the essential message at the core of this religion. Viewed as a religion, Islam is pure and absolute. In Muslim countries as elsewhere, people ask for social and political reforms while appealing to pure religion, in particular religious law, moral prescripts, and ethics. The call is for reforms not so much of religion itself, but of its application. It is a call for the reform of society with an appeal to, and in the name of, religion. True Islam is pure Islam as an absolute religion. To end situations of injustice, for instance, it has been demanded that the Islamic Sharl'a be imposed on society. In the name of Islam, demands are addressed to dictatorial and corrupt governments to implement justice. This includes respecting human rights and applying social justice. It implies fighting the economic exploitation of peasants and workers, and alleviating social misery. Popular preachers will insist that the prevailing social situation does not comply with Islam and is a result of its not being implemented. A religion such as Islam thus has an immense critical potential. Not only state officials and civil servants, but also representatives of the religion itself can be criticized in the name of Islam. Not only lower-ranking mullahs but also religious officials can be accused of abusing the religion for selfish purposes. Vlamä' have been accused of being intellectually backward, self-interested, and serving those who are in power. Sufi sheykhs have been accused of using their religious prestige for their own benefit by misleading simple people and cheating them under the cover of religion. Many social and political messages of this kind are conveyed directly or indirectly in Islamic religious discourses. Similar reproaches have of course been directed at religious dignitaries of all religions. In the monotheistic religions, popular jokes have circulated about pretentious but basically ignorant men of religion. More important, however, is the fact that most calls for the application of Islam to end the evil in society are in fact calls for a reform of society, which are calls not only to apply the norms of Islam but also to reform empirical Islam.

2.5. Forces Opposing

Reform

All attempts at religious reform, whatever their causes, motivations, and strategies, give rise to resistance. Various forces oppose religious reform, especially in societies where tradition weighs heavily with religious authorities and institutions.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

385

From this perspective, in most societies only small numbers of people—specific groups in favorable contexts and particular situations— can respond positively to calls for religious reform. The new orthodoxies that arise against reasonable, universalizing, and modernizing religious reform movements tend to become even more militant than the older traditional authorities who accepted the status quo. Such opposing forces are often supported by stubborn socio-political interests. Reasoned reforms in established religion apparently can take hold only when at the same time important structural changes take place in society and when reform in religion is felt to be a necessity. Governments and groups in power or with authority in most Muslim countries tend to align themselves in a more or less discreet way with a particular "mediate" interpretation of Islam. Too much open modernizing "reform" of religion as well as too much open religious "fundamentalism" in society may undermine social and political stability. Consequently, governments tend to promote a kind of "officialized" Islam and to resist the Islamist tendencies of more radical groups as well as the rationalizations of secularists. They keep themselves informed of Muslim debates on sensitive subjects, especially since increasing security concerns have led to more strict forms of control. This means that the possibility of a reform based on open discussion—not to mention moral considerations—has become increasingly weaker, since the public space needed for free discussion and change is absent. The Internet allows communication and exchanges by air, but not concrete dialogues and concerted action on earth. All of this implies that, in Muslim countries, conscious religious reforms have recently become mostly those of the first type i.e. reasserting the values contained in the core and sources of religion. Whether, to what extent, and how people are prepared to reform their religion in a more reasoned coherent way, in the sense of the second and third type of reform, depends largely on the socio-political context in which they live. Only in the second place, apparently, does it depend on their intellectual demands, the kind of personal stand they are willing to take, and the extent to which they are committed to their religion and have contacts with others. All of this is certainly a matter of religion. But it moves within given cultural, social, and political contexts and constraints that exert pressures and create dependencies. Reform of the third type, for instance, presupposes a kind of relatively free 20 t h -century bourgeoisie that is difficult to find in Muslim countries nowadays.

386

Muslims and Their Islam

3. Islamic Reform and the Shan'a A number of social reforms, current in many other non-Western countries, have been proposed in Muslim countries but cannot legally be defended and imposed. They mostly concern the position of women in family and public life, legal succession, marriage and divorce, responsibilities for children, the position of non-Muslims, apostasy from Islam, and a few crimes of penal law. These reforms have been held to be contrary to religious law (shan'a). In particular, it is difficult to succeed in changing rules that are supported by Qur'änic texts. An interesting case on the highest level was President Habib Bourguiba's attempt in Tunisia in the early 1960s to reinterpret the religious duty of fasting (sawm) during daytime in the month of Ramadan. Since people could not work well during that month and Tunisia could not waste manpower, Bourguiba wanted to impose the duty of working hard for the future well-being of the Tunisian people. "Fasting" was a test of endurance and its practice should change from a religious to a socio-economic meaning. Although some 'ulamä' supported the President, the initiative failed. The people were simply against it. Reforms of Islamic family law were here more successful, such as (in civil law) the rule of monogamy (monogyny) and greater rights for women in family law (such as initiating divorce). But here, too, family law is under the strictures of religious law (shan'a). Compared with most other Muslim countries, family law in Tunisia tends to be more secularized but an appeal to shan'a rulings remains possible here. If social reforms need legal provisions that violate existing shan'a rulings, proposed legal support for the reforms can be nullified unless a legal loophole can be found. Such reforms are legally difficult if the shan'a is explicitly mentioned as an important source of legislation (as in Egypt) and even more if it is considered officially the main source of legislation (as in the Islamic states of Saudi Arabia and Iran). Shan'a has a kind of absolute aura in Muslim societies and is defended by its legal experts (fuqahä'). Infractions of shan'a meet with protest in conscientious Muslim circles. This is not only a religious matter, a defense of rules sacralized by religious law and tradition, but it is also supported by popular feelings about how society functions and should continue to function. Palpable interests of the men in patriarchal societies and of religious leaders in tradition-bound societies are at stake. In certain cases, a head of state may defend women's interests, but even then, success cannot be assured. Family law is a minefield. It should be noted that the shan'a rulings themselves are under constant discussion. They are not codified and there are different legal schools. Often the standpoints of individual fuqahä' differ, so

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

387

that different experts of sharl'a can give different fatwäs on a particular issue. Apparently, there are two ways to overcome shart'a rulings in Muslim countries, apart from state intervention on the basis of state interest and from moving to a country where sharl'a is not an issue. One way is to increase the distance between the state and religion and as far as possible to endorse legislation based on general secular principles. This is the way followed in Turkey, where state legislation is secular. "Islamic" law has no official validity here and is forbidden when its rulings go against state law. The second way to overcome shart'a rulings would be to develop a modern Islamic law as an alternative to the shart'a, which presupposes a socio-political context that existed in the Middle East more than a thousand years ago. This modern Islamic law should respond to modern contexts. It should also take into account recent developments in international law which stress the rights and duties of persons and groups and the increasing communication in socio-economic, cultural, and even religious life. The Sudanese legal scholar 'Abdulahi Ahmed An-Na'im—who now works in the USA—has developed such a reform program, stressing the need to replace shart'a by a modern kind of Islamic law. He also stresses the need to apply a modern and new interpretation of the Qur'än and sunna different from the one customary a thousand years ago, as a condition for realizing a modern Islamic law. He puts forward an interpretative technique that gives precedence to universally-oriented rules (mostly found in Meccan texts) over case rulings (mostly given in Medinan texts), the general validity of which can be contested. If strictly secular law cannot be applied to a number of Islamic issues, updating Islamic law indeed seems to be a way out of the current deadlock and to allow Islamic reform. But who can work it out and apply it in practice? Present-day Islamic states may have the know-how to carry out such a program, but they are under the authority of the defenders of sharl'a. Moreover, the current movement in favor of a further Islamization of Muslim countries tends to defend shart'a with its religious aura. This movement is now distancing itself from Western law and may very well refuse any kind of modern Islamic law that would be an alternative to sacred sharl'a. Finally, the national contexts of Muslim countries have become so different nowadays that it will be difficult to reach unanimous approval and application of any proposal for a new kind of Islamic law that will respond to modern contexts.

388

Muslims and Their Islam

4. Studying Reformers and Reform When we speak of religious leaders, we may think in the first place of creative founders, prophets, spiritual souls, and charismatic minds establishing what would later become "religions". We should, however, also include among them influential reformers of religious doctrines and practices and of the inhuman conditions to which they made vehement religious protests. The emergence of reformers presupposes the existence of religious traditions that became fixed in institutional and other forms of immobility. In such situations, reformers may bring relief by protesting against the prevailing conditions, referring to what religion was meant for, and calling for the implementation of its message and its ethical and other implications. Reformers do not pretend to bring a new revelation. They mostly refer to past authorities and offer a new vision of the existing religion, with new insights, calling for new kinds of moral activity. Seen in this light, eminent religious figures such as Jesus and Paul, Mani, Muhammad, and others—whatever their particular vocation—can be considered reformers of the religion in which they grew up. They were social reformers, too. Numerous religious reforms have had effects that neither the reformers themselves nor the religious authorities at the time could foresee. When studying reforms and reformers, we ask questions similar to those raised earlier in this book, looking for the significance particular elements of Islam and also "Islam" itself had, or has, for particular Muslim groups in specific circumstances. How did they see and judge facts and events that had to do with Islam? How did they judge the situation of a particular Muslim community and of Islam as a whole? When did they see Islam as a religion or ideology, and when as an empirical social and political reality? Our approach should be scholarly. Research on reformers and reform in contemporary Islam, whether in the West or elsewhere, should not be led solely by specific Western ideals of reform. The hope in some quarters in the West of finding or making Muslim counterparts to a certain Western neo-liberalism, or to certain European value systems, is understandable but it is Western-centric. It should not guide scholarly research on Islamic reform, certainly not at a time when the Muslim world is distancing itself from Western models. The Islamic concept of isläh (reform) has little to do with European ideas of enlightenment, and what Muslim Wahhäbls called "reform" had little to do with the Protestant Reformation. Islamic reforms and reform movements should be studied on their own terms. Certain aspects may be somewhat repugnant to the Western

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

389

intellectual tradition. Much has been said about the need for a reform of Islam, but few people have been able to carry it out. Only exceptionally, prevailing religious ideas and customs could simply be rejected in a wave of reform on the basis of the authority of particular texts chosen at random from the Qur'än and sunna. Specialists have discussed how the texts relevant to particular reforms should be selected, read, and interpreted. Such reforms have originated less in a vision than in legal accuracy. Distressingly, decisions on reforms have often been made by a foreign occupant's stroke of the pen or decreed by politicians with their own pressing interests. All calls for reform should be seen in their historical contexts. The discussions about the possible role of national states and the need for Islamic reform in the first half of the twentieth century led to Muslim social action in the context of national construction. However, the tasks of the second half of that century—for instance, to deal with the relations between modernizing society and reformed Islam—turned out to be complicated. This period witnessed many different discourses about Islam that were less sociologically or historically (empirically) oriented than ideally and ideologically (politically). Often born into misery and pressure, they tended to rise and develop on the wings of hope and imagination, at a safe distance from prevailing economic constraints, political dependencies, internal and external threats. Islamic states were proclaimed and reforms prescribed, but their internal coherence was difficult to see. They had been imposed from above or from outside rather than born from inside. It is time to study 20 th -century Muslim discourses in various regions about reforms needed in Islam. A clear distinction should then be made between solid empirical knowledge of Islam and Muslim societies on the one hand, and ideas about Islam or projects for Muslim societies on the other. Practiced or living Islam is not the same as ideas about Islam. Apart from the work of some well-known 19 th - and 20 th -century Muslim thinkers, current interpretations and reinterpretations of Islam—and of its reforms—are difficult to grasp and analyze. When is it a question of (re)interpretations of Islam primarily with the authors' Utopian imagination, ideological construction, and political projects, and when is it a question of generally accepted Islamic social norms, moral guidelines, and religious truths? When and how did particular interpretations of Islam lead to specific constructive actions and who were the actors? When was an activity carried out according to a tradition or obedience to an authority, and when was it the result of new insight leading to a decision based on adequate knowledge and moral sense? To an outsider, many current interpretations of Islam seem to be impersonal and duty-bound, as if Islam were a system that one has to learn and apply.

390

Muslims and Their Islam

The criteria for accepting or rejecting a particular interpretation of Islam remain fluid. In the end, a critical observer wonders whether certain militant interpretations of Islam today perhaps owe more to the difficult living conditions of Muslims at the present time than to being a characteristic of their faith. In the 20 t h century there were a number of reform movements in various religions—for instance, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, and Christianity as well as Islam—which suggests that a more general need for reform of religions had arisen. In part, such movements came into being as a reaction and resistance to the weight of religious traditions and rules. In part, it was a natural requirement in modernizing societies that people should live and think in new ways, also with their religions. The presence of the West and of Marxism, for instance, must have had a catalyzing effect in the development of a new consciousness in Asia and Africa. Perhaps the quest for reform may also have been partly a refusal of being simply reduced to material reality. There are indications that people were looking for wise men, leaders able to reform society and religion. There must have been high hopes invested in these attempts at reform.

5. Reflecting on the Notion of Reform Let me end with a few reflections to put the study of Islamic reforms in a broader social and cultural context. First, it makes a considerable difference if we study attempts to reform a particular religion or if we look at social and cultural reforms in a particular society that have consequences for its religion. On the one hand, there are interventions in normative religion itself, such as anNa'im's proposal to develop a kind of modern Islamic law as an alternative to shart'a. Other examples are reforms in the interpretation of the Qur'än (Scripture) and the use of sunna (tradition), reforms in theological thinking (kaläm), philosophical thought (falsafa), and ethics (akhläq), and reforms in religious education, religious studies, forms of spirituality, etc. On the other hand, there are actions taken in a society that bring about changes in its religion, too. Such actions imply dilemmas about how society is meant to develop. There are various models of Islamization of society that impose particular Islamic rules on Muslim communities and on society. There are also various secular models of development, such as a particular kind of economy, development of particular sectors of society, support of particular groups, emancipation of

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

391

women, fair treatment of minorities, support of studies abroad, international meetings, exchanges with people of other cultures, etc. The situation of present-day Muslim minorities in the West is new and willy-nilly, bringing about changes in religious traditions and in social and cultural behavior in general. Here may be the seeds of religious and social reforms growing from the necessities of life. Second, any conscious quest for reform—religious, social, or otherwise—implies thinking of the future, escaping from more or less oppressive present-day structures and searching for better forms of life. The quest for reform may be moved by specific experiences, a particular vision for the future, or a firm commitment to human causes. Such a reform implies creativity and a conscious choice by the people involved. The future of Islam and the Muslim world is also an argument. Reform is linked to the demands of a future for which Muslims have to prepare themselves. Third, it makes a difference if reform is directed toward one's own community, keeping its uniqueness, or if it encourages relations with others, and cooperation with a view to establishing aims to be realized together. The first attitude has been the usual one of religious communities and their religions toward each other. The second attitude, encouraging relations with others, can be found, for instance, among some groups of Muslim immigrants in the West. It can lead to common action with indigenous Westerners, for human rights for instance. It can also encourage the presentation of Muslim culture and Muslim ways of life to others, such as at the World of Islam Festival in Britain in the 1970s and for several decades now at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. It may stimulate interest in a common history, such as that of relations between Europe and the Muslim world, the Muslim and the Western worlds, the shared history of the Mediterranean area, East-West relations along the Silk Road, etc. In a creative way, it may lead for instance to cultural exchanges, scholarly cooperation, and improvement of coverage of each other by the media. Religion is not necessarily the most important element in promoting relations with others. Fourth, there are reforms not only of action but also of observation and reflection. In this case, new orientations in the vision of things are stressed and developed. Muslims may further discover their Islam and familiarize themselves with lesser known aspects of the Muslim civilization. They may acquire more knowledge and develop thinking about the Muslim and other civilizations. Non-Muslims may become aware of their ignorance and discover Muslim civilizations and religion.

392

Muslims and Their Islam

Both action and observation are liable to reform. In a long-term perspective, creative observation and thinking are as crucial as creative action. And together they may lead to fundamental reforms of mentality.

Appendix A Note on Reading Scriptures Reforms in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have been intimately connected with the particular ways the reformers read and understood the Scriptures of their religions. Their readings were different from established religious readings at the time and very different from present-day scholarly interpretations. Until recently, reformers did not ask questions about the canonization of their Scriptures. 2

1. Religious

Readings

Literary and historical criticism of the foundational texts of religions was in part born out of polemics between their adherents. Hellenistic philosophers pointed to contradictions and improbabilities in the New Testament. Christians accused Jews of not recognizing the announcements of Christ's coming that they saw in the Hebrew Bible. Jews accused Christians of wrongly interpreting the Hebrew Bible and considering it an "Old" Testament. Muslims accused Jews and Christians of tampering with texts in their Scriptures that announced the coming of Muhammad. Jews and Christians, according to Muslims, made their own selection of the authentic prophetic writings of Moses, David, and Jesus and added other texts to these writings. Christians denied that the Qur'än was revealed. Jews at most recognized the monotheistic message of Islam to gojim (non-Jews). Christians used the Hebrew Bible as a sacred history of which the New Testament was the fulfillment. Fundamentally, however, all three religions contested the revealed character of each other's Scriptures. The rabbis, theologians, and ulamä' who studied their texts carefully, considering their own as the deposit of divine revelation, must have been aware of what may be called literary and historical weaknesses in these texts. But they superimposed a religious reading on critical readings of these texts, which they saw as "sacred", as "Scriptures". For them, these Scriptural texts were authoritative and had to be read and 2

Canonization

and Decanonization,

Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998.

ed. by A . v a n der KOOIJ a n d K . v a n der TOORN,

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

393

studied as they stood; they could not be criticized, corrected, or revised. The task of religious scholars was largely to uncover the religious meanings of and in these authoritative Scriptures. To interpret problematical passages in their Scriptures, religious scholars could make a distinction between different levels of meaning and identify metaphorical and spiritual ones beyond the literal meaning of a text. In the case of conflicting texts within a Scripture, they could make a distinction between earlier and later texts, mostly assuming that a later revelation had abrogated an earlier one. Alternatively, they could search for a particular truth that the two conflicting texts held in common. A more general hermeneutical view was that a fundamental message ran through the different texts of the Scripture as a whole. This underlying message was to be recognized and decoded in its various expressions throughout the texts. Such religious readings made it possible for religious scholars in all three religions to accept on authority and study their own foundational texts as revealed Scripture. They searched for the truths these texts were held to contain and to communicate. The possibility of studying Scriptural texts more critically and in greater depth, thanks to a good knowledge of the original languages, remained the privilege of those scholars who had specialized in the subject and were recognized as religious authorities in their community. One of the tasks of present-day scholarship on these Scriptures is to reconstruct the ways Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious scholars of various orientations and at various times and places approached, read, and interpreted their Scriptures and to see what these interpretations implied. Such a study of religious interpretations of Scriptures is part of the study of subjective meanings in religion.

2. Literary and Historical

Interpretations

The situation changed when philosophers, such as SPINOZA (d. 1677) and historians such as Hermann REIMARUS (d. 1768) and Julius WELLHAUSEN (d. 1918), searching for historical truth, started to ask precise historical questions of Biblical texts. Did the events mentioned in Scripture actually take place? When and how and in what historical contexts were these texts written down? H o w were the various texts composed and to what extent can their successive redactions be reconstructed? What relationships were there between particular biblical and non-biblical texts, or between biblical texts and possible oral traditions? Which "worldly" interests could have played a role during the first writing, the ensuing redaction, the final composition, and the eventual canonization

394

Muslims and Their Islam

of these texts? The core question, of course, was and remains: what methods should we use in the scholarly study of these texts today? Questions such as these were not asked for the sake of polemics but in the interest of scholarly truth: to arrive at valid knowledge. To find answers, scholars could pursue research freely in universities, academies, and scholarly societies. The first Scriptures to be scrutinized critically in this way in the West were the foundational texts of Christianity itself; texts of other religions would follow. In the 19th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums, Jewish scholars in Germany such as Abraham GEIGER (d. 1844) started to do the same kind of critical literary and historical research on their own foundational texts, including the Thora, Mishna, and Talmud. In the first decades of the 20 t h century if not earlier, this kind of critical scholarship became better known to Muslims. They tended to perceive such critical literary and historical research on the Qur'än by European—non-Muslim—scholars in religious terms and some saw it as a religious attack on Islam by Western orientalists. Some militant groups called for a religious defense of Islam by Muslim scholars. There are questions here. Did Muslim religious scholars perhaps not have the right information or knowledge about the aims and means of Western scholarly research? Or could they not give their scholarly opinion openly because of the religious and political pressures that prevailed in society? Some Egyptian scholars, for instance, who did research on the Qur'än as a literary document were accused of unbelief, even though they were Muslims and carried out their research at the University of Cairo. As in the past in Europe, one had to have a certain courage to venture into critical research on what was considered sacred in one's own religion and make its results publicly known. This defensive attitude is not restricted to Islam. In many Christian and Jewish circles nowadays, outside the world of scholarship, critical research on the biblical text is still perceived with distrust. First of all, things sacred should not be questioned. Such questioning is not so much seen as a sign of curiosity and of the desire to know, but rather as a sign of unbelief. Second, the results of such research should not be made public, that is to say made available to believers. Their faith has to be protected against false and wrong questions by outsiders, just as religious truth has to be defended against wrong claims of knowledge. Third, the idea that such studies do not lead to truth but to error.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

3. Common Structures of the Scriptural

395

Religions

In the three religions considered, their Scriptures have great significance and a pivotal function. T h e y have been surrounded by stories about their miraculous nature and their origin has been ascribed to prophetic figures w h o accomplished superhuman tasks. T h e idea of the miraculous nature of their Scriptures and prophets supports the idea of the miraculous nature of these religions themselves. This is enhanced by the particular tradition supplementing the Scripture, the divine prescriptions and laws which their communities have to obey, and of course the more popular beliefs and practices alive among the people. It looks as if everything has been devised to place these religions outside the rules of ordinary human history and behavior. T h e foundational texts are attributed to supernatural events and to experiences bringing revelations to particular persons. T h e entry of these texts into the course of history and the reasons why certain texts or b o o k s and not others were canonized has n o t been clearly recorded. Last but not least, the authority enjoyed by the interpreters of these texts—as religious leaders of the community and guardians of its religion—is not justified rationally. T h e story of 'Uthmän's wilful destruction of alternative Q u r ' ä n versions is paradigmatic: as a rule, there should be no discussion or questioning about what is proclaimed to have religious authority in the community. F r o m their origin, the three religious communities concerned appear to have been on the defensive. Each religion developed its Scripture as a kind of bastion to defend itself against attacks from outside and questions from within. Such a defense was critical to the survival of the distinct groups that had crystallized as particular communities with their own religions. If religion was a cornerstone in the defense system of the community, Scripture was a cornerstone in the defense of its religion. In response to attacks from outside, arguments were developed to support the validity and truth of a community's Scripture. T o convince the opposing party, such arguments corresponded at least in part to the particular criteria it used to consider something as true Scripture. Christianity and Islam held that the Torah as an earlier Scripture had foretold the coming of a future Messenger w h o would bring the definitive Revelation. In response to discussions and debates following questions and criticisms raised within the community, the religious leaders formulated its particular religious truths. These c o m m u n a l truths indicated the special nature and the distinctive features of the communal life. As such, these truths had more weight than that of just theological doctrines.

396

Muslims and Their Islam

Notwithstanding evident differences among the three religions, their communal truths show a common structure, with elements accepted by all three communities: 1) the presence and possession of a Divine Revelation in the community; 2) the authority of a particular Scripture considered to guarantee the presence of this Revelation; 3) the authority of a prophetical Messenger who mediated the Revelation to the community and who is considered to guarantee the authority of the resulting Scripture; 4) the authority of persons who know the Scripture, mostly supplemented by knowledge of the recognized religious tradition; 5) specific beliefs, rituals, and other practices common to, and considered constitutive for, the community; 6) what is held to be the community's particular religion, making the community a religious one.

4. Common Structures around the Scriptures The Scriptures of the three religions also show a common structure, the elements of which were accepted by all three communities: 1) their miraculous origin and nature are asserted; all three Scriptures are considered linked to what is called God's Word; 2) they contain infallible truth and bring a perfect message with particular teachings, prescriptions, wisdom, and knowledge; they are considered definite and perfect; 3) the texts they contain are held to provide solutions for all kinds of problems that have to do with religion; quotations from Scriptural texts are an authoritative argument for solving a religious problem; 4) problems readers may have in understanding the meaning of particular Scriptural texts can be solved by special, sometimes ingenious, ways of interpreting these texts; 5) the truth of a Scripture is proved by the persuasive quality of the text and supported by the quality of the religion developed on the basis of it. In the religious traditions that developed with the rise of the three communities, the original state of each community is described as having been perfect. That was at the beginning, the time when revelation took place, directly accessible and witnessed by Scripture. Subsequently, to know the Scripture and tradition well and to understand their meanings correctly is possible only in the particular community itself, and specifi-

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

397

cally by its religious leaders. To obtain this knowledge is an ideal that becomes increasingly difficult to realize, even for members of the community. Outsiders—including Orientalists keen on knowing the language of the Scriptural texts and acquiring an empirical knowledge of these texts—cannot really understand the full meaning of the given Scripture.

