Constructing The Religious Self - New Manhaj - Duderija 2008

Studies in
Contemporary Islam
Editorial Advisory Board
Zafar Ishaq Ansari, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado, Boulder
John L. Esposito, Georgetown University
Azizah Y. Al-Hibri, University of Richmond
Ali A. Mazrui, State University of New York, Binghamton
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, George Washington University
Sulayman S. Nyang, Howard University
Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Youngstown State University
William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
Abdulaziz Sachedina, University of Virginia
Tamara Sonn, College of William & Mary
John E. Woods, University of Chicago
Editor
Mustansir Mir, Youngstown State University
Production Manager
Joseph A. Marino III
Publisher
Center for Islamic Studies
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© 2009 Center for Islamic Studies, Youngstown State University

Studies in
Contemporary Islam
Volume 10, Numbers 1−2, Spring and Fall 2008
Contents
Articles
The Redeployment of Orientalist Themes in Islamophobia 1

Kate Zebiri
“The One” Over “the Many”: A Historical Perspective on

the Pan-Islamic Salafiyyah 43
Ulrika Mårtensson
Construction of the Religious Self and the Other:

The Progressive Muslims’ Manhaj 89
Adis Duderija
Review Essay
Quelle, Qumran, and the Qur’an 121

Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui
Book Reviews
Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century:

From Triumph to Despair 131
Youssef M. Choueiri
Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman, Stereotypes and Prejudice

in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society 135
Helene J. Sinnreich
i
Daruish Zahedi, The Iranian Revolution Then and Now:
Indications of Regime Instability 137
Faegheh Shirazi
Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, eds. The New

Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy 139
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher
Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral

Competition and Ethnic Riots in India 143
Sunil Ahuja
Shireen Mahdavi, For God, Mammon, and Country:

A Nineteenth Century Persian Merchant, Haj Muhammad Hassan
Amin al-Zarb (1834–1898) 147
Kamran S. Aghaie
Ismail Adam Patel, Madina to Jerusalem: Encounter with

the Byzantine Empire 150
Amidu Olalekan Sanni
Alex De Waal, ed., Islamism and Its Enemies in the

Horn of Africa 152
Michael Wolfe et al., eds., Taking Back Islam:

American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith 155
Ahmed Achrati
Michael Mumisa, Islamic Law: Theory and Interpretation 158

Murad Wilfried Hofmann
Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam and Science 161

F. Jamil Ragep
ii
Studies in Contemporary Islam 10 (2008), 1–2: 1–41
The Redeployment of Orientalist Themes

in Contemporary Islamophobia
Kate Zebiri∗
This article aims to contribute to the understanding of contemporary

anti-Muslim hostility, focusing on a specific national embodiment of
it, namely Islamophobia in Britain. Globalization notwithstanding,
anti-Muslim discourse does vary across different national contexts
(witness, for example, the relatively strong opposition to
manifestations of religion in the public sphere in France). However,
these variations have not so far been the subject of any extensive
empirical or comparative study. Discourse cannot be properly
analyzed or understood in isolation from the context in which it
arises, and the extent to which anti-Muslim rhetoric is linked to the
concerns and anxieties of those who propagate it should not be
overlooked. Questioning the claim that is sometimes made, by
various interested parties, that contemporary Islamophobia is merely
the most recent manifestation of an age-old hostility to Islam on the
part of Christendom/the West which has existed since the very
beginning, this article illustrates some of the ways in which the
discursive content of selected themes has changed and evolved
according to the nature of the societies in which the discourse
circulates. The current article aims to make a modest and qualitative
contribution to the thematic analysis of anti-Muslimism and
Islamophobic discourse.
© Kate Zebiri 2009.

∗
Kate Zebiri is Senior Lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Faculty of Languages
and Cultures, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
1
Studies in Contemporary Islam
While the term “Orientalist” has been primarily applied to

academic production, as well as to art and literature, the term
“Islamophobia” generally applies more to popular culture, including
the media and grassroots prejudice. For various reasons, including
the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of
postmodernism, academics are now far less likely to represent
particular national interests than they were in the colonial period, or
even in the 1970s when Said wrote his seminal book;1 and the
atmosphere in the academy is now one of greater uncertainty and an
unwillingness to subscribe to metanarratives.2 Therefore, continuities
with classical anti-Muslim themes are more likely to be found in
popular culture, which is the focus of this article.
It must be acknowledged that even with the best of intentions,
it is not always easy to distinguish between “legitimate criticism” of
Islam and “unfounded hostility”;3 but as Halliday argues, it is
important to make the effort to do so.4 This is perhaps an even more
crucial distinction in an age in which some Muslims themselves
contribute to essentialist, Orientalist-style discourse which may be felt
to enhance the status of Muslims or Islam as a “threat” to the West.
Academically, and even Islamically (i.e. arguing from Islamic sources),
it is not difficult to deconstruct the link between Islam and abusive
practices such as forced marriages, honour killings, and female
circumcision, though the link may persist in media coverage and
popular discourse. However, the case is more nuanced when it
comes, for example, to punishments sanctioned in the classical
Shari’a and seen as harsh in today’s world.5 Even accepting that these
punishments are seen as valid by some Muslims, and that in a small
number of Muslim countries they are sometimes carried out, a
problem arises when the reporting of such things leads to the
1See Said.
2Turner, 27–29.
3Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, 4.
4Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, 164.
5Some of the hadd punishments (i.e. those prescribed in the Qur’an and/or Sunnah)
have been consistently condemned as cruel and inhumane by Amnesty

International. See, e.g., http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA11
0021992?open&of=ENG-AFG (accessed 04 June 2009).
2
Zebiri: Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia
creation of an essentializing discourse in which the link between

Islam and violence, for example, is naturalized through constant
reiteration and reinforcement.
Three main themes—namely gender, violence and
foreignness—have been selected for analysis because they were the
main ones that emerged from my field research; in the course of this
research, I found that even the non-verbal hostility my interviewees
encountered seemed to fall under one of these three headings. The
focus on specific themes (together with their accompanying topoi and
motifs) will make it possible to observe the various ways in which
they are constructed, their relative and shifting importance, and the
interrelationship between them. The extent to which the treatment of
these themes echoes or departs from traditional Orientalist
approaches will be of interest, as will ways in which they reflect
contemporary British and/or European concerns and anxieties, for
example about national identity.
The primary research for this article is mainly based on
interviews with British Muslim converts, but also includes some
reference to the media, which will provide useful contextualization.
Since converts are usually targeted as Muslims, this will shed light on
contemporary British Islamophobia in general. Furthermore, the
experiences of white converts (who made up approximately two-
thirds of my sample) arguably provide an opportunity to observe
anti-Muslim hostility in its purest form, excluding (in theory at least)
the ethnic/racial dimension. To put it another way, on occasions
when they are recognized and targeted as converts, it may be possible
to extricate religious hostility from racial (although, as will be seen,
the dividing line between the two may be blurred, even in the case of
white converts). The inclusion of the “grassroots” element of
Muslims’ actual experience in this article should be a useful
complement to previous research in the British context which has
often focused on newspaper coverage.6
After locating the three chosen themes in the historical context
of Christian anti-Muslim polemic and Orientalist discourse, this
article situates British anti-Muslim hostility in its sociopolitical
6See in particular: Poole, Reporting Islam and Richardson.
3
context, and briefly problematizes “Islamophobia,” both as a term

and a concept. This problematization is necessitated by the broad,
sometimes indiscriminate, and often controversial, application of the
term. The main section then draws on the findings of my own
fieldwork, in which interviewees were asked about their experiences
of hostility or discrimination.7 In conclusion, I will reflect upon the
significance of my findings, and suggest possible future lines of
enquiry which may help in arriving at a deeper understanding of
Western responses and reactions to Islam.
1. Gender, Violence, and Foreignness

as Perennial Themes in Anti-Muslim Discourse
Orientalist discourse up until the Enlightenment was predominantly
Christian-led, and the language and discursive field were primarily
religious and theological, with Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islamic
theology being the main areas of discussion. Primary concerns were
the alleged falseness of the revelations, Muhammad’s deliberate
manipulation of these, and his failure to perform miracles on a par
with those of Jesus. Daniel’s magisterial study of late medieval
Christian anti-Islamic polemic demonstrates the perennial nature of
the preoccupation with violence and sensuality. In a medieval society
in which Christianity formed the central element of individual, social
and communal identity, distortions of Islam reached the point where
“nonsense was accepted…because whatever seemed useful to faith
was thought likely to be true.”8
The rise of secular humanism in the Enlightenment period and
beyond gave rise to a reassessment of Islam, sometimes resulting in
more positive views, for example secular-oriented admiration of
Muhammad as a robust and effective leader, in contrast to Jesus’ lack
7While the general findings of that research were written up in my book British
Muslim Converts: Choosing Alternative Lives, the issue of discrimination was only briefly
touched on therein. I am indebted to the British Academy and to the School of
Oriental and African Studies for providing, respectively, financial support and
research leave which helped to make the empirical research on Muslim converts
which is referred to in this article possible.
8Daniel, 302.
4
of worldly success. However, it also led to a view of religion in

general as irrational—a view which still often finds favor in the
secular-dominated media. Rodinson provides a vivid description of
images in art and literature which appealed to the European
imagination in the Romantic period, in which the themes of
exoticism (i.e. foreignness), sensuality (usually gender-related) and
violence are intertwined:
Fierce and lavish scenes in a wild array of colors; harems and

seraglios; decapitated bodies; women hurled into the Bosphorus
in sacks; feluccas and brigantines displaying the Crescent flag;
round turquoise domes and white minarets soaring to the
heavens; viziers, eunuchs, and odalisques; refreshing springs under
palm trees; giaours with their throats slit; captive women forced
into submission by their lustful captors.9
The image of Islam that emerged in the Romantic era was not
infrequently an attractive one; for example, Thomas Carlyle’s famous
1840 lecture on “The Hero as Prophet” rejected the widespread ideas
that Islam was spread by the sword and that Muhammad was an
“impostor,” and idealized the Arabs (including Muhammad) as “a
swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men…a gifted noble people; a
people of wild strong feelings,” etc.10
The colonial period gave rise to more geographically- and
politically-oriented forms of Orientalism; anti-Muslim discourse now
embraced a new function which has been amply documented in
Said’s Orientalism: the justification of the imperial project, with a
corresponding need to show the irrationality, barbarity, obscurantism
and backwardness of Muslims and Islam (and therefore their need to
be “civilized” and “enlightened”). Ernest Renan’s famous lecture on
“Islam and Science” (delivered at the Sorbonne in 1883), depicting
Islam as antithetical to reason, progress, creativity and reform, was an
early example of such attitudes.11 In the postcolonial period,
postmodernism has had conflicting and contradictory results, its
9Rodinson, 59.
10Carlyle,
54.
11Hourani, 120–121.
5
championing of the “underdog” having a leveling effect with regard

to genders, sexualities and races and (in theory at least) giving a voice
to oppressed and disadvantaged minorities. In light of global
inequalities, Muslims may be seen as such minorities, both
internationally and in Western nation-states. The dominance of
human rights discourse offers hope to dispossessed Muslims but can
also give rise to the construction of Islam as politically repressive and
intolerant (continuing the colonialist theme of the Oriental despotic
ruler). The elevation of pluralism similarly offers certain advantages
to minorities, but it does little to detract from a secular ethos which
has scant sympathy for religious worldviews, continuing to see
religions as outmoded and patriarchal, among other things.
Issues of gender and sexuality have a high profile in both
Muslim and non-Muslim discourse on Islam. The subject of women
in Islam is highly sensitized due to the long history of polemic and
apologetic between Muslims and non-Muslims on this issue, and is
not without political implications. In the colonial period, claims that
Islam’s teachings on women were evidence of its “backwardness”
provided justification for political intervention in Muslim countries,
and the construction of Islam as “oppressive” towards women
continues to serve specific Western political interests;12 an example
would be the invocation of women’s rights issues in connection with
American military intervention in Afghanistan in recent years.13 The
gender-related discourse changed markedly over time. In the early
centuries of Muslim-Christian encounter, Islam was attacked for its
alleged moral laxity and sensuality, with accusations focusing on
Muhammad’s alleged “lustfulness” (with reference to his multiple
marriages and in particular his marriage to Zaynab), the Qur’an’s
sensual depiction of Paradise, and the licitness of concubinage and
divorce as well as polygyny. In the Romantic period, by contrast, the
harem and the seraglio became objects of nostalgia and fascination. The
increasingly restrictive sexual mores of middle- and upper-class
Victorian England gave rise to a sensual and sexualized view of the
Orient, with Oriental women being seen as objects whose purpose
12See, e.g. Bullock, 227.

13Abu-Lughod, 783–790.
6
was to offer sexual gratification. As Kabbani says of the erotic

paintings of this period: “Such portraits, in wishing to convey the
East, described more accurately, Europe. They portrayed the
repressiveness of its social codes, and the heavy hand of its bourgeois
morality.”14 More recently, with the rise of feminist ideas in Western
societies, the “oppression” of Muslim women has become a favoured
theme, even more so in the postcolonial than in the colonial era.
The theme of violence has been no less persistent than gender-
related themes in anti-Muslim discourse, though the reasons for its
prominence have changed. For early Christians, the idea that Islam
was “spread by the sword” (and the accompanying idea of
Muhammad and Muslims as “bloodthirsty”) was significant because it
contrasted so markedly with the Christian ideal model of Jesus, who
did not engage in military activity. At certain points of the history of
Muslim-Christian relations, various parts of Europe were in fact
under threat from Muslim military expansion, the main crisis points
being Muslim incursions into Southern Europe in the eighth century,
the capture of Constantinople in the fifteenth and the siege of Vienna
in the sixteenth. However, once subjugated by Western colonialist
expansion Muslims were seen as rather less threatening and other
themes, such as those of irrationality and backwardness, took
precedence over that of violence, though the latter did not
completely disappear. In recent decades, the alleged violence of Islam
is related to the rise of political Islam and, latterly, Jihadist activism
and so-called “Islamic terrorism.”
Foreignness, in a sense, stands for Otherness in general – the
perception of an alien culture, values, way of life etc. Inevitably, it is
constructed differently in a world of nation-states than it was in
former times. In the early centuries of Muslim-Christian/European
encounter, foreignness/Otherness was usually constructed in
religious terms, with Islam being viewed as heretical or as a harbinger
of the apocalypse, for example.15 If nineteenth-century Romanticism,
inspired by the tales of travelers such as Richard Burton and Charles
Doughty, constructed an exotic and alluring vision of the Orient
14Kabbani, 85.
15Zebiri, Muslims and Christians Face to Face, 188.
7
(which has not wholly died out), twenty-first-century nations in the

West are more concerned with issues of national identity,
immigration and social cohesion. In recent decades – at least in the
British context – racial and ethnic markers have decreased in
importance as color racism has ceased to be acceptable; but a cultural
racism which emphasizes the “foreign values” of Muslims has, if
anything, increased.
2. Islamophobia in the British Context

Unlike other parts of the world, Europe has a long history of conflict
with Islamic polities, and this has clearly influenced the development
and evolution of its views of Islam. While not denying the impact of
distant events on shaping the discourse, I would suggest as a general
rule that the more recent the event, the greater its impact on
contemporary views. To risk stating the obvious, imperialism is rather
more important in the scheme of things than the Crusades. Halliday
points out that British imperial history differs from that of France,
both in terms of its general impact on national identity (imperialism
being more formative in the case of France), and in terms of the role
played by Muslims (again, being rather more significant in the case of
France). Britain’s most difficult encounters were with non-Muslim
groups such as Hindu mutineers and Irish Catholic republicans rather
than with Muslims.16 Similarly, Winter argues that British national
identity differs from many of its European counterparts in that it
lacks a history of self-construction against an Islamic rival, and that
British xenophobia has been directed more against others than
against Muslims.17 Events of the past few decades such as the 1973
OPEC oil price rises, the Iranian hostage crisis, the ongoing Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, and more recently 9/11, while important globally
and having some influence on British views, have been relatively
more significant for American perceptions of Islam.18 The July 2005
London bombings notwithstanding, the above considerations, taken

17Winter, 7–12.
8
together with Britain’s recent history of multiculturalism, may mean

that a less contentious view of Islam prevails in Britain, as compared
to France and the US.
One incident which has had particular resonance in Britain
occurred at the end of the 1980s; the Rushdie Affair gave a new
impetus to anti-Muslim hostility in Britain. The events surrounding
this affair marked a shift from race and ethnicity to religion as the
core element not just in British Muslim identity, but also in anti-
Muslim hostility, which was now increasingly expressed in religious
rather than racial terms. Widely circulated (and sometimes staged)
images of bearded, robed, foreign-looking Muslims demonstrating
and burning books contributed to a view of Islam and Muslims as
anti-modern, repressive, intolerant, and obscurantist; and the
protestors appeared to be challenging one of the most cherished
values of contemporary Western societies: freedom of speech.
Equally importantly, by bringing religion into the public sphere they
were going against the model of European modernity, whose
trajectory over the course of the past two or three centuries had been
in the opposite direction. More recently, the Danish cartoons affair
has given fresh impetus to the above stereotype, with violent
overtones being conveyed by the widely disseminated images of
placards bearing threatening and bloodthirsty messages, ostensibly in
defense of Islam and its prophet.
The term “Islamophobia” is increasingly used to refer to
religiously-motivated hostility directed at Muslims. It was popularized
in Britain by the publication in 1997 of the Runnymede Trust’s report
entitled Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, and it became more
widely accepted in Europe as a whole after the publication of the
EUMC (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia)
Islamophobia reports of 2001 and 2005.19 In general, it has become
more prominent in public discourse since 9/11. The Runnymede
Trust report concluded that Islamophobia was a pervasive feature of
British society and that media reporting on Muslims and Islam was
19See Cesari.
9
biased and unfair.20 In 2002, the EUMC reported that there was a real
possibility of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism becoming acceptable
in European society.21 The far right, both in Europe generally and in
Britain, have in the last few years begun focusing on religion rather
than just race, often singling out Islam.22
Muslims have been particular targets for hostility in recent years
for a number of reasons. In the wake of 9/11 and the July bombings,
more questions have been raised about their commitment to core
European values such as democracy and gender equality, and there
has been a new emphasis on social cohesion, with the blame for lack
of integration sometimes being placed on Muslims rather than on
racism and discrimination.23 Exacerbating factors have included
recent UK foreign policy, and the fact that a high proportion of
asylum-seekers and refugees are Muslims.
Modood sees anti-Muslim prejudice as a form of cultural
racism, and uses the term “Islamophobia” interchangeably with other
terms such as “anti-Muslimism” and “Muslimophobia.” He describes
cultural racism as a “two-step racism . . . with colour racism being
the first step.” In other words, culturalism combines with color
racism in a sort of “double whammy” which can be particularly
potent (as with the combination of nationalism and racism);24 this is
to be understood in light of the fact that two-thirds of British
Muslims are of South Asian descent. Modood maintains that
“Muslimophobia is at the heart of contemporary British and
European cultural racism.”25 His description of the way in which
20The follow-up report in 2004, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, found that
while there had been some improvements, levels of anti-Muslim prejudice had
increased in certain quarters.
21Anwar, 31.
22Chris Allen, 54. There have also been some positive developments in the wake of
9/11, such as a new openness in some sections of the media (and generally
responsible reporting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), new opportunities for
dialogue between Muslims and government, and new Muslim initiatives to combat
extremism. See Hussain, 125–126.
23Tariq Modood, “Foreword,” viii.
24Idem, Multicultural Politics, 8.
25Ibid., 37.
10
cultural racism operates more than hints at why Muslims should

suffer from it to a greater degree than most:
Racialized groups that have distinctive cultural identities or a

community life defined as “alien,” will suffer an additional
dimension of discrimination and prejudice. The hostility against
the non-white minority is likely to be particularly sharp if the
minority in question is sufficiently numerous to reproduce itself as
a community and has a distinctive and cohesive value system that can be
perceived as an alternative, and a possible challenge, to the norm…Cultural
racism is likely to be particularly aggressive against those minority
communities that want to maintain, and not just defensively, some
of the basic elements of their culture or religion and if, far from
denying their difference (beyond the color of their skin) they want
to assert this difference in public and demand to be accepted just as
they are. [My emphasis.]26
As mentioned above, in view of the controversy surrounding

“Islamophobia,” any in-depth discussion of it needs to problematize
it as a term and, equally importantly, as a concept. Even the
Runnymede Trust report which led to its popularization and
acceptance in the British context concedes that the term is “not
ideal,” but justifies its use on pragmatic grounds: “because there is a
new reality which needs naming: anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so
considerably and so rapidly that a new item in the vocabulary is
needed so that it can be identified and acted against.”27 The term
“Islamophobia” is problematic not least because it applies to a very
diverse set of phenomena, including many different forms of
discourse (e.g., journalistic, literary, vernacular) and different types of
action. The Runnymede Trust report lists different ways and contexts
in which Islamophobia may operate: exclusion (e.g., from
government or employment), violence (including verbal abuse),
prejudice (e.g., in the media or everyday conversation) and
discrimination (e.g., in employment practices or the provision of
services).28 It could be argued that its usage has become too broad
26Ibid., 38–39.
27Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, 4.
28Ibid., 12.
11
and generalized to have much explanatory value. The fact that, like
the term “fundamentalist,” it is often used uncritically and seldom
problematized, only adds to the difficulties.
Controversy over the term “Islamophobia” turns on at least
three different axes. Firstly, and most straightforwardly, there is
discussion of the relative merits of this term as opposed to
alternatives such as “anti-Muslimism” (with some fearing that
widespread use of the term “Islamophobia” may lead to restrictions
on criticism of Islam or on academic freedom in the study of Islam).
Secondly, there is disagreement over the extent to which it is valid or
helpful to treat Islam and Muslims as a special case, as opposed to
subsuming them under a more general category such as “cultural
racism.” Thirdly, and related to the second axis, there is a debate over
the extent to which it is helpful to promote “Islamophobia” as a
centrally organizing concept which informs and shapes the
opposition to hostility and discrimination against Muslims. Some
point to the danger of promoting a “victim mentality” or to the
inevitable backlash when one group is seen as receiving special
treatment. The second axis is the most relevant to the present
discussion, since the view of Islam as a special or unique case often
goes hand-in-hand with the belief that anti-Islamic prejudice is a
perennial, entrenched phenomenon and that Orientalist modes of
discourse are relatively constant over time. This stance is all the more
powerful because it reflects vested interests: a Huntingtonian view of
divisions along cultural fault-lines can be used to justify certain
foreign and domestic policies, but it is also convenient for Muslim
leaders who wish to enhance their own position by invoking threats
and stirring up hostility.
Those who see anti-Muslim feelings as being engrained in the
Western psyche tend to underestimate the importance of contingent
factors while overemphasizing the importance of Islam as an
explanatory factor. They also tend to downplay or ignore the fact that
both historically and in the present, other foes such as Jews, gypsies
or rival Christian sects, have been equally demonized at different
times.29 In relation to the portrayal of “folk devils” in the media,
29See Joseph.
12
Muslims can be seen as just one in a long line which has included,
among other things, punks, welfare scroungers, teenage mothers,
gypsies and travelers, and different groups of immigrants.30 Halliday
cautions against exaggerating the continuity between the medieval
and the contemporary polemic, arguing that focusing on contingent
causes is more conducive to change than attributing hostility to
entrenched historical positions.31 It is clear from the thematic
overview above that although anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic sentiment
may have existed to varying degrees through the ages, its discursive
content has changed dramatically according to the historical context.
The media is arguably one of the most powerful driving forces
of anti-Muslimism in Britain. For most non-Muslim Britons, the
media is the primary source of information about Islam and Muslims;
and Poole’s research shows a close correspondence between
representations of Islam in the press and public opinion.32 The 2007
report commissioned by the then Mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone, The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and
the UK Media, found a prevailing view that “there is no common
ground between the West and Islam, and that conflict between them
is accordingly inevitable.”33 The overall picture in the media is that
globally, Islam is “profoundly different from, and a serious threat to,
the West, and that within Britain Muslims are different from and a
threat to ‘Us.’”34 Muslims are depicted as “challenging ‘our’ culture,
values, institutions and way of life.”35 The report, which examined
press material from the year 2006, identifies several components of
the dominant narrative. These include the failure of Muslims to
integrate, their unreasonable demands, their mixed loyalties and
support for extremism, their obscurantism, and the incompatibility of
their values and interests with those of mainstream society.36 Other
30The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media, 119.
31Halliday, “‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered,” 895.
32Poole, Reporting Islam, 240 and 250.
33The Search for Common Ground, xiii.
34Ibid., 18.
35Ibid., 30.
36Ibid., 103.
13
studies, notably those by Poole and Richardson,37 which focus on

material from the mid- to late-1990s, confirm the overriding
impression of the Otherization of Muslims in the British press, with
non-Muslims and Muslims being constructed as “Us” and “Them”
respectively. Both studies found that there were strong consensual
interpretive frameworks operating in the representation of Muslims,
with coverage mostly confined to a limited range of themes, and
stories selected on the basis of how well they fit in with those themes.
It may well seem that, as Miles and Brown suggest, “there is
something unique about Islamophobia,”38 in light of the fact that
currently, Muslims seem to be relatively more demonized than most,
if not all, other groups in the Western media.39 They are criticised by
elements across the whole political spectrum, being liable to fall foul
of the xenophobia or anti-immigration stance of the right wing as
well as the liberalism/human-rights stance of the left. Ironically,
Muslims received some positive coverage in the conservative press in
1999–2000 for their opposition, together with other faith groups, to
government plans to withdraw Clause 28 which prevented the
promotion of homosexuality in schools.40
3. Case Study: the Experience

of British Muslim Converts
This section is based mainly on field research conducted in 2005–
2006, but it also draws on research on the media and refers to selected
articles from the British press. It begins by providing an overview of
the type and extent of hostility encountered by the interviewees,
before focusing on the three chosen themes. This overview will serve
to highlight the gender imbalance in terms of degree and frequency
of hostility encountered, and to show that ideas and concepts related
37For details, see fn. 5 above. Poole has also published a follow-up article dealing
with more recent developments: “The Effects of September 11 and the War in Iraq
on British Newspaper Coverage,” in Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson, eds.,
Muslims and the News Media, 89–102.
38Miles and Brown, 164.
39Poole, Reporting Islam, 252.
40Poole, “The Effects of September 11,” 100.
14
to the three themes may be “in the air” even when not expressed
verbally.
On beginning my research I anticipated that the nature of the
hostility encountered by converts would be broadly similar to that
encountered by born Muslims, with the possible added dimension of
“betrayal” – whether cultural, political or racial - when they are
targeted as converts to Islam. While discourse related to foreignness
(e.g., “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”) could be
expected to be less prominent, at least in the case of white converts, I
expected that there could be an element of “racism by proxy,” as
described by Franks.41 She found that some of her white Muslim
respondents experienced racial abuse; she explains this with reference
to the fact that these Muslims are “linked by association” with
Pakistani or South Asian Muslims.42 She suggests that converts are of
particular interest in this context: “As white Muslims in Britain,
located at the intersection of religious and ‘racial’ boundaries, their
experience of wearing the hijab in a liberal democracy draws attention
to the issues of religious tolerance and discrimination.”43
4. Methodology
In all, thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted
between August 2005 and July 2006.44 Potential interviewees were
contacted mainly through snowballing and convenience sampling,
and some effort was made to ensure a spread which reflected the
makeup of British converts as a whole (insofar as this is known) in
terms of gender, age, ethnic background, and Islamic orientation. The
interviewees comprised twenty women and ten men (possibly
corresponding to the male-female ratio among British converts
generally, though this is not known for sure), between the ages of 19
and 59, with an average age of 34. The length of time that they had
41Franks, 926.
42Ibid., 922.
43Ibid., 918.
44Seven out of the thirty interviews were conducted by my research assistant, Aisha
Masterton.
15
been Muslim varied from 4 months to 28 years, with an average of

10.5 years. With one exception, the interviewees were brought up in
the UK and (in one case) southern Ireland.45 Twenty-four of them
were living within the greater London area, while six lived in small
towns or rural areas in the Midlands and Home Counties.46 Twenty of
the interviewees were white (including four Irish, two Scottish, one
Welsh and two mixed European), six were Black African or Afro-
Caribbean, one was mixed-race (Afro-Caribbean and white English),
and three were Asian. This tallies reasonably well with the probable
national profile of converts (approximately one-third black, a tenth
Asian and the rest white).47 The educational level of the sample was
above average, with just over half being educated to first degree level
or higher (including one Ph.D.). As far as professional qualifications
are concerned, the sample included three teachers, a doctor, a
chartered accountant, a psychologist, an engineer and a social worker,
although not all of these were currently employed. As regards
employment status, seventeen people were in salaried employment
(including five who worked in an Islamic context), two were self-
employed, and three were students; in addition five women were at
home with young children, and three people were unemployed.
5. The Particular Experience of Converts:

Family Reaction
The great majority of converts encounter an initial negative reaction
when they tell their family about their conversion.48 Family reaction is
relevant here because the reactions converts encounter from their
families of origin reflect the attitudes of society at large, but with the
45The exception was a woman who was brought up in an English-speaking country
and who had spent nearly all her adult life in Britain.
46Interviewee numbers were too small to be able to discern any significant regional
differences in experiences of hostility; however, several of the London-based

interviewees expressed positive appreciation for London’s diversity and
multicultural ethos.
47See Birt.
48I have gained the impression that compared to, say, twenty years ago, family
reaction is, on average, less severe nowadays.
16
important difference that parents have a strong motivation to find a

modus vivendi and retain the ties of affection. Also, a negative reaction
on the part of a parent may be partly the result of anxiety that their
son or daughter will encounter discrimination and hostility from
mainstream society. In particular, many parents are anxious about the
consequences of their daughter wearing hijab. The parents of female
converts also often harbour fears about the general position, status or
role of women in Islam. One woman’s parents, for example, were
afraid that when she got married her husband would beat her,
although when they subsequently got to know the husband their fears
were allayed.
Several interviewees felt that negative media images of Muslims
had adversely affected their parents’ attitudes; in some cases parents
insisted on bringing up political issues or even engaging in heated
debates about such matters as the Taliban or countries seen as
implementing Islamic laws such as Saudi Arabia, and, in particular,
terrorism. The conversion of a son or daughter was sometimes seen
as a sort of political betrayal; a male interviewee who had been
Muslim for fifteen years, and who felt that his relationship with his
family had deteriorated as a result, told how his family were
convinced that he was either a terrorist or a supporter of terrorism.
The “betrayal” could also be seen as cultural, as described by one
woman: “My mother, who believes European culture is the most
civilized, cannot get over the fact that I have ‘gone native’ and
adopted a ‘foreign culture’ that seems more primitive and barbaric.
She actually finds it distasteful.” The perceived “foreignness” of
Islam was also a problem for another woman; she says that her
parents were not at all happy about her conversion “because they saw
it as becoming an Indian”; her mother had told her: “You need to
come back down to earth and be Westernized.” As will be seen
below, the themes which come up in relation to family reaction are,
to a great extent, those which converts and, by implication, other
Muslims, encounter in relation to society at large.
17
6. Experiences of Hostility and Discrimination

Human experience and the reporting of it is a highly individual
matter, and this necessarily complicates any attempts at academic
research in this area. I noticed during my fieldwork that the broad
answers people gave when asked whether they had experienced any
hostility or discrimination because of being Muslim did not always
correspond to the experiences they reported when questioned in
more detail about particular incidents. For example, a person might
report that they had not suffered any hostility or discrimination, and
then on further questioning reveal that they had been sworn at or
verbally attacked in the street. This drew my attention to the element
of subjectivity: different people have different reactions or attitudes
to the same stimulus. Contrasting attitudes emerged on a range of
issues, all affecting the way in which discrimination is experienced
and reported. Compare, for example, the reported experience of one
young convert writing in to Q-News, reproduced here, with a
comment made by one of my interviewees, reproduced below:
I began practising Islam after the events of September 11th . . . I

gew a beard, put on a topi [Muslim cap] and raised my joggers
above my ankles. Since the change in lifestyle, I have encountered
one obstacle after another . . . I am 17 and have my whole life
ahead of me but what is the point of studying so hard when no
employer will hire a bearded man wearing a jubbah [Muslim
overcoat]? Is it wrong for me to expect to be hired for my
knowledge and skills, rather than my appearance? I feel like it is
just going to get worse and the only remedy is to exclude myself
from everything and just keep myself engaged in the
remembrance of my Creator.49
By contrast, a male interviewee talking generally on the problems

encountered by Muslims in Britain volunteered the following: “I’ll be
frank and say if you wanna have a long beard and shalwar kameez and
turn up for a job interview like that you might not be doing yourself
too many favours - you might need to just wear a suit for the
49Q-News, no. 352, December 2003.
18
interview at least.” The pragmatic realism of the latter, a convert of

almost twenty years, contrasts with the idealistic fervor of the former,
much younger convert who had only been Muslim for two years.
Interviewees reported a range of varying types of experience
ranging from verbal abuse to more subtle forms of discrimination
such as difficulty in getting jobs or in being promoted at work. Most
people felt that things had become worse since 9/11, and that they
had deteriorated at least temporarily in the immediate aftermath of
7/7; however, sometimes they were describing a general impression
they had gained, rather than direct personal experiences of hostility.
Not surprisingly, men reported far fewer problems than women,
whose religious identity tends to be much more visible. In fact a
relatively small minority of male converts dress in a way that is
identifiably Muslim;50 while many have beards, the beard is usually
not unambiguously Islamic. Of the ten men in my sample, nine wore
a beard, but only three of these regarded their beard as distinctively
or recognizably Islamic. Only one man habitually dressed in
“Islamic” style, wearing a robe, but because his ethnic origin was
black African, he found that people often took his attire to be
African rather than Islamic (and his “African” appearance did not
seem to evoke hostile reactions).51
Due to this low profile, most of the men were unsure as to
whether they had encountered prejudice, or whether any negative
experience could be attributed to their religious affiliation. The black
African male convert mentioned above, whose appearance was
perhaps more “African” than “Islamic,” felt that he had definitely
suffered discrimination which was racially motivated, but was not
sure whether religious motivation had also been a factor. In addition
to the visibility factor, it emerged that men were less likely to be
verbally abused than women due to the latter being a softer target.
One rather tall and well-built male convert joked about the fact that
no one would dare to express overt hostility towards him by virtue of
50Maha al-Qwidi found that all twenty men in her sample dressed in European style
(210); similarly, in Ali Köse’s study of conversion to Islam in Britain, only three out
of fifty men radically changed their dress (131).
51In addition, three of the men wore Islamic dress on an occasional basis, for
example at the mosque or Islamic events, or when in a Muslim country.
19
him being “a large, black guy.” His wife, who was present during the
interview, said that she sometimes received verbal abuse when she
was on her own, but never when she was with her husband. For
whatever reason, the types of experiences reported by the men were
largely to do with getting job interviews or jobs (in the case of those
who used their Muslim names in that situation), or being promoted at
work. One man who felt he’d been “left out of the loop” at work
commented that he never went to the pub when invited, adding: “I
may have inadvertently excluded myself.” As Modood points out,
cultural racism can affect groups which do not accept mainstream
norms, including, as in this case, those who abstain from drinking
alcohol in a social context, as well as those who choose to dress in
distinctive ways.52
The women’s experience differed markedly from that of the
men. For example, almost half of them reported definite incidents of
verbal abuse. None of the women had actually been physically
assaulted (though some knew of women who had been). Probably
the most traumatic-sounding experience reported was someone who
had been attacked by a woman in the street, seemingly out of the blue
and without provocation: “She was going with her fists as though she
was gonna punch me in the face…and then she made the sound of a
bomb.” At the time this convert had been pregnant and accompanied
by her toddler, so felt particularly vulnerable and unable to challenge
the attacker as she normally would have done. She said that she had
been reluctant to go out with her children for some time following
that incident.
Women also described more subtle forms of prejudice. Several
had noticed whispering, funny looks, or felt they were stared at when
they took on the hijab.53 One woman said that she often had people
look her up and down from head to toe; sometimes she would smile
at them, at which point they would usually look away or get
embarrassed. She compared this to the experience of people with
52Modood, Multicultural Politics, 41–42.

