New Methodological Perspectives in Islamic Studies (Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 20) 9004536620, 9789004536623

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Contributors include Ali Abedi Renani, Abbas Aghdassi, Bahattin Akşit, Taira Amin, Betül Avcı, Abdessamad Belhaj, Martina Crescenti, Isabella Crespi, Meral Durmuş, Walid Ghali, Aaron W. Hughes, Brian Arly Jacobsen, Pernille Friis Jensen, Eva Kepplinger, Zahraa McDonald, Emin Poljarevic, Magdalena Pycińska, Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat, Kirstine Sinclair, and Niels Valdemar Vinding. Abbas Aghdassi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of History and Civilization of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. He has published on Muslim minorities, methods in Islamic studies, and academic Persian, including Perspectives on Academic Persian (Springer, 2021). Aaron W. Hughes, Ph.D., is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. He is the author of numerous books, edited collections and articles on Islam, Judaism, and theory and method in the study of religion.

Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 20 9 789004 536623

ISSN: 2214-3270 brill.com/smtr

SMTR 20

NEW METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN I S L A M I C S T U D I E S Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes (Eds.)

This volume draws attention to and moves beyond the traditional methodological frames that have governed knowledge production in the academic study of Islam. Departing from Orientalist and largely textual studies, the chapters collected herein revolve around three main themes: gender, the political, and what has come to be known as “lived Islam.” The ��rst involves ascertaining how to read gender and gender issues into and out of traditional sources. The second encourages an attunement to the often delicate intersection between the spheres of religion and politics. The ��nal provides a corrective to our traditional over-emphasis on the interpretation of texts and a preoccupation with studying (mainly male) elites. Taken as a whole, this volume encourages a multi-methodological approach to the study of Islam.

SUPPLEMENTS TO METHOD & THEORY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

26 mm

NEW METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN ISLAMIC STUDIES Edited by Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes

New Methodological Perspectives in Islamic Studies

Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion Editorial Board Aaron W. Hughes (University of Rochester) Russell McCutcheon (University of Alabama) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen)

Volume 20

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smtr

New Methodological Perspectives in Islamic Studies Edited by

Abbas Aghdassi Aaron W. Hughes

Cover illustration: “Man Kneeling While Praying” by Ali Arapoğlu. Available from Prexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-kneeling-while-praying-2652088/ under their license https://www.pexels.com/license/ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hughes, Aaron W., 1968- editor. | Aghdassi, Abbas, editor. Title: New methodological perspectives in Islamic studies / edited by Abbas Aghdassi, Aaron W. Hughes. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2023. | Series: Studies in medieval and reformation traditions, 2214-3270 ; vol. 20 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023006803 (print) | LCCN 2023006804 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004536623 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004536630 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Islam–Study and teaching. | Islam and politics. | Women in Islam. | Religious life–Islam. Classification: LCC BP42 .N49 2023 (print) | LCC BP42 (ebook) | DDC 297.07–dc23/eng/20230222 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006803 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006804

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2214-3270 ISBN 978-90-04-53662-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-53663-0 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Tables viii Notes on Contributors ix Note on Transliteration xvi 1

Introduction: Moving Beyond 1 Aaron W. Hughes and Abbas Aghdassi

2

“Islam and…”: Thinking about Islam through the Act of Comparison Aaron W. Hughes

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Part 1 Gender 3

Toward a “Hermeneutics of Trust” in the Current Discussion on a Gender-Just Interpretation of Islamic Primary Texts 29 Eva Kepplinger

4

The Discursive Construction of Women’s Guile in the Muslim Exegetical Tradition 46 Taira Amin

Part 2 The Political 5

Contemporary Turkish Academic Approach to Christianity The Case of the New Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam (DİA) 75 Betül Avcı

6

New Methods for Understanding Political Islam Tradition-Constituted Rationality and the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning in the Work of Naʾini 94 Ali Abedi Renani and Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat

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Recontextualizing Islam in the Social and Collective Memory Tracing the Sociogenesis of Martyrdom in Türkiye 115 Meral Durmuş and Bahattin Akşit

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Contents

Part 3 Lived Islams 8

Old, New or Digital Philology Working towards an Amalgamated Work Frame Walid Ghali

137

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New Lenses for an Ethnography of Islam The Case of Mevlid Ceremonies 163 Isabella Crespi and Martina Crescenti

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Lived Institutions in the Study of Islam 184 Brian Arly Jacobsen, Pernille Friis Jensen, Kirstine Sinclair and Niels Valdemar Vinding

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Everyday Islam Moving beyond the Piety and Orthodoxy Divide Magdalena Pycińska

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213

Moving from a Madrasa Situation to the Process of Doctrinal Development An Explication of the Extended Case Method in the Study of Islam Zahraa McDonald

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A Phenomenological Approach to the Study of Lived Islam and Muslimness 264 Emin Poljarevic

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Back to Critique Islamic Studies and the Vicious Hermeneutic Circle Abdessamad Belhaj Index

307

291

240

Acknowledgements An edited volume does not come into existence without countless hours of group work. This volume is no exception. We, the editors, would like to wholeheartedly thank all the contributors to this volume for their dedication to the idea behind this work, and their patience in various stages of peerreview and production. We would also like to thank the SMTR editors, Prof. R.T. McCutcheon and Prof. K. von Stuckrad, who welcomed the volume into their series. Two anonymous reviewers read the manuscript carefully, which benefitted respective chapters and the work as a whole. We appreciate their comments. Rashmi Shetty, associate editor at Brill, was a wonderful help in different stages of this work. We thank her and her team. Also at Brill, we thank Pieter te Velde, who handled the production process quite professionally. Aaron: I thank the usual suspects: my interlocutors (you know who you are), Abbas (my co-editor), and, last but not least, my family. Abbas: When I first shared the idea of new methods and methodologies in studying Islam with my co-editor, Prof. A.W. Hughes, I did not know how much his enthusiastic support would help my preliminary idea flourish. We can all see it now. Thank you, indeed, Aaron! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank an exceptional figure, Prof. S.M.K. Sajjadpour, in whose brilliant classes—though in a different field—I had unforgettable memories, and, who remains a source of inspiration for me in perceiving how political psychologies might shape the backstage of methodologies and their possible academic implications. Mr. M.M. Danesh Sokhanvar, also, deserves a special mention for the big role he has played in my life. Very special thanks go to my parents for their sincere daily prayers and good wishes. Finally, I am grateful to my wife, L. Saffari, without whose unique support my scholarly ambitions would have not come true.

Tables 4.1 4.2 6.1

Strategies of representation (based on Wodak 2016, augmented with Toulmin 1979, with examples provided by the analysis) 52–53 List of Sunni and Sufi exegeses used as part of this study 56 Core meanings and institutionalized meaning 111

Notes on Contributors Ali Abedi Renani is an Assistant Professor of Political Sciences, at the Research Institute of Culture and Communication, Allameh Tabataba’i University in Iran. He received his master’s degree from Imam Sadiq University in 2003. The subject of his thesis was the review of Alasdair McIntyre’s criticism on the foundations of liberalism. He received his PhD in Western Political Philosophy from the Australian National University in 2013. The subject of his thesis was MacIntyre’s tradition-constituted account of justice and rationality. His research field includes Islamic political thought, ethics, and communitarianism. Recently, his book Ethics and Politics was published by Allameh Tabataba’i University Press. Some of his papers include “A Peaceful Interpretation of Jihad in the Qur’an,” “Organizational Virtue Ethics,” and “McIntyre Moral Theory and Moral Relativism.” Abbas Aghdassi serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Civilization of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Iran. He teaches courses on Methods and Methodologies in Islamic Studies, Contemporary Muslim World, and Islam and/in the West. His publications include Persian Academic Reading (Routledge, 2018), Tashayyuʻ dar Āmrīkā (Kavīr, 2020), Perspectives on Academic Persian (Springer, 2021), and New Methods in the Study of Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). He was a visiting research scholar in the Graduate Center (New York, USA). Abbas is the managing editor for Tārīkh va Farhang, a journal in Persian on pre-Safavid Iran and Islam. He curates a page with Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO): Spotlight in Iranian and Persian Studies. His fields of interest include methods in Islamic studies, Muslim minorities, academic Persian, bibliography and bibliometrics, (humanizing) Orientalism, and socio-historical study of Greater Khorasan. Bahattin Akşit holds the former Dean’s Professorship of the Humanities in the Department of Sociology at Maltepe University in Istanbul, where he currently works as an experienced Faculty Member with numerous research and publications on rural and urban sociology, sociology of social change and modernization, sociology of religion and secularization, and sociology of Middle East and Central Asia. He has held positions at the Middle East Technical University/METU (Ankara), Manas University (Bishkek), School of Oriental and African Stud-

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ies (University of London) and University of Koç and University of Bogaziçi (Istanbul). While a university student, the rural sociological research he conducted was published as Underdeveloped Capitalism in Turkey and its Penetration into the Villages (1967) by the Student Union of METU as a book. He is also the author and/or editor of various national and international publications. Today he actively broadcasts on YouTube (since 2020) and Blogspot (since 2013). Taira Amin holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics, Lancaster University. A linguist at heart, trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, her research interests comprise gender construction in Qurʾānic narratives and their reception within the Muslim exegetical tradition, focusing specifically on how exegetes draw upon rhetoric and discourse to support and justify their readings of women-related verses. Betül Avcı is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Ibn Haldun University (Istanbul, Türkiye). She holds a B.A. from Istanbul University and an M.A. from Marmara University, Istanbul. She received an S.T.L. in interreligious studies from the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome and an M.A. in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago (IL) Divinity School. Her S.T.D. in interreligious studies (2012) is from the Pontificia Università Gregoriana. Her academic research includes comparative theology, Muslim-Christian relations and alternative contemporary spiritualities. She has published several journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries and has contributed to several international conferences and symposia. She is currently working on an oral history project on her family between the Late Ottoman and Early Republican eras, an edited book on alternative spiritualities in contemporary Turkey as well as a monograph on Muslim-Christian relations. Abdessamad Belhaj is senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Research Institute for Religion and Society, Ludovika-University of Public Service (Hungary) and at CISMOCUCLouvain University (Belgium). He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies (Mohammed V-Rabat, Morocco) and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences (UCLouvain University). He is author of several books such as Argumentation et dialectique en Islam: Formes et séquences de la munāzara (Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2010), L’autre islam: lumières, liberté et critique (L’Harmattan, 2021) and Authority in Contemporary Islam: Structures, Figures and Functions (Ludovika University Press, 2022).

Notes on Contributors

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Martina Crescenti holds a Ph.D. in Psychology, Communication and Social Sciences at the University of Macerata (Italy) and is currently a research fellow at the University of Torino (Italy) for the national project “Inhabiting uncertainty. A multifaceted study on the relationship between social attitudes and lifestyles in pandemic spaces inhabiting” (PRIN 2022–2025). She is an author of different publications regarding Islam (Turkey, Italy), migration, methodology: Crespi, Crescenti, Scocco Visual methods and migration: methodological advantages using documentary in the field (2021), Visual Studies Journal; Giovani musulmani italiani: appartenenza religiosa, socializzazione e agenzie socializzative (2021), Culture e Studi sul sociale, 6 (1), pp. 35–50; Le cerimonie del mevlid a Bursa e Gemlik. Rito, ruolo, identità (2016), Ethnorêma, Vol. 12, pp. 1–20. She is a member of the European Sociological Association-ESA (RN34-Sociology of Religion, RN10-Sociology of Education). Isabella Crespi holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Methodology and is an Associate Professor in Cultural Sociology at the University of Macerata (Italy). She is the author of many publications regarding cultural aspects. Among them: with Castrén et al. (2021) The Palgrave Handbook of Family Sociology in Europe London, Palgrave Macmillan; Crespi, Crescenti, Scocco (2021) Visual methods and migration: methodological advantages using documentary in the field in VISUAL STUDIES; 37; Abingdon, Oxford, Taylor & Francis; Crespi and Ruspini (2014) Genere e religioni in Italia. Voci a Confronto Milano, Francoangeli. She has held visiting positions at the EPFL of Lausanne (CH), Lovaine La Neuve (BEL) and Essex (UK). Since 2017 member of the advisory board of the European Network of Sociology of the Family of which she was the coordinator from 2013 to 2017. She has worked as an expert evaluator for DG Justice of the European Commission (2020) and is included in the expert list of the EIGE (European Institute for Gender Equality) of the European Commission (2020–2025). Meral Durmuş holds a Master of Social Science in Sociology (2015) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (2020), both from Maltepe University. Her main concern has been the sociology of the body, with special interest in Foucauldian body-power relations and modernity, regulation of bodies through power and discipline in modern society, human agency problematic and the social constructionist discourses of identity. Her master’s thesis titled Understanding and giving meaning to nose job through actual personal narratives: Society & rhinoplasty coming nose to nose at the turn of the 21st century and her doctoral disserta-

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tion Three generations of martyrdom-veteran/ghazi status root paradigm within the cognitive map of ‘political-cultural Turkish Islam’ society relate largely to the examination of embodiment through discourse analysis. Walid Ghali is an Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at AKU-ISMC and a specialist in Arabic manuscripts tradition. He also leads the Aga Khan Library in the United Kingdom. His research interest is Sufism and Arabic manuscripts. He published books and articles in English and Arabic with diverse titles. His recent publications are Islamic and the Middle East Area Studies Librarianship; The Role of Cultural Institutions in Manuscripts Preservation; Humour in Islamic literature and Muslim practices; and Poems in praise of the Prophet (madīḥ) as a citizen of the literary world. Dr Ghali teaches courses in Sufism, Modern Arabic Literature, and Muslim Reformists. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Abdou-Filali Ansari Occasional Papers published by the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. Dr Ghali is also a Board member of The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA). Aaron W. Hughes holds the Dean’s Professorship of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professorship of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester in New York. He is the author of over twenty books with diverse titles such as An Anxious Inheritance: Religious Minorities and the Shaping of Sunnī Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 2022), From Seminary to University: An Institutional History of the Study of Religion in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2020), and Shared Identities: Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam (Oxford University Press, 2017). He has held visiting positions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), and the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. His work has been supported by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust (Jerusalem), the Killam Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Brian Arly Jacobsen is an Associate Professor in Sociology of Religion at the Department of CrossCultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. He holds an M.A. in Sociology of Religion and Minority Studies from the University of Copenhagen (2002) and a PhD from the University of Copenhagen (2009), and he currently leads a cross-disciplinary collective research project on ‘Danish Mosques— Significance, Use and Influence’ (2017–2022). His field of research is mainly

Notes on Contributors

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in the area of religion and politics, religion and local politics, state and religion, civil religion and religious minority groups, especially Muslim minorities in Western Europe, the political debate on Muslim minority groups and Muslim institutions. Among his publications are “Introduction: Operationalizing power in the study of mosques.” In Journal of Muslims in Europe, co-authored with Niels Valdemar Vinding, Kirstine Sinclair, and Pernille Friis Jensen (2019) and “Religion and State: Complexity in Change.” In Religious Complexity in the Public Sphere: Comparing Nordic Countries. Inger Furseth (Ed.) co-authored with Lene Kühle, Ulla Schmidt, and Per Petterson (2018). Pernille Friis Jensen holds a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion from Department of Cross Cultural and Regional studies, Copenhagen University. In her PhD thesis; Women & Gendered Mosque Organisations (2022, Copenhagen University), Jensen investigated mosques in Denmark as gendered organisations. Her research interests include religion and gender, religious minorities and religious institutions. Eva Kepplinger is a postdoc researcher and lecturer at the Department of Islamic-Religious Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Having discussed the influence of the maqāṣid thought of the Andalusian scholar Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī on the Maliki school of law in her PhD (publication forthcoming), she currently researches and publishes on Islamic law and ethics in the modern period. Recent publications in this field include the article “Taha Abderrahmane and Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī: Comparative Reflections on Legal Thought and Ethics,” in: Mohammed Hashas and Mutaz alKhatib (Eds.): Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, Studies in Islamic Ethics (Brill Book Series), 2020, pp. 62–77. Zahraa McDonald is a researcher at JET Education Services in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a sociologist that has focused on education for the past 15 years. Subsequent to her PhD which examined the intersection of Islamic education and postsecular citizenship she completed post-doctoral fellowships at Stellenbosch University, UCT, CPUT and UJ. Her post-doctoral fellowship at CPUT was with the South African Research Chair in Teacher Education in the Centre for International Teacher Education. She has co-authored a number of journal articles and book chapters exploring teacher development. She has co-edited a book Learning to teach in post-apartheid South Africa: Student teachers’ encounters

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with initial teacher education. She is currently a research associate with the South African Research Chair in Teaching and Learning, UJ as well as with the Centre for International Education at the University of Sussex. Emin Poljarevic is currently an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at SOASCIS, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and chapters on Islamic activism, Islamic history, Islamophobia, and political theology. He is a co-author of the book, Social Movements and Civil Wars: When Protests for Democratization Fail (Routledge, 2017). He holds a position (on leave) in Sociology of Religion position at Uppsala University. He has held positions at Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Stockholm University. Magdalena Pycińska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of the Middle and Far East, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies. Her research interests include: contemporary national discourses in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and social changes in Muslim societies, decolonialism, settler colonialism, racialisation of religion and gender. She attended many international conferences concerning Muslim societies or Palestine in sociological or anthropological perspectives. Selected works include, Postcolonial Racialisation of Gender and Religious Experience within the Settler Colonial Context: Ahed Tamimi’s Experience of a Racialised Practice (“Literature and Theology” 35: 4, 2021); Palestinian experiences of shaping the relationship between national politics and Islamic religious tradition (“Studia Religiologica,” 52: 1, 2019). Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat holds a PhD in Political Sciences. His master’s thesis entitled “Tradition and Intellectualism” was awarded in the National Academic Students’ Theses Festival. The title of his doctoral dissertation was “The Political Issues of Contemporary Iran and the Issue of Democracy,” which was later published as Iranian Democracy Models by Allameh Tabataba’i University Press in 2021. His research interest is generally in the field of “Intellectualism,” “Tradition,” “Democracy,” “Political Issues” and “Islamic Political Thought.” He has published and presented more than 40 academic papers in academic journals and conferences. Currently, Sarparast Sadat is a faculty member at the Department of Political Sciences, Allameh Tabataba’i University in Iran.

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Kirstine Sinclair is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Modern Middle East and Muslim Studies, University of Southern Denmark, since 2015. She holds an M.A. in History and Comparative Literature from the Universities of Aarhus and Edinburgh (2003) and a PhD from the University of Southern Denmark (2010). Her field of research is Muslim minorities in the West with special reference to religious institutions, organisations and religious-political activism, modernity and mobility. Her most recent publications in English are: “Locating the ideal state: The practice of place by far right and Islamist parties” in Journal of Intercultural Studies, co-authored with Susan De Groot Heupner (2022), “What Does It Mean to be Danish? The Integration of Muslims in Denmark in a Historical Perspective” in Journal of International Migration and Integration (2022) and Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity Islamic Traditions and the Construction of Modern Muslim Identities, co-edited with Dietrich Jung, Brill (2020). Niels Valdemar Vinding is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. He holds a B.A. in Theology (UCph, 2006), a M.A. in Islamic Studies (UCph, 2009), a PhD in Islamic Studies (UCph, 2013) and a LL.M. in Canon Law (Cardiff U, 2020). His field of research is on Islam and Muslims in Denmark and Europe in the context of church and state, and he currently leads a cross-disciplinary collective research project on ‘Producing Sharia in Context’ (2021–2024). His most recent publications include Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe: Denmark (Brill 2020)), “In what sense is Islamic religious law legally recognised in Denmark?” in the Nordic Journal of Law and Social Research (2021), and “An American Example of Islamic Chaplaincy Education for the European Context.” Special Issue on Exploring New Assemblages of Islamic Higher Education in Western Europe, Religions Vol. 12, no. 6, 2021.

Note on Transliteration This volume follows the transliteration guidelines of IJMES for Arabic, Persian and Turkish terms. Although the Encyclopaedia of Islam and the Encyclopaedia Iranica provide more accurate systems of transliteration and transcription for Arabic and Persian languages accordingly, IJMES remains a more accessible and user-friendly system to both authors and readers—regardless of some of its technical shortcomings for publishing and indexing services. For all other local languages, the transliterations are those of the LOC.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Moving Beyond Aaron W. Hughes and Abbas Aghdassi

Theory and method are two terms that ideally signal something in the academic study of religion, often indicating to cognoscenti an awareness of and a sensitivity to how data is brought into existence and the often-unchecked assumptions that traditionally and continue to govern knowledge production. The two terms are often associated with a critical posture that works on the assumption that the world does not self-categorize, simply awaiting us to describe it as accurately as possible. Instead, theory and method emerge from an awareness that it is we who conjure our data into existence. To use the iconic words of the late Jonathan Z. Smith, “there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study.”1 This sentence puts meaning-making squarely on the shoulders of the scholar, showing how it is we who organize and classify the social worlds that others organize and classify. All of this is for the good and pushes scholarship in healthy directions by showing where we have come from and, because of this, where we might be headed. Attention to theory and method, however, is not just about past and future coordinates; when understood appropriately the two terms reveal the difficulty of the situation in which we are stuck, but of which we are often little aware. We refer to how we are often unknowingly embedded in the methods and methodologies that have been bequeathed to us, and which are often assumed to be natural, because we have often confused collectively the methodological for the real. Frames are mistaken for reality, in other words, and interpretive lenses confused with data collection. We assume methods and methodologies are natural—so natural, in fact, that we do not even know that we are stuck in them. This, of course, makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to move beyond. While we see many books with titles like “new methods in ‘x’” or “new advances in ‘y,’” engaging in such “newness” often proves much more difficult than it sounds. We are, in sum, confined to the methodological cages that are others’ creations.

1 Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.

© Aaron W. Hughes and Abbas Aghdassi, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_002

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Hughes and Aghdassi

This situation is particularly palpable when we look at the various subfields that comprise the larger field of religious studies—such as the study of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. Theory and method in these subfields often mean something altogether different. Since so many of these subfields are the products of textual and philological work on the one hand and, on the other, a mentalité still struggling to shed its Orientalist roots,2 textuality and the reading of texts have tended to remain the methodological benchmark. While the ability to read texts in their original languages is crucial, said reading and concomitant description cannot and should not be the be-all and end-all of these subfields. Instead, we need to shine the flashlight a little farther back than is customary and ask ourselves: why these texts and not others? Or, even just as basic, why assume that medieval texts simply fall in line with our modern categories? These are all important methodological considerations but are often ignored because choice, selection, and our categories are assumed to be natural markers. We ignore them, however, at our own peril. While criticism of Orientalism has become an increasingly important part of the field,3 the emphasis on textuality remains in these subfield—though often combined with a greater attention to anthropological methods and so-called lived religion or “religion on the ground.” This is especially the case when it comes to the study of Islam. Much of its history—say, from Ludovico Marracci’s publication of a Latin Quran in 1698 and the foundation of the École spéciale des langues orientales in Paris in 1795 to Edward W. Said’s critique of Orientalism in 1978—has been textual and linguistic, producing critical editions of texts and trying to understand “the Muslim mind” in the service of both scholarly and political objectives.4 Said’s Orientalism, however, marks a massive turning point in shifting the study of Islam from such textual study to scholarly endeavors that begin to take on a more personal tone. It was a slippery slope from this personal quality to one in which identity politics is increasingly becoming the norm.

2 For histories of these fields, see Aaron W. Hughes, Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (London: Equinox, 2007); Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 3 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978); see further Wael B. Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). 4 On the political, see the likes of Said and Hallaq in the previous note; on the scholarly, see Majid Daneshgar, “I Want to Become an Orientalist Not a Colonizer or a ‘De-Colonizer,’” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 33.2 (2021): 173–185.

Introduction

3

While this is certainly not the place to chart this transformation,5 we mention it in the present context to draw attention, more generally, to some of the methodological themes that have governed knowledge production in the academic study of Islam. It has been a dramatic shift as large-scale textual and historical study has, in many ways, drifted into more autoethnographic and historical analyses that have, among other things, sought to read modern values onto the time of the Prophet. We witness many of these themes in the chapters that follow, all of which stress, in one way or another, theoretical arguments, textual analyses, and case studies. Most of these, as a quick perusal of the table of contents reveals, revolve around the relatively new subfield of “lived Islam.”

1

Lived Islams

There exist well over a billion and a half Muslims scattered across every continent and in nearly every country on the planet. Too often, however, this tradition is treated as if it were a monotheistic monolith, reducible to the socalled five pillars and the six articles of faith. Such a definition, while perhaps making the majoritarian ulama or religious elites happy, overlooks the incredible regional, national, and local variations within Islam. Some might argue that all these variations represent different manifestations but share the same essence. Others might take an anti-essentialist position and argue that there is not some Platonic form of Islam that all variants tap into. Yet, others might maintain that these variations are so distinct as to represent distinct Muslim traditions. Perhaps the easiest and most accessible way to deal with these variations— at least from the perspective of academic study—has been to invoke the term “lived Islam.”6 This latter term derives from “lived religion,” a relatively new subfield that developed in the study of religion over the course of the last decades of the twentieth century. Employing “lived religions” as a method is an attempt to offer a corrective to what was regarded as a traditional overemphasis on the interpretation of texts and a preoccupation with studying

5 For an attempt to do this see Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); see also Hughes, Situating Islam. 6 For a recent and very good articulation of this concept, see A. Kevin Reinhart, Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

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(mainly male) elites. Emphasis instead was now placed on how religion was and is experienced and thus often overlooked in everyday settings.7 An examination of “lived religion”—alternatively called “material religion” or “religion on the ground”—leads scholars to draw on sources outside those traditionally used by, say, historians or Orientalists (i.e., textualists), given that those studied are often absent from archives (e.g., official government documents or newspaper records). Scholars interested in studying lived experience and, by extension, lived religion, often engage in fieldwork that allows them to try to understand what it is like to inhabit a specific subjective position that had traditionally been left unstudied and therefore remained unknown and silent. Perhaps on account of the relative newness of the term in religious studies, and especially now in the study of Islam, the study of “lived religions” is often seen as unproblematic. In their critique of the term, Hughes and McCutcheon invoke the work of historian Joan Wallach Scott, which argues that we must be aware of the larger historical, contextual, and thus contingent structural conditions that determine what gets to count as a lived experience in the first place.8 Scott proposes, for example, that we should perhaps be more interested in examining the conditions that lead to things being narrativized and then reported as experiences. The “evidence of experience,” she writes, “reproduces rather than contests given ideological systems,” such as those that produced the so-called experiences in the first place.9 Regardless of such critiques, which we hope will be taken more seriously moving forward, the study of “lived Islam” now plays a very large role in Islamic studies, moving the center of gravity from texts to bodies. Indeed, this concept—as a quick glance at the Table of Contents will reveal—is one of the major themes weaving throughout this volume.

2

Breakdown of Chapters

After Aaron W. Hughes’s initial chapter “‘Islam and…’: Thinking about Islam through the Act of Comparison,” which sets the tone for thinking about Islam

7 One of the earliest attempts to get at some of these ideas may be found in Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). See also the collection in Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 8 Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon, “Lived Religion,” in their Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary (London: Routledge, 2022), 157. 9 Joan Wallach Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17.4 (1991): 773–797, at 778.

Introduction

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using the method of comparison, the present volume is subdivided into three loose categories, all of which overlap with one another: Gender, the Political, and the aforementioned Lived Islams. The first subdivision consists of two chapters. In the first, “Toward a ‘Hermeneutics of Trust’ in the Current Discussion on a Gender-Just Interpretation of Islamic Primary Texts,” Eva Kepplinger examines the differing approaches scholars use when attempting to engage in what is often referred to as a gender-just reading of Islamic primary sources. Often this involves a selective reading of the sources. Rather than reject certain texts and gravitate towards others, she instead argues that we need a “hermeneutics of trust,” which is based on a holistic study of the sources, their aims, and the socio-political situation at the time of their creation. Instead of confronting the dilemma of disregarding or rejecting sources, she applies her method towards developing a new perspective on the interpretation of specific aḥadīth. In “The Discursive Construction of Women’s Guile in the Muslim Exegetical Tradition,” Taira Amin focuses on a salient linguistic attribution used to refer to women in the Qurʾān, in particular the notion of kayd (stratagem). This term occurs frequently throughout the chapter of Joseph (sura Yūsuf ), and subsequently played a rather large role in Sunnī and Sūfī exegetical elaboration of Q12:28 in particular. Using a diachronic analysis of key Qurʾānic exegeses from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, Amin identifies, tracks, and traces dominant discourses about this term and, simultaneously, later Muslim accounts of what is believed to be the “true” nature of women. Despite clear differences in intellectual tradition (e.g., Sūfi vs. Sunni), geographic location, socio-cultural context, and the historical period in which these exegeses were produced, she notes that exegetes demonstrate a great deal of consolidation in patterns relating to their argumentation schemes, modality, and the practice of recontextualisation of key sources. The second subdivision, what we have called The Political, consists of 3 chapters. In “Contemporary Turkish Academic Approach to Christianity: The Case of the New Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam (DİA),” Betül Avcı examines the Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam (DİA) that was launched in 1988 and offered as a corrective to Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI). In their introductory “manifesto,” the editors of DİA accuse EI of being a product of “religious, nationalist and Western bigotry,” in addition to having a “colonialist and missionary viewpoint.” Although DİA primarily focuses on religious phenomena mostly related to Islam, Islamic studies and Muslim countries, it includes entries related to other religious traditions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Avcı examines the representation of Christianity in DİA, especially as it concerns sacred texts, history, and theology. In terms of method, she has

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scanned through the whole list of DİA entries and selected forty-six of them primarily related to the Christian tradition, and subsequently applies content analysis to each of these entries. In so doing, she adopts a post-critical approach in order to search for the “subtext” and “context” of the texts in question. In “New Methods for Understanding Political Islam: Tradition-Constituted Rationality and the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning in the Work of Naʾini,” Ali Abedi Renani and Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat introduce two conceptual tools that they maintain offers a new way of understanding religious texts. In so doing, they use Alasdair MacIntyre’s idea of tradition-constituted rationality and the theory of Naʾini’s rawhʾ al-mʾany, i.e., the spirit of meaning. Developing these two conceptual tools, they seek to examine religious concepts and update them for the contemporary period. They argue, based on classical and objectivist hermeneutics, that texts have comprehensible main meanings, which can be discovered by applying distinct rules and methods. These meanings can then be adapted and developed to fit modern requirements or need. In their “Recontextualizing Islam in the Social and Collective Memory: Tracing the Sociogenesis of Martyrdom in Türkiye,” Meral Durmuş and Bahattin Akşit seek to bring a new theoretical approach to the study of Islam as a social phenomenon through an examination of the politics surrounding “holy” death (in Arabic “shahīd” and in Turkish “şehit”). They do this specifically as it relates to the formation and reproduction of the “martyrdom cult” in Turkey. Using qualitative research findings, they show that for Turkish people today “martyrdom in Islam” does not have a connotative meaning distinct from “martyrdom for Turkey.” This linkage of religious and secular meanings highlights group/national identification and public opinion, thereby playing a huge role in societal assent. An examination of the relationship between martyrdom and memory in modern Turkey, they suggest, reveals societal-cognitive maps pertaining to religion (specifically Islam) while also showing the establishment of cultural codes that construct gender and shape power relations supporting the martyr cult prevalent in some Muslim societies. The final subdivision, Lived Islams, consists of 7 chapters and comprises the bulk of the volume. No approach to “lived Islams” would be possible without first confronting the textual record, including its past and possible future possibilities. In “Old, New or Digital Philology: Working towards an Amalgamated Work Frame,” Walid Ghali focuses on the “critical edition,” perhaps the central feature of traditional Islamic studies. In particular, he sheds light on some of the differences between Western and non-Western scholarship devoted to

Introduction

7

the textual studies of Islamic manuscripts (manāhij al-taḥqīq), including the newly established method of Digital Humanities. The integration of these different methods to form a multi-methodological approach should assist us, he argues, in speeding up the analysis and publication of the vast volume of still unedited collections of manuscripts, especially in some contentious areas in the study of Islam, such as Islamic law and Sufism. “New Lenses for an Ethnography of Islam: The Case of mevlid Ceremonies” sees Isabella Crespi and Martina Crescenti develop what they consider to be a new ethnographic approach that seeks to re-evaluate the figure of the researcher who, after all, plays an—if not the—integral part of the research. They use such an ethno-sociological approach to analyse contexts and relational dynamics among Muslims that reflects on the methodological procedures used by the researcher to validate their research. Using 25 mevlid ceremonies in Turkey as a case study, they examine methodological procedures through the critical lens of the researcher. “Lived Institutions in the Study of Islam” sees Brian Arly Jacobsen, Kirstine Sinclair, Niels Valdemar Vinding, and Pernille Friis Jensen examine the dynamics of power, significance, and influence inside and around mosques in Denmark. Researching these mosques from the perspective of lived institutions, they address questions of methodology by examining how access to mosques proved difficult—despite varied methodological strategies and well-established relationships with many mosques and Islamic associations. This leads them to reflect on their joint experiences and thoughts on the methodological challenges and theoretical implications embedded in the interplay of structure and agency vis-a-vis the perspective of lived institutions applied to a contested political field. Magdalena Pycińska’s “Everyday Islam: Moving beyond the Piety and Orthodoxy Divide” begins with the premise that we should first focus on our informant’s understanding of his/her relations with God, saints, etc. This involves examining when and why such relationships gain meaning and how these meanings are positioned with regards to other human relations. To help navigate the movements of those relationships, she seeks to map the varieties of public spheres. She does this by engaging the problem of religiosity as it ranges from face-to-face interaction between individuals to symbolic or mediated public spheres and from political public spheres to “private” spheres. Depending on mapped relations she also seeks to track how religiosity is practiced and understood within specific intersections of social and individual categories, as for example race, gender, class, age. In her “Moving from a Madrasa Situation to the Process of Doctrinal Development: An Explication of the Extended Case Method in the Study of Islam,”

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Zahraa McDonald examines how the study of Islam can make significant contributions to theorizing social processes when the extended case method is applied as a methodology. The extended case method generates generalizability by reconstructing theory based on data drawn from participant observation. The chapter focuses on “aggregating the social situation into a social process,” explaining how this works in a study focused on Islamic education at Warda Madrasa in Johannesburg and expressions of citizenship. In his “A Phenomenological Approach to the Study of Lived Islam and Muslimness,” Emin Poljarevic draws attention to some of the tensions involved when it comes to the study of lived Islam. Avoiding established terminology within the field of Islamic Studies, such as Islamdom, Islamicate, and more recent notions, such as Lived Islam and Muslimness, he instead invokes the study of phenomenology to explore Lived Islam through analysis of Muslims’ experiences of Islam and Muslimness. “Lived Islams,” of course, need not just involve anthropological method; it can also involve the study of intellectuals embedded in particular living communities. In the final chapter, “Back to Critique: Islamic Studies and the Vicious Hermeneutic Circle,” Abdessamad Belhaj focuses on what he considers to be the vicious hermeneutic circle that occurs when the Islamic tradition is used to explain itself. Scientific critique, which was used in the 19th century by European scholars of Islamic studies, suggested various solutions to escape this circle through methods of philology and history, and in many ways continues to provide solutions for this hermeneutic circle. He discusses two recent examples from France and Belgium: Jacqueline Chabbi in France who draws on historical anthropology to read the Quranic vocabulary in light of the Arabian tribal imaginary and, in Belgium, Mehdi Azaiez who examines biblical material to index Quranic polemics in the Jewish-Christian religious history. Taken as a whole, we trust that this volume will provide an important springboard that will encourage other scholars of Islam to reflect upon method and methodology as it relates specifically to their work in the field.

Bibliography Daneshgar, Majid. “I Want to Become an Orientalist Not a Colonizer or a ‘DeColonizer.’” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 33.2 (2021): 173–185. Hall, David D. (Ed.). Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Introduction

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Hallaq, Wael B. Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Hughes, Aaron W. Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline. London: Equinox, 2007. Hughes, Aaron W. and Russell T. McCutcheon. Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary. London: Routledge, 2022. Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Marchand, Suzanne L. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Orsi, Robert A. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Reinhart, A. Kevin. Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978. Scott, Joan Wallach. “The Evidence of Experience.” Critical Inquiry 17.4 (1991): 773–797. Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Storm, Jason Ananda Josephson. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Chapter 2

“Islam and…”: Thinking about Islam through the Act of Comparison Aaron W. Hughes

Frequently we hear some variation on the phrase, “Islam and….” This can take the form, for example, of “Islam and other religions” or, more specifically, “Islam and Judaism” or “Islam and Christianity”—to say nothing of more restrictive topics such as “Islam and the environment,” “Islam and feminism,” “Islam and social justice,” and so on and so forth. Such couplings, I wish to suggest here, are often weighted in such a manner that the emphasis is traditionally put on the two nouns, with but scant attention devoted to the conjunction that joins them to one another. This chapter instead wishes to call attention to the performative work of that little word “and,” showing that far from neutral filler, it instead announces a proprietary claim and a relation of encompassment between the two larger concepts that it locks, temporarily if fragilely, together.1 It is the conjunction, after all, that takes two highly essentialized and reified nouns (e.g., “Islam,” “Judaism”; or “Islam,” “social justice”) and narrows them into some sort of union that enables them to relate to one another. Yet, this act of relating is never simply value-neutral, let alone a natural activity. The conjunction is what limits, reduces, defines, and otherwise structures the two concepts that it holds together in a network of some descriptive or comparative framework. This is done, moreover, to such an extent that it is never some pure or essentialized “Islam” that is held together—though it is often presented in precisely such a manner—with some other equally essentialized and/or grossly amorphous term or concept (e.g., environment, gender). Rather, it is often an understanding or definition of that tradition, and that to which it is linked, as understood and put forth by the interpreter to achieve some desired end.2 We forget these latter two points at our peril. I would suggest, that new conceptual modelling demands a critical scrutiny of the terms

1 Here I use the language and insights offered by Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 8.3 (1996): 225–227, at 225. 2 Shahab Ahmed has tried, with varying degrees of success, to call our attention to some of these issues. See, for example, his What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 104.

© Aaron W. Hughes, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_003

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and categories we have used, and indeed continue to use, to bring Islam into clearer focus. Before I proceed, it might be worth situating myself methodologically and theoretically. I work on the intersection of Islam and Judaism, primarily from the perspective of the critical wing associated with academic study of religion.3 This wing tends to be interested in theory and method, two terms that, as I understand them, ideally get us to reflect on where we have come from and, ideally, where we are going. It does this primarily by focusing on genealogy—that is, whence our terms, categories, and discourses emerged, something that has to include examining their many intertwined theological and often highly (Protestant) Christian investments—all the while stressing the importance of creating and maintaining a self-reflective intellectual posture.4 With this in mind, the following examines the various ways that we bring Islam into focus by our methodological acts. While we often think that such acts are as natural as the various social worlds in which we seemingly operate, I wish here to call attention instead to the artificiality of what we do. While I certainly agree that there can be no authentic or pure Islam, protestations of some to the contrary, we need to attune ourselves to how we construct those often highly contingent Islams with which we all deal. To return to the “and,” the focus of this chapter, we see how it is used in the pursuit of comparison. When Judaism and Islam are thought about, it is always done for the sake of showing similarity and/or difference. When we try to show, for example, that Judaism emphasizes “x,” this is often to imply that Islam either does something similar or something different. Rarely asked, however, is what Jew or Jews and what Muslim or Muslims are we talking about. Or, to use another example, when Islam and ecology are brought together, it is to

3 Allow me to cite some examples of works I find helpful to situate myself a little more clearly, and to provide background to my own thinking on the topic of what is now commonly called “critical religion.” Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); idem, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 4 For a survey of many of these terms and their complicated histories, see Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon, Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary (London and New York: Routledge, 2022); and idem, Religion in 50 More Words: A Redescriptive Vocabulary (London and New York: Routledge, 2022).

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show, more often than not, how Islamic teachings bear upon—whether historically or, more often than not, in the present—ecological problems and often how it can help to solve such problems. Rarely, it might be noted, does such “and” literature tend to reveal the ecological problems that Islam (or any other religion, for that matter) creates. The “and,” in other words, is a loaded term, one that does a lot of intellectual—and, indeed, extra-intellectual—work. While, on one level, we might all certainly agree that there can be no knowledge without such implicit sets of juxtapositions and comparisons. She is taller than him, for example, or this is darker than that. Such statements may well seem obvious enough as we go about our quotidian lives, deciding, for example, which batch of apples look better or what color of car is more sporty, but when used as an academic method problems inevitably arise because we often forget or overlook the fact that comparison is now employed as a theoretical or heuristic construct.5 Despite the fact that we all compare, whether in our personal and intellectual lives, it is surprising just how little energy is expended on thinking about the act of comparison.6 Indeed, often just as little energy is spent on the word “and” that so often makes comparison possible in the first place.

1

“… and”

When that little conjunction “and” is added to Islam, the latter term is suddenly, even perhaps strikingly, curtailed, focused, and structured in such a manner that it can now be usefully limited for some intellectual—or indeed non-intellectual—project that someone somewhere deems significant. In this manner, the “and” not only brings together, it also separates. Islam, to go back briefly to an example cited above, needs neither Judaism nor ecology to define itself, but when conjoined with “and” it does and it does so, moreover, in such a manner that all those aspects that do not fit the coupling are simply deemed irrelevant and matter-of-factly left behind. While I certainly do not doubt that 5 In another context, I have tried to analyze and theorize comparison for the study of religion in my Comparison: A Critical Primer (Sheffield: Equinox, 2017), see esp. 8–24. 6 The person that has done more than anyone—at least in the academic study of religion—to deal with such issues is the late Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017). While he will certainly make several cameos in the pages that follow, his work that I have found to be of especial significance are the following: “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,” in Imagining Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 19–35; idem, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), e.g., 36–53.

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this is or has to be the case, I do wish to call attention to it, if for no other reason than that it is an unnatural act presented as natural. Take the rather popular pairing of “Islam and women” or even “Islam and gender.” Such pairings have, in the past, tended to signal a focus on issues that deal with women in Islam, including women’s roles in worship services and/or within the religious community at large.7 Now it increasingly refers to how female Muslims can reclaim their tradition, using either the tools of feminist analysis or recalibrating indigenous categories.8 When we keep the two categories separate—as the “and” inevitably does—we leave untheorized why the field unproblematically focuses on men by studying their spheres and their cultural productions as if they were natural and therefore ungendered. Indeed, as K. Merinda Simmons, a scholar of religion who does not focus on Islam, asks: “just what are ‘women’ and ‘religion,’ and do these tropes change when cast in the same conversation?”9 She further makes the case that “what women and religion are is always a question of who is defining them,”10 thereby switching our gaze, once again, from seemingly stable persons or items in the world—two items brought together while simultaneously separated by the conjunction “and”—to the way that people in discrete settings, including scholars, strategically arrange and sort the world for their own ends. Comparison—and, just as importantly, the rhetoric of comparison—is not natural, appearances to the contrary, but contains numerous ideological and political implications. To return to the title of this chapter, what work does the conjunction “and” perform in thinking about Islam? Here, we might even go so far to mention that even if Islam is not explicitly thought about comparatively, comparison is nevertheless omnipresent, with “Europe,” “the secular,” or even “(Protestant) Christianity” as perhaps the most natural comparanda.

7

8

9 10

See, for example, such classic works as Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). More recently, and more or less employing the same title, see Celene Ibrahim, Women and Gender in the Qur’an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). E.g., Ayesha S. Chaudry, Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Aysha A. Hidayatullah, Feminist Edges of the Qur’an (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Julianne Hammer, Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). K. Merinda Simmons, “Placing Theory: Thinking and Teaching ‘Women and Religion,’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78/2 (2010): 542–563, at 543. Simmons, “Placing Theory,” 561.

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Reconfiguring Comparison

The act of bringing two or more things together and then comparing them, looking for similarities and differences, forms the basis for all new knowledge, since intellectual gains inevitably result from extending the known and the familiar to the unknown and the unfamiliar. Despite—or, indeed, because of—its central importance, comparison remains surprisingly untheorized. We assume it is natural, and then we just do it. In Jewish studies, for example, comparison has tended to be employed as a way to articulate some intangible or unquantifiable special trait (e.g., monotheism, chosenness, genius, continuity, or the like) or to isolate what is ostensibly “Jewish” from what is ostensibly “non-Jewish.”11 Comparison, then, largely functions as a way to mark Jewish difference even in the face of no compelling evidence. More often than not, this has involved constructing something that is imagined to be Judaism and/or a sense of Jewishness in an essentialized fashion, backprojecting it onto the historical record, and then locating it retroactively.12 In the current academic study of Islam, comparison—again, often completely untheorized—functions as the process whereby some grandiose thing known as “Islam” or all those social actors referred to by the name “Muslims” can be normalized, all with the aim of showing where and how they fit within the parameters set out by the liberal modern nation state. The two classic traits of comparison are to show either difference or similarity, but often left sidelined is why, how, and for what purpose comparison is employed. Often it is invoked by a hunch or set of hunches (i.e., “that reminds me of…”) that occurs to the interpreter as opposed to a well thought-out and systematic mode of analysis. Often, this is done for apologetic purposes: either to show how two things are the same (e.g., prayer in Islam is the same as prayer13 in Judaism, therefore they both represent manifestations of some amorphous “sacred”),14 or that they bear no resemblance to one another (e.g., the Prophet Muhammad is categorically unlike any other prophet, and therefore sui generis).15 11 12 13 14 15

A particularly egregious example is Haggai Mazuz, The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Aaron W. Hughes, Somewhere Between Islam and Judaism: Critical Reflections (Sheffield: Equinox, 2021), 33–53. All the while realizing that “prayer” is indigenous to neither tradition, but is a Protestant category that has crossed over to become an ostensibly objective and analytic term. The classic example being Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 1–37. On the latter, see the opening chapter in Smith, Drudgery Divine, 1–35.

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Comparison is not just a way of creating new knowledge but also an invested process that produces knowledge for some desired end or set of ends. The way in which two concepts—that is, Islam and something else—are put beside one other is not dictated by the concepts themselves, as if their similarities or differences are either indisputable or intrinsic. Instead, they are related by the one who is doing the comparison, the one who brings them together—i.e., change the comparativist or the interpreter and the comparison alters or the interpretation differs. Items in the world, after all, do not self-arrange or self-classify. On the contrary, things encountered about which we claim to know something are placed into their various relationships of similarity and difference by curious and invested observers proactively arranging their worlds—social, academic, or the like. Scholars of Islam, for example, have no problem using comparative categories like myth, ritual, pilgrimage, prayer, text, etc., to name and organize different things and actions, from different contexts, as if they are members of the same class, all for purposes of making claims about the world. While this may well make Islam more familiar to students or colleagues (or the liberal nation state), it also distorts by taking an Islamic belief, practice or text and fitting it into a different, sometimes radically different, context.16 “To know one [religion],” in the oft-quoted locution of F. Max Müller (1823–1900), the Oxford Indologist and father of the academic study of religion, “is to know none.” We would do well to remember that then, not unlike now, scholarly judgments took place within much larger social and political worlds. For Müller, not unlike many other earlier scholars of religion, comparison—regarded by many of these individuals as the sine qua non of secular religious study—was central to their enterprise to account for practices and beliefs of “the savages” and “the heathens.” Such practices were perplexing precisely because of how familiar they seemed to be despite their obvious exoticness. Comparison arose here on account of the inevitable failure of local understandings when confronted with new and unanticipated information. Despite such a fracture, based as they were on a set of miscommunications, comparison still exists as the default position in the study of religion in general and that of Islam in particular. Rather than imagine comparison as a scholarly, let alone a natural, act, we should perhaps conceptualize it as a tool that situ-

16

On this distortion, see Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon, Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary (London: Routledge, 2021).

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ated people use to organize their world in specific ways, for specific purposes.17 One way such a reconfiguration might take place is to articulate better one’s comparative work—making as plain as possible the larger concern or interest by means of which one has placed two concepts (Islam and…) or two groups of people (Muslims and…) beside each other in our imagination. Such a placement, we must remember or be reminded, is precisely what allows us to conclude that Islam and/or Muslims are either similar to or different from other concepts/people. But surely this perspectivism chips away at or undermines the authority of scholarly claims, at least as some have rather confidently made them, for now the conclusion is not Islam is similar to/different from [x], but rather “given that I have defined Islam in this or that manner, it allows me to talk about these discrete groups and then to come to conclusions about them in this specific way.”

3

… and Islam

It is unfortunate that we live in a geopolitical situation wherein Islam functions—indeed, some might argue as it has since at least the time of the first Crusade—as the other whereby the Euro-Christian West has defined itself, something that is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase “Islam and Europe.” Here is certainly not the place to rehearse the history of classical Orientalism, something that has been done well by others,18 but it does suffice to mention that views on Islam are omnipresent—on the street, in the classroom, and on the news and other social media—and such views tend to have implicit ideas about “Europe” (or the West”) and Europeanness (or “Westernness”) in the background. We, thus, arrive at something of a paradox: Parts are often made, both within and outside of the academy, to stand for the whole. The process of underwriting both popular and academic conceptualizations of Islam ultimately prove to be similar. Some element is chosen that catches 17

18

Some have certainly tried to do this. In addition to the work cited by J.Z. Smith and my own Comparison: A Critical Primer mentioned above, see also Bruce Lincoln, Apples and Oranges: Explorations In, On, and With Comparison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 3–24; Oliver Freiburger, Considering Comparison: A Method for Religious Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 20–44. Obviously, the classic work here is Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978). A more recent attempt at reformulation, arguing that Said simultaneously went too far and not far enough, is Wael B. Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

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our attention, extracting it from its various contexts so that it can now exist artificially for the pundit’s, the Islamophobe’s or the academic’s analysis. In popular or media circles this often involves focusing on hot-button issues— such as violence, the hijab, or the presumed inability of Muslims to integrate properly into the modern liberal nation-state—and in the case of the academy to attempt to correct such misconceptions. This, of course, is not to make the argument that the Islamophobic and the academic conceptions are the same; on the contrary I instead wish to return our attention to the very unnaturalness of the act of interpretation and all of the intellectual work (and baggage included) by that little word “and.” Both conceptualizations ultimately rely on implicit definitions of what Islam is or what Muslim groups are relevant to our work. Such implicit definitions, however, tend to mimic and thereby uncritically reinforce common understandings, which subsequently function as the scholar’s analytic framework even though they were never intended for either analytic or cross-cultural comparative work. It is not simply the case, as I have mentioned several times already, that we simply encounter Islam—or anything else for that matter—naturally in the world. Instead, we conjure it into existence by a host of acts. It is up to us, as scholars of the tradition, to understand this and reflect upon such processes. Certainly one cannot be expected to talk about the entirety of the diverse moods, motivations, beliefs, and practices that are Islam—to say nothing of either historical or geographic variances. One must limit and demarcate, and one of the main ways we do this is by adding the conjunction “and.”19 However, too frequently not enough time and attention is devoted to such demarcation. One text or set of texts, for example, cannot be expected to stand for the entire tradition. Nor can one individual or group be imagined as a metonym for the length and breadth of a religious civilization. This is where the “and” certainly comes in handy, functioning as a focusing lens to bring some part of Islam into contact with some, oftentimes, equally broad or murky concept. The problem, however, is when the part is taken for the whole and/or vice versa. When we talk about Islam and gender, for example, we tend to focus only on a select text or set of texts that are either laudatory or that denigrate women and their roles in Muslim society, depending, of course, on one’s research questions (i.e., to show whether “Islam,” again writ large, is something approaching egalitarian or misogynist). The texts that one chooses to focus on are rarely haphazard, but such choice ultimately determines the interpretation. Any set

19

Such, of course, is one of the main points of Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

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of texts that one chooses to focus on represents but a small selection from among hundreds or thousands that actually deal with women in the tradition. The same could be said of any other term or category that is brought together with Islam by the conjunction “and.” Take Islam and ecology, to use another example.20 On the cover of an edited volume, Islam and Ecology, we read that “this volume outlines the Islamic view of the cosmic order and reviews the way an Islamic worldview can be interpreted, reassessed, and applied to such environmental problems as pollution and water scarcity.”21 The essays in the volume then proceed to narrow down the historical length and geographic breadth of a gargantuan “Islam,” all with the aim of defining what they believe to be “the Islamic view” on the universe and the planet with an eye toward ascertaining how such a view can be used to examine current ecological problems. I certainly have no problem with such an approach; indeed, the editors and contributors are to be congratulated for trying to address the environmental problem we all currently face, and to do so moreover from an Islamic perspective. I only call attention to it, however, to note the methodological implications of such an act, and that such acts rarely involve imagining Islam as the problem when it comes to, say, pollution or environmental degradation.

4

Centers and Margins

The question becomes: How are we to conceptualize this amorphous thing that we, and others, call “Islam” in ways that enable us to grasp structures and continuities without essentializing them. Here, once again, Islam is merely exemplary of the ways we conceptualize religion more generally. One of the major ways that we frequently do this is by the invocation of the “center and margins” trope.22 This can be literal (e.g., the medieval caliphate as the “center”

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22

To see other examples, just type in the worlds “Islam and” on any search engine (e.g., Google) or online bookstore (e.g., Chapters) and see the myriad of possibilities. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust, eds. Richard C. Foltz, Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). This is but one of many devoted to the subject. See also: Islam and Ecology, eds. Fazlun Khalid and Joanne O’Brien (London: Cassell, 1992); Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, GreenDeen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet (San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010); Anna M. Gade, Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). I think here of the important analysis found in Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: The View From the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

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and the rural countryside as “margins”), geographic (e.g., medieval Baghdad as “center” and the fringes of empire to the East as “margins”), or theological (e.g., discourses of orthodoxy and heterodoxy). What all of these tropes share is a conceptual system that assumes a core of fixed or static ideas at a center that gradually diminish the further out one goes concentrically from it. To maintain its control, the center seeks to replicate itself at the margins, with the assumption that ideas, power, and the like only move centripetally, but never centrifugally. Whenever we use the word “and”—that is, whenever we attach Islam to some other term or concept—the point where they meet is, by definition, marginal. However, the juxtaposition reveals a rather complicated dialectic. On the one hand, margins are mistaken for the center since the one undertaking the interpretation, definition, and/or comparison imagines ideas to move centripetally so that they can get at Islam’s “essence” from the marginal position from which they are undertaking their conceptual act. Yet, on the other hand, such conceptualization attempts to draw cohesion and theological proclamations from the center to show how Islam interacts with some other concept (e.g., feminism, ecology, other religions). In moving them either from or to the center, to retain the spatial and even conceptual sense of the metaphor, we stretch “Islamic” doctrines, teachings, etc. to their limit, using them to study or interpret or illumine some question or set of questions that we hold to be either interesting or self-evident. In that fragile moment of repose we go about our scholarly business. It is an artificial task, to be sure, and one that demands critical reflection.

5

Self-Reflexivity

My goal here is certainly not to engage in either deconstruction or a complete relativism where every interpretation is as good as any other because they are all based on idiosyncratic acts of selection and comparison. On the contrary, in calling attention to the idiosyncrasy of the act, I instead want to make the case that a large part of scholarly practice on Islam must involve a certain selfreflexivity on the part of the interpreter, and this unfortunately has been in rather short supply. When it comes to classical Orientalism and its scholarly treatment of Islam we see the results of this lack. We witness it, for example, in talk of “the Arab mind” or “the Muslim experience,” arrived at when Muslims ideas are believed to be locked in a selection of texts deemed important by the Orientalist. Despite the reaction against the excesses of Orientalism in recent years, however, the confusion of parts for whole, and centers for

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margins, remains. All of this, as I have suggested here, is exacerbated by the intellectual work that the little word “and” is imagined to perform, and which plays a rather large role in our situation and conceptualization of Islam in the present. Even when this “and” is not actually literally present—as it is, for example, with Islam and Judaism or Islam and ecology—it is always there given the fact that the tradition is always compared, explicitly or even implicitly, to something else (e.g., the modern West, secularism). Despite the appearance that comparison—not unlike cognate methodologies in the academic study of religion (e.g., description, explanation, interpretation) is ostensibly obvious to all and sundry, we must realize and appreciate that, more often than not, it is a political act, based on social interests that prompt an actor to choose to focus on some thing or aspect to the exclusion of all else. Within this context, a comparison is ostensibly based on description of two or more things based on a partial list or the sum of qualities or features that the scholar decides to use or otherwise mark-out as characteristic of something. They are not all the possible qualities, however; far from it, they are often highly idiosyncratic. Left muted or unstated is how and why have these criteria and characteristics been selected and singled out as useful? Someone has, after all, chosen them, and them alone, to the exclusion of others. The next question ought to follow immediately, but it rarely does: for what purpose has a particular understanding of Islam and something else been put in counterpoint? What is the analytic gain and, just as importantly, how long are the two concepts meant to be held in abeyance? All the while, of course, the descriptions—and the comparisons based upon them—are assumed to be the result of neutral observation and objective description. However, in describing, say, the contents of a text or the nuances of a ritual means that the scholar has no option but to make choices about what items in the world to focus upon and which of its many aspects to emphasize, marginalize, or otherwise just ignore. This choice ought to be guided by an explicit theory, providing a rationale to one’s colleagues and readers as to why one wishes something to occupy their attention. We see some of the political uses to which description can be put in works devoted to the topic of early Islam, a period that is notoriously difficult to describe on account of the paucity of sources.23 Such difficulties, and the political and ideological imbroglios in which they are caught up, however, can—and often are—conveniently sidestepped in secondary literature. Thus,

23

I have discussed this at length in my Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (Sheffield: Equinox, 2012), 34–60.

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we can read, for example, in descriptions such as the following that the interpreter has “consult[ed] the widest range of sources about Muhammad,”24 that they have read later sources with “careful, judicious scrutiny,”25 or that their descriptions present that which “is strictly faithful to classical biographies (as far as facts and chronology are concerned).”26 The assumption here, of course, is that description is tantamount to the simple summary of the contents of these later sources that are believed to be stable and objective, as scholars take their own reading of the tradition, as they understand it, and offer it as something universal and natural. Here, again, it is clear how description, as an ostensibly neutral act, and interpretation, finding the meaning that one wants, mutually reinforce one another. To show just how important the conjunction is in studying Islam (or anything else for that matter) implicit in such statements is an attempt to remove, both literally and metaphorically, the “and.” Muslim sources in the above examples are believed to be self-explanatory and self-descriptive when they are removed from their immediate conjunctive environments. They work on the assumption that Islam is a timeless essence, beginning with the revelation to Muhammad in seventh-century Arabia and then subsequently moving, Geist-like, throughout the ensuing centuries until we arrive at the present moment. This Geist, or essence, then becomes the Islam that can be put in counterpoint with other concepts using the “and.” But this is only after the fact, after an essentialized Islam is constructed in the interpreter’s imagination. The deployment of the “and,” at the beginning, however, reminds us that Islam did not emerge de novo. The “and” reminds us that Islam and Muslim actors have been—and continue to be—intimately involved with those of other traditions (e.g., various types or groups of Jews, Christian, Manicheans, Zoroastrians), and should also ideally remind us of the conflict and contestation as various social groups seek to make sense of their worlds. Islam, like any religion, does not fall from heaven, but if we simply read the stories that later Muslims told themselves to make sense of their social worlds as true then we will have forfeited both academic integrity and a sense of the real historical

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Omid Safi, Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 17. Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims: History and Memory (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), xx. See the critical comments to her approach in Chase F. Robinson, “The Ideological Uses of Early Islam.” Past and Present 203 (May 2009): 205–228. Tariq Ramadan, In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhamad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), xi.

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and social conditions that went into the creation and spread of Islam. As a human creation, it is up to us not to repeat the stories that early Muslims told themselves, but to understand, keeping with the theme of this chapter, the “and” that links Muslim actors to those of other social groups (e.g., Jews, Christians, Manicheans). The “and,” after all, is not just ours and modern, it was also invoked by Muslims—past, present, and undoubtedly in the future—to make sense of their own unruly social worlds. It aids in definition and in ascertaining the bounds of group membership, just as much as it does as an aide to scholarly analysis. The “and,” once again, destabilizes simplistic understanding and puts the emphasis, ideally, on the messy, mundane, and historical formation of a new religion whose early practitioners imagined as anything but. Now what does all this mean for the academic study of Islam? It means, for one thing, that, while we need to be aware of the artificiality of our enterprise, we need to go even further and explain why and how we are going about what we are doing. This means keen attention ought to be paid to this little conjunction. It is not just how we construct our scholarly analyses, it also plays a considerable work in how Muslims themselves make sense of themselves. Leaving the latter aside, we might also say that the “and” means that if we want to connect Islam (whether in the early period or now in the contemporary one) to concepts such as “gender justice” and “gender equality,” we have to admit that they are our terms and that we are methodologically connecting it to Islam for the sake of some scholarly, though not necessarily historical, act. No one in late antique Arabia, for example, would have been familiar with such terms, after all, and that it is an academic desire to read certain (as opposed to other, let alone all) sources with such presentist concerns. Rather than be honest about such concerns, we are instead presented with study after study attempting to tell us what “true” or “authentic” Islam is. Finally, a focus on this one word, a word that often goes unnoticed on account not only of its size (three letters) but also its omnipresence on a page (is there any other words employed as much?), potentially brings a lot into focus. It functions as the narrow bridge that connects two, often extremely large, concepts to one another. It is problematic, to be sure, but only when we do not focus on and appreciate the work that it does—not only for the data we study, but how we enter that data with the aim of making various intellectual forays.

6

Conclusions

This chapter has focused on what is often imagined as the most insignificant of words, the conjunction “and.” It has done this by trying to show that, far from

“Islam and…”: Thinking about Islam

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neutral or objective, it instead announces a relation of containment between often two much larger concepts that it locks, temporarily if fragilely, in isolation, often nowhere other than in the mind of the scholar. But, in moving such concepts together, the “and” brings in its wake a host of methodological, theoretical, and interpretive baggage. The argument here has been that (1) we need to understand this baggage; and, in the process (2) we must acknowledge just what this word does when it brings together two concepts that might be only tangentially, if at all, connected to one another into a relation of encompassment. More specifically, when we use “and” to link up Islam with some other idea or concept, we limit, often artificially through the selection of criteria that we deem to be significant and the marginalization of that which we do not, our data. But this procedure, I have tried to argue here, demands caution and reflection on just what we have done and, just as importantly, why we are doing it. We are not simply describing things, after all, we are bringing things into existence—relationships, social worlds, taxonomies, among other things—that otherwise would not be there. A focus on description, such a large part of the Islamicist’s conceptual toolbox, is anything but natural or neutral, yet it nonetheless remains our default methodological position. “And” makes us realize just what we do and that how we do it is not necessarily natural.

Bibliography Abdul-Matin, Ibrahim. GreenDeen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010. Afsaruddin, Asma. The First Muslims: History and Memory. Oxford: Oneworld, 2008. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Ahmed, Shahab. What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Bulliet, Richard W. Islam: The View From the Edge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Chaudry, Ayesha S. Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Eliade, Mircea. Patterns in Comparative Religion. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Foltz, Richard C., Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin (Eds.). Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.

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Freiburger, Oliver. Considering Comparison: A Method for Religious Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Gade, Anna M. Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Hallaq, Wael B. Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Hammer, Julianne. Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Hidayatullah, Aysha A. Feminist Edges of the Qur’an. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Hughes, Aaron W. Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction. Sheffield: Equinox, 2012. Hughes, Aaron W. Comparison: A Critical Primer. Sheffield: Equinox, 2017. Hughes, Aaron W. Somewhere Between Islam and Judaism: Critical Reflections. Sheffield: Equinox, 2021. Hughes, Aaron W. and Russell T. McCutcheon. Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. Hughes, Aaron W. and Russell T. McCutcheon. Religion in 50 More Words: A Redescriptive Vocabulary. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. Ibrahim, Celene. Women and Gender in the Qur’an. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Khalid, Fazlun, and Joanne O’Brien (Eds.). Islam and Ecology. London: Cassell, 1992. Lincoln, Bruce. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Lincoln, Bruce. “Theses on Method.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 8.3 (1996): 225–227. Lincoln, Bruce. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Lincoln, Bruce. Apples and Oranges: Explorations In, On, and With Comparison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Mazuz, Haggai. The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina. Leiden: Brill, 2014. McCutcheon, Russell T. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Ramadan, Tariq. In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhamad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Robinson, Chase F. “The Ideological Uses of Early Islam.” Past and Present 203 (May 2009): 205–228.

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Safi, Omid. Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978. Simmons, K. Merinda. “Placing Theory: Thinking and Teaching ‘Women and Religion.’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78/2 (2010): 542–563. Smith, Jonathan Z. Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Smith, Jonathan Z. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Part 1 Gender

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Chapter 3

Toward a “Hermeneutics of Trust” in the Current Discussion on a Gender-Just Interpretation of Islamic Primary Texts Eva Kepplinger

1

Introduction

Gender equality is an idea, which has come to the fore with the expansion of feminist discourses and human rights in the modern age.1 For Muslims, an engagement with the issue began with Muslim reform movements in the nineteenth century. However, it was especially during the twentieth century that the discussion on “the status of women in Islam”2 gradually increased and demands arose to revisit and read Islamic primary sources, that is, the Qurʾān and the prophetic tradition, in the light of the current needs and social changes. In the works of those Muslim scholars today who engage with this topic, not only is the conviction that justice and the preservation of human dignity, which are the goals of Islam, should be observed, but also that these values are anchored in its primary sources.3 According to this understanding, some of those scholars argue, there is no basis for discrimination against women in the Qurʾān. The injustice, however, has resulted from the work of male jurists in the centuries after the end of the revelation.4 As a consequence of the cultural imprint of these jurists, whose legal thinking was patriarchal

1 Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe, “Introduction: Muslim Family Law and the Question of Equality,” in Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe (Eds.), Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 1. 2 Ziba Mir-Hosseini, “Muslim Legal Tradition and the Challenge of Gender Equality,” in Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Mulki al-Sharmani, and Jana Rumminger (Eds.), Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition (London: Oneworld, 2015) 34–83, 36. 3 See, for example, Ibn ʿĀšūr, Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭāhir. Maqāṣid aš-šarīʿa al-islāmīya. Tūnis: Dār Suḥnūn li-n-Našr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2007. 4 For more on this opinion, see, for example, Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, “Rethinking Men’s Authority Over Women: Qiwāma, Wilāya and their Underlying Assumptions,” in Ziba MirHosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe (Eds.), Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 203.

© Eva Kepplinger, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_004

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and based on the idea that men are superior to women,5 the Qurʾān and the prophetic tradition (sing. ḥadīth, pl. aḥadīth) were interpreted in that light and the inequality of women was then understood to be part of the divine will.6 Those Muslim scholars who attempt to establish gender-justice argue that today it is important to work on a contemporary interpretation of the texts and that it is necessary to involve women and their views so that new meanings can be elaborated.7 According to Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, this endeavor should not only be undertaken for the sake of establishing equality for women but also to secure the well-being of the whole of society.8 For the realization of gender-justice, scholars today focus on different areas within the topic and apply different methods through which they believe a contemporary understanding for a new, gender-just reading can be established. Questions which underlie these attempts include: How can the revealed scriptures be interpreted in a contemporary way? How should seemingly misogynist aḥadīth be dealt with? What roles do reason and ethical convictions play in this current interpretation and in the attempts to ensure justice?9 In the first part of this chapter, different approaches for a contemporary reading and gender-sensitive interpretation of the sources will be presented, taking in particular consideration approaches to the Qurʾān, the aḥadīth, and how the aims of the sharīʿa (maqāṣid) are understood and used in that discussion. In this part, by mentioning certain scholars and the methods they apply, it is intended to highlight the relevant trends and argumentations which can be found in the current discourse. In the argumentative and second part, the premises for a “hermeneutics of trust” are introduced. It begins with the observation, that in the works of some contemporary scholars, especially in their dealing with the aḥadīth, either an explicit or an implicit “hermeneutics of suspicion” can be noted. Some of them argue that the contents of certain aḥadīth are incompatible with the values of modernity and this is why certain traditions should be rejected.10 With regard to the maqāṣid, they are used with 5

6 7 8 9 10

Adis Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” in Adis Duderija (Ed.), Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa and Contemporary Reformist Muslim Thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 199. Ibid., 200. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Qurʾanic Principle of Wasatiyyah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 191. Duderija writes about Eshkevari’s approach, see Adis Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 156. For further questions and considerations, see Mir-Hosseini, Vogt, Larsen, and Moe, “Introduction: Muslim Family Law and the Question of Equality,” 3. See, for example, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (London: Oneworld, 2001), 442ff.

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the argument that some values (i.e., the maqāṣid) can be deduced from the Qurʾān and aḥadīth, and, therefore, these maqāṣid should serve as a measure when evaluating and judging the primary sources. The argumentation is that if something in the sources seems to contradict these values or maqāṣid, then certain teachings from the texts or the texts themselves should be rejected because they are not compliant with, for instance, the current notions of justice and equality.11 At the beginning of the argumentation for a “hermeneutics of trust,” it is first put forward, that, as far as we know, at no point in the history of human beings has there existed a consensus on one singular notion of justice; instead, notions of justice have differed based on their time, place, and social context. Therefore, what follows raises the question that, if at no time a consensus has existed on the exact meaning of justice, what would remain from the Islamic sources until today if, over the past 1,400 years of Islam, jurists at different times had taken their then prevalent notion of justice as a measure to reject sources when they did not comply with their particular ethical view? This chapter, which is written from a theological perspective, aims to suggest an approach which, it is hoped, avoids the dilemma of having to reject texts. To achieve this, an approach is suggested which allows a new interpretation of aḥadīth which today might appear as ethically problematic. For this approach, it will be necessary to study the aḥadīth holistically in order to meaningfully understand them as a part of a bigger picture. To elaborate on this “hermeneutics of trust,” different premises on which this hermeneutics is grounded will be raised. One premise is the conviction—and this is also mentioned in the work of many contemporary scholars—that God emphasizes the equality of men and women in their dignity and responsibility.12 Another premise is based on the actions of the Prophet, who was chosen by God to personify the values and ethics of the Qurʾān and to teach them to human beings. Analysis shows that his treatment of women was revolutionary and indeed he encouraged a promotion of women. Today, numerous authors argue that with Islam, and through the Prophet, women were given a place in all domains of life and were not excluded from any.13 Naturally, that also meant that no domain remained exclusively for men. 11 12 13

See, for example, Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 213. See, for example, Asma Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Qurʾān, translated by Muneera Salem-Murdock (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 31. See, for example, Adis Duderija. Constructing a Religiously Ideal “Believer” and “Woman” in Islam: Neo-Traditional Salafi and Progressive Muslims’ Methods of Interpretation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 182 and Mohammad Hasim Kamali. The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Qurʾanic Principle of Wasatiyyah. Oxford: Oxford University

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Besides the noticeable tendency of Islam to establish equality and justice between all people,14 however, there also exist a handful of prophetic traditions which—from today’s point of view but not for the then patriarchal characterized society—are seen as misogynistic. This calls for an examination of how such a clear inconsistency and discrepancy can be possible—after all, God is the source of both the Qurʾān as well as the utterings of the Prophet and one of His Names is al-ʿadl—The Just. Therefore, the question arises of whether it is possible to look at these aḥadīth from a new perspective, which would resolve this contradiction and offer a very different explanation? The chapter aims to find an answer to this core question and arrives at a surprising result: While the Qurʾān and the Prophet tended to change and restructure society toward justice on all levels of life, this meant that women were given unprecedented influence and positions. Simultaneously, there was someone who suffered a clear loss of control and power, that is, man. As this tendency can be noticed, this chapter therefore tries to find an answer to the question of whether it is possible that the intention of the utterance of certain “misogynist” aḥadīth was to make it easier for men to accept that enormous change and therefore—because these aḥadīth, in fact, did not have an impact on social life—that those reports served rather a pedagogical purpose. The “hermeneutics of trust,” through the consideration of all sources available, is supposed to allow a new reading which particularly considers the overall picture of the ethics, which the Qurʾān and the prophetic tradition aim to establish and which tries to offer coherent explanations for single troubling traditions.

2

The Need for Reform

The voices and methods of those scholars who strive for a gender-just interpretation of the Islamic sources are numerous and various. However, what unites them is the consensus that there is a need to reflect on the continuing existence of gender discrimination and interpretation in the Muslim world, through the patriarchal interpretation of Muslim scholars.15 In addition, many

14 15

Press, 2015, 195 and Asma Lamrabet. Women and Men in the Quran. Translated by Muneera Salem-Murdock. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 31. See, for example, Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀšūr. Maqāṣid aš-šarīʿa al-islāmīya. Tūnis: Dār Suḥnūn li-n-Našr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2007, 126f. Anver E. Emon, “The Paradox of Equality and the Politics of Difference: Gender Equality, Islamic Law and the Modern Muslim State,” in Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe (Eds.), Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 253.

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of them agree that the Prophet Muhammad aspired to a different, a new situation, namely, justice between the sexes, but that his progressive mission soon after his death was unraveled and replaced by the traditional, patriarchal ideas of that time.16 As a consequence, women’s rights that were introduced by Islam have been steadily subverted. Thus, women were restrained from participation in public affairs, from visiting mosques, and often had no opportunity to speak about these matters publicly; they mostly did not receive any advancement in their education and were expected to remain in the confines of their homes. Thus, the ideal of strong, independent women, which was introduced by the Prophet, subsequently was replaced by the idea of passive, dependent women, who had no role or influence in their societies.17 Moreover, the ideals of the sharīʿa such as equality, justice, and so forth were not reflected in the fiqh of the jurists.18 It is also argued that as the fiqh was formulated by men, even texts of the Qurʾān were molded in the scholar’s understanding of the value of men and women. For instance, as is stated by Mohammad Hashim Kamali, when the Qurʾān speaks about blood money, it is stated “life for life—al-nafsu bilnafs,” which clearly establishes equality. However, in the jurist’s explanation, the blood money for a woman was half that of a man.19 And even if beautiful values concerning the relationship between husband and wife are anchored in the Qurʾān, in the fiqh concerning women, they are not spoken of as partners but as a means by which men can satisfy their physical needs. In this understanding, marriage is not a relationship of “love and mercy” but primarily becomes a “contract of enjoyment” (ʿaqd mutʿa).20 Thus, it is argued, that it is not religion which discriminates against women but it is the patriarchal interpretation of the texts which causes inequality.21 Conservative scholars build their arguments on the following logic, stating that: men, who are different from women, are gifted with stronger reason and therefore are more suited to the pursuit of (religious) learning.22 Further, they argue that men are responsible for women because Allah has given men a degree over women as their maintainers. As a result, the good and submissive

16 17 18 19 20 21

22

Miriam Cooke: Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), xxvi. Haifaa A. Jawad, The Rights of Women in Islam: An Authentic Approach (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1998), 14. Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 153. Kamali, The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam, 195. Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Qurʾān, 77. Adis Duderija, Constructing a Religiously Ideal “Believer” and “Woman” in Islam: NeoTraditional Salafi and Progressive Muslims’ Methods of Interpretation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 178. Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 150.

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woman should obey her husband.23 According to this argument, men were created superior to women and women are accused of having an evil essence. While they suffer from weakness in reason, they are unequally strong in their emotions and the power of their sexuality is able to corrupt men.24 As the inherited fiqh and the continuing argumentation of conservative scholars is seen as unbearable and not in line with contemporary values, many voices are calling for a new reading and a more progressive view on the primary sources in order to create an adequate, gender-just interpretation. As can be observed in the work of today’s scholars, it is especially a new interpretation of the Qurʾān, the aḥadīth and values, as is the case in the work with the maqāṣid, which it is supposed will allow for a contemporary reading. 2.1 Approaches for a Gender-Just Interpretation of the Qurʾān Many of those scholars who today try to read the Qurʾān from a gendersensitive perspective assume that the Qurʾānic descriptions of the relationship between husband and wife are characterized by consultation, love, and respect.25 They put forward the view that there is no doubt that God, as He himself describes in the Qurʾān, created men and women as equal in their dignity and liberty.26 For reasons of space, at this point, only two prominent voices in the current Islamic-feminist interpretation of the Qurʾān will be mentioned: those of Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas. For the elaboration of an Islamic gender equality, Wadud builds her interpretation on central values. One of them is the Islamic concept of monotheism (tawḥīd), or, as she calls it the “tawḥīdic paradigm.” This, she considers not only as a theological concept but also as an idea which has far-reaching social implications. If understood correctly, she argues, tawḥīd constitutes the basis for justice and equality between all human beings in front of their common creator.27 Departing from the understanding that tawḥīd represents a hierarchy between God and his creation and not a hierarchy between the creatures, Wadud concludes that to establish a hierarchal relationship between men and

23

24 25 26 27

Nasr Abu-Zayd, “The Status of Women Between the Qurʾan and Fiqh,” in Ziba MirHosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe (Eds.), Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 153. Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, “Rethinking Men’s Authority Over Women,” 192. Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Quran, 83. Ibid., 31. Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 203.