5. Reform Movements

and their Reading of

Scripture

19 th - and 20 t h -century reformers and reform movements in Islam developed their own studies of the Qur'än and sunna, different from the classical medieval ones. They asked their own, new questions of these texts and they read and interpreted the latter to find answers to these questions of reform needed at the time. Islamic reform movements should therefore be studied not primarily as social movements or as predecessors of modern scholarship. They should be studied fundamentally according to the relation they had with their Scriptures, the questions they asked them, and the answers they found. They must have had particular expectations from the Scripture they studied. This could vary from an unconditional acceptance of the literal meaning of a selection of texts that they held to be more authoritative than others, to a conscious search for the main features of the particular reform they envisaged. Such a reform was then confirmed by particular texts they selected from Scripture for that purpose. All three religions had already developed particular interpretative techniques in studying their Scriptures. These were also used by reform movements in support of their claim that their message was correct. It was not only correct because it gave adequate solutions to the problems treated, but also because their message was based on Scripture or supported by it. Each reform movement addressed its religious Scripture and applied its particular interpretative technique to it. It did not take into account other possible interpretations of it and it hardly looked at other Scriptures. This procedure served the primary need of each reform movement: to find authoritative texts to support the reforms it proposed and defended.

Muslims and Their Islam

398

Selected

Literature

1. Initiatives to Reform and Renewal in Islam Before

1970

ABDERRAZIK, Ali, L'Islam et les fondements du pouvoir (1924). Nouvelle traduction et introduction de Abdou FILALI-ANSARY, Paris: La Decouverte et CED E J , 1994. ALI, Syed Ameer, Lhe Spirit of Islam. A History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam with a Life of the Prophet, London: Christophers, 1922. Paperback London: Methuen, 1965, reprinted 1967 etc. Art. "Isläh", in Lhe Encyclopaedia of Islam. New (2ND) Edition, Vol. 4, Leiden: Brill, 1 9 7 3 , pp. 1 4 1 - 1 7 1 : " T h e A r a b W o r l d " by Ali MERAD, p p . "Iran"

by H a m i d ALGAR, p p . 1 6 3 - 1 6 7 ;

141-163;

" T u r k e y " b y N i y a z i BERKES, p p .

1 6 7 - 1 7 0 ; " I n d i a - P a k i s t a n " by Aziz AHIMAD, p p . 1 7 0 - 1 7 1 ; a n d V o l . 1 2 , Leiden: Brill, 2 0 0 4 , p p . 4 6 6 - 4 7 0 : " C e n t r a l A s i a " by M e t i n HEPER.

BENNABI, Malek, Vocation de l'Islam, Paris: Seuil, 1954. English translation by Asma RASHID, Islam in History and Society, Islamabad: Islam Research Institute, 1988. COMMINS, David Dean, Islamic Reform. Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam, ed. by Nehemiah LEVTZION and John Obert VOLL, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987. FYZEE, Asaf Α. Α., A Modern Approach to Islam, London: Asia Publishing House, 1963. New edition Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981. HIMMICH, Bensalem, De la formation ideologique en Islam. Ijtihädät et Histoire. Preface de Maxime RODINSON. Postface de Μ. A. LAHBABI, Paris: Anthropos, 1981. Second edition Rabat: Ed. Guessous, 1990. Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890-1939, ed. by Marawan R . BUHEIRY, Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981. IQBAL, Muhammad, Lhe Reconstruction of Religious Lhought in Islam, London: Milford, 1930. New edition by M. Saed SHEIKH, Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1986. "Isläh", see above under: Art. "Isläh". Islam and Modernity. Muslim Intellectuals respond, ed. by John COOPER, Ronald NETTLER and Mohamed MAHMOUD, London: I. B. Taurus, 1998. Islamic Lhought in the Lwentieth Century, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI and Basheer M. NAFI, London and New York: Tauris, 2004. Islams and Modernities, ed. by Aziz al-AziMEH, London: Verso, 1993, 2 n d ed. 1996. JANSEN, J. J. G., Art. "Tadjdld", in Lhe Encyclopaedia of Islam, New (2 nd ) edition, Vol. 10, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 61b-62a. KERR, Malcolm H., Islamic Reform. Lhe Political and Legal Lheories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Ridä, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. MERAD, Ali, Le Reformisme musulman en Algerie de 192S a 1940, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1967. NAFI, Basheer M., Lhe Rise and Decline of the Arab-Islamic Reform Movement, London: Crescent Publications, 2000.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

399

NOER, Deliar, The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1900-1942, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1978. The Religion Reformers in Islam, ed. by Hüseyn HILMI, Istanbul: Isik Kitabevi, 6 th edition 1970. SHEPARD, William, The Faith of a Modern Muslim Intellectual. The Religious Aspects and Implications of the Writings of Ahmad Amin, New Delhi: Indian Institute of Islamic Studies and Vikas Publishing House, 1982. TROLL, Christian, Sayyid Ahmad Khan. A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology, New Delhi: Vikas, 1978. ZEBIRI, Kate, Mahmud Shaltut and Islamic Modernism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

2. Present-Day Thinking on Renewal of Islam ABU ZAID, Nasr Hamid, Naqd al-khitäb al-dlm (Criticism of the religious discourse), Cairo, 1994. German translation Islam und Politik. Kritik des religiösen Diskurses. Mit einer Einleitung und einem Interview mit dem Autor von Navid KERMANI, Frankfurt a.M.: DIPΑ-Verlag, 1996. French translation Critique du discours religieux. Essais traduits de l'arabe (Egypte) par Mohamed CHAIRET, Paris: Sindbad Sud, 1999. —, Ein Leben mit dem Islam. Presented by Navid KERMANI, Freiburg, etc.: Herder, 1999. ARKOUN, Mohammed, Pour une critique de la raison islamique (Islam d'hier et d'aujourd'hui 24), Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984. —, Rethinking Islam. Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, Boulder, Col. & London: Westview Press, 1994. —, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, London: Saqi Books, 2002. AL-ASHMAWY, Muhammad Said, L'islamisme contre I'Islam. Paris: La Decouverte, and Cairo: Ed. al-Fikr, 1989. AZM, Sadik J. al-, Unbehagen in der Moderne. Aufklärung im Islam, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1993. AZMEH, Aziz al-, Arabic Thought and Islamic Societies, London: Croom Helm, 1986. —, Islamic Law: Social and Historical Contexts, New York: Routledge, 1988. —, Islams and Modernities, London and New York: Verso, 1993, 2 n d edition 1996. —, Muslim Kinghip. Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities, London: Tauris, 1997. BABES, Leila, Le voile demystifie, Paris: Bayard, 2004. BENZINE, Rachid, Les nouveaux penseurs de l'islam, Paris: Albin Michel, 2004. BROWN, Daniel W., Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge Middle East Studies 5), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. CHARFI, Abdelmajid, L'islam entre le message et l'histoire, Paris: Albin Michel, 2004.

400

Muslims and Their Islam

CHARFI, Mohamed, Islam et liberte. Le malentendu historique. Paris: Albin Michel, 1998. English translation: Islam and Liberty. The Historical Misunderstanding, London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. CHEBEL, Malek, Manifeste pour un Islam des Lumieres, Paris: Hachette, 2004. ENAYAT, Hamid, Modern Islamic Political Thought, Austin: University of Texas Press, and London: Macmillan, 1982. FYZEE, Asaf Α. Α., A Modern Approach to Islam, London: Asia Publishing House, 1963. New edition Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981. HIMMICH, Bensalem, De la formation ideologique et Islam. Ijtihädät et Histoire. Preface de Maxime RODINSON. Postface de Μ. A. LAHBABI, Paris: Anthropos, 1981. Second edition Rabat: Ed. Guessous, 1990. Islam and Modernity. Muslim Intellectuals Respond, ed. by John COOPER, Ronald NETTLER and Mohamed MAHMOUD, London: I. B. Taurus, 1998 Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI and Basheer M. NAEI, London and New York: Tauris, 2004. Islams and Modernities, ed. by Aziz al-AziMEH, London: Verso, 1993, 2 nd ed. 1996. JABRI, Mohammed Abed al-, Introduction a la critique de la raison arabe, Paris: Ed. La Decouverte et Institut du monde arabe, 1994. JANSEN, J . J . G., Art. "Tadjdld", in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New (2 nd ) edition, vol. 10, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 61b-62a. KAiMALi, Mohammed Hashim, Freedom of Expression in Islam, Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 1994, revised 2 nd edition 1997. KHATAiMi, Seyed Mohammad, Religiosität und Modernität, Heidelberg: Deux Mondes, 2001. LABDAOUI, Abdellah, Les nouveaux intellectuels arabes, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993. LAROUI, Abdallah, Islam et modernite, Paris: La Decouverte, 1987. —, Esquisses historiques, Casablanca: Centre Culturel Arabe, 1992. —, Islamisme, modernisme, liberalisme. Esquisses critiques, Casablanca: Centre Culturel Arabe, 1997. —, Islam et histoire. Essai d'epistemologie, Paris: Flammarion 8ί Albin Michel, 1999. Liberal Islam. A Source Book, ed. by Charles KURZMAN, New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1998. MARTIN, Richard C. and Mark R. WOODWARD, with Dwi S. ATiMAjA, Defenders of Reason in Islam. Mu 'tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997. NOOR, Farish. New Voices of Islam, Leiden: ISIM, 2002. Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender and Pluralism, ed. by Omid SAFI, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. RAHMAN, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity. Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982, 1984. REDISSI, Hamadi, L'exception islamique, Paris: Seuil, 2004. SEIDEL, Roman, Hermeneutik, Glaube und Freiheit. Das postrevolutionäre Denken des iranischen Theologen Mohammed Mojtahed Shabestari, Magisterarbeit FU Berlin, 2004.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

401

TALBI, Mohamed, Plaidoyer pour un Islam moderne, Tunis: Ceres, 1998, 2 nd ed. 2001. —, Penseur libre en Islam. Un intellectuel musulman dans la Tunisie de Ben Ali: Entretiens avec Gwendoline Jarczyk, Paris: Albin Michel, 2002. ZAKARIYA, Fouad, La'icite et islamisme. Les Arabes a l'heure du cboix, Paris: La Decouverte et CEDEJ, 1991.

3. Reinterpretations

of Islam in Terms of

Reform

ABDERRAZIK, Ali, L'Islam et les fondements du pouvoir (1924). Nouvelle traduction et introduction de Abdou FILALI-ANSARY, Paris: La Decouverte et CEDEJ, 1994. ABOU ZAID, Nasr, Critique du discours religieux (Naqd al-khitäb al-dtnt). Essais traduits de l'arabe (Egypte) par Mohamed CHAIRET, Paris: Sindbad Actes Sud, 1999. German translation: ABU ZAID, Nasr Hamid, Islam und Politik: Kritik des religiösen Diskurses. Mit einer Einleitung und einem Interview mit dem Autor von Navid KERMANI, Frankfurt a.M.: Dia Verlag, 1996. AHIMED, Akbar S., Postmodernism and Islam. Predicament and Promise, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, 2 n d ed. 1996. AKHTAR, Shabbir, Reason and the Radical Crisis of Faith, New York, etc.: Peter Lang, 1987. AMIRPUR, Katajun, Die Entpolitisierung des Islam. Abdolkanm Sorüss Denken und Wirkung in der islamischen Republik Iran, Würzburg: Ergon, 2003. —, Gott ist mit dem Furchtlosen. Schirin Ebadi und der Kampf um die Zukunft Irans, Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2003. AZMEH, Aziz al-, Islams and Modernities, London and New York: Verso, 2 n d ed. 1996.

BROWERS, Michaelle, An Islamic Reformation? Lanham, Md., Lexington Books, 2004. DAHLEN, Ashk P., Islamic Law, Epistemology and Modernity. Legal Philosophy in Contemporary Iran, New York and London: Routledge, 2003. EBADI, Shirin and Azadeh MOAVENI, A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, New York: Random House, 2006. ESACK, Farid, Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism. An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997, 5 th ed. 2005. —, On Being a Muslim. Finding the Religious Path in the Modern World, Oxford: Oneworld, 1999, 5th edition 2005. FILALI-ANSARY, Abdou, Reformer I'lslam. Une introduction aux debats contemporains, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003. HAJATPOUR, Reza, Iranische Geistlichkeit zwischen Utopie und Realismus. Xum Diskurs über Herrschafts- und Staatsdenken im 20. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002. HASSAN, Riaz, Faithlines. Muslim Conceptions of Islam and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. An Islamic Reformation?, ed. by Michaelle BROWERS and Charles KLLRZMAN, Oxford: Lexington Books, 2004.

402

Muslims and Their Islam

NA'ÜM, Abdullahi Ahmed an-, "Civil Rights in the Islamic Constitutional Tradition. Shared Ideals and Divergent Regimes", The John Marshall Law Review, Vol. 25, Nr. 2 (Winter 1992), pp. 2 6 7 - 2 9 3 . —, Toward an Islamic Reformation. Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990, 1996. RAHMAN, Fazlur, Revival and Reform in Islam. A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism, ed. by Ebrahim MOOSA, London: Oneworld, 1999. RAHNEMA, Ali, An Islamic Utopian. A Political Biography of Ali Shari'ati, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998. Paperback edition 2000. RAIMADAN, Tariq and Alain GRESH, L'Islam en questions. Debat anime et presente par Frangoise GERMAIN-ROBIN, Paris: Sindbad-Actes Sud, 2000. RAIMADAN, Tariq and Jacques NEIRYNCK, Peut-on vivre avec I'lslam? Le choc de la religion musulmane et des societes laiques et chritiennes, Lausanne: Favre, 1999. RUTHVEN, Malise, Tundamentalism. The Search for Meaning, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. SAYAD, Parviz, Shirin Ebadi. Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2003, Los Angeles: Ketab, 2005. SOROUSH, 'Abdolkarim, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam. Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush. Translated and edited by Mahmoud SADRI and Ahmad SADRI, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. TAHA, Mahmoud Mohamed, The Second Message of Islam. Translated by Abdullahi Ahmed an-NA'IM. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987. French translation of this book: Un Islam a vocation liberatrice, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. Turkish Islam and the Secular State. The Gülen Movement, ed. by Hakan Μ. YAVUZ and John L. ESPOSITO, Syracuse, N Y : Syracuse University Press, 2003.

4. Islamic Resurgence and Politics ABU-RABI", Ibrahim M., Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. ALVI, Sajida Sultana; Homa HOODFAR; Sheila M C D O N O U G H , The Muslim Veil in North America: Issues and Debates, Toronto: Women's Press, 2003. DIA, Mamadou, Islam, societes africaines et culture industrielle, Dakar etc.: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1975. HAENNI, Patrick, L'ordre des ca'ids, Paris: Karthala, 2005. —, L'Islam de march0, I'autre revolution conservatrice, Paris: Seuil, 2005. HAJATPOUR, Reza, Iranische Geistlichkeit zwischen Utopie und Realismus. Zum Diskurs über Herrschafts- und Staatsdenken im 20. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002. Islamic Movements. Impact on Political Stability in the Arab World. Translated by Ahmad MOUSSALLI, Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2003. Islamism and Secularism in North Africa, ed. by John RUEDY, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

403

LAWRENCE, Bruce, Defenders of God. The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. —, Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. MOTTAHEDEH, Roy, The Mantle of the Prophet. Religion and Politics in Iran, New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Repr. Oxford: Oneworld, 2000. Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender and Pluralism, ed. by Omid Safi, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, ed. by Sabine ScHiMiDTKE, Leiden: Brill, 2006. ROALD, Anne Sofie, Women in Islam: The Western Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. SIRRIYEH, Elizabeth, Sufis and Anti-Sufis. The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999. Spokesmen for the Despised. Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, ed. by R. Scott APPLEBY, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ZAMAN, Muhammad Qasim, The 'Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change, Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. ZEGHAL, Malika, Gardiens de l'Islam. Les oulemas d'Al Azhar dans I'Egypte contemporaine, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po & Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1996.

5. Islam inland the West BENCHEIKH, Soheib, Marianne et le Prophete. L'Islam dans la France latque, Paris: Grasset, 1998. BOISARD, Marcel Α., L'humanisme de l'Islam, Paris: Albin Michel, 1979. German translation: Der Humanismus des Islam, Kaltbrunn: Verlag Zum Hecht, 1982. FETZER, Joel S. and J. Christopher SOPER, Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. HUSSEIN, Taha, The Future of Culture in Egypt (Mustaqbal al-thaqäfa ft Misr, Cairo 1944). Translated by Sidney GLAZER, Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954. Islam and the European Union, ed. by Richard Ροτζ and Wolfgang WIESHAIDER, Leuven: Peeters, 2004. IZETBEGOVIC, 'Alija 'Ali, Islam between East and West, Indianapolis: American Trust, 1984. LATHION, Stephane, Musulmans d'Europe. L'emergence d'une identite citoyenne, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, ed. by Stefano ALLIEVI and Jörgen S. NIELSEN, Leiden: Brill, 2 0 0 3 . Muslims in the Enlarged Europe: Religion and Society, ed. by Brigitte MARECHAL, Stefano ALLIEVI, Felice DASSETTO and Jörgen NIELSEN (Series Muslim Minorities, vol. 2), Leiden: Brill, 2003. Muslims on the Americanization Path?, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 0 0 0 .

Muslims and Their Islam

404

Paroles d'Islam. Individus, societes et discours dans I'Islam europeen contemporain; Islamic Words: Individuals, Societies and Discourse in Contemporary European Islam, ed. by Felice DASSETTO, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2000 (The book contains both English and French texts). QURESHI, Emran, and Michael A . SELLS, The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. RAIMADAN, Tariq, Islam, the West and the Challenge of Modernity, Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2001. SAYYID, Bobby, A Fundamental Fear. Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism, London: Zed Books, 1997, 2 n d edition 2003. Taking back Islam. American Muslims Reclaim their Faith, ed. by Michael WOLFE, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2 0 0 2 .

TIETZE, Nikola, Jeunes musulmans de France et d'Allemagne. Les constructions subjectives de l'identite, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. Turkish Islam and Europe/Tiirkischer Islam und Europa, ed. by Günter SEUEERT and Jacques WAARDENBURG (Beiruter Texte und Studien 82), Istanbul: Deutsches Orient Institut, and Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999. The West and the Muslim World - Der Westen und die islamische Welt Al-gharb wa'l-'älam al-islämt. Eine muslimische Position. Europäisch-islamischer Kulturdialog (Meeting Neuhardenberg, October 2002). Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 2004.

6. Worldwide

Islam

Globalization and the Muslim World. Culture, Religion, and Modernity, ed. by Birgit SCHAEBLER and Leif STENBERG, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2 0 0 4 .

HANAFI, Hassan, Islam in the Modern World (Collection of Papers). Vol. 1: Religion, Ideology and Development; Vol. 2: Tradition, Revolution and Culture, Cairo: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1995. Islam, Communities and the Nation. Muslim Identities in South Asia and Beyond, ed. by Mushirul HASAN, New Delhi: Manoh, 1998. Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity, ed. by Akbar S. AHIMED and Hastings DONNAN, London, etc.: Routledge, 1994. Islam in the Era of Globalization. Muslim Attitudes towards Modernity and Identity, ed. by Johan MEULEiMAN, Jakarta and Leiden: INIS, 2001. IZETBEGOVIC, 'Alija 'Ali, Islam between East and West, Plainfield, Ind.: American Trust Publications, 1984, 3 r d edition 1999. —, Le Manifeste Islamique (Islamska deklaracija, 1980). Traduit, presente, annote et commente par Ahmed ABIDI (Collection L'Islam Autrement), Paris: Al-Bouraq, 1999. ROY, Olivier, Globalized Islam. The Search for a New Ummah, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

7. Ideas and Developments

in Contemporary

405

Islam

Khaled, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. —, Speaking in God's Name. Islamic Law, Authority and Women, Oxford: Oneworld, 2001. —, Reasoning with God. Rationality and Thought in Islam, Oxford: Oneworld, 2002. —, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. ABUL-FADL, Mona, Introducing Islam from Within. Alternative Perspectives, Leicester (UK): Islamic Foundation, 1991. AMIRPUR, Katajun, Die Entpolitisierung des Islam. Abdolkartm Sorüss Denken und Wirkung in der Islamischen Republik Iran, Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2003. AYOUB, Mahmoud Mustafa, Islam, Faith and Practice, Lahore: Suhail Academy, 2001. BARBULESCO, LUC and CARDINAL, Philippe, L'Islam en questions; vingt-quatre icrivains arabes repondent, Paris: Grasset, 1986. CHEBEL, Malek, Manifeste pour un Islam des Lumieres, Paris: Hachette, 2 0 0 4 . The Contemporary Islamic Revival. A Critical Survey and Bibliography, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and others, New York, 1991. COOKE, Miriam, Women claim Islam. Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature, London, 2000. DJAIT, Hichem, La personnalite et le devenir arabo-islamiques, Paris: Seuil, 1974. ESPOSITO, John L., Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform, Boulder, Col. and London: Westview Press, 1997. — and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Gesichter des Islam, 2. Orient-Tagung im Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 1992. HALLAQ, Wael B . , Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Intellectuels et militants de l'Islam contemporain, ed. by Gilles KEPEL and Yann RICHARD, Paris: Seuil, 1990. Der Islam am Wendepunkt. Liberale und konservative Reformer einer Weltreligion, ed. by Katajun AMIRPUR and Ludwig AMIMANN (Herder Spektrum 5665), Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2006. Islam et Laicite (Arabic texts with French translation), Etudes Arabes (Dossiers), No 9 1 - 9 2 (1996/2-1997/1), Rome: P.I.S.A.I., 1997. Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives, ed. by John J. DONOHUE and John L . ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition. Essays by Western Muslim Scholars, ed. by Joseph Ε. B. LUIMPARD. Introduction by Seyyed Hossein NASR. Bloomington, Ind.: World Wisdom Books, 2004. Islam, Gender and Social Change, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and John L . ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ABOU EL FADL,

406

Muslims and Their Islam

The Islamic Alternative, ed. by Ibrahim ABU-LUGHOD. Special issue of Arab Studies Quarterly (Vol. 4, Nr. 1/2), Spring 1982. Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI and Basheer M. NAFI, London and New York: Tauris, 2004. K R Ä M E R , Gudrun, Gottes Staat als Republik. Reflexionen zeitgenössischer Muslime zu Islam, Menschenrechten und Demokratie, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999. Makers of Contemporary Islam, ed. by John L . ESPOSITO and John O . VOLL, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. MALEK, Redha, Tradition et revolution. L'enjeu de la modernite en Algerie et dans l'Islam, Paris: Sindbad, 1993. Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, ed. by Sabine SCHMIDTKE, Leiden: Brill, 2006. Remaking Women. Feminism and Identity in the Middle East, ed. by Lila Abu LUGHOD, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. ROUSSILLON, Alain, La pensee islamique contemporaine. Acteurs et penseurs, Paris: Tetraedre, 2005. SACHEDINA, Abdulaziz, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. SALEH, Soubhi, Reponse de l'Islam aux defis de notre temps (Collection "Dialogue pour un monde meilleur"), Beirut: Ed. Arabelle, 1979. SALVATORE, Armando, Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, Reading: Ithaca Press, 1997. SHARIATI, Ali, Reflections of a Concerned Muslim on the Plight of Oppressed Peoples, Houston: Free Islamic Literatures, 1979. Spokesmen for the Despised. Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, ed. by R. Scott APPLEBY, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. STENBERG, Leif, The Islamization of Science. Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity, Stockholm: Almqvist, 1996. YASSINE, Abdessalam, Islamiser la modernite, Rabat: Al Olok, 1 9 9 8 . YASSINE, Nadia, Toutes voiles dehors, Casablanca: Le Fennee, 2003. ZAKARIYA, Fouad, Εαϊάΐέ et islamisme. Les Arabes a l'heure du choix. Paris: La Decouverte et CEDEJ, 1991.