53Ina broad sense, “hijab” is used (among other things) to denote the female dress
code prescribed in classical Islamic law, usually understood as covering everything
except the face and hands. The word is also often used to mean “headscarf.”
20
visible disabilities: “People forget that you’re not just an object.” The
women who did not wear hijab, of whom there were three, tended to
experience the same kinds of discrimination as the men, i.e. work-
related. One of these described a similar form of social exclusion to
the man quoted above who had refrained from going to the pub with
his workmates. She had previously worked in the City, and said that
she had experienced “bullying” in the form of pressure to go to the
pub and drink at lunchtime. She had found that there was “a very
heavy pub culture, and if you don’t comply you do get the sense that
you’re not being considered one of the gang…You lose chances.”
Another woman who did not wear hijab spoke of “sarcastic
comments” at work, but ironically perhaps felt that people would not
dare to make them if she did wear the hijab (possibly an implicit
reference to new legislation against religious discrimination in the
workplace).54
7. Thematic Analysis
Gender and Hijab
This theme provides perhaps the richest set of motifs, arguments and
images, both in media coverage and the popular imagination, Islamic
gender norms being represented in much of the discourse as
challenging or negating some of the most cherished and recently-won
“Western” values of human rights, female emancipation, and sexual
liberation. While it is not surprising that press coverage is mainly
devoted to politics, violence and terrorism, themes related to gender
are given an airing whenever current events (such as the Jack Straw
niqab affair) allow the opportunity.55 Issues such as female
circumcision, arranged/forced marriages (the two sometimes being
conflated) and honor killings have periodically become prominent in
54The European Directive on Employment outlawed religious discrimination in the
workplace from December 2003.

55In late 2006, heated public debate followed comments by Jack Straw (then Leader
of the House of Commons), and Tony Blair, which strongly implied that the niqab
(face veil) represented an obstacle to the integration of British Muslims.
21
the news, and certain relationships – particularly those involving a

glamorous/rich/famous white female and a Muslim male – received
extensive coverage in the 1990s.56
The original Runnymede Trust report found a recurring theme
in the media representation of Islam to be “the claim that Islam
oppresses women, in ways significantly different from and worse
than the ways in which women are treated in other religions and
cultures.” Hence the preoccupation with arranged marriages, which
are generally seen as unhappy, and contrasted with “love marriages”
prevalent in Western countries. In particular, the occasion of Jemima
Goldsmith’s engagement and marriage to Imran Khan in the 1990s
provided an opportunity for some particularly glib generalizations
about the place of women in Islam, including one commentator
(writing in the Guardian) who predicts that she will be “expected to
live in women’s quarters,” and that her new life will be “diametrically
opposite to that of a Western woman.” Another laments that the new
bride “must always have one niggling thought on her mind: how
many other wives will Imran Khan take?”57
The “veil” (a term which can incorporate both niqab and hijab,
and is often ambiguous) provides a rich and endlessly versatile
symbol, perhaps the most powerful symbol of Muslims’ Otherness
and alien values. Often portrayed in the media as “restrictive and
burdensome,” it is closely related to the theme of women’s
subjugation, and is seen as something imposed rather than chosen.58
In the wake of the Jack Straw affair, the word “niqab” was added to
the existing repertoire of “burqa,” “veil,” and “hijab,” enabling
columnists to make finer distinctions between the different types of
covering. Excerpts reproduced in The Search for Common Ground show
the variety of themes which come into play. Joan Smith of The
Independent, in an emotive piece in which she declares that she
“loathes” the niqab and burqa, sees the phenomenon of female
covering as “a human rights issue”: “I can’t think of a more dramatic
visual symbol of oppression, the vast majority of women who cover
56Poole,Reporting Islam, 255.

57Islamophobia:
A Challenge to Us All, 28–29.
58Richardson, (Mis)Representing Islam, 91.
22
their hair, faces and bodies do so because they have no choice.”

Melanie Phillips sees “the Muslim veil” in even more explicitly
political terms, pronouncing it “unacceptable” on the grounds that it
is associated with “the most extreme version of Islam…It’s
inherently separatist and perceived by some as intimidatory.”59
Suzanne Moore of The Observer, says of burqas: “These garments are
shrouds, they stop the wearer from living a full life,” adding: “That
goes for Lancashire as much as Kabul.” But for her, issues of
sexuality are uppermost: “If the female body is so sinful it must be
completely covered, or if its exhibition shows the whorishness of all
women, we make all sexuality something which is women’s fault. The
idea that men can’t control sexual impulses while women must does
nothing to liberate women – or men – from the horrific round of
repression, guilt, blame and shame.”60
The hijab clearly played a significant part in the hostility
encountered by the female interviewees. When women converts
adopt the hijab, there is usually some kind of adverse reaction from
family, friends and/or work colleagues; in many female testimonies,
the family is reasonably accepting of their conversion until they take
on the hijab, at which point the attitude changes. Because female
converts are aware of this, the decision to take on the hijab is often
preceded by much trepidation and hesitation. In fact the three
women in my sample who did not wear hijab (two of whom hoped to
do so in the future) all feared that to wear it would create a barrier or
have an isolating effect. One professional woman feared that it would
adversely affect her relationship with her clients, as her work
involved dealing with families and their emotional problems: “I just
think would it be a barrier in this current climate, because people
have perceptions that you’re not going to understand my world
because you must be in a different world if you’ve got that thing on
your head.” Several of the women had felt extremely self-conscious
when they started wearing hijab, like the one who commented: “I
59The Search for Common Ground, 13.

60Ibid.,14. Ironically, she hereby reproduces the male-dominated Islamic discourse
on woman as fitnah (temptation), ignoring the female-dominated discourse on hijab
as liberation.
23
found it hard at first, everyone’s staring at you, you become

completely paranoid.”
The theme of Muslim women’s supposed oppression came up
fairly regularly in the interviews in the context of female covering.
The only woman in my sample who wore niqab full-time in public
said that she had received a lot of sympathetic smiles and comments
such as: “You alright love?” adding: “They think you’re oppressed.”
Another said of the hijab: “A lot of people think you must have been
forced to wear it because you’re married to an Arab.” A third woman
said that her friends had asked her why she had gone into “a religion
that treats women so badly.”
Women who convert to Islam sometimes find themselves on
the receiving end of a particular type of hostility, being accused of
having betrayed the cause of feminism for which women in the West
fought so hard. Katherine Bullock, a Canadian convert and author of
an academic study on perceptions of the hijab, reports that she was
told that she “didn’t belong” at an International Women’s Day
gathering, as it was felt that she represented the subjugation of
women.61 One interviewee described how her mother (who was not
particularly feminist and in fact held quite traditional values) had told
her that her (the mother’s) friends felt that she’d “betrayed everything
they’d fought for” in terms of women’s rights. English convert Huda
al-Khattab describes how after she adopted the hijab, a woman at a
public exhibition “got angry when she realized I was English and had
willingly embraced Islam. She accused me of being insane (virtually),
how could I possibly have embraced a religion which did such
terrible things to women?”62
While hijabis sometimes encounter anger from non-Muslim
women as a result of their alleged betrayal of the feminist cause, they
may encounter anger from non-Muslim men, and sometimes women
as well, for an entirely different reason. One woman had had a man
comment: “Look at the state of that, must be boiling” (a reference to
wearing full covering during the summer months). Another had had a
woman in the street remark: “Look at that for a pig’s ear.” These
61Bullock, xv.
62al-Khattab, 87.
24
comments are likely to be a reaction to the sexual non-availability of

Muslim women (if not literally, then at least symbolically – they are
not even playing the game and making a pretence of such
availability); Franks points out that women as well as men can find it
hard to forgive those who “disrupt” the “pattern of the masculine
gaze.”63 Probably not unrelated to this is the fact that several
interviewees volunteered the view that it was mostly men who
expressed hostility towards hijabis in the street.
The niqab has a rather different impact from the hijab on the
public persona or identity of the Muslim woman. According to
British convert Na’ima Robert who has written a book about her
own experience as well as that of other women converting to Islam:
“It is as if, once you put on the niqab you cease to have a human
identity. I know that the niqab is a shock to the system for most
people in non-Muslim societies – we are used to seeing so much
personal information about people around us, being able to tell their
race, their age, their physique and their attractiveness. The niqab gives
none of this information.”64 This depersonalization renders the
covered Muslim woman a blank screen on which others may project
a plethora of negative images; it also has a “shock” value. Robert
shows a keen awareness of the possible impact of the fully covered
woman on observers or passers by: “What does the non-Muslim see
when he or she sees us in the street? A relic of a bygone age? A
lingering symbol of oppression in a liberated world? A religious
fanatic? A terrorist or terrorist’s aide? An outsider, immigrant,
interloper?”65 As mentioned above, only one of my female
interviewees wore the niqab at all times when in public; additionally,
six wore it on an occasional basis. Several female interviewees
abstained from wearing the niqab when in Britain, either because they
would not feel safe, or out of fear that it would create a bad image for
Islam or be counterproductive from the point of view of da’wah (the
propagation of Islam).
63Franks, 920.
64Robert, 127.
65Ibid.
25
The discrimination and hostility experienced by women who

wear hijab is offset by the benefits and advantages – perceived or
experienced – which come from wearing it.66 Some women converts
commented explicitly on the way in which wearing hijab had
strengthened their Islamic identity or heightened their sense of self-
confidence. Some women who report a rise in self-esteem relate it to
the issue of sexuality, feeling that they no longer have to dress to
please men (or that they are taking a stand against consumerism, and
against the commodification and objectification of women’s
bodies).67 Taking these perceived advantages into consideration
highlights these womens’ agency and militates against seeing them as
passive victims of abuse; the discourse of “empowerment” runs
directly counter to common perceptions of hijab and niqab as
symbolizing the subjugation of women.
Violence
Both Poole and Richardson found that in the mid- to late-1990s,

conflict and violence were central to reporting on Islam and Muslims,
with “Muslim” or “Islamic terrorism” being a central theme; Poole’s
follow-up article, coming into the 2000s, found that this theme
predominated over all others relating to Muslims.68 Muslims in
general are routinely portrayed as a threat to security, with the motifs
of “the enemy within” or “fifth column” implicating British Muslims
in particular. Richardson identifies four main topoi which are used to
66Inthe context of Western, non-Muslim societies, the perceived advantages, some

of which are described in this paragraph and in the following footnote, are
somewhat different from those which are commonly reported in Muslim countries,
such as enhanced freedom of movement or improved employment or marriage
prospects.
67A further advantage reported by my interviewees was the strengthened sense of
belonging to a community, as reported by one woman when she started wearing

the headscarf: “There was suddenly this network of people, and suddenly there
were brothers on the tube that would stand up and give me their seat, or would
look out for me, and I would see that they were making sure that everything was
okay and it was just completely different. I just felt like, this is making me part of
something.”
26
negativize images of Muslims: the military threat posed by Muslim

countries; the threat of Muslim political violence and extremism; the
threat to democracy posed by authoritarian Muslim political leaders;
and the “social threat” of Muslim gender inequality.69 The first three
are either implicitly or explicitly related to violence.
While, as discussed below, coverage of British Muslims may in
some cases be less negative than that of Muslims globally, even prior
to the phenomenon of “home-grown terrorism” violence was
sometimes attributed to Muslims in the domestic context. An
example of this is provided by Richardson, who analyses the
representation of Muslim opposition to a bingo hall which undergoes
a name change to “Mecca.” He finds that the Muslim opponents are
consistently represented as reactionary and/or violent, the reports
being sprinkled with references to the Muslims’ “demands” (as
opposed to them asking or requesting), “violent protest,” “attacks,”
their “anger and irritation,” “ire,” and “outrage.”70
It is not difficult to find references to violence in the media
which chime in with age-old anti-Muslim themes. The first
Runnymede Trust report reproduced a particularly crude example
from an article by Robert Kilroy-Silk published in the Daily Express in
1995. After referring to the public cutting off of ears and hands in
Iraq, the article continues: “Moslems [sic] everywhere behave with
equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female—only
female—adulterers, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to
wear the chadar [sic], mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually
abuse animals.”71 His infamous article entitled “We Owe Arabs
Nothing” published several years later in the Sunday Express did not
refer explicitly to “Moslems,” but the reference to “suicide bombers,
limb-amputators, women repressors” was clearly intended to invoke
Islam, and not just the Arabs of the title.72 Evening Standard columnist
Brian Sewell argues that “Islam has always been militant; the urge to
conquer and convert began with the great imperial thrust of

70Ibid.,120.
71Islamophobia: A Challenge to Us All, 26.
72The article was accessed at http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/news/040104_kilroy
silk.html on 06 June 2009.
27
Mohammed himself.” Asking rhetorically what “Islam” will gain

from a clash with the West, he replies: “It will secure the old
certainties of poverty, disease, the suffocating conformism compelled
by the beatings, amputations and hideous executions of sharia law –
‘the will of Allah,’ as they say when children die, and ‘God is great,’
they shout when men and women, hanged for what we see as mere
misdemeanour, choke slowly in the noose.”73 The war historian John
Keegan, as Defence Editor of The Daily Telegraph, explains that the
religion of Islam “inspired the raiding Arabs to become conquerors
of terrifying power,” before drawing a direct parallel between 9/11
and “the Oriental tradition”: “Arabs, appearing suddenly out of
empty space like their desert raider ancestors, assaulted the heartlands
of Western power, in a terrifying surprise raid.”74 Thus we find a
potent mix of old and new themes combined in mutually reinforcing
ways: the initial Islamic conquests, harsh Islamic punishments, and
“Islamic terrorism.”
Given the timing of my interviews, which began the month
after the July bombings, it is perhaps not surprising that interviewees
felt that the theme of terrorism was somehow present, even if it
wasn’t verbally expressed; several commented that their families
expected them to explain or defend so-called Islamic terrorism or
political extremism. One woman said that since 7/7, “People look at
you like you are a terrorist, as soon as they see your head covering
they think you’re going to blow them up.” Another sensed “a kind of
wariness . . . Is she a terrorist? . . . There is a kind of barrier which
people are scared of Islam.” Another commented on an experience
of being stared at by both customers and staff in a bank: “I was so
scared…I actually felt that they were feeling I was a terrorist or
something.” Such experiences were more common immediately
following the July 2005 London tube bombings, but most said that
the sense of hostility had subsided somewhat fairly soon afterwards.
One woman said that she had felt uncomfortable at work after the
bombings when her colleagues were discussing the event. When a
73SeeSewell.
74SeeKeegan. Both Sewell and Keegan were quoted in Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges
and Action, but I have chosen slightly different quotes from the original articles.
28
non-Muslim colleague had mentioned that she was scared to go on

the tube, this convert had said that she too was scared: “They looked
at me in surprise, to see that I felt the same way that they did.” One
female English convert who was known to me because she assisted
me in my research on British converts was accosted in the street by a
man shouting “Muslims are murderers!”75
At times, the theme of violence is linked to the hijab. As Farhia
Thomas of the Muslim Women’s Resource Centre in Glasgow points
out, describing reactions that she and her hijab-wearing friends
encounter: “We’re either oppressed or we’ve got Kalashnikovs under
our coats.”76 Interestingly, a male interviewee who was himself very
discreet about his Muslim identity, preferring a culturally minimalist
and theologically-oriented version of Islam, echoed the view
expressed by Melanie Phillips above: “niqab is the uniform of an al-
Qaeda sympathizer…When I see women in niqab, I just think they’re
the sympathizers of the terrorists of today and the breeders and
nurturers of the terrorists of tomorrow. You don’t wear that unless
you’re committed to a hardline version of Islam which is anathema to
me.”
Foreignness
Quantitative and qualitative studies of the British press show that

although at times British Muslims are seen in a slightly more
favorable light and in less stereotypical ways, the lines between
British Muslims and Muslims globally are blurred, with direct links
frequently being made between them.77 While global Islam outweighs
British Islam in terms of quantity of coverage, there is a good deal of
osmosis between the two, for example when British Muslims are seen
as “the enemy within,” or as a conduit for the penetration of
75The scene of this happening was actually shown on Newsnight, 3 August 2005.
Aisha Masterton had been walking along the road talking to the Newsnight
interviewer with the cameras rolling when the incident happened.
76http://www.nujglasgow.org.uk/understandingislam.html (accessed 11 November
2006).
77E.g., Poole, Reporting Islam, 98.
29
“foreign” values into Britain.78 Islam and Muslims are thus still seen
as a foreign phenomenon. The permeability of the boundaries
between domestic and foreign Islam/Muslims contributes to the
sense of the Muslim presence in, and immigration to, the UK as
threatening. Indeed, both Richardson and Poole found that British
Muslims, like other Muslims, are strongly Otherized, to the extent
that they are excluded from Britishness, either because of values or
characteristics they are perceived as lacking, or because of those that
they are perceived as having (namely “Islamicness”).79
Both the Honeyford and Rushdie affairs in the 1980s had a
strong foreign dimension (pertaining to pupils’ extended visits to
Pakistan and Khomeini’s so-called fatwa respectively), and with the
rising specter of “Islamic fundamentalism” and then “Islamic
terrorism” in the 1990s, specific connections were made between
events abroad and the infiltration of Islamists into Britain (bringing
right-wing criticism of Britain’s relatively liberal immigration and
asylum policies). The link between foreignness and violence is made
even more explicit in stock images of cartoonists who, in recent
years, have depicted an enemy who resembles bin Laden – complete
with beard, turban, robes, Kalashnikov and hooked nose.80 Bin Laden
is of course just one of a number of obligingly foreign-seeming and
bellicose “folk devils,” including Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri
Mohammed.
As indicated or hinted at above, a major motif in Muslims’
perceived foreignness is their allegedly alien culture and values. A
certain emphasis on education in press coverage of Muslims,
especially in the 1990s, arose from the recognition of the key role
which education plays in transmitting cultural values and social
norms to the younger generation.81 This strand of discourse resonates
with Huntington’s famous “Clash of Civilizations” thesis. In much
78Poole. “The Effects of September 11,” 96.

79See Richardson, (Mis)Representing Islam, 152, and Poole, Reporting Islam, 249 and
259.
80Islamophobia:Issues, Challenges and Action, 17. The report explains that this enemy is
depicted not just as evil and threatening, but also as “stupid, naïve, unsophisticated,
unscientific, primitive, a figure of fun.”
30
anti-Muslim rhetoric, exclusion of Muslims goes beyond the national

context; as Miles and Brown observe, “the difference which is
imputed to Muslims is not just cultural but civilizational.”82 Poole
reports that Islamic cultural practices are seen as “restrictive and
abhorrent to a modern liberal society,” while Richardson observes
the centrality and dominance of the idea that Muslims are “barbarians
in need of (Our) civilisation.”83 Cultural difference is predominantly
seen as “cultural deviance,” and increasingly as a cultural threat.84
Thus Samuel Brittain of the Financial Times is able to contend that
“Islamist militancy is a self-confessed threat to the values, not merely
of the United States, but of the European Enlightenment: to the
preference to life over death, to peace, rationality, science and the
humane treatment of our fellow men, not to mention fellow women.
It is a reassertion of blind, cruel faith over reason.”85 As seen above,
attitudes to gender are framed as a particularly prominent part of
Muslims’ alternative cultural values.
As with the theme of violence, the theme of foreignness is
often linked with the hijab. Franks observes that the wearing of the
headscarf can be seen as “very unBritish”; one white Muslim woman
wearing a headscarf, being asked by a friendly older woman on a train
where she was from, “felt almost obliged to claim to be foreign.” As
Franks points out, white Muslims (the most visible of whom are
hijab-wearing women) are sometimes seen as “race-traitors” by white
supremacists.86 As mentioned above, for my interviewees family
reaction was sometimes exacerbated by the sense that the son or,
more likely, daughter was adopting a “foreign” culture. Some of the
comments received by the female interviewees indicated that they
were being perceived as foreigners; one white English woman was
told to “go back to [her] tent” and referred to as a “bloody Arab,”
while a mixed-race woman was told to “go back to [her] own
country.” An Afro-Caribbean woman said that other Afro-Caribbean
82Miles and Brown, Racism, 164.

83Poole, “The Effects of September 11,” 99; Richardson, (Mis)Representing Islam,
230.
85Cited in Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, 11.
86Franks, 923–924.
31
people did not see her as “one of them,” but “just as a refugee or
someone who’s just come over, she’s ‘other.’”
The assumption of foreignness was not always accompanied by
hostility. A rather less pernicious experience of women wearing hijab
was that of being spoken to slowly as if they didn’t speak or
understand English very well (and subsequently of encountering a
shocked reaction when they answered in an
English/Welsh/Irish/Scottish accent). One female interviewee said
on the subject of adopting the hijab: “You became an ethnic
minority…not that many comments but odd looks and also people
treating you like you’re stupid,” adding: “I kind of miss those days
because now you get treated like you’re evil.” Generally speaking, the
kindly indulgence and efforts at sympathy which South Asian
Muslims with their “foreign ways” may sometimes encounter (as in
Jacobson’s description of a white woman expressing concern for a
fasting Pakistani girl: “Are you feeling alright? You must be careful,
you know”)87 are less likely to be on offer to white converts.
8. Conclusions
The following description, in the Runnymede Trust 2004 follow-up
report, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, of some common
symbols in cartoon imagery illustrates the complex ways in which
different Orientalist or Islamophobic motifs are interrelated, often
intertwined, and mutually reinforcing
magical flying carpets, with their implications of exotic and

alluring irrationality; genies kept in bottles and lamps, evoking
dark, destructive, uncontrollable forces; scimitar-shaped swords,
symbolising primitive cruelty; and minarets, implying foreign and
outlandish beliefs and practices.”88
What emerged from the “grassroots” interview material (as

opposed to newspaper coverage which places more emphasis on
politics and, correspondingly, violence) was the predominance of
87Jacobson, 130.
88Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, 17.
32
issues related to gender. For non-Muslims in contemporary Britain,

and no doubt elsewhere, it seems to be issues related to gender and
sexuality rather than religious concerns in the narrower sense that
epitomize Islam’s Otherness; no doubt this is because Islamic
teachings on male-female relations are highly distinctive when set
against the norms of contemporary mainstream Western society. The
hijab provides a visual stimulus and seems to act as a lightening rod
for feelings of hostility, to the extent that it even becomes associated
in some cases with violence and terrorism, as indicated above.
Because it draws together so many anti-Muslim themes and motifs,
the hijab seems to have the capacity to serve as a focal point for
Western antipathy to Islam; in fact, the hijab or veil acts as a metonym
not just for gender relations in Islam but for Islam in general. Beattie
gives an idea of its symbolic potency and semantic flexibility: “The
veiled woman is part of the Otherness which the so-called western
man of reason projects onto his eastern counterparts, by depicting
the Arabic-Islamic world as feminized and irrational. This oriental
figure…represents seduction and threat, mystery and challenge, so
that it is very difficult to see her humanity clearly through the west’s
own cultural veils.”89 Different readings of the “veil” illustrate
opposing agendas and worldviews; while to the wearer (and to
Muslims in general) it often symbolizes piety, and sometimes
empowerment, in anti-Muslim discourse it symbolizes women’s
oppression, first and foremost.
The various issues which are commonly thrown up by the
discourse around the veil in contemporary Britain – the subjugation
of women, the insertion of religion into the public sphere together
with the removal of sexuality from that same public sphere (in both
cases going against the grain of mainstream society) - all relate to a
broader theme, that of the alleged dichotomy between the veil and
modernity. Blatant religiosity itself is seen as offensive, the more so
when the religion in question espouses values which are seen as
belonging to a bygone age (as seen in the accusations of betrayal of
the feminist cause). This is particularly highlighted in the case of
89See
Beattie, cited in The Search for Common Ground, 12. For an in-depth study of the
symbolic versatility of the veil, see Shirazi.
33
converts, who cannot simply be dismissed as having an “exotic” or

foreign culture.
One reason for the hostility encountered by women wearing
hijab is that it subverts a longstanding tradition in Western culture
which assigns to women the role of being looked at, of being
evaluated and enjoyed visually, by men in particular but also by other
women. Franks refers to the long history of female nudity in Western
art which has contributed to this, and points out that although British
society is liberal in many ways, it still has certain expectations of
women, in particular that they be “the object of the gaze.” The
refusal of Muslim women who cover to conform to this expectation
constitutes a disruption of power relations.90 While at certain times
and places the “veil” has been constructed as exotic and sensual, in
contemporary, highly sexualized Western societies, it may be resented
for its perceived repression of sexuality. The “puritanical” aspect of
the hijab/veil is reflected in Werbner’s suggestion that in
psychoanalytic terms, the fear of Islam could be framed as “the fear
of the super-ego gone wild,” with its claim to moral superiority.91
Despite the varying constructions put on the “veil,” one element of
continuity, both historically and in the present, is the Western
ambivalence towards Muslim or “Oriental” women, as seen in
Rabbani’s description of nineteenth-century European feelings of
“desire, pity, contempt and outrage,” with Oriental women being
seen “as erotic victims and as scheming witches.”92
The hijab draws reactions varying from sympathy to outright
hostility, partly according to the perceived degree of agency of the
wearer. Ironically, it is sometimes the case that the more freely the
hijab is perceived to have been chosen, the greater the hostility.
Despite the fact that freedom of choice and individual agency are
highly-prized values in Western societies, the woman who freely
chooses Islam and/or the hijab may incur anger; on the other hand,
when women are perceived as wearing the hijab out of compulsion
rather than free will, this leads to a construction of Islam as
90Franks,
920.
91PninaWerbner, 8.
92Kabbani, 26.
34
“oppressive”—so either way, hostility may be directed at Muslims as

a result. As with the issue of freedom of speech, this issue brings out
the “liberal paradox”—the difficulty liberals have in tolerating
something which they perceive as illiberal or intolerant.
Repeated references to the violence, barbarity and cruelty of the
Other clearly fulfils the function of distancing these undesirable traits
from the Self, which can then be seen as decent, peace-loving, just,
humane, and promoting human rights. The treatment of the theme of
violence is quite closely linked to contemporary global political
events; while the Iraq war did not have the same kind of impact as
9/11 or 7/7, it nevertheless raised questions about Muslims’ loyalty
(notwithstanding widespread opposition to the war among non-
Muslim British people). Werbner suggests that the Muslim as
“religious fanatic” or as “violent terrorist” is “the folk devil par
excellence of a post-modern age.”93
Despite the continual coverage of “Islamic terrorism” and
related themes in the press, in Muslims’ actual everyday experience
these issues came to the fore in the wake of particular events,
especially 9/11 and 7/7, and for the women especially, were
ultimately superseded by issues related to gender.
The theme of foreignness fulfils the overriding function of
Otherization, polarizing categories of humanity into “Us” and
“Them.” As Poole observes, “to exoticise and render the internal
Other inherently different, if not foreign, allows the Other to be
managed, and promotes a sense of national identity at the Other’s
expense.”94 She concludes that such representations are used to
justify social and aggressive policies to manage Muslims worldwide.95
While the hijab is sometimes associated with literal foreignness, but
mostly with “foreign” or alien values, the same can be said of
customs which are perceived as culturally alien, such as abstention
from alcohol and non-mixing of the sexes. Given that Islamophobia
can be seen as a form of cultural racism, it is perhaps ironic that while
93Werbner, 8. Werbner explains this with reference to the fact that this particular
folk devil negates the impulses of “consumption and individual self-gratification,”

which are celebrated in Western societies today.
94Poole, Reporting Islam, 251.
35
in previous decades media images were of Arabs (especially in the

1970s) or Iranian Mullahs and Ayatollahs (especially in the 1980s), the
“Islamic terrorist” of the past decade or two in some ways transcends
ethnicity. Having said that, even the faceless and raceless “Islamic
terrorist” is no doubt conceived of as foreign and Other in a general
sense, as seen in the racialized cartoons of terrorists resembling Bin
Laden referred to above.
Robinson’s study of representations of Islam in early modern
English literature draws parallels between the seventeenth century
and the present day, particularly in terms of the function of anti-
Muslim discourse. Describing the seventeenth century as a moment
of crisis and transformation in terms of both Europe’s self-
understanding and its understanding of the differences between itself
and Islam, he relates that the discourse of “fanaticism” was projected
onto Islam in order for Christendom to distance itself from its own
recent past of religious wars and violence; from this emerged the
discursive contrast between reason and fanaticism (then called
“enthusiasm”), between political modernity and premodern
irrationality. The role of Islam was to aid Europe in its negation of its
own premodernity, to become the name for all that Europe had
rejected in its own self-image. He concludes that today, “images of
Islamic fanaticism are again being circulated in order to provide cover
for the most radical transformations of state power, citizenship, and
the rule of law.”96
This article has not addressed the institutional aspects of
Islamophobia, as that has been done elsewhere by those who are
more qualified to do so.97 The suffering caused by anti-Muslim
hostility to individuals such as the woman referred to above, who
feared going out with her children after being accosted in the street,
necessitates an urgent institutional response. Alongside that, it is my
belief that there is a place for exploration of the deeper, underlying
psychological causes of contemporary anti-Muslimism, and the
resulting understandings can contribute, no matter how subtly or
96Robinson, 178–179.
97See, for example, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges
and Action, and The Search for Common Ground.
36
imperceptibly, to a change of consciousness. Such an exploration

could benefit from the insights provided by psychoanalytical theory
and developmental and humanistic psychology. Gilman’s work on
stereotypes provides an example of such an approach. He sees the
creation of stereotypes as linked to an early developmental stage
when the child’s sense of self splits into a “good” and a “bad” self, a
division which the child subsequently projects onto the outer world.
He concludes that “we need crude representations of difference to
localize our anxiety, to prove to ourselves that what we fear does not
lie within.”98
In conclusion, there seems little doubt that a significant factor
in understanding Islamophobia is the seemingly unusual capacity of
Muslims/Islam to resist—in terms of culture, moral values, and
religiosity—Western universalistic aspirations; Islam appears to
challenge prevailing intellectual trends of relativism and pluralism.
The rapid changes brought about by globalization, including
increasing pluralization and shifts in the international political order,
contribute to a feeling of insecurity. For Britain in particular, the end
of empire, the nation’s gradual diminution as a world power, its
involvement in Europe, migration and regional devolution have all
added to the sense of uncertainty.99 At such times, the creation of
“folk devils” onto which one can project one’s own shadow side
(unwanted or unacknowledged traits) is especially appealing. The
representation of Muslims as barbaric, cruel, irrational, backward,
repressive of women, irredeemably alien and Other, goes hand in
hand with a view of the Self – whether it be the West, Europe, or
Britain – which is modern, progressive, rational, civilized, humane
and liberal. The shadow side may also include the past Self. Referring
to Western civilization’s prolonged struggle to overturn the
domination of the Church, Werbner observes that in facing Islam,
Europe in some sense faces its own past: “Islam evokes the spectre
of puritanical Christianity, a moral crusade, an attack on permissive
98Gilman, 240; see also 17. Jungian concepts which embrace both the individual
and the collective (in particular archetypes, the shadow and the collective
unconscious) could provide an alternative approach.
99For further details, see Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain.
37
society.”100 Reactions to the hijab bring this out particularly clearly: the
subjugation of women, the covering of womens’ bodies and the
restrictions on sexuality, or maybe just old-fashioned “family values”
whereby the wife takes care of home and husband, all conjure up a
past which for some people is still a living memory. The “threat” of
Islam is perhaps all the greater because it conjures up such a recent
past.101
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“The One” over “the Many”:

A Historical Perspective on the Pan-
Islamic Salafiyyah
Ulrika Mårtensson∗
Introduction
Over the past ten years or so, Tariq Ramadan has been preaching a
message, here called pan-Islamic salafiyyah, for European Muslim
youth. This article seeks to explore this salafiyyah through a three-
stage analysis: (1) through the concepts “globalization”,
“fundamentalism,” and “Sufism,” (2) by placing it in historical
continuity with a particular Neoplatonic genealogy of “reform,” and
(3) by comparing Ramadan’s message with those of his selected
predecessors, the pan-Islamic champion al-Afghani and his own
grandfather Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Society of the Muslim
Brothers.1 The main argument is that this is a “globalized” salafiyyah,
whose proponents are concerned with the meaning and implications
of being Muslim in global society, and who use “global” concepts
from nationalism and European philosophy in order to communicate
their messages as broadly as possible.
© Ulrika Mårtensson 2009

