Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction And Reconstruction [Paperback ed.] 1844657906, 9781844657902, 1908049367, 9781908049360

Citation preview

Theorizing Islam

Religion in Culture: Studies in Social Contest and Construction Series Editor: Russell T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama This series is based on the assumption that those practices we commonly call religious are social practices that are inextricably embedded in various contingent, cultural worlds. Authors in this series therefore do not see the practices of religion occupying a socially or politically autonomous zone, as is the case for those who use “and” as the connector between “religion” and “culture.” Rather, the range of human performances that the category “religion” identifies can be demystified by translating them into fundamentally social terms; they should therefore be seen as ways of waging the ongoing contest between groups vying for influence and dominance in intraand inter-cultural arenas. Although not limited to one historical period, cultural site, or methodological approach, each volume exemplifies the tactical contribution to be made to the human sciences by writers who refuse to study religion as irreducibly religious; instead, each author conceptualizes religion—as well as the history of scholarship on religion—as among the various arts de faire, or practices of everyday life, upon which human communities routinely draw when defining and reproducing themselves in opposition to others. Published Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation Russell T. McCutcheon The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity William E. Arnal Representing Religion: Essays in History, Theory and Crisis Tim Murphy Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline Aaron W. Hughes Myth and the Christian Nation: A Social Theory of Religion Burton L. Mack Japanese Mythology: Hermeneutics on Scripture Jun’ichi Isomae Rethinking Hindu Identity D. N. Jha Masking Hegemony: A Genealogy of Liberalism, Religion and the Private Sphere Craig Martin Christian Mentality: The Entanglements of Power, Violence, and Fear Burton L. Mack Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction Aaron W. Hughes

Theorizing Islam Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Aaron W. Hughes

First published in 2012 by Equinox, an imprint of Acumen First published in paperback in 2014 by Acumen.

Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business © Aaron W. Hughes 2012 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN: 978-1-908049-36-0 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-84465-790-2 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by S. J. I. Services, New Delhi.

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

vii 1

1. The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

10

2. Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

34

3. John Esposito and the Muslim Women

61

4. Toward a Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women” 81 5. Reflections on Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies 100 6. From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies” 118 Notes

133

Bibliography

137

Subject Index

143

Name Index

145

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgements This little volume is meant to provide the second installment in my general attempt to get interested readers both to acknowledge and to think through the repercussions of the apologetic discourses that currently define what I here call “Islamic Religious Studies.” In so doing, I hope to level some of the current theoretical models that define the field, with an eye toward new beginnings. Versions of Chapters 2 and 4 first saw the light of day in my Muslim Identities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). I would like to thank Russell McCutcheon for including this volume in his series and, more generally, for his support and kindness over the years. I would also like to thank those who have read the manuscript, whether in whole or in part: Herbert Berg, Arnold Franklin, Jennifer Hall, David S. Powers, Paul Powers, Mark Wagner, and Peter Wright. I realize that these individuals may not agree with everything that I have written or some of the uses to which I have put their comments. I thus take full responsibility for all errors. Finally, I am grateful to Sandra Margolies for her expertise in copy-editing the entire manuscript. Last, but not least, I am grateful for the patience and indulgence of my beautiful family, who constantly indulge my refusal to take either the inherited or the status quo as verity.

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11 When one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will be understood, suspends one’s interest in the temporal and the contingent, or fails to distinguish between “truths,” “truth-claims,” and “regimes of truth,” one has ceased to function as a historian or scholar. In that moment, a variety of roles are available: some perfectly respectable (amanuensis, collector, friend and advocate), and some less appealing (cheerleader, voyeur, retailer of import goods). None, however, should be confused with scholarship. (Lincoln 1996: 227) For much of the past forty years, scholars of religion have largely tended to look upon their departmental colleagues who specialize in Islamic data with some degree of bewilderment and bemusement. Their sparse numbers (often one scholar of Islam per department) and their highly technical philological training in other fields (e.g., Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, or Islamic studies) have often generated a set of methodological and theoretical interests perceived to be far removed from the academic study of religion. This has, at least historically, resulted in a rather tenuous and complicated relationship between the study of Islam and religious studies.1 All of this, however, radically changed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Islam’s involvement in the attacks of that day (whether this was real or perceived is certainly not the issue here) suddenly thrust this religion into the spotlight. Revealing that our larger field is truly at the mercy of global events and directly proportionate to where our troops are, scholars of Islam—or Islamicists, as they are often called—suddenly became a highly sought-after commodity. Hundreds of jobs opened up, students flocked to courses, programs were created, and Islamicists have increasingly become important players within the American Academy of Religion (AAR),2 North America’s largest organization devoted to the academic study of religion.3

2

Theorizing Islam

One would, at least in theory, think that this might have functioned as a catalyst to encourage the academic study of Islam and the academic study of religion to cross-pollinate. And, in many ways, this has happened. However, when this cross-pollination has occurred, Islamic studies has largely overlooked, or ignored, those discourses within the larger field of religious studies that are highly critical of the status quo. Instead, the academic study of Islam has migrated toward the more regnant ecumenical and phenomenological discourses within religious studies that are primarily interested in adjudicating truth, authenticity, experience, and meaning. The critical discourses to which I refer, by contrast, refuse to take the category “religion” as a given and contend that its study ought to be contextualized within larger social, cultural and ideological structures. The result is that the academic study of Islam has become more, not less, insular and apologetic. It is within this latter context that scholars of Islam have presented themselves to their colleagues, to the media, and to the general public as the de facto interpreters of Islam. They have largely invoked their authority to elevate their particular and idiosyncratic interpretation of Islam (e.g., liberal and egalitarian) over others and, in the process, deemed their version to be somehow more authentic and normative. On one level, given the anger and hostility directed toward Islam and Muslims this is certainly understandable. In this respect, many Islamicists have tried to correct the blatant and often hostile misrepresentations that frequently circulate in both the media and public opinion. However, on another level, problems inevitably arise when, to correct such misrepresentations, the only Islam that is presented as normative is the one that they have largely constructed in their own image. The declaration of any Islamic social or identity formation as the authentic one risks overlooking or marginalizing the complex processes whereby competing Islams—or interpretations of Islam— interact with and confront one another. Unfortunately, in much of the work that I examine in the following pages this interaction and confrontation is forsaken. Instead, we encounter a liberal Islam, one whose message is largely defined by tolerance, “gender justice,” and a universal respect for human rights. While I certainly do not doubt that there are Muslims and versions of Islam to which these virtues

Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

3

can properly be ascribed, it is highly problematic to use these as the sole criteria whereby an authentic Islam is constructed. The essays in this volume seek to redress such oversights and apologetics. Taken as a whole, they examine how scholars of Islam working in departments of religious studies manufacture such an Islam, the rhetorical devices they employ, and the often hidden ideological assumptions behind such devices. Within this context, this book’s thesis is simple enough: The academic study of Islam as carried out in departments of religious studies has become so apologetic that it has largely ceased to function as an academic discipline, preferring instead to propagate a theological and apologetical representation of the religion. This discourse, which I call “Islamic Religious Studies,” is largely theological in orientation, manipulative in its use of sources, and distortive in its conclusions. My goal is to study the study of Islam, with an eye to improving or reforming it. In so doing, I take my cue from Jonathan Z. Smith, who contends that it is part of our job as scholars to “expose the set of tacit understandings which inform, but are rarely the objects of, our corporate discourse about religion” (1990: 5).

What Is “Islamic Religious Studies”? For years I have tried to coin a term that (1) articulates and accurately defines the largely apologetic claims put forth by scholars of Islam who work under the larger canopy of religious studies, and that (2) differentiates these claims from some of the more philological and historical work carried out by Islamicists in other disciplines, such as history or Near Eastern studies. When reading Rethinking Islamic Studies, edited by Carl Ernst and Richard Martin (2010; the subject matter of Chapter 5 below), I came upon the term “Islamic Religious Studies.” Since it is less cumbersome than “scholars of Islam working in departments of Religious Studies,” I have opted to appropriate this term and use it pejoratively (though this is certainly not the manner in which Ernst and Martin use it) in what follows to signify, both precisely and concisely, the set of largely apologetical discourses that currently characterize the field and against which I set up my own mode of analysis.

4

Theorizing Islam

Employing the term “Islamic Religious Studies” has a number of advantages. First, as mentioned, it is a convenient term that permits me to refer to a particular set of discourses that are largely uninterested in (or, even better, hostile toward) critical scholarship. Second, and again as mentioned, it enables a neat differentiation between those who engage in such apologetic discourses and those who do not (e.g., Islamic Religious Studies vis-à-vis Islamic Studies). In this regard, however, the term does need a certain amount of nuance. It must not, for example, be regarded as referring solely to those scholars of Islam in religious studies departments, some of whom are certainly critical of these discourses. Relatedly, those not working in departments of religious studies can, and indeed certainly do, employ the discourses associated with “Islamic Religious Studies.” Third, because the larger discipline of religious studies is primarily theological, inherently phenomenological, and based on liberal Protestant categories, “Islamic Religious Studies” is a convenient rubric that nicely designates its Islamic equivalent. Lest I am accused of creating a straw man here (as I customarily am)—selecting a few random scholars who I believe largely reflect my concerns and criticisms and, in the process, ignoring the majority of religious studies scholars dealing with Islam—I do have a specific constituency in mind. The scholars of Islam to whom I refer are largely associated with the Study of Islam section of the AAR. These individuals have created a collective response to the events of 9/11—a response that is described on their website (http://groups.colgate. edu/aarislam/response.htm) as the product of “the cooperation of over 50 professors of Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies from the US and Canada. These scholars are members of the Study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion, the largest international organization responsible for the academic study of religion.” They write that as scholars of religious traditions, we observe that religious symbols are used for political motives all over the world in Hindu, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions. However, we must critically distinguish between politically motivated deployment of religious symbols and the highest ideals that these traditions embody. Just as most would regard bombers

Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

5

of abortion clinics to be outside the pale of Christianity, so the actions of these terrorists should not be accepted as representing Islam in any way. (http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm) This statement says much about what these scholars imagine “real” Islam to be: peaceful, non-political, internal. For them, Muslims who commit terror in the name of Islam misunderstand their own tradition and are motivated by political, as opposed to spiritual, gain. It is these “over 50 scholars” (and those like them)—and the graduate students they have trained in the meantime and whom they continue to train—who are responsible for producing this response and are whom I have in mind when I talk about the largely “apologetical” discourses that pass for academic scholarship. It is these scholars, I maintain, who have created a set of discourses associated with what we can now conveniently delimit with the rubric “Islamic Religious Studies.”

The View from the Edge My analysis, in what follows, is confined to the theoretical frameworks that scholars of Islam develop and subsequently apply to their own material, including the growing consensus that permits them to create rhetorically, and virtually unchecked, a particular version of Islam that conforms to a particular agenda. The institutionalization of this consensus has led to the existence of an increasingly authorized space from which scholars of Islam defend their datum (i.e., “Islam”) and the models used to bring it into existence. However, models that are accepted without questioning or approaches to data that are not self-reflexive, as Jonathan Z. Smith reminds us, should be avoided at all costs in the academic study of religion (e.g., Smith 1982: xi). We should, on the contrary, be self-conscious of the terms, tropes, and categories we employ because it is precisely these rhetorical devices, more than anything else, that enable us to imagine religion in the first place. My interest in the present set of essays is that “Islam,” much like its genus “religion,” is constituted by the very methods used to

6

Theorizing Islam

elucidate it. We do not, in other words, simply describe that which exists naturally and effortlessly in the world; rather, we conjure it into existence theoretically, methodologically, and rhetorically. We would do well, as Russell McCutcheon warns us, not to lose sight of our first principles and what it is that we, qua scholars of religions, are supposed to do. As critics, not caretakers, it is incumbent upon us to analyze “the various modes and sites of conceptual production in creating and reproducing the discourse” on religion (1997: 24). Focusing on the various ideological lenses used to create and subsequently study manifold Islams ideally permits an examination of the material, ideological, and historical conditions of disciplinary formation. The motivation for the present volume stems from my growing dissatisfaction with the manufactured discourses associated with Islamic Religious Studies. Whether it be reminiscences of what Muhammad means on a personal level to scholars of Islam (the subject of Chapter 1), perceptions of Islam’s inherent gender justice (Chapter 3) or apologetic attempts to rethink the discipline (Chapter 5), what passes for theorizing in Islamic Religious Studies unfortunately exhibits a paucity of critical thinking and self-reflection. The reasons for this are simple enough: Islamic Religious Studies has become the locus of liberal Muslim theologizing. The articulation of a progressive Islam (see Hughes 2007: 109–11) and its subsequent apologetical dissemination currently define the field. Certainly we have to factor into this the need to counter negative portrayals of Islam and Muslims after the events of 9/11 and the highly politicized environment on campuses when it comes to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. However, we must be on guard against mistaking the apologetics of these discourses for critical theory, as do many of the scholars in the aforementioned volume devoted to theory and method entitled Rethinking Islamic Studies (Ernst and Martin 2010).4 In this regard, I offer the critical hermeneutic that weaves throughout the essays collected here as a necessary corrective, a call to fellow scholars of Islam not to get lost in the slippery rhetoric of apologetics and political correctness. Islamic Religious Studies risks taking the rich complexities and competing histories of the many Islams that have existed both synchronically and diachronically and flattening them into a

Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

7

stereotype. Stereotypes, we would do well to remember, operate through an intricate system of adjectives that emphasize certain chosen characteristics (and marginalize others) as if they were eternal truths.5 Islam is accordingly “peaceful,” “liberal,” based on “gender justice” and inherently “egalitarian.” Such adjectives, with sufficient repetition, risk becoming mistaken for essential traits, ones that are immune from both history and disinterested scrutiny. The categories that flow from such language both manufacture knowledge of Islam and also, in many ways, create Islam—an Islam that Muslim intellectuals and their non-Muslim supporters (read: professors of Islamic Religious Studies) in the West have come to appropriate and deploy for their own ideological purposes and agendas. My own working assumption is that if we simply stand aside and allow an essentialized and reified Islam (note the singular and not the plural) that is produced through an elaborate system of privilege and denial, then ultimately we deny these manifold Islams their histories. This, furthermore, risks denying Muslims their agency as they contest the various tropes and symbols bequeathed to them, and around which they contest and conflict with one another. The essays that follow emerge from the very real concern that Islamic Religious Studies has become far too apologetic, with the end result that the study of Islam as carried out in departments of religious studies will morph completely into a pulpit for liberal Muslim theologizing. I certainly have nothing against liberal Muslim theology (indeed I much prefer it to non-liberal Muslim theology); however, my concern is that theologizing of any variety carried out in departments of religious studies is far too exclusive and largely uninterested in any sort of criticism of its primary object of study. There is a tendency to write off such critical voices as somehow passé or, even worse, as “Orientalist” or “Islamophobic.” For Islamic Studies, and not Islamic Religious Studies, to flourish, it must permit a plethora of different approaches and methodologies. If a discipline loses its critical edge it risks installing half-truths as first principles, eventually leading to intellectual ossification.

8

Theorizing Islam

Structure The structure of the present volume alternates between destruction and reconstruction. Chapters 1, 3, and 5 all critically examine recent trends in Islamic Religious Studies, showing how apologetics, liberal theologizing, and distortion guide Islamic Religious Studies. Chapters 2, 4, and 6, however, largely use the same data, but do so in a way that can, ideally and creatively, move us beyond the current methodological impasse. For example, Chapter 1 (“The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps”) examines what I call “Muhammadan devotional literature,” a genre that presents largely noncritical, apologetical, and ahistorical treatments of Muhammad produced by scholars of Islamic Religious Studies. This literature, under the guise of scholarship, enables scholars to reach out to a popular audience and tell readers what Muhammad personally means to the author. Part historical, part confessional, the results represent a lack of selfreflexive criticism and are overshadowed by personal musings. Chapter 2 (“Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas”), to be read in counterpoint, provides a more critical, less apologetical, and “historical” account of Muhammad.6 If the academic study of Islam is going to be about more than just special pleading and the composition of devotional literature, I present the account of Chapter 2 as a corrective, one that we should consider implementing in the classroom and public presentations. Chapter 3 (“John Esposito and the Muslim Women”) draws attention to John Esposito’s election as Vice-President, and subsequently President, of the AAR. It does this by offering a critical examination of his apologetic hermeneutics, especially his manipulative and distortive account of gender in Islam. Chapter 4 (“Toward a Reconfiguration of the Category ‘Muslim Women’”) again provides a corrective, this time to the regnant discourses that imagine a pristine message (often in the imagined words of Muhammad) that Islam promotes gender justice and egalitarianism. This chapter, in stark contrast to the previous one, offers a much more nuanced portrayal of the category “Muslim woman.” Chapter 5 (“Reflections on Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies”) uses as its point of departure a detailed and highly critical

Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

9

review of Rethinking Islamic Studies (Ernst and Martin 2010). This volume contains a collection of essays by some of the major scholars of Islamic Religious Studies that attempt to “rethink” the field and the relationship between the study of Islam and religious studies. I argue, however, that this work further obscures and obfuscates by reproducing more of the same liberal Muslim apologetics. Chapter 6 (“From Islamic Religious Studies to the ‘New Islamic Studies’”), the final chapter in the volume, provides my own take on how to resuscitate and reconstruct the academic study of Islam in departments of religious studies. It culminates in my “Theses on Method.” Taken as a whole, this little volume seeks to chart the course from which we can navigate the current maelstrom of Islamic Religious Studies and return to the terrain of a critical study of Islam that is in conversation with critical discourses in the academic study of religion and other disciplines.

1 The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps The years since 9/11 have witnessed the publication of a plethora of works examining the life and times of Muhammad, Islam’s prophet. Many of these books, with titles designed to inspire reverence in their readers, such as Memories of Muhammad and In the Footsteps of Muhammad, are less interested in the historical Muhammad and the methodological difficulties associated with reconstructing the early centuries of Islam than they are in writing hagiographies of a seventh-century individual and showing his relevance to contemporary concerns. To legitimate their reconstructions of Muhammad, all of the authors lay claim, in one way or another, to historical accuracy and textual fidelity. However, because they are largely uninterested in the philological or redactional problems associated with creating a, let alone the, historical Muhammad, many of these works present later and problematic sources as eyewitness accounts. In and of itself this might not be a problem: people are free to portray Muhammad in whatsoever ways they see fit (indeed, this is something that Muslims have been doing since Muhammad’s death in 632 ce). What concerns me is that virtually all of the authors of these books implicitly derive their authority from the academic discipline of Islamic Religious Studies and, concomitantly, they imply that those who do not share their views are biased or somehow lack adequate training. Appeals to larger disciplinary frameworks—be they history or religious studies, including the selective use of their methodologies and objectives—may lend a certain legitimacy to these works, and their authors certainly use this to their advantage. Deriving their authority from their positioning in the field, e.g., their graduate-level training in Islamic studies at prestigious universities, their current institutional affiliations, their knowledge of Arabic and other Islamic

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

11

languages, these scholars present to a more popular audience (the target audience of these books) the contested as uncontested, the mythic as historical, and the ideological as objective. The end result is that virtually all of these “hagiographies” provide subjective and highly apologetical accounts, but do so under the guise of objectivity. In so doing, these works further add to the largely descriptive and uncritical accounts of Islam currently manufactured by professional Islamicists in the North American academy (for a larger critique of whom see Hughes 2007: 72–92). Perhaps not surprisingly, all of these works turn on the assumption that the “core” or “essence” of Islam is somehow embedded in Muhammad’s life, teaching, and response to a message signified by later generations as “divine.” By studying Muhammad, walking in his footsteps or tapping into the memories of later generations, as it were, this core or essence can be unlocked for the contemporary reader. This essentialist reading, as we shall see, works on the assumption that all that is good, peaceful, and egalitarian about the tradition (= its essence) derives from Muhammad’s authentic teaching and that this essence subsequently moves throughout history and is something to which later “good” Muslims subscribe. All that does not fit such a virtuous reading of Muhammad’s life and message can be dismissed and quite literally written off, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, as inauthentic or the product of a later interpretation, i.e., corruption, that does not adequately reflect Muhammad’s life as displayed in these biographical portrayals. Adding to this apologetical agenda is the fact that these books are written for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Presumably, and using support from the authors’ introductory comments, this is to show both audiences that Islam, embodied in the constructed and imagined life of Muhammad (although presented as a faithful historical reconstruction), naturally coincides with modern liberal values. Those types of Muslims—the so-called “bad” Muslims or “terrorists”—not shown in these “authoritative” accounts of Muhammad’s life are, at worst, wrong or, at best, beyond the pale of “true” Islam. This desire to write for a dual audience—insider and outsider, caretaker and critic—presupposes a shifting or erratic methodology and ultimately produces untenable conclusions. Yet, because both

12

Theorizing Islam

the Muslim and non-Muslim audiences targeted by these scholars are religious and largely non-scholarly, they can escape criticism for ideas and concepts that they could not present, at least in theory, if they were writing for scholars of Islam. Those who contest the largely unquestioned narratives presented in these books can be labeled as Orientalist or Islamophobic and their arguments, to quote Ernst, can and should remain “safely buried in obscure academic journals” (2003: 97). The arguments to which Ernst here refers are not those books that present Muhammad as a “terrorist” or Islam as an inherently evil religion (books that, incidentally, are easy to dismiss), but scholarly articles and monographs that seek to question the chronology of sources and help us rethink the nature and function of the “historical” Muhammad, whosoever he may have been. The goal of this chapter is to group together and consider several of these recent books with the word “Muhammad” in the title. Written by diverse authors—from Karen Armstrong to Tariq Ramadan to Carl Ernst—these books seek to locate in Muhammad everything from the “real” Islam to spiritual teachings to guide humanity in the present to the antidote for interfaith misunderstandings. In what follows, I read and analyze these books as a genre in order to reflect upon their first principles, as such, and their unchecked assumptions and motivations.

The Hero as Prophet and the Prophet as Hero Many of these works, whether they admit it or not, are predicated on the “great man” theory of history that was developed and made popular in the nineteenth century. In the opening pages of his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, published in 1841, Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) writes For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

13

in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world; the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these. (1993 [1884]: 1) According to Carlyle, “great men” are largely responsible for driving history. Above and beyond their immediate historical moments, these great men, in the words of Robert Segal, “do not ultimately impose their will on history. They subordinate themselves to history, the course of which is set by God” (2000: 2). Closer to God, seeing reality for what it is, great men are the ones who have the capability to save society from itself and from the forces of evil or anomie that threaten it. Interestingly, Carlyle devotes a chapter in his seminal work to Muhammad. In “The Hero as Prophet,” he identifies Muhammad as an excellent example of the great man as a prophet: Such a man is what we call an original man; he comes to us at first hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tiding to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, God; —in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man’s words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things; —he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that … God has made many revelations; but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The “inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:” we must listen before all to him. (1993 [1841]: 40) The works under discussion here, I argue, differ little from Carlyle’s discussion. Certainly they come from a different age and, as such, reflect a different understanding of Muhammad’s prophetic career than that of a nineteenth-century non-Muslim. However, like Carlyle they often foreground Muhammad, removing him from his immediate social and cultural milieux, and seek instead to show him as a “great man” of history, someone who paradoxically exists beyond its mere mundane or quotidian flow. History, in other words, cannot confine the perceived spiritual truths of Muhammad and this is why appeals must be made to ambiguous terms such as memory (in the case of Safi and Afsaruddin) or footsteps (in the case

14

Theorizing Islam

of Ramadan and Ernst). These ambiguous terms should immediately alert us to the fact that these authors are not interested in historical reconstruction, but in something else, something much more illusive and, as such, less historically verifiable. It seems to me that if these authors would admit that they are engaging in creative myth-making all would be fine. However, the fact that they claim to be offering scholarly treatments of Muhammad that fit with the sources of his life demands a critical response. Yet, the “great man” of history, for the books under review here, extends far beyond even the lofty position that Carlyle had set for him. Muhammad now becomes a man unshackled by the historical, existing beyond history, a man whose teachings, to quote Ramadan, reveal “timeless spiritual teachings,” whose life is “strewn with events, situations and statements that point to the deepest spiritual edification” and whose biography “points to primary and eternal existential questions, and in this sense, his life is an initiation” (2007: x).

Muhammad: The Historical Paradox The fact of the matter is that we know next to nothing about Muhammad. The main sources that we have for understanding his life emerge from the Qur’an and the subsequent biographical tradition. Yet, even these sources are highly problematic. Although the Qur’an—at least, according to the master narrative of the Islamic tradition—may offer us a set of insights into Muhammad’s life and times, it provides very few specifics. Within this context, it is also worth noting that modern scholars debate the dating of the final recension of the Qur’an. The biographies of Muhammad, as mentioned in the previous chapter, present a different set of problems. Primary is the fact that they were written roughly 150 to 200 years after his death. As a result, they are often highly stylized and largely uninterested in what we today call “history.” It is, thus, quite impossible to know how accurate they are. In addition to these biographies, there exists a body of literature comprising various sayings and deeds attributed to Muhammad, the so-called hadiths, but once again scholars contest how historically useful or accurate this material is.

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

15

There also exist several accounts of Muhammad that are found scattered in various Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Hebrew sources. Again, however, most of these come from a later period (see Hoyland 1997). Despite the existence of such Arabic and non-Arabic sources, it is still virtually impossible to create a historically reliable biography of Mohammad. One scholar of Islamic origins sums up this situation accurately: At present, the study of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim community, is obviously caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, it is not possible to write a historical biography of the Prophet without being accused of using the sources uncritically, while on the other hand, when using the sources critically, it is simply not possible to write such a biography. (Motzki 2000: xiv) This epistemological impasse, however, does not stop many scholars from trying to read these later sources back onto the earliest period. The majority opinion in Islamic Religious Studies, for better or worse, is to contend that even though the earliest sources of Islam may come from a later period, they nonetheless represent reasonably reliable accounts of the matters which they comment upon or describe. The biography (Sira) of Muhammad, for example, which dates to a couple of generations after his death, is held up as a reliable account of his life and times. Hadiths (the sayings of Muhammad) are accordingly considered to represent authentic accounts of the earliest period. From a historical point of view, this is extremely problematic. The social and political upheavals associated with the rapid spread of Islam fatally compromise the earliest sources, according to many scholars who work in this period. These sources were written so long after the fact and with such distinct ideological or political agendas that they provide us with very little that is reliable or with which to reconstruct the period that they purport to describe (e.g., Wansbrough 1977a, 1977b; Crone and Cook 1979; Hawting 1999). None of the books under analysis here is particularly interested in these debates over sources. How can they be when their operating assumption is to uncover the authentic Muhammad and establish his life as the paradigm for Muslim, and indeed non-Muslim, life today? To ward off “the improbable and idiosyncratic nature of a number of

16

Theorizing Islam

the conclusions arrived at by revisionists” (Afsaruddin 2008: xix), by whom she means those who are skeptical of reconstructing the early period, she opines that There is no reason to prevent us from regarding this corpus of material as less than a largely reliable reflection and reconstruction of actual events in their own time as well as their later perception … despite the assertion of the minority rejectionist camp, which has based its contrarian position on its own rather tendentious reading of the sources and unsubstantiated speculations. The majority of careful and responsible scholars have not found this camp’s position unassailably convincing and the scholarly consensus remains that the traditional historical, biographical, and prosopographical works together constitute an invaluable and indispensable source for the study of the formative period of Islam. (xx; my italics) Despite such a bold statement, however, Afsaruddin herself presents no compelling evidence to back up her claims. She is certainly correct to posit, what the works under review here support, that scholarly consensus regards these sources as historically accurate. This consensus, however, is based more on lethargy, on maintaining the status quo, and on apologetics than it is on solid evidence. Because they attempt to break out of the status quo, she labels those who disagree with her cynical “rejectionists,” whose “contrarian” nature is based on a series of “tendentious” readings. Cynicism, rejectionism, and contrarianism are, however, the hallmarks of sober scholarship and they neither emerge from nor reduce to tendentiousness. To bypass the difficulties of reconstructing the early community of Muhammad, the works under discussion here employ a hermeneutic that replaces historical aporia with reading as many sources as possible. For example, Safi “consult[s] the widest range of sources about Muhammad” (2009: 17), Afsaruddin reads the later sources with “careful, judicious scrutiny” (2008: xx), Ramadan presents an account that “is strictly faithful to classical biographies (as far as facts and chronology are concerned)” (2007: xi), but nowhere mentions that these classical biographies date to much later generations. But even wide-ranging, judicious and/or faithful readings cannot miraculously transform later sources into early ones.

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

17

Surprisingly, though, given the fact that so many of these books either have the word “memory” in their title or invoke it, none of their authors is specifically interested in how memory not only carries Muhammad, but actually creates him. Rather than argue, for example, that the only Muhammad that now exists does so solely in the memory of later generations, these works persist in pursuing the goal that, in the words of Safi, “the reader has every right … to be assured that the Muhammad presented and confronted here is authentic, real, and recognizable” (2009: 32). Such assumptions impede nuance and analysis. One would think that the trope of memory would encourage these authors to eschew any attempt to reconstruct a period that is for all intents and purposes largely unreconstructable, and instead focus their energies on the intellectual work that Muhammad performs for subsequent generations. Memory, in other words, is not a historical source that aids in the reconstruction of the earliest period. It is, on the contrary, a collective mechanism that creates a series of Muhammads—often rival Muhammads who are themselves created in the image of rival Islams on display in the generations after Muhammad’s death.