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women would constitute polytheism (shirk).28 Her central point is that ethical principles such as human rights, justice, and equality represent the ultimate aims of the Qurʾān and they should be used as hermeneutic means and principles for a contemporary interpretation.29 Barlas’ suggestion for a non-patriarchal Qurʾānic reading resembles Wadud’s approach in several ways. However, concerning the interpretation of tawḥīd and its implications for gender equality, while Baslas acknowledges that patriarchal readings also have their legitimacy, Wadud aims to demonstrate that if the Qurʾān were properly understood, it would advocate equality and justice.30 2.2 Approaches of Gender-Just Interpretation to the aḥadīth As for the aḥadīth and attempts to interpret them in a gender-just way, there are a number of scholars who provide suggestions. One example is the USEgyptian jurist Khaled Abou El Fadl, who tries to establish a contemporary hermeneutics. He puts forward the argument that both classical as well as modern scholars have not examined the authenticity of a tradition based on their theological and social consequences for societies.31 Abou El Fadl believes that if the consciousness of Muslims today becomes troubled as a result of a prophetic tradition—either because one cannot imagine that the Prophet had said something that would be offensive in one’s relationship with God (such as so-called misogynistic traditions) or because one does not want to believe that the Prophet would have said this—then one option would be to “refuse to accept the authenticity of the traditions.”32 Thus, due to the strong normative ramifications of certain traditions, a “conscientious pause” is needed.33 Abou El Fadl continues to explain that if, due to the current ethical standards, certain traditions cause the consciousness to become unsettled, then one needs to reflect on how it could be dealt with such aḥadīth.34 Assuming that a tradition is so suspect that it causes the reader to take a conscientious pause, then this ḥadīth should “not be relied upon” until its authenticity can be ensured.35 Abou El Fadl does not explain 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 172. Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 211. Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qurʿān (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), 13. Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, 441ff. Ibid., 442ff. Ibid., 433. Ibid. Ibid., 441.

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exactly what he means by “not relied upon,” that is, whether he means it should be rejected or that the source should not be considered. However, a few lines later, he does speak of the “rejection of aḥadīth,” so perhaps his description of “not relied upon” can be understood as a circumlocution for “rejection.” 2.3 A Hermeneutics of Interpretation Based on maqāṣid al-sharīʿa Another method that is used for a gender-just interpretation of the sources is that of maqāṣid al-sharīʿa. To enhance an alternative reading, numerous scholars choose this purpose-based approach.36 From that, it is hoped that an interpretation of the sources will allow an approach which is able to produce, for example, a law that reflects the ideals and ethics of Islam.37 This hermeneutics asks for the deeper meaning of the texts and states that the spirit of the text should be followed and rather than its literal meaning. This methodology “privileges a rationalist, ethico-religious, values-based approach to the interpretation” of the Islamic texts.38 In the field of a gender-just interpretation, some scholars hope that this method will facilitate a gender-equal reading of the sources.39 For instance, new maqāṣid which are deduced from the Qurʾān and the Sunna could serve for the establishment of a contemporary Muslim family law which would be based on mercy, love, and harmony.40 At its conclusion, these values could then be used as legal indicants, which would describe the normative nature of the relationship between husband and wife.41 One of the many scholars who argues for this approach is Nasr Abu-Zayd, who has tried to establish new maqāṣid in his rereading of the Qurʾān, for example, the maqāṣid of freedom and the maqāṣid of justice.42 Asked about how the problem of unequal roles and rights in the relationship of husband and wife should be dealt with,43 he argues that juridical determinations in the Qurʾān should be interpreted in a way so that they are consistent with the highest Qurʾānic value, which is justice. Duderija concludes from this, that, for example, with regard to family affairs, due to the current interpretation of

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Duderija, A Case Study of Patriarchy and Slavery, 237. Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 178. Ibid., 183. Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 200. Ibid., 201. Ibid., 202. Abu-Zayd, “The Status of Women Between the Qurʾan and Fiqh,” 164. Ibid., 165.

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Qurʾānic justice which is in contradiction with unfair ethical implications of divorce (ṭalāq), the concept of ṭalāq should not be understood as being part of the Qurʾān-Sunna teachings, because it contradicts the higher Qurʾān-Sunna values.44

3

From a “Hermeneutics of Suspicion” toward a “Hermeneutics of Trust”

3.1 “Hermeneutics of Suspicion” in the Current Gender Debate In the current assessment of the Islamic sources, the author notes approaches which are explicitly suspicious of the texts and also use the expression of “hermeneutics of suspicion.” The recourse taken in such approaches is that of the “established tradition of feminist hermeneutics that begins with a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ that critically analyzes patriarchal biases in the texts and destabilizes accepted interpretations of ‘truth.’”45 An implicit sort of hermeneutics, even if not pronounced directly as such, seems to offer a clear indication of it when it is spoken of, for example, “misogynistic” aḥadīth,46 or, as has been shown in the maqāṣid discourse, when the idea was put forward that certain concepts from the sources should be disregarded or dismissed because they seem to contradict today’s understanding of ethics.47 3.2 The Necessity of a “Hermeneutics of Trust” 3.2.1 One Premise as a Prerequisite in the Hermeneutics Discussion In the works of numerous scholars, a current, contemporary, modern justice in our age is discussed. One problem that is presented by these authors is that some of the prophetic traditions seem to be irreconcilable with modernity. They, therefore, raise the question of how such reports, which seem to

44 45 46

47

Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 213. Saʿdiyya Shaikh, Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 26–27. See, for example, Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 187 and 158; Duderija, Constructing a Religiously Ideal “Believer” and “Woman” in Islam, 185; and Fatima Mernissi, Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 61. See, for example, Duderija, “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law,” 213.

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be irreconcilable with the current understanding of justice, should be dealt with.48 As mentioned in the first part of what follows, there are some scholars who argue that, in the case of the irreconcilablity of sources with the contemporary understanding of justice, these sources should not be relied upon or that they should be disregarded. In response to this approach, I argue that justice and the way it is understood and perceived by people at different places, different times, and in different societies has always been and remains in a state of continuous change. To mention only one quite obvious example, Aristotle found it ‘just’ to keep slaves.49 Therefore, Muhammad Khalid Masud correctly speaks of a “pre-modern notion of justice” and of “modern concepts of equality,” which have changed in line with the changing of different factors and circumstances.50 This continuous change in contexts and in societies has affected the judgments of Muslim jurists, who have a never-ceasing responsibility to strive to establish justice, and this offers an explanation for the differing judgments of one and the same scholar, who have released one juristic view in one context and another view in a different context, due to the differences in time, place and society—as was the case with al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī.51 Therefore, as there has been no consensus throughout time regarding the meaning of justice—and even more so gender justice, which is only a relatively recent, modern idea,52—what would have happened if jurists had used the approach of dismissing sources when they clashed with their current notion of justice? What would have been left of the sources over the period of 1,400 years? The discussion raises the question of whether there is truly no other way to deal with this dilemma than to disregard or dismiss sources from the corpus of Islamic primary texts.

48 49 50

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See, for example, Adis Duderija, The Imperatives of Progressive Islam, 190. Michael J. Sandel, Justice: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 263. Muhammad Khalid Masud, “Gender Equality and the Doctrine of Wilāya,” in Ziba MirHosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe (Eds.), Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 147. To mention an example of the changing notion of justice: in the early colonial period in India British, judges were not comfortable with gender equality and even regarded the rights women had in Muslim family law as immoral; see Masud, “Gender Equality and the Doctrine of Wilāya,” 127. Ṣubḥī Rajab Maḥmaṣānī, Falsafa al-tashrīʿ fī al-islām: muqaddima fī dirāsa al-sharīʿa alislāmīya ʿalā dawʾ madhāhibihā al-mukhtalifa wa dawʾ al-qawānīn al-ḥadītha (Beirut: Dār al-Kashāf, 1952), 150. Emon, “The Paradox of Equality and the Politics of Difference,” 240.

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How Do We Start from Here? Premises for a “Hermeneutics of Trust”

Based on the previous premises and thoughts, the question is raised of how to deal with the sources and of which meaningful approach and understanding of the sources could be established for our own contemporary times? When we assume that there is no such thing as a general human notion of justice that would stand the test of time with all its associated changes, then how are we to deal with sources, which at the first glance and without considering the broader context of this report, appears to be disconcerting and even misogynistic? The following thoughts are offered as premises in the argumentation for a different approach to reading singular texts which appear troubling and problematic today. 4.1 Values in the Qurʾān As has already raised by respected scholars, such as Wadud, Barlas, Abou El Fadl, among others, there is no doubt that there are certain values which are deeply anchored in the Qurʾān and which stress the equality of men and women. This can be seen in the narration of the creation of men and women, who were both created in dignity and honor,53 and who are equally responsible for their actions.54 Furthermore, central values mentioned in the Qurʾān such as love and compassion could hardly exist if there were a clear hierarchy and a dominance in the relationship. And, as has already been emphasized by other scholars, among them Asma Lamrabet, the Qurʾān is particularly uncompromising when aiming at annulling any form of inequality and to establish justice.55 4.2 The Prophet’s Actions Although among many of the Muslim scholars who strive for a gender-just interpretation of the sources it is nearly consential that the Qurʾān with its values to establish equality between men and women, it is noted that when it comes to the ḥadīth literature, this is often encountered with skepticism. The following examples and thoughts are offered to help find a way to reread certain seemingly problematic aḥadīth. It is important to consider the women whom the Prophet married: an autonomous, influential merchant (Khadīja bint Khuwaylid), a constant advi53 54 55

See, for example, “Verily We have honored the Children of Adam,” Qurʾān 17:70. Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Qurʾān, 29. Ibid., 18.

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sor (Umm Salama), a woman whom he trained to become a great scholar (ʿAisha bint Abī Bakr), the preserver of the “treasure of the Muslim community,” that is, the Qurʾān (Ḥafṣa bint ʿUmar), that is, all women who either held strong positions at the time of their marriage with the Prophet or whom he made to attain these positions with respective influence on society. As for the communal life of the Prophet with his family, it is stated by many scholars, that the Prophet was never harsh toward his family or ever spoke in a violent manner toward them.56 The Prophet’s establishment of equality was so far-reaching that even one of his closest Companions, ʿUmar b. al-Khattāb, was shocked when he was informed about the egalitarian relationship of the Prophet with his family.57 Also, we should not forget that it was a woman, Umm ʿAmmāra, who saved his life at the battle of Uḥud (625 AC). The Prophet’s respect for the heroism of that woman became obvious when he said: “Whenever I looked to the right or left I saw her fighting in front of me.”58 It was without doubt a reform which Islam caused in that patriarchal society: women took part in all affairs of the new Muslim community, in the most important incidents, in times of peace and war, women were not excluded but participated actively. Certainly, the one who uttered “women are the equals of men” and who was sent by God as a “mercy to the worlds”59 (raḥma li al-ʿālamīn), his mercy certainly is not restricted to the male part of society. 4.3 The Aspiration for an Egalitarian Society A popular example given by many scholars to prove that Islam strives for a just society and for the equality of all people is that of Islam’s intention to end slavery. Many scholars argue that, if one ponders on the Islamic sources, it can be seen clearly that Islam intended to end slavery in order to establish equality of all people.60 Using the same line of argumentation, but giving different examples, scholars such as Mohamed Talbi,61 Asma Lamrabet,62 Nasr 56

57 58

59 60 61 62

See, for example Muhammad Aftab Khan et al. Sexuality Education from an Islamic Perspective. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020, 210 and Syafiq Hasyim. Understanding Women in Islam: An Indonesian Perspective. Missouri: Solstice Publishing, 2005, 16. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 2nd edn. Damascus, 1999, 873. Arabic transliteration: “mā iltaftu yawm uḥud yamīnan wa la shimālan illā wa arāhā tuqātil dūnī,” Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī, Kitāb Ṣiffa al-ṣafwah, Vol. 2 (Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿa dāʾira al-maʿārif al-ʿuthmānīya, 1968), 34. Qur’ān 21:107. See, for example, Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir b.ʿĀshūr, Maqāṣid al-sharīʿa al-islāmiyya, 2nd edn, Tunis: Dār Suḥnūn li al-Nashr wa al-tawzīʿ, 2007, 126ff. Masud, “Gender Equality and the Doctrine of Wilāya,” 145. Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Quran, 22.

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Hamid Abu-Zayd,63 and in a similar way also Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988)64 hold that Islam gradually aimed at a particular improvement and development of society, but that certain revolutionary ideas during the Prophet’s time had to wait for their realization until societies developed further to establish certain ideals which Islam holds. In other words, the argumentation is that the vision to establish a truly just society already existed at the beginning of Islam and represents a core aim of its sources. However, this needs the development of peoples and societies, before the Islamic ideals can be implemented. Now the question is: if traditional as well as modern scholars agree that Islam aims at a just society and that a clear tendency toward that aim can be found in the sources, what would this understanding mean with regard to women and gender-related sources—because certainly not only should slaves be elevated to an egalitarian level but also women, who constitute one half of society. 4.4 Analysis of the sujūd-ḥadīth The following ḥadīth has caused much discussion and dispute among today’s scholars. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: It is not lawful for anyone to prostrate to anyone. But if I would have ordered any person to prostrate to another, I would have commanded wives to prostrate to their husbands because of the enormity of the rights of husbands over their wives.65 The ḥadīth is mentioned in several collections such as in Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s Musnad and in the collections of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Mājah, Ibn Ḥibbān and Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī. In many collections the tradition is evaluated as ṣaḥīḥ,66 however it is also classified as weak (ḍaʿīf ) in al-Albānī´s Ḍaʻīf al-targhīb wa al-tarhīb.67

63 64 65

66

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Abu-Zayd, “The Status of Women Between the Qurʾan and Fiqh,” 163. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, “Muslim Legal Tradition and the Challenge of Gender Equality,” 53–55. The Arabic wording is: Lā yaṣluḥu li basharin an yasjuda li basharin, wa law ṣalaḥa li basharin an yasjuda li basharin laʾamartu al-marʾata an tasjuda li zawjihā min ʿitham ḥaqqihi ʿalayhā. See, for example al-Imām al-Tirmidhī. Al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr. 2nd volume. Edited by Bashār ʿAwād Maʿrūf. 2nd print. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī. 1998: 403, Ibn Mājah, Saḥīḥ sunan Ibn Mājah. 2nd volume. Edited by Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albanī. Riyadh: Maktaba al- Maʿā rif, 1997: 121 and Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Shaykh Shuʿayb al-Arnaʿūt (Ed.), Vol. 20, 2nd edn (Beirut: Mu ʾassasa al-risāla, 2008), 64. Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī. Al-Targhīb wa al-tarhīb. Riyadh: Maktaba al-Maʿā rif. 1421H: 3515.

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This ḥadīth causes different reactions among contemporary scholars— mostly negative—who class it as “unsettling,” or “disturbing to the conscience.”68 There are, in fact, three ways to approach this report: First, the conservative interpretation which simply sees this tradition as a confirmation of a patriarchal reading of the primary texts. The second is a skeptical approach, which reads the ḥadīth in the light of our time and from a respective perspective on the issue of gender; it argues that the ḥadīth cannot be reconciled with today’s values which is why it has to be neglected or rejected. The third option considers all available sources and follows the argumentation mentioned above such as ethics and the intentions of the Qurʾān, the dealings of the Prophet with women during his own lifetime, and the intention of the religion; in this way then, one tries to understand this ḥadīth as part of a bigger picture. I choose the last option and ask, when considering all the arguments mentioned, whether it is possible that the addressees of this ḥadīth actually were not women who were being reminded of the greatness of their men and how much women owe them? Is it possible that the ḥadīth was actually addressing men who, because of Islam, had already suffered from losses of all kinds and on all levels of society, while women had gained increasing influence on all levels in society? There had been a complete change in society and, in that new order, numerous sorts of injustices were being replaced by justice and more equality among the members of society. Looking at the scenario from that perspective, the ḥadīth seems rather to serve as a pedagogical means to calm men after they had lost so much, e.g. political and social influence, to women69 and also to calm them with the “reminder” that, although their women had taken so much from them, they should not worry because they are still superior to women. What supports this direction of reasoning is the fact that, when the report was uttered, there were no women present70 who could have been taught about their lower rank. Moreover, the ḥadīth says: “I would have ordered…” but because the Prophet did not order women to prostrate to men and did not even told them directly, that ḥadīth did not have an actual consequence for a society in which women continued to steadily gain influence.

68 69 70

Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, 443. See, for example Lamrabet. Women and Men in the Qurʾān. Translated by Muneera SalemMurdock. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 78. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (London: Oneworld, 2001), 434.

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4.5 The Consequence of This Approach for the Dealing with the Sources With this approach, the “hermeneutics of trust” reading, similar to those contemporary scholars who argue for a holistic reading of the Qurʾān,71 tries to consider all the sources available. The aim is to gain a holistic idea of the intentions of the sources and to interpret single sources in the light of these intentions. The positive result from this approach is that it allows a more comprehensive understanding of Islam and its ideas, which the values of a society should be based upon. Through the study of all sources which are at our disposal, new perspectives can be gained that have not been considered before, which, in turn, allow new interpretations to be deduced. Furthermore, this approach saves scholars from being forced to decide between neglecting or rejecting sources, which, if looked at from a different perspective, would allow a completely new and different evaluation of certain “problematic” sources.

5

Conclusion

The main purpose of this chapter was to plead in favor of a “hermeneutics of trust” in the reading of Islamic sources in the current discussion on genderjust interpretation. For that, first, current methods were presented through which contemporary scholars attempt to enhance a gender-sensitive reading. Some scholars follow the argumentation that if Islamic sources appear to be so repugnant and clash with today’s understanding of justice, then these sources—as a last resort—need to be rejected. To avoid this dilemma, I argued for the need for a new reading, which considers the bigger context of the texts. After mentioning certain premises and selected examples from the Qurʾān and the Sunna, I argued that a clear ethical vision can be found in these sources, which promoted women at the time of revelation and included them in all domains and affairs of the Muslim society. This chapter raised the question of how in the face of these huge gender-just indications, contrasted with the existence of a few aḥadīth which today are seen as problematic, these seeming contradictions can be reconciled. After considering all these empowering sources and one so-called misogynistic ḥadīth for which the actual addressees were men who had steadily lost control and authority, it is suggested that these problematic aḥadīth rather seem to have served a psychological purpose rather than serving to reinforce patriarchy. 71

See, for example, Barlas, Believing Women in Islam, 23; Duderija, A Case Study of Patriarchy and Slavery, 220; and Lamrabet, Women and Men in the Qurʾān, 21.

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From the “hermeneutics of trust,” several things are hoped to be realized. On the one hand, this method is aiming to encourage an approach toward the sources with a sense of trust and confidence. This should be done while keeping in mind that the Prophet was sent to all peoples at all times as a “mercy to the world”—which certainly includes being a mercy for women as well as securing their dignity and interests. On the other hand, this chapter is a call to take a holistic approach for interpretation and creativity—one that not only allows all sources to be regarded but also offers meaningful explanations for today’s questions and needs.

Bibliography Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women. London: Oneworld, 2001. Abu-Zayd, Nasr. “The Status of Women Between the Qurʾan and Fiqh.” In Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini et al., 153–168. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. al-Albānī, Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn. Al-Targhīb wa al-tarhīb. Riyadh: Maktaba al-Maʿā rif. 1421H: 3515. al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. 2nd edn. Damascus: n.n., 1999. al-Jawzī, Abū al-Faraj b. Kitāb Ṣiffa al-ṣafwah. Vol. 2. Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿa dāʾira almaʿārif al-ʿuthmānīya, 1968. al-Tirmidhī, al-Imām. Al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr. 2nd volume. Edited by Bashār ʿAwād Maʿrūf. 2nd print. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī. 1998: 403. Barlas, Asma. Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qurʿān. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002. Cooke, Miriam. Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. Duderija, Adis. The Imperatives of Progressive Islam. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Duderija, Adis. “Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Gender Non-Patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutics, and the Reformation of Muslim Family Law.” In Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa and Contemporary Reformist Muslim Thought, edited by Adis Duderija, 193–218. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Duderija, Adis. Constructing a Religiously Ideal “Believer” and “Woman” in Islam: NeoTraditional Salafi and Progressive Muslims’ Methods of Interpretation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Emon, Anver E. “The Paradox of Equality and the Politics of Difference: Gender Equality, Islamic Law and the Modern Muslim State.” In Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba MirHosseini et al., 237–258. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

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Eshkevari, Hassan Yousefi. “Rethinking Men’s Authority Over Women: Qiwāma, Wilāya and their Underlying Assumptions.” In Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini et al., Seitenanzahl. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Hasyim, Syafiq. Understanding Women in Islam: An Indonesian Perspective. Missouri: Solstice Publishing, 2005, 16. Ibn ʿĀshūr, Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir. Maqāṣid al-sharīʿa al-islāmiyya. 2nd edn. Tunis: Dār Suḥnūn li al-Nashr wa al-tawzīʿ, 2007. Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad. Musnad Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal. Edited by Shaykh Shuʿayb al-Arnaʿūt. Vol. 20, 2nd edn. Beirut: Mu ʾassasa al-risāla, 2008. Ibn Mājah, Saḥīḥ sunan Ibn Mājah. 2nd volume. Edited by Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albanī. Riyadh: Maktaba al- Maʿā rif, 1997. Jawad, Haifaa A. The Rights of Women in Islam: An Authentic Approach. Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1998. Kamali, Mohammad Hasim. The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Qurʾanic Principle of Wasatiyyah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Khan, Muhammad Aftab et al. Sexuality Education from an Islamic Perspective. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020, 210. Lamrabet, Asma. Women and Men in the Qurʾān. Translated by Muneera SalemMurdock. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Maḥmaṣānī, Ṣubḥī Rajab. Falsafa al-tashrīʿ fī al-islām: muqaddima fī dirāsa al-sharīʿa al-islāmīya ʿalā dawʾ madhāhibihā al-mukhtalifa wa dawʾ al-qawānīn al-ḥadītha. Beirut: Dār al-Kashāf, 1952. Masud, Muhammad Khalid. “Gender Equality and the Doctrine of Wilāya.” In Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini et al., 127–152. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Mernissi, Fatima. Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. “Muslim Legal Tradition and the Challenge of Gender Equality.” In Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini et al., 34–83. London: Oneworld, 2015. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba; Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe. “Introduction: Muslim Family Law and the Question of Equality.” In Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini et al., 1–6. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Sandel, Michael J. Justice: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Shaikh, Saʿdiyya. Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Chapter 4

The Discursive Construction of Women’s Guile in the Muslim Exegetical Tradition Taira Amin

1

Introduction

The Qurʾānic verse Q12:28 is notorious for depicting women as inherently deceptive. How this verse is then interpreted in the Muslim exegetical tradition exposes further problematic gendered discourses within the tradition which continue to be read, accepted and perpetually recontextualised in contemporary religious and popular discourses about women. Yet, in view of its Marxist underpinnings, critical discourse studies (CDS) has often overlooked the role of mainstream religion and religious texts in constructing, sustaining and even actively perpetuating unequal relations of power between social groups, like men and women.1 By way of addressing this gap, this chapter investigates the process of meaning creation and power construction in the Muslim interpretative tradition. If the tafāsīr (“interpretive traditions”) are the “key to accessing Qurʾānic meaning” if only because inscribed within them are centuries’ worth of Muslim interpretative engagement with the Qurʾān, particularly (though not exclusively) its earliest meanings, then, engaging with the tradition may be key in shifting current and prevalent misperceptions about the nature of men and women, gender roles and male-female relations, as extrapolated from the exegetes’ interpretative engagement with certain women-related Qurʾānic verses. This is particularly acute in relation to those ideas that have been problematically perpetuated to this day, despite the fact that they might well be pre- or post-Qurʾānic products ensuing from their very subjective sociocultural, androcentric and patriarchal contexts. We can thus no longer continue with our ‘hermeneutics of rejection’ towards tradition, when so much of

1 See for example, Paul Chilton, Political Discourse: Theory and Practice, Taylor and Francis, 2004; Mark Garner, “Preaching as a communicative event. A discourse analysis of sermons by Robert Rollock (1555–1599),” Reformation and Renaissance Review 9 (May 2007); Eun-Young Julia Kim, “Persuasive Strategies in a Chauvinistic Religious Discourse: The Case of Women’s Ordination,” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, Vol 8. January: 2016.

© Taira Amin, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_005

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what we examine today hinges upon this powerful source of knowledge and ideas. Not only does this chapter potentially seek to carve out new horizons in yielding Qurʾānic meaning, it also corroborates the key claims from within Muslim feminist scholarship by providing concrete, textual evidence for their speculative claims about the Muslim exegetical tradition, which does indeed inscribe onto the Qurʾān, meanings which are not always supported by the Qurʾānic world-view.2 In so doing, my study is supporting of a Muslim feminist “hermeneutics of suspicion”3 towards the masculinist exegetical tradition. What follows is also important in challenging the findings of key Muslim feminist and gender-focused scholars in their downplaying of the Qurʾān’s more problematic ideas and discourses about women (e.g., women as deceptive) which Muslim feminists have often tried to “explain away” or more often than not, deliberately disengaged with, in their rigid attempts to emphasise the egalitarian spirit of the Qurʾānic text.4 Specifically, this chapter is innovative and impactful for bringing to light the socially-constructed nature of the Muslim exegetical tradition; not only was it significant in perpetuating ideas about women, through the medium of Qurʾānic interpretation, but it too was very much shaped by the prevalent gender ideologies and broader societal knowledge structures of the time. As Fairclough has noted, “changing discourses will, or may, lead to changes in other elements of social practices through processes of dialectical internalization.”5 In this way, Mills suggests “calling for change at the level of the phrase or word is drawing attention to problems at the level of conceptualisation, at a discourse level, and at the level of social practices […] which are anachronistic; these campaigns constitutes a call for change at the level of material practice.”6 Moreover, from a methodological angle, CDS has underscored the need for and

2 Asam Barlas, Believing women in Islam: un-reading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’ān (Texas: University of Texas 2002). 3 Shuruq Naguib, “Horizons and limitations of Muslim Feminist Hermeneutics: Reflections on the Menstruation Verse,” in Anderson, P.S. (Ed.), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate Amsterdam/New York: Springer Books, 2010. 4 Raja Rhouni, “Rethinking ‘Islamic Feminist Hermeneutics’: the case of Fatima Mernissi,” in Kynsilehto, A. (Ed.) Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, Finland: Tampere Peace Research Institute, 2008. Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’ān, Hadith, and Jurisprudence, London: One World publications 2006. 5 Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 22. 6 Sara Mills, Language and sexism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 161.

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gains from examining religious texts at the level of discourse,7 as opposed to a philological examination of individual words and phrases, as has often been the case in traditional and reformist Muslim Qurʾānic interpretation. By drawing attention to the point above, I hope to signal, through a sustained critique, the problematic as well as subversive and possibly egalitarian aspects of representation within Sunnī and Sūfī interpretative commentaries, particularly in relation to how they read and explain the meaning of Q12:28.

2

Background

The Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) was developed by Wodak and other researchers in the 1990’s and constitutes one of the core approaches within CDS. It “locates its origin within sociolinguistics and text linguistics.”8 It offers a vast range of categories and strategic tools to work with tafsīr data, in a manner that makes it ideal for in-depth analysis. The tools and categories are conducive to the nature of tafsīr material because the classical tafāsīr are by their very nature voluminous and detailed. In this regard, the DHA, which allows for a broader discursive analysis, is more viable, feasible and applicable. More importantly, its analytical framework has an undeniably strong theoretical basis which it draws on for interpreting the data. Moreover, as opposed to using a literary, thematic approach to examining the tafsīr (and non-tafsīr) literature, I use a linguistically oriented, DHAbased analysis of argumentation schemes and strategies by way of concretely unpacking the claims and evidence used to support them. All arguments are deconstructed into their separate component parts (claim, evidence and conclusion), to understand their mechanisms. In this regard, I analysed the exegetes’ engagement with Q12:28 by way of investigating: (a) how they understand the meaning of kayd in this verse; (b) what the dominant and peripheral discourses about (men and) women are that ensue from their exegetical engagement (c) how women’s relationship to kayd is understood (d) how exegetes delineate the purpose of women’s kayd and (e) what stereotypical views they hold about women and women’s nature. These will enable me to understand in a concrete way, the extent to which Q12:28 has yielded exegetical understandings of women and kayd.

7 Ibid., 2008, p. 5. 8 Wodak et al. 1990:33.

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2.1 Context One of the strengths of the DHA lies in its sophisticated approach to context. It examines the context of data at four levels, by way of understanding the workings of the data content and structure from a range of perspectives.9 Starting at the micro-level of the text, it progresses to examining the historical context in which the text was produced. This is because the DHA recognises that religious discourse such as the Qurʾān, for example, and its exegetical tradition are “not produced without context; it is historical and importantly, it cannot also be understood [accurately] without taking its [secondary, exegetical] context into consideration.”10 Subsequently, the DHA “has made the systematic analysis of context and its dialectical relationship to meaning-making one of its priorities.”11 Importantly, the “historical context can mean studying how language use changes over shorter timescales” (e.g. over the years in the tafsīr literature) and in this way, the DHA, “could have significant potential for providing new insights”12 into how women have been represented in the Qurʾān and tafsīr, for instance, “without having to rely on purely hermeneutic interpretative procedures”13 as the classical exegetes have done. In accordance with the DHA’s four-step strategy of analysis14 the following steps were adopted as part of the case study analysis: 1. The specific contents or topics of a specific discourse (e.g., women’s guile; Satan’s guile; women’s seduction; men’s guile) were established. 2. The discursive strategies (e.g., argumentation strategies) were investigated. 3. The linguistic means (types) and the specific context-dependent linguistic realisations (tokens) of the discriminatory stereotypes were examined. 4. Various levels of the context of the verse were examined. The DHA offers an in-depth, four level contextual analysis, of which the first three levels were explored in some detail:

9 10 11 12 13 14

Ruth Wodak, “Complex Texts: Analysing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings,” Discourse Studies (13(5), 2011a), p. 39. Fairclough and Wodak, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in van Dijk, T.A. (Ed.), 2006, Discourse as Social Interaction, London: Sage, 1997, p. 276. Ruth Wodak, “Complex Texts: Analysing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings,” Discourse Studies (13(5), 2011c), p. 627. Ibid., 2011, p. 629. Ibid., 2011, p. 629. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London: Sage, 2016, p. 32.

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– The immediate language or text internal co-text (of the tafāsīr) was examined. – The intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between utterances, texts, genres and discourses (occurring, and being perpetuated in the tafāsīr) were identified. – The extra-linguistic (social) level or context of situation is explained by middle-range theories (tafsīr is also a genre, with conventional norms, involving the production and transmission of religious knowledge). The advantage of using the DHA is that it facilitates the analysis and interpretation of the extensive and highly sophisticated tafsīr data in a simple and systematic manner because of the useful range of categories and strategies provided by the approach. 2.2 Argumentation Analysis Arguments and counter-arguments are a key aspect of displaying one’s expertise and skill as an exegete, and yet, because of their disavowal or rejection of the tradition, most reformist and feminist scholars have not examined the rich tradition of Qurʾānic exegeses let alone the complex argumentation schemes and claims exegetes put forth by way of justifying their discriminatory beliefs about women’s inherent nature.15 This is despite recognising that mostly, these ideas are justified by recourse to the sacred text of the Qurʾān.16 This disengagement from the Muslim tradition on the part of some Muslim feminist scholars has meant that problematic ideas within the tafsīr tradition cannot be challenged or deconstructed with a view to offering alternative readings of these Qurʾānic verses. Subsequently, the strong argumentation dimension of the DHA was yet another motive for choosing it. By way of augmenting the DHA argumentation analysis, Toulmin’s (1979) model was drawn upon. Essentially, the DHA draws upon the pragma-dialectical view of argumentation strategies and specifically upon the theory of argumentation by Kopperschmidt who elaborated Habermas’s ideas.17 It connects the “formal, functional and content-related aspects of argumentation in an integrative

15 16 17

Taira Amin, PhD thesis, The Discursive Representation of Women in the Quran and its Interpretation, Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2018. Asma Barlas, Believing women in Islam: un-reading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’ān, Texas: Texas University Press, 2002, p. 117. Martin Reisigl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

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framework.”18 However, its main interests lie in exploring the contents of argumentation schemes as a way of distinguishing between sound and fallacious argumentation schemes using the pragma-dialectic rules of critical discussion.19 With the DHA’s take on argumentation theory, ‘topoi’ or ‘loci’ as “argumentation analytical categories”20 can be described as “parts of argumentation which belong to the obligatory, either explicit or inferable premises.”21 Essentially, they “connect the content-related warrants or ‘conclusion rules’ which connect the argument[s] with the conclusion,” otherwise known as the claim. In so doing, “they justify the transition from the argument[s] to the conclusion.” Importantly, “topoi are not always expressed explicitly but can always be made explicit as conditional or causal paraphrases (such as ‘if x then y or if y then x’).”22 The role of recontextualisation within argumentation cannot be overstated since it is “the most important process in connecting these genres as well as topics and arguments (topoi).”23 In the DHA, argumentation is viewed as “an abstract pattern of text formations or discourse formation.”24 It is frequently shortened because some parts are inferred/taken for granted and thus not all its component parts are linguistically realised (ibid.). It is conceptualised as “a non-violent linguistic as well as cognitive pattern of problem-solving that manifests itself in a more or less regulated sequence of speech acts which, altogether, form a complex and more or less coherent network of statements or utterances.”25 It seeks to serve: The methodical challenging or justification of validity claims such as truth and normative rightness […and its] basic purpose is to persuade—either in

18

19

20 21 22 23 24

25

Salomi Boukala, “Rethinking topos in the discourse historical approach: Endoxon seeking and argumentation in Greek media discourses on ‘Islamist terrorism,’” Discourse Studies, Vol. 18 (March 2016); p. 251; see also Martin Reisigl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Reisgl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.) 2017, Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, 2017: 69. Ibid. p. 68. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London: Sage, 2016, p. 35. Ibid., p. 35. Wodak, The Discursive Construction of National Identity, 2009: 70. Martin Reisigl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Ibid., p. 70.

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Table 4.1

Strategies of representation (based on Wodak 2016, augmented with Toulmin 1979, with examples provided by the analysis). Note: Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London: Sage, 2016, p. 33.

Strategy

Objectives

Nomination

Discursive construction of (female) Qurʾānic social actors. These were briefly touched on and social actors were limited to key protagonists within the Joseph narrative, namely Potiphar’s wife, the women in the city and Joseph, e.g., explicit naming of key Qurʾānic actors, Potiphar’s wife and Joseph. Discursive qualification of female social actors (more or less negatively or positively, e.g., identifying women’s guile as “tender,” “graceful” and “able to pierce through the heart” [of men]. Justification and questioning of claims of truth and normative rightness e.g., via topoi and fallacies. Claim (C): “assertions put forward publicly for general acceptance.” The claim “defines both the starting point and the destination of our procedures.”a Grounds: “statements specifying the particular facts about a situation relied on to clarify and make good, the previous claim.”b“Relevance [of the grounds for the specific claim made] is a substantive matter” (ibid. p. 34). Warrant /conclusion rule (CR): “general statements” serving the function of authorising “the inferences by which different collections of specific information (data, relevant facts, known variables, significant features, and so on) are put forward as rational support for claims.”c Backing (B): “generalisations making explicit the body of experience relied upon to establish the trustworthiness of the ways of arguing applied in any particular case.”d Rebuttal: extraordinary or exceptional circumstances that might undermine the force of the supporting argumentseand nuances to complete the argument. Awareness of any opposition to your perspective; potential challenges etc. Modalities: indicating the strength and limitations of the initial claims and phrases showing what kind and degree of reliance is to be placed on the conclusions. How true is the claim? The argument gives the reason for or against a controversial claim/thesis, the conclusion rule guarantees the connection of the arguments to the claim, and the claim represents the disputed, contested statement that has to be justified or refuted.f

Predication

Argumentation

a b c d e f

Stephen Toulmin, An Introduction to Reasoning, New York: Macmillan, 1979, p. 29. Ibid., 1979: 33. Ibid., 1979: 53. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 75. Martin Reisigl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, pp. 74–76.

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Objectives In this regard, here are some of the topoi and fallacies that were identified in the exegeses: Topos of authority (X says this so it must be right) e.g. Abu Hurayrā, in which the Prophet is reported to have stated that “Indeed women’s kayd is great because God has revealed about women that Verily your guile is great (Q12:28) and He has revealed about Satan that Verily the guile of Satan is weak” (Q4:76)). Topos of definition (if an action, a thing, a person or a group of people are named or designated as X, the action, thing, person or group of people should then carry the same qualities, attributes or traits as contained in the literal meaning of X) e.g., kayd as a form of trickery, guile and deception. Topos of danger or threat (if X is dangerous then one should do something about it) e.g., if women’s guile exceeds that of Satan, then men must be warned against women. Topos of comparison (when two different things are associated with the same characteristic/trait or compared to draw out a similarity/difference) e.g., women’s kayd is greater than that of the devil. Topos of degree (when two things are explicitly or implicitly differentiated or presented as different from each other) e.g., women’s guile is greater than men’s guile. Fallacy: Argumentum ad verecundiam (backing one’s own view by means of reference to unimpeachable authorities) e.g., al-Qurtubī’s reference to Abu Hurayrā, who is not considered to be an ‘unimpeachable’ narrator of prophetic traditions. Fallacy of secendum quid (hasty generalizations) e.g., the generalization of the actions of Potiphar’s wife to all women without exception. Fallacy of petitio principii (circular reasoning or beginning the argument with what is controversial and in question), e.g., the exegetes beginning with the claim that the guile of all women is great. Fallacy of Composition (the error of assuming that what is true of a member of a group is true for the group as a whole) e.g., since God did not comment on the attribution of great kayd of al-Aziz to his wife as encapsulated in Q12:28, therefore, it is representative of all women in general. Fallacy of causation (the error of deducing a cause-effect relationship between two variables simply because they correlate), e.g., some exegetes argue that because men are easily overwhelmed by women, it must be because of (the kayd of) women. Fallacy of Comparability (drawing a comparison between two otherwise very different phenomena based on the premise that they share something in common), e.g., some exegetes draw a comparison between women’s ability to trick and that of Satan’s ability to deceive men.

the sense of convincing by sound arguments or in the sense of influencing somebody suggestively and manipulatively by fallacies.26 26

Ibid.

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More specifically, Reisigl points out that “validity claims of normative rightness relate to practical questions of how to do the right thing, i.e., to questions of practical norms or ethical and moral standards, to questions of what should be done or must not be done, or what is recommended or forbidden.”27 This form of argumentation is prevalent in scriptural and exegetical discourse, which is geared towards guiding people to what is deemed moral/ethical. However, because exegetes are expected to present various different and (conflicting) interpretations, by way of displaying their loyalty to the tradition, thereby involving several predecessor social actors with differing points of view,28 tafsīr texts are often “sites of struggle [in that they reflect…] differing discourses and ideologies contending and struggling for dominance”29 and hegemony. Since fallacies are essentially “important argumentation schemes that serve to justify discrimination”30 they are thus particularly worth investigating in the exegetes’ readings of women-related verses such as Q12:28. In line with the DHA, the strategies of representation in Table 4.1 were drawn on to systematically unpack the claims made by exegetes in relation to the positive self-representation of men and negative other-representation of women in their commentaries on the verse. 2.3 Intertextuality and Recontextualisation I applied these categories across the tafsīr texts to determine how exegetes legitimised and de-legitimised women and women’s guile. The DHA is thus very useful for examining the tafsīr data used in the case study. This is because, as a genre, by its very nature, it is bound by certain norms and writing conventions which require exegetes to draw on intertextual links back to various earlier and contemporaneous sources,31 reflecting a highly complex and sophisticated nexus of intertextuality. Intertextuality denotes that texts are

27

28 29 30

31

Martin Reisigl, “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, p. 70. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London: Sage, 2001, p. 66. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London: Sage, 2001, p. 10. Salomi Boukala, “Rethinking topos in the discourse historical approach: Endoxon seeking and argumentation in Greek media discourses on ‘Islamist terrorism,’” Discourse Studies, Vol. 18 (March 2016) p. 252. Norman Calder, “Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference to the story of Abraham,” in Hawting G.R. and Shareef A.K.A. (Eds.), Approaches to the Quran, London: Routledge, 1993.

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linked to other texts; that authors draw on, or refer to; allude to other texts ort sources by way of constructing, engaging and conveying ideas. Intricately related to the concept of intertextuality is the notion of recontextualisation. This occurs when a text that is otherwise separate or external to the former text is incorporated into it. This process of incorporation involves a transfer of meaning which can either reflect the original integrity of the incorporated text or de-contextualise it- refer to it in a way that involves a loss or distortion of the original intended meaning. For example, exegetes, by default, recontextualise the Qurʾānic verses; not only the one(s) they seek to clarify, but also by using other Qurʾānic verses to clarify the message of that particular verse; a hermeneutical method known as “tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi al-Qurʾān,” greatly favoured by modernist and Muslim feminist scholars like Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas and others alike. They also draw intertextual links to exegetical authorities from the past (like Saīd ibn Jubayr; Ibn Ishāq; ʿAmish; Ibn Abbās; Abu Jaʿfar etc.) who clarified the meaning of verses in the early centuries of Islam. Fairclough would describe this as opening up “difference by bringing other [past and contemporary] ‘voices’ into a text.”32 These exegetical authorities have had a powerful role to play in the formation and sustaining of the tafsīr tradition; their interpretations (of Qurʾānic verses; key words/phrases; variant readings/pronunciations etc.) are the corner stone upon which the tafsīr tradition has been built. Thus, the exegetes are bound to the interpretations of these past authorities in a way that dictates the extent to which they will be recognised as an exegetical authority themselves by the community of practice (Qurʾānic exegetes) as well as by the wider Muslim reader/consumer communities (current and future). A related concept to intertextuality is interdiscursivity. Just like texts are linked to other texts in complex relationships, so are certain discourses linked to one another. A discourse is a structured form of knowledge; a way of conceptualising a phenomenon. An exploration of the Sunni and Sūfī exegeses highlights how the discourse on women’s great kayd, in intimately connected to other dominant and peripheral discourses on women’s nature and connections to the realm of evil. In view of the fact that I examine exegetical texts that are ‘historic’ in that they were produced in the medieval-early modern period (12th–19th centuries), the historical element to my research also assumes an innovative and original contribution to CDS, which more often than not (and understandably)

32

Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 93.

56 Table 4.2

Amin List of Sunni and Sufi exegeses used as part of this study

Name of exegete

Year of death

Country of origin

Intellectual tradition

Other

Mahmoud ibn Umar al-Zamakhsharī

(1144)

Khwārazm, Persia. Died in Iran.

Mutazalite, Sunnī

Theologian, poet, and exegete.

Fakhr al-Din al-Rāzī Imam Muhammad ibn Ahmed al–Qurtubī

(1209)

Born in Ray, Iran. Died in Herat. Born in Cordoba, Spain. Died in Egypt.

Asharite

Renowned theologian, philosopher, and jurist. Andalusian jurist, scholar and exegete.

Qādi al-Baydāwī

(1286)

Asharite

Ismail ibn Umar Ibn Kathīr

(1371)

Born and died in Iran. Born in Busra, Syria. Died in Damascus.

al-Suyūtī

(1505)

Cairo

Asharite

Muhammad ibn Ali Abu-Tālib al-Makkī

(1053)

Born in Jibal, Persia. Died in Baghdad.

Sūfī mystic

Abdul Qādir al-Jilānī

(1166)

Sūfī Master

Abu Muhammad Rūzbehān Baqlī

(1209)

Born in Iran and died in Baghdad, Iraq. Iran

Muhammad Ibn ʿArabī al-Hātimī

(1240)

Ismaīl Haqqī Bursevī

(1725)

Ahmad ibn Ajība

(1809)

(1272)

Born in Murcia, Spain. Died in Damascus, Syria. Born in Aytos, Bulgaria during the Ottoman reign. Died in Bursa, Turkey. Morocco

Asharite

Asharite

Sūfī

Sūfī Master, Sunni. Sunnī, Sūfī

Sunnī, Sūfī

Judge, theologian and exegete. Arab historian, scholar and exegete. Persian linguist, scholar and Sūfī Jurist. Student of Ibn Arabi and Junayd al-Baghdadi. Jurist, scholar and Sūfī Mystic. Hanbali Sunni Muslim preacher, ascetic, mystic, jurist and theologian. Persian poet, Sūfī master and mystic. Renowned Sūfī Master and poet, mystic and philosopher. An Ottoman Muslim scholar, Sūfī mystic and theologian. scholar and Sūfī poet and grammarian.

limits itself to recent discourses prevalently circulating in the contemporary (or near past) period. The Sunni and Sufi exegetes whose commentaries will inform this paper are provided in Table 4.2.

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Collectively, these exegetes reflect a variety of geographical locations, intellectual traditions and socio-historical periods, allowing for a rich, diachronic study of how Q12:28 has been interpreted by the renowned exegetes whose tafāsīr are still widely read and viewed as authoritative in the mainstream Muslim communities throughout the world. My reason for adding a few late, pre-modern exegetes is largely due to the fact that they follow the writing and structural conventions of the medieval exegeses, marking them out as continuations of a long-standing tradition of Qurʾānic exegesis.

3

Analysis

3.1 Background to the Verse Q12:28 This verse has been taken from the Yūsuf narrative, as recounted in the Qurʾān. Potiphar’s wife is madly in love with her slave, Yūsuf. One day, after her husband leaves for work, she takes this opportunity to express her love for Yūsuf and tries her utmost to forcibly seduce him. Yūsuf actively refuses and tries to escape. Upon his escape, with his mistress closely chasing after him, Potiphar unexpectedly comes home. As a way of getting herself out of any impending trouble, his wife quickly accuses Yūsuf of indecency. After finding evidence to the contrary, her husband angrily speaks the following words: Indeed it [accusing Yūsuf of indecency against you] is of your guile; indeed the guile of you women is great! (Q12:28) What is no more than the angry and embarrassed outburst of a husband who finds his wife cheating on him, has been interpreted by Muslim medieval exegetes in intriguingly remarkable ways as a means of divinely condoning the discursive notion of women’s great propensity to deceive men. The use of the qualifier “indeed it is” serves to intensify Potiphar’s commitment to the certainty of his truth claim. I will now unpack these, paying particular attention to their use of argumentation schemes. A close study of the interpretative responses of the Sunnī and Sūfī exegetes clearly illustrates that it was not the notion of women’s guile per se, that intrigues the exegetes, but rather its purported greatness, hence the comparative adverbial “greater” is the most frequently co-occurring word with kayd in the commentaries. This implies that the notion of women’s guile was an already socially accepted idea; what was perturbing, however, was why it had been attributed with greatness. Subsequently, by way of clarifying the meaning of this verse, the exegetes concoct

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a range of inter-related ideas about how and why the attribution of greatness to women’s guile was valid. The basic warrant is: if the greatness of women’s deception is expounded in the Qurʾān then it must be great indeed. But the premises upon which this claim is founded is as follows: The Qurʾān is the word of God. God’s word is Truth. The Qurʾān is therefore truth Q12:28 is therefore truth: women’s greater deception is Qurʾānically warranted/supported Rebuttal: had God objected to its implications He would have done so. The unquestioned acceptance of this verse that is effectively re-presenting the direct speech act of Potiphar, a fallible human actor and disbeliever, in a particular situation, by way of contextualising the struggles of Yūsuf has thus been problematically accepted by the exegetes. In fact, these words have been given divine authority and weight. Herein lie the origins of all the subsequent fallacious reasoning by the exegetes. Inherent in the words of Potiphar, as encapsulated in Q12:28, are several fallacies which we will briefly unpack here. Firstly, it neatly exemplifies the fallacy of a hasty generalisation and a fallacy of composition: the actions of one frightened and vulnerable woman cannot be representative of women in general nor can all women be implicated with inherent guile as a result of her slander. The damning statement of Potiphar also represents a fallacy of petitio principii (circular reasoning): to concoct grand conclusions about women’s nature on the basis of the unproven assumption of Potiphar is futile at best. 3.2 Women as Surpassing the Devil in Their Ability to Beguile In view of the fact that drawing on authoritative sources such as other Qurʾānic verses, prophetic traditions as well as the readings of earlier exegetical authorities by way of interpreting the Qurʾān forms the foundation of the Muslim tafsīr bi al-maʾthūr (exegesis based on early narrations) exegetical tradition, the most widely used topos when interpreting Q12:28 is a topos of authority, which is used in conjunction with other topoi by way of enabling exegetes to strengthen and validate their particular reading of this verse. In this regard, since the Qurʾān is believed to be the most authoritative source, the most frequently used lens through which Q12:28 is interpreted are other Qurʾānic verses. Despite the intellectual, historical and geographical differences between the exegetes explored as part of this paper, and despite the

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fact that there are other linguistic references to kayd in the Qurʾān, saliently, all the exegetes who draw on the Qurʾān, choose to read Q12:28 in juxtaposition with Q4:76, thereby reflecting a great deal of intertextuality and interdiscursivity within the tradition. The argument is as follows: Indeed the guile of women is great because God, almighty states “Indeed it is of your [female plural] guile: indeed the guile [of you women] is great” (Q12:28 and He, the almighty states that “Indeed the guile of Satan is weak” (Q4:76).33 Here the use of the quantifier “great” together with the repetition of the qualifier “indeed,” couched both times in statements with a high degree of epistemic certainty, serve to intensify the implications of his argument for rationalising women’s great kayd. Hence, even though the two Qurʾānic verses are from completely different contexts, the juxtaposition between the two, nevertheless ‘works’ according to the exegetes, not only because they are derived from the same source (Qurʾān), but also that this verse is perhaps the most ideal in best facilitating an interpretative clarification of the ‘greatness’ of women’s kayd in the backdrop of the “weak” kayd of Satan. Recontextualising the verse on the devil’s weak kayd and reading it alongside Q12:28, assumes that the exegetes fallaciously believed that Satan and women in general were somehow comparable, or that the represented kayd of Satan was somehow of relevance to any discussion of women’s represented kayd. Nevertheless, in so doing, the meanings associated with Satan’s relatively weak kayd, as clearly espoused in Q4:76, in comparison to the greatness of women’s kayd are collapsed and distorted, thereby adding a dimension of semantic meaning onto Q12:28 that is not necessarily supported on the grounds of irrelevance. Whilst the exegetes al-Zamakhsharī, al-Baqlī and al-Haqqī draw on Q4:76 directly, al-Qurtubī presents it in the form of a prophetic narration as follows: It has been reported by Yahya bin abī Kathīr from Abu Hurayrā that the messenger of God said: indeed the deception of women is greater than the deception of Satan because God Almighty said in the Qurʾān: Indeed the deception of Satan is weak (Q4:76) and he said: Indeed your deception [Oh you women] is great (Q12:28).34 Here, alongside the repetition of the qualifier “indeed” and use of the comparative adverb “greater” further support and strengthen the epistemic intensity 33 34

Baqli, Tafsir Arais al-bayan fi haqaiq al-Quran, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 166. Al-Qurṭubī, Al-Jāmiʿ li Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, Vol. 11, Lebanon: Al-Resalah Publishers, 1935, p. 324.

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of al-Qurtubī’s truth claim. In so doing, al-Qurtubī doubly strengthens his claim using evidence which is both supposedly sourced from the words of the Prophet Muhammad himself, and which simultaneously directly draws on the Qurʾān. Interestingly, he is the only exegete to present this particular hadīth, which remains isolated across the exegetical tradition. Even though this narration is considered flawed in and of itself, since the narrator Yahya ibn abī Kathīr never actually met with a companion of the Prophet (including Abu Hurayrā), the fact remains that al-Qurtubī’s exegesis continues to be viewed as the ‘gold-standard’ for Qurʾānic interpretation and so is therefore the bridge for understanding the meaning of the Qurʾān for many scholars and lay-persons alike. By way of perpetuating and further reinforcing women’s connections to Satan, another interesting example of a frequently used topos of authority that often comes in conjunction with Q4:76 entails the following piece of scholarly advice: Some scholars say: Indeed I fear in women a lot of that which I fear from Satan.35 This ‘advice’ which is ultimately fallacious on the grounds of positing a faulty analogy or irrelevance, since Satan and women are by no means comparable, as well as a fallacious appeal to emotion, which is connected to the topos of threat, has been re-contextualised in the exegeses of three commentators.36 Whilst al-Zamakhsharī’s use of the hedging device “some scholars say” gives the false impression that he seeks to mitigate the impact of this idea, the use of the singular personal pronoun in the statement suggests that actually the use of vague aggregation “some scholars” here serves to intensify, via exaggeration, the fear-mongering message of women’s great danger by a certain scholar who has been left anonymous. By way of constructing the discourse of women as dangerous, al-Zamakhsharī also uses the qualifier “a lot of” by way of conveying the degree of confluence between women and the devil in the act of fooling men. Al-Haqqī actually presents this saying in an intensified and exaggerated form by way of arguing that some scholars “fear in women that which they

35 36

Al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1987, p. 512. Ismail Haqqi, Tafsir al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 242. Al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1987, p. 512. Baqli, Tafsir Araʾis al-bayan fi haqaʾiq al-Quran, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 166.

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do not even fear in Satan.”37 By incorporating this negative formulation, alHaqqī exaggerates the threat of harm ensuing from women by construing it as surpassing even the threat of harm coming from the devil. In this way, these very exegetes compound and reinforce women’s purported connections with the devil by positing these two sources of authority as important grounds for supporting their overarching claim about women’s great kayd. What is deeply problematical is that although women’s connections to the devil are nowhere to be found in the entire Qurʾān itself, such discursive notions are nevertheless constructed and reinforced via a topos of authority which draws on the most authoritative Islamic sources (Qurʾān, hadīth and scholarly advice) in their hermeneutical engagement with Q12:28 in particular. These sources are seamlessly filtered through into Qurʾānic exegeses across the board, via the exegetes’ use of argumentation schemes where such otherwise irrelevant and fallacious pieces of evidence are posited as the grounds upon which they support their grand claims about women’s great ability to deceive. 3.3 Women’s kayd as a Threat to Men Discursively connected to the dominant discourse of women’s greater kayd is the discourse of women’s kayd as a threat to men in particular. In this regard, drawing on a range of inter-connected socially-circulating gender ideologies, which exegetes use as the grounds and backing for further supporting their primary claim of the great kayd of women, exegetes draw on a range of topoi and fallacies by way of constructing and solidifying their argumentation schemes. In this regard, drawing on a topos of difference and topos of cause and effect, the exegetes build on their conflation of women and the devil, by arguing that women’s guile is qualitatively different from that of the devil, as is their mode of delivery. Women’s kayd is more subtle and their trickery is better executed They have a tenderness and kindness to it For which reason, they overpower men38 Al-Zamakhsharī here understands women’s deception as not quantitatively greater than men’s deception but as qualitatively great: the deception is “more 37 38

Ismail Haqqi, Tafsir al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 242. Al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1987, p. 512.

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subtle” and the trickery is executed more tenderly. Here the use of the comparative adverbs “more,” in addition to the generalising using the male and female plural, work together using epistemic modality to intensify and exaggerate the apparent overwhelming effects of women’s kayd. Incidentally, implicated in this argument is also a fallacy of causation: just because men are supposedly fooled or over-powered by women, does not necessarily mean that women or their purported guile is the cause. Moreover, by drawing on an appeal to fear and an appeal to emotion and stereotypes, alZamakhsharī (and others like him) works on manipulating the emotions of male readers instead of grounding his argument on concrete evidence. Nevertheless, al-Baydāwī not only corroborates this idea of al-Zamakhsharī’s, but he goes on to elaborate it further, adding in nuances via a topos of threat/harm and of cause and effect to his own understanding of women’s greater kayd. Women’s kayd is more subtle and is therefore more likely to cling to the heart [of men] and have a profound effect on the nafs (mind) [of men].39 In this argument, intensification is compounded and constructed using the comparative adverbs such as “more” and qualifiers such as ‘profound.’ Here again epistemic modality has been used by way of expressing the exegete’s commitment to his claim. The Sūfī exegete ibn Ajība (and mostly by alHaqqī), recontextualises this aspect of al-Baydāwī’s formulation verbatim in his own commentary, perpetuating the life of such problematical ideologically constructed ideas, and thereby cementing their place within the Muslim exegetical tradition.40 These exegetes go on to argue, that since Satan deceives on the sly, and women deceive face-to-face, that is another reason why women’s kayd is significantly greater in its power over men. Al-Baqlī, building on the fallacy of comparability, argues for example that The reason for Satan’s weak kayd here is Satan’s unsightly looks and frightful sight; he possesses no power over men other than to whisper.41

39 40 41

Al-Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʾwīl, Beirut: Dar Ehia al-Tourath al-Arabi, 1998, part 3, p. 161. Ismail Haqqi, Tafsir al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 242. Ibn Ajība, Al-bahru-al-madid fi tafsīr al-Qurān, 1999, p. 593. Baqli, Tafsir Araʾis al-bayan fi haqaʾiq al-Qurʾan, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 166.

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Here, by way of extending the topos of difference, the implication is that, not only does women’s kayd possess inherently feminine qualities which produce a deep and profound effect on men, since women are “beautiful and attractive”42they differ greatly from Satan’s unsightly looks, making them more effective perpetrators and executers of kayd than Satan. Here, by mitigating the effects of Satan’s power over men, via a process of curtailment “no more” of his power to mere whispers, and magnifying via the use of negatively connoting descriptives, the unsightly looks of the devil, al-Baqlī seeks to intensify the epistemic effects of women’s great kayd.43 Al-Jilānī, whilst mitigating the generalising tendency of the Aziz’s claim in Q12:28 to women who deliberately deceive and trick, proffers a related but different discourse which is intimately connected to other discourses on women’s connections to Satan. Singling out such women, he argues the following: Your deception Oh you deceiving women {indeed your guile} and your trickery Oh you corrupt tricksters {is great}Q12:28] from the deception of Satan and his trickery; because Satan seeks help and support from you at the time of inflicting his harm.44 Whilst the dominant discourse juxtaposing women’s relatively more powerful kayd with that of Satan’s weak kayd is firmly entrenched within the tradition, here, al- Jilānī puts forward the idea that such women, i.e. deceiving tricksters become the means by which Satan is then able to inflict damage on his target. As such his claim resonates with the hadith that Baqli recontextualises in his commentary that “Women are traps of devil.” Unlike other Sufi exegetes like Haqqi, Ibn Ajiba, Baqli or Sunni exegetes like al-Zamakhsharī and al-Baydawi, who explicitly identify men as the targets of Satan and women’s trickery, alJilānī appears not to do so. By way of further extending the notion of women’s great kayd, using a topos of threat/harm to men, some exegetes use Q12:28 by way of perpetuating the notion that what makes women’s kayd so great, greater even than the devil’s is that it is fundamentally inherent to women’s nature. In this regard, al-Tabarī, draws on a topos of definition and a fallacious appeal to stereotypes by way of arguing that women’s kayd is “from the doings of women” [in general]. Moreover, al-Suyūtī, al-Shawkānī and al-Haqqī, for example, argue that kayd

42 43 44

Ibidem. Ibidem. Al-Jilani, Tafsīr al-Jilānī, part 2, p. 358.

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is inherent to the very essence of what it means to be woman.45 The latter intensifies his argument using the vocative address “oh you women” and adds that guile and trickery are “inextricably tied to women’s nature in a way that is incomparable to anything/one other than woman.”46 In this way, by exaggerating and intensifying such claims, exegetes incorporate and validate socially-circulating sexist and gynophobic ideas using Q12:28 as an important means for achieving this. In summary, it is clear that by way of clarifying the possible reasons for why women’s kayd has been saliently attributed with greatness, the exegetes draw on a range of topoi and fallacious modes of reasoning which, far from shedding light on the narrative context of the verse, pave the way for highly problematical sexist and misogynistic ideas about women’s nature to be perpetuated under the guise of divine acknowledgement. In what is to follow, I shall now present an overall sketch of the strategies used by exegetes to support their grand claims about the great kayd of women.

4

Discussion: Overall Argumentation Strategies in the tafāsir

Whilst the strategies the exegetes use to support their truth claims are different, the ultimate claim upon which they base their reading of the Qurʾānic verse is the same. Only Ibn Kathīr differs in the application of his claim by arguing that the implication of the verse is restricted to Potiphar’s wife, the primary intended referent only, and therefore does not apply to all women. Some Sūfī exegetes choose not to elaborate upon this verse at all, although they may still perpetuate the life of sexist and gynophobic discourses on women in other verses.47 According to the vast majority of exegetes, the first part of the verse is referring to Potiphar’s wife and possibly to her nanny, which could be interpreted as an attempt to initially mitigate the implications of the verse. However, this is swiftly overridden by the exegetes’ unanimous agreement that the second part is referring to all women. Potiphar’s wife’s deception is great because she is a woman. As a woman, she is metonymically representative of all women in general. Thus, the claim of truth regarding the existence of, and greatness of all women’s deception is the most dominant subscribed to by the

45

46 47

Ismail Haqqi, Tafsir al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 242; Jalaluddin al-Suyūti, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, Karachi: Maktaba al- Bushra, 2010, Vol. 2, p. 113; Al-Shawkani, Fath al-Qadir, Beirut: Daru al-Kalam, 2010, part 3, p. 47. Ismail Haqqi, Tafsir al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub Ilmiyya, 2008, p. 242. Abi Talib Makki, Al-Hidaya ila Bulug al-Nihaya, Oman: Dar al-Imarat, 1997, pp. 3582–3583.

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vast majority of exegetes. This explicit generalisation of the verse’s implications could be read as a form of intensification by these exegetes. Its validity was not explicitly or implicitly challenged by any of the exegetes, not even by ibn Kathīr, Ibn Arabī or al-Makkī, the three exegetes who choose not to comment or interpret on Q12:28. Interestingly, as time progresses, the demarcation between the first part being in direct reference to Zulaykha begins to blur and later exegetes, such as the post-classical exegetes al-Suyūtī and Shawkānī and al-Haqqī, extrapolate its meanings as referring to all women without exception. Although the above truth claim may be the most dominant, it is by no means the only one put forward by exegetes. Other truth claims include the existence of men’s deception, which is subscribed to by al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī in the form of rebuttals; women’s greater motivation to deceive than men, a claim put forward by al-Qurtubī and al-Rāzī, the qualitative difference of women’s deception, an idea that has been explored by al-Zamakhsharī and al-Baydāwī; and Satan’s ability to deceive, which has been pointed out by al-Zamakhsharī, al-Baydāwī and al-Qurtubī. Other peripheral claims are that: witches are women and also, women living in castles are more cunning and deceptive, both of which have been explored by al-Zamkhshari alone. There is some evidence of recontextualised drawing on the works of predecessor exegetes such as in the case of Baydāwī’s heavy borrowing from the tafsīr of al-Zamakhsharī, his teacher. Interestingly, the schemes constructed in both these exegeses have also found a home in the Sūfī exegeses of ibn Ajība and that of al-Haqqī. As such, there is clear evidence of recontextualisation, crosscontextualisation as well as interdiscursivity which not only keeps the life of such arguments ‘alive’ within the tradition, but reinforces and prolongs them too. Such truth claims include the qualitative difference of women’s deception and women’s overpowering ability to fool men. Overall, it is clear that a range of topoi has been used by exegetes by way of developing the argumentation schemes upon which they construct their readings of this particular verse. The topos of authority has been drawn upon as the conventional form of topos in the tafsīr tradition, by way of supporting the truth claims of exegetes. This is reflective of the exegetical convention of supporting one’s reading via referring to other authoritative sources such as the Quran, prophetic traditions, scholarly advice and the readings of earlier exegetical authorities (interpretations of the Companions, or those succeeding them).48 48

Norman Calder, “Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference to the story of Abraham,” in Hawting, G.R. and Shareef A.K.A. (Eds.), Approaches to the Quran, London: Routledge, 1993.

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However, in addition to or alongside the topos of authority, the exegetes alZamakhsharī and al-Baydāwī have also drawn upon the topos of difference and the topos of cause and effect, by way of constructing binary oppositions between the nature, delivery and impact of men’s ability to deceive vs. women’s (greater) ability to deceive. Al-Rāzī and al-Qurtubī have also drawn upon the topos of consequence, albeit with very different agendas in mind. Whilst al-Rāzī sympathises with women’s predicament of losing one’s reputation in a patriarchal society which treats men and women differently, alQurtubī draws on the popular trope of the femme fatale by way of justifying his gynophobic views of women’s duplicity and threat to men. Interestingly, an internal contradiction highlighted in the tafsīr of al-Rāzī is that he draws upon the topos of contraction whereby he even acknowledges that men’s ability to deceive exceeds that of women’s. However, in the same argumentation scheme, he then also uses the topos of degree to argue that women actually have powers of deception and trickery which men do not possess, thereby contradicting his earlier point. The most widely used fallacies are those of composition, hasty generalisations and circular reasoning, as based on the linguistic and grammatical structures of the verse. This is since the verse is accepted as it is, and therefore the linguistically apparent meaning has literally been accepted. These fallacies have been drawn upon by seven out of eight Sunnī exegetes and six out of eight Sūfī exegetes in their interpretive engagement with Q12:28. The usage of these particular fallacies is primarily due to the underlying premise that since the Qurʾān is the true word of God, and since the verse is clear, then the message of Q12:28 must be based on absolute truth. Interestingly, there are unspoken assumptions/premises underlying the explicit reasoning/proffering of an explicit warrant which simplify the transition between Ground to Claim. These are as follows: Q12:28 associates deception with the plural female pronoun you women Kunna is a general reference to all women (without exception) Therefore, kayd is associative with all women and not just Potiphar’s wife and the other women in the Yusuf story Quran 12:28 is a clear verse The meaning of verses is clear in the linguistic structure of the verse Therefore, the meaning of Q12.28 is clear and unambiguous An appeal to popular stereotypes and emotion are also quite common and run across eleven out of sixteen of the exegeses. The use of a faulty compar-

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ison between two fundamentally different things/phenomena (women and Satan) is also quite commonly used and can be detected in half of the exegeses explored. The appeal to authority, including an appeal to dubious authority, has been used in tandem with the fallacy of appealing to fear, as a way of providing authoritative support for why men must acknowledge women’s threat of harm to men and society at large. Other fallacies used by a few of the exegetes are the confusion of correlation and causation, as well as the fallacy of relevance. These are particularly important in highlighting the internal contradictions and logically incoherent schemes within the argumentation schemes put forward by exegetes in their endeavour to perpetuate as Qurʾānically-endorsed, damaging ideas about women’s nature. The exegetes sometimes state their warrants explicitly, but there are always some unspoken premises underlying the explicit warrants which we would need to identify to really understand the reason for their sweeping generalisations. Rebuttals are rarely used, except by the logician/philosopher al-Rāzī and al-Zamakhsharī. The uses of backing however, are frequently indicative of a drawing on wider societal gender ideologies and gender stereotypes. These rarely tend to be supported by the Qurʾān or support it. Nevertheless, they indicate the function of these gender ideologies in augmenting exegetical engagement and interpretation of Qurʾānic verses, particularly those that relate to women or are of a ‘controversial’ nature. Epistemic modality, the only form of modality used throughout, by all exegetes examined, has been shown to play a crucial role in indicating the exegete’s high levels of commitment to the truth claims regarding women’s great kayd. Here, the most frequent modality features used by exegetes include the use of qualifiers such as “extremely”; comparative adverbs such as “more subtle,” “better executed” and “more likely” as well as the use of aggregation of nouns “women” and “men” and vague aggregation “some scholars” by way of intensifying and exaggerating the strength of claims. The atomistic approach to Qurʾānic interpretation by medieval Muslim scholars means that although each verse was engaged with individually, the overall approach was fragmentary, as it did not take into consideration the interdependency of one verse to another (co-text) and the cohesion between verses, as well as the narrative context and broader discoursal aspects.49 Subsequently, this inevitably leads

49

Abdullah Saeed, Interpreting the Qur’ān: Towards a Contemporary Approach, London: Routledge, 2005, p. 107.

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to literalist interpretations of the Qurʾān50 which ensue in fallacious generalisations and interpretative leaps51 as clearly seen in their interpretation of Q12:28. Nevertheless, it is clear from the tafāsīr that recontextualisation as a strategy, was commonly used in various ways for the primary purpose of supporting the claim: women’s deception is indeed great, that was put forward by the exegetes. As such, the topos of authority was also the most popular one used. This was expected as drawing on earlier authorities, the Qurʾān, hadīth and so forth is a conventional practice in the exegetical tradition which not only adds authority and credibility to the commentaries of exegetes but also demonstrates loyalty to the tradition.52 Inextricably related to this second manifestation of intertextuality is the direct recontextualisation of prophetic narrations by exegetes later on in the tradition (classical and post-classical) as a reflection of the development and refinement of the science of hadīth. Prior to this time, prophetic narrations and narrations by Companions reporting back to the Prophet (or not) were subsumed under the sayings of the ‘core’ exegetical authorities.53 It is by using this strategy that exegetes derive and justify most of their truth claims and generalisations about women’s nature.

5

Conclusion

To conclude, identifying the topoi, fallacies and broader argumentation strategies used within the Sunni and Sūfī tafāsīr has been particularly useful in enabling an unpacking of the argumentation schemes, truth claims and evidence provided by exegetes in the justification of their truth claims pertaining to the nature of women. It has provided key insights into the types of topos and fallacious schemes that have been proffered by exegetes across the board, by way of justifying, reinforcing and perpetuating the already fallacious claim of the Aziz as encapsulated in Q12:28, with further strategies prevalent and constitutive of the tradition as reflected in the exegetical commentaries examined. Far from identifying and problematising the “cracks” and “blind spots”

50 51 52

53

Ibid., 2005, p. 113. Ibid., 2005, p. 113. Norman Calder, “Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference to the story of Abraham,” in Hawting, G.R. and Shareef A.K.A. (Eds.), Approaches to the Quran, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 103. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Qur’ānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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of Potiphar’s words, in their endeavour to clarify the meaning of Q12:28, the exegetes themselves, fall prey both to Potiphar’s words as well as their own “blind spots,” failing to identify, track and trace their fallacious reasoning behind their hermeneutical engagement with this verse. The broader, theoretical ideas, such as intertextuality, interdiscursivity, (the nature of) discourse as well as the use of modality has also been immensely useful for explicating the implications of the findings in a sophisticated and nuanced way that has helped shed light on certain ideas/areas yet to be systematically explored in both Qurʾānic studies and CDS. Thus, the paper has highlighted the strong intertextual tendency by exegetes to draw on other texts, usually from a limited repository of sources, by way of clarifying the meaning of the verse in question. Thus, not only are primary textual extracts from the Qurʾān and hadīth decontextualised within the exegetical tradition, but so are secondary and tertiary texts such as scholarly sources and broader gender ideologies, which result in a transfer of meaning into the verse’s interpretation, which in the case of this particular verse, results in a loss and distortion of meaning. Drawing from a limited pool of readings also results in a marked degree of interdiscursivity in the verse’s interpretations. This has meant that the certain different but intimately related discourses about women and women’s great kayd are circulated within the tradition with ease, thereby resulting in an overall consolidation of possible readings of Q12:28 both synchronically and diachronically, despite the intellectual, sociohistorical origins of the exegetes explored.

Bibliography Abi Muhammad Sadruddīn Rūzbihān Baqlī. Tafsīr Arāis al-bayān fi haqāiq al-Qurʾān, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya: Lebanon 2008. Abi al-Qāsim Abdul Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayrī. Latāif al-Isharāt, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, Lebanon: Beirut 2007. Abu al-Abbās Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn Ajība. Al-bahr ul-madīd fi tafsīr-al-Qurʾān, Cairo, Egypt: Dr. Hassan Abbass Zaki 1999. Abu al-Fidaʾ Ismaʿil Ibn Kathīr. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAzīm, Mesir: Isa al-Babi al-Halabi, 2000. Abu Muhammad ibn Abi Talib Makkī. Al-Hidāya ila Bulūg al-Nihāya, Oman: Dar alImarat, 1997. Ahmad Ibn Umar. al-Taʾwilāt al-Najmiyya fi tafsīr al-Ishāri, al-Sūfī, Dar al-Kutub alIlmiyya, Lebanon, Beirut 2009.

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Amin, Taira. The Discursive Representation of Women in the Quran and its Interpretation, PhD thesis, Lancaster: Lancaster University 2018. Barlas, Asma. Believing women in Islam: un-reading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’ān, Texas: University of Texas 2002. Bell, Allan. “Reconstructing Babel: Discourse Analysis, hermeneutics and the Interpretive Arc,” Discourse Studies, 13(5), 2011, 519–568. Bell, Allan. “On Responsiveness: Interfacing hermeneutics and discourse interpretation,” 13(5) 2011, pp. 645–653. Boukala, Salomi. “Rethinking topos in the discourse historical approach: Endoxon seeking and argumentation in Greek media discourses on ‘Islamist terrorism,’” Discourse Studies, Vol. 18(3), 2016, pp. 249–268. Calder, Norman. “Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference to the story of Abraham,” in Hawting G.R. and Shareef A.K.A. (Eds.), Approaches to the Quran, Routledge, 1993, pp. 101–139. Cameron, Deborah. The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader, (2nd Ed), Oxon: Routledge 1998. Chilton, Paul. Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice, London: Routledge 2004. Chilton, Paul and Monika Kopytowska. Religion, Language and the Human Mind, New York: Oxford University Press 2018. Dijk, Theo van. Discourse and Manipulation, Discourse and Society, Sage Publications Vol. 17(3), 2006, pp. 359–383. Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, Routledge 2003. Fairclough, Norman, and Ruth Wodak. “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in van Dijk, T.A. (Ed.), 2006, Discourse as Social Interaction, Sage Publications 1997. Fakhr al-Din al-Rāzī. Mafātih al-Ghayb, Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1985. Garner, Mark. “Preaching as a communicative event. A discourse analysis of sermons by Robert Rollock (1555–1599),” Reformation and Renaissance Review 9 (Spring 2007), 45–70. Haqqī, Ismail. Tafsīr al-Hidāya ila Bulūg al-Nihāya, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 2008. Jalāluddin al-Mahallī, and Jalaluddin al-Suyūtī. Tafsīr Al Jalālayn. Karachi: Maktaba alBushra, 2010. Kecia Ali. Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’ān, Hadith, and Jurisprudence, London: One World publications 2006. Kim, E.-Y.J. “Persuasive Strategies in a Chauvinistic Religious Discourse: The Case of Women’s Ordination,” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, Vol 8 (1): 58–83, 2016. Mahmūd ibn Umar al-Zamakhsharī. al-Kashshāf, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿArabi, 1987.

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McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. Qur’ānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Mills, Sara. Language and sexism, London: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Muḥammad bin Aḥmad al-Qurṭubī. Al-Jāmiʿ li Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, Lebanon: Al-Resalah Publishers, 1935. Muhammad bin Ali ibn Muhammad al-Shawkānī. Fath al-Qadīr. Lebanon, Beirut: Daru al-Kalam, 2010. Muhammad Ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī. Jāmiʿ al-Bayān fi Taʾwīl al-Qurʾān, Beirut: Mu’assassat al-Risala, 2000. Muhyuddin Abdul Qādir al-Jilānī. Tafsīr al-Jilāni, Maktaba Ma’rufiyya: Pakistan, Quetta 2010. Muhyuddin Ibn Arabī. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya: Lebanon, Beirut. Naguib, Shuruq. “Horizons and limitations of Muslim Feminist Hermeneutics: Reflections on the Menstruation Verse,” in Anderson, P.S. (Ed.), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate, Amsterdam/New York: Springer Books, 2010. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī. Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-ta’wīl, Beirut: Dar Ehia al-Tourath al-Arabi, 1998. Reisigl, Martin. “Argumentation Analysis and the Discourse-historical approach: A Methodological Framework,” in Hart, C. and Cap, P. (Eds.) (2017), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, Bloomsbury 2014, pp. 67–96. Rhouni, Raja. “Rethinking ‘Islamic Feminist Hermeneutics’: the case of Fatima Mernissi,” in Kynsilehto, A. (Ed.), Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, Finland: Tampere Peace Research Institute, 2008. Saeed, Abdullah. Interpreting the Qur’ān: Towards a Contemporary Approach, London: Routledge, 2005. Sunderland, Jane, and Lia Litosseliti. “Current Research Methodologies in Gender and Language Study: Key Issues,” in Harrington, K., Litosselliti, L. and Sunderland, J. (2008), Gender and language research methodologies, Palgrave McMillan 2008. Toulmin, Stephen, Richard Rieke, Alaan Janik. An Introduction to Reasoning, New York: Macmillan, 1979. Wodak, Ruth and Michael Meyer. Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (third edition), London: Sage Publications, 2016. Wodak, Ruth. “Complex Texts: Analysing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings,” Discourse Studies, 13(5) (2011), pp. 623–633. Wodak, Ruth, et al. The Discursive Construction of National Identity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009b. Wodak, Ruth. “Controversial issues in Feminist critical discourse analysis,” in Harrington, K., Litosselliti, L. and Sunderland, J., Gender and language research methodologies, Palgrave McMillan 2008.