∗
Ulrika Mårtensson teaches in the Department of Archaeology and Religious
Studies, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
1See the published version of Ramadan’s doctoral thesis (Ramadan, Renouveau
Musulman).
43
In spite of these communicative efforts, exactly what this

salafiyyah implies politically and socially is a hotly contested matter, as
the case of Tariq Ramadan illustrates. As a francophone citizen of
Switzerland, he began staking out his position as a preacher of
“reform” among young French-speaking Muslims. At that time, he
emphasized the right—even duty—of European Muslims to resist
secularism, especially in its French model, where religion is expected
to be invisible in public institutions. Unsurprisingly, he faced strong
opposition from French intellectuals and politicians. In a televised
debate in November 2003, the then minister of the interior, Nicolas
Sarkozy, challenged Ramadan to prove that he did not encourage
“communitarianism,” which in the French public debate signifies
secession of ethnic or religious groups from the values and
institutions of the Republic. Ramadan also ran into trouble with the
immigration authorities of the United States. In 2004, he was denied
residence under the Patriot Act, which made it impossible for him to
take up the position he had been offered as professor of Islamic
studies, and studies of religion and peace building, at the University
of Notre Dame, Indiana. After that, however, things improved.
Ramadan now resides in the United Kingdom where he has been
granted a fellowship at St. Antony’s College of Oxford University,
and, in the aftermath of the bombings on 7 July 2005, serves as
counselor on interethnic relations.2 In this new setting, he has chosen
British foreign policy in the Middle East, especially Iraq and
Israel/Palestine, as a topic for public debate. There is, here, a pattern,
showing that Ramadan is skilled at identifying and bringing into the
public debate what he perceives to be suppressed “Muslim concerns”
in each country: public manifestation of religion in France because
official laïque France has an issue with such matters, and support for
Israel and U.S. Middle East policies in Britain because Britain is the
closest ally of the United States in the Middle East, but has no issue
with public manifestations of religion; on the contrary, the more
religious schools, clothes, and rules the merrier. Ramadan explains
2See Buruma. Regarding the U.S. residence permit, see also Ramadan’s personal
website: Ramadan, http://www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3?id_article=155&

lang=en (accessed 6 April 2008).
44
Martensson: “The One” Over “the Many”
this not as his personal politics but as encouragement for Muslims to

conceive of themselves as citizens in the full sense of the term, which
means that they have the right to voice opinions and promote
interests that run contrary to “national consensus,” without their
being suspected of treason or fifth columnism.3
In spite of the official British recognition of Ramadan as a
leader of young European Muslims, the issue of the exact
implications of his message remains a contentious one: does he
encourage Muslims to integrate with or separate from society, to
embrace or reject liberal values and secularism, to establish “Islamic
states” in the midst of European societies, etc?4 I hope to provide
some new interpretations of Ramadan’s and his predecessors’
messages, through the three-stage analysis outlined above. I will begin
by providing working definitions of three concepts: globalization,
fundamentalism and Sufism.
Globalization
“Globalization” is here understood in Peter Beyer’s term “global

society.” Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, Beyer
defines society as communication, by which he means the act of
imparting, receiving, and understanding information.5 If society is
communication, it follows that society ends where communication
ends. Thus, if there is to be a global society, communication must
reach over the whole globe, as indeed it does, according to Beyer:
3See Bechler. On British foreign policy, see Ramadan’s article in The Guardian titled,
“Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign policy,” and
writings posted on his website under the menu “Articles,” http//
www.tariqramadan.com/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=43&lang=en, accessed 8 April
2008.
4For the view that Ramadan seeks to promote conflict between Muslim youth and
“society at large,” see, for example, Fourest. Olivier Roy, on the other hand, sees
Ramadan not as provoking conflict but rather trying to address and alleviate the
alienation that already exists among Muslim youth; see especially Secularism Confronts
Islam. In addition to these studies, numerous postings about Tariq Ramadan can be
found on the Internet.
5See Beyer, 10.
45
If, for instance, this book finds its way to Montreal, Melbourne,
Murmansk, Mumbai, Mombassa and Montevideo; and it is read
and understood there; then that suggests that the society of which
it is a component reaches to all those centres. Considering the
amount of communication in today’s world that has this sort of
reach, it becomes easy to understand how, from a Luhmannian
perspective, most of us today live in a global society. The passage
to global observation is comparatively straightforward. We do not
have to think alike; we do not have to share the same set of values
and norms; we simply have to be participating in the same web of
imparted and understood communication, something that
includes the possibility that we might be trying to kill each other.
Whatever else the destruction of the World Trade Center in New
York did, it certainly made a statement! Indeed, this horrific
example shows how, on this communicative model, society is not
a matter of solidarity or consensus, of similarity at some basic
level like worldview or sense of belonging. It is only about the
interconnectedness of communication.6
So how did this global society come about? According to Beyer,

its basic units are the modern nation states. Since these began to take
shape in Europe with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Treaty
can be designated as the “origins” of global society. By the mid-
twentieth century, a system of nation states had come to encompass
the whole world. Concurrent with the formation of the modern
nation states was the development of what Beyer calls function
systems, namely the institutions and professions required in the
increasingly differentiated and specialized national social systems,
such as law, government, economy, education, scientific research,
health care, and so on. The professions, in their turn, are based on
education systems and scientific research. From this point of view,
“development” is a question of how complex and differentiated a
society’s function systems are: the more differentiated, the more
developed. Moreover, since science and education have come to span
the whole globe, with universities harmonizing degrees and curricula,
function systems are simultaneously national and transnational: a
computer engineer from Jakarta communicates with a colleague from
6Ibid., 34 f.
46
Stockholm through their shared professional language, just as Beyer’s

book can be understood and discussed by students of the sociology
of religion from all over the world.7
Global society contains, besides the nation states, other social
systems, notably organizations and social movements. Again
following Luhmann, Beyer defines an organization as:
a type of social system that constitutes itself by distinguishing

between members and non-members. The rules, and thus roles,
that distinguish between the two establish a relatively clear social
boundary by which one can identify what communication is part
of the system. The expectations for members are different than
those for non-members, thereby lending a clear structure to the
communication of the system.8
Because organizations focus on functions rather than place in society,

they recruit members from different social strata. Thus, even while
they create boundaries between members and non-members, they
have the capacity to cut across other boundaries, both on national
and international levels.9 This is illustrated by the growing number of
international organizations, such as the United Nations, the World
Bank, the international criminal courts, and the World Economic
Forum. These organizations are social systems within the global
social system, since they are made up of one or more of the function
systems which occur on both national and trans-national levels, and
because specific codes of communication coincide with the
boundaries of the organization.10
As for social movements, they are distinct from organizations
in that they are structured not around membership but around an
issue or element, such as the environmental movement or the anti-
globalization movement. A social movement can also be connected
to an organization, as the environmental movement is to Greenpeace,
and the alter-globalization movement to ATTAC, but still the
7Ibid., 34–49.
8Ibid., 51.
9Ibid., 51.
10Ibid., 49–53.
47
movement is something else: it is a “communicative event” which

serves to mobilize people. Therefore, a movement is often
amorphous, as it has to be able to adapt its communication to
changing circumstances; when it is unable to do so, the movement
ceases to exist. It is only when a movement takes organizational form
that it may become a permanent part of the social system and
influence it in a more profound way—but then its communicative
power may also have been spent.11
According to Beyer’s model, religion is a specific function
system in global society. Like all function systems, it has its own
communicative code: it communicates by defining things as
“blessed” or “cursed”; exactly how these opposites are defined varies
from case to case. Moreover, religion can take the shape of
organizations as well as social movements. The fact that religion is a
function system distinct from others is a consequence of the secular
way of organizing modern nation states: government, law, education,
and scientific research are functions considered to be separate from
religion. Religion also becomes individualistic, a “sector” of the
individual which coexists alongside professional and other
recreational activities. And, perhaps most important, as
institutionalized religion has lost its power to command people,
religion has become a matter of choice, both in terms of religious
identity and the intensity of practice. 12
The three leaders treated in this article, al-Afghani, Hasan al-
Banna and Tariq Ramadan, all communicate through a religious code
which represents “Islamic unity” as “the blessed” and,
correspondingly, “fragmentation” as “the cursed.” But underneath
the shared code, they represent different social systems. Al-Afghani’s
“pan-Islam” is a movement mobilizing for Muslim unity and progress
as a precondition for the Caliphate to compete successfully with
European powers; Hasan al-Banna set out as a preacher for the same
cause, which, after Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida had put
their imprint on it, was formulated in terms of salafiyyah, a return to
11Here, Beyer refers to Max Weber’s concept of “charismatic authority” as
“inherently evanescent and subject to routinization” (52 f.)

12Beyer, 79–97.
48
the ideal of the pious ancestors as found in the Qur’an and the
Prophet’s Sunnah, but he turned it into a well-functioning
organization, the Society of the Muslim Brothers;13 Tariq Ramadan,
again, is (probably) affiliated with the Muslim Brothers but leads a
youth movement, not an organization. These systemic differences are
reflected in the three leaders’ messages: we find a correlation between
movement and calls for a “united Islamic nation,” and between
organization and a more pragmatic focus on Islamizing nation states.
All three leaders are well integrated members of global society.
In al-Afghani’s lifetime, the modern social systems and function
systems had set roots in the Islamic world. His pan-Islamic
movement depended on the ideology of nationalism, and on such
global function systems as mass media and growing public literacy.
This implies that the three leaders’ messages cannot be understood in
exclusively “Islamic” terms, for even though al-Banna and Ramadan
refer to their programs as salafiyyah, their messages seek to
communicate with as many members of global society as possible,
and they, therefore, used the terms most suited to that purpose. A
further implication is that the messages of the three leaders are not
reactions to a system outside of them, but are parts of a system. This
will be further explored below, through definitions of
fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism
When Caroline Fourest characterizes Ramadan as a “fundamentalist”,

she means that he advances a Shari‘ah- and scripture-orientated, anti-
secular program which sets Muslims up against the rest of society.14
Olivier Roy also defines Ramadan as a “fundamentalist,” but in the
sense of conveying an identity and a sense of dignity to young
Muslims who are second- and third-generation Europeans, and who
have all the aspirations of the middle class but still do not feel
accepted by society. Ramadan offers a way to be Muslim within
13The organizational skills of Hasan al-Banna have been analyzed in detail by
Brynjar Lia.
14See Fourest.
49
secular society, and with religious individualization as a given; he

describes reality in terms familiar to Muslim youth. But within the
secular social structure, he maps out new directions toward the “non-
secular” objective of living a faithful life in which Islamic ethics is
supposed to direct the individual’s entire life. Roy has a specific term
for this, intégralisme:
Intégralisme is indeed a form of fundamentalism, but one that no

longer concerns society as a whole, for society has been
secularized, but the believer who is attempting to live completely
(intégralement) his faith as an individual [sic]: he attempts to do this
not within the confines of a sect or a ghetto but in a process of
negotiation with the authorities and the dominant society.
Intégralisme looks for compromise but not concessions, because
dogma is never put into question. Intégralisme is the modern form
of fundamentalism, in the sense that it has integrated the loss of
the social prominence of the sacred and its individualization while
not calling dogma into question. For the believer, intégralisme
consists of sanctifying his everyday life and placing everything
under the sign of religion. Culture and society are no longer the
bearers of religious sentiment, which is based on radical individual
reform followed by the establishment of a voluntary community
of believers.15
Elsewhere, Roy uses the term “neo-fundamentalism” as the

equivalent of intégralisme. The “neo” in neo-fundamentalism signifies
that it is a development of the “old” fundamentalism, which Roy
refers to as “Islamism.” Both islamism and neo-fundamentalism seek
to convert Muslims to a life in accordance with the Shari‘ah.
However, they differ over the importance attributed to the nation-
state and territory: islamists accept the parameters of the territorially
defined nation-states which they seek to “Islamize” by making the
Qur’an their constitution and the Shari‘ah their law. Neo-
fundamentalists either do not accept the territorial nation-state as
legitimate at all (e.g., Ayman al-Zawahiri), or take no interest at all in
politics, statehood, and territory (e.g., Tablighi Jama‘at), seeking to
15Roy,79, referring to Avon, “Une réponse à l’Islam ‘réformiste’ de Tariq

Ramadan.”
50
live the Shari‘ah on an individual basis; in this, they can be compared

to “born-again” evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Both
islamism and neo-fundamentalism are individualistic in the modern
sense, since both reject the traditional Islamic schools in favor of
laymen, use modern means of communication to mobilise and recruit
followers, and address people who increasingly see religion as
something they voluntarily engage in.16
If one were to combine Roy’s concepts with Beyer’s, islamism
would correspond to the organizational social system (al-Banna and
the Society of the Muslim Brothers), and neo-fundamentalism to
social movement (al-Afghani and Ramadan). Moreover, Beyer sees
fundamentalism as a specific form of religious communication in
global society:
Most of the so-called religious ‘fundamentalisms’ are not so much

movements to preserve threatened religious and cultural traditions
as they are neo-traditional but innovative movements that seek to
establish a particular region or culture as clearly different from all
others, and above all from those in their own territories and
outside it that seek to succumb to the relativizing and even
homogenizing influence of the dominant systems.17
Communicating “Islamic difference” would, thus, be the most

significant element in the messages of both islamists and neo-
fundamentalists.
Any definition of fundamentalism must consider the matters of
scripture and interpretation. Fundamentalism is often understood to
imply “literalist” readings of scripture, in which case nonliteral,
allegorical interpretations, such as those common among members of
the Muslim Brothers, are taken as signs that they are not
fundamentalists.18 However, the assumption that fundamentalism is
“literalist” has recently been modified. As David Katz has shown in
the case of American Christian fundamentalists and the texts that are
most important to them, namely the apocalyptic ones, they interpret
16Roy, Globalized Islam, 1–99.

17Beyer, 104.
18E.g., Utvik.
51
them allegorically. They believe that history is played out according to a

divine Plan, which begins with Creation and ends with the
Apocalypse, and is to be followed by a new era where only the true
believers exist. This belief presupposes an esoteric, occult view of the
universe as a living organism, in which all parts are interconnected,
and in which individuals as well as nations have their given places and
destinies; this occult worldview is grounded in Neoplatonic
metaphysics, transmitted via European Renaissance thinkers. The
Plan is not explicitly described anywhere in the Bible, but
fundamentalist exegetes have deduced it by “coding” and “decoding”
the apocalyptic books.19 “Literalism” is, therefore, not the right word
to characterize fundamentalist exegesis, but rather the degree of truth
which fundamentalists ascribe to scripture as the repository of the
Plan: for them, it is an inerrant, “literal” truth that knowledge about
the destinies of individuals and nations is contained in scripture. This
belief appears in the thought of our three leaders as well.
Sufism
The assumption that Neoplatonism constitutes a kind of

“fundamentalist worldview” provides a link between fundamentalism
and our third concept, Sufism.
Sufism played significant roles for al-Afghani and al-Banna,20
and Ramadan declares that the heart of his message is “Sufi
spirituality.”21 Yet both al-Afghani and al-Banna were critical of
popular superstitious and charismatic Sufism as embodied in the
many brotherhoods. Being Sufi, on the one hand, and criticizing
popular Sufism, on the other, they fall in line with the Qadiri Sufism
of Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), the famous Hanbalite jurist of
19Katz, 11–47, 178–199, and, especially, 185–190.

20Regarding the formative influence of Sufi asceticism, ritual and organisation for
al-Banna and his Society, see for example, Mitchell, 2–4, 6, 214–217; Lia, 24–27;
Utvik, 143–158. On Sufi leader charisma and the relationship between al-Afghani
and Muhammad ‘Abduh, see Kedourie, 66–69; on al-Afghani’s studies of Sufi and
Shiite mysticism, see Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 8–9.
21Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, vii-viii; The Messenger: The Meanings
of the Life of Muhammad, x.
52
Damascus, who lived during the Mongol onslaught just to the east of
Syria. In 1258, the Mongols had killed the Abbasid Caliph in
Baghdad, and effectively abolished the Caliphate. In this context,
with no Caliph as symbol of Muslim unity (which, in reality, never
existed), Ibn Taymiyyah emphasized the need to unite Muslims,
across the divides of legal and theological schools and Sufi
brotherhoods, under the Mamluk sultans. In return for the
ideological support, the sultans were expected to rule “justly,” that is,
in accordance with the Shari‘ah (siyasah shar‘iyyah). This would require
a unified legal system, which would be achieved by basing jurisdiction
not on the traditions of the several schools of law, but on the
scriptures in the broader sense, that is, the Qur’an and hadith from the
Prophet and his Companions, and the rulings of the second
generation of scholars, the Followers; these first two generations
being as-Salaf as-salih, “the pious ancestors.” Reason should then be
applied to the scriptures in order to deduce legal principles. In this
way, Ibn Taymiyyah hoped to create a “middle ground” (wasat)22 of
legal science, constituted by a fusion of the three traditional
sciences—rational theology (‘aql), Prophetic and legal tradition (naql),
and the Sufi quest for insight (irada).23 The fusion involved stripping
the traditional forms of all three sciences of what Ibn Taymiyyah
termed “innovations”: in Ash‘arite rational theology, the science of
God’s essence and attributes and the doctrine of predestination; in
legal tradition, the rulings of the legal schools after the Followers’
generation; and in Sufism, Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of “unity of being”
(wahdat al-wujud). The criterion for what should be rejected as
innovation was compatibility with the Qur’an and the Prophet’s
Sunnah.24
Ibn Taymiyyah’s critique of Ash‘arite rationalism did not mean
that he rejected reason in jurisprudence; on the contrary, he came
very close to the Mu‘tazilite method of deducing law exclusively from
scripture, only he added the tradition of as-Salaf. In this exercise of
22From Qur’an 2:143: “And thus We have made you a middle-way community
(ummatan wasatan), so that you may bear witness unto mankind, while the Messenger
bears witness unto you” (Fakhry tramslation).
23Weismann, 263–265.
24Ibid., 266 f.
53
reason on scripture (ijtihad), Sufi revelatory insight (kashf) played an

essential role as a path to knowledge: Ibn Taymiyyah claimed that
Sufi insight could provide new meaning in scripture, and, thereby,
also new precepts of the Shari‘ah, although these precepts lacked the
authority to abrogate existing interpretations and precepts.25 Thus, he
retained such Sufi beliefs and practices as were in line with his general
objective of creating a scientific “middle ground” as the platform of
just governance based on th Shari‘ah (siyasah shar‘iyyah). His critique
of Sufism focused on the beliefs and practices which served to boost
the charisma of Sufi shaykhs: Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of “unity of being”
implied identity between God and man, and made the insight into
this supposed truth the goal of the Sufi path, while the miracles
performed by the shaykhs of certain brotherhoods equally made them
appear to possess the supernatural powers associated with God, and
which He used to give signs of prophethood to the prophets.26 One
may speculate about the rationale for this critique; certainly it is
related to Ibn Taymiyyah’s elevation of unity as First Principle, on the
scientific level through the “middle ground” platform (wasat), and
politically through unity under the sultan’s authority. The existence of
different schools is in itself divisive, just as the Sufi shaykhs were
sources of charismatic authority alongside the sultan. Needless to say,
the idea of dismantling the disciplines put Ibn Taymiyyah in
opposition to the majority of scholars and Sufi shaykhs. This, in turn,
made the idea of siyasah shar‘iyyah unpalatable to the sultan, in spite of
its underlying intent to strengthen the sultan’s power, since it would
antagonize powerful groups to the palace.
In spite of Ibn Taymiyyah’s failure to gain acceptance for his
program of “unification,” the idea lived on among his Hanbalite
followers in Baghdad and Damascus. In the eighteenth century, as
the Ottoman Empire gradually lost its European territories, and as
European powers and trading companies made their way to India and
Indonesia, Ibn Taymiyyah’s ideas of Muslim unity against an external
enemy gained a broader following, through two quite different
movements: The so-called “Wahhabi” school, which emerged in the
25Ibid., 267.
26Ibid.
54
early eighteenth century and gained a foothold in southern Iraq and

the central Arabian Peninsula; and the Indian branch of the
Naqshbandiyyah brotherhood from Shah Wali’ullah of Delhi (d.
1763). Both advocated unity on the basis of the Prophet’s Sunnah.
But while the Wahhabis took this approach in the extreme direction
of declaring all who held that scripture must be interpreted through
the exercise of reason (ijtihad) as “idolaters” (i.e., all other scholars),
the Indian Naqshbandis remained closer to Ibn Taymiyyah, favouring
ijtihad over literalism.27 Shah Wali’ullah gave to the principle of
“return to scripture” a specific, esoteric twist: instead of having the
traditional Sufi murshid (guide) as the passage to God (which, in itself,
gave rise to “diversity” as opposed to the sought-after “unity”), the
Sufi disciples should make the Prophet himself their murshid to God,
and thereby experience the same kind of revelation that the Prophet
had experienced. This was the tariqah Muhammadiyyah, which would
serve to unite all Muslims on the basis of the Prophet’s Sunnah,
present in the hadiths.
The same concept, tariqa Muhammadiyya, was propounded by
the Moroccan Ahmad b. Idris (d. 1837), follower of the Shadhiliyyah
tariqah and teacher in Makkah around the beginning of the nineteenth
century; he, too, saw the problem of law schools and brotherhoods as
one of diversity and the elevation of jurists and murshids above the
Prophet.28 Among Ibn Idris’ writings is the short treatise The Alchemy
of Certitude in the Desirous among the God-fearing (Kimiya al-Yaqin fi
Mushawwaq al-muttaqin). It treats the different experiential stages
(maqamat) of certitude which the Prophet embodied, focusing
especially on the God-fearing: only those who fear God can reach
certainty because they know that it is only from Him that they derive
their sustenance (rizq); hence they are free to pursue truth and justice
in legal rulings as goods in themselves, without worrying about
whether they can make a living out of it.29 This experience granted
the jurist the moral independence of human power structures that
was necessary for the pursuit of justice. The way to this goal was by
27Ibid.,
268–270.
28Sedgwick,The Heirs, 10–16.
29Bernd Radtke et al.
55
living in a state of permanent actual union with the Prophet himself,

by envisioning him and entering the state of eternity, where mundane
time and place are suspended; thus the murid could meet the Prophet,
and, through him, God.30 To attain this, Ibn Idris assigned special
practices of envisioning the Prophet.
Another of Ibn Idris’ specialities was al-‘Azimiyyah, “the prayer
to the Almighty (al-‘Azim).” The first lines describe a light which
emanates from God, and which is the power that sustains the
universe:
By God’s Name The Merciful and Compassionate: Mighty God, I

ask you by the light (emanating from) the face of God the
Almighty (al-‘Azim), which fills the corners of the throne of God
the Almighty, and which upholds the kingdoms of God the
Almighty; that you pray for our Master Muhammad, (he who
possesses) the capacity of the Almighty, and for the family of the
prophet of God the Almighty . . . 31
The ‘Azimiyyah became popular with Ibn Idris’ disciples, obviously,

but also with the ‘Alawiyyah, a tariqah from Hadhramawt, which held
the Prophet’s cousin ‘Ali b. Abi Talib to be the spiritual guide. In the
following story from the ‘Alawiyyah, Ibn Idris’ prayer is said to
contain the divine light itself:
One day, an ‘Alawi shaykh who was travelling with some

companions passed another caravan. He insisted on stopping the
other caravan and on opening the saddle bag of a slightly
surprised old man. Inside he found some clothes and a piece of
paper, on which was written the ‘Azimiyya. “Ah,” he said, “I
wondered where that strong light was coming from.”32
As Sedgwick points out, apart from the ‘Azimiyyah and some

recitations, most of Ibn Idris’ teachings and concepts related to the
tariqah Muhammadiyyah were found also among other preachers of the
30Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 12.

31Photocopied Arabic text on the title page in Sedgwick, The Heirs.
32Cited in Sedgwick, Saints and Sons, 18, referring to interview with ‘Alawi Hasan al-
‘Attas.
56
same cause.33 But they also appear in Twelver Shi‘ite thought. The
Shi‘ites, too, were struggling with the same questions related to
religious authority, and in a politically turbulent context: by the
beginning of the nineteenth century, Shi‘ism had sustained great
losses at the hands of the Wahhabis in eastern Arabia, Sunnite
Afghans in Iran, and Russian and English power politics. In the
writings of the Twelver Shi‘ite shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i (d. 1826) from
Bahrayn, the symbols of alchemy and the divine light, and the
significance of visions, all appear. The ideas have a long past in Shi‘ite
gnosis (‘irfan), but al-Ahsa’i gave them a new twist. Like Ibn Idris, al-
Ahsa’i did not assume the traditional role of shaykh because he, on
principle, rejected the notion of some humans being closer to God
than others. Yet the hearts of some men, notably the shaykh of each
age, were repositories for the light emanating from the occult Twelfth
Imam, who, in turn, was the prism through which the divine light
was refracted. According to Juan Cole, al-Ahsa’i broke with
traditional Shi‘ite legal thought, even in its illuminationist forms,
because singling out the individual shaykh as the repository of the
divine light is more in line with Sufi concepts of authority, notably
the Shi‘ite Ni‘matullahi tariqah, which had just emerged and become
very popular. The idea is similar to Ibn Idris’ belief that, in the state
of waking union with the Prophet, he himself became a repository of
God’s light. The difference is that, while Ibn Idris thought that this
state could be taught to others, al-Ahsa’i limited it to the shaykh, that
is, himself.34
Because of his self-acclaimed role as a savior of some sort, al-
Ahsa’i was, after his death, acclaimed as founder of the Shaykhi
movement. In a study of his cosmology, Juan Cole points out that,
much like contemporary postmodernists, al-Ahsa’i conceived of the
world as constituted in written language.35 Al-Ahsa’i assumed, in
Neoplatonic fashion, that there was an immediate, organic
relationship between the written Arabic alphabet, as revealed in the
33Ibid., 18.
34Regarding Ibn Idris on this matter, see ibid., 24; on al-Ahsa’i, see Cole, “Shaykh
Ahmad al-Ahsa’i on the Source of Religious Authority.”
35Cole, “The World as Text,” 145–163.
57
divine Qur’an, and the substance of reality. Because of this

relationship, the Qur’an contains in its letters the fate of each human
and his or her sustenance (rizq). It also follows from the assumption
about a relationship between the text and reality that a new reading of
the text can produce a new social and political reality, which, in fact,
was what al-Ahsa’i envisioned. Thus, he shared with Salafi reformers
the idea that sociopolitical change required a return to scripture. But
there was more to it than that. In Neoplatonic thought, the highest
principle is the principle of the One, the true reality; as Cole puts it:
The contours of this linguistic cosmology are delineated by two

sets of poles, simplicity and complexity, and immateriality versus
materiality. The One is simple, and simplicity is superior in
Muslim Neoplatonism to manyness. The One is ideal rather than
gross and material, and the ideal is superior.36
This is, presumably, the metaphysics underlying the idea proposed by

Ibn Taymiyyah as well as the later Sufi “reformers,” namely, that, in
order to change reality, one must “return to the One” and the ideal
from a spiritual and intellectual exile in complexity and materiality. In
the reformers’ vision, the One is identified with the text of the
Qur’an, while “complexity” refers to the many disciplines, schools of
law and theology, and Sufi brotherhoods. Since the One is the ideal,
it follows that the many represent devolution, not evolution in the
positive sense. This is the theological counterpart to the political call
for unity around the head of state. But it also works independently of
states, for the idea of uniting the Muslims on the basis of scripture
can be made independently of existing states, as illustrated by
neofundamentalism.
The conclusion is that the Neoplatonic metaphysics and
hermeneutics found in Sufism are needed as prerequisites if we are to
interpret “fundamentalism” as a call to return to scripture aimed at
achieving sociopolitical unity as a precondition for defense against
external enemies. This “fundamentalist” approach is “blessed One”
and “cursed Many.” The belief has no necessary relation to
violence—for example, Shah Wali Allah, Ibn Idris, and al-Ahsa’i
36Ibid., 156 f.
58
tolerated the many without excluding them from the faith; but the
“Wahhabis” carried out violent campaigns, as they excluded “the
many” from Islam. Al-Afghani, al-Banna and Ramadan all fall within
the first category. They are open to Western ideas and to political
alliances with non-Muslims, and, thus, they are in line with Olivier
Roy’s characterization of neofundamentalists: they do not live
“within the confines of a sect or a ghetto but in a process of
negotiation with the authorities and the dominant society,” and,
therefore, they look for “compromise but not concessions, because
dogma is never put into question.”37 The central dogma is the belief
that the Qur’an as scripture is the repository of the One, which is the
source of complex reality, and that scripture must, therefore, be the
point of reference for all human action, individual as well as social
and political. This is also intégralisme, the belief that all aspects of life
go back to the One as true reality. While this approach can, as in the
case of Tariq Ramadan’s message, focus on the individual’s life as the
unit to be integrated, focus can equally well be enlarged to society, as
in al-Banna’s thought; the difference is quantitative, not qualitative.
Both challenge the concept of religion as a distinct function system.
From the believer’s point of view, the distinction between religious and
nonreligious is unreal, because reality is the One. Put in terms of the
popular idiom of “religion and politics”: if the ideal One is “religion,”
then religion is all of reality.
In the following, the definitions furnished so far will be applied
to al-Afghani, al-Banna and Ramadan. The objective is to bring out
both continuities (the Neoplatonic genealogy) and change (global
concepts).
Al-Afghani
Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (1838–1897) was from the village of

Asadabad, in the district of Hamadan in northwest Iran.38 His family
was of noble sayyid lineage, descending from the line of the twelve
37Roy,Secularism Confronts Islam, 79.

38Biographical information about al-Afghani is from Keddie, “Afghani,” 67–78, and
Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, xiii–xxii, 3–97.
59
Shi‘ite Imams. As a young man, he studied Twelver Shi‘ite theology

and law in the seminaries of Ottoman Iraq, including the
illuminationist and Neoplatonic, esoteric traditions; in particular, he
was fascinated by “mystical alphabets, numerical combinations, and
esoteric treatises.”39 “Mystical alphabets” is, of course, a connection
to al-Ahsa’i, and, indeed, al-Afghani possessed one of al-Ahsa’i’s
treatises, and was well acquainted with the Shaykhi movement, which
was widespread in both Iran and in the Iraqi cities where al-Afghani
was studying. According to Nikki Keddie, al-Afghani gave a talk in
Istanbul in 1870 which was strongly reminiscent of al-Ahsa’i’s
teachings.40 Hence the young al-Afghani was familiar with the Neo-
platonic metaphysics of unity in its Shaykhi form. There is also
evidence, in the form of letters, that the adult al-Afghani’s Egyptian
disciple Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905) venerated him virtually as a
manifestation of the divine:
My Exalted Lord, whom God preserve and second in his purpose!

Would that I knew what to write to you. You know what is in my
soul, as you know what is in yours. You have made us with your
hands, invested our matter with its perfect form and created us in
the best shape. Through you have we known ourselves, through
you have we known you, through you have we known the whole
universe. Your knowledge of us is, as will not be hidden from you,
a necessary knowledge, it is the knowledge you have of yourself,
your confidence in your power and will; from you have we issued
and to you, to you do we return.41
It is quite possible that al-Afghani saw himself as the shaykh, or

savior, of the age. The “purpose” which ‘Abduh referred to in his
letter was, almost certainly, the pan-Islamic cause to which al-Afghani
had devoted his life. Pan-Islam (Osmanli: ittihad-i islam) was a concept
and movement current in the Ottoman Empire and promoted by
39Keddie, An Islamic Response, 8, referring to documents in al-Aghani’s notebooks, in

the collection Documents inédits concernant Seyyed Jamal al-Din Afghani, prepared by Iraj
Afshar and Asghar Mahdavi.
40Keddie, An Islamic Response, 10 f.
41Kedourie, 66, ref. to referring to Abduh’s letters to al-Afghani from Beirut,
preserved in Documents inédits, plates 134–137.
60
Sultan and Caliph Abdülhamid II (reigned 1876–1909). Its aim was

unity among Muslim heads of state, across sectarian and state
boundaries, in order to halt the processes of loss of territory to
European powers and Russia. The Sultan engaged al-Afghani as a
pan-Islamic ideologue of some sort, because the latter had ideas
about an alliance between the Sunnite Ottoman Empire, the Sunnite
Afghans, and Shi‘ite Qajar Iran, in order to fight back in the Balkans
and oust the British from India. Such an alliance required
transcending Sunnite and Shi‘ite borders, and al-Afghani declared
that while sectarian divides might have been important at some point,
they were merely destructive in a modern age that called for Islamic
unity.42 Substantially, his call for Islamic unity was the same as that of
earlier reformers, although he sought to bridge not only the divide
between law schools and brotherhoods but also that between
Sunnites and Shi‘ites .
Still, al-Afghani’s pan-Islam, compared with that of the
Neoplatonic “reformers,” contains some significant new elements.
He travelled widely—to Afghanistan, Iran, Istanbul, British India,
Ottoman Egypt, St. Petersburg, London, and Paris. And he was a
modern journalist, publishing his religious and political writings in
Arabic and Persian, and translations in European languages. Perhaps,
his most important contribution is the fusion of the “unifying”
reformist vision with modern nationalism. As Sylvia Haim observed,
al-Afghani envisaged the united Islamic community as a nation, using
the same terms as modern nationalists do:
[A] people without unity, and a people without literature is a

people without language. A people without history is a people
without glory, and a people will lack history if authorities do not
rise among them, to protect and revivify the memory of their
historical heroes so that they may follow and emulate. All this
depends on a national (watani) education which begins with “the
42Landau, 15; on Sultan Abdülhamid’s pan-Islam and al-Afghani, see 9–72.
61
homeland” (watan), the environment of which is “the homeland”,

and the end of which is “the homeland!”43
The remarks made above are from the end of al-Afghani’s life. But
even earlier on, he was well acquainted with nationalism and theories
about the relationship between religion and science in modern
nations, a subject which had concerned political theorists and
philosophers since the Enlightenment. Al-Afghani was familiar with
the writings of Ernest Renan (1823–1892), professor of Semitic
languages in Paris and historian of religions, with a strong interest in
nation-building and nationalism. Renan was a proponent of the
concept of “natural religion,” first coined by David Hume (d. 1776)
in The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion. According to Hume, religion arose as primitive man’s
attempts to give rational explanations of natural phenomena. From
there, it developed via animism, polytheism, and monotheism into
dogmatic systems of superstition. At this later stage, reason was
employed not to explain nature but to prevent explorations of nature,
because such explorations would undermine dogma; in other words,
what began as primitive science developed into superstition. Modern
rational sciences were, in a sense, the logical development of that
first, primitive “natural religion,” in that they drew on the human
desire to explain nature, the difference being that they employed
empirical methods. Once society was organized and governed in
accordance with the empirical sciences, superstitious, institutionalized
religion would cease to exist; its superstitions were functional in “the
old order” but would have no place in modern society.
Compared with Hume, Renan gave “natural religion” a positive
and, indeed, necessary role for science and the progress of modern
nations. Modern empirical science was the prerequisite for progress.
Historically, Renan argued, science derived its impetus to seek the
truth about things from philosophy. Now, when traditional,
institutionalized religion had become an obstacle to both
philosophical and scientific quests for truth, since it was principally
43Al-Afghani in recorded conversations from the last years of his life, with and by
his friend Muhammad al-Makhzumi, Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, 257; cited by
Haim, 504 f.
62
concerned with maintaining the authority of social institutions, natural

religion was driven by the same quest for truth about things as
philosophy. But it was more than that: natural religion was a spirit
which propelled humans to search for truth. Thus, unlike Hume, who
saw religion as a spent force once science was in place, Renan argued
that both philosophy and science require natural religion, lest they lose
their urge to arrive at the truth. Consequently, atheists made no
scientists. The source of natural religion was in the Gospels’
narratives: Jesus’ religion was not a legitimacy of institutional
authority but a challenge to it, for he sought the truth about God and
things. Also, he lived in nature itself, which is why he could
manipulate its powers and perform “miracles.” Therefore, a
Christianity inspired by Jesus’ religiosity, described in scripture and
not in church dogma, was what the nation needed to progress
through science.44 In contrast, Islam’s Arabian prophet Muhammad
was from the outset concerned with power and institutional
authority, and his religiosity had nothing to do with “proper” nature,
since it arose in the barren desert; there are no nature miracles to be
found in his biography. The only reason science could take root
briefly in Islamic civilization was the creative intellects of Persians,
Greeks and Spanish, but their spirits were soon stifled by “Arab”
Islam. Rational philosophy and modern sciences are thus antithetical
to Islam, and Islam’s survival in the modern world depended on
Muslims rejecting science, Renan surmised.45
Already by his late teens, al-Afghani argued for the necessity of
making religion compatible with philosophy, so that it could, in turn,
be made compatible with science, for without science the Islamic
nation would not progress. This view was perfectly in line with al-
Ahsa’i’s mystical approach to scripture, which was motivated,
ultimately, by an urge to override dogma and change reality.46 As early
as 1855–56, during his stay in British India, al-Afghani propagated an
evolutionary view of religion highly similar to Hume’s historical
explanation, and rejected traditional religious belief in creation in
44ErnestRenan, L’Avenir de la science; La vie de Jésus.