8. Situation and Future of Women Sajida Sultana; Homa H O O D F A R ; Sheila M C D O N O U G H , The Muslim Veil in North America. Issues and Debates, Torionto: Toronto's Women Press, 2003. AMIRPUR, Katajun, Gott ist mit dem Furchtlosen. Schirin Ebadi und der Kampf um die Zukunft Irans, Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2003. BABES, Leila, Le voile demystifie, Paris: Bayard, 2004. COOKE, Miriam, Women Claim Islam. Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature, London, 2000. Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions. Studies in the History of Religions, ed. by Ria KLOPPENBORG and Wouter J. HABEGRAAFF, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 1995. ALVI,

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture

407

Islam, Gender and Social Change, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and John L. ESPOSITO, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. RAUDVERE, Catharina, The Book and the Roses. Sufi Women, Visibility, and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul, Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute; London: I. B. Tauris, 2002. Religion and Gender, ed. by Ursula KING, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Remaking Women. Feminism and Identity in the Middle East, ed. by Lila Abu LUGHOD, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. ROALD, Anne Sofie, Women in Islam: The Western Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. SARDAR, Ali Shaheen, Equal before Allah, Unequal before Man? Negotiating Gender Hierarchies in Islam and International Law, Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1999. SAYAD, Parviz, Shirin Ebadi. Nobel Prize Winner 2003, Los Angeles: Ketab, 2005. Women in the World's Religions. Past and Present, ed. by Ursula KING, New York: Paragon, 1987.

9. Situation and Role of Religious

Authorities

MOTTAHEDEH, Roy, The Mantle of the Prophet. Religion and Politics in Iran, New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Reprinted Oxford: Oneworld, 2000. Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, ed. by Sabine ScHiMiDTKE, Leiden: Brill, 2006. ZAMAN, Muhammad Qasim, The 'Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change, Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. ZEGAL, Malika, Gardiens de l'Islam. Les oulemas d'Al Azhar dans I'Egypte contemporaine, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po & Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1996.

10. Some Subjects of Current

Debate

ARKOUN, Mohammed, Pour une critique de la raison islamique (Islam d'hier et d'ajourd'hui 24), Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984. ASHIMAWY, Muhammad Said al-, L'islamisme contre l'Islam, Paris: La Decouverte, and Cairo: al-Fikr, 1989. Original text: Al-isläm al-siyäsi, Cairo 1987. AHMAD, Eqbal, Confronting Empire, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2 0 0 0 . ATTAS, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-, Islam and Secularism. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 1978. Second impression 1993. AZM, Sadik J. al-, Unbehagen in der Moderne. Aufklärung im Islam, ed. by KaiHenning GERLACH, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993. Contemporary Debates in Islam. An Anthology of Modernist and Fundamentalist Thought, ed. by Mansoor MOADDEL and Kamran TALATTOF, Houndsmill and London: Macmillan, 2 0 0 0 .

Muslims and Their Islam

408

The Empire and the Crescent. Global Implications for a New American Century, ed. by Aftab Ahmad MALIK, Bristol: Amal Press, 2 0 0 3 . FILALI-ANSARY, Abdou, Reformer I'Islam. Une introduction aux debats contemporains, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003. Islam and Modernity. Muslim Intellectuals Respond, ed. by John COOPER, Ronald NETTLER, Mohamed MAHMOUD, London: I. B. Taurus, 1998. KRÄIMER, Gudrun, Gottesstaat als Republik. Reflexionen zeitgenössischer Muslime zu Islam, Menschenrechte und Demokratie, Baden Baden: Nomos Verlag, 1999. MOTTAHEDEH, Roy, "The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist's Critique", Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, vol. 2 (1996), pp. 1-26. SAID, Edward, "The Clash of Ignorance", in The Nation, October 4, 2001.

Appendix A N o t e on Reading Scriptures 1. Scripture in General GRAHAiM, William Α., Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 2 nd ed. 1993. —, Art. "Scripture" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 nd Edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 12, pp. 8194-8205. Holy Book and Holy Tradition, ed. by Frederick F. BRUCE and E. G. RUPP, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1968. The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, ed. by Frederick M. DENNY and Rodney L. TAYLOR, Columbus, S.C.: South Carolina University Press,1985. MORENZ, Siegfried, "Entstehung und Wesen der Buchreligion", Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 75 (1950), pp. 709-715. Rethinking Scripture, ed. by Miriam LEVERING, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1989. SIMITH, Wilfred Cantwell, "The Study of Religion and the Study of the Bible", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 39 (June 1971), pp. 131-140. —, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, and London; SCM Press, 1993.

2. Scripture in Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam

Holy Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. by Hendrik Μ. VROOIM and Jerald D. GORT, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. PETERS, F . E . , Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: The Classical Texts and their Interpretations, 2 vols., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. REEVES, John C., Bible and Qur'än. Essays in Scriptural Intertextulity, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004.

Islamic Reform and Renewal. Recourse to Scripture 3. Scripture

in

409

Islam

Farid, The Qur'an. A Short Introduction, Oxford: Oneworld, 2002, 3 r d edition 2004. —, The Qur'an. A User's Guide, Oxford: Oneworld, 2005. GRAHAiM, W. Α., "The Earliest Meaning of 'Qur'än'," Die Welt des Islams, vol. 23/24 (1984), pp. 3 6 1 - 3 7 7 . —, See above under 1: Beyond the Written Word . . . (1987, 1993), pp. 7 9 - 1 1 6 . KERMANI, Navid, Gott ist schön. Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999. N E L S O N , Kristina, The Art of Reciting the Qur'än, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1985. The Qur'än as Text, ed. by Stefan W I L D , Leiden: Brill, 1996. W A R D , Rosalind, Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qur'än. God's Arguments, London and New York: Routledge and Curzon, 2004. ESACK,

4. New and

Kinds of Muslim Interpretation

Qur'an

Exegesis,

Reading,

Nasr Hamid, Mafhüm al-nass. Diräsa ft ulünt al-Qur'än (The Concept of Text. A Study on the Qur'änic Sciences), Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqäfi al-'Arabl, 1990. —, "Rethinking the Qur'än. Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics" (Inaugural address), Islamochristiana, Nr. 30 (2004), pp. 2 5 - 4 5 ARKOUN, Mohammed, Lectures du Coran, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982. Revised edition Tunis: Alif, 1991. BARLAS, Asma, Believing Women in Islam. Unreading Patriarchal Interpretation of the Qur'än, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2002. ENNAIEER, H'mida, Les commentaires coraniques contemporains. Analyse de leur methodologie (Collection "Studi arabo-islamici del PISAI" no 10; comp. Etudes Arabes no 93), Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Studi Arabi e d'lslamistica, 1998. (Arabic and French). ESACK, Farid, Qur'än, Liberation and Pluralism. An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997, 2 n d ed. 1998, 3 r d ed. 2002. KERMANI, Navid, Offenbarung als Kommunikation. Das Konzept wahy in Nasr Hamid Abu Zayds Mafhüm an-nass, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1996. Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'än, ed. by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. SAEED, Abdullah, "Rethinking 'Revelation' as a Precondition for Reinterpreting the Qur'än. A Qur'anic Perspective", Journal of Qur'anic Studies, vol. 1 no. 1 (1999), pp. 9 3 - 1 1 4 . WADUD, Amina, Qur'än and Woman. Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ABU ZAYD,

410

Muslims and Their Islam

5. Some Studies about New Kinds of Muslim Qur'an

Interpretation

Approaches to the Qur'än, ed. by G . R. HÄWTING and Abdul-Kader A. SHAREEF, London and New York: Routledge, 1993. BALJON, J. M . S . , Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation (1880-1960), Leiden: Brill, 1961, 2 n d ed. 1968. K Ö R N E R , Felix, Revisionist Koran Hermeneutics in Contemporary Turkish University Theology. Rethinking Islam, Würzburg: Ergon, 2005. Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, edited by Suha TAJI-FAROUKI, London: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2004. W I E L A N D T , Rotraud, Offenbarung und Geschichte im Denken moderner Muslime, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971. —, "Wurzeln der Schwierigkeit innerislamischen Gesprächs über neue hermeneutische Zugänge zum Korantext", in The Qur'än as Text, ed. by Stefan W I L D , Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 2 5 7 - 2 8 2 . —, Art. "Exegesis of the Qur'än: Early Modern and Contemporary", Encyclopedia of the Qur'än, vol. 2, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002, pp. 1 2 4 - 1 4 2 . WILD, Stefan, "Die andere Seite des Textes. Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid und der Koran", Die Welt des Islam (N.S.), vol. 33 (1993), pp. 2 5 6 - 2 6 1 . —, Mensch, Prophet und Gott im Koran. Muslimische Exegeten des 20. Jahrhundert und das Menschenbild der Moderne, Münster: Rhema, 2001.

Part Six Further Reading

Further Reading 1. Middle Eastern Responses to Western Islamic Studies The Orientalism

Debate

ABDEL-MALEK, Anouar, "Orientalism in Crisis", Diogenes, Nr. 44 (Winter 1963), pp. 103-140. French text: "L'Orientalisme en crise", Diogene, No. 44 (1963), pp. 109-142. Responses by Claude CAHEN (English in Diogenes 4 9 , Spring 1 9 6 5 , pp. 1 3 5 - 1 3 8 ) and Francesco GABRIELI (English in Diogenes 50, Summer 1965, pp. 128-136). ABED, Shukri, Israeli Arabism. The Latest Incarnation of Orientalism in the Muslim World, Washington, D.C.: International Center for Research and Public Policy, 1988. AHMAD, Aijaaz, "Between Orientalism and Historicism", Studies in History, N.S. Vol. 7 (1991), Nr. 1, pp. 135-163. —, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, London: Verso, 1992. AHIMAD, Khurshid, Islam and the West, Lahore: Jama'at-i-islami Pakistan, 1957. ALGAR, Hamid, "The Problems of Orientalists", Islamic Literature (Lahore), Vol. 17, No. 2 (1971), pp. 95-106. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, ed. by Talal ASAD, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1973. As Others see Us. Mutual Perceptions East and West, ed. by B. LEWIS, E. LEITES, and M. CASE. Special issue of Comparative Civilizations Review (New York), Vol. 13-14 (1985-86). AZM, Sadiq al-, "Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse", Khamsin, Vol. 8 (1981), pp. 5-26. AZMEH, Aziz al-, "The Articulation of Orientalism", Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1981), pp. 384-402. —, Ibn Khaldün in Modern Scholarship. A Study in Orientalism, London: Third World Centre for Research and Publ., 1981. —, Islamic Studies and the European Imagination, Exeter: Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 1986. —, "Ibn Khaldün in Modern Scholarship. A Study in Orientalism", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 46, no. 3 (1987), pp. 233-234. BAHAY, Mohammad el-, The Attitude of Missionaries and Orientalists towards Islam, Cairo, 1963. BAITÄR, Nadlm al-, "From Western Orientalism to Arab Orientalism" [Arabic], in ID., Hudüd al-huwtya al-qaumtya \The Boundaries of Nationalist Identity], Bairüt: Dar al-Wahda, 1982.

414

Further Reading

BATUNSKY, Mark, "Russian Clerical Islamic Studies in the Late 19 t h and Early 20 t h Centuries", Central Asian Survey, vol. 13, nr. 2 (1994), pp. 2 1 3 - 2 3 5 . BENABOUD, M'hammad, "Orientalism and the Arab Elite", The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 26 (1982), pp. 3 - 1 4 . —, "The Prophet's Revelation and 20 t h Century Orientalists. The Case of W. M. Watt and M. Rodinson", Revue d'Histoire Maghrebine, Vol. 13, No. 4 1 - 4 2 (1986), pp. 1 4 3 - 1 6 1 . —, "The Methodology of Orientalism in Islamic History", in Melanges Professeur Robert Mantran, ed. by Α. ΤΕΜΠΜΙ, Zaghouan (Tunisie): Pub. du CEROMDI, 1988, pp. 5 1 - 8 2 . BOSWORTH, C . E . , "Orientalism and Orientalists", in Arab-Islamic Bibliography, ed. by Diana GRIMWOOD-JONES and others, Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1977, pp. 1 4 8 - 1 5 6 . BULLIET, Richard W., "Orientalism and Medieval Islamic Studies", in The Past and Tuture of Medieval Studies, ed. by John VAN ENGEN, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994, pp. 9 4 - 1 0 4 . BURKE III, Edmund, "The Sociology of Islam: The French Tradition", in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H . K E R R (7 th Georgio Levi Dela Vica Conference), Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1980, pp. 73-88. BÜTTNER, Friedemann, "Situation, Structure and Functions of Contemporary Oriental Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany. Spiritual Imperialism or Bridge of Intercultural Communication?", in Europe's Tuture in the Arab View. Dimensions of a New Political Cooperation in the Mediterranean Region, ed. by Dieter BIELENSTEIN, Saarbrücken et al.: Breitenbach, 1981, pp. 7 1 - 8 6 . CHARNAY, Jean-Paul, Les Contre-Orients ou comment penser l'autre selon soi, Paris: Sindbad, 1980. —, "Des Contre-Orients aux Contre-Occidents", Etudes Orientales, No 2, janvier 1998, pp. 5 - 1 6 . CLARKE, John James, Oriental Enlightenment, London: Routledge, 1997. CLIEEORD, James, "Review of Orientalism", History and Theory, Vol. 1 9 ( 1 9 8 0 ) , Nr. 2, pp. 2 0 4 - 2 2 3 . —, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Titerature, and Art, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. COHEN, Warren C., Reflections on Orientalism, East Lansing, Mich.: Asian Studies Center, 1983. DANIEL, Norman, "Edward Said and the Orientalists", Melanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales du Caire (MIDEO), Vol. 15 (1982), pp. 211-222. DAS, Veena, "Gender Studies, Cross-cultural Comparison and the Colonial Organisation of Knowledge", Berkshire Review, Vol. 21 (1986), pp. 5 8 - 7 6 . DJAIT, H . , Europe and Islam. Cultures and Modernity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. ESCOVITZ, Joseph H., "Orientalists and Orientalism in the Writings of Muhammad Kurd 'Ali", International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), vol. 15 (1983), pp. 9 5 - 1 0 9 .

Further Reading

415

FÄHNDRICH, Hartmut, "Invariable Factors Underlying the Historical Perspective of Theodor Nöldeke's Orientalische Skizzen", in Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft (UEAI), ed. by A. D I E T R I C H , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976, pp. 1 4 6 - 1 5 4 . —, "Orientalismus und Orientalismus. Überlegungen zu Edward Said, Michel Foucault und westlichen Islamstudien", Die Welt des Islams, vol. 28 (1988), pp. 1 7 8 - 1 8 6 . FüCK, Johann, "Islam as a Historical Problem in European Historiography since 1800", in Historians of the Middle East, ed. by B. LEWIS and P. M. H O L T , London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 3 0 3 - 3 1 4 . GABRIELI, Francesco, "Apology for Orientalism", Diogenes, Nr. 5 0 ( 1 9 6 5 ) , pp. 1 2 8 - 1 3 6 . French text "Apologie de l'orientalisme", Diogene, No 5 0 ( 1 9 6 5 ) , pp.

134-142.

—, "Casual Remarks of an Arabist", Diogenes, Nr. 83 (1973), pp. 1 - 1 1 . French text "Propos d'un arabisant", Diogene, No 83 (1973), pp. 3 - 1 5 . G E L L N E R , Ernest, "In Defence of Orientalism", Sociology, Vol. 1 4 (1980), Nr. 2, pp. 2 9 5 - 3 0 0 . G U R Ä B , Ahmad 'Abd al-Hamld, Rüya Islämtya lil-istisräq [An Islamic Vision of Orientalism], Riyäd: Mu'assasat Dar al Asäla lil-Taqäfa wa-al-Nasr wa-alI'läm, 1988. HALLIDAY, Fred, "Orientalism and its Critics", British journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20 (1993), Nr. 2, pp. 1 4 5 - 1 6 3 . HANAFI, Hasan, "De l'orientalisme Ä l'occidentalisme", Peuples Mediterraneens, no. 50 (1990), pp. 1 1 5 - 1 2 0 . H A R T , William D., Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture (Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought Nr. 8), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. H E N T S C H , Thierry, L'Orient Imaginaire. La vision politique occidentale de l'Est mediterraneen, Paris: Ed. De Minuit, 1987. HUSSAIN, Α . , "The Ideology of Orientalism", in Orientalism, Islam, and Islamists, ed. by ID. and others, Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books,1984, pp. 5 - 2 1 . I R W I N , Robert, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies, London etc.: Allen Lane, 2006; Penguin Books, 2007. KABBANI, Rana, Europe's Myths of the Orient: Devise and Rule, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986; London: Macmillan, 1986, 1988. Rev. and expanded ed. as Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of the Orient, London: Pandora, 1994. KEDOURIE, Elie, "Islam and the Orientalists. Some Recent Discussion", British journal of Sociology, Vol. 7 (1956), No. 3, pp. 2 1 7 - 2 2 5 . K E M P , Paul E . , "Orientalistes econduits, orientalistes reconduits", Arabica, vol. 2 7 (1980), pp. 1 5 4 - 1 7 9 . K O P F , David, "Hermeneutics Versus History", Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 3 9 , Nr. 3 (1980), pp.

495-506.

KOREN, J., and NEVO, Y. D., "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", Der Islam, Vol. 68 (1991), pp. 87-107. LEWIS, Bernard, "The Pro-Islamic Jews", Judaism (New York), Vol. 1 7 , Nr. 4 ( 1 9 6 8 ) , pp. 3 9 1 - 4 0 4 . Reprinted with some revisions in I D . , Islam in History.

416

Further Reading

Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East, New York: The Library Press, 1973, Chapter 10, pp. 1 2 3 - 1 3 7 (Notes pp. 315-317). —, "The Question of Orientalism", New York Review of Books, 24 June 1982. Revised version in ID., Islam and the West, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 9 9 - 1 1 8 (Notes pp. 192-194). —, Reply to SAID, Edward W., "Letter to the Editor. Orientalism. An Exchange", New York Review of Books, Nr. 29, 12 August 1982, p. 4 7 - 4 8 . LEWIS, Reina, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Eemininity, and Representation, London: Routledge, 1996. LITTLE, Donald P., "Three Arab Critiques of Orientalism", The Muslim World, Vol. 69 (1979), Nr. 2, pp. 1 1 0 - 1 3 1 . LOWE, Lisa, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. MACKENZIE, John M., "Edward Said and the Historians", Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Vol. 18 (1994), pp. 9 - 2 5 . Responses in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Vol. 19 (1995), with ID., "A Reply to My Critics". —, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. MALTI-DOUGLAS, Fedwa, "Re-Orienting Orientalism", The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 55 (1979), pp. 7 2 4 - 7 3 3 . —, "In the Eyes of Others: The Middle Eastern Response and Reaction to Western Scholarship", in J4S Others See Us: Mutual Perceptions East and West, ed. by B . LEWIS, E. LEITES and M. CASE, Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 1 3 - 1 4 (1985-86), pp. 3 6 - 5 5 . MANI, L. and FRANKENBERG, R., "The Challenge of Orientalism", Economy and Society, Vol. 14 (1985), Nr. 2, pp. 1 7 4 - 1 9 2 . MANZOOR, S. Parvez, "Method Against Truth. Orientalism and Quranic Studies", Muslim World Review, Vol. 7 (1987), No. 4, pp. 3 3 - 4 9 . Mawsü'at al-mustashriqm (Encyclopedia of the Orientalists), Beirut: Dar al-'ilm li'1-maläyln, 3 r d edition 1993, 635 p. MOORE-GILBERT, B. J., Kipling and Orientalism, London: Croom-Helm, 1986. MORGAN, J., "Religion and Culture as Meaning Systems. A Dialogue between Geertz and Tillich", Journal of Religion, vol. 57 (1977), pp. 3 6 3 - 3 7 5 . NAGEL, Tilman, "Gedanken über die europäische Islamforschung und ihr Echo im Orient", Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, Vol. 62 (1978), pp. 2 1 - 3 9 . —, "Die Ebenbürtigkeit des Fremden. Uber die Aufgaben arabistischer Lehre und Forschung in der Gegenwart", ZDMG, Vol. 148 (1998), pp. 3 6 7 - 3 7 8 . O'HANLON, R., and WASHBROOK, D., "After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics in the Third World", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 34 (1992), Nr. 1, pp. 1 4 1 - 1 6 7 . Orientalism. A Reader, ed. by A. L. MACFIE, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Orientalism, Islam and Islamists, ed. by A. HUSSAIN and others, Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books, 1984. Opening Chapter by A. HUSSAIN, "The Ideology of Orientalism", pp. 5 - 2 1 . L'Orientalisme. Interrogations, Special issue of Peuples Mediterraneens, No. 50 (1990).

Further Reading Paths to the Middle S U N Y Press,

East. Scholars

Look

Back,

417 ed. by T. NAFF, Albany, N.Y.:

1993.

PFLTRF, Christine, Orientalism in Art, New York: Abbeville Press, 1998. PFTFRS, Rudolph, "Abendländische Islamkunde aus morgenländischer Sicht", in Wij en het Midden-Oosten. Midden-Oosten en Islamstudies in ander perspectief (MOI Publicatie), Nijmegen, 1978, pp. 6 1 - 7 2 . PRAKASH, Cyan, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World. Perspectives from Indian Historiography", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 32 (1990), Nr. 2, pp. 3 8 3 - 4 0 8 . REIG, Daniel, Homo orientaliste. La langue arabe en France depuis le XIXe siecle, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1988. "Review Symposium: Edward Said's Orientalism" by Robert Α. KAPP, Μ. DALBY, D . KOPF, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 39 (1980), pp. 4 8 1 - 5 0 6 . RICHARDSON, M., "Enough Said", Anthropology Today, Vol. 6 (1990), Nr. 4, pp. 1 6 - 1 9 . RODINSON, Maxime, "The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam", in The Legacy of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by Joseph SCHACHT, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 9 - 6 2 . —, La fascination de l'Islam, Paris: F. Maspero, 1980, 1981. New, enlarged edition under the title of La fascination de l'Islam. Suivi de Le seigneur bourguignon et l'esclave sarrasin, Paris: La Decouverte, 1989. —, "Orientalisme et ethnocentrisme", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, (ZDMG Supplement V), Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983, pp. 7 7 - 8 6 . —, Europe and the Mystique of Islam. Translation of La fascination de l'Islam, by Roger VEINUS, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. —, Interview by Hassan ARFAOUI in M.A.R.S. (Le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique), Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, No 4, Winter 1994, pp. 27^10. ROSENTHAL, Franz, "Die Krise der Orientalistik", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, (ZDMG Supplement V), Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983, pp. 1 0 - 2 1 . ROUSSILLON, Alain, "Le debat sur l'orientalisme dans le champ intellectuel arabe: l'appui des sciences sociales", Peuples Mediterraneens (Paris), Nr. 50 ( J a n March 1990), pp. 7 - 3 9 . RUDOLPH, Ekkehard, "Eine neue Phase im Verständnis der Orientalistik. Bemerkungen zu einem Gemeinschaftswerk arabischer Wissenschaftler", Orient, Vol. 29 (1988), pp. 5 0 5 - 5 0 9 . —, Westliche Islamwissenschaft im Spiegel muslimischer Kritik. Grundzüge und aktuelle Merkmale einer innerislamischen Diskussion (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen), Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1991. SADOWSKI, Yahya, "The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate", Middle East Report, 183 (1993), pp. 14-21, 40. SAGIR, Muhammad Husain All al-, Al Mustasriqün wa-'d-diräsät al qur'äntya \Orientalists and Quranic Studies], Bairüt, 1983. SAID, Edward W., Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966. —, Beginnings: Intention and Method, New York: Basic Books, 1975.

Further Reading , "Shattered Myths", in Middle East Crucible, ed. by Naseer H. ARURI, Wilmette, 111.: Medina University Press, 1975, pp. 410-427. , "Arabs, Islam and the Dogmas of the West", The New York Times Book Review, 31 October 1976. , Orientalism, London and New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Second edition, with title enlarged to Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books, 1995. French translation L'Orientalisme: L'Orient cree par I'Occident, Paris: Seuil 1980; new edition 1997. , The Question of Palestine, New York: Times Books, 1979; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981; New York: Vintage Books, 1992. , "Islam, the Philological Vocation, and French Culture: Renan and Massignon", in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. Malcolm H. KERR (7TH Georgio Levi della Vida Conference), Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1980, pp. 53-72.