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Wodak, Ruth. Gender and Discourse, London, Sage Publications 1997. Wodak, Ruth and Michael Meyer. “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology,” in Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd Ed), Sage Publications Limited, 2009, pp. 1–33. Wodak, Ruth and Michael Meyer. Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd Ed), Sage Publications Limited, 2001, pp. 1–13.

Part 2 The Political

∵

Chapter 5

Contemporary Turkish Academic Approach to Christianity The Case of the New Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam (DİA) Betül Avcı

Dedicated to the memory of my dear teacher, Prof. Dr. Ömer Faruk Harman (d. 04 March 2021)

∵ 1

Introduction1

An individual belonging to a certain tradition tends to make sense of others by means of the “tools” he/she is already familiar with and which would reflect his/her own worldview. While such tendency may be due to derogatory intentions, most often it is caused by lack of information about the “foreign” tradition. While such predisposition may be based on asymmetry between traditions, it may also be caused by lack of necessary “tools” (e.g. conceptions). In this chapter, I engage with the ways in which the Christian tradition is presented to a Muslim audience. Upon this line of inquiry, I provide an analytical review of Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (DİA) entries related to the Christian tradition. To do this, I scanned through the whole list of DİA entries and selected forty-six of them primarily related to the Christian tradition. I applied content analysis to each of these entries and examined its language and terminology, its position in terms of impartiality and reliability, the method of the author, as well as the sources he/she used. I also engaged with a postcritical approach in order to search for the “subtext” and “context” of the texts in question. By this, I intended not only to study what appears in the text but also what does not appear and therefore what is assumed. I asked myself the following questions: 1 This chapter is based on my doctoral dissertation—with major additions and revisions—submitted to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

© Betül Avcı, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_006

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What does the text say? What does the text not say? Why? What is the agenda of the text/author? What does the text say and hide in comparison to a similar source produced within a different context (i.e., non-Muslim, Western)? – In what way does the text in question represent “Christianity?” What aspects of the Christian tradition are given priority over others? – What method does the text employ in presenting Christianity to a Muslim audience? Below is a list of entries I examined thoroughly: 1. Ahd-i Atȋk/Old Testament 2. Ahd-i Cedȋd/New Testament 3. Barnaba İncili/Gospel of Barnabas 4. İncil/Gospel 5. Kitȃb-ı Mukaddes/Bible 6. Aforoz/Excommunication 7. Cizvitler/Jesuits 8. Endüljans/Indulgence 9. Engizisyon/Inquisition 10. Gagauzlar/Gagauz People 11. Havȃri/Apostle 12. İznik Konsili/Council of Nicea 13. Katoliklik/Catholicism 14. Keldȃnȋler/Chaldeans 15. Keşiş/Monk 16. Kıptȋler/Copts 17. Kilise/Church 18. Konsil/Council 19. Luther, Martin (1483–1546) 20. Manastır/Monastery 21. Mȃrûnȋler/Maronites 22. Melkâiyye/Melchites/Melkites 23. Merkûniyye/Marcionism 24. Misyonerlik/Missionary Activity 25. Nestûrȋlik/Nestorianism 26. Noel/Christmas 27. Ortodoksluk/Orthodox Church 28. Papalık/Papacy 29. Paskalya/Easter

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30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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Patrik/Patriarch Protestanlık/Protestantism Reform/Reformation Ruhban/Clergy Süryȃnȋler/Syriac Orthodox Church Aslȋ Günah/Original Sin Azȋz/Saint Çarmıh/Crucifix, Crucifixion Haç/Cross Hıristiyanlık/Christianity Hulûl/Ḥulūl, Incarnation İlham/Inspiration Ȋsȃ/Jesus Meryem/Mary Mesȋh/Messiah Nübüvvet/Prophethood-Prophecy Rûhulkudüs/Holy Spirit

Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (The Encyclopedia of Islam by the Religious Affairs Foundation of Turkey) or DİA

Kate Zebiri, in her Muslims and Christians Face to Face, argues as follows: In contrast to the medieval period, when Muslim scholars were often more sophisticated and informed in the study of religions than their Christian counterparts, it is now, generally speaking, Christians who, as participants in the Western academic tradition, are more qualified in this field and more likely to have assimilated the insights of recent developments in the study of religions.2 In the modern period, it is the Euro-American academia that is prominent not only in the study of various religious traditions but also in the study of Islam in the West. Nevertheless, quite recently Muslims have also instigated an interest in the study of Christianity as a part of religious studies. Different from early Muslim interest in Christianity which was particularly done for polemical purposes, contemporary study of Christianity has primarily been undertaken as

2 Kate Zebiri, Muslims and Christians Face to Face. Oxford: Oneworld, 1997. pp. 4–5.

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an element of intellectual curiosity or as a part of interreligious studies. While such studies have often been carried out within the context of comparative or religious studies, they have also been enforced by contemporary interreligious initiatives. Thus, contemporary Turkish study of Christianity undertaken in various faculties of theology in Turkey may be considered along the lines of such an attempt. Likewise, the new Turkish encyclopedia of Islam has a twofold purpose: to correct the “biased” attitude of The Encyclopaedia of Islam published in Leiden by Brill;3 and to include a significant number of entries on various religious traditions other than Islam. Brill’s The Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI) is the first modern encyclopedia to cover topics related to Islam. The first edition, also known as EI1, was completed between the years 1913 and 1938. The second edition, also known as EI2, was published between 1954 and 2005. In 2007, Leiden launched the Encyclopaedia of Islam-Three, which is ongoing. The first two editions have been criticized by Muslims on the grounds that the information they provide about Islam is not only incomplete but also distorted.4 The preface of DİA should be considered as a manifesto that voices Muslim criticism towards EI. Here, the editors of DİA accuse EI as being a product of “religious, nationalist and Western bigotry,” in addition to having a “colonialist and missionary viewpoint.”5 Accordingly, as noted, EI views Islam as a religion that does not have a divine origin, but rather interprets it as a religion founded on “borrowings” from Judeo-Christianity and, hence, espouses an Orientalist point of view. DİA is significant in many ways. It is not only the most comprehensive modern encyclopedia of Islam in Turkish, but also in contact with Western research in contemporary Muslim countries. Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı (Religious Affairs Foundation of Turkey) is the institution responsible for the edition of DİA, in addition to conducting and supporting research on Islam. The idea of composing such an encyclopedia emerged out of the need for unbiased, sound information about Islam. This was supported by the view that any culture or religious tradition should speak for itself rather than being introduced from an “outsider” or “Orientalist” perspective. DİA covers many subject areas, such as Arabic language and literature, Turkish history and civilization, hadith, Islamic

3 The first publication of Leiden’s The Encyclopaedia of Islam was translated into Turkish with some major changes. 4 The same viewpoint is also prevalent in the DİA entry on EI. See Kemal Kahraman, “The Encyclopaedia of Islam,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1995) 11: 181–184. 5 “Önsöz” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988) 1: n.p.

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theology, geography of Muslim countries, history of religions, etc. The collection has been completed in 2013 and consists of forty-four volumes. Although the encyclopedia primarily focuses on religious phenomena mostly related to Islam, Islamic studies and Muslim countries, it also includes entries related to other religious traditions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. DİA tries to address both scholars and those who seek basic information on a certain topic. Besides, the authors are predominantly Muslim senior scholars in their respective fields.

3

Priority Given to Catholicism over Other Christian Denominations

Contemporary Turkish religious studies, as in the case of DİA, primarily focuses on Catholicism and the Catholic practices as “the envoy of Christianity.” In the following pages, in order to prove my claim regarding the contemporary Turkish preference of Catholicism, I will focus extensively on three DİA entries as significant textual samples, in addition to citing examples from six other entries towards the end of this section. 3.1 “Kilise/Church” This entry is composed by three different authors in three different sections. While Levent Öztürk discusses church in Islamic history, Mehmet Akman recounts the same in Islamic jurisprudence. The introduction section of the entry, authored by Mehmet Aydın, attracts particular attention. Aydın expands upon the term “kilise,” focusing mainly on three aspects: First is the etymological analyses of the words “kilise,” “ecclesia,” “kanīsa” and “kahal” in the context of Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew. Thereafter, he elaborates on the development of the word “ecclesia” in the New Testament and in the thought of the Church Fathers. In the following paragraph, he analyzes the term “kanīsa,” (church in Arabic) as it appears in the hadith collections, as well as the Syriac word, “bīa” that appears in the Qurʾān (al-Hajj, 22:40) in its plural as a reference to churches. Second, he tries to examine various meanings of the word “church” developed within Christianity. Overall, this section of the entry is quite informative and fairly accurate, as Aydın produces a decent, concise article on such a large topic. In the bibliography of this part there are over twenty printed sources. Twelve out of twenty-three sources, including a dictionary of the Qurʾān, are in European languages. Eleven out of the twenty-three are overtly Islamic sources, including the hadith compilations. The author employs Arabic, French, English and Turkish as languages of research. Consequently, other than the Islamic view

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and Islamic sources the author includes, there is not much difference from an entry on church in an average Western encyclopedia or textbook. However, there are some details in need of closer consideration. For instance, Aydın begins the entry with a comprehensive definition of the church that he quotes from the Dictionnaire de la Bible: İnananların teşkil ettiği, Ȋsâ Mesîh tarafından havâri Petrus’un otoritesi altında kurulan, havârilerin önderliğinde oluşturulan, Kutsal Ruh tarafından teyit edilen, görünmeyen lideri Mesîh ile birleşmiş, üyelerini kurtarıcının doktrinini tasdikte, onun kanununu uygulamakta, sakramentlerini kullanmakta birleştiren görünür bir topluluğu ifade eden kilise kelimesi … (the bold term is the original author’s). The word church denotes a visible group that unites its members in confirming the doctrine of the Savior, in implementing its law and in employing its sacraments. The church is made up of believers. It is founded by Jesus Christ under the authority of the Apostle Peter. It is generated by the leadership of the Apostles and confirmed by the Holy Spirit. It is united with its invisible leader, Christ.6 This definition of Church is highly “Catholic” in nature and many, namely non-Catholic Christians, would disagree with some elements of this definition. This is because the Catholic understanding holds to the fact that the Church is under the authority of the Apostle Peter and his successors, the Popes. This indicates a traditional line of succession that would not coincide with the Protestant belief in the primacy of scripture and faith. The doctrine of the apostolic succession holds that the Apostles received authority from Jesus Christ and this authority was later inherited by their successors. Therefore, the bishops of today have the spiritual authority transmitted from former bishops through the Apostles and originally from Jesus Christ. According to both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, “the bishops through the apostolic succession are the legitimate legatees of Christ and the guarantors of a binding interpretation of revelation.”7 Thus, bishops hold power and authority over sacramental and canonical administration as well as over matters of

6 Mehmet Aydın, “Kilise” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002) 26: 11. 7 K.S. Frank et al. “Petrus,” in Brill’s New Pauly. Antiquity ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, 2011, http://www.brillonline.nl.proxy.uchicago.edu/subscriber/entry?entry=bnp _e916730 (08 October 2011).

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faith and morals. This doctrine is shared by various denominations, such as the Catholic, Orthodox and some Protestant Churches. However, the Roman Catholic perception of the apostolic succession only by means of the “episcopal office” is replaced by “fidelity in the transmission of the gospel message and doctrinal succession” in most Protestant Churches.8 Another point of divergence between the Catholic Church and others is the primacy of the Apostle Peter. The Catholic Church holds to the view that the Apostle Peter, who is called the “Prince of the Apostles,” has primacy over other Apostles. This view is based on the biblical reference in which Jesus Christ announces Peter as the “rock” upon which he would build his church (Matthew 16:18). Thus, the Catholic Church believes that Peter’s being the first bishop of Rome is closely related to the papal primacy. However, parallel to their view on the apostolic succession, most Protestant churches limit this primacy to the lifetime of Peter. Regarding the abovementioned definition of the church in the encyclopedia entry, the concepts of “law” and “sacrament” also display an overtly Catholic tone. Catholics affirm the existence of “law” and its importance for governing the Church. However, many other Christians would not like to speak in terms of law, but rather of grace. Although, both Catholics and Protestants believe that the Gospel is the “New Law,” Protestants would not believe that the Church really has much power to make laws. Likewise, Catholics believe that there are sacraments and assert that their number is seven. Many other Christian denominations would also believe in the importance of certain ritual actions but would not consider them as sacraments and would not build a certain structure around them as the Catholic Church does. Subsequently, the word “sacrament” itself is highly Catholic. The Protestant Churches prefer the expression “ordinance” and refer to these ritual actions as “rites which the church understands to be ‘means of grace’ for the recipient.”9 Furthermore, while Protestants believe in the importance of certain acts and matters that Catholics name as “sacraments,” they generally accept Baptism and Eucharist as “ordinances” that explicitly appear in the New Testament. In a similar manner, while the Orthodox Church believes in such acts and issues, she refrains from defining and structuring such rites, as do the early Latin Fathers, and prefers the term “mysterion.”10 8 9 10

P. Neuner, “Apostolic Succession,” in Religion Past and Present, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browing, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel (Leiden: Boston, 2007) 1: 338. N.R. Kerr et al. “Sacraments,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (Routledge: New York London, 2004) 4: 1638. J.A. McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008) 278.

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3.2 “Hıristiyanlık/Christianity” The entry “Hıristiyanlık,” is divided into nine parts written by four different authors. While Kürşat Demirci offers the introductory section in addition to a history of Christianity, Mehmet Aydın attempts to cover various aspects of Christianity, such as the Bible and other religious literature, certain issues of faith and liturgy, as well as a number of confessions and orders within Christianity. Baki Adam then gives information on the relationship between Christianity and other religions. The final two sections, authored by Mustafa Sinanoğlu, deal with Islamic literature and the Islamic stance regarding numerous issues related to Christianity. Following an overview of Christianity, Demirci expands upon the term “Christian” with respect to its history and linguistic details and gives a list of various terms with which Christians have identified themselves. In the following section, Demirci tries to cover the history of Christianity commencing with the context in which Christianity was born up until the twentieth century. This section is based upon non-Islamic sources. Since there is not much difference from an entry on church history in an average Western encyclopedia or a textbook, this section is rather European-Catholic centered. The author gives priority to the history of Christianity in Europe, namely the Catholic Church and the Reformation, in addition to briefly mentioning the history of the Orthodox Church. However, histories of other Eastern Churches are almost totally ignored. The Armenian Church, for example, is recounted in only one paragraph in addition to a few sentences in separate subsections. Additionally, when Demirci narrates the history of Christianity, he mentions the Armenian Church very briefly only when he notes that Tridates was the first king who accepted Christianity.11 Baki Adam, in the subsection “Christianity and Other Religions,” focuses on the approach of the Catholic Church towards other faiths as well as dialogue and inculturation activities of some Catholic individuals addressed to adherents of non-Christian faiths. For this, Adam primarily refers to the documents of the First and the Second Vatican Councils in addition to encyclicals issued primarily by Pope John Paul II. However, there is almost no mention of any relationship between various faiths and non-Catholic Christian Churches. Thus, in this section the terms “Christianity” and “Church” exclusively refer to the Catholic Church. 11

Kürşat Demirci, “Hıristiyanlık: Giriş & Tarih” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998) 17: 333. Here, Demirci notes that the “King of Armenia, Tridates, was the first king to accept Christianity.” Although the author does not mention it, this should be Tridates III.

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3.3 “Konsil/Council” Another main instance of priority given to Catholicism over other Christian denominations appears in the entry “Konsil/Council.” Although the author associates the term council with gatherings in the Buddhist, Jainist and Jewish traditions and mentions the same in the Eastern and Orthodox Churches, at the very beginning he defines council as “the term in the Catholic Christian literature that denotes the gathering of a number of religious authorities of high rank in order to discuss and resolve religious matters.”12 Among twenty sources listed in the bibliography, Harman lists three entries from the New Catholic Encyclopedia and five entries from Catholicisme. Additionally, Harman occasionally quotes information from Code de droit canonique. Thus, the sources in the bibliography are overtly Western and Catholic. In addition to the three entries I have explored above, we also come across priority given to the Catholic Church in various other entries. For instance, Hikmet Tanyu mentions Protestants together with Catholics regarding the inspiration of the New Testament. However, he only cites references from the Catholic tradition, such as the decrees of the Popes in particular. Likewise, M. Süreyya Şahin recounts details of excommunication according to the Canon Law of the Catholic Church and simply mentions that such a penalty exists in the Orthodox, Armenian and the Protestant Churches. Similarly, in the entries “Azîz/Saint,” “Rûhulkudüs/Holy Spirit,” “İlham/Inspiration” and “Meryem/Mary,” teachings of the Catholic Church are given priority over the Orthodox, Protestant and Eastern traditions. The authors of these entries depend highly on the decrees of the popes, teachings of the Vatican II and Catechism of the Catholic Church. I would now like to reflect briefly upon the reasons why Catholicism is given priority over other Christian groups or denominations in the DİA. I suggest that the current cultural and political predisposition is the main reason why the Catholic Church has come to represent “Christianity” for the contemporary Turkish academia with respect to its history and theology, while Armenian and Greek Orthodox Churches have been highly ignored. The Orthodox Church of Constantinople in the modern period has mostly been associated with political motives against late Ottoman and modern Turkey. Moreover, it has been identified with Greece and with “ulterior motives.” Likewise, modern relations with Armenians have not been amicable due to the “Armenian issue.” Currently, while “unfriendly” relations with Greeks have been accelerated because

12

Ö. Faruk Harman, “Konsil,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002) 26: 175.

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of the still-unresolved Cyprus issue, Armenian insistence on “genocide” and Turkish denial of this in addition to recent problems between Armenia and Azerbaijan keeps earlier acrimony intact. Hence, the Armenian Church and Armenian people, similar to the Greek Orthodox, have overtly been considered through political lenses in the late Ottoman and modern history of Turkey. On the other hand, modern Turkey has not had much experience with the Reformed Churches other than Protestant missionary activities particularly in the final periods of the Ottoman Empire. Alternatively, Protestantism is made up of various groups that may be quite distinct from one another while the Catholic Church as an institution is more uniform and hence, easier to grasp for an “outsider.”

4

Issues with Terminology

Translating a source religious concept into a target language/culture requires genealogical familiarity with the concept. With genealogy, I indicate the cultural-linguistic development of the concept through history and culturallylinguistically diverse forms it acquires therein. This is what Venuti refers to with “cultural discourses in the target language, past and present.”13 Moreover, by genealogy of a concept I mean its development both in the source and target languages/cultures. Therefore, understanding a religious tradition different from one’s own not only requires familiarity with its basic concepts, language and terminology but also how they work within certain cultural contexts. As an example, I will depict how the concept of “laik” creates such cross-cultural confusion in the DİA. 4.1 Laik or Lay? In the entry “Hıristiyanlık” the term “laik” is identified as a reference to “lay people” in contradistinction to the religious. For example, Demirci recounts changes made within the Catholic Church as follows: “laiklerin dinî işlere katılabileceği bazı düzenlemeler de yapıldı/ the Catholic Church also made some arrangements for the lay (laikler) population to be involved in religious activities.”14 Likewise, Aydın notes that lay people do not have a specific outfit

13 14

Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (London-New York: Routledge, 2004) 309. Kürşat Demirci, “Hıristiyanlık: Giriş & Tarih” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998) 17: 338.

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for occasions in church: “kiliseye gelen laiklerin özel bir dinî kıyafeti yoktur.”15 With the word “laik” both authors intend to translate the Latin lāicus and the Greek λaϊκός, as a reference to common people or non-clergy. However, they fail to note its current connotation in today’s Turkish Muslim context. At this point, it is necessary to comment briefly on the Turkish perception of laiklaiklik that is not only conceptually but also ideologically a neologism of the French laïque-laïcité. Lay or secular did not have any negative implication towards the Church or religion in the Middle Ages. Differentiation between the lay and clergy started as a religious distinction and it only acquired its modern connotation by the turn of the eighteenth century. Consequently, by the aftermath of the French Revolution it became an ideological concept. Laiklik was introduced to the new Republic of Turkey by Atatürk as one of the six founding principles of the new state. It was adopted from the French laïcité through three primary spheres of public life. First was the demolishing of the Caliphate. In place of the Caliphate, the Presidium of Religious Affairs was founded in 1924. Second, Sufi orders and their lodges were banned. Third, Islamic schools were closed. Although the Turkish laiklik started off as an implementation of the French laïcité, it has become a unique system. Such distinction between the laity and clergy is Christian-Eurocentric and is alien to Muslim society. Therefore, it is necessary to be very careful while engaging cross-cultural translation. In the above-mentioned cases, I suggest to employ “ruhban olmayan” which is the literal translation of “non-clergy” into Turkish. 4.2 Various Spellings, Transliterations or Translations In the DİA, when there is no specific equivalent of a certain religious term in Turkish, it appears in various translations or transliterations. For instance, the concept of transfiguration, in reference to the Gospel account, materializes in at least three different forms. Ö. Faruk Harman employs its Turkish transliteration as “transfigürasyon” in addition to providing an explanation and citing the term in English.16 Mehmet Aydın interprets it as “Îsâ’nın şekil değiştirmesi (Jesus’ change of shape)”17 but also includes its English version in parentheses. Finally, Osman Cilacı refers to the event of transfiguration in an explanatory

15 16 17

Mehmet Aydın, “Hıristiyanlık: Mâbed ve İbadet” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998) 17: 353. Ömer Faruk Harman “İncil” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2000) 22: 272, 273. Mehmet Aydın, “Hıristiyanlık: Mâbed ve İbadet” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998) 17: 351.

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manner as “esvabının ışık gibi aydınlanması hadisesi (the event of illumination of his dress),”18 while he also cites the original word in English next to this explanation. In other instances, authors quote specific concepts in their original language in addition to citing their equivalents in Turkish. For instance, Kadir Albayrak in the entry “Keldânîler/Chaldeans” cites the Aramaic equivalents of some religious concepts. In a similar way, Mehmet Çelik in the entry “Süryânîler/Syriac Orthodox Church” provides the reader with the original Syriac of certain religious expressions employed by the Syriac Orthodox Church. Throughout the DİA a significant example of domestication appears with the names of ancient cities. Most of the DİA authors use the contemporary names of ancient cities in Turkish such as “İstanbul” for Constantinople, “Efes” for Ephesus, “Antakya” for Antioch, “İskenderiye” for Alexandria, etc. For instance, Kürşat Demirci employs the contemporary Turkish name “İstanbul” for Constantinople for the year 330 AD.19 Similarly, Mustafa Sinanoğlu employs contemporary names of ancient cities such as “İstanbul” for Constantinople (or “Konstantiniyye” when he quotes from Arabic), “Kadıköy” for Chalcedon, “İznik” for Nicea, etc. However, he mentions “Marcellus of Ancyra,” “Maris of Chalcedon,” “Noetus of Smyrna,” etc. with ancient names of the cities.20 Although there is a tendency to use the modern names of ancient cities, consistency is not always provided. Moreover, such practice is open to dispute. This is because the contemporary boundaries of a city would most likely be different from the city with the same name in antiquity. For instance, while Constantinople in the fourth century was limited to a small area next to the Golden Horn, contemporary Istanbul is a metropolitan city covering an area of over five thousand square meters. Lack of consistency in terminology appears in various types of spelling in the DİA. Most likely this is the result of secondary sources the authors use as references, which employ English, French, German or Arabic spelling. For instance, Hikmet Tanyu cites the names of some Church Fathers in their French spelling as “Justin le Martyr,” “Clément” and “St. Grégoire de Nazianze.”21 Likewise, Osman Cilacı cites the names of certain figures in

18 19 20 21

Osman Cilacı, “Havȃri” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1997) 16: 514. Kürşat Demirci, “Ortodoksluk” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2007) 33: 409–414. Mustafa Sinanoğlu, “İznik Konsili” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2001) 23: 549–552. Hikmet Tanyu, “Ahd-i Cedîd” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988) 1: 503, 505, 506.

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French spelling. For instance, “Saint Pierre” “Grégoire de Nazianze” and “Clément” all appear in their French spelling.22 However, Mehmet Aydın, mostly uses English spelling of names (i.e., Justin Martyr, Jerome, Origen, etc.). Still, he also uses French spelling of some names (i.e., André, Thaddée, Didaché, etc.).23

5

Main Contribution of the DİA and Its Difference from Euro-American Sources

The main contribution of the encyclopedia entries, and here they differ from similar Euro-American encyclopedias, is their inclusion of the Islamic perception on the subject in question. For instance, in the entry “Kilise/Church,” after relating various features of the church according to Christianity, the author gives an account of the church in Islamic history and Islamic jurisprudence in separate sections within the same entry. Mustafa Sinanoğlu, in the entry “İznik Konsili/Council of Nicea,” initially explores the council in reference to the writings of the Church Fathers and council decrees. What is more, as a scholar well versed in Islamic theology, Sinanoğlu explains that the Muslim authors mention and explain the Council of Nicea mostly in their works. Accordingly, he gives examples from the writings of al-Masʿūdī, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Shahrastānī and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. The author of the entry on Chaldeans not only refers to Western sources but also relates information on the subject from various Muslim scholars, such as Ibn al-Nadīm, Ibn Khaldūn and Masʿūdī. Also, the first part of the entry “Monastery/Manastır” is based principally on Western sources and discusses the concept of monastery according to Euro-American and Christian sources. The second part of this entry is based on the works of Muslim authors and explores the concept of monastery from an Islamic perspective. Along the same line, the final two sections of the entry on “Christianity” deal with the Islamic literature and the Islamic stance towards Christianity and monasticism based on the Qurʾān, hadith collections and works of refutation. Also, the entry on Luther includes a section entitled “Luther and Islam” in which the author relates Luther’s approach towards Islam and the Turks. While it is plausible to find almost all the information contained in the

22 23

Osman Cilacı, “Barnaba İncili” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1992) 5: 76, 77. Mehmet Aydın, “Hıristiyanlık: Kutsal Metinler ve Dinî Literatür” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998) 17: 340–345.

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abovementioned entries in a European or American encyclopedia, in the DİA sections related to Islam provide invaluable information on each subject.

6

Ömer Faruk Harman’s Approach to His Subject Matter

I now proceed with the approach of Ömer Faruk Harman, who authored many entries related to Christianity, in DİA. Harman was one of the most prominent scholars in the field of history of religions in Turkey. I here explore his method in presenting history, theology and other phenomena related to Christianity to a Muslim audience, and I base my evaluation on ten of his entries in DİA: “Old Testament,” “Gospel,” “Bible,” “Jesus,” “Holy Spirit,” “Indulgence,” “Catholicism,” “Council,” “Saint” and “Mary.” In the introductory sentence of the entry, Harman defines Old Testament as “the name given to the Jewish Bible by Christians.”24 Following the Turkish tradition, Harman employs the Christian division and naming of the Bible. The entry includes brief, but very rich, general information on the Old Testament, such as its language, literary construction, history of its translation into Greek and Latin, the reliability of its translations, and its canonization in both the Jewish and the Christian biblical traditions. Further, Harman explains the differences between the Jewish and Christian versions of the Old Testament. Moreover, when he says “Christians” he cites the views of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches on the list of canonical books separately. Additionally, he explicates the Qurʾānic and later Muslim polemical accounts in the subsection entitled “Old Testament and Muslims.” As he recounts the Qurʾānic approach, he mentions scriptures bestowed upon Moses and David. He also cites the Qurʾānic view that the People of the Book distorted their scriptures. As he notes, because of the belief in distortion of the Holy Scriptures by the People of the Book, Muslim scholars studied these sources and wrote books of refutation. In the section entitled, “Scholarly Research on the Old Testament,” Harman relates modern biblical criticism of the Old Testament. He notes that, contrary to the traditional view, scholarly research proves that the Torah was composed by a number of authors over a span of time and was edited during this process. According to the author, this confirms the Qurʾānic view regarding the distortion of the Old Testament. The author is careful when he refers to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition as he indicates this clearly. 24

Ö. Faruk Harman, “Ahd-i Atîk” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988) 1: 494.

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In the entry entitled “Gospel,” Harman begins recounting information on the Gospel from the traditional Christian perspective as well as from modern scholarly approaches, such as form criticism, theories on origins, etc. It is significant that he also refers to the views of some Church Fathers on the discrepancies between various accounts. Furthermore, as he notes, there are various parallel narrations between the Qurʾān and the Gospels. While the Christian tradition views this issue as borrowings, Muslims hold that both the Qurʾān and the original Gospel are from the same divine origin. In the second part, Harman notes that, according to the Qurʾānic view, the Gospel is not only the good news and a teaching of Jesus but also the book that contains this message. Accordingly, as he notes, many Muslim authors of refutation hold that the Gospels have been distorted: All through Islamic history, religious debates and works of refutation have been one of the main grounds for the relationship between Muslims and Christians. The Christian sacred scriptures have been among the themes of such debates and have been the subjects for works of refutation. Muslims, in order to clarify the issue of distortion and the proclamation of the Prophet Muhammad, explored the Torah as well as the Gospels. Additionally, also based on certain indications from the Qurʾan, they concluded that the Gospels have been distorted.25 In the entry entitled “Indulgence,” after giving information according to the Christian tradition, Harman explains the Islamic view on forgiveness of sins by means of a specific institution and through intercession. As he notes, there is no practice close to indulgences in the Islamic tradition. It is noteworthy that, at the end, he presents his own view regarding the “corruption” of the Christian tradition in reference to the Qurʾān: In certain passages of the Qurʾan, it is explained that the scholars of the People of the Book have changed the words of God for insignificant benefits (thaman al-qalīl) that are unworthy before the divine realities (for ex. see the Qurʾan 2,79–174–175; 3,77). In Chapter 9 of the Qurʾan, it is noted that the Jews and Christians corrupt the belief in the unity of God by divinizing their clergy (Q. 9,31). It is also noted that the clergy mentioned consume the possessions of people unjustly and revert them from

25

Ö. Faruk Harman, “İncil” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2000) 22: 275.

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the path of God (Q. 9,34). It is possible that the Qurʾan also refers to the tradition of indulgence in such accusations.26 In the entry on “Council,” Harman makes a comparison between Christian and Islamic accounts of a gathering known in church history as the first council. He provides quotes from both Acts and the Qurʾān regarding this meeting. As he notes, this council of the Apostles took place in Jerusalem around the late forties as mentioned in Acts 15. Harman records the parallelism between the Qurʾānic and Biblical accounts as follows: “similarity between the decision taken in the Council of the Apostles and the prohibitions noted in the Qurʾān (Q. 2,173; 5,3; 16,115) is significant. However, the prohibition of pork in the Qurʾān is replaced by adultery in the list of the Apostles.”27 In the entry on “Mary,” Harman addresses the topic according to both Christianity and Islam separately. Regarding the teachings concerning Mary, he cites differences between the views of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Churches. He also presents Islamic account of Mary based on the Qurʾān, hadith collections, Qurʾān commentaries, works of history and stories of the prophets. He is aware of the parallelisms and differences between the Islamic and the Christian accounts of Mary. For instance, he notes as follows: Accounts of the birth of Mary in the Islamic sources, except the Qurʾanic account, are almost identical with information in the Protevangelium and De Nativitate Mariae… As a result of the drawing of lots, Mary was entrusted to her cousin, Joseph (Thaʿlabī, p. 285). According to some sources, it is Jurayj, rather than Joseph (Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, III, p. 246). According to the Biblical account, Mary was betrothed to Joseph as the result of the drawing of lots, however, there is no such information in the Qurʾan. According to some other Islamic sources, it is explained that due to the old age of Zachariah, Joseph took care of Mary.28 Finally, Harman tries to correct a later misunderstanding regarding Mary in the Qurʾān. As he argues, the Qurʾān does not claim that Mary is a person of the Christian Trinity.

26 27 28

Ö. Faruk Harman, “Endüljans” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1995) 11: 210. Ö. Faruk Harman, “Konsil” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002) 26: 177. Ö. Faruk Harman, “Meryem” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2004) 29: 240.

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In these examples, we see Harman offering a multi-perspectival approach to his subject matter. First is the descriptive method he employs when he cites primary and indigenous sources of the Christian tradition. Second, he uses the comparative method as he is well informed about his topic, according to both Christian and Islamic traditions, and he establishes parallelisms and differences between them successfully. Third, we see an apologetic-polemicist approach not only when he tells us the Islamic account of a certain Christian phenomena, but also when he acquires the role of a Qurʾānic commentator and a Muslim theologian. In the end, Harman’s claims are well-argued, documented and present us with an accomplished multi-perspectival scholarly approach.

7

Conclusion

In general, with respect to bibliographies of DİA entries related to Christianity, we may reasonably conclude that most of them try to let the Christian tradition speak for itself. This is because the entries often refer to Western-Christian sources when giving an account of a certain phenomenon according to Christianity. For instance, Mustafa Sinanoğlu, in the entry “İznik Konsili/Council of Nicea,” refers directly to the selected writings and letters of Athanasius and a collection of council decrees.29 When other authors do not directly refer to the primary works of the Christian tradition, they gather their information mostly from secondary Western sources. It is not only the bibliographies that reveal the attitude of DİA, but also the ways in which the authors approach their subject matter. As a result, DİA attempts to keep an unbiased and scholarly approach towards Christianity. In respect to terminology, we may reasonably argue that there is no standard in the Turkish study of Christianity. However, I am also aware that a self-critique has been initiated in the Turkish academia on the issue of terminology in the study of religions. For example, in June 2011, the History of Religions Department of Istanbul University’s Faculty of Theology initiated a coordination meeting in Istanbul. One of the primary issues of this meeting was the problem of terminology in the Turkish study of religions other than Islam. Thus, despite some methodological flaws, I suggest that DİA is quite successful in distancing itself from an anti-Christian or anti-Western ideology. However, as I have tried to demonstrate thus far, DİA acquires a rather

29

Mustafa Sinanoğlu, “İznik Konsili,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2001) 23: 549–552.

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European-Catholic centered attitude in dealing with Christianity with respect to its history and theology. Due to its prevalent Eurocentric scholarly approach over the past century, in modern Turkey the term “Christianity” often indicates the Latin Church. As also noted above, various DİA entries primarily focus on Catholicism and the Catholic practices as “the envoy of Christianity.” For example, even the definition of Church indicates the Catholic Church rather than other denominations. Likewise, while Church history concentrates upon the Western Christianity of Europe, namely the Catholic Church and the Reformation, history of the Orthodox Church is only briefly mentioned. However, history of other Eastern Churches is almost totally ignored. Likewise, although there was no separate entry on the Armenian Church in the initial edition of the encyclopedia, the second edition includes an Addendum volume that houses an entry entitled “İstanbul Ermeni Patrikhânesi/Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate.”

Bibliography In Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Adam, Baki. “Hıristiyanlık: Hıristiyanlık ve Diğer Dinler,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Aydın, Mehmet. “Hıristiyanlık: Kutsal Metinler ve Dini Literatür,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Aydın, Mehmet. “Hıristiyanlık: Hıristiyan İnançları,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Aydın, Mehmet. “Hıristiyanlık: Mâbed ve İbadet,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Aydın, Mehmet. “Hıristiyanlık: Mezhepler ve Tarikatler,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Aydın, Mehmet. “Kilise,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 26. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002. Cilacı, Osman. “Havâri,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 16. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1997. Cilacı, Osman. “Barnaba İncili,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 5. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1992. Demirci, Kürşat. “Hıristiyanlık: Giriş ve Tarih,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 17. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998. Harman, Ö. Faruk. “İncil,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 22. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2000.

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Harman, Ö. Faruk. “Konsil,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 26. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002. Harman, Ö. Faruk. “Meryem,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 29. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2004. Harman, Ö. Faruk. “Endüljans,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 11. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1995. Harman, Ö. Faruk. “Ahd-i Atîk,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988. Kahraman, Kemal. “The Encyclopaedia of Islam,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 11. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1995. Şahin, M. Süreyya. “Aforoz,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988. Sinanaoğlu, Mustafa. “İznik Konsili,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 23. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2001. Tanyu, Hikmet. “Ahd-i Cedȋd,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 1. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1988.

Others Frank, Karl Suso. “Petrus,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, 2011 [date accessed: 08 October 2011], http://www.brillonline .nl.proxy.uchicago.edu/subscriber/entry?entry=bnp_e916730. McGuckin, John Anthony. An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Nathan R, Kerr. “Sacraments,” in The Encylopedia of Protestantism, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand, Vol. 4. New York: London, 2004. Neuner, Peter. “Apostolic Session,” in Religion Past and Present, edited by Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browing, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel. Vol. 1. Leiden: Boston, 2007. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London-New York: Routledge, 2004. Zebiri, Kate. Muslims and Christians Face to Face. Oxford: Oneworld, 1997.

Chapter 6

New Methods for Understanding Political Islam Tradition-Constituted Rationality and the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning in the Work of Naʾini Ali Abedi Renani and Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat

1

Introduction

Understanding religion, including Islam, is an issue of high importance. However, understanding religious texts is complicated on account of their sanctity, on the one hand, and on the other, because of the time interval between their composition and ourselves.1 This interval paves the way for the emergence of different interpretations. This chapter borders on hermeneutic and contextualist theories. According to hermeneutics, religious texts are closely related to the conditions in which they were first compiled. Each text is written or revealed in a specific context and culture, and is influenced by that culture. For a correct understanding of any text, the presuppositions and socio-cultural conditions in which the text is written should be considered. Without understanding these assumptions, the text cannot be applied in another era, as new problems and issues arise.2 Abdul Karim Soroush, the contemporary religious intellectual, holds that revelation is the result of the prophets’ spiritual experience, and believes that the Qurʾān was compiled by the Prophet. In his view, the Prophet played an active role in compiling the Qurʾān, and the Qurʾānic rules were in line with his understanding and his contemporary knowledge and culture.3 Our view differs from this hermeneutical view in that we do not consider the Qurʾān to be the result of the Prophet’s spiritual experience. For us, the Prophet, as a servant of God, has submissively received the message of God.

1 Alford T. Welch, “Introduction-Problems and Perspectives,” in Studies in Qur’an and Tafsir, ed. Alford T. Welch, Journal of the American Academy of Religion (thematic 2 issue) 47 (1979): 630. 2 Abdullah Saeed, Islamic Thought: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 150–1. 3 Abdul Karim Soroush, “Muhammad is the creator of the Qur’an,” Baztabe Andishe, no. 96 (2009): 10 (in Farsi).

© Abedi Renani and Sarparast Sadat, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_007

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However, we admit that God and His prophets speak to people according to their culture and understanding, and in a sense, “in proportion with the people’s intellect.”4 God employs conventional meanings of the words to convey His purpose. Unless the Sharia has set a religious meaning for a word, it will have a conventional meaning.5 For instance, the criterion introduced by the Sharia for the permission of selling impurities such as blood and the dead body is to have reasonable interests, which can only be judged by conventions and might differ through time.6 In our view, there is no conflict between the divine authorship of the Qurʾān and its relevance for changing social conditions. If the Qurʾān was revealed in the present age, it might have had different rulings and practices. But its general spirit would probably be no different from that of the current Qurʾān. There might be differences in some penal rules, or, for example, in the Qurʾānic description of beautiful women7 in Paradise, camels, etc. The main themes of the Qurʾān—monotheism, theism, justice, and so on—would, however, remain in tact. Unlike the latter, examples such as Paradise and camels do not constitute the main intended meaning of the Qurʾān. In what follows we are looking for a way that, while accepting the possibility of changing our understanding of the Qurʾān over time, such changes nevertheless betray a certain stability of meaning. We claim that with linguistic theories such as rawhʾ al-mʾany, the theory of the spirit of meaning (hereafter, TSM) provides an inner logic, which grants a continuity to the new interpretation of the Qurʾān. An early application of this theory can be seen in the political thought of Mohammad-Hossein Naʾini during the Iranian constitutional movement in the 19th century. Although he did not make explicit reference to this theory, his thought can be explained and developed on such a basis. Our aim here is to explain the TSM’s potential for rearranging and updating Islamic political thought through reconstructing Naʾini’s thought. The further development and application of this methodology would require separate treatment. Our view is in line with classical and objectivist hermeneutics. On this basis, texts have comprehensible main meanings, which can be discovered by applying correct rules and methods. Emilio Betti (1890–1968) and Eric D. Hirsch

4 Muhammad ibn Yaʿqub al-Kulayni, Kitab al-Kafi (Tehran: Dar al-Kitab al-Islamiya, 1987), Vol. 1, 23. 5 Mohammad Hassan Najafi, Jawāhir al-kalām fī sharḥ sharāʾiʿ al-islām (Beirut: Dar ’Ihya’ alTurath al-’Arabi, 1984), Vol. 22, 47. 6 Murtadha al-Ansari, Kitab al-Makasib (Qom: Dar al-Zakhair, 1991), Vol. 3. 7 The houris.

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(1928–) are among the proponents of objective hermeneutics, who in their critique of modern hermeneutics defended the existence of original meanings for texts and the possibility of discovering them, but in ways which are compatible with different interpretations. Changes in contexts generate multiple interpretations, but this does not mean that the understanding is historical. The correct understanding is a fixed one that can be discerned according to the literal meaning of a text. The literal meaning is the author’s intention, which can be discovered by using linguistic signs and rules. The existence of a single meaning is compatible with there being different interpretations for the text. Multiple interpretations or significances of the text are the results of the text’s relationship with its external environment.8 However, as Hirsch indicates, the only compelling normative principle that lends validity to an interpretation is the original author’s intention.9 Considering the time gap between us and texts imagined to be sacred, it is often impossible to have direct access to the author. For this reason in becomes important to find a systematic way to discover and reconstruct the meaning. Semantic theories, like TSM, help us to find new instances of meaning based on shared functions, thereby aiding us adjust to the intended meaning and adjust it to new conditions. The new meaning, we hope, is what the author would intend if he were addressing us in the new circumstances.

2

Literature (Contexts and Concepts)

We here use two conceptual tools: (1) Alasdair MacIntyre’s idea of traditionconstituted rationality; and (2) TSM. Using these two tools, we can develop concepts and update them for the needs of the day. We develop religious concepts based on the concept of institutionalization. When religious texts belong to the traditional and pre-modern era, some assumptions from traditional life have inevitably been involved in the construction of these texts. One of these assumptions is the concept of simple and close social relationships. Traditional societies were small societies in which people had face-to-face relationships. Therefore, people in such a society were more influenced by personal and moral characteristics than by institutions. In the political arena, the ruler and his advisers could run public affairs directly on account of the small size and simplicity of society. We see this, for example,

8 Eric D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 8. 9 Eric D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 5.

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in the spread of the genre known as the mirrors for princes. The main objective of these, such as Nizam al-Mulk’s Siasat-nameh, has been to protect the established power by offering some individual advice to the ruler.10 Advising political rulers to practice justice and God-fearing, and to be accessible to their people were recurring themes in these advisory letters.11 But in the modern age, with the growth and complexity of the administration of society, individual moral advice to rulers is not very effective. The ruler, even if he is God-fearing and humble, is not able to have sufficient control over all the complex affairs of society. In such an environment, institutions must be formed to monitor and implement policies. Therefore, with the necessity of institutions, it is necessary to develop our understanding of the sociopolitical aspects of religious texts while preserving their main content in a way that is useful for the conditions of the day. The present study seeks to do this. What happened in the Iranian constitutional era of the 19th century CE was a kind of conceptual development of religious concepts. As will be shown below, Naʾini, a constitutionalist jurist in the Qajar era, developed the meaning for some basic religious concepts such as the infallibility of the Imams to extract institutional concepts like parliament, the limitation of power, and power monitoring. In the Islamic sciences, the rules of understanding sacred texts are discussed in uṣūl al-fiqh, translated as the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. According to the traditional view, meaning is conveyed by the Sharia’s choice of a word. The Sharia has purposes and chooses proper words to convey them. The Sharia is wise and, in a sense, the wisest being, so it conveys its meanings following the conventional understanding of the word so that the desired meaning is accessible for the audience.12 To understand religious texts correctly, one must understand the texts in the context of the age of revelation. The meaning of the words in the age of revelation must be examined. However, we should not limit the meaning to that of the revelation age and should examine what those words and texts would mean in the current context. In other words, while the case and context

10

11 12

Javad Tabatabaʾi, A Philosophical Introduction to the History of Political Thought in Iran (Tehran: Kavir, 2003) (in Farsi); also Javad Tabatabaʾi, Ibn Khaldun and Social Sciences: Speech in the Conditions of the Impossibility of Social Sciences in the Islamic Civilization (Tehran: Thaleth Publication, 2011), 184 (in Farsi). Abu Ali Hassan Tusi, Sir al-Muluk (Tehran: Book Translation and Publishing Company, 1977), 53. Muhammad Hussain al-Haeri al-Isfahani, Alfusul Algharawiat fi Al’usul Alfiqhia (Qom: dar ahya’ aleulum alaslamih, 1984), 42.

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in which the revelation of religious orders has occurred help illuminate the correct meaning of these orders, the meaning would not be specific to those cases.13 One way of combining the understanding of the age of revelation with the understanding of the present age is to discover the inner logic that connects these concepts. This logic creates a kind of coherence in understanding. It is this logic that has led the Shari’a in the age of revelation to choose the word for a particular religious meaning, alwade alshar’iyah, and at the same time allows us to reconstruct that meaning in a defensible way for the present age. This reconstruction must be in line with the general spirit of the text so that we do not fall into eclecticism. For this purpose, we can use TSM.

3

The Theory of the Spirit of Meaning (TSM)

According to TSM, the true object of a word is the common spirit or meaning that exists between its various instances. The specific properties of instances do not affect the general meaning. A word can be applied to various material and spiritual instances and can include various layers of meaning. The common element of meaning between these layers constitutes the meaning.14 The meaning of words is set for the spirit of their meanings and functions, and any instance of the word that can accomplish this spirit and function exhibits a kind of real, not metaphorical, usage.15 Based on this, words have multi-level meanings. For example, some Islamic mystics in their interpretation of the term “emigration” in the Qurʾān refer to physical, spiritual, and moral migration, in the sense of discarding immoral traits.16 One of the applications of the theory of the spirit of meaning is in the field of divine attributes. The point is whether divine attributes such as the merciful, the compassionate, and the knowledgeable make sense about God in the

13 14

15 16

Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, the Shiite Principles of Jurisprudence (Qom: The Jurisprudential Center of the Pure Imams, 2001), Vol. 6, p. 539 (in Farsi). Abdollah Mirahmadi and Mona Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” The Quarterly of Kheradname-ye Sadra, no. 91 (2018): 25 (in Farsi). Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 26. Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 29.

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same way as they apply to human beings. According to this theory, commonalities can be found between the different instances of these meanings. The common spirit between the instances is the real object of these words, which in this case is the principle of mercy and knowledge. The privational aspects of these attributes that apply to creatures do not hold for God.17 There are several interpretations of this theory, some of which are briefly described below. 1. Functional development: According to this view, words are formulated for a specific purpose, and over time, anything that can serve this purpose can be the real object of that word. The concepts of bulb and measuring scales are examples of this. Over time, various instances of bulbs and scales have been made, for instance, incandescent, tungsten Halogen, and fluorescent lamps; or mechanical and electronic scales, all of which share their functions. Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai supports this interpretation.18 2. Common meaning: According to this view, the different derivatives of a word have a common meaning. This common meaning is the real object of the word. For example, the root “rajl” meaning “foot” exists in its various derivatives such as “rajil,” “raajel,”“yarjul,”19 all showing some kind of relevance to this core meaning, in the sense of walking on foot. This core meaning can extend to new meanings which all show this relevance; for instance, in the metaphorical phrase “tarajjal alnahar” which means the day started, as if the day has stood on its foot.20 3. The perfection theory of naming: According to this interpretation, names denote the perfect aspects of objects, while deficient characteristics and restrictions have no role in this naming. Light, for example, refers to the perfect figures of brightness and illuminating, and the specific properties of bright things have no role in this designation. Anything with these perfect aspects can be so named. Such usage is real and not metaphorical.21

17 18 19 20 21

Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 26. Seyyed Mohammad Hussein Tabatabai, Al-Mizan Fi Tafsir al-Quran, 5th edition (Qom: Islamic Publications Office, 1996), Vol. 2, 320 (in Arabic). Meaning, respectively, someone strong in walking, pedestrian, and to walk. Hasan Mostafavi, An investigation into the words of the Noble Qur’an (Beirut: Dar alkotobe al-elmiyyah, 2009), Vol. 4, 77 (in Arabic). Seyyed Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, Adab-e-Salah, seventh edition (Qom: Imam Khomeini Publishing House, 1991), 251 (in Farsi). See also H. Farzaneh, D. Heidari. The Spirit of Meaning Theory: Interpretations and Criticisms, Islamic Philosophical Doctrines, 2019, no. 23, pp. 117–131 (in Farsi).

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In this chapter, the first interpretation, i.e., the functional view, is preferred and taken as a basis, because it is consistent with the second interpretation, i.e. the common meaning, and is safe from the metaphysical problems of the third view. We also see this view in the functionalism of the American philosopher William Alston (1921–2009). Alston gives the example of the term memory. The term memory is used for both human beings and computers. But memory has different mechanisms in the two. What makes this assignment meaningful is the common denominator and function of the concept of memory, namely the ability to store information. This is the common function between human beings and computers.22 The functional account in TSM is related to the developmental theory of meaning. Based on this, the interpreter, along with paying attention to the words of the age of revelation, pays attention to social developments.23 This theory is in line with the theory of semantic functionalism and contrasts with the theory of essentialism. According to this theory, we do not look for a common essence but a common function between instances. This common function is the real object of the words. For example, the word “measure” in the Qurʾān does not refer to a specific type of scale, but to the function of measurement. Some commentators of the Qurʾān and mystics attribute the possibility of developing these meanings to the multi-layeredness of the Qurʾān.24 Khomeini introduces TSM as the master key to the knowledge of the Quran.25 According to Tabatabaʾi, disregarding this theory would result in unacceptable results in the interpretation of the Qurʾān, including the denial of the infallibility of the prophets or the physicality of God.26 Tabatabaʾi has applied the theory of functionalism in the field of theology, the study of divine attributes, and the interpretation of the Qurʾān. In his view, the human being is first acquainted with material instances of concepts. But concepts are not just set for material purposes. As a result of their additional needs, human beings invent and employ immaterial and spiritual examples

22

23 24 25 26

William P. Alston, “Can We Speak Literally of God?” In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. William P. Alston (Ed.) (Cornell University Press, 1989), 39–63. Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 23. Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 24. Mousavi Khomeini, Adab-e-Salah, 39. Tabatabai, Al-Mizan Fi Tafsir al-Quran, 5th edition, 1996, Vol. 6, 368.

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of concepts.27 In his view, as long as there is a relevant purpose and spirit for a word, that concept applies to the new instances. For example, as long as there is a purpose relevant to measuring, the concept of scale applies to new instances. In other words, the concept of scale is not restricted to a material scale, and, for instance, can refer to what can assess human deeds. According to Tabatabaʾi, the new use of the words in new instances is initially metaphorical and unreal, but gradually, as a result of greater frequency in its usage, becomes real.28 It is important that in the reconstruction and development of the meaning of words, we do not go beyond the internal criteria and the logic of the text and meet the purpose of the text in the best way. We think MacIntyre’s account of tradition-constituted rationality (TCR) can be used as a method in this regard. On this basis, we are committed to the text and at the same time do not remain limited to it, and based on the internal criteria of the text, achieve a kind of dynamism in understanding. Before proceeding further, we will explain MacIntyre’s account of rationality.

4

Tradition-Constituted Rationality (TCR)

MacIntyre has used this idea to explain the relationship between traditions, but in this chapter, we consider it as a way of understanding a text. These two issues are related, especially if we note that the text is always rooted in a particular tradition and culture. MacIntyre (1988) introduced TCR as an alternative to the Enlightenment’s ideal of universal rationality. According to MacIntyre, any tradition has its own measures of rationality, which reveal themselves in the tradition’s history.29 Any tradition in its intellectual life faces challenges and makes attempts to resolve them based on its own measures of rationality; however, it might fail to do so and encounter an epistemological crisis recognized by its own measures of rationality. The fact that the measures of rationality are traditionconstituted does not mean that traditions are always able to justify their own

27 28 29

Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 56. Mirahmadi and Amanipour, “the Analysis of the Efficiency of the theory of the Spirit of Meaning,” 34. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 365.

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claims. TCR does not lead to relativism. Epistemological crises act as occasions which reveal the inadequacy of a tradition. The tradition makes efforts to pass through them by using its own resources, but sometimes fails to do so, and is forced to borrow from other traditions some resources to overcome this situation. However, the important point is that the diagnosis of the crisis and the application of the borrowed resources must be based on the tradition’s internal measures of rationality.30 This state might be recognized according to the internal standards of the tradition or the theory. Indeed, what is crucial about an epistemological crisis is that it is identified by the very standards of the tradition or the theory in which the epistemological crisis occurs. If the tradition/theory adheres to its own hitherto valid measures, it will fall into an inconsistency in respect of a situation that it cannot handle.31 However, the mere occurrence of some counter-evidence cannot simply falsify a theory or make a narrative or tradition unintelligible. Theories or traditions usually, as MacIntyre has argued, resist an epistemological crisis by providing some new interpretations of their own positions, or bracketing and neglecting the inconsistencies; however, the theory/tradition might reach a critical stage at which it can no longer handle the challenges with its own resources.32 The new theses that resolve an epistemological crisis are either adopted from a new tradition or are the products of “imaginative conceptual innovation”33 and “linguistic innovation”34 from within the tradition itself. The examples of conceptual innovation mentioned by MacIntyre include a new interpretation of the notion of the Trinity in the fourth century, which ended the controversies over the issue at that time, and Aquinas’ attempts to reconcile the Aristotelian and Augustinian traditions.35 Imaginative conceptual innovation and linguistic innovation are in some respects similar to TSM. The Islamic tradition’s encounter with the West led Muslim thinkers to return to their own tradition and offer new interpretations to resolve the crisis of political and religious despotism. Some of them, mostly Muslim jurists like Naʾini and Khorasani, with a strong attachment to the Islamic tradition, did not believe in the superiority of the western tradition; they, rather, claimed that the Western tradition had borrowed resources

30 31

32 33 34 35

Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 365. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science.” In MacIntyre, A. The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3–5. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 355. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 362. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 370. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 362.

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from the Islamic tradition which have led to its development.36 Without this encounter with the West, they might not have discerned this lacuna in their interpretation of the religion.

5

The Application of TCR and TSM in Naʾini’s Work

The concept of sociopolitical and military backwardness and the necessity of political reform in Iran emerged after Iran’s defeat in the first round of RussoPersian War (1804–1813). During this period, following the Russian invasion, Iranian society had the opportunity to look at itself and compare itself with others and understand its political and military backwardness. Iran’s defeat in the Russian wars during the Qajar period left Iranian officials, most notably Abbas Mirza (1789–1833), the Qajar crown prince and the military commander, with questions regarding the reasons for the Russian military superiority.37 According to Nafisi, a result of Iran’s relations with the European powers of Russia, Britain, and France during the Qajar period was that a small number of Iranian intellectuals realized the superiority of the new European civilization and Iran’s backwardness from this movement.38 Among the Shiite jurists of this period, Akhund Khorasani and Naʾini viewed this issue from a jurisprudential perspective and tried to provide answers based on the Sharia. Both jurists found the reason for the backwardness of Muslims in religious and political tyranny. Presenting a democratic interpretation of religion and jurisprudence, they assumed the jurisprudential leadership of the constitutionalist movement in Iran. These jurists tried to justify the limitation of the monarchy with a new interpretation of the Qurʾān and jurisprudence. Their arguments for this were based on religious reasons, and here we can apply MacIntyre’s idea of rationality to their method. The superiority of the technical and political system of the West drew their attention to a particular interpretation of the religious texts. They used conceptual and linguistic innovations to offer a new interpretation of Islam that fits modern requirements. However, it should be noted that in the opinion of these jurists, Muslims, and not the Islamic tradition, were in a critical state, owing to the fact that 36 37

38

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, edited by Javad Varaʾei, 4th edition (Tehran: Boostane Ketabe Qom, 2013), 37. Gholam Hossein Zargarinejad, “Abbas Mirza, the first architect of the new system,” Journal of the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Literature and Humanities, no. 5, 2007: 80 & 85 (in Farsi). Saeed Nafisi, the Social and Political History of Iran in the Contemporary Period (Tehran: Ahura, 2004), 693 (in Farsi).

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they had neglected capacities that should have been used. The Western tradition served as a reminder to these two jurists of the possibility of a new interpretation of these texts. These jurists, as we will see, developed several religious concepts—such as consultation, parliament, and their limitation of power. Although not explicitly using TSM, their new interpretation of religious texts can be understood in its light. Naʾini, as a leading Shiite jurist, faced a problem concerning the issue of tyranny, which the dominant interpretation of the Shiite jurisprudence had been unable to answer. He transferred this issue into the field of jurisprudence and gave it a religious meaning. He did not believe in the superiority of the rival Western tradition over the Islamic tradition, but instead claimed that the West borrowed these concepts from the Islamic tradition.39 In Shiite political thought, the rise of Safavid rule led to the creation of a discourse of a “permitted monarchy” by Shiite jurists like Mohaqqeq al-Karki (1463–1534). In so doing, he sought to legitimize the reign of the world’s only Shiite ruler. The decree of a qualified mujtahid thus legitimized the sultan. This subsequently led to the consolidation of power in the person of the ruler. To find a solution for restraining the absolute power of the sultan, a new discourse was introduced in the constitutional movement. Akhund Khorasani, the designer of this theory, defended the constitutional movement. Naʾini was Khorasani’s assistant in his jurisprudential lessons and was closely acquainted with the constitutional movement. Naʾini thus followed the work of Khorasani by theorizing the idea of constitutional government. Within this context, he wrote “Awaking the Nation and Purifying the Religion”40 (Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah) to explain the foundations of the constitutional system in Islamic society. Therein he argued that the legislation of the shura, i.e. the parliament, limited the sultan’s rule. Naʾini thus sought to limit the monarchy by designing several procedures, as will be explained below.

6

Problems and Solutions for Naʾini

According to MacIntyre, a researcher in a tradition may face a crisis that requires reinterpretation or using resources of a rival tradition. In the case

39 40

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, edited by Javad Varaʾei, 4th edition (Tehran: Boostane Ketabe Qom, 2013), 37 (in Farsi). The full title is: “awaking the Nation and purifying the Religion about the Necessity of the conditionality of the elected Government to reduce the oppression of individuals and make the nation progress.”

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of Naʾini, the crisis he faced was that of a tyrannical monarchy, which he considered to be in clear opposition to Islamic teachings. Naʾini used different descriptions for tyrannical rule, such as “tamlikiyyah” in the sense of possessing the people’s lives, “iʾtisafiyyah” in the sense of forceful conquest, “tasallotiyyah” in the sense of being dominating, and “tahkkomiyyah” in the sense of authoritarianism.41 In such circumstances, Naʾini’s attempt to deny authoritarianism on religious grounds was an innovation. To fend off the charge, he referred to some verses of the Qurʾān against tyranny:42 And is this a favor of which you remind me—that you have enslaved the Children of Israel? (26:22) Shall we believe two men like ourselves, while their people are our slaves? (23:47) The elite of Pharaoh’s people said, ‘Will you leave Moses and his people to cause corruption in the land, and to abandon you and your gods?’ He said, ‘We will kill their sons and spare their women, and indeed we are dominant over them.’ (7:127) They have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allah, and [also] the Messiah, the son of Mary. And they were not commanded except to worship one God; there is no deity except Him.” (9:31) As the last verse shows, according to Naʾini, absolute obedience to sultans, as well as to the arbitrary orders of religious scholars who present their orders in terms of religion, is in fact worshipping them instead of God.43 Some claim that Naʾini was influenced by the Muslim modernists, including Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, the author of the Nature of Despotism,44 in his understanding of the constitutional theory.45 Naʾini states he has written his book with the intention of “informing the people about the necessities of the Sharia and purifying the nation from this heresy.” By heresy, he means tyranny, the most dangerous kind of which is religious tyranny. Naʾini cites verse (9:31) quoted above for rejecting religious

41 42 43 44 45

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 43. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 53. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 58. Tabai al-Istibdad wa-Masari al-Istiʾbad. Abdolhadi Haeri, Shiism and Constitutionalism in Iran (Tehran: Amikabir, 1985), 221.

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tyranny. According to Naʾini, the dark days of the Iranians are the result of the connection between political and religious tyranny. Liberation from religious tyranny is more difficult than that from political tyranny, which itself enforces political tyranny.46 He has employed several strategies based on his religious understanding to combat religious and political tyranny. The first is to use the Quranic verses and concepts which address any kind of tyranny, as was presented above. The second is to use some juridical rules. We will begin with the religious concepts and then with the juridical rules.

7

The Religious Concepts Used by Naʾini

Naʾini infused some Islamic expressions with modern political meanings: 1Taghut was taken as tyranny, 2- shura as democracy, 3- Hurriyat as freedom, 4mosavat as equality, and 5-infallibility, 6-enjoining the good, 7-usurpation all with the necessity of controlling and supervising the political power, as will be explained further below. 7.1 Taghut Taghut is a Qurʾānic term denoting a rebellious and transgressive entity. Everything that pretends to be a deity is referred to as taghut in the Qurʾān. The devil is also called taghut because of his rebellion against God. The rhythm of the term taghut (faʾool) denotes intensity in Arabic. According to Naʾini, the authoritarian system is also a kind of taghut because the tyrant rules according to his whims, and is not responsible for his actions.47 7.2 Shura According to Naʾini, Islam is based on freedom, justice, and consultative rule. During the time of the Prophet and the rule of Imam Ali, we also see this kind of ruling, but in the Umayyad era, it turned into an absolute monarchy, which was one of the main causes of the decline of the Muslims.48 Like other Shiite scholars, Naʾini accepts the exclusive right of the infallible Imams to govern, but in the Aaṣri Alghayba (the age of the absence of the Shia twelfth Imam), as a result of necessity and to ensure justice and equality, Naʾini accepts restriction of the ruling power on religious and rational bases.

46 47 48

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 59. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 43. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 54–5.

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Naʾini justifies an Islamic consultative assembly based on the religious principle of council. Citing verse (3: 159),49 which commands consultation, he argues that this verse is addressed to all people. Also, verse 38 of Surah Shurah indicates that the affairs of Muslims should be handled through consultation.50 The Prophet also consulted with his companions, for example in the battle of Uhud. Most of his companions voted to leave the city. The Prophet accepted their view against his own opinion, although later on, everyone acknowledged that it was a wrong decision.51 Naʾini refers to Imam Ali’s words: “Do not speak to me as you do to the oppressors, do not hesitate to say the word of truth to me and do not refuse to consult me with justice.”52 To justify the legitimacy of majority vote, Naʾini quotes from Imam al-Sadeq, who said that during the Imam’s absence, if there is a dispute between you, refer to the jurists who are familiar with our opinion, and if there is a difference between the jurists, refer to someone who is more just. And if they are the same in this respect, accept what is agreed upon and abandon the rare and infamous hadith.53 As we can see, Naʾini has used religious arguments and concepts to justify shura and council rule. So far, we notice that he has developed the meaning of the original religious concepts such as taghut, hurriyat, and shura and has brought them to the institutional level of ruling by council. In their original meaning, these terms had individual and moral meanings, which have been transferred to an institutional level in the new understanding. 7.3 Hurriyat Naʾini argued that freedom did not mean revolt against God and religion. According to him, all efforts of the prophets in their struggle against the pharaohs were to abolish the monarchy and free human beings from tyranny.54 According to Naʾini, living under an authoritarian and arbitrary system is a form of servitude that is the opposite of freedom. The prophets tried to free the people from this slavery. According to the Qurʾān (26:22), Moses said to Pharaoh “And is it a favor of which you remind me that you have enslaved the children of Israel?”

49 50 51 52 53 54

“… and consult them in the matter.” “who conduct their affairs by consultation.” Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 85. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 86. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 117. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 60.

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Naʾini considers freedom as the greatest divine blessing and the most important purpose of the prophets, which has been neglected due to the people’s negligence.55 He also invokes the principle of shura and enjoining good and forbidding evil, and believes that no one and no principle can violate or cast doubt on this public right.56 7.4 Mosavat According to Naʾini, the basis of an authoritarian government (Sultanate Tamlikiyah) is that the people are subject to the arbitrary whims of the ruler and do not have equal opportunities with him. But in a non-authoritarian government (Sultanate walayatiyah), the people are free from this captivity and are equal to each other and the ruler.57 This equality includes equality in rights, rulings, and punishments;58 however, Naʾini notes that it does not apply to Muslim—non-Muslim relationships.59 7.5 Infallibility Another religious concept used by Naʾini is infallibility. In his opinion, in the era of the absence of the Imam, we do have access to this infallibility, so we must impose an external restriction on the monarchy to prevent its transgressions. Restricting the monarchy and appointing a body of scholars to oversee the laws in these circumstances replace the highest degree of infallibility and piety that we are now deprived of.60 In his opinion, since there is no access to the Infallible Imam in the age of his absence, we should look for external barriers instead of complete infallibility to check far-from-infallible rulers. 7.6 Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil People have the right to monitor their government’s performance because of the taxes they pay to the government. Also, according to the principle of enjoining good and forbidding evil, people have the right to monitor their rulers. Therefore, the enactment of laws and the establishment of parliament are not in conflict with Sharia, because it is a way to monitor the rulers and control their power.61 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 142. Musa Najafi, “Critique and evaluation of social democracy in the political theory of Mirza Naʾini,” Journal of the Faculty of Law and Political Science, no. 32, 206. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 50. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 61. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 66. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 47–8. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 167.

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7.7 Usurpation According to Naʾini, three rights are usurped by a tyrannical government: the right of God, the right of the Infallible Imam, and the right of the people; but a council-based government is only usurping the right of the Imam and therefore involves less corruption. The extent of usurpation in a constitutional government is less than in an authoritarian government, to the degree that is enough to maintain order and security.62 Besides the newly understood religious concepts partly explained above, Naʾini has used some jurisprudential rules in a new way to justify his support of limited political power, as will be explained below.

8

Jurisprudential Rules

8.1 Possible Extent (qadri maqdur) According to this jurisprudential rule, religious duties are obligatory in proportion with human ability, and the human being has no religious duty beyond his ability. Using this rule, Naʾini holds that the proposed government of the constitutional system is not the most desirable Islamic government; however, in the special circumstances of the constitutional revolution, and generally in the absence of the Imam, it is better than Qajar dictatorship, and we do not have a better option available.63 In such circumstances, the parliament acts as a monitoring and rectifying body, “qowwah mosaddadeh‌ va radaeʾah kharjiyah,” as much as possible to prevent a constitutional government from becoming authoritarian.64 8.2 Preliminary to the Obligatory Matter (moqadamah wajib) To justify the legitimacy of law-making, Naʾini appeals to a jurisprudential rule called preliminary to the obligatory matter. According to this rule, if an act is obligatory, its necessary preliminaries become obligatory as well. For instance, if prayer is obligatory, ablution, as its preliminary, becomes obligatory. In the same way, since controlling tyranny is necessary and obligatory, its preliminaries, like law-making, become necessary and obligatory. Therefore, not only is law-making not heretical, as claimed by the opponents of the constitutional movement, but it is in fact obligatory.65 62 63 64 65

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 78. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 90. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 89. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 108–9.

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To the objection that the enactment of laws, and obliging people to follow them are a kind of heresy, Naʾini responds that the enactment of laws is heretical if they are enacted as divine rules. To guarantee the compatibility of the laws with the rules of Sharia, supervision of lawmaking by a panel of religious scholars is sufficient.66 8.3 Primary and Secondary Rulings In justifying the legitimacy of law-making, Naʾini uses the division between primary and secondary rulings in Shariʿa. Primary rulings are set by the Shariʿa and are not subject to conditions, but secondary rulings are time-bound and subject to change. Primary rulings, unlike secondary rulings, are consultable, and it is sufficient for them not to oppose explicit religious rulings. Secondary rulings can be set by lawmakers, and a panel of scholars checks their compatibility with primary rulings.67 As the above indicates, Naʾini has developed the meaning and application of some religious concepts, such as infallibility and usurpation, and jurisprudential rules. His method was precisely in line with an institutional understanding of religion. He developed the concept of infallibility and usurpation from an individual to an institutional level. The institutional supervision by religious scholars of political power is an extension of the concept of infallibility, or a parliament is an institutional form of the concept of council and consultation. Without this semantic development and institutional understanding of religion, an understanding of religion that fits the requirements of the modern age cannot be achieved. This development has occurred based on an account of rationality that is rooted in the Islamic tradition. In our view, Naʾini has implicitly used a functional account of TSM by developing the meaning of some religious and jurisprudential concepts and principles, as outlined above. This development would ensure the best fulfillment of the original functions of those concepts according to the new requirements of the age. Therefore, this development is in line with the rationality embodied in the Islamic tradition. This method can and should be taken further to produce new concepts based on religious ideas. There are many Qurʾānic and religious concepts capable of such a development, denoting the negation of imposing faith,68 tyranny,69 and leniency with the people.70 All these concepts can 66 67 68 69 70

Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 135. Naʾini, Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, 135. “You (the Prophet) are not over them a controller” (Qurʾān, 88:22). “Thus does Allah seal up the heart of every arrogant, tyrant” (Qurʾān, 40:35). “Thus it is due to mercy from Allah that you deal with them gently, and had you been rough, hard hearted, they would certainly have dispersed from around you” (Qurʾān, 3:159).

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Core meanings and institutionalized meaning

Verse no.

Text

Core meaning

88:22

You (the Prophet) are not over them a controller. Thus does Allah seal up the heart of every arrogant, tyrant. Go to Pharaoh. Indeed, he has transgressed. (20:24) [Moses] said, “My Lord, expand for me my breast.” He (Pharaoh) intimidated his nation, so they obeyed him, for they were a sinning nation. And Pharaoh led his people astray and did not guide [them]. Recall the time when We delivered you from the slavery of Pharaoh’s people. They had inflicted a dreadful torment on you: they killed your sons and let your daughters live. And in this there was a hard trial for you from your Lord. So go to him and say, “Indeed, we are messengers of your Lord, so send with us the Children of Israel and do not torment them.”

Negation of religious tyranny Negation of individual tyranny

40:35

20:25

43:54

(20:79)

(2:49)

20:47

Negation of sociopolitical tyranny

Institutionalized expanded meaning

Respecting the rights of religious minorities Separation of Powers

Negation of sociopolitical tyranny

Limited power

Negation of religious and sociopolitical tyranny Negation of sociopolitical tyranny

Election

Negation of sociopolitical tyranny

Legitimacy of protest

Power monitoring

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be institutionalized and developed to produce a deliberative, participatory, and non-despotic political system. A brief attempt is seen in table 6.1. Ideas such as denying the role of dominator to the Prophet and fighting with the Pharaoh for the deliverance of the people have clear anti-despotic meanings, which can be institutionalized for the modern age through limiting political power by means of parliaments, elections, etc. For instance, the first verse in the table states the point that the Prophet should just deliver the divine message to people; rather than forcing them to accept it. The people should be encouraged and persuaded to accept it but should be immune from coercion and threats in this regard. The institutional implications of this view are clear. Society should not be organized based on religious intimidation and discrimination. Public goods such as welfare, education, health, and employment should not be distributed on the basis of religious discrimination. This institutional development of the meanings is in line with TSM and TCR; because it develops the meaning according to the internal standards of a tradition, and in a way that fulfills the original function of the terms more adequately according to new circumstances.

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Conclusion

From the Muslim point of view, the Qurʾān and the Islamic hadiths are the eternal guides of life. Although these sources emerge from their specific conditions, the core of their message can be adapted and applied to current circumstances. With the systematic development of these concepts, they can be updated and used for the modern era. One of the requirements of modern life is to pay attention to institutions and structures along with the role of individuals. In this chapter, we aligned with classical and objectivist hermeneutics based on the work of Emilio Betti and Eric Hirsch. The main theme of this kind of hermeneutics, as opposed to modern hermeneutics, is that the author’s intended meaning should not be sacrificed. We also argued that an early attempts of this can be seen in Naʾini’s jurisprudential and political thought. He extended religious concepts such as taghut, infallibility, and shura, and brought them to the institutional level, considering institutions such as elections, parliament, and check on political power. Expanding the meaning of these concepts, we can achieve a democratic system that, of course, cannot be considered as the full equivalent of liberal democracies, but one that has commonalities with them in terms of limited power. We presented this development along the lines of TSM and TCR; because through this change, the new extended meanings better fulfill the function of the original concepts and are

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based on a kind of rationality internal to the Islamic tradition and preserve its integrity. Naʾini’s methodology can be taken further by extending the meanings of the verses and hadiths which oppose religious and political domination.

Bibliography Al-Ansari, Murtadha. Kitab al-Makasib. Qom: Dar al-Zakhair, 1991. Al-Haeri al-Isfahani, Muhammad Hussain, Alfusul Algharawiat fi Al’usul Alfiqhia. Qom: dar ahya’ aleulum alaslamih, 1984. Al-Harrani, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan bin Shu’ba. Tuhaf al-Uqul. Qom: The Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, 1404 AH. Al-Kulayni, Muhammad ibn Yaʿqub. Kitab al-Kafi. Tehran: Dar al-Kitab al-Islamiya, 1407 AH. Alston, William P. “Can We Speak Literally of God? In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology.” William P. Alston (Ed.), 39–63. New York: Cornell University Press, 1989. Farzaneh, H. Heidari, D. The Spirit of Meaning Theory: Interpretations and Criticisms, Islamic Philosophical Doctrines, 2019, no. 23 (in Farsi). Fazel Lankarani, Mohammad. The Shiite Principles of Jurisprudence. Qom: the Jurisprudential Center of the Pure Imams, 2001 (in Farsi). Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. U.K.: Sheed and Ward Ltd., 1975. Haeri, Abdolhadi. Shiism and Constitutionalism in Iran. Tehran: Amikabir, 1985 (in Farsi). Held, David. Models of Democracy, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. Hirsch, Eric D. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science.” In MacIntyre, A. The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Mirahmadi, Abdollah and Amanipour, Mona. “The Analysis of the Efficiency of the Theory of the Spirit of Meaning.” The Quarterly of Kheradname-ye Sadra, no. 91 (2018) (in Farsi). Mostafavi, Hasan. An investigation into the words of the Noble Qur’an, Beirut: Dar al-kotobe al-elmiyyah, 2009 (in Farsi). Mousavi Khomeini, Seyyed Ruhollah, Adab-e-Salah, seventh edition, Qom: Imam Khomeini Publishing House, 1991(in Farsi). Naʾini, Mohammad Hossein. Tanbih al-Ummah va Tanzih al-Mellah, edited by Javad Vara’ei, 4th edition. Tehran: Boostane Ketabe Qom, 2013 (in Farsi).