45Renan, “Mahomet et les origins de l’islamisme.”
46Keddie, An Islamic Response, 9 ff.
63
favor of the philosophical assumption of the eternity of the

universe.47 Still, like Renan, he completely rejected materialism and
held religion to be necessary for philosophy and science; the
following is from his refutation of an Indian group of “nature-
materialist” thinkers, where he explains why man needs “natural
religion”:
One of the inevitable consequences of the . . . belief, that man

has come into this world in order to attain the perfections
needed to transfer him to a higher and vaster world, is that
when someone acquires this belief he will of necessity always
strive to improve and enlighten his mind with true science and
sound knowledge. He will not leave his intellect idle, but will
bring out of concealment and into the light of the world what
has been deposited in him of active power, lofty sentiments,
and great virtues. In all stages of his life he will try to rid his
soul of impure features and will not stint in the adjustment and
improvement of its qualities. He will continually strive to earn
property in a worthy and proper fashion, and not by use of
dishonesty, deceit, treachery, swindling, bribery, and cynical
flattery. He will spend it in ways that are worthy and fitting,
and not in false ways. Thus this belief is the best impulse
toward civilization, whose foundations are true knowledge and
refined morals.48
Thus, the claim is that there is no true knowledge or science without

religion—and, therefore no civilization. In “The Benefits of
Philosophy,” a later treatise from 1880–1881 addressed to Indian
Muslims, al-Afghani presents a view of the Qur’an in distinctly
“Shaykhi” terms, as the microcosmic repository of all of reality and,
therefore, also the source of “natural religion” to which Muslims
must return to retrieve the philosophical spirit that would lead them
to progress:
[T]hat Precious Book was the first teacher of philosophy to the

Muslims. It is the comprehensive exemplar of that macrocosm.
47Ibid., 13 f.
48Ibid., 143.
64
Each individual is a letter, each species a word, each race a line,

and each microcosm a page in it; and each movement and change
an elucidation and annotation of it. No end exists for this great
Book. Its letters, words, lines, and pages are incapable of being
counted by man. In each word, and even in each letter, so many
mysteries and secrets are hidden that if all the sages of the past
and present had the lifetime of Noah, and each one solved a
thousand mysteries and uncovered a thousand secrets each day,
nonetheless they would remain incapable of fathoming it, and
would confess their inability.49
After Renan had published his treatise on the incompatibility of

Islam and science in 1883, al-Afghani wrote a reply refuting Renan’s
claims, arguing that Muslims could reform Islam just like Christians
were doing with Christianity, for even if it were true that traditional
Islam was hostile to science, there is nothing fixed in this world, and
so, Muslims are no more bound to be what they once were than any
other nation.50
Keddie has argued that al-Afghani was one of the first
modernists to present Islamic rational philosophy as an “indigenous
alternative” to “Western philosophy,” thus making it easier for both
the masses and the elites to accept social and political development.51
This could be a correct description of how his message was
understood by his contemporaries. However, it is worth recalling that
the call for Muslim unity by rationalistic methods of interpreting the
Qur’an and the Sunnah goes back at least as far as Ibn Taymiyyah (d.
1328), and was current throughout the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Thus, al-Afghani simply continued a particular
Islamic genealogy. The new elements in his take on the Neoplatonic
“reform” discourse would be modern nationalism and the concept of
“natural religion”; interestingly, “natural religion” in Renan’s form
fitted almost seamlessly with the Neoplatonic call to return to the
sources and to set free reason in interpreting them. Hence the call for
unity and return to the sources is not so much a discourse on
“indigenous alternatives” as it is a discourse of empowerment. Calls for
49Ibid., 114.
50Ibid., 181–187.
51Ibid., 18 f.
65
“indigenous alternatives” emphasize identity and difference, and it is

hard to find this in al-Afghani’s message. For him, there is no
essential difference between Islamic and Western philosophy, for
philosophy is one and the same; and while Christianity is the “natural
religion” of Christians, Islam is the same for Muslims:
The modern Christians, at the same time as they acknowledged

the Trinity, the cross, resurrection, baptism, purgatory,
confession, and transubstantiation, assured their domination;
progressed in the spheres of science, knowledge, and industry;
and reached the summit of civilization. Most of them still, with all
their science and knowledge, follow the same beliefs. . . .
[R]eligious beliefs . . . are in no way incompatible with civilization
and worldly progress unless they forbid the acquisition of science,
the earning of a livelihood, and progress in sound civilization. I do
not believe there is a religion in the world that forbids these things
. . . Rather I can say that the lack of faith results only in disorder
and corruption in civil life, and in insecurity. Reflect—this is
Nihilism!52
Thus, al-Afghani also does not quite meet Beyer’s definition of

fundamentalists as those who seek to mark out a region or culture as
“different” from others in global society;53 if anything, al-Afghani saw
Islam as similar to Christianity in terms of its ability to function as
“natural religion” in modern, progressive societies.
In the last years of his life, when he lived under house arrest in
the Sultan’s court in Istanbul after having instigated the murder of
the Iranian shah, al-Afghani wrote a letter “to the Persian people,”
regretting his previous tactics of trying to achieve Islamic unity
through heads of state. Here he emphasized instead that reform
would have to come from the people:
Would that I had sown all the seeds of my ideas in the receptive
ground of the people’s thoughts! Well would it have been had I
not wasted this fruitful and beneficent seed of mine in the salt and
sterile soil of that effete Sovereignty! . . . Nature is your friend,
52Ibid., 128 f.
53Beyer, 7.
66
and the Creator of Nature your ally. The stream of renovation

flows quickly towards the East. The edifice of despotic
government totters to its fall. Strive so far as you can to destroy
the foundations of this despotism, not to pluck up and cast out its
individual agents. Strive so far as in you lies to abolish those
practices which stand between the Persians and their happiness,
not to annihilate those who employ these practices. If you merely
strive to oppose individuals, your time will only be lost. If you
seek only to prevail against them, the evil practice will draw to
itself others. Endeavour to remove those obstacles which prevent
your friendship with other nations.54
This new “grassroots perspective” of achieving political change by

educating the people was to become an important part of the politics
of Tariq Ramadan and, before him, of Hasan al-Banna.
Hasan al-Banna
Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) was the son of an imam from the town
of Mahmudiyyah in Egypt, who had studied at al-Azhar during
Muhammad ‘Abduh’s tenure as chancellor of the institution. Al-
Afghani’s pan-Islamic, modernizing project may, thus, have shaped
the young Hasan’s knowledge about Islam from the very beginning.55
According to Brynjar Lia, the two most important influences on
Hasan as a teenager were Sufism and nationalism. Hasan became a
member of the Hasafiyyah tariqah around the age of thirteen, and
displayed unusual zeal in supervising other members’ dress codes and
morals. But, in spite of his fervent religiosity, he went against his
father’s wish that he become a religious scholar and enter al-Azhar,
and instead chose teachers’ training college in Cairo. Like most young
men at the time, he was enthusiastic about Sa‘d Zaghlul’s revolution
in 1919 against the British. These two streams, Sufism and
nationalism, conjoined in the organization he founded together with
other members of the Hasafiyyah: The Hasafi Welfare Society. Its
objective was to educate the Egyptian people morally as part of the
54Keddie, An Islamic Response, 40.

55Mitchell, 1.
67
struggle for independence, and to check the activities of Christian

missionaries.56
During this time in Cairo, al-Banna used to visit Rashid Rida
(1865–1935), the publicist who took al-Afghani’s and ‘Abduh’s pan-
Islam in a more conservative direction toward Ibn Taymiyya’s
salafiyyah, making the Shari‘ah the factor that would integrate society
and unify Muslims. Rida was also involved in the Egyptian
movement to reestablish an Arab Caliphate. While most proponents
of this cause wanted such a caliphate to replace the Ottoman Turkish
Caliphate, Rida saw it as a complement to the latter, as the spiritual
source from which the Islamic world would regain its powers.57 In
1928, al-Banna founded the Society of the Muslim Brothers, which
built on the same conception of the Islamic community as a nation as
did al-Afghani’s pan-Islam. A significant difference, however, was
that the Ottoman Caliphate had been abolished in 1924 and replaced
by nation states. Following Rida’s adaptation of Ibn Taymiyyah, al-
Banna defined the Shari‘ah as the factor that could integrate Muslims
as individual beings, Islamic societies, and the Islamic community
across national borders; and, like Rida, he saw no opposition between
this quest for religious unity and nationalism:
The Muslim Brethren do not oppose everyone’s working for one’s

own fatherland. . . . They strive for Islamic unity, which they
perceive as the complete structure for the general Muslim
fatherland . . . they believe that the Caliphate is a symbol of
Islamic union and an indication of the bonds between the nations
of Islam . . . the Muslim Brethren see the Caliphate and its re-
establishment as a top priority, although they believe that
preparatory work for this is absolutely necessary, to be followed
by alliances, treaties, and the convocation of meetings among
these lands . . . Subsequently, an association of Muslim peoples
should be set up, which would elect the Imam.58
56Lia,
25 ff.
57Haddad, “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era.”
58Landau, 224, referring to al-Banna’s lecture, “The Stand of the Muslim Brethren
towards Unity—Nationalist, Arab and Islamic,” delivered at the fifth general

meeting of the Society, held in Cairo on October 11 1938, reprinted in ‘Amara,
171–174.
68
In addition to the “Taymiyyan” emphasis on the Shari‘ah as a

unifying factor, one of Ibn Taymiyyah’s terms appears in al-Banna’s
writings, namely, wasat, “middle.” In the short treatise The Muslim
Brothers under the Banner of the Qur’an (al-Ikhwan al-muslimuna tahta rayat
al-Qur’an), he cited Qur’an 2:143: “And thus We have made you a
middle-way community (ummatan wasatan), so that you may bear
witness unto mankind, while the Messenger bears witness unto you.”
But the Muslims had digressed far from the Messenger’s sunnah; as al-
Banna put it: “Is this Muhammad’s guidance, by which he sought to
bring the people out of darkness into the light?”59 The task for the
Muslim Brothers, thus, is to guide the community back to the divine
light that guided the Messenger, as expressed in the following
paragraph:
You must not diminish yourselves by comparing yourselves with

others, or, in your mission (fi da‘watikum), follow any other way
than the way of the faithful, or compare your mission, which takes
its light from God’s Light and its program (minhaj) from His
Messenger’s Sunnah, with other missions engendered by ordinary
needs and carried forth by events and by time. When you have
preached and exerted yourselves (jahadtum), you will see the fruits
of even this feeble exertion in [the form of] voices calling for the
leadership of God’s Messenger and the supremacy of the Qur’an’s
order, and for the obligation to rise to action and to purify the
objective [by directing it toward God], while the blood of the
virtuous and noble youth will flow in the path of God. This
success was more than you had expected, so continue your
struggle, and since God will be with you in your actions, your
actions will not harm you.60
The title “Under the Banner of the Qur’an” signifies that the Qur’an
is the principal source of the divine guiding light. However, the
Qur’an as external source corresponds to the divine light of the heart.
There are many instances where the Qur’an refers to God’s light, and
59Al-Banna, Tahta Rayat al-Qur’an, 8.

60Ibid., 28.
69
it is rather self-evident that al-Banna got the symbol from there.61 But
there is also a tenuous link between al-Banna and one of the
brotherhoods coming out of Ibn Idris’ tariqah Muhammadiyyah, with
its strong emphasis on God’s light. At some point, al-Banna met with
one ‘Abd al-Wahhab, son of the murshid who initiated in Egypt the
Dandarawiyyah Ahmadiyyah tariqah from Ahmad b. Idris. Al-Banna
and ‘Abd al-Wahhab were both concerned over the poor state of
Islam in Egypt, and agreed to spread Islam each in their own field
and in their own manner.62
Al-Banna also changed his view of Sufism during the course of
developing the Society of the Muslim Brothers. As a young man, he
was happy to swear allegiance to the Hasafiyyah shaykh, but as leader
of the Society, he came to see Sufi brotherhoods as detrimental to
Islamic unity and reform. This shift coincides with him assuming
spiritual authority for himself as guide of the Brethren. In al-
Ma’thurat, we find the collection of al-Banna’s awrad (Quranic
readings) and dhikr, which he, like a Sufi shaykh, had composed for
his disciples. It is, thus, possible that he came to see the Society as the
organizational vehicle for achieving tariqah Muhammadiyyah on a
societal level; for example, in the opening blessing in al-Ma’thurat, al-
Banna wrote:
May God bless our lord Muhammad, most favoured among those
who recall God (al-dhakirina), master of the thankful (al-shakirina),
imam of the messengers, seal of the prophets, and leader of the
nobles, and for his family and all of his companions, and for those
who follow their path (waman salaka tariqahum), until Judgement
Day.63
One of the first Quranic passages which al-Banna prescribed for wird
contains two significant terms: al-‘urwah al-wuthqa, “the most
trustworthy link,” which refers to the divine contract and was the title
of the journal which al-Aghani and ‘Abduh published in Paris (1884)
61Al-Banna, al-‘Aqa’id, 51, referring to Qur’an 24:40: “He to whom God has not
granted a light will have no light.”
62Sedgwick, The Heirs, 152, referring to al-Banna, Memoirs, 136–142.
63Al-Banna, al-Ma’thurat, 7.
70
and which referred to Islam as the unifying principle and the divine
light:
There is no (longer) oppression in judgement, for true guidance

has become distinct from error. Thus, he who rejects tyranny and
has faith in God has taken hold of the most trustworthy link (al-
‘urwah al-wuthqa), which will never break; God is All-hearing, All-
knowing. God protects those who have faith. He brings them out
of darkness into the light. As for those who are ungrateful, they
are protected by the tyrants who bring them out of the light into
darkness; they are the people of the Fire, where they shall abide in
eternity.64
Another of Al-Afghani’s concepts, “natural religion,” appears

in al-‘Aqa’id (“The Doctrines”). Here al-Banna states that the
foundation of Islamic doctrines, as well as of Shari‘ah rulings, is
God’s scripture and the Sunnah of His Messenger, and that both
doctrines and rulings are in conformity with reason and are
supported by both rational arguments and observation. He then cites
Qur’anic passages which encourage man to observe nature and
therein find signs of the Creator, and concludes:
From this, you learn that Islam does not put limits to thought or
impair reason, but rather points out its limitations and makes it
conscious of how little it knows, and orders it to expand its
knowledge; as the Sublime has said: “You have only been given a
little knowledge” (17:85), and: “Say: ‘Lord, increase my
knowledge’” (20:114).65
The implication is that, since Islamic doctrine is entirely compatible

with reason and the results of empirical and natural sciences, there
can be no opposition between Islam and the modern sciences, which
the nation requires in order to progress. He then proceeds to show
how interpretation of the Qur’an and the sunnah began with the Salaf,
at which time there was consensus on the meanings of scripture and,
hence, on a common set of doctrines, but that the emergence of
64Ibid., 23 f.; Qur’an 2:256–257.

65Al-Banna, al-‘Aqa’id, 11.
71
different schools brought about diversity in interpretation and

doctrine; this disagreement over meanings and diversity impaired the
requirements of the Shari‘ah. In the present, al-Banna concludes, the
overriding objective is to unify the ranks, and consensus is one way
to achieve this, as the Salaf had done before.66 And if this could be
achieved on a national level, it could then be furthered to others:
If we had an Islamic government (hukumah islamiyyah) that was

true to Islam, of sincere faith, free to think and edify, for which
learning the truth of science was the greatest treasure, which
inherited the might of the Islamic order (an-nizam al-islami) and
had faith in it as the cure for the people and guidance for mankind
as a whole, we could seek to strengthen this world by the name of
Islam, so that other states would investigate and observe it and
want it for themselves, and so that we could conduct them to it,
through continuous information (bi d-da‘awat al-mutakarrirah),
conviction, proof, sequential delegations, and other means of
information and communication.67
The Islamic government would encompass all important functions of

government: interior and foreign affairs; law; defense and military;
finances and economy; culture and education; and families as well as
individuals.68 Thus society, in all its complexity, should be governed
by one principle, Islam; like the call for doctrinal unity, this reflects
the Neoplatonic principle that the One is superior to the Many.
Tariq Ramadan
Alongside the issue of creating Islamic societies and government,
struggle to prevent the establishment of a Jewish nation state in
Israel/Palestine was part of the objectives of al-Banna’s Society at
least since 1936. And after the founding of Israel in 1948, the
liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem’s sanctuaries, and official non-
66Ibid., 78.
67Al-Banna, Tahta Rayat al-Qur’an, 23.
68Ibid.
72
recognition of a two-state solution, are part of the Society’s policies.69

This is also true for two of its Europe-based representatives, Yusuf
al-Qaradawi (born 1926) and Tariq Ramadan (born 1962). Al-
Qaradawi is the more traditional of the two, carrying on the program
to unite Muslims, including European Muslims, around the Shari‘ah;
like al-Banna, he calls the project al-minhaj al-wasat, “the middle-way
program.” He leads two Europe-based organizations, the European
Council of Fatwa and Research, and (since 2004) The International
Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS). The latter consists of both
Sunnite and Shi‘ite scholars, and has a threefold aim: To help the
global Muslim community to safeguard its cultural identity; to
promote moderate Islam as opposed to militant jihadism; and to
promote democracy—based on the Shari‘ah—in Islamic countries.70
Thus, al-Qaradawi has maintained the pan-Islamic insistence that
Sunnites and Shi‘ites can find a common cause in Islamic unity and
al-Banna’s Shari‘ah-centred salafiyyah. However, the objectives of
IAMS contain significant new concepts which refer to developments
in global society, e.g., “cultural identity” and “democracy,” both of
which are new issues being debated in the global public sphere.
Al-Qaradawi addresses primarily imams and leaders of Muslim
organizations, hence the more traditional focus of his Shari‘ah on
legal and ritual matters. Tariq Ramadan, however, addresses young
Muslims who do not find much in common with al-Qaradawi’s
audiences. Since they are Europeans, the issue of democratizing
Islamic countries is not the prime focus, although criticism of
authoritarian regimes and their religious cronies is a recurrent theme.
Rather, Ramadan advocates a gradual reform of Islam as a
precondition for political change, suggesting that it will take place
first among Muslims in the West, and will then spread to the Islamic
69Mitchell, e.g., on Palestine and Zionism under al-Banna, see 55–58, 267–269; on
Zionism and Western cultural imperialism, especially in Sayyid Qutb’s
formulations, see 227–231; on al-Banna’s Society and Palestine, see also Lia, 237–
247.
70Gräf, 47.
73
world; hence the imagery on his old website, which has the sun rising
in the West:71
Fig. 1: The banner on www.tariqramadan.com before April 2008.
Reform is linked to Ramadan’s specific take on the Shari‘ah and

cultural identity, which is to fuse them so that Muslim identity is the
Shari‘ah, but understood in terms of “ethics” and “conscience” rather
than as the traditional categories of ritual and law.72 At the same time,
Ramadan has politicized the Shari‘ah, through the following steps.
First, Ramadan describes the pan-Islamic salafiyyah of al-
Afghani and Hasan al-Banna by rejecting a number of other
understandings of Islam: traditional fiqh, because it is text-bound and
apolitical; the “Wahhabi” salafiyyah, because it is text-bound,
ultraconservative, and closed to other cultures; and secular
modernists, because they are “Westernized.” Compared with these
others, the pan-Islamic salafiyyah has the unique feature of opening
the texts to new political needs and being open to other cultures,
while still preserving a distinctly Islamic identity.73 Here, Beyer’s
characterization of fundamentalism as movements which seek to
mark a region or culture as “different” seems more relevant than as
applied to al-Afghani; for al-Afghani, Islamic unity was a political
strategy for people who were unquestionably Muslims, whereas for
Ramadan it is a matter of “ingathering” young Muslims into a united
Islamic nation, but in order to do so, he must give the Islamic nation
71web.archive.org/web/20051110064745/www.tariqramadan.com/rubrique.php3?i
d_rubrique=0045&lang=en; this is, of course, a symbol of multiple meaning, as

Islamic apocalyptic imagery has it that, in the end of time, everything will be
inverted so that the sun will rise in the west; see, e.g.,the Fatimid Qadi an-Nu‘man’s
narrative about Ismailite apocalyptic imagery (“The sun of God will rise from the
west”), in Haji, 68.
72Ramadan, La foi; Western Muslims, 31–61,
73Ramadan, Renouveau musulman, 19–30; cf. idem, Western Muslims, 24–30; Ramadan
does not use the term pan-Islamic salafiyyah, but “Salafi reformism.”
74
a distinct identity in competition with other youth and religious

movements in global society. Emphasis on “difference” is, thus, to a
large extent, a marketing strategy.
This leads over to the second step, Ramadan’s politicization of
Islam. Here I will heuristically apply some of Martin Heidegger’s
(1889–1976) concepts, as interpreted by Michael Lewis in his reading
of Being and Time (1927).74 “To be” is to coexist with others, and,
therefore, there is no such thing as a being in itself, but only “being-
with.” There are different ways of being-with others, and the ethically
preferable way is to be-with others in an “open” way that allows each
being to be a “singularity,” that is, someone who is with others
according to his or her “conscience.” Conscience is, in turn, the
inner, silent beckoning that tells of impossible ways of being-with
others, namely, everything that involves “constraint.” When
conscience is articulated in discourse, it can turn impossible,
constraining ways of being-with into new liberating possibilities.
Even though discourse is articulated by individuals, articulation takes
place in a “political community,” which, then, is a “collective
singularity”; no individual discourse exists which is not part of a
political community. The community’s singularity is expressed in its
specific way of being-with other political communities. And, since
being is being-with, the political community can only be itself when it
ventures into other, foreign communities and opens up to them.
“Ethics,” finally, is the “place” in which discourse formulates
possible ways of being-with, and from which it questions politics by
disclosing to it its own singularity; in other words, ethics will show
when politics is constraining.
In La foi, la Voie, et la résistance (2002), Ramadan constructs a
discourse for Muslims as a political community. The Muslim
community has an ethics and conscience which, if the community is
true to itself, allows it to “be with” other communities in ways which
are liberating and non-constraining for everyone:
Today, we must be and testify. To be is to find the best expression

for one’s inner equilibrium: To live with God, to calm one’s heart,
74See Lewis.
75
and to engage oneself in action for justice and solidarity. To testify

is to construct our discourse, to choose, according to one’s
conscience and not the pressures from the environment, the
matters one wants to treat, questions one wants to address, and
the riches one wants to share.75
The singularity of the Muslim political community is that it believes

religion to be the foundation of politics—and here Ramadan is in line
with all the Neoplatonic “reformers.” And because this is so,
Western secularism is not applicable to Muslims. Moreover, Muslim
politics favor a kind of social justice which is opposed to Western
materialism and capitalism. This means that Western secularism and
capitalism are also a singularity, and to try to enforce them on
Muslims, wherever they live, is to produce a clash of singularities.
Muslim discourse must, therefore, disclose to Westerners the
constraint of secularism and capitalism, so that they can find new
possibilities of being-with the Muslim political community, just as it
must disclose to those Muslims who are not true to themselves, who
live in conflict with their consciences and pursue unethical politics,
what true Islam, true Shari‘ah is really about. European Muslims will
lead the way in articulating this discourse, for they have ventured
“into the foreign” and opened up to the West, and thus liberated
both themselves and the Westerners. The precondition for doing so
is to return to the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah:
Muslims living in the West have a major responsibility: in the

heart of the industrialised world, in permanent contact with
material progress, their engagement, resistance, and propositions
will have a powerful impact on the whole Muslim world.
Therefore we must bring to life and transmit to Europe’s Muslims
this open, vast, and global understanding of their religion and its
founding principles. Therefore they must resist the siren song of
the laxity and gentrification in the societies of excessive comfort
and entertainment. Between a literalist and reductive reading of
our sources, and the lax resignation of the new Western Muslim
petit bourgeoisie, there is an alternative way of faithfulness which
expresses the essential nature of the relationship to the Creator
75Ramadan, La foi, 33; my translation.
76
and to spirituality, and which proposes a profound and consistent

reading of the Qur’an and the Sunna and which, finally,
understands its being in the world as constant reform to improve
matters, make them more just, more equitable.76
In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2004), Ramadan defines

Muslim politics as a Muslim version of globalization criticism,
especially in its leftist forms, and he advocates cooperation with those
organizations and movements, because theirs is a nonconstraining,
liberating discourse. Here he also performs an interesting linguistic
shift. In traditional fiqh, non-Muslim lands with which Islamic states
were at war are termed dar al-harb (“the domain of war”). Ramadan
coins his own term, ‘alam al-harb (“the world of war”), which refers
not to a territorially defined enemy but a systemic one which is
everywhere: neoliberalism:
In the alam al-harb (world of war) of the neoliberal economy, we

shall first have to comply if we are to hope to propose a thought-
out alternative that will break with the dominant model; as we
understand it, this is the only way of overcoming the paradoxical
fact that our total refusal to participate in the system has today
become its best guarantee of survival. This must mean that it is
absolutely vital that Muslims study closely and deeply the
dynamics of resistance that are already in process in the United
States and Europe. They are neither the first nor the only ones to
reject the dominant economic system: many studies have been
published, and development cooperatives, alternative banks, and
ethical businesses and investment funds are functioning and
putting forward “something else”. Muslim citizens should take
inspiration from these writings and experiences and get involved
in multidimensional, complementary, and long-term partnerships.
We have spoken of civil movements, the new approaches
proposed by ATTAC, and the reflections on ethics and
economics produced by Christian liberation theologians (and
other Catholic and Protestant intellectuals); to live in the West and
ignore these developments and achievements is madness, and it is
going to be necessary for Muslims to emerge from their
intellectual isolation into direct engagement with the debates that
76Ramadan, La foi, 75 f.
77
are stirring their society and from which they are currently largely
absent. Few of their fellow-citizens know that the principles held
by Muslims are essentially opposed to the economic logic of
today’s world and that they are, in heart and mind, opposed to its
dominance. It is for Muslims to explain and make themselves
heard. Overall, they need to develop a global vision of the stakes
involved in their presence on the economic scene and to make
sure that the adaptations proposed to them by scholars from here
and there do not become a safeguard that allows the emergence of
a new caste of “highly integrated” Muslim citizens in the style of
new capitalists interested primarily in owning houses or shining
financially in the world of productivity and returns. . . . Contrary
to the old theories, there are no longer two separate worlds,77 and,
whether here or there, our rejection of the dominant economic
system is radical by nature. The reality that may force us to interact
does not in any way force us to give up.78
Ramadan’s critique of neoliberal economy and gentrified Muslims

dovetails neatly both with a Heideggerian critique of Americanized
German bourgeoisie and with traditional Sufi asceticism. In the
introduction to Western Muslims, he refers explicitly to Sufism and
some of the symbols of Ibn Idris’ and al-Ahsa’i’s esotericism, for
example, the divine light and alchemy, interspersed with the
Heideggerian “conscience,” “being,” and “liberation”:
Paulo Coelho, in his novel The Alchemist, has brought in one of the
most traditional and deep teachings of Sufism (Islamic mysticism).
Go, travel the world, watch, look for the truth and the secret of
life—every road will lead you to this sense of initiation: the light, the
secret, are hidden in the place from which you set out. You are on
your way not toward the end of the road but toward its beginning:
to go is to return; to find is to rediscover. Go! …You will return.
The apparent paradox of spiritual experience is the lesson that the
constant effort, the jihad, that we make in order to purify, control,
and liberate our heart is, in the end, a reconciliation with the
deepest level of our being (al-fitra)—there where the spark gleams
that God originally breathed into our heart, there where our
conscience weds our being and gives in to peace (salam). The
77Dar al-harb and Dar al-salam.

78Ramadan, Western Muslims, 199.
78
peace of recognition, the peace of submission (salam al-islam) is,

deep down, a liberation.79
On Ramadan’s new website, the imagery has been changed. The

picture now moves through two sequences. In the first sequence,
Ramadan’s face is in the right (or “eastern”) end of the picture, and,
in the second, the sun has emerged in the left (or “western”) end and
a flame replaces Ramadan’s face. Suggestive of Qur’an 24:35, where
God is described as a light that burns like the light of a lamp kindled
by olive oil, the imagery implies that Ramadan is a manifestation of
the divine light.
In other contexts, Ramadan refers to Sufism as “spirituality,” a

term familiar to young people interested in new religious movements;
for example, in the introduction to The Messenger: The Meanings of the
Life of Muhammad (2007): “Muhammad . . . initiates [the faithful] into
[God’s] knowledge and discloses the initiatory path of spirituality.”80
He has also articulated the Society of the Muslim Brother’s struggle
79Ramadan, Western Muslims, vii.