, Covering Islam. How the Media and the Experts Determine how we See the Rest of the World, New York: Pantheon Book, 1981, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985; New York: Vintage Books, 1997. , "Letter to the Editor. Orientalism. An Exchange", New York Review of Books, Nr. 29, 12 August 1982, p. 44-46 (Debate with B. LEWIS). , The World, the Text and the Critic, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. , "Orientalism Reconsidered", in Race and Class. A journal for Black and Third World Liberation, Vol. 27 (1985), No. 2, pp. 1-15; also in Literature, Politics and Theory. Papers from the Essex Conference, ed. by Francis BAKER and others, London: Methuen, 1986, pp. 210-229. , After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, London: Faber & Faber, 1986. , Blaming the Victims. Spurious Scholarship and the Palestine Question, London: Verso, 1988. , "Michel Foucault, 1926-1984", Arac, 1988, pp. 1 - 1 1 . , Musical Elaborations, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. , "The Politics of Knowledge", Raritan (Summer 1991), 17-31; reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. by Robert Con DAVIS and Ronald SCHLEIFER, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998, pp. 158-165. , The Historical Study of Literature and the Intellectual Vocation, Harry Camp Memorial Lecture 1992 (unpublished). , Culture and Imperialism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. , Reflections of the Intellectual, New York: Vintage Press, 1993. , "Nationalism, H u m a n Rights, and Interpretation", Raritan, Vol. 12, nr. 3 (1993), pp. 2 6 - 5 1 , The Politics of Dispossession. The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 1969-1994, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. , Representations of the Intellectual: the 1993 Reith Lectures, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. , "Postface ä l'Orientalisme", in M.A.R.S. (Le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique), Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, N o 4, Winter 1994, pp. 49-67.

Further Reading

419

—, "Interview" by Hassan ARFAOUI and Subhi HADIDI, in M.A.R.S. (Le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique), Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, No 4, Winter 1994, pp. 7 - 2 4 . —, "Orientalism, an Afterword", Raritan, Vol. 14, 1995, pp. 4 5 - 4 6 . —, "East isn't East. The Impending End of the Age of Orientalism", Times Literary Supplement, 4792:6 (1995), pp. 3 - 6 . —, Peace and Its Discontents, New York: Vintage Books, 1996. —, Out of Place. A Memoir, London: Granta Books, 1999. —, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. —, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. —, "Impossible Histories. Why the many Islams cannot be simplified", Harper's Magazine, July 2002, pp. 6 9 - 7 4 . Edward Said: A Critical Reader, ed. by Michael SPRINKER, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, edited by Paul A . BOVE, Durham, N C : Duke University Press, 2 0 0 0 . Power, Politics, and Culture. Interviews with E. W. Said, ed. by Gauri ViswANATHAN, New York: Pantheon books, 2001. SAMARRAI, Qasim al-, "Discussions on Orientalism in Present-Day Saudi Arabia", in Modern Societies & The Science of Religions, ed. by Gerard WIEGERS and Jan PLATVOET, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2002, pp. 2 8 3 - 3 0 1 . SCHAAR, Stuart, "Orientalism at the Service of Imperialism", Race and Class, Vol. 21 (1979), Nr. 1, pp. 6 7 - 8 0 . SCHAEDER, Hans Heinrich, "Der Orient und das griechische Erbe", Die Antike, Vol. 4 (1928), pp. 2 2 6 - 2 6 5 . SCHÖLLER, Marco, Methode und Wahrheit in der Islamwissenschaft. Prolegomena, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000. English summary by J. WAARDENBURG in Bibliotheca Orientalis, Vol. 61, No 1 - 2 , January-April 2004, pp. 228-235. SCHULZE, Reinhard, "Orientalistik und Orientalismus", in Der Islam in der Gegenwart, ed. by W. ENDE and U . STEINBACH, 5 t h , rev. edition, München: Beck, 2005, pp. 7 5 5 - 7 6 7 , 9 2 8 - 9 3 2 , 9 8 1 - 9 8 2 . SIMON, David, Orientalism and History, 2nd ed., Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1970. SINOR, Denis, Orientalism and History, Cambridge, U. K.: Heffer, 1954. New edition Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1970. SRVAN, Emmanuel, "Orientalism, Islam and Cultural Revolution", Jerusalem Quarterly, Vol. 5 (1977), pp. 8 4 - 9 3 . —, Radical Islam. Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. —, Mythes politiques arabes, Paris: Fayard, 1995. STAUTH, Georg, Islam und westlicher Rationalismus. Der Beitrag des Orientalismus zur Entstehung der Soziologie, Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Campus, 1993. STOVER, Dale, "Orientalism and the Otherness of Islam", Studies in Religion, Vol. 17 (1988), pp. 2 7 - 4 0 .

420

Further Reading

John, The Oriental Obsession. Islamic Interpretation in British and American Art and Architecture, 1500-1920, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. TIBAWI, Abdel-Latif, "English-speaking Orientalists. A Critique of their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism", The Muslim World, Vol. 53 (1963), pp. 1 8 5 - 2 0 4 and 2 9 8 - 3 1 3 . Also in Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 8 (1964), pp. 2 5 - 4 5 and 7 3 - 8 8 . Also as a separate publication, Geneva: Islamic Centre, 1965. —, "Second Critique of English-Speaking Orientalists and their Approach to Islam and the Arabs", Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 23 (1979), pp. 3 - 5 4 . Also as a separate publication, London: Islamic Culture Centre, 1979. —, "On the Orientalists again", The Muslim World, Vol. 70 (1980), pp. 5 6 - 6 0 . TURNER, Bryan S., Marx and the End of Orientalism, London: Allen and Unwin, 1978. —, Orientalism, Post Modernism and Globalism, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. VALIDI, Ahmed Zeki, "Considerations sur la collaboration scientifique entre l'Orient islamique et l'Europe", Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 1935, pp. 249-271. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident. Comment quelques orientalistes occidentaux se sont penches sur l'Islam et se sont forme une image de cette religion, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1961, 2 n d edition with Preface by Johannes PEDERSEN 1962; enlarged 3 r d edition 1969. —, "Changes in Perspective in Islamic Studies over the Last Decades", Humaniora Islamica, Vol. 1, 1973, pp. 2 4 7 - 2 6 0 . —, "Islam studied as a Sign and Signification System", Humaniora Islamica, Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 2 6 7 - 2 8 5 . —, "Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, 24.-29. März 1980 in Berlin. Ausgewählte Vorträge, ed. by Fritz STEPPAT, (ZDMG Supplement V), Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983, pp. 197-211. —, "Assumptions and Presuppositions in Islamic Studies", Rocznik Orientalistyczny, Vol. 43 (1984), pp. 1 6 1 - 1 7 0 . —, Art. "Islamic Studies", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan and London: Collier-Macmillan, 1987, vol. 7, pp. 4 5 7 - 4 6 4 . Reprinted in the 2ND Edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 7, pp. 4 7 1 5 - 4 7 2 1 . —, Art. "Mustashrikün" (Orientalists) in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New (2 nd ) Edition, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 1993, Vol. 7, pp. 7 3 5 - 7 5 3 . Die Welten des Islam. Neunundzwanzig Vorschläge, das Unvertraute zu verstehen, ed. by Gernot ROTTER, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1993. WEINER, Justus Reid, " 'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications by Edward Said", Commentary, September 1999, pp. 2 3 - 3 1 . WILSON, Ernest J., "Orientalism. A Black Perspective", journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 10 (1981), Nr. 2, pp. 5 9 - 6 9 . SWEETMAN,

Further Reading

421

2. Religion(s) and the Study of Religion(s) 2.1. The Concept of

Religion

Der Begriff der Religion (Fragen einer neuen Weltkultur 9), ed. by Walter KERBER, München: Kindt, 1993. CLARKE, Peter B., and BYRNE, Peter, Religion Defined and Explained, London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. DESPLAND, Michel, La religion en Occident. Evolution des idees et du vecu, Paris: Cerf, 1980. ELSAS, Christoph, Religion. Ein Jahrhundert theologischer, philosophischer, soziologischer und psychologischer Interpretationsansätze, Munich: Ch. Kaiser, 1975. FEIL, Ernst, Religio. Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs vom Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986.

HAUSSIG, Hans-Michael, Der Religionsbegriff in den Religionen. Studien zum Selbst- und Religionsverständnis in Hinduismus, Buddhismus, Judentum und Islam, Berlin: Philo, 1999. KARKI, Hakim, Et Dieu crea l'Occident. La place de la religion dans la conceptualisation de la notion de l'Occident, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001. MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., "The Category 'Religion' in Recent Publications: a Critical Survey", Νunten, vol. 42 (1995), pp. 2 8 4 - 3 0 9 . The Notion of 'Religion' in Comparative Research. Selected Proceedings of the XVI t h I.A.H.R. Congress in Rome, 1990, ed. by Ugo BIANCHI, Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1994. The Pragmatics of Defining Religion. Contexts, Concepts and Contests, ed. by Jan G. PLATVOET and Arie L. MOLENDIJK, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1999. POLLACK, Detlef, "Was ist Religion? Probleme der Definition", Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, vol. 3 (1995), pp. 1 6 3 - 1 9 0 . Religion - Eine europäisch-christliche Erfindung? Beiträge eines Symposiums am Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, ed. by Hans-Michael HAUSSIG and Bernd SCHERER, Berlin: Philo, 2003. Religion in History: the Word, the Idea, the Reality - La religion dans I'histoire: le mot, I'idee, la realite, ed. by Michel DESPLAND and Gerard VALLEE, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992. SALER, Benson, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1993. SCHMITZ, Bertram, 'Religion' und seine Entsprechungen im inter kulturellen Bereich, Marburg: Tectum-Verlag, 1996. SMITH, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963. SPIRO, Melford, "Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation", in Anthropological Approaches in the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael P. BANTON, London and New York: Tavistock, 1966, pp. 8 5 - 1 2 5 . STIETENCRON, Heinrich von, "Der Begriff der Religion in der Religionswissenschaft", in Der Begriff der Religion. Fragen einer neuen Weltkultur, ed. by Walter KERBER, München, 1993, pp. 1 1 1 - 1 3 7 (Discussion pp. 138-158).

422

Further Reading

WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Über die Religion der Religionswissenschaft", Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, Vol. 26, Nr. 3 (1984), pp. 2 3 8 - 2 5 5 . WAGNER, Falk, Was ist Religion? Studien zu ihrem Begriff und Thema in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1986, 2 n d edition 1991.

2.2. Discussions around a Science of Religion. Method and Explanatory Theory "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins. A Discussion", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 8 (1996), pp. 2 2 9 - 2 8 9 . Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael BANTON, London: Tavistock, 1966. Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter CONNOLLY, London and New York: Continuum, 1999. Approches scientifiques des faits religieux, ed. by Jean JONCHERAY, Paris: Beauchesne, 1997. ASLAN, Adnan, "What is Wrong with the Concept of Religious Experience?", Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 14 (2003), No. 3, pp. 2 9 9 - 3 1 2 . Aspects of Religion. Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart, ed. by Peter MASEEIELD and Donald WIEBE, New York: Peter Lang, 1994. BAILEY, Edward Ian, Implicit Religion. An Introduction, London: Middlesex University Press, 1998. BAIRD, Robert D., Category Formation and the History of Religions (Religion and Reason 1), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1971, pb. 1991. —, Essays in the History of Religions, New York: Peter Lang, 1991. BANIMAN, Christina Α., "The Study of Religion: 19TH Century Sources and 20TH Century Misconceptions", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 1 ( 1 9 8 9 ) , Nr. 2, pp.

160-185.

BAUIMANN, Martin, Qualitative Methoden in der Religionswissenschaft, Marburg: REMID, 2 revised edition, 1998. BERGER, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy, New York: Anchor Books, 1990. —, A Rumor of Angels, New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Feter Berger and the Study of Religion, ed. by Linda WOODHEAD with Paul HEELAS and David MARBN, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion, ed. by Charles Y. GLOCK and Phillip E. HAMIVLOND, New York: Harper & Row, 1973. BORGEAUD, Philippe, "Qu'est ce que l'histoire des religions?", Equinoxe. Revue romande des sciences humaines, Vol. 21 (1999), pp. 6 7 - 8 3 . —, Aux origines de l'histoire des religions, Paris: Seuil, 2004. BOYER, Pascal, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1994. —, "Creation of the Sacred. A Cognitivist View", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), no. 1, pp. 8 8 - 9 2 . —, Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Further Reading

423

BRONKHORST, Johannes, "Asceticism, Religion, and Biological Evolution", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), pp. 3 7 4 - 4 1 8 . B U R K E R T , Walter, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1979. —, Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1983. —, Creation of the Sacred. Tracks of Biology in Early Religion, Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1996. Comments on this book appeared in a special issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), Nr. 1, with contributions by Pascal BOYER, Willi BRAUN, D a n i e l C . DENNETT, C . R o b e r t PHILLIPS III. A

"Re-

sponse" by Walter B U R K E R T was given in the same issue, pp. 1 2 9 - 1 3 2 . CAPPS, Walter H., Religious Studies. The Making of a Discipline, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research, by Jacques WAARDENBURG, Vol. 1: Introduction and Anthology; Vol. 2: Bibliography (Religion and Reason 3 and 4), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973 and 1974. A paperback edition of Vol. 1 was published by Walter de Gruyter, New York and Berlin, 1999. Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism, ed. by Pascal B O Y E R , Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993. COLPE, Carsten, "The Science of Religion, the History of Religion, the Phenomenology of Religion", Historical Reflections/Reflection historiques, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 4 0 3 - 4 1 2 . he comparatisme en histoire des religions. Actes du Colloque international de Strasbourg ( 1 8 - 2 0 sept. 1 9 9 6 ) , ed. by Frangois BOESPFLUG and Frangoise DUNAND, Paris: Cerf, 1997. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank W H A L I N G , Vol. 1: The Humanities, Vol. 2: The Social Sciences (Religion and Reason 27 and 28), Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 1984 and 1985. A paperback edition of selected contributions under the title of Theory and Method in Religious Studies. Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion was published by Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1995. C O U L I A N O , loan Peter, "La religion comme systeme", in Dictionnaire des religions, ed. by Mircea ELIADE and loan P. COULIANO, Paris: Plön, 1990, pp. 17-21. The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. S T O N E , New York: Palgrave, 2000. Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark C. T A Y L O R , Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. C R O S B Y , Donald Α . , Interpretive Theories of Religion (Religion and Reason 2 0 ) , The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1981. D A W S O N , Lome L., Reason, Freedom and Religion. Closing the Gap between the Humanistic and Scientific Study of Religion, New York: Peter Lang, 1988. DOUGLAS, Mary. See under FARDON, Richard. DUBUISSON, Daniel, L'Occident et la Religion: mythes, science et ideologie, Bruxelles: Complexe, 1998. The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, 16 volumes. New York and London: Macmillan, 1987. Two Reviews: by Neil M C M U L L I N ,

Further Reading

424

"The Encyclopedia of Religion·. A Critique from the Perspective of the History of the Japanese Religious Traditions" in MTbSR Vol. 1, Nr. 1, pp. 8 0 96; and by Ursula KING, "Women Scholars and the Encyclopedia of Religion" in MThSR, Vol. 2 ( 1 9 9 0 ) , Nr. 1 , pp. 9 1 - 9 7 . 2 N D Edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, 15 Volumes, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. FARDON, Richard, Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography, London: Routledge, 1999. FASCHING, Darrell J., and CHANT, Dell de, Comparative Religious Ethics. A Narrative Approach, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Fieldwork, Ethnography, and the History of Religions. Special Issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 1. Contributions by Frank J . KOROM, Robert M . BAUM, Brian R BENNETT, Jeff CARTER, Ann Grodzins GOLD, Peter GOTTSCHALK, Kathryn KUENY, June MCDANIEL, Dee-

pak SARIMA, Matthew N. SCHMALZ, Rosalind I. J. HACKETT, Hugh B. URBAN. FITZGERALD, Paul J., "Faithful Sociology. Peter Berger's Religious Project", Religious Studies Review, Vol. 27 (2001), No 1, pp. 10-17. FITZGERALD, Timothy, The Ideology of Religious Studies, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The Future of Religion. Postmodern Perspectives. Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart, ed. by Cristopher A. LAMB and Dan COHN-SHERBOK, London: Midlesex University Press, 1999. GANTKE, Wolfgang, Der umstrittene Begriff des Heiligen. Eine problemorientierte religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchung, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1998. GEERTZ, Armin W., "Global Perspectives on Methodology in the Study of Religion", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 12 (2000), Nos 1 2, pp. 49-73. — and MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., "The Role of Method and Theory in the IAHR", in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 12 (2000), Nos 1-2, pp. 3-37. GELLNER, Ernest, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, London and New York: Routledge, 1992. —, Reason and Culture. The Historic Role of Rationality and Rationalism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Gender and the Study of Religion, ed. by Randi R. WARNE, Special Issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 2. Contributions by Randi R. WARNE, Susan Starr SERED, Morny JOY, Dawne MCCANCE, Virginia Lieson BRERETON, Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Rita M . GROSS.

GROTTANELLI, Cristiano, and LINCOLN, Bruce, "A Brief Note on (Future) Research in the History of Religions", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), Nr. 3, pp. 311-325. Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. by Willi BRAUN and Russell T . M C C U T CHEON, London and New York: Cassell, 2000. A Review Symposium on this book was held in November 2000, with contributions published in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 3. Contributors: Lome L. DAWSON, Julie INGERSOLL, David SELJAK, Phillip C. LUCAS.

Further Reading

425

Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, ed. by Hubert CANCIK, Burkhard GLADIGOW, Karl-Heinz K O H L , and others (preceding), 5 vols., Stuttgart etc.: W. Kohlhammer, 1988-2001. HASE, Thomas, Quantitative Methoden in der Religionswissenschaft. Eine Erörterung ausgewählter Erhebungs- und Analyseverfahren, Marburg: REMID, 2000. HEDIN, Dag, Phenomenology and the Making of the World (Studia Philosophiae Religionis 19). Uppsala and Stockholm: Almkvist & Wiksell, 1997. HERVIEUX-LEGER, Daniele, Religion as a Chain of Memory, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. HEWITT, Marsha, Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analyses, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques, special issue on the history of religions, ed. by Luther H. MARTIN, Vol. 20, no. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 335-495. With contributions by E . BREISACH, K . RUDOLPH, H . G. KIPPENBERG, C . COLPE, M . DESPLAND, A. M C C A L L A , G . LEASE, E . Thomas LAWSON. The History of Religions. Retrospect and Prospect, ed. by Joseph Mitsuo KITAGAWA, New York: Macmillan, 1985. HOBSBAWM, Eric, and RANGER, Terence, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. How to do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals, ed. by Rene GOTHONI (Religion and Reason 44), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader, ed. by Russell T. M C C U T C H E O N , London and New York: Cassell, 1999. Islamic Origins Reconsidered: John Wansbrough and the Study of Early Islam, ed. by Herbert BERG, Special issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 9 (1997) Nr. 1. Contributions by Herbert BERG, G. R. HAWTING, Andrew RIPPIN, Norman CALDER, Charles J . ADAMS. JENSEN, Jeppe Sinding, The Study of Religion in a New Key, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2003. JUERGENSIMEYER, Mark, Religion. Politics, Power and Symbolism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. —, Global Religions. An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. KEPNES, Steven D., "Bridging the Gap between Understanding and Explanation. Approaches to the Study of Religion", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 15 (1986), pp. 504-512. KING, Richard, Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and 'The Mystic East', London and New York: Routledge, 1999. KING, Ursula, "Historical and Phenomenological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Some Major Developments and Issues under Debate since 1950", in Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, Vol. 1: The Humanities, Berlin etc.: Mouton Publishers, 1983, pp. 29-164. Also in the paperback edition of this book, Theory and Method in Religious Studies, Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 41-176. KIPPENBERG, Hans G., "Diskursive Religionswissenschaft. Gedanken zu einer Religionswissenschaft, die weder auf einer allgemein gültigen Definition von Religion noch auf einer Überlegenheit von Wissenschaft basiert", in Neue

426

Further Reading

Ansätze in der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by Burkhard GLADIGOW and Hans G. KIPPENBERG, Munich: Kösel, 1983. —, "Rivalry among Scholars of Religion. The Crisis of Historicism and the Formation of Paradigms in the History of Religions", in Historical Reflections/ Reflexions Historiques, Vol. 20 (1994), no. 3, pp. 377-402. —, Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte. Religionswissenschaft und Moderne, Munich: C. H . Beck, 1997. English translation by Barbara HARSHAV, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. — and STUCKRAD, Kocku von, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft. Gegenstände und Begriffe, Munich: C. Η. Beck, 2003. LAWSON, Ε . Thomas, "Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion", Numen, Vol. 47 (2000), pp. 338-349. —, "Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity. Making Space for a Cognitive Approach to the Religious Phenomena", journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 61 (1993), nr. 2, pp. 201-223. —, "Counterintuitive Notions and the Problem of Transmission. The Relevance of Cognitive Science for the Study of History", Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques, Vol. 20 (1994), No. 3, pp. 481-495. — and MCCAULEY, Robert N., Rethinking Religion. Connecting Cognition and Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. LEVINE, Michael P., "Religion and Method in the Study of Religion (Response)", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 9 (1997), no. 4, pp. 3 7 7 387. LINCOLN, Bruce, Discourse and the Construction of Society. Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. —, Death, War, and Sacrifice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. —, Authority: Construction and Corrosion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. —, "Theses on Method", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 8 (1996), pp. 225-227. —, Theorizing Myth. Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. —, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003. — and GROTANELLI, Christiano, "A Brief Note on (Future) Research in the History of Religions", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), pp. 311-325. Malinowski and the Work of Myth, ed. by Ivan STRENSKI, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., Manufacturing Religion. The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. —, "A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 65 (1997), pp. 443-468.

Further Reading

427

—, Critics not Caretakers. Redescribing the Public Study of Religion, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2001. —, The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric, London: Routledge, 2003. MESLIN, Michel, Pour une science des religions, Paris: Seuil, 1973. —, L'experience humaine du divin. Fondements d'une anthropologic religieuse, Paris: Cerf, 1988. Modern Societies and the Science of Religions, Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer, ed. by Gerard A. WIEGERS and Jan G. PLATVOET, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2002. MOHN, Jürgen, Mythostheorien. Eine religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchung zu Mythos und Interkulturalität, Munich: Fink, 1998. MOL, Hans, Identity and the Sacred. Α Sketch for a New Social-Scientific Theory of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 1976. NEUSNER, Jacob, "Holy Writing: the Social Setting", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 3 (1991), Nr. 1, pp. 8 4 - 9 9 . —, "From History to Religion", in The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. STONE, N e w Y o r k : P a l g r a v e , 2 0 0 0 , p p .

98-116.

New Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, and Randi R. WARNE, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches; Vol. 2: Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches (Religion and Reason 42 and 43), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. The New Comparativism in the Study of Religion, ed. by Luther H. MARTIN, MThSR, Vol. 8 (1996), Nr. 1, pp. 1 - 4 9 . Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie? Ed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch 6/ 7), Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2001. O'BRIEN, Joanne, and PALIMER, Martin, Atlas des Religions dans le Monde, Paris: Autrement, 1993. OKUYAMA, Michiaki, "Approaches East and West to the History of Religions: Four Japanese Thinkers", Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 27 (2000), no 1 - 2 , pp. 9 9 - 1 1 4 . ORYP, Lieve, "'It's about us': Religious Studies as Human Science", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 4, pp. 3 5 5 - 3 7 3 . PALS, Daniel L., "Explaining, Endorsing, and Reducing Religion", in Religion and Reductionism, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward A. YONAN, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1994, pp. 1 8 3 - 1 9 7 . —, Seven Theories of Religion, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. PENNER, Hans H., Impasse and Resolution. A Critique of the Study of Religion, New York: Peter Lang, 1989. — and YONAN, Edward Α., "Is a Science of Religion Possible?", Journal of Religion, Vol. 52 (1972), pp. 1 0 7 - 1 3 3 . Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Adjunct Proceedings of the XVII t h Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Mexico City, 1995, ed. by Armin W. GEERTZ and Russell T. MCCUTCHEON, with the assistance of Scott S. ELLIOTT, Leiden etc.: Brill: 2000.

428

Further Reading

PIKE, Kenneth L., "Etic and Emic Standpoints for the Description of Behavior", in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, ed. by Russell T. MCCUTCHEON, 1 9 9 9 , p p . 2 8 - 3 6 .