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Nafisi, Saeed. The Social and Political History of Iran in the Contemporary Period. Tehran: Ahura, 2004 (in Farsi). Najafi, Mohammad Hassan. Jawāhir al-kalām fī sharḥ sharāʾiʿ al-islām. Beirut: Dar ’Ihya’ al-Turath al-’Arabi, 1984. Najafi, Musa. “Critique and evaluation of social democracy in the political theory of Mirza Naʾini.” Journal of the Faculty of Law and Political Science, no. 32 (in Farsi). Saeed, Abdullah. Islamic Thought: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Soroush, Abdul Karim. Straight Paths, 4th edition. Tehran, Serat Cultural Institute, 2001 (in Farsi). Soroush, Abdul Karim. “Muhammad is the creator of the Qur’an.” Baztabe Andishe, no. 96 (2009) (in Farsi). Tabatabaʾi, Javad. A Philosophical Introduction to the History of Political Thought in Iran. Tehran: Kavir, 2003(in Farsi). Tabatabaʾi, Javad. Ibn Khaldun and Social Sciences: Speech in the Conditions of the Impossibility of Social Sciences in the Islamic Civilization. Tehran: Thaleth Publication, 2011(in Farsi). Tabatabai, Seyyed Mohammad Hussein, Al-Mizan Fi Tafsir Al-Quran, 5th edition, Qom: Islamic Publications Office, 1996 (in Farsi). Thaler, Richard H. and Sunstein, Cass R. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. USA: Yale University Press, 2009. Tusi, Abu Ali Hassan. Sir al-Muluk. Tehran: Book Translation and Publishing Company, 1977 (in Farsi). Zargariejad, Gholam Hossein. “Abbas Mirza, the first architect of the new system.” Journal of the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Literature and Humanities, no. 5, 2007 (in Farsi).

Chapter 7

Recontextualizing Islam in the Social and Collective Memory Tracing the Sociogenesis of Martyrdom in Türkiye Meral Durmuş and Bahattin Akşit

1

Introduction: How Are Martyrs Made in Modern Türkiye?

The sociological perspective in the study of Islam within various Islamic contexts, specifically examining martyrdom as a societal culture within the Turkish Islam context, renders the potential to answer the question of how and why martyrs are being made today despite the century long modernization process of the secular state founded and officially named as the Republic of Türkiye, following the end of the long legacy of the Ottoman rule. According to official numbers, with 99.8 percent of the population being initially registered by the state as Muslim, Islam is and has been the largest religion in Türkiye since the Republic was proclaimed in 1923. The transformation from the Empire to the full republican constitution (with no official religion) in a transitional yet societal manner was made possible through an institutional religious control apparatus, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (1924), abbreviated as DİB in Turkish, and depicted as a successor to the Shaykh al-Islam, after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate). Notwithstanding the purely secular republic established, DİB has played and currently plays an important role in connecting society (Turkish people) to the nationstate (Turkish Republic) through religion (Turkish Islam) by reconciling the dichotomy between secularism and religion, thereby consolidating the innate religion-state relation through the years. Furthermore, in relation to the martyr cult constantly reproduced and sustained within the context of Turkish Islam, the sociological approach has implications for the importance of prevalent socio-political norms, practices, and institutions in the construction of individuals’ social positioning, identity or citizenship in relation to their personal ‘religiosity’ (taken as the subjective appropriation or the individuation of religion, resulting in the personalization of religion) and subsequently, to their ‘religioperformativity,’ a portmanteau word which is further elaborated in the following sections (largely in the main body of literature) as a conceptualization special to this chapter.

© Meral Durmuş and Bahattin Akşit, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_008

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According to system justification (or “group justification”) theory1 individuals are supporters and victims of the system-instilled norms, motivated to accept, adhere, defend, bolster and justify aspects of the societal status quo; namely the existing social, economic, and political systems alongside those of the ongoing religious norms integrated into various domains of life, all of which are ‘intrinsically imposed’ on society at an unconscious level of awareness. Since agency and submission, the crucial pair in subject formation constitute the core of bodily embodiment, it is to be argued that the secularity of the state can merge with the religiosity of the individual not just because the individual is eminently a part of the society, but largely through the sharing of the societal culture by the majority of individuals constituting the society. Thus, the establishment of cultural codes shaping gender and power relations via all collectivities (collective consciousness/identity/behavior/action/memory and public opinion) important in backing up the martyr cult prevalent in most Muslim societies today is to be discussed through the role of the justified societal culture and societal assent in the Turkish context; firstly by taking into account symbolic interactionism, with the individual taken to be both an ultimate partner and an actor in society (with a group/national identity and as the carrier of public opinion), and secondly, through debating the role of “collective memory” (borrowing from Halbwachs)2 in constructing societal-cognitive maps pertaining to religion (Islam) in transforming the cultural mind of the Turkish society.

1 For the initial theory see J.T. Jost, and M.R. Banaji, “The Role of Stereotyping in SystemJustification and the Production of False Consciousness.” British Journal of Social Psychology, 33 (1994): 1–27. For the evaluation of the past twenty years of the theory, see J.T. Jost, M.R. Banaji, and B.A. Nosek, “A Decade of System: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” International Society of Political Psychology. 25, no. 6 (2004): 881–919. Here Jost and Banaji (with Nosek) argue that, distinctive to the theory, “a general ideological motive to justify existing social order (…) observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness” reproduces the “group justification” theory (p. 881). The theorists claim current evidence showing “people are motivated to (…) hold favorable attitudes toward the existing social system and the status quo.” They conclude that “human beings accommodate, internalize and even rationalize key features of their social constructed environments, especially those features that are difficult or impossible to change,” which has “vast social and political implications (emphasis added) that may help us understand why the status quo exerts such a powerful hold on us, whether or not it serves our interests, and whether or not we are aware of its influence.” (p. 91). 2 Maurice Halbwachs. On Collective Memory, ed. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992).

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Notes on Methodology

As part of the PhD research, in-depth interviews were carried out (between 2018 February–2019 May within the study field of Istanbul) with a total number of 60 participants (aged between 19–90), 15 of them a group made up of veterans and the close family members of both veterans and martyrs. The research participants’ ideas and views on state and religion in general, on martyrdom and veteran-status in particular were thoroughly inquired and evaluated. In the study of issues concerning the sociology of the body, especially those relating to the life or death of the body, such as in the specific case of the the holy martyr as an initially religious embodiment (embodied religious experience), the examination of body/embodiment through discourse analysis is important in understanding the religio-political operating as the ultimate societal expression. The interviews conducted revealed important discourse on the role of religion and state in the making of the Turkish holy martyr. 2.1

Researching Religion as the Unifying/Binding Constituent of Society in Türkiye As the master narrative in the social scientific study of religion has been the secularization paradigm for many decades, the social and political role of religion in modern times and in modernizing Muslim societies is not very often discussed. Islamic modernity is bound to religion in a unique way, animating all aspects of life in being the undoubted traditional religious consciousness of Muslim societies.3 The most unifying constituent of the society in Türkiye is thought to be the religion (Islam) today, verified by the majority of the participants of the field research.4 Hence, the importance of taking a contextual approach in deconstructing the concept of martyrdom is critical to the study of religion. 2.2

Reflecting on Religion as Meaning in the Cultural Mind of the Turkish Society With regard to relationships in a society and the production of meaning, research methods used to study collective phenomena must entail symbolic interactionism and collective memory as they play a huge role in societal

3 Sami Zubaida, “Islam and Secularization.” Asian Journal of Social Science 33, no. 3 (2005): 438–48. Accessed May 11, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23654381. 4 Meral Durmuş, “Three generations of martyrdom-veteran/ghazi status root paradigm within the cognitive map of ‘political-cultural Turkish Islam’ society.” (Unpublished PhD diss., Maltepe University, 2020): 85, 238.

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assent. Moreover, the link between the past and present of a social phenomenon not only sheds light on the societal process going on and operating through time, but constitutes its meaningfulness or relevance to a specific society, the context, just at that particular time and space. Once again the contextuality perspective, versus the classical textuality method, is crucial to understanding the role of religion taken ‘out of context’ by the political, as in the case of the martyr/dom of modern Türkiye. As Durkheim affirms that “all that is historical is sociological,”5 the study of the past permits the sociological understanding of the present, hence, every social phenomena should be approached as socio-historically constituted. In line with Durkheim’s affirmation, Foucault’s assertion that embodied material subjectivity (body/subject formation) is socio-historically constructed by “power” always operating through discourse6 is to be addressed in the discussion part of this chapter. The answer to the question of how martyrs are made today lies beneath a deeper question that needs a reply: “As seen in its portrayal today, where does the social reality of martyrdom exclusive to the Turkish society fit in the overall political-cultural Turkish Islam framework drawn throughout the historical process?”7 A satisfying answer must entail all the various administrative dynamics of military, judicial, religious and social dimensions related to the religio-historical context of the subject matter. Moreover, according to the sociological approach while culture, socialization and social order constitute the basis of social context, groups (families, associations, organizations, nations) are the top organized contexts in societal life, producing less organized contexts like collective behavior. Geertz’s anthropological reading of Islam as “meaning” for social order and living culture constructing “frames of perception” and “blueprints for conduct,”8 is tested here. Almost all of the research participants criticized DİB for not being proactive, yet the majority (55 participants out of 60) thought that such an institution is necessary and should continue to prevail.9 Thus, the research findings verify that cultural collectivities, normativities and imaginaries constructing “the 5 Eric Malczewski, “Durkheim and the Nation.” Istanbul University Journal of Sociology 39, no. 1 (Jun. 2021): 44 https://doi.org/10.26650/SJ.2019.39.1.00.13. 6 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995): 136–138. Foucault emphasizes the power of discipline (disciplinary power/practices) in the production of subjected and practiced bodies (“docile bodies” in “obedience” and “strict subjection”) and hence, the construction of historical bodies, culturally-infused and situated in “a relation of docility-utility.” 7 This is the main question raised and sought after throughout the PhD research. 8 Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968): 98. 9 Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 205.

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mind of all”10 all relate to the principle of order and social control through the production of meaning. Besides, religions address the mortality of the body, both in controlling the human body and sustaining social order via the notions of salvation and predestination. Reading religious practices as “a semiograph of the social” gives the solution to “the misfortune to be averted, the crises to be overcome, the blessings hoped for, and the imagination of eternal happiness.”11 2.3 Answering “Why Do People Seek Martyrdom in Modern Türkiye?” Looking at martyrdom from the lens of society by asking this alternative question is another way, in fact the other way around, to explain how modern martyrs are made. Because societies are the everyday lived reality of commonculture constructs, reflecting shared practices, values and beliefs of groups, and general patterns of daily interaction of groups across social contexts creating social behavior; the choices, perceptions, experiences and motivations behind the actions of individuals must be analyzed through the master constructs or structures giving meaning and shaping the way of life of societies. Islam is the “sacred canopy”12 of meaning for the Turkish society as a whole. Knowing that the traditional religious consciousness of Muslim societies continues to transform the mentalities and psyches of the Muslims in the modern world, shaping the culture of Muslim societies, and realizing that the social structure of religion exists in a much larger social context than the individual’s religious experience, helps keep in mind that the individual’s religion is inseparable from the religion of the society/culture in practical life. The term religioperformativity13 used in this chapter to denote the agency/performativity of the individual as a religious actor is not only dependent on the religiosity 10

11

12 13

Foucault’s perception of the mind of all (conceptualized here to denote the cultural mind of society) can be summed up as “a surface of inscription for power” in order to control ideas, through “the submission of bodies” (individual and collective) to the medium of language/discourse. In this sense, Halbswach’s “collective memory” is a constituent part of the cultural mind, as it is both the meaning for and the memory of society. [See M. Halbwachs. On Collective Memory, ed. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992).] Martin Riesebrodt, Religion in the Modern World: Between Secularization and Resurgence, 7. EUI MWPLS, 2014/01 (retrieved from Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository, at: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/29698). Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy; Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967). ‘Religioperformativity’ is a portmanteau blend of the terms ‘religiosity’ and ‘performativity.’ While the concept of religiosity denotes the subjective appropriation and individuation/personalization of religion, the concept of performativity is a adopted from

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of the individual per se but on the ‘total religiosity’ lived in the society/culture, of which he/she is a part of.

3

The Body Politics of the Modern State: From Islamic Martyrdom to the Secularization of Martyrdom as Societal Culture

Viewed through the lens of narratives of martyrdom in the context of Türkiye, in-depth interview data analysis of the research conducted put forth “willing to become a martyr” (şehit olmayı istemek) as the most repeated expression/discourse brought forward by all participants:14 Sentences like “I wanted so much to become a martyr,” “My brother does not say he wants to be a soldier, he says he wants to be a martyr,” “I hope martyrdom is predestined for me” and “I wish I was a martyr” are common examples from the participants’ discourses (tabulated, p. 171). Martyrdom is, first and foremost, a religiously inspired concept/act with a long tradition for the Muslim-majority society of Türkiye. Hence, by looking at holy death as an agentive, ‘desiring’ self performativity that relates to a whole new way of constructing body politics based on religious faith, cultural traditions, localized moral values, sociality and politics; this chapter examines martyrdom broadly as a social phenomenon, but more specifically as a religioperformativity, recurring as a social construct, in a social context. Elaborating on social constructs and contexts within the history of Türkiye, Turkish Islam comes to refer to the cultural and social forms by which the Islamic faith is expressed in the Turkish society. First used by Fallers,15 the term relates to cultural aspects (local social constructs) that in many ways furnish the Islamic fact (without representing the real core of the faith)

14 15

Butler’s theory on ‘performativity.’ Essential to Butler’s theory of “performing the self” is the notion of the living self as the performing/performative agent in the process of self-making, otherwise put, the self in performance. According to this theory, religious identity (the religious self/the religious individual) is merely “the performative accomplishment” of religiously dictated and enacted persistent regulatory performances materialized over time [Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997): 463]. Shortly put, religioperformativity denotes the materialization of religious identity through performing religion. Henceforth, religioperformativity is used in this chapter as a conceptualization to mark the religious agent as being the object rather than the subject of the religious identity or religiosity adopted, continually maintained (materialized) through social interactions. Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 29, 171, 196. Lloyd A. Fallers, Guide to the Lloyd A. Fallers Papers 1937–1977 [Box 45 Folder 4, 5 & 6–7] “Turkish Islam” conference proceedings. (Special Collections Research Center. University of Chicago Library.)

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yet while giving certain shape to Islam and influencing forms of expression, association or religious agency, reflecting those peculiar to the Turkish people: Turkish Islam is itself the very context of Türkiye in being the ‘Turkish case of Islam.’ Through the course of tracing the well-established martyrdom cult for several generations within the Turkish Islam context and making sense of the tradition of “willing to become a martyr,” the field work further revealed that martyrdom today is understood not merely as “dying in the name of God” (Allah yolunda ölmek)16 but as self-sacrifice for a higher cause over mere individual survival, an act of solidarity and fighting for others, defending national security or serving as a symbol of the national community, or as a bodily performance in defence of the nation-state. The shift from the sacred (God) to the profane (nation-state) is observable. But it is important to point out here that putting too much emphasis on the ‘national martyr,’ using current labels such as Yenen’s “official martyr” or Scolari’s “state martyr” has the danger of dismissing the ongoing role of religion, especially the part religious embodiment as the ‘individualized societal culture’ plays in shaping the modern martyr.17 With too much concentration on the nation-state martyr side of the modern martyr, agency and religioperformativity enhanced through discursive practices that are themselves performed by iterating rhetoric patterns and narrative models is either overlooked or commonly disregarded. Making use of Islamic

16

17

Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 92–96, 175, 189, 191, 251–252. Dying/becoming a martyr in the name of God (Allah yolunda ölmek/şehit olmak) is an old definition in the Islamic-Turkish lexicon used rarely today in modern Turkish. Only but a few participants use “dying/becoming a martyr in the name of God” to depict martyrdom, while they clearly emphasize that it is inclusive of “the sacrifice for the nation/state,” which clearly signifies martyrdom in the name of vatan/millet. In the making of the nation-state martyr, the essential role played by religious embodiment as the ‘individualized societal culture’ in the Turkish context should not be dismissed. All practices exalting the martyr, whether dircursive practices of language/rhetoric or non-discursive practices of official/media representation, memorialization and commemoration (functioning as the post-act narratives of martyrdom) are the religious legitimizing/justifying elements for the individual. Religious embodiment (embodied religion) as the unconscious acquisition of religious practices (embodied religious practices) expressing religion’s power and authority on the figure/body of the martyr is individualized every time it is reproduced in “willing to become a martyr.” For “official martyr” see A. Yenen, “Legitimate Means of Dying: Contentious Politics of Martyrdom in the Turkish Civil War (1968–1982).” Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019); for “state martyr” see B. Scolari, State Martyr. Representation and Performativity of Political Violence (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2019). https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771 /9783845299372/state-martyr.

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references in the production of discourse is essential in the reproduction of ‘religiosity’ and hence the constancy of religioperformativity. Additionally, a dominant concept that needs to be taken into consideration when discussing martyrdom in any Muslim society is the doctrine of predestination. Concerning the eventual fate and eternal destiny of the individual and his/her body, the doctrine is closely related to societal assent in eliciting total submission to the will of God. As martyrdom is understood as “the will of God” (Allah nasip ederse/etsin),18 meaning to be not accidental (according to premonition narratives) but ordained by fate or divine will, “willing to become a martyr” emerges as the end product of Islamic religious thinking. It is a common belief that the martyr is rewarded by the highest rank in heaven (şehitlik mertebesi).19 Discourse analysis conveys that the exaltation of martyrdom recruited through metaphysical beliefs, myths, liturgical rituals and sacred practices is further enhanced by the doctrine dominant in modern Türkiye. The loss of the martyr compensated for dichotomously through exaltation of bodily death for a holy cause, a death that is both religious (heavenly) and nationalistic (memorialization and rights/benefits provided by the sovereign state), binds predestination to societal assent: The will of God for the martyr connects with his/her sacrifice for the nation. 3.1

Body Politics as Sacralization: The Sacred in Politics as the Religionization of Politics It is important to emphasize that the field research findings put forth a correlation between soci(et)al and collective memory in the case of the Turkish martyrdom: While the dominant religious nationalistic discourse constructed martyrdom as a religion-based collectivity in the memory of the Turkish people today, the progression to dying for the nation—consciousness recruited from the nation-building process onwards—constructed a state-indexed martyrdom in the common/everyday consciousness of Turkish society.20 Türkiye is a good example of a modern Muslim society in that it is both religious (Muslim populated) and nationalistic (secular state governed). As far as adherence to both doctrines (religious and nationalistic) modern Turkish society can be said to be an important ‘Muslim nationalist ideology’ carrier of Islamic values where modern state legal codes are duely operative. The Islamic codes of conduct (societal value production) unquestionably go together with secular

18 19 20

Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 171,190–193, 195. Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 171, 262. Ibid., 173, 262.

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codes of law (state rule production), enabling a ‘Turkish Islam nation-state’ law enactment legitimization of the Turkish Republic on behalf of the Turkish people. Research findings also showed that martyrdom as the societal culture in question, when taken both with its inherent religious denotations and the contemporary secular denotations closely linked to the nation state, almost always relates to ‘holy death.’ Hence, the course of ‘martyrdom in Islam’ becoming synonymous with ‘the martyrdom in Türkiye’ for the Turkish people today should be addressed as a societal process within the realm of the politics of ‘holy’ death.21 Today ‘martyrdom in Islam’ and ‘the martyrdom in Türkiye’ do co-exist, yet they do so in a symbiotic manner whereby the latter is unable to exist or survive as it produces no ‘holy’ meaning without the former which is already ‘inherently holy.’ Indeed, the state-determined Turkish nationalism promoted with the foundation of the Republic (1923) had initially included the state-determined religion (via DİB). Thus, under the banner of the state, martyrs are made for the “nation” (millet), because the “nation” (vatan) is in question and/or when the nation is at stake. In the Turkish context, “the state’s culture of martyrdom” imposed as “a matter of raison d’état in Türkiye” always operates to establish “the ‘nationalization’ of martyrdom by society.”22 The nationalization of Islam as DİB is the key factor in transforming the God-centric political understanding to the changing modern understanding of politics. The difference between the secular and the religious has been complementary rather than contradictory in the Turkish case. When nationalism is “perceived as a matter of national survival,” and whenever the nation’s “unity and order is threatened civil nationalism is activated and transformed into religious nationalism.”23

21

22 23

Ibid., 162, 251; 167, 174–176, 192–202. All participants of the sociological field research related martyrdom to holy death, regardless of whether their conceptions of the term were initially religious (linked to God) or contemporarily secular (linked to the nationstate). Two categories of martyrdom (1) religious martyrdom (the will of God) and (2) nation/duty martyrdom (the will of the state or the choice of individual/profession) became distinctive in the narratives/discourses of the participants. It is evident that being the main bridge between the secular/profane and the divine/ethereal, religion in the Turkish context provides legitimate ground for martyrdom in the abstract/moral domain of life, while the nation-state becomes the official foundation for the substantial/corporal domain of legitimization. Yenen, “Legitimate Dying Martyrdom,” 14–17. Mihau I. Tarta, “Dynamic Civil Religion and Religious Nationalism: The Roman Catholic Church in Poland and the Orthodox Church in Romania.” (PhD diss., Baylor University, 2012): 250, 255.

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Traditionally, in Muslim societies like Türkiye, the sacred is akin only to the realm of religion (Islam). Religion creates and legitimates basic social norms and values by sacralising them. As a result of the nation building process, the politics of conferring a sacred status to the nation/state as “a matter of life and death,” and presenting the nation as the principle of collective existence was an indirect way of exercising power over “the life” of society. Martyrdom as a living soci(et)al tradition was fitted well into the brand new national context of Türkiye as the resurgence of the political form of religion in modern life, because it had a memorable past in religion. Deeply entrenched in the collective national identity of “being a Turk” (Türklük aidiyeti),24 a collectivity which bears underneath the meaning of “being a Muslim” with the institutionalization of Sunnite Islam as DİB, modern Turkish martyrdom was readily constructed. The study of the “sacred in politics” is important in the analysis of the dynamics by which religion as a traditional institution has “migrated” to the realm of the secular in the process of the sacralization of politics, or what Bauman as a sociologist prefers to call, “religionization of politics.”25 Religion supplies the language of political legitimacy, apparently observable in the case of modern Türkiye, as seen in the example of the sacralization of modern martyrdom: “The resurgence of religions into the political sphere” becomes apparent in the emerging necessity for ‘the martyr for the nation.’ The religion of modern Türkiye has never been depoliticized or desecularized,

24

25

Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 135–147. “Being a Turk” emerged to be the core category (theoretical model) of the grounded theory research. Of all the themes that the research unearthed, Turkish identity (being part of the Turkish nation) is the consciousness or mind behind the state-indexed martyrdom of modern Türkiye. See (1) R. Griffin, R. Mallett, and J. Tortorice, The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Also see (2) William T. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011); (3) E. Gentile, “The Sacralization of Politics,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1:1 (2000): 18–55; (4a) Z. Bauman, Living on Borrowed Time: Conversations with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010): 132 and (4b) Z. Bauman, Postmodernity and its Discontents (New York: New York University Press, 1997): 283. The “sacred in politics,” a term used by the historian Griffin, is coherent with the declaration of the theologian Cavanaugh that religion as a traditional institution has “migrated” to the realm of the secular nation-state. While the historian Gentile calls this modern process “the sacralization of politics,” Bauman, the sociologist talking, prefers to call it the “religionization of politics.” As this chapter takes a sociological approach to Islam in dealing with the religio-political concept of martyrdom, Bauman’s conceptualization is taken as a basis for the analysis of the return of the gods in the age of “liquid modernity.”

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always kept within the “biopolitical order” (with DİB), thus confirming more strongly the observable “‘public’ resurgence of religion” today.26 This affirms Gellner’s depiction of the unsecularized modernity of Islam.27 Regarding religion both as memory and politics by revisiting Bauman’s “religionization of politics” thesis further makes the secularization of martyrdom as societal culture become more prominent as a successful Islam-modernity entwinement. Bauman’s emphasis on religionization more than on politicization is crucial to understanding the shift from the traditional use of politics for the cause of religion to religion used for the sake of politics contemporarily observable. Today religion-use as grounding politics subjectifies religion-disposed societies such as Türkiye not only through religion but through the politics of memory integrated into religion as the memory of the collective (collective memory). 3.2

The Sociogenesis of Martyrdom in Modern Türkiye: The Century-Long Turkish Experience of Martyrdom The historical inquiry into the interrelation of the institution of religion and the constructed discourses in the study of martyrdom is essential in underpinning the lived-experience of a society.28 Taken as a product of discursive practices, the analysis of the role of language, rhetoric and media’s representation in the construction and contestation of martyr figures, and especially official representation, memorialization and commemoration practices in connection with the production of societal assent are operative in the making of the modern Turkish martyr. Language as discourse is the primary source for the narrative creation of and/or the making of martyrs. Masculine discourse of heroic narratives by large forge and foster the “hegemonic masculinity”29 represented by and exalted in the figure of the martyr. But it is the post-act 26 27 28

29

Riesebrodt, Religion Secularization Resurgence, 1–7. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (New York: Penguin Books, 1996). See John Soboslai, “Performing One’s Own Death: Martyrdom, Sovereignty and Truth” (PhD diss., University of California, 2016). As an example of a research analyzing martyrdom in different contexts and different cultures: Early Christian martyrdom, Shiʿi “martyrdom operations”/“sucided bombings” and Buddhist autocremations martyrdoms. R.W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987): 185. The term hegemonic masculinity signifies the marginalization and subordination of feminity and all other masculinities to the ideal/ized image of masculinity. The state-interference in gender relations becomes apparent when militarism, taken to be the dominance of militaristic values in society is enjoined to nationalism, establishing gender roles and gender-based division of labor in warfare. The common expression “Every Turk is born to be a soldier” commingles manhood, militarism and nationalism in constructing hegemonic masculinity of the martyr figure.

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narratives of martyrdom that are the legitimizing and justifying elements (of societal assent) in contemporary Islamic martyrology. Turkish “official martyrdom” today has become “a monopoly over legitimate means of dying in the name of the state-nation-religion triad.”30 The making of a national martyr through martyrological representations and sacrificial narratives is common in the modern Christian world as seen in the Italian examples examining “the construction of a willing martyr” academically.31 Muslim societies, like the Turkish society, show similarity to Christian communities in that the martyr’s story is essential in the production and continuity of martryologies, whereby the “useful past” and a “living tradition” merge.32 Situating martyrological discourses comprehensively in relation to the past and to present-day social-political realities in the course of tracking the sociogenesis of martyrdom in the Turkish context requires the systematic tracing of the long history of martrylogies, beginning with the initial meaning of martyr (shaheed in Arabic) in religion, specifically in Islam.33 There exists an expansive literature on the roots and transformation of the Arabic word/term before it becomes Turkish, showing the gradual transition or transgression from the sacred/Islamic to the profane/secular. The martyr as “the one who dies for his faith” is not a one-to-one Qurʾānic use, but a broader term acquired through the alternative legal literature known as hadith and sunna, comprising the sayings and acts relating to the Prophet of Islam. A diachronic survey of the

30 31

32 33

Yenen, “Legitimate Dying Martyrdom,” 14–17. For the chapter named “Construction of a Willing Martyr” see Scolari, State Martyr, 182–247. Also see Amy King, “Italy’s secular martyrs: The construction, role and maintenance of secular martyrdom in Italy from the twentieth century to the present day” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018). Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory. Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). As the martyrdom in question in this chapter is the martyr/dom in the Turkish Islam context where the Hanafi School of Sunni Islam is practiced, only the Sunni type of martyrdom as the prevalent “martyrdom typology” in Türkiye will be discussed. But a must read for a general understanding of Islamic martyrdom are two valuable contributions: (1) David Cook, Martyrdom in Modern Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and (2) Meir Hatina, Martyrdom in Modern Islam: Piety, Power and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Here it suffices to say that the Sunni discourses of military martyrdom (martyrdom for the nation-state) differ from the more revolutionary Shiʿi discourses where the ‘Karbala paradigm’ is the enduring emblematic value for the Shiʿi Muslim self-sacrifice, martyrdom being “a symbol of communal cleansing and regeneration”: See Manochehr Dorraj, “Symbolic and Utilitarian Political Value of a Tradition: Martyrdom in the Iranian Political Culture.” The Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997): 489–521. Accessed June 26, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1408549.

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exegeses of Qurʾān reveals that “in spite of countervailing Qurʾānic pronouncements, certain hadith made firm distinctions in status between the military and non-military martyr,” the latter being “the believer who dies a natural death” while “striving in the path of God.”34 Hence, the Islamist figure of the martyr was essentially constructed as a religiously-idealized catalogue of social norms dictating being-living-dying a good Muslim. According to the historical transformation of martyrdom in the Abrahamic religions, the etymological origin of the terminology for the martyr in all three traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) show similarity in the connection between the initial literal meaning of “bearing witness” or “confession” in court and the latter emerging meaning of “resisting injustice with selfsacrifice.”35 Thus, the central shift in meaning in all three Abrahamic religions is the theme of self-sacrifice performed as “acts of dying.”36 Also, “the cult of military martyrdom” common to all modernizing Muslim societies emerged roughly after second/eighth century.37 A comparison of early and later exegeses reveals “how a cultic reverence for military martyrdom progressively came to be articulated and read back into the verses, despite the lack of overt reference in them to first, the military martyr, and second, any assumption of their higher status vis-a-vis other believers who die, for example, while immigrating in the path of God.”38 Thus, understanding Turkish martyrdom through questioning the “martyrdom memory” within the context of Islamic literature and comparing the historicity of contemporary Muslim conceptualizations of martyrdom to those present today in Turkish society are equally significant in the analysis of martyrdom typologies akin to different contexts. Contemporary Turkish martyrdom seems to have transformed into a military type of martyrdom as it nourished the masculine ethos of nationalism. Steadily, as part of “the monopoly of the state over religious-secular distinctions,” Islam has become “a form of nationalism” for the state-building process in the post-Empire context, resulting in a military kind of martyrdom.39 The most common use of the term şehitlik today is “martyrdom,” which is the military use of the term. Even though the word şehit, uttered too often in the media 34 35 36 37 38 39

Asma Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 280–82. Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God, 280–82. Scolari, State Martyr, 377. Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God, 280–282. Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God, 280–282. Nilüfer Göle, “Manifestations of the Religious-Secular Divide: Self, State, and the Public Sphere” in Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age, ed. Cady L.E., Hurd E.S. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 44–47. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106703_3.

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in recent years, has become part of daily political usage, the word still holds a religious meaning in the collective imaginary of the Turkish people.40 Martyrdom, depicted as a test of manhood and dying a man, further gives hints on the gendered dynamics of secular subject formation (gendered performative bodies) in modern Türkiye. Closely related to the concept of holy martyrdom is the concept of holy war which corresponds today to conscription, a gender-structured practice of the military institution, functioning as the basic manifestation of nationalism. Compulsory/mandatory military service/duty in Türkiye, known as Turkish military service, applies to all male citizens of the nation and is regarded as a sacred duty for the nation. Although Turkish women are exempt from conscription, they are the silent yet most loyal supporters of the sacred duty, because they play an important role in “engendering martyr/dom”41 as they become the Muslim mothers, wives or daughters of martyrs. It is because women are the “flesh-and-blood creators of martyrs,” their deceased ones (whether their children, husbands or fathers) are martyrs for the nation. None of the research participants (male and female alike) questioned “martyrdom” in relation to gender, regardless of their degree of embracement (observed to be higher in male participants as anticipated, due to popular military/manhood discourses).42 As a useful religious resource in the political sphere in the hands of the secular state, in every context where martyr/dom is to be made, the political economy of believing (religion) and belonging (national identity) actualized via religion as societal culture and nationalism as political culture becomes manifest. The notion of “nationality” taken as a mental construct, a sense of collective being is “the common consciousness”; thinking and feeling like, and for one’s fellow nationals becomes the product of “the collective,” for the “shared collective” in Durkheimian terms.43 Nationalism unites citizens displaying a high degree of commitment to the system through common identity, beliefs, experiences and rituals, as does religion. Turkish nationalism taken as “state patriotism” (as loyalty to the nation/state) has become

40

41

42 43

Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 92–96, 251–252. Despite the common phrase “dying/becoming a martyr in the name of God,” both used and sacralised by all the participants to explain martyrdom, the strong emphasis made on “sacrifice for the nation/state” is important in showing a shift in meaning. Irene Oh, “Engendering Martyrs: Muslim Mothers and Martyrdom” in Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalis: Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics. ed. Bucar E.M., Stalnaker A. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 65–79. https://doi.org/10 .1057/9781137273031_4. Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 236–238. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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the common ground for willing to become a martyr today in the Turkish context. In order to understand the present juridico-religio-political complex from which the sovereign power derives its socially accepted justifications for martyrdom, it is sufficient to look at all that is “national” and “commemorative” in the Turkish context; the national flag, the national days/holidays, the national monuments, the national memorials and national cemeteries. Turkish state patriotism is observable in the importance attributed to visiting the national martyrs’ cemetery as a sacred museum.44 It is important to note also that the Turkish term for the national martyrs’ cemetery is the same word used for ‘martyrdom’ (‘şehitlik’) in Türkiye (e.g., Edirnekapı Martyrs’ Cemetery (Edirnekapı Şehitliği). Similarly, the terms used for “martyr’s memorial” are “şehitlik abidesi” or “şehitlik anıtı”). With the nation building process, especially three areas in politics, (a) identity politics, (b) memory politics and (c) media politics have gained momentum in the making of the modern martyr. In the context of modern Türkiye, being a Turk as the officially established group/national identity, collective memory as ancestral discursive practice and media as real-time discourse, have all contributed to the politics of the (martyr’s) body. Nationalistic ideologies are firsthand constructs of nationalistic history and national identity politics. National identity forms the basis for becoming a martyr for the state, while memory/history constructs and builds on that identity with reference to the Islamic tradition of martyrdom. Especially, the new media’s role in the processes of religious subjectification, more explicitly, on the formation, articulation and performance of communities of faith and religious subjectivities is immense when combined with political discourse, as is in the “diffusion of the martyr figure.”45 The collective consciousness of a society and the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting are part of everyday public policy. Therefore, society never questions “the relationship between martyrdom and political violence.”46

4

Conclusion: Turkish Martyr/dom “Made in Türkiye,” “Made in Islam”

This chapter contributes to the study of Islam through the interrogation of the relationship between state power and religious life-worlds of a Muslim

44 45 46

Durmuş, “Martyrdom Turkish Islam,” 178. Scolari, State Martyr, 30, 33. Scolari, State Martyr, 15, 26–33, 39.

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majority society. In explicating the dynamics of modern martyrdom as a societal culture, Turkish Islam’s unique socio-political role and scope are central. Islam still seems to be the principal constitutive point of reference shaping Turkish society culturally and politically; “to cope with misfortune, manage crises, and attain blessings and salvation through meaningful action”47 as seen in the making of the modern martyr in Türkiye. Thus, in the study of a concept stemming from religion, yet constituted today practically within the field of politics, this article focuses on the interplay between religion and politics in understanding martyrdom in the Turkish Islam context. Moreover, in deciphering a concept embedded within the Islamic tradition, this study fills the gap between state-centric approaches to the issue (the macropolitics of martyrdom) and the everyday politics (micropolitics) in modern Türkiye. The chapter discusses the construction and reproduction of martyrdom as part of the Turkish-Muslim cultural identity and situates it within Turkish Islam. Hence martyrdom contextualized within Islamist, nationalist and secular discourses is recontextualized within everyday religious (Islamic values/perceptions) and secular (discourses on sovereignty, nationalism, masculinity) domains that not only shape the social and the collective memory of Turkish society but make the Turkish martyr. As “the emergence of the figure of the state martyr is a product or result of secularization,”48 with Turkish martyr/dom, the passage from the realm of the profane (material/corporal) to the realm of the sacred (divine/metaphysical) is dislocated to be vice versa: The dislocation from secularization on is “from the sacred to the profane sphere of meaning.” Thus, as a new national construct exemplifying “the mutual borrowing” or “cross-fertilization” between the secular and the Islamic, Turkish martyr/dom successfully blurs the rigid, clear-cut distinctions between the otherwise taken-for-granted duality in modern Türkiye: Martyrdom in the Turkish context can be read as “a recomposition of the religious-secular divide,” clearly manifesting the societal interconnectedness.49 National identity politics, collective memory and the media with their impact on processual constructions of imagined communities of faith and the political and socio-religious life of the religious community take stage in the making of the Turkish martyr/dom, but the role religion has played, as the most influential societal meaning map, is beyond all. Nationalistic martyrdom in Türkiye is, indisputably, concomitant to religious martyrdom. Yet as

47 48 49

Riesebrodt, Religion Secularization Resurgence, 1–7. Scolari, State Martyr, 107. Göle, “Religious-Secular Divide,” 44–47.

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martyrdom today is understood as holy death for the nation-state, the role of nationalism so highly overemphasized poses the danger of shadowing the role of religion. With this chapter, Islam’s resistance to secularism and resilience to all other aspects of society, is tested with martyrdom as societal culture in the Turkish context: Verifying Gellner’s assumption, not only does Islam’s grip of Turkish society continue, independent of all other aspects; but also, reconsidering Bauman’s claim, religion turned into a matter of politics through religionization, accounts for societal integrity formulated as “the hold of the Islam over the minds and hearts of believers”50 in modern Türkiye.

Bibliography Afsaruddin, Asma. Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodernity and its Discontents. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Bauman, Zygmunt. Living on Borrowed Time: Conversations with Citlali RovirosaMadrazo. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy; Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Castelli, Elizabeth. Martyrdom and Memory. Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Cavanaugh, William T. Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011. Connell, R.W. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. Cook, David. Martyrdom in Modern Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Dorraj, Manochehr. “Symbolic and Utilitarian Political Value of a Tradition: Martyrdom in the Iranian Political Culture.” The Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997): 489–521. Accessed June 26, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1408549. Durkheim, E. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

50

Ernest Gellner, “Foreword” in Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity, ed. Ahmed Akbar S. and Hastings Donnan (London: Routledge, 1994): xi–xiv.

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Durmuş, Meral, “Three generations of martyrdom-veteran/ghazi status root paradigm within the cognitive map of ‘political-cultural Turkish Islam’ society.” Unpublished PhD diss., Maltepe University, 2020. Fallers, Lloyd A. Guide to the Lloyd A. Fallers Papers 1937–1977. “Turkish Islam” conference proceedings. (Special Collections Research Center: University of Chicago Library [Box 45 Folder 4, 5 and 6–7].) Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Geertz, Clifford. Islam Observed. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968. Gellner, Ernest. “Foreword” in Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity, ed. Ahmed Akbar S. and Hastings Donnan. London: Routledge, 1994: xi–xiv. Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Gentile, E. “The Sacralization of Politics,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1:1, 2000. Göle, Nilüfer. “Manifestations of the Religious-Secular Divide: Self, State, and the Public Sphere” in Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age, ed. Cady L.E., Hurd E.S. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106703_3. Griffin, R. Mallett, and J. Tortorice, The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Griffin, Roger. “Introduction: The Evolutions and Convolutions of Political Religion” in The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics, ed. Griffin R., Mallett R., Tortorice J. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230241633_1. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory, ed. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992. Hatina, Meir. Martyrdom in Modern Islam: Piety, Power and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Jost, John T. and Banaji, Mahzarin R. “The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justification and the Production of False Consciousness.” British Journal of Social Psychology, 33 (1994): 1–27. Jost, John T., Banaji, Mahzarin R. and Nosek, Brian A. “A Decade of System: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” Internatinal Society of Political Psychology. 25, no. 6 (2004): 881–919. King, Amy. “Italy’s secular martyrs: The construction, role and maintenance of secular martyrdom in Italy from the twentieth century to the present day” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018). Malczewski, Eric. “Durkheim and the Nation.” İstanbul University Journal of Sociology 39, no. 1 (Jun. 2021): 41–64. https://doi.org/10.26650/SJ.2019.39.1.00.13. Oh, Irene. “Engendering Martyrs: Muslim Mothers and Martyrdom” in Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalis: Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics.

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ed. Bucar E.M., Stalnaker A. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 65–79. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9781137273031_4. Riesebrodt, Martin. Religion in the Modern World. Between Secularization and Resurgence. Max Weber Lecture Series: European University Institute, 2014. Scolari, Baldassare. State Martyr. Representation and Performativity of Political Violence. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2019). https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771 /9783845299372/state-martyr. Soboslai, John. “Performing One’s Own Death: Martyrdom, Sovereignty and Truth.” Unpublished PhD diss., University of California, 2016. Tarta, Mihau I. “Dynamic Civil Religion and Religious Nationalism: The Roman Catholic Church in Poland and the Orthodox Church in Romania.” Unpublished PhD diss., Baylor University, 2012. Yenen, Alp. “Legitimate Means of Dying: Contentious Politics of Martyrdom in the Turkish Civil War (1968–1982).” Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 14–34. Zubaida, Sami. “Islam and Secularization,” Asian Journal of Social Science. 33, no. 3 (2005): 438–48. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23654381.

Part 3 Lived Islams

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Chapter 8

Old, New or Digital Philology Working towards an Amalgamated Work Frame Walid Ghali

1

Introduction

Manuscripts, as primary sources, play an undisputed role in the field of Islamic studies. In addition to the oral transmission of knowledge, extant Islamic manuscripts, written over the ages, cover nearly every aspect of Islamic thought and culture. Moreover, Islamic manuscripts are important for western intellectual history, as there are many Arabic works pertaining to the heritage of Greek antiquity that remain in manuscript form. Some of these already printed texts possibly need to be re-edited critically based on new manuscript discoveries.1 Manuscript studies overlap with and use other disciplines such as diplomacy, philology, palaeography, and codicology. These fields focus on examining the intellectual history and history of ideas in a particular period or culture. As far as Islamic manuscripts are concerned, various approaches and methods were introduced to study the text and decipher the contents to make it available for scholarship. The outcome of this text-centric approach is called a critical edition.2 Textual analysis, text criticism or critical editing of manuscripts bring the content to the forefront of scholarship, passing through many interconnected steps. However, it is believed that there are methodical differences between Western and non-Western scholarship in this field. This chapter aims to shed light on some of these differences in textual studies of Islamic manuscripts (manāhij al-taḥqīq), including the newly established method of Digital Humanities.3

1 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. “Significance of Islamic manuscripts.” In The Significance of Islamic Manuscripts, ed. John Cooper (London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation), 7. 2 Critical Editions are produced by comparing several versions of the same work and producing a more comprehensive version, pointing out the differences in each version to arrive at a more comprehensive work. The notation of the textual differences enables placing the work in its context, be it historical, social, ideological or otherwise. 3 I previously dealt with one of those differences in my Ph.D. when I tried to answer the question of how digitisation and the metadata attached to it can speak the language of textual

© Walid Ghali, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_009

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The chapter also argues that working towards an integrated approach to studying Islamic manuscripts will directly impact the study of Islam. The integration of different methods to form a multi-methodological approach should assist in speeding up the analysis and publication of the vast volume of still unedited collections of manuscripts, especially in some contentious areas in the study of Islam, such as Islamic law and Sufism. Most importantly, the scientific manuscripts, seemingly remain much neglected in the studies performed by Muslims.

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Philology or Textual Criticism

As this chapter attempts to analyse textual criticism as a method to study the primary sources in Islamic studies, it might be helpful to provide some definitions for the sake of clarity. In English language, Philology, old and new, is the study of language or languages. There is also textual criticism, “the study of a literary work that aims to establish the original text.”4 This pattern cannot be traced in Arabic in the same way, as the language includes a wide range of terms referring to philology. Starting from using the transliterated form of fīlūlugiya, (Philology) and diblūmātīqā, (Diplomacy), and words such as taḥqīq wa-nashr al-nuṣūṣ (textual editing and publishing), and naqḍ al-nuṣūṣ (Textual Criticism). In the Arabic language, the word taḥqīq derives from the root ḥ.q.q. which relates to other words such as al-Ḥaqq (truth), al-ʿAdl (justice), al-Şidq (honesty), mawjūd (certain), ṣaḥḥa (true story), tayaqqan (certainty). In the field of manuscripts, taḥqīq means to make the text legible as close as possible to what the author intended to provide, and if this goal cannot be achieved, then to provide a text with as high proximity to the original text as possible through referring to any additions, glosses, insertions, deletions or removals in the original text’s versions that could have happened by mistake or deliberately.

criticism and not the computer binary language. How it could support the work of Tahqiq and give them what they need to complete their critical editions. The challenge here was not in offering a technological solution, but was how to reach a common ground between the coding language XML and the traditional philologists. The outcome was a designed schema to absorb all codicological and philological descriptions. This chapter however is not about the nitty-gritty technical details of the digital architecture. 4 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “textual criticism,” accessed July 27, 2021, https://www.merriam -webster.com/dictionary/textual%20criticism.

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Aḥmad Shawqī Binbīn believes that philology in Western scholarship means studying literary texts, not including the study of language.5 However, Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid argues that philology is a huge field, but the philological study of Arabic manuscripts examines the textual tradition and the content of the book. Sayyid prefers using taḥqīq al-nuṣūṣ (Textual criticism) over philology.6 Ahmed El-Shamsy also confirms that there are many Arabic terms used to describe different editorial practices, but the most common were al-muqābala, “collation,” and al-taṣḥīḥ, “correction.” This and the related word muḥaqqiq, “verifier,” became the standard terms for editing and editors, gradually replacing the corrector (muṣaḥḥiḥ) and his work of correction (taṣḥīḥ) as the primary interface between classical manuscripts and their printed manifestations.7 In this chapter, the term ‘textual criticism’ will be often used to supersede philology and taḥqīq. Philological as an adjective is also used to express the methodologies as opposed to codicological.

3

Significance or Tragedy?

The number of studies about the significance of Islamic manuscripts is hard to count, especially those published in the Muslim world. Perhaps we need to shift the focus from the significance of manuscripts to What the manuscripts can tell us about Islam and how we could use it in Islamic studies in modern times. For instance, Hossein Nasr argues that Islamic manuscripts in Arabic and Persian are an important source for a better understanding of the religions and cultures of pre-Islamic Persia, adding that the extant manuscripts written over the ages cover nearly every aspect of Islamic thought and culture. Both written and oral traditions can give a clear picture of Islamic heritage and culture.8 Al-Shamsy ascribes manifold of reasons to the significance of Islamic manuscripts. The first reason is the quantity of extant manuscripts from the corpus; for example, around six hundred thousand manuscripts have survived to the

5 Binbīn, Aḥ mad Shawqī. Dirāsāt fī ʿilm al-maḫṭūṭāt wa-’l-baḥṯ al-bibliyūġrāfī (al-Rabāt:̣ Dār Abī Raqrāq lil-Ṭ ibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 2018), 13. 6 Sayyid, Ayman Fuʾad, al-Kitāb al-ʿArabi al-Makhṭūṭ wa-ʿilm al-Makhṭūṭāt (al-Qāhirah: al-Dār al-Miṣrīyah al-Lubnānīyah,1997), 2: 545. 7 El Shamsy, Ahmed. Rediscovering the Islamic classics: how editors and print culture transformed an intellectual tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 137. 8 Nasr, “The significance,” 14.

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present day. Perhaps El-Shamsy refers to the recorded items, as some might argue that a similar number also exists in parallel, however in unrecorded private collections. The second striking feature is linguistic continuity and internal coherence. Finally, the tradition extends far back in time and spans and connects an immense geographic area with numerous local vernaculars.9 This geographic expansion bestows much value to Islamic manuscripts in that it facilitates the understanding of several cultures. It is pertinent to many fields of scholarship outside the domain of Islamic studies, such as knowledge of ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Byzantine civilisations, and preIslamic societies of the eastern Mediterranean world, such as the so-called Sabaeans of Harran. Islamic manuscripts were also afflicted with numerous tragedies,10 such as Wars, distractions and looting. We need to ask ourselves whether these tragedies come from within the heritage or are a result of the methodologies. To answer this question, we need to look at the challenges related to textual traditions and research, as the issue is rather old. The following excerpt from ʿAjāʾib al-āthār by al-Jabartī, the Egyptian historian, (d. 1822), already demonstrates this issue. He writes: “These [books] are now merely titles; the works themselves do not exist anymore. We have seen only fragments of some of them remaining in the endowed libraries of madrasas … the last remains were lost in conflicts and wars or were taken away by the French to their lands.”11 The political instability, conquest and the effects of colonialism have greatly affected the number of extant manuscripts. Another critical problem in the field of Islamic studies is the high frequency of using and quoting some popular works such as al-Maqrīzī and al-Masʿūdī in the history; al-Qurtubī and Ibn Kathīr in the field of Tafsir and Ibn ʿArabī and Rūmī in Sufism, to mention but a few examples. These works have also received great attention featured in several hundreds of printed editions. Nasr claims that scholars tend to ignore other works which are still in the manuscript form or due to ideological reasons but never gave an example. In my view, each work has its own significance and answer a specific queries. So, this challenge will remain until new works get accessed, edited and printed. I concur with Nasr that some of the most renowned historical works still need a critical edition based on the most trustworthy of existing manuscripts

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El-Shamsy, Rediscovering, 8. I believe the first one who used the word tragedy was Michael Albin in his study: The tragedy of Islamic manuscripts. MELA Notes, 1972. Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, 1:11, in, El-Shamsy, 9.

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including major works such as al-Fihrist, al-Maqrīzī and al-Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn.12 I also believe that another problem lies in the subjects that scholars tend to favour working on, such as Islamic law, history and literature, while there is a vast available corpus of scientific manuscripts on medicine, mathematics and astronomy.13 This is possibly linked to the thousands of Arabic manuscripts that flowed out of the Islamic world in the nineteenth century, which had an impact on the study of manuscripts in the Muslim world. Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) admitted that “[it] wiped the most ancient and most important sources of Arabic philology and Muslim science of religion out from their original homeland where these studies have found a new home in the last decades.”14 As far as the methodologies are concerned, some agree that the major tragedy is that Muslims refrain from using new methodologies to deconstruct their heritage, particularly the textual tradition. In his interview about Muslim heritage, ʿAbd al-Bāṣiṭ Haykal15 argues that Muslims refrain from using new methodologies out of fear of failure, to retain their own agency, and to avoid accusations of imitating western methodologies. However, he believes that the only way to renew religious thoughts is by actively engaging with the heritage (turāth). In his own words: “we should aim to reinterpret [the past heritage] through the present.”16 The usage of manuscripts to the study of Islam and Muslims need further attention. Even with the increasing drive to making these manuscripts available online, Western academy utilization of such manuscripts is selective,

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Nasr, “Significance,”13. See works of David A. King in the Islamic manuscripts of science such as: Mathematical Astronomy in Medieval Yemen—A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, 1983; Islamic Mathematical Astronomy, London: Variorum, 1986; Islamic Astronomical Instruments, London: Variorum, 1987; Astronomy in the Service of Islam, Aldershot: Variorum, 1993; World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999; and The Ciphers of the Monks—A Forgotten Number Notation of the Middle Ages, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001. Mestyan, Adam, “Ignác Goldziher’s Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,” Journal of Semitic Studies LX/2 Autumn 2015, p. 454. ʿAbd al-Bāṣiṭ Haykal, an Egyptian researcher specializing in Islamic thought and the discourse of Islamic groups, among his most important publications: “The Concept of the Civil State in Islam,” “The Crisis of Islamic Groups’ Discourse between Ancient and Modern,” and “The Lost Rib: The Interpreter’s Relationship to the Text.” And “A Reading in Interpretive Points of Nasr Abu Zayd,” a study was recently published by him entitled: Bab Allah, Religious Discourse between the Two Rifts. ʿAbd al-Bāṣiṭ Haykal. Interview by Samih Ismail (2018). https://tinyurl.com/84pwf42h.

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where philologists and digital humanists focus on works pertaining to their research projects. On the other hand, Muslim scholars look at this heritage as indigenous and unquestionable. In addition, Muslims tend to study homegrown manuscripts; for example, Persian manuscripts of any classical texts are widely studied in Iran by Iranian scholars.17 While the former approach is somehow accepted, the approach of Muslim scholarship to the manuscripts needs to be revisited. That said, one should not ignore the accessibility problems and the control of the closed scholarly circles in both scholarships, Western and indigenous. One of the challenges is that some Muslims are suspicious of anything that comes from the West (anti-orientalists) that emerged after Edward Said’s (d. 2003) famous work Orientalism.18 While Said’s work was seminal in feeding this attitude, I believe that this suspicion had already started earlier, especially with the emergence of the movable printing press, evidenced by the Muslims’ rejection of printing religious texts, such as the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth collections.19 Regardless of when the anti-orientalism inclination started, I concur with Majid Daneshgar’s conclusion that “it is naïve to say that all multilingual orientalists were puppets of a royal court that wished to enslave Muslims.”20

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Arabic-Islamic Philological Tradition

This section attempts to answer an important question regarding how Muslims approached their tradition and knowledge infrastructure and whether they knew textual criticism before the rise of the genre (taḥqīq) in the nineteenth century. In doing so, the focus will be given to the Arabic and Islamic philological traditions before and after the age of printing. Textual transmission was an essential part of the educational system and knowledge transmission in Muslims intellectual history. Baghdad Gharbia argues that Muslim scholars used systematic guidelines to ensure the accurate transmission of knowledge throughout texts.21 Al-Suyūṭī (d. 1111) mentioned the levels of receiving knowledge and the terminology related to the process to avoid mistakes. In his view, receiving the knowledge orally from the author comes first and foremost, followed by reading to the author to confirm authen17 18 19 20 21

Daneshgar, “Lost Orientalism, Lost Orient, and Lost Orientals.” Deconstructing Islamic Studies (MA: ILEX and Harvard University Press), 2020, 338–57. Said, Orientalism. Ghali, “Politics.” Daneshgar, “Lost Orientalism,” 338. Baghdad, “Contribution,” 201–205.

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ticity of transmission as the second important step, and a certificate to prove the first two comes third.22 Commentaries on teaching texts go back at least to the third century of Islam, but the emergence of glosses as a key medium of scholarship is characteristic of the postclassical age. The system of commentaries is built on multilayers, which consist of primary commentaries (shurūḥ) written by either the author or, more commonly, by later scholars; glosses (ḥawāshī ), are usually but not always based on commentaries; and sometimes tertiary commentaries (taqārīr), that is, commentaries on glosses on primary commentaries were produced. As a result, the older literature came to survive only in secondhand citations of individual opinions attributed to particular scholars or intellectual stream, often in oversimplified, distorted or it censored.23 Nevertheless, one point that tends to be missed in textual criticism is the translation movement from the second/eighth century and specifically during Harūn al-Rashīd’s (d. 809) reign. In my view, this movement was not a mere translation movement, but it also included the critical interpretation and refutations, known in the Muslim heritage by Kutub al-shukūk (lit. suspicious). Along with the translations of books, Muslim scholars refuted the content of these books. For example, Kitāb al-shukūk ’ala Jālinyūs by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 924), and al-Shukūk ʿala Baṭlaymūs by Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1040) which criticises the treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Ptolemy (c. 100–170), known as Almagest.24 Talking about the textual transmission throughout copying manuscripts as a type of authorship, al-Qāḍī ’Iyāḍ (d. 1149) mentioned that some authors and scribes stick to the text they are copying or commenting on and ensure they do not make any changes. If they found any mistakes, they would add a tanbīh (note) in the margin. Others were brave enough to correct the text as they narrated, copied or used it in teaching.25 Maḥmūd al-Miṣrī26 collected a few 22 23 24 25

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Suyū tị .̄ Tadrīb al-rā wī fī sharḥ Taqrīb al-Nawā wī. al-Dammām: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ.2010), 1:526. El-Shamsy, 32–35. Ḥalwajī, Tārīkh al-Makhṭūṭ al-ʿArabī, 32. One famous example is al-Qadi Abu al-Walid Hisham ibn Ahmad al-Kinani al-Waqshi in his work on Kitab al-Ilmaʾ pp. 185–186. For more examples, see: Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463) dedicated one chapter to explain text collation and comparisons; Al-Khatib Baghdadi (d. 463) chapter on matching books together to authenticate the copies; Qadi ʿIyad (d. 544) Bab al-Taqyid bi-al-Kitabah wa-al-Muqabalah; Ibn al-Salah (d. 643) Man Nasakha Kitab f’alyh Muqabalatauh; ibn Daqiq al-ʿId (d. 702) al-Muqabalah wa-kayfiyyatiaha; Ibn Jumaʿah (d. 733) idha sahha al-kitab wa-almuqabalah ʿalayh. Miṣrī, Maḥmūd, “Manāhij Taḥqīq al-Makhṭūṭāṭ ladá al-ʿArab wa-al-Gharb,” Al-Multaqá al-Duwalī al-Thānī ḥawla Manāhij al-Taḥqīq ʿinda al-ʿArab wa-al-Gharb, 14–15 April, 2013.

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principles that Muslim scholars used in Ḥadīth sciences in the fourth century, which they used in collating and editing any texts to confirm the authenticity of transmission. For instance, muqābala or muʾārada was used to match and compare different copies while iṣlāḥ al-naṣṣ (corrections), and ḍabṭ al-naṣṣ (additions) were to correct and insert missing text portions, and finally, ṣunʿ alḥawāshī (glosses) in which they wrote notes and al-ʿAzw which meant adding citations to the quotations used.27 Ḥusayn Naṣṣār argues that it is hard to imagine that Muslim scholars had not done similar techniques (taḥqīq) before the Western academia. It can be easily confirmed that Muslims knew taḥqīq during the mass production of manuscript copies or commentaries on specific texts while teaching them.28 For example, al-Nadīm (d. 995) mentions in his al-Fihrist that Jamharat alʿArab by Muḥammad ibn Durayd (d. 933) has multiple copies with significant variances in the number of pages. He attributes the best copy as the one produced by ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad al-Naḥawī, saying “[it] was the best because he copied it from different manuscripts and also recited29 it to the author [Ibn Durayd].”30 Although the above examples display some structural guidelines in knowledge transmission in general and textual transmission in particular, they cannot be used as an example of textual criticism known in Islamic and Arabic studies since the 19th century. It is better to put these examples in their historical and intellectual context to explain the modes of authorships in the classical and postclassical periods. Now, I will turn to the second cycle of textual traditions in the Muslim world, which started in the nineteenth century with movable printing.

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Al-Suyūtī mentioned that he never quoted another person without mentioning his name and his work “wa-la trānī adhkru shayʾan min taṣnīf illā maʾzuwwan ila qāʾilih min al-ʿulamāʾ mubayyinan kitābahu alladhī dhakarahu fīh” (Suyuti. Al-Muzhir fi ’ulum alLughah. Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah, 1998. 2: 273). Naṣṣar, Ḥusayn, “Ittijāhāt al-Ḥadītha fī Manāhij Taḥqīq al-Turāth,” in Fi Tahqiq al-Nusus, Jamʿ wa-tahrir Muhammad Abu al-Izz Abduh. Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 2020, 368. Known as certificate of audition or reading, where the student or scribe read the book to its author to confirm authenticity (see: Gacek, Arabic manuscripts: a vademecum for reader, 2012, p. 59). Kitāb al-Jamharah fī ʿIlm al-Lugha, mukhtalif al-nusakh, kathīr al-ziyāda wa-al-nuqṣān, liannahu amlāhu bi-Fāris wa-amlāhu bi-Baghdād min ḥifẓih. Fa-lamma ikhtalaf al-imlāʾ zād wa-naquṣa… wa-ākhir mā ṣaḥḥa min al-nusakh nuskhat Abī al-Fatḥ al-Naḥwī li-annahu katabahā min ʿiddat nusakh wa-qaraʾahā ʿalayhi (Kitab al-Fihrist, page 86, al-fann al-awwal fī ibtidāʾ al-kalām fī al-naḥw wa-akhbār al-naḥwīyīn wa-al-lughawīyīn min al-Baṣrīyīn wafuṣaḥāʾ al-aʾrāb).

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Librarians who engage with classical texts in Islamic studies know the subdivision ”Early works to 1800” which indicates the historical nature or date of the material, rather than saying something about its content. In other words, the subdivision indicates when the work was produced, not what it is about. We can call “The works before 1800” the ‘world of manuscripts; and what comes after as the ‘world of printing.’ The delay in the widespread usage of the printing press in the Muslim world is a subject to be studied of its own and exceeds the scope of this chapter. In the final analysis, the manuscript culture was still the prevalent form of textual tradition until the twentieth century in some Muslim countries. With the official printing press starting in Egypt in 1820 with Būlāq, there has been many developments in the textual tradition either by reproducing printed editions of manuscripts, the emergence of the correctors cult, later become Muḥaqiqīn and finally the establishment of the Nahda (renaissance) led by Muslim reformers such as al-Ṭahṭawī (d. 1873)31 and Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). The printing and editing culture that developed around Būlāq Press was and still is the theme of many studies and discussions. Recently, Islam Dayeh revisited the early history of Arabic printing to examine the specific editorial practices in the nineteenth century and their editions (taṣḥīḥ), drawing connections and comparisons with the European editorial practices of the time.32 In addition, the study by Ahmed El-Shamsy argues that the adoption of printing to reproduce Arabic and Islamic literature had a significant role in the literary landscape in the Middle East.33 These studies and many others have illustrated the importance of the editorial practice of classical texts in improving the intellectual sphere. Despite the importance of the editorial practices of the correctors (musaḥḥiḥūn), it posed some challenges from within as it continued to produce, correct and read these printed texts the way they would read manuscript texts.

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Under al-Ṭahṭāwī’s supervision, Būlāq printed numerous major multi-volume works in the 1850s–1860s, including al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt (1266/1850), al-Maqrīzī’s al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-l-iʿtibār (2 vols., 1270/1853–54), Ibn Khaldūn’s Kitāb al-ʿIbar (4 vol., 1247/1867), alṬabarī’s Tārīkh al-umam wa-l-mulūk (5 vol., 1275/1858), al-Rāzī’s Mafātīḥ al-ghayb (8 vols., 1289/1872); and al-Iṣfahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī (20 vol., 1285/1868–69) (in Islam Dayeh, p. 252). Dayeh, I. (2019). From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq: Toward a History of the Arabic Critical Edition, Philological Encounters, 4(3–4), 245–299. El Shamsy, Ahmed. Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition. PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton University Press, 2020. Accessed July 13, 2021.

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Perhaps because the correctors were traditionally trained scholars, mainly from al-Azhar, working in a prevailing manuscript culture, the lithograph editions resembled manuscripts regarding how they were produced and read. Although some of the leading philologists of the time were involved in these editing projects, errors did occur and were noted. That is one of the reasons that the large corpus of editions need to be revisited. The second development is the engagement of scholars known as reformers, who recognised the potential of printing in promoting social and religious change. Names such as Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905),34 Ṭāhir al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1920), Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (d. 1914) and Maḥmūd Shukrī al-Ālūsī (d. 1854) were among the luminaries of this development. This can be noted from their choice of works to be published, which reflected their goal of challenging the postclassical scholarly orthodoxy on both methodological and substantive grounds.35 In the introduction to the Maqāmāt al-Hamadhāni, which was published in Beirut in 1924 AD, ʿAbduh also mentions how he validates the variances in the text. He advised using as many criteria as possible, such as grammatical correctness, lexicographical evidence, sources used by the author, stylistics, possible repetitions of the same ideas or sentences in the exact text or several texts by the same author, historical evidence, traces of a material changes. This is evidenced in his conclusion of Fatḥ al-Shām that was attributed to al-Wāqidī (d. 829), which displays ʿAbduh’s knowledge and consideration of factors other than grammar and context. He pointed out that at the first glance at the style in al-Wāqidī’s book, it becomes clear that it belongs to a later historical stage and that the book is full of stories dating to the ninth century. Also, the style known of Iraqi scholars and grammarians was absent. All of these factors led Muhammad ʿAbduh to confirm that the book was misattributed to al-Wāqidī.36

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ʿAbduh’s contribution to the earlier publication of a classical work on logic had also been described as taḥqīq on the edition’s cover. The largest of these projects was the edition of Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/1066) lexicographical work al-Mukhaṣṣaṣ, a comprehensive multi-thematic thesaurus. The work was published in Būlāq in the years 1898–1903 and appeared in 17 volumes (in: Dayeh, p. 266). El-Shamsy, Rediscovering, 6–7. Rashīd Riḍa mentioned ’Abduh’s efforts to collect as much copies of manuscripts as he could to the extent that ’Abduh addressed Sultan of Maghrib to permit the release of Mudawwanat Al-Imām Mālikk, that was in the holdings of al-Qarawayin Mosque in Fez so as to correct the printed copy against it (Riḍa, Tārīkh al-Ustādh al-Imām).

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Let me revert to the correctors’ movements. One of the most famous names is Aḥmad Zakī Pasha (1868–1934), the Egyptian Statesman and Philologist.37 Dayeh argues that Zakī’s taḥqīq emerged in a burgeoning culture of textual scholarship and publishing that continued traditional Islamic scholarly methods and techniques, as well as testing new techniques and forms made possible by print technology. Zakī’s taḥqīq also drew on this vibrant philological culture.38 Zakī systematically recorded variants texts and placed them in footnotes, which indicates him following Orientalist conventions and preferring them over the traditional practice of writing notes in the margins. The same preference for Orientalist practices is apparent in his choice to write introductions rather than colophons for the editions he produced. By adopting the term “verification” for the role of the editor as a mediator between manuscript and print, Zakī created a new cultural agent namely that of the editor as an expert scholar who employs a philological toolkit and whose work is valued for reviving the classical heritage.39 The method of the correctors, that is, “correction and collation” (al-taṣḥīḥ wa-l-muqābala), was concerned with the production of the authoritative text as it had been critically transmitted and read through the centuries. One major principle in this period was to confirm the attribution of the work to its author. This is a crucial step as some works have been attributed to other authors for economic reasons (best selling) or to gain particular fame. For instance, the first printed edition of Kitāb al-burhān fī wujūh al-bayān, originally written by Ibn Wahb (d. 813), had a different title, namely Naqd al-nathr and was attributed to another author, namely Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar (d. 948).40 ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, was another one of the pioneers in textual criticism in twentieth century, who believed that textual criticism should not involve any enhancement or correction of the main text. The transmission should happen with integrity because any work is a witness of its author, his time and the cultural environment it was produced in. Therefore, any change that could indicate the opposite is forbidden.41 However, as developed by Karl Lachmann 37

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For full biography of Zaki see: Jundī, Anwar al-. Aḥmad Zakī al-mulaqqab bi Shaykh al-ʿUrūba. Cairo: Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, 1963, 121; for his engagement with the western scholarship, Umar Ryad, ““An Oriental Orientalist”: Aḥmad Zakī Pasha (1868–1934), Egyptian Statesman and Philologist in the Colonial Age,” Philological Encounters 3, no. 1–2 (2018): 129–166. Dayeh, 248. El-Shamsy, 138. Naṣṣār, “al-Ittijāhāt,” 4–6. Hārūn, ʿAbd al-Salām. Taḥqīq al-Nuṣūṣ wa-nashruha, 48.

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and others, European text criticism sought to break away from the traditional reception of the text to reconstruct the original text.42 There have been many limitations in the textual criticism methodologies in the nineteenth century. It continued to produce, correct and read these printed texts the way it would deal with the manuscript texts. For instance, using the margin as a critical apparatus and incorporating a long history of philological engagement with the work is in line with the commentaries tradition that was practiced with manuscript form. An index was generally not provided. The name of the corrector generally did not appear on the front cover, but was rather relegated to the colophon. Moreover, they rarely mentioned the copies of manuscripts used. Even in those rare cases when copies were mentioned, no detailed description of the sources was given. The editorial practice was integral to the tradition. The taṣḥīḥ editions generally reflect the scholarly tradition of reading and engaging with the text. They often provided long comments and annotations that resemble the glosses (ḥawāshī ) in the manuscript tradition. In addition, no introduction was added to describe the manuscript sources, the editorial method, and the problems that faced the editor.43

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Orientalists and the Rise of taḥqīq44

As discussed above, Muslim scholars played a role in publishing printed classical texts, but their work, to some, was more of corrections on the printing drafts following the same tradition of manuscript copying. Some contemporary Muslim philologists, such as al-Munajjid, Ḥusayn Naṣṣār and Ayman Fuʾād agree on different levels that Western scholarship had a significant impact on textual criticism methods. Naṣṣār argues that it was not until the work of Western scholars who introduced the systematic methodology in the textual criticism, that Muslim scholars replicated their knowledge in Western philological studies.45

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Dayeh, “From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq,” 273. Dayeh, “From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq,” 262–269. Although European scholars had begun printing Arabic texts centuries before, the scholarly editing of texts only began properly in the early 1800s. Influenced by the methods that were developed in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century classical philology and Biblical criticism, scholars began to apply these methods to so-called ‘oriental’ texts, including Arabic (Dayeh, p. 272). Naṣṣār, “al-Ittijāhāt,” 3.

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Maṣri, however, argues that the rise of publishing critical editions in the West in the nineteenth century coincided with the early publications of Būlāq through which hundreds of Arabic manuscripts were published, followed even by the appearance of private presses in Egypt and other Arab countries.46 The latter claim might be valid to represent the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In this period, Dayeh argues, many of the orientalists’ editions travelled to Cairo, Beirut, and other countries, and the Būlāq editions would similarly make their way to European scholars.47 Al-Munajjid confirms that the first generation of muḥḥaqqiqīn of Arabic manuscripts utilised the orientalist’s experiences by either implementing it or making some adaptations to the method. He did not mention any clear examples to support this claim, apart from how these works were printed in the Arab world. This is slightly problematic as it focuses on the apparatus criticus more than the edition itself.48 Ridwān al-Sayyid relates the major development in the philological studies in the nineteenth century to the efforts of the German philologists, Karl Lachmann (1793–1851), who associated philology with the study of text history.49 Lachmann “brought rigorous scientific method to textual editing, formulating the principle that agreement in error implies a common origin,”50 He noticed that the manuscript heritage did not reach us in its original copies, but reached through witnesses who were subject to various types of distortion and alterations. Therefore, he took it upon himself to retrieve the evidence that was lost with time and that could help to read the original text. Lachmann’s stemmatic method, known as the ‘common errors’ method, as theorised by Paul Maas (1957), came about in the historicist/positivist context of the nineteenth century, analysing the textual variations in manuscripts in genealogical/hierarchical terms. Mistakes produced in the course of the copying process are transmitted in the subsequent copies, which add their own mistakes and so on. This genealogy of mistakes provides us with an objective tool to reconstruct the pedigree of the manuscripts themselves, which is called

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Miṣrī, Manāhij Taḥqīq. Dayeh, “From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq,” 273. Al-Munajjid, Qawāʾid Taḥqīq al-Nuṣūṣ. Al-Sayyid, Ridwan. Usul Tahqiq al-ʿIlmi, p. 12. ”Lachmann, Karl.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford University Press, 2010. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198606536.001.0001 /acref-9780198606536-e-2697.

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the stemma.51 This is also known as old philology, “a full collation of all significant differences between witnesses.”52 It is worth mentioning that the stemmatic approach becomes the key to another approach known as text reconstruction.53 The goal of reconstructing a text, following the historical-critical method, required a comprehensive search for all extant manuscript witnesses. This means a survey of all known manuscripts, the creation of research tools such as comprehensive catalogues and bibliographies, and individual as well as institutional cooperation. While the textual reconstruction could help us understand the authorship tradition in the Muslim world, it is noteworthy that it has also been criticised, because it privileges accuracy and authenticity as it attempts to identify the closest codicological witness to the original authorial intention. This is the problem that reoccurs in the modern printed editions of classical Arabic and Persian texts.54 Tara Andrews argues that the main criticism of this method is around intuition and prejudices as part of its framework, which means they lack a scientific methodology. She adds, “The method remains grounded in assumptions about what we can and cannot know dating from before the digital age.” The new philologist is generally more interested in the individuality and the variation in each witness than in a unified textus receptus. They would often publish an edition of a single manuscript or of very few and meticulously provide a transcription as accurate as possible. Consequently, editions produced according to the principles of new philology only rarely required extensive text collation. This method also likely facilitated making the data digitally available, which explains why the method it often seen as more suited to digital editions than the old methods.55 This is also one of the reasons that I choose this methodology in my current textual criticism projects.56 51 52 53

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Chapter 3: Textual Criticism, p. 336. Philipp Roelli, Handbook of Stemmatology: History, Methodology, Digital Approaches (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), 1. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid gave many examples of reconstructing lost texts using the stemma methodology such as Ibn Tulun biography is one of the works that was lost in its original form, but thanks to the historical method of reconstreucting the work from another work “al-Mughrib fi hula al-Mghrib” by ibn al-Sa’id al-Maghribi (d. 1286) who copied in the same work sirat Muhammad ibn taghaj al-Ikhshid written by Ibn Zulaq (Sayyid, Ayman Fuʾad, al-Masadir al-Tarikiya fi tahqiq al-Nusus, p. 225). Zadeh, 31. Tara L. Andrews, “The third way: philology and critical edition in the digital age,” in The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 61–76. Currently working on editing an Arabic manuscript attributed to al-Jazuli, which is widely used in the daily rituals of Sufis in Morocco. The manuscript comes from a private collection of an eminent scholar and Sufi leader in Fez.

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In addition to reducing time spent in the editorial projects, I argue that the method better suits the dispersed corpus of unidentified/unedited Islamic manuscripts, which need to be brought out for further studies. It is worth mentioning that in both methods, the preparatory work is still largely manual, even where/when it is computer-assisted with word processors, spreadsheets for collation, or XML editors for TEI57 transcription. While acknowledging the importance of orientalist editions and the standards they had set, a few scholars criticised their approach and methodologies, such as Mohammed Arkoun, and ᷾Abd al-Salām Hārūn. Others, such as Maḥmūd Shākir went so far as to deny the idea that text editing was an innovation of Western scholars. He accused all “Orientalists” of being “[the] soldiers of Christianity, who dedicated themselves to the greater jihad, they locked themselves between walls hidden behind stacks of books, written in a language other than their native tongues.” He even blamed them for the decline of the Ottoman Empire and Islam.”58 El-Shamsy argues that Orientalists must have seemed both grand and strangely purposeless in the eyes of Muslims.59 Some Muslim scholars, notably Maḥmūd al-Miṣrī and Hārūn, believe that orientalists adopted similar techniques used in the early tradition of knowledge transmission by Muslims, particularly in Ḥadīth, such as matching the copies and organising them hierarchically. In Arab-Islamic culture, the holographs or copies with reading or transmission certificates always had a prominent status using the principle of solid transmission against weak transmission, similar to Ḥadīth narrations. Gotthelf Bergsträsser argues that Muslim scholars were more appreciative of authorial copies than Western scholars.60 In contrast, Aḥmad Shākir (1892–1958), the well-known ḥadīth scholar and editor, argued that due to the poor quality of printed editions by correctors, Egyptian scholars began to imitate European philologists and the methods used in their editions. Therefore, the work of those orientalists became a guide

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The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium that collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines that specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences, and linguistics. Since 1994, the TEI Guidelines have been widely used by libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to present texts for online research, teaching, and preservation (available at: https://tei-c.org/). Shākir, Maḥmūd. Risālah fī al-Ṭarīq ilá Thaqāfatuna, 34–49. El-Shamsy, Rediscovering, 15. Bergsträsser, Gotthelf, and Muḥammad Ḥamdī Bakrī. 1969. Uṣūl naqd al-nuṣūṣ wa-nashr al-kutub: muḥāḍarāt al-mustashriq al-Almānī Birjshtrāsir bi-kulliyat al-ādāb sanat 1931/32. [Cairo]: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, Markaz Taḥqīq al-Turāth.

