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Islam as Identity: After a Century of Islamic Revivalism

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Abstract

This chapter examines the challenge modernity presented to Muslims and identifies four Muslim responses—traditionalists, modernist, Islamist and secularist. It critically examines these responses focusing on their understanding of modernity and their interpretation of Islam. These perspectives are examined in the light of the Islamic revival that has been taking place in many parts of the Muslim world. In this chapter, I demonstrate how this global Islamic revivalism has reduced Islam to an identity. Islam is used not as a source of normative values but as an instrument of political mobilization. The goal of this chapter is to show how contemporary Muslim politics, even in the name of Islam, has deviated from its normative purpose. Over a century of Islamic revivalism and the emergence of political Islam has reduced Islam from being a fount of civilization, ethics, values, norms, cultures and politics to essentially a political identity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the first hadith in “The Book of Great Battles” in the collection Sunan Abu Dawud. I found that different collections number them differently. Some number it as #4291 and others as #4278. This is the reference to the edition I used. Muhammed Mahdi Al-Shariaf (Tr.), Sunan Abu Dawud: English-Arabic Text, Vol. V (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyyah, 2008), p. 34.

  2. 2.

    See Syed Abul A’la Maududi, A Short History of The Revivalist Movement in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2002). This is a translation of Maududi’s Urdu work on the subject titled Tajdid Wa Ihya Al-Deen. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat-I Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), p. 136.

  3. 3.

    The concept of the Mujaddid has special resonance to Islam in Pakistan because of the controversy about the Ahmediyyah movement. The Ahmediyyah movement was declared as heretical by the government of Pakistan after concerted agitation by tradition Islamists and Maududi and his followers. The founder of the Ahmediyyah movement, Ahmed Qadiyani (1835–1908), had claimed that he was the Mujaddid of the thirteenth century of Islam. His ideas which were seen as heretical by the orthodoxy attracted special attention to the concept of revivalism, since it was Qadiyani’s principle instrument for leveraging his ideas as legitimate. See Syed Abul A’la Maududi, The Finality of Prophethood. The pamphlet is available on the World Wide Web at: http://alhafeez.org/rashid/finalprophet.htm.

  4. 4.

    Tariq Ramadan, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (London: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 12–14.

  5. 5.

    The publications of Arab Human Development Reports on an annual basis now provide a glimpse into the state of development in the Arab world. See http://www.arab-hdr.org/. See also Ali A. Allawi, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Also see specially the work of Chapra who is one of the most prominent of Muslim economists, M. Umer Chapra, Muslim Civilization: Causes of Decline and the Need for Reform (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 2010).

  6. 6.

    See Khalid Bin Sayeed, Western Dominance and Political Islam: Challenge and Response (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009).

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (Boulder, CO: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002). As for the discourse on the end of creation itself, see an excellent analysis by Frederic J. Baumgartne, Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization (Boulder, CO: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

  8. 8.

    For a comprehensive bibliography on the subject, see Yvonne Y. Haddad, John O. Voll, and John L. Esposito, The Contemporary Islamic Revival: A Critical Survey and Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991). For theory and history, see Fazlur Rahman, Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000).

  9. 9.

    I have lately started to prefer the term Islamists to political Islam. Rather than describing or identifying the characteristics of a specific group, the term political Islam essentially qualifies Islam itself.

  10. 10.

    For an excellent summary and analysis of the ideas of Islamists, see Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004). For a summary of the ideas of the key thinkers of political Islam such as Maulana Maududi, Syed Qutb, Ayatollah Khomeini, including the views of Khurshid Ahmed and Hassan Turabi, see John L. Esposito, ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). For a systematic review of political Islam in Pakistan, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat-I Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). See also Shahram Akbarzadeh, ed., Routledge Handbook of Political Islam (London: Taylor & Francis, 2012). Also see M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “The Political Philosophy of Islamic Resurgence,” Cultural Dynamics 13.2 (Summer 2001): 213–231.

  11. 11.

    See M. A. Muqtedar Khan “The Islamic States,” in M. Hawkesworth and M. Kogan, eds., Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 265–278. Also see Noah Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  12. 12.