Religion and Literature. A Reader, ed. by Robert DETWEILER and David JASPER, Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000. Religion and Reductionism. Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward A. YONAN, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1994. Religionswissenschaft. Eine Einführung, ed. by Hartmut ZINSER, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1988. RUDOLPH, Kurt, Historical Fundamentals and the Study of Religions, New York: Macmillan, 1985. —, Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1992. —, "Die ideologiekritische Funktion der Religionswissenschaft", in ID., Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft, Leiden: Brill, 1992, pp. 81-103. —, "We Learn What Religion is from History: On the Relation between the Study of History and the Study of Religions", in Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques, Vol. 20 (1994), No. 3, pp. 357-376. —, Art. "Vergleich, religionswissenschaftlich", in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, ed. by Hubert CANCIK, Burkhard GLADIGOW, Karl-Heinz KOHL, vol. 5, Stuttgart etc.: W. Kohlhammer, 2001, pp. 3 1 4 323. RYBA, Thomas, The Essence of Phenomenology and its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion (Toronto Studies in Religion 7), New York, etc.: Peter Lang, 1991. The Sacred and its Scholars. Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data, ed. by Thomas A. IDINOPULOS and Edward A. YONAN, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 1996. Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology. Proceedings of the Study Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, held in Turku, Finland, August 27-31, 1973, edited by Lauri HONKO (Religion and Reason 13), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1979. Secular Theories on Religion: Current Perspectives, ed. by Tim JENSEN and Mikael ROTHSTEIN, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000. SEGAL, Robert Α., Religion and Social Sciences. Essays on the Confrontation, Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989. —, Explaining and Interpreting Religion. Essays on the Issue, New York: Peter Lang, 1992. —, "Ninian Smart and Religious Studies", Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April 2001), pp. 27-29. SEIWERT, Hubert, "Systematische Religionswissenschaft. Theoriebildung und Empiriebezug", Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, vol. 60/61 (1976/77), pp. 1-18. —, "Religiöse Bedeutung als wissenschaftliche Kategorie", Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, vol. 5 (1981), pp. 57-99.

Further Reading

429

SHARMA, Arvind, To the Things Themselves. Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenomenology of Religion (Religion and Reason 39), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. SHARPE, Eric J., Comparative Religion. A History, London: Duckworth Press, 1975, 2 n d ed. London and La Salle, 111., 1986. Comments on the book were given at a "Sharpe Symposium" and published under the title of "Doing the History of Religion: Eric Sharpe's Comparative Religion" in Method and Theory in the Study of Religions, Vol. 1, Nr. 1 ( 1 9 8 9 ) , pp. 4 1 - 7 8 . With contributions by A . ARONOWICZ, A . R. GUALTIERI, R . I. J . HACKETT, U . KING, R . SEGAL, D . WIEBE.

—, Art. "Comparative Religion", Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, Vol. 3, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 578-580. —, Understanding Religion, London: Duckworth, 1994. SiMART, Ninian, The Phenomenon of Religion, London: Macmillan, 1973. —, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, Some Methodological Questions, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973. —, Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilization, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981; London: Collins, 1982. —, Worldviews. Cross-cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, New York: Scribner, 1983. New edition Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995. —, Art. "Comparative-Historical Method", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 3, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 571-574. Reprinted in the 2 n ^edition, Macmillan Refernce USA, 2005, Vol. 3, pp. 1868-1871. —, "Concluding Reflections. Religious Studies in Global Perspective", in Turning Points in Religious Studies, ed. by Ursula KING, Edinburgh: Τ. 8c T. Clark, 1990, pp. 299-306. —, "Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Complementarity", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 4 (1992), Nr. 2, pp. 21-26. —, Dimensions of the Sacred. An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. —, "Methods in My Life", in The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. STONE, New York: Palgrave, 2 0 0 0 , pp. 1 8 - 3 5 . — and BURRIS, John P., Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. SiMART, Ninian. See also under The Future of Religion and under SEGAL, Robert S. SIMITH, Jonathan Z., "Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acervus Erit", History of Religions 11 (1971), pp. 67-90. —, Imagining Religion. From Babylon to Jonestown, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. —, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. —, Drudgery Divine. On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. —, Map is not Territory. Studies in the History of Religions, Leiden: Brill, and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. —, Relating Religion. Essays in the Study of Religion, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

430

Further Reading

SPIRO, Melford, "Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation", in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael BANTON, London: Tavistock, 1966, pp. 85-126. STARK, Rodney, "Atheism, Faith, and the Social Scientific Study of Religion", Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 14 (1999), No. 1, pp. 41-62. STOLZ, Fritz, Grundzüge der Religionswissenschaft, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck 8Ί Ruprecht, 1988. —, "Hierarchien der Darstellungsebenen religiöser Botschaft", in Religionswissenschaft. Eine Einführung, ed. by Hartmut Zinser, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1988, pp. 55-73. STRENSKI, Ivan, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History; Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, and Malinowski, London: Macmillan, and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987. —, "Theories and Social Facts. A Reply to my Critics", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 1 (1989), No 2, pp. 196-212. — Religion in Relation: Method, Application, and Moral Location. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. — "The Rest is History", in The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. STONE, New York: Palgrave, 2 0 0 0 , pp. 3 0 0 - 3 2 4 . The Struggle for Life: a Companion to William James's The Varieties of Religious experience, ed. by Donald CAPPS and Janet L . JACOBS, Newton: Mennonite Press, 1995. Symposium on Methodology and the Study of Religion, Bath 1996, ed. by Steven SUTCLIEEE, Special Issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), Nr. 3. Contributions by James L. Cox, Steven SUTCLIEEE, Kim KNOTT, Sanda IONESCO. Symposium on Religion and Method in the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael P. LEVINE, Special Issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 9 ( 1 9 9 7 ) , Nr. 4 . Contributions by Martin S. JAEEEE, Peter BYRNE, Donald WIEBE, Michael P. LEVINE. Teaching the Introductory Course in religious Studies: A Sourcebook, ed. by Mark JULRGENSIMEYER, Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991 "Teaching Method and Theory", ed. by Russell T. MCCUTCHEON, in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 11 (1999), no. 2, pp. 107-149. TITE, Philip L., "Categorical Designations and Methodological Reductionism. Gnosticism as Case Study", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 3, pp. 269-292. Tradition und Translation. Zum Problem der interkulturellen Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene. Festschrift Carsten Colpe. With bibliography, ed. by Christoph ELSAS et al., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1 9 9 4 . Vergleichen und Verstehen in der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by Hans-Joachim KLLMKEIT, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997. WASSERSTROIM, Steven M., Religion after Religion. Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. WIEBE, Donald, "The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion. Α response to W . C . Smith", Numen, Vol. 2 6 ( 1 9 7 9 ) , pp. 2 3 4 - 2 4 9 .

Further Reading

431

—, Religion and Truth. Towards an Alternative Paradigm in the Study of Religion (Religion and Reason 23), The Hague: Mouton, 1981. —, "Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion. Comments on Pals and Dawson", Religion, vol. 20 (1990), pp. 1 7 29.

—, The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991. —, The Politics of Religious Studies. The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

2.3. Anthropology

of Religion

Anthropological Approaches in the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael P. BANTON, London and New York: Tavistock, 1966. ASAD, Talal, Anthropological Conceptions of Religion, London: Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1983. —, Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 2ND edition 1997.

—, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003. BAAL, J. van & W. E. A. van BEEK, Symbols for Communication. An Introduction to the Anthropological Study of Religion, Van Gorcum: Assen, 1971, 2ND revised edition 1985. BATAILLE, Georges, Theory of Religion, New York: Zone Books, 1989. BELL, Catherine, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Between Belief and Transgression. Structuralist Essays in Religion, History, and Myth, ed. by Michel IZARD and Pierre SMITH, translated by John LEAVITT, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. BOON, James Α., Other Tribes, Other Scribes. Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982. —, Art. "Anthropology, Ethnology, and Religion", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2ND edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2 0 0 5 , Vol. 1, pp. 3 7 8 - 3 8 8 .

BOWEN, John R., Religions in Practice. An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998, 3RD edition 2005. EVANS-PRITCHARD, Edward Evan, Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. FABIAN, J., "Six Theses Regarding the Anthropology of African Religious Movements", Religion,

vol. 11 ( 1 9 8 1 ) , pp. 1 0 9 - 1 2 6 .

FARDON, Richard, Mary Douglas. An Intellectual Biography, London: Routledge, 1999. Fieldwork, Ethnography, and the History of Religions, Special Issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 1.

Further Reading

432

GEERTZ, Clifford, Art. "Religion: Anthropological Study", in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. by David SILLS, vol. 13, New York: Macmillan, 1968. —, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, 1973. —, Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, New York: Basic Books, 1983. —, After the Fact. Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. —, Available Light. Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. —, "Which Way to Mecca?", New York Review of Books, vol. 17 (July 3, 2003). Global Religions: An Introduction, ed. by Mark JUERGENSMEYER, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. H A I M M O U D I , Abdellah, The Victim and Its Masks. An Essay on Sacrifice and Masquerade in the Maghreb, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. HEFNER, Robert W., Conversion to Christianity. Historical and Anthropological Perspective on a Great Transformation, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993. LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude, Totemism. Translated by Rodney NEEDHAJVL, Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. LITTLETON, C. Scott, The New Comparative Mythology. An Anthropological ASsessment of the Theories of Georges Dumezil, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1966; 3 rd ed. 1982. MOL, Hans, Identity and the Sacred. A Sketch for a New Social-Scientific Theory of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 1976. NEEDHAM, Rodney, Belief, Language, and Experience, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. POOLE, F. J. P., "Metaphors and Maps. Toward Comparison in the Anhropology of Religion", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 54 (1986), pp. 411-457. RAPPAPORT, Roy Α., Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. by Michael LAMBEK, Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002. Reader in Comparative Religion. An Anthropological Approach, ed. by William A. LESSA and Evon Z . VOGT, New York: Harper and Row, 1 9 5 8 ; 4 TH edition 1979.

STARK, Rodney, "Atheism, Faith, and the Social Scientific Study of Religion", Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 14 (1999), No. 1, pp. 41-62. STRENSKI, Ivan, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, and Malinowski, London: Macmillan & Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987. TURNER, Victor, The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure, London 1969. New edition New York: A. de Gruyter, 1995.

Further Reading

433

—, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974. —, The Anthropology of Performance, New York: PAJ Publications, 1988.

2.4. Comparative-Historical

Research

The Sacred Bridge. Researches into the Nature and Structure of Religion, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963. —, The Rainbow. A Collection of Studies in the Science of Religion, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. —, The History of Religions 1950-1975, Lancaster: University of Lancaster, 1976. BORGEAUD, Philippe, "Le probleme du comparatisme en histoire des religions", Revue europeenne des sciences sociales, Vol. 24, No 72 (1986), pp. 59-75. BUCK, Christopher, Paradise and Paradigm. Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahä'i Faith. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1999. BURRIS, John P., Art. "Comparative-historical Method (Further Considerations)", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 3, pp. 1871-1873. CANNON, Dale, Six Ways of Being Religious. A Framework for Comparative Studies of Religion, Belmont etc.: Wadsworth, 1996. COLLING WOOD, R. G., The Idea of History, ed. by Τ. M. K N O X , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. Le comparatisme en histoire des religions, ed. by Frangois BOESELUG and Franfoise DUNAND, Paris: Cerf, 1997. Comparative Research Methods, ed. by D . P. WARWICK and S. OSHERSON, Englewood Cliffs, N.Y.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Comparer les comparatismes. Perspecives sur l'histoire et les sciences des religions, ed. by Maya BURGER and Claude CALAiME, Paris: Edidit & Milan: Arche, 2006. DONIGER O'FLAHERTY, Wendy, Other People's Myths. The Cave of Echoes, New York: Macmillan, 1988. FASCHING, Darreil J . and Dell de CHANT, Comparative Religious Ethics. A Narrative Approach, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. GROTTANELLI, Cristiano and Bruce LINCOLN, "A Brief Note on (Future) Research in the History of Religions", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), Nr. 3, pp. 311-325. Histoire des religions, ed. by Henri-Charles PUECH, 3 vol. Paris: Gallimard, 1970-1976. Historical Reflections /Reflexions historiques, Special issue on History of Religions, ed. by Luther H. MARTIN, Vol. 20, no. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 335-495. The History of Religions: Retrospect and Prospect, ed. by Joseph Mitsuo KITAGAWA, New York: Macmillan, 1985. HOBSBAWM, Eric and Terence RANGER, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. HOLDREGE, Barbara, Veda and Torah. Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1996. BLEEKER, C . J . ,

434

Further Reading

KING, Ursula, "Historical and Phenomenological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Some Major Developments and Issues under Debate since 1950", in Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Frank WHALING, Vol. 1: The Humanities, Berlin etc.: Mouton Publishers, 1983, pp. 2 9 - 1 6 4 . In the paperback edition (Theory and Method in Religious Studies, 1995), pp. 4 1 - 1 7 6 . KIPPENBERG, Hans G., Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte. Religionswissenschaft und Moderne, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997. English translation by Barbara HARSHAV, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. LINCOLN, Bruce, Discourse and Construction of Society. Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. —, Authority: Construction and Corrosion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. —, Theorizing Myth. Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. MOHN, Jürgen, Mythostheorien. Eine religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchung zu Mythos und Interkulturalität, Munich: Fink, 1998. The Myth and Ritual Theory. An Anthology, ed. by Robert A. SEGAL, Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998. NAKAMURA, Η., Buddhism in Comparative Light, New Delhi: Islam and the Modern Age Society, 1975. NEUSNER, Jacob, Take Judaism, for Example. Studies toward the Comparison of Religions, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983. —, "From History to Religion", in The Craft of Religious Studies, ed. by Jon R. STONE, N e w Y o r k : P a l g r a v e , 2 0 0 0 , p p .

98-116.

"New Approaches to Comparativism", Special issue of Numen. International Review for the History of Religions, Vol. 48 (2001), no. 3. "The New Comparativism in the Study of Religion: A Symposium", ed. by Luther Η . M A R B N , Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 8 (1996), no. 1, pp. 1 - 4 9 . PADEN, William E., Religious Worlds. The Comparative Study of Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, 2 n d edition 1994. —, Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. —, Art. "Comparative Religion" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, vol. 3, pp. 1 8 7 7 1881. POOLE, F. J. P., "Metaphors and Maps. Toward Comparison in the Anthropology of Religion", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 54 (1986), pp. 4 1 1 - 4 5 7 . PUHVEL, J., Comparative Mythology, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. PYE, Michael, Comparative Religion. An Introduction through Source Materials, Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972. Reader in Comparative Religion. An Anthropological Approach, ed. by William A. LESSA and Evon Z. VOGT, New York: Harper and Row, 1958; 4TH edition 1979.

Further Reading

435

RUDOLPH, Kurt, "Das Problem der Autonomie und Integrität der Religionswissenschaft", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 27 (1973), pp. 1 0 5 - 1 3 1 . —, "Die 'ideologiekritische' Funktion der Religionswissenschaft", Humen, Vol. 25 (1978), pp. 1 7 - 3 9 . —, Art. "Vergleich, religions wissenschaftlich", in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, Vol. 5, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001, pp. 3 1 4 323. —, "Die vergleichende Methode in den Kulturwissenschaften und die Religionswissenschaft", in Vergleichen und Verstehen in der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by Hans-Joachim KLIMKEIT, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997, pp. 1 6 1 - 1 7 0 . SHARPE, E. J., Art. "Comparative Religion", in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, Vol. 3, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 5 7 8 - 5 8 0 . SIEBERT, R. J., The Critical Theory of Religion. The Trankfurt School (Religion and Reason 29), Berlin: Mouton, 1984. SIMART, Ninian, Art. "Comparative-historical Method", Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, Vol. 3, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 5 7 1 - 5 7 4 . Reprinted in 2ND edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2 0 0 5 , vol. 3, pp. 1 8 6 8 - 1 8 7 1 .

SMITH, Jonathan Z., Drudgery Divine. On Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Tate Antiquity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. —, Map is not Territory. Studies in the History of Religions, Leiden: Brill 8c Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. SPROUL, Barbara C., Primal Myths Creating the World, New York: Harper and Row, 1979. STEPHENSON, Gunther, "Wege und Grenzen der vergleichenden Perspektive. Die Religionswissenschaft im Kreise der Kulturwissenschaften", Saeculum, Vol. 4 7 (1996), pp. 3 0 0 - 3 4 0 . TWORUSCHKA, Udo, "Das Problem des Vergleichens von Religionen" in ID., Methodische Zugänge zu den Weltreligionen. Einführung für Unterricht und Studium, Munich: Kösel, 1982. Vergleichen und Verstehen in der Religionswissenschaft, Vorträge der Jahrestagung der DVRG vom 4. bis 6. Oktober 1995 in Bonn, ed. by Hans-Joachim KLIMKEIT, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997. VRIES, Jan de, Perspectives in the History of Religions, translated by Kees W. BOLLE. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1977. WASSERSTROM, S., "Scriptures in comparison", Religious Studies Review, Vol. 19 ( 1 9 9 3 ) , pp. 3 - 8 .

WERBLOWSKY, R. J. Z., "On Studying Comparative tions of a Simple Non-Philosopher", Religious 145-156. World Religions. Two volumes: Western Traditions Willard G. OXTOBY, Toronto, New York & Press, 1996.

Religion. Some Naive ReflecStudies, Vol. 11 (1975), pp. & Eastern Traditions, ed. by Oxford: Oxford University

Further Reading

436

2.5. Sociology and Psychology of Religion BERGER, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. — and Thomas LUCKIMANN, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. See about the author Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, ed. by Linda WOODHEAD, Paul HEELAS, and David MARTIN, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. See also Paul J. FITZGERALD, "Faithful Sociology. Peter Berger's Religious Project", Religious Studies Review, Vol. 27 (2001), No. 1, pp. 10-17. DAVIS, Winston, Art. "Sociology of Religion" (1987) in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 12, pp. 8490-8497. PARSONS, William B., Art. "Psychology of Religion" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2ND edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 11, pp. 7473-7481 (with bibliography). ROBERTSON, Roland, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion, New York: Schocken Books, 1970, 2 nd edition 1972. SEGAL, Robert Α., Art. "Sociology of Religion (further considerations)", in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 nd edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 12, pp. 8497-8501. WINCH, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958; revised 2 n d edition 1990. WULEE, David M., The Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary, New York etc.: John Wiley, 1991, 2 nd edition 1997.

3. Interpretative Studies of Religion 3.1. The Phenomenology

Debate

ALLEN, Douglas, Art. "Phenomenology of Religion", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan, 1987, Vol. 11, 1 9 8 7 , pp. 2 7 2 - 2 8 5 .

—, Art. "Phenomenology of Religion", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2ND edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2 0 0 5 , Vol. 10, pp.

7086-7101.

ALLES, Gregory D., "Jacques Waardenburg's Phenomenology of Intentions and the Economics of Sacred Space", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologieed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7, 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2 0 0 1 , pp. 2 8 7 - 3 0 5 .

BERNER, Ulrich, "Religionsphänomenologie und Skeptizismus", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologieed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, 6 / 7 , 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 369-391.

Further Reading

437

BLEEKER, C. JOUCO, "Wie steht es um die Phänomenologie der Religion?", in ID., The Rainbow: A Collection of Studies in the Science of Religion, Leiden: Brill, 1975, pp. 3 0 - 4 2 . BRAUN, Hans-Jürg, Elemente des Religiösen. Aufbau und Zerfall seiner Phänomene, Zürich: Artemis & Winkler, 1993. —, "Notizen zu einer transzendentalphilosophischen Phänomenologie der Religion", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologieed. by Axel M I C H A E L S , Daria P E Z Z O L I - O L G I A T I , Fritz S T O L Z (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7, 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 3 5 1 - 3 6 7 . BRENNEIMAN, J R . , Walter L . ; YARIAN, Stanley O . ; and Alan M . O L S O N , The Seeing Eye. Hermeneutical Phenomenology in the Study of Religion, Philadelphia and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982. CARiMAN, John Β., "Modern Understanding of Ancient Insight: Distinctive Contributions of W. B. Kristensen's Phenomenology of Religion", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery, 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway, ed. by Sigurd H J E L D E , Leiden etc.: Brill, 2 0 0 0 , pp. 1 5 7 - 1 7 2 . COLPE, Carsten, "Zur Neubegründung einer Phänomenologie der Religionen und der Religion", in Religionswissenschaft. Eine Einführung, ed. by Hartmut ZINSER, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1988, pp. 1 3 1 - 1 5 4 . —, Über das Heilige. Versuch, seiner Verkennung kritisch vorzubeugen, Frankfurt a.M.: Hain, 1990. —, "The Science of Religion, the History of Religion, the Phenomenology of Religion", Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 4 0 3 - 4 1 2 . Cox, James L., Expressing the Sacred. An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1992. —, "Religious Typologies and the Postmodern Critique", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), Nr. 3, pp. 2 4 1 - 3 1 0 . DAGENAIS, James J., "Once more into the Lion's mouth: Another look at Van der Leeuw's Phenomenology of Religion", in Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 15, ed. by A . - T . TYIMIENIECKA and C. O. SCHRÄG, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983, pp. 319-329. DANIELS, John, "How New is Neo-Phenomenology? A Comparison of the Methodologies of Gerardus van der Leeuw and Jacques Waardenburg", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 3 (1995), Nr. 1, pp. 4 3 - 5 5 . DHAVAiMONY, Mariausai, Phenomenology of Religion, Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1973. Die Diskussion um das "Heilige", ed. by Carsten C O L P E (Wege der Forschung 305), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. E R R I C K E R , Clive, "Phenomenological Approaches", in Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter CONNOLLY, London and New York: Continuum, 1999, pp. 7 3 - 1 0 4 . Experience of the Sacred. Readings in the Phenomenology of Religion, ed. by Sumner B. Twiss and Walter H. C O N S E R , J R . , Hanover and London: Brown University Press, 1992. FERNHOUT, Rein, Canonical Texts, Bearers of Absolute Authority. Bible, Koran, Veda, Tripitaka. A Phenomenological Study (Currents of Encounter 9), Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1994.

438

Further Reading

FLOOD, Gavin, Beyond Phenomenology. Rethinking the Study of Religion, London and New York: Continuum, 1999. GANTKE, Wolfgang, Der umstrittene Begriff des Heiligen. Eine problemorientierte religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1998. —, "Reflexion und Interpretation. Ein nicht-reduzierter Erfahrungsbegriff als Grundlage einer zukunftsfähigen Religionsphänomenologie", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologieed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7, 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 3 9 3 - 4 0 7 . GILHUS, Ingvild Saelid, "The Phenomenology of Religion and Theories of Interpretation", Temenos, Nr. 20 (1984), pp. 2 6 - 3 9 . —, "Is a Phenomenology of Religion possible? A Response to J. S. Jensen", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 1 6 3 - 1 7 1 . —, "Phenomenology of Religion Critically Observed", Temenos, Nr. 3 5 - 3 6 (1999-2000), pp. 7 - 2 3 . —, "The Phenomenology of Religion: An Ideal and its Problems", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery. 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp. 1 9 1 - 2 0 2 . GREISCH, Jean, "Phenomenologie de la Religion en Sciences religieuses. Plaidoyer pour une 'conversation triangulaire'", in Approches scientifiques des faits religieux, ed. by Jean JONCHERAY, Paris: Beauchesne, 1997, pp. 1 8 9 - 2 1 8 . HAIMMOND, M.; H O W A R T , J . ; and KEAT, R . , Understanding Phenomenology, Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991. HEDIN, Dag, Phenomenology and the Making of the World (Studia Philosophiae Religionis 19), Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1997. HONKO, Lauri, "Die typologische Methode in der religionsgeschichtlichen Forschung", Temenos, Nr. 17 (1981), pp. 5 - 2 6 . HOPKINS, B. C., Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger. The Problem of the Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology, Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer, 1993. HULTKRANTZ, Α., "The Phenomenology of Religion. Aims and Methods", Temenos, Nr. 6 (1970), pp. 6 8 - 8 8 . JACKSON, Michael, Things as they are. New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1996. JAMES, George Alfred, "Phenomenology and the Study of Religion: The Archaeology of an Approach", The Journal of Religion, Vol. 65, 1985, Nr. 3, pp. 311-335. —, Interpreting Religion. The Phenomenological Approaches of Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye, W. Brede Kristensen, and Gerardus van der Leeuw, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995. JENSEN, Jeppe Sinding, "Is a Phenomenology of Religion possible? On the Ideas of a Human and Social Science of Religion", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 5 (1993), Nr. 2, pp. 1 0 9 - 1 3 3 . —, "Phenomenology of Religion as a Project in Cultural Analysis and the 'Problem of Universals'", Temenos, Nr. 3 5 - 3 6 (1999-2000), pp. 3 9 - 6 5 .

