Abstract
The present analysis of the oscillation in Islam between culture and politics is not a narrative of topical events, but is rather ambitious in that it attempts to identify the issues and find ways to gain a better conceptual grasp of their substance. With this understanding, I shall then pursue the cultural analysis of Islam in a more concrete manner. The puzzle of the locality of culture and the global framework of structural change lie at the centre of my thoughts. Our world is characterised by the most intriguing aspect of becoming equally and simultaneously more globalised and localised, that is, culturally fragmented, than ever before.1 In short, my basic contention pertains to the simultaneity of structural globalisation and cultural fragmentation. I believe that this is the hallmark of the present world. This simultaneity also affects the pendulum between culture and politics in the contemporary Islamic civilisation.
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Notes
See Martin Albrow, The Global Age, Stanford, 1997; and also
Barrie Axford, The Global System: Economics, Politics, Culture, New York, 1995; from a conceptual perspective
Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London, 1992 (reprinted 1998).
On this concept see B. Tibi, ‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging’, in Roman Herzog (President of Germany 1995–99), Preventing the Clash of Civilizations: a Peace Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, New York, 1999, pp. 107–26.
See the debate conducted in Amsterdam at The Erasmus Foundation (ed.), The Limits of Pluralism: Neo-Absolutisms and Relativism, Amsterdam, 1994 (for my contribution on Islamic Neo-Absolutism, see pp. 29–35). See also
John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism, Princeton, NJ, 1993, for new major theses on pluralism, see pp. 17–37.
Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, Oxford, 1997, p. 8.
See Immanuel Kant, ‘Entwurf zum ewigen Frieden’, in Richard Saage (ed.), Friedensutopien. Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, Görres, Frankfurt/M., 1979, pp. 37–82; and
Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, Princeton, NJ, 1993. See also the contributions in
Michael Brown et al. (eds), Debating the Democratic Peace, Cambridge, MA, 1996.
Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, Princeton, NJ, 1997.
For a close examination of these processes, see B. Tibi, ‘Secularization and De-Secularization in Modern Islam’, in Religion, Staat, Gesellschaft, vol. 1, 1 (2000), pp. 95–117; and by the same, ‘Post-Bipolar Order in Crisis: the Challenge of Politicised Islam’, in Millennium, vol. 29, 3 (2000), pp. 843–59.
The flaws in Inglehart’s analysis are related to his ignorance about the research on this topic pursued by the American Academy of Arts and Science (The Fundamentalism Project). See the five volumes edited by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed, Chicago, 1991; Fundamentalisms and Society, Chicago, 1993; Fundamentalisms and the State, Chicago, 1993; Accounting for Fundamentalisms, Chicago, 1994; Fundamentalisms: Comprehended, Chicago, 1995. I have co-authored vol. 2. See also my book that grew from this project The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998.
On this see Charles Lindholm, The Islamic Middle East: a Historical Anthropology, Oxford, 1996, pp. 17ff. and 219ff.
Najib al-Armanazi, al-Shar’ al-duwali fi al-Islam (International Law in Islam), new reprint, London, 1990 (first published in Damascus, 1930).
Muhammed Imara, al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya wa al-tahaddi al-hadari (The Islamic Awakening and the Civilisational Challenge), Cairo, 1991.
For more on this with extensive references, see B. Tibi, Kreuzzug und Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt, Munich, 1999. Chapters 1 and 4 deal with Islamic expansion. Chapter 6 is on European expansion. Sources are referenced there.
Jemaladdin Afghani, al-A’mal al-kamila (Collected Works), ed. M. Imara, Cairo, 1968, p. 328. See his biography completed by
Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972.
See Ivan Hannaford, Race: the History of an Idea in the West, Baltimore, 1996.
See, for example, Rudolf Wendorff, Dritte Welt und westliche Zivilisation, Opladen, 1984, p. 65. On the German cultural roots of the moralising worldview see the masterpiece by
Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation, reprint, Frankfurt/M., 1974. See also
B. Tibi, Europa ohne Identität? Die Krise der multikulturellen Gesellschaft, Munich, 1998 (new edition 2000), Part 1, pp. 59–133.
See, for example, Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs McWorld, New York, 1995.
See Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People, Berkeley, 1978; and also his essay ‘Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered’, published in his collection of articles, Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order, new and substantially revised edition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 361–434, especially pp. 411ff. Of particular significance is Bendix’s thesis that the modernisation of some spheres of life in non-European societies does not necessarily contribute to bringing about modernity.
On this debate, see B. Tibi, Islamischer Fundamentalismus, moderne Wissenschaft und Technologie, Frankfurt/M., 1992. See also my chapter, ‘The Worldview of Sunni Arab Fundamentalists: Attitudes toward Modern Science and Technology’, in Fundamentalisms and Society (full reference in note 9 above), pp. 128–45.
See the standard work of the Frankfurt School on this subject by Franz Borkenau, Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild, reprint, Darmstadt, 1980, new edition, Frankfurt, 1988 (it was first published in 1934 while in exile in Paris but in German).
On the Islamic Weltanschauung and its historical development, see B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, 1996, 2nd edition, 1997, paperback 1998, Part 1.
Niklas Luhmann, ‘Die Weltgesellschaft’, in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 2, Opladen, 1975, pp. 51–61.
See B. Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam: a Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age, Salt Lake City, 1988.