80Ramadan, The Messenger, x.
79
for Palestine in terms of Sufi esotericism (“the secret”), seeking to

disclose to Westerners that denial of the Palestinian people’s rights
“constrains” Muslim consciences; for example, on 6 January 2007,
he posted, on his French website, the poem “For Palestine, a secret”:
Dawn. Silence … time appears to stop. I often wish to speak to

my daughter, to my son. I wish to murmur what is essential. A
secret. . . . My daughter, my son, if our blood is kept alive by
consciousness, then it is time to awaken our common memories.
To wake up and resist. We have been fooled. Our dreams were so
beautiful, reality so ugly. Peace had been drawn up for us as a
drawing of hope, but for us, apart from us . . . without us.
Without effort. We were all spectators of a destiny supposed to
realise itself, but without memory, without justice, without
sacrifice. Without dignity. At the horizon of Palestine, I hear
melodies muffled by wounded consciences, sustained guilt, stifling
sufferings: I want to be the way for those without direction, lost,
exiled or refugees, who twice have paid the price of our
cowardice. I wish, you see, to be the energy of that victim in
memory of the daybreak that, as it inevitably breaks through,
exacts the justice of dawn. Claiming tribute from our night . . .
rom our history. I wish it so.81
In addition to Palestine, Britain’s role in the war in Iraq is also a topic

in Ramadan’s discourse. He criticizes the government’s assumption
that integration and common civil values are the way to combat the
spread of jihad ideology among British Muslims, and suggests instead
that a combination of discrimination at home and bad politics abroad
are the main factor behind terrorism:
The problem today is not one of “essential values”, but of the gap
between these values and everyday social and political practice.
Justice is applied variably depending on whether one is black,
Asian or Muslim. Equal opportunity is often a myth. Young
citizens from cultural and religious “minorities” run up against the
wall of institutionalised racism. Rather than insisting that Muslims
81The address of the web archive is: 66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:qlh35jZ_B10J:
www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3%3Fid_article%3D912+%22Pour+la+Palesti
ne,+un+secret+...%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
80
yield to a “duty to integrate”, society must shoulder its “duty of

consistency”. It is up to British society to reconcile itself with its
own self-professed values; it is up to politicians to practise what
they preach.
Tony Blair and his government have obliged civil servants
to deny that a link exists between terrorism and British foreign
policy. While the invasion of Iraq can never be claimed as ethical
justification for terrorist attacks against innocent citizens in
London, it would be absurd to deny the reality of the political
connection between the two. The illegal invasion of Iraq, blind
support for the insane policies of George Bush, British silence on
the oppression of the Palestinians - how could these issues not
have a direct bearing on the deep discontent shared by many
Muslims toward the west in general, and toward Britain in
particular. Even though this is not the sole explanation for
terrorism, it is certainly part of the explanation (without arguing
that it can be justified).
We must be bold enough to take the measure of this
foreign policy, and listen to the voices of millions of citizens who
have democratically and peacefully opposed the war, citizens
whose voices were not heard. The negative effects of this policy -
in terms of confidence - are deep, not to mention what we now
know about the horrors of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, and the
secret flights that carried prisoners without rights through Britain
to the black sites of the torture gulag.82
Also in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Ramadan makes it clear
that “integration” on conditions set by non-Muslims and the
neoliberal system is constraint, and must be resisted. He rejects
economic integration for Muslims on systemic terms, such as
becoming property owners, as an end in itself; and, therefore, he
denounces as “patchwork” fatwas permitting Muslims to take loans
against interest, and which come out of, for example, al-Qaradawi’s
European Council of Fatwa and Research. For Ramadan, the end is to
change the system:
82Ramadan, “Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign
policy.”
81
What is disturbing . . . is that people are interested primarily in

buying houses, while it is the whole relationship with the
dominant economic system that poses the deeper and more
complex problem. To allow borrowing from banks on the ground
that there is a “constraining necessity” in the matter of housing
while keeping silent about financial and economic considerations
that are so much more serious and that touch the daily lives of a
much more significant number of Muslims than those who would
like to buy property is surprising and in the end illogical. What
Muslims in the West are in painful need of today is a global
approach that would make it possible for them not only to live
but also to develop a spirit of economic initiative and creativity
capable of putting forward concrete alternatives aimed at
extricating them from the system through financial independence,
rather than remaining spectators resigned to their own
powerlessness. This is the level at which urgent commitment is
needed. Constant ad hoc solutions and adaptations are methods
that, as we have said, affirm the dominant system of speculation
and interest more than they resist it. Our ethics require us to
commit ourselves to an in-depth and radical resistance.83
Conclusions
In this article I have analyzed the pan-Islamic salafiyyah, represented
by al-Afghani, al-Banna, and Ramadan, with reference to three
concepts—those of “globalization,” “fundamentalism,” and
“Sufism”—and by placing them within a historical genealogy of what
is commonly called “reform” (islah) or “renewal” (tajdid), from Ibn
Taymiyyah to the Sunnite Sufi tariqah Muhammadiyyah, and in Twelver
Shi‘ism (on more arbitrary grounds, admittedly) with al-Ahsa’i as
example.
Regarding the “reform” genealogy, my focus has not been so
much on its innovative aspects as on its “unifying” approach.
“Unity” is both metaphysical and social. The Neoplatonic belief that
reality is the One and that the Many represent devolution, not
evolution, is reflected in the critique by the “reformers” of the many
disciplines, schools, and brotherhoods. Ordinarily, quests for
83Ramadan, Western Muslims, 191.
82
intellectual, social, and political unity, whether by statesmen or

scholars, are associated with authoritarianism. The fact that al-
Afghani, al-Banna, and Ramadan criticize the authoritarianism of the
established political and religious authorities of their respective
societies does not in itself make their messages less authoritarian.
This may be why the Muslim Brothers have, so far, had a systemic
problem with handling “the many,” namely, because they have
connected a political objective with religion. This can, of course,
change, but that is another matter for another study.
As for the three terms, the “unifying” discourse is
“fundamentalist” in its insistence on return to scripture to overcome
“the many” disciplines, and in its belief that the community’s destiny
is related to scripture. And it is “Sufi” in its Neoplatonic metaphysics
and emphasis on real union with the Prophet and God, the One.
“Globalization” is also a relevant analytical concept. From al-Afghani
onward, the “unifiers” are part of the emerging global society erected
on the foundation of nation-states. Therefore, the ideology of
nationalism and the debate over relations between religion and
science that accompanied the formation of the European nations
appear in the thought of al-Afghani and al-Banna; the former was the
first to conceive of the ummah as a united nation, and the latter
retained this concept and combined it with territorially based
nationalism. Thus, al-Banna harnessed the mobilizing power of al-
Afghani’s pan-Islamic movement in his organization for national
Islamic reform, the Society of the Muslim Brothers. For al-Afghani
and al-Banna, Sufism provides not only metaphysics but also leader-
charisma: both were spiritual guides in the traditional sense, but
detached from the genealogies of traditional brotherhoods. This is
true also for Ramadan, even though he, like al-Afghani, leads a
movement, not an organization, and is concerned with the whole
Islamic nation, not a specific nation-state. But Ramadan’s concern is
less with the typically nineteenth-century issue of relations between
religion and science, which preoccupied al-Afghani and, to some
extent, al-Banna, and more with globalization critique, which concern
is expressed in Heidegger’s concepts. And when he refers to Sufism,
he uses contemporary terms from new religious movements and
popular culture, e.g., spirituality and alchemy.
83
It is possible to use the “global” concepts to identify the

thinker who represents “globalized fundamentalism” in Peter Beyer’s
sense, that is, movements which seeks to demarcate a region or
culture as “different” from the system. Al-Afghani’s pan-Islamic
movement does not fit that description, as he was more interested in
similarities and the universality of philosophy and empirical sciences;
he tried to sell his pan-Islam to Muslims on the grounds that it would
make them like Europeans. Al-Banna was more concerned with
“difference,” as he could only recruit members for his organization
by selling Islam as a viable social and political alternative for forming
modern nations to ideologies and constitutional models from Europe
and the Soviet Union. Thus, al-Banna’s Society of the Muslim
Brothers represents the threshold to Islamic “globalized
fundamentalism” in Beyer’s sense. It could also be argued that al-
Banna’s approach follows from his embrace of ethnic, Arab
nationalism in addition to pan-Islam, for nationalism always
emphasizes difference, even when it is not chauvinistic. Ramadan,
while not an Arab nationalist, has provided a new theoretical
foundation for why the Islamic nation as a whole is one and different
from any other: it is, in Heidegger’s terms, a political community.
Preaching to European youth, “difference” is, for Ramadan, an
almost inevitable marketing strategy, as he seeks to attract individuals
who might not know what is so special about Islam.
Finally, all three representatives of the pan-Islamic salafiyyah
have in common an openness toward those non-Muslims who share
their views. Al-Afghani sought alliances wherever possible, even
among Brits. Hasan al-Banna was equally pragmatic. And Ramadan
advocates cooperation with the alter-globalization movements. Thus,
they all fit Olivier Roy’s characterization of “intégralisme” as a
position which is open to “compromise but not concessions, because
dogma is never put into question.”
84
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Construction of the Religious Self and the

Other: The Progressive Muslims’ Manhaj
Adis Duderija‫٭‬
1. Defining a Way of Being a Muslim1

We will begin by outlining a broad heuristic framework that we will
employ to delineate Muslim identities and the ways of being a
Muslim. The task is fraught with problems.2 What criteria can
effectively describe groups or identities and can distinguish them
from one another?
The basic premise of this article is that a most crucial factor in
defining a particular Muslim religious identity is the differences in the
assumptions—methodological, ontological, and epistemological—
used in conceptualizing and interpreting the Qur’an and Sunnah, the
two primary sources of the Islamic Weltanschauung. It is also important
to consider the relationship of these differences to the larger,
cumulative intellectual tradition of conceptualization and
interpretation of the two sources. We need to remember, too, as
Kurzman argues, that various “socioreligious interpretations” of the
Islamic tradition “overlap and intertwine and should not be
considered mutually exclusive or internally homogenous but as
heuristic devices which provide insight into the history of Islamic
© Adis Duderija 2009.

‫٭‬
Adis Duderija is a doctoral student in the Centre for Muslim States and Societies,
University of Western Australia. This paper is dedicated to Layla Duderija.
1In this paper, we will use interchangeably such phrases as “way of being a
Muslim,” “Muslim group or movement,” and “school of thought.”

2See, for example, Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims.
89
discourse.”3 The concept of Progressive Muslims, therefore, should

primarily be seen not as rigid category but as a heuristic tool that may
be used to define and delineate a particular type of way of being a
Muslim.
2. Being a Progressive Muslim

We will use the term “Progressive Muslims” (PM) in the sense in
which it is developed by the contributors in Omid Safi’s Progressive
Muslims. The book was
a result of almost an entire year of conversation, dialogue, and

debate among the fifteen contributors. It had its real genesis in the
aftermath of September 11, 2001 in what we [the contributors]
saw as the urgent need to raise the level of conversation, and to
get away from the standard apologetic presentations of Islam.4
The PM movement is characterized by its adherents’ commitment to

striv[ing] to realize a just and pluralistic society through critically
engaging Islam, a relentless pursuit of social justice, an emphasis on
gender equality as a foundation of human rights, a vision of religious
and ethnic pluralism, and a methodology of nonviolent resistance.5 It
is, Safi says, a reform movement that is
marked by a genuine spiritual core, something that would

combine and yet go beyond the earlier rationalistic 20th century
movements with Sufi etiquette and postmodern, post-colonial
liberation stances.6
Central to the movement is a strong emphasis on spirituality and

interpersonal relationships based on the teachings of the “romantic
or idealistic” Sufi ethics of dealing with fellow human beings in a way
3Kurzman, 5.
4Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 18.
5Safi, “Challenges and Opportunities.”
6Ibid.
90
Duderija: Construction of the Religious Self and the Other
that “always recall[s] and remember[s] the reflection of Divine

Presence and qualities in one another.7
The proponents of PM thought are found throughout the
Muslim8 and non–Muslim world. Many of the leading PM
intellectuals live in and teach at universities in the West. Some of
them completed their graduate and post-graduate studies at Western
institutions of learning, and, in some cases, are also trained in the
traditional Islamic sciences.9 In the words of Safi:
unlike their liberal Muslim forefathers, progressive Muslims

represent a broad coalition of female and male Muslim activists
and intellectuals. One of the distinguishing features of the
progressive Muslim movement as the vanguard of Islamic
(post)modernism has been the high level of female participation
as well as the move to highlight women’s rights as part of a
broader engagement with human rights.10
It is important to bear in mind that progressive “Islam” is not, as

Ebrahim Moosa rightly warns, “a ready-made ideology or an off-the-
shelf creed, movement or pack of doctrines.” It is not a school of
thought, for it is more than a systematic theory of interpretation of
the entire Muslim law, theology, ethics, and politics. It is a practice, a
package of loyalties and commitments, a work in progress.11 In PM
thought, progress is not conceptualized in the Hegelian-Fukoyamian
teleological view of history—as inevitability of change; progress,
rather, is viewed as the “possibility” of change.12In Moosa’s words,
progress is “fortuitous, rather than inevitable, hold[ing] the promise
that change might occur in diverse and multiple forms”. Thus, the
7Ibid.
8For example, Hasan Hanafi in Egypt, A. K. Soroush in Iran, M. H. Kamali in
Malaysia, the late Nurkolich Majid in Indonesia, Ali Ashgar Engineer in India, Enes
Karic in Bosnia, Abdul Qadir Tayob in South Africa, Amina Wadud, Kecia Ali,
Asma Barlas in the United States, and Z. Mir-Hoseini in the United Kingdom, to
name but a few.
9See the list of the contributors to Safi, Progressive Muslims, and n. 8, above.
10Safi, “Challenges and Opportunities,” 7.
11Moosa, “Transitions in the ‘Progress’ of Civilization,” in Cornell, 5:115–118.
12Ibid, 118–120.
91
word “progress” is not premised on the “totalitarian narrative of

progress driven by scientism, [and] liberal capitalism “or on a
“deterministic or apocalyptic theory of progress” embedded in the
larger framework of singular modernity.13 As such, history and
historical inquiry are approached from a Foucaultian genealogical
perspective, according to which “ideas, institutions and practices are
regarded as unique products of specific historical confluences, perfect
in and of themselves, without reference to extra-historical values or
ideals in relation to which they either succeed or fail to conform.”14
The PM understanding of the concept of Islam in general, therefore,
is not viewed in a framework of a reified religion or culture or of a
particular way of life, but as, to borrow Karamustafa’s phrase, a
civilizational project in progress, that is
dynamic and beyond reification; a truly global phenomenon

adoptable across cultural, national and ethnic divides; both a
supracultural construct that is inclusive of and interactive with
culture (i.e. inclusively interactive);a treasure trove of civilisational
riches serving all humanity; and constantly in progress but having
a core set of beliefs and practices that are ultimately linked to the
historical legacy of Prophet Muhammad.15
Thus, according to Moosa, the PM worldview is based on more then

“identity, texts, practices and history,”16 and includes an additional,
undefined element that “involves all those things that make one feel
that you belong.”17
This progressive Islamic consciousness is “firmly rooted in
usable traditions but uncompromisingly universal in outlook, can
redefine the very meaning of Islam without abandoning the
parameters of faith.” It is, furthermore, “syncretically arranged and
engaged in permanent dialogue with the progressive agendas of other
cultures, its ultimate goal is a culturally polycentric world founded on
13Ibid, 119.
14Azam, 13.
15Karamustafa, 109–110.
16It is not implied, however, that these do not play an important role in the way the
PM worldview is constructed.
17Moosa, “Transitions,” 126.
92
economic socialism and gender equality.”18 Its Islam is democratic,

anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist.
3. Progressive Muslims’ Approach

to Islamic Tradition (Turath)
As Moosa points out, traditionalist and Salafi revivalist approaches to
the Islamic tradition regard legitimate religious knowledge to be
coterminous with the pre-modern Islamic tradition itself.19 Their
worldviews are embedded in a Salafi understanding of the (regressive)
nature of history and time. By definition, tradition is conceived of in
terms of continuity, stability, authenticity, and authority,20 resulting in
the adoption of what Moosa terms “a perpetually retrospective
approach to religious understanding.”21
The concept of PM and the manner of PM engagement with
the turath reject this assumption of the regressive character of
history/time and the static nature of the Islamic tradition. The PM’s
understanding of tradition is based on the fundamental premise that
the primary textual sources of the Islamic worldview (the Qur’an and
Hadith-derived Sunnah) are subject to humanly constructed
interpretational processes, and that a distinction ought to be made
between “religion and religious knowledge,”22 “normative and
historical Islam” (to use Fazlur Rahman’s terminology23), or, in the
parlance of Islamic jurisprudence, between shari‘ah (Divine
worldview) and fiqh (human understanding of it). The same applies to
Islamic Law. In the words of Emon, the PM approach recognizes
that “[B]etween scripture and the pronouncement of a legal ruling lies
a complex interpretive and constructive process administered by the
human agent.”24 This is the reason for using the phrase, Progressive
Muslim thought, and not Progressive Islamic thought. This
18Majid,323.
19Moosa, “Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” 112.
20Abrahamov, vii.
21Moosa, “Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” 122.
22Phrase used in Soroush. Cf. Amirpour, 20–21.
23Rahman, Islam.
24Emon, 3.
93
interpretational awareness of PM thought translates itself in the

importance and emphasis given to examining the epistemological and
methodological dimensions underlying and determining the validity
and soundness of various inherited interpretational models of the
overall Qur’ano-Sunnatic teachings. Therefore, the PM considers the
concept of tradition to be humanly constructed, to be a product of
many past and present communities of interpretation. Tradition is
seen as operating on a human epistemological plane, being able to
accommodate a number of competing interpretations, which, at
times, may be mutually exclusive.25 The PM hermeneutic, therefore, is
based upon a model in which there is a “fluid exchange of ideas and
the acknowledging of a wide spectrum of interpretations.”26
The PM does not claim to make a complete epistemological break
with the intellectual history of the turath. In line with the genealogical
approach to history discussed above, the Islamic tradition is
conceived as “consisting of contending forces and ideas and not as a
seamless and harmonious whole.” In particular, the ideologically
vulnerable legal discourses embedded in the larger framework of
culture, are seen as ideologically-laden and as arenas where power
relations are constantly (re)-negotiated.27 Thus, following Asad, the
PM considers tradition to be discursive in nature and embedded in
the broader framework of power relations, conflict, and contestation
of competing interpretations or subtraditions, each based on a shared
set of assumptions linking the Islamic past and the future to
particular Islamic practice in the present.28 Furthermore, the PM
approach to tradition is that of serious engagement with the full
spectrum of Islamic thought and practices.29 In the words of Safi:
There can be no progressive Muslim movement that does not

engage the very ‘stuff’ (textual and material sources) of the Islamic
tradition …we [PM] believe that it is imperative to work through
inherited traditions of thought and practice. In particular cases, we
25Jackson, Introduction.
27Azam, 8
28Asad.
29 Safi, Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 7.
94
might conclude that certain pre-existing interpretations fail to

offer us sufficient guidance today. However, we can fruitfully
claim that position after-and not before-a serious engagement
with tradition. To move beyond certain past interpretations of
Islam, we have to go critically through them.30
The PM approach to cumulative Islamic tradition is that of a “fine

tuning, a polishing, a grooming, an editing and re-emphasising”31of
certain aspects of Islamic historical legacy.32 Its approach is based on
“a critique which derives its inspiration from the heart of Islamic
tradition” and is not a “graft of (Western) Secular Humanism onto
the tree of Islam” but “a graft that, although receiving inspiration
from other spiritual and political movements, must ultimately grow in
the soil of Islam.”33 Indeed, for the PM, the Qur’an continues to
assume a central position to the contemporary Muslim debates and is
considered the ultimate legitimizing text of the Islamic
tradition.34This attitude toward the accumulated intellectual heritage
is, therefore, “not framed in the context of the Islamic equivalent of
Lutheran Christian reformation.” Unlike some non-traditional
approaches to Islam, 35 the PM advocates not a radical and complete
rupture from the turath, but a pluralist epistemology and a
methodological fluidity which “freely and openly draw from sources
outside the Islamic tradition so long as nontraditional sources serve
as useful tools in global pursuit of justice,” such as discourses
characterizing liberation theology36 and secular humanism.37
Progressive Muslims consider themselves to be “critical
traditionalists.” They “constantly interrogate tradition and strive to
30Ibid.
31Ibid.
32Ibid,7–9.
33Safi,Introduction, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 2, 8, 16.
34Taji-Farouki, Introduction, in Taji-Farouki, 12–16.
35That is, approaches in which the primary sources of the Islamic Weltanschauung
and the derivative body of knowledge comprising the cumulative Islamic tradition
are considered of no value, have no authority or normativeness, and are not used as
points of reference.
36As in the writings of Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Rebecca Chopp.
37As exemplified in the works of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky.
95
ask productive questions.”38Unlike the Neo-Traditional Salafi (NTS)

and madhhab-based approaches, the turath in PM thought is not seen
as static or as a “pre-fabricated design of being,” to use Moosa’s
phrase,39 but as dynamic, “manifesting itself in the relationship
between the past which produced the turath and the present in which
the turath continues to live.40 Basing itself on a dialectical relationship
between the past and the present, PM thought “studies turath in the
light of the present, its problems, its questions and its needs.”41
Progressive Muslims call for a “rational authentication of turath [as] a
methodological tool for making turath the product of a dynamic
fertilization of textual assets by means of innovative hermeneutic
activity. . . .”42
PM thought engages in the process of deconstruction (tafkik)
of tradition, which is a process of transformation of
the constant into changing, the absolute into relative, the

ahistorical into historical, the non-temporal into temporal in order
to discover the inherently rational( author’s translation). 43
Thus, argues Moosa, “to be a person of tradition one must conceive

of the temporal and the timeless together; one must acutely be aware
of one’s place in time and of one’s own contemporaneity.”44 In Safi’s
words, “every tradition is a tradition-in-becoming, and Islam is no
exception.”45 The concept of tradition is, therefore, seen in the PM as
humanly constructed and is subject to vicissitudes of human history.
In the PM, the question of authenticity (asalah) and heritage is
constructed along the lines outlined in the Fourth Statement of the
Final Declaration on the question of heritage and authenticity by the
Arab Muslim intellectuals who convened in Kuwait in 1974:
38Moosa, “Transitions,” 118–126.

39Ibid, 25.
40Cf. Gäbel., 5.
41Mansoor, 59.
42Salvatore, 195.
43Gäbel, 32.
45Safi, Introduction, in Safi, 6.
96
Authenticity does not consist in literal clinging to the heritage but

rather in setting out from it to what follows and from its values to a
new phase in which there is enrichment for it and development of its
values. Real revivification of the heritage is possible only through a
creative, historical, critical comprehension of it; through transcending
it in a new process of creation; through letting the past remain past
so that it may not compete with the present and the future; and
through a new assimilation of it from the perspectives of the present
and the future.46
The much-debated and frequently misunderstood concept of
jihad in PM thought is closely linked to that of its etymologically
47
related concept of ijtihad.48 Indeed, an essential component of this

thought, according to Safi, is Progressive Muslims’ “struggle (jihad) to
exorcise [our ] inner demons and bring justice in the world at large by
engaging in a progressive and critical interpretation of Islam
(ijtihad).”49
In the PM approach to interpretation of Qur’ano-Sunnatic
indicants, besides the concept of the sociocultural embddedness of
certain aspects of the Islamic tradition and its primary sources, to
which a vital role is assigned, ethico-moral considerations are the
highest hermeneutical tool.50 As such, PM thought is a “search for
moral and humane aspects of Islamic intellectual heritage and [a
force] against moral lethargy.”51 Indeed one of its central guiding
principles is “to reclaim the beautiful in the vast and rich moral
tradition of Islam and to discover its moral imperatives.”52
Progressive Muslims call for a “careful analysis of some of the more
complex and foundational presumptions in Muslim legal and ethical
philosophy” and the necessary epistemological and paradigm shift in,
46Cited in Boulatta, 16.

47Usually translated as—spiritual as well as physical—“struggle,” “effort,” or
“exertion.”
48Usually signifying intellectual exertion in interpreting normative sources of the
Islamic tradition.
50For more on this, see section 4 of this paper.
51El-Fadl, in Safi, 35.
52Ibid.
97
what Moosa terms, the post-Empire Islam climate.53 In this respect, it

strongly opposes, accounts for, and challenges the “great
impoverishment of thought and spirit brought forward by all Muslim
literalist-exclusivist groups such as (but not only) Wahhabism.”54
Being a progressive Muslim, argues Safi further, means “to issue an
active and dynamic challenge to those who hold exclusivist, violent
and misogynist interpretations [of the Islamic tradition].”55
Progressive Muslims, in this context, see it as their task to revive the
tradition’s “vibrancy, intelligibility and diversity.”56 As such, avers
Safi:
At the heart of a progressive Muslim interpretation is a simple yet

radical idea: every human life, female or male, Muslim and non-
Muslim, rich or poor, “Northern” or “Southern” has exactly the
same intrinsic worth.57
Furthermore:
A progressive Muslim agenda is concerned with the ramifications

of the premise that all members of humanity have this same
intrinsic worth because, as the Qur’an reminds us, each of us has
the breath of God breathed into our being.58
As a corollary, Progressive Muslims have a holistic, non-sectarian

approach to the Islamic tradition.
As shall be discussed in more detail in the next section, the PM
hermeneutic, unlike the predominantly de- or, at best, semi-
contextualized hermeneutics employed by NTS and madhhab-based
communities of interpretation, is contextualist.
Also, the PM approach to turath goes beyond the apologetic
discourses indulged in not only by modernists, but also by other
traditionalist and revivalist groups that have emerged over the last
53Moosa, Poetics, 3.
55Ibid.
58Ibid.
98
two or three decades.59 An apologetic approach is based on a process

that “reduces complex problems and practices to their bare essentials
in order to score an ideological point.”60 This approach is,
furthermore, ahistorical and, in actual fact, distorts history by
attempting to apply today’s standards to the past. This leads Moosa
to assert that
The predisposition among many Muslim apologists is not to

understand history, but rather to try to fix or correct it, with the
enormous condescension of posterity.61
4. Delineating Features of the PM Model of

interpretation (Manhaj) of
Qur’ano-Sunnatic Textual Indicants
A detailed discussion of the delineating features of PM manhaj has
been presented elsewhere.62 There, it is argued that the PM Qur’an-
Sunnah interpretational model is based upon a number of
epistemological and methodological assumptions, one of which
pertains to the nature and function of language in the Qur’anic
discourse. The PM approach to conceptualizing the nature and the
function of the Qur’anic discourse is based upon the Qur’an’s
essential literary character, as understood in the “conventional”
theory of the origins of language as well as the Qur’an’s essential
createdness. This approach implies that, although Divine in origin,
the text and the language of the Qur’an are, like any other literary
piece of writing, to be subject to modern literary criticism.
Additionally, Progressive Muslims do not subscribe to ethical
voluntarism, which, in a large segment of Muslim thought, implies a
legalistic expression of the Will of God.63 As such, ethico-moral
59See, for example, Ali, in Safi, Progressive Muslims, 175–182; Moosa, “The debts and
burdens of critical Islam,” in Safi, 120–126; and Safi, Introduction, in Safi,
Progressive Muslims, 20–22.
60Moosa, “The debts and burdens of critical Islam,” in Safi, 121.
61Ibid., 122.
62Duderija, “Delineating Features,” article under review.
63Weiss, 35.
99
considerations that can be derived from the text (nass) are

hermeneutically privileged over literally interpreted textual indicants
conceptualized in legal positivist temrs.
The PM manhaj also emphasizes the role of the interpreter in
deriving meaning and subscribes to the view of the Qur’anic
polyvalency—the view that the Qur’anic text can withstand or
accommodate application, by different communities of interpretation,
of various interpretative strategies eliciting different readings of the
same (piece of) text. As such, Progressive Muslims subscribe to the
notion of Qur’anic polysemicity/polyvalency. Furthermore, the PM
manhaj highlights the essential “historicity” of the Qur’anic text, i.e.,
the essential, intrinsic sociohistorical embeddedness of much of the
Qur’anic content. This is particularly the case for the Qur’anic
legislative and sociocultural norms, such as those pertaining to
questions of gender and sexuality. Hence, they adopt what we refer to
as a comprehensively contextualist approach to Qur’anic
interpretation. This comprehensive contextualist heuristic consists of
two elements, as identified by Barlas: reading behind the text, that is
reconstructing the historical context from which the text emerged,
and reading in front of the text, that is, recontextualizing the text in
light of present needs.64 The ultimate objective of this approach is to
develop the ability to distinguish hermeneutically between universal
ethicoreligious and socioculturally contingent elements of the
Qur’anic revelation, allowing for a development of a systematic,
coherent, and hierarchical model of general and universal Qur’anic
values, which, hermeneutically, would be the Qur’an’s most powerful
interpretational instruments. In line with the views of the earliest
Muslim communities, who lived in the first and the first half of the
second century, the PM manhaj also insists that rationality and ethical
objectivity are not alien to the élan of the overall Qur’anico-Sunnatic
teachings. A thematico-holistic approach to the interpretation of the
Qur’anic content is another feature of this manhaj. This thematico-
holistic principle is based on the premise that a proper understanding
of a Qur'anic concept is gained only if all the relevant verses dealing
with that concept are analyzed and subsequently synthesized into a
64Barlas, 22–23.
100
larger framework of interpretation. The above-mentioned

hermeneutical tools of the PM manhaj are all based on a broader
hermeneutical mechanism, which, in turn, is based on the premise
that the actual nature and character of the Qur’anic discourse seeks to
realize and reach an underlying objective (qasd/maqsad) which is the
definitive task of the interpretational process. This purposeful nature
of Qur’anic discourse is embedded, according to the PM manhaj, in
the Qur’an’s actual content and is in accordance with the way the
Qur’anic message was, in essence, understood by the first three
generations of Muslims. The PM manhaj is also premised on the view
that certain Qur’anic ethicoreligious values, such as justice (‘adl), dignity
of all human beings (karamah), equity (qist), mercy (rahmah), and
righteous conduct (‘amal salih) are higher-order principles of
interpretation of Qur’anic injunctions, to which all other
norms/values/injunction, especially those (including the ones in the
Qur’an) which are relative from a sociocultural standpoint, are
subservient. These values, in turn, are traced back to the Qur’anically
embedded concept of Divine Ontology and Divine Discourse rooted
in the concept of Divine Unity (tawhid) that permeates the entire
Qur’an and is of fundamental importance to its conceptually and
linguistically distinct Weltanschauung. 65As far as the nature and the
scope of the concept of Sunnah are concerned, the PM manhaj does
not conflate the concepts of Hadith and Sunnah as being
epistemologically and methodologically identical, and it does not
consider that Hadith is the Sunnah’s only vehicle.66 As we shall
demonstrate in the next section, the PM manhaj is, instead, based on
a concept of the nature and scope of Sunnah that is epistemologically
and methodologically independent of Hadith and is ultimately linked
to the broader usul-al fiqh (Islamic legal theory ) models. As such, it
goes beyond the classical Hadith sciences (‘ulum al hadith) and usul-al
fiqh sciences in the hermeneutical assessment of the significance and
function of Hadith in Islamic thought.67
65Ibid.,
13–19.
66Duderija,“The Nature and the Scope of the Concept of Sunnah,” 269–280.
67For more details, see Duderija, “A Paradigm Shift,” 195–206.
101
How are these features of the PM manhaj employed in order to

construct the Religious Self and the Other?
5. The Religious Self and the Other

in the Qur’an and Sunnah: The Importance of Context
Before examining the above-stated question, more needs to be said
about the revelatory environment in which occurred, especially in the
Medinan period, the revelation and the Prophet’s embodiment of it
in reference to the question of the identity of the Self and of the
Other. It was, primarily, in Medinah that Muhammad’s message—
and, therefore, the Muslim identity—became more “Self-conscious.”
But, also, it is the Medinan model of the Prophet and early Muslim
community that many Muslims consider worthy of emulation in
many respects, including that of the relationsip with the (religious)
Other. Furthermore, even a cursory examination of the Qur’anic
content (and, therefore, of the Prophet’s legacy) was organically
linked to this context, especially the dimension of the Qur’anic
content bearing on the relationship between Muslims and the
religious “Other”.68
Several general points need to be considered in attempting to
understand, from a religious perspective, the concept of the identity
of Self and Other as understood during the Prophet’s time in light of
the Qur’an and the Prophet’s embodiment of it.
First, the Prophet Muhammad’s message arose within the context of
well-established religious communities, most important of them
being—apart from the pre-Qur’anic paganism—Judaism,
Christianity, and Hanifiyyah.69 The Qur’an describes several instances
of the Muslim community’s attitude toward the non-Muslim Other70
and vice-versa.
68For more on this in relation to the concept of “the ethic of pluralism” in the
Qur’an see Miraly.
69Explained later in this section.
70I.e., the mushrikun (“polytheists”), the munafiqun (“hypocrites”), and Ahl-Kitab
(“the People of the Book”—primarily, Jews and Christians). For a lucid discussion
of this issue, see Donner; also, Maghen. Donner writes (267–268): “Islam’s
relationship with the People of the Book has had its ups and downs. The growing
102
Second, the Qur’anic attitude (and Muhammad’s conduct)

toward the non-Muslim Other is highly contextual in nature and,
therefore, possibly ambivalent.71Also, during much of the Muslim
community’s “formative period” in Medina, a climate of friction and
hostility between the Muslims, on the one hand, and the mushrikun,
large Jewish tribes, Christians,72 and hypocrites (munafiqun), 73 on the
other, prevailed, under which Muslims were constantly concerned
about the survival of their community, which often took a
reactionary, antagonistic stance vis-à-vis the religious Other. Watt
describes the circumstances and motives behind the relationship
between Muslims and non-Muslims, especially between the Prophet
of Islam and the Medinan Jews:
In Muhammad’s first two years at Medina the Jews were the most
dangerous critics of his claim to be a prophet, and the religious
fervour of his followers, on which so much depended, was liable
to be greatly reduced unless Jewish criticisms could be silenced or
rendered impotent . . . . In so far as the Jews changed their
attitude and ceased to be actively hostile, they were unmolested.74
This is attested to by the Qur’an itself. The context-dependency of

the scriptures toward the view of the (religious) Other (and, by
familiarity of the inhabitants of the Arabian Penninsula with the ideas, institutions
and the communities of the surrounding monotheisms followed by the initial and
increasingly intense encounters of the nascent Muslim umma with the same, bred
the complex mixture of attitudes to Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism
discernable through the classical literature of the faith. The seminal texts and
genres—the Qur’an, Hadith, Tafsir, Sharh, and fiqh—evince a multifaceted and
pendulating posture vis-à-vis the religio-cultural “other” that partakes more of
dialectic than dogma.”
71Ambivalence and contextuality are also found in non-Qur’anic elements of the
tradition as embodied in various Hadith corpora. On Qur’anic ambivalence in

relation to the “Other,” see Maghen, 268.
72The Christians had a much smaller numerical presence in Medina. Furthermore,
they had much less economic influence. Thus, the Qur’an’s “complaints” about
Christians pertain primarily to the domain of dogma. For details, see McAuliffe.
73A group of people in Medina who only superficially became Muslims in order to
procure certain benefits, but, in reality, supported the enemies of Muslims.

74Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 217.
103
implication, the religious Self) lead Waardenburg to assert that

“Looking back at the interaction of the new Islamic religious
movement with the existing religious communities, we are struck by
the importance of socio-political factors.”75
Besides the sociopolitical factors, religious ideas were also
significant, since the Qur’anic progressive consolidation of Islamic
religious identity is inextricably linked with the religious identity of
the Other, notably of Jews and Christians.76 The aspects of religious
identity’s continuity and commonality with other faiths 77 in the
Qur’an are intertwined with those of the emergence of, and the
emphasis on, the Muslim identity’s originality and distinctiveness.”78
Thus, the religious aspects of, and interactions between, various
religious communities in the Qur’anic milieu led to the genesis of the
construction of religious identity of Muslims and played a very
important role in its construction.79
In his study of the extent of the Prophet Muhammad’s and the
Qur’an’s emphasis on confessional distinctiveness, Donner has
demonstrated that, in the Islamic scripture and in early Islam, “the
community of Believers was originally conceptualized independently
of confessional identities,” and that
It was only late—apparently during the third quarter of the first

century A.H., a full generation of or more after the founding of
Muhammad’s community—that membership in the community of
Believers came to be seen as confessional identity in itself- [check
punctuation mark here; hyphen, dash, comma?] when, to use a
somewhat later formulation of religious terminology, being a
Believer and Muslim meant that one could not also be a Christian,
say, or a Jew.80
75Waardenburg, Muslims and Others, 99.; cf. Waardenburg, “World Religions as Seen
in the light of Islam,” 245–276.