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for modern scholars among Muslims. Among the first to imitate them and follow in their path was the great scholar Aḥmad Zakī Pasha and those who followed in his path and imitated him.61 Al-Munajjid explains the relation between orientalists and Islamic heritage as a matter of mutual interest. The Arabic manuscripts, particularly the ḥadīth collections, were an excellent medium for western scholars to practice philological principles on. In return, orientalists introduced standards methods for textual criticism to the nineteenth century Muslim scholars.62 One of the most significant reflections on orientalists approaches was developed by Mohammed Arkoun. He criticised the orientalists’ philological methodologies for handling the Muslim textual heritage. He argued that orientalists were keen to prove the historical facts that were mentioned in the early texts and how that becomes authentic and autoreactive. They tend to neglect the side events accompanying these facts or those that they classified as the unspoken in historical facts. He added that orientalists ignored the oral tradition and popular culture. This was part of Arkoun’s more extensive agenda in studying the Islamic heritage and providing epistemological and etymological analysis to deconstruct Islamic studies, which explains why he criticised both the orientalists and the indigenous approaches alike.63 To conclude, the rise of taḥqīq al-nuṣūṣ can be credited to the intellectual movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, due to the influence of colonialism, scholars throughout the world adapted their editorial practices to these new standards and textual forms. As a result, the critical edition, as a textual form and a manifestation of critical historical research, became the dominant form of scholarly publishing of classical texts. Furthermore, despite the composition and translation of dozens of manuals on taḥqīq al-nuṣūṣ, controversies around editorial practices continued to shape intellectual life, making it an important and relevant field of research.64

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The manifestation of textual criticism approach in the 19th century was evidenced in the appearance of many editions such as Kitab al-FIlaha li-ibn al-ʿAwwam al-Ishbili edited by Panckry; Muntakhab min Tarikh Halab li-ibn al-ʿAdim in Bone 1819 edited by Firtagh; Taqim al-Buldan li-Abi al-Fida in Paris 1840 by De Slane; al-Kamil lil-Mubarrid 18640 by Wright; Muʿjam al-Buldan lil-Hamawi 1866 by Westfield; and Fihrist al-Nadim 1871 by Flughel. Munajjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. Qawāʾid Taḥqīq al-Nuṣūṣ. The Perspectives of Orientalism in the contemporary Arab thoughts. Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS), 7 (2), pp. 119–138. Dayeh, p. 246.

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Digital Textual Tradition

I will now discuss what is believed to be the proposed solution to all textual criticism challenges. Before that, I will summarize the methods that were discussed in the precious sections. The older practice of philology emphasised the “ideal” text whose authority superseded that of any surviving witnesses. The specific ideal text in question might be the author’s original, the recoverable archetype, or even the emended and conjectured version of a sole surviving witness. Conversely, the emphasis of new philology is on the “real” text as it has been preserved, received, annotated, and used. The distinction between “ideal” and “real” is a simple shift that prescribes radically different working methods. In the end, there is no consensus on methods in textual criticism of classical Islamic texts. The advent of information technology tools in the last half of the twentieth century has transformed how editorial and textual studies can be conceived and how they are conducted.65 Elias Muhanna defines Digital Humanities saying: “[its’] practitioners come from different disciplines, use different methodologies, ask different questions and constitute their research objects in a different way.”66 To take a different approach from the too numerous instances of the word “different” in the previous definition, I prefer using Digital Islamic Studies over Digital Humanities. The latter has become an ocean without shores. To be specific, Digital Islamic Studies, at least in this chapter, is centred on the usage of digital tools (digitising, OCR’ing, analysing, editing) to produce critical editions of Islamic texts. Regardless of the different categories of Digital Humanities,67 it can be argued that the recent academic digital trend seeks to reform the approach by encouraging scholars to re-examine manuscripts from other sources, which justify the noticeable increase in the digital corpora of Islamic and Arabic texts under the umbrella of Digital Humanities. In this context, the critical question arises: How does digital textual criticism work, and what does it offer? Peter Robinson put forward a set of

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Buzzetti, Dino & Gann, Jerome. (2006). Critical Editing in a Digital Horizon, p. 55. Muhanna, Elias. Islamic and Middle East Studies, p. 2. Muhanna provides three main categories of Digital Humanities. The first is the use of computational tools and digital metrical to facilitate traditionally scholarly inquiries. The second category begins with traditional inquiry but become qualitatively transformed in the course of their development of digital tools and methods; and the third is projects that use and often develop a computational tools and dataset to ask entirely new questions (Muhanna, p. 5).

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working methods for true digital textual criticism and confirmed that digital editions challenge us with the same fundamental problems as print editions.68 Andrews argues that digital textual criticism owes its origins to both “old” and “new” philological practices. The most immediate value of digital methods is assigning as much as possible of the work—particularly that which is repetitive, exacting, and error-prone—to the computer.69 A practical example is the automated text collation in which a complete transcription of each witness will be produced and then automatically collated and compared instead of choosing a base text (or reference text) against which all subsequent texts are compared.70 However, given the vast quantities of data that can be produced about a set of texts and given the generally accepted notion that texts were copied from other texts, the digital philologist might expect that, with enough aggregate empirical data, a scholar ought to be able to use computational analysis to arrive at an approximate order of copying. We ought to consider having no fear of contamination, horizontal transmission, multiple archetypal versions, or extra-textual influences having skewed the results. The history of the text lies in its witnesses, and the historian of the text must seek to uncover that history.71 Critical apparatus is an essential part of the textual editing process and using digital tools can transform passive readers into active users. Tom Keeline argues that in addition to the known benefits of the apparatus, which is to inform the reader about the constitution of the text at any relevant point and to instruct the reader about the manuscripts and scribes of the tradition in question; it must also be used by readers, hence the benefit of the digital representation.72 I do not wish to criticise digital philology nor the digital humanities. The debates have been going on for a long time now.73 I also do not claim expertise in the Digital Humanities’ colossal field, however I instead ask a different question “Did the field of digital humanities deliver its promises in the textual criticism field? It is believed that one main role of the digital humanities could

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Robinson (2004, 420), in Andrews, The Third way, 3. Robinson, Peter. “Towards a Theory of Digital Editions.” Variants 10, 2012. P.106. Macé, Caroline, et al., “Textual editing and text editing,” 333. Andrews, 7. Keeline, Tom. “The Apparatus Criticus in the Digital Age.” The Classical Journal 112, no. 3 (2017): 350. Klein and Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).

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be advocating for humanities by helping to broaden the very idea of instrumentalism, technological, and otherwise. As Y. Liu argues,” this could be its unique contribution to cultural criticism.”74 As far as textual criticism is concerned, how many digital critical editions are available online? Andrews agrees that there is a lack of production and she attributes that to the lack of clarity of what a digital edition ought to look like. She confirms that textual criticism remains fundamentally non-digital in its methods. Additionally, comparing the steps of creating a digital critical edition and a non-digital critical edition, one can still see the similarity such as the transcription and collation75 are still among the steps of creating a digital edition, before providing a critical version of the consented text with its variations noted in an apparatus criticus.76 Additionally, some think that digital philology failed to allow detailed examination of manuscripts. It was hoped that the recent developments in digital Islamic studies will solve this problem by reforming the textual studies approach and encouraging scholars to re-examine manuscripts from other sources.77 Moreover, it failed to account for how scribes, rules and authorities can systematically and deliberately censor different manuscript copies.78 Another point is that neither book history nor the digital humanities are wellestablished subfields in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.79 The previous challenges are directly connected to the state of digitisation and manuscript access in Muslim countries, which reminds us of the historical debates about printing.80 From a methodological point of view, many of the fundamental problems associated with the textual tradition are carried over directly into the digital age.81 Perhaps this is linked to the fact that the majority of the digital humanities projects relied on printed editions of the work, which means that a vast corpus of manuscripts was excluded. The notion of authenticity appears again in the digital sphere; electronic texts or digital surrogates are only regarded

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Liu, A.Y. Where is cultural criticism in the digital humanities? eScholarship, University of California, 2012. For many decades it has been recognized that text collation is a task that is extraordinarily tedious, and requires vast attention to detail—and that such a task would be well-suited for automation. Andrews, “The Third Way,” 4. Daneshgar, 346. Daneshgar, 346. Dagmar, “Of making many copies,” 67. Ghali, “Politics.” Zadeh, 12.

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as authentic as long as the interference of computer technology, in particular, the loss of information, remains invisible to the readers.82 Travis Zadeh raised another concern and named it the “illusion of completeness,” where most projects send a wrong signal that they are complete corpora.83 These corpora are not inclusive and are controlled by curation acts of exclusion by choosing what is deemed as worthy of being passed on and what is not. Zadeh claims that most of these websites and platforms are designed to reconstitute and enunciate a particular form of normativity.84 In the end, we cannot blame digital humanities or technology alone for this uncertainty. These projects face challenges on different fronts, such as the fragmentary nature of Islamic manuscripts, the lack or absence of digitisation projects in the Muslim world, and the access restrictions on some private and public repositories. These are confirmed challenges on the resource availability side.85 Some of these challenges in digital Islamic studies are also linked to the very nature of the orientalists’ methodologies of textual criticism as their focus was mainly on the quality and reliability of the resource as a witness and how they can cite it. The basis of the textual tradition is taxonomic and very much based on the idiosyncratic nature of manuscript production. A monogenetic origin from a single parent is also generally assumed. Both assumptions, according to Zadeh, prove somewhat problematic for the Arabic and Persian book culture.86 To conclude, it is undeniable that the rise of the computational paradigm in textual studies has shifted the scholarship’s approach in textual studies. Muhanna argues that thousands of online volumes have become resources for the first report for researchers and that we should ask how this affected the methodologies and practices of research.87 The profound value of digital 82

83 84 85

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Riedel, Dagmar. “Of making many copies there is no end: The digitization of manuscripts and printed books in Arabic script.” In The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies, ed. Elias Muhanna (Boston: De Gruyter, 2016), p. 72. Such as al-Mawsuʿa al-Shamila; al-Jamiʿ li-Kutub al-Turath and al-Jamiʿ to mention but a few. Zadeh, 28. Ghali, Walid. “13. The State of Manuscript Digitization Projects in Some Egyptian Libraries and Their Challenges.” In Library and Information Science in the Middle East and North Africa edited by Amanda B. Click, Sumayya Ahmed, Jacob Hill and John D. Martin III, 302–318. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Saur, 2016. Zadeh, p. 31. See also: Witkam, J.J. “Establishing the Stemma: fact or fiction?”, Manuscripts of Middle East Studies, 3: 88–101 (1988); Zadeh, Travis, “Of Mummies Poets, and Water Nymphs: Tracing a codicological limits of Ibn Khurradadhbih’s Geography,” Abbasid Studies IV, ed. Monique Bernards (Exter: Short Run Press, 2013), p. 18. Muhanna, Elias. Islamic and Middle East Studies, 2.

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philology is that it should allow not only for innovative means of publication and display but also for innovative working methods and unexpected results. When can we cast aside so many of the practical limitations on the management of data that existed through to the end of the twentieth century?88

7

Conclusion: Towards an Amalgamated Approach

By way of conclusion, I would like to propose an amalgamated approach to the study of Islamic manuscripts, which can help us understand the intellectual history, transmission of knowledge, categories of writing and Muslim authorship cultures. Aaron Hughes argues that until a major manuscript or archaeological discovery happens, the most pressing question we can try to articulate and answer is how and why early Muslims wrote their history?89 In my opinion, answers to these questions can be found in the process of searching and deciphering the written heritage (turāth) and reading it in its sociopolitical context. The Muslim heritage represents a tradition that has existed since the 7th century C.E. and provided a written corpus that has no similarity in other cultures. So, the fundamental question should be about how we should handle this unique and one of its kind heritage? Let us then assume that a critical edition, in theory, aims to bridge the gap between manuscript and book cultures and to respond in a variety of forms to the interests of the editors (muḥaqqiqīn) as authors, their readers and to a lesser extent publishers and universities as stakeholders in cultural productions. What are the methods or method to reach this goal? With all methods and practices discussed previously, it is obvious that there is no single method or ready-made recipe for dealing with textual criticism. Methods vary according to the objective that editors strive to achieve and the objects/products they wish to approximate to.90 Perhaps because the goals and approaches were diverse, some sought to reinvigorate the established scholarly tradition, others to undermine it. Some emphasized the socially relevant messages conveyed in rediscovered older works, while others focused on their aesthetically superior form. Varied methods have been used that were different from the consciously adapted one of the Orientalist tradition of editing and scholarship. In contrast, others sought 88 89 90

Andrews, p. 4. Hughes, Aaron W. Muslim identities: An introduction to Islam (Columbia University Press, 2013), 37. Macé, “Textual criticism and text editing,” 323–324.

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to excavate indigenous Arabic philology to counterbalance Orientalism and its claims to privileged expertise.91 Even the Text Encoding Initiative’s guidelines, which comprise the de facto representation standard for textual scholarship, are interpreted differently and routinely customised for each new project. This idiosyncratic interpretation and insistence upon customisation, wherein exception becomes the rule, is a misunderstanding of the nature of a digital data model that effectively prohibits large-scale interchange or machine analysis across different projects.92 Digital humanities is, in fact, a method with multiple approaches. I do not believe, however, that digital methods will make critical editing obsolete.93 It can take it to the open skies of new philology, computer theory and intertextual algorithms. Andrews argued that the rise of a new professional digital philology had significant implications for the reception of the classical tradition in the modern period, and it has a direct impact on Islamic studies in general and textual analysis in particular.94 With digital humanities then we have the old and new philology mashed together. The other aspect that should be amalgamated to the textual criticism approaches is the social status and function of texts and copies. Each text is unique in terms of the ways it was authored, commissioned or copied. Why were some texts so popular, and others were less favoured or entirely ignored. The idea of social text editing was promoted by D.F. McKenzie, who believed that a scholar’s attention should be directed not only at the text—the linguistic features of a document—but at the entirety of the material character of the relevant witnesses. McKenzie regarded documents as complex semiotic fields that bear within themselves the evidence of their social emergence. The critical editor, in his view, should focus on that field of relations and not simply on the linguistic text.95 The social status of manuscripts is connected to the material status of each object and is named codicology. Along the lines of the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and his The Social Life of Things, it was recently suggested that we need to start practicing codicology (the material study of manuscripts)

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El-Shamsy, 4–5. Schmidt, 2011. Stemmatology is central to the methods of digital critical edition. It is the form of text analysis that lies at the heart of classical philology, and it is the type of analysis that, if done more correctly and sympathetically, could be of great help to mediaeval philologists whether of the old school or the new. Andrews, “The Third way,” 7. Buzzetti, Dino & Gann, Jerome. (2006). Critical Editing in a Digital Horizon, p. 55.

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as social science, as texts do have a social life, which we need to know about if we want to understand them properly. Olly Akkerman argues that social codicology explores the encounter between philology and a particular community. She gave an example from the Alawi Bohras writing that “[it] is an invitation to rethink the social meaning of philology and manuscripts in Muslim societies.”96 However, there has been a slight mixing between the text and the object. I believe that social codicology does not investigate the material only, but also includes textual analysis including the glosses. Socialising manuscript studies entails looking at texts differently, transcending borders of classical philology, codicology, and palaeography to include ritual, mechanical, spatial, and social practices and oral histories of book copying, consuming, collecting, venerating and preserving. As such, social codicology works with the understanding that, as objects, the agency97 is given to texts in all sorts of ways through practices and traditions, and, as such, narratives of social life are created.98 This proposed approach should look at each manuscript as a unique item carrying a story between the lines. Digitisation should facilitate access to these manuscripts, and if that is not possible, then the cooperative transcription projects.99 All of this has to happen at once; a continuing improvement over time is an intrinsic part of the promise of digital editions. “Reading” a classical text becomes a collaborative process of critical reconstruction. In theory, this has always been the responsible way to use a critical edition; in the digital age, this theory can finally be put into practice.100

Bibliography Akkerman, O. “The Bohra Manuscript Treasury as a Sacred Site of Philology: a Study in Social Codicology.” Philological Encounters, 2019: 182–201. al-Munajjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. “Min Mushkilāt al-Turāth al-’Arabī.” ’Ālam al-Kutub, 1980: 142–146. 96 97

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Akkerman, O. The Bohra Manuscript Treasury as a Sacred Site of Philology: a Study in Social Codicology, Philological Encounters, 4(3–4), 182–201. Dagnais work in the filed of Iberian medieval literature about the social lives of handwritten texts and their rough edges can potentially be applied to pre-modern manuscripts and libraries (Dagenais, John. The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture. Princeton University Press, 1994). Akkerman, “Bohara manuscripts,” 197. Arabic Scientific Manuscripts of the British Library (official website). Keeline, Tom. “The Apparatus Criticus in the Digital Age,” 352.

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Andrews, Tara L. “The third way: philology and critical edition in the digital age.” The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, 2013: 61–76. Baghdad, Gharbi. “Contributions of the Islamic Scholars in Establishing the origins and controls of investigation of manuscripts: Suyuti as a model.” Akadimiyat alDirasat al-Ijtima’iya wa-al-Insaniya, 2019: 201–205. Bani-Yaseen, Durar Ali, and Mohammad Abedullah Altawallbeh. “The perspective of Orientalism in the contemporary Arab thought: A Critical Study Of criticizing Mohammad Arkoun of the orientalist Approach.” Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS), 2018: 119–138. Bergsträsser, Gotthelf, and Muḥammad Ḥamdī Bakrī. Uṣūl naqd al-nuṣūṣ wa-nashr al-kutub: muḥāḍarāt al-mustashriq al-Almānī Birjshtrāsir bi-kulliyat al-ādāb sanat 1931/32. [Cairo]: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, Markaz Taḥqīq al-Turāth, 1969. Binbīn, Aḥ mad Šauqī. Dirāsāt fī ʿilm al-maḫṭūṭāt wa-’l-baḥṯ al-bibliyūġrāfī. al-Rabāt:̣ Dār Abī Raqrāq lil-Ṭ ibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 2018. Buzzetti, Dino and Jerome J. McGann. “Electronic Textual Editing: Critical Editing in a Digital Horizon.” In Electronic Textual Editing. New York: Modern Language Association of Amer, by Lou, Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe and John Unsworth (Eds.) Burnard, 53–73. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2006. Dagenais, John. The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture. Princeton University Press, 1994. Daneshgar, Majid. “Lost Orientalism, Lost Orient, and Lost Orientals.” In Deconstructing Islamic Studies, by Majid Daneshgar, & Aaron W Hughes, 338–357. MA: ILEX and Harvard University Press, 2020. Dayeh, I. “From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq: Toward a History of the Arabic Critical Edition.” Philological Encounters, 2019: 245–299. Driscoll, Matthew J. “The Words on the Page: Thoughts on Philology, Old and New.” In Creating the medieval saga: Versions, variability, and editorial interpretations of Old Norse saga literature, by Judy and Emily Lethbridge (Eds.) Quinn, 85–102. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010. El Shamsy, Ahmed. Rediscovering the Islamic classics: how editors and print culture transformed an intellectual tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. El-Rouayheb, Khaled. Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Ghali, Walid. Reading the Politics of Digitization, panel co-chair, Middle East Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. The 48th Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (Washington, DC, 22–25 Nov. 2014). Ghali, Walid. Print or not print: is that still the question? https://ecommons.aku.edu/uk _ismc_faculty_publications/2, n.d.

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Ghali, Walid. “The State of Manuscript Digitization Projects in Some Egyptian Libraries and Their Challenges.” In Library and Information Science in the Middle East and North Africa, by Sumayya Ahmed, Jacob Hill and John D. Martin III Amanda B. Click, 302–318. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Saur, 2016. Ḥalwajī, ʻAbd al-Sattār. “Tārīkh al-Makhṭuṭ al-’Arabī.” In Tahqīq al-Nuṣūṣ by Muhḥammad Abū al-’Izz (Ed.). Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīya, 2019. Hārūn, ʻAbd al-Salām Muḥammad. Taḥqīq al-nuṣūṣ wa-nashruhā: awwal kitāb ʻArabī fī hādhā al-fann yuwaḍḍiḥ manāhijihi wa-yuʻālij mushkilātihi. al-Qāhirah: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1954. Hārūn, ’Abd al-Salām. Taḥqīq al-Nuṣūṣ wa-nashruha. Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1954. Haykal, ’Abd al-Bāsit, interview by Samih Ismail. Lā Yumkin Iḥdāth Qaṭī’ah ma’a alTurāth (6 30, 2018). Hershenzon, D. “Doing Things with Arabic in the Seventeenth-Century Escorial.” Philological Encounters, 2019: 159–181. Hughes, Aaron W. Muslim identities: An introduction to Islam. Columbia University Press, 2013. Jabartī, ʻAbd al-Raḥ mān. Tā rīkh ʻajā ʼib al-ā thā r fī al-tarā jim wa-al-akhbā r. Bayrū t: Dār al-Jīl, 1983. Klein, M.K. Gold and L.F. Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, Debates in the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Lachmann, Karl. “Lachmann, Karl.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book: Oxford University Press, 2010. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/97801 98606536.001.0001/acref-9780198606536-e-2697: Oxford University Press, 2010. Liu, A.Y. Where is cultural criticism in the digital humanities? eScholarship. University of California, 2012. Macé, Caroline, Lara Sels, Alessandro Bausi, Johannes Den Heijer, Jost Gippert, Paolo La Spisa, Alessandro Mengozzi, and Sébastien Moureau. “Textual criticism and text editing.” (2015): 321–465. Manṣūr, F.A. al-Muzhir: fī ’ulūm al-lughah wa-anwā’ihā. Dār al-Kutub al-’Ilmīyah, 1998. 2 v. Mestyan, Adam. “Ignác Goldziher’s Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.” Journal of Semitic Studies LX. no. 2 (2015): 443–480. Miller, Matthew Thomas, Maxim G. Romanov, and Sarah Bowen Savant. “Digitising the Textual Heritage of the Premodern Islamicate World: Principles and Plans.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2018: 103–9. Miṣrī, Maḥmūd. “Manāhij Taḥqīq al-Makhṭūṭāt inda al-ʿArab wa-al-Gharb.” Al-Multaqa al-Dawlī al-Thānī ḥawla Manāhij al-Taḥqīq ʿinda al-ʿArab wa-al-Gharb. 14–15 April 2013.

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Muhanna, Elias. “Islamic and Middle East Studies and the Digital Turn.” In The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies, 1–10. De Gruyter, 2016. Muhanna, Elias. The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. “Significance of Islamic Manuscripts.” In The Significance of Islamic Manuscripts: Proceedings of the inaugural conference of Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, by John Cooper (Ed.), 7–17. London, UK: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 30th November_ 1st December 1991_ English version, 1992. Naṣṣār, Ḥusayn. “al-Ittijahat al-Haditha fi Tahqiq al-Turath.” In Fi Tahqiq al-Nusus, by Muhammad Abu al-’Izz (Ed.). Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriya, 2020. Riedel, Dagmar. “Of making many copies there is no end: The digitization of manuscripts and printed books in Arabic script.” In The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies, by Elias Muhanna (Ed.), 65–92. Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. Robinson, Peter. “Towards a Theory of Digital Editions.” In The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (Brill), 2013. Roelli, Philipp. Introduction—Handbook of Stemmatology: History, Methodology, Digital Approaches. 2020. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books, 2019. Sayyid, Ayman Fuʼād. al-Kitā b al-ʻArabī al-makhṭūt ̣ wa-ʻilm al-makhṭūtạ ̄ t. Vol. 2. 2 vols. al-Qāhirah: al-Dār al-Miṣrīyah al-Lubnānīyah, 1997. Suyū tị .̄ Tadrīb al-rā wī fī sharḥ Taqrīb al-Nawā wī. al-Dammām: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2010. Zadeh, Travis. “Uncertainty and the Archive.” In The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies, by Elias Muhanna (Ed.), 11–64. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.

Chapter 9

New Lenses for an Ethnography of Islam The Case of Mevlid Ceremonies Isabella Crespi and Martina Crescenti

1

Introduction1

In recent decades, ethnographic studies conducted by Western academics on the Islamic religion have given more and more importance to the figure of the researcher, since the researcher filters knowledge gained in the context of analysis through a personal lens. This knowledge risks being tinged by subjectivity—the researcher’s own cultural baggage, ideologies and potential existing prejudices—which affect the objectivity and scientific nature of the research. For this reason, one of the presuppositions of the use of the ethnographic method is that there is a development of a critical capacity on the part of the researcher. Through this reflexivity, the non-Muslim researcher from a Western country—or from an educational and working background influenced by stereotypical narratives about Islam—can explain first to themselves and then to the reader how they undertook the research and what their intentions were, analysing the consequences and the effects of the particular mode of investigation. It is precisely critical capacities that allow the researcher to reflect on their personal conditioning—such as being subject to orientalising ideologies or political positions regarding Islam—which may be learned and sustained consciously or without real awareness. These conditions may come to light when the researcher places themselves in a position of ‘discomfort’ that forces them to enact self-examination and examination of their own theoretical assumptions underpinning the research. Assuming such a position in relation to the participants and the context studied is equivalent to putting oneself in a mental and relational condition, whereby what has been learned, made one’s own and taken for granted can be easily reworked in the encounter and exchange with the other.

1 The authors conceived of the idea, collected the literature, the references, and the data, and wrote the chapter together. In particular, Isabella Crespi wrote par. 2 and Martina Crescenti par. 3. The introduction and conclusions were written together.

© Isabella Crespi and Martina Crescenti, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_010

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The researcher faces the problem of their role within the group of Muslim believers: do they place themselves in a position of superiority or do they try to establish a relationship of respect and dialogue? On the basis of what cultural and ethical references does the ethnographer decide to play a certain role? Can dialogue with the participants as part of fieldwork actually lead to an open and non-judgemental exchange? To what extent does the exchange of views and opinions between the two parties lead to the acquisition of knowledge from a scientific point of view? Is it really possible to deconstruct a cultural stereotype through constant reflection, if previous conceptions were founded on a lack of awareness? These are some questions that the researcher necessarily asks themselves when entering into a relationship with people of other cultural origins and of the Islamic faith. It should also be remembered that even on the Muslim side there are forms of stereotyping and discrimination against Westerners and non-Muslims. In the dialectic between West and East, particularly after the September 11 attacks of 2001, Europeans have constructed certain stereotypical narratives about Muslim identity, while Muslims have constructed just as many about Westerners.2 According to one strand of media, public and political thinking, Muslims are terrorists, violent, misogynistic, uneducated and interested in proselytising. On the other hand, Westerners are seen by a large part of the Islamic elite and the broader Muslim public as immoral, lacking in social rules, without modesty and care for the family (women), and individualistic. Therefore, for analysis of Muslim contexts in which there is a cultural encounter between non-Muslim Westerners and Muslims, the ethnographic method allows the researcher to undertake critical reflection on their own way of relating to the other and their own symbolic-cultural reference system. A diary in which the researcher takes notes can also be useful in developing critical reflection on both their own methodology and the knowledge learned in the context. In the study of Islamic practices, in particular, prolonged observation over time helps uncover different interpretations of Islam among believers, deconstructing the idea of a single and universal Islam and replacing it with a concept of a pluralistic and ever-changing Islam. Interviews help the researcher to understand believers’ thinking, which is embodied in

2 Mashuri, Ali, and Zaduqisti Esti. “Explaining Muslims’ Aggressive Tendencies Towards the West: The Role of Negative Stereotypes, Anger, Perceived Conflict and Islamic Fundamentalism.” Psychology and Development Societies, 2019, DOI: 10.1177%2F0971333618819151. Pew Research Center, (2006). Report “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2006/06/22/the-great-divide-how -westerners-and-muslims-view-each-other/.

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a lived and visible practice. Moreover, for both the researcher and the group of Muslims, the interview also facilitates a change in the conception of the relationship, i.e. a mutual questioning, starting from relative personal and collective values. In the ethnographic method, all the people present in the field participate equally in the production of knowledge, which is constructed through mutual observation and dialogue, and filtered by the researcher’s criticality for scientific restitution. The research we present in this chapter led us to reflect in our capacity as Western (Italian) and non-Muslim researchers on the interaction we had with a group of Muslim women. The research concerned the analysis of 25 Islamic mevlid ceremonies in the cities of Bursa and Gemlik (Turkey), during which we endeavoured to observe our fieldwork through a flexible and reflexive lens. In particular, given some relational difficulties and obstacles along our research path, we reasoned about what ethnographic methodology brings to the study of everyday Islamic practice and what the advantages are of observation for a diversified and contextualised understanding of the Islamic religion. This allowed us to formulate a new way of seeing Islam. An ethnocentric attitude (the imposition of the values and norms of one culture on another with the assumption that one is superior to the other) is considered a fatal error in ethnography. Moreover, one of the dangers of ethnography is that it may produce stereotypes of a group, culture or subculture. We now better understand the conditions that produce mistrust, discontent and anxiety for Muslim women. It seems to us, therefore, necessary to contribute to a methodological reflection to produce a new way of undertaking ethnographic studies of Islam in the contexts in which this religion is lived out.

2

Ethnography and the Study of Culture and Religion

The social sciences partly experience what Ludwig Wittgenstein called ‘cravings for generality,’ which leads the discipline to reflect and theorise on the nature of the object of study without investigating its specific mechanisms and without recognising a particular group of people as being able to produce knowledge and integrate it into their daily lives.3 So-called ‘generalisers’ seek general rules in society, while ‘particularisers’ seek to study society through

3 Baudoin Dupret, Thomas Pierret, Paulo Pinto, and Kathryn Spellman-Poots. Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Agha Khan University-ISMC: Edinburgh University Press, 2012).

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individuals and small groups.4 For analysis of specific contexts, social disciplines such as sociology and political science use the ethnographic approach as it provides a ‘particular’ and gradable lens through which to analyse the everyday dynamics of a particular category of people. The definition of the term ethnography has been subject of controversy.5 For some, it refers to a philosophical paradigm; for others, it designates a method that takes opportunities for study where it can. In practical terms, ethnography usually refers to forms of social research that have the following characteristics: a strong emphasis on exploring the nature of a particular social phenomenon, a tendency to work primarily with unstructured data, the investigation of a small number of cases, and analysis of data that includes detailed interpretation of the meanings and functions of human actions. The analysis of these actions mainly takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations, with statistical and quantitative analysis usually taking a subordinate role.6 Ethnographic research is not fixed or static but is transformative, personal and responsive to social dynamics that change over time. This flexibility and adaptability make research work particularly challenging in terms of time and space, yet offer the potential to experience first-hand the transformative process of the social phenomenon being examined. Thanks to this method, the researcher can gain many advantages, including obtaining deep insight into the research context, understanding the point of view of the participants, collecting various types of material from the context, and being able to observe relational dynamics through verbal and physical language.7 The ethnographic approach allows, in general, analysis of the complexity of the social context in which people orient themselves and act, through observation of normative codes, material and immaterial elements, body language, and social ties.8

4 James V. Spickard and Shawn Landres. “Whither Ethnography? Transforming the SocialScientific Study of Religion.” In Personal Knowledge and Beyond. Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion, ed. James V. Spickard, Shawn Landres and Meredith B. McGuire, 1–14 (New York: NYU Press, 2002). 5 Martyn Hammersley. “What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it?” Ethnography and Education 13 (2018): 1–17. 6 Paul Atkinson and Martyn Hammersely. “Ethnography and Participant Observation.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman Denzin and Ivonne Lincoln London, 248–261 (London: Sage, 1994). 7 Michael Angrosino. Doing ethnographic and observational research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007). 8 Dupret, Pierret, Pinto and Spellman-Poots. Ethnographies of Islam. Naidoo, Loshini. “Ethnography: an introduction to definition and method.” In An Ethnography of Landscapes and corridors, ed. Loshini Naidoo, 1–8 (Croatia, Intech: 2012).

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Based on these references, it is recognised that theory could be a valid and useful guide for the practice of the ethnographic method. We use an approach to ethnography that takes in both qualitative research through research questions and theoretical background.9 The ethnographer recognises the importance of having a reference model whose epistemological basis is clear. The most typical model for ethnographic research is based on a phenomenologically oriented paradigm: it includes a multicultural perspective because it accepts different realities.10 People act according to their perceptions, and these actions have real consequences. Phenomenological studies are generally inductive; they make few explicit assumptions about social relations.11 This last aspect is crucial if the ethnographic approach is used to study religion, as it allows us to understand how people construct their relationship with religion and how it shapes relational and social dynamics. Given its adaptability to context, the ethnographic approach makes it possible for the researcher to identify and analyse all those forms of religiosity and spirituality that are not specifically defined and institutionalised, but rather personalised, diffuse and hybrid and that are part of the religious dimension of contemporary society.12 Moreover, ethnography used in the study of religion allows for an understanding of religion as a social phenomenon that is practised (lived religion); constructed in everyday life (everyday religion); and multi-situated, with connections between the real world and online spheres (networked and multisituated religion).13 While there are advantages to the ethnographic approach, there are also potential problems with it that are related to the subjectivity of the researcher, the insider/outsider dichotomy, the search for identity and the question of power.14 Religion constructs a worldview and a particular orientation of thought and action, defining in a normative way what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong.’ A con9 10 11 12 13

14

Gobo, Giampietro and Erika Cellini. “Ethnographic approaches: Types, trends and themes.” In Qualitative Research, ed. David Silverman, 109–127 (London, Sage: 2020). Paul Lichterman. “Interpretive reflexivity in ethnography.” Ethnography 18 (2017): 35–45. Lichterman, “Interpretive reflexivity,” 35–45. Julian M. Murchison and Curtis D. Coats. “Ethnography of Religious Instants: Multi-Sited Ethnography and the Idea of Third Spaces.” Religions 6 (3) (2015): 988–1005. Murchison and Coats, “Ethnography of Religious Instants,” 988–1005. Nancy T. Ammerman, Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Heidi Campbell, “Understanding the relationship between religion online and offline in a networked society.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80 (2012): 64–93. Meredith McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Martyn Hammersley, “Ethnography: problems and prospects.” Ethnography and Education 1 (2006): 3–.

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siderable difficulty for the researcher lies in wanting to ‘really’ see a given religious system beyond the conception of it by the group of believers, which leads to the error of providing non-inclusive results.15 In fact, the researcher’s positioning of themselves and how they build links with the group of participants is fundamental, because these things also define the researcher’s way of investigating the context and providing the results of the research.16 As opposed to subjectivity (understood as an individual filter of knowledge of the world), reflection on positionality allows the researcher to analyse how they take ‘place-position’ in the religious context under analysis.17 However, this methodological approach raises many questions, starting with how much the researcher can really know about a group of believers’ religious thoughts and actions, and the disconnect between what the researcher learns from the group and what may be the result of interpretation. In particular, due to the researcher not being part of the culture of the group under analysis, some aspects may elude the interpretation of the researcher, not be fully observed or considered irrelevant. However, these aspects could turn out to be decisive in the analysis of some group dynamics in a phase subsequent to the observation, if carefully noted and analysed. But, above all, to what extent can the researcher manage to describe and report the knowledge gained about the group without falling into exoticism or ‘conditioned’ interpretations? A methodological reflection about ethnography then becomes crucial. Studying the relational dynamics and practices constructed and shaped by Islam, it is possible to investigate how specific groups of people live out a religion that is widespread among populations all over the world. In this way, a complex study of this heterogeneous religion emerges; it therefore cannot, by its very nature, be considered simplistically as a monolithic social phenomenon.18 The possibility of closely observing, with constancy and interaction, the religion practised and lived by a given group of believers makes it possible

15 16

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Spickard and Landres, “Whither Ethnography?” 1–14. Neila Miled, “Muslim researcher researching Muslim youth: reflexive notes on critical ethnography positionality and representation.” Ethnography and Education 14 (1) (2017): 1–15. Marie Parker-Jenkins, “Problematising ethnography and case study: reflections on using ethnographic techniques and researcher positioning.” Ethnography and Education 13 (2018): 18–33. Madison D. Soyini, Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005). Fatemah Albader, “Breaking the Perceptions of Islamic Monolithism.” University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review 26 (2019): 338–367. Derya Iner and Salih Yucel. Muslim identity formation in religiously diverse societies (New Castle upont Tyne: Cambridge scholars publishing, 2015).

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to overturn the conception of a single Islam and to redefine it as pluralistic and diverse, leaving behind ‘cravings for generality.’19 Idealised, stereotyped and ideologised representations and narratives regarding Islam and Muslims are questioned and deconstructed due to the possibility of coming into contact with Muslims as they live their daily lives. Ethnography on Islam allows the group being studied to express and narrate its relationship with the religious dimension of their lives.20 By understanding the worldview of the group of Muslims with whom they have established a relationship, the researcher has the opportunity to reflect on their previously acquired knowledge, and to notice and dismiss stereotypical narratives about Islam of an ideological, political or orientalist type. Edward Said, in his 1978 book Orientalism,21 explained how studies carried out by Western researchers in Eastern countries tended to be conditioned by the conception of Western superiority. The historical, media and political dialectic between East and West has given rise to misrepresentations of religion and the Muslim population—particularly, racist and Islamophobic misrepresentations. Such ‘conditioned’ conceptions can feed into the reasoning of the researcher-ethnographer, despite their search for objectivity. For this reason, the researcher needs to put themselves in a position of ‘discomfort’ to reflect on their work. Since the researcher becomes both an observer and a participant,22 they must pay particular attention to their position in the relationships they build and how they construct the research path. Reflexivity, therefore, is understood as a critical process that leads the researcher to question their own subjectivity, positionality and agency in the context studied.23 Different from the ‘positivistic’ concept of reflection—linked to the problem of objectivity24—reflexivity refers to the relationship between the researcher and the context, the modes of investigation, and the research and production of knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary within ethnographic research on Islam to give more value to the role of the researcher—to their critical and reflexive capacities—to produce scientific knowledge that is as valid as possible. The aim is not to produce objective, universal and representative results, but to provide results based

19 20 21 22 23 24

Dupret, Pierret, Pinto and Spellman-Poots. Ethnographies of Islam. Murchison and Coats. “Ethnography of Religious Instants,” 988–1005. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Angrosino, Doing ethnographic. Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg. Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research towards a reflexive methodology (London: Sage, 2000). Kim Etherington, Becoming a Reflexive Researcher (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006).

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on critical and reflective reasoning that can be retraced, made explicit and adequately clarified. One must also consider the fact that the results are the product of a dialogical relationship between researcher and participants, i.e. they are based on an exchange of ideas in which the participants themselves express their point of view, but which can be influenced by the researcher outside the context.25 This chapter examines ethnographic fieldwork concerning the analysis of 25 Islamic mevlid ceremonies organised by women in the Turkish cities of Bursa and Gemlik (2014). These ceremonies are informal and popular and not prescribed by Islamic law; therefore, they take place outside the institutional setting of the mosque. The ceremonies are reworked into practices that are frequent in everyday life by borrowing and contaminating certain aspects, as individual and group needs vary. The flexibility of everyday religious practices makes it possible to explore in greater depth, through interviews and participant observation, the changing religiosity and spirituality of these women.26 This study has, therefore, the intention of providing not only the researcher’s reflections on the choices and methodological criticalities in the field study that characterise these ‘lived religious practices,’ but also of showing the potential of a critical reflection that builds, in our opinion, the basis for a new ethnographic approach to Islam.

3

Critical Notes on the Ethnographic Method Applied to Islamic Ceremonies

The following reflections arise from an ethnographic study conducted in Turkey between July and September 2014. The project analysed 25 Islamic ceremonies, commonly called mevlid (birth), organised and celebrated exclusively by women. They took place in the homes of private citizens in Bursa, at the Ӧrdekli Cultural Center and the Gökdere Madrasa Culture and Art Center in Bursa, and in a wedding hall, the Manastır düğün salonu, in Gemlik. These ceremonies were initially created to celebrate the prophet Muhammad’s birth according to the Islamic lunar calendar; over the centuries, they spread among the Turkish population and became a form of celebration of private occasions such as birth, marriage, death and the beginning or end of military service. The mevlid ceremonies we focused on concerned private citizens’ celebrations

25 26

Angrosino, Doing ethnographic. Spickard and Landres, “Whither Ethnography?” 1–14.

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of three specific Muslim rites of passage: birth (bebek mevlidleri), circumcision (sünnet mevlidleri) and death (vefat mevlidleri), in which texts celebrating the ‘birth’ of Islam’s prophet Muhammad were sung. The ceremonies revolved around the recitation by experienced singers (mevlithan) of an Ottoman Turkish text, the Vesīlet en-Necāt (‘The Birth of the Prophet’), composed in 1409 by the poet Süleymān Ҫelebi, to which are added Koranic suras, songs, poems, hymns and dini sohbetler, religious speeches similar to sermons.27 Attending the mevlid were women only, of all ages, and their uncircumcised or just circumcised young sons, as according to Islamic tradition female singing cannot be heard by adult men. The participants all resided in Bursa and Gemlik and the surrounding province: they were all relatives, work colleagues and friends of the family celebrated. They had different occupations: private and public sector workers, housewives, and students. In contrast to the celebrations in private homes, where the number of women was small (15 people on average), those in public spaces had an average of 45 people. Although a great many types of private occasion are celebrated in Turkey, the period between July and September is dominated by the three types of ceremonies (bebek mevlidleri, sünnet mevlidleri and vefat mevlidleri) ceremonies, on which we focused our attention. Regarding the number of ceremonies to be analysed, we decided to be flexible and to determine as the study went on the appropriate number of ceremonies required to provide comprehensive and exhaustive information. In our case, this number was reached through having experienced a sufficient amount of ceremonies of different types (birth, circumcision, death) organised in different ways (home space, rented room) by different coordinators (family, event agency paid by the family) and according to different approaches (traditional Islamic ceremony, ceremony with mystical songs, ceremony with Western and Turkish non-religious pop songs). During our fieldwork we used ethnography techniques: semi-structured interviews in Turkish language28 in the social moments before and after the ceremony, which were the only appropriate times to do this so as not to interfere with religious practice, or observation before, during and at the end of the ceremony. In their provision of information about the rite and how it was performed, the interviews allowed us to have an initial cultural exchange with the participants and contextualise the celebration in terms of specific relationships, and to bring out inconsistencies between what the researcher noticed and the

27 28

Martina Crescenti, “Le cerimonie del mevlid a Bursa e Gemlik. Rito, ruolo, identità.” Ethnorêma 12 (2016): 1–20. One of the authors has a Master’s degree in Turkish language and literature.

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group’s behaviour. As we will see, the interviews succeeded in bringing out what observation alone could not. The observation of the celebratory context was non-participatory and out in the open, as the ceremonies were private in nature and access to them required an explanation of the reasons for our presence. However, only the organisers and interviewees were aware of our presence as researchers, while the others were not informed (the organising family did not consider informing them to be useful). In order to keep relations positive, we made the interviews with the participants anonymous, obtaining only basic personal data from them (age, place of residence, profession). We carried out analysis of the observation in the first phase by writing the details down in a notebook (day, time, number of participants, type of celebration, music, etc.), as well as our interpretations and ‘feelings’ about each celebration. These were then revised in a second phase, giving us time to reflect and gain an overview of all the ceremonies. Also, despite our requests, it was not possible to videotape or audiotape the celebrations because of the Islamic ban on men listening to women’s singing. Even though we are not men, they were afraid that we might broadcast the audio to male colleagues. The main characteristic of these ceremonies is their adaptability to the type of occasion celebrated, since they are not prescribed by Islamic law, not canonised and can be shaped by the organisers of the events. The reason they are held has to do with continuity of tradition, the opportunity to praise Muhammad and God, and doing a good deed by performing the ritual, which may be recognised as meritorious (sevapli) on Islamic Judgement Day. These characteristics make these ceremonies very interesting for ethnographic fieldwork because they allow the researcher to investigate religion and religiosity in its everyday forms, practised, lived and personalised by different groups of believers. In this type of study, the researcher has the opportunity to observe and understand the relationship between the believer and Islam, from the way believers organise and adapt the practice to their personal needs, to the way they arrange themselves in the celebratory space and the way they explain their motivations for participating in this type of ceremony. The ethnographer’s observation then focuses on the visible and material aspects of Islamic practice (space, cost of the event, staging, clothing, food, type of participants, movements of and roles of participants) and the invisible and relational aspects between believers (socioeconomic status, social status related to knowledge of faith) and between believers and God (ways of manifesting faith). Since reflexivity on the part of the researcher, the return of the reflections made during the study of the data and the production of results are necessary, this appears even more so in the case of the ethnographic study of the

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Islamic religion. When analysing a particular Islamic practice, as we Italian and non-Muslim researchers did at mevlid ceremonies, the risk may be to detect only certain aspects of the practice that the researcher has come to know through the studies performed. These studies are sometimes the result of a crystallisation of knowledge resulting from the scientific need to make the object of research ‘quantifiable, calculable, observable,’ even where it is not possible due to the mutability of phenomena.29 In addition to this, for the researcher the risk may also be in the production of an ‘idealised’ or ‘conditioned’ knowledge drawn from models of social relations different from those experienced in the Islamic context under analysis. In our opinion, the ethnographic method allows, through observation, precisely the avoidance of such problems because it puts the researcher in a position of ‘discomfort,’ as we have explained, so that they are forced to rethink their ‘conditioned’ way of conceiving that type of religion and the context experienced. Compared to other research methodologies, ethnography allowed us to observe the flexibility and adaptability of Islamic celebration and those ritualised parts of the expression of personal and collective religiosity. The use of the ethnographic method confirmed that Islam is not a monolithic religion practised in a standardised way, but that it is flexible according to the contexts in which it is practised and the groups that practise it. This reflection stems from the fact that we noticed the presence of flexible elements between the groups of believers. The ceremony was different (staging, arrangement of participants, food offerings to God, music, etc.) depending on the type of occasion celebrated, whether it was the birth of a child or the mother’s puerperium. Even among the same type of ceremony there were differences according to the type of organiser. For example, two different families had two different arrangements for a birth mevlid: one was ‘Western style,’ meaning the organisers were dressed in Western clothes (short skirts and heels) and wore flashy make-up, and the background music was pop. In the other ceremony, the organisers were dressed in Islamic clothing (ankle-length dresses, opaque veil) and wore no make-up, and the music was exclusively religious. From this we could see that the organisation of the ceremonies involved a wide range of people, from the less ‘orthodox’ to the more ‘strict.’ Moreover, all the texts recited by the women changed in relation to the type of celebration (birth, puerperium, circumcision, death), creating textual variations. The type of staging, and the number and type of prayers, songs, hymns and recited parts of the

29

David Fetterman M., Ethnography Step By Step (London: Sage, 1989). Lichterman, “Interpretive reflexivity,” 35–45.

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Turkish-Ottoman poem also changed. For example, during the celebration of death, the singer preferred to recite the parts of the poem that praised Muhammad’s miracles rather than his birth, to wish that the ‘meritorious deeds’ of the deceased would be recognised on the day of judgement. The use of the ethnographic method allowed us, therefore, to understand how the relationship between believers and their religion varies by observing changes made to the event, from alterations to the texts to the organization of the celebration. Observation of the context to be studied is certainly essential to noticing the presence of elements of Islamic practices that are usually not considered in scientific description prior to the fieldwork, because of the changes and developments in these practices that occur over time. Observing the participants in some ceremonies, we noticed that the clothing recalled an Ottoman fashion—not described in previous ethnographic studies—in which mothers dressed as brides, and the children celebrated in the circumcision ceremonies dressed as Janissaries. This observed element led us to make a broader connection between costume and the neo-Ottoman policies of contemporary Turkey. A certain type of Ottoman culture, intentionally diffused and commodified by the Islamist government—a culture which, incidentally, was partly reinvented according to a need for grandiosity that was to spread across the state—exists in current religious practices as a display of solidarity and sociability. Over time, it will be necessary to reconsider the changing aspects of mevlid as local changes that indicate more extensive changes at the national level occur. For the detection of this important socio-cultural data, the ethnographic method was an essential tool of inquiry. Further, the use of the interview allowed us to understand that while for us the wearing of Ottoman dress was bound up with clear political influence, for the participants it was just a fashion of the time, something easily purchased at the market. Thus, it is clear that ethnography in its various methodologies allows us to observe what is intentional within a group and what is unconscious: what the ethnographer sees clearly is not always clear to the group, and vice versa. Interestingly, ethnographic observation has allowed us to notice a particular flexibility related to men listening to women’s singing. In the literature about Islamic norms, women’s singing is distracting to the male sex because of its beauty, so it is forbidden for men to listen to women’s singing after puberty because it would lead them to turn their eyes away from God. Contrary to what we learned from the literature, we were able to observe that, during ceremonies, men on the staff of public facilities and cultural centres would enter and leave without paying attention to the moments when the mevlid singer was singing. Going by the women’s reactions, it did not appear that this viola-

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tion was happening for the first time, nor did the women, how any concern or annoyance about this male behaviour. This phenomenon, which only emerged through ethnographic observation, showed that an Islamic norm known to be very strict is actually violated in daily religious practice without creating gender conflict. This confirmed the fact that the ethnographic method applied in Islamic contexts does indeed offer the researcher the opportunity to reframe learned cultural knowledge through observable data. Sometimes a bottomup observation can completely overturn prior knowledge crystallised in the literature: in this case, the researcher has no choice but to expose the new experience and make it available to the scientific world. In addition to the potential of ethnography, the habit of keeping a diary is undoubtedly useful because it allows us to maintain a constant reflection on our ‘position’ in the context and can help make our actions more flexible and conscious, even in situations not foreseen, such as the presence of the male sex during the singer’s performance. While some elements could be expected in the study of the observed ceremonies, only our continuous observation and reflection on the diary notes allowed us to see aspects that were not expected, such as the lack of a real gender separation. This lack also calls into question the idea of a static Islam, without the possibility of change. Researching as a cultural outsider in an ethnographic study, as well as in an Islamic context, where the researcher is non-Islamic and has a Western education, can bring up many challenges.30 The difficulty in defining the researcher’s position and the impact of outside research is present in any cross-cultural context and is always debated in the literature.31 However, it must also be considered that the position and influence of the ‘Western’ researcher in relation to the insider participants should not be conceived in a fixed way, but in a flexible way. As time passes and the parties become closer, being Western

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Sean McLoughlin, “Islam(s) in context: Orientalism and the anthropology of Muslim societies and cultures.” Journal of Beliefs & Values, 28 (3) (2007): 273–296. Barbara Dennis “What does it mean when an ethnographer intervenes?.” Ethnography and Education, 4(2) (2009): 131–146. DOI: 10.1080/17457820902972762. Sharan B. Merriam, Juanita JohnsonBailey, Ming-Yeh Lee, Youngwha Kee, Gabo Ntseane and Mazanah Muhamad. “Power and positionality: negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures.” International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(5) (2001): 405–416. Friday I. Joseph, Jane Earland and Maryam A. Ahmed, “Experience of Conducting Sensitive Qualitative Research as a Cultural Outsider: Formulation of a Guide for Reflexivity.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods (2021). https://doi.org/10.1177%2F16094069211058616. Lu Hangyan and A. Warren Hodge “Toward multi-dimensional and developmental notion of researcher positionality.” Qualitative Research Journal, 19(3) (2019): 225–235.

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and non-Muslim may have a different impact than at the initial stage:32 there may be improved trust and more room for spontaneity in relationships. In our field study, for example, we realised the lack of spontaneity of the women participating in the ceremony was a result of our presence as observers and ethnographers, which then ‘conditioned’ our observation of the context in which the mevlid took place. We could not do covert research as the ceremonies were organised by private citizens: on each occasion we had to ask permission and provide information about our study. The participants in the celebration continually asked us about ourselves, our faith (a strong point of interest), and our propensity to convert to Islam and our motivation for doing so. They asked us about our marital status and whether we had children to understand how much we had in common, or did not. The construction of a dialogue and exchange between cultures presupposes that on both sides (that of the researcher and that of the group studied) there is a basis of mutual understanding. As underlined, the study of an Islamic context requires special care because it examines a group of people who are part of a population particularly subject to discrimination. In particular, since September 11, 2001, subsequent terrorist attacks (Nice, Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, etc.), and the creation of the Islamic State (Isis) and its terrorist activism, the Muslim population has suffered from widespread discrimination, despite the fact that most believers are uninvolved in and deplore terrorism. Over the past 20 years, some political factions, mass media and public opinion have characterised the Muslim population using negative stereotypes: terrorist, misogynistic, the uncultured Muslim and the submissive, powerless Muslim. Similarly, as we have already pointed out,33 scientific research tends to observe ‘oriental’ and ‘Islamic’ societies from a perspective of cultural superiority: these two ethno-religious characters are connoted by subalternity. For this reason, our ‘Western’ presence in the Islamic context of a private celebration triggered manifest and latent distrust and suspicion on the part of the participants. In our view, these reactions were understandable given the West-East dialectic. However, we must remember that the access we were granted to ceremonies and the hospitality shown through the offering of gifts and food was a sign of acceptance of our presence and understanding of the motivations for our research. This showed us

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Thomas Fletcher. “‘Does he look like a Paki?’ an exploration of ‘whiteness,’ positionality and reflexivity in inter-racial sports research.” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 6(2), 2014: 244–260. Said, Orientalism.

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that participants’ mistrust of Western culture did not preclude us from participating in the ceremonies. Relational discomfort, and difficulty in understanding and trusting the other, are, however, understandable in encounters between people belonging to different cultures and, in research, we cannot pretend to avoid or eliminate them. However, the ethnographic method, which suggests living in the context of the study for quite a long period of time, allows researchers and participants to go through different stages of the encounter, from initial fear and distrust to mutual interest and, in the best cases, exchange of ideas, information and knowledge. This is one of the main reasons why the ethnographic method applied in the Islamic context can offer many advantages over other methodologies, as it respects each person’s own time and modalities. Often the short time dedicated to the interview, to the focus group or to photovoice is a moment of great stress for the researcher who, within a few hours, must organise the meeting, prepare the working tools (microphone, video camera, lights) and be able to collect data without obstacles. In the fieldwork, thanks to the prolonged acquaintance, the researcher has the time to slowly build a relationship of trust, as well as to review their own point of view, and question any prejudices and stereotypes that come from their non-Islamic context of origin. In our case, trust in us was revealed through invitations from the participants to attend other ceremonies and continue studying Islamic rituals. The Muslim participant could enter into the relationship by revising their understanding of the relationship between themselves and the other. In some ways, the availability of time dilutes any potentially ‘hurried and aggressive’ attitudes of the researcher, thereby putting the other at ease. However, ethnographic observation makes it possible to highlight what in the ceremony under analysis is so crucial that it must be maintained, even in the presence of ‘Westerners,’ and what can be modified depending on the type of participants. From this point of view, it may be of scientific interest to observe the differences between the ‘canonical’ part of the ritual, fixed by Islamic norms, and the ‘informal’ and modifiable part of the ritual. This kind of evaluation can only be done using the ethnographic method, since it allows live observation of the way women ‘act’ the celebration. However, the act of ‘researching,’ represented by the figure of the researcher, is problematic in that the researcher is investigating and observing a group of people who are not from their culture of origin. The group being studied could easily feel as if they being watched and judged, and develop anxiety and fear and seek to control the way they act. Being aware of this is the first step to understanding whether to continue the analysis and to what extent the research can be considered adequate with respect to the initial objective when

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there is possible discontent within the group. In our case study, the feeling of being under observation during the mevlid, particularly during prayers to Muhammad and God, created a certain unease among the women because it affected them in a moment of complete religious worship: they did not want to be interrupted or to be deprived of a moment of intimate inner conversation because of our gaze. This uneasiness was also manifest during the interviews for the two reasons just described. A particularly clear instance of this distrust emerged when the participants asked us to ‘write well of them,’ suspecting, we may deduce, that as Westerners we were inclined to view them ‘badly.’ The participants’ request led us to reflect on our role and position in relation to them, and the act of ‘observing’ them. We wondered why Muslim and Turkish women would think that our research would paint them negatively. Could it be because of media reports of accusations and discrimination against Muslims by Westerners? Could it also be due to a broader sociopolitical situation: the unfavourable relations between the Turkish government and Europe? The distrust displayed by the participants confronted us with the possibility that we had been unable to build a dialogue free of cultural superiority and stereotyping. We asked ourselves these questions during fieldwork, and included them in the field notes in order to be able to constantly reflect on and hopefully assuage the mistrust implicit in the request to not portray the participants negatively. We could see during the interviews that there could be a connection between reticence in dealing with us and the Western sociopolitical dynamics that consider Turkey unfit to be part of Europe and which deride Turkey for its geopolitical positions and attitudes towards the Turkish population. To the question ‘how do you live Islam under the current government?’ which allowed us to understand the sociopolitical context in which the ceremonies were practised, the answers from the participants were particularly positive about the work of current governments. The interviewees expressed appreciation of and satisfaction with the national and Bursa administrations (the national party AKP was in power at the time, also nationally). We observed that this question had produced an initial moment of distrust, as if this was something that should not be discussed. This further demonstrates the possible tension that can exist between a Western researcher and a group of people of other origins. We must also point out the impossibility of taking photographs at certain ceremonies. Compared to videos, which cannot be taken because they could be spread among men, who are forbidden to listen to women singing (although the rule is sometimes violated, as we observed), photographs can be taken, but we were not always allowed to do so. In our opinion, what prevented this was insecurity on the part of women about how the pho-

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tographs might be used, for example, uncontrolled dissemination on the web. Despite our assurances that they were purely for scientific use, we were denied, since ‘you never know where photographs can go.’ Again, the issue of mistrust seemed to come to the fore here. Ethnographic research in Islamic contexts highlights the symbolic and relational boundaries that emerge at the specific moment of fieldwork by pointing out what the relational possibilities between people are—to what extent people consent to being in an intermediate space of confrontation and dialogue, what their limits are, and how far the possibility of exchange extends. This space is also subject to change on the basis of the passage of time, which is provided for in the ethnographic method. For a Western and non-Muslim researcher, continuous reflection on one’s own actions in a particular context, on one’s own thoughts and on the type of relationship with the group under study is fundamental and offers new lenses through which to analyse Islamic practices and, more generally, provides insight into the various forms of Islamic religion lived out and ‘put into action’ by followers. The questions that the researcher asks themselves, and the sharing of them within the research team, constitute a process that has become increasingly relevant in contemporary ethnography involving a religion that is both discriminated against and stereotyped. As we pointed out in our analysis of the mevlid ceremonies, asking questions does not result in the production of valid and meaningful knowledge that is not conditioned by our presence, but in the production of knowledge that is conscious of and respectful of the group studied. The group being studied, it should be remembered, has no obligation towards the researcher to show itself ‘truly as it is’ and should not have to ‘justify’ its actions. It is precisely ethnography that makes it possible to explore what the group wants to say about itself (interview) and what it is not aware that it is showing (observation), as in the case of the men listening to the women’s song. However, we noticed that the Muslim participants perceived our Western gaze as conditioned by negative, stereotypical thoughts about them. This certainly conditioned them in return. We, too, were obviously conditioned by our Western background, but through continuous reflection, we put ourselves in a state of ‘discomfort’ to become more critical of ourselves and better understand and analyse Islam.

4

Conclusions

This chapter highlighted how ethnographic methodology applied in Islamic contexts, especially religious practices, constitutes a more useful tool than

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other methodologies in which observation is not contemplated. Starting from some aspects noted in our fieldwork in two Turkish cities, where 25 exclusively female mevlid ceremonies were analysed, we were able to critically reflect on how ethnographic tools were useful in our scientific research. As we noted, one of the recurring difficulties for the ethnographer stems from their presence within a native context, which can provoke unease and distrust. Being Western and non-Muslim researchers, we experienced in several situations this ‘mistrust created by cultural distance,’ probably linked to an ancient dialectic of contrast between West and East. Islam, particularly following the terrorist attacks from 2001 onwards, has increasingly been the object of negative stereotypes and discrimination that affect, on the one hand, the Western way of conceiving religion and believers, and, on the other, the way Muslims perceive themselves as discriminated against and frequently criticised. This kind of mistrust created along our research path cannot be eliminated because it is part of the relationship between cultures that meet, but it can be reworked in the interaction that ethnographic research offers, that is, a constant and continuous presence in the research space and context. Time makes it possible to go through several stages of the cultural encounter, from mistrust to the first signs of interest, up to—in the best cases—exchange of knowledge. As pointed out, observation also makes it possible to note precisely the unspoken, what is not comprehensible through interviews alone, in the context of believers. Moreover, it gives the ethnographer the possibility of revising their own point of view and the knowledge they have acquired about the specific object of study, which only emerges naturally and spontaneously—at least at its maximum potential, despite the presence of the researcher—in the context of the participants’ lives. Some unknown expressions of faith emerge, other manifestations change and others are not present. The ethnographic method applied to the religious sphere allows us to observe and understand the plurality of Islamic forms and manifestations of faith, which may also depend on the contemporary sociopolitical context, which changes over time. As we have noted, the fashion of dressing in the Ottoman style suggests the influence of the Islamist government in power. With these reflections we would like to support the idea that the different techniques of ethnography can suggest new ways of observation—new lenses—flexible, gradual and adaptable to knowing the ‘Islam of believers,’ the one really lived and experienced, avoiding false stereotypes and dangerous scientific statements.

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Hammersley, Martyn. “What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it?” Ethnography and Education 13 (2018): 1–17. Hammersley, Martyn. Reading Ethnographic Research: A Critical Guide. London: Longman, 1991. Hammersley, Martyn. “Ethnography: problems and prospects.” Ethnography and Education 1 (2006): 3–14. Iner, Derya and Salih Yucel. Muslim identity formation in religiously diverse societies. New Castle upont Tyne: Cambridge scholars publishing, 2015. Kapinga, Laura, Huizinga, Rik and Reza Shaker. “Reflexivity through positionality meetings: religion, muslims and ‘non-religious’ researchers.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology (2020). DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2020.1853876. Lichterman, Paul. “Interpretive reflexivity in ethnography.” Ethnography 18 (2017): 35–45. Lu, Hangyan and Warren A. Hodge, W.A. “Toward multi-dimensional and developmental notion of researcher positionality.” Qualitative Research Journal, 19(3) (2019): 225–235. Madison, D. Soyini. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Mashuri, Ali, and Zaduqisti Esti. “Explaining Muslims’ Aggressive Tendencies Towards the West: The Role of Negative Stereotypes, Anger, Perceived Conflict and Islamic Fundamentalism.” Psychology and Development Societies, 2019. DOI: 10.1177/2F097133 3618819151. McGuire, Meredith. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. McLoughlin, Sean. “Islam(s) in context: Orientalism and the anthropology of Muslim societies and cultures.” Journal of Beliefs & Values, 28 (3) (2007): 273–296. Miled, Neila. “Muslim researcher researching Muslim youth: reflexive notes on critical ethnography positionality and representation.” Ethnography and Education 14 (1) (2017): 1–15. Murchison, Julian M. and Curtis D. Coats. “Ethnography of Religious Instants: MultiSited Ethnography and the Idea of Third Spaces.” Religions 6 (3) (2015): 988–1005. Naidoo, Loshini. “Ethnography: an introduction to definition and method.” In An Ethnography of Landscapes and corridors, edited by Loshini Naidoo, 1–8. Croatia, Intech: 2012. Parker-Jenkins, Marie. “Problematising ethnography and case study: reflections on using ethnographic techniques and researcher positioning.” Ethnography and Education 13 (2018): 18–33. Pew Research Center, “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other” (2006), https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2006/06/22/the-great-divide -how-westerners-and-muslims-view-each-other/.

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Chapter 10

Lived Institutions in the Study of Islam Brian Arly Jacobsen, Pernille Friis Jensen, Kirstine Sinclair, and Niels Valdemar Vinding

1

Introduction

In Denmark, mosques are at the very core of societal debates about Muslims, integration, liberal rights and duties, and the future of the welfare state, yet surprisingly little is known about Danish mosques, and the dynamics of power, significance and influence inside and around them. As it is, the field is marked by a lack of knowledge and prejudices based on media portraits of particularly problematic institutions and individuals. Thus, in 2017, we embarked on a fourpart research project, Danish Mosques: Significance, Use and Influence, aiming at better understanding the many different dimensions of mosques as religious institutions of post-migratory Muslims in Denmark.1 Our point of departure was seeing mosques as more than places of Islamic worship, namely as religious institutions that are “complex social and religious structures produced not solely by the congregations and worshippers but by state requirements for religious communities, relationships with local authorities, and decades of integration efforts and organizational ambitions, as well as social ingenuity, institution building and infighting within the constituent Muslim communities.”2 The research project consists of four sub-projects aiming at understanding mosques as: 1. institutions and organizations, asking how do mosques come to be, who builds them and why, how are they established politically and how are they perceived, enabled, and empowered?

1 The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark | Humanities from 2017 to 2021. The term ‘post-migratory’ is inspired by work by Mouritz Schramm, Steen Pultz Moslund and Anne Ring Petersen’s edited volume Reframing Migration, Diversity and the Arts: The Postmigrant Condition, Routledge, 2019. 2 Jacobsen, Jensen, Sinclair and Vinding, “Introduction: Operationalizing power in the study of mosques” Journal of Muslims in Europe 8, no. 2, pp. 123–137 (2019).

© Jacobsen, Jensen, Sinclair, and Vinding, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_011

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2.

simultaneous products of and producers of authority, asking how the authority of imams and mosque leadership is established, maintained and distributed both inside and amongst mosques in Denmark? 3. communities of individual believers, asking how mosque institutions facilitate and shape Muslim identities and ways of articulating religious minority voices in Denmark today? and finally, 4. gendered organizations, asking how Muslim women experience and navigate structures of power and authority internally in the mosque and what kind of counterstrategies they produce? Naturally, in order to study such complex mosque dynamics, we needed access. However, from the very beginning of the project, accessing mosques proved difficult—despite all research group members having well-established relationships with many of these communities and institutions already. Thus, the empirical examples in this article reflect our joint experiences and thoughts on the methodological challenges encountered as well as our attempt at developing a new theoretical approach to the study of religious institutions in ever-changing and politically charged circumstances. Based on findings in the shape of uneven distribution of resources in a broad sense and the obvious central role of individuals, we argue that the study of mosques and other religious institutions may benefit from applying a combination of New Institutionalism (NI)3 and lived religion,4 which we call lived institutions. With this combined framework for the analysis, we seek to study mosques as any other institutions in society rather than introduce alternative concepts to capture a special Muslim or Islamic quality. At the same time, we aim at understanding the actual process of institutionalization involved in establishing new institutions, which ironically is not always part of the analyses implied in NI. By engaging with institutions5 and practice6 we advance our understanding of mosques in Denmark and expand the conceptional and methodological toolkit available to us. This will be developed further in the first sections of the chapter. 3 DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organisational Fields” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983). 4 McGuire Maredith B. Lived religion: Faith and practice in everyday life (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008); Dessing, Nathal, Jeldtoft, Nadia and Woodhead, Linda (eds.) Everyday Lived Islam in Europe (Farnham: Routledge, 2013); Ammerman, Nancy T (ed.). Everyday religion. Observing modern religious lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007). 5 DiMaggio, P.J., and Powell, W. (eds.) The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991). 6 Ammerman, Nancy T. “Rethinking Religion: Toward a Practice Approach” AJS 126, no. 1 (2020), 6–51.

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After explaining how we came to combine these two theoretically informed approaches to the field, we reflect on mosques as institutions intersected by multiple interests and norms, before turning to significant empirical examples. The chapter concludes on both our theoretical conceptualization, our methodological reflections and points to the emerging results of our overall project.

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Lived Religion as a Point of Departure

Individual religious practices have received great attention in recent years as the past decades have seen a tendency to abandon the study of official religion to instead focus on practical forms of religion following ‘everyday lived religion’ as it occurs outside the categories of religious institutions.7 Lived religion focuses on religious actors by emphasizing “individuals’ religion-aspracticed, in all their complexity and dynamism.”8 As the argument goes, a specific focus on the individual and how religion is ‘done’ in individuals’ everyday lives makes visible such forms of religion that might otherwise remain beyond the gaze of scholarly attention. In her central work on lived religion, Meredith McGuire argues that scholars must study religion not as defined by religious organizations, but as it is lived in people’s everyday lives, “we need to refocus our work to see the religion that often appears in unexpected places.”9 Dessing, Jeldtoft and Woodhead have approached Muslims in Europe through the lens of lived religion.10 They suggest research on Muslims in Europe should focus on how, for instance, people practice their faith at home, in workplaces and schools, and in dealing with problems of health, wellbeing and relationships. This focus achieves two gains: It grasps various individual

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See for instance, Orsi “Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, no. 2 (2003): 169–174. Ammerman, N.T., ed. Everyday religion: Observing modern religious lives. Oxford University Press, 2007; Hall, D.D. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) and Neitz, M.J. “Lived religion: Signposts of where we have been and where we can go from here.” Religion, spirituality and everyday practice. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011. 45–55, also, Dessing, Jeldtoft, and Woodhead (eds). Everyday Lived Islam in Europe. Routledge, 2013. McGuire, Meredith, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008: 5. Ammerman, N.T. “Finding religion in everyday life.” Sociology of Religion 75.2 (2014): 189–207. Dessing, Jeldtoft, and Woodhead (eds). Everyday Lived Islam in Europe. Routledge, 2013.

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religious practices and understandings that are otherwise not captured within the institutionalized forms of religion, and it prevents disproportionate attention to one distinct group of Muslims.11 However, as with any new research approach, favoring one approach may be at the expense of another. As such, lived religion has not been left uncriticized. It has been noted that an effect of the narrow focus on religion and spirituality in everyday practices is suggesting that religious institutions contribute little to faith and practice in everyday life, hence risk to “marginalize the diversity, contradictions, and multiple meanings that are found too in institutional religious settings.”12 With no intension to dismiss the approach of lived religion or the importance of gaining knowledge about how religion takes different forms beyond religious institutions, we argue for the importance of not neglecting institutionalized forms either. A narrow focus on the individual’s free choice risks ignoring the fact that the individual is embedded in structures that assist in framing, determining and provide content to practice—also in religious terms. In a recent article, Nancy Ammerman, one of the most influential scholars within the lived religion paradigm, has argued for broadening the lived religion theory to encompass structure, as she argues: “What began as a successful empirical and theoretical rebellion now needs a more durable foundation that will allow sociologists to better analyze the religious phenomena they encounter.”13 Her request is not exceptional; the wish for refinement comes from other important prominent scholars of lived religion as well. Linda Woodhead has recently argued for the potential in bringing together the study of everyday lived religion and organized religion, as the combination of these dimensions and their connections make for a fuller picture.14 We argue that turning the focus back on the institutional level can rebalance the structure/agency scale back toward the former without losing important insights about the agents. We suggest doing so by approaching the field from a synthesis of the practice approach in lived religion and the sociological theories of NI. 11

12 13 14

Jeldtoft, Nadia J. Everyday Lived Islam: Religious Reconfigurations and Secular Sensibilities among Muslim Minorities in the West (PhD thesis. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2012). Dillon, M.M. “Review of M. McGuire, Lived Religion” American Journal of Sociology (Oxford University Press 2009): 926. Ammerman, Nancy T. “Rethinking Religion: Toward a Practice Approach” AJS 126, no. 1 (2020), 11. Woodhead, Lina “Afterword” in Gemzöe, Lena, Marja-Liisa Keinänen, and Avril Maddrell, Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion European Perspectives (1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016): 343–344.

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Including New Institutionalism

In our research project, we focus on the organizational and institutional level of the religious field as found in mosques.15 However, mosques are much more than mere organizations made up of individuals, and we argue that critical reflection of the conceptualization of Muslim institutions and social effects of institutionalization processes is important in order to understand how mosques are constituted by lived religion and deeply institutionalized social and religious behavior. In such realization, we navigate strong currents in contemporary theory of sociology of religion but see particularly compelling reasons for revisiting the insights and contributions of NI theory and research. The central construct of the sociological neo-institutional theory has been the organizational field that is: “a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field.”16 NI emerged in the 1980s in response to a strong focus on agency and a view of institutions as epiphenomenal, merely the sum of individual actions. NI is centrally concerned with understanding, conceptualizing and defining organizations, institutions and institutionalization,17 and draws on significant developments in sociological theory of the second half of the 20th century, including pioneer work by Talcott Parsons, George Herbert Mead, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as well as Pierre Bourdieu.18 Berger and Luckmann, e.g., were instrumental in shifting the focus from agency and intentional actions towards the social constructions of institutions through norms, social patterns

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Jacobsen, B.A., Jensen, P.F., Sinclair, K., and Vinding, N.V., “Introduction: Operationalizing power in the study of mosques.” Special Issue on Mosques in Europe: Theoretical and Methodological Strategies in the Study of Mosques in Europe, Journal of Muslims in Europe. 8 (2019), 123–137. Scott, W. Richard Institutions and Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008: 56. DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage”; Scott, W R, Institutions and Organizations. 3rd Ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008; Jepperson, Ronald. “Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism.” The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (1991): 143–163. In particular regarding Bourdieu and New Institutionalism theory, consider Paul DiMaggio’s early “Review Essay: On Pierre Bourdieu” American Journal of Sociology (1979). Here, DiMaggio gave one of the first American readings of Bourdieu in his review of two new translations into English, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Bourdieu 1977A) and Outline of a Theory of Practice (Bourdieu 1977B). Thus, DiMaggio introduces Bourdieu’s concepts and theories to new American readers, and likely, integrated Bourdieu’s thinking into his own work.

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of habits and routine. Thus, Berger and Luckmann highlight that “institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. Put differently, any such typification is an institution.”19 Despite the differences between proponents of NI there is some consensus about what institutions are and how to define them. Ronald Jepperson argued that institutions are “stable designs for repeated activity sequences” and stated that, “Institution represents social order or pattern that has attained a certain state or property; institutionalization denotes the process of such attainment. By order or pattern, I refer, as is conventional, to standardized interaction sequences. An institution is then a social pattern that reveals a particular reproduction process.”20 Similarly, Mahoney and Thelen stress institutions as “relatively enduring features of political and social life (rules, norms and procedures) that structure behavior and cannot be changed easily or instantaneously.”21 There is a strong consensus on the centrality of ‘rules and norms’ for all institutions. Further, there is a distinction between formally codified rules and more informally understood conventions and norms.22 Both formal and informal rules and norms are part of organizational life and are constantly evolving, designed and constructed by actors over time through processes of negotiation and contestation. According to this view of institutions, organizations adopt the practices that they consider in their institutional environment to be appropriate or legitimate, whether these practices increase organizational efficiency or otherwise reduce costs in relation to benefits. What is central to NI, and very central to lived religion perspectives, too, is that NI is much more concerned with the sociological, behavioral, contextual and cognitive aspects of institutionalization compared to the ‘old’ or classical organizational and management paradigm that would focus on formal aspects of organization, more traditional leadership studies, and rational economic theories. DiMaggio and Powell argue in the introduction to their seminal anthology The New Institutionalism in Organisational Analysis that the neo-institutionalist rejection of the formal rationalism and the assumed intentionality in human behavior constitutes NI theory as “an alternative theory of

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Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor, 1966: 72. Jepperson 1991, 145, original italics. Mahoney, J. and K. Thelen Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power (Cambridge University Press 2010): 4. Waylen, Georgina “Understanding Institutional Change from a Gender Perspective” Working Papers in Gender and Institutional Change, no. 1 (2014): 6.

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individual action, which stresses the unreflective, routine, taken-for-granted nature of most human behavior and views interests and actors as themselves constituted by institutions.”23 Particular to NI theory and of great importance to our study of mosques and the inclusion of the lived religion perspective that we propose, is that NI focuses on institutional effects much beyond the mere study organizations and their leadership. With routine, habits and unreflective social patterns, institutions emerge as social taken-for-grantedness that is very subtle, yet significant in its influence beyond itself into the wider environment. That institutions are characterized by not being contested, by low social upkeep and a great degree of automaticity, yields the very significant benefit of legitimacy. Such organizations appear legitimate, almost by definition, and the contrast to the continuous contestation of mosques is particularly telling for the relatively low degree of institutionalization of mosques. NI examines entire fields or populations of organizations, such as ‘mosques,’ in an institutional environment, for example ‘religious communities in Denmark.’ NI theorists define institutions both as informal and common cultural frameworks, symbols, and cognitive schemas taken for granted, and as formal systems of rules.24 As organizations of the same type, such as mosques, share a particular institutional environment, they also tend to acquire more or less the same structures and practices over time. Consequently, particular organizational fields may gradually grow increasingly similar, become isomorphic or homogeneous. This is not because they all instrumentally seek to find the most effective way to operate as an organization, but because they strive to follow the culturally or politically appropriate scripts, schemas and organizational models in their environment.25 Considering the tactical or practical focus of how individual organizations—such as mosques—may apply institutional strategies, one of the most important iterations of NI theory comes with DiMaggio and Powells’ claims that institutions develop homogeneously across institutional boundaries. According to DiMaggio and Powell the concept implies, in a sociological context, that institutions develop similar structures and there is a focus on their repetitive and reproductive effect: it can be described as having a spill-over effect between the institutions or organizations. This spillover phenomenon is called isomorphism.26 23 24 25 26

DiMaggio and Powell, The New Institutionalism. Jepperson 1991, 145. DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage.” DiMaggio and Powell, The New Institutionalism.