Further Reading

439

KING, Winston L., Introduction to Religion: A Phenomenological Approach, New York: Harper & Row, 1969. KROLICK, Sanford, "Through a Glass Darkly: What is the Phenomenology of Religion?", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 17 (1985), pp. 193-199. LAMBRECHTS, Pieter, De fenomenologische methode in de godsdienstwetenschap, Brüssel: Academie van Wetenschappen, 1964. MUJIBURRAHMAN, "The Phenomenological Approach in Islamic Studies. An Overview of a Western Concept to Understand Islam", The Muslim World, Vol. 91 (Fall 2001), pp. 425-449. MURPHY, Tim, " Wesen und Erscheinung in the History of the Study of Religion: A Post-Structuralist Perspective", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 6 (1994), pp. 115-146. OTTO, Rudolf, Das Heilige. Uber das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, Breslau: Trewendt & Granier, 1917. English translation by John W . HARVEY: The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1923 etc. Pb. New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Book 14, 1958 etc. PADEN, William E., Religious Worlds. The Comparative Study of Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, 2 n d edition 1994. —, Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. PENNER, Hans, "Is Phenomenology a Method for the Study of Religion?", The Bucknell Review, vol. 18 (1970), pp. 29-54. PETTERSSON, Olof, and AKERBERG, Hans, Interpreting Religious Phenomena. Studies with Reference to the Phenomenology of Religion, Stockholm: Almqvist &c Wiksell International, 1981. PYYSIÄINEN, Ilkka, "Phenomenology of Religion and Cognitive Science: The Case of Religious Experience. Why Phenomenology and Cognitive Science? Categories, Taxonomies and Comparison", Temenos, Nr. 35-36 (1999-2000), pp. 125-153. Religion, Culture and Methodology, Papers of the Groningen Working-group for the Study of Fundamental Problems and Methods of Science of Religion, ed. by Th. P. van BAAREN and H . J . W. DRIJVERS (Religion and Reason 8), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973. RICOEUR, Paul, Husserl. An Analysis of his Phenomenology, Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1967. —, "Phenomenologie de la religion", in ID., Lectures 3, Paris: Seuil, 1994, pp. 263-271. RUDOLPH, Ulrich, "Religion und Reflexion. Einige Bemerkungen zur Religionsphänomenologie aus islamwissenschaftlicher Sicht", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie?, ed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7, 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 331-349. RYBA, Thomas, The Essence of Phenomenology and its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion, New York etc.: Peter Lang, 1991.

440

Further Reading

—, "The Idea of the Sacred in Twentieth-Century Thought: Four Views (Otto, Scheler, Nygren, Tymieniecka)", Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 43, ed. by A.-T. TYMIENNECKA, Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer, 1994, pp. 2 1 - 4 2 . —, "Why Revisit the Phenomenology of Religion?", Temenos, Nr. 3 5 - 3 6 (1999-2000), pp. 1 5 5 - 1 8 2 . ScHiMiTT, Richard, "Phenomenology", in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan Company and Free Press, 1967, pp. 1 3 5 - 1 5 1 . SEGAL, Robert Α., Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue, New York etc.: Peter Lang, 1992. SEIWERT, Hubert, "Religiöse Bedeutung als wissenschaftliche Kategorie", Annual Review for the Social Sciences of Religion, Vol. 5 (1981), pp. 5 7 - 9 9 . —, '"Religionen und Religion'. Anmerkungen zu Jacques Waardenburgs Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft", Zeitschrift für Missions- und Religionswissenschaft, Vol. 71 (1987), pp. 2 2 5 - 2 3 0 . SHARMA, Arvind, "An Inquiry into the Nature of the Distinction between the History of Religion and the Phenomenology of Religion", Numen, vol. 22 (1975), pp. 8 1 - 9 5 . —, "Towards a Definition of the Phenomenology of Religion", Milla wa-Milla, Vol. 16 (1976), pp. 8 - 2 2 . —, To the Things Themselves. Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenomenology of Religion (Religion and Reason 39), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. SiMART, Ninian, The Phenomenon of Religion, London: Macmillan, 1973. —, "Scientific Phenomenology and Wilfred Cantwell Smith's Misgivings", in The World's Religious Traditions. Current Perspectives in Religious Studies, Essays in Honour of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ed. by Frank WHALING, Edinburgh: Τ. & T. Clark, 1984, pp. 2 5 9 - 2 6 9 . —, "Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Complementarity", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 4 (1992), Nr. 2, pp. 2 1 - 2 6 . —, "'Foreword' to Religion in Essence and Manifestation", in G. van der LEEUW, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. I X - X I X . Reprinted in Ninian SiMART's Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, edited with an Introduction by John P. BURRis, Basingstoke & New York, 1997, pp. 5 1 - 6 2 . —, "Identity and a Dynamic Phenomenology of Religion" (1985), in ID., Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, edited with an Introduction by John P. BURRIS, Basingstoke & New York, 1997, pp. 6 3 - 7 2 . —, Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, edited with an Introduction by John P. BURRIS, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. SPIEGELBERG, H . , The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960; 3 r d revised and enlarged edition 1984. STEPHENSON, Gunther, Wege zur religiösen Wirklichkeit. Phänomene - Symbole Werte, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995. STRUCKMEYER, Frederick R., "Phenomenology and Religion. Some Comments", Religious Studies, Vol. 16 (1980), pp. 2 5 3 - 2 6 2 . TWORUSCHKA, Udo, Die Einsamkeit. Eine religionsphänomenologische Untersuchung (Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Religionsgeschichte 9), Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1974.

Further Reading

441

Terhi, "Situated Bodies and Others Making Religion: Phenomenology of the Body and the Study of Religion", Temenos, vol. 35-36 (19992000), pp. 249-270. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, "Religion between Reality and Idea. A Century of Phenomenology of Religion in the Netherlands", Numen, Vol. 19 (1972), Nr. 2 3, pp. 128-203. —, Reflections on the Study of Religion (Religion and Reason 15), The Hague, Paris and Berlin: Mouton, 1978. —, "Gerardus van der Leeuw as a Theologian and Phenomenologist" in Reflections on the Study of Religion, The Hague etc., 1978, pp. 187-247. —, "The Language of Religion, and the Study of Religions as Sign Systems", in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Lauri HONKO, The Hague: Mouton, 1979, pp. 441-457. —, Religionen und Religion, Systematische Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986. —, "The Problem of Representing Religions and Religion", in Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik, ed. by Hans G. Kippenberg and Brigitte Luchesi, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1991, pp. 31-56. —, Art. "Religionsphänomenologie" in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. 28, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, pp. 731-749. —, "Religionsphänomenologie 2000", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie?, ed. by Axel Michaels, Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, Fritz Stolz (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6/7, 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 441-469. WESTPHAL, Merold, God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984. WIDENGREN, Geo, "Some Remarks on the Methods of the Phenomenology of Religion", Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Vol. 17 (1968), pp. 250-260. German translation: "Einige Bemerkungen über die Methoden der Phänomenologie der Religion", in Selbstverständnis und Wesen der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by G. LANCZKOWSKI (Wege der Forschung, Vol. 2 6 3 ) , Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974, pp. 257-271. WIESSNER, Gernot, "Prolegomena zu einer Religionsphänomenologie als einer systematischen Religionswissenschaft", in Theologie und Wirklichkeit. Festschrift für Wolfgang Trilhaas zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Hans Walter SCHÜTTE & Friedrich WINTZER, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1 9 7 4 , UTRIAINEN,

pp.

192-208.

Evan Μ., "The Role of Intentionality in the Phenomenology of Religion", journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53 (1985), pp. 51-74.

ZUESSE,

3.2. Scholarly Hermeneutic

Orientations

Lars, "Discourse Analysis within the Study of Religion. Processes of Change in Ancient Greece", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 9 (1997), pp. 203-232. ALLES, Gregory D., "In Search of Intellectual Biography. A Review", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 6 (1994), pp. 251-275. ALBINUS,

442

Further Reading

ARAPURA, John G., Religion as Anxiety and Tranquillity (Religion and Reason 5), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1972. BARNHART, Joe E., The Study of Religion and its Meaning (Religion and Reason 12), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1977. BENZ, Ernst, "Über die Schwierigkeiten des Verstehens fremder Religion", in Geist und Werk. Aus der Werkstatt unserer Autoren. Zum 75. Geburtstag von Dr. Daniel Brody, Zürich: Rhein-Verlag, 1958, pp. 245-266. BETTI, Emilio, Teoria generale della interpretazione, 2 vols., Milan, 1955. German translation by the author as Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften, Tübingen, 1967. BOLLNOW, Otto Friedrich, Dilthey. Eine Einführung in seine Philosophie, Leipzig: Teubner, 1936. —, "Religionswissenschaft als hermeneutische Disziplin", Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, Vol. 31 (1979), pp. 225-238 and 366-379. BOWKER, John, The Sense of God. Sociological, Anthropological and Psychological Approaches to the Origin of the Sense of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. —, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. BREMiMER, Jan N., "W. Brede Kristensen and the Religions of Greece and Rome", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp.115-130. BRENNEMAN, JR., Walter L.; YARIAN, Stanley O . ; and Alan M . OLSON, The Seeing Eye. Hermeneutical Phenomenology in the Study of Religion, Philadelphia and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982. BULKELEY, Kelly, The Wilderness of Dreams. Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture, New York: SUNY Press, 1994. CLIFFORD, James, Person and Myth. Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982. COLPE, Carsten, Uber das Heilige. Versuch, seiner Verkennung kritisch vorzubeugen, Frankfurt a.M.: Hain, 1990. Henry Corbin, ed. by Christian JAMBET, Paris: Ed. de l'Herne, 1981. COULIANO, loan Peter, "La religion comme systeme", in Dictionnaire des religions, ed. by Mircea ELIADE and loan P. COULIANO, Paris: Plön, 1990, pp. 17-21. CROSBY, Donald Α., Interpretive Theories of Religion (Religion and Reason 20), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1981. Die Diskussion um das "Heilige", ed. by Carsten COLPE (Wege der Forschung 305), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. DUPRE, Wilhelm, Patterns in Meaning. Reflections on Meaning and Truth in Cultural Reality, Religious Traditions, and Dialogical Encounters, Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994. FLOOD, Gavin, Beyond Phenomenology. Rethinking the Study of Religion, London and New York: Continuum, 1999. GADAiMER, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, New York and London: Sheed and Ward, 1975, 2 n d revised edition 1993. Gadamer Lesebuch, ed. by Jean GRONDIN, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.

Further Reading

443

GANTKE, Wolfgang, Der umstrittene Begriff des Heiligen. Eine problemorientierte religionswisenschaftliche Untersuchung. Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1998.

—, "Reflexion und Interpretation. Ein nicht-reduzierter Erfahrungsbegriff als Grundlage einer zukunftsfähigen Religionsphänomenologie", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie?, ed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI, Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch, Vol. 6 / 7 , 2000/01), Bern etc.: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 393-407. GEERTZ, Armin W., "Hermeneutics in Ethnography: Lessons for the Study of Religion", in Vergleichen und Verstehen in der Religionswissenschaft, ed. by Hans-Joachim KLIMKEIT, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997, pp. 53-70. GEERTZ, Clifford, "Religion as a Cultural System", in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Michael BANTON, London: Tavistock, 1966. Reprinted in the author's The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 87-126. —, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, 1973. —, Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, New York: Basic Books, 1983. —, " 'From the Native's Point of View': On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding", in the author's Local Knowledge (1983), pp. 55-70. —, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. GRÜNSCHLOSS, Andreas, Religionswissenschaft als Welt-Theologie. Wilfred Cantwell Smiths interreligiöse Hermeneutik, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994. HAIM, J. J. TEN, "Gerardus van der Leeuw: Ontwikkeling en grondstructuur van zijn theologie". Doctoraal Scriptie, Theologische Faculteit, Universiteit Utrecht, 1973. HARVEY, Van Α., Art. "Hermeneutics", Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d Edition, Lindsay JONES, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, Vol. 6, pp. 3930-3936. The History of Religions. Essays on the Problem of Understanding, ed. by Joseph M. KITAGAWA, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1967. HOPKINS, B. C., Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger. The Problem of the Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology, Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer, 1993. How to do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals, ed. by Rene GOTHONI (Religion and Reason 44), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. KEHNSCHERPER, Jürgen, Theologisch-philosophische Aspekte der religionsphänomenologischen Methode des Gerardus van der Leeuw, Frankfurt a.M. etc.: Peter Lang, 1996. KEPNES, Steven D., "Bridging the Gap between Understanding and Explanation. Approaches to the Study of Religion", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 15 (1986), pp. 504-512. KITAGAWA, Joseph M., Gibt es ein Verstehen fremder Religionen? (Joachim Wach Vorlesungen), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.

444

Further Reading

LONG, Charles H., Significations. Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. LOTT, Eric J., Vision, Tradition, Interpretation, Theology. Religion and the Study of Religion (Religion and Reason 35), Berlin, The Hague, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987. MAKKREEL, R . Α . , Dilthey. Philosopher of the Human Studies, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. MATTHES, Joachim, "Was ist anders an anderen Religionen? Anmerkungen zur zentristischen Organisation des religionssoziologischen Denkens", in Religion und Kultur, ed. by J. BERGMANN, A. HAHN, Th. LUCKMANN, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993, pp. 16-30. Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Robert D. BAIRD, Chico, Calif.: New Horizons Press, 1975. OTTO, Rudolf, Das Heilige. Uber das Irrationale in der Idee des göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, Breslau: Trewendt & Granier, 1917. English translation by John W. HARVEY, The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1923 (further revised editions of this translation). PADEN, William E., Religious Worlds. The Comparative Study of Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, 2 n d edition 1994. —, Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. PALMER, Richard E., Hermeneutics. Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1969, 2 n d ed.1988. PETTERSSON, Olof, and AKERBERG, Hans, Interpreting Religious Phenomena. Studies with Reference to the Phenomenology of Religion, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1981. PYE, Michael, "Comparative Hermeneutics in Religion", in ID. and R. MORGAN, The Cardinal Meaning. Essays in Comprative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973, pp. 9 - 5 8 . —, "Problems of Method in the Interpretation of Religion", Japanese journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 1 (1974), Nr. 2 - 3 , pp. 107-123. — and MORGAN, Robert, The Cardinal Meaning. Essays in Comparative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity (Religion and Reason 6), The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1973. RICOEUR, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil, New York: Harper and Row, 1967. —, Hermeneutik und Strukturalismus, Munich: Kösel, 1973. —, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 2 n d edition 1982. RYBA, Thomas, The Essence of Phenomenology and its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion, New York: Peter Lang, 1991. —, "The Idea of the Sacred in Twentieth-Century Thought: Four Views (Otto, Scheler, Nygren, Tymieniecka)", in Prom the Sacred to the Divine, ed. by A . - T . TYMIENIECKA (Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 43), Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1994, pp. 2 1 - 4 2 .

Further Reading

445

—, "The Utopias of Disney World's Magic Kingdom: A Stroll through a Realized American Eschatology", Temenos, Nr. 3 5 - 3 6 (1999-2000), pp. 1 8 3 223. SCHLEIERMACHER, Friedrich, Hermeneutics, The Handwritten Manuscripts, ed. by Heinz KIMMERLE, Translation of the German edition of 1974, Missoula, Mont., 1977. SEGAL, Robert Α., Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue, New York etc.: Peter Lang, 1992. SEIWERT, Hubert, "Religiöse Bedeutung als wissenschaftliche Kategorie", Annual Review for the Social Sciences of Religion, Vol. 5 (1981), pp. 5 7 - 9 9 . —, " 'Religionen und Religion'. Anmerkungen zu Jacques Waardenburgs Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft", Zeitschrift für Missions- und Religionswissenschaft, Vol. 71 (1987), pp. 2 2 5 - 2 3 0 . SHARPE, Eric J., Understanding Religion, London: Duckworth, 1994. SMART, Ninian, The Phenomenon of Religion, London: Macmillan, 1973. —, Concept and Empathy. Essays in the Study of Religion. Edited by Donald WLEBE, London: Macmillan and New York: New York University Press, 1986. —, "Comparative-Historical Method", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, Vol. 3, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 5 7 1 - 5 7 4 . —, Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, ed. with an Introduction by John P. BURRIS. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Cf. Aspects of Religion. Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart, ed. by Peter MASEEIELD a n d D o n a l d WIEBE, 1 9 9 4 .

Cf. also The Euture of Religion: Postmodern Perspectives. Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart, ed. by Christopher A . LAMB and Dan COHN-SHERBOK, London: Middlesex University Press, 1999. SMITH, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963. SUNDERMEIER, Theo, Den Eremden verstehen. Eine praktische Hermeneutik, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck 8c Ruprecht, 1996. THOMPSON, John Brookshire, Critical Hermeneutics. Α Study of the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Tradition und Translation. Zum Problem der interkulturellen Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene, Festschrift Carsten Colpe, ed. by Christoph ELSAS, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1994. WAARDENBURG, Jacques, Reflections on the Study of Religion. Including an Essay on the Work of Gerardus van der Leeuw, The Hague, Paris and Berlin: Mouton, 1978. —, "The Language of Religion, and the Study of Religions as Sign Systems", in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Lauri HONKO, The Hague: Mouton, 1979, pp. 4 4 1 - 4 5 7 . —, Religionen und Religion, Systematische Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986.

446

Further Reading

—, "The Problem of Representing Religions and Religion", in Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik, ed. by Hans G. Kippenberg and Brigitte Luchesi, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1991, pp. 31-56. —, "In Search of an Open Concept of Religion", in Religion in History: The Word, The Idea, The Reality, ed. by Michel DESPLAND and Gerard VALLEE, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1992, pp. 225-240. —, "Religionsphänomenologie 2000", in Noch eine Chance für die Religionsphänomenologie, ed. by Axel MICHAELS, Daria PEZZOLI-OLGIATI and Fritz STOLZ (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Jahrbuch 2000/01), pp. 441-469. WACH, Joachim, Das Verstehen. Grundzüge einer Geschichte der hermeneutischen Theorie im 19. Jahrhundert, 3 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 19261933. WOOD, Charles Monroe, Theory and Religious Understanding. A Critique of the Hermeneutics of Joachim Wach, Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975. Zwischen den Kulturen?: Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs, ed. by Joachim MATTHES, Göttingen: Schwartz, 1992.

3.3. Comprehensive

Reflections

DUPRE, Wilhelm, Patterns in Meaning. Reflections on Meaning and Truth in Cultural Reality, Religious Traditions, and Dialogical Encounters, Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994. GRÜNSCHLOSS, Andreas, Religionswissenschaft als Welt-Theologie. Wilfred Cantwell Smiths interreligiöse Hermeneutik, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck 8ί Ruprecht, 1994. HUBBELING, Hubertus G., Divine Presence in Ordinary Life. Gerardus van der Leeuws Two-fold Method in his Thinking on Art and Religion (Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde), Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1986. LOTT, Eric J., Vision, Tradition, Interpretation, Theology. Religion and the Study of Religion (Religion and Reason 35), Berlin, etc.: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987. PLANTINGA, Richard John, Seeking the Boundaries: Gerardus van der Leeuw on the Study of Religion and the Nature of Theology. (PhD Dissertation 1980, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilm International, 1980. SIMART, Ninian, The Phenomenon of Religion, London: Macmillan, 1973. —, Concept and Empathy. Essays in the Study of Religion, ed. by Donald WIEBE, London: Macmillan, and New York: New York University Press, 1986. —, Reflections in the Mirror of Religion, ed. with an Introduction by John P. BURRIS, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. SMITH, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion. A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Further Reading

447

—, "Methodology and the Study of Religion: Some Misgivings", in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Robert D. BAIRD, Chico, Calif.: New Horizons Press, 1975, pp. 1 - 2 5 , with "Rejoinder", pp. 1 2 3 - 1 2 4 . —, Religious Diversity, ed. by Willard G. OXTOBY, New York and London: Harper & Row, 1976. —, Belief and History, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977. —, Faith and Belief, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. —, Towards a World Theology, London: Macmillan and Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981. Cf. W. C. Smith Conference, Toronto 1992, Special issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 4 (1992). Contributions by John HICK, Ninian SIMART, E d w a r d J . HUGHES, D o n a l d WIEBE, E v a K . N e u m a i e r DARGYAY, J o n a t h a n Z . SIMITH, A n t o n i o R . GUALTIERI, P e t e r SLATER.

4. Gender and the Academic Study of Religion 4.1. Gender and Religion in General After Patriarchy. M.

Feminist Transformations

of the World Religions,

ed. by Paula

COOEY, W i l l i a m R . EAKIN, J a y B . M C D A N I E L , M a r y k n o l l , N . Y . :

Orbis,

1991. The Annual Review of Women in World Religions, ed. by Arvind SHARiMA and Katherine K. YOUNG, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1 9 9 1 - 2 0 0 2 . BOYARIN, Daniel, "Gender", in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark C. TAYLOR, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 1 1 7 135. Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion, ed. by Serinity YOUNG, 2 vols., New York: Macmillan, 1999. Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions. Studies in the History of Religions, ed. by Ria KLOPPENBORG and Wouter J. HANEGRAAFF, Leiden etc.: Brill, 1995. Feminism and World Religions, ed. by Arvind SHARiMA and Katherine K. YOUNG, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1999. Feminism in the Study of Religion. A Reader, ed. by Darlene M. JUSCHKA, London and New York: Continuum, 2001. Fundamentalism and Gender, ed. by John Stratton HAWLEY, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. "Gender and Religion" (various authors for various religions) Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d ed., 2005, vol. 5, pp. 3 2 9 6 - 3 4 2 0 (with bibliographies). Gender and Religion. On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. by Caroline Walker BYNUIM, Stevan HARREL, Pauls RICHMAN, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1986. Gender and the Study of Religion, ed. by Randi R. WARNE, Special issue of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 13 (2001), Nr. 2. Gender, Religion and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Ursula KING and Tina BEATTIE, London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Globalization, Gender, and Religion. The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts, ed. by Jane H. BAYES, New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Further Reading

448

Good Sex. Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions, ed. by Patricia Beattie JUNG, Mary E. HUNT and Radhika BALAKRISHNAN, New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press, 2001. GROSS, Rita M., Buddhism after Patriarchy. A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993. —, Feminism and Religion. An Introduction, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1996. HAWTHORNE, Sian, Art. "Gender and Religion: History of Study", Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d ed., Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 5, pp. 3 3 1 0 - 3 3 1 8 (with bibliography). HEWITT, Marsha Α., Critical Theory of Religion. A Feminist Analyses, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. —, "Ideology Critique, Feminism, and the Study of Religion", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 11 (1999), No. 1, pp. 4 7 - 6 3 . KING, Ursula, Art. "Gender and Religion: an Overview", Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d ed., Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, vol. 5, pp. 3 2 9 6 - 3 3 1 0 (with bibliography). LAMBIN, Rosine Α., Le voile des femmes. Un inventaire historique, social et psychologiue (Studia Religiosa Helvetica Series Altera 3), Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Methodology in Religious Studies. The Interface with "Women's Studies, ed. by Arvind SHARMA (McGill Studies in the History of Religions), Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2002. MIKAELSSON, Lisbeth, "Gendering the History of Religions", in New Approaches to the Study of Religion, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, Randi R. WARNE (Religion and Reason 42), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, pp. 2 9 5 315. MORGAN, Sue, "Feminist Approaches", in Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by Peter CONNOLLY, London, and New York: Cassell, 1999, pp. 4 2 - 7 2 . OFFEN, Karen, "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach", Signs, Vol. 14 (1988), Nr. 1, pp.119-157. Religion and Gender, ed. by Ursula KING, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995. Religion and Women, ed. by Arvind SHARIMA, Albany, N . Y . : S U N Y Press, 1994. RUETHER, Rosemary Radford, "Androcentrism", in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea ELIADE, Editor in Chief, Vol. 1. New York and London: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 2 7 2 - 2 7 6 . Today's Woman in World Religions, ed. by Arvind SHARIMA, Albany, N.Y.: S U N Y Press, 1 9 9 4 .

Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives, ed. by Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, Belmont, Calif.: Wadswoth/Thomson Learning, 1980, 3 r d edition 2001. WARNE, Randi R., "Gender", in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. by Willi BRAUN and Russell T. MCCUTCHEON, London and New York: Cassell, 2000, pp. 1 4 0 - 1 5 4 . Weaving the Visions. Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. by Judith PLASKOW and Carol P. VJRIST, San Francisco, Calif.: Harper, 1989.

Further Reading

449

Women and Religion, ed. by Judith PLASKOW and Joan ARNOLD, Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1974. Women in Religion, ed. by Jean HOLM with John BOWKER (Themes in Religious Studies Series), London and New York: Pinter, 1994. Women in the World's Religions: Past and Present, ed. by Ursula KING, New York: Paragon, 1987. Women in World Religions, ed. by Arvind SHARIMA, Albany, N.Y.; SUNY Press, 1987.

4.2. Gender and Islam Khaled, Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority, and Women, Oxford: Oneworld, 2001. ABOULELA, Leila, Minaret, London: Bloomsbury, 2005. ABU-LUGHOD, Lila, Veiled Sentiments. Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. AEKHAIMI, Mahnaz, Faith and Freedom; Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995. AHMED, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam. Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. ASCHA, Ghassan, Du Statut inferieur de la femme en Islam, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1987. BARLAS, Asma, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretation of the Qur'än, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2002. COOKE, Miriam, Women Claim Islam. Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature, New York: Routledge, 2000. DOORN-HARDER, Nelly van, Contemporary Coptic Nuns, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. —, Art. "Gender and Islam" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d edition, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, pp. 3364-3371 (with bibliography). —, Women Shaping Islam. Reading Quran in Indonesia, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, edited by Joseph SUAD, Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2003 ff. ENGINEER, Ashgar Ali, The Rights of Women in Islam. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, 2 n d edition Chicago: New Dawn Press, 2004. ESPOSITO, John L. and Natana J. DELONG-BAS, Women in Muslim Family Law, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1982, 2 n d revised edition 2001. Feminism and Islam. Legal and Literary Perspectives, ed. by Mai YAMANI, New York: New York University Press, 1996. FERNEA, Elizabeth Warnock, In Search of Islamic Feminism. One Woman's Global journey, New York: Doubleday, 1998. GÖLE, Nilüfer, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Islam, Gender and Social Change, ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck HADDAD and John L. ESPOSITO, New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1998. ABOU E L FADL,

450

Further Reading

KARAM, Azza M., Women, Islamisms, and the State. Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. MAYER, Ann Elizabeth, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, London: Pinter, 1991; 3 rd ed. 1999. —, "Reform of Personal Status Laws in North Africa: a Problem of Islamic or Mediterranean Laws?", Middle East Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 432-446. MERNISSI, Fatima, Beyond the Veil. Male Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society, Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1975. —, The Veil and the Male Elite. A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, translated by Mary Jo LAKELAND, Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1991. —, Women and Islam. An Historical and Theological Enquiry, translated by Mary Jo LAKELAND, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. —, Women's Rebellion and Islamic Memory, translated by Mary Jo LAKELAND, London: Zed Books, 1996. METCALE, Barbara Daly, Perfecting Women. Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi's Bibishti Zeivar, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. M I R - H O S S E I N I , Ziba, Islam and Gender. The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran, London and New York: Tauris, 1999. MOGHISSI, Haideh, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism. The Limits of Postmodern Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Muslim Feminism and Feminist Movement, ed. by Abida SAIMIUDDIN and R. K H A N A I M , 9 vols. Delhi: Global Vision Publishing House, 2002. NASIR, Jamal J., The Status of Women under Islamic Law and under Modern Islamic Legislation, London: Graham and Trotman, 1990. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, ed. by Omid SAEI, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. Property, Social Structure and Law in the Modern Middle East, edited by Ann Elizabeth MAYER, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1985. ROALD, Anne Sofie, Women in Islam. The Western Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. SARDAR, Ali Shaheen, Equal before Allah, Unequal before Man? Negotiating Gender Hierarchies in Islam and International Law, Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1999. SCHAEEER DAVIS, Susan, Patience and Power. Women's Lives in a Moroccan Village, Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1983. SHARAWI, Huda, Harem Years. The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, translated and introduced by Margot BADRAN, London: Virago, 1986. SHAREATI, Ali, Fatima is Fatima, translated by Laleh BAKHEIAR, Teheran, 1 9 8 1 . SVENSSON, Jonas, Women's Human Rights and Islam. A Study of Three Attempts at Accommodation, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2000. TAARJI, Hinde, Les voilees de l'Islam, Paris: Balland, 1 9 9 0 . WADUD, Amina, Qur'an and Woman. Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, New York: Oxford University Press, 2 n d ed. 1999. WALTHER, Wiebke, Women in Islam, Introduction by Guity NASHAT, Princeton and New York: Markus Wiener, 1992. —, "Womanpower im Islam", Die Frau in unserer Zeit, Vol. 27 (1998), pp. 2-11.

Further Reading

451

Women and the Family in the Middle East. New Voices of Change, ed. by Elizabeth Warnock FERNEA, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. Women in Contemporary Muslim Societies, edited by Jane I. SMITH, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Women, Islam, and the State, ed. by Deniz KANDIYOTI, Philadelphia, 1991.

5. The Study of Religions in Various Countries General Section "Study of Religion" (country-wise) in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2 n d Edition, Lindsay JONES Editor in Chief, Macmillan Reference USA, 2005, Vol. 13, pp. 8760-8796 (most countries), and Vol. 15, pp. 10072-10082 (China and Western Europe). See especially: Art. "Study of Religion: an Overview" by Gregory D. ALLES (pp. 8761-8767) in Vol. 13. See in this Encyclopedia also Art. "Historiography" by Ernst BREISACH ("Overview", pp. 4 0 2 4 - 4 0 3 5 ) , Arnaldo MOMIGGLIANO ("Western Studies. First Edition" 1987, pp. 4 0 3 5 - 4 0 4 2 ) , and Giovanni CASADIO ("Western Studies, Further Considerations" 2 0 0 5 , pp. 4 0 4 2 - 4 0 5 2 ) in Vol. 6 . Modern Societies and the Science of Religions. Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer, ed. by Gerard WIEGERS and Jan PLATVOET (Numen Book Series 95), Leiden etc.: Brill, 2002 (Quoted as "Modern Societies"). New Approaches to the Study of Religion, Vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, ed. by Peter ANTES, Armin W. GEERTZ, Randi R. WARNE (Religion and Reason 4 2 ) , Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2 0 0 4 . (Quoted as "New Approaches"). Religion in the Making. The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion, ed. by Arie L. MOLENDIJK and Peter PELS (Numen Book Series 80), Leiden etc.: Brill, 1998. (Quoted as "Religion Making").

Australia TROMPF, Garry W., "A Survey of New Approaches in the Study of Religion in Australia and the Pacific", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 147-181.

China SCHIPPER, Kristofer, "Rediscovering Religion in China", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 377-386.

Czech

Republic

HORYNA, Bretislav, "Czech Religious Studies: Past, Present, Future", Method Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 13 (2001), pp. 254-268.

and

452

Further Reading

Denmark TYBJERG, Tove, "The Introduction of History of Religions as an Academic Discipline in Denmark", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery: Hundred Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp. 237-252.

Europe ANTES, Peter, "A Survey of New Approaches to the Study of Religion in Europe", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 43-62.

France Jean, "Deux institutions de science des religions en France: La Section des Sciences Religieuses de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), le Groupe de Sociologie des Religions" (etablis en 1886 et en 1954 respectivement), Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 55-66. DESPLAND, Michel, "Sciences of Religion in France during the July Monarchy (1830-1848), Religion Making, 1998, pp. 31-43. —, L'emergence des sciences de la religion, ha monarchie de Juillet: un moment fondateur, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999. —, "Les sciences religieuses en France: des sciences que l'on pratique mais que l'on n'enseigne pas", Archives de Sciences sociales des Religions, no. 116 (oct.-dec. 2001), pp. 5-25. —, Comparatisme et christianisme. Questions d'histoire et de methode, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. MESLIN, Michel, "Histoire ou science des religions: Le cas frangais", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 41-54. POULAT, Emile, "Les sciences des religions en France", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, pp. 46-47. BAUBEROT,

Germany KIPPENBERG, Hans G., "One of the Mightiest Motors in the History of Mankind: C. P. Tiele's Impact on German Religionswissenschaft", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 67-81. WILLAIIME, Jean-Paul, "La 'Religionswissenschaft' en Allemagne", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, p. 47.

India Pratap, "A Survey of New Approaches to the Study of Religion in India", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 127-145.

KUIMAR,

Further Reading

453

Indonesia BECK, Herman L., "A Pillar of Social Harmony. The Study of Comparative Religion in Contemporary Indonesia", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 331-349.

Israel SHARED, Shaul, "The Science of Religion in Israel, with Notes on Interlocking Circles of Traditions", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 258-271.

Italy CAROZZI, Pier Angelo, "La science des religions en Italie", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, pp. 49-50. TERRIN, Aldo Natale, "The Study of Religions in Italy. Some Data and Reflections", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 10 (1998), pp. 373-387.

Japan PYE, Michael, "Modern Japan and the Science of Religions", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 350-376. ROTERMUND, Hartmut Ο., "Les sciences des religions au Japon", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, pp. 51-52.

Netherlands BREMIMER, Jan N., "Methodologische en terminologische notities bij de opkomst van de godsdienstgeschiedenis in de achttiende en negentiende eeuw", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 57 (2003), pp. 308-320. HOESTEE, Willem, "Phenomenology of Religion versus Anthropolopgy of Religion? The "Groningen School" 1920-1990", in Man, Meaning and Mystery. Hundred Years of History of Religions in Norway: The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp. 1 7 3 190. LEERTOUWER, Lammert, "Nec lusisse pudet ...", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 149-165. MOLENDIJK, Arie L., "Transforming Theology. The Institutionalization of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands", Religion Making, 1998, pp. 67-95. —, "At the Cross-roads, Early Dutch Science of Religion in International Perspective", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery: 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp. 19-56.

454

Further Reading

—, "'In hoc signo vinces'. De geschiedschrijving van de godsdienstwetenschap", Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 57 (2003), pp. 291-307. —, The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. PLATVOET, Jan G., "Close Harmonies. The Science of Religion in Dutch duplex ordo Theology, 1860-1960", Numen, vol. 45 (1998), pp. 115-162. —, "From Consonance to Autonomy: The Science of Religion in the Netherlands, 1948-1995", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 10 (1998), nr. 4, pp. 334-351. —, "Pillars, Pluralism and Secularisation: A Social History of Dutch Sciences of Religions", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 82-148.

North

America

KITAGAWA, Joseph M., "The History of Religions in America", in The History of Religions, Essays in Methodology, ed. by Mircea ELIADE and Joseph M. KITAGAWA, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 1-30. MCCUTCHEON, Russell T., "Critical Trends in the Study of Religion in the United States", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 317-344. MARTIN, Luther H., "The Academic Study of Religion in the United States: Historical and Theoretical Considerations", Religio, vol. 1 (1993), pp. 73-80. SIMART, Ninian, "Les etudes religieuses en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, pp. 49-51. WARNE, Randi R., "New Approaches to the Study of Religion in North America", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 13-42. WIEBE, Donald, "Promise and Disappointment: Recent Developments in the Academic Study of Religion in the United States", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 185-222.

Norway FINNESTAD, Ragnhild Bjerre, "The Study of Religions in Norway", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 13, pp. 243-253. HJELDE, Sigurd, "From Kristiansand to Leiden: The Norwegian Career of W. Brede Kristensen", in Man, Meaning, and Mystery: 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, ed. by Sigurd HJELDE, Leiden etc.: Brill, 2000, pp. 205-222.

Poland GRZYMALA-MOSZCYNSKA, Halina, and HOFFIVIANN, Henryk, "The Science of Religion in Poland: Past and Present", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 10 (1998), pp. 352-372.

Further Reading

455

South Africa TAYOB, Abdulkader I., "Modern South Africa and the Science of Religion. Productive and Inhibitive Models for the Study of Religions", Modern Societies, 2000, pp. 3 0 2 - 3 2 8 .

Spain WIEGERS, Gerard, "The Science of Religions in Spain. The Instituto Universitario de Ciencias de las Religiones in Madrid and Ibn Rushd University in Cordoba", Modern Societies, 2002, pp. 1 6 6 - 1 8 4 .

Turkey HARIMAN, Omer Faruk, and YEL, Ali Murat, "The Sciences of Religions in Turkish History", Modern Societies, 2000, pp. 2 4 5 - 2 5 7 . SENAY, Bülent, "The Study of Religion, the History of Religions and Islamic Studies in Turkey. Approaches from "Phenomenological Theology" to Contextualism", New Approaches, 2004, pp. 6 3 - 1 0 0 .

United

Kingdom

BYRNE, Peter, "The Foundations of the Study of Religion in the British Context", Religion Making, 1998, pp. 4 5 - 6 5 . CUNNINGHAM, Adrian, "Religious Studies in the Universities: England", in Turning Points in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. by Ursula KING, Edinburgh: Τ. & T. Clark, 1990, pp. 2 1 - 3 1 . SiMART, Ninian, "Religious Studies in the United Kingdom", Religion, vol. 18 ( 1 9 8 8 ) , pp. 1 - 9 .

—, "Les etudes religieuses en Grande Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis", Le grand Atlas des Religions, Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 1988, pp. 4 9 - 5 1 . Studying Religions: Empirical Approaches, ed. by Steven SUTCLIEEE, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2004. THOIMAS, Terence, "Political Motivations in the Development of the Academic Study of Religions in Britain", Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 1 2 ( 2 0 0 0 ) , p p . 7 4 - 9 0 .

WALLS, Andrew F., "Religious Studies in the Universities: Scotland", in Turning Points in Religious Studies. Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. by Ursula KING, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1990, pp. 3 2 - 4 5 . WHEELER-BARCLAY, Marjorie, The Science of Religion in Britain, 1860-1915. PhD Thesis, 1987, Northwestern University (Evanston).

Further Reading

456

6. Islamic Studies in Various Countries Canada ADAMS, Charles J., "The Development of Islamic Studies in Canada", in The Muslim Community in North America, ed. by Earle WAUGH & others, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983, pp. 185-201. KENNY, Lome M., "Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada", in Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art, ed. by Tareq Y. ISiMAEL, New York: Praeger, 1990, pp. 26-44.

Denmark Middle East Studies in Denmark, versity Press, 1994.

ed. by Erslev ANDERSEN, Odense: Odense Uni-

France ARKOUN, Mohammed, "The Study of Islam in French Scholarship", in Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 33-44. CAHEN, Claude, and PELLAT, Charles, "Les etudes arabes et islamiques", in Cinquante ans d'orientalisme en France, 1922-1972, special issue of journal Asiatique, No. 261 (1973), pp. 89-107. LAURENS, Henry, "Orientalism and politics in France", in Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures, ed. by Sami A. KHASAWNIH (Conference Amman, 22-24 October, 2002), Amman: University of Jordan, 2004, pp. 160-165. SANAGUSTIN, Floreal, "Orientalism in France between Scholarly and Ideological Tendencies" (in Arabic), in Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures, ed. by Sami A. KHASAWNIH, Amman, 2004, pp. 129-137 (Arabic Part).

Germany Friedemann, "Situation, Structure and Functions of Contemporary Oriental Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany. Spiritual Imperialism or Bridge of Intercultural Communication?", in Europe's Future in the Arab View. Dimensions of a New Political Cooperation in the Mediterranean Region, ed. by Dieter BIELENSTEIN, Saarbrücken et al.: Breitenbach, 1981, pp. 71-86. HAARMANN, Ulrich, "Die islamische Moderne bei den deutschen Orientalisten", in: Araber und Deutsche. Begegnungen in einem Jahrtausend, ed. by F. KOCHWASSER and R . ROEMER, Tübingen, 1974, pp. 56-91. BUTTNER,

Further Reading

457

—, "L'orientalisme allemand", M.A.R.S. (Le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique), (Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe), No 4, Winter 1994, pp. 6 9 78. HANISCH, Ludmila, Die Nachfolger der Exegeten. Deutschsprachige Erforschung des Vorderen Orients in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003. — and SCHÖNIG, Hanne, Ausgegrenzte Kompetenz. Porträts vertriebener Orientalisten und Orientalistinnen 1933-1945, Halle/Saale: Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum, 2001. "Islamic Studies in the German Democratic Republic. Traditions, Positions, Findings", ed. by H. PREISSLER and M. ROBBE, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, East Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1982. JOHANSEN, Baber, "Politics and Scholarship. The Development of Islamic Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany", in Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art, ed. by Tareq ISIMAEL, New York: Praeger, 1990, pp. 71-130. —, "Politics, Paradigms and the Progress of Oriental Studies. The German Oriental Society (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft) 1845-1989", M.A.R.S (Le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique), (Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe) No 4, Winter 1994, pp. 79-94. LITTMANN, Enno, Ein Jahrhundert Orientalistik. Lebensbilder aus der Feder von Enno Littmann und Verzeichnis seiner Schriften, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1955. Der Orient in akademischer Optik. Beiträge zur Genese einer Wissenschaftsdisziplin, ed. by Ludmila HANISCH (Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 20/2006), Halle: Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum der Universität, 2006. PARET, Rudi, The Study of Arabic and Islam at German Universities. German Orientalists since Theodor Nöldeke, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1968. ROEMER, Η. H., "Spezialisierung, Integration und Innovation in der deutschen Orientalistik", Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 28 (1988), pp. 475-497.

Netherlands BRUGMAN, J. and SCHRÖDER, F., Arabic Studies in the Netherlands, Leiden: Ε. J. Brill, 1979. DAIBER, Hans, and RAVEN, Willem, "Recent Islamic and Arabic Studies in the Netherlands", Asian Research Trends, Vol. 4 (1994), pp. 1-24. GROOT, A. H. de and PETERS, R., A Bibliography of Dutch Publications on the Middle East and Islam, 1945-1981, Nijmegen: MOI Publications, 1981. JONG, Frederick de, "Middle Eastern Studies in the Netherlands", Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 20 (1986), No. 2, pp. 171-186. —, "A Survey of Middle Eastern Studies in the Netherlands: Academic Tradition, Present-Day Programs, Research, and Working Conditions", in Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art, ed. by Tareq ISMAEL, New York: Praeger, 1990, pp. 157-172. STRIJP, Ruud, A Guide to Recent Dutch Research on Islam and Muslim Societies, Leiden: I S I M , 1998.

Further Reading

458

Russia and USSR Mihail, "Quarante ans d'Etudes Orientales en U . R . S . S . ( 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 5 7 ) , Studia et Acta Orientalia, Vol. 1 ( 1 9 5 8 ) , pp. 2 8 1 - 3 1 6 . KRATCHKOVSKY, I. Y . , Among Arabic Manuscripts, Memories of Libraries and Men, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1953. —, Die russische Arabistik. Umriß ihrer Entwicklung, Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1957. MILIBAND, S. D., Biobibliograficheskii slovar' sovietskich vostokovedov, Moscow: Nauka,1975. 2 n d in two volumes Moscow: Nauka, 1995. MIKOULSKI, Dimitri, "The Study of Islam in Russia and the Former Soviet Union: An Overview", in Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 9 5 - 1 0 7 . GUBOGLU,

Spain MONROE, James T., Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship, tury to the Present, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970.

United

Sixteenth

Cen-

Kingdom

ARBERRY, Arthur John, "British Contributions to Persian Studies", London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1942. —, British Orientalists, London: Collins, 1943. —, The Cambridge School of Arabic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. —, Oriental Essays. Portraits of Seven Scholars, London: Allen & Unwin, 1960. BOWEN, Harold, "British Contributions to Turkish Studies", London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1945. LEWIS, Bernard, "British Contributions to Arabic Studies", London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1941. MARSHALL, Peter, "Oriental Studies", in The History of the University of Oxford, ed. by Τ. H. ASHTON, Vol. 5, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. RENDALL, Jane, "Scottish Orientalism from Robertson to James Mill", The Historical Journal, Vol 25 (1982), nr. 1, pp. 4 3 - 6 9 .

USA HERiMANSEN, Μ. K., "Trends in Islamic Studies in the United States and Canada since the 1970s", American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol. 10 (1993), Nr. 1, pp. 9 6 - 1 1 8 . ISMAEL, Tareq Y. and ISIMAEL, Jacqueline S., "Middle Eastern Studies in the United States", in Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art, ed. by Tareq Y. ISMAEL, New York: Praeger, 1990, pp. 11-25.

Further Reading

459

MAHDI, Muhsin, "The Study of Islam, Orientalism and America", in Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogies, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 149-180. WINDER, R. Bayley, "Four Decades of Middle Eastern Study", Middle East Journal, Vol. 41, No 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 40-63.

Indexes 1. Index of Persons 'Abduh, Muhammad 117, 128, 380 Adams, Charles 63 Afghani, Jamal al-Dln al- 117 Ahmad, Aziz 201 Ahmad Khan, Seyyed (Sayyid) 128, 379-380 Allard, Michel 173 Anawati, Georges C. 171-172, 174, 200, 212 Andrae, Tor 59 Arkoun, Mohammed 28, 130, 199, 243-249 Arnaldez, Roger 171 Asad, Talal 28 Ascha, Ghassan 15

Bultmann, Rudolf 7, 195 Burckhardt, Titus 383

Baaren, Theodoras Petrus van 14, 310, 313 n. 24, 316, 316 n. 33, 320 Bahä' Alläh (Mlrzä Husayn 'All Nürl) 382 Bammate, Nadjm oud Din 4 Bannä, Hasan al- 380 Basetti-Sani, Giulio 158 n. 2, 172 Batunsky, Mark 275 n. 23 Beaureceuil, Serge de 172 Becker, Carl Heinrich 189 Bell, Richard 195 Berque, Jacques 8, 94 n. 15, 96, 170, 190 Blachere, Regis 161 Bleeker, Claas Jouco 3, 7, 303, 310, 313, 316, 318 Bourgiba, Habib 386 Bregel', Yuriy Enokhovich 273 Brunschwig, Robert 161 Buber, Martin 308 n. 19, 319

Demeerseman, Andre 173 Dilthey, Wilhelm 321

Cahen, Claude 190 Carman, John B. 318 n. 35 Caspar, Robert 173 Chantepie de la Saussaye, Pierre Daniel 303, 309-311, 313, 317 Claudel, Paul 159 Cook, Michael 193 Corbin, Henry 28, 60, 169, 174, 189-190, 198, 200 Cragg, Kenneth 212 Crone, Patricia 193 Cuoq, Joseph M. 94, 201

Eickelman, Dale 194 Eliade, Mircea 19, 314-315, 331-349 Esack, Farid 199-200 Ess, Josef van 28, 199 Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan 363 Faruqi, Ismä'll Räjl al- 129 Faysal ibn Husayn 162 Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock 199 Flügel, Gustav 86 Foucauld, Charles de 159, 171-172 Gardet, Louis 92, 163, 171, 200, 212 Geertz, Clifford 28, 68, 95, 190, 203, 207 Geiger, Abraham 394 Gellner, Ernest 95

Index of Persons Ghandi, Mahatma 167 Gibb, Hamilton A. R. 190, 207 Goitein, Solomon Dob 200 Goldziher, Ignaz 58, 151, 159, 169, 189, 197 Gonda, Jan 11, 312 Gordon-Polonskaya, Lyudmila R. 272 Graham, William A. 197 Grunebaum, Gustav Edmund von 9 10, 12, 25, 40, 67, 143, 171, 190, 200, 208, 2 2 9 - 2 3 1 Gude, Marie Louise 158 n. 2 Guenon, Rene 383 Hamidullah, Muhammad 4 Hanafi, Hassan (Hanafl, Hasan) 4, 109 n. 2 Harpigny, Guy 174 n. 8 Heidegger, Martin 7 Heiler, Friedrich 235 η. 20, 308 η. 19, 340 Henninger, Joseph 194 Hidding, Klaas Aldert Hendrik 310, 316 Hirschmann, Eva 319 n. 37 Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 25, 68, 190 Hoens, Dirk Jan 11, 14-15 Honko, Lauri 14, 77 n. 52 Hourani, Albert 190, 201 Hubbeling, Hubertus Gezinus 313 n. 24 Huizinga, Johan 312 Hurgronje, Christiaan Snouck 91 n. 9, 160, 169, 189 Husayn, Tähä 160, 174 Husserl, Edmund 7, 314 Huysmans, Joris-Karl 159, 172 Ionescu, Nae 332 Izutsu, Toshihiko 9, 195 Jalll, Muhammad Ben 'Abd al- 172 Jeffery, Arthur 196 John XXIII 379 Jomier, Jacques 172 Juynboll, Gauthier Η. A. 197 Kahil, Mary 163, 174-175 Keryell, Jacques 163, 176 n. 12

461

KhudayrI, Mahmüd al- 174 Kloppenborg, Ria 15 Kraemer, Hendrik 311 Kraus, Paul 169 Kristensen, William Brede 7, 303, 307, 309-311, 313, 317-319, 321, 362 Lahbabi, Mohamed Aziz 4 Laoust, Henri 163, 169-170, 190, 198 Leeuw, Gerardus van der 7, 303-304, 310-325, 340 Levi, Sylvain 169 Levi-Provenjal, Evariste 161 Lewis, Bernard 25, 190, 201 Macdonald, Duncan Black 189 Madelung, Wilferd 198 Madkour, Ibrahim 174 Makdisi, George 169, 190, 199-200 Mani 382 Marcel, Gabriel 172 Maritain, Jacques 159, 172 Maritain, Rai'ssa 172 Mason, Herbert 163 Maspero, Henri 169 Massignon, Daniel 158 n. 2, 163, 176 n. 12 Massignon, Genevieve 163 Massignon, Louis 2-3, 5 - 6 , 8, 12, 18, 28, 59, 67, 94, 143, 151, 157-182, 189-190, 207, 307 Mauriac, Frangois 6, 182 n. 14 Menasce, Jean de 172 Miliband, Sofiya Davidovna 281 Molendijk, Arie L. 314 n. 27 Monnot, Guy 82 n. 62, 172, 201 Monteil, Vincent 161, 170 Montesquieu, Charles 127 Moubarac, Youakim 158 n. 2, 163, 170, 174 n. 8, 175-176, 212 Muhammad V 162 Na'im, Abdullahi ('Abdulahi) Ahmed an- 199, 387 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 28, 125 n. 8, 129, 199-200, 235-242