    For examples of traditional Islamic responses to modernity, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Need for a Sacred Science (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993). See Jan Ali, “Islamic Revivalism: The Case of Tablighi Jamaat,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23.1 (Spring 2003): 173–181. Also see essays included in Joseph E. B. Lumbard, ed., Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Press, 2004). For a sense of Sufi revival in modern times, see Martin Van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell, Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007). See in particular chapter five from Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Traditional Islam in the Modern World (London: KPI Publications, 1987).

  13. 13.

    See Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982). See John Cooper, Ronald Nettler and Mohamed Mahmoud, eds., Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). See Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West and the Challenge of Modernity (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2001). Also see Tariq Ramadan, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (London: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  14. 14.

    To get a sense of Islamic modernist thought, see the two anthologies by C. Kurzman—Charles Kurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Source Book (London: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Charles Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam: A Source Book (London: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also Sheila McDonough, Muslim Ethics and Modernity: a comparative study of the ethical thought of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mawlana Mawdudi (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984). For a summary of Arab modernist thought, see Albert Hourani, Arabic thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

  15. 15.

    These observations were made by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr at a conference I had organized in 1998 at Georgetown University on Contemporary Islamic Philosophy. Dr. Nasr had delivered the keynote address at this conference.

  16. 16.

    Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Traditional Islam in the Modern World, pp. 75–118.

  17. 17.

    For a rather interesting and illuminating discussion of how all the three traditions interact and negotiate the meaning of Islam in Muslim society, see Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Pakistan: Shariah and the State,” in Robert W. Hefner, ed., Shari’a Politics: Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), pp. 207–243.

  18. 18.

    To assess the nature of diversity within Islamist movements, see Francois Burgat, Face to Face with Political Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003). See also Mohammed Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007). See John L. Esposito, ed., Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism or Reform? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publications, 1997).

  19. 19.

    See, for example, Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). Also see Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Austin, TX: University Texas Press, 2002). See Amina Wadud, Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). And also see Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).

  20. 20.

    See Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). M. A. Muqtedar Khan, ed., Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Salt Lake, Utah: Utah University Press, 2007). See also Chales Kurzman, Liberal Islam; A Source Book.

  21. 21.

    See “Political Islam: Everywhere on the Rise,” The Economist, Dec 12, 2011.

  22. 22.

    See Marc Lynch, “The Big Think Behind the Arab Spring: Do the Middle East’s Revolutions Have a Unifying Ideology?” ForeignPolicy.com (December 2011). On the World Wide Web at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_big_think?page=full.

  23. 23.

    See Muhammed Tahir, The History of Jamaate Tabligh (Karachi: Printing Press Karachi, 1987). Mufti A. Haq, The Tablighi Jamaat Movement (Lahore, Pakistan: Aziz Printing House, 1987). Mumtaz Ahmed, “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat,” in Martin Marty and Scott R. Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).

  24. 24.

    For a historical analysis about the dynamics between secular nationalism and Islamism, see Michaelle Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). See Nazik Saba Yared, Secularism and the Arab World: 1850–1939 (London: Saqi, 2002). See P. Salem, “The Rise and Fall of Secularism in the Arab World,” Middle East Policy 4 (Fall 1996): 147–160. See specially Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

  25. 25.

    See Shiping Hua, Islam and Democratization in Asia (Amherst, MA: Cambria Press, 2009).

  26. 26.

    Nur Yalman, “Some Observations on Secularism in Islam: The Cultural Revolution in Turkey,” Daedalus 102.1 (Winter 1973): 139–168. See Andrew Davidson and Joel Weinsheimer, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey; A Hermeneutic Reconsideration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  27. 27.

    See Benazir Bhutto, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West (New York: Harper, 2008). For the dynamics between secularism and Islamism in Pakistan and Malaysia, see Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  28. 28.

    See “What do you Mean by Dawlah Madaniyyah?” by Ahmed Zayed published by http://www.dawlamadaneya.com. The entire website is dedicated to the advocacy of a civil state.