Imagining the Historical Muhammad Explicit in all of these attempts to write the “spiritual autobiography” of Muhammad is the desire to show the human face of Islam. In a Euro-American world that many perceive to be increasingly hostile to Islam and Muslims, the overarching goal of all these volumes is to normalize Islam, to make Muslims not so “other.” Again, I have no quarrel with this goal. I do, however, have a problem with the rhetoric employed in this endeavor and the fact that it is being done using “academic” authority. In Tariq Ramadan’s In the Footsteps of Muhammad, for example, we encounter the following: Because Muhammad’s life expressed the manifested and experienced essence of Islam’s message, getting to know the Prophet is a privileged means of acceding to the spiritual universe of Islam. From his birth to his death, the Messenger’s

18

Theorizing Islam

experience—devoid of any human tragic dimension—allies the call of faith, trial among people, humility, and the quest for peace with the One. (2007: 7) Such phraseology—appeals to Muhammad’s experiences, his faith, his spirituality, his message of gender egalitarianism—is one of the hallmarks of this literature. The problem with such statements is that they ring loudly with theological overtones and they set the stage for a highly apologetical program. They are not objective accounts for the simple reason that we have no objective accounts of what Muhammad felt and experienced (just as we have no objective accounts of what Moses, Jesus or the Buddha thought and experienced). However, these largely devotional works claim objectivity because they are written by so-called or self-styled experts in Islam, namely, those who teach Islamic Religious Studies within secular and publicly funded departments of religious studies. Framing it somewhat differently from Ramadan, Carl Ernst makes Muhammad into one of the most, if not the most, important men of history: Nevertheless, the importance of Muhammad is not limited to those sources that can be dated with certainty to his own lifetime. He has served as an ongoing model for ethics, law, family life, politics, and spirituality in ways that were not anticipated 1,400 years ago. There are few people in history who have had a greater impact on humanity and it is through the historical elaboration of tradition that we must seek to understand that impact. (2003: 72–3) Although there are—at least as far as I am aware—no such “sources that can be dated with certainty to [Muhammad’s] own lifetime,” this does not stop Ramadan, Ernst, and others from using older sources as if they were contemporary eyewitness accounts. Moreover, in elucidating this life, all of the books under discussion here appeal to the discipline of history, conflating what they are doing with historical method. For example, they employ phrases such as “the Muhammad presented and confronted here is authentic, real, and recognizable” (Safi 2009: 33) or “this text is academically rigorous in regard to classical Islamic sources” (Ramadan 2007: xi). Perhaps the

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

19

most egregious in this respect is Afsaruddin, who writes that “In its basic orientation and methodology, this book will reconstruct the era of the first three generations of Muslims by using the classical Arabic sources which relate accounts of their lives and thought” (2008: xvi). This certainly sounds good, until one remembers that all of the “classical Arabic sources” date to centuries after the facts which she claims to “reconstruct.”

Muhammad the Feminist In all of these works, modern claims make their way into the argument in the guise of “historical reconstruction.” A case in point is the imagining of Muhammad as a feminist. Omid Safi, for example, opines that the marriage between Muhammad and Khadija, his first wife, “embodied a nurturing and loving relationship that lasted for twenty-five years” and that “this support and affection between Muhammad and his wife Khadija, even their erotic relation, would undoubtedly shape many of his views toward women” (2009: 109; my italics). What are these views toward women? According to Safi, it was one of equality, which, for him and all of the authors under discussion here, becomes the paradigm for gender relations in Islam. To show his egalitarianism, Muhammad, for example, abolished the practice of female infanticide (2009: 70), and married and took care of “marginalized” women (147). Gender equality, in other words, is the authentic Muhammadan, and thus Islamic, teaching. Although he never comes out and says it, Safi intimates that any unequal relationship between a man and a woman—one, for example, where the woman is forced to wear a hijab or cannot drive or go out without the protection of a male relative (as in Saudi Arabia)—is un-Muhammadan and, thus, inauthentic. In The First Muslims, Afsaruddin argues (see Chapter 4 below) that, at the time of Muhammad, there existed a “message of social justice and gender egalitarianism” (2008: 18). In the “late medieval” period (medieval, it should be noted is often invoked as a trope, much like “priestcraft,” synonymous with change for the worse), however, this egalitarianism was replaced with “construals of ‘proper’ Muslim women who are demure, retiring, and, above

20

Theorizing Islam

all, who prefer seclusion in their homes to activity in the public sphere” (160). In his desire to show the spiritual and contemporary teachings in the life of Muhammad, Tariq Ramadan writes that inside the mosque, the women would line up behind the men’s ranks, as the postures of prayer, in its various stages, require an arrangement that preserves modesty, decency, and respect. Women prayed, studied, and expressed themselves in that space. Moreover, they found in the Prophet’s attitude the epitome of courtesy and regard: he demanded that men remain seated in order to let women leave first and without inconvenience, there was always gentleness and dignity in his behavior toward women, whom he listened to, and whose right to express themselves and set forth their opinions and arguments he acknowledged, protected, and promoted. (2007: 148) Ramadan’s reading, like the others, is impossible to verify given the paucity of sources available to us. All of these accounts say more about the authors of these books—their views on women, on social justice, and gender egalitarianism—than they do about Muhammad.

*** Let me now move from these general comments to specific discussions of the works in question.

Omid Safi’s “Muhammadi Revolution” In the Acknowledgments to his Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (2009), Omid Safi (professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) writes that “my primary audience has been and remains my children … I have spent my adult life figuring out how to make the wisdom and spirituality of these texts intelligible to my own children, and their children. I hope that they will have meaning to your children as well” (2009: 307). This is certainly a noble initiative; however, because Safi is interested

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

21

in communicating the “wisdom and spirituality” of Muhammad to his children and the next generation, he is certainly not interested in asking hard questions of his dataset. He does not, in other words, discuss the difficulties, if not impossibilities, of reconstructing a “historical” individual from sources that were written in much later periods. Safi’s tone is instead primarily confessional: For me, Muhammad represents the completion of the possibilities available to us as human beings, not because he is superhuman, but precisely because he embodies the meaning of what it means to be fully human. The fullness of his humanity is particularly important to me in his life as the ideal father, husband, friend, leader, and prophet. He ascended to God and out of compassion returned to lead others so that they too might ascend to God. These are facets of my memory of Muhammad, and aspects that I seek to transmit to my children. (36–7) Such words, I submit, are problematic coming from a scholar of Islam, who, in theory, is charged with presenting objective accounts of the religion to students (both Muslim and non-Muslim) and others. After all, Safi had earlier argued that “scholars trained in the field of Islamic Studies” represent the true experts on Islam and that their lives are made more difficult by the “dilution of the standards of scholarship” by the media and other imposters (14). Clearly, Safi is not interested in a, let alone the, historical Muhammad. “The facets of [his own] memory” shape his understanding of Islam’s prophet and what he ultimately presents is a theological apology for his own belief. This is fine except that, to reiterate, Safi enjoys the institutional authority of his university position and the backing of Islamic Religious Studies. What follows is the fairly customary portrayal of the later biographical sources as the stuff of history. This is something, it will be recalled, that Carlyle did as early as the mid-nineteenth century. For example, Safi recounts the following well-known story about Bahira, a Christian monk, whose study of ancient manuscripts had led him to expect a new prophet sent by God to the Arabs. When he saw the

22

Theorizing Islam

caravan approach, he felt the presence of an extraordinary soul among the travelers and invited them to a meal. The travelers left Muhammad, a mere boy of twelve, behind to tend to the luggage. Bahira, not sensing among the adults anyone who matched the description he had read, asked for Muhammad to be brought to him … He even asked to examine the boy’s face and body, and there—as the tradition says, between his shoulder blades—Bahira found the sign of the Seal of the Prophets … He entrusted Muhammad to his uncle and asked [him] to look after the young boy and protect him from his enemies. (80) Where Safi has “enemies,” the original has “Jews.” This certainly is not to say that the early Islamic material is anti-Jewish or antiSemitic. On the contrary, my concern is to draw attention to Safi’s selectivity, which needlessly expurgates the material in question. For example, no mention is made of the young age of Muhammad’s wife Aisha. Safi also describes as a later invention Muhammad’s harsh (but probably fair) treatment of a Jewish tribe that had conspired with the latter’s Meccan enemies (138–9). Safi writes,“It is hard to speak with certainty about this issue, so perhaps the best we can do … is to say alongside premodern Muslims: God knows better than we do (Allah a`lam). There are simply situations whose historical veracity we cannot ascertain, but God knows what truly happened” (139; my italics). Note the irony of this last statement: Safi is content to use later material when it suits his story, but when it threatens his portrayal of Muhammad these materials become something whose “veracity we cannot ascertain.” This is not so much a hermeneutic as it is stacking the deck in one’s favor. Moreover, it is unfair to readers seeking a fair and balanced treatment of Muhammad. Instead, they get (1) the later stuff of legend presented as if it were historical fact, and (2) a highly selective and expurgated summary of these later sources. Anyone who does not agree with Safi’s take on Muhammad is labeled a “polemicist” or an “Islamophobe.” But, of course, Safi himself becomes a polemicist for the other side, for a reading of Islam that is liberal and apologetic; anything that does not fit his reading is neatly circumvented.

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

23

Safi mentions at the beginning of his book that one of his goals is to “explore the various ways in which different groups of Muslims have found inspiration in Muhammad to seek beauty and wisdom— and also the ways in which some have sought to justify their violence and prejudice by referring to certain episodes in Muhammad’s life and teachings” (17). However, he never follows through in such an interrogation, primarily because it would take him into the murky and uncertain territory of human construction and contestation, as opposed to the lofty heights that Muhammad’s life offers for himself and the rest of humanity. For example, he mentions in passing the so-called Wahhabis (290–2) as puritans who seek to destroy the popular cult of Muhammad in Islam. He nowhere says that these Wahhabis—who refer to themselves as Salafis, i.e., the “pious followers” of Muhammad—also create their version of Islam in the image of Muhammad. This is precisely the type of contestation over the “memory” of Muhammad that needs to be interrogated. Ultimately, for Safi, as for the other authors discussed in this chapter, the Muhammad of legend proves to be a more compelling story to tell one’s children. But, it is not the real story. It is, on the contrary, the mythic story that religious practitioners tell themselves to make sense of their world.

Following Carl Ernst’s Muhammad Of the works examined here, Carl Ernst’s award-winning1 Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World is certainly the most sophisticated and, because of this, potentially the most problematic. Ernst—a colleague of Safi’s at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill—writes in the preface that his book offers “a completely different alternative to currently available books on Islam” (2003: xiii). This uniqueness, he explains, resides in the fact that he proposes “a nonfundamentalist understanding of Islam,” by which he means “a sympathetic yet reasoned and analytical view of the Islamic religious tradition and the contemporary issues that Muslims face” (xiii). Although I am uncertain as to how this is unique—surely every academic account of Islam and Muslims ought to combine the sympathetic with the analytical. Yet given what we have already

24

Theorizing Islam

seen in Safi’s book and what we shall again encounter in Ramadan’s, scholarship in Islamic Religious Studies is not necessarily objective or value-neutral. Ernst is bothered by what he vaguely calls traditional colonialism and Orientalism, which have largely conspired with one another to create a negative portrayal of Islam over the past century and beyond.2 He correctly argues that a contextual method is necessary to interpret Islam because “religious symbols have no specific meaning in themselves apart from the people who deliberately employ them in specific ways” (31). Although this method starts out promisingly, it soon becomes apparent that he invokes this hermeneutic only when it suits him. For example, he says that certain Arabo-Islamic lexemes that are often criticized by non-Muslims are actually based on “mistranslations.” He uses jihad to illustrate this and argues that this term should be primarily understood as the non-violent “struggle for truth” (ibid.). This would seem to contradict his earlier claim that religious symbols are devoid of meaning. A few pages later, he writes of the “misinterpretation” of Islamic law (shari`a): Modern readers would assume that this is an inflexible legal code, but in fact Muslim judges had considerable independence in how they interpreted and applied the law … The situation is entirely changed, however, when zealous self-taught ideologues make amputation of the hand the standard punishment for every case of theft or prosecute rape victims on charges of adultery … This ideological imposition of shari`a, with none of the safeguards of the Islamic legal tradition, is rightly seen as a travesty. (34; my italics) That some people who consider themselves Muslims define jihad as holy war or interpret the shari`a “zealously” does not make them fake or inauthentic Muslims. These are contested terms, sites of skirmishes, that are appealed to by various actors who consider themselves and their interpretations of Islam to be the only correct ones. They are decidedly not terms that possess fixed meanings. And, most importantly, it is not our duty—as Islamicists or as religionists— to take sides in these matters. As an aside and to show the debates over such terms, I quote from David Cook’s study of the concept of jihad:

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

25

In reading Muslim literature—both contemporary and classical—one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible. (2005: 165–6) Ernst seems to employ a double standard. When non-Muslims say something negative about Islam—e.g., that jihad is tantamount to “holy war”—it is the result of decades of colonial critique and the inability (or, perhaps better, unwillingness) of non-Muslims to understand such terms in their original contexts. Yet, when certain actors who call themselves Muslims “misinterpret” their own religion in ways that do not follow liberal norms it becomes a “travesty,” an aberration of an authentic and presumably original teaching located, of course, in the life and times of Muhammad. Ernst argues that one cannot access Muhammad’s true meaning for Muslims “from a historical point of view” (2003: 75). Even though we possess later sources that describe his life, Ernst instead proclaims that “Muhammad is presented in terms of the cultural and religious imperatives of a religious tradition” (75). As a result, It would not do justice to the many-faceted character of Muhammad to begin with a dry factual summary. Should one summarize the life of Jesus Christ as the career of a Jewish carpenter of uncertain paternity who turned itinerant preacher of Judgment Day and was executed as a rebel by the Romans? (ibid.) As a scholar, I would hope that we would. Without understanding the “dry facts” of a person’s life, especially a person whose followers founded a new religion in his name, how do we contextualize him? Ernst, however, claims that the “religious significance of such figures would be buried by such an approach, with its deceptive claims of historical objectivity that leaves aside the beliefs and devotion of generations” (ibid.).

26

Theorizing Islam

Ernst’s approach curtails understanding because it does not let us ask certain questions. Questions that contradict the narrative of the mainframe, that threaten Muslim belief or that some might regard as insensitive are never asked or broached. Again, the trope of the “cynical rejectionist” serves as a straw man: Orientalist scholars cast doubt upon any quotations from the Prophet that seemed to have a clear and specific legal consequence; such an obvious legal application, in their view, meant that these reports were obviously forged, especially since many of them addressed specific issues that only arose many years after the time of the Prophet. (81) For Ernst, then, we are to take all texts at face value. Anachronisms and terms that have been reinterpreted threaten to undermine his understanding of the heart of Islam.

Tariq Ramadan and Making Muhammad Our Contemporary Tariq Ramadan is a highly controversial figure. The Swiss-born scholar, who presently teaches at St Anthony’s College in Oxford, is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Critics accuse him of supporting Palestinian organizations that carry out suicide attacks against Israelis, of defending the stoning of adulterers, of anti-Semitism, of speaking about peace when it suits him, and so on. At the same time, however, many conservative Muslims have also found fault with Ramadan for his liberal criticisms and his charge that many Muslim countries (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia) violate human rights and democratic principles. In February 2004, Ramadan accepted a professorship at the University of Notre Dame, but his non-immigrant visa was revoked by the State Department. He subsequently became a cause célèbre of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in general and scholars of Islam in particular. Ramadan subsequently resigned his position and took up his current one at Oxford. In January 2010, the ban on Ramadan’s admittance to the United States was lifted.

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

27

In the Introduction to his In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (2007), Ramadan writes that Our aim is more to get to know the Prophet himself than to learn about his personality or the events in his life. What is sought is immersion, sympathy, and essentially love … This is indeed the primary ambition of this work: making of the Messenger’s life a mirror through which readers facing the challenges of our time can explore their hearts and minds and achieve an understanding of questions of being and meaning as well as broader ethical and social concerns. (xi) For Ramadan, the main hermeneutic with which to understand Muhammad and his life is love. Let me put this in perspective. I know of no other discipline that would allow a “scholar” from the University of Oxford, publishing an “academic” monograph with Oxford University Press, to make such claims. Could a serious scholar of Christian origins in the year 2011 get away with saying in an academic monograph published by, say, Cambridge University Press that the main way to understand Jesus and the early Jesus movement was through love? Ramadan continues: The reader, whether Muslim or not, is thus invited to look into the Prophet’s life and follow the steps of an account that is strictly faithful to classical biographies (as far as facts and chronology are concerned) but which nevertheless constantly introduces reflections and comments, of a spiritual, philosophical, social, judicial, political, or cultural nature, inspired by the facts narrated. (xi) Ramadan is certainly correct to note that the “facts” of Muhammad’s life emerge from the classical biographies. However, he fails to mention that these biographies postdate, some by centuries, the period in which Muhammad lived. Moreover, he also assumes that biographies, such as the Sirat rasul Allah (Biography of the Prophet of God), composed by Ibn Ishaq (d.c.767) and redacted by Ibn Hisham (d.833), record facts as opposed to presenting mythic accounts to explain Muhammad’s life in the light of categories encountered among Jews and Christians in an increasingly cosmopolitan environment. Neither is Ramadan interested in Muslim socio-rhetorical formation

28

Theorizing Islam

at the time of and immediately after Muhammad. He transposes, in other words, the historical shroud of mystery that enwraps the first centuries of Islam with the theologian’s sense of certainty and truth. In the concluding chapter of In the Footsteps of the Prophet, Ramadan summarizes Muhammad for his readers: He was beloved by God and an example among humans. He prayed, he contemplated. He loved, he gave. He served, he transformed. The Prophet was the light that leads to Light, and in learning from his life, believers return to the Source of Life and find His light, His warmth, and His love. The messenger may have left the human world, but he has taught us never to forget Him, the Supreme Refuge, the Witness, the Most Near. Bearing witness that there is no god but God is, in effect, stepping toward deep and authentic freedom; recognizing Muhammad as the Messenger is essentially learning to love him in his absence and to love Him in His presence. Loving and learning to love: God, the Prophet, the creation, and humankind. (216) As touching and moving as such a passage may be, it does not reflect the historical record. Ramadan may well claim that Muhammad is the footpath to “deep and authentic freedom,” but what constitutes “authenticity” and “freedom”? Undoubtedly Ramadan and others would object to my critique as follows: “How can you be so blind, this is the way that most Muslims feel and the stated goal of such works is to communicate this to readers.” But such a response is spurious. The goal of academic works is not to proselytize. Moreover, from an academic perspective we cannot assume that all Muslims think and believe the same thing about Muhammad. How do we understand different constructions of Muhammad? What historical, political, ideological, and cultural forces contribute to such constructions? Unfortunately, none of these authors are interested in entertaining such mundane concerns. Their interest, on the contrary, is to create a rarefied and spiritualist reading of Muhammad that fits with their own understanding of Islam. Some Muslims create peace in the name of Muhammad and others kill in his name. Is one the right understanding of Muhammad, the most “authentic”? Many of the writers examined in this chapter

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

29

would tell us that there is a proper way to understand Muhammad: the path of love, openness, gender egalitarianism, inclusivity, and so on. Any construction that does not mesh with this path becomes inauthentic and wrong. To correct this wrong path, all of those mentioned here have created what they consider to be the authentic Muhammad.

Karen Armstrong’s Prophet for Our Time Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (2007) is, as we should expect from her, a work of liberal, ecumenical apologetics.3 Her premise is that “Muhammad was not a man of violence,” and, she further argues, “to cultivate an inaccurate prejudice damages the tolerance, liberality, and compassion that are supposed to characterize Western culture” (6). Her essentialized readings of Islam (not to mention the West), her notion that “paradigmatic personalities shed light on the often dark conditions in which most of us seek salvation in our flawed world” (1), and her lack of training in history should take her beyond the pale of a study such as this. However, her books are often used in university classrooms that introduce Islam to students and, in 2006, she was invited to give a plenary address at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) held in Washington, DC.4 In the debates about the “real” or authentic Muhammad, Karen Armstrong is a major player, and her book is arguably the most widely read of all those discussed here. Armstrong begins with contemporaneous concerns that are subsequently used to frame Muhammad’s life and times. On her reading, “Muhammad literally sweated with the effort to bring peace to war-torn Arabia, and we need people who are prepared to do this today” (7).5 Armstrong goes on to “document” the customary aspects of Muhammad’s life gleaned from the later sources. Like the others, she describes Muhammad’s prophetic experience in dramatic fashion: Afterwards he found it almost impossible to describe the experience that sent him running in anguish down the rocky

30

Theorizing Islam

hillside to his wife. It seemed to him that a devastating presence had burst into the cave where he was sleeping and gripped him in an overpowering embrace, squeezing all the breath from his body. In his terror, Muhammad could only think that he was being attacked by a jinni, one of the fiery spirits who haunted the Arabian steppes and frequently lured travelers from the right path. (Armstrong 2007: 9) Here Armstrong claims special access into the psyche of Muhammad. If not, how else could she describe his emotional state during events first recorded hundreds of years after his death? When Muhammad granted prophetic and divine approval to Sa`d b. Mu`adh to punish the treasonous Jewish tribe in Medina with death, Armstrong proclaims: “Nor was it what Muhammad had set out to do” (151)! In her conclusion, Armstrong returns to her well-known theme that religions in general and Islam in particular are vehicles of peace, and that the only reason there are problems is because some people with malicious intent hijack these religions. She concludes: If we are to avoid catastrophe, the Muslim and Western worlds must learn not merely to tolerate but to appreciate one another. A good place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex man, who resists facile, ideologically driven categorization, who sometimes did things that were difficult or impossible for us to accept, but who had profound genius and founded a religion and cultural tradition that was not based on the sword but whose name—“Islam”—signified peace and reconciliation. (202)

Muhammad Outside of Religious Studies Not all “scholars” of Islam are interested in presenting apologetical accounts of Islam in the form of spiritual autobiographies of Muhammad. In his Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (2010), Fred Donner argues that Muhammad preached a generic Near Eastern message and what he calls the “Believers movement” included Jews and Christians as part of a general

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

31

monotheistic community.6 Without assuming that he can read later sources as accurate indicators of the period in question, Donner asks basic questions: More difficult to assess, however, is the status of Muhammad himself in the religious ideology of the Believers’ movement. The Believers, as we have seen, belonged to a strong monotheistic, intensely pietistic, and ecumenical or confessionally open religious movement that enjoined people who were not already monotheists to recognize God’s oneness and enjoined all monotheists to live in strict observance of the law that God had repeatedly revealed to mankind—whether in the form of the Torah, the Gospels, or the Qur’an. But what did the Believers perceive Muhammad’s role to be and, in particular, how might this understanding have affected the willingness of Jews or Christians who heard Muhammad’s message to join the Believers’ movement? (75) Here Islam does not emerge fully formed with Muhammad’s biography. Donner, correctly, avoids terms such as “Islam” or “Muslims” at this early point. It was only later, after Muhammad’s death, that subsequent generations of Believers began to refer to themselves as “Muslims” and their religions as “Islam.” According to Donner, what “Islam” meant in the seventh century and what it means today are not necessarily congruous. We cannot simply reconstruct Muhammad’s life from the earliest sources and then recycle his life in modern terms and in such a manner that this reified Muhammad becomes our contemporary. Another example is a recent monograph by David Powers, entitled Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men (2009). Powers is not interested in establishing the “historical” Muhammad or rehabilitating this Muhammad as a catalyst for change in the modern period; on the contrary, he is interested in the much more prosaic issue of how the first generations of Muhammad’s followers struggled to understand his message. He argues that these early followers altered sections of the Qur’an dealing with Muhammad and his adopted son, Zayd, in order to establish Muhammad as the “seal of the prophets.” Since the Qur’an portrayed prophecy through the lineage of Abraham, Powers holds that it was important

32

Theorizing Islam

for the early Muslim community to ensure that Muhammad died without a son, lest later claimants to prophecy arise. Powers hypothesizes that later generations changed the actual text of the Qur’an to suit their needs. For example, the verse in Q 33:40, “Muhammad is not the father of any of your men,” clashed with an earlier verse in 33:6 that read “The prophet is closer to the believers than they are to themselves, he is their father and his wives are their mothers.” This formulation was subsequently changed so that the clause in italics (“he is their father”) was omitted. Although the “he is their father” variant was removed from the Uthmanic codex, it continued to circulate in the later commentary tradition. One final example from Powers’s work should suffice. In Q 33:37 permission is granted to Muhammad to marry his daughter-in-law (divorced from his adopted son Zayd). This, however, conflicted with the initial version of 4:23, which forbade marriages with “your daughters-in-law.” This verse was later changed to read: “the wives of your sons who are from your own loins”. This new phrase, “from your own loins,” meant that Muhammad could in fact marry Zayd’s ex-wife because he was not Muhammad’s biological son. In addition to verses such as these, Powers also shows how legal and political verses from the Qur’an were emended and changed over time. The work of scholars such as Donner and Powers should be more important to the religionist than the apologetical works surveyed here. They take sources seriously, by which I mean that they are aware of the problems involved in reading them and in their application. They see Muhammad’s immediate milieux as very complex and the product of numerous monotheistic messages that only later became established as Islam. Readers interested in understanding this complexity, as opposed to being treated to highly apologetical accounts, would be much better served by going to such books.

Conclusions The books under discussion here maintain the guise of scholarship. Professors of religious studies at reputable universities (e.g., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Oxford) write them;

The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps

33

excellent university presses (e.g., Oxford University Press) publish them; their authors’ academic bona fides are printed prominently on the book jackets and within (e.g., “When I was a student at Harvard …”); and they “blurb” each others’ work on their back covers. These self-styled experts speak from positions of authority derived from their institutional frameworks (Lincoln 1994: 1–13).7 Rather than treat these texts as “expert” accounts of the life of Muhammad, I have opted to read them as primary sources. Despite all pretenses to the contrary, they are most decidedly not academic books. They are, like all those sources from the centuries after Muhammad that claim to reflect historically on his life, theological constructions of an individual whom we know very little about. Like these early sources, the books under discussion here claim to be objective accounts. They are not.

2 Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas Despite the fact that the books described in the previous chapter claim, like Omid Safi, to present a Muhammad who “is authentic, real, and recognizable” (2009: 32), they reveal more about the authors themselves than they do about a seventh-century prophet. The end result is that we read about what Muhammad means to the lives of Muslim university professors of Islamic Religious Studies who teach in secular western universities. This is a Muhammad who, like them, is liberal, tolerant, egalitarian and, as such, the perfect symbol of the Muslim in the modern world. In presenting later accounts as if they were contemporaneous, these books gloss over the textual and chronological difficulties that face the scholar of early Islam. Invocations of ambiguous terms such as “memory” or “footsteps” mean that these authors largely eschew any of the problems that face scholars who actually work in this period, whose work they would prefer to remain, as Ernst claims, “safely buried in obscure academic journals” (2003: 97). Those interested in such problems can be written off as Islamophobic (“How dare they engage in source criticism that threatens to undermine Islam’s mythic origins”) at worse or as arcane at best. So, what might an honest account of Muhammad’s life look like? The present chapter seeks to offer a more balanced portrait of Muhammad largely by providing a realistic assessment of what we know about Muhammad and, perhaps more importantly, what we do not. Rather than conflate the legendary with the historical, memory with the real, this chapter seeks to unravel them from one another. The hope is that if we begin to do this, we can present Islam accurately and unapologetically to our students and to the general reading public, that is, to those who really want a frank and honest assessment of what Islam is and means.

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

35

General Overview For both many believing Muslims and many scholars of Islamic Religious Studies, Muhammad is the vehicle of divine revelation, the incarnation of the perfect man, illiterate of other scriptures, and the individual whose life and actions embody the ideal response to the Qur’an’s challenge. Outsiders, especially those with a more skeptical perspective, however, are less willing to accept as objective the religious status that Muhammad enjoys among Muslims. (It should go without saying that I am not trying to create a Muslim: non-Muslim binary here. It is important not to assume that “insiders” of any particular religious tradition are somehow always rendered incompetent to function as critical scholars of their own tradition. Moreover, there certainly exist “outsiders” who buy into and recycle apologetical discourses, such as those encountered in the previous chapter.) The fact of the matter is that many Muslims and scholars of Islamic Religious Studies regard a skeptical and historical account of Muhammad as invasive, whereas skeptics believe that an account of Muhammad’s life that simply portrays him as the later sources do is biased and subjective. The goal of this chapter is to try to strike a balance between these two perspectives. That is, it seeks to show how Muhammad functions as a trope in Muslim belief and practice, while at the same time speaking to the biographical and textual problems of reconstructing the historical Muhammad. The Muhammad of history and the Muhammad of faith, at least from a non-theological perspective, are certainly not easily reconciled. A historical approach to the study of Islamic origins must apply the categories of historical scholarship to the persona of Muhammad. This includes contextualizing what, if anything, we know of the real Muhammad who lived and walked in sixth- and seventh-century Arabia and looking critically at the various ways later sources imagine him. (I, thus, strongly disagree with Ernst, who, as we saw in the previous chapter, opines that “It would not do justice to the many-faceted character of Muhammad to begin with a dry factual summary” [2003: 75].) Such an approach necessarily works on the assumption that human agents actively produce all discourses, even those constructed or sublimated as divine.

36

Theorizing Islam

However, we immediately run into the problem of sources. We possess very little textual or other evidence that dates to the period in question. Since Muhammad is generally considered to be the most important person in Islam, we possess ream upon ream of material about his life and times. However, virtually all of this material comes from a later period that retroactively seeks to project onto the character of Muhammad later virtues and messages. This is the material that all of the works examined in the previous chapter use and, moreover, do so as if it were an objective account of the time in question. Perhaps a more interesting question than asking about or assuming the existence of the historical Muhammad would be to inquire into the ways that Muhammad as a textual trope figured in the creation of such identities. Framed in this manner, we can witness how this textual Muhammad has been cast and recast, shaped and manipulated to fit any number of competing and often contradictory paradigms of what it means to be Muslim. Otherwise the historical Muhammad and the Muhammad of legend collide, with the result that it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to separate them from one another. Although this chapter does its best to try and undertake this task of separation, its main goal is more modest: to introduce Muhammad in a less polemical way than is customarily done and then to show how and why his biography became an important part of Muslim self-definition. After a brief and critical discussion of the various sources that claim to provide us with evidence of Muhammad’s life, the present chapter goes on to present the basic narrative of this life as it emerges therefrom. The goal is not to take these sources at face value, but to explore some of the potential reasons behind their construction. For whom were they produced? Why? What functions did they serve? This will then segue into the importance of Muhammad’s life as one of the constitutive ingredients in the formation of subsequent Islamic identity formations.

The Immediate Context: Pre-Islamic Arabia1 The customary presentation of pre-Islamic Arabia is based on a later Islamic myth of its isolation and separation from the larger empires

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

37

of the area. This trope of a desert people wandering in darkness and receiving a divine message is certainly a common one in ancient Near Eastern religious cultures. However, if we assume the mythic trope as historical narrative, as is frequently done, we miss out on the active involvement of pre-Islamic Arabs and other tribes in these larger empires. It is certainly clear, for instance, that the Peninsula functioned as an important nexus on a number of east–west and north–south trade routes (Hoyland 2001: 1–12). Pre-Islamic Arabia, in other words, did interact with the rest of the Middle East and did so increasingly as time progressed. The claim that Arabia was untouched by the major empires of the region, and their religions, is a potentially useful theological claim. The myth of pre-Islamic isolation functioned in numerous ways. First, it allowed Islam to emerge miraculously on the world stage with Muhammad. Second, it permitted Islam to emerge untouched by other monotheisms in the area, thereby protecting Islam from later charges that it and its scripture, the Qur’an, copied Jewish and Christian sources. Third, it signaled the uniqueness of Muhammad’s message that inspired the tribes of Arabia to take up monotheism. Finally, it contributes to a mythic narrative produced by later generations to rival the accounts of origins found in other religions, most notably various Judaisms and Christianities, some of whose practitioners undoubtedly formed the core of Muhammad’s early movement.

Monotheisms in Arabia Given both the importance of the trade routes to Arabia and the fact that larger geopolitical forces surrounded it, it is certainly unlikely that the Peninsula existed in some sort of religious vacuum and was untouched by the existence of other imperial powers and their monotheisms. Not only were all of the political hinterlands that surrounded the Arabian Peninsula connected to monotheistic civilizations, there is evidence for the existence of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in Arabia well before the time of Muhammad. More important than asking whether or not other monotheisms existed in the area, the more accurate and pressing question is: What were

38

Theorizing Islam

the contours and contents of these monotheisms? And, perhaps equally important, given the fluid ethnic and religious contexts of sixth- and seventh-century Arabia, is it even possible to assume that these monotheisms represent, as they do today, distinct markers of identity?

Judaisms If we accept the historicity of the Arab sources on the existence of Jews in the Arabian Peninsula (e.g., Newby 1988; Lecker 1989, 1995), Jewish tribes arrived in the Hijaz in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce. There is other clear evidence that by the end of the fourth century there existed a Jewish presence, which seems to have arrived there from Yemen. We know that in the mid-fifth century ce one of the Yemeni kings adopted some form of Judaism as the state religion. The significant presence of Judaism in the Yemen lasted for centuries— long after it ceased to be the state cult. There was also an important Jewish community in Elephantine (on the Nile—part of the Red Sea Basin2), not to mention the Jews of Alexandria. All of these Jewish communities had historical and political ties to Iran. The Jews of Arabia were an integral part of this scene.3 The Constitution of Medina—a text attributed to Muhammad when he established a polity in Medina/Yathrib (but likely dating to a later period)—names no fewer than seven Arab tribes of Jews, and there are other passing references to a house of study (bayt al-midrash) there. Moreover, Ibn Ishaq, one of Muhammad’s later biographers, links the Jewish community of Yathrib to the Yemeni Jews, suggesting that there were networks not only of trade but also of political and religious culture that ran the length of the Red Sea Basin and reached into both Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau. The existence of these Jewish tribes in Arabia seems to predate the codification of the Talmud, the main documents of rabbinical Judaism, around 500 ce. Although this codification occurred in the rabbinical academies of Babylonia, which were relatively close to the area, it is unclear how much jurisdiction such academies would have had among other Jews in the Red Sea Basin. At the same time,

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

39

however, it is important not to assume an orthodoxy of fixed and ascertainable Jewish identity and practice based upon the rabbinical academies of Babylonia and then use this as the standard against which to judge the “authenticity” of Arabian Jewishness. If anything, the Talmud, as a product of late antiquity, further reveals the fluid and evolving nature of Judaism in this period. Relatedly, it is important to avoid positing sharp ethnic, racial or religious distinctions between “Jews,” “Arabs,” “Christians,” and others in sixth- and seventh-century Arabia. We do know that tribes of “Jewish Arabs” or “Arab Jews”—and note the fluidity and ambiguity of such terms or categories—appear to have had ready access to anciently established local Jewish authorities (in the Yemen and in Yathrib). Perhaps what eventually emerged as “Islam” in subsequent centuries preserves a local Jewish “orthodoxy” that no longer competed with the Palestinian or Babylonian religio-legal schools for the simple reason that it became identified with Islam, and the Arabian Jews who practiced it were absorbed into the Islamic community.

Christianities The same kinds of questions arise for the existence of Christianities in the Red Sea Basin. If the period just before the rise of Muhammad was one in which rabbinical Judaism was being formulated in Babylonian academies, it was also a period in which the Christian Church was defining itself and working out what would become “orthodox” belief and doctrine, by weeding out what would subsequently become labeled as “heretical” movements. Interestingly, all of the main forms of Christianity in Arabia seem to have been forms of the religion that the Church in western Europe would deem more heterodox (see Trimingham 1979). Monophysite Christianity appears to have been one of the more dominant strains of the religion in the area. Monophysitism adopted the christological position that Jesus has only one nature, as opposed to what would emerge as the orthodox position adopted at the Council of Chalcedon (451 ce) that Jesus possesses two natures, one divine and one human. The other major form of Christianity

40

Theorizing Islam

in the area is that of Nestorianism, which held that Jesus existed as two separate persons, the man Jesus and the divine Son of God, or Logos, rather than as a unified person. The existence of Christian Arabs at the time before Muhammad raises all sorts of interesting questions regarding identity. What, for example, did it mean to be a Christian Arab at this time? Although these tribes may have identified with and even allied with larger Christian empires in the region, the heterodox and even heretical teachings that dominated in Arabia would certainly have limited such identification. Or, again, as we saw in the possible existence of various Judaisms in the area, perhaps some form of Arab Christianity—along with forms of (Arab-)Judaism and (Arab-)Zoroastrianism, in addition to other local cults—represented the fluidity of loyalties and practices out of which Muhammad’s social movement emerged (see Hawting 1999: 20–30). And, perhaps unlike those who sought to impose upon them orthodoxies, orthopraxies, and exclusive loyalties to one community or another, Muhammad’s movement succeeded because it both appealed to and encouraged, at least in its formative stages, a variety of beliefs and practices (Donner 2010: 92–5).

Sources for Muhammad’s Life The main sources that we possess for understanding Muhammad’s life within these broader contexts, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, are the Qur’an and the later biographical tradition. Both of these are problematic, however. Although the Qur’an certainly provides us with a glimpse at the changing historical circumstances that Muhammad faced as an individual, it presents us with very few specifics. Moreover, there is considerable debate as to the dating of its final recension. As for the biographies of Muhammad, they present other problems: they were written roughly 150 to 200 hundred years after his death. They are often highly stylized and, unlike historical biographers of the modern period, their authors were not interested in writing accounts firmly embedded in the historical record. It is thus quite impossible to know how accurate they are. Coeval with these biographies, there also exists a related body of literature comprising various sayings and deeds attributed

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

41

to Muhammad, but again modern historians are not convinced that this literature provides an accurate historical source, if for no other reason than that this was not their goal. There also exist, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, several outside accounts of Muhammad that are found scattered in various Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Hebrew sources. Again, however, most of these come from a later period. One of the earliest, written by the seventh-century Armenian bishop Sebeos, does provide us with the first narrative account of Muhammad to survive in any language (Hoyland 1997: 124–32). This source would seem to confirm what later Muslim sources tell us: that there was a Muhammad, that he was a merchant, that he preached a message that centered on the figure of Abraham, and that he established a community of Arabs and Jews based on common Abrahamic descent. Although this is Sebeos’ claim, we would do well to remember that there is little historical evidence that terms such as “Arab” or “Jew” were mutually exclusive cultural markers at this time. We should therefore be cautious of projecting modern sectarian notions of “Arabness” and “Jewishness” onto seventh-century Arabia. Despite the existence of such Arabic and non-Arabic sources, it is still virtually impossible to create a historically reliable biography of Muhammad. Some scholars contend that it is quite possible to isolate what they consider to be historical kernels or fragments from the legendary traditions found in the later biographical accounts of Muhammad.4 W. Montgomery Watt, for example, argues that many legendary aspects surround only the motivational accounts of Muhammad’s actions, but not the actual external acts, which we can take to be largely true (Watt 1953: xiv). Others contend that the Islamic traditions about Muhammad’s life are nothing more than literary products of subsequent generations and not expressly historical documents about the life of a, let alone the, historical Muhammad (e.g., Rubin 1998: chap. 4). Given my more skeptical approach, I tend to agree with the latter, and, like them, maintain that the biographical literature about Muhammad is the work not of historians or even biographical historians, but of creative storytellers or myth-makers seeking both to understand and to explain Muhammad—and thus themselves—in the light of narratives that were part of a shared or common Near

42

Theorizing Islam

Eastern religious, literary, and cultural milieu. Furthermore, these stories tell us more about the concerns of those in eighth- and ninthcentury Iraq and other cosmopolitan locations than they do about seventh-century Arabia (just as the “biographies” examined in the previous chapter reveal much more about twenty-first-century liberal Muslim professors than they do about a historical Muhammad). Not only did this myth-making enable these later Muslims to differentiate increasingly normative Islams from Judaisms and Christianities, it also enabled them to show the miraculous nature of their own tradition. Most importantly, and this must not be understated, the entire enterprise of creating a biography of Muhammad was to establish and explain the contexts of the Qur’an’s revelation. In this regard the biographical literature also seems to be intimately connected to another later genre meant to ascertain the “circumstance of revelation” (asbâb al-nuzûl). That is, subsequent commentators sought to reconstruct the “historical” contexts in which particular verses were revealed to Muhammad. Some modern commentators argue that this literature had a legal function and its main goal was to determine the order of revelation (an important project to determine what verses abrogate or are abrogated by others; e.g., Wansbrough 1978: 200–11); others connect the genre to attempts to “historicize” or structure the Qur’an’s otherwise amorphous narrative (Rippin 1985,1988).

Muhammad at Mecca According to tradition, Muhammad was born in 570 ce in Mecca to the Banu Hashim family within the larger Quraysh tribe. The Banu Hashim were a prominent, if not dominant, part of the Quraysh. Muhammad’s parents and grandfather died when he was relatively young, and he then came under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the new leader of Banu Hashim. While still in his teens, Muhammad accompanied his uncle on trading journeys to Syria, gaining experience in commercial trade. According to the later biographical tradition, it was on one of these trading expeditions that Muhammad met a Christian monk by the name of Bahira, who is said to have foreseen Muhammad’s career as

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

43

a prophet of God. We read, for example, in the Biography redacted by Ibn Hisham (d.833): Then [Bahira] looked at [Muhammad’s] back and saw the seal of prophethood between his shoulders in the very place described in his book. When [Bahira] had finished he went to his uncle Abu Talib and asked him what relation this boy was to him, and when he told him he was his son, [Bahira] said that he was not, for it could not be that the father of this boy was alive. “He is my nephew,” [Abu Talib] replied, and when [Bahira] asked what had become of his father he told him that he had died before the child was born. “You have told the truth,” said Bahira. “Take your nephew back to his country and guard him carefully against the Jews, for by Allah! If they see him and know about him what I know, they will do him evil; a great future lies before this nephew of yours, so take him home quickly.” (Guillaume 2009 [1955]: 80–1) Such stories undoubtedly increase the prophetic pedigree of Muhammad. We can glean from them how they would be useful to later Muslims because they reveal that earlier monotheistic traditions—symbolized in the above story by the Christian Bahira— recognized (and thereby acknowledged) the future prophecy of Muhammad and that, in so doing, they were worried about their own traditions being superseded by this new dispensation. Muhammad subsequently married a wealthy and older widow by the name of Khadija, who was heavily involved in the camel-caravan trade. At the age of forty, perhaps following a pre-Islamic custom, Muhammad went on a solitary retreat into the hills around Mecca and, upon Jabal al-Nur (“the Mountain of Light”) in the Hira cave, it is said that he encountered the angel Jibril (Gabriel). Later Muslim tradition marks this event with the phrase that is customarily said to begin Muhammad’s revelatory career: “Repeat in the name of your Lord who creates” (Q 96:1). Muhammad went up Jabal al-Nur as a man and returned a prophet in the classic paradigm common among Near Eastern monotheists. After periods of self-doubt, Muhammad began to preach the message of God’s oneness to the inhabitants of Mecca. Other than the conversion of Khadija and his cousin and future son-in-law, Ali,

44

Theorizing Islam

to his message, he seems to have had very little success. Because he preached monotheism, his message would have immediately alienated the elites of the Quraysh tribe, who were heavily invested in the economic and religious status quo in Mecca (a large part of which hinged on the polytheistic shrine to the Arabian tribal deities housed in the Kaba and was celebrated in an annual pilgrimage). Mention should also be made here of the claims in some sources that Muhammad would have seizures when he received revelations. Such occurrences may well have been a mechanism that he (or the later Islamic tradition) could employ to differentiate the Quranic revelation from his own thoughts. However, medieval and even some modern European critics of Islam would claim that Muhammad had epilepsy and that the Qur’an is actually a product of this illness. It should go without saying that a diagnosis of epilepsy by non-physicians and especially by those living 1500 years after the fact is neither historically accurate nor particularly helpful.

The “Night Flight” The Qur’an relates the following very brief sentence about Muhammad: Glory be to Him, who carried His servant from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque the precincts of which we have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. (17:1–3) This verse, although sparse in details, was often read with other verses in the Qur’an that deal with the twin themes of ascent and vision: By the star when it plunges, your comrade is not astray, neither errs, nor speaks he out of caprice. This is not but a revelation revealed, taught him by one terrible in power, very strong; he stood poised being on the higher horizon, then drew near and suspended hung, two bows’ length away, or nearer, then revealed to his servant that he revealed. His heart lies not of what he saw; what, will you dispute with him what he sees? (53:1–12)

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

45

Because of its terse and often ambiguous language, the Qur’an would receive much exegetical expansion in later Islamic literature. This later literature pinpointed this event to one night in the year 620 (although some sources put it even earlier) and it would become one of the defining moments of Muhammad’s prophetic career. One example of this later expansion may be found in the writings of al-Ghaiti, a fourteenth-century thinker, who describes the journey in the following terms: There then came over [Muhammad] a cloud containing every color. Gabriel stayed behind, but he—upon whom be God’s blessing and peace—was taken up to a lofty place where he heard the scratching of pens [that are writing God’s decrees]. There he saw a man [sitting] concealed in the light of the throne. Said he, “Who is this? Is it an angel?” The answer came: “No.” “Then who is it?” The answer came: “This is a man whose tongue in the world was always moist with mentioning God, whose heart cleaved to the mosque, and who never at any time abused his parents.” Then he saw His Lord—glorified and exalted be He—and the Prophet—upon whom be God’s blessing and peace—fell upon his knees in obeisance. (Jeffrey 1962: 634) Although later commentators would debate whether or not this journey was a physical one or took place at an internal level, it would come to play a crucial role in establishing Muhammad’s prophetic credentials. In the first part of this journey, referred to as the isra, he traveled from the Kaba in Mecca to “the farthest mosque” (al-masjid al-aqsa), identified with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: the al-Aqsa mosque that stands there today eventually took its name from this larger precinct, in which it was constructed. On the second part of the journey, referred to as the mi`raj, Muhammad is said to have toured the various heavenly realms, where he spoke with earlier prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. This story is significant for several reasons. First, it established a justification for subsequent Islamic connection to the city of Jerusalem and thus connected the message of Islam to the ancient Jewish prophetic tradition. Secondly, it shows how Muhammad met and was greeted by earlier Jewish and Christian prophets, thereby

46

Theorizing Islam

further cementing his stature as the “seal of the prophets,” a term that would be interpreted in various ways over the centuries (Friedmann 2003 [1989]: 1–20).

The “Satanic Verses” Another significant event that occurred during the Meccan period is the so-called “satanic verses” incident. In his desire to convert his kinfolk to the new message, it seems that at one point Muhammad allowed potential “converts” to pray for intercession to three pagan goddesses (Allat, Uzza, and Manat), who were associated with the polytheistic Meccan cult. Some Meccans apparently believed these three goddesses to be Allah’s offspring. According to an account preserved in the later commentary of al-Tabari (838–923), Muhammad originally received a verse that read: Have ye thought upon Allat and Uzza and Manat the third, the other? These are the exalted eagles, whose intercession is hoped for.5 Hearing this, again according to the later account found in the writings of al-Tabari, many of the Meccans rejoiced and began to accept Muhammad’s message. Eventually, Muhammad seems to have realized the problem of this intercession for his monotheistic message, and we then have the revelation of the following verse: Have you thought upon Allat and Al-Uzza And Manat, the third, the other? Have you males and He females? That indeed were an unjust division! They are but names that you and your fathers have named. God has set down no authority concerning them. They follow only surmise, and what the souls desire. Yet guidance has come to them from the Lord. (53:19) Because it obviously has repercussions for Muhammad’s infallibility, many subsequent commentators reject this story and argue that it was the result of a “satanic” intermediary or his Meccan enemies spreading rumors to slander him and discredit his message. Some

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

47

critical scholars, however, use stories such as this to explore the redaction or editorial history of the Qur’an, showing how the text underwent various modifications through Muhammad’s lifetime. As Muhammad continued his criticisms of Meccan polytheism and the political status quo, the Quraysh kept up their attacks on him and his growing community of converts. Matters intensified when Muhammad’s uncle and patron, Abu Talib, died in 619, whereupon the new leader of the Banu Hashim refused to offer Muhammad his support and protection. Interestingly, tradition also tells of a small group of his followers who emigrated to Abyssinia, presumably either to find asylum among Christian groups there or to seek potential converts from other monotheisms in the area. Without the protection of his clan, things eventually got so bad for Muhammad and his followers in Mecca that in 622 he made arrangements to leave and establish a new home for his community in Yathrib, where he was invited to function as a mediator between rival tribes. Yathrib, as we saw at the start of the chapter, had no fewer than seven Jewish tribes who comprised a significant portion of the town’s population. Perhaps their existence encouraged Muhammad to settle there, thinking that such a large community of Jews—fellow monotheists—would naturally recognize and readily accept his message. On account of his migration to Yathrib, the oasis would subsequently be renamed Medina, short for Medinat al-nabi (“the city of the Prophet”). Indeed, so important was this event that it became known in the later Muslim tradition as the hijra or “exodus,” an event about which the Qur’an is largely and perhaps surprisingly silent. This event later marked the beginning of the Muslim calendar, with 622 ce equaling 1 ah (anno hegirae).

Muhammad at Medina Muhammad’s followers might well have connected his inclusive or generic message of monotheism, including the centrality of Abraham, to the Jews in the area and felt some sort of kinship with their fellow monotheists. We know, for example, that during this time Muhammad and his followers prayed facing Jerusalem (as Jews do),

48

Theorizing Islam

kept the Jewish Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) in some manner, and fasted during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Although, once again, it is worth pointing out that early Christians (so-called “Jewish Christians” or “Jewish followers of Jesus”) in the first century ce also prayed facing Jerusalem. We should also, as mentioned, avoid assuming, imposing, or retroactively ascribing rigid sectarian differences (especially between “Muslim” and “Jew”) between groups in the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula. An important question that arises in this context is at what point did the followers of Muhammad come to self-identify as capital-M Muslims? This is a difficult question to try and answer and most likely resembles the question in early Christianity about when does the Jesus movement develop into something that we would now recognize as Christianity. Some scholars of early Christianity contend that what would eventually emerge as orthodox Christianity probably took several centuries to develop in response to various doctrines that only after the fact would be labeled as “heretical.” In the case of Islam, we should probably assume something similar: Islam only emerges after roughly a two-century-long process of self-definition, as legal traditions and other matters were gradually developed and worked out in response to various conflicts and controversies. At this stage, it is preferable to speak of a “Muhammad movement” or a “nascent Islamic polity” as opposed to Islam in the way that we or Muslims would later come to think of this term. At Medina, the followers of Muhammad were no longer persecuted and increasingly began to imagine themselves as an umma or community, one that ceased to be defined according to the traditional tribal structures common to the Arabian Peninsula at that time. This new community was instead defined according to the so-called “Constitution of Medina.” Although some contend that this is in fact a later document—the earliest copy we currently possess dates to several centuries after the event—it claims to date from the years immediately following the hijra. Still, it deserves mention, whatever its provenance, because it acknowledges all of the inhabitants of the city—Jews, pagans, and followers of Muhammad—as belonging to one community. This fact might well testify to an earlier dating since it does not significantly differentiate between Muslims and non-Muslims: All possess the same rights so

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

49

long as they follow the rules and obligations set forth for them. For example, This is a document from Muhammad the prophet [governing the relations] between the believers and Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib, and those who followed them and joined them and labored with them. They are one community [umma] to the exclusion of all men. (Guillaume 2009 [1955]: 231–2) It became increasingly clear to Muhammad, however, that some of the Jews of Medina would never accept his message, although it is certainly worth noting that this may well be a projection of later conclusions put into the mouth of Muhammad, a figure about whom we know very little. In the ensuing years, it seems that Muhammad gradually anticipated a return to Mecca and that, by making raids on the caravan trade of the Meccans, Muhammad and his followers sought to increase their power and prestige in the eyes of the other tribes of Arabia. The most famous of such raids was known as the Battle of Badr in 624. According to later sources, Muhammad and his followers were greatly outnumbered and their victory was interpreted as a sign of God’s favor. The Sirat Rasul Allah (The Biography of the Messenger of God), for example, records several poems heralding the victory, including this one attributed to Ali: Have you not seen how God favored His apostle With the favor of a strong, powerful, and gracious one; How he brought humiliation on the unbelievers Who were put to shame in captivity and death, While the apostle of God’s victory was glorious He being sent by God in righteousness… (Guillaume 2009 [1955]: 241)

Muhammad and the Jews of Medina The situation between Muhammad and some of the Jewish tribes of Medina deteriorated fairly quickly. Perhaps, at least in retrospect, these tribes would have had little patience for the still largely generic and inchoate monotheistic statements professed by Muhammad. Yet,

50

Theorizing Islam

although Jewish tradition forbade the acceptance of new prophets and lawgivers, this is certainly not to deny that certain Judaisms were open to messianic figures and movements. At any rate, it was around this time that some of these Jewish tribes were accused of conspiring with Muhammad’s enemies in Mecca to overthrow him. Muhammad confronted some of these tribes and gave one, the Banu Qurayza, a choice between conversion and death: they seem to have chosen the latter. Later accounts tell that all the men of this tribe were murdered and their wives and children sold into slavery. However, it is worth pointing out that other sources mention the existence of Jewish Arab tribes in Medina long after the alleged treason of the Banu Qurayza. Perhaps these tribes were eventually absorbed into the Muhammadan polity. Sources also tell us that the sanction imposed upon the Banu Qurayza was decided upon in consultation with Jewish Arab tribal leaders. Finally, there exists no corroborating evidence as to the historicity of these events outside of Muslim sources; consequently, we are on no firmer historical ground when discussing these events than when discussing anything else alleged to have transpired during the early period. We should be cautious of using such accounts, as some modern political commentators do, to show the inherent anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism of Islam. The later biographical literature has the following to say about the Jewish tribes of Medina: About this time the Jewish rabbis showed hostility to the apostle in envy, hatred, and malice, because God had chosen His apostle from the Arabs. They were joined by men from al-Aus and al-Khazraj who had obstinately clung to their heathen religion. They were hypocrites, clinging to the polytheism of their fathers denying the resurrection; yet when Islam appeared and their people flocked to it they were compelled to pretend to accept it to save their lives. But in secret they were hypocrites whose inclination was towards the Jews because they considered the apostle a liar and strove against Islam … It was the Jewish rabbis who used to annoy the apostle with questions and introduce confusion, so as to

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

51

confound the truth with falsity. The Qur’an used to come down in reference to these questions of theirs, though some of the questions about what was allowed and forbidden came from the Muslims themselves. (Guillaume 2009 [1955]: 239) Later Muslim tradition suggests that it was around this time that the Qur’an (e.g., 2:112; 5:56; 9:182) begins to speak of the Jews (al-yahud) in negative terms, often associating them with hypocrites (al-munafiqun). Most importantly for Islamic self-definition, it is also around this time that Muhammad switched the qibla, or direction of prayer, for his followers from Jerusalem to Mecca, told his followers not to rest on the Jewish Sabbath, and instituted the fast at Ramadan to replace Yom Kippur.

Return to Mecca and Death of Muhammad With the growing strength of Muhammad and his followers, and the concomitant marginalization of the Quraysh throughout the Arabian Peninsula, negotiations were started to establish a truce between the two competing parties. This led to the signing of the so-called Treaty of Hudaybiyya in 629, which would allow the Medinans to enter Mecca the following year for the annual pilgrimage (hajj). By 630, Muhammad’s following had become so large and powerful that they were able to march on Mecca with a large army and take control of his former town. Muhammad declared an amnesty for past offenses and most Meccans, many of whom had been his former enemies, converted to his message of monotheism. Muhammad, according to tradition, subsequently destroyed all the statues of Arabian gods in the Kaba. There then followed the pilgrimage, although now presumably devoid of the pagan practices that had characterized earlier ones and, from the perspective of later sources, the reinstitution of the monotheistic pilgrimage that had first characterized the hajj. Muhammad spent the last years of his life consolidating his position by establishing treaties with the other tribes in Arabia that often involved, at least nominally, conversion to his message.

52

Theorizing Islam

The Making of the Last Prophet Such is the life of Muhammad as presented to us by the later sources. These are known in Arabic as Sira (“manner of life; biography”) or sira-literature. Among the earliest authors of Sira compilations, which seem to have been edited from materials that likely originated in various regions among different groups, are Ibn Ishaq (d.767), whose biography exists in several recensions, the most important of which is that by Ibn Hisham (d.833). Other important authors/ compilers of early sira material include al-Waqidi (d.822), Ibn Sa`d (d.844), al-Baladhuri (d.892), and al-Tabari (d.923). As mentioned earlier, such individuals were not interested in composing what we would today call “historical biography.” They were, however, interested in understanding the life of Muhammad, using a set of inherited criteria and categories meant to explain his life to others. The biographical literature, in particular, tends to read more like a work of hagiography than of history. It is this hagiographic material that all of the individuals examined in the previous chapter read as works of history. It seems that the pool of available converts to Muhammad’s movement in the early period was largely composed of Arab-Christians and Arab-Jews. It should come as no surprise, then, that these early biographers drew upon a largely oral body of literature, collectively known as Isra’iliyyat, that is, stories about the ancient Israelites. Such stories represent the creative re-working of existing Jewish and Christian traditions in an effort to “correct” what were considered to be inappropriate trajectories of those traditions as they were worked out among earlier monotheists. Many of these authors/compilers were writing from the perspective of the new cosmopolitan center of Baghdad, the capital of the recently established Abbasid Empire. There, these biographers would undoubtedly have encountered many Jews and Christians in what was an increasingly competitive religious marketplace. Hearing the miraculous stories that Jews and Christians told themselves about their founders and the reception of their scriptures might well have led to a desire on the part of Muslims to create their own mythic portrayal of Muhammad. In their hands, the oral traditions circulating about Muhammad were redacted and embellished to create not only

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

53

a prophet in the more familiar Near Eastern sense, but even more symbolically to establish the credentials of the “final prophet” or the “seal of the prophets.” We have already seen, for example, how the biography relates that both Jews and Christians recognized in Muhammad, even at a young age, the signs of prophecy. We have also seen how the narrative expansions of Muhammad’s night journey witnessed his encounter with and acknowledgment from other prophets. Much like the emergence of the cosmic Christ from the historical Jesus, the historical and supra-historical aspects of Muhammad’s personality eventually become fused and indistinguishable. This Muhammad now became the perfect prophet and lawgiver, the bravest general, the best military tactician, the most liberal thinker, and so on. All of this, however, took centuries to develop and was undoubtedly connected to the increasing self-definition required by Muslims as they interacted with other monotheistic religions in the area, and as various Muslim subgroups sought legitimation for their ideas and doctrines in the earliest period. Because his personality is intimately connected to the Qur’an, the creation of a cosmic Muhammad makes perfect sense. This Muhammad had to be described as living a life of sinlessness (`isma), lest his message somehow be contaminated. Yet, although this cosmic Muhammad may make perfect sense from a religious point of view, the end result of its formation is that it is probably impossible to uncover the historical Muhammad. To get a sense of just how important Muhammad is in Muslim piety, many Muslims today continue to celebrate his birthday and many regard him as an intercessor on the Day of Judgment. The following thirteenth-century poem from Egypt, for example, shows to just what an extent Muhammad functions in the lives of practitioners. The poem, only part of which appears here, is an acrostic, with the first line of each verse beginning with a letter of the Arabic alphabet: Alif: Adoration do I have for my intercessor in the hereafter He who is that gentle morning sun, that moon of the cosmos, Muhammad

54

Theorizing Islam

Ba’: Because he was chosen, strife and enmity have vanished The world is filled with purity, genuine affection, and devotion Through Muhammad Ta’: Truly the Exalted One, the supreme God in His Greatness Has adorned the heavens with the light of Muhammad Tha’: Thanks to him, the sky is graced with a pair of moons For the cosmos is resplendent with the light of Muhammad Jim: Join the whole creation in witness Its warp and weft arise from the design and guidance of Muhammad Ha’: Having shielded true religion with his sword The faith waxed triumphant by virtue of Muhammad Kha’: Culminating as the Seal of the Prophets That seal has the exquisite fragrance of musk: Muhammad… (Waugh 1998: 120–1) The poem continues in the same pattern until it reaches the end of the alphabet. Despite the popularity of this type of literature in the premodern and modern Muslim world, it is important to note that various modern reform movements, such as the Wahhabis (or to use the name they use themselves, Salafis), roundly condemn such beliefs and such poetry as heretical. According to them, no one—not even Muhammad—can stand as an intermediary for the individual Muslim when he or she appears before God on the Day of Judgment. However, it is worth pointing out that even these literalist and reform-minded interpretations of Islam model their identities on particular understandings of Muhammad. Regardless of such critiques, it is important to be aware that both historically and in the contemporary period this cosmic Muhammad is extremely pliable. It often becomes necessary to ground one’s identity in him as the vessel of revelation on account of (1) his personal conduct as inscribed in the collective memory of the

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

55

tradition, and (2) his function as an exemplar in all mystical, legal, liberal, and militant versions of Islam.

Polemical Literature Against Muhammad Medieval polemical literature produced by Europeans accused Muhammad of being, as we have seen, an epileptic. Other sources claim that he actually died in the year 666 (as opposed to 632), alluding to the number of the beast and an obvious sign that he was somehow connected to the devil. Others changed his name to “Mahound,” implying that he was a demon that instituted a false religion; and yet others attacked Muhammad for the number of wives he had and the ages of these wives when he consummated his marriages to them; still others even charge him with being a former Christian monk. In more recent times, especially after 9/11 and the so-called “War on Terror,” conservative commentators, like Jerry Falwell, have come out and called Muhammad “violent” and “a terrorist.” Certainly such comments and labels are connected to larger geopolitical conflicts and need to be understood within such contexts. In particular, they may construct Muhammad as a foil for Jesus or someone else who is imagined as instituting a “true religion.” On this theme of religious polemics, it is also worth noting, as we saw in the previous chapter, that some modern Muslims, in response to 9/11 and the criticisms leveled at Islam in its wake, seek to make Muhammad into a peacenik or feminist. What both critics and apologists share, of course, is the desire to create a Muhammad who functions as a placeholder for their ideas of what Islam is or should be. Both are constructions that are ultimately based on the specific interpretations of the commentators and, as such, have little or no backing in the historical record, since words like “terrorism” and “feminism” are of a distinctly modern provenance.

56

Theorizing Islam

The Deeds and Sayings of Muhammad: The Genre of Hadith Because Muhammad is seen as the perfect embodiment of the response to the Quranic message, later generations of Muslims were necessarily interested in what he said and did. This gave rise to a related body of literature, eventually regarded as important or canonical by those who sought to define themselves by preserving and transmitting Muhammad’s responses. Known as hadith (pl. ahadith, but often pluralized in English as hadiths), this genre refers to various reports about the sayings or actions of Muhammad, including his tacit approval or disapproval of something said or done in his presence. These can run the gamut from seemingly mundane actions (e.g., how he wore his beard) to what we would consider to be more religious concerns (e.g., when and how he engaged in meditation). Several examples of hadith reports should suffice to illustrate the genre: Ishaq told me that Ubayd Allah told him on the authority of Shayban on the authority of Yahya on the authority of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman, client of the Banu Zuhra, on the authority of Abu Sama on the authority of Abd Allah ibn Umar that he said: The messenger of God said to me: “Recite all of the Qur’an in one month.” I said, “But I am able to do more than that!” So [Muhammad] said: “Then recite it in seven days, but do not do it less than that.”6 This, like all hadiths, is divided into two parts. The first is called the isnad or “chain” of transmission that includes the list of names that run from Ishaq to Abd Allah ibn Umar, with the last name in the list considered to be the one that was closest to Muhammad in time. The second part is referred to as the matn, or the actual text handed down in Muhammad’s name. Both parts are equally important and, according to the later tradition, a matn without a proper isnad is considered to be invalid. Another example of a hadith, this time dealing with the importance of proper intention during the Ramadan fast:

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

57

Muslim ibn Ibrahim related to us, saying: Hisham related to us, saying: Yahya related to us from Abu Salama, from Abu Huraira, from the Prophet, upon whom be Allah’s blessing and peace—who said: “Whosoever rises up [for vigil and prayers] during the night of al-Qadr, with faith, and in hope of recompense, will have all his previous sins forgiven him, and whosoever fast during Ramadan with faith, in hope of recompense, and with [sincere] intention, will have all that is past forgiven him.” (Jeffrey 1962: 91) These reports refer not just to spiritual and legal matters, but can also transmit more mundane features, such as Muhammad’s clothing preferences: Hudba ibn Khalid al-Azdi has related to us, relating from Hammam, from Qatada, who said: “We asked Anas what kind of garment the apostle of God—upon whom be Allah’s blessing and peace—liked best, or which was the most pleasing to him, and he answered: ‘The hibara [a striped garment].’” (Jeffrey 1962: 132) Hadith reports were judged and evaluated by subsequent experts in Islamic law to be either “sound” (sahih), “acceptable” (hasan), “weak” (da’if), or “fabricated” (mawdu), based on criteria such as the verifiability of the isnad or whether or not the matn contradicts other narrations. The process by which the isnad is verified is determined by ilm al-rijal (literally, “the science of men”) and refers to the process of ascertaining whether or not the chain of transmission in the isnad is chronological and, most importantly, determining that all of the individuals within it are proven to be of good and reliable character (see Lucas 2004: 287–9). Taken together, these hadiths give later Muslims insights into the sunna (“custom” or “practice”) of Muhammad’s life. Again, attesting to the centrality of Muhammad in Islam, his sunna became a major basis in the subsequent formation of Islamic law (shari`a), second only in importance to the Qur’an. As a result, the figure of Muhammad was used to develop various legal positions that subsequent Muslim jurists contended reflected the practices of Muhammad and should therefore be binding on the entire Muslim community. The crucial

58

Theorizing Islam

question that we must ask ourselves is when exactly did Muhammad emerge as this source of legal authority? And, equally importantly, how is it possible to know, let alone prove, that Muhammad did all of the things that were reported in his name? The early Islamic tradition also recognized another, special, type of hadith known as the hadith qudsi, or “divine saying.” These sayings fit in between the Qur’an and the hadiths because they were believed to be direct revelations from God, but couched in Muhammad’s own words (see Graham 1977). They tend to be concerned not with legal matters, but with religious or spiritual ones. A typical example is the following: I heard the Apostle of God say: “Your Lord delights in a shepherd on top of a remote mountain peak who gives the call to prayer and then performs the prayer. Thereupon God says ‘Look at this servant of mine! He gives the call to prayer and then performs the prayer. He fears me. So I forgive my servant, and I shall cause him to enter paradise.’”7 In the eighth and ninth centuries, bodies of hadith literature were collected and codified into six authoritative collections by al-Bukhari (d.870), Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (d.875), Ibn Maja (d.887), Abu Dawud (d.889), al-Tirmidhi (d.892), and al-Nasa’i (d.915). It is worth noting that the two main denominations of Islam, Sunnism and Shî`ism, have different collections of authoritative hadith, although there is certainly a sizeable body of hadith upon which they both agree. The collections just given are regarded as canonical by Sunnis, whereas Shi`is regard the collections by Muhammad al-Kulayni (d.939), Muhammad ibn Babuya (d.991), and Muhammad al-Tusi (d.1067) as canonical. Many Shi`i hadiths also archive the sayings and deeds of individuals who are important to their movement, in particular Ali. Hadiths, however, are not without a certain amount of problems. Chief among these is the fact that one could, in theory, attach a “sound” isnad to any concept, written in the form of a matn, that one wanted to prove. The result is that the sayings of Muhammad can be, and many in fact are, employed to argue opposite positions. In other words, one could use ready-made isnads to justify virtually any principle in Islam and, since hadiths are such an important

Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas

59

part of Islamic law, give such a principle almost immediate legal justification. Modern western scholars have also argued that hadiths tend to “grow backwards.” That is, it is possible to have sayings attributed to other individuals or maxims that are even unattributed that will later show up as sayings of Muhammad with complete isnads. This seems to give evidence that isnads became important later in the historical development of Islam and that only then were they required to establish a report’s authority, in which case they “grew backwards” to include Muhammad and thereby invest a saying or an opinion with his authority. In this case, hadiths may well tell us about later Muslims and what was important to them, but become problematic when it comes to telling us about a historical Muhammad.

Representing Muhammad On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve editorial cartoons depicting Muhammad in various bellicose situations. Not only did the contents of the cartoons bother many Muslims, but the fact that Muhammad was portrayed at all was considered deeply offensive to Muslim belief, which maintains that portrayals of Muhammad in particular and humans in general is a form of idolatry. The subsequent protests throughout the Muslim world and beyond became increasingly violent and many Muslims regarded the cartoons as deeply offensive and blasphemous. Charges of Islamophobia and racism were leveled at the paper that published the cartoons, at the Danish government, and eventually at all western nations and individuals who came to the defense of the paper. The artist of the cartoons, however, argued that they drew attention to criticisms of Islam and self-censorship. There is certainly precedent for creating images of Muhammad. The uproar created by the Danish cartoons is most likely connected to the current tensions in Europe between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the perceived place of religion (or at least Islam) in society. Mention could also be made of a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of Muslims, which asked Wikipedia to remove all images of Muhammad—whether by non-Muslims or Muslims—from the

60

Theorizing Islam

website. Apparently, such conservative Muslims are equally critical of historical Muslim portrayals of Muhammad and they blame these representations on Persian “cultural” influences that corrupted a pristine Arab monotheism. This is, of course, an argument grounded more in memory and desire than in the historical record.

*** In this chapter, I have tried to present something about the life of Muhammad, at least as reconstructed through much later sources. Unlike the books discussed in the previous chapter, I contend that it is still possible to speak about the importance of Muhammad as described in these later sources. However, rather than present them as historical accounts, this chapter has attempted to present them as the products of later generations trying to make sense of Muhammad and his monotheistic legacy. Whether or not he perceived himself to be the “seal of the prophets,” or whether this was something ascribed to him by subsequent theologians, the centrality of Muhammad within both the formation and subsequent development of Islam cannot be denied. Muhammad’s importance flows largely from the constructed cultural memory of him that was cherished by later generations.

3 John Esposito and the Muslim Women In 2010, the general membership of the largest North American organization devoted to the academic study of religion, the American Academy of Religion (AAR), elected John Esposito as its Vice-President, ensuring that in 2013 he will become President. In what follows, I wish to provide a critical assessment of his work in Islamic Religious Studies. I have already devoted parts of several studies to highlighting his largely apologetical program (e.g., Hughes 2007 and 2011c), so in the space afforded to me in this chapter I would like to refract this larger program through a particular focus: his treatment of Muslim women. In particular, I wish to argue that his assessment is so distortive and apologetic that it borders on the ridiculous. His distinction between Islam (= timeless and preaching a message of gender equality) and culture (= responsible for putting a temporal patriarchal veneer on the religion) is problematic, as is his selective use of quotations from Muslim “feminists,” who reify his distinction with claims that, for example, “both sexes are equal when it comes to performing their religious duties and in terms of rewards and punishments” (2007: 115). By focusing solely on the “religious” teachings of the tradition, Esposito overlooks the reality “on the ground.” Certain texts have good things to say about gender egalitarianism, so he gravitates toward them, labeling them as “authentic” and making them the essence of the tradition. Meanwhile all those texts that do not support his claims are either completely ignored or written off as marginal or as “inauthentic.” That Muslim women are mistreated— for example, when they are attacked in the street for not veiling in Algeria or when schools for girls are destroyed in Afghanistan—is of no consequence to him and his whitewashed version of Islam because such actions have nothing to do with what he constructs as the “real” Islam.

62

Theorizing Islam

It seems to me that Esposito can make such claims because, as he sees it, the main goal of the academic study of religion is neither nuance nor engagement in philological study, but to present often highly essentialized data (“Muslims believe …”; “Islam is …”) to policy-makers and fellow citizens. His goal as President of the AAR, as will be described below, is to make the academic study of religion relevant. Like many humanists, Esposito makes claims to relevance in an academic climate that is increasingly defined by its shrinking financial and administrative support. In religious studies this often means invoking the mantra that, because many of the conflicts of the contemporary world have a “religious” patina, professional religionists are uniquely poised to interpret the world.1 While there can be no doubt that certain actors invoke religion to legitimate certain actions and behaviors, our goal should not be to adjudicate between “authentic” and “inauthentic” invocations, which is often done, but to reveal the manifold political, cultural and ideological contexts of such invocations. For example, I do not doubt that Muhammad Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, thought that he was a pious Muslim. And, again, I have no doubt that both his will and the final set of instructions found in his luggage at Logan airport in Boston were saturated with Qur’anic and other legal categories and terms derived from the later Islamic tradition. This is the obvious point. What is of interest is the overlapping contexts that led him to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. How did he come to understand Islam in the manner that he did? How were the various discourses created (I do not want to say “distorted” because this would imply that they have only one, pure, and noble meaning) by him and the larger Islamist movement of which he was but a part. What social forces led to this understanding of Islam? What are the historical sources of such interpretation? How do these social and historical forces combine with political, ideological, and economic ones? Esposito, however, is not interested in any of these features because his intent is to show that Atta is not a “real” Muslim. Note that in the previous paragraph, I did not use the term “religion” or “religious,” but instead used other disciplinary terms such as history, politics, ideology, sociology, and economics. With their rarefied and essentialist categories, religionists often obscure our understanding

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

63

of the contemporary world as opposed to clarifying it. To say, for example, that if we understand Confucianism, we somehow better understand China’s economy is ludicrous! Understanding the might of China’s economy involves an appreciation of the political, social, ideological, and economic contexts not only of modern China, but also of those countries that import Chinese products (including the reason why so many American manufacturing jobs have migrated there). Understanding the theoretical or textbook explanation of the major tenets of Confucianism tells us nothing. Or, again, to make the bold claim that a reader or student will understand the current mess in Iraq and Afghanistan if they take an introductory course on Islam or read one of Esposito’s books is extremely problematic. Comprehending the complexity of these conflicts is not simply about understanding a simple theoretical presentation of Islam (i.e., the so-called “five pillars” of faith; that the Qur’an preaches gender equality), but about contextualizing such conflicts against a much broader swath of political, tribal, economic, social, and cultural forces both in Iraq and Afghanistan and in those western countries that are currently occupying forces in the region. Instead, Esposito sets himself up as the de facto “voice” of Islam. In Who Speaks for Islam (2007), along with his co-author Dalia Mogahed, he interprets the 2001–7 Gallup poll conducted “with residents of more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have substantial Muslim populations” (2007: xi). This means, as Esposito and Mogahed make clear, “in totality, we surveyed a sample representing more than 90% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims” (ibid.). I certainly do not claim any expertise in statistics or statistical representation, so I leave such an analysis to others. My concern, however, is that this survey lends Esposito and his work a certain legitimacy that permits him to criticize those who, like me, completely disagree with both his methods and theory. Such critics can easily be dismissed because we are not in touch with “more than 90%” of the world’s Muslims. Unlike his critics, Esposito’s analysis has the weight of these Muslims behind it. For example, he can conclude his chapter on “What Do Women Want?” based on his number-crunching with the Gallup poll, by making the following “key points”: • Muslim women cherish their religion and their rights.

64

Theorizing Islam

• While Muslim women admire aspects of the West, they do not endorse wholesale adoption of western values. • Majorities of Muslim women believe that their most urgent needs are not gender issues, but greater political and economic development. • Western advocacy of women’s issues is often eyed suspiciously because feminism was used historically to justify colonialism. (ibid.: 133) Presented in this manner, who can argue with Esposito? Since he presents “feminism” as an historical agent of colonialism, Islam certainly does not want or need it. And because Muslim women “cherish” their religion, a feminist critique of religion would be nonsensical or irrelevant. We are instead informed that “majorities”— how this differs from “the majority” is unclear—of Muslim women desire “political and economic development” as opposed to some amorphously defined “gender issues.” Of course, Esposito does not reflect on the interconnection of “gender issues” and political, educational, and economic inclusion, and on the fact that the latter tend to presuppose the former. The end result is that, Esposito’s claim to tell us what Muslim women want to the contrary, there is no real engagement with the plight of women in Islam. According to him, all is good with Islam and the problem is not the religion, but us in the so-called West who misunderstand the religion. To correct matters, Esposito presents himself as the translator of Islam to the West, someone whom the cover of his 2002 book, published by Oxford University Press, labels as “one of America’s leading experts.”

John Esposito, President of the AAR John Esposito certainly has a distinguished academic record. He is currently University Professor and Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. At Georgetown, he is also the Founding Director of the Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding, which was renamed The Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding in 2005 after receiving a $20 million endowment from the Prince.2

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

65

Esposito is a recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s 2005 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. In addition to being the Vice President (and President elect of the AAR), he has served as President of both the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America and the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and as Vice Chair of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, is currently a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders and was President of the Executive Scientific Committee for the Maison de la Méditerranée’s 2005–10 project entitled “The Mediterranean, Europe and Islam: Actors in Dialogue.” The major goal of Esposito’s work, as reflected in his receiving the Marty Award, is to increase awareness and public understanding of Islam. We see this clearly in his platform for election to the Vice Presidency of the American Academy of Religion. There, he wrote: We in the AAR are in a unique position as specialists in religion. We have an increasingly important opportunity to share our scholarship and experience with policy makers and citizens, to foster a better understanding of current events, and enable more informed decisions at this critical time in our history.3 With this statement, Esposito defines the raison d’être of the religionist as his or her ability to share or translate expertise to non-specialists. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, however, this translation is virtually always apologetical and ideologically charged. Written against hostile presentations of Islam from the “other side,” it gives a picture of the religion that is no less distorted. As I have argued elsewhere (Hughes 2006: 569–72), whenever we make our work accessible to a general public, including policymakers, it comes at a real cost. The general public wants sound bites that are predicated on a set of essentialisms (e.g., Muslims do …; Muslims believe …; Muslims act …) that should make scholars uncomfortable. The assumption, of course, is that all Muslims behave and think the same way and that whenever a Muslim does something that does not fit into the essentialist category that we have created for him or her, that action or belief risks being labeled as “inauthentic.”

66

Theorizing Islam

All this talk of public outreach has, in many ways, created the predicament in which the field currently finds itself. It has created the situation wherein the scholar of Islam largely ceases to be a scholar and instead becomes the one whose goal it is to represent Islam publicly to students, colleagues, local church groups, the media, and so on.4 (It is for this reason, recall, that Esposito received the Marty Award.) And because the scholar of Islam now becomes the de facto and institutionally sanctioned spokesperson for Islam on campus, there are certain features of the religion that s/he is expected to say (e.g., not all Muslims are terrorists; Islam is an inherently beautiful and peaceful religion; certain agents have hijacked it for political or ideological ends as opposed to religious ones) and not say (e.g., that terrorists can be and are Muslims; that such individuals uphold themselves and their version of Islam as the most authentic). The result is that Islamic studies scholars who want to take their role as scholars seriously are caught between numerous subcultures. These include, but are not necessarily limited to: a) orthodox Muslim students who reject the scholarly approach and who want only positive things said about Islam; b) public discourse leaders who favor an essentialized version of Islam as under siege from within by perversions of its pure, progressive and peaceful nature, and who want the academy to back them up; c) bona fide Islamophobes who cannot think of anything “fair and balanced” or positive to say about Islam and who feel any positive claims must be anti-Semitic, anti-western, illiberal or all of these; d) students and colleagues who think all religions are basically good, and the same at heart; e) policy-makers who want to use a particular portrait of Islam, or Arabs, to justify one political decision or another. I point all these constituencies out because they largely control and shape the public discourses that Islamicists create and are created by. Rather than take them for granted, they surely demand further study.5 After his brief discussion of public outreach in his election platform (but which is elaborated extensively in his recent works), Esposito looks to the future and argues that, should he be elected, our ability to meet many academic challenges will be strengthened by a holistic and inclusive approach in our annual

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

67

national and regional conferences, publications, and projects. This means a continued focus on established disciplines and methodologies (scripture, theology, history, and law), embodied in the AAR/SBL concurrent meetings, to be restored again in 2011, as well as coverage of the world’s major religious traditions and emphasis on the widespread role of religion in the public square. We’ve certainly come a long way! The AAR is now positioned to respond with its unique resources to define and explain the critical role(s) of religion in the twenty-first century.6 A brief analysis of his rhetoric here is telling. Terms such as “holistic” and “inclusive,” at least in the context of religious studies, are buzzwords that denote the utilization of (phenomenological) approaches that take religion “seriously” and not just as an object of academic study. These include theological, insider, and caretaker approaches. In fact, the AAR has largely adopted this inclusive and descriptive agenda, with the result that it has become increasingly difficult to include critical methods among the sections at the Annual Meeting. Further evidence for this may be found in Esposito’s decision to focus on “established” methodologies, which, for him, include “scripture, theology, history, and law.” No mention, tellingly, is made of theory or critical discourses that query the first principles of what religionists do or think they do. I certainly do not want to claim that John Esposito is undeserving of becoming President of the AAR. In fact, given the emphases of the AAR—e.g., on ecumenicism, on crypto-theologizing, on essentialism, and on the application of liberal Protestant categories to the world’s religions—he is a perfect choice to represent the Academy’s diverse constituency.

Overview: Books Post-9/11 In a pre-9/11 book, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (1992, currently in its third edition), John Esposito argues that a normative or authentic Islam is constantly at risk of subversion from those who seek to interpret it through the prisms of their own ideologies:

68

Theorizing Islam

The demonization of a great religious tradition due to the perverted actions of a minority of dissident and distorted voices remains the real threat, a threat that not only impacts on relations between the Muslim world and the West but also upon growing Muslim populations in the West. (xiii; my italics) Like many before him, Esposito here invokes the trope of religions qua vessels of stability and uniformity.7 This uniformity arises from the inner faith experience of practitioners that can take different manifestations in various historical moments. Faith and experience are here assumed to provide a stability that grounds the vagaries and instabilities of various historical, social, and cultural forms. This perceived stability of Islam, “epitomized by a common profession of faith and acceptance of the Shari`a, Islamic law” (Esposito 2005 [1988]: 66), is what brings coherence to an otherwise disparate collection of data. This is, of course, a chimera. One cannot make appeals to inner experiences, which are inherently unverifiable, to explain a historical, social, or cultural record. One cannot, in other words, define the known by appeals to the unknown. In another work, initially published before 9/11 but reissued in an new edition after it, Esposito, again invoking the stability of a normative Islamic tradition and the movement of extremists beyond its pale, writes that:8 Terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and others have gone beyond classical Islam’s criteria for a just war. They recognize no limits but their own, employing any weapons or means … At the same time, many prominent Islamic scholars and religious leaders across the Muslim world have denounced this hijacking of Islam by terrorists. The Islamic Research Council at al-Azhar University, one of the oldest universities in the world and a leading center of Islamic learning regarded by many as the highest moral authority in Islam, issued strong authoritative declarations against bin Laden’s initiatives. (2005 [1988]: 263; my italics) The discourse that Esposito employs in this passage is surely significant. Employing the common and overused “hijacking”

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

69

trope (i.e., people who do bad things in the name of Islam have “hijacked” the tradition), he creates a scenario that equates bin Laden (and those like him) as innovators, nihilists, people who for various psychological reasons have chosen to depart from, as the title of this book makes clear, “the straight path.” Juxtaposed against such individuals are the “prominent” scholars at one of the “oldest” universities in not just the Islamic world but also the world at large. These nameless scholars defined by their institutional affiliation as opposed to their charismatic personalities confront, according to Esposito’s description, an individual lacking such credentials. The “authority” of the past thus confronts the initiatives of the present; stability, according to this model, must always trump innovation. In his Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (2003), Esposito sets as his goal the demonstration that there is not a “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world, and that Islam, “like Judaism and Christianity, rejects terrorism” (2003: xi). In the very title of his book, Esposito implies that violence or terror when committed in the name of Islam (or any other religion) cannot be a religious act; that it must be an inauthentic or misplaced expression of religious zeal. For instance, he writes: The terrorists responsible for the atrocities of September 11, 2001, are the radical fringe of a broad-based Islamic jihad that began in the late twentieth century. Islam’s power and the idealistic concepts of jihad have been “spun” to become the primary idiom of Muslim politics, used by rulers and ruled, by reformers, political opposition, and terrorists. (2003: 73) Here Esposito tries to show that the grievances felt by the likes of Osama bin Laden are by no means representative of a monolithic Islam, but represent a “radical fringe” that appeals to a set of Islamic symbols (e.g., jihad) and sentiments that function to legitimate their project. Despite the attempts at nuance, Esposito still fails to acknowledge that lexemes such as jihad are potentially much more dynamic than he makes them out to be. Such terms do not possess fixed meanings or linguistic reifications that remain unchanged through an equally fixed Islamic history. On the contrary, such terms are the sites of semantic skirmishes that are fought between rival groups claiming authenticity through self-legitimation.

70

Theorizing Islam

Although I have examined Esposito’s writings before, I want to focus here on a set of books, all written post-9/11, that reflect his desire, as laid out in his election platform, “to share our scholarship and experience with policy makers and citizens, to foster a better understanding of current events.” Many of these works seek to “communicate what Muslims believe and why they do what they do” (2002: xiv, 2010: 1; cf. Esposito and Mogahed 2007: xii–xiii). This is indeed a tall order. His motivations for this enterprise are: (1) so much has been written about Islam and Muslims that is spurious, with the result that the Muslim majority has been silenced (2010: 18–20); and (2) we tend to use a double standard by “approaching Islam differently than we should Judaism or Christianity” (2003: xv).9 Again, as I said in the Introduction to this volume, it is certainly important to defend Islam against many of the ridiculous charges leveled against it. My argument, however, is with the theoretical underpinnings of what has largely become a set of apologetical and quasi- or crypto-theological arguments, and the practical ramifications that flow from them. In terms of the previous paragraph, then, I have no problem with Esposito’s desire to educate as large an audience as possible about Islam and Muslim teachings. However, I have a problem with the ways in which he and those like him manipulate the data to create a distorted vision. Responding to his two points above, I would contend that (1) the highly critical and ideologically motivated attacks against Islam in the media and other outlets cannot be answered by an “expert” account that is equally ideological, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. Where theirs is critical, his is apologetical. The result is further distortion because Esposito sweeps under the hermeneutical carpet all of the real issues that a general reading public wants to know about. The treatment of women, for example, becomes in his hands not a “religious” phenomenon, but a “cultural” one (e.g., 2003: 87). As for (2), Esposito creates a double standard of his own because he treats Islam—for example, his bold claim that he can tell us what Muslims really believe—in the way that no self-respecting scholar (not theologian) of Christianity or Judaism would treat their datasets. In The Future of Islam, which he refers to as “the culmination of my work on Islam and Muslim politics” (2010: 4), Esposito is at

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

71

his apologetical best. In the Introduction, for example, he recycles numerous clichés, such as Islam is a religion of peace: Why do Muslims emphasize that Islam is a religion of peace? The very word “Islam” means “peace and submission to God.” Just as Jews use the greeting Shalom (peace), and Christians greet each other with the sign of peace, Muslims say Assalam wa alaykum (peace be upon you) whenever they meet someone or say good-bye. (38) There are numerous problems with this. First, and quite simply, those who want to equate Islam with a “religion of peace” are apologists. No religion is a religion of peace for the very simple reason that religions pack under their large canopies numerous voices, from the peaceful to the militant. To reiterate, no self-respecting scholar of Judaism or Christianity would make the claim that either of these two religions are “religions of peace.” Second, Islam means “submission” (i.e., to the will of God); it most decidedly does not mean peace. Third, how does this square with the suggestion that Jews or Christians use the term “shalom” as a greeting? I know very many Jews (from secular to ultra-Orthodox) and none of them uses the phrase; I also know Christians and, as far as I am aware, have never been greeted with the “sign of peace.” My hunch is that this is part of Esposito’s larger apologetic plan of creating or styling an “Abrahamic” religion, showing that Muslims and Islamic values are in sync with the more customary “JudeoChristian” ones. As he concludes his book, he certainly implies as much, when he claims that Jews and Christians have come to affirm that beyond their distinctive belief and past conflicts, they have a shared Judeo-Christian heritage. Most have been raised with some appreciation of the interconnectedness of the Old and New Testaments with their faiths’ common belief in God, prophets, and revelation, and moral responsibility and accountability. Few until recently have possessed the broader Abrahamic vision that recognizes the integral place of the descendants of Abraham, Hagar, and Ismail, Muslims who are equal citizens and believers in the West. (2010: 198)

72

Theorizing Islam

This is pleading, not scholarship: a plea for theological inclusion, not a critical study of what we are led to believe from a title such as The Future of Islam. The remainder of the book—like the majority of Esposito’s books—bears this out. He criticizes those who are critical of Islam or certain aspects of it (e.g., Bat Ye’or, Bernard Lewis); he lambasts the role of American Jews in the State Department (160); he is highly critical of what he calls Israel’s immorality (85), war crimes (84), and its “occupation” (193); and he makes naïve distinctions between “civilians,” “militants,” and “armies” in the Israeli– Palestinian conflict. Of course, he never quite says these things in his own name—such opinions are always put generically, such as “Muslims believe that …,” or in the words of someone else. Indeed, Esposito goes to great lengths, including the performance of ingenious hermeneutical backflips, to defend Muslims. Of the infamous Danish cartoons, for example, he writes that For Muslims, opposition to the cartoons was a matter of respect for their Prophet and their religion. They see the cartoons as Islamophobic and racist, intended to humiliate rather than extend the same respect that Christians and Jews enjoy. (2010: 27) Christianity and Judaism can be and are “humiliated” on a daily basis in the media, on the internet, and in art galleries in “western” society (whatever this term may mean). However, and this is a key point, most Christians and Jews can get over it and they do not go on rampages throughout the “Christian” or “Jewish” worlds. Instead of apologizing for Muslims, as Esposito does, it might be more productive to claim that in the future of Islam (which is, after all, the title of his book), Muslims have to get used to the fact that Islam might also be criticized and that, in a liberal democracy with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, this is the way it is and must be. Esposito next turns his gaze to the issue of Muslim women: … conflicts over the hijab in France, Turkey, and Denmark are seen exclusively as “religious issues” rather than also as issues of civil rights and freedoms such as women’s rights to dress as they choose. Because European Muslims are defined simply in terms of their faith, these problems and issues are incorrectly

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

73

seen as “Muslim issues” when in fact, given their nature and primary causes, they require social, not religious, solutions or policies. (2010: 27) As we shall see below, Esposito feels free to draw a convenient distinction between what is “cultural” (or “social,” to use his words) and what is “religious.” This allows him to make claims that work with a strange dualism wherein the “religion” may not sanction certain things, but the “culture” might. This, of course, will lead him to his grand conclusion that Islam does not oppress women, but certain cultural contexts in which Muslims find themselves do. After one finishes reading Esposito’s work, one sees a peaceful and peace-loving Islam that has no room for those who hate or kill in its name. The reason one sees this is because Esposito has effectively sugar-coated the tradition and ingeniously removed all such individuals or groups from the pale of the tradition. Hamas now becomes a democratically elected government (2010: 85); Osama bin Laden becomes “like a Hitler or a Stalin” (82); and he quotes without comment a preacher who says “Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem” (Esposito and Mogahed 2007: 102). In Esposito’s world, Islam is the harbinger of peace, and rogue individuals, according to his skillful presentation, are no longer Muslims. If we think that there are some Muslims who kill in the name of Islam, according to Esposito, we are mistaken. Global terrorism, for him, is primarily political and economic. Religious language is only co-opted or hijacked by such extremists (71).

“What Do Women Want?” As I shall show in the next chapter, there is a tendency in Islamic Religious Studies to make the claim that Islam, properly understood, promotes gender equality and gender justice, but, because of various local cultural practices (i.e., from those who do not understand Islam properly), women can be and are mistreated. What is so problematic about this argument is that it mirrors the larger academic study of religion, which has a propensity to claim that “culture” names an external, social thing and should not be confused with the timeless

74

Theorizing Islam

inner motivation of religion, which often goes by such names as meaning, faith, belief, or spirituality. In What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam (2002), Esposito deals with women not in his chapter entitled “Faith and Practice,” but tellingly in a chapter devoted to “Customs and Culture.” Here we are presented, much as we were in Chapter 1, with a series of examples that starkly contrast the emergence of Islam with the so-called “Age of Ignorance” (al-jahiliyya) that existed before it. This juxtaposition, in turn, is then used as further evidence of Islam’s inherent liberal nature: The revelation of Islam raised the status of women by prohibiting female infanticide, abolishing women’s status as property, establishing legal capacity, granting women the right to receive their own dowry, changing marriage from a proprietary to a contractual relationship, and allowing women to retain control over their property and to use their maiden name after marriage. The Quran also granted women financial maintenance from their husbands and controlled the husband’s free ability to divorce. (2002: 89) All of this certainly sounds good. However, as mentioned, we have no idea of the way women were treated within the Arabian Peninsula prior to the advent of Islam because we have no sources to tell us. All that we possess is later Islamic sources that, as witnessed in Chapter 2, were determined to draw as wide a ontological gap as possible between the “new” and the “old.” Esposito also tackles the thorny issue of veiling in Islam. For him, this practice did not become widespread in the Islamic empire until three or four generations after the death of Muhammad. Veiling was originally a sign of honor and distinction. During Muhammad’s time, the veil was worn by Muhammad’s wives and upper-class women as a symbol of their status. Generations later, Muslim women adopted the practice more widely. They were influenced by upper- and middle-class Persian and Byzantine women, who wore the veil as a sign of their rank, to separate themselves not from men but from the lower classes. The mingling of all classes at prayer and in the marketplace encouraged use of the veil among urban women. (2002: 96)

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

75

Women in Islam, according to Esposito, possess the freedom to choose their own fates. They freely choose (or not) to veil themselves and are never forced to do so by males. The veil, on this reading, is not a sign of a Muslim woman’s inferiority, but of her superiority. For Esposito, as the passage above well indicates, when a woman wears the veil it is always a matter of her freedom to choose. He juxtaposes this with the comment—always put in the mouths of others, but never his own—that “Western women only believe that they are free” (2002: 97; cf. Esposito and Mogahed 2007: 108). This discussion is problematic on several fronts. In particular, I find Esposito’s essentialism uninformative. He assumes, again, that there is an essential Muslim teaching that he claims to reproduce for us. He is never interested, for example, in the veil as a contested symbol, around which various actors skirmish for control. His essentialism forces him to overlook, on a synchronic level (never mind the diachronic one), all those countries where women have no choice and must wear the veil. Even if this is not the “authentic” Islamic teaching (whatever that may be), Islam certainly provides the legitimacy for such patriarchal practices. Esposito seems to be able to get out of the difficulties that this poses by claiming that, in such places, the people misunderstand the “true” Muslim teaching. Fair and good, but on a deeper level such an argument completely whitewashes all those crimes committed against women whether implicitly or explicitly in the name of Islam. In other places, when it suits him, Esposito moves from such a monolithic and essentialized view of Muslim women to one wherein “the status of women in Muslim countries differs as much as the countries themselves” (2002: 99). He does this in order to show that even though women are not allowed to vote or drive in places like Saudi Arabia, “women have been prime ministers in Bangladesh, Turkey, and Pakistan and president in Indonesia” (ibid.). Does he really think that this equates with gender equality in such countries? Nowhere does he factor phenomena such as class and education into his claim. Even in Saudi Arabia, according to him, all is not that bad because “there are more women than men in universities” and “Saudi women own their own companies and are major landowners” (ibid.).

76

Theorizing Islam

This becomes even more problematic in Who Speaks for Islam? (2007), which, as we saw above, legitimizes everything that Esposito has to say because it is based on the Gallup poll that claims to have surveyed more than 90% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. He can tell us, for example, that “majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second class status” (2007: 101). Again, however, nowhere does he define what constitutes “majorities” nor does “virtually every country” imply every country. Which ones have not been conditioned to accept it? Moreover, he does not bother to share what “majorities” of Muslim men in the countries feel about the matter. Esposito asks the question: Why are Muslim woman not eager to westernize? Of the over half a billion women surveyed, he focuses on one 22-year-old Moroccan woman, who says: “I resent … the disrespecting of women by men” (2007: 108). To this, he adds his own comments: Men—and in even greater percentages, women—say they resent the West’s perceived promiscuity, pornography, and indecent dress—perceptions that can be traced to Hollywood images exported daily to the Muslim world. Far from inspiring an eagerness to imitate, images of scantily clad young women may leave Muslim women believing that despite Western women’s equal legal status, their cultural status is lacking. (2007: 100) According to Esposito, and we are never quite sure in whose voice he here speaks, Muslim women prefer their status and inferior legal position to the promiscuity and revealing clothing that American women wear. Nowhere does Esposito suggest that perhaps the portrayal of such women on TV in Muslim countries is, for example, part of a larger campaign to undermine America and its perceived lack of values by stereotyping a whole way of life. Moreover, the implication of such comments is that in Muslim countries women enjoy an important “cultural status” that their counterparts in America and European countries lack. What about violence committed against women in Muslim countries? According to Who Speaks for Islam? and Esposito’s other

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

77

books under discussion here, the answer is simple: there is none. If crimes against women are mentioned, it is to show that Islam has no role to play in it. For example, in the global survey, Esposito can actually claim that Research indicates that 69.4% of the men who committed honor killings in Jordan did not perform their daily prayers, and 55% did not fast. That these men fail to observe the most obligatory rituals of Islam suggests that their act of murder is not motivated by religious zeal or devotion. (2007: 123) Esposito, using his false dichotomy between “religion” and “culture,” acts as the arbiter of what gets to count as an authentically “religious” act and what does not. Because “Muslim” men who kill their daughters or sisters do not pray on a daily basis or fast during Ramadan, they are, according to him, not really Muslims! This returns us to the point I have made time and again here: Esposito manipulates his data to skew his conclusions. The bad or the uncomfortable is never mentioned and instead we are presented with a sugar-coated and apologetic treatment of the tradition. Lest I am mistaken here, let me be crystal clear: I am certainly not trying to make the case that Islam is inherently more patriarchal than any other religion. My point is not to side with the many hostile critics of Islam who appear in various neo-conservative venues. On the contrary, my goal is simply to expose the theoretical and methodological inconsistencies of Esposito’s approach to his data. Esposito subsequently asks the question: “Are Muslim women, who are relatively well-educated and aware of their deserved rights, hostile toward Islam?” (2007: 113). He is no longer interested in all Muslim women now, only the “relatively well-educated,” i.e., the cultural elites. Earlier, however, we were informed that only 28% of Yemeni women were literate (compared to 70% of men) and only 28% of Pakistani women (53% of men) (2007: 104). What the term “deserved” means is also unclear. Does it refer to what is promised to women in the Qur’an? Does it refer to the natural rights of human (including gender) equality? We are also told how Muslim men feel about women’s rights. Even though women cannot yet vote or drive in places such as Saudi Arabia, Esposito informs us that the majority of Muslim men

78

Theorizing Islam

think that women should have equal rights to men. Of course, what exactly defines “equality” is ambiguous. We get a better sense of it when we read the words of the only Muslim man, Amr Khaled, mentioned by name in the subsection and referred to as “by far the most popular religious preacher in the Arab world” (2007: 121). Paraphrasing him, Esposito writes: [Khaled] teaches that women’s status in Islam is not only “equal” to men, but that women carry a special gift. “God created women as a mercy to the world,” he tells the millions who watch his television program on Iqra’ (Read), an Arabic satellite channel devoted to religious programming. “Women’s status in Islam is unmatched by any other system,” he says, “but we Muslims have ignored these rights for too long.” (2007: 122) This argument—that men and women are equal, but have different roles—is a common one among fundamentalists and has been used for well over a century (if not longer) to keep women in the home. As is typical of Esposito’s work, we are never sure who is speaking in whose name. Does he quote Amr Khaled approvingly? It seems to me that this is part of a larger issue in Esposito’s work: it is frequently difficult to tell whether he quotes such individuals as individuals or to make a point—here we must also include his fondness for the phrase “most or many Muslims believe …”—that he himself holds to be the correct one. I could go on and on, but will instead use one last example from Esposito’s work here, mainly to show just how endemic the problem is. Near the end of the chapter “What Do Women Want?” in Who Speaks for Islam?, Esposito quotes, presumably with approval, a statement from Lila Abu-Lughod, a professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at Columbia University. She writes of her discomfort at having to sign a petition to save Afghan women from the Taliban: I had never received a petition from such women defending the right of Palestinian women to safety from Israeli bombing or daily harassment at check-points. Maybe some of these same people might be signing petitions to save African women

John Esposito and the Muslim Women

79

from genital cutting, or Indian women from dowry deaths. However, I do not think that it would be as easy to mobilize so many of these American and European women if it were not a case of Muslim men oppressing Muslim women—women … for whom they can feel sorry and in relation to whom they can feel smugly superior. (2007: 129) The conflation of the treatment of Palestinian women at Israeli checkpoints and the closing of schools for girls and male violence directed against Afghani women is truly disturbing (I would hope, no matter what one’s opinion on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict might be).10 Esposito seems to think here that Abu-Lughod’s personal discomfort can stand in for any discussion of or conversation with those who work for the rights of Muslim women “on the ground.” Abu-Lughod’s neo-colonialist critique, and Esposito’s endorsement of it, avoids real issues concerning gender and Islam. Moreover, the use of this quote to criticize instead both Israel and western women is also surely not a random one.

Conclusions This chapter has presented a critical analysis of the work of John Esposito, much of which is predicated on correcting the accusation that Islam is an inherently violent and misogynist religion. Rather than contextualize such violence and misogyny (which, again, is not unique to Islam, but common among all the world’s religions), such features are interpreted away as the products of those who manipulate a peaceful religion for their own nefarious ends. The core or essence of Islam is harmonious, peaceful, liberal, egalitarian, and the like. What corrupts these essential features are “hijackers” who twist Islam’s essential “religious” message for a variety of “political” or “ideological” purposes. To accomplish his goal, Esposito attempts to revise history by distorting facts. Veiling, for example, becomes an elite activity, not the provenance of patriarchy. Hamas is the peaceful and democratically elected government of Gaza (no mention, for example, of its constitution that calls for the destruction of “the Zionist enemy’),

80

Theorizing Islam

and so on. As bad as all this is, however, nothing quite prepares us for his most outrageous claim that those who commit honor killings are not really Muslims because 69.4% of them did not pray on a daily basis and 55.5% did not fast! In his apologetical treatises, his desire to defend Islam at all costs, Esposito refuses to nuance his data. While Islam may not condone terrorism or violence, it certainly creates the mechanisms, the rhetoric, and the power structures that some Muslims use both to justify and to legitimate any act (in this, it is no different from any other religion). To say then, as Esposito does, that Islam is equivalent to peace is a distortion that flies in the face of the evidence and common sense. Since he is fond of drawing parallels with Judaism and Christianity, let me also try: Catholicism does not condone pedophilia, yet the Church’s authoritative and administrative structures create the space in which such crimes can occur. Does this mean that Catholicism is a religion of pedophilia? Certainly not. However, to try and completely separate the pedophilia of some priests from the Church is to ignore the latter’s authority that can create certain conditions that make it possible. What bothers me in all of this, and the impetus behind this chapter, is that John Esposito is generally considered to be one of the major interpreters of Islam in the West. He advises government officials, is part of think tanks and NGOs, and lectures throughout the world. His neatly packaged essentialisms seem to be precisely what everyone wants to hear. “Religion” as a category is never queried or nuanced; religion, as real and quantifiable, is something whose main role is to do good in the world; is something internal or spiritual; and, as such, can never be co-opted by the forces of evil.

4 Toward a Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women” Given my comments in the previous chapter, a question that we could well ask ourselves is: What might the beginnings of a nonapologetical treatment of Muslim women look like? To begin this rethinking, the present chapter offers an account that tries to nuance the neat and reified distinctions made by the likes of John Esposito, in which we encounter unhelpful signifiers such as “religion” and “culture” that he (and others) conveniently separate from one another in the service of a liberal theological framework. Working on the assumption that the diversity exhibited in the historical record is the best antidote to essentialism, this chapter examines diachronically how the category “Muslim women” has been manufactured and contested.

Modern Attempts to Recreate Women’s Lives During the Time of Muhammad The attempt to write about anything during the lifetime of Muhammad returns us to an issue encountered previously: We know virtually nothing about the earliest centuries of Islam because all of the materials that claim to provide knowledge of this period come from much later sources. This has not stopped many writers from attempting to portray the lives of women during the time of Muhammad. This is usually done, as witnessed in the analysis of Esposito in the previous chapter, for apologetic purposes, to show that the earliest period was characterized by a type of gender equality preached by Muhammad, which was later eroded when male elites began to corrupt his message by increasingly circumscribing the role and place of women in Muslim society (e.g., Mernissi 1991; Ahmed 1992).

82

Theorizing Islam

As encountered in the first chapter, the time of Muhammad becomes a canvas upon which later sources project their own visions and portraits. The case is not much different today. For some, the advent of Islam empowered women, giving them a set of rights unheard of until relatively recently in the West (e.g., Smith 1979). Such interpreters contrast the message of Islam with the so-called “Age of Ignorance” (jahiliyya), during which it is said the Arabs practiced female infanticide and gave women no rights. Others, however, find sources that demonstrate the opposite: women actually enjoyed power and prestige in the pre-Islamic period; and the Qur’an initially reflects this, but was later misinterpreted to deprive women of their rights. On this reading, Islam—at least, according to its subsequent theological elaboration—is actually a large part of the problem of women’s subjugation. Both of these interpretations, as we shall see at the end of the chapter, still figure highly in analyses of Islam, gender, and the status of women. The fact of the matter is that these interpretations, at least from the historian’s perspective, are impossible to verify. Attempts to show women having some sort of power in the pre-Islamic world are intended not to raise the status of women, for example, but to lend credence to an ethos that gives women power over men—an ethos that Islam was perceived to correct. Those who wish to point to the positive treatment of women in early Islam, on the contrary, are usually drawn to a number of key females associated with Muhammad: Khadija (his first wife), Aisha (his last wife), and Fatima (his daughter). We would, however, do well to remember that many of the details of these figures’ lives represent later elaborations and are essentially the constructions of male elites in their quest to define what they consider to be proper womanly values.

Khadija According to the biography of Muhammad, Khadija bint (“daughter of”) Khuwaylid (c.555–619), a wealthy trader, was Muhammad’s first wife. Some sources depict her as a widow; others deny this, owing to the problems that it might pose (i.e., that the first wife of Muhammad had been with other men). Again according to the

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

83

later biography, Khadija proposed marriage to Muhammad; she was the first convert to Islam; she provided great moral and emotional support to Muhammad; and, while she was still alive, Muhammad took no other wives. In his fourteenth-century commentary on the Qur’an, Ibn Kathir (1301–73) writes: Once Aisha asked him if Khadija had been the only woman worthy of his love. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) replied: “She believed in me when no one else did; she accepted Islam when people rejected me; and she helped and comforted me when there was no one else to lend me a helping hand.”1 Muhammad and Khadija had two sons, Qasim and Abd-Allah (both of whom died very young) and four daughters—Zayanab, Ruqayya, Umm Kalthum, and Fatima. However, most Shi’is debate the paternity of the first three, arguing that they were the products of previous marriages and—as a way to protect the sanctity of Muhammad’s family and the lineage of the Shi’ite Imams—only Fatima was the true daughter of the union between Muhammad and Khadija.

Aisha Aisha bint Abu Bakr (d.c. 678) was the last wife of Muhammad and was, as her name suggests, the daughter of the first successor to Muhammad, Abu Bakr. She is quoted as a source for many hadiths (i.e., the sayings and deeds of Muhammad handed down by his followers, which, as collections, function as an important source of shari`a, or Islamic law), especially those concerning aspects of Muhammad’s personal life. Many later Muslims regard Aisha, given her role in the transmission of these hadiths, as a learned woman, who tirelessly recounted stories from the life of Muhammad and who explained the earliest history and traditions to a new generation of followers of Muhammad’s message. As the most prominent of Muhammad’s wives, she is revered as a role model by millions of Muslim women. Although it does not bother Muslims, the case of Aisha does raise certain issues, perhaps of more contemporary concern, that

84

Theorizing Islam

nevertheless must be addressed. According to sources, Aisha was betrothed to Muhammad when she was six or seven years old and the marriage was consummated when she was nine (something that none of the scholarly hagiographies discussed in Chapter 1 mention). Although child marriages were and still are relatively common in Bedouin societies, many modern critics of Islam use this as evidence to discredit Muhammad as a pedophile, especially those who for a variety of reasons are critical of Islam to begin with (e.g., the SomaliDutch, ex-Muslim politician who now lives in the U.S.A., Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Perhaps the most interesting defense of Muhammad is offered by Denise Spellberg, who argues that Aisha’s young age might have been a later construction or interpolation to insure that Muhammad’s “favorite wife” would have been a virgin at marriage (1994: 40–5). But this again raises a problematic issue. We cannot pick and choose what is old and what is a later interpolation when it suits our interpretation. Aisha was also accused by some of Muhammad’s enemies of committing adultery. Once, when she was traveling with Muhammad and some of his followers, Aisha claimed that she had left camp in the morning to search for a lost necklace and, upon returning, found that the men had dismantled the camp and left without her. A man named Safwan eventually rescued her, which led to speculation that they had committed adultery. Shortly after this, Muhammad announced that he had received a revelation from God confirming Aisha’s innocence and directing that, in future, four eyewitnesses must support or verify charges of adultery (Q 24:4; see Guillaume 2009 [1955]: 493–9). Because of her young age at the time of marriage, Aisha lived for a significantly long period after the death of Muhammad. She was, for example, involved in an early and unsuccessful uprising against Ali at the Battle of the Camel. Using a motif that we have already encountered in this chapter, some Muslim feminists have argued that Aisha provided a role model for women’s political participation in Islamic communities, and that women became marginalized in Islamic polity following Aisha’s defeat at the Battle of the Camel (see Afshar 2006). There seems to be very little historical evidence, however, for such claims. Aisha’s power derived not from her gender, but her association with Muhammad.

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

85

Fatima Fatima (c.605–32) was a daughter of Muhammad—for Shi’is, as we have seen, the only daughter—from his first wife Khadija. She remained at her father’s side through the years of persecution that he suffered at the hands of the Quraysh in Mecca. After the migration to Medina, she married Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. Regarded as “the Mother of the Imams,” Fatima plays a special role in Shi’i piety. She has a unique status as Muhammad’s only surviving child, the wife of Ali, the first Imam, and the mother of Hasan and Husayn. She is believed to have been immaculate, sinless and a role model for Muslim women. Although she is said to have led a life of poverty, Shi’is emphasize her compassion and sharing of whatever she had with others. Because of her marriage to Ali, Fatima is often imagined in later Shi’i sources as a critic of Abu Bakr’s and Umar’s caliphates. After the death of Muhammad, for instance, she opposed the election of Abu Bakr and supported the claims of Ali. In the ensuing years, she was said to have had many grievances with both Abu Bakr and Umar concerning a host of issues from the political and the genealogical to the financial. Later Shi’i historians tell how Umar called for Ali and his men to come out and swear allegiance to Abu Bakr. When they did not, Umar broke into their house, with the result that Fatima’s ribs were broken when she was pressed between the door and the wall; this caused her to miscarry and led to her eventual death. She also laid claim to the property rights of her father and challenged Abu Bakr’s refusal to cede them. According to this hadith, narrated in the name of Aisha: After the death of Allah’s Apostle Fatima the daughter of Allah’s Apostle asked Abu Bakr to give her her share of inheritance from what Allah’s Apostle had left of the Fai [booty gained without fighting] which Allah had given him. Abu Bakr said to her, “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Our property will not be inherited, whatever we [i.e. prophets] leave is sadaqa [to be used for charity].’” Fatima, the daughter of Allah’s Apostle, got angry and stopped speaking to Abu Bakr, and continued assuming that attitude till she died. Fatima remained alive for six months after the death of Allah’s Apostle.2

86

Theorizing Islam

Stories such as this, in addition to the ones recounted above concerning her refusal to submit to the wills of the first caliph and the violence directed towards her, undoubtedly contributed to the pathos of later Shi’ism. In this regard, Fatima became an important symbol in the evolution of Shi’i identity, functioning as a feminine image to sanctify the family of the prophet on the one hand and to reinforce the domestic role of Shi’i women within a patriarchal system on the other (see, e.g., Thurlkill 2008).

Gender and the Construction of Female Mystics Many modern commentators who are interested in reconciling Islam and the rights of women frequently point to Sufism, wherein it is said that “women enjoy full equal rights” (Schimmel 1997: 15). Such comments are difficult to sustain given the fact that male scholars have largely been responsible for creating the various stories about Sufi saints bequeathed to us. These male scholars, writing centuries after the fact, have largely constructed female mystical identities to show that, although they were women, they were unlike most women, who desire marriage, children and the trappings of family. In fact, these female mystics, if they in fact existed, become the ideal for male Sufis: lowly individuals, acutely aware of their inferiority, who were marginalized from the rest of society and thereby enabled to contemplate God in relative isolation. To quote from the Sufi hagiographer Attar, in reference to the female mystic Rabia al-Adawiyya, “When a woman becomes a man in the path of God, she is a man and one cannot any more call her a woman” (Attar 1996: 40). Although views such as this might strike us as genderbending, in fact they hold up or reinforce the male as the ideal.

The Veil: A Contested Symbol One of the most visible and contested symbols in Islam is the veil. In order to get a better sense of its manifold meanings, it is important

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

87

to put this symbol in historical context so that we may see how it has been deployed, used, and understood over the centuries. The term “hijab”—which now can refer to a veil or, more generally, to the concept of modesty—initially appears in the Qur’an. It is specifically used in the context of instructing male believers to talk to Muhammad’s wives behind a “hijab” (e.g., 33:53). Some have accordingly argued that hijab is not the personal or individual veil of later centuries, but actually a large curtain used to ensure the sanctity of Muhammad’s wives. Other Quranic verses that are used to support veiling include the following: And say to the believing women, that they cast down their eyes and guard their private parts; and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward; and let them cast their veils over their bosoms, and reveal not their adornment save to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or what their right hands own, or such men as attend them, not having sexual desire, or children who have not yet attained knowledge of women’s private parts; nor let them stamp their feet, so that their hidden ornament may be known. And turn all together to God, O you believers; happily so you will prosper. (Quran 24:31) Or, Children of Adam! We have sent down on you a garment to cover your shameful parts, and feathers; and the garments of the godfearing—that is better; that is one of God’s signs; haply they will remember. (7:26) Or, O Prophet, say to your wives and daughters and the believing women, that they draw their veils close to them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so it is likelier that they will be known, and not hurt. God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. (33:59) All of these verses, however, are extremely vague; none specifically refers to the practice of women veiling, and they all can seemingly be

88

Theorizing Islam

interpreted in any number of ways. Regardless of the actual content of such verses, they were subsequently generalized in the later legal tradition to establish the often rigid segregation between Muslim men and women. With these vague verses in the background, today all of the four major Sunni legal schools (Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali) hold that a woman’s entire body, frequently but not always with the exception of her face and hands, is considered part of her awra, or that part of the body that must be covered in public settings. Some commentators in the modern period argue that there is nothing specifically Islamic about such covering, as it seems to have already existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Leila Ahmed, for example, extrapolating from this pre-existence, contends that therefore veiling is not or should not be mandatory in Islam (Ahmed 1992). John Esposito, whose work on women was examined in the previous chapter, argues that Muhammad’s wives were the only ones to wear veils as a symbol of their status, and that only later did Muslim women more generally take up the practice. At this later period, he believes, Muslims were influenced by upper- and middle-class Persian and Byzantine women, who wore the veil as a sign of their rank, to separate themselves not from men but from lower-class women (Esposito 2002: 95–7). Esposito, however, presents no evidence to back up his claims. From the above, it can be seen that there is some debate as to the origins of the veil in Islam. This debate typically revolves around whether or not the veil is a cultural or a religious symbol. However, the line separating the “religious” from the “cultural” in seventhcentury Arabia (or even today) is anything but clear. In recent years, the debate about veiling has shifted from its origins to the status of women in Islam. Owing to its visibility, veiling has become one of the few practices involving Muslim women of which westerners are aware. Many point to it as a sign of the seclusion and oppression of women in Muslim societies and, when coupled with the knowledge that women are forbidden from driving in places such as Saudi Arabia, further proof of their complete marginalization. It is important to be aware of the various sides of the debate here. It is not simply that Muslims support the veil and that non-Muslims regard it as a symbol of misogyny. The fact of the matter is that many Muslims are opposed to the veil, and contend that issues of modesty

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

89

should be contingent upon the society in which particular Muslims happen to find themselves. The other side of this debate argues that, rather than regard the veil as a sign of female oppression, we need to regard it as part of a woman’s freedom. (This is a variation on the theme that Esposito had already mentioned, although it was unclear as to whether or not he endorsed it.) The following, for example, comes from a fundamentalist website, which contends that women must wear the hijab: Contrary to popular belief, the covering of the Muslim woman is not oppression but a liberation from the shackles of male scrutiny and the standards of attractiveness. In Islam, a woman is free to be who she is inside, and immune from being portrayed as sex symbol and lusted after. Islam exalts the status of a woman by commanding that she enjoys equal rights to those of man in everything, she stands on an equal footing with man, and both [men and women] share mutual rights and obligations in all aspects of life.3 While this may well be an extreme example, it does show what is at stake for those who support the veiling of women. For them, the veil is not a “cultural” symbol, but a “religious” one that is required— morally, legally, and socially—for all Muslim women. Rather than enter into the debate as to whether or not veiling is good or bad, “religious” or “cultural,” it is perhaps better to regard the veil, in all of its many manifestations, as a contested symbol, around which skirmish all sorts of actors who desire to define what is authentically “Muslim.” How, for example, can the veil be a symbol of a woman’s freedom when in certain Muslim countries (most notably Saudi Arabia and Iran) women are not only forced to wear them, but are forced to do so by males? Yet, surely we need not regard every woman who wears the veil as a victim of male oppression. In many countries, such as America, some Muslim women freely and willingly wear the hijab as a sign of their Muslim identity and to express their choice of Islam over western secularism. Yet, just as we should not assume that every woman in Iran wears the veil against her will, we should not assume that there are no cases in places such as America where women are forced to veil, whether by husbands, brothers, or fathers.

90

Theorizing Islam

It is also important to be aware that at stake in much of the public discourse concerning the veil is the perceived role and place of Islam in the West today. It is perhaps unfortunate that political discourse in Europe over banning the veil presents a stark binary— Muslims can choose to be modern and European or backward and Oriental—and, as such, a “with us or against us” mentality. All of these debates, of course, transcend the veil and instead revolve around the perceived integration (or lack thereof) of Islam into America and Europe. And, once again, at the center of all these discourses is the female body that enables males (both Muslim and non-Muslim) to define themselves.

Traditional Patterns Islam, like all religions, is patriarchal. As such, women—despite what Esposito may say—have been excluded from many areas of public life and ritual activity. Menstruation, for example, puts women in a state of ritual impurity that prevents them from becoming full participants in Muslim ritual, especially prayer. Sometimes this is presented apologetically, as it is also in orthodox Judaism, with the argument that women might prove a distraction for men at prayer, thereby preventing both genders from their proper intentions and goals during this important activity. It is also contended that women occupy a different sphere from men and thus have different sets of responsibilities that take place largely within the context of the home (for example, looking after children). In many places in the Islamic world, women have naturally gravitated to more “popular” forms of religious devotion, such as saint worship and the practices associated with the tombs of saints. This, as some scholars have shown, has provided women with a different form of ritual life and, in certain instances, given them a sense of solidarity and independence from men (Fernea and Fernea 1972: 385–401; Beck 1980: 27–60). Such practices, perhaps not surprisingly, have been labeled as “un-Islamic” by conservative Muslim groups, which, as a subset of religious fundamentalists, have been signified as male, given the terms and concepts they use (cf. Hawley and Proudfoot 1993: 3–45).

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

91

These traditional patterns are predicated on the notion of purdah, a Persian term that denotes a sharp separation between men and women. In Arabic, the term used to denote this is one that we have already encountered—hijab—which can refer to the actual veil, to the physical segregation of the sexes, and to the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form. Women in total seclusion, even though they experience few or no restrictions within the house, must be escorted in public by a close male relative, be covered so that men may not see them, and must not mix with men who are not related to them unless they need to. It is important to nuance the concept of purdah with several caveats. First, not all Muslim women exist in such a state of seclusion. It is often based on geographic location in the Muslim world (for example, in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia and not necessarily in more liberal countries, such as Tunisia), on social status, and on other such factors. However, it is important to realize that increasingly as Islam finds a place for itself in the modern world, especially in the multicultural and multi-ethnic West, Muslim families are often caught between cultures and generations, with traditional parents trying to enforce their religious and cultural values on children brought up in an environment with a radically different ethos. These intra-familial and intercultural tensions can usually be negotiated, but occasionally they cannot; in such cases we sometimes hear of violence committed against women by a male relative (usually a father or brother) who harms a woman who refuses to obey him or threatens the good name of the family. This violence is usually directed against women for perceived immodesty, the desire to break off an arranged marriage, for seeking a divorce, for committing adultery, or for being sexually assaulted. Although such crimes—in their most extreme forms they are called “honor killings”—tend to be more common in the other parts of the Islamic and non-Islamic world, they do happen in America as well. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates the annual worldwide total of honor-killing victims at 5,000 (although it is probably much, much higher). Second, we return to the debate as to whether or not this seclusion is Islamic or “cultural” in origin. Although as one commentator aptly concludes:

92

Theorizing Islam

As is frequently the case, this is as much a matter of definitions of words as anything else. The total veiling of women—taken as a way of implementing a “moveable seclusion”—is not stated as a requirement in the Qur’an and, on that basis, is often suggested to be simply a cultural trait and not part of Islam. Such is true only, however, if attention is paid to the outer form of clothing alone. Veiling is, in fact, the logical (although, strictly speaking, perhaps not necessary) outgrowth of various Quranic statements taken to their limits. (Rippin 2005: 291) Finally, it must be remembered that all of this is currently in flux. As economic, demographic, and sociological conditions change, it is often no longer viable to have only males working and women, indeed sometimes very well-educated women, confined to the house. Such changes will inevitably have repercussions on the traditional status of women as homemakers and mothers as they increasingly enter the workforce. Legally (and, again, Esposito is never interested in these issues), women occupy a lesser position than men. The testimony of two women, for example, is equivalent to that of one man (see Q 2:282); the inheritance that a woman receives is less than what men are supposed to receive (see Q 4:11). Whereas a man can divorce his wife for any reason, a woman can instigate divorce only for specific reasons. And whereas men can remarry immediately after divorce, a woman (including a widow) must wait a prescribed period to insure that she is not pregnant, thereby establishing the biological lineage of any child. A Muslim man can, in theory, marry a woman from another monotheistic religion; a Muslim female, however, can only marry another Muslim (see Q 5:6; cf. Friedmann 2003: 161–3). Whereas a Muslim man, again in theory, can marry up to four wives, a Muslim woman can marry only one man. Finally, sexual relations are at the command of the man: Go apart from women during the monthly course, and do not approach them until they are clean. When they have cleansed themselves, then come unto them as God has commanded you. Truly God loves those who repent, and He loves those who cleanse themselves. Your women are a tillage for you; so

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

93

come unto your tillage as you wish, and forward for your souls; and fear God, and know that you shall meet Him. Give thou good tidings to the believers. (Q 2:223–224)

Fundamentalist Constructions Fundamentalist constructions of women—whether of the Muslim or non-Muslim variety—are based on the notion that men and women are equal, but that they need to occupy different spheres. Recall the popular Egyptian preacher quoted at the end of the previous chapter, who said that men support the family financially and women, as mothers and wives, provide emotional wellbeing. Support for such positions is usually marshaled from the religious scriptures that were written by men in order to legitimate their social, religious, and legal superiority. Such scriptures are now appealed to as a reflection of the natural order and as a way to further separate the sexes from one another. This often translates into a dynamic wherein women are considered both powerful and weak, to be both feared and dominated at the same time. The experience of Muslim women in fundamentalist or Islamist states is certainly not monolithic. At the most extreme is Talibancontrolled Afghanistan, in which women were forced to wear the burqa in public, forbidden from working or being educated after the age of eight, and were faced with public flogging and execution for violations of Taliban laws.4 At the other end of the continuum is Iran, where there are female legislators in the parliament and roughly 60 percent of university students are women. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Iranian women are still forced to wear the veil. Saudi Arabia, as witnessed in the previous chapter, is the epicenter of the conservative Wahhabi movement. Women there, regardless of age, are required to have a male guardian in public. They can neither vote nor be elected to high positions in the government. Moreover, it is the only country in the world that prohibits women from driving. In 2009, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries for gender parity, and it was the only country to score a zero in the

94

Theorizing Islam

category of political empowerment for women (again, something that is largely ignored by Esposito).5

Western Feminism and Islam It is important to be aware that patriarchy is certainly not a phenomenon that is confined solely to Islam. Western feminists, largely secular, have traditionally been interested in trying to show that men throughout history have sought to control and oppress women, often using religion to legitimate their ambitions and power. Such feminists seek the liberation of women from the oppressive practices of religion and are often highly critical of all religious practices and beliefs. In the 1970s, for example, Mary Daly, one of the pioneers of feminist critiques of religion in general, was extremely critical of the Hindu practice of sati, but was widely criticized for projecting “western” feminist ideas onto a practice and a culture about which she knew relatively little. A more recent generation of feminists, in a backlash against work like Daly’s, are increasingly critical of what they perceive to be an imperialist mindset that assumes superiority over non-westerners or non-Europeans. Using the rhetoric of post-colonial criticism, they point to the hubris of western academics who are critical of religious and cultural practices that they are largely ignorant of, thereby further replicating colonialist critiques (recall, for example, the Abu-Lughod quotation that was cited at the end of the previous chapter). Joan Wallach Scott (2007), for example, argues that European attempts to ban the veil are racist, discriminatory, and intolerant of Muslim immigrants primarily from North Africa, and are thus part of Europe’s inability to integrate its former colonial subjects. Views such as those offered by Abu-Lughod and Scott worry me because they have the potential to shut down debate with their implicit accusations of colonialism and racism. Meanwhile, other feminist scholars, such as Uma Narayan, have argued that this is a new form of political correctness based on the fear of being labeled a colonialist and that this will further silence criticism of misogynist cultural and religious practices (2000: 80–100).

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

95

Contemporary Islamic Feminism Largely in response to the secular tendencies of feminism, various religions have produced feminist theologies. One of the key questions about feminist critiques of religion is whether the patriarchal structure of religion is so monolithic that women’s rights and religion are incompatible with each another. Feminist theologians, by contrast, seek to work within their religious systems to effect change in terms of creating new traditions, practices, interpretation of scriptures, and theologies. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about the deity or deities, determining women’s place in relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the religion’s sacred texts. Within this context, Islamic feminism is largely concerned with the role of women in Islam and seeks the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate both women’s rights and a gender equality that is perceived to be grounded within an Islamic framework, even though many have been influenced by secular and western feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement. This frequently leads to conservative critics labeling such movements as “western” or “un-Islamic,” thereby easily condemning and dismissing them. Islamic feminists often highlight what they see as deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Qur’an and seek to question the patriarchal interpretation of later Islamic teaching by returning to the Qur’an and the hadiths in order to create a more equal and just society. Many of these feminists are opposed to the veil and are frequently supportive of governmental initiatives to ban it (for example, in France and Tunisia). Many Islamic feminists are also in favor of reforming aspects of shari’a law that deal with personal and family matters, especially polygyny, divorce, custody of children, maintenance, and marital property. Increasingly in places where Muslims form minorities (e.g., Europe, the U.S.A., Canada), many Islamic feminists argue that the shari’a should not be reformed to take into consideration the rights

96

Theorizing Islam

of women, but rejected completely.6 Instead, they argue, Muslim women should seek redress from the secular laws and courts of the countries concerned.

Examples of Islamic Feminists Riffat Hassan Riffat Hassan (1943–) was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She went on to receive a PhD in philosophy in 1968 from Durham University in the U.K. with a thesis on the thought of Muhammad Iqbal. After returning to Pakistan to teach, she emigrated to the United States in 1972. She is now—again, nicely showing the apologetical and overt theological dimensions of Islamic Religious Studies in general and of the academic study of religion that both tolerates and endorses such theological positioning—Professor Emerita in the department of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. For Hassan, employing a trope that we have seen frequently in this chapter, the problem of the oppression of women in Muslim societies is not a religious issue, but a cultural one. For her, if and when the Qur’an is properly understood, it becomes clear that it and the religion that flows from it sanction freedom and not oppression. She writes, for example, that given the centrality of the Qur’an to the lives of the majority of the more than one billion Muslims of the world, the critical question is: What, if anything, does the Qur’an say about human rights? I believe that the Qur’an is the Magna Carta of human rights and that a large part of its concern is to free human beings from the bondage of traditionalism, authoritarianism (religious, political, economic, or any other), tribalism, racism, sexism, slavery or anything else that prohibits or inhibits human beings from actualizing the Qur’anic vision of human destiny embodied in the classic proclamation: “Towards Allah is thy limit.”7 Rather than reject the Qur’an as the product of male elites, Riffat Hassan contends that it ought to be interpreted openly and

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

97

pluralistically. It is a document that cannot be co-opted to sanction violations of human rights or other injustices because it is the word of God and, as such, cannot be unjust. In 1999, Hassan founded The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan,8 a foundation that seeks to address the problem of honor killings. She argues that such killings are a distortion of Islam, and, theologically, contends that women should be seen as the equal of men because in the Qur’an Adam and Eve, and therefore men and women, were created at the same time.

Shirin Ebadi Shirin Ebadi (1947–) was born in Hamadan, Iran, but shortly afterwards her family moved to Tehran. In 1965, she entered the faculty of law at the University of Tehran and in 1969 passed the qualification exams to become a judge. In 1975, she became the first woman in Iran to preside over a legislative court. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, conservative elements decided that Islam did not allow women to become judges and Ebadi was demoted to a secretarial position at the court where she had previously presided. She and other female judges protested and were assigned to the slightly higher position of “legal experts.” After taking early retirement, Ebadi began to write about the human rights struggle in Iran and in the 1990s she returned to public life as a human rights lawyer, defending political dissidents and taking on cases of physical abuse against women and children. She has been instrumental in the foundation of numerous organizations in Iran to defend human rights, most notably the Center for the Defense of Human Rights. She writes in her memoir, for example, that In the last 23 years, from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years of doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith. It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered. That belief, along with the conviction that

98

Theorizing Islam

change in Iran must come peacefully and from within, has underpinned my work. (2006: 204) In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children.”9 She was the first-ever Iranian, and the first Muslim woman, to have received the prize. The Iranian authorities allegedly confiscated her award, though the government has denied the charge. Iranian authorities criticized her for accepting the award without wearing a veil, and had her award denigrated in Iran as little more than a political gesture by a pro-western institution. In recent years, Ebadi has lived in exile, owing to the persecution of Iranian citizens who are critical of the government.

Amina Wadud Amina Wadud (1952–) is an African-American convert to Islam. Born Mary Teasley in Bethseda, Maryland, Wadud was until recently a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Although she has written much on the role of gender in Islam, Wadud is perhaps most famous for an event that took place on March 18, 2005, which was heavily covered by international media. On that day she took on the role of ima4m and led a Friday prayer service attended by over a hundred male and female Muslims. The event, sponsored by the now largely defunct Progressive Muslim Union (PMU), took place at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Three mosques had refused to host the service and another venue withdrew its acceptance after a bomb threat. At issue was a woman functioning as an ima4m, something that broke with the tradition of having only male ima4ms. Her detractors accused her of being un-Islamic; her supporters, on the other hand, argued that she did not go against Islamic legal teaching, only cultural custom. Although she received death threats for her actions, Wadud has subsequently functioned as a prayer leader at other congregational prayers and speaks internationally on issues related to Islam and gender.

A Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women”

99

Conclusions This chapter has presented something of the complex intersection between Islam, women, and gender roles. Its goal was to offer a point of departure from the presentations provided by the likes of Esposito. It is perhaps not surprising that the three individuals examined at the end of this chapter now live outside of the Islamic world. Moreover, it is probably not surprising that two of the three were or are professors of Islamic Religious Studies. In the Islamic feminist desire to reform the religion, we witness the appeal to a perceived pristine Islam— one in evidence at the time of Muhammad and enshrined in a pure Qur’an unaffected by subsequent male interpretations that sought to exclude women. This motif of a pure Quranic or Muhammadan message is not confined solely to matters of gender, but is something that we have already encountered in, for example, Safi’s desire, discussed in Chapter 1, to find the authentic Islamic teaching on any number of topics. Whether this vision is true or not is impossible to determine. However, what is certain is that appeals to such an egalitarian Islam, one that promotes gender equality and human rights, are an important part of constructing what some consider to be an authentic Muslim identity in the modern world.

5 Reflections on Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies Previous chapters have witnessed the quest for the “authentic” Muhammad and the “real” message of an authentic Muhammadan teaching on gender equality. The methodological support for these positions emerges from the fairly simple claim that their authors are accurately reading the sources or consulting as many texts as possible. The reader, in other words, is to take comfort in the scholar’s ability to immerse him- or herself in a rather arcane and not always easily accessible body of texts written in Arabic and other Islamic languages. Expertise, and the personal and institutional authority that flows from it, is largely defined by the ability to “translate” these sources into a pleasing idiom for as large a reading audience as possible and, moreover, in such a manner that the “real” Islam is presented fairly and so that it functions as a corrective to hostile or negative portrayals. In the various works examined above, there has been very little, let alone any systematic, attention to meta-questions of method and theory. The manifold and complex interconnections between these two terms, including all that they stand for, create the scholar of religion’s conceptual workshop (Smith 2004). The academic study of religion, when it works best, is a highly theoretical, critical, and self-reflexive discipline that must square insider accounts of what they consider “religion” (or, even better, “religious experience”) really means with a set of accounts provided from other disciplines associated with the humanities and social sciences. Unfortunately, however, the default position of the overwhelming majority of scholars of religion is to take these insider accounts at face value and largely repackage and describe them for students and for one another. This produces the unfortunate result that theory and method, rather than taking their natural place at the center of the discipline, tend to be deferred indefinitely or ignored altogether.

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

101

As we have witnessed above, especially in Chapters 1 and 3, the majority of scholars of Islamic Religious Studies tend, for the most part, to follow the regnant descriptive discourses within the academic study of religion. The result is that there is little or no reflection on theoretical matters. We have already encountered this in the ways that many of these scholars “deal” with the practical difficulties posed by the early sources. In Chapter 1, for example, we saw how, rather than query these sources or show their investment in later identity formations, many scholars are quite content simply to read them as eyewitness accounts of the events in question. Rather than focus on the ideological motives of later groups trying to shape and mould (read: manipulate) a perceived message in their own image, there is a tendency among scholars of Islamic Religious Studies to take such texts at face value. Or again, in Chapter 3, we encountered numerous apologetical claims that Islam—at least, the Islam that has been liberally interpreted to coincide with modern, western values—and gender equality are not only mutually compatible, but natural bedfellows. The very fact that these are regnant discourses, and that the price for their transgressions is disciplinary ostracization, means that I frequently have to articulate that it is not my intention to undermine Islam. This, it seems to me, reveals the extent of the impasse. It is, to reiterate, not my concern whether or not Islam is a religion with a much later terminus post quem or whether Islam is somehow more (or less) patriarchal or misogynist than any other religion. My argument, on the contrary, stems from the theoretical and methodological naïveté that produces such statements and does so consistently and to such an extent that it is becoming endemic to the discipline of Islamic Religious Studies. We cannot pass off the mythic as real or fudge over certain chronological and historical infelicities for the sake of scoring a political, theological, or ideological point in the present. Religious studies, the discipline to which many of those I have criticized in the previous pages ostensibly belong, in order to function properly must be attuned to self-reflexivity and cannot engage in matters of special pleading (see, for example, the comments of Lincoln 1996 with which I began my Introduction). This lack of self-reflexivity and the desire to engage in apologetics is, as I see it, the major problem currently plaguing the academic

102

Theorizing Islam

study of Islamic Religious Studies. Islamicists must begin the process of interrogating their first principles and, in the process, open their datasets up to the more theoretical concerns supplied by other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. This is certainly not to claim that all is methodologically well in religious studies (for a critique of which, see McCutcheon 1997 or Fitzgerald 2000). However, when it works well, it seems to me, the academic study of religion refers to a set of critical discourses that refuse to take religion seriously as an analytical marker or to regard religion as somehow occupying a socially or politically autonomous zone. On the contrary, I side with those who contend that the range of human performances that the category “religion” demarcates can and must be demystified by translating them into fundamentally social and cultural terms. It was with great interest, then, that I was recently asked by the Journal of the American Academy of Religion to review a book edited by Carl Ernst and Richard Martin entitled Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (2010). The description of the book on the back cover, in particular, intrigued me: Rethinking Islamic Studies upends scholarly roadblocks in postOrientalist discourse within contemporary Islamic studies and carves out fresh inroads toward a robust new understanding of the discipline, one that includes religious studies and other politically infused fields of inquiry. Despite my discomfort with the word “post-Orientalist,” was my dissatisfaction with the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field about to be “upended”? Was the academic study of Islam about to undergo a 180-degree shift in emphases? With anticipation, I began to read the essays found within the volume. However, within a few pages of the introduction it quickly became clear to me that what I was reading, far from being a “rethinking” of the field, was in fact more of the same quasi-theological and apologetical pleading. Although I completed my largely critical review (see Hughes 2011c), Rethinking Islamic Studies got me further thinking about the nature of theory and method in Islamic Religious Studies. In the present chapter, I wish to reflect more on this collection, in a way that moves beyond the narrow confines of the book review.

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

103

The structure of this chapter is as follows: I begin by stating my general impressions of this edited collection, showing how they intersect with my larger concerns about the field. Following this, I engage in a critical analysis of several of the essays that comprise the volume. This, in turn, will lead me into my concluding chapter, where I try to present a real alternative to the apologetical ends presented by the essays in Rethinking Islamic Studies.

“Toward a Post-Orientalist Approach to Islamic Religious Studies” Carl Ernst and Richard C. Martin begin their volume highly critical of the Orientalism that they believe has largely been responsible for determining and defining the traditional parameters of Islamic studies. In fact, they seem to want to distance themselves from the normative study of Islam and to rename what it is that they do as “Islamic Religious Studies,” a rubric I have adopted, but only pejoratively and critically, to show what Islamic studies should not become, but is in danger of becoming. This term, it will be recalled, is actually a convenient rubric for a type of academic study of Islam that is largely apologetical, descriptive and, for lack of a better term, politically correct. In this new Islamic Religious Studies, questions of sources and their verifiability are not asked (in fact, the pre-twentieth century is largely ignored), issues of skirmishes around identity formations are not broached (with the exception, for example, of African American Muslim women), and topics that deal with Islam as an overlapping set of social and ideological formations are rarely entertained. To form this new “Islamic Religious Studies,” Ernst and Martin assemble together a group of scholars, both senior and junior, to begin the process of rethinking “how to theorize and problematize the textual and social data of Islam and how to adjust their investigations to methodologies that address the urgencies of Islamic studies in the twenty-first century” (2). In this, the editors situate their collection around a previous collection of essays edited by Martin entitled Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies (1985). “The essays

104

Theorizing Islam

in [Rethinking Islamic Studies],” the editors write, “are envisaged as a generational sequel and advance upon the earlier effort, taking full account of the critical developments in the understanding of Islam in recent years” (2010: ix). Whereas the earlier Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies had only one self-identified Muslim among its contributors, the present volume has at least seven (of thirteen). I certainly suggest nothing nefarious about this and am well aware that “insiders” can study their religion critically. On the contrary, I point this out because it reveals just how dramatically the demographics of Islamic Religious Studies has morphed in the past twenty years. This metamorphosis, however, should not just be passed over unawares but should be recognized as a discursive site of disciplinary formation. For this changing demographic, as the essays in this volume reveal, is not without certain epistemological and intellectual repercussions.

Misusing Terms: Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, Religious Studies Despite their intentions of “rethinking” the field, the editors overwhelmingly fail in their task because they work with vague notions of what exactly needs to be rethought. This categorical failure stems, in part, from the fact that nowhere do they clearly define the two key terms that sit uncomfortably together in the subtitle of the book: “Orientalism” and “Cosmopolitanism,” and how both of these fit with an equally murkily defined “religious studies.” The editors tell us, for example, that “Orientalism remains for most scholars the bête noir in the expanding family of Islamic Studies today” (4). Why? Says who? Recent years have seen many important monographs—which greatly extend our understanding of the formative and other periods of Islam—that we or their authors might comfortably label as “Orientalist.” Recall, for example, the studies in Chapter 2 that have questioned many of our presuppositions about the nature of early Islam (e.g., Wansbrough 1977a, 1977b; Crone and Cook 1979; Powers 2009), including its historical reconstruction. Are the pioneering studies of Cook, Crone, and

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

105

Wansbrough the “bête noir” of the field? (According to the scholars examined in Chapter 1, they most certainly are.) Do we simply overlook or dismiss Powers’s insightful work into the nature of the Qur’an’s redaction over time as the community was developing historically and socially as “Orientalist”? In this regard, at no point in their introduction do the editors define what exactly they mean by the term “Orientalism.” It seems to be invoked at will to denigrate and dismiss their opponents. In this regard they tend to employ it in the, by now, surely old-fashioned Saidian sense that connects bad scholarship, artistic production, and empire maintenance. But who seriously engages in, let alone takes seriously, such scholarship today? Said succeeded in creating a straw man (see Varisco 2007: 251–66) and, unfortunately, many of those within the discourses of Islamic Religious Studies maintain this creation, thereby seemingly defining what it is they do or think they do. As I have argued elsewhere: Said’s largely literary argument has unfortunately metastasized into a historic and/or historiographic one (Hughes 2007: 11–13). Using the term “Orientalist” in a pejorative sense, in the manner that the editors do here, is a matter of ideology, a way of dismissing all those who take a critical perspective when it comes to dealing with the historicity of early and other Muslim sources. Even though the editors ostensibly call for a “rethinking” of the discipline, my concern is that they are attempting to establish the parameters for what gets to count as authoritative Islamic studies in the future. Their easy dismissal of those who disagree with them and their hermeneutical approaches, however, cannot take the place of a serious engagement with rival methodologies. To lump their critics under the omnibus rubric “Orientalist” is both misleading and unfair. Am I, for example, an “Orientalist” because I have criticized a number of the authors in this volume on methodological grounds? Is anyone who takes a scholar of Islam to task for presenting an overly apologetical or theological portrait of Islam guilty of the charge of being an “Orientalist” (or, worse, an “Islamophobe”)? I would hope not. There is a danger that a book such as Rethinking Islamic Studies might further sever the relationship between Islamic Religious Studies and those who undertake such activity in other departments (e.g., Near Eastern studies). The latter and their emphases—for

106

Theorizing Islam

example, the historical development of Islamic law (shari’a), the rise of Quranic exegesis, the intersection between Greek and monotheistic paradigms in theology and philosophy—are all but ignored. They are ignored, moreover, in favor of topics that one could label as “soft” or “light,” such as appeals for gender equality (the essay by Omid Safi), what it means to be African American and a Muslim (Jamillah Karim), gender ambiguity and homoeroticism (Scott Kugle), and, of course, Sufism (the essays by David Gilmartin, Tony K. Stewart, and Carl Ernst). The second ambiguous term of the subtitle of Rethinking Islamic Studies is “Cosmopolitanism,” which, given its invocation and placement, seems to function as a hermeneutic to replace the recently and, as I have just argued, all-too-easily-dismissed “Orientalism.” By this new term, the editors seem to have in mind a pluralism of non-critical, non-skeptical, and insider approaches to deal with Islam. It appears, even though it is not completely obvious from their introduction, that the editors have in mind Kwame Anthony Appiah’s notion of “cosmopolitanism,” as articulated in his 2006 book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Therein, Appiah writes that “two strands intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism”: One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kin, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. (2006: xv) Sure enough, Appiah’s notion of cosmopolitanism is invoked in the collection, but we have to wait until page 53 before we read that this term “is the foundation of [Appiah’s] vision of a harmonious, globalized social order based on pluralism and tolerance.” Okay, but what does this mean? How does this term function as a critical hermeneutic to bring to Islamic data? Cosmopolitanism, it seems to me, is largely a moralistic claim, a form of ethical coexistence in a world reduced by the potentially hostile forces of globalization. In this sense, Appiah’s work represents an articulate plea for human diversity. However, it is uncertain as to

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

107

how we could employ his notion of cosmopolitanism as a critical method in the academic study of religion. I assume that to study religious forms using a “cosmopolitan” hermeneutic would mean that we would have to take these forms seriously and at face value. We would have to accept them as they are; to describe them using terms to which those of the religion in question would assent; and not attempt to undermine them by using hermeneutics of suspicion, reductionism, or the like. Framed in this manner, it should now be clear why the editors were so quick to dismiss Orientalism, which engages in the critical study of Islamic texts. It would appear that their goal in mapping the “new” Islamic studies is to be neither critical nor offensive to Muslim sensibilities. The goal, in short, is more of what we have encountered throughout this study: a theological presentation of Islam that refuses to ask hard questions or engage the critical discourses of religious studies. The third term that the editors invoke and the disciplinary perspective from which the majority of contributors ostensibly write is “religious studies.” Yet “religious studies,” as we all know, provides an extremely broad set of approaches, theories, and methods that range from the phenomenological and ecumenical to the extremely critical. To what “religious studies” do the editors and authors desire to connect? The editors, for example, insist on the importance of “theoriz[ing] Islamic data within religious studies” and that such theorizing “makes Islamic studies more intelligible within the discourse of religious studies” (13). However, there is no engagement with what it means to theorize data or how to make Islamic data more attractive to religionists working in other areas with similar problems but different datasets. Presumably this is left to contributors to work out; yet very few do, as I shall show in subsequent sections of this chapter. Since there is no mention of individuals such as J. Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, Russell McCutcheon (to name but a few), the editors’ idea of religious studies seems to be the liberal protestant one that is not particularly interested in meta-questions or category analysis, does not question the basic narrative parameters of practitioners, and is overly descriptive. The editors imply as much when they state that the future of Islamic studies has to “consider the impact of having

108

Theorizing Islam

Muslim students in the classroom” (5). Why? What are the repercussions of such a statement? That we have to teach Islam in a manner that Muslims do not disagree with or that does not offend them? Do those who teach Judaism or Christianity have to “consider the impact” of having Jews or Christians in their classrooms? I would certainly hope not and that the presence of such students in a classroom should ideally mean that we have to work extra hard to theorize about how we can make unrecognizable the religious forms that students think they know. To be fair, the editors mention Talal Asad, but reduce his complex work to the following utterance: “He argued forcefully that Muslim societies must be understood on their own terms and not a superimposed model” (9)! There is no engagement, for example, with Asad’s critique of the political implications of the use and abuse of the very term “religion” (1993: 29). Rather than simply state, as Ernst and Martin would imply, that Islam must be “understood on its own terms,” Asad’s claim is much more bold, implying that scholars of Islam should unpack generic and essential terms such as “Islam” into a variety of heterogeneous and historically specific elements, each one of which both embodies and reflects a variety of power relations in local situations. This imbroglio of power relations, moreover, is something in which we as scholars are also invested, whether we know it or not, or acknowledge it or not. Ideally, theorizing in religious studies, as again ideally it should be in Islamic studies, is about taking a critical perspective when it comes to the status quo (howsoever this may be defined). A “theoretical” perspective cannot be invoked whimsically to make a point only and whenever it suits the scholar—for example, in the case above where Asad was invoked for no other reason than to show that Muslims must be studied on their own terms. On the contrary, theorizing is about consistency and about following through even when it makes us (and potentially those we study) uncomfortable.

The Structure of Rethinking Islamic Studies To begin their project of “rehabilitation,” Ernst and Martin divide the book into three overlapping sections with the aim of creating

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

109

a “post-Orientalist Islamic Studies” (15). The first section seeks to provide various Islamic perspectives on modernity; the second section deals with social scientific and humanistic perspectives on Islam; and the third and final section deals with Asian perspectives on the Muslim subject. The editors write that they have chosen these rubrics to highlight the contemporary significance of the Islamic tradition, the interdisciplinary approaches that are increasingly required in religious studies, and the specifically regional and local factors and histories that govern the positioning of Muslims as subjects in particular contexts. (ibid.) The choice of such rubrics, however, is not without a set of problems. They blur, for example, the boundaries between the academic study of Islam and Islamic perspectives on a particular topic. Islamic perspectives on modernity, for example, are decidedly not the same thing as modern perspectives on Islam. In fact, the latter should interest us more because they illumine how we construct Islam and how the forces of secularism contribute to such constructions. Instead, however, we are offered essays on “Islamic perspectives on modernity” that deal with the “epistemological crisis” of modern Muslim intellectuals (Cornell); “progressive Muslims” in North America and how they can aid the reform movement in Iran (Safi); how Islam is no longer the simple practice of everyday life, but a choice and commitment that illustrates individual belief (Karim). In a similar manner the third part that deals with “Asian perspectives” is also problematic on a theoretical level. Its intent, for instance, is never transparent. Is it to provide an analysis of how Muslim and Asian perspectives on the (Muslim) subject differ from one another or is it to understand the Asian-Muslim subject? Certainly Islam in Southeast Asia has tended to take a backseat to Islam in the Arab world over the longue durée of historical writing and, in such a respect, this section is certainly welcome. However, how the essays in this section contribute to our understanding of “Asian perspectives on the Muslim subject” (15) is by no means clear. The very term “Asian,” for example, is as problematic as it is essentialist (as indeed is “the Muslim subject”). Moreover, there is no analysis of the blurred and blurring borders between, for lack of better terms,

110

Theorizing Islam

“Muslimnesses” and “Asiannesses.” Rather, we are presented with examples of homoerotic poetry (Kugle) and the role of ethics in the modern “Asian nation-state” (essays by Ernst and Moosa). The result is that many of the essays straddle the boundary between “insider” and “outsider” accounts or, framed differently, between apologetic and critical studies—with an emphasis on the former of each pair. The danger of this is that the academic study of Islam will become not more familiar to those working in religious studies, but less so. If the desire is to create a rapprochement between contemporary theoretical modeling in religious studies and the academic study of Islam, why do the editors/contributors encourage an approach that stresses “Muslim” and “Asian” perspectives as opposed to critical ones? I suspect they would argue that this is because the latter are implicated in numerous wills to power and the Orientalist heritage from which they desire to move.

The Return of the Insider Many of the essays bear this hermeneutic out. Less interested in opening the academic study of Islam up to broader theoretical trajectories in critical theory, many betray a tendency towards introspection and exclusion. Since space does not permit me to examine all of the essays in the volume, I shall merely examine several of them that I find most egregious in this regard. The first essay of the volume is Vincent J. Cornell’s “Reasons Public and Divine: Liberal Democracy, Shari`a Fundamentalism, and the Epistemological Crisis of Islam.” Vincent Cornell is presently the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Emory University. Cornell provides further evidence for my claim in Chapter 1— namely, that many scholars of Islamic Religious Studies tend to blur important distinctions such as that between insider and outsider, and engage in the business of active theologizing from the secular pulpit of a publicly funded university. In this regard, Cornell is also a Muslim theologian who is actively involved in interfaith dialogue, and is currently the director of the project Toward a Muslim Theology of World Religions, sponsored by the Elijah Interfaith Institute and funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.1

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

111

Cornell’s essay, as we can glean from the title, provides a theological and technical study of “epistemological crisis” among Muslim intellectuals, among whom he certainly counts himself. He argues that these intellectuals have not yet analyzed the principles of Islam and modernity, in particular, the forms of liberal democracy associated with the West. Rather than embrace liberal democracy, there is a tendency to regard the shari`a (Islamic law) “as holistic and absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction” (27). This epistemological crisis, according to Cornell, must be mediated by developing “new resources and frameworks for the tradition under pressure” (30). By this, he means that Muslim theologians need to create an understanding of the shari`a that is informed by western principles of democracy and liberalism. As interesting as this may be, I am not sure how this represents a rethinking of Islamic studies, as the title of the volume in which it appears claims to do. Is the future of the field really about Muslim theologians, writing from within the discipline of religious studies, developing new conceptual models with which to harness the forces of liberal democracy to shari`a and vice versa? The third chapter in the volume is by Omid Safi, and is entitled “Between ‘Ijtihad of the Presupposition’ and Gender Equality: Cross-Pollination between Progressive Islam and Iranian Reform.” It functions as a further installment in his ongoing project to develop a “progressive Islam” (see, e.g., Safi 2003 and my critique in Hughes 2007: 109–11). Safi’s hermeneutic, and it should come as no surprise, given my analysis of his work in Chapter 1, is to write as a “participant-observer”: …[this] is not merely an academic exercise. As someone who considers himself a participant-observer in both [Reform] movements, it seems to me that both progressive Islam and the Iranian reform movement presently have foundational shortcomings that have to be remedied before each can achieve its potential. (73) Safi’s goal here is to provide a first-hand account of his role in the formation of a progressive Islam in North America, link it to what is going on in the Reform movement in Iran, and detail its shortcomings. This will enable him and like-minded colleagues to regenerate

112

Theorizing Islam

Islam for the present. Like Cornell, and indeed like so many of the authors collected between the covers of this volume, Safi presents himself as an insider who is trying to ameliorate the tensions caused by the intersection of the so-called and highly reified “Islamic” and “western” worlds. This redefinition of Islamic studies and what gets to count (or not count) as valid scholarship creates real epistemological problems. What role, for example, do non-Muslims or even Muslims who are interested in historical and critical scholarship have to play in this new Islamic studies? Islamic Religious Studies, to reiterate, risks becoming a form of liberal Muslim theology. What does this say about Islamic Religious Studies? What does this say about the discipline of religious studies, which allows this to happen in its midst? The editors have, after all, made the rather dubious claim that the essays in their volume will help to create “the development of a new subfield that is fully integrated with religious studies” (12)! Let me return briefly to Safi’s essay. His goal is to argue that progressive Muslims in North America need to connect their discourses to reform movements outside of the “West” (his essentialism, not mine), such as in Iran. His conclusion speaks volumes about the new Islamic studies: Perhaps the most exciting part of the new emerging global Muslim progressive identity is that progressives everywhere are seeking one another out, reading one another’s work, collaborating with one another’s organizations. This is a fruitful process of cross-pollination. (90) This “progressive” identity is something that is manufactured by scholars of Islamic Religious Studies. And that is precisely what they do: seek one another out, read each other’s works, write blurbs for each other’s books, and invite one another to their conferences, where religious studies and overt (not even crypto-) theology intermingle. Following Safi’s piece, we encounter Jamillah Karim’s examination of how African American women attempt to understand themselves, their experiences, and Islam in response to immigrant Muslim women’s experiences. Her chapter is tellingly entitled “Can

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

113

We Define ‘True’ Islam? African American Muslim Women Respond to Transnational Muslim Identities.” The chapter title is indeed promising: we encounter both “true” in quotation marks and the word “identity”. However, her goal is to show how immigrant Muslim women, particularly South Asians, transport Muslim gender notions to the American context at the same time that they create new meaning into gender structures. They imagine new possibilities for themselves as Muslim women related to mosque attendance, dress, and work. (116) The problem with this, of course, is that terms such as “Muslim” or “Islam” or even “gender” and “the American context” are neither defined nor queried. Certainly Karim puts quotations around terms such as “true” and “cultural” when she refers to different types of Islam; however, her goal is decidedly not to show how such Islams are actively created or contested. On the contrary, she seeks to show that As immigrant Muslim women reassess and modify gender norms related to mosque attendance, dress, and work, and as African American Muslim women respond to this repositioning, both groups of women create important Islamic feminist discourses seeking greater gender justice and women’s agency based on the Islamic sources of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)… For both groups “real” Islam is understood as one that advances women’s rights, whereas cultural Islam is widely accepted as one that harms women. (117; my italics) Because Karim’s hermeneutic is based on fieldwork with informants, her focus is solely anthropological and descriptive. She is not interested, for example, in the ways that authoritative Muslim practices are signified as “authoritative.” She speaks of Muslim identities, but nevertheless speaks of “the Islamic sources.” Moreover, all of her discussion about gender takes place in the United States, whose diverse notions of gender roles are ignored in the discussion except to say that there is an “ethnic American experience” (128). Finally, Karim implies that while immigrant Muslim identities are

114

Theorizing Islam

neither static nor monolithic, non-immigrant Islamic identity is. As in the essays by Cornell and Safi, Karim also invokes a trope that is one of the hallmarks of the “new” Islamic studies, “gender justice”: Muslim women’s perspectives on Muslim gender norms provide a window onto into transnational Muslim formations and African American Muslim responses. As both immigrant and African American Muslim women redefine Islam and Muslim gender norms based on their new religious knowledge and ethnic American experiences, they often generate Islamic feminist consciousness and practices. (128)

*** In the section entitled “Rethinking the Subject: Asian Perspectives,” Scott Kugle—in a chapter entitled “Dancing with Khusro: Gender Ambiguities and Poetic Performance in a Delhi Dargah”—examines the homoerotic themes of a fourteenth-century poet that can “help engineer a balance between political effectiveness and cultural authenticity” (262). Although he never tells us what “cultural authenticity” is or what it might look like, based on the tenor of his essay it must involve the acceptance “of gender ambiguity and sexuality diversity”—two features about which, he judges, Muslim and Hindu societies have become increasingly intolerant. Kugle argues that “critical theory” (it is unclear what exactly he means by this term) and Islamic Religious Studies have a practical and quasitheological goal: to protect diversity within Islam. “The welfare of many,” he concludes his essay, “depends upon the success of this delicate project” (262). This project is related to other of Kugle’s writings dealing with the topic of homosexuality in Islam. Using his Muslim name, Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, he has written a theological treatise entitled Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (2010). Beginning this work with the customary Muslim invocation “In the name of God, the Compassionate One, the One who cares…,” Siraj al-Haqq Kugle writes that All praise belongs to God, the singular and subtle One, who created the universe and made humankind reflect its diversity.

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

115

All thanks be to God, who made from one human being two, and from two made many and declared, we created you all from a male and female and made you into different communities and different tribes. Glory be to God who made a multitude in which each is unique and urged them to reflect upon their differences, overcome their egoistic judgment of others, and find the good in each reflected in others—so that you should come to know one another, acknowledging that the most noble among you is the one most aware of God (Qur’an [Q.] 49:13). Then to God they are called and all return. So let us each revere that God, the forbearing One, the One who is just. (2010: vi) Following this, Siraj al-Haqq Kugle moves into a discussion of Islamic tolerance (again read the trope of “gender justice”): The reformist or progressive approach must take into account new possibilities for human fulfillment in increasingly nonpatriarchal societies like those evolving under democratic constitutions, where Muslims are living as minority communities and fellow citizens. In these new environments, it is possible for homosexual relationships to be based on ethical reciprocity, trust, justice, and love, just as heterosexual relationships ought to be based on these values in the ethical vision of the Qur’an. What matters is not the sex of the partner with whom one forms a partnership, as long as that partnership is contractual on par with legal custom. Rather, what matters is the ethical nature of the relationship one has within the constraints of one’s internal disposition, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity. (3) It is certainly not my intent to criticize the project of showing Islam’s compatibility with gender and sexual diversity. My problem is that such theological musings bleed into works that apparently claim to be critical and scholarly studies. My goal, then, is to reveal the theological underpinnings of what passes for the “new” Islamic studies, showing that it is just more of the same old Islamic Religious Studies but with a few more apologetic emphases.

116

Theorizing Islam

Connections to the Humanities and Social Sciences The great majority of the essays in the Ernst and Martin volume are quasi-theological and apologetical, and represent the ongoing desire to carve out a liberal Islam that is all about “gender justice,” “progressivism,” “transnationalism,” etc. The goal is to show the interface between an “authentic” Islam and liberal democracy, including the celebration of sexual and intellectual diversity. Such topics, from my perspective, are not, will not, and cannot be the future face of Islamic studies as carried out within departments of religious studies. For one thing, many of these chapters are too introspective. They do not, in other words, reach out to those in religious studies who happen to work with other datasets. This is strange given the fact that one of the goals of the editors was to create a “new” Islamic studies that could further “address the problem of the absence of Islamic Studies in religious studies scholarship and curricula” (6). I fail to see, for example, how the need to create a liberal Islamic discourse that combines American progressive Muslims (largely professors of Islam who work in religious studies departments) with reform-minded individuals in the so-called “Muslim” world actively contributes to the creation of new theoretical modeling in the academic study of religion. Or, for that matter, how an essay that argues that modern Muslim theologians/intellectuals must, like their medieval predecessors, embrace foreign ideas and adopt and adapt them to Islamic teachings is of any relevance whatsoever to the ostensible objective and critical study of religion. I could go on and subject all of the essays in this volume to a similar critique. I choose not to, however, and believe that my analysis of the chapters that I have already examined here will suffice to make my case. Indeed, there are even some very good and more critical essays in the collection: the one by the co-editor Richard Martin and Abbas Barzegar, which scrutinizes the complex web of social factors that contribute to the formation of orthodoxy, is probably the best of the lot precisely because the authors do try to engage broader themes in religious studies. There is also a chapter by Louis A.

Reflections on Rethinking Islamic Studies

117

Ruprecht, Jr. (the only non-Islamicist in the collection) that provides a good, if impressionistic, discussion of identity, comparative religion, and museum culture. However, I am still uncertain and unclear as to its connection to the larger theme of the volume and the other chapters. As I argued in the review that forms the nucleus of the current chapter, despite their bold claims that this volume represents a “rethinking” of the field, it actually reads as a Festschrift to honor the recently retired Bruce B. Lawrence, the former Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University. Many of the contributors are his former students and/or colleagues and virtually every essay begins with a laudatory invocation of Lawrence’s work, claiming to take his methodology in new or different directions. Indeed, Lawrence himself responds to each essay at the end of the collection. The editors are perhaps not to be faulted for their desire to market their book with the grandiose title of “rethinking” the discipline, and Lawrence certainly has done a lot in helping to define the field. However, to give this collected volume the title they do is highly problematic and far too exclusive. I would like to conclude the present chapter by arguing that it becomes necessary for those of us who work with Islamic datasets both non-apologetically and within the broader field of religious studies to rethink this Rethinking Islamic Studies.It is to this subject that I now turn.

6 From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies” So where do we go from here? How do we create or return to a critical and academic study of Islam from the theologizing and apologetics currently associated with Islamic Religious Studies? In this chapter I refer to this critical and academic study of Islam as the “New Islamic Studies,” one that positions itself in stark opposition to much of the work surveyed in the previous chapters. Moving beyond attempts to create a liberal version of Islam or the desire to defend Islam at all costs, this “New Islamic Studies” privileges the examination and analysis, not the mere description, of Islamic data, showing how they are implicated in the creation and maintenance of manifold Muslim identities on both synchronic and diachronic levels. Despite calls to the contrary, as witnessed for example in Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies, there have been virtually no attempts to connect Islamic data to the critical methods and discourses supplied by certain subsections within the larger field of religious studies.1 Instead we are presented, time and again, with special pleading and attempts to convey the uniqueness of Islamic data. It is important to reorient the field from such special pleading to a critical study in tune with other discourses in the larger discipline in which Islamic Religious Studies finds itself. Reorienting an entire subdiscipline, especially one about which the majority of those associated with it see nothing problematic, is, however, a rather daunting task. The events of 9/11, as mentioned in the Introduction, put Islam under the microscope (“Why do they hate us?”—as the naïve refrain went). Although we could certainly make the case that 9/11 was the catalyst for the various apologetic treatments examined in Chapters 1, 3 and 5, it would, I think, be a mistake to assume that such apologetical discourses simply came into existence over the last decade or

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

119

so. It is probably more accurate to acknowledge that these discourses were already in existence—undoubtedly nurtured by the regnant phenomenological approach of religious studies that aims to take religion “seriously”—and that the events of 9/11 brought them to the surface, intensified their usage, and made their deployment de rigueur.2 Some of Esposito’s apologetic works—with names such as The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (1999 [1992])—were published, for example, well before 2001. There is no denying that those who study Islam academically have certainly found themselves in an awkward position. Public opinion has become very hostile toward Islam and Muslims, spurred on by the ridiculous and over-the-top comments made by right-wing commentators. However, a response to such critics (while certainly necessary on some levels) should not function as the de facto methodological positioning of the field. My concern is that this is precisely what is happening, and I trust that many of the works examined in the pages above bear this out. What we encounter in such works is a discipline on the defensive, and the results are certainly not conducive to critical and detached scholarship. Indeed such critical scholarship is usually written off as “Orientalist” or worse, and in its place we hear the concomitant call, as seen in the previous chapter, to move towards some vaguely defined “cosmopolitanism” or inclusive (read: theological) approach, which presumably is meant to function as a panacea for the ills that currently plague both Islam and its academic study. This, what I have called “Islamic Religious Studies,” is quickly becoming the new pulpit for a liberal and ecumenical Islamic theology. Islamic Religious Studies is such an apt name for this because, by and large, it weds Islamic data with some of the most egregiously theological aspects of the academic study of religion. Muslims and non-Muslims who both specialize in Islam and inhabit departments of religious studies have created this theological discourse and they disseminate it, both academically and publicly, with full institutional backing. It is precisely this institutional legitimacy, and the intellectual lethargy that stems from it, that so concerns me. Those who do not buy into this manufactured liberal Islam or question the set of quasimethodological tools that bring it into existence risk ostracization.

120

Theorizing Islam

Recall Omid Safi’s comments from Chapter 1, where he neatly differentiated between books written by “scholars trained in the field of Islamic studies and [those] which are composed by prejudiced bigots” (2009:14). Those who disagree with us cannot simply be labeled as bigots. Moreover, it is not entirely clear who these “bigots” are. Are they scholars, such as John Wansbrough, who examine the historical origins of the Qur’an and subsequently Islam? Or, are they right-wing “Islamophobes”? The fact that Safi is not clear in this regard is cause for real concern. In the same chapter, I also flag in this regard Carl Ernst’s less extreme, but equally problematic, desire to keep critical scholarship “safely buried in obscure academic journals” (2003: 97). If Safi’s “bigots” were ambiguous, Ernst is clear that such critical scholarship has little or no room in his vision of Islamic Religious Studies. Why this fear of critical scholarship? Does critical scholarship really have to be invested in the Orientalist enterprise? Is the alternative the types of theological essays encountered in Rethinking Islamic Studies? If we simply replace critical and historical scholarship with modern theologizing, and a set of discourses that revolve, in manifold variations, around the theme “Islam is Peace,” what exactly are we doing or claiming to do? This “with us or against us” mentality currently functions as the sentinel that patrols the field’s boundaries. The clearest example of this is Rethinking Islamic Studies, which I contend reveals a concerted effort, whether conscious or unconscious, to define narrowly what gets to count and not count as “valid” Islamic Religious Studies. Although this edited collection positions itself as “cutting-edge” scholarship, it is anything but. Instead it provides more of the same cryptotheologizing—in fact, several of the essays are not even “crypto,” they are just plain theologizing—that has marred Islamic Religious Studies for the past decade and beyond. Critical approaches are largely ignored and, in their stead, we are offered sound bites by selected scholars, such as Talal Asad, whose complex theoretical work on issues such as secularism is reduced by the editors to a set of pithy and largely unhelpful remarks, such as “Muslim societies must be understood on their own terms” (Ernst and Martin 2010: 9). Implicit in this is the suggestion that “Muslim societies” are somehow unique and demand to be studied using the unique methodologies developed by scholars of Islamic Religious Studies.

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

121

This policing of academic boundaries and soft approach to matters of theory and method do no one any good. Both create a situation that is potentially unhealthy both for the general field and for our ability to understand the complexities associated with Islamic social and identity formations. My disagreement with the likes of Esposito and the authors in Rethinking Islamic Studies is not personal, but ideological and scholarly, turning on the assumption that if we permit an essentialized and reified Islam (note the singular and not the plural) that is produced through an elaborate system of privilege and denial, then ultimately we deny the manifold Islams their histories. In what follows, I try to begin the process of rethinking some of this. Using as the point of departure my reconstructive Chapters 2 and 4, I confine myself in the present chapter to a series of theoretical and methodological reflections for thinking through this New Islamic Studies.

The View from Nowhere: Expertise, Authority and the Scholar Scholars of Islamic Religious Studies, presumably like scholars of all disciplines, pride themselves on their scholarly bona fides. These bona fides are, after all, what signal expertise and scholarly practice in the myriad of interrelated and interconnected disciplinary formations. Increasingly, however, these bona fides in Islamic Religious Studies have been wedded to a commitment to liberal Islamic values based on constructive theology and, where necessary, descriptive diachronic study. This intersection now functions as the privileged space from which to speak about and study Islam within departments of religious studies (see, for example, the comments in Martin 2011).3 The material examined in the previous chapters certainly bears witness to this. Safi, as we saw in Chapter 1 excoriates all those “non-experts” who make his life difficult by thinking they have something to say about Islam. Oxford University Press hails John Esposito as “one of America’s leading experts.” Oxford University Press also continues to publish the work of Tariq Ramadan, which is saturated with a non-critical approach to Islam that virtually

122

Theorizing Islam

proselytizes to non-Muslims. The collection of essays in Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies sanctions the new cosmopolitan Islamic Religious Studies, thereby attempting to silence dissonant voices. Because these scholars, and others, present themselves as the de facto experts on Islam, they desire, perhaps not surprisingly, to retain the monopoly on their self-perceived sphere of privilege. This privileged sphere, based as it is on the institutionally ascribed asymmetry between scholar and audience, is after all what permits a scholar to command the respect or trust of an audience or, at least, make audiences think this is the case. In his nuanced discussion of authority, Bruce Lincoln differentiates between numerous actors who claim authoritative status. The type of “authority” I am most interested in here is the one whereby individuals style themselves—as opposed to being styled by others—as “an authority” on a particular topic. Such “authorities,” according to Lincoln, rarely bring forth reasoned arguments, but rely on authority’s age-old ally of persuasion: This exercise of persuasive authority, in other words, “need not involve argumentation and may rest on the naked assertion that the identity of the speaker warrants acceptance of the speech” (Lincoln 1994: 5). This force of persuasion, as so many of the works manufactured by scholars of Islamic Religious Studies reveal, is one of the primary goals of these experts. They do not, as we have seen, take kindly to the intrusion of unauthorized persons into the privileged sphere. They write for one another; they endorse each other’s work; and they guard the sanctum from which they profess their version of Islam. Those who disagree risk ostracization as “Orientalists,” “bigots,” or “Islamophobes.” Do they convince anyone? This is the big question. Obviously, it is impossible to track the sales of their books. However, we can track certain iterations of the book’s influence. In an attempt to assert their persuasive authority and presumably to widen their privileged sphere, the editors of Rethinking Islamic Studies assembled a workshop at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Atlanta with a twofold intent: The purpose of the workshop is two-fold. The main goal is to identify and discuss research problems in the study of Islam that are now confronting scholar members of the American

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

123

Academy of Religion. Participants (AAR members, including graduate students and faculty) will receive a copy of Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, edited by Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin (University of South Carolina Press, 2010), in which fourteen scholars write on specific problems, methods, and theories in Islamic studies today. Within this framework, a second goal is for participants to meet in broad thematic breakout groups, to present current research projects for review, and to offer constructive analysis by the members of the group. Each group will be led by two scholars experienced in research, publication, and grant funding.4 For sixty dollars, participants received a copy of the book and were led in a series of breakout “discussions,” in which the contributing authors examined and commented upon participants’ research topics. The workshop had sixty spaces, which were quickly “sold out.” Thus sixty young scholars and their research projects were presumably brought in line with the general apologetical “methodological” tenor of the volume. Indeed, so successful was this workshop that another one was held at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the AAR in San Francisco, entitled “Gender, Secularity, and the Body in the Text.”5

The Simultaneity of Destruction and Reconstruction In order to rebuild the academic study of Islam it is first necessary to tear down the methodological and categorical scaffolding that currently surrounds it. Invoking Nietzsche’s metaphor of philosophizing with a hammer, it is time to lay bare—or, following Nietzsche, smash—the category errors and faulty methodologies that currently define the study of Islam. Why? As I trust I have demonstrated, this is the only way that we can move beyond a field that wants to associate “Islam with peace” or show Islam’s compatibility with liberal virtues such as gender justice and egalitarianism by returning to an authentic Muhammadan teaching that was subsequently

124

Theorizing Islam

corrupted by medieval male elites. This is nothing more than a form of special pleading brought on by contemporary political events. How can we honestly teach our students or the general public about Islam if we peddle half-truths or simply repeat a set of slogans until we have convinced ourselves that they are true? We largely fail, both as scholars and as educators, if we create an object of study solely in our own image or in the image of what we desire that object to be. This is a form of wish fulfillment, not scholarship, and it paradoxically both results in and flows from shoddy methodological frameworks and unchecked assumptions (recall J. Z. Smith’s insistence on the importance of self-reflexivity in our field). Because Islam, like any religion, does not exist naturally in the world, our understanding of this tradition, in all its manifoldness and synchronic and diachronic complexity, is contingent upon the lenses we cut and through which we look. These prisms are not valueneutral, but coincide with the formation of a set of terms, categories, and rhetorical tropes. All prisms distort and it is up to us to employ those with the least amount of refraction. And the only way this can happen is to be constantly vigilant as to what we are doing and why we are doing it. A large part of the problem associated with many of the books discussed here is that their authors are not (or perhaps better, seem not to be) conscious of theoretical issues and methodological problems. Rather they perceive themselves as simply engaging data and subsequently describing or translating it for non-specialists. But even approaches that claim to be simply descriptive are saturated with theoretical issues that, more often than not, are connected to matters of authority, representation, and, of course, authenticity. What texts, for example, are used? Why this particular set of texts and not others? These questions are certainly not innocent, yet are frequently passed over in complete silence. Only by destroying the existing approaches of the status quo, laying bare its assumptions, will it be possible to rebuild the academic study of Islam as carried out in departments of religious studies.6 This destruction can only occur by questioning, picking away at, and generally undermining its regnant discourses. This reorientation needs to begin at the most basic level, with the words, tropes, and categories we employ, then move on to the textbooks used to

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

125

introduce undergraduates to Islam, and end with graduate school programs that will permit their students to engage in critical theory and its application to Islamic datasets. It is, in other words, a large program that will take years to develop and implement, but the key for this change is that there has to be a will to change and reform the status quo. It is in this spirit that I have offered these critical essays. This book’s structure has attempted to facilitate this project of destruction and reconstruction. Destruction, of course, is the easy part; what is more difficult is reconstruction, especially on shifting terrain. In this light, Chapters 1, 3, and 5 attempted, destructively, to expose many of what I consider to be the shortcomings of Islamic Religious Studies. Chapters 2, 4, and 6, on the contrary, have tried to tackle the same subject matter, but from a radically different set of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Semantics: A Return to First Terms The large overhaul that I am suggesting here must begin with the most basic of issues: words. Words are certainly not disinterested or innocent, and it is often the case that larger concepts ride, unchecked, on their backs. Many of the words employed in Islamic Religious Studies, from the most obvious ones such as “Islam” or “shari`a” are not value-neutral (as they are often presented), but sites of contestation around which various regimes of truth skirmish for control. Frequently we encounter, for example, terms such as “Islam” in the singular as opposed to the plural. Or, “Islam” is presented as existing as early as the time of Muhammad, but never the product of later generations who created the legal, exegetical, and ritual components that actively brought Islam (or, better, “Islams”) into existence. A couple of examples should suffice. In Chapter 1, I showed how Carl Ernst performs all sorts of hermeneutic back-flips to “clarify” the lexeme “jihad.” Western audiences, he informs us, must be aware that the term has many meanings. This presumably allows him to imply that there are other types of “jihad” (such as the nonviolent “inner jihad”). However, when it comes to Muslims who employ the term jihad in a violent manner, Ernst suddenly backtracks and argues

126

Theorizing Islam

that such individuals are guilty of woefully misunderstanding their own tradition. What happened to his earlier position of terms having many or unfixed meanings? Another example comes from my own discussion in Chapter 2. There I tried to nuance a term that is traditionally glossed over. “Judaism” in seventh-century Arabia most decidedly did not mean the same thing that it does today or even in the fourteenth century. When we talk about the “Jews of Arabia,” then, we must be careful that we do not impose later notions of ethnicity and religion as markers of identity in a period when such concepts were anything but clear and probably did not even function as such markers. What, for example, does an “Arabian Jewish tribe” mean? What were their relationships to other Judaisms in the seventh-century Red Sea Basin? Lexemes such as these must be queried, not taken for granted as part of the natural world. If they are not interrogated, we run the risk, as the likes of Ernst and so many others discussed here do, of making one interpretation of them normative or authentic. The result is that rival interpretations become bastardizations or somehow inauthentic. Recall, in this regard, Esposito’s remarks that the controversy over the Danish cartoons resulted simply from the fact that Muslims were offended at an Islamophobic portrayal. Such simplicity both whitewashes the real issues and insults readers. Terms that are fast becoming the hallmarks of Islamic Religious Studies—such as “gender justice,” “progressive Islam,” “democracy,” “transnationalism”—need, I urge, to be submitted to scrutiny. Where do such terms come from? When were they first employed and, concomitantly, what are their ideological genealogies? What sorts of intellectual work do such terms perform for those who employ them? The New Islamic Studies—not to be confused with Islamic Religious Studies—must begin with this process of interrogation and rehabilitation.

Ten Theses on Method In 1996, Bruce Lincoln published thirteen “Theses on Method” in order to clarify what it is that historians of religions do (e.g., “History is the method and religion the object of study” [1996: 225]).7

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

127

These theses, as Lincoln himself notes, are pithy comments aimed directly at the apologetic discourses that define the academic study of religion. This larger discipline, of which the study of Islam forms a part, is itself marred by a confusion of aims and methods. As Lincoln himself notes in his twelfth thesis: “Although critical inquiry has become commonplace in other disciplines, it still offends many students of religion, who denounce it as ‘reductionism.’ This charge is meant to silence critique” (1996: 227). It should go without saying that such comments must be directed at both scholars of religion and scholars of Islam. In the spirit of Lincoln, I herewith present my own set of ten theses. Their aim is to remove the largely apologetical scaffolding associated with Islamic Religious Studies. If we are to dismantle this scaffolding we must clearly isolate the discourses that both support it and that it supports. We, invoking Nietzsche’s metaphor again, need to theorize with a hammer here: Call existing discourses what they are and, in the process, relegate their future deployment to a clearly defined or articulated realm of liberal Muslim theological apologetics. This, ideally, will prevent the slippage that currently goes on within Islamic Religious Studies, where we have theologians presenting their progressive Islam, in secular universities no less, proffering a version of the religion that they have largely created in their own image. As I have stressed all along, my interest is solely in the reformation of Islamic studies as carried out within departments of religious studies, the so-called “Islamic Religious Studies.” I leave it up to others who work in such areas to decide if the study of Islam as carried out in cognate fields such as political science, Near Eastern studies, Middle Eastern studies or history needs to undergo such reformation. My argument is that only by destroying what passes for existing methodological impulses in Islamic Religious Studies, as exemplified in the scholars and their work examined in this collection, will it be possible for the study of Islam to enter the mainstream. I present these theses as an initial step on the lengthy and labyrinthine path that will hopefully shift the direction of Islamic Religious Studies from the opaque to the transparent, from the essential to the historical, from the uncontested to the contested, from the so-called “objective” to

128

Theorizing Islam

the ideological, and, finally, from the apologetic to the critical. The result of this shift will hopefully be what I here call the “New Islamic Studies.” Let me say a word about their structure. Theses One through Five are largely destructive, a way of toppling the regnant discourses. Following this, as the dust settles, Theses Six through Ten aim at reconstruction, highlighting a series of themes and issues that should be of importance to scholars of Islamic data. So, without further ado, I hereby nail these to the office doors of all those engaged in the academic study of Islam within departments of religious studies. May their bluntness and, I hope, acuity inspire further discussion as a way of moving the conversation along. Thesis Number One. We must cease treating Islam, Muslims and Islamic data as if they were somehow special or privileged objects of study. “Reverence,” to quote from Lincoln’s fifth thesis, “is a religious, and not a scholarly virtue” (1996, 225–6). This lack of reverence must be the bedrock for the creation of the New Islamic Studies. Too many “scholarly” treatments of Islam, as we have seen, are completely unwilling to engage in critical analyses. The origins of the Qur’an and the problematic features of Muhammad’s biography, for example, are rarely, if ever, entertained. Instead, we are presented with a summary of Muslim accounts of the former (e.g., that the Qur’an is a product of divine revelation) and, for the latter, with an assumption that later accounts are faithful historical documents and, even worse, with poetic descriptions of what Muhammad means to contemporary scholars (see Chapter 1). A case in point occurs in Chapter 3, where John Esposito is quoted as actually complaining that we tend to use a double standard because we “approach Islam differently than we [do] Judaism or Christianity” (2003, xv). Maybe political commentators and average citizens do this, but the case in Islamic Religious Studies is the exact opposite. These scholars, I have argued, get away with things that those dealing with other religions could never get away with. Recall, in this regard, Tariq Ramadan’s hermeneutic of love or Omid Safi’s hermeneutic of “God knows better than we do” (Allah a`lam) (2009, 139). These approaches are not scholarly, yet they are produced

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

129

by scholars of Islam and derive their legitimacy from this. The New Islamic Studies has no place for such hermeneutics. Thesis Number Two. It is time to identify all those approaches that masquerade as critical scholarship for what they are. Islamic identity formations, quite simply, are to be studied and analyzed, not defended. We have to admit to ourselves, to our students, and to the larger public that there are things that we know about the historical record and things that we do not. (And this has nothing, pace Safi, to do with God.) We saw in Chapter 1, for example, that, as a way to get around the aporia associated with the early centuries of Islam, there were attempts to read “as many sources as possible” or to read them “faithfully.” But neither of these approaches, despite the fact that they may well inspire confidence in the non-specialist or the student who is unfamiliar with the historical record, can get around the fact that even if we read as many of them as possible or as faithfully as possible, they are still later sources composed by subsequent generations for a variety of ideological purposes. Juxtaposed against such an approach, it is necessary to be honest about what we know and what we do not know, what we can do and what we cannot do, when it comes to dealing with our sources. Thesis Number Three. We cannot make claims about the tradition that are false or distorted because we believe that this is what others want to hear about the tradition. The work of John Esposito and his clever use of statistics comes to mind here. Recall in this connection his ridiculous claim that the majority of those who commit honor killings in Jordan are not real Muslims because they do not pray five times a day or fast during the month of Ramadan. Rather than make such wild claims, predicated as they are on a neat bifurcation between religion and culture (i.e., culture kills, religion spiritualizes), Esposito overlooks a wonderful opportunity to engage seriously with their intersection. How, for example, does Islamic teaching or perceived Islamic teaching enter into the world-view of someone who commits an honor killing (or any other type of killing)? How is Islam used to legitimate patriarchy in places such as rural Jordan? But, of course, given Esposito’s

130

Theorizing Islam

apologetic hermeneutic this is not something that he would ever entertain. Thesis Number Four. Scholars of Islam must not bring the interfaith work they do in their private lives into the classroom. Certainly we have an obligation to defend the tradition from malicious slandering and to go to local churches and synagogues to explain Islam. However, “Islam is peace,” “Islam preaches gender justice,” or “terrorists have hijacked the tradition” are slogans, not facts or truths. Repeating them time and again does not make them true. Thesis Number Five. We can be critical of Islam and Islamic identity formations without somehow undermining Islam, or being accused of having an “ax to grind,” or being a neo-conservative. Although there are certainly a lot of ill-informed critiques of Islam out there, legitimate historical and scholarly criticism must occur. This is one of the hallmarks of scholarship. Thesis Number Six. Islams and the Muslim sources that produce them are our data, not our faith commitments. As such, we must situate these data within their historical social, ideological, and material contexts, even though the sources themselves tend to represent themselves as timeless and as ahistorical. This means that texts, such as the Qur’an, and individuals, such as Muhammad, must be studied in the same manner that other texts and other individuals are. Thesis Number Seven. We must ask of Islamic data what we would of any data. Or, to quote from Lincoln’s fourth thesis, “The same destabilizing and irreverent questions one might ask of any speech act ought be posed of religious discourse” (1996, 226). We must accordingly analyze Islamic discourses and not simply transcribe or describe them. Thesis Number Eight. As a social formation, Islam—like any such formation—is not a stable entity defined by readily ascertainable or accessible boundaries that effortlessly moves throughout history.

From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies”

131

As social formations, these various Islams, or Muslim identities, are constantly cobbled together as opposed to simply being inherited, both synchronically and diachronically, in manifold ways. Thesis Number Nine. Islamic studies must appeal to the theoretical frameworks of other disciplines. History, for example, is a perfect antidote to the essentializing that passes for so much of what goes by the name of “critical” scholarship in the field. It is perhaps no coincidence that one of the hallmarks of Islamic Religious Studies is its presentism. Largely unconcerned with historical questions, the emphasis seems to be on thick descriptions of the manifold intersections between “Islam” and the “West,” with very little analysis. Thesis Number Ten. Finally, Islamic studies must integrate itself with those critical discourses within the academic study of religion that are non-phenomenological. It cannot, as the essays collected in Rethinking Islamic Studies do, simply use theorists (e.g., Asad) selectively and only when it suits them. In this regard it is important to open the study of Islam up to other critical methodologies, not isolate it by gravitating to softer ones (e.g., cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism).

Toward a Future The pithiness of these theses demands further articulation and nuance. I present them as an initial step in the formation of what I hope will become the “New Islamic Studies.”8 As such, they are meant to inspire a collective rethinking of the discipline. This rethinking must go on at every level: from the textbook that introduces undergraduates to the field to grad schools where future generations of scholars of Islam can be exposed to critical discourses within the academic study of religion (in such a manner that they are not afraid to apply them to their own data) to trade paperbacks that pronounce more “truthful” or, at least, nuanced accounts of the tradition. The development of this “New Islamic Studies” cannot take place in isolation, but must be part of the new conceptual modeling that

132

Theorizing Islam

is currently going on in religious studies. Scholars of Islam, students (both Muslim and non-Muslim), and general audiences (both Muslim and non-Muslim) must be exposed to a more nuanced version of the manifold traditions, practices, rites, and ideologies that we often conveniently label “Islam.”

Notes Introduction 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

For the requisite historical background, see Nanji 1997; Hughes 2007: 49–71; and Martin 2011. For example, its President-Elect is John Esposito, and the editor of its mouthpiece, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR), is currently Amir Hussain. For example, the Study of Islam section has since 2001 mushroomed to include “groups”—established to encourage the exploration of an emergent study or methodology, to cultivate the relation between the study of religion and a cognate discipline, or to pursue a long-range and broad research project—on the Qur’an, Islamic mysticism, and contemporary Islam. This work, and its contents, is the subject matter of Chapter 5. In this formulation I am indebted to the language in Lopez 1998: 1–13. Historical is in quotations because, as we shall see, pace the scholars surveyed in Chapter 1, we know next to nothing about a, let alone the, historical Muhammad.

1. The Scholarly Dream of Following Muhammad’s Footsteps 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

It won the inaugural Shaykh Muhammad Salih Bashrahil Prize for Cultural Achievement (Cairo) in 2004. These next few paragraphs are based on Hughes (2011a). In fact, it is not her first book on Muhammad. See also Armstrong 1992. Her lecture was entitled “Religion after September 11.” On the AAR website her upcoming plenary was described as follows: “Despite some differences, there was a remarkable consensus in these religions’ call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today” (online at http://www.aarweb.org/meetings/ Annual_Meeting/Past_and_Future_Meetings/2006/highlights.asp). There is, it should be said, very little evidence that Muhammad’s Arabia was “war-torn,” a term with a decidedly modern connotation. It is worth pointing out that Donner has a tendency to reify terms such as “belief” and “religion” in seventh-century Arabia, assuming that the terms meant then what they do today.

134 7.

Notes This authority is perhaps most egregiously stated by Omid Safi [2009], when he divides books written on Islam into those “ written by scholars trained in the field of Islamic studies and [those] which are composed by prejudiced bigots who have found a new victim and an additional target for their hatred” (14).

2. Another Painting on Islam’s Early Canvas 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Much of this section is indebted to the careful reading and comments of Peter Wright. By “Red Sea Basin” I refer to all those lands that touch the Red Sea or were directly connected to it via inland trade routes. This and the following two paragraphs are indebted to the perceptive comments of Peter Wright. Examples being Motzki 2000; Watt 1953, 1956; Kister 1970. Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Ta’rikh, edited by M. J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), vol. 1, 1192ff. See also the discussion in Hawting 1999: 130–49. Al-Bukhari, Al-Sah9ih9 kita4b fad9a4’il al-Qur’a4n (Cairo: Da4r al-`Arabı3, 1955), vol. 6, 114. Translation in Sah9ih9 al-Bukharı3, trans. Muhsin Khan (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1984), 5th edn, vol. 6, pp. 517–18. Quoted in Graham 1977: 198.

3. John Esposito and the Muslim Women 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

This assumption or, perhaps even better, this lie unfortunately discourages interdisciplinary work. If religionists start from the assumption that religion is that which informs all other aspects of human creativity, there is no good reason to examine this creativity from other disciplinary perspectives. (As an aside, I once had a colleague who informed me in all seriousness that she told her students Religious Studies was the one truly interdisciplinary department!) The press release can be found online at http://explore.georgetown. edu/news/?ID=3762. http://www.aarweb.org/Members/Election/2010-VPstatements.pdf Parts of this paragraph and the following two are based on my analysis in Hughes 2011b. For my initial take on this, see Hughes 2011b. http://www.aarweb.org/Members/Election/2010-VPstatements.pdf Parts of this and the next few paragraphs are based on my comments in Hughes 2007: 84–7. The following three paragraphs also draw on Hughes 2011a.

Notes

135

9.

Although, as I tried to demonstrate in Chapter 1, the double standard actually works the other way. Scholars of Islam can get away with saying things about Islam that scholars of Judaism or Christianity could never get away with in academic publications. 10. Also note that she uses the relativistic “genital cutting” as opposed to the more customary “genital mutilation.”

4. Toward a Reconfiguration of the Category “Muslim Women” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

Online at http://www.islamawareness.net/Muhammed/ibn_kathir_wives. html Sahih Bukhari 4.53.253, online at http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/053.sbt.html http://www.tebyan.net/islam_features/islam/articles/2008/5/7/66198. html See The Taliban’s War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan (online at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/ documents/reports/talibans-war-on-women.pdf). The World Economic Foundation (WEF) is a non-profit foundation, based in Switzerland, that annually brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, intellectuals, and journalists to discuss what it considers to be some of the most pressing issues of the day. Perhaps the most recent example of this occurred in Ontario, Canada, where the province was considering implementing shari`a tribunals that would be recognized by the regular courts. Riffat Hassan, “Religious Human Rights in the Qur’an” (online at http:// muslim-canada.org/emory.htm). The foundation’s website may be found at http://ecumene.org/INRFVVP/ “The Nobel Peace Prize 2003” (Nobelprize.org. http://nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2003/).

5. Reflections on Ernst and Martin’s Rethinking Islamic Studies 1.

I should be absolutely clear here. I have no quarrels with the likes of what individuals such as Cornell do in their spare time. Interfaith dialogue is an important feature of the chaotic, multi-religious and multi-ethnic world in which we live. My problem is when the academic study of religion is invoked to give legitimacy to this activity—the fact that Cornell speaks from the authority of his professional and largely secular position at a public university. To speak as a theologian at a secular university is to imply that the type of religious theology to which

136

Notes one adheres (in the case of Cornell, an open, liberal, democratic and pluralistic one) is correct and that other types of Islam are somehow illegitimate. Religious studies, as I mentioned in the introduction to this volume, is a critical discipline whose raison d’être is (1) to show that “religion” is pre-eminently a social and cultural form; and (2) to point out and criticize the regnant discourses in the discipline that simply describe what it is that religious actors do/believe or claim to do/ believe.

6. From Islamic Religious Studies to the “New Islamic Studies” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

There certainly are some exceptions to this. I think, in particular, of Berg (2000), Powers (2005), and Wheeler (2006). On this topic more generally, see Hughes 2007: 49–71. A quick perusal of any of the panels and paper titles devoted to Islam, the Qur’an, Islamic mysticism, or modern Islam at the Annual Meeting of the AAR will certainly bear this out. Online at http://www.rsnonline.org/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=188&Itemid=325. The online description may be found at http://www.aarweb.org/ meetings/annual_meeting/Current_Meeting/workshops.asp# rethinkingislamicstudies My concern here is not and indeed cannot be the study of Islam in cognate departments such as Near Eastern studies, political science, history, or the like. These “Theses on Method” have been criticized over the years (e.g., Fitzgerald 2006; Griffiths 2006). However, I believe that they still ring loud and true. For a large-scale attempt to apply these findings to Islam in an introductory textbook, see Hughes (2012).

Bibliography Afsaruddin, Asma. 2008. The First Muslims: History and Memory. Oxford: Oneworld. Afshar, Haleh. 2006. Democracy in Islam. London: Hansard Democracy Series. Ahmed, Lila. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ali, Kecia. 2010. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: Norton. Armstrong, Karen. 1992. Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco. Armstrong, Karen. 2007. Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. New York: HarperOne. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Attar, Farid al-Din. 1996. Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans. A. J. Arberry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beck, Lois. 1980. “The Religious Lives of Muslim Women,” in Jane I. Smith (ed.), Women in Contemporary Muslim Societies, pp. 27–60. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Berg, Herb. 2000. The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. Brockopp, Jonathan E. (ed.). 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad. New York: Cambridge University Press. Carlyle, Thomas. 1993 [1884]. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chopra, Deepek. 2010. Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet. New York: HarperOne. Cook, David. 2005. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cook, Michael. 2003. Muhammad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crone, Patricia, and Michael Cook. 1979. Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donner, Fred M. 2010. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origin of Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

138

Bibliography

Ebadi, Shirin. 2006. Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope. New York: Random House. Ernst, Carl. W. 2003. Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Ernst, Carl W., and Richard C. Martin (eds.). 2010. Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Esposito, John L. 1999 [1992]. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd edn. New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L. 2002. What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L. 2003. Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L. 2005 [1988]. Islam: The Straight Path. Rev. 3rd edn. New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L. 2010. The Future of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L., and Dalia Mogahed. 2007. Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. New York: Gallup Press. Fernea, Robert A., and Elizabeth W. Fernea. 1972. “Variation in Religious Observance among Islamic Women,” in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East Since 1500, pp. 385–401. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fitzgerald, Timothy. 2000. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. Fitzgerald, Timothy. 2006. “Bruce Lincoln’s ‘Theses on Method’,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 18.4: 392–423. Friedmann, Yohanan. 1989. Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadî Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background. New edn. 2003. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedmann, Yohanan. 2003. Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graham, William A. 1977. Divine Word and Prophetic Words in Early Islam: A Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special Reference to the H9adı3th Qudsı3. The Hague: Mouton. Griffiths, Paul J. 2006. “On the Future of the Study of Religion in the Academy,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74.1: 66–74. Guillaume, Alfred. 2009 [1955]. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hassan, Riffat. 1999. “Feminism in Islam,” in Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (eds.), Feminism and World Religions, pp. 248–78. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Bibliography

139

Hassan, Riffat. 2002. “Is Islam a Help or Hindrance to Women’s Development?” in Johan Meuleman (ed.), Islam in the Era of Globalization: Muslim Attitudes Towards Modernity and Identity, pp. 189–210. London: Routledge Curzon. Hawley, John S., and Wayne Proudfoot. 1993. “Introduction,” in John Stratton Hawley (ed.), Fundamentalism and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press. Hawting, Gerald R. 1999. The Idea of Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoyland, Robert G. 1997. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press. Hoyland, Robert G. 2001. Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London: Routledge. Hughes, Aaron W. 2006. “Outside looking in, inside looking out: An epilogue (of sorts),” Studies in Religion, 35. 3–4: 561–75. Hughes, Aaron W. 2007. Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline. London: Equinox. Hughes, Aaron W. 2011a. “The Study of Islam Pre- and Post 9/11: A Primer and Provocation,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 24.1. Hughes, Aaron W. 2011b. “The Failure of Islamic Studies Post 9/11: A Contextualization and Analysis,” in William Arnal, Willi Braun, and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Failure and Nerve in the Study of Religion. London: Equinox. Hughes, Aaron W. 2011c. “Review of Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Hughes, Aaron W. 2012. Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Jeffrey, Arthur (ed.). 1962. A Reader on Islam: Passages from Standard Arabic Writings. The Hague: Mouton. Kister, M. J. 1970. “‘A Bag of Meat’: A Study of an Early h9adı3th,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 33: 267–75. Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq. 2010. Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. Oxford: Oneworld. Lecker, Michael. 1989. The Banû Sulaym: A Contribution to the Study of Early Islam. Jerusalem: Publications of the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lecker, Michael. 1995. Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina. Leiden: Brill. Lincoln, Bruce. 1994. Authority: Construction and Corrosion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

140

Bibliography

Lincoln, Bruce. 1996. “Theses on Method,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 8.3: 225–27. Lincoln, Bruce. 1999. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lopez, Donald S. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lucas, Scott. 2004. Constructive Critics, H9adı3th Literature, and the Articulation of Sunnı3 Islam: The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Sa‘d, Ibn Ma‘ı3n, and Ibn H9anbal. Leiden: Brill. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Martin, Richard C. 1985. Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Martin, Richard. C. 2011. “Islamic Studies in the American Academy: A Personal Reflection,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78.4: 896–920. McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press. McCutcheon, Russell T. 2003. The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric. London and New York: Routledge. Mernissi, Fatima. 1991. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. 1999. Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Motzki, Harald (ed.). 2000. The Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources. Leiden: Brill. Nanji, Azim (ed.). 1997. Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity, and Change. New York and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Narayan, Uma. 2000. “Essence of Culture and Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism,” in Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding (eds.), Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, pp. 80–100. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Newby, Gordon D. 1988. The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Peters, F. E. 1994. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press. Powers, David S. 2009. Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bibliography

141

Powers, Paul R. 2005. Intent in Islam Law: Motive and Meaning in Medieval Sunni Fiqh. Leiden: Brill. Ramadan, Tariq. 2007. In the Footsteps of Muhammad: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad. New York: Oxford University Press. Rippin, Andrew. 1985. “The Exegetical Genre asbâb al-nuzûl: A Bibliographical and Terminological Survey,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 48: 1–15. Rippin, Andrew. 1988. “The Function of asbâb al-nuzûl in Qur’ânic Exegesis,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 51: 1–20. Rippin, Andrew. 2005. Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. 3rd edn. London and New York: Routledge. Rubin, Uri. 1995. The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press. Rubin, Uri (ed.). 1998. The Life of Muh9ammad. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate; Brookfield, VT: Variorum. Safi, Omid (ed.). 2003. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Politics. Oxford: Oneworld. Safi, Omid. 2009. Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters. New York: HarperOne. Schacht, Joseph. 1950. The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1997. My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam, trans. Susan H. Ray. New York: Continuum. Scott, Joan Wallach. 2007. The Politics of the Veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Segal, Robert A. 2000. “Introduction, ” in Robert A. Segal (ed.), Hero Myths: A Reader, pp. 1–27. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, Jane I. 1979. “Women in Islam: Equity, Equality, and the Search for the Natural Order,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 47: 517–37. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1990. “Connections,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 58.1: 1–15. Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. “When the Chips Are Down,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, pp. 1–60. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spellberg, Denise A. 1994. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of A`isha bint Abi Bakr. New York: Columbia University Press. Stetkevych, Jaroslav. 1996. Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stowasser, Barbara Freyer. 1996. Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press.

142

Bibliography

Thurlkill, Mary F. 2008. Chosen Among Women: Mary and Fatima in Medieval Christianity and Shi`ite Islam. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Trimingham, J. Spencer. 1979. Christianity Among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times. London: Longman. Varisco, Daniel Martin. 2007. Reading Orientalism: Said and Unsaid. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Wadud, Amina. 1998. Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Wadud, Amina. 2006. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam. Oxford: Oneworld. Wansbrough, John E. 1977a. The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wansbrough, John E. 1977b. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watt, W. Montgomery. 1953. Muhammad at Mecca. Oxford: Clarendon. Watt, W. Montgomery. 1956. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon. Waugh, Earle (trans.). 1998. “In Praise of the Prophet Muhammad,” in John Renard (ed.), Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life, pp. 120–23. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wheeler, Brannon. 2006. Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yazbeck Haddad, Yvonne, and John L. Esposito. 1998. Islam, Gender, and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Zeitlin, Irving M. 2007. The Historical Muhammad. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Subject Index Afghanistan 61, 63, 93 American Academy of Religion (AAR) 1, 3, 8, 26, 29, 61, 62, 64, 67, 122–3 ancient Near East 37, 41–2 apologetics 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 22, 116 asbab al-nuzul 42 authenticity 28–9, 61, 62, 65, 123–4 authority 122–3 “bad” Muslims 11 Banu Qurayza 50 Battle of Badr (624) 46 Believers movement 31–2 biography (Sira) of Muhammad 14, 15, 27, 49, 52 burqa 93 Christianity in Arabia 37, 39–40 colonialism 94 Constitution of Medina 38, 48 cosmic Muhammad 52–5 cosmopolitanism 104, 106–7 critical theory 6, 100, 108, 110 “culture” vs. “religion” 73–5, 81, 88, 89, 91, 96 female infanticide 82 feminism 94, 95–8 fundamentalism 93–4 Gallup Poll 63–4, 76 gender justice 2, 7, 20, 29, 61, 73, 81, 101, 113–14, 115, 116, 123, 130 great man theory of history 12–14

hadith qudsi 58 hadiths 14, 15, 40–1, 56–9, 83, 95 hajj (“pilgrimage”) 51 hijab (veil; veiling; modesty) 75, 86–90 hijra (“Exodus”) 48 historical Muhammad 12, 17–19, 35–7 homoeroticism 114–15 honor killings 77, 80, 91, 97, 129–30 insiders 110–15 interfaith dialogue 110 Iranian revolution 97 Iraq 63 Islamic feminism, see feminism Islamic Religious Studies 3–5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 21, 35, 96, 99, 101, 103–4, 118–32 authority of 122–3 as pulpit for liberal Muslim theologizing 7, 112, 120 as regnant discourse 21 system of privilege and denial 121 and theory and method 102, 108, 124 uncritical nature of 11 Islamic studies 2, 7, 105, 107, 118–32 Islamophobia, invoked to shut down critique 7, 12, 22, 34, 66, 120, 122 isra, see “night flight” of Muhammad Isra’iliyyat 52

144 jahiliyya (“Age of Ignorance”) 82 Jerusalem 46, 47, 48 Jews in Arabia 22, 30, 37, 38–9, 47, 126 jihad 24–5, 68, 125 Jyllands-Posten (Danish newspaper) 59 Kaba (Mecca) 45, 51 Mecca 43–7 Medina 47–9 memory 17, 21, 54 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 65 Middle Eastern studies 1, 127 mi’raj, see “night flight” of Muhammad Monophysitism 39–40 Muslim women 73–9, 81–99 Near Eastern studies 1, 3, 127 “new” Islamic studies, see Islamic studies “night flight” of Muhammad 44–6 Orientalism 7, 12, 24, 104–6, 110, 119, 120 Oxford University Press 27, 33, 64, 121 Palestinian–Israeli conflict 6, 78–9 polemics 55–6 “popular” forms of Islam 90–1 “post-Orientalism” 102, 103, 109 pre-Islamic Arabia 36–40, 82, 88 Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim–Christian

Subject Index Understanding (Georgetown University) 64–5 progressive Islam 6, 109, 111, 126 purdah, see hijab Qur’an 13, 31–2, 40, 42, 44–5, 51, 57, 62, 64, 82, 87, 95, 128, 130 Quraysh 42, 44, 47 Red Sea Basin 38–9, 126 religious studies 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 67, 100, 101, 107–8 revisionists 16 Salafis 23, 54 “satanic verses” 46 September 11, 2001 1, 6, 10, 55, 67–73, 118, 119 shari`a 24, 57, 68, 92, 95–6, 106, 110–11 Shi`ism 58, 83, 85–6 socio-rhetorical formation 27–8 Study of Islam section (AAR) 4 Sufism 86 Taliban 93 terrorists 11, 55, 66, 68 theses on method 126–31 transnationalism 126 “true” Islam 11 veil, see hijab Wahhabis 23, 54, 93 “War on Terror” 55 Wikipedia 59

Name Index Abu Bakr 85 Abu Dawud 58 Abu-Lughod, Lila 78–9, 94 Abu Talib 42, 47 Afsaruddin, Asma 13, 16, 19 Ahmed, Leila 88 Aisha 83–5 Ali 49, 84, 85–6 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 106–7 Armstrong, Karen 12, 29–30 Asad, Talal 108, 120 Atta, Muhammad 62 Attar 86 Bahira 21–2, 42–3 al-Baladhuri 52 Barzegar, Abbas 116 bin Laden, Osama 68–9 al-Bukhari 58 Carlyle, Thomas 12–14, 21 Cook, David 24 Cornell, Vincent J. 110–11, 113–14 Daly, Mary 94 Donner, Fred 30–3 Ebadi, Shirin 97–8 Ernst, Carl 3, 12, 13, 18, 23–6, 34, 100–17, 118, 120, 125 Esposito, John 8, 61–80, 81, 88, 92, 94, 119, 121, 126, 128, 129 Falwell, Jerry 56 Fatima 85–6

al-Ghaiti 45 Hassan, Riffat 96–7 ibn Babuya, Muhammad 58 ibn al-Hajjaj, Muslim 58 Ibn Hisham 43, 52 Ibn Ishaq 38 Ibn Sa`d 52 Jesus 39–40 Jibril (Gabriel) 43 Karim, Jamillah 112–14 Khadija 19, 43, 86–7 Khaled, Amr 78 Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq 114–15 al-Kulayni, Muhammad 58 Lawrence, Bruce 117 Lewis, Bernard 72 Lincoln, Bruce 1, 107, 122, 126–7, 128, 130 Martin, Richard 3, 100–17, 118 McCutcheon, Russell T. 6, 107 Mogahed, Dalia 63 Muhammad 10–33, 34–60, 74–5, 81–6, 87–8, 125 Narayan, Uma 94–5 al-Nasa’i 58 Nietzsche, Friedrich 123–4, 127 Powers, David S. 31–3 Rabia al-Adawiyya 86

146 Ramadan, Tariq 12, 13, 16, 17–19, 20, 26–9, 121–2, 128, 129 Ruprecht, Louis A. 116–17 Sa’d b. Mu`adh 30 Safi, Omid 13, 16, 17, 20–3, 24, 34, 111–12, 120, 128 Said, Edward 105 Scott, Joan Wallach 94 Sebeos 41 Segal, Robert 13

Name Index Smith, Jonathan Z. 3, 5, 107, 124 al-Tabari 46, 52 al-Tirmidhi 58 al-Tusi, Muhammad 58 Umar 85 Wadud, Amina 98 Wansbrough, John 120 al-Waqidi 52 Watt, W. Montgomery 41