462

Index

Nieuwenhuijze, Christoffel Anthonie Olivier van 2, 67, 96, 190 Nöldeke, Friedrich 194 Nwiyah, Paul 173 Otto, Rudolf 7, 315 Otto, Walter F. 307 Palacios, Asin 169 Paul VI 174 n. 8 Pettazzoni, Raffaele 332 Pius XI 174 n. 8 Platvoet, Jan 15 Pye, Michael 25 η. 1 Ramadan, Tariq 125 n. 9 Räshid Rldä, Muhammad 380 Reimarus, Hermann 393 Reland, Adriaan 26, 192 Ritter, Helmut 169, 190 Rocalve, Pierre 158 n. 2, 183 Rodinson, Maxime 170,190, 207, 270 Said, Edward 212, 270 Sale, George 26 Schacht, Joseph 171, 197 Schaeder, Hans Heinrich 169 Schimmel, Annemarie 28, 190, 200, 231-234 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 321 Schuon, Fritjhof 383 Sharl'atI, 'All 175 Sierksma, Fokke 7, 310, 316, 316 n. 33, 320

Six, Jean-Frangois 176 n. 12 Smith, Joseph 382 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 8-9, 12, 28, 41, 67, 92, 143, 190, 207, 212, 223-229, 341 Smith, William Robertson 62 Söderblom, Nathan 315 Spinoza, Baruch de 393 Stenberg, Leif 129 n. 11 Stern, Samuel 190 Talbi, Mohammed 169, 174 Ten Ham, J. J. 316 n. 32 Tiele, Cornells Petrus 309-310 Tokarev, Sergej A. 276 n. 26 Trimingham, John Spencer 201 Tsevi, Shabbetai 382 Ugrinovich, Dmitriy Modestovich 276 n. 27 Vries, Jan P. M. L. de 312 Wach, Joachim 346 Wansbrough, John 195 Watt, William Montgomery 28, 67, 92, 190, 193, 199, 212 Wellhausen, Julius 62, 393 Wensinck, Arent Jan 62, 189 Westermarck, Edvard Alexander 59, 91 Widengren, Geo 7, 60, 63, 308 η. 19 Wiet, Gaston 170 Yahya, Osman 4, 174

2. Index of Subjects actors: Muslim ~ 21; Muslims as ~ V; people as ~ 16, 211 aggiornamento (updating) 379 Algerian War 3, 93 n. 11, 162, 167, 176 American foreign policy 135 Arab Christians 175-176 äya, pi. äyät 33-34, 76 η. 51, 77, 77 η. 52, 78, 78 η. 54, 80-81, 81 η. 59, 82, 195, 197, 232 Azhar, al- 128, 174 Bäbl movement 382 Badaliya, Badallya (Christian "substitution" group) 3, 5, 159, 162, 167, 174, 174 η. 8 Bahä'I faith 65, 382 calls for reform, context of ~ 389 Catholic orders 111, 172-173 Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University 224 Christian missions 68, 114-115, 306 n. 9 Christian-Muslim dialogue 114-115, 175, 266 n. 7; see also ChristianMuslim relations Christian-Muslim relations 170-172, 175, 182; study of ~ 16, 157, 181 Christian liturgical texts (Syriac) 196197 Christianity and Islam, historical relations of 59-60 Christians living in Muslim societies 161; see also dhimmts "clash" of civilizations VII, 113, 207 Cold War 18, 26, 29, 92, 113, 113 n. 3, 135, 211, 262-281, 333, 347 colonization 111, 121, 135

comparative philosophy of East and West 237-238 comparative study of religious data 62-66

conflicts and Islamic Studies 262, 263 n. 2 conversion 159, 162, 166-168, 173, 178 converts 124, 159, 166, 171, 178, 181 critical scholarship on Islam, attitudes to ~ 394 Crusades 110, 118 cultural: elite 381; superiority 127 cultural rapprochement through intercultural studies 121-122 culture and barbarism 134 Dar al-Saläm Center (Cairo) 175 dbimmls 26-27, 200 Directoire (Charles de Foucauld) 172 discourse analysis (L. Massignon's writings) 177 East (Orient), attraction of the ~ (L. Massignon and M. Eliade) 158, 333 Eastern spirituality, Western views of -361 Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) 161, 169, 172-173 education 115-116 Egyptian Academy of the Arabic Language (Cairo) 174 Egyptian University (University of Cairo) 160 Empirical: reality of religions 2 9 2 293; ~ scholarly research 289 Encyclopaedia of Islam 122, 190 n. 4

464

Index

Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an 132, 132 n. 13, 197, 197 n. 19 Encyclopedia of Religion 333 Enlightenment 26, 116, 127, 192, 231, 244, 280, 285, 318, 388 Europe, Muslim discovery of ~ 109 European - ~ claims of superiority 119 - ~ culture VI, 10, 126, 2 3 0 - 2 3 1 , 266, 304, 333 - ~ Islam 125 experience of God 178 facts and ideals in Islamic Studies 7 2 73 faith V-VI, 8 - 9 , 1 7 - 1 8 , 20, 3 5 - 3 6 , 47, 49, 6 8 - 6 9 , 75, 87, 90, 101, 115 n. 4, 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 , 148, 166, 173 n. 7, 1 7 8 - 1 7 9 , 181, 2 0 5 - 2 0 6 , 209, 2 2 4 - 2 2 5 , 2 2 7 - 2 2 8 , 230, 2 4 9 - 2 5 0 , 3 4 1 - 3 4 2 , 347, 349, 364, 377, 3 8 1 - 3 8 2 , 390, 394 fiqh 89, 109, 128, 1 9 8 - 1 9 9 , 250, 274, 276 n. 28 France 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 French Empire 167 French policies 162 fundamentalism 32, 96 n. 21, 113, 205, 364, 371, 385 fundamentalization, movements of ~

102

future of Islam the ~ 348

2 4 1 - 2 4 2 , visions of

Golden Seventies 15 Golden Sixties 10 Croupe de Recherche islamo-chretien (GRIC) 173 "guest workers" 11 Gulf War (1991) 113, 127, 135 hadith{s) 30, 60, 71, 80, 89, 1 0 4 105, 109, 128, 148, 1 9 7 - 1 9 8 , 204, 209, 240 n. 28, 269, 274, 344 hadtth studies 1 9 7 - 1 9 8 hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) 73 hegemonic (ambitions of the) West 127, 131

history of religions: and Islamic Studies 5 8 - 6 1 human causes 37, 345, 364, 391 Humaniora Islamica 12 'ibädät (Islamic rules for worship) 71, 77, 79, 81, 264 n. 6 idealism 381 identity, dual ~ 166, 181 ideological: ~ factors in Islamic Studies 280; ~ frameworks 2 6 3 - 2 6 7 imagination and dreams 371 impartiality, scholarly ~ 55 Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal 8, 117, 224, 268 intercession 5 intercultural research 2 5 - 2 7 intercultural studies, Islamic Studies in ~ 109-110 International Association of the History of Religions (IAHR) 14, 26, 271 n. 17 Iranian revolution (1979) 12, 208, 211, 2 6 7 - 2 6 9 , 274 isläh movements in Islam 378, 388 islam 33 Islam 15 - ~ and Christianity, relations between ~ 15, 166, 181 - ~ and Europe, mutual perceptions of - 2 6 - 2 7 - antagonistic structures around ~ 182 - ~ as antagonistic to Europe and the West - 2 7 - ~ as a political phenomenon, study of - 95 - critical potential of - 384 - encounters with other civilizations and religions 2 0 0 - 2 0 2 - future of ~ 2 4 1 - 2 4 2 - interpretations of ~ 119, 385, 387 - medieval ~ 230 - mystical dimensions of ~ 1 5 9 - 1 6 0 , 163-164, 233-234 - normative and practiced (living) ~ 89 n. 5

Index of Subjects -

popular forms of ~ 28 "political" and "religious" ~ 29 reformist movement and "modern trends" in ~ 118 - religious aspects of ~ 57 - study of ~ 20, 121-122, 159-160, 163-164 - universality and particularity in ~ 36 - Western attitudes to antagonistic structures 182; denigrations of ~ 127 - interest in ~ 118-119; religious interest in ~ 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 - 1 1 4 Islamic ~ discourses and their globalization 35 - ~ fundamentalism 32, 113 - ~ Law, idea of modern 387 - ~ movements 32 - ~ universities 128 Islamic Studies and intercultural relations 121-122 Islamization 60, 129, 387, 390 ~ of knowledge (Islamic epistemology) 129 Islamology, applied ~ 130, 199, 243 Islamopbilia 171 Israel 27, 29, 113 n. 3, 135, 162, 168, 201, 203 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 12, 29, 97, 135, 176 "Jesus movement" 382 jihäd 26-27, 146, 212, 344, 364 Judaism: history of ~ 62; ~ and Islam, historical relations 59-61 kaläm 46, 60, 71, 109, 128, 198, 274, 390 laicite (secularity, secularism) in France 4, 168, 172, 178 Lausanne, University of ~ (DIHSR) 15-16 Levi della Vida Prize (biannual, at UCLA) 10 Liberal Christianity 379

465

Manicheism 60, 382 Marxism 92, 242, 390 monotheistic religions 65, 246-248, 338, 382, 384 Mormons 382 Mubähala 160 Muhammad: socio-historical context 193-194 Muslim(s) - ~ Brotherhood 174, 380 - ~ commonwealth 35 - ~ growing historical consciousness 118 - ~ identity 131 - ~ intellectuals called to fundamental reflection 246 - ~ in Europe: students 117; immigrants 11-12, 122-125; teaching institutions 128-129 - ~ cultures; mediation between the French and ~ 243 - ~ views of other religions 11 Muslim-Christian relations 16, 160, 172, 181, 247 Muslim-Western and Muslim-Christian relations, views of ~ 247 Muslim societies: VI, 19, 26, 28, 37, 42, 48, 55, 57, 70-71, 71 n. 40, 73, 79-80, 81 n. 58, 90-97, 99, 102, 104-105, 115, 128, 234, 242, 248, 264-265, 269, 383, 386 - study of ~ V, 17, 25, 28, 50, 68, 72 n. 43, 73, 91-97, 101-102, 109, 111-112, 123-125, 134, 143, 146-149, 161, 166, 180, 189-192, 200-212, 230, 243, 245, 246, 262, 265, 268, 272, 279-280, 389 - western views of ~ 112 Muslims - ~ as actors V; Muslim actors 21 - ~ in Islamic Studies 108, 117 - diversity and unity among ~ 4 7 48 - periods of cultural creativity of ~ 36 Near Eastern Center (UCLA) 10, 229 New World (North America) 11, 231

466

Index

non-violent action 6 Nostra Aetate (Declaration of Second Vatican Council, 1964) 173 "Occidentalism" 109, 109 n. 2 Oriental philosophy 2 3 7 Oriental Studies 56, 92, 109, 111, 120, 126, 189, 205, 2 7 0 - 2 7 3 , 295 Orientalism and the Orient 5 6 - 5 7 Orientalism: debate 271; former USSR and Western ~ 272; western-centered ~ 230 Orientalists VI, 2, 45, 57, 92, 118, 120, 162, 166, 168, 1 7 0 - 1 7 4 , 201, 248, 265, 270, 270 n. 11, 272, 277, 311, 348, 394, 397; ~ views of Islam 157 orthodoxies (new) against reforms 380, 384 O t t o m a n Empire 1 1 0 - 1 1 2 , 114, 127, 158, 162, 382 Palestinians 135, 162, 168, 175 primordial Revelation 383 primordial Universal Tradition 383 prophetic religions 33, 64, 338 puritanical attitude 379 Q u r ' ä n 34 studies 1 9 4 - 1 9 7 , 393 - meaning of Qur'änic terms 7 6 - 7 7 - search for internal logic of meanings of äyät 7 9 - 8 0 R a m a d a n , interpretation of fast 386 reform appreciation of relations with others 391 - ~ as a call for application of religion and religious law 384 - ~ as creative observation, thinking and action 392 - ~ as adaptation to the present-day situation 379 - calls for reform of Islam to be seen in their contexts 389 - concept of ~ 3 7 8 - 3 7 9 ; idea of a progressive revelation 383

-

contexts of ~ 389 discourses about reforms that are needed in Islam 389 - religious and social ~ 377, 390 - social and political ~ 384 reform movements 3 7 9 - 3 8 1 ; ~ and Scriptures 3 7 7 - 3 7 8 reformers in Islam 388 reformist movement in Islam 128 Reform Judaism 379 Reformation, Protestant 388 religion, problematic situation of ~ in Western societies 2 8 7 "Religion and Reason" (series) 1 3 - 1 4 Renaissance, impact of the European ~ 237 research: framework of reference of ~ 142; levels of research and commitment in ~ 3 3 5 - 3 3 6 sacred 240; the ~ as the transcendent reality to which religious phenomena testify 3 3 5 - 3 3 6 Salafiyya movement 380 scholars, cooperation among ~ 134 science and religion, dichotomy of ~ 291 science of religion, attraction of a ~ 269; recent changes in ~ 3 4 6 - 3 4 9 scientific atheism (former USSR) 265 scriptural religions 3 9 5 - 3 9 7 Scripture(s) - ~ providing authoritative truth 20 - ~ read by reform movements 397 - literary and historical critical interpretations of ~ 3 9 3 - 3 9 4 - religious readings of ~ 3 9 2 - 3 9 3 - study of ~ 198 self-views and views of others through religion 202 Shabbateanism 382 sbahäda 32, 35, 77, 103, 228 Shana 46, 69 n. 36, 71, 7 8 - 7 9 , 81, 102, 146, 199, 204, 227, 384, 390 Sharl'a and social reforms 386 Shan'a rulings, overcoming established ~ 387

Index of Subjects sign and symbol, meanings of 76 n. 50 "societies of the Book" 247 spiritual forces, experience of ~ (M. Eliade) 335 spirituality 5 - 6 spirituality in Islam 80, 160, 165 Sufism 241 Sünna (tradition) 46 Sykes-Picot Treaty (1916) 143-144 tarlqas 94, 104, 118 tasaivivuf 71, 128, 198, 274 tawbtd 47, 71 n. 38 terrorism and anti-terrorism 113, 135, 364 traditions, "great" and "little" 71 umma 47, 61, 72 n. 41 universities in Arab countries 8 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 9-10, 229 Utrecht, University of 11, 14-15 USSR, Islam in the former ~ 2 6 4 265

Vatican 6, 110, 157, 163 Vatican Council, Second ~ 173, 266 n. 7, 379 Vietnam War 10

467

11, 170,

West - increasing distance between the ~ and Islam 127 - problem of the ~ to enter with non-Westerners as real partners 246 Western: attitudes to ~ Christianity 286 Western hegemony VII, 27, 109, 131, 133, 245 Western teachers in Muslim countries 93 Western views of Islam during the Cold War 2 4 9 - 2 5 0 Westernization 230 White Fathers 3-4, 173 World of Islam Festival (U.K.) 391 World Religions 224 World Theology 224 Zionist: claims 118; policies 162

3. Index of Concepts (Problem-Oriented) academic study: of religions and of Islam 2 6 - 2 7 anthropological approach to Islam: social and cultural 244-247; historical and cultural (Kulturanthropologie) 229 believers (with faith, community, religious system, actors in their own right) 359-365 comparative theology 248-249 faith 227-228 hermeneutics: rules of interpretation and the art of understanding, with orientations depending on the nature of the search 89 n. 6, 2 9 4 295, 336-338, 342 humanities and sciences, contrast of understanding and explanation 19, 275-276 imagination in research 338 intention as mental direction and perspective 367-372 interpretation of something's meaning at a given place and time or in a social or historical process 181 interpretative framework underlying various interpretations 340 interpretative research in the study of religions 338

Muslim: discourse and Islam VII; interpretations V; statements 3 1 32; ~ study of Islam 125, 128-130, 133 normative and practiced 72 reification by Muslims 80 n. 56, 224 rethinking by Muslims 245 significance and meanings for Muslims 21, 104 spiritual experience of what one calls ~

166

statements 31-32 study of ~ by Muslims 130, 133

125, 128-

Islam as subject of scholarly inquiry

-

as an interpreted interpretation of reality and life 34 - as part of the general history of religions 232 - as a religio-cultural entity 160 - as a religio-cultural framework 72, 74-75 - as a religion 249-251 - as a religious tradition 72, 74-75 - as a signification system 40, 4 6 48 - as a system of doctrines and duties 181 study of Islam based on humanities and social sciences 244-245

Islam held by Muslims

conceptualization 34, 224 constructions V, VII, 30, 32-35 discourse on VII distorted views of 244-245, 268-271 instrumentalization 248 interpretations V, 17 meanings 20, 29, 72

Islam viewed

-

as a civilization and culture 211 as a collection of signs and symbols 77, 232 as a community 68-69 as a faith VI, 68-69 as an ideational force 207 as a living communal tradition 245

Index of Concepts -

as a resource of significance and meaning for people 21, 75 in humanities 2 0 8 - 2 1 1 in humanities and social sciences 8 8 89, 2 4 4 - 2 4 5 in social sciences 9 0 - 9 6 , 9 9 - 1 0 2 Islamic Studies as a field of scholarly research 41; ~ in Europe 1 1 0 - 1 1 2 ; ~ in the West 2 6 7 - 2 6 8 ; ~ in the former USSR 274 conceptualization 5 7 - 5 8 , 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 contents 110, 2 1 1 - 2 1 2 epistemological concerns 6 7 - 6 8 fields of research 109 fresh approach in 4 8 - 4 9 history of 8 6 - 9 7 , 1 1 6 - 1 1 7 , 1 2 6 - 1 2 7 , 170, 1 8 9 - 1 9 0 , 2 9 2 - 2 9 3 Islam in Western contexts 123 meaningfulness 89 n. 6, 2 9 4 - 2 9 5 , 3 3 5 - 3 3 7 , 340 meanings 16, 3 0 - 3 1 methodology 204 Muslim scholars in ~ 117 Muslim study of and reflections on Islam 1 2 8 - 1 3 0 , 192 nature of 69, 147, 191 new developments in 125 political science and ~ 203 presuppositions and assumptions in 7, 57, 2 7 0 - 2 7 1 social scientific approach in 1 0 4 - 1 0 5 study of religion and politics in 9 7 99 three dimensions 1 4 7 - 1 4 8 tradition 7 0 - 7 1 variety of approaches and methods 56 Islamic

-

data in relation to people 48 lived religious meanings 1 6 - 1 7 patterns of meaning 48 phenomena 2 4 4 religious sciences ('ulüm al-din) 128 spirituality 2 3 6 thinking (enlightened) 130

469

monotheistic faiths and religions 2 4 7 249 phenomenological: approach 221222, 2 3 5 n. 20, ~ to Islam 232; ~ attitude 7 phenomenology 16 phenomenology of religion 13-14, 19, 66, 2 3 5 n. 20, 3 1 7 - 3 2 1 classical ~ 63, 2 3 3 descriptive and hermeneutically oriented ~ 303 distance from current truths, norms and values in religions 14 - in the Netherlands between 1918 and 1939: 3 2 1 - 3 2 2 questioning 143, 2 9 0 - 2 9 1 , 347 - metaphysics in the West 2 3 7 - 2 3 8 - modern Western man 2 3 8 - 2 3 9 - reason in religious matters 379 - scientia sacra (sapiential knowledge) 2 3 6 philosophical ~ 331, 335 search for true knowledge 144, 2 9 0 291 religio sacra and the scholarly study of religions 180 religion concept of ~ 8 constructions of a given ~ 3 2 - 3 3 current definitions of ~ 90 explanations of ~ 2 8 6 ideas on ~ in the Western and the Muslim tradition 9 9 - 1 0 1 Islamic notions of ~ 78 objectifying and relativizing ~ 291 rationalizing and studying rationally ~

288

reifying -

291-292,296

religion in the Study of Religion(s) religion studied: ~ as a domain of reality in itself 2 9 1 - 2 9 2 ; ~ in connection with human ordinary life situations 2 9 6

470

Index

concept of religion in ~ 6 6 conceptualization in the Study of Religions: 2 9 1 ; by G. van der Leeuw 3 2 4 - 3 2 5 ; by M . Eliade 3 3 6 ; after M . Eliade 3 4 2 - 3 4 5 conceptualization, construction and deconstruction of "religions" in the ~ 224-225 constructions of a religion, 3 2 - 3 3 hermeneutical-interpretative research in the ~ 3 3 7 - 3 3 8 history of the ~ 3 3 9 - 3 4 0 Islam studied in the ~ VI methodological variety and theoretical flexibility in the ~ 2 7 0 Muslim contributions to the ~ 10 philosophical presuppositions in the ~ 334 questions for the ~ 3 2 3 "totalitarian" concept of the Study of Religion 3 3 6 western notions of religion 3 6 2

-

religion and subjective meanings 19 research on ~ in religion 4 5 , 3 6 8 370 study of transcendent references in living religion 4 4

scholarly research in general scholarly - discovery 2 8 6 - engagement 1 6 5 - critical of traditional images of religions 3 0 5 assumptions in ~ 142, 1 4 5 - 1 4 7 conditionings of ~ 1 4 3 findings and overall images in ~ 142 levels of ~ 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 presuppositions in ~ 1 4 0 - 1 4 3 questions asked and subject matter discovered in ~ 1 5 0 - 1 5 1 search for rules and broader connections in ~ 1 7 7 subjectivities in ~ 74

subjectivities in scholarly research

74

religions studied as frameworks of interpreting reality and acting in it 3 6 8 as interpretative systems that are continuously interpreted 3 4 as orientations 3 4 4 as systems of belief and unbelief 2 4 7 as systems of doctrines and duties 2 4 7 construction of religions 2 0 2 prophetic(al) religions 19, 33, 6 3 - 6 4 , 338, 345 representing religions 3 0 5 - 3 0 7 structural comparisons between religions 6 2 - 6 3 religious - aspects of Islam

70-71

concepts and their reification 2 2 8 data: contexts of 9 0 ; nature or character of 7 5 - 7 6 ; interpretation of 3 3 6 - intentions 1 0 3 - 1 0 4 - interpretations 3 9 2 - phenomena 13, 19, 6 3 - 6 4 , 67, 1 6 9 , 2 3 2 - 2 3 3 , 2 3 5 n. 2 0 , 2 4 5 , 2 4 9 , 2 9 3 , 2 9 5 , 3 0 4 n. 3, 3 0 9 - 3 1 0 , 325, 336, 3 4 0 - 3 4 1 , 345, 360, 362, 364, 3 6 8 - 3 7 0 - reality versus empirical reality 2 9 2 - reality versus non-religious reality 292 - revelation, concepts of 2 4 8 - 2 4 9 conceptualization of ~ matters 2 0 7 208 Islamic notions of ~ 5 5 - 5 6 significance and meaning: in general 4 2 ^ 1 3 , 3 6 2 - 3 6 6 ; ~ 4 4 , 75, 82, 336 study of a ~ system 3 4

scholars, epistemological 144-145

position

significance (objective) and meaning (subjective) 4 2 - 4 3 , 3 6 2 - 3 6 5

Index of Concepts Signification System: Islam internal logic of the interpretations given of elements of the Islamic ~ 79 Islam functioning as a common and communicative ~ of Muslims 3 0 Islam viewed as a loosely structured overarching local symbol systems 81-82 Islam as a ~ interpreting reality, that is continuously interpreted itself 3 4 Muslim Study of Islam 1 2 8 - 1 3 1 , 1 9 2 signification system in general: VI, 12, 15, 17, 4 1 - 4 5 symbol system 4 1 - 4 5 , 4 8 , 7 7 n. 5 2 , 81, 81 n. 58, 2 1 0 symbolic capital 2 4 7

471

traditional images of religions subject of critical scholarly research 3 0 5 universal "Traditional Religion" behind the historical religious traditions 2 4 0 transcendent dimension, Muslim views of the ~ 2 0 7 , 2 2 8 transcendental dimension and religious character of the religion studied 3 0 7 - 3 0 8 truth, personal and impersonal ~ 2 0 7 truth: research on what believers hold to be the ~ of their religion; research on the truths that religions have or had to offer 3 1 5