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When institutional structures spread, certain key aspects are relevant. The legitimacy aspect is central to isomorphism, i.e., that in this context it becomes important for religious organization-structures to be reproduced. Institutions are mutually dependent on each other, e.g., by the mosque-organizations technical dependencies of the statutory basis of religious associations in order to be recognized as a religious community by the state.27 The reproducing structures are set in motion, either because an institution or organization is forced to do so,28 due to the interdependence, or because each institution increases its own legitimacy by adopting these structures,29 which we will show in the discussion later. While NI has a strong focus on stability and homogeneity, the theory has difficulties explaining moderate change and innovation.30 In recent years, the discontinuous model of institutional change as mentioned above has increasingly been challenged from scholars working in the main variants of NI. Amongst these a move towards more dynamic conceptions of institutional change has occurred. Scholars involved emphasize the often-gradual ways in which institutions evolve subtly over time as a result of both exogenous and endogenous factors,31 and call for closer connections between what goes on inside organizations and outside, i.e., taking into account practices within the organizations in the field.32 In our research project, we suggest a concept of practice-oriented institutionalism that connects individual practice, mosque organization, and institution.

27 28 29 30 31 32

Vinding, N.V. “State and Church in Denmark.” In Robbers, G. (ed.), State and church in the European Union. Nomos Verlag, (2019). Aiken, M., and Hage, J. “Organizational interdependence and intra-organizational structure.” American sociological review (1968): 912–930. Mimetic isomorphism, cf. DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage.” Lowndes, V. “Varieties of new institutionalism: a critical appraisal” Public administration 74, no. 2 (1996): 185. Mahoney, J. and K. Thelen Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Smets, M., Aristidou, A., and Whittington, R. “Towards a practice-driven institutionalism” in Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Lawrence, T.B., and Meyer, R. (eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (2nd ed.: London: Sage. 2017): 384–411; Smets, Michael, T.I.M. Morris, and Royston Greenwood. “From practice to field: A multilevel model of practice-driven institutional change.” Academy of Management Journal 55.4 (2012): 877–904; Whittington, R. “The practice turn in organization research: Towards a disciplined transdisciplinarity,” Accounting, Organizations & Society, 36, no. 1 (2011): 183–186.

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Introducing the Concept of Lived Institution in the Study of Mosques

Understanding religious institutions and various organizations through individuals, we introduce the concept of lived institution. This notion overlaps the theories of NI that focus on the taken-for-granted routines of everyday life and religious practices as they occur in everyday life. It bridges the gap between the macro and micro-levels; between structure and individual behavior and beliefs by examining how institutions create social roles, the authority behind such roles and behavior and knowledge of individuals who enact them in their everyday life. Hence, the concept of lived institution is also a theory of practice, and the notion of practice is a central point that makes possible ‘inter-paradigmatic conversations’33 between lived religion and NI. Lived religion researchers identify the practice of informants in dichotomy to established practices of churches or religious structures. This is telling of the fact that the analytical language of lived religion is still very much understood in relation to these structures and that the relational and normative power of religious structures still influence them. McGuire,34 for example, speaks very broadly about ‘unofficial religion,’ ‘nonpracticing’ and being ‘unchurched’35 and so on, and highlights ‘invisible’ and ‘new patterns of spirituality.’ From the point of view of NI theory, it would seem that exactly this negative definition against the organizational other, is still within the frame of NI theory, and that patterns and the borders of social order are very much part of the agenda in lived religion studies. Even outside an organization, institutionalization is still an influence.36 From a sociological perspective informing both NI and lived religion, religious institutions can be seen as everything from weekly ritual acts such as the Friday prayer to strategy planning activities on mosque boards, implying that institutions are not necessarily official organizations. As such, institutions are different to mosques; mosques being the ‘arena of action’ in which institu-

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Adler, E. and Pouliot, V., “International Practices,” International Theory 3, no. 1 (2011): 3. McGuire, 2008: 5. McGuire, 2008: 11. In this context it should be noted that our project did not collect empirical data outside mosques, hence we are not able to provide concrete examples of institutionalization outside institutions from our Danish studies. However, based on work by Jeldtoft (2012) we assume that institutionalization plays a role outside institutions simply because individuals relate to them—even if expressed as opposition or distance to forms of institutionalization.

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tions operate.37 Putting it bluntly, criticism of lived religion studies is framed against something akin to the ‘old institutional’ research with its focus on formal structures. However, the ‘new institutional’ paradigm has focused on irregular patterns of practice to a high extent. For more than 30 years, emphasis has been on the invisibility of habitual states of action and the oppositional nature of deliberate action. By considering a way to better understand institutional processes as lived we add to an emergent strand turning to institutional theory’s micro foundations, and view of institutions—not only as cognitively carried by people38—but as inhabited by people who actively engage in maintaining, creating, or disrupting these institutions.39 Arising from the inter-paradigmatic conversation, the concept of lived institution adopts a position that focuses on both micro and macro-level interactions, as “practices shape the conditions under which interactions unfold and the ratification of identity happens, with implications for subjectification and subsequent identity enactments.”40 This approach emphasizes the co-constitutive relationship between actors and institutions thus contains nuanced accounts of structure and agency. The utility of lived institutions allows for a greater understanding of the various ways 1) exogenous rules and norms bring about changes in institutions, 2) institutions shape individuals’ behavior through rules and norms, and 3) actors bring about endogenous changes in institutions while resisting others. Keeping in mind that individuals can change belief systems and move in and out of differently organized religious settings or informal networks with blurred boundaries, the organization is understood through the agents, here and now. We understand mosques as embedded in institutional systems. These systems’ sets of logics, networks of actors, and flows of resources shape organizational structure, action, and beliefs. A mosque organization does not only

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40

Lowndes, V. “How are political institutions gendered?” Political Studies (2019) 1–22. DiMaggio and Powell, The New Institutionalism. Hallett, T., and Ventresca, M.J. “Inhabited institutions: Social interactions and organizational forms in Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.” Theory and society 35.2 (2006): 213–236. Also, Lawrence, T.B., and Suddaby, R. “Institutions and institutional work.” In Clegg, R., Hardy, C., Lawrence, T.B., and Nord, W.R. (eds.), The SAGE handbook of organization studies (London: Sage, 2006): 215–254; see also Lok J., Douglas Creed W.E., DeJordy R. and Voronov, M. “Living Institutions: Bringing Emotions into Organizational Institutionalism” The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism: Bringing emotions into organizational Institutionalism (Sage, 2017). Lok J., Douglas Creed W.E., DeJordy R. and Voronov M. “Living Institutions: Bringing Emotions into Organizational Institutionalism.”

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need to have participants and resources, in order to obtain legitimacy, it also needs to conform to rules and norms of its institutional environment.41 Legitimacy can be obtained by complying with laws and norms or by alignment with cognitive frameworks. This pressure led to isomorphism in organizations.42 Muslim institutions exist in a field of tension between local norms (Danish Muslim mosques), Danish majority norms and Muslim transnational norms (the imagined ummah). Thus, complexity exists in relation to isomorphism on several levels vis-a-vis institutional complexity.

5

Institutional Sociology: Preliminary Attempts at Capturing Dynamic Practices

In the following, we address a set of questions related to researching mosques through the concept of lived institution: How could we best generate empirical data to analyze lived institutions? What are the most promising paths to lived institutional practice? What research strategies follow if one takes the livedin institutions as the central unit of analysis? Addressing these questions, we concretely show how we approached our study of mosques from the lens of lived institution, and hereby assess the issues involved in translating a lived institution approach into empirical research. We designed our research project Danish Mosques: Significance, Use and Influence as ‘institutional sociology,’ consisting of four data collection methods that would all be used over the course of the study and continuously informing one another: participant observation, formal and informal interviews, archival research, and surveys. These are all tools to explore dynamic practices, religious norms and structural positions of lived institutions. Our sampling strategy was designed to proceed on theoretical grounds. Mosques were selected through purposive sampling with a maximum variation strategy; acknowledging the variety of the field we made sure to include mosques with different ethnicities, theologies, modes of visibility, and geographical placement. Instead of achieving complete representativeness, the purposive sampling method applied indicated our aim of achieving representativeness of concepts.43 Hence, we used theoretical sampling until theoretical

41 42 43

Meyer, J.W., and Rowan, B. (1977), “Institutional organizations: formal structure as myth and ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology, 83.2 (1977). Di Maggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage.” Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. “Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria,” Qualitative Sociology 13, no. 1 (1990): 420.

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saturation was reached. This method and process created an unfolding, iterative system of action and interaction inherent in Grounded Theory,44 allowing for concepts to be developed based on the empirical reality we found. Hence, continual analysis of the data collected during our visits to mosques opened up more specific and complex meanings of the concept of ‘mosque,’ which informed further sampling and additional collection of data in the subprojects. By adopting a kind of rapid ethnography, we would be able to gather a large volume of in-depth data that also produced deeply personal insights into the lives of mosque participants. Our data was collected from multiple mosque types and across a range of characteristics, which we found to be enriching the value of the data, because it allowed us to identify shared themes and issues, something that would not have been possible had we chosen a more traditional ethnographic approach typically focused on one or at least a very limited number of sites.

6

The Process of Data Collection

Following on from opening up the field with initial questions and study designs, we began our data collection during the spring of 2018, which iteratively continued for a two-year period. First of all, we would contact a mosque through official channels, introducing the project and expressing our academic interest in the specific mosque. Having established contact, we would set up a meeting with the chairman, or spokesperson, and in some mosques an imam would participate at these meetings as well. The meeting would be part of an arranged visit to the mosque to conduct the initial interview and to also do some initial observations at the site. During the interviews, we would ask about access to official documents such as rules and regulations of associations and economic reports. We made sure to follow an interview and observation guide to ensure comparability between the visits. We tended to focus our questions on structure and practices in the mosque as well as member profiles, and self-assessed successes and challenges. Asking about practice meant for instance: What took place at the mosque? What activities were avoided? How would practices unfold? When and where would they unfold? Who would be responsible for which activities

44

Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A., The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction, 1967).

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and who would participate or otherwise benefit? And which variations to the described pattern had they encountered? Following the more formal interview situation, we, the research group, would typically be shown around in the mosque, and we would stay to observe the daily activities. Rather than relying only on leadership accounts through the interviews, these observations allowed us to witness lived practices in their institutional frame. Typically, we would visit on normal weekdays during daytime. Thus, in most places we encountered everyday activities such as coffee-drinking male seniors sitting together in the mosque café, while in few cases our visit would coincide with a special event, for instance a funeral ritual in a Turkish mosque in Frederiksberg that filled the building with men, women and children taking part in the ritual. Hence, the visits not only provided strategic information through our interviews, it also made possible to study direct interactions between the people and the context in their everyday form, thereby gaining insights about people’s discourses and practices as well as the materiality surrounding them. We would make detailed field notes and collect artefacts such as photographs of mosque layouts and messaging posted on bulletin boards etc., which would help us to identify activities and informal rules of the organizations. After each visit, we would debrief, reflect on and transcribe our conversations and observations, providing an opportunity of early interpretations and identification of similarities and differences in the practices, narratives, themes and views encountered during the visits and expressed by participants. During the first visits future visits were arranged, and contacts established with potential informants for further data collection in the subprojects. For instance, the chairman was asked to communicate the contact to one or more active women in the mosque for the purpose of studying women’s positions and institutional gender norms through interviews about women’s individual and collective experiences, views and everyday practices, that would highlight the interface between individual lives and institutional relations.45 E.g., in the study on gender relations, observations were done to capture the gendered practices, norms and structures. Such observations occurred during different activities both internal events such as Friday prayer, religious education, mother-groups, social activities, and external events such as ‘culture night’ and food markets. We also made virtual observations of online meetings, Friday prayer, and educational activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 45

McCoy, L. “Keeping the Institution in View: Working with the Interview Accounts of Everyday Experience” in Smith, D.E. (ed.), Institutional ethnography as practice (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2006).

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the period from March 2020 to May 2021, however most of our fieldwork was conducted prior to the lockdown. In the following we illustrate how we developed this mixed methods study with three concrete case examples.

7

Uncovering Isomorphic Changes: Form and Function

In the project, we set out to study mosques from multiple perspectives resting on multiple methods. Concretely, our engagement with e.g., both juridical and historical documents and actual practices made visible how secular legitimizing structures spread to mosques as isomorphic changes, consequently altering the organizations, rituals and theologies in the end. One example is the Danish state’s requirements for the statutory basis of religious associations in order to be recognized as a religious community by the state. Requirements for the articles of association and the (mosque) associations’ way of organizing themselves influence the way associations shape the mosque community of the future. A specific case serves to reveal ways of both coercive isomorphic institutional change as well as rather subtle forms of change: The case of the Danish Ahmadiyya community and changes in form and function.46 The Ahmadiyya movement succeeded in establishing a community in Denmark in the 1950’s and to start with primarily consisting of Danish converts. Later they built the first proper mosque in the Nordic countries in 1967,47 The Nusrat Djahan mosque in Copenhagen. During the first decades in Denmark, the community underwent significant institutional changes of different characters, likewise changes to the community composition brought with it endogenous changes. The minority context in which the Danish Ahmadiyya community emerged, brought with it special needs and requirements of the community. In general, moving into a multi-confessional European context Islamic belonging increasingly institutionalizes and undergoes isomorphic change. As Islam becomes 46

47

A thought on minority and majority groups within the Muslim population in Denmark and their representation in our project: In the project plan, we were conscious of differences within the Muslim communities in Denmark, however, we never applied explicit minority and majority categories in the research quesions of the subprojects. Rather, we have paid special attention to the emergence of such differences in the empirical material. Jacobsen, B.A., Larsson, G., and Sorgenfrei, S., “The Ahmadiyya mission to the Nordic countries,” in Lewis, J.R., and Tøllefsen, I.B., (eds.), Handbook of Nordic New Religions (Leiden: Brill 2015): 359–373.

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one religion among other religions in secularized democratic spaces, belonging transforms into an individualized or familial choice as the state neither supports nor imposes Islam on the children. Consequently, the need for affirming an identity arises along with the secular state’s need for a formal voice of the religious minority.48 New attitudes and demands from individual members, new functions and importance of the imam, and the new status of the mosque as a representation of its members in wider society are some of the changes, which mosques are facing when appearing in secular societies such as the Danish. The vice president of the community, the Danish convert Amir Abdus Salam Madsen (1928–2007) fulfilled the function of providing responses to the minority position by for instance translating the Quran to Danish,49 and serving as a representative of ‘Muslims in Denmark’ in media and other public contexts.50 The changes related to the establishment regarded institutional form and function, and had an isomorphic character caused by exogenous pressure. Thus, the mosque association adopted a new form (i.e., internal institutional structure), while at the same time retaining its primary function however strategically converting functions to correspond to the minority position. However, as an increasing influx of immigrants from Pakistan during 1980’s and onwards changed the composition of the congregation, the mosque association introduced new rules and norms in function, such as new activities alongside existing ones in response to the changing composition of the movement. Therefore, the mosque would now answer to more social and cultural requests and provide various forms of gatherings in addition to the function of prayer and worship. When the Danish Ahmadiyya community was established, the congregation primarily consisted of ethnic Danish converts. This meant that the congregants would bring with them the dominating Danish norm of gender equality, alongside the ideal of gender inclusiveness institutionalized in the global Ahmadiyya movement, into the mosque. Thus, when the mosque was constructed, both men and women were praying in the main—and only— prayer room in the mosque; something of importance to the Danish architect of the mosque.51 However, changes in the composition of the congregation also brought with them converted gender norms resulting in less women

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Dialmy, A. “Belonging and Institution in Islam” Social Compass 54, no. 1 (2007): 63–75. It was the first complete translation of the Qur’an, published in 1967. Jacobsen, Larsson, and Sorgenfrei, “The Ahmadiyya Mission,” 367. Jacobsen, Larsson, and Sorgenfrei, “The Ahmadiyya Mission,” 366–368.

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taking part in prayer in the mosque, due to a gendered logic of appropriateness calling for gender segregation, which culminated in a renovation of the mosque commenced in 2013. While maintaining the ideal of gender inclusiveness, dominant gender norms converted to reflect gender segregation. The renovation included an expansion of a basement that became the largest room in the mosque. The basement was confined for women’s use from the argument that women needed their own space—a request coming from the women themselves—and more space than men, as they were superior to men in numbers. By this more subtle, endogenous change, the institution retained its function while changing its form in response to an internally altered gendered logic of appropriateness and consequently converted gender norm.

8

Encountering Processes of Change and Maintenance: Organizational Structures and Gendered Practices

In the fall of 2019, we made contact to the board of the newly constructed purpose-built Turkish Diyanet mosque on Sinstrupvej in Aarhus, Brabrand Ulu Camii. Apart from answering our survey, the board allowed us to do interviews with the chairman, a female board member, and a group of female participants. Further, we were shown around in the mosque and made observations of daily activities, as well as collected central documents concerning the construction of the mosque and correspondence with local government, media coverage and so forth. As we will briefly show, the case of Brabrand Ulu Camii demonstrates how institutionalized gender norms are both maintained and changed through external and internal dynamics.52 There has been an influx of women in Brabrand Ulu Camii since the construction of the new mosque in 2018, which is reflected in management positions in the mosque. This influx echoes a general increase in women participating in mosque administration in general the past fifteen years in Denmark.53 This change reflects changing institutional gender norms and rules driven forth by both external pressure and internal dynamics.

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See also Jensen, P.F., Women and & Gendered Mosque Organisations (PhD thesis, Copenhagen University, 2022). Kühle, L. Moskeer i Danmark: islam og muslimske bedesteder (Forlaget University, 2006); Kühle, L., and Larsen, M. Moskeer II. En ny kortlægning af danske moskeer og muslimske bedesteder (Aarhus Universitet 2017).

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From 2013 and until changes in legislation from 2017, the practice prevailed in the “The Advisory Committee on Religious Denominations” (Rådgivende Udvalg vedr. Trossamfund)54 that religious communities were to function per democratic principles and equality, including gender equality, in worldly affairs. This meant for instance that women ought to be electable for the central board. Consequently, discriminating statements, such as ‘only men can elect and be elected’ would not be accepted.55 This is an example of a kind of volunteering ‘coercive isomorphic change’ of gendered practices, as applying for approval is up to the single religious community to decide (cf. freedom of religion), however, being approved comes with certain goods, such as the possibility of performing marriages with civil legal validity and tax benefits.56 Formally, the practice of the advisory committee meant that applications explicitly stating that only men could be part of the central board were rejected, rather than expecting to actively write in women. Although organizations tend toward normativity and stability, they are not fixed. Changing lived institutions occur not only through direct exogenous rules like the practice in the advisory committee, but also through altered norms brought into the organization with the individuals. In this case, the institution of gender equality carries with it a demand for a reconstruction of gender roles evident among the young generation within Brabrand Ulu Camii, working for enhanced gender inclusiveness and cooperation between the sexes, gradually altering what is considered appropriate for a woman and a man in the mosque over time. As in most purpose-built mosques in Denmark,57 the women from Brabrand Ulu Camii have their separate space on the balcony for prayer, as well as a sep54

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Since 1969 religious communities could apply for official approval given by the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1998 the system changed so that a “counselling committee on religious denominations” (Rådgivende Udvalg vedr. Trossamfund) consisting of impartial persons would be leading the approval of religious communities by advising the Minister on approval. Cf. Vinding, N.V., Muslim Positions in the Religio-Organisational Fields of Denmark, Germany and England, PhD Dissertation, Faculty of Theology, 2013. In particular, “Chapter Five: The Advisory Committee on Religious Denominations, Danish Muslim Organisations and the fundamental dividers in the religioorganisational field in Denmark” pp. 167–186. Rytter, M. “Writing against integration: Danish imaginaries of culture, race and belonging.” Ethnos 84.4 (2019): 678–697. Vinding, N.V. Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe: Denmark. Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe, Vol. 18, Brill, 2020. The number of purpose-built mosques in Denmark has increased from three to eleven between 2006 and 2020. Nine are Sunni mosques located in various parts of Denmark, and of which six are part of Diyanet. Seven have separate space allocated for women on a balcony, while two do not have any separate space for women (one Diyanet and one

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arate room adjoined for social activities confined for women, with a separate women’s only entrance making it possible for women not to mix with men. The institutionally embedded phenomenon of gender-segregation in the mosque meets the individual as both a structural and physical condition. As a phenomenon gender segregation is continuously reproduced, thus manifests in different and new ways over time; variations of connections between institution and gendered symbols construct gender and gender-segregation in new ways. Several European studies have shown that many women consider gender segregation in the mosque to be a factor of female empowerment,58 something that was echoed among the women in Brabrand Ulu Camii. In a group interview all of the four participating women pointed to the separate women’s facilities as an important factor for their engagement in the mosque. Likewise, the male chairman in the mosque explained how women normally pray behind men or at the female preserved balcony, because “they feel more themselves up there.”59 The chairman and the women thus rendered the same attitude towards gender segregation: women and men do not have to be separate, however, the separation was practiced both socially and religiously. Not having the opportunity of segregation due to poor facilities prevented the women from taking part in activities in the old mosque. A female board member explained how women would normally not participate or arrange activities in the old mosque buildings prior to the construction of the new mosque, because they did not have a separate space for women. Instead, a group of women met regularly in a community house in a nearby housing area, from where they engaged in various activities that they themselves understood to be part of the mosque association, including collecting money for the new mosque construction. This group of women are now actively engaged in the mosque in Brabrand, making use of the possibilities that the separate women’s space provides.

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Bosnian). In addition to this, there is one purpose-built Shi’a and one Ahmadi Mosque, both with separated space allocated for women. The latter is the oldest purpose-built mosque in Denmark, built in 1967. E.g., Maske, V., “IMAN-cipation—Identity Politics of young Muslim Women within the ‘Muslim Youth in Germany e.V. (MJD)’ between Agency, Submission and Repression. An Analysis of the Transformation of Gender-Roles” Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation, 5 (2017): 133; Nyhagen, L., and Halsaa, B., Religion, Gender and Citizenship (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017): 142; Shannahan, D.S, “Gender, inclusivity and UK mosque experiences,” Contemporary Islam, 8 (2014): 1–16; Schmidt, G., Muslim i Danmark—muslim i verden, en analyse af muslimske ungdomsforeninger og muslimsk identitet i årene op til Muhammad-krisen (Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 2007). Interview with board member, Brabrand Ulu Camii, Aarhus, November 2020.

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Consequently, exogenous pressures as well as changes of more endogenous kind influence the mosque materiality and practices. Observing the materiality of the mosque space reflects and suggests the dominant gendered ‘logic of appropriateness’: What actors expect of appropriate behaviour by men and women, in this case, religious and social gender segregation. Accordingly, the form of the building follows the gender norm including the idea of inclusion of women paired with their segregation. Women’s enhanced educational background, competences and personal ambitions—as a result of the steadily changing status of congregants from immigrants towards second and third generation immigrants—alter gender norms and rules towards inclusion of women. However, the case of Brabrand Ulu Camii also sheds light on how the structure and use of space reflects and suggests the maintained gendered logic of appropriateness and gender division. As such, we see how the form of the building follows the norm of gender inclusion but also religious and social gender division, as the idea of inclusion of women is paired with their segregation. Gender division is one of the gendered institutional norms that shape the logic of appropriateness for actors engaging within the mosque, serving as an example not only on processes of maintenance, but also change, as segregation only becomes an issue when women are in fact included in the mosque. Understanding how Muslim organizations, such as mosques, are gendered is only possible if we recognize these simultaneous and intersecting institutional processes of change and maintenance of both norms and rules in-use and in-form—made visible by multiple entry points and a methodology that enabled us to examine the institution through the perspective of actors. However, this recognition obviously requires access, which was not as easy as we had hoped.

9

Unexpected Findings: Institutional Complexities and Issues of Accessibility

Though most mosque visits progressed as planned, and the informants for the most part met with us and shared information openly, we also encountered difficulties in our fieldwork especially with regard to access. This caused us some concern and raised uncertainties about the project, however, surprisingly, it pointed to unexpected results appearing from the iterative process of data collection and analysis, too. It was to be expected that making contact with the mosques constituted a basic methodological challenge. In our project, it was not possible to find

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contact details for all mosques. Mosques close, new ones appear, and both street and email addresses as well as board members change regularly, all of which makes it difficult and time-consuming to locate a mosque. Once you have the right telephone number, you may call at an inconvenient time as imams and heads of Muslim associations often have other primary occupations. Thus, one should not only avoid making phone calls in the middle of daily time prayers but also be aware of whether one is disturbing in the middle of working hours. If the initial contact is successful, further challenges may arise. In the conversation with various heads of Mosque associations and imams, we have often been met with a degree of suspicion. Although in all surveys there is a task in motivating respondents to participate in the survey, several of the respondents seemed to be more than generally reserved. Some, for example, seemed hesitant to confirm or deny whether it was, in fact, a mosque. This caution may be due to the general criticism and negative publicity of mosques in the Danish media, but it may also be a result of a legal change in 2017 implying that mosques can no longer receive municipal subsidies for activities via the Public Education Act.60 Hence, answering questions about mosque activities may be perceived as detrimental. Whatever the reason, conducting a survey among mosques requires a convincing presentation of the project. Furthermore, we have encountered signs of increasing fatigue in the field as a consequence of mosques meeting a high level of interest and inquiries from both journalists, students, researchers and many others connected to the mentioned negative coverage in media and public debates. On top of this may be a fatigue related to surveys more specifically. At least this is one possible interpretation of respondents having interrupted answering our preliminary questionnaire before completion. We conducted the questionnaire electronically, and as with written and posted questionnaires, these can be overlooked in the mail. Thus, conducting surveys in person is likely to be more efficient just as it provides the opportunity to explain, develop or translate questions along the way, however, as it is also more costly and time consuming on the part of the researchers, this was not a viable solution in our project.61 In the spring of 2018, we contacted Islamisk Trossamfund Ørbækvej, the biggest mosque in Denmark’s third biggest city, Odense, numerous times via

60 61

Vinding 2020, Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Denmark, in particular, section “1.4 Religious Communities as Associations,” pp. 23–25. Bryman, A. Social Research Methods. 4th ed. 6. printing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 199.

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their homepage, with no response.62 Eventually, we contacted a student who frequented the mosque and asked for his help. Then, we got a call asking us to resend the request. We did—only to have it turned down: The mosques had no interest in participating in our project, no interest in hearing more about the aims and expected outcomes and no time to elaborate the reasons behind the rejection. However, not long after, we were contacted by the former chair of the board who was displeased with the board’s refusal to participate. He invited us to visit the mosque and explained that he would take full responsibility. The mosque was open, and we were welcome. At the meeting, we were interested in understanding what the reasons were for not wanting to participate in a research project, just as we were interested in understanding why this individual representative defied the majority of board members and extended an invitation to us after all? It turned out, both stances were very important to our project’s preliminary findings: In some Danish mosques, the skepticism towards Danish authorities and institutions is dominant and outspoken due to years of political debates marked by rightwing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments. The dominant view amongst board members was that the best way to protect the interests of the mosque, was to close off activities from the surrounding society and decline any and all participation in interfaith dialogue, media pieces, socio-political projects, research etc. The only exception being school visits following a specific template with a tour of the premises and an opportunity to ask questions about Islam either to one of the young members giving the tour or to the imam. Due to multiple references to bad experiences with journalists, we see the skepticism stemming from such bad experiences of media misrepresentation and a following mistrust of any interest in mosque activities going beyond very basic questions about Islam. The board member who invited us to the mosque had a very different approach. He acknowledged the skepticism amongst his peers but maintained the need to stress the difference between research and journalism and a continued openness towards the public. His argument was: If we close the mosque and prevent any engagement with the (critical) public, suspicion will grow which will harm the mosque in the long run. 62

Islamisk Trossamfund,—The Islamic Religious Community. It was founded in 1996, first in Copenhagen then in Odense, by the charismatic Imam Ahmed Abu Laban, who died in 2007. The association is made up of Sunni immigrant groups from primarily Arabic countries. The mosques welcome all sunni interpretations (Hanbali not excluded) and known affiliated imams have had various legal and scholarly backgrounds. Approximately 800–1200 people attend the khutba every Friday in the two mosques, of which up to 300 are women.

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In the fall of 2018, we also contacted The Islamic Religious Community (Wakf) in Copenhagen located on Dortheavej. This is the largest Arab Sunni Mosque in Denmark.63 Wakf is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood and has strong ties to Egyptian Muslim organizations. Its perception of Islam is closely identified with Arab culture. Mosque representatives have themselves labelled the mosque as “Pan-Arabic” but in our interpretation this bears witness to these individual representatives identifying with a particular time period in Egyptian and Syrian history, rather than adherence to a political ideology. In our estimation, it makes more sense to understand the mosque organization and activity as based on a shared language—Arabic as mother-tongue rather than the language of the Qurʾān. This means, the mosque has attracted individuals of immigrant background from Arab countries primarily and has not itself differentiated between legal traditions and interpretations of scripture. A division according to languages was the common pattern of Danish mosques up until the early 2000s when younger generations of Muslims—those born in the country to immigrant parents—started expressing preferences for congregations based on current experiences rather than language backgrounds. In these new congregations, the working language was Danish as the members’ identification was with the surrounding Danish society and common experiences here. Here, the spokesperson responded positively to our initial project ideas and proposal and even contributed with suggestions for research questions touching on internal insecurities related to interaction with local communities. After these initial conversations about our project ideas, in the summer of 2018 we were invited to an event at the mosque and considered this another positive sign indicating trust and will to further cooperation. However, when the time and date for the first actual project related meeting at the mosque occurred, we had not heard anything from our contact person for a while; Emails and texts had not been responded to and thus our appointment had not yet been confirmed. On the date of the supposed meeting, we got an email stating that the meeting was not to take place and that the mosque had no interest in participating in our project. Furthermore, we were asked to kindly contact the mosque through formal channels in the future, that is use the email address provided at the homepage, rather than go through personal contacts. This, of course, we had done as a natural first step, but as we got no responses, we proceeded to draw on personal contacts. Unfortunately, the impression we got from the board member cancelling our meeting was one of misused trust. 63

See also footnote 61.

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The examples are numerous. After conducting interviews with several young, female Shi’a Muslims in Copenhagen’s Imam Ali Mosque and participation in both Friday prayer events and educational activities, we later asked one of the informants to do a follow-up interview. Surprisingly, the request was declined this time in a very formal tone asking to communicate through official mosque channels rather than through individual worshippers. While this did not question the validity of the findings—as the findings provided insights into the women’s subjective experiences as well as their daily practices and interactions in the organization based on individual given informed consent—it does challenge the sampling strategy and hence the reliability. The three cases are strikingly similar in the surprising inconsistency and tell us a great deal about internal strategies for maintaining control over the mosque and the mosque’s interaction with its surroundings just as they provide information about power, available resources and defining contextual dynamics, the latter including important reflections on the role of researchers.

10

Concluding Reflections

On this basis, we dare to sketch an outline of emerging results from our research project. The different, contradicting responses are indeed rational, all have the mosque’s interests at heart and, significantly, they have to do with power. It is a demonstration of power and independence to decline initiatives and requests. However, it is also an expression of power to differentiate one’s engagement and negotiate terms for participation in research projects based on knowledge of underlying structures and roles as well as recognition of the interest of others. The different responses, then, also have to do with resources. Board members are answering emails and coordinating visits besides running the mosque in their spare time and many have insufficient language skills or knowledge about the Danish society to do so in a meaningful manner. Thus, finding research questions like ours daunting or even threatening may be due to uncertainty as to who does what when, which may reflect organizational and structural challenges in the mosque. In addition, answers concerning social and theological challenging issues may not be available amongst ordinary board members. One possible consequence of such shortcomings is, as we have seen, the closure of the mosque to research projects as ours. It takes a strong organization and thorough knowledge of societal structures and dynamics to participate in research collaboration in an open and transparent manner. Attending to different organizational responses and control measures draws attention to incompatible prescriptions resting

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on multiple institutional logics. Such institutional complexities are difficult to explain using traditional conceptual toolkits. Hence, we found valuable information hidden in questions like: Who answers when you approach a mosque? Who is willing to represent the mosque and show it to you? Is this person also able to set up meetings with other mosque users? Observations like these provide insights into inner dynamics of mosques, available resources, power relations and strategies for maintaining control and interaction with the surroundings, just as they draw attention to the coexistence and collision of incompatible prescriptions resting on multiple and sometimes competing institutional logics within different factions of the mosque. A lack of internal clarity concerning distribution of tasks and responsibilities may not only result in incoherent communication outwards, but also tensions within that perhaps in due time trigger institutional changes endogenously. When we embarked on the research project on Danish mosques, we were well-aware that the study of Islam and Muslims in Denmark was highly politicized. We anticipated negative responses from peers, politicians and opinion makers for our inclusive approach to potentially controversial topics touching on power dynamics, institution building and gender. We were also prepared for negative responses to our research requests from some of the mosques. However, we were not prepared for just how problematic our research interests would be perceived as by so many of the mosques. Power hierarchies and struggles were permeating the mosques in multiple ways and on multiple levels and although we were familiar with these institutions beforehand, we were surprised as to the degree of resource shortages, experienced powerlessness and conflicting responses encountered. In addition to outlining emerging answers to our overall research questions, this chapter has been directed by our experiences with approaching the field of mosques in Denmark and the methodological and theoretical consequences and learning outcomes which followed. The aim has been to share the challenges and pitfalls encountered in order to stimulate further conversation about how best to study and understand religious institutions and all the changes and interactions involved as they come to be and are. Rather than operating from one level of organizational reality, seeing either organizations as entities or individuals as components, our intention was to bridge the gap between understanding mosques as organizations and institutions, on the one hand, and spaces for individual and collective social and religious action, on the other, with a special view to how norms are enacted and adapted in praxis. A focus on institutions as lived then brings people and their social interactions to the center of analysis. Understandings of how organizations respond

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to institutions and institutional complexity depend on an understanding of the thoughts, experiences, and practices of people within these organizations, because they animate such responses. Rather than blindly or automatically adopting particular ontologies or predefined dogmas on mosques, an empirically based, mixed methods approach helps weed out conceptual and theoretical assumptions, erroneous conclusions, and other research fallacies. Furthermore, it helps us avoid false negatives as well as false positives, or to put it plainly, neither did we not find what we were looking for, because we were looking for the wrong thing, nor have we found exactly what we were looking for, because we did not look elsewhere. Combining multiple and mixed methods and drawing on three academic disciplinary backgrounds allowed for unexpected findings. We have come to understand the inclusive and simultaneous study of individual meaning-making and institutional frames and organization as lived institutions and with this combination of approaches from lived religion and new institutionalism, we wish to contribute to the discussion of how best to strike the hermeneutically informed balance between mixed method empirical studies and theoretical reflections.

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Chapter 11

Everyday Islam Moving beyond the Piety and Orthodoxy Divide Magdalena Pycińska

1

Introduction1

The ongoing decolonization of both knowledge and academic practice has produced a myriad of solutions and helped in the articulation of new problems. An intersectional approach has voiced the issue of the scholar’s role in the production of knowledge and his/her power relations with the subject of their inquiry.2 Within this discussion, the study of Islam has been identified as one of the most prominent products of colonial knowledge, which requires intervention.3 To combat the essentialization of Islam, as an exceptional religio-political entity and homogenic,4 harmonious religious phenomenon, scholars began to focus on everyday politics and social interactions, micropolitics and piety. In 1989 Lila Abu-Lughod in her essay “Zones of Theory in the Anthropology of the Arab World”5 showed that the textual understanding of Islam is still prominent in academic discourse and how research

1 This research was funded by the Priority Research Area Heritage under the program Excellence Initiative—Research University at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. 2 Benjamin Soares and Filippo Osella. “Islam, Politics, Anthropology.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009): S1–S23; Gurminder K. Bhambra, Kerem Nişancıoğlu & Dalia Gebrial, “Decolonising the university in 2020,” Identities, 27, no. 4 (2020): 509–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2020.1753415. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia, “Aspects of the Coloniality of Knowledge.” Critical Philosophy of Race 8, no. 1–2 (2020): 48–60. DOI: 10.5325 /critphilrace.8.1-2.0048; Morgan Ndlovu, “Coloniality of Knowledge and the Challenge of Creating African Futures,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 40, no. 2 (2018): 95–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/F7402040944; Patricia Hill Collins, and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (2nd ed. Key Concepts. Oxford, England: Polity Press, 2020). 3 Soares and Osella. “Islam, Politics, Anthropology,” S1–S23. Talal Asad, Anthropology & the colonial encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973). 4 Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017); Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015). 5 Lila Abu-Lughod, “Zones of Theory in the Anthropology of the Arab World.” Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989): 267–306.

© Magdalena Pycińska, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_012

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through production of scientific texts creates so-called “Muslim realities.” She identified several areas of academic interest regarding “Muslim societies,” a term that creates an illusion of unity that does not exist, and imposes a universal category of religion, which is understood to motivate societies living in countries with a Muslim majority, regardless of class, gender, ethnicity, state policy, etc. Those zones consist of tribalism, harem (gender) theory and Islam.6 Since then, as Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar argue,7 academic discourse about Islam, especially in anthropology, has experienced a paradigm shift that is more wary of the power relations issues, social-cultural practices, and global geo-politics. New feminist approaches, such as intersectionality, opened a variety of scholarly interventions, especially towards the traditional focus of American and European interests that is Islam and gender issues. The studies go beyond the liberal notion of self-sufficient human agency, and secular notions of self-expression, freedom and personal fulfilment (which themselves do not only belong to the liberal or secular dimension).8 Deeb and Winegar recognize that even the labelling of the region itself (Middle East and North Africa) is a power-laden action, that ties together the territory, people and Arab-Islamic socio-cultural categories. Today the issues of modernization, secularization, nationalism and state politics, violence and consumption with cultural practice have dominated the main body of academic work. This has been exacerbated by the problem of utilizing the universal category of religion and the binary opposition between the religious and secular spheres.9 Islam, then, is still considered as a major social and political factor, a phenomenon that has tangible effects and consequences, especially in Muslim majority societies. This Eurocentric and Orientalist idea is prevalent despite the fact that decades old postcolonial studies (while still not completely decolonized) have pointed out the problem of universal categories (such as religion, Islam, piety, nation, democracy) and their applicability in societies representing and experiencing different history, ideas, and social practices.10 Additionally, postcolonialism suffers from

6 7 8 9 10

Abu-Lughod, “Zones of Theory,” 280–298. Lara Deeb, and Jessica Winegar, “Anthropologies of Arab-Majority Societies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 537–558. Sirma Bilge, “Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 31, no. 1 (2010): 9–28. Deeb and Winegar, “Anthropologies of Arab-Majority Societies,” 540–541. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value,” in Literary Theory Today, eds. Peter Collier and Helga Greyer-Ryan (New York: Cornell University Press, 1990), 228. Gayatri Ch. Spivak, “The Post-Colonial Critic,” in The PostColonial Critic, ed. Gayatri Ch. Spivak and Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, 1990), 69; Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 171–197.

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privileging non-national societies in its critical framework over nationalist, politically and socioeconomically engaged peoples (as if still preferring to deal with undeveloped, simple societies just as the old colonialists did).11 It impacts the study of Islam, which as a social phenomenon is being separated from other public factors or is viewed as a tool of other grand narratives like nationalism. This chapter takes into account the above concerns and dedicates its methodological proposal to those scholars who first of all represent the constructivist, feminist or pragmatic interpretative paradigms in humanist sciences. Positivists and postpositivist ontology assume the view that social reality exists objectively, while it can be imperfectly understood. Its epistemology considers a binary distinction between what is true and not true. Its methodology is focused on testing grand social and general theories, no matter the social, political context. But in fact it is the researcher who produces the knowledge and the categories with which he/she defines the world. The knowledge produced is standardized, created from within a certain position of power, which does not concern itself with the local frame of reference, since it is the methodology that is supposed to secure the accuracy of the study. Local input is not necessary for the scientific process. Other paradigms, while representing various stances towards academic activism and the role of local informants, represent a more contextualized understanding of social reality and their generalizations are more carefully produced and localized.12 It does not mean that scholars who prefer the postpositivist paradigm and quantitative methodology will not be able to use the proposed method of studying the phenomenon of “Islam”—on the contrary, they may enrich their research by adding it to their academic toolkit. The proposed methodological perspective does not present a universal method, and does not claim that a category produced in one instance can be standardized and generalized to other societies. This researcher proposes to use in every particular study the practical categories of specified phenomenon, and not analytical ones, which means that they cannot be used outside their context of analyzed social interaction and circumstance. As Rogers Brubaker rightly points out, the distinction between categories of practice and analysis is indispensable, but the line between them is blurred. He recognizes that scholars contribute to the production of social categories, which often have tangible consequences, as he shows by analyzing the studies on “Muslim immigrants” to Europe, which re-label variously 11 12

Anna Bernard, Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 8. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed., London: Sage Publications Inc, 2005).

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represented populations as Muslim, along with specific knowledge and policies based on that understanding. Creating an objective, generalized “Muslim” category of analysis does at least emphasize their perceived piety, that differentiates them from other populations and makes religion the main frame of reference, relegating other categories to the side-lines of academic, social and political interest.13

2

Literature

To overcome the ontological problems that arise when applying universal categories of “religion,” “Islam” or “Muslim society” to their research, scholars promoted the use of the idea of everyday life and piety. The premise was to show the ambivalence of the everyday, to transcend the trap of categorizing Muslims only as “Muslims” and argue that in social and individual practice their religion is not the only factor that influences their lives or is the basis for their decision making. This shift was to introduce a more dynamic, flexible, ambiguous understanding of Muslim communities or practitioners of Islam. It was a move from a “state of being” (to be a Muslim, a static form with concrete characteristics) to “doing, performing, producing, behaving” like a Muslim (that entails a non-static form of identity and practice). A fascinating discussion arose around the issue of the everyday and Muslim piety, that sheds light on the main problems and benefits of this perspective. Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando14 in their paper titled “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim: Notes on an anthropological divide,” argue that a tension arises between scholars regarding the idea of Islam, its production and experience in everyday life. The debate is part of a decades’ long discussion in social and anthropological studies about the relation between the dominant structures, commonality and individuality, heterogeneity, agency, and resistance. Scholars who focused on the everyday practice, which is defined as ambiguous, contradictory and dynamic have tried to put into writing what in its very nature is to be elusive.15 We need to arrive at a scholarly consensus about the necessary reduction we need to make to operationalize the 13

14 15

Rogers Brubaker, “Categories of analysis and categories of practice: a note on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36, no. 1 (2013), 1–8. Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim: Notes on an anthropological divide,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, no. 2 (2015), 59–88. For example: Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of

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concept of the everyday, religion, secularism, etc. The main idea the authors focus on is the persistence of the duality between social structures and agency understood as resistance. This agency might not be directly invoked in one’s research, but it can be implied when interpreting the imperfect daily practice of a believer against a religious ideal, as a form of a coping mechanism, functional or utilitarian in intent. This can happen even when a scholar directly opposes such duality, as it all depends on how particular social categories or phenomena are understood and operationalized. Fadil and Fernando question the practice of treating Salafi Muslims as exceptional, since to do so implies that they somehow live their lives beyond the everyday. The Salafi category encompasses a very broad movement and strain in Islamic thought and should not be treated as one essential analytical category.16 Fadil and Fernando recognize the growing academic literature that criticizes the previous focus on ethical self-cultivation through Islamic norms and values. Those studies were conducted in a particular historical context, when the so-called “Islamic revivalism” was gaining prominence in political and social spheres, against different projections of secularization of society in various states. Many scholars began to study “Multiple Modernities” and developed an idea of “Islamic Modernity.”17 Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori emphasized in their work “Muslim Politics”18 that modernities and religions can be differently articulated depending on the socio-political context and the new Islamic movements that are part of those modernities.

16

17

18

Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory. Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures: selected essays (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Clifford Geertz, Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983); James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Irving Goffman, The presentation of the self in everyday life (Rockland: Anchor, 1959); Michael Lambek, Ordinary ethics: Anthropology, language, and action (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 39–63; Michael Lempert, “No ordinary ethics.” Anthropological Theory 13, no. 4 (2013): 370–93. Fadil and Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim,” 76–79; Henri Lauzière, “The construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the perspective of conceptual history,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 3 (2010), 369–89. Ira M. Lapidus, “Islam and Modernity,” in Patterns of Modernity. Beyond the West Vol. 2, ed. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 89–116; Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000): 1–29; Ilse Lichtenstadter, Islam and the Modern Age: An Analysis and an Appraisal (New York: Bookman, 1958). Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1996).

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Following their arguments, new studies began to focus on the experiences of pious Muslims and their practices of self-discipline and self-cultivation according to Islamic norms. Those studies, one of the most prominent of which are Saba Mahmood’s “Politics of Piety”; Charles Hirschkind’s “The Ethical Soundscape,” and Ali Agrama’s “Questioning Secularism”19 became the cornerstones of much other similar research. The debate regarding the difference between what is ethical and moral in daily life and how the relations between individual piety and Islamic authority are constructed became the focus of those studies. Fadil and Fernando express their puzzlement with regards to new studies that put themselves in opposition to the above-mentioned body of literature, focusing more on everyday religiosity, “ordinary Muslims” and their expression of agency through creative resistance to Islamic norms.20 They focus their argument on Samuli Schielke’s article “Being good in Ramadan,”21 who, according to the authors, retains the notion of religion as an abstract set of rules that are in contradiction to everyday life. Schielke understands Ramadan as a time of exceptional articulation of morality, that will not be expressed after it ends. Schielke argues for the redirection of academic focus from privileging the strive for ethical perfection to more ambivalent, conflicting aspects of everyday life, where people evade or contradict orthodox moral norms.22 The emphasis on creating oppositional space between the one which is overwhelmed by religious powers, norms, doctrines and the other in which people experience moments of disruptions separates the individuals from the process of socialization and embodiments of social symbolical capital and recreates the total opposition between what is ideal and what is real, what people say and what people do.23 This understanding has as its consequence treating those who practice Salafism as unnatural, since their strive for perfection is unattainable in “real” life. Fadil and Fernando reject such understating of Salafism because it creates a homogeneous category of Salafi followers and places them outside the “real” world of human interaction and everyday life.24 19

20 21

22 23 24

Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005); Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Hussein Ali Agrama, Questioning secularism: Islam, sovereignty, and the rule of law in modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Fadil and Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim,” 65. Samuli Schielke, “Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009), 24–40. Fadil and Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim,” 67–68. Fadil and Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim,” 69–70. Fadil and Fernando, “Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim,” 78–79.

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The responses to their article were very interesting since they touched on different topics. Lara Deeb disagrees with essentializing the literatures deriving their research from the two above-mentioned theoretical perspectives. She differentiates between studies that represent a critical response to revivalism and studies that negotiate their various forms.25 Deeb argues that commitment to the study of “everyday Islam” does not automatically lead to an oppositional stance towards the more textual norms.26 The author defines her own understanding of “everyday Islam” as relying on ideas of various traditions of Islam to assess or understand how to handle certain day to day situations. She does not inquire if Muslims are guided by religion or not, but is more interested in how we can determine “what constitutes the realm of piety in the first place?”;27 how do different views of morality relate to everyday practices? Deeb acknowledges that a problem may arise when nonnormative practices and ideals are treated as the only form of the everyday, but she assesses that in contemporary studies the “everyday” is not only relegated to a form of resistance or contingency; moreover the idea of the “everyday” may be understood differently by scholars. She sees Fadil’s and Fernando’s work as useful to highlight the problem of how certain works are read by scholars and more importantly how to understand and conceptualize the boundary between what we see as piety and do not see as pious, as part of the dynamics of the everyday itself, not forgetting the differences between generations, classes, etc.28 The binary views of power and agency may be overcome if we agree that the “everyday” is also filled with power relations and social norms, which Islamic morals may be used to fend off. Deeb emphasizes that both piety and the everyday coconstitute each other.29 A second response came from Samuli Schielke who emphasized the problem of focusing on the “everyday Muslim” and not on everyday life itself. Both the everyday and extraordinary moments in life are valuable phenomena of academic study. By focusing on life itself Schielke intends to transcend the universal concept of a “Muslim” and “Islamic tradition” and concentrate on reflective and unreflective moments, on “the experience of greater powers and an unpredictable destiny.”30 Additionally, he refuses to treat his research as part 25 26 27 28 29 30

Lara Deeb, “Thinking piety and the everyday together: A response to Fadil and Fernando,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, no. 2 (2015), 94. Deeb, “Thinking piety,” 94. Deeb, “Thinking piety,” 94. Deeb, “Thinking piety,” 95. Deeb, “Thinking piety,” 96. Samuli Schielke, “Living with unresolved differences: A reply to Fadil and Fernando,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, no. 2 (2015), 89.

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of the anthropology of Islam, since he treats Islamic revivalism as other similar social phenomena. According to the author, the research within this discipline made the phenomenon of Islam a problem in itself, at the expense of other social phenomena that accompany the everyday life of Muslims. According to him, this leads to the essentialisation of Muslims solely on the basis of a religious category. Schielke argues that what makes life livable is its ambivalence, and the Salafi strive to perfection requires solutions to the emerging contradictions, because the ideal cannot be ever reached.31 Following this argument Schielke argues that Fadil and Fernando read too much liberal thought into his research and argues that their study instead represents a research tradition that emphasizes the critique of liberalism, the role of secularism and the power-agency relation. Schielke redirects his focus from creativity and resistance to “tragic pursuits” (of goals guided by “greater powers”), adding that the secular concept for his research is not helpful since it was not hegemonic in the social context he was working with. He admits though that his work was indeed written against the Salafi movement (which he saw as hegemonic to the point of silencing other ways of life, which informed his interpretation of studied social experiences, but since 2011 changed his focus towards Egyptian nationalism).32 In their final remarks Fadil and Fernando rightly summarized that the responses did not tackle the problem of the juxtaposition between piety and the everyday, since Schielke confirmed his understanding of Salafism (later put as the “affective and violent labour of loving the Egyptian nation”),33 as a greater power that is external from the everyday life. In an answer to Lara Deeb, they argue that they do not claim there exists an essential set of unified literature, but their different theoretical orientations still articulate the everyday “primarily as a site of contestation and ambiguity.”34 With regards to the concept of the everyday itself, rightly the authors ask what is not the everyday, what is not part of human interactions and relations? Lastly the authors emphasize that ambiguities should not be the focus of study but should be considered as part of the everyday along with the practices that aim to constitute a comprehensible self; that norms should not be dislocated from the everyday.35

31 32 33 34

35

Schielke, “Living with unresolved differences,” 90–91. Schielke, “Living with unresolved differences,” 91. Schielke, “Living with unresolved differences,” 91. Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando, “What is anthropology’s object of study?: A counterresponse to Schielke and Deeb,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, no. 2 (2015), 98. Fadil and Fernando, “What is anthropology’s object of study?,” 98–99.

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221

Discussion

The responses to Fadil’s and Fernando’s article have not dispelled their main concerns and arguments regarding the prevailing tensions between the “religious” and the “everyday.” Lara Deeb suggested to focus the study on understanding how and where the boundary between “piety” and the “everyday” is articulated in a dynamic form, since moral norms and the everyday inform each other. Still the everyday is being conceptualized as something separate from moral norms and religion. I argue that this problem is very similar to studies concerning the public and private spheres, where many scholars debate their nature, boundaries, and interconnectedness, whilst also tackling the issue of power and agency. Therefore, this study argues for inclusion of the public spheres research, since it helps transcend the issue of localizing the particular “spaces” for piety and the everyday life. Samuli Schielke on the other hand goes even further and questions the usefulness of the concept of “anthropology of Islam,” “everyday Muslim,” and in another article the researcher finds it “peculiar that people find it necessary in the first place to state what they think Islam is.”36 Instead, Schielke proposes to take a more “fuzzy and open-ended view of it as a grand scheme that is actively imagined and debated by people and that can offer various kinds of direction, meaning and guidance in people’s lives.”37 Author of this article will sometimes use the idea of grand narrative in reference to a similar notion of “master ideas.” Grand scheme is understood as a phenomenon that is external and superior to everyday experience, which can be variously imagined and related to. A grand scheme has a dual nature, that is both perceived as perfect (that is why it is viewed as a guideline of life) but is ambiguous in essence, thanks to its assumed externality. This nature allows the grand scheme to persevere despite the everyday life experience of contradictions and pitfalls. Here too, Schielke differentiates between the “everyday” and the “grand scheme.”38 We need to unpack several crucial aspects of Schielke’s arguments. The main point of contention is the attempt to define the category of “Islam” (especially within the “anthropology of Islam”) which may privilege Islam as the main factor impacting people’s lives. Nowadays anthropologists are very well aware of the pitfalls of academically created categories, as rarely

36

37 38

Samuli Schielke, “Second thoughts about the anthropology of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life,” ZMO Working Papers 2 (2010): 2 https://nbn -resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-322336. Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 14. Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 14.

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today are even the analytical categories understood as universal and homogeneous. Anthropology shifted its focus from one category of religion to the study of particular religions, especially to the so-called “world religions” and their manifestations across the world. Islam is not the exception in this regard, since there are works concerning other “religions,” like Buddhism39 and Christianity.40 As Sondra L. Hausner recognizes, there is still danger of reifying a particular religion’s framework as real,41 objective truth, unless the scholar also articulates the construction of those categories, and not only deconstructs the category of religion itself.42 This process involves both the scholar and the practitioner(s), in which the relations between them, their own ideas, values, attitudes and goals impact their mutual understanding. As she emphasizes there is lots of ambiguity in the anthropological practice and production of knowledge. On the one hand anthropologists try to extract the multiplicity of practices, ideas, and their dynamics within a particular religion, but on the other hand this process still may contribute to its reification, by understanding the category of identity as its base, and equivalent.43 However, Hausner contends that anthropologists today do not naively reproduce the previous practice of building universalist and homogeneous analytical categories. The engagement with the informants and their own categorization (they also challenge the rigidity of the specific concept of religion) reminds us that no matter what the informant intentions, goals and knowledge, scholars should not be the ones to claim the religious category for them. Anthropology of a particular religion prevents us from creating a singular view of religion, since our focus and emphasis on ambiguity and multiplicity obscures and muddles this overarching category.44 Every time we engage in the scholarly process, we need to always question the framework production of that religion, as Hauser aptly 39

40 41

42

43 44

Nicolas Sihlé and Patrice Ladwig, “Introduction: Legacies, trajectories, and comparison in the anthropology of Buddhism,” Religion and Society: Advances in Research 8 (2017), 109–128. Fenella Cannell, The anthropology of Christianity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). Sondra L. Hausner, “The comparative anthropology of religion, or the anthropology of religion compared: a critical comment,” Social Anthropology 28, no, 2 (2020): 483. https:// doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12766. As it was done by numerous scholars, e.g., Talal Asad, Genealogies of religion: disciplines and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Timothy Fitzgerald, The ideology of religious studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Tomoko Masuzawa, The invention of world religions, or how European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Hausner, “The comparative anthropology of religion,” 487. Hausner, “The comparative anthropology of religion, 492–493.

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puts it “… we have plenty of ethnographic evidence for religious life outside the categories.”45 While the discussion about the methods of studying various manifestations of religions were present, especially after Clifford Geertz’s work “Islam observed: religious development in Morocco and Indonesia,”46 a clearer expression of the idea of an anthropology of Islam was raised by Talal Asad in his work titled “The idea of an anthropology of Islam.”47 Asad stressed that even though there cannot be a coherent idea of an Islamic social totality, we can still define a starting point for our analysis, as Asad writes: If one wants to write an anthropology of Islam one should begin, as Muslims do, from the concept of a discursive tradition that includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith. Islam is neither a distinctive social structure nor a heterogeneous collection of beliefs, artifacts, customs, and morals. It is a tradition.48 While being cautious not to conflate religion and culture, text and religion, Asad explains that our inquiry should focus on Islam as a discursive tradition, a proposition much contested by Samuli Schielke.49 This tradition is defined as: An Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present. Clearly, not everything Muslims say and do belongs to an Islamic discursive tradition […] For the anthropologist of Islam, the proper theoretical beginning is therefore an instituted practice (set in a particular context, and having a particular history) into which Muslims are inducted as Muslims.50 Asad does not claim that there is an inherent logic to Islam, but that there is a good starting point for our studies, i.e., the form, content and historical experi-

45 46 47 48 49 50

Hausner, “The comparative anthropology of religion, 493. Clifford Geertz, Islam observed: religious development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). Talal Asad, The idea of an anthropology of Islam. Occasional Papers Series (Washington: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1986). Asad, The idea of an anthropology of Islam, 14. Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 3. Asad, The idea of an anthropology of Islam, 14–15.

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ences concerning the foundational texts (Qurʾān and Sunna, and their understanding by the subjects of the researcher’s inquiry), even when one intends to argue against them. What is even more crucial is the stressed embodiment of the tradition. Deriving from his analysis of the early Christian discourses Asad argues that religious ideas and symbols are being embodied, not only in sacred texts and laws, but also in disciplinary activities of social institutions (from family to church) and one’s body.51 Asad recognizes the tensions between those embodied practices; that they don’t always represent the practice authorized by the church and the authorizing doctrine itself. Moreover, the Islamic discursive tradition seeks to authenticate or develop orthodoxy when it meets with new or oppositional factors; it is a rational process, capable of change, especially in contemporary networked and global circumstances. While many scholars focus on the notion of “tradition” in Asad’s proposal, often the aspect of the everyday life is not considered as part of it. Tradition is understood in two distinct ways: first, as a starting point for raising questions about power, authority, language (act and learning reflectively/unreflectively), embodiment (acquisition of propensities sensibilities), and experiences, and second, as “…an empirical arrangement in which discursivity and materiality are connected through the minutiae of everyday living.”52 Tradition in his understanding is not a form of theorization but a form of “embodied, critical learning.”53 Through it the practitioners are able to evaluate the significance and applicability of the discursive tradition and change it if necessary. The change though has more to do with an embodied aspect of tradition, not so much with an abstract notion of it.54 The embodied and discursive tradition represent two faces of the same coin, they are not separate, and they inform each other, both in a constructive and a disruptive way. In his research Asad explores the problem of relations between embodied practices and the Egyptian (liberal) state and how they impact one another in the context of global powers and markets,55 emphasizing all the more the interconnectedness of individual, social, institutional and symbolic relations that have to be taken into account in our research. Schielke’s critique of Asad’s proposition of academic research is framed as an opposition between tradition and the complexity of everyday life, there-

51 52 53 54 55

Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 28–39. Talal Asad, “Thinking About Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today,” Critical Inquiry 42, no. 1 (2015), 166. Asad, “Thinking About Tradition,” 166. Asad, “Thinking About Tradition,” 167. Asad, “Thinking About Tradition,” 175–201.

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fore accenting only one of Asad’s points.56 Schielke articulates his concerns about the dangers of developing a particular concept of Islam through this perspective. Schielke proposes his own notion of a grand scheme. As he argues Muslims in time began to objectify Islam, shifting from understanding religion as an act (Islam with no agency) to an understanding of Islam more as an entity that is external to the practitioner. It is now viewed as set of norms, morals that prohibit, command and sanction the believer and his/her experience.57 As mentioned earlier Schielke provides us with a more open-ended view of a grand scheme that is actively debated and constructed by people and guides people’s lives. A grand scheme is external to the everyday experience and as a guideline of life we should understand it firstly in its relation to everyday concerns and experiences and secondly in its relations to other grand schemes.58 Grand schemes have their place in people’s lives, but as part of their lifeworlds, they are not separate worlds; they are all sources of one’s hopes and frustrations. A grand scheme may be constituted by people, ideas and powers that are not part of the everyday but are still a relevant guide for living it.59 The author provides the example of Egypt, where he was able to recognize such grand schemes as: Islam, capitalism, love, nationalism and a few others. But as we see, the issue remains, since we still need to specify a particular grand scheme as “Islam,” “nationalism” etc. We are able to do that because both the researcher and the informant have not only their own knowledge about grand schemes, but they also embody them in certain shapes and forms, which they later negotiate. Moreover, the grand scheme is separated from the process of embodiment since it is viewed as external to daily life, reifying the dualism we want to overcome. Schielke trying to transcend the danger of objectifying a developed category of social practice/idea, emphasizes the priority of existential concerns (after Michael Jackson),60 that the starting point of our research should be the immediate practice of living life. This way rather than asking why and how an idea or discourse is articulated, we can ask what people want to accomplish

56 57 58 59 60

Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 3–4. Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 4. Schielke, “Second thoughts,” 14. Samuli Schielke, Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, frustration, and ambivalence before and after 2011 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 12–13. Michael Jackson, Existential anthropology: Events, exigencies and effects (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005); Michael Jackson, Things as they are: New directions in phenomenological anthropology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).

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by pursuing them and with what consequences.61 It is perfectly understandable that Schielke writes against culturalist interpretations of people’s actions and ideas and emphasizes the humanistic approach of explanation (human experience in general), but it should be stressed that in contemporary qualitative methods of research we are very well aware of the pitfalls of cultural essentialization, and the humanistic perspective is always part of our academic explorations. When focusing on the existential concerns, we should also not forget that the embodied practices and knowledge has its impact on the understanding of what can be viewed as existential necessities, in what hierarchy they are arranged and what is the best way to satisfy them. Again, it does not mean that people are conditioned by certain ideas and traditions to which they surrender themselves completely. But we should not write off the embodiment of various ideas, notions, and practices; they also have their roles in people’s lives. Mayra Rivera’s ‘Poetics of the Flesh’62 investigates the relations and intersections between materiality, bodies63 and discourses. Following the feminist’s new framework of knowledge that stresses the cultural sources of body transformation and representation that is also an effect of various social and political power arrangements, Rivera points out that language or discourse about one’s corporeality are not the only factors that have a lasting effect on a body. Material, physical relations and actions also shape the human body, which can be simultaneously disrupted and expanded as it never represents one state of being. It is constantly shaped and reshaped, shifting between the idea of one’s body and its materialization. It is both ‘natural’ and a result of social relations; the idea of a homogeneous, complete natural body is an illusion. Not only is the body formed in that way, but also is the material world around us.64 Life experience is mediated not only through language but also through material structures and relationships. Material practices of everyday life intersect between the symbolic and material powers. It is not enough to state how discourse shapes the representation of gender or race and how it situates them in the social hierarchy. Also important is how they are being materialized and naturalized. Social relations and hierarchies have an impact on our bodies and inform our actions. Despite race and gender being a social construct, they

61 62 63

64

Schielke, Egypt in the Future Tense, 13. Myra Rivera, Poetics of the Flesh (London: Duke University Press, 2015). Myra Rivera distinguishes body from flesh, but doesn’t analyse them separately, they are always intertwined. Body represents a complete visible materiality. The flesh is understood as formless and temporary; Rivera, Poetics of the Flesh, 2. Rivera, Poetics of the Flesh, 1–7.

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have material consequences. The material world is not fixed, stable, but relational, and in constant flux.65 The empirical and discourse (or to be even more general “nature” and “culture”) should not be treated as distinct realms, but as parts of a continuum of materiality. The physical and the social both have material effects in an ever-changing world.66 Schielke then is right by pointing out that discourse should not be the only focus of our inquiry. However, we should not marginalize the impact of the embodied ideas and practices on the understanding of existential concerns, since they inform and constitute one another. We need to take them both into account and not risk creating another dual opposition between the discourse and the everyday. Grand schemes can be viewed then as grand not only because they are an external guiding force, but also because their ideas and practices are already embodied and materialized in our lifeworld. It is not our concern to assess whether existential concern prompted a certain choice that later became embodied or that our embedded ideas inspired or provoked an action that was to satisfy a defined concern in an objective perspective. Rather instead our informants will evaluate in which social, institutional and symbolical relations those practices in everyday life are invoked and acted upon. Following the argument made by Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec that grand schemes are always in construction67 we need to tackle the problem of the common knowledge and practices that are supposed to constitute the grand schemes68—that is, what represents that knowledge, where is the starting point? The authors suggest that orthodoxy should not be the point of departure of anthropological study of religious tradition,69 when we aim at understanding the relationship between lived practice and the grand scheme. This may be true if we read Asad’s proposition in one part, as mentioned earlier. In Schielke’s article “Being good in Ramadan: ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians” religion is still: … understood as a set of clear norms, often referred to as ‘Qurʾan and the Sunna,’ that is, the two central sources of Islam. Religion, in this under65

66 67 68 69

Karen Barad, “Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter,” Signs, 28, no. 3 (2003): 801–831; Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, “Introducing the new materialisms,” in: New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 29. Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 3. Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec, Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 5. Schielke and Debevec, Ordinary Lives, 9. Schielke and Debevec, Ordinary Lives, 6.

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standing, is essentially a normative system that defines all acts as either permitted (halâl) or prohibited (harâm) on the base of evidence from the Scripture.70 The above definition suggests that religion is viewed mostly through text, with clear frames of understanding what is permitted and prohibited (despite the fact that even law studies analyzed such issues in terms of five values, from: neutral, obligatory, forbidden, recommended, to disfavored). In this view there is no space for any gray areas within religious practice, since ambiguity is located in the everyday life, separate from religious practice. No matter how much we emphasize the dynamic nature of human practices, the ambivalence of everyday life, and avoid conceptualization of certain categories, still we need a starting point for our research. Here, not only the Islamic religion is viewed as a body of norms, but its nature is stated and relegated to the Qurʾān and the Sunna (partial reading of Asad’s orthodoxy). Religion was defined as one of many “moral registers” (in the Egyptian context of his research) that express modalities of moral speech and action and underlines the performative, situational character of norms. Other registers are defined as: social justice; community and family obligation; good character; romance and love; self-realization.71 Those modalities are influencing each other, and all play a role in the life of the young Egyptians the author was studying. But religion is understood here as a form of orthodoxy, strictly limited to the Qurʾān and the Sunna, cutting out other forms of developing the orthodoxy and everyday life, relegated to a set of permitted and prohibited acts. Religion is viewed as completely external to the ordinary life. Only in combination with other registers can religion become manageable and livable. The problem is that embodied religious practices and ideas can already be found in what was named as other registers. Similarly, Lara Deeb and Mona Harb72 in their Lebanese research define moral rubrics that are negotiated during youth’s complex lives. Those rubrics are defined as sets of categorical guides, with specific values that evolve and change. Here, they also take the form of prohibitions and permissions.73 In their case, the informants referred to the religious rubric in Asad’s sense of a discursive tradition (tradition mostly understood as not part of various innovations, and individual judgement, since they are treated as an addition

70 71 72 73

Schielke, “Being Good in Ramadan,” 30. Schielke, “Being Good in Ramadan,” 30. Lara Deeb and Mona Harb, “Choosing Both Faith and Fun: Youth Negotiations of Moral Norms in South Beirut,” Ethnos 78, no. 1 (2013): 3–4. Deeb and Harb, “Choosing Both Faith and Fun, 4.

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to his concept). The social rubric is considered, among others, as a form of obligations, hierarchies, or manners. While their understanding is based on the usage by their interlocutors, it would be helpful to recognize that those categories may consist of embodied practices of other “rubrics”—and here again religion is mostly defined as set of rules, based on religious texts. So, if we still cannot escape the use of a category of religion as a starting point for our inquiry of the relation between religion and everyday life, what can be proposed as a solution? As we can see, practically all authors, no matter their stance regarding the issue of anthropology of Islam and the conceptualization and operationalization of the term religion or Islam, see the everyday religious practice (among other grand schemes) as a useful perspective to look how people live their lives. But nevertheless, the biggest issue remains—how to define our starting point, without reifying the duality between “ideal religion” and “actually performing/living religion,” implying that the latter is more real and relatable? It is one thing to recognize that different “grand narratives” or grand schemes inform each other, are in constant flux and therefore no person acts upon only one grand narrative at a time. But it is another thing to leave the starting category too open-ended, which threatens to collapse it in various ways into other categories (like in the case of religion and nationalism74), which make them less useful for our research needs. Another problem arises when we make our starting category too narrow, which risks creating a dual nature of a phenomenon, when other categories are called upon to add new features to it, to make it more complex and ambivalent. The contributors to “Ordinary Lives,” despite their different examples of everyday religion, still assumed that their attributes merit organizing them under the notion of “everyday religion” and not some general “grand narrative.”75 Part of the solution is given by Robert Orsi in the “Afterword” of Schielke’s and Debevec’s volume.76 Orsi proposes to understand lived religion as relational, recognizing that people develop personal relationships with God (gods), saints, and other similar entities, with all their hopes, fears, etc. “Everyday religion” does not only happen in instances of people’s ordinary lives,77 and we should not dismiss the more routinised practices outright, since people do not suddenly stop their habitual, embodied practices in those times (sacred calendar) and places and perform completely different ones. They may add

74 75 76 77

Example: Carlton J.H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1928); Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 77–78. For example, Schielke and Debevec, Ordinary Lives, 48, 82, 146. Robert Orsi, “Afterword,” in Ordinary Lives, ed. Schielke and Debevec, 146–161. Orsi, “Afterword,” 150–151.

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something, modify a few, but they do not abandon them completely; they are part of the relational features of people lives. The routine still is part of one’s life, knowledge and inspiration for improvisation. When we take into account the embodiment of more “authorized” religious practice it becomes very hard to separate them from “everyday religion.” Even in crisis a person enters a liminal stage that is both disruptive and creative, and to overcome it (crisis is not an objective period as it is also relational and power-driven) that person draws inspiration for his or her creativity from the knowledge, memories and relations he/she possesses.78 The problem with the notion of an “everyday” is that it is understood as a sort of a blank slate of clearly defined existential concerns, onto which external grand schemes imprint their features and become embodied—and vice versa those concerns modify the understanding of the grand scheme. However, since we are born and people are raised in certain ways, we already become part of the embodied practices and knowledge and we also draw inspiration from them to creatively answer the ambiguities of living life. The everyday is not totally free from the grand schemes due to those embodiments, and grand schemes are not entirely external from the everyday. While we can all agree with the statement that: As a result of this objectivity, externality and realness, religious idioms that arise within and exist in response to the exigencies of everyday life are not ever completely or securely under the authority either of the persons using them or of religious or political authorities. In an important phrase from the introduction, everyday religious practice is ‘embedded in traditions, relations of power and social dynamics, but it is not determined by them.’79 We may slightly modify it, by adding that depending on the relationships and situation, a tradition (understood in Asad’s full concept not only through the religious texts) can become a dominant force in determining the practice and understanding of religious action in a given context. In other relationships other grand schemes may be invoked, all depending on the comprehension of one’s relation to God/saints, etc., other people and the material world. This way we will not isolate from our studies people or groups that may represent in a scholar’s view a more routinised aspect of religiosity, since that instance

78 79

Eric Wolf, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Janet Roitman, Anti-Crisis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). Orsi, “Afterword,” 152.

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of religiosity will still be considered as part of the everyday life. After Orsi I stress that everyday religion, religious tradition and power do not exist apart from each other in any space and time; therefore there is no clear distinction between freedom and adherence to authority.80 Going beyond the understating of religion as an analytical category, as Orsi rightly points out,81 we should take into consideration the real presence of a religious entity, we should start from asking what is the perceived relationship between a person and a God (God becomes part of the human experience) and simultaneously what is his/her relationship with other humans, in a certain context. Our point of inquiry is what consequences there are in the intersection of those two axes of relationship in a given situation, time and place. This interpretation is also in accordance with Islamic understating of relations between believers and religion. Khaled Abu al-Fadl82 emphasizes the difference between Islamic law and Muslim law. The Islamic law, despite its more formal nature, still retains a fluid manner, thanks to such methods as qiyas (the deductive reasoning) and ijma (the overall consensus), which are added to the usual two sources of formal law, that is Quran and Sunna.83 Muslim law is understood as based on a number of other methods of reasoning with the addition of local traditions, social and political contexts. He also points out the distinction between ʿibadat (laws with regards to ritual and texts) and mu’amalat (laws that deal with relationships of humans with one another).84 This distinction is very fluid and hard to clearly categorize (between the rights of God and the rights of humans), therefore expressing what we have discussed here, that we cannot treat the grand schemes as external from the daily lives and should be wary of narrowing tradition or orthodoxy to a set of norms and regulations, since even in Muslim jurisprudence this problem is recognized as paradoxical and is highly debated, especially nowadays when the state and other formal institutions aim at controlling the idea of the religious sphere and what it entails for the institutions and for the rest of the citizens. This culminates in the problem of centralization and bureaucratization of religion, making it more stale, regulated and encompassed within other grand schemes like nationalism or capitalism.

80 81 82 83 84

Orsi, “Afterword,” 153. Orsi, “Afterword,” 156. Khaled Abu al-Fadl, “The Shari’ah,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics, ed. John L. Esposito and Emad El-Din Shahin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7–24. al-Fadl, “The Shari’ah,” 9. Shia Muslims and different Sunni schools of law may have various sources of Islamic law. al-Fadl, “The Shari’ah,” 16.

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Keeping this in mind we should then proceed to the issue of the public/private sphere, since the discussion about what is daily life and what is not has the same conceptual problems. Elizabeth Butler Breese85 emphasizes the existence of not one public sphere but many public spheres, which differ from each other within two “continua”: scale (face to face-symbolical) relations/interactions and content (from political and transnational-intimate relations). The multiple public spheres often overlap each other and are not equal; they often compete with each other for legitimacy and resources.86 Public spheres range from more intimate relations (face to face)87 in real time or are mediated, usually by mass media. Publics also range from political spheres that culminate with the state and international institutions/groups (juxtaposed with political inaction and uncritical subjectivity) to civic/social (juxtaposed with social isolation) that leads to more “private spheres” (which cannot be relegated to private space). People and groups very often move along those two axes and never stay in one place. Butler Breese, along with Hannah Arendt,88 emphasize the pluralism of public spheres, not the unity of their members. There is no clear-cut public and private sphere since they are relational, and practically there is no private sphere external to the public. Private persons discuss public manners and vice versa. The state or global economy have their toll on private income, not to mention global politics and conflicts which penetrate people’s intimate relations. The private for too long have been relegated to a certain space (usually one’s home) or direct, close relationships with family or friends.89 Shampa Mazumdar and Sanjoy Mazumbar took a similar approach and proposed a rethinking of the public and private spheres, drawing on examples from Iran and India, within the context of religious lives and gender experience, where they are analyzed in more relational way, many times fluctuating and changing. They argue that religion both limits the mobility and simultaneously provides the pretext and opportunity for women to 85 86

87

88 89

Elizabeth Butler Breese, “Mapping the Variety of Public Spheres,” Communication Theory 21, no. 2 (2011), 130–149. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy,” in Habermas and the public sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 109–142. To transcend the self-other duality, that privilege “resistance” and individualist ideologies a focus on constructs of intimacy and varieties of self-other identification is a considerable alternative. The self is experienced through/with other and not against the other; Diane Hoffman, “Turning power inside out: Reflections on resistance from the (anthropological) field,” International Journal od Qualitative Studies in Education, 12, np. 6 (1999): 683–684. Breese, “Mapping,” 134–141. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 112–118.

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convene in a “female” public space.90 Baudouin Dupret and Jean-Noel Ferrie in their work “Constructing the Private/Public Distinction in Muslim Majority Societies: A Praxiological Approach” state that “public” and “private” are contingent categorizations—not generalizable, but particular and contextualized; therefore there is no such category as an “Islamic public sphere” outside those imagined, constructed, and given meaning by Muslim subjects.91 They demonstrate that sometimes references to Islam are embedded in courses of action that are not determined by Islam. One of the points they raise is that even when people turn to a religious lexical repertoire, its use is embedded in sequences of action that are not logically oriented to a religious performance; moreover it is the context that modalises the religious reference. The meaning of the reference to Islam is locally achieved, through the specific orientation of the people participating in the situation toward Islam as the reference around which they organize their interactions in public.92 An illustrative example may be the 2010 Egyptian movie “Cairo 678,” directed by Mohamed Diabtakes. It is a multi-narrative film that highlights the problem of sexual harassment of women in public spheres. Even though the three main characters are victims of harassment, they live differently through them. One of the protagonists of the movie, Fayza, is presented as a conservative woman from a lower class who faces daily harassment on public transportation. Without going into too much of the storyline details, for our purpose I will focus on her embodied practice of wearing a hijab and her motivations for wearing it, especially in juxtaposition with the two other women, who represent the higher middle class, who also experienced harassment. Throughout the movie we do not observe Fayza talking or engaging in any religious practices that would help position our understating of her relations toward religion. A most interesting discussion though arose between her and the other two women (Seba and Nelly) regarding the issue of retaliation against the men harassing them. Earlier in the movie Fayza, inspired by a selfdefense talk by Seba (wealthy jewelry designer) took the matter into her own hands by pricking men who try to violate her. At the end of the movie Seba sees

90

91

92

Shampa Mazumdar and Sanjoy Mazumbar, Mazumdar, “Rethinking Public and Private Space: Religion And Women In Muslim Society,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 18, no. 4 (2001), 302–324. Baudouin Dupret and Jean-Noel Ferrie, “Constructing the Private/Public Distinction in Muslim Majority Societies: A Praxiological Approach,” in Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies. Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies, ed. Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 135. Dupret and Ferrie, “Constructing the Private/Public Distinction,” 150.