76Zebiri, chapter 1. Also, Donner, “From Believers to Muslims.”
77Such as belief in Allah (One, True God), the previous prophets, the Hereafter, the
Day of Judgment.
78The latter trend being more prominent in the context of Medinan Muslim
community.
79Zebiri, chapter 1.
80Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 12; cf. Maghen, 268–269.
104
Donner adduces a substantial amount of evidence to support the

argument that. Qur’anically, (some) Jews and Christians would qualify
as mu’minun (believers) besides the muslimun (those who submit to
God).81
Another significant trend in the “historicity” of the
development of the Muslim religious Self was the gradual but ever-
growing religious self-consciousness of the Prophet of Islam and his
early community. Whilst attempts to find common ground and a
syncretic base featured more frequently during the earlier periods of
Muhammad’s life,82later periods stressed “features constituting
specific identity and what distinguished one [i.e. Muslims]
fundamentally from others.”83 Miraly asserts that “Whereas pluralism
was an essential foundation of Islam, exclusivism was a later addition.
In the centuries following the Revelation, the original pluralist
impulse that prompted the Constitution of Medina was usurped by
politically motivated factions who propounded exclusivist
interpretations of the Qur’an in order to justify warfare and territorial
expansion.”84 Echoing this observation while discussing the context
of the early Muslim view of the Byzantines in the days of the Prophet
Muhammad, Shboul says that the attitudes of the Muslims developed
from sympathy and affinity, reflected in the early Qur’anic verses, to
awe and apprehension of Byzantium’s military power, scorn of
Byzantine wealth and luxury, and, finally, anticipation of open
antagonism and prolonged warfare.85
Jews and Christians were eventually recognized by Islam as
recipients of previous revelations (Ahl-Kitab) and were awarded by it
the status of protected/secured minorities (dhimmis).
81Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 17–24, 28–34; cf. Miraly.

82Such as the importance of Jerusalem and the Muslim practice of turning to it in
prayer.
83Waardenburg, Muslims and Others, 44. A case in point is that of the change of
direction in prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. Traditions reportedly going back to

the Prophet, such as those found in Sahih Bukhari, stress largely the distinctiveness
and uniqueness of the Islamic religious identity.
84Miraly, 33.
85Shboul, 242.
105
Another point to be considered in relation to the question

under examination is the Qur’anic concept of a hanif/millat Ibrahim.86
Qur’anically, this notion may be called the primordial, monotheistic
Urreligion based on the belief in the One, True God as embodied in
Abraham’s message (Arabic millat Ibrahim), considered as the
universal belief system and as potentially Muhammad’s final attitude
toward the religious Self and the Other.87 It is, however, unclear
whether the Prophet of Islam himself identified “historical Islam” “as
the only or merely one possible realisation of the primordial religion,
the Hanifiyyah, on earth.”88
Lastly, an “Islamocentric view” of Muslim perceptions of the
religious Other stems from a certain interpretation of the Qur’ano-
Sunnatic teachings. This view is based upon the premise that the
Qur’an is a source of empirical knowledge of the religious Other that
is to be applied universally, ahistorically and without regard to
context.89
Having outlined the general trends and circumstances that
shaped the Qur’ano-Sunnatic view of the religious Self and of the
Other, we will now examine statements from the Qur’an and Hadith
pertaining to the Self vis-à-vis the Other and analyze them in relation
to the PM manhaj in regard to Qur’ano-Sunnatic teachings.
6. PM Approach to Interpetation of the Qur’an and

Sunnah in Regard to the Religious Self and the Other:
Relevant Qur’ano-Hadithic Texts
As mentioned above, the main feature of the PM approach to
Qur’ano-Sunnatic teachings is based upon, inter alia, the
comprehensively contexualist, syncretico-thematic, objectives-driven,
86For more details, see Beck.

87Waardenburg, Muslims and Others, 87–94.
88Ibid., 106–107; also, Qur’anic verses, such as 5:48, seem to present the existence
of religious plurality as a manifestation of God’s Will.

89In other words, Qur’anic criticisms of certain practices of Jewish and Christian
communities living in the seventh-century Hijaz apply to all previous and

subsequent Jewish and Christian communities in an ahistorical, uncontextualized
manner.
106
and ethical or values-based heuristic that draws a conceptual

difference between the concepts of Sunnah and Hadith, distinguishing
between their nature and scope. It this section, we will highlight how
this approach understands the normative sources of Islam about the
religious “Other” in order to construct the religious Self. In the next
section, we will examine how, with the same objective in view, the
approach understands the Qur’ano-Sunnatic boundaries of faith.
Before we examine Qur’anic verses and Hadith statements on
which the PM manhaj arguing for an inclusive and pluralist religious
Muslim identity is based, we should note that a number of
overarching Qur’anic concepts support the normativity of the
construction of a pluralistic identity—namely, those of islam/muslim,
iman/muslim, tawhid,90 and fitrah,91 to which may be added the
Qur’an’s conscious linking of Muhammad to the primordial religion
(Urreligion) of Abraham92 and all the other prophets (see, for example,
Qur’an 16:123). Furthermore, Article 25 of the above mentioned
“Constitution of Medina”93 and Qur’an 21:92 are evidence of the
pluralist character of the Qur’anic worldview and of Muhammad’s
praxis, which is symbiotically linked to that worldview.94
In line with its method of understanding the nature, objectives,
and the context-content dynamic behind the unfolding of Qur’ano-
Sunnatic teachings, Progressive Muslims consider such Qur’anic
verses as 2:120,95 3:118,96 5:51,97 9:5,98 and 3:85,99 and several ahadith100
90That is Unity, Immanence, and Transcendence of God.

91Miraly defines fitrah as “humanity’s common divinity grounded in an innate
“noble nature” which informs a universal morality amongst all humans,” 26.
92Ibid, 53–55.
93Article 25 runs as follows: “The Jews of banu ‘Awf are a community (ummah)
along with the believers. To the Jews their own religion(din) and to the Muslims
their religion. See ibid., 73.
94Ibid, 31, 51–52.
95“Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow
their form of religion. Say: ‘The guidance of Allah that is the (only) guidance.’ Wert
thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee then
wouldst thou find neither protector nor helper against Allah.”
96“O ye who believe! Take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks; they
will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin: rank hatred has already
107
that have been used by other schools of thought within Islam to

argue for an exclusivist religious identity,101 as being contextually
contingent—and, hence, specific to the time of the Revelation and to
the communities at the time of the Revelation, rather than as
universal in their scope. As far as Hadith texts are concerned,
Progressive Muslims not only on the comprehensively contexualist
approach to their interpretation to them, but maintain that those
ahadith contradict the concept of Sunnah based on the overall Qur’anic
attitude toward the ahl-Kitab as well as on the Prophet’s praxis, which
is an embodiment of that attitude. Furthermore, as argued above, one
of the delineating features of the PM manhaj is their conceptual,
methodological, and epistemological divorcing of the Sunnah from
the body of knowledge called Hadith, which is also used as a
hermeneutical tool. Recourse is also taken to the concept of
“authorial enterprise.” According to El-Fadl, the term authorial
enterprise refers to the process of determining the extent to which
the Prophet’s role in the historical transmission of the report can
safely be established. Since, according to the classical Islamic view,
hadith reports are not the actual words of the Prophet, but rather the
recollections and interpretation of the Prophet’s words, representing
the core meaning of the Prophet’s statements as reported by
appeared from their mouths; what their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made
plain to you the Signs if ye have wisdom.”
97“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and
protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you
that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people
unjust.”
98“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans
wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in
every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and
practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving,
Most Merciful.”
99“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah., never will it
be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have
lost (All spiritual good).”
100These have been analyzed in Duderija, “The Interpretational Principles
Governing Neo-Traditional Salafi Qur’an-Sunnah Hermeneutic in the Construction

of the Self and the Religious Other” (article under review).
101See, for example, ibid.
108
individual transmitters, a hadith can have several authors, representing

various collateral influences, each contributing to the shaping of the
structure and meaning of the report. When interpreting a hadith
report, argues El-Fadl, the principle of “proportionality of
correlation” between the role of the Prophet and the normativeness
of the report is to be applied.102 According to this correlation
principle, the higher the Prophet’s’ authorial enterprise in the report,
the higher its normative effect and vice versa. El-Fadl also applies
another regulatory mechanism relating to the normative effect of the
hadith report. According to this rule, hadith reports having
“widespread moral, legal, or social implications must be of the
highest rank of authority . . . and requiring heaviest burden of
proof.”103 Lastly, as the very last methodological resort, he introduces
the concept of a “conscientious pause,” a faith-based objection to
textual evidence104 deriving from the overall understanding of the
Qur’ano-Sunnatic Weltanschauung and its lan/ethos—what we have
called the ethico-religious and values-objective approach to
interpretation.
Furthermore, based upon the notion of a thematic/holistic
approach to the Qur’anic content and according precedence to
ethical, or values-based, dimensions of the that content in light of the
Qur’anic verses cited below, Progressive Muslims develop a
pluralistic and inclusivist Self identity that legitimizes the religious
claims of the religious “Other.” As such, Progressive Muslims
consider “the ethic of pluralism” as intrinsic to Qur’an.105
In reference to how Muslims should behave toward the
religious other, Progressive Muslims consider the following verses106
102El-Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, 89.

103Ibid.
104Ibid.,
93.
105See,for example, Esack, Asani, Rahman, Major Themes, El–Fadl, Place of Tolerance,
and Arslan.
106This does not render PM methodology segmentalist or selective because it do
not dismiss other Qur’anic evidence that might contradict the interpretation based
on the chosen verses but considers it contextually contingent and not part of the
universal injunctions of the Qur’ano-Sunnatic teachings. Thus, a distinction
between contextually contingent and universal Qur’anic injunctions is made as
another delineating feature of PM manhaj.
109
to be more reflective of the spirit and ethos of the overall Qur’ano–

Sunnatic teachings:
Invite (all) to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful
preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most
gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best who have strayed from His
Path and who receive guidance. (16:125)
And dispute ye not with the People of the Book except with
means better (than mere disputation) unless it be with those of
them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say "We believe in the
Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came
down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we
bow (in Islam). (29:46)
Allah forbids you not with regard to those who fight you not for
(your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes from dealing kindly
and justly with them: for Allah loveth those who are just. (60:8)
They are those with whom thou didst make a covenant but they
break their covenant every time and they have not the fear (of
Allah). . . . If ye gain the mastery over them in war disperse with
them those who follow them that they may remember. If thou
fearest treachery from any group throw back (their covenant) to
them (so as to be) on equal terms: for Allah loveth not the
treacherous. . . . Against them make ready your strength to the
utmost of your power. But if the enemy incline towards peace do
thou (also) incline towards peace and trust in Allah: for He is the
one that heareth and knoweth (all things). (8:56–61)
These verses are self-explanatory and do not require a great degree of

contextualisation for their underlying message to be understood.
They lay down, according to Progressive Muslims, the general and
universal principles underlying the decorum to be observed in dealing
with, and the attitude to be taken toward, the religious Other whether
in conditions of peace or in a situation of conflict (especially, 8:61).107
As such, these verses could be considered as higher-order principles
107Ramadan, 203–204; El-Fadl, Great Theft, 203–219.
110
superseding the contextually contingent Qur’ano-Hadithic body of

texts.108
7. Qur’ano-Hadithic Texts Relevant

to the PM View of the Boundaries of Faith
We will now see how the PM approach to interpretation of the
Qur’an and the Sunnah demarcates the boundaries of belief and
disbelief and applies them to non-Muslims, especially Christians and
Jews. But first, a word about the historical development of the
concept of faith/belief (iman) and “disbelief”109 (kufr).
Drawing upon his methodology of Qur’anic historical semantics,
Toshihiko lists several components of the implied and related
meanings of the root K-F-R as it occurs in the Qur’an:
To cover, ignore knowingly, or be unthankful for received
benefits (philological meaning);
Attitude of ingratitude toward, and acts of rebellion against,
the Benefactor;
Giving the lie (takdhib) to God and God’s Apostle and the
divine message;
Disbelief, when used as antonym of iman;
Man’s denial of the Creator manifesting itself in acts of
insolence, haughtiness, contentiousness, and presumptuousness;110
Kufr associated with shirk or the practice of associating other
gods with the One true God (practice of Arab polytheists called
mushrikun);
Kufr, in sense of going astray (dalalah).
Three points need to be made: First, the concept of kufr pre-

supposes belief in God. Second, it can be applied to those who give
the lie to God and to God’s Apostle and his Message, and, as a result,
go astray. Third, it is well known that Jews and Christians in the
108These have been discussed in Duderija. See n. 100, above.

109Most commonly translated as disbelief. For more on the meaning of kufr, see
below.
110Izutsu, Ethico-religious, 119–155.
111
Qur’an are often referred to as as Ahl-Kitab, People of the Book, but,

in several instances, the root K-F-R is also used in relation to them, as
will be noted below.111 Thus, as remarked above, unless one adopts a
holistic and thematic approach to Qur’anic interpretation, one will
see a degree of confusing ambivalence in the Qur’anic attitude
toward Jews and Christians in relation to their faith.
As Izutsu points out, the Qur’anic concept of muslim112/kafir
relationship is based on a rather clear semantic dichotomy. Later
Muslims, however, changed the nature of the muslim/kafir dialectic,
introducing into it an additional element—namely, the concept of the
grave sinner (murtakib kabirah), or fasiq113. For example, the puritan
Khawarij, the first Muslim sect, considered fasiqs and disbelievers
(kafirun [pl. of kafir]) all those Muslims who did not subscribe to their
view of Islam. The Murji’ites, or the “pacifists,” considered fasiqun
(pl. of fasiq) to be Muslims, whilst the Mu’tazilites regarded them as
an falling into an independent category.114
Qur’anically, fisq, kufr and nifaq (religious hypocrisy)
Qur’anically are closely related concepts. Indeed, fisq and nifaq are
regarded as types of kufr.115 Elsewhere, it has been argued that, owing
to their non-contextualist manhaj, certain revivalist neo-
fundamantalist Salafi approaches to the Qur’an and Sunnah blur the
line between the Qur’anic concepts of kuffar, fasiqun and ahl al-Kitab,
and even conclude that the ahl-al-Kitab should, indeed, be considered
dis/unbelievers, and that all the Qur’anic verses that, interpreted in a
decontextualised, universalist manner, apply to mushrikun should also
apply to the ahl-Kitab not only of the time of the Prophet of Islam but
also of today.116 We have also briefly referred to the divergent
opinions within the Muslim community as to what constitutes kufr
111Qur’an 5:17, 98:1, and 5:57.

112Or, more precisely, mu’min. But the word Muslim is used since the religion of the
Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammed is termed Islam and its adherents are called
Muslims.
113This was a result of the turbulent socio-political climate during the first two and
a half centuries of Hijrah. See Watt, Formative Phase.

114See Izutsu, The Concept of Belief, 156–162.
115Izutsu, Ethico-religious, 156–162, 178–183.
116Duderija, “Interpretational Principles.”
112
and iman, and have noted that the kufr/iman relationship in the Qur’a
is far from as black and white, as the adherents of the neo-
fundamentalist Salafi-based approach consider.
We will now consider a body of evidence which the PM, based
upon its interpretational model, considers to be establishing religious
pluralism as the normative paradigm of the Qur’ano-Sunnatic
teachings:117
Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clear

from error; whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped
the trust worthiest handhold that never breaks. And Allah heareth
and knoweth all things. (2:256)
If their spurning is hard on thy mind yet if thou wert able to seek
a tunnel in the ground or a ladder to the skies and bring them a
Sign (what good?). If it were Allah's will He could gather them
together unto true guidance: so be not thou amongst those who
are swayed by ignorance (and impatience)! (6:35)
To thee We sent the Scripture in truth confirming the scripture

that came before it and guarding it in safety; so judge between
them by what Allah hath revealed and follow not their vain desires
diverging from the truth that hath come to thee. To each among
you have We prescribed a Law and an Open Way. If Allah had so
willed He would have made you a single people but (His plan is)
to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all
virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah; it is He that will show you
the truth of the matters in which ye dispute. (5:48)
If it had been the Lord's Will they would all have believed all who
are on earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind against their will to
believe! (10:99)
(They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in
defiance have right (for no cause) except that they say "Our Lord
is Allah." Did not Allah check one set of people by means of
another there would surely have been pulled down monasteries
churches synagogues and mosques in which the name of Allah is
commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid
117Cf. Miraly.
113
those who aid His (cause); for verily Allah is Full of Strength
Exalted in Might (Able to enforce His Will). (49:13)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) and those who follow the
Jewish (Scriptures) and the Christians and the Sabians and who
believe in Allah and the last day and work righteousness shall have
their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear nor shall
they grieve. (2:62)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) those who follow the Jewish
(Scriptures) and the Sabians and the Christians any who believe in
Allah and the Last Day and work righteousness on them shall be
no fear nor shall they grieve. (5:69)
Those who believe (in the Qur'an) those who follow the Jewish
(scriptures) and the Sabians Christians Magians and Polytheists
Allah will judge between them on the Day of Judgment: for Allah
is witness of all things. (22:17)
Based on the hermeneutical principles outlined in the previous

section, these Qur’anic verses are viewed as being hermeneutically
superior to any other Qur’ano-Sunnatic/Hadithic evidence, and as
forming the foundation of the Islamic perspective on the issue of
faith. They are also invoked to argue that the “necessity of
diversity”118 is intentional on behalf of God and is a sign of God’s
wisdom and will. Furthermore, Progressive Muslims subscribe to the
view that, as Qur’an 22:17 suggests, the ultimate arbiter in matters of
belief /unbelief is God, not human beings. El-Fadl writes:
Moderates119 argue that not only does the Qur’an endorse

principle of diversity, but it also presents human beings with a
formidable challenge, and that is to know each-other [Qur’an
49:13].120 In the Qur’anic framework, diversity is not an ailment or
118Ramadan, 202.
119In our terminology, Progressive Muslims. For a definition of moderates, see El-
Fadl, Great Theft, 16–25.
120“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and
made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that ye may
despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who
114
evil. Diversity is part of the purpose of creation, and it reaffirms

the richness of divine. The stated Divine goal of getting to know
one another places an obligation upon Muslims to cooperate and
work towards specified goals with Muslims and non Muslims
alike…In addition to the obligation of tolerance, the Qur’an
obliges people to work together in pursuit of goodness.121
In this regard, we may also note the view of Abu Zayd, who
maintains that one major characteristic of Qur’anic discourse, that of
negotiation, an inclusivis mode of discourse, applies to the Ahl al-
Kitab. In fact, he argues that Qur’anic discourse does not repudiate
the scriptures of Jews and Christians, only the Jews’ and Christians’
understanding and explanation of them. The exclusivist mode of
Qur’anic discourse, Abu Zayd maintains further, only applies to the
mushrikun, the Arab polytheists.122 As such, Progressive Muslims are of
the view that religious pluralism is divinely willed and is central to the
Qur’an’s vision of society giving salvational significance to all human
communities.123
8. Conclusion
This article has examined how the interpretational principles
governing the PM Qur’an-Sunnah manhaj result in a particular
construction of the religious Self vis-à-vis the religious Other. It has
been argued that the term “Progressive Muslims” is a heuristic tool
which describes a particular approach to understanding the
cumulative Islamic tradition (turath) and the concept of modernity. I
have maintained that the PM school of thought, as developed by the
contributors to Safi’s Progressive Muslims, is not based on a complete
epistemological break from the turath but on a particular
interpretation of it. I have contended that Progressive Muslims
is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted
(with all things).”
121As in Qur’an 5:48. See also Qur’an 5:2: “Help ye one another in righteousness
and piety but help ye not one another in sin and rancor: fear Allah: for Allah is
strict in punishment.” Y.Ali. Also, El-Fadl, The Great Theft, 207–208.
122Abu Zayd.
123Cf. Miraly, 37.
115
consider the concept of tradition to be dynamic, humanly

constructed, a product of many past and present communities of
interpretation. The concept of authenticity (asalah) in PM thought is
not based on a literal clinging to the turath but is negotiated through a
creative, historical, critical engagement with it. As far as
epistemological boundaries and contours of PM thought are
concerned, it was demonstrated that they are inclusive of both the
pre-modern traditional Islamic episteme and the modern episteme. I
have also argued that the PM manhaj is characterized by a number of
hermeneutically delineating features, such as comprehensive
contextualization, a thematic/holistic approach to interpretation of
Qur’an and Hadith textual indicants, a hermeneutical privileging of
ethicomoral and values-based interpretational and a conceptual,
methodological, and epistemological divorcing of the Sunnah from
Hadith. Finally, I have argued that, applied to the relevant Qur’an-
Hadith textual indicants, these hermeneutically delineating features of
the PM manhaj enable Progressive Muslims to construct an inclusivist
and pluralist religious Self vis-à-vis the religious Other.
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Quelle, Qumran, and the Qur’an:

A Review Essay
Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui∗
Ruquaiyyah W. Maqsood, The Mysteries of Jesus. Oxford,

U.K.: Sakina Books, 2000. xvi, 288 pages. PB $19.00. ISBN
0–953–8056–7–0.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls

Deception. New York: Touchstone, 1991. xix, 268 pages, PB
$12.60. ISBN 0–671–79797–2.
Mohammad Ata ur-Rahim, Jesus: A Prophet of Islam. 3rd. Ed.

London, U.K.: MWH London Press, 1983. 245 pages. PB $6.50.
ISBN 0–906194–08–3.
Michael Hart, in his well-known 1978 work, The 100, ranked the most
influential persons in history. In the opening chapter, “The Premise,”
he spells out the three criteria that he used to evaluate thousands of
potential candidates for the one hundred top positions: (1) the person
should have given his/her followers a powerful movement; (2) the
movement should have succeeded in the lifetime of that individual;
(3) the movement should have sustained its original force and
dynamism even today. Using these standards, he ranks Mohammad
© Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui 2008.

∗
The late Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui was Professor, and later Professor Emeritus, of
Communication at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.
121
number one, and Jesus number three. Hart was subsequently asked
why he placed Jesus lower than Muhamamd when, today, the number
of Christians in the world greater than that of Muslims. He justified
his evaluation by dividing the credit for the spread of Christianity
between Jesus and St. Paul. According to him, while Jesus’ moral
principles have remained identifiable in theory, it is the practice of
Pauline theology that has actually survived as the Christian religion.
Throughout the history of Christianity, attempts have been made
to restore that religion to its monotheistic roots in the true
Abrahamic tradition. Early Unitarians like Iranaeus (second century),
Tertullian and Origen (second and third centuries), Diodorus, Lucian,
and Arius (third and fourth centuries) made tremendous sacrifices for
setting things right by openly challenging Trinitarianism. During the
European Renaissance and Reformation (fourteenth-seventeenth
centuries), scholars like Servetus in Spain, Francis David in
Transylvania, Sozini (also known as Socianus) in Italy, and Biddle,
Milton, Priestly, and Theo Lindsey in England exposed the
hollowness of the logic behind Pauline theology and the “divinity” of
Jesus (Ata ur-Rahim). However, the pace, frequency, and intensity of
these strikes on Christian dogma have accelerated since the 1945
discoveries of the Gospel of Thomas and Apocalypse of James at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt, and of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in
Palestine two years later.
The Savior-Cult around the personality of Christ, which has
nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus or of his genuine disciples,
has received a political boost on a number of occasions in the past,
and continues to do so even today. Paul, who had never met Jesus
and who, by his own admission, tortured many of early Christians,
originated this cult of Jesus’ dying for the sins of all the past, present,
and future generations of believers. Paul deemphasized the need for
following the Divine Law for the purpose of attaining salvation. He
found, in Antioch, Hellenized Gentiles, ready listeners of his dogma.
The better-informed eyewitnesses of Jesus’ mission in Jerusalem and
its surrounding communities were committed to the Mosaic Law.
Thus, they refused to accept the new accretions to their original faith.
When these disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, like James and Peter,
came to know what Paul was preaching in the name of the Lord’s
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Siddiqui: Quelle, Qumran, and the Qur’an
faith, they were shocked. They recalled Paul from his missions back
to Jerusalem to ask him to explain his reasons for supplanting Jesus’
teachings with his own fabrications. Confronted by the early
Christians led by James, brother of Jesus, Paul became rather
defensive.
The situation became so ugly for Paul that some forty Jews,
passionate about upholding the Law, plotted to kill him. Invoking the
need to keep the peace, the Roman authorities apparently took Paul
into custody and ferreted him out of Jerusalem to the safety of
Caesaria, and then to that of Rome itself. With such sure support
from the powers that be, Paul and his followers were now free to
preach a dogma, which was almost totally out of sync with the one
that God had revealed through Jesus.
However, one phoenix-like characteristic of independent
scholarship is that its valid findings, even though they may be
eclipsed for some time, will be vindicated again and again despite the
opposing ideologies thrown up by contemporary political and
economic forces. This is so because the expansion of human
knowledge increases the chances for the truth to be liberated from
redactions, distortions, and misrepresentations of real historical
people, places, and events.
The four authors of the three volumes under review here discuss
this phenomenon by looking into the forces and events that have
been responsible for the prevailing marginalization of the truth in
Christendom. My rationale for considering these volumes together is
manifold. First, they all deal with the same central issue of
suppression of the truth about Jesus’ personality and preaching.
Second, they all are minutely researched and copiously documented.
Third, despite their different faith affiliations, all four authors point
in the same direction and reach the same conclusions on the gap
between the original and the contemporary versions of Christianity.
Above all, in today’s politically and ideologically charged global
climate, these studies have immense potential for contributing to the
much-needed interfaith understanding with a view to avoiding a clash
of civilization.
The background of each of the four authors is interesting and
noteworthy. Maqsood, formerly Rosalyn Kendrick, a British
123
Christian, is a convert to Islam. She had to her credit half a dozen

books on Christianity before she embraced Islam. Since then, she has
written about a dozen more books. Thus, she has not only written on
both her Abrahamic faiths, but has experienced them in practice as
well. Baigent and Leigh are Christian church historians, from New
Zealand and the United States, respectively. They have written several
well-researched volumes on both the rise and fall of the Christian
church as an institution of organized religion. Also, they have
produced researched materials on the past and the present of
Freemasonry. Ata ur-Rahim, a Muslim, who recently passed away in
Karachi, Pakistan, had invested over thirty years of arduous research
in his book, before its first edition appeared in 1977. His book has
been a rich resource for scholars and speakers engaged in
contributing to Christian-Muslim dialogues.
Despite their diverse backgrounds, the scholars’ investigations
lead to the same conclusion, namely, that the meek, quiet, and savior-
like personality of Jesus, as projected by the prevailing Pauline
theology is not the one attested by either contemporary history or
recent findings like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the diggings from Nag
Hammadi. So much so that the very foundations of the Trinitarian
dogma, such as original sin, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the
sacrificial lamb, the savior-cult, and atonement cannot be verified
clearly and unequivocally with direct quotes from the Gospels
attributable to Jesus himself.
Each of the three books stresses a different aspect of this saga of
suppression of the truth about Jesus and his mission. Maqsood has
attempted to differentiate between the Nazarene zealot of Qumran,
presented in the Trinitarian Gospels as pacifist and all-loving Jesus,
on the one hand, and, on the other, the prophet Jesus of the Qur’an,
son of Mary. Baigent and Leigh have analyzed the deceptive politics
surrounding the emerging new documentary evidence of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, which is under the control of the Israeli Department of
Antiquities since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Ata ur-Rahim extensively
covers the evolutionary history of the Pauline doctrine and its easy
acceptance away from the Holy Land, and the continual challenges
to that doctrine from early, medieval, and modern Unitarian
Christians and non-Christian scholars. He also compares the Biblical
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accounts of Jesus’ life and his three-year-long missionary career with

what the Qur’an and Hadith (the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings) have
to say on the same subject.
Maqsood ascribes this ready acceptability of Paul’s theology in
western Christendom populated by the Gentiles to its freedom from
the “restrictive and oppressive” Jewish Law, and to the fact that the
Gentiles loathed the Jews and, therefore, would stay clear of the
latter’s beliefs and conduct. Also, the revolutionary resistance to the
Roman occupation of the Holy Land led by the Jewish Essenes (also
known by other names) had aroused hostility toward the Jews and
Jewish Christians among the general populace of the rest of the
Roman Empire. To the Gentiles, therefore, anything easier and
different would be more readily acceptable than the cumbersome
Jewish Law or, for that matter, anything associated with anti-Roman
dissidents. The prophets Zechariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus were,
each in their own times, in the vanguard of this politico-religious.
Paul’s compromising stance toward the Roman occupation helped
him attain the rulers’ advocacy as well as popular support among the
masses.
The Mysteries of Jesus is a cogent collection and collation of
historical materials on all the major issues in New Testament studies.
The materials include narratives of Jesus’ birth, crucifixion,
resurrection, personality traits, and teachings; of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
patterns of life in the Qumran community, this community’s
Zealotry, and Jesus’ disciples affiliated with the community; of the
sources of the Gospels, the role of Jesus’ brother, James, as well as
references to Jesus and Mother Mary. Here, Maqsood goes into great
details of the very early literature—like the Q source (derived from
the German word Quelle, which means “source”), which the earliest
Gospel writer, Mark, has heavily drawn upon. Yet, mysteriously, this
source was later rejected by the Church authorities. According to
traditional Christian scholarship, Matthew and Luke are said to have
based their Gospels on Mark’s. Maqsood points out, however, that
Mark mentions nothing about the birth or resurrection of Jesus. Also,
there are 200 verses in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark.
For these traditional Trinitarians, Maqsood poses another
problem: the early Christian community described in Q were not
125
Christians; they were followers of Judaism, and they did not interpret
Jesus’ death as divine or tragic, or as a “Savior” event. According to
Q, therefore, the later Christian beliefs about Jesus’ birth and
resurrection are erroneous. The Church is said to have concealed or
destroyed historical records of contemporary events by Tacitus and
Josephus. Strangely also, there is no mention of Nazareth in the Old
Testament. Moreover, the New Testament mentions nothing about
the Essenes or the pious community of Qumran led by James. It is
noteworthy that it was James, and not Peter or Paul, who was the
first head of the early followers of Jesus. Whatever references to
James have survived in the New Testament are negative; they are
even hostile to him.
Maqsood asks why the Church declared heretical some of the
early practices common to Judaism and Christianity, such as: at least
three daily prayers; male circumcision; ablution and bathing for
purity; clean-food habits; charity requirements; and making
pilgrimage to a central Temple? These practices have been preserved,
in their developed form, in Qur’anic teachings. Paul’s tactical or
surreptitious compliance with the Roman occupiers and their
paganism seems to have set the Church along a wrong course, from
which it has not been able to recover.
Maqsood devotes several chapters to discussing various aspects
of each of the above-listed matters, and finally delivers the judgment
in her last, 25th, chapter by underscoring a need for both Muslims
and Christians to make concerted efforts to understand each other’s
beliefs. This, she believes, would enable them to find the truth
leading to world peace. The sole appendix in the book discusses the
contents of the Gospel of Barnabas with a view to resolving some of
the controversies dealt with in the book, and then goes into the
politics behind the Gospel’s suppression by the Church.
Baigent and Leigh, in their classic work further illustrate the
traditional Church’s attempts at suppressing any and all documentary
evidence contradicting the Pauline doctrine, which was officially
supported by the pagan Roman rulers in the first century of the
Christian era. The doctrine continued to enjoy still stronger support
of the emperor Constantine at the ecumenical Church Council
convened at Nicaea in 325. The imperial support for the Athanasian
126
creed, later known as the Nicene Creed, seriously damaged the

Unitarian faith taught by Jesus himself and upheld by James and his
later followers like Arius. This powerful state support for the doctrine
of divinity of Christ led to its imposition on the entire Roman
Empire. Thus, Unitarianism, which had so strongly survived as the
very foundational principle of Christianity for over three centuries
after Jesus, was now declared a heresy for a long time to come.
Baigent and Leigh narrate a similar saga of organized cover-up
by the Church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Dead
Sea Scrolls are the earliest Biblical manuscripts. They were discovered
in 1947 near the cradle of Christianity—in the caves of Qumran and
Damascus (not to be confused with the Syrian capital) situated on the
north-western shore of the Dead Sea, a few miles to the east of
Jerusalem. These locations are much more significant for the history
of the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam than
even Jerusalem and Nazareth, this last place being erroneously known
as the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Incidentally, according to the Dead
Sea Scrolls records, Nazareth did not even exist at the time of the
birth and mission of Jesus. Jesus was born and raised in the Nazarene
community of Qumran caves, and this location has been confused
with the then non-existent town Nazareth.
The politics, materialistic greed, academic rivalry and arrogance,
and, above all, the Church’s anxiety at the discoveries negating the
Pauline Christianity of today are some of the main reasons behind the
fact that the Dead Sea Scrolls have, so far, only partially seen the light
of day. Ever since their discovery by some Jordanian Bedouins before
the existence of the state of Israel, these scrolls have been kept under
unprecedented secrecy—first by an exclusively Catholic team of
Church scholars—the so-called “International Team.” So long as
Jerusalem was under Jordanian control, access to these documents
was not as restricted as it was after the Arab West Bank fell to Israel
in the Six-Day War of 1967. While in Jordanian control, these
manuscripts were housed in the Rockefeller Museum.
From the very beginning, these scrolls were considered so
important politically that
127
Former Major-General Ariel Sharon (current Prime Minister of

Israel) reported that, in the late 1950’s, he and Moshe Dayan
devised a plan for an underground raid on the Rockefeller, to be
conducted through Jerusalem’s sewer system (Baigent and Leigh,
1992, 24).
The plan could not be implemented then, but no sooner was the
Museum, heretofore an internationally accessible institution, captured
by the Israelis in 1967, than they sadly treated it as “spoils of war.”
The scholars of Hebrew University started using the scrolls as an
invaluable treasure for granting doctoral degrees at their own
institution. Intense wrangling began between the Israelis and the
Catholics scholars under the leadership of Father De Vaux. The two
contending groups exchanged hateful and venomous epithets against
each other. They accused each other of tardiness in processing the
scroll materials for public use.
Baigent and Leigh disdainfully dub the international team as
incompetent; they even accuse them of having arrived at a consensus
to conceal the truth. They assert: “[T]he Scrolls identify the group
known as Christians as a band of fervent theocratic revolutionaries
intent on breaking Roman control of the Holy Land and restoring the
Kingdom of Israel and its rightful Judaic dynasty, of which Jesus
himself was a member.” The two authors, drawing upon Eisenman
and Wise’s (1983, 1986) work, depict the early Christians of Qumran
caves not as a passive, contemplative monkish celibates, but as a
band of Zealots, who revolted against Rome and, thus, led to the
destruction of the Temple. The Christian consensus team brushes
aside the differences between the temperaments of the revolutionary
Qumran community and the meek and peace-loving Jesus and his
followers of the Gospels. They justify their conclusions by dating the
Scrolls to a much earlier period before Christ. On the contrary, the
“independent” and “unbiased” researchers date them to the first
century of the Common Era, when James, called the Just and
Righteous Teacher, leads the early Christians. The latter group of
scholars also finds striking similarities between the beliefs and
practices of Jesus and his followers, on the one hand, and rabbinical
Judaism, on the other. The early Christians, unlike those of the
128
subsequent two millennia, were fully committed to the strict

observance of the Law.
In The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Geza Vermes, the
foremost expert on the Scrolls, who was later appointed by the
Israelis to lead the more diverse and inclusive team of independent
researchers of the scrolls and related materials, testifies to the
findings of Eisenman, Wise, Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh. He says:
“Thus, compared with the ultra-conservative rigidity of the Essene
Rule, rabbinical Judaism reveals itself as progressive and flexible,
while the religion preached and practiced by Jesus of Nazareth stands
out invested with religious individuality and actuality. Also, by
comparison to all three, the ideology of the Gentile Church sounds a
definitely alien note (25).”
It is precisely this “definitely alien” character of the Pauline
doctrine that Ata ur-Rahim has analyzed in his book. He has drawn
many parallels between Islam and the original teachings of Jesus
reflected in Unitarian Christian beliefs, which survived in the face of
false doctrines alien to the Abrahamic monotheism. This golden
mean lies between the two extremes of the rigid and ritualistic
Essenian Creed, on the one hand, and the Gentile Church’s “Savior-
cult,” devoid of any firm commitment to the Law, on the other. The
Introduction of Ata ur-Rahim’s book has been written by a British
convert to Islam, Andrew Douglas-Hamilton, who, like Maqsood,
has experienced and rejected Paul’s flawed interpretation of Jesus’
teachings and embraced Jesus’ genuine message as contained in the
Quran. Douglas-Hamilton stresses the importance of mutual
understanding among the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as they are
the inheritors of the same divine message of unadulterated
monotheism.
In sum, it would be appropriate to illustrate that genuine
revelation is compatible with independent universal human reason,
by sharing the gist of the conclusion drawn by each of the three
books reviewed.
(a) “For centuries church people have never dared to admit that
the Trinitarian choice made by the fourth century church might have
been wrong, and that Jesus might not have been the great blood-
sacrifice of propitiation, but exactly what the Muslims have patiently
129
said he was: a sublime Messenger of God, one of a series of chosen

prophets, of whom Muhammad was the seal and the last” (Maqsood,
222).
(b) “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all, at present, beset by a
resurgent fundamentalism. One would like to believe that greater
understanding of their common roots might help curb the prejudice,
the bigotry, the intolerance and fanaticism to which fundamentalism
is chronically prone” (Baigent and Leigh, 235).
(c) “Historical research has shown that the animism and idol
worship of primitive peoples in the world is in all cases a regression
from an original unitive belief and the One-god of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam grew up in opposition to many-gods rather
than evolving out of them (Ata ur-Rahim, 7).”
The four authors draw the same conclusions: (a) the original
teachings of Jesus are not his divinity, or the Trinitarian Savior-cult;
(b) true Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have common monotheistic
roots; (c) religious extremism results from ignorance or neglect of
this commonality; and (d) the three religions need to be explored
through independent historical research.
The three works reviewed here assume vital significance not only
for academic research for the purpose of rectifying historical errors,
but also because the “liberated” knowledge they contain has immense
potential for contributing to the much-needed world peace at this
critical juncture of global human interaction. In the absence of such
an understanding on the part of the common people of the world,
greedy and armed robber barons and terrorists will continue to push
humanity toward the brink of disaster.
130
Book Reviews
Adeed Dawisha. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century:

From Triumph to Despair. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003. vi, 340 pages. PB. $19.95. ISBN 0–691–12272–5.
This provocative book is likely either to delight or infuriate. It will

certainly delight all those who have, all along, considered Arab
nationalism to be an irritant and would gleefully read its obituary set
in gloating prose. But the fury of the adherents or sympathizers of
Arab nationalism will be all the greater as the author lays out his case
in a highly controversial and contentious manner.
The author’s thesis is set in a simple and straightforward
theoretical and historical approach: Arab nationalism has
unceremoniously become obsolete because of its failure to achieve its
main raison d’être, namely, the unification of the Arab world into a
single state. In other words, Arab nationalism had one overriding
goal which constantly eluded its leaders and followers. Consequently,
the ideology itself has been utterly discredited in all its articulations
and political manifestations. Moreover, such a judgement is
developed on the basis of highlighting certain historical events as a
confirmation of the original hypothesis. Although the study is
chronologically organized, its main argument subsumes this
chronology in a dazzling array of examples, thereby leaving in its
wake a number of gaps both factually and theoretically. Furthermore,
most of these arguments are simply recycled by relying on previous
contributions by scholars and diplomats whose subjective
observations are taken at their face value, or as they happened to
substantiate the book’s main thesis. Nevertheless, the author exhibits
a healthy mastery of almost all the relevant sources (except
unpublished documents) and does not hesitate, from time to time, to
pass judgement on their reliability in accordance with his own criteria.
131
The author starts off by drawing a sharp distinction between

Arabism and Arab nationalism. Whereas the first is considered to
denote no more than a cultural identity with no particular political
program, the second is treated as an ideology aiming at creating a
single state for all the Arab peoples. However, throughout the first
half of the book, Arab nationalism is invariably referred to as an
identity rather than as an ideology (see, for example, 15, 105, 124,
127, and 136). It is only in the second half that Arab nationalism is
finally referred to as an ideology. This theoretical bifurcation
permeates the entire book to the extent that one is led to consider its
first five chapters as no more than an amateurish exercise in historical
narration. This is, perhaps, to be explained by the fact that the author
is a political scientist whose expertise or field of specialization is
primarily focused on the second half of the twentieth century.
Otherwise, how would one justify all the inaccurate references in the
course of discussing the career of the prominent Arab nationalist
thinker Sati’ al-Husri? The author gets al-Husri’s date of birth wrong,
erroneously states that during “World War I, Istanbul sent him to
Syria as the director general of education” (49), and then goes on to
highlight his “illiberal streak,” simply because al-Husri thought that
freedom “is not an end in itself but a means towards a higher life”
(71). Moreover, the reader is not told that such a statement was made
in 1941, in the context of a lecture on the military defeat of France
and its occupation by the German army.
Furthermore, this theoretical bifurcation repeatedly rears its head
in the author’s constant reference to the Arabs as “the Arabic-
speaking people” (71, 107, 125). Such a designation was normally
used by certain Orientalists or imperialist diplomats in order to justify
foreign rule or highlight the mosaic nature of Arab societies,
depriving them thereby of any clear national identity or identities.
Moreover, Arab revolts of a decidedly national character, such as the
1920 Iraqi revolt and the 1925 Syrian revolt, are pronounced to be
mere tribal or sectarian rebellions, with no underlying political
program or modern notions of state building (chapter 4).
Neverthelss, the tone of the whole study changes completely as we
enter the 1950s and the onset of the Egyptian Revolution led by
Gamal ‘Abd an-Nasir. As a matter of fact, the book seems to have
132
Book Reviews
been originally intended as a glorification of Nasir (or Nasser) as the

most popular and influential leader of Arab nationalism in its entire
history. It is to the credit of Dawisha that, despite his misgivings as to
the ultimate aims of Arab nationalism, or its future as an identity, he
paints an almost Shakespearean portrait of his Egyptian hero,
revealing both his high moments and tragic human faults. It is for
this reason that one suspects that Dawisha was once a Nasserite
whose former loyalties shine through his thick layers of critical
remarks. Thus, Nasir had an unmistakable “charisma,” an “aura” and
“mounting prestige” as “the confident leader” of the entire Arab
world. Nasir also represented a “mystical power” known as Arab
nationalism, but often tinged with emotionalism rather than
rationality (166–172). Nasir’s moment of glory, or the apex of Arab
nationalism, as Dawisha dubs it, was exemplified in the 1958 merger
between Syria and Egypt. However, within one year Arab nationalism
began its downward slide (chapter 9).
According to Dawisha, this downward slide was a direct result of
powerful entrenched interests and societal forces across the Arab
World. Curiously, these entrenched interests and societal forces were
represented by sects, tribes, ethnic minorities, and, sometimes, local
patriotic loyalties rather than by ideologies. Hence Arab nationalism,
an overarching identity aspiring to replace all these parochial or
partial allegiances with a modern notion of citizenship, was, in the
end, unable to overcome all these obstacles, despite its astounding
success in the 1950s and 1960s. Israel’s military victory against Egypt,
Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 simply hastened the process of decline
and eventual fall. Moreover, the Six Day War, as it was called, served
to consolidate the separate identities of the Arab states, thereby
announcing the final triumph of wataniyyah (local patriotism) over
qawmiyyah (or Pan-Arabism). Once again, the failure is explained as
the result of a clash of identities, whereby the ideological relevance of
Arab nationalism hardly features in Dawisha’s sweeping statements.
Furthermore, it is maintained that, by the end of the twentieth
century, Arab nationalism ceased to exert any discernible influence,
even as a cultural bond (274–281). Such a statement is supposedly
substantiated by disparaging the reemergence of a new generation of
Arab nationalists who espouse democracy, support the vital role of
133
civil society, and call for a different approach to the achievement of

Arab unity. This New Arabism, dismissed by the author as the
mumblings of a handful of old men (280), merits sober consideration
and deserves to be taken more seriously as it represents a new wave
that is likely to gather momentum as other ideologies and identities
have so far miserably failed to create viable alternatives.
More important, in his concluding chapter, the author suddenly
introduces a new theory to account for the decline of Arab
nationalism. This is done by reference to a seminal article by Ian S.
Lustick on the absence of Middle Eastern great powers. Lustick’s
arguments highlight the fact that this absence was essentially the
result of constant foreign “intervention and enforcement of
international norms” in the Middle East. By contrast, there was, in
the period of European history between the sixteenth and nineteenth
centuries, a noticeable “absence of actual or potential interference by
outside powers” (307). Hence the consolidation of new nation-states
in Europe and the segmentation of the Arab World. Surprisingly,
Dawisha endorses Lustick’s thesis and goes out of his way to show its
credible application and relevance to a number of Arab situations and
artificial states. Dawisha’s conclusion runs as follows:
Consequently . . . no Arab state was allowed to accumulate power

and territory, and by so doing create the possibility for one unified
state, the ultimate goal of Arab nationalism. Western powers were
not about to allow the emergence in the Arab world of a Prussia, a
Piedmont, or an Ile de France. And certainly they did not.” (311)
In other words, Arab nationalism failed because the West willed it to

fail. However, this seems to be an afterthought hardly alluded to in
any of the preceding chapters. The book’s theoretical bifurcation may
turn out, after all, to be a scholarly virtue rather than a confused
account.
Youssef M. Choueiri
University of Oxford
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Book Reviews
Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman. Stereotypes and Prejudice

in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xvi, 483 pages.
HB. $85. ISBN 0–521–80797–2.
Children can begin to acquire an ethnic and national identity from the
age of two or three and a conception of an enemy group by age three
or four. The creation of these identities and prejudices does not
happen in a vacuum. Cultures in conflict with each other and with
embedded negative stereotypes of each other begin to mold the
prejudices of their children from a very early age. Professors Bar-Tal
and Teichman, in their scholarly work Stereotypes and Prejudice in
Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society, demonstrate the
negative stereotypes about Arabs in Israeli Jewish culture, tracing,
over the last one hundred years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the
evolution and transmission of these stereotypes.
The first quarter of the four-hundred-plus-page book explains
the theoretical framework of the study and outlines the relevant
definitions. Bar-Tal and Teichman argue that many works that
examine stereotypes focus on individuals’ perceptions without
looking more broadly at the society from which the individuals in
question draw their perceptions. To remedy this problem and in
order to understand and contextualize the formation of Israeli
children’s attitudes toward Arabs, the authors dedicate about half of
the book to a review of research studies that trace prejudices and
stereotypes in Jewish society and culture in the period from before
the creation of the State of Israel to the present day.
Bar-Tal and Teichman note a link between historical events and
the evolution of Israeli perceptions of Arabs. “Israeli public
discourse,” they argue, “is characterized by a continuous negative
stereotyping of Arabs in general and of Palestinians in particular, with
use of delegitimizing labels.” The book recognizes the evolution of
this stereotyping over time: “The dominant presentation of Arabs in
public discourse is related to the threat they are perceived to pose to
the Jewish existence in Israel” (154).
The authors relate that, before the creation of the State of Israel
and in the early years of the existence of that country, Arabs were
135
depicted as a primitive, violent mass without distinction of national

affiliation or recognition of national aspirations. The peace
negotiations with Egypt in the late 1970s marked a change in the
depiction of Arabs: the negative focus shifted from Arabs as a whole
to Palestinians in particular. The Oslo Accord of 1993 began a new
era in Israeli representations of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and the Palestinian people. Specifically, “Palestinains
began to be personalized and humanized” (155). Bar-Tal and
Teichman identify a renewed shift toward negative media
representations of Palestinians after the violence that broke out in
September 2000. They show that Israeli school textbooks mirrored
media representations of Arabs, and that, until recently, the textbooks
have depicted Arabs in a negative way. They attribute the change to
the difficulty posed to Zionist histories by the presence of Arabs in
Palestine at the time Jews came to settle there in the late nineteenth
century as well as to the history of conflict between Jews and Arabs
in Palestine over the past one hundred years. The 1990s saw a
revision of textbooks, but negative stereotypes of Arabs still linger in
some schoolbooks.
In the last quarter of the book, the authors discuss the research
they conducted over the course of a decade examining children’s
drawings of human representations of Arabs. Teichman analyzed
these drawings to monitor the children’s perceptions. The study
concluded that children develop emotionally laden stereotype at a
young age and that, despite the reduction of negative opinions held
about Arabs by children as they get older, the prejudices formed early
on remain in the children’s minds at the subconscious level. The
children under study overwhelmingly attributed their negative
perceptions to negative images in the media rather than to their
parents or educators.
Bar-Tal and Teichman note that important changes in Israeli
society have helped to overcome negative media representations, but
they fear that recent events have played a harmful role in turning
Israeli culture back toward negative depictions of Arabs. They
demonstrate the persistence of delegitimizing depictions of Arabs in
adult and children’s literature, in schoolbooks, and, especially, on
Israeli television. They argue that, despite their ongoing conflict, Jews
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Book Reviews
and Palestinian must overcome the negative depictions of each other,

“and in this way . . . contribute to the cessation of vicious cycles of
violence” (390). The authors propose a number of ways, including
education, cultural exchanges, and mass media reform, to facilitate
change.
Helene J. Sinnreich
Daruish Zahedi. The Iranian Revolution Then and Now:

Indications of Regime Instability. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 2001. 224 pages. HB. $60. ISBN 0–813–33748–8.
Daruish Zahedi takes on the challenge of predicting the outcome of

the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime on the basis of past events that
led to the formation the Islamic Republic after the Pahlavi monarchy.
Traditionally, historians are skeptical of predictions because actual
historical outcomes often turn out to be different from the
predictions made. Nevertheless, Zahedi predicts that, going by
political, economic, and social conditions now present in Iran, the
country is ripe for another drastic change.
Zahedi justifies his view by comparing and contrasting past and
present analyses of the Islamic Republic of Iran. One of Zahedi’s
strong arguments in support of his view is his belief that many of the
conditions that led to the change of government from the Pahlavi
regime are currently present and working against the Islamic
Republic. He gives examples to show that the general condition of
Iranian citizens is worse than it was during the Pahlavi regime
twenty-three years ago. He specifically talks about two major groups,
women and youth, as being the most constrained and deprived in
terms of freedom of action. He discusses the issues of the alienated
groups that initially welcomed the revolution, among such groups
being the intelligentsia, some of the clerics, and the bazaaris
(traditionally non-secular, wealthy merchant class, as opposed to the
contemporary business class).
137
One chapter in the book focuses on topics concerning the social

underpinnings of the monarchy, the theocracy, the business
community, and the dispossessed (such as the elite and middle class
who lost their wealth and positions as a consequences of the
revolution). The author contrasts the modern business community
with the bazaaris. This business class is primarily engaged in non-oil
mining, commerce, construction, agriculture, and manufacturing. The
author discusses the alienation of this sector by the Islamic Republic,
since the “theocracy assumed a negative posture toward the business
class” (93). Referring to the middle class, he remarks that “members
of this group came to realize that they had made a grave error in
anointing Khomeini as their leader. . . . Along with the intellectuals,
the professional middle class has undoubtedly been one of the
biggest losers of the revolution” (103).
Another chapter treats the nation’s opposition forces and the
current situation. Zahedi begins by discussing the National Front of
Iran, headed by Mohammad Mossadegh (1949), and continues
through the Liberation Movement of Iran (Nehzat Azadi-ye-Iran,
established in 196; Iran’s Communist party known as the Tudeh; the
Mojahedin-e-Khalq (Organization of the People’s Crusaders), and the
Fadaiyan (Sazman-e Chirkha-ye Fadaiyan-e Khalgh) or Organization of
the Guerrilla Crusaders of the Pople, formed in 1971. The author
does a good job in providing a survey, including backgrounds, of
these organizations’ activities, which is especially helpful when some
organizations, such as the Mojahedin, are compared with the Mojahedin-
e-Khalgh today. Zahedi also deals with the National Party of Iran,
which is the latest opposition force operating inside Iran, concluding
that “Iran’s opposition forces today are woefully disorganized and
bereft to unifying leaders and ideologies” (150).
In a final chapter, the author compares the nature and
leadership qualities of prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary
authoritarian regimes. The chapter compares the structural
arrangements and institutional underpinnings of the two kinds of
government, Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This well-written book provides a good survey of the
prerevolution and postrevolution events and organizations. The
book, however, draws on a rather small number of sources. The
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Book Reviews
number of books published in and outside Iran discussing and

analyzing the dynamics of Iranian politics and society is numerous. It
seems a little odd that Zahedi relies mostly on secondary sources.
Faegheh Shirazi
University of Texas at Austin
Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, eds. The New Crusades:

Constructing the Muslim Enemy. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2003. xii, 416 pages. PB. $24.50. ISBN 0–231–
12667–0.
It is rare that a book actually keeps me up at night thinking about the

implications of what I have just read—but this one most certainly
did! Qureshi and Sells have not only constructed a very readable
work, they have provided an important book at an important time in
American social thought.
The book consists largely of responses to the widely cited works
of Samuel Huntington, especially his essay “The Clash of
Civilizations,” published in the influential Washington “insider’s”
journal Foreign Affairs (72:3, 1993), and Bernard Lewis, especially his
popular piece, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” which was published in
Atlantic Monthly (September 1990). Lewis is, of course, an
accomplished scholar of the Middle East, but his views made popular
in his own articles, and Huntington’s elaborations, are the views
addressed in this collection of essays.
The basic thesis is not difficult to either summarize or
understand. Western civilization is at a crossroads in its international
standing—and it is marked by the “basic clash” between the values of
the Islamic East and the Judeo-Christian West. There are few
possibilities of coexistence of these two social forms and societal
theories. In short, we are at war (again).
In their introduction, Qureshi and Sells make telling points
about the curiosities of this constructed conflict. First of all, they
note, Lewis refers casually to “our Judeo-Christian civilization” (6),
yet “for a thousand years, up through the Holocaust, Jews were, at
139
best, tolerated evils in the view of dominant Christian ideologies” (6).

One suspects contemporary political alignments behind the
identification of “historic” relationships. Furthermore, Jewish
contributions to Islamic/Mediterranean cultures and civilizations are
flatly denied by such a bifurcation of East and West, with Jewish
contributions to the West exclusively highlighted.
More serious, however, is the accusation that contemporary
“scholarly” attacks on Islam as inevitably and invariably set on
conquest have been self-fulfilling prophecies in situations of conflict
in the modern world. The editors write, “The claim of Lewis and
Huntington that Muslims are obligated by their religion to work for
world domination reinforced the claims of extremist Serb and Croat
nationalists that Muslims could never be trusted to live among them.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Serb and Croat nationalists
championed the Lewis and Huntington theories of civilizational clash
in arguing for the inability of Muslims to be integrated into the
European communities of the Balkan region” (9).
This, in summary, is the real reason why this book is so
important. It is critically important to answer the demagogues of war
between East and West, the advocates of “irreconcilable differences”
between Christian and Islamic societies. In this collection, we are not
only the beneficiaries of careful analysis of the problems, the deeply
troubling roots and history of the Lewis/Huntington theses, but also
of responses on the basis of reasoned, historical analysis.
In the first major essay, “Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal
Democracy” (51–67), Fatema Mernissi elaborates how Western
connivance with Islamic monarchical powers have contrived to hold
back democratic developments in those lands, and, thus, cynically
perpetuating the very “Palace” powers that are used as examples of
the incompatibility of “Western democracy” and Islamic regimes. Oil,
of course, becomes the lubricant of any conscience that would object
to supporting ruling “friends” in Arab countries whose political
policies otherwise seem so objectionable. They may not be
democratic, but we can still drive our cars!
In “The Clash of Definitions” (68–87), the late Edward Said
demonstrates again the kind of analysis that made him such an
influential theorist. Taking on the Lewis/Huntington thesis directly,
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Book Reviews
Said shows how the contradicting realities of cultural exchange and

intersocietal influences across only apparently “incompatible
cultures” puts the lie to any attempt to say that there exists in the
world certain kinds of people who cannot ultimately find ways to
richly influence each other, interact peacefully, and create striking
examples of crosscultural artifacts, music, novels, and other
demonstrations of conviviality. The multiplying exceptions eventually
do disprove the rule.
John Trumpdour, in his essay: “The Clash of Civilizations:
Samuel P. Huntington, Bernard Lewis, and the Remaking of the
Post-Cold War World Order” (88–130), traces how the American
foreign policy is driven by the search for, and construction of,
“enemies” against which to insist on certain economic policies, with
often catastrophic results for domestic well-being, and equally
catastrophic results for international relations. With the demise of the
Soviet Union, and the ties to China that force us to choose between
our injected plastic McDonalds toys or supporting real democratic
reform, the Islamic world appears to be the newly constructed enemy
of choice to defend policies advantageous to Western, and, especially,
American, markets.
Roy Mottahedeh’s “The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist’s
Critique” (131–151) is a well constructed criticism of many of the
stereotypes used in Huntington’s own work, and Rob Nixon, in
“Among the Mimics and the Parasites: V. S. Naipaul’s Islam” (152–
169), points out that such stereotyping can be found in Indian
popular novelists as well as in the “serious” analysis of American and
European historical and social scholarship. Finally, Mujeeb Khan
traces Western (and the occasional non-Western) philosophical and
social commentary on perceptions of the East and Islam specifically
that have had significant influence—especially how one generally
conceives of “the Other” in his essay, “The Islamic and Western
Worlds: ‘End of History’ or the ‘Clash of Civilizations’” (170–201).
In Part Two of this volume, the uniting theme appears to be
“case studies” of specific regions or countries where these issues of
Western and Islamic conflicts or tensions are informed by prejudices
and cultural traditions of chauvinism (often, it must be said, on both
sides).
141
Tomaz Mastnak takes up the critically important question of

European dealings with the Ottomon Empire as an essential aspect
of defining “Europe” in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in
his impressively researched essay, “Europe and the Muslims: The
Permanent Crusade?” (205–248). Maria Rosa Menocal deals with
literary influences between the Christian and Islamic cultures
(especially of southern Europe—of course, most notably, in Spanish
history) in her essay, “The Myth of Westernness in Medieval Literary
Historiography” (249–287). Neil MacMaster provides very important
background on French attitudes toward Islam that is directly linked
to their colonial experience in Algeria—and his essay provides
important background material to the recent French rejection of the
European Constitution, allegedly motivated (according to many
media reports) at least in part by French resistance to Turkish
admission to the European Union. His essay is entitled,
“Islamophobia in France and the ‘Algerian Problem’” (288–313).
Two final essays venture into the cultural histories of societies in
conflict. Norman Cigar ventures into the highly charged issues
surrounding the Serbian conflicts in “The Nationalist Serbian
Intellectuals and Islam: Defining and Eliminating a Muslim
Community” (314–351), which is helpfully accompanied by analysis
of nearby conflicts in Michael Sells’ essay, “Christ Killer, Kremlin,
Contagion” (352–388). The presence of Sells’ essay reminds me to
note that readers of The New Crusades would benefit immensely by a
reading of an important related work, In God’s Name: Genocide and
Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov and Phyllis
Mack (Berghahn Books, 2001), where Sells also makes an important
contribution.
The New Crusades does an admirable job of responding the
Huntington’s famous thesis, but it does have its limitations. There are
issues that hover around the periphery of these discussions—for
example, the issue of minorities, both Christian and Jewish, in the
Islamic world, and of Islamic minorities in the European world—
issues that are especially relevant for understanding European
dealings with the Ottoman Empire over at least two centuries, and,
arguably, more. I would want to offer a firm “amen” to those who
point out that Lewis and Huntington’s easy references to a Western
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Book Reviews
“Judeo-Christian” culture are quite a generalization that hides

centuries of Christian brutality toward Jews—yet somehow we
“share” a culture that is “different” from Islam? It is hard to feel
comfortable with the fact, pointed out by more than one of the
essayists in this collection, that these wagons appear to be rather
hastily drawn in a circle for the purpose of making an argument over
and against Islam. Is the Jewish-Christian agenda somehow
completed? That would indeed be news to many of us, and a
significant Jewish contribution to this collection would have been
helpful, and certainly relevant.
Finally, I feel a bit like a “broken record” (a metaphor that
reveals this reviewer’s age, alas) in suggesting that such serious
analysis of the background of conflicts and social tensions, especially
between Christians and Muslims, would benefit from a sustained
attention (beyond Said’s helpful pointers in his essay) on those times
and events that exemplified the best in Islamic-Christian relations. It
is one thing for Christians and Muslims to insist—rightly but often
against frustratingly frequent historical realities—that “our religion
does not endorse that kind of behaviour,” it is quite another thing to
highlight those times when the faithful of the two traditions actually
managed to realize this, and live a different way—and then analyze at
length why peace and co-existence happened!
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher
Loyola Marymount University
Steven I. Wilkinson. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition

and Ethnic Riots in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. xiii, 293 pages. HB. $39.99. ISBN 0–521–
82916–X.
Democracy in pluralistic societies can be a tricky enterprise. A major

source of threat to democratic viability in such societies is ethnic
violence. Therefore, observers from John Stuart Mill and Thomas
Jefferson to Kenneth Shepsle and Alvin Rabushka have doubted the
success of democratic institutions in ethnically heterogeneous states.
143
However, India as well as the United States provide perhaps the best
cases to show that democracies are indeed sustainable in diverse
nations.
In Votes and Violence, Steven I. Wilkinson addresses the issue of
ethnic violence in India, chiefly the Hindu-Muslim riots, and its
connection to electoral politics. In the first chapter of the book, he
lays out his fundamental argument that ethnic riots are fomented or
prevented principally due to electoral considerations. Wilkinson
argues, contrary to other leading explanations discussed later, that it is
the electoral competition that drives communal riots. Democracies
protect minorities or inflame passions against them, the argument
goes, if it is in the governments’ electoral interest to do so.
In Chapter 2, the author addresses the town-level variations
relative to ethnic riots. According to Wilkinson, the electoral
incentives at the local level account for much of the variation
concerning the break out of riots. Using data for all communities of
more than 20,000 people in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous
state, the findings show that closeness to an election as well as the
previous margin of victory of less than 5 percent in the state election
significantly increased the odds of a riot, even while controlling for
socioeconomic and demographic variables and prior rates of violence
in the state.
In Chapters 3 and 4, Wilkinson takes on the heretofore two
widely accepted arguments about the causes of communal violence or
the lack of it in India. One notion, posited by Atul Kohli and
discussed in Chapter 3, deals with state capacity to prevent violence.
The argument is that Indian state governments have become
considerably weaker since the 1960s, hence unable to prevent riots
where before they could. However, Wilkinson argues that it is not the
state capacity, for even the least muscular state governments like
those of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh could prevent violence if ordered to
do so by state politicians. The other notion, posited by Arend
Lijphart and discussed in Chapter 4, deals with the idea of
consociational powersharing (meaning, giving minorities a seat at the
table) in preventing violence. The argument here is that, as India has
become less consociational over the decades, ethnic riots have
increased. Wilkinson, however, notes that India has in fact become
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Book Reviews
more consociational—consequently, there is reduced violence now,

as compared with the two decades following independence.
The heart of Wilkinson’s analysis is presented in Chapters 5 and
6. The author’s main argument that runs throughout the book is that
if party competition is high, ethnic violence will be low; if party
competition is low, ethnic violence will be high. In high party
competition situations, politicians will want to protect minorities in
order to garner their support; but in low party competition situations,
the politicians do not need minorities, and, thus, have no incentives
to protect them. In Chapter 5, Wilkinson’s study confirms this
hypothesis using data for fifteen major Indian states from 1961 to
1995. Regression estimates, for example, reveal that, as the number
of parties doubles, say, going from a state like Gujarat to a state like
Kerala, the number of riots drop by half. What, then, explains the
varying levels of party competition in the different states? In Chapter
6, Wilkinson argues that southern Indian states adopted integrative
policies relative to diverse castes early in the twentieth century, which
explains more political and social organization in the South,
producing more state parties, than in the North.
Chapter 7 is about comparative analysis, testing Wilkinson’s
thesis about electoral incentives and ethnic riots in 19th-century
Ireland, postindependence Malaysia, and postcommunist Romania. In
each case, he demonstrates support for his hypothesis. Finally, in
Chapter 8, Wilkinson ponders the broader question about the
sustainability of free institutions in diverse nations. Can democracy
and multiethnicity coexist? Wilkinson’s answer is a firm yes, for he
shows that electoral competition can actually reduce communal
violence.
There are many commendable points in this book. Wilkinson’s
main argument makes every sense in the world. It would appear, by
simply the progress of time, that the Indian society is becoming more
integrationist (or more consociational), which would lower the levels
of violence. It would also appear, as qualitative evidence makes
abundantly clear, that politicians will not at all hesitate in “playing”
with ethnic minorities for political reasons. The Bharatiya Janata
Party and the Shiv Sena Party have certainly been complicit during
their years of power in fanning the nativist flames in order to attract
145
more Hindu support. I would, however, also put more stock in the
economic argument than Wilkinson appears to do. The author does
examine economic variables (economic competition) and finds them
not to be responsible for the incitement of violence. But rather than
economic competition, economic security might be a better indicator.
Violence severely disrupts economic life, costing the majorities more
than the minorities. As economics increasingly drive Indian society,
Indian businesses are unwilling to tolerate any disturbances in
economic growth. In addition, Wilkinson’s “socialization” argument,
made briefly in the last chapter, would also have much validity in
minimizing ethnic prejudices.
The author is to be admired for collecting what appears to be an
unprecedented set of data for this project. Wilkinson relies on a
database of 2,000 riots for the years 1950–1995, along with a separate
database of Hindu-Muslin violence from 1900–1949. These data were
collected from a variety of sources, and represent a remarkable
undertaking. Moreover, this study is empirically well done, and
should serve as a model particularly for graduate students who wish
to conduct quantitative analyses.
I do, however, feel an obligatory itch to raise a few minor
matters of concern about this book. In defining towns, Wilkinson
draws the line at 20,000 people. Of course, going into smaller towns
would make the data collection project even more onerous. But what
happens in towns with populations of less than 20,000? In the United
States, for instance, ethnic disturbances seem more likely to occur in
rural rather than in urban areas. Indeed, if one paraphrases James
Madison’s argument from Federalist No. 10, it is the smaller
communities with homogeneous populations that would be more
troublesome for ethnic minorities. Also, in conducting the town-level
analysis, Wilkinson relies on one state only, the state of Uttar
Pradesh. I wonder if towns in other states would yield similar results.
Last, the author should have provided some summary measures (R2s
or other statistics) for the regression models in the book.
In the main, though, Wilkinson convincingly manifests the
significance of electoral motivations over other causes in instigating
or preventing ethnic violence. On the larger question of the success
of democratic structures in ethnically heterogeneous societies, I
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Book Reviews
wholeheartedly agree with Wilkinson. India, the United States, and

increasingly multicultural states in Europe have shown that free
institutions can not only exist, but indeed flourish, in such societies.
Sunil Ahuja
Shireen Mahdavi. For God, Mammon, and Country: A

Nineteenth Century Persian Merchant, Haj Muhammad
Hassan Amin al-Zarb (1834–1898). Boulder, CO: Westview,
1999. xvii, 286 pages. PB. $31.00. ISBN 0–8133–3875–1.
This book helps to fill an important gap in our understanding of

Qajar society. While there are several published memoirs and
documents for Qajar notables, there are not many biographical
histories for Qajar Iran, except for works like Abbas Amanat’s
thorough study of the life of Naser ad-Din Shah, Hamid Algar’s
monograph focusing on Mirza Malkum Khan, and Ramin Yalfani’s
book on Nasir al-Mulk. The lives of merchants are even less
understood, with such occasional exceptions as Ann K. S. Lambton’s
work on Haji Nur ad-Din and Haji Abd al-Karim, which were
published in her book, Qajar Persia. Shireen Mahdavi’s For God,
Mammon, and Country is an intriguing look into the daily life and
professional career of a leading merchant of Qajar Tehran, Haj
Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb. The book is organized
chronologically, according to events in his life, from 1834 to 1898.
The book begins with Muhammad Hassan’s early life in Isfahan,
where his father was a moderately successful merchant (sarraf). About
1846, when Muhammad was barely twelve years old, his father died
in Kirman, leaving his family virtually penniless. Muhammad Hassan,
his brothers, and even his mother, were forced to do whatever they
could to make a living. By 1850, about 16 years old, Muhammad
Hassan relocated to Tehran to try his luck in the prosperous capital.
He began his career in Tehran by buying, selling, trading, and
peddling anything that had the potential to be profitable. He also
maintained his ties with Isfahani sarrafs, a pattern that continued
147
throughout his long career. He proved to have a shrewd “nose for

business,” and gained a reputation as a smart and honest merchant
and financier. Eventually, his talents and hard work allowed him to
become a very successful merchant. By the time he was in his thirties,
Muhammad Hassan was established as a prominent merchant in
Tehran. By the time he was in his forties or fifties, he was, arguably,
the most successful merchant in Tehran, with economic activities
reaching as far as Europe. The early chapters of the book give a
fascinating account of his Muhammad Hassan’s to prominence.
The final chapters discuss in detail Muhammad Hassan’s
financial and political career as one of the most wealthy and
influential merchants in Qajar Iran. The author analyzes how he built
and maintained strong financial and political ties with the nobility and
the court. Because of his role as both a financier and a merchant, he
was able to supply Qajar elites with funds and financial services while
at the same time serving as their primary supplier of luxury goods.
His trade networks reached eastward to India and westward to
Europe. Muhammad Hassan’s career running the national mint is
also discussed in detail. His economic activities help to explain his
considerable political influence at court.
Muhammad Hassan actively supported the interests of the
merchant class, and, at times, was an active reformist as well. For
example, he developed a personal and financial relationship with al-
Afghani, whose ideas seem to have influenced him. He also made
several trips through the Ottoman empire, as well as Russia and many
other parts of Europe, including France, where his brother stayed for
many years representing their financial interests there. His
experiences while traveling are discussed in some detail, and serve to
explain how they helped to shape his economic and political views
regarding Iran.
The narrative of Muhammad Hassan’s life and career is based
primarily upon the private family collection, which contains such
things as an incomplete biography compiled by his son, financial
documents, and personal and professional correspondence. These
documents are supplemented by a diverse array of other types of
sources. For example, there are the memoirs of Iranians, newspaper
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articles, travel accounts of Europeans living in Iran, and

correspondence between diplomats.
There are, unfortunately, many large gaps in the documentary
evidence. However, the author is very honest about these gaps,
usually pointing them out rather than trying to cover them up. For
example, much of Muhammad Hassan’s private family life is difficult
to document. There is enough information to provide some basic
understanding of his relationship with his male relatives, and, to some
extent, his relationship with his mother. However, in his letters, there
is very little mention of his married life or of his children. The author
is honest enough to leave unanswered many questions for which
there is not sufficient evidence. He is a very meticulous and
conscientious historian, using primary documents with care and
integrity. He is also creative in dealing with some gaps in evidence.
For example, when discussing some details of his, for which
documentary evidence is lacking, he uses primary accounts of similar
trips by other people. Often, these are accounts of Europeans or
Iranians who undertook the same trips. In the absences of detailed
documentation of portions of his travels, this is an effective way to
provide readers with a sense of what they are likely to have
experienced.
Much of the narrative is deceptively descriptive in tone, while, at
the same time, analyzing specific or more narrowly focused historical
issues. In practice, this approach turns out to be a major asset,
because it allows the author to maintain a broad vision of what
should and should not be included in the narrative. If the book had
been focused exclusively upon a single theme or theory, the author
would have been obliged to leave out all sorts of interesting material.
The author, fortunately, resisted this urge, and, instead, presents a
study that is in many ways reminiscent of approaches to social history
that are related to the Annales School.
The author’s use of a descriptive narrative of Muhammad
Hassan’s life can be said to have accomplished three basic goals: to
explore in detail Muhammad Hassan’s career and life, to explore and
analyze various specific, and often isolated, historical issues, and to
shed light on the everyday life of merchants in Qajar Tehran. The
biographical aspects of this study are truly valuable, because
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Muhammad Hassan was one of the most prominent and influential

people in Qajar Tehran. This task is carried out quite affectively, if
somewhat deferentially. The second task dealt with in this book is the
analysis of a wide variety of specific issues, such as how the ever-
changing polities for minting coinage affected inflation and economic
productivity in Iran, or how the expansion of opium farming
contributed to major famines.
Social historians, such as myself, will likely be most interested in
the third goal, which is. to provide glimpses of everyday life for Qajar
merchants. While this book is a biography, the author wisely chooses
to focus the study on the broader social, economic, and political
context surrounding Muhammad Hassan rather than on the details of
his life only. There are frequent digressions from the biographical
narrative, which will likely seem awkward to some readers. However,
this is an essential part of the approach of the book. In these
digressions, the author is able to discuss the inner workings of
financial markets, travel, patterns of trade, social etiquette, court
politics, etc. These digressions also allow the author to analyze a wide
variety of difficult questions, while at the same time giving even a
nonspecialist, a sense of what everyday life in Tehran must have been
like for merchants. The book, thus, serves as a wonderful social and
economic history of Qajar Tehran.
For God, Mammon, and Country is very well written, with an
engaging narrative style that makes it interesting and easy to read.
The appendices are also extremely helpful and informative. I would
recommend this book highly for both specialists and nonspecialists
who are interested in the social, cultural, and economic history of
Qajar Tehran.
Kamran S. Aghaie
The University of Texas at Austin
Ismail Adam Patel. Madina to Jerusalem: Encounter with the

Byzantine Empire. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 2005
CE/1426 AH. viii, 160 pages. PB. $11.95. ISBN 0–86037–393–2.
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Book Reviews
The city of Madina, which harbors the second holiest mosque in

Islam, was the seat of the Islamic government from the time of the
Prophet Muhammad to the death of the third caliph, ‘Uthman.
Jerusalem is the transit route for the Prophet’s nocturnal voyage to
the heavens and houses the third holiest shrine in Islam. So, the two
cities are of especial significance. The four-chapter book under
review traces the history of the encounter of Islam with the
Byzantines in the Levant and analyzes why the conquered
confederates preferred the Muslim rule to the Roman and the
Persian.
Before the advent of Islam, the Persians ruled the east, and the
Romans ruled the east, of the Arabian Peninsula. Chapter 1 discusses
the pre-Islamic political and religious landscape of the area as the
confessional divide between the Monophysites and the Nestorians
ensured an enduring instability in the “Christian” Roman empire until
the Persian King Chosroes conquered Jerusalem in 614. Chapter 2
gives an account of the military encounters of Islam with its
adversaries, starting with the Battle of Badr to the more specific
battles fought after the demise of the Prophet against the apostates
and the Byzantines in the Levant. Chapter 3 is a continuation of the
account of the military confrontations between the Muslims and the
Byzantines, particularly the historic Battle of Yarmuk. In the final
chapter, Patel discusses the impulses behind the Muslims incursion
into the Levant and rebuts the negative stereotypes, namely, “the lust
for booty theory,” “the forceful conversion theory,” and the “desire
to relocate excess population,” which are often advanced as the raison
d’être for the Muslim exploits. As for the secret behind the ultimate
achievements of the Muslims, Patel argues that “the success of the
Muslims lay in transforming the political and socioeconomic regime,
so as to allow personal freedom in all spheres, without state
interference or religious persecution, coupled with economic
incentives by way of fair taxation and enterprise” (113).
A significant flaw in this work is that the footnotes are
exceedingly verbose and often contain vital information that should
have been part of the main text. There are also some infelicities in the
citation of sources. For example, details of the article by Abdallah el-
Khatib, cited by the author (127, n. 1), are not given. (The article in
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question is “Jerusalem in the Qur’an,” published in the British Journal

of Middle Eastern Studies, 28 (2001), 1: 25-53). By and large, the book
will certainly meet the expectations of both Muslim and non-Muslim
lay readers, for whom the effort of our optometrist author is
intended in the first place.

Lagos State University
Alex De Waal, ed. Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of

Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 2004. xiii, 279 pages. PB. $24.95. ISBN 0–253–21679–6.
This is a collection of seven essays individually or jointly written by

three authors who are familiar with the crosscurrents of political
developments in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The
underlining objective of this work is to fill the lacuna in the political
science-oriented analyses of the crises in the region. These analyses
are often oblivious of the impact of political Islam, which has
become a significant, global phenomenon since the 1979 Iranian
Revolution. It is the fallout from the confrontation between Islamism
and its ideological adversaries in this region that the various essays in
this work set out to address. The ultimate aim of political Islam,
wherever it rears its head, is to control all the apparatus of the state
and the economy. This is what A. H. Abdel Salam and Alex de Waal
call the “big project” (21) in their analysis of the theory and concept
of jihad, the subject matter of Chapter 2.
Although the “big project” may not have materialized as yet,
its neofundamentalist successors, the “small projects,” which include
the culture of voluntarism, provision of education and health
services, and microeconomic facilities for the poor in trade and
industry, have succeeded. More significant, the projects received
spectacular financial and logistic backing from the Salafi Gulf states,
the traditional enemies of Sufism, the popular brand of Islam in the
region (67). The enigma represented by Hasan at-Turabi, the éminence
grise behind the “Islamist” government in Sudan since the 1990s, is
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rightly put in the context of the success of this ideologue in

collapsing the Islamic components of governance and secular power
structures (a recent and authoritative study on Turabi is J. Millard
Burr and R. O. Collins, Revolutionary Sudan-Hasan al-Turabi and the
Islamic State 1989-2000 [Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2003]). The
portrait of Turabi as the one “constant phenomenon” (82) is better
appreciated against the background of the enormous influence his
thoughts and ideas have had across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
The spectacle represented by Somalia before and after the 11
September 2001 catastrophe in the United States, especially the
Islamic political dynamics engendered by the civil wars of the 1990, is
what Roland Marchal discusses in chapter 4. He examines five basic
issues: (1) The new features of the Islamic practices in the antebellum
and postwar era and their impact on the emergence of new Islamic
groupings. (2) The process of Islamization of the public life at the
inchoate state of the civil war. (3) The establishment of Islamic courts
since 1994 (incidentally, the proponents of the Islamic courts
continually engaged the business groups and warlord elements in
government in fratricidal was as recently as March 2006). (4) The
modus vivendi of the political groupings since the catastrophic end of
the international intervention in Somalia. (5) The inglorious end of
the most important Somali company whose account was frozen on 7
November 2001 on the allegation by the United States that it was a
financier of terrorist groups, including the amorphous al-Qa‘idah.
Chapter 5, by M. A. Mohamed Salih, illustrates the Islamic NGOs in
Africa as an expression of humanitarian voluntarism and its impact
on Africa in the spheres of social services and proselytism. But the
one gross error is the general characterization of the Jamaatu Nasril
Islam of Nigeria, the Zak Zaky’s militant pro-Shi’ite group, Ansarul
Din [Society], and the Ahmadiyyah as “the most important Muslim
brotherhoods in northern Nigeria” (160). A more disturbing
postulation arising from the inaccuracy of this characterization is the
overgeneralized association of these groups with the Shari‘ah-related
violence in Nigeria since over the last few years (for some details
about the reality of these movements, see Stefan Reichmuth,
Islamische Bildung und soziale Integration in Ilorin (Nigeria) seit ca 1800
[Muenster: LIT Verlag, 1998]). Chapter 6, by de Waal, discusses the
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politics of destabilization in the Horn of Africa between 1989 and

2001. This timeframe saw the advent of the Islamist-backed
government in Sudan and the inauguration of G. W. Bush in the
White House—in that order. Three main issues are discussed here:
(1) the tensions between the military “realists” in the new Sudanese
government and the Turabi-led “Islamist” doctrines of foreign
affairs; (2) the Metternichean Realpolitik in the region by states that
were opposed to the Khartoum government and were committed to
its removal; and (3) the collapse of the United States policy based on
the configuration of the powers from Asmara to Kigali. One fine
conclusion made by the author is that state interest, which may not
necessarily be compatible with the Islamist interest, prevailed in the
Horn of Africa in the 1990s.
The concluding chapter illustrates how America’s declared
“War on Terror” engendered a new brand of militant Islamism. The
evolution of a unipolar global hegemony represented by the Unite
States created a new focus of assault for the new wave of militant
Islamism. Moreover, the crackdown by the United States on Islamic
charities under the guise of fighting terror has further enhanced the
historic hostilities of the Muslims, both the so-called moderate and
the militant fundamentalist, toward the US and its allies.
One significant thesis running through all the essays in this
work is the close association of violence in the region with the new
wave of Islamism. However, the “ideologization” of violence, to
borrow from Burgat (see François Burgat, Face to Face with Political
Islam [London: I.B.Tauris, 2005]), or rather, linking it to purely
religious developments would, a priori, deny us the comprehension
of Islamism as a new phase of nationalism and anti-imperialism, for
which the Islamic world had illustrious proponents and exponents in
the 19th-century Arab nationalists and Muslim revivalists. Essentially,
this work, with its rich bibliography and index, is a significant effort
that will further our understanding of the mechanisms of change that
have been the lot of North East Africa since the twilight of the
twentieth century.

Lagos State University
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Book Reviews
Michael Wolfe et al., eds. Taking Back Islam. American

Muslims Reclaim Their Faith. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, and
Beliefnet, 2004. PB. $13.95. 1–57954–988–8.
Taking Back Islam is a representative sample of the pondering and

wondering that is going on within the American Muslim community.
It is difficult to review the variety of ideas on any one of the issues
which this book raises, and to focus on only a few of them is to
diminish the intellectual richness of the book. However, democracy
and religious reform constitute a running theme throughout the
various contributions, and are, therefore, the focus of this review.
What moves the contributors in this book is a sense of
citizenship in a new and democratic world, and a feeling of gratitude
that is matched by a readiness to shoulder the responsibility toward
the adoptive country. These civic sentiments are well expressed by
Ingrid Mattson, who says that American Muslims have a great
responsibility to speak out. “The freedom, stability, and strong moral
foundation of the United Stated,” she says, “are great blessings for all
Americans, particularly Muslims.” She then urges that “an honest
critical evaluation of our own flaws” be undertaken (2–3).
Responding to her urging is Omid Safi, who learned from recent
events that “Being Muslim, Being American After 9/11” begins by
condemning the escapist attitude which blames Muslims’ problems
on Jews, Americans, Hindus, and others.
Enthusiastic about the promises of democracy, Yahiya Emerick
expresses dejection that Islam in the Muslim world is “too bogged
down in stupidity, corruption, nationalism and racism.” For him, the
light of Islam has been put out in the Muslim world and has been
reborn in the heart of the supposedly secular faithless West” (198).
He is also wary of the fact that “some Muslims are trying to import
their refuse of the Muslim world into North America,” which, he
fears, is adding up to the refuse of the West, which some converts are
importing into Islam. Sharing Emerick’s views is Ali Minai, who
believes that true reform is possible only in the West. Minai
disapprove of terrorism, but he also indicates that it is no more
correct to proclaim that Islam is more peaceful than to proclaim that
it is violent. Supporting texts, he says, are available for both the
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peace-minded Muslim and the radical, militant, one. Asma Khan

concurs in the condemnation of terrorism, and talks about her active
opposition to violence through the organization she helped found,
Muslims Against Terrorism.
Starting from the premise that the “message of the Qur’an is a
plural vision,” Karen Armstrong says in her contribution, “Has Islam
Been Hijacked?,” that the task of the Muslims is “to delve creatively
into their rich faith tradition and emphasize, as never before, the
compassion, justice, and tolerance that are central to the Qur’anic
vision.” What matters most, she says, is God, “not how people
interpreted their experience of the divine.” Muhammad was
interested in what united the Jews, the Christians, and Muslims, not
how they exalted their own traditions. In “Can Religious States Be
Democratic?” Armstrong reminds the readers of the difficulties that
were encountered in building Western democracies, and also the new
problems that are facing the newly-independent nations. She does,
however, point to a crucial fact, namely, that democratization does
no go without a degree of secularization.
And this is where a major difficulty comes in, the regressive
theological interpretations that are incompatible with democracy.
These, Alexander Kronemer points out, are the theological
interpretations that put the will of God before and above the will of
the people. For Kronemer, “The question is not whether ‘Islamic
ideology’ will allow Muslims to embrace democracy and freedom . . .
Muslims are intimately familiar with the ideals of freedom and
democracy and by and large embrace them . . . The irony is that
despite almost universal rejection of the United States foreign policy
by the ‘Muslim street,’ that same constituency has great admiration
and praise for the American democracy and freedom” (65). Taha
Jabir Alwani complaints that Muslims tend to reduce all things to
halal (“allowed”) and haram (“forbidden”), ignoring the need to know
how they should relate to others (82). He reminds Muslims that fiqh,
jurisprudence, is not everything, and that life is not based on law
alone. For him, the question of governance according to Allah’s
wishes is addressed to the ummah, which has “to develop a system to
implement” Islamic values and define the meaning of justice and
freedom according to its own needs (ibid.). Khaled Abou El Fadl also
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remarks that traditional theologies are not only regressive, but also
distorted, conceiving the world in a dichotomous way. In terms of
war and peace, for example, the Islamic theological views can be
“even imperialist,” dividing the world into dar al-harb and dar al-Islam,
with little attention paid to dar as-sulh (“neutrality”) or dar ‘adl (“land
of equity”). Even worse, some of these views confuse the notion of
qital (“fighting”) and that of jihad (37).
For a solution to some of the problems, and rejecting the two
models of the Islamic community, the oppressed Meccan community
and the community of Medina, Farid Esack looks toward a third
community, namely, the “Abyssinian paradigm,” a model of tolerance
and coexistence (16). This suggestion is enhanced by the pluralistic
view of Islam, which is brought to bear on the debate by Shaykh
Ahmed Abdur Rashid and Akbar Helminski. The Islamic community
(ummah), Abdur Rashid says, is not monolithic. Islam is a faith built
around “compassion, mercy, tolerance, patience, love” (41).
Helminski also thinks that Islam is a pluralistic religion and this
pluralism is located in the timelessness of the religion of Abraham,
the first Muslim. Muslims may think that their Islam is closer to the
first religion, but this is not a sufficient reason to deny that other
religions are also valid approaches to God. And here, Helminski
reassures Muslims that Sufism is not eclectic. The source of Sufism,
he says, remains the Qur’an, the character of Muhammad, and the
“compassionate and tolerant viewpoint of all faiths” (175).
The book is a small step on a long journey toward a great
destiny. Though the journey has begun, the destiny remains
uncertain, clouded by a lack of clarity on the fundamental issue in this
debate: freedom. To be sure, freedom is expressed in the very
diversity of the contributions, yet it remains unarticulated. Freedom is
mentioned no more that five times (liberation, once), only to be
avoided. Yet freedom is the very point at which the possibility of
convergence or divergence between Islam and democracy
materializes. It is in the name of this principle of freedom that
democracy demands that Islam be reformed, but it is also in
deference to that same principle that only Muslims are entitled to
speak on behalf of Islam and to choose which form of Islamic beliefs
to adopt. Yet Islam will never be adequately spoken for until sexual
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equality is recognized, and the voices of women like Saraji Umm

Zaid, who was denied access to the mosque because of her
womanhood (“Why Every Mosque Should Be Women-Friendly,”
108) are heard.
Ahmed Achrati
University of Illinois at Chicago
Michael Mumisa. Islamic Law: Theory and Interpretation. With

a foreword by Shaikh Zaki Badawi. Beltsville, MD: Amana
Publications, 2002. xii, 209 pages. PB. $14.95. ISBN 1–59008–
010–6.
From a short treatise on Islamic Law, one expects, at best a

restatement of the conceptual gamut of classical Islamic
jurisprudence as developed by its several legal schools (madhahib).
This book, however, goes far beyond that. The author, who has a
diploma in Arabic literature from Iqra College in Harare, Zimbabwe,
and is an ‘Alimiyyah graduate from Dar al-‘Ulum in Newcastle, South
Africa, is an accomplished Muslim scholar possessing all attributes of
a proper mujtahid. Not his the cavalier attitude adopted by certain
social scientists, for whom the Shari‘ah is an antiquated “discourse”
and a nuisance. Indeed, his perceptive exposition of Islamic legal
history is masterful. This is particularly true for the notion of Hadith
(55–73), the context for the development of the concept of bid‘ah
(with the nonsensical idea of bid‘ah hasanah) (171–174), and his
thorough discussion of the famous (but weak) hadith about Mu‘adh b.
Jabal’s approach to ascertaining the law at a time of need (9, n. 9).
The author is a gifted analyst and pedagogue with a strong sense
of history, all of which helps to make his account of Islamic
jurisprudence come to life dramatically. Always illustrating his point
with a verse, a hadith, and an historical episode, his exposition is both
concrete and compelling. But he never loses sight of the necessity to
relate change to the textual authority of the Qur’an and Sunnah.
As a member of an oppressed minority, identified as “colored”
in his home country, and as an active Muslim in a world devoid of
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truly Islamic societies, Mumisa sees Islamic law as a divine instrument

for revolutionary change, its original role in al-Madinah. He sees
himself as an Islamic “liberation theologian,” like Abu Dharr before
him, protesting against social injustice, racial and gender
discrimination. In contrast to lawyers turned conservative—a
professional deformation—the author is the opposite of a status quo-
ist. When speaking of change, he means business—now! And yet the
following points merit some pondering:
(a) While considering Qur’an and Sunnah as the two primary
sources of Islamic law against which a newly developing fiqh must be
measured, the author also treats, as legal “sources,” methods like
analogy (qiyas) and consensus (ijma), which do not extend the existing
law but help finding it deductively. Following Najmuddin at-Tufi (d. d.
1316), he even flirts with the idea of giving the highest rank within
the legal hierarchy to the principle of masalih al-mursalah (unrestricted
safeguarding of the Ummah’s welfare) as a legal supersource (130).
This explains why the author calls not only for a reform of Islamic
substantive law (fiqh), but also for amending the very theory of Islamic
jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh). His (disputable) thesis is that not only the
resulting law but also the very theory of its roots are products of
previous historical, cultural, social and economic conditions.
(b) One cannot seriously quarrel with Mumisa’s vivid description
of the prevailing despotism, corruption, and social injustice in the
Muslim world. Nor can one dispute his equally depressing description
of the rigidity, unholistic narrowness, and formalism into which
Islamic law has fallen under the notion of taqlid—as already deplored
by Ibn Khaldun. It is simply true that old legal commentaries and
supercommentaries as legal tradition have often been studied harder
than the Qur’an, so that fiqh became it own root. According to
Mumisa, we inherited a legal museum—religious norms we are now
cannibalizing (118). This justifies the author’s demand to revive and
broaden the discipline by including social and economic studies.
Modern issues can, indeed, only be solved by mujtahids who are ‘alim,
faqih/qadi and imam in one person and recognize the “ontological
kinship of knowledge, law, and the divine” (11). Indeed, “the
universality of Islam consists in its being open, dynamic, and subject
159
to reinterpretation” (54). The Qur’an, being inexhaustible, is not a

closed text but allows a degree of flexibility in its understanding.
(c) So far so good. Alas, modernists argue the same way when
trying to make a (compromised) Islam fit with modernity. They, too,
believe in reason determining what benefits society, equating it with
what is useful. How do they differ from a mujtahid applying his
wisdom, hikmah, in discerning what is good for Muslim society? Is he,
too, not following his individual opinion about what the law should
be, as if—in clear contrast to Qur’an 2:216—it had to be to our
liking? Are we to determine what the Qur’an should say? Have
certain Sufis not virtually destroyed it by speculating about the “inner
meaning” of the Qur’an (32)? Will the reduction of jurisprudence to
the mere application of broad aims and principles (maqasid ash-
shari‘ah) not lead to boundless relativism? Is the application of the
principle of the masalih not human law-making, as if we knew what
was good for us, better than Allah?
(d) The author, aware of these dangers, is resolutely intent on
linking all interpretations to Qur’an and Sunnah as the final criteria.
He even warns: “If we reject 14 centuries of Muslim experience . . .
we are sitting ducks for the sharp shooters of modernity.” “If we
condemn ourselves to re-invent the wheel, we will be condemned to
use everybody else’s wheel.” Therefore “we must understand the
Islamic legacy before we change it” (159 f.). However, as a legal mind,
he realizes that legal systems must stay in touch with reality, as with
escape clauses and notions of “equity.” As a rationalist, he believes, in
spite of Qur’an 3:7, that revelation “contains nothing that cannot be
understood by reason” (39). And as a democratically minded
theological liberator, he wants emancipated Muslims to realize that
“they have been left with the world in one hand and the Qur’an and
the Sunnah in the other.” In other words: Risky as it is, he sees no
alternative to the global Ummah engaging in a search for a new
consensus about what the Shari‘ah means today in the area of
“transactions” (mu‘amalat), doctrine (‘aqidah) and matters of worship
(‘ibadah) remaining unchanged. In the process, he hopes to overcome
the paternalism, elitism, and expertism, which had convinced the
average Muslim that he was incompetent to handle questions of
morality and public affairs (88).
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Mumisa offers an excellent theoretical exposition of his subject.

But, when he applies the theory to current issues like divorce sought
by a woman for her husband’s miserliness, amount of dowry, interest
being equivalent to inflation, corporate identity, credited murabaha
“sales,” or banking with non-Islamic banks (181–192), he is again
cooking with water.
The bibliography curiously falls short of a number of most
relevant Muslims authors, such as Muhammad Abduh, Muhammad
Asad, Umer Chapra, Rashid al-Ghannouchi, Imran Ahsan Khan
Nyazee, Fathi Osman, Fazlur Rahman, and Hassan al-Turabi, to
name a few. The Index, too, is inadequate, missing out even on
figures like Abu Hanifah and Ibn Hanbal. The number of printing
and editing errors is atrociously high.
Murad Wilfried Hofmann

Istanbul, Turkey
Muzaffar Iqbal. Islam and Science. Aldershot, Hampshire,

U.K.: Ashgate, 2002. xxii, 349 pages. PB. $29.95. ISBN 0–7546–
0800–X. Ashgate Science and Religion Series.
The idea of the Scientific Revolution, in which modernity is held to

have come into being on the back of a significant cosmological shift
represented most prominently in the work of Copernicus, Galileo,
and Newton, has been a staple of intellectual history for some time.
But since the 1960s, this view has come under increasing scrutiny and
criticism. On the one hand, historians have become increasingly
uncomfortable with the view that intellectual changes, even scientific
ones, are somehow beyond cultural, social, political, and/or
economic explanation. Thus, the notion that intellectual
transformations can be a cause rather than a result of social change
has been severely criticized. Indeed, some historians of science have
even disputed the existence of the Scientific Revolution. What this
has meant for scholarship, especially in America and Europe, is that
modernity is seen less as being due to scientific change than to social
or political factors specific to Europe. On the other hand, when the
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Scientific Revolution is taken as an important factor in change, it has

been criticized for having led to a value-less scientism that has had
dangerous global repercussions, from weapons of mass destruction
to ecological disasters. Though it still has its supporters and
adherents, the Scientific Revolution is rarely seen today as an
unmitigated good.
It is in this context that we need to place Muzaffar Iqbal’s Islam
and Science. This book falls into the category of works that take a
critical view of the Scientific Revolution. But far from denying its
existence, it views it from the perspective of those in the so-called
Third World who feel that they have paid a heavy price for the
changes brought about by this intellectual and cultural
transformation. Traditionally, this view has focused on several issues:
how and why did Europe and its offshoots gain such an intellectual
advantage; more important, how did this advantage translate into a
technological and military advantage; and finally, what were the
inhibiting factors that did not allow this revolution to occur in other
parts of the world. That this is a critical issue in the Islamic world is
illustrated by the ascendancy of two historians of science in 2004: one
to the speakership of the Iranian parliament, the other to the position
of Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Beginning, perhaps, as early as the eighteenth century, and
gaining considerable momentum in the nineteenth, the sense of
scientific and technological inferiority in the Islamic world resulted in
numerous attempts to “catch up,” either by sending the best and
brightest to study in Europe or by trying to establish institutions that
could lead to a renaissance of science in the Islamic world. But
generally speaking, these attempts have been failures. Many of these
best and brightest decided to stay in Europe or America, while the
institutions either came to a premature end or were seriously deficient
in human and material resources. By almost any measure, scientific
productivity in Islamic countries today lags behind the rest of world.
Iqbal is well aware of these failures and is strongly critical of
those Muslims, both past and present, who have advocated emulating
the West in order to reach its level of science and technology. But his
is not a simple longing for a bygone golden age; trained as a
biochemist, Iqbal is well aware that there is no going back to some
162
Book Reviews
earlier, scientific truths that have long since lost their relevance. He is
also critical of those Muslims and their supporters who have searched
relentlessly for modern science in the Qur’an. Instead, Iqbal sees the
problem in terms of a mismatch between the core metaphysical and
ethical values of Islam, and a modern science that hides a value-less,
atheistic world-view behind a façade of objectivity and universalism.
In his critique, Iqbal would seem to be both descriptive and
prescriptive: the historical failure to assimilate modern science in the
Islamic world is a kind of affirmation of Islamic values, while the
prescription is to continue to resist a mindless acceptance of an alien
ideology.
The book itself is wide-ranging in its approach. The first part
(Chapters 1–4) deals with the early period of the Islamic scientific
and philosophical tradition, when the Islamic world was the leader in
these areas. Until recently, the time period in question would have
been from the ninth until the twelfth centuries, but Iqbal has rightly
followed the newer historians of Islamic science who have pointed to
major developments in the tradition that occurred up to the sixteenth
century and beyond. This brings up the difficult question of decline,
which Iqbal deals with in Chapter 5. Older historians dated the
decline to the transmission of Arabic/Islamic science to Europe in
the twelfth century, but, again, this has been discounted owing to a
number of recent historical findings that Iqbal discusses. He then
moves on, in Chapter 6, to the transmission of Arabic/Islamic
science to Europe. The last part of the book (Chapters 7–11) deals
with the situation of science in Islam in the modern period
(beginning with the eighteenth century).
How well has Iqbal succeeded? To his credit, he has attempted
to provide his readers with a survey of recent literature covering a
long chronological period and a diverse range of subjects. It is
certainly not easy to deal with the early history of science in Islam,
the encounter of Islam with European science in the last three
centuries, and the modern situation of science in the Islamic world—
all in the same book. And he also provides some useful critiques of
recent literature—for example, the deeply flawed work of Toby Huff,
who, contrary to all evidence, sought to find an inherent conflict
between Islam and science, and the work of Ziauddin Sardar, who
163
insisted that science was culture-specific. Iqbal’s book, though,

suffers from the same flaw as his overall philosophy. By insisting
upon a single, overriding view of Islam, one whose reality is
“atemporal and transcendental,” Iqbal ignores contrary evidence and
builds his historical narrative, and his prescriptions, from this a priori
stance.
From the point of view of history of science, the results can be
misleading, and, sometimes, just plain wrong. By insisting that “every
doctrine or every branch of knowledge that appeared in the Islamic
polity traces its roots back to the Qur’an” (3), Iqbal is led to claim
that “astronomy, medicine and mathematics were already established
fields of study before any major translations were made into Arabic.”
But there is hardly any evidence for this; his citations are misreadings
of secondary sources. One particularly egregious case is his use of A.
Dhanani’s work on Islamic atomism to claim that “this atomistic
doctrine was a totally independent development in the Islamic
intellectual thought, without any links to the Greek atomism” (20).
But in the work he cites, Dhanani actually argues for a possible
connection with Epicureanism! More generally, his “monocentric”
view of Islam (129) leads him to downplay and gloss over the
ongoing tension, at times vituperative, at times creative, between the
upholders of the “ancient” (i.e., Hellenistic) sciences and the religious
sciences. Here, I believe, one sees the real dangers of Iqbal’s position,
both for historical reconstruction and for the future development of
science in the Islamic world. By following S. H. Nasr’s Islamic
version of a Sophia perennis, he would constrict future scientific work
within the same type of straitjacket that he has imposed upon his
historical reconstructions. The irony is that he, thereby, ignores the
many scientists in Islam, such as Ibn al-Haytham (d. ca. 1040), Nasir
ad-Din at-Tusi (d. 1274), and, especially, ‘Ali Qushji (d. 1474), who
argued against philosophical and religious constraints in the pursuit
of science. Iqbal, who sincerely desires a renewal of Islamic
intellectual life, would do well to study these harbingers of
“modernism” from within his own cultural heritage.
F. Jamil Ragep
McGill University
164
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Notes to Contributors. An electronic copy of the article should be

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© 2009 Center for Islamic Studies, Youngstown State University

The Redeployment of Orientalist Themes in Islamophobia 1

“The One” Over “the Many”: A Historical Perspective on

Construction of the Religious Self and the Other:

Quelle, Qumran, and the Qur’an 121

Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century:

Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman, Stereotypes and Prejudice

Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, eds. The New

Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral

Shireen Mahdavi, For God, Mammon, and Country:

Ismail Adam Patel, Madina to Jerusalem: Encounter with

Alex De Waal, ed., Islamism and Its Enemies in the

Michael Wolfe et al., eds., Taking Back Islam:

Michael Mumisa, Islamic Law: Theory and Interpretation 158

Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam and Science 161

The Redeployment of Orientalist Themes

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of contemporary

© Kate Zebiri 2009.

While the term “Orientalist” has been primarily applied to

have been consistently condemned as cruel and inhumane by Amnesty

creation of an essentializing discourse in which the link between

6See in particular: Poole, Reporting Islam and Richardson.

context, and briefly problematizes “Islamophobia,” both as a term

1. Gender, Violence, and Foreignness

of worldly success. However, it also led to a view of religion in

Fierce and lavish scenes in a wild array of colors; harems and

championing of the “underdog” having a leveling effect with regard

12See, e.g. Bullock, 227.

was to offer sexual gratification. As Kabbani says of the erotic

(which has not wholly died out), twenty-first-century nations in the

2. Islamophobia in the British Context

16Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, 180.

together with Britain’s recent history of multiculturalism, may mean

cultural racism operates more than hints at why Muslims should

Racialized groups that have distinctive cultural identities or a

As mentioned above, in view of the controversy surrounding

studies, notably those by Poole and Richardson,37 which focus on

3. Case Study: the Experience

been Muslim varied from 4 months to 28 years, with an average of

5. The Particular Experience of Converts:

45The exception was a woman who was brought up in an English-speaking country

differences in experiences of hostility; however, several of the London-based

reaction is, on average, less severe nowadays.

important difference that parents have a strong motivation to find a

6. Experiences of Hostility and Discrimination

I began practising Islam after the events of September 11th . . . I

By contrast, a male interviewee talking generally on the problems

49Q-News, no. 352, December 2003.

interview at least.” The pragmatic realism of the latter, a convert of

example at the mosque or Islamic events, or when in a Muslim country.

52Modood, Multicultural Politics, 41–42.

54The European Directive on Employment outlawed religious discrimination in the

workplace from December 2003.

the news, and certain relationships – particularly those involving a

56Poole,Reporting Islam, 255.

their hair, faces and bodies do so because they have no choice.”

59The Search for Common Ground, 13.

found it hard at first, everyone’s staring at you, you become

comments are likely to be a reaction to the sexual non-availability of

The discrimination and hostility experienced by women who

Both Poole and Richardson found that in the mid- to late-1990s,