Hedley Bull, ‘The Revolt against the West’, in Hedley Bull/Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society, Oxford, 1984, pp. 217–28.
See Gérard Leclerc, Anthropologie et Colonialisme, Paris, 1972.
For the history of ideas of this approach see Stephan K. Sanderson, Social Evolutionism, Cambridge, MA, 1990.
Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, IL, 1958. Thinking on development has since then gone far beyond Lerner’s most influential work. See
David E. Apter, Rethinking Development, Newbury Park, CA, 1987; and
David Harrison, Sociology of Modernization and Development, London, 1988.
Ibid., p. 255. On the groundbreaking work of Norbert Elias, see Stephen Mennell, Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image, Oxford, 1989.
See also Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism (referenced in note 9). For earlier works on this subject in Western languages see Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam, London, 1991, and
Gilles Kepel, La Revanche de Dieu, Paris, 1991. The foremost critical work in Arabic is by
Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, al-Islam al-siyasi (Political Islam), 2nd edition, Cairo, 1989.
Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, Boulder, CO, 1994; and
B. Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Boulder, CO, 1990.
See Ayubi, Political Islam, (referenced in note 38). See also Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, Cambridge, MA, 1996, and the other works referenced in note 38 above.
Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York, 1982.
Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: the Politics of Ideas in the Middle East, New Brunswick, NJ, 1996.
Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed, 2nd printing, Chicago, 1971, p. 56.
I. Mörth and F. Fürstenberg, ‘Religionssoziologie’, in R. König (ed.), Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung, vol. 14, 2nd printing, Stuttgart, 1979, pp. 1–84, particularly p. 46.
Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis, Berkeley, 1987.
See Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria, New York, 1996, pp. 241–3.
B. Tibi, ‘Culture and Knowledge: the Islamization of Knowledge as a Postmodern Project?’, in Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 12, 1 (1995), pp. 1–24.
R. Bendix, ‘Modernisierung in internationaler Perspektive’, in W. Zapf (ed.), Theorien des sozialen Wandels, 2nd printing, Cologne and Berlin, 1970, pp. 505ff., particularly p. 506.
R. Bendix, Freiheit und historisches Schicksal. Heidelberger Max-Weber-Vorlesungen, Frankfurt/M., 1982, p. 132.
Jean-Paul Charnay, Sociologie religieuse de L’Islam, Paris, 1978. For a combination of the approaches of Islamic studies and social history see
Maxime Rodinson, Islam et capitalisme, Paris, 1966.
See Gerald Holton, Science and Anti-Science, Cambridge, MA, 1993, in particular pp. 145–89.
See, in particular, Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society, Cambridge and London, 1981 (collection of essays).
Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, London, 1992, in particular pp. 40ff., 80ff. See also my article referenced in note 48 above.
See the classical work by Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, new printing, Oxford, 1979, here, in particular, pp. 239ff.
See the new print of the classical Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, New York, 1998, chapter 17. For the ensuing developments and the surge of political Islam, see
B. Tibi, Aufbruch am Bosporus. Die Türkei zwischen Europa und dem Islamismus, Munich, 1998.
On this debate, see C. Seyfarth and W. Sprondel (eds), Seminar: Religion und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung. Studien zur Protestantismus-Kapitalismus-These Max Webers, Frankfurt/M., 1973, p. 9. See also
Wolfgang Schluchter (ed.), Max Webers Sicht des Islam, Frankfurt/M., 1987.
See Muhammed Imara, al-Islam wa al-uruba wa al-ilmaniyya (Islam, Arabism, and Secularism), Beirut, 1981, particularly pp. 57ff.
Yahya H.H. Farqhal, Haqiqat al-ilmaniyya (The Truth about Secularism), published by al-Azhar, Cairo, 1989.
B. Tibi, ‘Islam and Secularization’, in Islam and Civilization: Proceedings of the First International Islamic Philosophy Conference (19–22 November 1979). The papers were published by Mourad Wahba, Cairo, 1982, my paper pp. 65–79. (Arabic version in: Qadaya Arabiyya, Beirut, vol. 7, 3[1980], pp. 12–23). See also the concluding chapter in my book The Crisis (referenced in note 26), on the ‘Secularization of Islam’, pp. 127–48.
T.G. Carroll, ‘Secularization and States of Modernity’, in World Politics, vol. 36, 3 (1984), pp. 362–82, particularly pp. 375 and 380.
This debate is well documented in the reader edited by Heinz Horst Schrey, Säkularisierung, Darmstadt, 1981.
See Ali M. Jarisha and Muhammed Sh. Zaibaq, Asalib al-ghazu al-fikri li al-alam al-Islami (Methods of Intellectual Invasion of the Islamic World), Cairo, 1987, pp. 37ff., 92ff.
See also Theodore H. von Laue, World Revolution of Westernization: the Twentieth Century in Global Perspective, New York, 1987.
Daniel Bell, ‘The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on the Future of Religion’, in Daniel Bell, The Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological Journeys 1960–1980, New York, 1980, pp. 324ff., particularly p. 332.
See Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society, Oxford, 1984, chapters 1 and 2.
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Tibi, B. (2005). The Dichotomy of Structural Globalisation and Fragmenting Cultural Self-Assertion: the Case of Islamic Civilisation. In: Islam between Culture and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204157_5
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