  29. 29.

    Here are some examples of attempts at political theory to advance a vision of democracy with a significant role for Islam and Islamic values in both the architecture of the polity and in politics as well. See Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman, eds., Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). M. A. Muqtedar Khan, ed., Islamic Democratic Discourse: Theory, Debates and Philosophical Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Book, 2006). Abdullahi A. An-Naʿim, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of the Shari’a (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Towards a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  30. 30.

    A recent book illustrates beautifully how secularists blame Islam for all ills in society. See Dan Diner and Steven Rendall (Tr.), Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  31. 31.

    See John Esposito and Azzam Tamimi, eds., Islam and Secularism in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  32. 32.

    See Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007). Also see Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from The Extremists (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).

  33. 33.

    See, for example, this lecture by Dr. Muhammed Musa Al-Shareef entitled, “Islam and Human Rights” (Islam wa Huquq Al-Insaan). It can be viewed on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmECQ4QgeGg.

  34. 34.

    See M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Islam, democracy and Islamism after the counterrevolution in Egypt,” Middle East Policy 21.1 (2014): 75–86.

  35. 35.

    Quoted by Vali Reza Nasr in his book, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p. vii.

  36. 36.

    See M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Constructing Identity in Global Politics,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 15.3 (Fall 1998): 81–106. Also see M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Islamic Identity and the Two Faces of the West,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 19.6 (August/September): 71.

  37. 37.

    M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Constructing the American Muslim Community,” in Y. Haddad, J. Smith and J. Esposito, eds., Religion and Immigration (New York: Altamira Press, 2003), pp. 175–198.

  38. 38.

    See Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Islam and the West (Lucknow: Pub: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 1991). Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009). Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (London: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  39. 39.

    See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72.3 (Summer 1993): 22–49.

  40. 40.

    Fazlur Rahman, “Islamic Modernism: Its Scope, Methods and Alternatives,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 1.4 (Winter 1970): 317–333. For samples of the writings of the modernists, see Charles Kurzman, Liberal Islam: A Source Book.

  41. 41.

    On May 26, 2010, the Oxford Islamic Society hosted a conference titled “Rethinking Islamic Reform.” The key speakers were Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a very charismatic traditionalist, who true to traditional Islam is infused with Sufi tendencies, and Tariq Ramadan, the bearer of the torch of reform and shaper of contemporary Islamic modernism. The conference can be viewed on YouTube. Sheikh Hamza epitomizes traditional Islam resplendent with turban and robe and a well-manicured beard. Ramadan was wearing an expensive western suit and a barely visible beard. Their discourse exemplifies all the observations I made about the traditions they represent. To my delight, Ramadan actually quoted the hadith in his talk that I start this chapter with. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY17d4ZhY8M&feature=related.

  42. 42.

    See Dietrich Reetz, “Enlightenment and Islam: Seyyid Ahmad Khan’s Plea to Indian Muslims for Reason,” The Indian Historical Review XIV.1–2: 206–218.

  43. 43.

    S. K. Bhatnagar, History of M. O. A., Aligarh (Bombay: Asia Pub. House, 1969).

  44. 44.

    Moment for self-disclosure; the address of the website that I maintain and which hosts many of my short articles is www.ijtihad.org.

  45. 45.

    I recall a very interesting conversation about this phenomenon with Dr. Sherman Jackson, a prominent Islamic scholar both in the academy and in the community. He agreed with my point of the problem of knowledge deficit in the community and claimed that, it was the prime motivation, to provide “religious literacy,” behind an initiative that he was part of ALIM, American Learning Institute for Muslims. See https://www.alimprogram.org/. There are many such initiatives in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, which may be able to increase the religious literacy of the communities to levels necessary to make arguments for reform and from Islamic modernists potent.

  46. 46.

    Malik Bennabi in the Arab world and Ali Hasan Nadwi in India tried to understand why the Muslim world became colonizable. Malik Bennabi, Abdul Wahid Lu’Lu’a (Tr,), The Question of Culture (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2003). See Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Islam and the World: The Rise and Decline of Muslims and Its Effect on Mankind (London: UK Islamic Academy, 2003).