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the action as wrong, prompting Fayza to ask her why she did not discourage her form doing it, instead saying that to Nelly, the third victim (from the middle class). Fayza concludes that she does not feel guilty about her actions since she acts and wears clothes in a proper manner, unlike Seba who is accused of acting as she likes, not caring about where she goes and what she wears (she does not wear a hijab), asking about what her family thinks about her behavior. The same goes for Nelly. Fayza argues that it is because of women such as Nelly that women like her pay the price. As a woman from a low class, having to travel by crowded public transportation, not being able to pay for private transport, she must live through daily harassment, knowing that she has no socially-structured power to act against it. Seba and Nelly argue back by saying that it is the fault of conservative women like Fayza, since they started to reconceptualize what is and is not proper for a woman to do. Interestingly Fayza does not refer to Islam or religious norms to back her argument. The hijab and modest attire are already embodied as protective of women; therefore what the men do is interpreted as totally their fault. That is why Fayza does not feel guilty about her actions, while the other two women, according to her, view their lack of carrying themselves modestly as partly responsible. Even though Fayza is aware of the religious reasons for wearing the hijab, in her relations with those women and the public sphere it was not her main motive. The hijab has been embodied as a protective shield for her and in her daily circumstances it gains an additional meaning that becomes prioritized in those public interactions. It is not implied that other meanings of the hijab were forgotten or abandoned, but rather its meaning has different prioritizations depending on the context and relations. That is why in our research we need to be careful not to claim (in this case) a women’s religiosity just because she wears a hijab and nor we should try to “uncover” why a woman “really” wears one, trying to expose the “true” intent (most likely categorized as “secular” and not religious in nature) if a woman will not state a direct religious purpose for wearing the hijab. The method proposed is to help navigate our research through all these intricacies, without giving up on defining and operationalizing our basic terms and concepts, so that we will avoid the danger of producing overly open-ended terms, that may collapse different phenomena with each other, thereby obscuring their meaning and lived consequences.

4

Conclusion

All these examples concerning the “public” and “private” may be translated into the question of the concept of a “grand scheme” and “everyday life.”

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We are not able to clearly delineate when and where one begins and the other ends, since they inform each other, especially if we go beyond how the practice theory treats culture as largely external to individuals, leaving out the process of internalizing and processing, what we can broadly call culture, tradition, etc. By treating a grand scheme as external to everyday life, we still operate within the dualism we wanted to escape in the first place. It is more efficient for our studies of human life if we first define our starting point, the base for communication with our informants. In the context of religious studies, in this case of Islam, it is proposed to first refer to Talal Asad’s understanding of discursive tradition, but in its entirety, not only as set of norms (haram, halal) and texts. This entails firstly raising questions about power, authority, language (acting and learning reflectively/unreflectively), embodiment (acquisition of propensities and sensibilities), and experiences, and secondly an arrangement in which discursivity and materiality are connected through the particulars of everyday living.93 Tradition in his understanding is not a form of theorization but a form of embodied, critical learning, through which the believers are able to evaluate the significance and applicability of the discursive tradition and change it if necessary. Those aspects can be treated as the basis for our inquiries on how, why, when and if a person sees him/herself in relation with God, saints, etc. and when and why that relationship gains meaning and how it is positioned with regards to other human relations, along with ascertaining in what situations that relationship is interpreted as more important, meaningful, and consequential to that person and when the relationship with other people is scaled higher, but not totally denouncing it or marginalizing it. To help navigate the movements of those relationships we can use the two “continua” of scale and content, proposed by Elizabeth Butler Breese. Just as there are multiple, unequal, and simultaneous public spheres so there are multiple everyday lives which people navigate and move between. Each different, depending on where they are on the two-axis system. This navigation then takes into account other religious grand narratives, various lived experiences and relationships, that also include God (content axis). The above proposal can be used both in qualitative and quantitative strategies of gathering research (ideally, such quantitative research should be complemented by qualitative inquiries).

93

Asad, “Thinking About Tradition,” 166.

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Mazumdar, Shampa and Sanjoy Mazumbar, Mazumdar. “Rethinking Public and Private Space: Religion And Women In Muslim Society.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 18, no. 4 (2001): 302–324. Ndlovu, Morgan. “Coloniality of Knowledge and the Challenge of Creating African Futures,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 40, no. 2 (2018): 95–112. http://dx .doi.org/10.5070/F7402040944. Orsi, Robert A. “Afterword.” In Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, ed. Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec, 146–161. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Rivera, Myra. Poetics of the Flesh. London: Duke University Press, 2015. Roitman, Janet. Anti-Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Schielke, Samuli and Liza Debevec. Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Schielke, Samuli. “Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009), 24–40. Schielke, Samuli. “Second thoughts about the anthropology of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life.” ZMO Working Papers 2 (2010): 1–16. https:// nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-322336. Schielke, Samuli. “Living with unresolved differences: A reply to Fadil and Fernando.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5, no. 2 (2015): 89–92. Schielke, Samuli. Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, frustration, and ambivalence before and after 2011. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Sihlé, Nicolas and Patrice Ladwig. “Introduction: Legacies, trajectories, and comparison in the anthropology of Buddhism.” Religion and Society: Advances in Research 8 (2017): 109–128. Smith, Anthony D., National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Soares, Benjamin and Filippo Osella. “Islam, Politics, Anthropology.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009): S1–S23. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value.” In Literary Theory Today, eds. Peter Collier and Helga Greyer-Ryan, 219–239. New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “The Post-Colonial Critic.” In The Post-Colonial Critic, ed. Gayatri Ch. Spivak and Sarah Harasym, 67–74. New York: Routledge, 1990. Wolf, Eric. Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Chapter 12

Moving from a Madrasa Situation to the Process of Doctrinal Development An Explication of the Extended Case Method in the Study of Islam Zahraa McDonald

1

Introduction

This chapter shows how the study of Islam can make a contribution to theorising social processes when the extended case method is applied as a methodology. The chapter describes this method and explains how it was implemented in a study focused on Islamic education and citizenship. The study used participant observation to explore Islamic education at Warda Madrasa, an institution for women associated with the Deobandi Islamic movement in Johannesburg, South Africa. The chapter demonstrates that implementation of this methodology enabled the reconstruction of a theoretical concept: doctrinal development. The chapter begins with a description of the extended case method.1 It then explains how the social situation was aggregated to a social process, a key aspect of the extended case method. It shows how aggregating the social situation, Warda Madrasa, to the social process and to developing and communicating a religious doctrine allows data gathered through participant observation to have wider applicability and reach. The chapter then describes how reconstruction of the social process and doctrinal development, aggregated

1 Michael Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” in Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis, ed. M. Burawoy et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991a); Michael Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories” in Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis, ed. Michael Burawoy et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991b); Burawoy, “Introduction” in Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis, ed. Burawoy et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991c); Michael Burawoy. “The Extended Case Method” Sociological Theory 16, no. 1 (1998): 4–33; Michael Burawoy et al., Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Michael Burawoy, The Extended Case Method. Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations and One Theoretical Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

© Zahraa McDonald, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_013

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from the Warda Madrasa situation, enabled the explanation and understanding of expressions of citizenship while being religious. The chapter ends by summarising the outcomes of applying the extended case method to this situation, pointing to its potential value for developing theories of social processes while studying Islam.

2

The Extended Case Method

Methodology is the link between data and theory and is concerned with its reciprocal relationship.2 Methodology bridges the gap between what is currently known (from the literature) and new information (gathered during data collection) to fill the gap in relation to new knowledge (answering the research question related to the problem statement). Michael Burawoy’s3 extended case method is a methodological approach that seeks to draw out generalisations from data collected via participant observation. While Burawoy clearly delineates the extended case method,4 a greater understanding of the implementation of the method contributed significantly to the development of the research.5 The chapter is an attempt to contribute to the documented experiences of implementing the extended case method. It outlines the method and describes the implementation of one aspect of it: aggregation of the social situation to a social process in relation to data gathered at an institute of Islamic education or madrasa in South Africa. Data were gathered to explore how Islamic education for women can allow for expression of post-secular6 citizenship.7 The extended case method is a methodological technique that works by collecting, analysing and explaining data collected via participant observation so that the social situation is understood in relation to particular external 2 Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i, 271. 3 Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i; Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,”; Burawoy, “Introduction,”; Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii; Burawoy, Four Countries. 4 Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i; Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories”; Burawoy, “Introduction,”; Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method” ii; Burawoy, Four Countries. 5 I am grateful to Michael Burawoy for personal communication that facilitated my implementation of the extended case method while in the field. 6 Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy, 14, no. 1 (2006): 15. 7 See Zahraa McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship: A Sociological Exposition of Islamic Education in South Africa” (PhD dissertation., University of Johannesburg, 2013): 114–121.

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forces.8 The method was developed by Max Gluckman and his students who ‘regarded the social situation as an expression of the wider society.’9 Thus, social processes can be discerned in each social situation because the situation is part of society. As Burawoy has put it, Society was, so to speak, composed of cells each encoded with the same structure, reflecting the essential character of the totality in which they existed. It did not matter which cell one looked at; the purpose was to arrive at features that were generalizable to society as a whole.10 The extended case method ‘examines how the social situation is shaped by external forces.’11 Generalisations—explaining the situation as it has been shaped by external forces—here are based on the reflexive scientific model and are drawn out from the data during implementation of the extended case method.12 Theory building guides reflexive science and the extended case method whereas objectivity guides positive science and survey research.13 As Burawoy has written, ‘We keep ourselves steady by rooting ourselves in theory, which guides our dialogue with participants.’14 Reliance on prior theory increases researchers’ “objectivity” because theory is the result of previously developed concepts and constructs rather than ideas assumed by researchers. In this way, the extended case method addresses a common critique or assumed limitation of participant observation: the lack of breadth and thus an inability to generalise.15 Data collection for the extended case method takes the form of dialogue between the participant and observer in order to achieve a scientific explanation constituted from a dialogue between theory and that data.16 The extended case method requires that an interesting, surprising or unexpected feature of

8 9 10 11 12

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Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i, 277. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i, 277. Burawoy, “Introduction,” 6. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i; Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,”; Burawoy, “Introduction,”; Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii; Burawoy, Four Countries. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii, 5. Burawoy, Four Countries, 20. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i, 271–2; Jessica Iacono, Ann Palmer Brown and Clive Holtham, “Research Methods—a Case Example of Participant Observation,” The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 7, no. 1 (2009), 40. Burawoy, “Introduction,” 4–5.

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the situation be identified.17 What is interesting from the data emerges from theory.18 “Unexpected” is defined with reference to existing knowledge which may be lay theories, common sense knowledge or academic theory.19 Social phenomena are thus viewed as ‘counterinstances of some old theory.’20 It is necessary to construct a strong sense of expectations from the site or situation so that violations or anomalies may be detected.21 Existing theoretical explanations are then related to the data to explain the anomalies. The focus is, however, on what the theory fails to explain.22 In other words, we conduct a running commentary between field notes and the analysis that follows them. The conjectures of yesterday’s analysis are refuted by today’s observations and then reconstructed in tomorrow’s analysis. But there is a second running exchange, that between the analysis and existing theory, in which the latter is reconstructed on the basis of emergent anomalies.23 In the application of the extended case method, shortcomings in existing theory become grounds for reconstruction of the theory.24 ‘[T]heories that highlight some aspect of the study as being anomalous are rebuilt as opposed to be rejected.’25 Burawoy suggests that analysis with the extended case method develops from flaws or silences in existing theory.26 Flaws in existing theory are taken as points of departure in the explanation of data gathered from participant observation using the extended case method.27 In addition to anomalies, failures leading to reconstructions can arise from internal contradictions within theories.28 Inadequacy in theories may also result from disregard for important issues or the creation of false anticipations.29 Analysis for theory

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9, 26. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9; Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” i, 280. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 10–1. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 9. Burawoy, “Introduction,” 6. Burawoy, “Introduction,” 7. Burawoy, “Introduction,” 7. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 10. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 26.

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reconstruction ‘is a continual process, mediating between field data and existing theory.’30 The extended case method thus requires that a potential theory be found that should explain the situation in which the data were gathered. Aggregating the situation to a process facilitates the detection of a potential theory. To address the matter of the continual flux of situational knowledge, reflexive science performs a reduction by aggregating situational knowledge into social process.31 Aggregating the situation to a social process is therefore a hinge upon which the extended case method is implemented. A potential theory for reconstruction will therefore, to an extent, explain the social process that is aggregated from the social situation. Situational knowledge is aggregated into social processes from ‘multiple readings of a single case’ and this ‘is always reliant on prior theory.’32 In other words, particular aspects from the social situation are highlighted based on an analysis of the data following suggestions from theory. Just as survey data aggregates data points from a large number of cases into statistical distributions from which causal inferences can be made, reflexive science collects multiple readings of a single case and aggregates them into social processes.33 A theory that is meant to explain the social process can then be reconstructed. With the social situations aggregated and the social process identified, the extended case method looks to deepen or elaborate on existing theory.34 Experimentation with a number of theories should in the end lead to the selection of a particular theory that has the potential to be reconstructed based on the data gathered during participant observation. There may be more than one theory which the data challenges; a selection then has to be made based on proximity to the research interests and aims.35 The back-and-forth movement between data and theories allows reconstruction of the theory or theories selected.36

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 11. Burawoy, Four Countries, 41. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii, 15. Burawoy, Four Countries, 41. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii, 16. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 26. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 26.

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Ultimately, theory reconstruction allows for the consolidation and development of what has been constructed.37 The ideal characteristics of a reconstructed theory are that it leaves core postulates of the theory intact; explains social phenomena to the same extent as the theory on which it is built; and should be able to absorb the anomalies found in the case used for reconstruction.38 Furthermore, as Burawoy argues, reconstructions should lead to ‘surprising predictions’ of which some are already corroborated.39 The chapter now moves to explain how the social situation was aggregated to social processes when the extended case method was used at Warda Madrasa (WM) in South Africa and how this enabled a theoretical concept to be selected and ultimately reconstructed.

3

The Extended Case Method at Warda Madrasa

The social situation at an Islamic education institution for adolescent women in South Africa is discussed here. The situation had to be aggregated to a social process by sifting thoroughly through the data. A firm grasp of what the data were presenting with respect to themes and connections between them was thus required. To gain a first-hand glimpse of what was being taught as well as to witness interactions in this space, participants were observed at WM once a week for six months. Interviews conducted with stakeholders at WM formed another layer of data collection linked to the participant observation and extended beyond the six months of participant observation. Participant observation or ethnography is ‘the study of people in their own time and space, in their everyday lives.’40 During my visits to WM, I observed the lessons and the interactions between learners and teachers. The nature of my position meant that I was never a full participant as I was not a full-time learner or teacher. I observed the interactions at WM by being in the same space as the learners and teachers. During classes, I sat where any learner could have sat. Though I did not interact with the learning material for the purpose that the teachers or the learners did, a passer-by could have easily mistaken me for one of the learners. Moreover, I heard what they heard in exactly the manner as they did and was interacting with the learning material for the purpose of answering my research question. My role was then that of 37 38 39 40

Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 26. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii, 16; Burawoy, Four Countries, 43. Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” ii, 16; Burawoy, Four Countries, 43. Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 2.

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a complete observer in relation to the formal educational activities. For this reason, I would not, for example, disrupt a class just to ask a burning question particularly since I was free to talk to teachers and learners during break and at other times. I did, however, participate in the informal activities when formal education was not taking place. Here I think specifically of standing outside, chatting to teachers before the day began or at the end of the day. I also refer to sitting with the teachers or the learners during break. Other examples are chatting to learners between classes or when a teacher was late in arriving for class. On a typical day at WM, I would arrive between 8h00 and 9h00, when classes start, and attend classes until the first break, 9h45 to 10h00. During break, I would talk to the learners or teachers informally. I would then attend classes from 11h30 to 11h45 until the second break. During the first three months of the participant observation site visits, I left during the second break after talking informally again to the teachers and/or the learners but later I stayed after the second break until the end of the learners’ day which was 14h00 at the time. I was able to make notes easily and freely during the observations because I was generally seated at a desk together with the learners. As WM is an education site, everybody had a reason for, and was thus supposed to be, writing. Therefore, nobody experienced any discomfort at me writing nor did I feel I was obstructing the normal flow of events. In addition, everybody knew that I was a researcher so I did not have to hide the fact that I was writing. When I talked to the learners and teachers informally, it was not always possible to immediately record in writing what they were saying as this could disturb the flow of the conversation. I would then note the conversation as soon as possible thereafter.

4

Warda Madrasa

WM was established in 1996 in Lenasia, a former Indian township of Johannesburg, by three men (Mawlana Rafeek Randeree, Yusuf Mohamed and Hafiz Sulaiman Parak) as an independent institute focusing on Islamic education for adolescent women. The institution was established following requests to Randeree to establish such an institute. During the course of the participant observation, the WM relocated due to growth in student numbers. Initially, at a mosque complex in Lenasia, WM used three large classrooms for the entire day and a fourth smaller classroom after the first break. The rooms served the purpose of classrooms but they all had carpets which indicated a sacred prayer space. The ambience in the

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classes resembled that of a mosque even though the main prayer area was not utilised as classes. A smaller room was used as a tuck shop, general administration office and staff room. In addition to the prayer space in the classrooms, there were facilities where the ritual ablution could be completed. This is a compulsory requirement before Muslims can pray or recite from the Qurʾān. Learners, teachers and others removed their shoes on entering WM. Flat desks were placed on the floor, with learners and teachers seated at them during class. The prayer markings, ablution facilities, the removal of shoes and the manner of sitting in class all created an ‘Islamic’ atmosphere, a spatial experience very different from the usual classroom environment. When space as well as time became limited at the first mosque complex, WM relocated to a larger mosque complex able to accommodate not only all the enrolled learners but all the courses offered. Since the institution moved from one mosque complex to another, it did not lose its Islamic feel. The new mosque complex was larger than the previous one but not enormous. The section that WM occupies is next door to, and part of, the same complex as the main mosque where prayers are held. The two entrances are separate and face different roads of a corner stand on which the mosque complex is built; in the previous complex, the entrances were also separate. As in the first mosque complex, learners and teachers here are seated on the floor and classes have carpets indicating the prayer position.

5

From Situation to Social Process

In the field while conducting participant observation, the question that constantly confounds is what theory has the greatest potential to be reconstructed from the situation. When the outcome of the research depends on whether a theory can be reconstructed, much anxiety is caused when a potential theory seems nowhere in sight or to be out of reach. In retrospect in the case of this research, locating the theory or rather the theoretical concept that would be reconstructed did not occur at one moment. There were a number of moments and, as Burawoy states, a dialogue between them that co-constitute the arrival at a theoretical concept which had the potential to be reconstructed.41 This case demonstrates that a consistent, compounding, iterative dialogue with a number of knowledge sources makes it possible to extend findings generated from participant observation and to reconstruct theory. The extended case method is built on a dialogue between theory (even generally accepted 41

Burawoy, “Introduction,” 4–5.

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stereotypes) and data.42 Knowledge and understanding emanates from tension; embracing these moments in a manner that seeks the solution in theory or data ultimately resolves the matter of finding a potential theory. A discussion of the moments, and the dialogue that emanated with ideas in literature, shows how the situation was aggregated to a social process. The question posed and which the WM situation had to answer was: how does Islamic education allow for post-secular citizenship? The question was located in a context where Muslims in minority communities who choose Islamic or Muslim schools43 were said to be disengaging from national life in the UK, Europe and South Africa.44 With respect to education, Muslims were thus argued to be confronted with ‘the tension between secular nation or the religious community.’45 Despite the fact that secular subjects are offered in Islamic or Muslim schools, the addition of Islamic education is presumed to bring about a tension for Muslims that could curtail their participation, as citizens, in secular nation states. Although the position of Muslims in South African politics has been thoroughly described and detailed in the literature,46

42 43

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Burawoy, “Introduction,” 5. The terms Islamic or Muslim schools are used to denote institutions of Islamic education where subjects such as Islamic Studies and Arabic are offered in addition to the secular subjects required to fulfil the requirements of national curricula. Tayob, Niehaus, and Wiese, eds., Muslim Schools and Education in South Africa and Europe, 15. Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), Britain: A Plural Society (London: CRE, 1990), 11; Mary Ann Zehr, “Guardians of Faith,” Education Week, January 20, 1999, http:// www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1999/01/20/19muslim.h18.html, 29; Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 35; Abdul Kader Tayob, Inge Niehaus and Wolfrum Wiese, eds. Muslim Schools and Education in South Africa and Europe (Munster: Waxmann, 2011), 9. Tayob et al., Muslims Schools, 9. Goolam Vahed and Shamiel Jeppie, “Multiple Communities. Muslims in Post-apartheid South Africa,” in State of the Nation: South Africa 2004–2005, eds. John Daniel, Roger Southall and Jessica Lutchman (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2005); Abdur Rashid Omar, “Democracy and Multiple Identities in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Annual Review of Islam in South Africa, 7 (2004); Goolam Vahed, “Islam in the Public Sphere in Postapartheid South Africa: Prospects and Challenges,” Journal for Islamic Studies, 27 (2007); Shamiel Jeppie, “Identity Politics and Public Disputation: A Baha’i Missionary as a Muslim Modernist in South Africa,” Journal for Islamic Studies, 27 (2007); Abdul Kader Tayob, “Islamic Politics in South Africa Between Identity and Utopia,” South African Historical Journal, 60, no. 4 (2008); Lubna Nadvi, “South African Muslims and Political Engagement in a Globalising Context,” South African Historical Journal, 60, no. 4 (2008); Heinrich Matthee, Muslim Identities and Political Strategies: A Case Study of Muslims in the Greater Cape Town Area of South Africa, 1994–2000 (Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2008); Sindre Bangstad and Aslam Fataar, “Ambiguous Accommodation: Cape Muslims and Post-Apartheid Politic,” Journal of South African Studies, 36, no. 4 (2010): 817–831.

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as far as could be established there had been little theoretical consideration related to expressing post-secular citizenship. To the contrary, if they were seeking to withdraw from public life how could they be expressing citizenship? Moreover, by virtue of their being religious, could they express post-secular citizenship? In the context of these questions, secularization theory was the first theory considered for reconstruction. To the extent that the secularization theory predicted the waning of religion whereas the post-secular, the continued presence thereof, this theory was regarded as the common-sense response to the requirement of the extended case method to identify a theory for reconstruction. The continued presence of religious communities, with respect to Muslims in South Africa, could not be contested. What was lacking was a theoretical framework for understanding their concomitant participation or lack thereof in public life, given their religious convictions, values and practice. A framework for explaining and understanding how Muslims communicate their Islamic beliefs and values appears was required. The consequences of Islamically-informed behaviour, however, is often seen as closure, isolation, retreat and withdrawal from the political community. Was there a theory that was able to take account of Islamic beliefs and values and public expression so that post-secular citizenship could be explained? Secularisation theory assumes that religion and religious expression recede; however, the WM situation is nothing if not religious. Secularisation theory predicts that religion becomes marginal in modern society47 and that if individuals practice their religion they are marginal. By this theory, Muslim schools add nothing new to our understanding of society.48 However, secularisation theory has been critiqued as Enlightenment ideology that assumes that religion would dissipate. Empirically, it is clear that religion has not declined in social life. Muslim schools, including the WM, from this assumption are something of a theoretical conundrum, being marginal yet present at the same time. When researching Muslim schools from the point of view of what it means to 47

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Peter L. Berger, “Reflections on the Sociology of Religion Today,” Sociology of Religion, 62, no. 4 (2001): 443; Sarah Bracke, “Conjugating the Modern/Religious, Conceptualising Female Religious Agency. Contours of a ‘Post-secular’ Conjuncture,” Theory, Culture and Society 25, no. 6 (2008): 57. Aslam Fataar, “Discourse, Differentiation, and Agency: Muslim Community Schools in Post-Apartheid Cape Town,” Comparative Education Review, 49, no. 1 (2005); Inge Niehaus, “Islamic Schools Between Academic Achievement, Religious Identity Formation and Democratic Citizenship: Voices from Learners and Teachers,” presented at the Muslim Minority Rights, Islamic Education and Democratic Citizenship Symposium, 8–9 October 2008, at the University of Cape Town.

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participate in citizenship, one finds that there is little dialogue with theoretical concepts that provide for engaging in public life as citizens. Debates tend not to go beyond whether or not citizenship education is taught and hence whether Muslim schools narrowly, and Islamic education broadly, allow for the expression of citizenship. To locate a theory which should explain the situation but does not quite do so, the social situation needed to be aggregated to a social process that relates to the expression of citizenship. In this study, this was done using two theoretical concepts. First: a theoretical concept was identified which allowed an analysis of how citizens participate or express their citizenship. Second: a theoretical concept was identified that explained religious practices and which overlapped with the theoretical concept that explained the expression of citizenship. Although the concepts did not overlap perfectly, they did so to the point where the first could be used to extrapolate the second. Literature and data about the situation were then used to further extend the second and, in so doing, reconstruct that theoretical concept: doctrinal development or the process by which religion is rationalised. These theoretical concepts are explicated below: literary publics49 and doctrinal development50 followed by how literature and data about the situation extended doctrinal development.

6

Literary Public

Citizen participation is argued to arise out of rational communication in the public sphere where debate and dialogue translate into public opinion formation. Literary publics were the cornerstone of the public sphere that Habermas described.51 According to him, rational communication through a literary public—that is: where individuals write, read and discuss matters of common interest—is the most effective way to express citizen participation. For Habermas, texts and reading are fundamental to the eighteenth century bourgeois public sphere.52 While any individual can discuss any matter that interests them, it is only when that matter becomes lodged within a particular literary public that it emerges as public opinion. Habermas explains how a

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50 51 52

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (London: Menthuen & Co. Ltd, 1966). Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 23. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 20–2, 24–5.

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shared moral outlook was constituted in the eighteenth-century public sphere through the work of writers such as Addison and Steele in weekly journals or newsletters which addressed issues that related to morality.53 Public moral commentary in these journals and newsletters focused on schools for the poor and the improvement of education, civilized forms of conduct together with polemics on vices.54 Predicated on the theoretical concept of the literary public, this study proceeded on the assumption that, if an instance of Islamic education relates to a process of constituting a literary public, it would enable the expression post-secular citizenship.

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Doctrinal Development

Weber’s conceptualisation of the process of the rationalisation of religion overlaps with the concept of the literary public. Although he did not set out to explain citizen participation, he demonstrates that religious individuals could participate in the formation of public opinion. In sum, the thesis of the Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism55 argues that through the development of an inner-worldly asceticism—that is: a rational religious ethic—Protestantism infused into the economic system a calculating, rational individual who was able to reinvest profits and to labour in a defined profession. Protestantism developed the character of an individual as a whole in a way that brought about a particular fervour in the pursuit of capital and the idea of the calling was communicated rationally.56 Texts are noted as fundamental to the development of religious ethics. The text, together with reading, writing and the expansion of printing and publishing, is central to the rationalisation of religion in the same way that texts and literature are critical to literary publics and the development of a rational public sphere. Together, texts bring the authors who write them and the literary public who read and then discuss them into a shared understanding of the world.57 Writings or texts are therefore critical to developing a common understanding of what is considered moral or good in a particular social situation.

53 54 55 56 57

Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 42–50. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 42–3. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2nd ed.) (Surrey: George Allen & Unwin, 1976). McDonald. “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 48. Baker, “Defining the Public Sphere,” 184.

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In the entire context of the process of rationalisation, Weber emphasises the importance of the development of a written sacred tradition, of sacred books … Once there are sacred texts, however, these are subject both to continual editing and to complex processes of interpretation and tend to become the focus of specialised intellectual competence and prestige in the religious field and on the cultural level of rationalised systems of religious doctrine.58 An important feature in determining a rational ethic lies in exploring dynamics surrounding sacred texts and doctrine. Doctrine is characterised by ‘the development of a rational system of religious concepts’ that lays the basis for a “systematic and distinctively religious ethic based upon a consistent and stable … ‘revelation.’”59 Within doctrine, Weber distinguishes between two kinds of texts: canonical writings—that is: foundational religious texts—and dogmatic writings which are interpretations of the canon.60 Textual development contributes to intellectual cognition and thus becomes central to rationalising a religion. ‘Religion depends for its ultimate truth not on empirical experimentation but on the authority of God through revelation.’61 The text is used to communicate authenticity and connection to the ‘original’ message. The Protestant Reformation was characterised by the ‘return to Scripture.’62 According to Casanova, Protestants believe in the infallibility of the Bible and thus a need to return to the scripture as a way of life.63 It was through a re-interpretation of the scripture that the Protestant ethic was developed. Weber notes that the German word for vocation—beruf —was not prevalent before Luther’s translation of the Bible.64 He argues that Protestantism emerged from Luther’s reinterpretation of the Bible making ‘the calling’ a commonly accepted religious conception which was not previously present.65 How then did the word beruf develop from Luther’s translation of the Bible to everyday Protestant speech and a moral outlook? In The Protestant Ethic, Weber describes the emergence of a literary public.66 He analyses Richard Baxter’s writings on individual religiosity or piety 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Talcot Parsons, “Introduction” in The Sociology of Religion, Max Weber (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1966), xxxvii. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 29. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 67. Yousuf I. Eshak, “An Educational Evaluation of the Madressa System of Religious Instruction” (M.A. thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, 1995), 33. Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 141. Casanova, Public Religions, 140–1. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 198. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 79. Weber, The Protestant Ethic.

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and the development of a moral character, ethic or spirit.67 These writings, by a seventeenth-century English Puritan theologian, ‘derived from ministerial practice’ and are demonstrated to have ‘exercised an influence’ over individuals’ character.68 Baxter’s writings form the bedrock of Weber’s connection between the fundamental religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism and its maxims for everyday economic conduct.’69 For Weber, Baxter’s writings are the major source that connected asceticism to the capitalist spirit.70 At a ‘time in which the beyond meant everything,’ Weber regards Baxter as having had a great influence over the formation of character.71 Baxter’s writings stood out for Weber because his works were widely read and went through many editions and translations.72 Baxter’s writings were not restricted to the canon or theological dogma but had a moral reach, according to Weber. ‘On this point [division of labour] Baxter expresses himself in terms which more than once directly recall Adam Smith’s well-known apotheosis of the division of labour.’73 Weber likens the idea of the calling, though based on the canon or scripture as translated by Luther, to secular ideas described in Baxter’s writings. For example, labouring at various things, or irregularly, would not align with the morality of the calling; one needs to labour in a specialised fashion.74 ‘A man without a calling lacks the systematic, methodical character which is, as we have seen, demanded by worldly asceticism.’75 In Protestant writings, the usefulness of the calling is measured in moral terms with respect to the greatest good for the community.76 The writings developed around the calling and a shared moral outlook in the same way that Addison and Steele’s writing did in the eighteenth century public sphere. Baxter’s writings do not constitute either canonical or dogmatic writings which form the basis of the concept—doctrinal development.77 According to Weber, it is not Luther’s translation of the Bible—a canonical writing— but writings like those of Baxter that are responsible for the moral outlook

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–176. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–165. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–6. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 161. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 161. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 161. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 162. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 67.

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amongst Protestant ascetics.78 From Weber’s examination of Baxter’s writings, it is clear that, although the Reformation was spearheaded by a reinterpretation of canonical writings, the spread of its doctrine was fuelled by another layer of writings or texts. Weber considers Baxter’s writings to be ‘derived from ministerial practice.’79 It is, however, unclear whether this is similar to dogmatic writings (the interpretation of canonical writings) as he defines them in the Sociology of Religion.80 Roman Loimeier concurs with Weber that a proliferation of popular literature is a central feature of the Protestant Reformation and distinguishes such texts from the Bible and from the dogmatic writings of Luther.81 Indeed, the Reformation was linked, according to Loimeier, with a ‘media revolution,’ specifically with respect to the printing press.82 Weber does not explain how the concept was able to be understood in the same way by so many individuals except to indicate that the work of writers such as Baxter was circulated widely. There is little consideration in Weber’s explication about how the texts came to constitute a complete moral outlook within individual believers. From the fact that the texts were printed, the assumption is made that they were read by many people. While this could be a fair assumption, assumptions offer no details about where and how they were read or how the content became a shared moral understanding and outlook amongst Protestant people. However, based on the outcome—the Protestant Ethic—we deduce that many people read the texts and that a shared morality indeed developed from them. From the fact that they were derived from ministerial practice, we could assume that they were written for the average person to understand and that many people read them; we can therefore deduce that they were relatively accessible. In dialogue with the theoretical concept ‘literary publics,’ we might further deduce that the content of the texts was also preached from church pulpits and that they were discussed by congregants as they left church and/or met in each other’s homes after the service. We might assume, again in dialogue with the theoretical concept of ‘literary publics,’ that there were religious study groups where Baxter’s writings were read and discussed. We can, however, only deduce or assume because Weber does not provide

78 79 80 81 82

Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–6. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–165. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 67. Roman Loimeier, “Is There Something like Protestant Islam?,” Die Welt de Islams 45(2) (2005): 233–241. Loimeier, “Is There Something like Protestant Islam?,” 242.

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further evidence of such gatherings and discussions. Important to highlight here is that the dialogue between two theoretical concepts that shed light on the process aggregated from the situation can extend both concepts. The dialogue between the theoretical concepts with literature and data relating to the situation enables further extensions and reconstruction of doctrinal development.

8

Doctrinal Development, Literary Publics and Islamic Education

In scholarly discussions of contemporary religious phenomena, texts are considered vital. Salvatore and Eickelman83 note the significance of texts for religion in the public sphere although they do not refer to rational religious ethics, doctrinal development, inner-worldly asceticism or Weber’s distinction between canonical and dogmatic writings. They argue, however, that Islamic texts which deal with moral action from contemporary religious movements are accessible to more people because they are written in a breezy and colloquial style that breaks with the cadence of traditional literature.84 Here, traditional literature could be likened to canonical and dogmatic writings while the more accessible colloquial style, as well as moral content, could be compared in terms of their impact to the writings of Richard Baxter. In addition, methods such as cassettes and new media, including the internet, have been or are used to disseminate the message.85 Van der Veer86 confirms the view that Protestantism was linked to the rise of a market for books and that materials printed in the vernacular created new reading publics which in turn were essential to developing a shared consciousness. Drawing on Van der Veer and predicated on that discerned from the theoretical concepts ‘literary publics’ and ‘doctrinal development,’ the feature ‘vernacular writings’ was introduced to refer to texts that offer an accessible moral account of a religious ethic. In addition, by extending from the theoretical concepts ‘literary publics’ and ‘doctrinal development’ and drawing on literature that relates to the WM situation, the feature ‘vernacular writings’ could be expounded in the study.

83 84 85 86

Armand Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman (Eds.) Public Islam and the Common Good (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Salvatore and Eickelman, Public Islam and the Common Good, 15. Salvatore and Eickelman, Public Islam and the Common Good, 15. Peter Van der Veer, “Secrecy and Publicity in the South Asian Public Arena,” in Public Islam and the Common Good, eds. Armand Salvatore & Dale F. Eickelman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 36.

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As Weber demonstrates with reference to Baxter’s texts, vernacular writings are fundamental to spreading the moral message and the teleological meaning related to the doctrine which enables religion to rationalise. Vernacular writings are authored by those who have authority and know and understand canonical and dogmatic writings. Baxter was a Protestant minister and not a lay person. Vernacular writings must therefore be linked to the doctrine as a whole; they cannot stand on their own. As Burawoy explains, theory reconstruction allows for the consolidation and development of what has been constructed.87 The content of vernacular writings is central to grasping the moral outlook which a religious ethic seeks to embed. Moreover, the content of the vernacular writings represents the essence of the ethic in the sense that it provides a basic programme of action. In addition, the nature of the morality promoted in vernacular writings could be suggestive of the effect a religious doctrine is likely to have on the public. Salvatore and Eickelman contend that, when texts which deal with moral issues are easier to access, more people can engage with them and thus they can infiltrate the public sphere.88 Following this discussion, in determining how Islamic education allows for participation in the public sphere it is necessary to establish the presence of vernacular writing that encourages a shared moral outlook. In essence, based on the theoretical concepts ‘literary publics’ and ‘doctrinal development,’ if a situation associated with Islamic education corresponds to the development of a rational religious ethic the individuals in that situation are also expressing citizenship. One could therefore deduce that interrogating the processes by which texts become and remain central to religious movements is critical to understanding doctrinal development as well as its potential impact in the public sphere. From the literature, it is clear that the Deobandi education movement and doctrinal orientation has had a huge impact on Muslims in South Africa over the past six decades.89 The education of women, outside South Africa, within the Deobandi education movement has also been demonstrated to be significant in instilling a unifying moral outlook which can be likened to

87 88 89

Burawoy, “Reconstructing Social Theories,” 26. Salvatore and Eickelman, Public Islam and the Common Good, 15. Mohammed Haron and Yaasien Mohamed, “The Theory and Practice of Islamic Education with Reference to South Africa,” in Perspectives on Islamic Education, eds. Y. Mohamed, S.E. Dangor and A.M. Mahomed (Lenasia: Muslim World League, 1990); Muhammad K. Sayed. “The Shifting World of South African Madrasahs, 1973–2008” (M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010).

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a religious ethic.90 The Deobandi are part of the Islamic reformation in the Indian subcontinent that began in the nineteenth century.91 Canonical writings formed the basis of these Islamic reformation movements. According to Metcalf, in a bid to establish true Islam the movements tended to be ‘scripturalist’ by returning to the written records of the Qurʾān and the tradition of the Prophet.92 The basis of Islam is textual and therefore, from the perspective of the concept ‘doctrinal development,’ an Islamic ethic is conceivable. Primary sources of religious interpretations for Muslims consist of the Qurʾān and hadīth.93 The Qurʾān has formed the bedrock of the Islamic faith although Eickelman and Piscatori94 point out there are differing social and political interpretations of Qurʾānic injunctions—what Weber refers to as dogmatic writings.95 The ulama (priests) are regarded as men of the texts and derive their authority from their knowledge of the texts.96 Deobandi seminaries provide ulama with a distinct doctrinal orientation and the ulama in turn reproduce that doctrine in all the endeavours they participate in after they have graduated. Ulama may disseminate their teachings as prayer leaders, writers, preachers and teachers.97 Extending the doctrine through vernacular writings is thus one of the endeavours that ulama take part in. Canonical, dogmatic and vernacular writings can be discerned within the Deobandi education movement.98 Therefore, in addition to writing and reading, members of the Deobandi religious movement are involved in discussing what it means to be Muslim on a variety of platforms.99 The literature has, however, not examined the Deobandi education movement as a process of doctrinal development associated with the rationalisation of religion and its capability to infiltrate the public sphere via a literary public.

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Mareike Winkelman, From Behind the Curtain. A Study of a Girls’ Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005). Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 4. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, 6. Muhammed Q. Zaman, “Religious Discourse and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Pakistan,” REMMM, 123 (2008): 57. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Travellers. Pilgrimage, Migration and Religious Imagination (California: California University Press, 1990), 8. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 67. Sayed, “The Shifting World.” 12. Barbara D. Metcalf, “The Madrasa at Deoband: A Model for Religious Education in Modern India,” Modern Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1978): 117. McDonald. “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 77–80. McDonald. “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 86.

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Muslim schools and Islamic education challenged citizen participation for minority Muslim communities. Theoretical cross-pollination between Habermas’ literary public and Weber’s process of doctrinal development indicate that religion can enter public debate in the public sphere when religion rationalises and, in the process, enables individuals who are religious to participate and express their citizenship. Indeed, while immersed in activities that contribute to a process of doctrinal development, groups of individuals come together to form literary publics. Analysing the data based on the process of doctrinal development overlaid on the process of constituting a literary public enabled the finding that particular patterns of actions related to a moral outlook were inculcated at WM. Learners are instructed to be constantly vigilant about their behaviour and always to calculate their actions.100 This concurs with the patterns of actions that enable rational action in this world, as Baxter’s texts are reported to have brought about.101 Ritual and mundane activities, together with emotions, are moulded through vernacular texts to achieve a specific character.102 A crucial element of behaviour includes a particular style of dress, purdah, which is both part of the behaviour that relates to the character and denotes the achievement of that character.103 In dialogue with the theoretical concepts ‘literary public’ and ‘doctrinal development,’ this style of dress is interpreted as bodily text or writing.104 These contribute to the development of the Deobandi doctrine and to its expression in the public sphere.105 As women enter public spaces dressed in a manner that communicates or expresses an Islamic ethic associated with the Deobandi doctrine, they are also religious individuals communicating their opinions and thereby expressing post-secular citizenship.

9

Concluding Remarks

This chapter has sought to demonstrate how the study of Islam can contribute to theorising social processes when the extended case method is used. Specifically, the chapter describes the implementation of this method in a study of how Islamic education allows for the expression of post-secular citizenship.

100 101 102 103 104 105

McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 201. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 155–6. McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 201. McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 201–2. McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 204–6. McDonald, “Expressing post-secular citizenship,” 204–6.

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The chapter shed light on aggregating a situation to the process of doctrinal development. By aggregating the madrasa situation to the process of doctrinal development, the theory of how religions rationalise was reconstructed. A dialogue between the theoretical concepts ‘literary public’ and ‘doctrinal development’ together with literature and data enabled the madrasa situation to offer findings generalisable to studies of Islam, studies of religion and, more broadly, studies that relate to expressions of citizenship and participation in the public sphere. The reconstruction of the theoretical concept ‘doctrinal development’ opens up many exciting avenues for further research: for Islamic studies, for religious studies and for social studies relating to citizenship, education, learning and literacy. For Islamic and religious studies, demonstrating that religious views can be and are communicated in the public sphere confirms that the secularisation thesis requires further interrogation. While religion remains private or separated at an institutional level, it is transferable to the public sphere through individual action as it relates to a rational ethic. That this ethic or character can influence secular action and that it is motivated by human, verifiable and thus worldly reason is testimony that post-secular citizenship is possible and can be explained. The crucial matter to determine is if an innerworldly ascetic religious ethic has been developed or is developing. Hence Weber’s contribution continues to be seminal and can be used to better understand contemporary religious and social life. Facets relating to vernacular writings are ever-present in social life and the dynamics of the public sphere are crucial for grappling with changing relations in social life. In addition to the content of vernacular writing, modes of written and oral communication that facilitate the spread of such texts are also significant and are open to interrogation. Texts that are disseminated widely in society are shown to be significant with respect to the processes and relationships around them. In addition, the central position of education systems in inculcating patterns of behaviour is highlighted as a prominent mechanism of the process of doctrinal development. While these theoretical reconstructions are relevant to understanding mechanisms within an Islamic education system and how they interact with the public sphere, they could be extrapolated to national education systems and the public sphere. One implication of the potential highlighted here is that the study of Islam in minority situations, such as South Africa, may have particularly fruitful outcomes when the extended case method is implemented. In a minority situation, Islam is automatically viewed as strange and this limits the extent to which individuals’ behaviour is accepted without question. Moreover, in minority contexts, the social situations are more compressed. When a process

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is aggregated from such a social situation, a fuller picture can be sketched from a similar situation at a larger scale. Imagine for a moment an ecosystem in a fishbowl as opposed to an ocean. A focus on Islam in minority contexts allows for this kind of fishbowl effect in which all processes aggregated from social situations are smaller in scale yet complete. For example, because there are fewer people involved in the Islamic education system in South Africa than in the national education system it is much easier to identify how the different mechanisms in the system operate. Studying Islam in minority contexts might therefore hold great potential for aggregating social situations to social processes and for reconstructing theoretical concepts, enhancing our understanding of social life at the same time. Studying Islam in minority situations can thus offer greater understanding of phenomena in society in general. In drawing on Western theories, this chapter is not arguing for an uncritical return to the Western canon. Nor is it arguing for the inherent goodness in any of the actions or processes theorised in the concepts described and reconstructed here. Explaining and theorising a phenomenon is not tantamount to praising or hailing it. The study explained and theorised phenomena because of a tension inherent in the South African situation of Islamic education. This situation is significant for two reasons: firstly, South Africa’s relatively recent entry into the global arena as a democratic nation in which citizens ought to be patriotic; and, secondly, the breakdown of rational communication perceived by so-called terrorist attacks by individuals who claimed to be acting on religious inspiration. The need to describe, explain and theorise social behaviour which is also religious is therefore significant from a wide range of perspectives. The chapter demonstrates the salience of reconstructing existing theories and theoretical concepts. It does so by illustrating the importance of bringing contemporary social situations into dialogue with them, drawing on existing literature and, importantly, on empirical data gathered during participant information. The limitations of those theoretical concepts are minimised when they are reconstructed. The reconstructed concept is incorporated into a dialogue with contemporary situations. Critiques of the processes—that is: the rationalisation of religion via doctrinal development and the constitution of literary publics—are not addressed. To the contrary, the critiques are elevated by the reconstruction of the theoretical concepts. For example, the hierarchical and authoritative development of the textual corpus is not disrupted with the extension of vernacular and bodily writing. The reconstruction of the theoretical concepts enables ‘seeing’ or makes ‘visible’ the moments in the process where insertion or incisions might be made. They also make ‘visible’ the com-

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plexity and complications of disrupting the activities and actions associated with those social processes. Key insights to transform social situations and social processes can emerge from reconstructed theoretical concepts, enabled by aggregating the social situation to social processes.

Bibliography Baker, Keith M. “Defining the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century France. Variations on Themes by Habermas.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun, 181–211. Baskerville: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992. Bangstad, Sindre and Aslam Fataar. “Ambiguous Accommodation: Cape Muslims and Post-Apartheid Politics.” Journal of South African Studies 36, no. 4 (2010): 817–831. Burawoy, Michael. “The Extended Case Method.” In Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Michael Burawoy et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991a. Burawoy, Michael. “Reconstructing Social Theories.” In Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis M. Burawoy et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991b. Burawoy, Michael. “Introduction.” In Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Michael Burawoy et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991c. Burawoy, Michael. “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory 16, no. 1 (1998): 4–33. Burawoy, Michael et al. Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Burawoy, Michael. The Extended Case Method. Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations and One Theoretical Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Casanova, Jose. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). Britain: A Plural Society. London: CRE, 1990. Eickelman, Dale F. and James Piscatori, Muslim Travellers. Pilgrimage, Migration and Religious Imagination. California: California University Press, 1990. Eshak, Yousuf I. “An Educational Evaluation of the Madressa System, of Religious Instruction.” M.A. thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, 1995. Habermas, Jürgen The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

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Haron, Mohammed and Yaasien Mohamed. “The Theory and Practice of Islamic Education with Reference to South Africa,” in Perspectives on Islamic Education. Eds. Y. Mohamed, S.E. Dangor and A.M. Mahomed. Lenasia: Muslim World League, 1990. Iacono, Jessica, Ann Palmer Brown and Clive Holtham. “Research Methods—a Case Example of Participant Observation.” The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 7, no. 1 (2009): 39–46. Jeppie, Shamiel. “Identity Politics and Public Disputation: A Baha’i Missionary as a Muslim Modernist in South Africa.” Journal for Islamic Studies, 27 2007: 150–172. Loimeier, Roman. “Is There Something like Protestant Islam?” Die Welt des Islams 45(2) (2005): 233–241. Matthee, Heinrich. Muslim Identities and Political Strategies: A Case Study of Muslims in the Greater Cape Town Area of South Africa, 1994–2000. Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2008. McDonald, Zahraa. “Expressions of post-secular citizenship: A sociological exposition of Islamic education in South Africa,” PhD diss., University of Johannesburg, 2013. Metcalf, Barbara D. “The Madrasa at Deoband: A Model for Religious Education in Modern India.” Modern Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1978): 111–134. Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1982. Nadvi, Lubna. “South African Muslims and Political Engagement in a Globalising Context.” South African Historical Journal 60, no. 4 (2008): 618–636. Omar, Abdur Rashid. “Democracy and Multiple Identities in Post-apartheid South Africa.” Annual Review of Islam in South Africa 7 (2004): 52–55. Parsons, Talcot. “Introduction,” in The Sociology of Religion, Max Weber. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1966. Ramadan, Tariq. Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Salvatore Armand and Dale, F. Eickelman, eds. Public Islam and the Common Good. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Sayed, Muhammad K. “The Shifting World of South African Madrasahs, 1973–2008.” M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. Tayob, Abdul Kader. “Islamic Politics in South Africa Between Identity and Utopia.” South African Historical Journal 60, no. 4 (2008): 583–599. Tayob, Abdul Kader, Inge Niehaus and Wilfrum Wiese, eds. Muslim Schools and Education in South Africa and Europe. Munster: Waxmann, 2011. Vahed, Goolam. “Islam in the Public Sphere in Post-apartheid South Africa: Prospects and Challenges.” Journal for Islamic Studies, 27 (2007): 116–49. Vahed, Goolam and Shamiel Jeppie. “Multiple Communities. Muslims in Postapartheid South Africa.” In State of the Nation: South Africa 2004–2005, eds. John Daniel, Roger Southall and Jessica Lutchman. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2005.

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Van der Veer, Peter. “Secrecy and Publicity in the South Asian Public Arena.” In Public Islam and the Common Good, eds. Armand Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1966. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2nd ed.). Surrey: George Allen & Unwin. 1976. Winkelman, Mareike. From Behind the Curtain. A Study of a Girls’ Madrasa in India. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Zaman, Muhammed Q. “Religious Discourse and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Pakistan,” REMMM, 123 (2008): 55–73. Zehr, Mary Ann. Guardians of Faith. Education Week, 20 January 1999, accessed from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1999/01/20/19muslim.h18.html on 17 January, 2012.

Chapter 13

A Phenomenological Approach to the Study of Lived Islam and Muslimness Emin Poljarevic

1

Introduction

This chapter suggests a phenomenological approach to studying lived Islam as a broad, multilayered, and complex historical phenomenon that consists of a range of practices and theological understandings of global Muslim populations. It suggests a methodological approach where researchers’ intentions and consciousness about studied phenomena is contextualized within the broader civilizational project of Islamdom. This means that scholars of Islamic Studies are encouraged to reflect more systematically on their intentions in relation to the analytical questions regarding Muslim communities and individuals, and Islam as a multifaceted tradition more broadly.1 Islamdom is here briefly defined in the light of the understanding of the scholar who coined the term, Marshall G.S. Hodgson, as Islamicate civilization based a theory of civilization. Islamdom represents an aggregate of collective claims to power, collective action, and influence in Muslim majority contexts and in a range of fields. This means that Islam as a religious tradition has contributed greatly to the evolution of a dynamic systems of cultural, social, economic, political systems that are rooted in distinctive sets of guiding principles, ethics, and theological premises.2 At the same time, the aggregate of understandings of these characteristics and oftentimes contested principles have both been affected by and also, influenced a wide range of other com-

1 This does not suggest that Muslims are somehow exceptional and separate from social reality. On the contrary; lived experiences, embodied practices, emotional experiences, modes of habitus, symbolic and political acts and discourses are all relevant in varying ways in the analysis of meanings and expressions of Muslimness. The same could be said about broad categories such as “Christians” or “Atheists,” for that matter. 2 The smallest common denominator for the vast number of people and groups who selfidentify as Muslims is the recognition of tawhid and the historical institution of prophethood as expressed in the Quranic text. Moreover, the understanding that the Qurʾān represents divine communication to human.

© Emin Poljarevic, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_014

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peting and correlating religious and philosophical traditions intellectually, discursively, and practically. This means that Islam can be studied as dīn in the (weltanschauung) broad sense of that word, but also a range of expressions of that dīn means to its devotees, including other interlocutors.3 The argument here, without in-depth discussion due to the format of the text, is that the somewhat fuzzy term Islamdom presents arguably the most effective way of conceptually outlining the borders of contents and meanings of the term Islam. More importantly, Islamdom as a conceptual canopy covers a wide range of what Islam means to its adherents together with their adversaries and competitors, which furthermore includes the diversity of their intellectual and theological understandings, practices, power-relations, and projects within a range of religious, legal, socio-political, economic, and other structures through time and space.4 This suggests that a researcher within the field of Islamic Studies ought to be familiar with some, if not most, elements that are constitutive of Islamdom, at least in relation to history and/or contemporary context. The chapter seeks to take note of findings in recent scholarship within the field of Islamic Studies and develop a potential way out of blurring of the perpetually descriptive studies of religion and method-centered social sciences that has become common practice within this nebulous scholarly field. This is done with a particular epistemic notion in mind. This notion is highlighted by the late Pierre Bourdieu, who suggested that in any social field including an academic and epistemic field there are certain modes of habitus and forms of capital that need to be considered as guiding mechanisms for those participants in the field.5 This means that scholar are not blank slates who relate to the studied object in an neutral fashion, but rather co-creators of research content and thereby new knowledge by the mere fact of interacting with humans, texts, and phenomena of interest. Islamic studies scholars, as with experts in other fields of knowledge, are deeply familiar with aspects of Islam understood differently and on the range of epistemic and even ontological premises. The processes of interaction with “objects” of study is a two-way streak as it were. More concretely, consider the following vignette generated from my field research in an Islamicate society. 3 Abbasi, Rushain, “Islam and the Invention of Religion: Study of Medieval Muslim Discourses on Dīn,” Studia Islamica 116 (2021): 1–106. 4 This tentative and general argument rests on an understanding of Hodgson Ventures of Islam, 1, 57–60, and it is informed by Salvatore, Armando, The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley 2016). 5 See Bourdieu, Pierre, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Artistic Field (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

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Back in 2009, in downtown Cairo, shortly after the sunset, I, as a researcher, had an encounter with a group of six young individuals who initiated a noisy conversation in a local coffeehouse. The topic of the main part of the 2-hour conversation is whether it is permissible for a Muslim polity to try to establish, or rather, support, the establishment of liberal democratic order in a Muslim majority society. In the mid-point of the conversation, I identify three distinguishable positions that seem to manifest during the conversation. Two of the individuals involved in the conversation dismissed the idea that liberal democracy is a relevant option for their own society [Egypt in the 21st cent.]. Three other individuals in various ways argue that democracy is both Islamically desirable and even mandated as a process by which to transfer political power from one government to another [government rooted in popular will]. One participant maintains a position that political power, democratic or authoritarian ought to be “totally” separated from Islam, primarily due to the corrupt nature of politics and liberalism in relation to the timeless and universalistic nature of Islam [a sort of quietism]. All three constellations of participants made irregular references to a number of the Quranic verses and prophetic narrations, and also some contemporary and historical [religious] authorities. The conversation yields no coherent agreement, and it comes to an unhurried stop as the call to prayer is sounded from a nearby mosque. All of the six individuals are slowly leaving the coffeehouse and walking towards the mosque for an evening prayer. What we can understand from the vignette depends fundamentally on the kind of description provided. Nevertheless, a reader’s own cultural, social, historical, philosophical, scholarly etc. competence also play a crucial role in processing the description above. In addition, what is the question that one might pose to such a scene, including a person’s intentions, interests, and relations with the subject matter. All of it guides the process through which an observer decodes a multitude of expressions, its meanings, relationships with the location and time within which it all takes place. Add to this the lack of sufficient description of perceived participants’ emotional states, expressed body language, their clothes, and modes of personal interaction, including information about their culture specific visual clues that could further contextualize meanings of the discusses topic. Such considerations are rarely, if ever, explicitly discussed in scholarly texts written by scholars of Islamic history and other adjacent subject areas. This is a problem. The problem consists of several levels, one of which is the habitual blurring of descriptive studies of religion and method-oriented social sciences

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approaches in a number of studies within Islamic Studies discussed below. This arguably unsystematic blurring of social sciences, such as sociology and political science with humanistic fields such as history and religious studies, has become common practice within what can be described as the nebulous field of Islamic Studies today. This process of blurring is at the same time (re)creating an academic field that experiences an epistemic crisis of sorts. The crisis consists largely out of difficulty to establish a firm epistemic ground upon which to evaluate and effectively analyze a range of evolutionary processes of Islamdom, including the diversity within Islamicate societies, and the range of expressions of Muslimness. This multiplicity and interpretative diversity among Muslims are usually interpreted as multiple iterations of Islam, hence some deduce that there is no Islam per se, but many different “Islams.”6 This is a perplexing notion as it obscures the fact that contemporary Muslims’ negotiations between their social behavior and the utility of sources of Islamic tradition contained in basic norms, ethics, doctrines, sources, histories, contexts etc. are reflections of multiplicity of interpretation of Islam and not fundamentally separate notions of Muslims’ experiences of the world, hence Islams. It is therefore not surprising to find strong contestations between various academic circles in Islamic Studies in the Europe and North America where some hold that notion of many Islams correspond to empirical observations and others who hold interpret same social realities as iterations of a range of interpretations of constitutively one polyphonic and historically rooted religious tradition and civilization—Islam. Such contestations are in many ways a driving force behind development of these dynamic epistemic communities and scholarly environments. This particular driving force is in a way a remnant or a biproduct of the disintegration process of the early 20th century orientalist scholars’ attempts to understand the Muslim “other” and their attempts to understand the authenticity of Islamic otherness.7 Orientalism, is here broadly understood as a 19th century European collonial approach to the study of Islam by primarily philologists, anthropologists and Islamicists. These scholars approached the study of Islamicate societies, its histories, cultures, ethics, subjectivities, notions of sacred and profane etc. in order to both understand and subjugate its populations politically, ideo-

6 See for example Otterbeck, Jonas, “Finding the object of study: Islamic studies in practice,” International Journal of Religion, 2, no. 1 (2021). 7 See Abdul Latif, Tibawi, “English Speaking Orientalists: a Critique of Their Approach to Islam and to Arab Nationalism,” Muslim World 53, no. 3–4 (1963). Also, Kojin, Karatani, “Uses of Aesthetics: After Orientalism,” Boundary 2 25, no. 2 (1998): 145–160.

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logically, and intellectually.8 At the same time, Orientalists, like specialists of the olden days in other subject areas later defined as humanities, expressed a range of personal biases in relation to the studied sources, people, and histories. It is worth noting that regardless of the types of critique leveled against orientalists’ biases, constructions, and tropes regarding Islam and Muslims, Orientalism has laid ground for the academic endeavor to simultaneously understand and construct the image of the Muslim “other” throughout the 20th century and into the 21st centuries.9 There is nevertheless more to this story. Here is a limited overview which can help us understand how to more constructively interpret the contents of the above vignette.

2

Dislodgment of Orientalism

On the one hand, Wael Hallaq provides an astute analysis together with a serious critique of modernity both of which are connected to a meticulous criticism of Orientalist approaches to Islam. Hallaq’s principal argument seems to be that the main body of Orientalist scholars worked from the modernist assumption of cultural superiority vis-à-vis non-Europeans (i.e. Orientals). This is, according to Hallaq, in line with the “positivist” way that economists and other proponents of scientism saw the world. Economists work from the modernistic assumptions that depart from ideas of historical materialism rendering economics as an elucidating science. Underlying these modernistic assumptions seems to be a set of claims that human behavior can be predicted much like other processes in nature. Hallaq’s critique is centered on the notion that Orientalists’ affinity towards materialism and positivism empties all human action of ethics. This, he claims, creates a whole range of real-life problems that stretches far beyond scholarly and intellectual debates about semantics, meanings, and imagining.10 Zachary Lockman, on the other hand, traces more concretely a number of polemical threads among Orientalists mapping a number of important Orientalist contributions to Islamic Studies in the 20th century. For instance,

8 9

10

See Jung, Dietrich, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modem Essentialist Image of Islam, Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd. Varisco, Daniel Martin. Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), Kalmar, Ivan. Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (New York: Routledge, 2012). Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018): 183–190, 227–250.

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Lockman demonstrates how some of the polemical discussion between those focused on presenting Muslims as inherently irrational and reactionary, such as Frenchman Ernest Renan (d. 1892), and others, such as Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (d. 1922), who more analytically argued that Islam as a system of beliefs and ideas is compatible with reason, and that re-interpretation of Islamic sources is an unceasing process.11 Lockman’s broad overview also inadvertently presents how researchers’ closely held assumptions and intentions guide the processes by which to investigate phenomena within Islamdom. It is during the second half of the 20th century when the basic premises of French and German late 19th and early 20th century Orientalist and colonialism centered assumptions started to be seriously questioned primarily due to the rise of more comprehensive, perhaps even more holistic, studies of Islamicate histories and Islam as such, led by Anglo-Saxon arabists and historians such as Marshall G.S. Hodgson (d. 1968), Hamilton A.R. Gibb (d. 1971), and Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003).12 They were joined by other scholars who were trained in the post-WWII period such as Toshihiko Izutsu (d. 1993), Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), Annemarie Schimmel (d. 2003), Fatima Mernissi (d. 2015), Angelika Neuwirth (b. 1943) and numerous others who presented serious challenges to Orientalist assumptions about Muslims and Islam.13 Their academic work added considerable substance to the development of Islamic Studies. It can be argued that the major substance of their scholarship incorporated their serious consideration of the critical capacity of Muslim scholars’ knowledge production and their methodological contribution to the study of Islam and Muslims. These and other like-minded scholar of Islam, their students, and interlocutors have generated a range of epistemic challenges to the original Orientalist assumptions stirring a range of competing claims about Islam, Muslims, and expressions of Muslimness.14 Muslimness on a meta-level of our understanding, points to a relationship between various expressions of Lived Islam,

11 12

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Lockman, Zachary, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 (2nd ed.), 79–93. Gibb, Hamilton A.R. Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972 [1942]; (New York: Octagon Books). Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 131–134. For recent criticisms of Orientalism see a series of aesthetic analyses in Ali Behdad and Luke Gartlan (Eds.), Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation (New York: Getty Publications, 2013). Laroui, Abdalla, “For a methodology of Islamic studies: Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum,” Diogenes 8, no. 4 (1973): 12–39.

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including observance of religious rituals and other physical and symbolic expressions of religiosity, but also expressions of particular understandings of Islamic history, theology, social reality, politics, power and much more, in various places both by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.15 Furthermore, Muslimness can also be recognized in both individual and collective praxis of various understandings of what it means to be a Muslim in a particular time and place. The latter group of scholars were seemingly more methodologically flexible and some of them even invested in studying aspects of Islamicate history and contemporary Muslimness. This trend was subsequently reflected in the growth and maturation of Islamic Studies as an academic field. For instance, one of the leading scholarly journals powered and published by Oxford University Press, Journal of Islamic Studies in its first issue 1990, declared its intention with the following words. “The intention of this Journal is to place Islam and the Islamic tradition as its central focus and to encourage a wide interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary academic consideration of the many facets of this core area of study.”16 The passage indicates an active attempt to unload some of the Orientalist ideological baggage by allowing for a more emic-centered study of the Islamicate. At the end of 20th century, the works of Muslim traditional scholarship started to be seen, not as mere empirical material to be analyzed, but also as informative sources of theoretical insights to be seriously considered in further studies. It is here that we can observe the dislocation of previous methodologies in studying various aspects of Islam, including Muslimness. The relationship between expressions and understandings of scholars and their interlocutors (theoretical or empirical) became therefore more intimate. For example, the sources of Islamic tradition, and its potential contribution to the advancement of the study of Islam and Muslims started to be seriously considered as relevant for the assessment of both specific and universal aspects of Islam. This has in turn started to challenge the singular and dominating narrative regarding the formation of modernity—which is certainly unsettling the status quo of orientalist approaches to the study of all things Islamic.17 In doing so, many of the late 20th century Islamic Studies scholars 15 16 17

Such a brief remark has anthropological connotations and it would need to be explained elsewhere due to the brevity of this text. Nizami, F. Ahmad. “EDITORIAL.” Journal of Islamic Studies 1, no. 1 (1990): III. See Ringer, Monica, Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), El-Yousfi, Amin, “The Anthropology of Islam in Light of the Trusteeship Paradigm” in Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, Mohammed Hashas and Mutaz al-Khatib (Eds.) (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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challenged the ideological character of both Orientalist and neo-Orientalists’ objectification of “the Muslim other.” In line of such developments, we can observe scholarly anxiety between exclusion and inclusion criteria regarding the contents of Islam and where dangers of objectifying and/or universalizing Islam can be avoided within the framework of Islamic Studies. This assumed anxiety is amplified if we further consider that Islamic studies do not offer or contain a coherent method of studying of Islamdom and its various layers.18 For instance, loaded questions such as “can Islam be democratic,” “has political Islam failed,” “where is authentic Islam,” or “is ISIS Islamic?” seem to have been posed in order to investigate or perhaps confirm particular assumptions about Islam held by the one (or many) who is (are) asking such questions.19 Answers to such and similar questions are diverse and range from those who argue that ISIS is “very Islamic” to those who claim “ISIS is not Islamic at all.”20 These and other similar questions tell us that methodological approaches in Islamic Studies are driven by different intentions and assumptions. To be clear, intentions are a key part of any scholar’s work on a topic related to Islam or any other similar phenomena. Some researchers are more, and some less, aware of what their scholarly intentions are. Some scholars choose to explicitly declare their interests, intentions, and even associations to the studied phenomenon.21 Others, in the name of academic objectivity, neutrality and non-confessionalism, chose not to interject any part of themselves into the

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See Goldstein, Warren S., “What makes Critical Religion critical? A response to Russell McCutcheon,” Critical Research on Religion, 8 no. 1 (2020): 73–86, also Krämer, Gudrun “Religion, Culture, and the Secular: The Case of Islam.” Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities—Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities,” 23 (Leipzig University, 2021), 47–56. An important example of this anxiety is also expressed in parts of Ahmed, Shahab, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). See, Fuller, Graham. “Has Political Islam Failed?” Middle East Insight, January-February 1995, Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), Juergensmeyer, Mark, “Thinking Sociologically about Religion and Violence: The Case of ISIS,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, 79, no. 1 (2018): 20–34. See Wood, Graeme, “What ISIS Really Wants?” Atlantic (2015, March). In the article Bernard Haykel claims for example that ISIS militants “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition” and thus their interpretations are legitimate as any other Muslim authority. A counterpoint is made in the same magazine, Dagli, Caner K. “The Phony Islam of ISIS,” Atlantic (2015, February 27). Jackson, Sherman, “Islam and the problem of Black suffering,” The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 34, no. 2 (2017): 1–31.

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study.22 This latter, so called etic approach, is assumed to be an outsider’s perspective on studied phenomena. That admirable goal aims at maintaining objectivity. Nevertheless, the ideal of academic objectivity is ultimately a mirage. Normativity is most likely inseparable from study of religion, or other fields such as history and anthropology.23 Religion according to some scholars of religion might be perceived ultimately as a human construct and nothing more than that, which offers an illusion of analytic distance to the subject studied.24 That is arguably only one of several ways to express one’s interpretative horizon. I argue that the most transparent and ethical way to proceed is to explicitly declare one’s intentionality and then to temporarily bridle one’s own normative position and allow oneself to empathetically explore the phenomenon at hand. Ideally, results of such a scholarly endeavor will allow an attentive reader to locate a particular analysis within a specific field of study and thereby draw a more comprehensive evaluation of analyses and its subsequent results presented. It is therefore reasonable to assume that such scholarly endeavor acknowledges that results of an inquiry of, presumably an aspect of Islamdom (or any other subject for that matter), is also an analytical outcome of scholarship from a particular time and place. For instance, European-centric understandings of meanings of religion and secularity have a hi(story). This story has unavoidably influenced scholars’ thinking about Islam, that has often been viewed, and still is, as external, foreign, and sometimes even hostile phenomena to, say, European modernity, Christendom, its cultures and histories.25

3

Re-thinking Islamic Studies

Coming this far, it is reasonable to assume that scholars are not studying religions in an epistemic and contextual vacuum. Research ideas, methods, 22 23 24 25

See McCutcheon, Russell T., Fabricating Religion: Fanfare for the Common (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2018). See Lewis, Thomas A. Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion—and Vice Versa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 43–50. McCutcheon, Fabricating religion, 2018. See Hallaq, Wael. 2002. “The Quest for Origins or Doctrine? Islamic Legal Studies as Colonialist Discourse.” UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, 2 (2002): 1–32; Hammer, Julianne. “Roundtable on Normativity in Islamic Studies: Introduction.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 2 (2016): 25–27. For example, some claim to have a high level of certainty in their assessment of the reasons why some Muslim groups in disparate places, act the way they do: See Lewis, Bernard. “The Return of Islam,” Le Débat, 14, no. 7 (1981): 17–38, Bernard Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meier (London: Hurst, 2009).

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theories, and questions posed are all influenced by academic traditions, diffusion of critical ideas, increased diversity of scholars, shifting perspectives, and not in the least, methodological innovations. The ongoing evolution of Islamic Studies seem to have prompted scholars to become more self-reflective regarding these various elements of knowledge production which inevitably affects their own work. In order to illustrate this point, reflect upon the above vignette once more. Would your understanding of the scene change if I provided more information to the existing description? If so, in which way would it change? Consider the following information that has been added to the original scene: All of the young men are members of a local usrah, “family,” of the Muslim Brotherhood in an upscale Cairo neighborhood. All of them are also university students in medical and engineering faculties at Cairo and al-Azhar universities. Two of them are dressed in jalabiyas, long, traditional white robes, while the rest are dressed in multi-colored shirts, sweaters, and jeans. Three of them wear beards, while three others are clean shaven. These few descriptive lines have provided, I would assume, a critical amount of information, which have an effect on an informed reader. How has this affected his/her understanding of the initial reading of the vignette? An answer to such a question provides an important cognitive context within which the reader understands the relationship between his/her “reading” of the scene, including the contents of the conversation and the youth themselves and the particular expressions of Muslimness in the scene. To illustrate this point further, it is useful to apply a similar experiment to Orientalists’ descriptions of what, who, when, and where classical Muslim theologians discussed their various understandings of the basic doctrines of Islam.26 Some of these cataloguing works done by Orientalist scholars are increasingly complemented with critical and normative studies of the contents of Muslim theological discourses, which signals a gradual epistemic shift among a number Islamic Studies scholars. For example, a number of emicoriented scholars are critically exploring the normative contents and scope of contentions relationships between authorities (traditional, secular, religious etc.) and Muslims (groups and individuals), by positioning themselves 26

See Watt, Montgomery, Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An extended Survey (Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, 1985), which seems to be a more focused version of Goldziher, Ignaz, [transl. Andras and Ruth Hamori] Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1981).

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on the normative spectrum produced by these relationships.27 A number of such scholars seek to extrapolate what the contents of these conflicts and disagreements mean theologically and otherwise for lager contemporary Muslim communities.28 These and other examples point toward the development of hybrid forms of the production of knowledge of Islamdom. Herein theological analyses are increasingly considered as legitimate forms of Islamic Studies scholarship.29 At the same time, it is important to note that this hybridity in study of Islam is not new. This latest tendency is however reflective of the increased confessional and ethnic diversity among scholars within the large parts of the English-speaking scholarship on Islamdom. The hallmark of this diversity, I argue, is noticed in the increased cosmopolitan approaches of the new scholars of Islamdom who happen to be Muslim. This diversity seems to have produced a particular form of creativity within the field where analytical questions are probing into the normative contents of Islamic tradition. This creative approach is partly demonstrated in Carl Ernst and Richard Martin’s edited volume Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism from 2010, which indicates a shift in the direction of American Islamic Studies, as conceived by most of the contributors to the volume. We might be witnessing an epistemic shift away from traditional and contemporary Orientalist notions of Islamdom.30 The shift represents more of a widening of the analytical scope of scholarly inquiry than anything else. This analytical scope concerns arguably the width theoretical and meta-theoretical discussions regarding the critical approach to the study of Islamdom. In their introductory chapter, Ernst and Martin explain that a scholarly shift in thinking about Islam went from Eurocentric Orientalist point of view to gradual multicultural and/or cosmopolitan, and arguably more inclusive 27 28

29 30

See Chaudhry, Ayesha, Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Harvey, Ramon, The Qur’an and the Just Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), Jackson, Sherman, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Bano, Masooda, The Revival of Islamic Rationalism Logic, Metaphysics and Mysticism in Modern Muslim Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Engelhardt, Jan Felix, “Beyond the Confessional/Non-Confessional Divide—The Case of German Islamic Theological Studies,” Religions 12, no. 2 (2021): 1–12. It should be noted that this shift is strongly criticized by some scholars who consider the whole enterprise as seriously flawed. For instance, several authors in Ernst and Martin’s volume writing about the Prophet Muhammad are criticized for being apologetics: “virtually all of these ‘hagiographies’ provide subjective and highly apologetical accounts, but do so under the guise of objectivity,” Hughes, Aaron W. Theorizing Islam Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (Oxon: Routledge, 2014): 11.

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and polyphonic approach. This gradual widening of interpretative horizons according to them depends partly on increasing resonance of critical discussions of Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and others, among the increasing number of scholars of Islam, many of whom are Muslim themselves.31 This resonance is noticed primarily in ever more widening scope of interdisciplinary approaches to historical analyses of scriptural and legal tradition, religious doctrines etc., including empirical studies based on observations of peoples practices, but also theoretical and conceptual engagements with both local and global Muslim discourses and varieties of expressions and understanding of Muslimness.32 One important case that might demonstrate this shift is A. Kevin Reinhart’s volume, Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition. Reinhart offers three-partite critique of three predominant perspectives on Islam in previous Orientalist scholarship. The first critique is leveled against the essentialist and reificatiory approaches to Islam prevalent among some Muslim or non-Muslim scholars. The driving idea here is usually an ambition to differentiate between the “real” and “false” Islam. An important marker in the distinction is a particular scholar’s own conceptualization of what constitutes the presumed essence of Islam.33 The second critique is aimed at those scholars who are focused on regional manifestations of “Islam in” a particular place and/or region. The main assumption at play in this case is that “Islam is” an ideal form to which Muslims in a particular time and place are striving towards.34 Reinhart’s third and most important critique is directed towards some analytically confused notions which conceptualize Islam as doctrinally and practically so diverse and disembodied there is useless of speaking about Islam (in singular), but that there are “many Islams,” all represented and reflected in Muslims’ practices and thoughts.35 31 32

33

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Ernst, Carl and Martin, Richard, Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010): 8–11. Ibid. 14–18. See also an interesting study that demonstrates conceptual and theoretical innovation discussed above, Ahmad, Irfan. Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Reinhart, A. Kevin, Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 14. As an example of this approach, see Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). Ibid., 20, as an example of this approach, see Harrison, Christopher, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Ibid., 23. As an example of this approach, see Otterbeck, Jonas, “Finding the object of study: Islamic studies in practice,” International Journal of Religion, 2, no. 1 (2021). This is certainly not a novel approach but actually a decades old way of describing the diversity found in Islamicate societies.

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These critiques are directed against analytical perspectives that largely ignore religious experiences and components of religious traditions composed of phenomena that enable religiously committed people to communicate with one another and understand the world in a coherent way over the centuries. Reinhart’s three critiques can also be understood broadly as an incomplete summary of widely accessible criticisms of both Orientalism and Eurocentric understanding of Islamdom. Such criticisms have been articulated by a range of late-twentieth century scholars both from within and without the field of Islamic Studies. Reinhart also identifies significant tensions between analytical approaches that tend to focus either on universal features of Islam as a real or imagined tradition, or on particular expressions and culturally distinct elements of Islam and/or Muslimness in one particular place at a particular time. If we are to take a satellite photo of these approaches we would perhaps also conclude that there are different and incompatible logics at play here. What can be done? Reinhart proposes a constructive theoretical framework by which to navigate the complexities of Islam inside or outside of the framework of Islamdom. For instance, a scholar of Islam could maintain an awareness of the complexity of lived Islam, expressed both as individual and collective identity and praxis of Muslimness that is connected to a history of Islam. This relatively small adjustment in conceptualizing what it means to be a Muslim in a particular place and time is placed on a historical continuum that is held together with common experiences of members of Islamicate communities. For instance, a researcher can explore relationships between the suggested categories of Reinhart’s “Standard Islam,” and various Muslims’ expressions of religiosity, political awareness or whatever else that is interesting, in Islamicate or other socio-historical contexts. This perspectival and conceptual adjustment is analytically relevant as it allows us to be cognizant of the general principles that make the category of Islamdom distinguishable from Christendom, or similar civilizational constructs. It is through this adjustment that Islamic Studies’ scholarship can account both for immense diversity of Islam, and at the same time, seriously consider the core principles that apparently allows Muslims and others to speak about Islamic tradition as a historical, religious, territorial etc. phenomenon. For example, Reinhart suggests that “Lived Islam is the native instantiation of practices and commitments to which Muslims pledge allegiance, which orient their lives, and which for them make the transcendent into the immanent.”36 By focusing of Lived Islam, Reinhart pushes his “anti-essentialist” 36

Reinhart, Lived Islam, 167.