  47. 47.

    Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966).

  48. 48.

    See an edited English translation; Qasim Amin, “The Liberation of Women,” in Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof, eds., Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Fundamentalist Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 163–182.

  49. 49.

    See Margot Badran, ed., Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009). See also Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  50. 50.

    One of the best works on how Islam spread, not by sword but by missionary work by Muslims, is T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam (Delhi: L. P. Publications, 1990).

  51. 51.

    See John L. Esposito, Islam the Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  52. 52.

    See Muhammad Abduh, Kamran Talattof (Tr.), “The Necessity of Reform,” in Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof, eds., Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Fundamentalist Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 45–52.

  53. 53.

    See William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2005), p. 37.

  54. 54.

    See Hiroichi Yamaguchi and Haruka Yanagisawa, eds., Tradition and Modernity: India and Japan Towards the 21st Century (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1997).

  55. 55.

    See Andrew Mango, Ataturk (London: John Murray, 1999).

  56. 56.

    See Seyyid Quṭb, Milestones (Damascus, Syria: Dar Al-Ilm, 2000).

  57. 57.

    See Abid Ullah Jan, The End of Democracy (Canada: Pragmatic Publishers and Distributors, 2003).

  58. 58.

    See, for example, Enver Masud, Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, Aljazeerah.Info on Feb 10, 2006. On the World Wide Web at: http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/February/10%20o/The%20Cartoons%20of%20Prophet%20Muhammad%20By%20Enver%20Masud.htm.

  59. 59.

    See Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990). See Jurgen Habermas and Frederick G. Lawrence (Tr.), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Boston: The MIT Press, 1990). See Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). See also Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).

  60. 60.

    See Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 18–23.

  61. 61.

    See Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 20.

  62. 62.

    Nasr acknowledges that the very idea of tradition has been constructed as an antithesis to modernity in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), pp. 65–67.

  63. 63.

    See Fernand Braudel, Sarah Matthews (Tr.), On History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 25–55.

  64. 64.

    See M. Basheer Ahmed, Syed A. Ahsani and Dilnawaz Siddiqui, Muslim Contributions to World Civilization (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2005).

  65. 65.

    The essay has been translated and published in English; see Syed Abul A’la Maududi, “Self-Destructiveness of Western Civilization,” in Moaddel and Talattof, eds., Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam, pp. 325–333.

  66. 66.

    See Ibn Khaldun, N. J. Dawood, ed., and Franz Rosenthal (Tr.), Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

  67. 67.

    See Mustapha Pasha, “Ibn Khaldun and World Order,” in Stephen Gill and James H. Mittelman, eds., Innovation and Transformation in International Relations (London: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 56–74.

  68. 68.

    See Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1982).

  69. 69.

    See Louay Safi, Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), p. 51. Safi shows that reformist thinkers do recognize that histories, in this case Muslim and Western are difficult to separate.

  70. 70.

    Soguk makes a rather interesting observation that Muslims have yet to tell their story. They not only have failed to develop a theory of history but have also not done a good job of just telling the Muslim story. See Nevzat Soguk, Globalization and Islamism: Beyond Fundamentalism (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2011).

  71. 71.

    See M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “The Need to Revive Islamic Philosophy,” Intellectual Discourse 6.1 (Spring 1998). I also hosted two conferences, one in 1998 and the other in 1999, to review what I then called was a contemporary Islamic philosophy. See Ahmad Iftheqar Hussain, “First Contemporary Muslim Philosopher’s Conference,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 15.3 (Fall 1998): 167–172.

  72. 72.

    See Hamid Dabashi, The Green Movement in Iran (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2011).

  73. 73.

    See James Loxley, Performativity (New York: Routledge Publishers, 2006).

  74. 74.

    See, for example, Azam Torab, Performing Islam: Gender and Ritual in Iran (Amsterdam: Brill Publishers, 2006).

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Khan, M.A.M. (2019). Islam as Identity: After a Century of Islamic Revivalism. In: Islam and Good Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54832-0_3

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