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argument further.37 The notion of “Lived” consists out of three conceptually distinct features: “Koiné, Dialect, and Cosmopolitan Islam are not essences but notional aspects, facets, characteristics, traits, forms, registers, or features of the phenomenon we identify as ‘Islam.’”38 Such dynamic and layered understanding of Islam rhymes well with the Hodgsian civilizational approach to Islam, where the three aspects of Islam are expressions of formative realities (rather than ideals) of Islamdom in both its non-modern and modern manifestations.39 The three aspects put forth by Reinhart attempt to capture the dynamic relationships between Muslim practices and their commitments to (a) Islamic rituals (Koiné Islam) and which are historically recognized as such (e.g. hajj) by the overwhelming Muslim majorities around the world,40 (b) but also diversity of Muslimness and its distinct local expressions and specific forms (Dialect Islam), (c) Cosmopolitan Islam stands for attempts to create an authentic image of Islam based on scriptural sources, and is represented by the learned elites, the ʿulama class. These three aspects are not only the contents of “Lived Islam,” but they also represent much of the content of introductory courses on Islam in various educational venues, something Reinhart also calls “Standard Islam.”41 Both cosmopolitan and local norm-bearing specialists normatively maintain the Standard Islam. Such an eclectic group of Islamic scholars has various degrees of support and following among Muslim populations, but their scholarship is equally a subject of scrutiny and contentions within and without Islamdom. This conceptualization of “Lived Islam” seems to have grown out of existing scholarship on Islam based on a number of premises and insights that seemingly transcend and thereby make irrelevant that proverbial Religious Studies’ emic-etic divide. “Lived Islam” thesis therefore opens up a range of analytical opportunities that open up for innovative approaches to the study of various

37 38 39

40 41

Ibid., 127. Ibid. One could also contrast Reinhart’s conceptual framework with Abbasi’s long discussion about a possibility of translating the Arabic word dīn into English word religion. In sum, Abbasi argues that it is possible to understand dīn, as “a distinct realm of life, comprised primarily of rituals and beliefs which disseminate a specific worldview to its adherents to the common understanding of ‘religion’ today.” This conceptualization of dīn is largely in line with Reinhart’s attempt to bring conceptual clarity in the study of Islam within the scope of Islamdom. See the edited volume Tagliacozzo, Eric and Shawkat Toorawa, The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Ibid., 128.

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aspects of the Islamicate. This thesis ultimately needs testing and developing in order to be relevant going forward. Re-conceptualizing and theorizing about religious phenomena are some necessary steps in the right direction. However, those steps are ineffective without properly stating and applying methodological approaches to the studied phenomena. The suggestion here is to consider phenomenological approach to Lived Islam, Muslimness and even other related dimensions of the Islamicate contexts.

4

Methodological Awareness

The phenomenological approach in this case represents one way out of widespread methodological confusion within the field of Islamic Studies and even the broader field of Religious Studies. Historically contingent and apparent lack of methodological clarity within the religious studies approaches is, I argue, these fields’ major weakness. For instance, at one point in time Aaron W. Hughes rightly argues that there is some confusion in the “academic study of religion” regarding the failure of (presumably numerous) scholars to discriminate between theory and method. In the same breath however, Hughes suddenly lumps together method and methodology, as they were the same thing: “The term ‘method’ and, by extension, ‘methodology’ refers to the scholarly practices that have made and continue to make the academic study of religion possible. Sociology is a method; history is a method; discourse analysis is a method, deconstruction is a method.”42 Although not specifically focused on Islamic Studies, Russell McCutcheon in the same volume, mixes up the two concepts as well, mostly by conflating a general way by which to approach a subject of study and specific way which is used to generate relevant data about and from a subject of study.43 As a consequence of these and other statements by leading scholars, it is important to state that sociology is not a method, but a polyphonic social science discipline. It is within this discipline that scholars attempt to understand and develop theories about human collective behavior based on empirical

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Hughes, Aaron W. “Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty-Five Years On,” in Aaron W. Hughes (Ed.) Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty Five Years On (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 2. McCutcheon, Russel, “Naming the Unnameable? Theological Language and the Academic Study of Religion,” in Aaron W. Hughes (Ed.) Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty Five Years On (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 96–98.

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studies of that behavior, including its religious aspects and structures surrounding it.44 Methodology and method are not the same thing. On the one hand, the former signifies the general and systematic (i.e., scientific) framework, or a research design, based on generally normative theoretical principles by which to study a research problem, puzzle, and other phenomena. On the other hand, method indicates at least three specific operations in the research process. Method represents a procedure through which empirical research is conducted. When a researcher decides upon a method, s/he answers the questions: how data is collected, then how the data is used to answer a specific research question, and lastly how are the results interpreted.45 Broadly speaking, the basic premise of social sciences is that all research inquiries within its various iterations begin with an intention to understand and/or explain a particular social phenomenon. An initial intention of a researcher usually translates into a research question, or series of questions, that can generate one or more postulates or hypotheses to be explored. The research question determines what sort of data is to be collected, what the unit of analysis is, and what the suitable/discipline-based analytical procedure ought to be employed. This representation can be described as an ideal-type procedure and in many ways a standard approach to empirical studies in social sciences, including various types of sociologies and political sciences. At the same time, it is important to remark that the philosophical and epistemic underpinnings of such a procedure are important (and rarely discussed) considerations that determine how we evaluate and categorize data and even what can be considered as valid interpretation of that same data.46 These underpinnings are also tied with the abovementioned research intentions and understanding of the structures of knowledge in a particular field. Methodology in this preexisting and contextually contingent scientific scheme through which a researcher approaches an area, object, or phenomena of interest. The choice of methodology points a researcher towards an exploration of a selected phenomenon through induction or deduction, qualitative or quantitative approaches. At the same time, the choice of methodology indicates what kind of epistemology is at work in the study at hand. Here we can 44

45 46

Sociology rests upon a number of epistemological and ontological assumptions that are not addressed here due to the format of the text. However, such premises are becoming increasingly relevant in understanding of the increased tensions between scholars of religion in the 21st century. See Neuman, Lawrence W., Social Research Methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (London: Pearson, 2014, 7th Ed.). Neuman, Social Research Methods, 2014.

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recognize what assumed characteristics of human knowledge and behavior is embedded in a chosen methodological approach. It is through the choice of methodology that we can understand that a particular research project is built upon constructivist or (post-)positivist etc. premises. A constructivist approach assumes that social reality, including its religious aspects, is not more (or less) than a construct and a sum of human interactions. Such an assumption guides, as it were, a researcher’s perception of social phenomena and how these phenomena exist, interact, evolve etc. This also premises that a particular “religious” phenomenon is only analyzable within a context of social interactions and never beyond them. Such and similar assumptions serve as epistemic bases upon which a researcher builds his/her assumptions and conclusions, persumably in an attempt to explain how, where and sometimes even why people act the way they do. A social scientific (constructivist) approach suggests also that interactions and exchanges between persons are recognizable and observable in several forms: in verbal conversations, non-verbal or symbolic expressions, humor, emotional states etc. and thereby scientifically analyzable. This means that a researcher needs to select an appropriate method to gather relevant data (a research instructions of sorts) in order to explore the assumed construction of a religious phenomenon, or coherently answer initially posed research questions. Collecting data would here usually into conducting interviews, surveys, observations, and/or participating in, for the study relevant, interactions. Islamic Studies scholarship is a residue and offspring of Orientalist studies that is largely steeped in humanistic studies (humanniora). This means that this field is by and large methodologically detached from the social sciences. Nevertheless, some scholars of Islamic Studies have an ambition to uphold the scientific standards oftentimes found in social sciences, which creates tenuous clarifications and even provincializations in approaching study of Islamicate and Muslimness.47 It is therefore that we find some of the most poignant works on Islam and Muslimness being conducted in fields of anthropology and sociology.48 The methodological awareness is indeed far more central to the overall argument than what is allowed to be demonstrated in the panoramic overview of the contemporary Islamic Studies scholarship presented above.

47 48

See Stenberg, Leif and Philip Wood, eds., What Is Islamic Studies? European and North American approaches to a contested field, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Salvatore, Armando. 2016, The sociology of Islam: Knowledge, power and civility. John Wiley & Sons; Asad, Talal (2009), “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” Qui Parle, 17(2): 1–30, Turner, Bryan (1974), Weber and Islam, London: Routledge, and many others.

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Let us therefore consider the vignette once more, in order to demonstrate at least one part of this argument. The above presented scene illustrates a slice of reality of many young men and women in a number of Islamicate societies. This slice can be studied and understood in a multitude of methodological ways, all depending on a researcher’s methodological training, intentions, interests, types of questions posed and level of analysis. For instance, one possible approach could be to focus on this scene as a part of Islamdom and imbedded in a modern socio-religious urban context that reflects an aspect of public discourse and concerns of youth in time and place. Such an approach would feasibly emphasize the diversity or context-dependency of Muslim interpretations of both liberal democracy and Islamic ethical principles by a religiously active group of young people. Moreover, this approach has a potential to challenge Rinehart’s conceptual framework, by investigating if and how the data in the vignette can be categorized within the three aspects of Lived Islam. Another conceivable approach could be to investigate the contents of the conversation and different ways by which participating individuals use Islamic sources and authorities to construct their respective understandings of Islamic ethics regarding the contents of liberal democracy in theory and practice. Yet another potential approach could aim at investigating and evaluating the degree of coherence of laypeople’s discourse on Islam and liberal democracy by juxtaposing the political theological contents of the discourse with ideal-type categories of Islam and liberal democracy. Such an approach would arguably be suitable to demonstrate whether Islam is compatible with liberal democracy, and vice versa. These admittedly truncated types of possible analytical approaches to the information in the vignette are only some suggestions that are deduced from parts of the scholarly jigsaw puzzle that is Islamic Studies.

5

Methodological Pathways

Generally speaking, Islamic Studies scholars, beside their specific specializations such as linguistics, historical analyses, hermeneutics etc., have insights into broad components of Islamic tradition, its early history and other important aspects, which in various ways constitute that which is referred to as Islamic. That is an important asset in sorting out methodological considerations. Let us therefore consider a hopefully more innovative methodological approach to interpreting the vignette, by starting with a discussion about the

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way the observation is framed and formulated in the first place. The scene that lasts little over an hour in a busy coffeehouse is infinitely more complex and eventful than the vignette can come close to conveying to the reader. For example, anyone who has done research and has familiarity with the urban milieus and youth culture in the Middle East will immediately have a whole range of assumptions about the contents of the vignette. These assumptions (whatever they might be) are epistemic accumulations of a researcher’s insights about Islamicate societies and its variations. Again, a researcher’s intentions, scholarly training, disciplinary habitus, and previously acquired knowledge, guide his/her interpretative strategy and explanatory schemes. This cannot be emphasized enough, because methodological awareness provides an important grounding and transparency from which research process including theoretical and methodological choices can produce or uncover knowledge, all depending on one’s epistemic and ontological positioning. Let us start with a premise that Reinhart’s concepts of Koiné, Dialect and Cosmopolitan Islam are relevant aspects of Lived Islam within the scope of Islamdom. The conversation in the vignette can therefore be identified as an aspect of Dialect Islam. This means that interpretative moment happens when we situate an event (i.e. the vignette) into a cognitive map (i.e. Dialect Islam) in order to make (social, cultural, historical etc.) sense of what we are observing. The particular “Islamic” dialect of the young men in the vignette consists out of three distinguishable suggestions on whether Muslims ought to support establishment of “liberal democracy” based on their particular understandings of both religious sources and authorities including that of liberal democracy. Their suggestions are not only verbal assertions but also acts of a particular praxis of their Muslimness, or rather expressions of their historically contingent understandings of these ambiguous concepts. This brief methodological proposal rhymes well with the cosmopolitan trend of Islamic Studies presented in the Rethinking Islamic Studies-volume. It also demonstrates an assertion that the contents of the vignette can be decoded through larger conceptual map placing it in a topography of meanings that are recognizable as parts of Islamdom. To test validity of this argument, imagine that the same conversation taking place in a coffeehouse in a major European city where the same number of opinionated interlocutors discuss whether Christians should support liberal democratic order. It is quite clear that our (research) intentions, epistemic assumptions, and analytical assertion would have been (perhaps even radically) different. This cosmopolitan trend within the Islamic Studies is arguably creating a gravitational pull that opens up an analytical space within which a researcher can evaluate the contents of this and similar vignettes within the larger framework called “Lived Islam.” Consider the following, one standard research pro-

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cedure would be to pose a question; how does a particular “Dialectical Islam,” such as that in the vignette, correspond with “Cosmopolitan Islam”? A couple of relevant follow-up questions could be asked: What are the specific points of divergence and agreement between the two understandings of Islam? And, what are the possible reasons for difference and similarities? These questions could be answered in part by comparing the range of arguments presented in the vignette, which here stand for “Dialect Islam,” with a number of selected sources that a researcher deems as representative of “Cosmopolitan Islam.” One hypothetical conclusion is that the two “groups” that represent two dimensions of Islam (Dialect and Cosmopolitan) in this specific case study have radically different understanding of what constitutes the arguably fundamental and unchanging legal rules and ordinances of Islam and those which are changeable and contextual aspects of broader tradition of Islam. Further analysis might suggest that these differences depend largely on various levels of proponents’ scholarly training, different intentions, priorities, expectations, and so on. This conjectural example could stand for one way of “doing” Islamic Studies today. The next example represents another largely untested methodological approach within the scope of Islamic Studies that have a potential to produce deeper awerness of polyphonic and historically contingent Islamdom, namely the phenomenological method. 5.1 Redundant Dichotomies between Emic and Etic In the light of the post-Orientalist and cosmopolitan evolution within the Islamic Studies scholarship, the intention here is to briefly present a phenomenological approach that aims at clarifying at least some of the abovementioned methodological confusions. One way is to problematize the convention within Islamic Studies’ scholarship of separation between emic and etic approaches to the study of religion, including Islam. The analytical division between subject and object of study of (lived and abstract) Islam are there for several reasons, one of which is ambition to understand and teach about Islam, not “preach” it. This is an inapt dichotomy in as much as it sometimes directly suggests that committed Muslims, or people of faith, are not capable of producing “objective” knowledge about Islam or any religious tradition for that matter. Such an assumption inadvertently suggests that self-proclaimed atheists, humanists or agnostics are in better position to produce knowledge about Islam and Muslims etc.49 Phenomenological method might provide a way out of this particularly redundant dichotomy. This method is an intricate and relatively new part of 49

See Stenberg and Wood, Philip 2022; Otterbeck 2021.

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qualitative research design that has its roots in the philosophical tradition initiated by Edmund Husserl and further developed by Martin Heidegger and many others throughout the 20th century.50 The main assumption here is that the core of the phenomenological method offers a way through which a scholar can explore lived experiences of particular phenomena. The central premise here is that a scholar, as much anyone else, is a part of the world experiencing it in similar ways as other humans. As such, there is an analytic integration between so called, subject and object. After all, all humans experience the world they occupy by orienting themselves using both their intentions and consciousnesses. Intentions are dynamic and integral parts of all human experiences in the world. This means that both object and subject are intricately related and experienced by both experts and non-experts in their efforts to interpret a phenomenon at hand e.g., Islamic rituals, acts of perceived kindness or cruelty, art, activism. A phenomenon can be understood as (an analyazible) “thing” in the world that appears to us. This appearance is manifested in the human experience of a phenomenon, and as such, a phenomenon, through the human experience, becomes a unit of analysis of scholarly interpretation.51 For instance, the above vignette presents a wealth of information about Egyptian, young, urban, Muslim males’ understanding of the political, politics, ideological preferences, Islamic tradition etc. Any of these phenomena could also be a topic of examination within which a scholar’s own perception and understanding becomes a part of the analysis at hand. All lived experiences of a phenomena are therefore understood to be subjective as they are experienced by participating in the world, and thus should be interpreted with attention to one’s own intentionality, historical contingency of the phenomenon. This suggests that phenomena are much more than social or mental constructions resulting from human interactions, as suggested by constructivists, but rather experiences of phenomena in the world within which a researcher partakes. The vignette offers an imperfectly presented slice of lived reality through which phenomenological method can provide an analytic entry point. I view this approach as a way forward within an already existing qualitative methodological framework of interpretation. Firstly, the vignette is a heavily reduced description of reality of an event where lived experience of Muslimness in

50

51

For important overviews and introductions to phenomenology as a philosophical tradition see Sokolowski, Robert, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Hopp, Walter Phenomenology: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2020). Vagle, Mark d., Crafting Phenomenological Research (Oxon: Routledge, 2014).

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relation to a specific question takes place. This example is used cautiously to demonstrate a phenomenological encounter within Islamdom. Imagine a scenario where an Islamic studies’ scholar, perhaps yourself, experiences the scene described in the vignette. The scholar’s presumed intention is to identifying a phenomenon of interest executed by clearly defined methodology of data gathering, such as participant observation, semistructured group interview etc. This is followed by a pre-planned and immediate reflection period—a sort of initial detailed write-up session. The very next step is to re-read and re-write the initial text by reflecting upon the observed situation and one’s own experiences of the scene. This helps to capture those initial appearances of the identified phenomenon in a specific context. The supposed gap between emic and etic approaches is here extraneous to the scholarly task of deepening or widening understanding of a particular topic. The scholar is as much a participant in the described scene as those young men engaged in the discussion in the broader context of the scene. All are participating in lived experienced of the identified phenomenon by the mere fact of their conscious presence, and that is regardless of the level of participation in the conversation in the event. This means that the scholar’s experiences of the particular phenomenon also contribute to the methodological process. For example, an experience of phenomenon such as Muslim polity is qualitatively different from Christian, or secular polity for that matter, which manifests itself differently in the lived experiences of individuals or a group of individuals with whom a researcher interacts with. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the empirical data in a phenomenological study within the scope of Islamic Studies could include, but not be limited to, unstructured interviews and other variations of conversations between a researcher and conversation partners—not mere informants, subjects of study, or alike. Observations, conversations, and sometimes mere (un)intentional presence in a social situation present experiences of phenomena through human interactions, narratives, including artistic performances, aesthetic productions such photography, drawings etc. This argument incidentaly suggests that phenomenological method is less suitable for historical, legal, or philological studies where a scholar’s experience of a particular phenomenon is harder to contextualize and extrapolate in relation to a larger body of humans. In other words, there are limits to this approach. Another way by which phenomenological method could be employed is to analyze the contents of the expanded version of the vignette by isolating the “units of meaning” in the text and which constitute the particular phenomenon of interest. This means that the processes of data gathering are intertwined with the analyses the identified meaning units. Some phenom-

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enologists talk about analysis of a text or transcribed interview as an intuitive process through which a research gets a sense of what is being transmitted without attaching his/her meaning (such as preconceived notions) to the analysis.52 This is sometimes apparent in qualitative and interpretative sociology and even more so in anthropology. Researchers in these fields are trained to be purposefully reflexive about their own role in the research process. Phenomenological method suggests going further than that. It demands identification of newness or freshness in reading a particular experience of a part of reality of life. Consider, for example, exploring aspects of Muslimness, or lived Islam in a time and place. This demands a personal and emotional investment on the part of a researcher in experiencing an identifiable phenomenon at hand. This method demands bracketing out a number of previous assumptions about a phenomenon. The method expects that a researcher minimizes risks of (mis-)guiding new experiences as much as possible, in order to come closer to the lifeworld and the phenomenon of interest.53 This might sound contra intuitive, but it is important for a researcher to attempt to minimize “contamination” of his/her phenomenological analysis (shared experience of a phenomenon), by bracketing or bridling his/her previous knowledge. The point is to minimize injecting one’s previous experiences into a new experience. This is done for a purpose of finding the newness in the experience of a phenomenon at hand. Bridling can be done in three distinct steps: 1. By presenting as pure description of lived experience as possible (the vignette above is an inadequate example of that). 2. An interpretation of what the kind of the experience this is within a relevant context. 3. An analysis of the form of the experience.54 This brief list offers a procedural interpretive scheme by which to bridle one’s previously acquired insights in a continuous self-reflexive fashion and contextual awareness. This is done in order to inspire creative, innovative, indepth, and systematic analyses.

52

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Giorgi, Amedeo. “The Phenomenological Movement and Research in the Human Sciences,” Nursing Science Quarterly, 18, no. 1 (2005): 75–82; Giorgi, Amedeo. Psychology as a human science: A phenomenologically based approach (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). Dahlberg, Karin, Dahlberg, Helen and Nyström, Maria, Reflective Lifeworld Research (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2007, 2nd ed.). Vagle, Crafting Phenomenological Research, 2014, 66–70.

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A phenomenological approach in this way encourages and opens up for new possibilities of understanding traditionally understood phenomena within, in this case, the scope of Islamdom. These possibilities are found in the analytical nexus of bridling of conclusive previous insights, producing detailed descriptions of experienced phenomena, and most importantly, interpreting these experiences of phenomena of interest in hope to produce new insights and understandings (of at least parts) of human reality. The empirical data in a phenomenological study can vary. A source text can be one source of interpretation and disclosure of lifeworld and its phenomena, but so can a narration of human experiences, an oral history of a collective, or a purportedly heated debate in an urban coffeehouse.

6

Summary

Given the eventful history of Islamic Studies, its origins, and evolution, including the many tensions within the field it is reasonable to conclude that the methodological turmoils will not disappear any time soon, or ever. Nevertheless, we ought not to stop at developing new ways through which to understand Islamdom, Islamicate societies and the multilayered expressions of Muslimness. This chapter suggests that Lived Islam within the realm of its dialects, and in its Koiné and Cosmopolitan forms can be approached through study of a range of phenomena experienced and discovered by its adherents and researchers alike, be they insiders or outsiders of the tradition—orientalistically speaking. At the same time, it is important to note that the identified points of contentions within the field of Islamic Studies are not merely methodological, the tensions are at the same time conceptual and epistemological. The field of Islamic Studies is still an amorphous field recognizable from the outside as a phenomenon of its own, experienced very differently by different people. In order to understand it, the most productive way is to engage with the people and subject matters involved in shaping the field. The scholars in the various epistemic and methodological clusters in this field are conscious beings that produce research that is sometimes opposed, and at other times, approved by their peers. The acceptance/rejection criteria are seldom coherent or clear. It is therefore important to clarify confusions and misconceptions in order to make progress. This chapter makes an exploratory effort to find a way forward by suggesting one concrete and arguably creative way through which to advance a part of this field—in particular the part dealing with contemporary expressions of

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lived Islam and Muslimness. The hope here is that there is enough perceptiveness in this scholarly community to create a centrifugal force strong enough to pull different gravitational clusters closer together. The main point in this chapter is that lived Islam in a form of Reinhart’s three partite division can be studied coherently and creatively through its potentially innumerable expressions within the scope of Islamdom and beyond. In this case, phenomenological method contains enough analytical consistency and potency that can be combined with some of the most pronounced social scientific methodologies at work within the contemporary Islamic Studies. Religious studies on the whole could benefit from phenomenological method primarily as it provides more systematized method of data collection including established analytical scheme, which has a potential to strengthen humaniora on the whole.

Bibliography Abbasi, Rushain. “Islam and the Invention of Religion: Study of Medieval Muslim Discourses on Dīn,” Studia Islamica 116 (2021): 1–106. Abdul Latif, Tibawi. “English Speaking Orientalists: a Critique of Their Approach to Islam and to Arab Nationalism,” Muslim World 53, no. 3–4 (1963). Ahmed, Shahab. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Bano, Masooda. The Revival of Islamic Rationalism Logic, Metaphysics and Mysticism in Modern Muslim Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). Behdad, Ali and Gartlan, Luke (Eds.). Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation (New York: Getty Publications, 2013). Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Artistic Field (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). Chaudhry, Ayesha. Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Dagli, Caner K. “The Phony Islam of ISIS,” Atlantic (2015, February 27). Dahlberg, Karin, Dahlberg, Helen and Nyström, Maria. Reflective Lifeworld Research (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2007, 2nd ed.). El-Yousfi, Amin. “The Anthropology of Islam in Light of the Trusteeship Paradigm” in Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, ed. Mohammed Hashas and Mutaz al-Khatib (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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Engelhardt, Jan Felix. “Beyond the Confessional/Non-Confessional Divide—The Case of German Islamic Theological Studies,” Religions 12, no. 2 (2021): 1–12. Ernst, Carl and Martin, Richard. Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010). Fuller, Graham. “Has Political Islam Failed?” Middle East Insight (1995, JanuaryFebruary). Gibb, Hamilton A.R. Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). Giorgi, Amedeo. “The Phenomenological Movement and Research in the Human Sciences,” Nursing Science Quarterly, 18, no. 1 (2005): 75–82. Giorgi, Amedeo. Psychology as a human science: A phenomenologically based approach (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). Goldstein, Warren S. “What makes Critical Religion critical? A response to Russell McCutcheon,” Critical Research on Religion, 8, no. 1 (2020): 73–86. Goldziher, Ignaz, [transl. Andras and Ruth Hamori] Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1981). Hallaq, Wael. “The Quest for Origins or Doctrine? Islamic Legal Studies as Colonialist Discourse.” UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, 2 (2002): 1–32. Hallaq, Wael. Restating Orientalism: a Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). Hammer, Julianne. “Roundtable on Normativity in Islamic Studies: Introduction.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 2 (2016): 25–27. Harrison, Christopher, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Harvey, Ramon. The Qur’an and the Just Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2018). Haykel, Bernard. “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meier (London: Hurst, 2009). Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). Hopp, Walter. Phenomenology: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2020). Hughes, Aaron W. “Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty-Five Years On,” in Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty-Five Years On, ed. Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Jackson, Sherman. Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Jackson, Sherman. “Islam and the problem of Black suffering,” The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 34, no. 2 (2017): 1–31.

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Juergensmeyer, Mark. “Thinking Sociologically about Religion and Violence: The Case of ISIS,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, 79, no. 1 (2018). Kalmar, Ivan. Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (New York: Routledge, 2012). Kojin, Karatani. “Uses of Aesthetics: After Orientalism,” Boundary 2 25, no. 2 (1998): 145–160. Laroui, Abdalla. “For a methodology of Islamic studies: Islam seen by G. von Grunebaum,” Diogenes 8, no. 4 (1973): 12–39. Lewis, Bernard. “The Return of Islam,” Le Débat, 14, no. 7 (1981): 17–38. Lewis, Thomas A. Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion—and Vice Versa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 2nd ed.). McCutcheon, Russell T. Fabricating Religion: Fanfare for the Common (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2018). McCutcheon, Russell T. “Naming the Unnameable? Theological Language and the Academic Study of Religion,” in Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty-Five Years On, ed. Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Neuman, Lawrence W. Social Research Methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (London: Pearson, 2014, 7th ed.). Nizami, F. Ahmad. “EDITORIAL.” Journal of Islamic Studies 1, no. 1 (1990): III. Otterbeck, Jonas. “Finding the object of study: Islamic studies in practice,” International Journal of Religion, 2, no. 1 (2021). Reinhart, A. Kevin. Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Ringer, Monica. Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Salvatore, Armando. The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley 2016). Stenberg, Leif and Wood, Phillip. What is Islamic studies?: European and North American approaches to a contested field (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). Sokolowski, Robert. Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Vagle, Mark D. Crafting Phenomenological Research (Oxon: Routledge, 2014). Varisco, Daniel Martin. Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017). Watt, Montgomery. Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An extended Survey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985). Wood, Graeme. “What ISIS Really Wants?” Atlantic (2015, March).

Chapter 14

Back to Critique Islamic Studies and the Vicious Hermeneutic Circle Abdessamad Belhaj

1

Introduction

As a research field, Islamic studies necessarily possesses a set of methods. Doing Islamic studies meant for over a century using tools of philology and history to critically understand and explain Islamic beliefs and practices; it also meant the critique of Islamic sources in their historicity and in their internal coherence, the critique of Islamic narratives about origins, empires, otherness, the arguments against and for particular schools of thought, the attribution of positions and works, discussions about names and dates, etc. In all these endeavours, Islamic studies took a charted path, that of critical research on Christianity and Judaism. Research on Islamic studies took distance with the traditional Islamic narratives produced by Muslim theologians and historians. Thus, critical research examines the foundations of knowledge about Islam. In his “Theses on Method,” Bruce Lincoln has shown that critical inquiry ought to be the starting point of studying religion and that said study should refuse “to ratify its claim of transcendent nature and sacrosanct status.”1 A critical study of religion does not involve itself in theological discussions about these claims, but goes beyond beliefs to look for their “symbolic and social codes.” Such a starting point has been further elaborated by Russell T. McCutcheon who asserts that “for scholars qua critics, religion is not itself part of the explanation or solution (as it is for translators and caretakers) but is, instead, part of the data to be explained (as it is for virtually all who develop theories of religion).”2 That is to say, a scholarly field such as Islamic studies ought to investigate critically every claim that Muslims in authority, both in the past or present, make about their religion. In this chapter, I intend to study how critique can be re-situated in Islamic studies today. Before proceeding to the analytical part of my study, I will clarify 1 Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (2005): 9. 2 Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 138.

© Abdessamad Belhaj, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004536630_015

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what I mean by critique as various claims and practices of critique compete in the field of Islamic studies. Not only do we need to distinguish between caretakers and critics, but also between types, scales and devices of critique. I will focus on the problem of the hermeneutical circle in Quranic exegesis, and how one can escape it. This hermeneutical circle, I argue, represents the viciousness of relying on the Islamic tradition in defining the process of reading the Quran. In this quest for solutions out of the vicious hermeneutical circle, I will take examples of critique as displayed by research in France and Belgium, showing few resources in re-situating critique in Islamic studies.

2

What Is Critique?

The successful birth of Islamic studies at the end of the 19th century can be predicated on the role played by the critique of the foundational texts and Muslim narratives about the origins and the development of Muslim traditions. To escape the vicious hermeneutic circle of Islamic traditions, early generations of critical scholars used biblical criticism, history of religions, and anthropology among other tools. This critical turn went into hyper-critique as a new generation of scholars called now “The Revisionist School of Islamic Studies” with scholars such as John Wansbrough (1928–2002), Patricia Crone (1945–2015), Michael Cook (born in 1940), etc. questioned basic beliefs about the birth of Islam and the development of Quranic studies. The field of Islamic studies has since evolved and, thanks to the fertilization with social sciences, “scholars have also a much better understanding of how societies actually worked in the past, how social control was maintained, how politics were negotiated, how propaganda was shaped to dress it up” as put by Patricia Crone.3 Contrary to ideology, critique can be adjusted as science does not abandon a method because of its excesses or mistakes.4 Ideology has begun to silence historical criticism since the 1980s. Robert Hoyland, for example, noted how “the massively increased public profile of Islam since then has made many academics, who are usually left-leaning liberals, shy of criticizing Islam and this has favored the traditionalist approach.”5 3 Patricia Crone, Islam, The Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, ed. Hanna Siurua (Leiden: Brill, 2016), Vol. 3, 246. 4 A historical account of scientific critique in Islamic studies can be read here: Mohammed Arkoun, “Contemporary Critical Practices and the Qurʾān,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1: 412–431. 5 Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 232.

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Patricia Crone likewise notes how the intrusion of politicized history writing, identity politics and victim culture have negatively effected the field.6 As a consequence, avoiding criticism is now the norm in Islamic studies. Instead, a new type of critique has occupied the space, I here call it ideological critique, endorsed by young academics of Western and non-Western background to combat the supposed “identity presuppositions” of “white orientalists.” This ideological critique is committed to Edward Said’s narrative and critical discourse analysis (of how “the West” perceives “the East”) rather than to how Islamic traditions, narratives and histories came to exist and justify themselves. It is softer on the Muslim tradition and harder on Western Islamic studies. Even more, the meaning and function of this critique remain often ambiguous, and depending on the context can indeed mean anything. Little vigorous philosophy is put into this kind of critique, using instead voluntarily “post-colonial friendly approaches and disciplines,” ranging from gender to post-modern philosophy. To illustrate this ideological critique, I take two cases: that of Irfan Ahmad’s Religion as Critique and Matt Sheedy’s edited volume Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions. Let us begin with Irfan Ahmad’s argument. The latter understands the concept of critique to mean a set of things: Islamist apologetics, a prophet’s call to monotheism, polemics, literary criticism, philosophical critique of Enlightenment, bashing and calumny between members of the same Islamist movement about dress and women, a commentary on sectarian politics of India, denouncing Islamophobia, reflection on mortality, etc. If critique is all this, then what is not critique? And so, any critique of the West, of modernity and Enlightenment or anything done by Muslims since the Quran against anything or anyone, down to Maududi and Jamaat-e-Islami is considered as critique by Irfan Ahmad.7 What Irfan Ahmad suggests as critique is not a scholarly process but an ideological critique of the West. Yet, this type of critique fails to produce any knowledge or advance in the field. This discourse of Irfan Ahmad on critique is part of a recent wave of postcolonial Islamic critical studies which can be illustrated in the journal ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies and also Critical Muslim, a series edited by Ziauddin Sardar (publishing over 32 volumes). In particular, Ahmad is concerned with how to provide theoretical insights about Islam as perma-

6 Hoyland, In God’s Path, 241. 7 Irfan Ahmad, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

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nent critique.8 Yet, he displays uncritical views on almost every issue related to the Islamic tradition. For example, he says that “Jews opposed Muḥammad not because he negated the teachings of Moses; they opposed him because he confirmed the truth of Christianity as well.”9 This is a theological claim, and does not rely on any critical study of early Islam. It is even contradictory to theorize Islam as critique and then proceed to state such propositions about Jews and Muḥammad while the amount of historical material about Muḥammad and the Jews is too scarce to make any radical statements. And surely, a basic sense of history would prevent someone from ascribing to the Jews the opposition to Muḥammad because of another religion. The natural place of such statements is Islamic ideology which is full of “religious narratives of history” that build the authority of Islamic tenets. Moreover, Ahmad considers Maududi’s religious rigor and thought, and his position towards women as critique. He also takes as a case of critique the debates between members of the Jamaat-e-Islami on leadership and the state. All these Islamist views accounted for by Ahmad do not illustrate critique, but rather intolerance. What seems to be the weakest link in this ideological critique is that it cannot free itself from deconstructing the West while it fails to do the same with Islam. Paradoxically, the whole theoretical arsenal Ahmad employs depends on the Western tradition (from Kant to contemporary philosophy), which he claims the ambition to deconstruct. Thus, Islam as critique could be seen as an outbidding of critique of the Enlightenment and the West in general and a pretext to reject Western imperialism and its consequences in India and other places in the world. Aaron W. Hughes’s critique of similar apologetic approaches adopted by some scholars of Islamic Studies leading to the reaction of Omid Safi (and others) has shown all the political and ideological aspects of studying Islam today. Whether one works within the critical Islamic studies, apologetic Islamic studies, or any other paradigm (for there are certainly scholars of new generations with no attachment to either of the two sides) identity, politics and ethics scholarship are inevitable matters to struggle with. While Hughes represents a paradigm on the defensive (due to the changes in campuses and the rise of the post-colonial perspective), apologetic Islamic Studies seems to be quantitatively significant, and its lenient stances on Islam and Islamism are

8 Ahmad, Religion as Critique, 14. 9 Ahmad, Religion as Critique, 15.

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increasingly tolerated and diffused. Yet, claims of autonomy and complaints of exclusion can be heard on both sides. Some young Islamicists justify the theologization and ideologization of Islamic Studies against autonomous critical research, by citing the need Muslims in the West express to know their identity, religion and history. Overall, it seems that the postcolonial turn of Islamic Studies has produced little knowledge about Islam; its field of action is rather to deconstruct the work carried on by scholars who embrace historical-philological approaches in studying the sources of Islam and its history. Sometimes the post-colonial Islamic Studies are instrumentalized to foster the study of Islam from the ‘Islamic’ point of view (even if it is still always a plurality of Islamic points of view) while some independent confessional or non-confessional studies of Islam are at serious odds with postcolonial approaches. A recent edited volume by Matt Sheedy Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions demonstrates how many young scholars in Islamic studies side with Omid Safi and his postcolonial views and vehemently attack Hughes for being the voice of the “wild and white West.” It sometimes feels as if the book is a re-trial of Orientalism. Undeniably, it is legitimate to expose the political interests of critical Islamic Studies but it is perverse to discard critical scholarship of Islam as such. Such trials of knowledge are sometimes excuses for mediocrity and incompetence. In Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam, we can read Salman Sayyid criticizing whiteness and its hegemony of power and knowledge, and trying to argue that the decolonial approach, which he calls critical Muslim studies, is the only viable one.10 Alexandre Caeiro and Emmanuelle Stefanidis speak even of the violence inherent in Western Qurʾānic Studies.11 Moreover, they promote a deconstruction of the hegemonic narrative in Western Qurʾānic Studies and openness towards research on the Qurʾān in Muslim countries,12 knowing that Qurʾānic Studies in the Muslim world is dominated by theological claims. Carlos A. Segovia a scholar of critical Islamic studies gives credit to Hughes and accuses Safi of a paradox in his belief that it is possible to make Islamic Studies as a humanities discipline while accepting the essentials of

10 11

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Salman Sayyid, “I want my discipline back,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Bristol: Equinox, 2018), 62. Alexandre Caeiro and Emmanuelle Stefanidis “Religion, History, Ethics: Rethinking the Crisis of Western Qur’anic Studies,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam, ed. Sheedy, 85. Caeiro and Stefanidis, “Religion, History, Ethics,” 90.

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the Islamic tradition.13 Also to the credit of Hughes is the afterword by Russell T. McCutcheon in the same book on ‘The Meaning and End of Scholarship on Religion’ which is a masterful lesson in religious scholarship, distinguishing between normative and critical approaches to Islamic Studies.14 Reappropriating critique could help us move beyond dualities and work with new paradigms. The main thesis of critical Islamic studies is valid, namely that Islamic sources and narratives should be studied in the same way other religious traditions are studied, with similar critical tools, philological rigour and historical methods. That said, taking distance with ideological or theological claims might provide ample opportunities for new perspectives and scholarly paradigms.

3

The Problem of the Vicious Hermeneutic Circle

At what point are we no longer dependent on the theological narratives of the Muslim tradition itself in reading its texts? I agree that like any other kind of human product, Muslim theological narratives can be read and interpreted as “points of view.” Failing to acknowledge the distance one should take between the analysis done and the available data propels one into a vicious hermeneutic circle; the latter takes place when any part of the Quran itself (or the Islamic tradition as a whole) is used as a tool to explain the whole text (and to the philological and religious knowledge surrounding it) and vice versa, that is when the whole text and its exegetical tradition build on pieces of the text. The circle is further complicated by the constant movement that disciplines make between each other (for example, between Quranic exegesis and juridical hermeneutics or hadith). Some texts, such as those of the prophetic tradition, are knowledge built around the Qur’an while being themselves tools to elucidate the meaning of the Quran. With the successive interaction of knowledge and belief in Islam up to modern times, hermeneutical distance has vanished as an attitude and claims are made about understanding the texts of the Muslim tradition in a single way or in a clear-cut way. The texts of Muslim theology were addressed to particular audiences, who possibly understood them and had access to the

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Carlos A. Segovia, “Identity Politics and Scholarship in the Study of Islamic Origins: The Inscriptions of the Dome of the Rock,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam, ed. Sheedy, 100. Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Meaning and End of Scholarship on Religion„” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam, ed. Sheedy, 213.

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linguistic convention necessary to understand these texts. This is not the case for later generations, who must work to decipher the Muslim scriptural data and all the scholasticism that has been built around it. This is another lesson that we learn in teaching and researching Islamic studies: nothing is clear or obvious in the Muslim tradition as some claim, whether in the Qur’an or in late theological-philosophical and mystical texts; ambiguity is inherent in it, caused by the distance between authors and readings, generating a scholarly tradition, which while claiming to clarify certain aspects, has also created other hermeneutical problems. Because many researchers fail to establish a distance between their work and the affective, historical, geographical, linguistic, etc., elements of “insiderism,” that is of the vicious hermeneutic circle, the borders between Islamic studies and Islamic theology are increasingly vanishing. The vicious hermeneutic circle can play another trick on researchers in Islamic studies, notably concerning the dilemma between internal and external views on the Muslim tradition. This issue was recently raised by Bekim Agai, a lecturer at the Center for Muslim Theology in Frankfurt, who legitimizes the need for Islamic theology versus Islamic studies on the grounds that Muslims in Europe want to know their identity, religion, and history, and that only a confessional theology, from within, could satisfy this need.15 To begin with, Muslim insiders are millions of people who embody numerous diversities and identity factors which could claim each to better understand and explain the Muslim tradition. It is not evident at all to state that any Muslim insider can study the identity, the religion or the history of Islam, without having to come to grasp with the theological narratives at work. Insiderism provides a comfortable solution to some researchers who avoid shocking Muslims, referring to “authorized” interpretations and later Arabic language dictionaries, ideological or mythological claims about Islam, etc. This enterprise only popularizes in the academic circles a century of non-historical Islamic theology and ideology. And thus, reflexivity could benefit insider and outsider views to convey historical knowledge about Islam. Islamic studies can only escape the vicious hermeneutic circle by maintaining the distance with its object of study, as it is the characteristic of any scientific discipline after all.16

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Bekim Agai, “Introducing Islamic Theological Studies at German Universities: Secular Expectations and Epistemic Rearrangements„” Toronto Journal of Theology 31 (2015): 190. Jan Felix Engelhardt, “On Insiderism and Muslim Epistemic Communities in the German and US Study of Islam,” The Muslim World 106 (2016): 740–758. See Aaron W. Hughes’ important critical arguments against apologetic Islamic studies and Muslim political identitarianism in:

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Two Possible Solutions to the Problem of the Vicious Hermeneutic Circle

In the following, I will discuss two possible solutions to escape the vicious hermeneutic circle in Islamic studies as endorsed by researchers in France and Belgium, and which are little known in the English-speaking world. 4.1 Historical Anthropology Jacqueline Chabbi (born in 1943), a French historian of early Islam produced some important works, perhaps the most relevant to our topic is her Les trois piliers de l’islam: lecture anthropologique du Coran. Chabbi argues that the formation of early Islam can be explained through the three intermingling concepts of alliance, guidance and gift which cemented the relations between followers of Muḥammad in Medina, and gave birth to a community which came to be known as Islam. Guidance, being the central mechanism of authority of the Prophet during the emergence of this community, could represent a trap for many researchers. Uncritical Islamic studies would approach the topic from the posterior political theology on nubuwwa as religious leadership, and thus depend on the data by the Muslim tradition, including the sīra literature, falling therefore to the vicious hermeneutic circle. Chabbi employed a set of tools which allowed her to escape the circle and build a coherent understanding and explanation of guidance in early Islam. Chabbi had recourse first to philology, by tracing all the terms in the Quran17 that indicate the way or road (sabab, sunna, sharīʿa, dīn, sabīl, umma) and found that the Quran indeed used the terms in a religious meaning later in the Medinan period, but even at that time these terms did not emancipate from their social meaning in an Arabian tribal context for Quranic terms evolved in their meanings. This tool saves the researcher from assigning one meaning to each term or many meanings to the same term and leaving the door open to ambiguity. Second,

17

Aaron W. Hughes, Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (London: Equinox, 2007). Aaron W. Hughes, Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (London: Equinox, 2012). Aaron W. Hughes, Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception (Sheffield: Equinox, 2015). An engagement with Hughes’s ideas can be read in: Matt Sheedy (Ed.), Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions (Bristol: Equinox, 2018). One should note here that it is not evident to assume that the vocabulary of the Qurʾān is “raw material,” for the Qurʾān is a tradition-based text since, for example, its jamʿ, orthography and qirāʾāt will not be understood without ample references to the Muslim traditions.

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she approached the whole debates on authority in the Quran as debates that can be understood as tribal conflicts (while empire conflicts can be understood to a certain extent through hadith, classical Islamic theology, history, etc.). And thus, by constantly rethinking Quranic comments on events as both resources and limits to action in a tribal political space one can better fathom how the Prophet of Islam managed relations between his followers and others. We learn from this reading that jihad was “natural” for the early community, but that it was proportionate, and far from religious zeal or major campaigns that are depicted in sīra and later religious literature. Chabbi found that the struggle in the way of God involved fight and funding of military campaigns, together with diplomacy and a sense of precaution and avoidance of fighting as long as possible.18 One can summarise Chabbi’s approach as that of a study of representations and mentality of a 7th century Arabian context used to distinguish history from sacred tradition. By giving due credit to the role structures and spaces of Arabian tribes play in society and religion, Chabbi could understand and explain the action of Muḥammad as both continuity and change in social and religious history of early Islam. This critical method brings back Islam to history (one would say crude history) escaping thus the claims of “transcendent nature and sacrosanct status” made by the Islamic tradition while at the same time taking into account these religious claims as part of societal dynamics.19 To illustrate how Chabbi escapes the vicious hermeneutic circle, I will take the case of the Quranic term umma. Chabbi notes that this term is translated and understood today as “Muslim community” or community. The problem arises because the term can designate an individual, a group of bees and a group of people. She does not provide an analytical tool to decipher polysemous terms, but suggests examining each term individually. Let us take one example, the Quran 43:22 which goes as follows: We indeed found our fathers upon a community, and we are following upon their traces20 18 19

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Jacqueline Chabbi, Les trois piliers de l’islam: lecture anthropologique du Coran (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2016), 165–261. A recent colloquium took place at the Catholic University of Louvain on 2 December, 2021 to discuss Chabbi’s method; she did not acknowledge the limits of her approach but few scholars who engaged with her work were able to point some problems with “the Arabian reading of the Quran,” mainly that the Quran itself was written over a long period of time with various influences outside of its Arabian context. Arthur John Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), Vol. I, 200.

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It is indeed incomprehensible to translate umma here as community as is translated or understood usually. Chabbi goes back to the root ’-m-m of the word which conveys the meaning of guidance, examining all usages of the root in the Quran. She concludes that umma represents the way which leads to destination without the risk of erring, and thus umma can designate the good way, the guide who leads to the good way, and the “well-guided group.” All these usages in the Quran have a shared basic meaning of being on the good way. This Quranic term has evolved later in the Islamic vocabulary to indicate the univocal meaning of “well-guided group,” to define the totality of Muslims who are destined to be led by the authority of an ideal guide. And thus, imāma is related to umma as it is an ideal guidance. This means that during early Islam umma did not have a religious-political sense which later generations considered it to be the group of believers in Allah around the Prophet Muḥammad.21 Now let us turn to al-Ṭabarī’s interpretation which impacted later exegesis and modern Islamic studies. Al-Ṭabarī himself interprets “We indeed found our fathers upon a community” to mean “we found our fathers following a religion, and that is their worship of idols.”22 And yet, he ignores the fact that umma was used in the Quran for bees and for individuals. Al-Ṭabarī is victim here of the vicious hermeneutic circle which relies on the religious meaning of umma in his times to project it on the Quran. Fortunately, and despite that the majority of authorities he quotes are meant to corroborate his interpretation, al-Ṭabarī also refers to a minority opinion of Quran reciters who read imma rather than umma, to mean the way (and so they understood the Quranic umma to mean leading the way such as in, amamtu al-qawma fa-anā a’ummuhum immatan which means I lead the people, that is: I guide them).23 4.2 Biblical Material Another solution to escape the vicious hermeneutic circle in Islamic studies was illustrated recently in Belgium by Mehdi Azaiez who works on Quranic studies at the Catholic University of Louvain. Azaiez’s way out of the circle consists in interacting with critical biblical studies in order to craft some research venues for Quranic Studies, on the basis that “methodological presuppositions and methods of biblical criticism have a definite relevance for

21 22 23

Chabbi, Les trois piliers de l’islam, 183–185. Abū Jaʻfar Muḥ ammad al-Ṭabarī, Jā miʻ al-bayā n fī tāʾwīl ā y al-Qurʾā n, edited by ʻAbd Allāh ibn ʻAbd al-Muḥ sin al-Turkī (al-Riyāḍ: Dār ʻĀ lam al-Kutub, 2015), Vol. 20, 569. al-Ṭabarī, Jā miʻ al-bayā n, Vol. 20, 571.

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the study of the Quran.”24 Considering the importance of the biblical stories in the Quran (over a thousand verses out of 6236 verses), a researcher can only exit the hermeneutic circle if he or she reads the Qur’an, in relation to the Bible or to biblical narratives. In other words, this solution is built in the back and forth between the Quran (and other Islamic religious texts) and the bridges that link it to other world religions, whereas the Islamic hermeneutic circle is trapped in the internal and closed movement of the circle on itself. Azaiez’s approach uses a comparative analysis of the Koranic and Talmudic polemic forms. In his analysis of the use of concomitant formulations called eschatological counter discourse, he identified Koranic opponents with figures located in an off-text, in this case the Talmud.25 Azaiez summarizes his approach as follows: Thus, when the Qur’an reports opposition to the idea of resurrection the undesignated opponent may belong to the groups of opponents explicitly designated in the Qur’an (Yahūd, Naṣārā, al-Aʿrāb, Quraysh) but he can also, because of the formal and thematic concomitances between the Koranic and Talmudic counter-discourses refer to the protagonists cited by the Talmud. This is why it is possible to affirm that the eschatological counter-discourse opens the Koranic text to what is external to it and thus creates a strategic “place” of relation with an outside text. In this perspective, the opponent is a fictitious, moving and transhistorical figure and transhistorical figure, the sum of all the figures summoned in the text and outside of it. The phenomenon is all the more true that it is also based on the decontextualized character of the polemic in the Koran.26 An example would illustrate further how this approach produces a viable exit strategy from the circular reasoning in Quranic exegesis. I will take as an example Quran 13:5 which goes as follows: If thou wouldst wonder, surely wonderful is their saying, ‘What, when we are dust shall we indeed then be raised up again in new creation?’ Those are they that disbelieve in their Lord; those—on their necks are fetters; those shall be the inhabitants of the Fire, therein dwelling forever.27 24

25 26 27

Mehdi Azaiez, “Enseigner la théologie islamique: la fécondité des méthodes critiques,” in L’enseignement universitaire de la théologie musulmane: perspectives comparatives, ed. Francis Messner and Moussa Abou Ramadan (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2018), 164. Azaiez, “Enseigner la théologie islamique,” 170. Azaiez, “Enseigner la théologie islamique,” 170. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, Vol. 2, 268.

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Azaiez quotes from Talmud, Sanhedrin (90b) the following: “The Roman emperor said to Rabban Gamliel: You say that the dead will live. Aren’t they dust? And does dust come to life?” and also “The Gemara relates that a certain heretic said to Rabbi Ami: You say that the dead will live. Aren’t they dust? And does dust come to life?”28 At this stage, let us consider al-Ṭabarī’s exegesis of this verse. The latter provides the foundation of traditional Islam scholarship in interpreting this verse, and also to numerous contemporary “scholars of Islamic studies.” Abu Jaʿfar said: The Almighty says: (surely wonderful is their saying) O Muḥammad, from these polytheists who take that which neither harms nor benefits, as gods which they worship besides me. And so, it is also astonishing that they said (What, when we are dust) and we were old, then dead (shall we indeed then be raised up again in new creation) our creation will be renewed and bring us back to a new life as we were before we died!! In this they deny the power of God, and disbelieve reward and punishment and resurrection after death. Bishr told us, he said: Yazīd told us: Saʿīd told us, on the authority of Qatāda, his saying: (surely wonderful is their saying) if you wonder, Muḥammad, (What, when we are dust shall we indeed then be raised up again in new creation?), the Most Merciful, the Blessed and Most High, was amazed at their denial of the resurrection after death. Yūnus told us, he said: Ibn Wahb told us, he said: Ibn Zayd said in his saying: (If thou wouldst wonder, surely wonderful is their saying) He said: If you marvel at their denial, and they have seen of God’s power and command and what he gave them of examples, as bringing back to life the dead land, if you marvel at this, then marvel at their saying: (What, when we are dust shall we indeed then be raised up again in new creation). Did they not see that we created them from a sperm? The creation out of a sperm is more difficult, or the creation out of dust and bones?29 Al-Ṭabarī’s enterprise seems to rely on two mechanisms: 1. building an “Islamic” identity for the verse as one of the numerous polemics the Prophet of Islam engaged in against the polytheists of Quraysh. The verse serves al-

28 29

Mehdi Azaiez, Le contre-discours coranique (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 222. See also: The William Davidson Talmud https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.90b?lang=bi. al-Ṭabarī, Jā miʻ al-bayā n, Vol. 13, 432–433.

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Ṭabarī to craft a “religious history” out of non-contextualised statements in the Quran. In turn, this “religious history” will serve him in reading other noncontextualised statements in the Quran, and so the enterprise seems coherent while it is a vicious circle. 2. al-Ṭabarī knows this first mechanism is a craft and needs to be supported by the tool of religious authority. And thus, he needs particular authorities down to Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d. 735) a jurist from Baṣra and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd (d. 799) who both have recourse to other Quranic verses (which themselves are not evidently addressing the Prophet’s polemics) in order to establish an Islamic framework for this verse. As a consequence, the Islamic vicious circle here links the Quranic text, “religious history” and religious authority form a triad which strengthens each other and makes the audience unable to see “through the text.” In contrast, the recourse to biblical material as suggested by Azaiez (and by numerous other scholars30) allows one to liberate from “crafted religious history” and from following the traces of jurists of the 8th century although biblical materials themselves are subject to critical study. Whether the object of research is Islamic or biblical materials, research should strive to avoid cyclical arguments in search of authenticity and/or validity. This approach shows that the Quranic material belongs to universal religious history (as it really existed even if incomplete, non-linear or heterogeneous), and addresses the Quran as a set of similar theological problems posed in other religions. Accordingly, it is possible to read Quran 13:5 as a rhetorical device which could be irrelevant to Muḥammad’s opponents.

5

Concluding Remarks

This chapter has discussed the reasons for adopting scientific critique as the way out of the Islamic vicious hermeneutic circle. The latter takes place when the Islamic tradition is used to explain itself. Scientific critique, which was used in the 19th century by European scholars of Islamic studies, through methods of philology and history (already applied in the history of religions and biblical studies) has lost much of its scientific authority today. Currently, another type of critique is on the rise among researchers of Islamic studies, that of ideological critique, championed by the post-colonial theory; this par-

30

See an important volume in this regard published recently: Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and Guillaume Dye (Eds.), Le Coran des historiens, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2019.

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adigm of critique deconstructs the scientific critical paradigm,31 whitewashes a theologisation of Islamic studies, and seeks to offer a rapprochement with Islamic narratives and modern ideologies on Islamic origins and identities. Yet, scientific critique continues to provide solutions for the Islamic vicious hermeneutic circle. I presented two recent examples from France and Belgium: Jacqueline Chabbi in France drawing on historical anthropology to read the Quranic vocabulary in light of the Arabian tribal imaginary while in Belgium Mehdi Azaiez has recourse to biblical material to inscribe Quranic polemics in the Jewish-Christian religious polemics. In both cases, we gain insights that explain Islamic traditions as formations in religious and social history,32 thus escaping the vicious hermeneutic circle.

Bibliography Agai, Bekim, “Introducing Islamic Theological Studies at German Universities: Secular Expectations and Epistemic Rearrangements,” Toronto Journal of Theology 31 (2015): 181–195. Ahmad, Irfan, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017). al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʻfar Muḥ ammad, Jā miʻ al-bayā n fī tā’wīl ā y al-Qurʾā n, edited by ʻAbd Allāh ibn ʻAbd al-Muḥ sin al-Turkī (al-Riyāḍ: Dār ʻĀ lam al-Kutub, 2015). Arberry, Arthur John, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Arkoun, Mohammed, “Contemporary Critical Practices and the Qurʾān,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001), Vol. 1, 412–431. Azaiez, Mehdi, Le contre-discours coranique (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).

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For a recent example of ideological critique, see: Ayesha Chaudhry, “Islamic Legal Studies: A Critical Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law, ed. Anver M. Emon and Ahmed Rumee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 5–44. Chaudhry claims at page 29 of her paper that “there is no reason that Arabic should be a necessary prerequisite for scholarship on Islam and Muslims. Most Muslims do not speak Arabic, nor see the Quran as an authoritative legal text, nor live lives structured by Islamic laws, or what they believe to be Islamic laws.” This amounts to saying that English is not necessary to study English literature, and such a statement is of course self-defeating. See also the reply to Chaudhry by Sohaira Siddiqui in: Sohaira Siddiqui, “Good Scholarship/Bad Scholarship: Consequences of the Heuristic of Intersectional Islamic Studies,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88 (2020): 142–174. Russell T. McCutcheon, “Redescribing ‘Religion’ as Social Formation: Toward a Social Theory of Religion,” Studies in the History of Religions 81 (1998): 51–72.

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Azaiez, Mehdi, “Enseigner la théologie islamique: la fécondité des méthodes critiques,” in L’enseignement universitaire de la théologie musulmane: perspectives comparatives, ed. Francis Messner and Moussa Abou Ramadan (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2018), 163–176. Caeiro, Alexandre and Stefanidis, Emmanuelle “Religion, History, Ethics: Rethinking the Crisis of Western Qur’anic Studies,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Bristol: Equinox, 2018), 69–97. Chabbi, Jacqueline, Les trois piliers de l’islam: lecture anthropologique du Coran (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2016). Chaudhry, Ayesha, “Islamic Legal Studies: A Critical Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law, ed. Anver M. Emon and Ahmed Rumee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 5–44. Crone, Patricia and Cook, Michael, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Crone, Patricia, Islam, The Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, edited by Hanna Siurua, Vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Engelhardt, Jan Felix, “On Insiderism and Muslim Epistemic Communities in the German and US Study of Islam,” The Muslim World 106 (2016): 740–758. Hoyland, Robert G., In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014). Hughes, Aaron W., Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (London: Equinox, 2007). Hughes, Aaron W., Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (London: Equinox, 2012). Hughes, Aaron W., Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception (Sheffield: Equinox, 2015). Lincoln, Bruce, “Theses on Method,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (2005): 8–10. McCutcheon, Russell T., “Redescribing ‘Religion’ as Social Formation: Toward a Social Theory of Religion,” Studies in the History of Religions 81 (1998): 51–72. McCutcheon, Russell T., Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). McCutcheon, Russell T., “The Meaning and End of Scholarship on Religion,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Bristol: Equinox, 2018), 201–223. Sayyid, Salman, “I Want my Discipline Back,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Bristol: Equinox, 2018), 43–66.

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Segovia, Carlos A., “Identity Politics and Scholarship in the Study of Islamic Origins: The Inscriptions of the Dome of the Rock,” in Identity, Politics and the Study of Islam: Current Dilemmas in the Study of Religions, ed. Matt Sheedy (Bristol: Equinox, 2018), 98–118. Siddiqui, Sohaira, “Good Scholarship/Bad Scholarship: Consequences of the Heuristic of Intersectional Islamic Studies,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88 (2020): 142–174.

Index ʿAbduh, Muḥammad 145, 146 Abu-Lughod, Lila 213, 214 Abu-Zayd, Nasr 34, 36, 41 agency XI, 7, 116, 119, 121, 141, 159, 169, 171, 187–189, 191, 193, 201, 214, 216–221, 225, 227, 249 Aḥmad Zakī Pasha 147, 152 anthropology of Islam 220, 221, 223, 229, 270, 280 argumentation schemes 5, 48, 50, 51, 54, 57, 61, 65–68 Arkoun, Mohammed 151, 152, 292 Asad, Talal 213, 222–225, 227, 228, 230, 235, 275, 280 authority X, 16, 29, 30, 34, 42, 43, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 65–68, 80, 121, 153, 185, 192, 218, 224, 230, 231, 235, 252, 256, 257, 271, 291, 294, 298–300, 302, 303 Azaiez, Mehdi 8, 300–304 al-Azhar 146, 273 Baqlī, Rūzbihān 56, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65 Barlas, Asma 34, 35, 39, 43, 47, 50, 55 Bauman, Zygmunt 124, 125, 131 Beruf 252 al-Baydawi 63 Betti, Emilio 95, 112 biblical material 8, 300, 303, 304 Burawoy, Michael 240–245, 247, 248, 256 Butler Breese, Elizabeth 232, 235 Canon XV, 83, 252, 253, 260 category of religion 214, 222, 229 Catholic 79–84, 88, 90, 92, 123, 299, 300 center IX, 4, 18, 19, 98, 120, 164, 170, 207, 223, 297 Chabbi, Jacqueline 8, 298–300, 304 Christianity 5, 10, 13, 75–79, 81–83, 85, 87–93, 127, 151, 222, 291, 294 church XV, 76, 77, 79–87, 89, 90, 92, 123, 124, 191, 224, 254 citizenship XIII, 8, 115, 201, 240, 241, 248–251, 256–259 classical hermeneutics 6, 95, 112 clergy 77, 85, 89

codicology 137, 158, 159 collective consciousness 116, 129 common 17, 34, 53, 66, 85, 98–100, 120, 122, 125–129, 138, 139, 149, 176, 188, 190, 205, 227, 242, 243, 249–251, 255, 256, 264, 265, 267, 272, 276, 277 comparison 4, 5, 10–16, 19, 20, 53, 59, 76, 90, 127, 222 consciousness 35, 116, 117, 119, 122, 124, 128, 129, 255, 264 conservative interpretation 42 cosmopolitan Islam 277, 282, 283 critical discourse studies 46, 49–52, 54 critique X, 2, 4, 8, 16, 48, 91, 96, 108, 216, 220, 224, 232, 242, 267, 268, 275, 291–297, 299, 301, 303–305 cross-cultural translation 85 cult 6, 115, 116, 121, 127, 145 cultural collectivity 118 Debevec, Liza 227, 229 Deeb, Lara 214, 219–221, 228 democracy XIV, 106, 108, 214, 232, 248, 266, 281, 282 Denmark XIII, XV, 7, 184, 185, 190, 191, 197–201, 203, 205, 207 Deobandi 240, 256–258 dialectical Islam 283 Digital Humanities 7, 137, 153–156, 158 discomfort position 163, 169 discourse X, XII, 11, 30, 37, 46–52, 54, 55, 60, 61, 63, 69, 104, 117–120, 122, 125, 129, 141, 213, 214, 223, 225–227, 249, 257, 272, 278, 281, 293, 301 discourses on women 55, 63, 64 Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (DİB) 115, 118, 123–125 doctrinal development 7, 240, 241, 243, 245, 247, 249–251, 253, 255–261, 263 Duderija, Adis 30, 31, 33, 38 Egypt 56, 145, 149, 218, 224–226, 266 Eickelman, Dale 217, 255–257 El Fadl, Khaled Abou 30, 35, 39, 42

308

Index

embodiment XII, 116, 117, 121, 224–226, 230, 235 emic 270, 277, 283, 285 Encyclopaedia of Islam XVI, 5, 78 Ethnocentrism 165 ethnography 7, 163, 165–171, 173–175, 177, 179–181, 183, 195, 196, 217, 240, 245 etic 272, 277, 283, 285 Eurocentrism 85, 92, 214, 274, 276 everyday life 167, 170, 185–187, 192, 216–221, 224, 226–231, 234, 235 everyday practice 186, 216 Extended Case Method 7, 8, 240–245, 247, 249, 258, 259 fallacy 53, 58, 62, 67 fiqh 33, 34, 36, 97 flexibility 166, 170, 173, 174 Gellner, Ernest 125, 131 gender debate 37 gender ideologies 47, 61, 67, 69 gender roles 46, 125, 200 gender-just interpretations 5, 29, 32, 34–36, 39 grand narratives 215, 229, 235 grand schemes 221, 225, 227, 229–231 Habermas, Jurgen 50, 232, 241, 250, 251, 258 Ḥadīth 47, 142, 144, 151 al-Haqqī 59, 60, 63, 65 Harb, Mona 228 Harman, Ömer Faruk 75, 83, 85, 88–91 hermeneutics 5, 6, 29–37, 39, 41, 43–47, 94–96, 112, 281, 296 Hermeneutics of Suspicion 30, 37, 47 Hermeneutics of Trust 5, 29–33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43–45 Hirsch, Eric D. 95, 96, 112 historical anthropology 8, 298, 304 Ibn Ajība 62, 63, 65 Ibn Arabi 56 Ibn Ḥazm 87 Ibn Kathir 54, 65, 68 Ibn Khaldūn 87, 141 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya

identity XI, 2, 51, 115, 116, 120, 124, 128–130, 164, 167, 168, 193, 198, 201, 216, 222, 229, 248, 249, 276, 293–298, 302 ideology 11, 91, 122, 205, 222, 249, 292, 294, 297 insiderism 297 institutional change 189, 191, 197 institutionalization 96, 124, 185, 188, 189, 190, 192 intention 32, 40, 42, 96, 105, 150, 170, 207, 270, 279, 283, 285 interdiscursivity 55, 59, 65, 69 interpretation IX, 3, 5, 15, 17, 19–21, 29–36, 39, 42–44, 47, 48, 50, 60, 67–69, 80, 95, 96, 98–100, 102–104, 143, 158, 166, 168, 203, 205, 217, 220, 231, 252, 254, 267, 269, 279, 284, 286, 287, 300 intersectionality 213, 214 intertextuality 54, 55, 59, 68, 69 interview 120, 141, 165, 174, 177, 179, 195, 196, 201, 206, 285, 286 Iran IX, XIV, 56, 97, 103, 105, 142, 232 Iran’s constitutionalist movement 103 Iron Cage 185, 188, 190, 191, 194 Islam in Europe XV, 185, 186, 200 Islamdom 8, 264, 265, 267, 269, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277, 281–283, 285, 287, 288 Islamic context 173, 175–177 Islamic manuscripts 7, 137–141, 151, 156, 157 Islamic studies IX, X, XII, XIV, xv, 4–6, 8, 79, 137–140, 142, 145, 152, 153, 155, 156, 158, 248, 259, 264, 265, 267–276, 278, 280–283, 285, 287, 288, 291–298, 300, 302–304 Islamic texts 36, 153, 255 Islamicate 8, 264, 265, 267, 269, 270, 275, 276, 278, 280–282, 287 Islamophobia XIV, 293 isomorphism 185, 190, 191, 194 Jewishness 14 Jews 11, 14, 21, 22, 89, 294 al-Jilānī 56, 63 Judaism 5, 10–12, 14, 20, 79, 127, 291 Kayd

87

5, 48, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61–64, 66, 67, 69

Index laïque-laïcité 85 laity 85 lifeworld 227, 286, 287 literary public 250–252, 257–259 Lived Institution 192–194 lived Islam 3, 4, 8, 185–187, 264, 265, 267, 269, 271, 273, 275–279, 281–283, 285–289 lived religion 2–4, 167, 185–190, 192, 193, 208, 229 lived religious practices 170 Luther, Martin 76, 87, 252–254 MacIntyre, Alasdair IX, 6, 96, 101–104 Madrasa 7, 8, 170, 240, 241, 243, 245–247, 249, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259, 261, 263 al-Makki, Abi Talib 64 maqāṣid XIII, 29–32, 34–37, 40 margin 143, 148 Marracci, Ludovico 2 martyr 6, 86, 87, 115–118, 120–122, 124–130 martyrdom XII, 6, 115, 117–131 al-Masʿūdī 87, 140 McCutcheon, Russell VII, 4, 11, 15, 271, 272, 278, 291, 296, 304 mentalité 2 method 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 10–12, 16, 36, 44, 55, 75, 76, 88, 91, 101, 103, 110, 118, 137, 138, 147–151, 157, 158, 163–168, 170, 173–175, 177, 179, 180, 194, 195, 208, 215, 234, 240–245, 247, 249, 258, 259, 265, 266, 271, 278–280, 283–286, 288, 291, 292, 299 methodology XI, 7, 8, 36, 95, 113, 117, 148, 150, 164, 165, 169, 179, 202, 215, 240, 241, 269, 278–280, 285 Mevlid ceremonies 7, 163, 165, 170, 173, 179, 180 Mir-Hosseini, Ziba 29, 30, 32, 41 misogynism 30, 32, 35, 37, 39, 43, 64, 164, 176 mosque XIII, 146, 170, 185, 191–193, 195–207, 246, 247, 266 Müller, Max 15 Muslim community 40, 249, 299 Muslim minority XIII, 249 Muslimness 8, 264, 265, 267, 269–271, 273, 275–289

309 Muslims XIII, XV, 3, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 29, 31, 33, 35, 77, 78, 88, 89, 103, 106, 107, 119, 138, 141, 142, 144, 151, 152, 157, 164, 165, 169, 178, 180, 184, 186–188, 198, 205–207, 216–220, 223, 225, 231, 247–249, 256, 257, 264, 267–270, 273, 275, 276, 282, 283, 291, 293, 295, 297, 300, 304 al-Nadīm 87, 144 Naʾini 6, 94, 95, 97, 102–110 nationalism 123, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 214, 215, 220, 225, 229, 231, 267 neo-Orientalist 271 neo-Ottomanism 174 New Institutionalism 185, 188–191, 193, 208 norm 2, 175, 198, 199, 202, 277, 293 objectivist hermeneutics 6, 95, 112 objectivity 163, 169, 230, 242, 271, 272, 274 Orientalism IX, 2, 3, 16, 19, 142, 152, 158, 169, 175, 176, 267–269, 274–276, 295 Orientalist 2, 19, 78, 147, 149, 151, 157, 169, 214, 267–271, 273–275, 280, 283 orthodoxy XII, 7, 19, 146, 213, 224, 227, 228, 231 paradigms 215, 296 participant observation 8, 166, 170, 194, 240–247, 285 phenomenological method 283–286, 288 phenomenon 6, 55, 91, 118, 120, 166–168, 175, 190, 201, 213–215, 220, 221, 229, 260, 264, 271, 272, 276, 277, 279, 280, 284–287, 301 philology 6, 8, 137–139, 141, 143, 145, 147–151, 153–155, 157–159, 161, 291, 298, 303 piety 218, 219 Piscatori, James 217, 257 political Islam 6, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 271 politics of memory 125 positionality 168, 169, 175, 176 postcolonial studies 214 post-secular 241, 248, 249, 251, 257–259 postcolonialism 214 power XI, XIII, 6, 7, 19, 32, 34, 46, 62, 63, 80, 81, 97, 104, 106, 108–112, 116, 118–121, 124–126, 129, 167, 175, 178, 180, 184, 185,

310 188, 189, 191, 192, 206, 207, 213–215, 219–222, 224, 226, 230–232, 234, 235, 240, 264–266, 268, 270, 280, 295, 302 predestination 119, 122 primary sources 5, 29, 31, 34, 137, 138, 257 private spheres 221, 232 Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism 251 Protestantism 77, 81, 84, 251–253, 255 public sphere XIII, 127, 232–234, 241, 248, 250, 251, 253, 255–259, 268 Purdah 258 al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ 143 qualitative methodology 284 quantitative methodology 215 Qur’an IX, 13, 94, 99, 198, 223, 274, 296, 297, 301 al-Qurtubī 59, 60, 65, 66, 140 al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr 143 reflexivity 19, 163, 167, 169, 172, 173, 175, 176, 297 Reinhart, Kevin 3, 275–277, 282, 288 religion-based collectivity 122 religioperformativity 115, 119–122 religiosity 7, 115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 167, 170, 172, 173, 218, 230, 231, 234, 252, 270, 276 religious community 13, 130, 191, 197, 200, 204, 205, 248 religious consciousness 117, 119 religious experience XIV, 117, 119 religious narrative 294 religious norm 116, 194, 234 religious tradition XIV, 78, 84, 227, 231, 264, 267, 283 rhetoric X, 13, 121, 125 sacralization 122, 124 Said, Edward W. 2, 16, 18, 35, 40, 41, 59, 105, 107, 111, 122, 142, 169, 176, 248, 264, 268, 291, 293, 296, 302 Schielke, Samuli 218–221, 223–229 science XI, 68, 102, 108, 117, 141, 156, 159, 166, 201, 242, 244, 267, 268, 278, 286, 292 Scott, Joan Wallach 4 secularization IX, 117, 119, 120, 125, 130, 214, 217, 249 self-reflexivity 19

Index al-Shahrastānī 87 shared collective 128 Shākir, Maḥmūd 151 al-Shawkānī 63, 64 Simmons, K. Merinda 13 Smith, Jonathan Z. 1, 11, 12, 16 social codicology 159 social context 31, 118–120, 166, 220 social norm 124, 127, 219 socially-constructed 47 societal assent 6, 116, 122, 125, 126 societal culture 115, 116, 120, 121, 123, 125, 128, 130, 131 sociology of religion IX, XI–XIV, 186, 188, 249, 250, 252–254, 257, 271 socio-political norm 115 Soroush, Abdul Karim 94 spirit (of text) 36, 98 Stemma 150, 156 stereotype 164 subculture 165 subjectification 129, 193 subjectivity 118, 163, 167–169, 232 submission 116, 119, 122, 201 Sufi 56, 63, 85, 150 Sufism XII, 7, 138, 140 Sunni 5, 55, 56, 63, 68, 126, 200, 204, 205, 231 Sura Yūsuf 5 al-Suyūtī 56, 63, 65, 142, 144 system-instilled norm 116 al-Ṭabarī 300, 303 tafsīr 48–50, 54, 55, 58, 62–66 tawḥīd 34, 35, 264 textual criticism 138, 139, 142–144, 147, 148, 150, 152–158 textuality 2, 118 Theory of the Spirit of Meaning 6, 94, 95, 98–101 Topoi 51–53, 58, 61, 64, 65, 68 Tradition-Constituted Rationality 6, 94, 101 Turkey X, XI, 6, 7, 56, 77, 78, 83–85, 88, 92, 165, 170, 171, 174, 178 Turkish context 116, 121, 123, 126, 129–131 Turkish Islam XII, 115, 117, 118, 120–124, 126, 128–130 Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (DİA) 5, 6, 75, 77–80, 82–92

311

Index Türkiye X, 6, 75, 77, 78, 80, 82–91, 115, 117–122, 124–126, 128–131. See Turkey Ulama

3, 257, 277

value-neutral 10 Venuti, Lawrence 84 vernacular writing 256, 259 Wadud, Amina

34, 35, 39, 55

Weber, Max 250–259, 280 Western culture 177 Westernness 16 Winegar, Jessica 214 women-related verses X, 54 Yousefi Eshkevari, Hassan 29, 30, 34 al-Zamakhsharī 56, 59–61, 63, 65, 67 Zebiri, Kate 77

Contributors include Ali Abedi Renani, Abbas Aghdassi, Bahattin Akşit, Taira Amin, Betül Avcı, Abdessamad Belhaj, Martina Crescenti, Isabella Crespi, Meral Durmuş, Walid Ghali, Aaron W. Hughes, Brian Arly Jacobsen, Pernille Friis Jensen, Eva Kepplinger, Zahraa McDonald, Emin Poljarevic, Magdalena Pycińska, Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat, Kirstine Sinclair, and Niels Valdemar Vinding. Abbas Aghdassi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of History and Civilization of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. He has published on Muslim minorities, methods in Islamic studies, and academic Persian, including Perspectives on Academic Persian (Springer, 2021). Aaron W. Hughes, Ph.D., is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. He is the author of numerous books, edited collections and articles on Islam, Judaism, and theory and method in the study of religion.

Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 20 9 789004 536623

ISSN: 2214-3270 brill.com/smtr

SMTR 20

NEW METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN I S L A M I C S T U D I E S Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes (Eds.)

This volume draws attention to and moves beyond the traditional methodological frames that have governed knowledge production in the academic study of Islam. Departing from Orientalist and largely textual studies, the chapters collected herein revolve around three main themes: gender, the political, and what has come to be known as “lived Islam.” The ��rst involves ascertaining how to read gender and gender issues into and out of traditional sources. The second encourages an attunement to the often delicate intersection between the spheres of religion and politics. The ��nal provides a corrective to our traditional over-emphasis on the interpretation of texts and a preoccupation with studying (mainly male) elites. Taken as a whole, this volume encourages a multi-methodological approach to the study of Islam.

SUPPLEMENTS TO METHOD & THEORY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

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NEW METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN ISLAMIC STUDIES Edited by Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes