1.1 Overview
This book examines the theme of civility, as well as the related idea of political culture, in the Muslim world with the aim of identifying and explaining how they have been understood in the past and up to the present time. Each chapter focuses on a specific period and deals with distinct Islamic perspectives, offering a systematic, comprehensive and interdisciplinary exploration of the theme(s) under discussion. Lastly, the project aims at satisfying the need to approach and assess the political aspects of Islam in as much an integrated manner as possible by bringing together insights from a range of disciplines, namely, history, political science, sociology, religious studies, anthropology and Islamic studies.
The study of Islamic civilisation has been a central topic of concern for several decades, highlighted by Marshal Hodgsonâs three-volume work The Venture of Islam (1974). Other notable works that treat the subject on a grand scale are the encyclopaedic effort of Ira Lapidusâ A History of Islamic Societies (1988) and Bryan S. Turnerâs thematic study The Sociology of Islam: Collected Essays of Bryan S. Turner (2013). The theme of civility, however, had not been thoroughly treated within the context of Islam until very recently, when the inquiry into the subject was spearheaded by Armando Salvatore in his extensive study Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (2016). Yet, the subject still requires greater attention, especially with regards to its development from a historical point of view. There are also areas of examination in relation to civility and the cognate concepts of the political and cultural that require further systematic exploration, such as Shiâa thought, literary culture, the Sufi and falsafa . One major concern of the project is to bring forward the nuanced debates around the problem of the relationships, dynamics and tensions that are seen as either existing or perceived between the religious/sacred and the socio-political/secular in the Muslim world. Although Islam has not historically demonstrated an overt tension between such paradigms in the way that they have been problematised in Christianity, this project aspires to argue that these very same tensions have becomeâespecially in modernityâquite pertinent (and possibly even of an urgent nature) to Islam in the current socio-political context.
The chapters in this book are arranged thematically and in a broad chronological sequence. Each chapter will to some extent deal with both historical and contemporary expressions of civility and political culture in Muslim societies. The first chapter, also the introduction, addresses the historical and theoretical aspects of the abovementioned tensions, looking closely at Tahaâs âsecond message of Islamâ and Ibn Khaldunâs theory of civilisations (asabiyya), and a revisiting of the prophetic missions of Moses and Muhammad as two case study examples. Chapter 2 will showcase the present quandary of Islam in modernity with a view to its historical conditioning and present imagining. Chapter 3 touches on broad concerns about the alternative presented by Islamic religiosity with regards to modes of institutionalised civility. Chapter 4 has a strong comparative focus as it traces civility across Christendom and the Islamicate coming up to its conceptualisations in the West and modernity. Chapter 5 examines the hermeneutic and interpretive articulation of civility through a textual analysis of the Islamic canon. Chapter 6 explores medieval to modern elements of civility in the court culture of the subcontinent. Chapter 7 addresses the distinctive character of the political phenomenology of Shiâism by studying the successive transformations of Shiâite political engagement. Chapters 8 and 9 examine the quintessential âflashpointâ of gender in the context of the modern values of democracy and human rights (Shepard 2014 , p. 342); in fact, the question of gendered holiness goes to the heart of the dilemma of Islam and civility, and this final chapter addresses the issue in terms of the paradox of gender in Islamic mysticism.
The issues raised in this book are also examined with an eye to the parallel roles of the interpretive and dogmatic modes that pervade the intellectual history of Islam. These (often unobserved activities) continue to determine Muslim sociality and politicality. That is to say, it is a question of how the different styles of thinking shape Islamic social and political engagement. This also has ramifications for views to âorthodoxyâ as a central debate when attempting to define Islamâs relationality to civility and political culture(s). Careful consideration is therefore given the processes of Muslim intellectualisation and rationalisation of significant events in Islamic history so as to discern the way that Muslims, as agents of history, play a direct role in shaping their future through their relationship to the past. Long have Muslim ideologues projected onto the past the utopian dream of socio-political unification. Likewise, they have sought to replicate past circumstance for present gain. Yet, is this a notion best retired? Common as it may be, should not such a truly outmoded framework (and not just in the sense of what is presently in vogue amongst academics) be abandoned for better alternatives? One alternativeâalbeit, a radical, hermeneutical oneâthat offers a genuinely original and critical rigour was proposed by Mahmoud Muhammad Taha (1909â1985), whose legacy was introduced to the English-speaking world and is carried by Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naâim (Taha 1987). Consequently, there are important currents of continuity and discontinuity in a discourse of past and present relationsâthat is, the question of Muslim historicalityâthat have generated certain kinds of âsalvificâ discourse both within the Muslim world and in the diaspora.
1.2 Tahaâs Understanding of Civility
Taha held that social equality grew out of economic and political equalities and that the former was not only the greatest challenge for societies but also âthe crowning achievement of the civilizing processâ (Mahmood 2007, p. 176). He situated this process at the core of âmanâs moral evolution from a lower, coercion-oriented moral sense and conduct to a higher, justice-oriented moral sense and conductâ (Mahmood 2007, p. 176). Civility was therefore the highest good, in social terms, that could be cultivated by Muslims if they adhered to the âsecond message of Islamâ (Mahmood 2007, p. 177).
Simply put, Taha proposed a revival of the Meccan revelations that carried the spiritual/ethical message of Islam that Muhammad had originally intended to impart but was unable because of the circumstances of the time. This âsecond messageâ represented âultimate Islamâ that is timeless. The âfirst messageâ of Islam, therefore, pertained to a lesser but necessary Islam, one that came to be defined in a fixed time period: Muhammadâs pax Islamica in Medina. What tradition has misconstrued, he argued, is that the first message of Islam is passed off as the definitive Islam. The âtrueâ and ânaturalâ religion that is with God (i.e., the fully disclosed Islam) and that ultimately brings humanity to God is the essential and eternal features of the second message (Mahmood 2007, pp. 144, 177). Proof of this for Taha was that which is legally binding is inferred from divine attitude (Mahmood 2007, p. 158). Meaning that the legal and ritual aspects of the religion are secondary to its spiritual and ethical aspects. Thus, the superiority of the second message would then follow based on what were the highest virtues of Islam that could not be instilled in fullness until a later time. Taha imagined that the full realisation of Islamâs essential qualities would then be translatableâand not contestableâin the modern context, since what was thought to have been âmodernâ values (i.e., socialâincluding genderâequality, democracy, freedom of individuals) were Islamic all along.
As such, Taha touches on several important points of tension that are important to our discussion regarding the relationality of past and present ideas of religion as they play out in the modern setting. He maintained that Islam was understood on two levels: the essential and the subsidiary, which corresponded to the âhigherâ and the âlowerâ parts of the Qurâan, relating to the Meccan and Medinan periods; he also teased apart a crucial difference between al-muâminun and al-muslimun (the believers and the Muslims), reserving the latter for those who had attained to true Islam. Thus, âMuslimsâ proper were distinguished from those of their brethren who went by this name as part of their religious identity, but were in fact merely âbelieversâ as per the verse 39:14 of the Qurâan. Key to Tahaâs thinking is the gradual process by which Muslims are perfected in their Islam, starting from a legal/ritual and moving toward the spiritual/ethical in an upward spiral. Tahaâs authentic Islam was already inlaid with the values of democracy, equality and freedom. And it was a matter of time before Muslim societies would arrive at that level of civic existence.
Interestingly, Tahaâs view presents a socialistic, communistic and Marxist view, albeit at the heart of which are God and religion. This is because he believed that their core values were the fundamental features of Islam, which Muhammad taught. Here we touch on some critical points that also highlight the problematics dealt with in this book, namely, that Taha himself embodied this tension between the Eschaton and civility. He was sympathetic of the Marxist position, but saw it as ultimately flawed because of its perceived atheism. Similarly, he was drawn to Western Liberalism because of its advocacy for democracy and individual freedom, but nevertheless saw the West as failing in its promise for equality and, above all, peace. While he believed the West functioned without a moral compass in its capitalist conquest for economic domination, Communism and Marxism were not its genuine correctives, since they were beset by godlessness. Both had failed to produce true equality, freedom and peace. To him, Islam was the answer, but not without radical change. Historical/traditional Islam had to be left behind through re-embracing ahistorical/essential Islam. The only viable outcome for civilisationâwhere economic, political and social equalities are truly met without coming into conflict with individual freedomâis when it complies with the highest degree of Islam.1
Whilst Tahaâs view on Islam as the solution to civilisational decay opens up interesting ways through which one might reconsider Islam in the light of modernity, this does have several significant drawbacks. To be sure, some of the latter have been resolved in the development of his ideas in the works of his former student an-Naim. Suffice it to say, the objections are merely technical in nature and not considered as undermining the integrity of his overall arguments, which stand to reason, regardless of how contentious they may be. There are two main parts to his thesis on Islam in relation to civility: historical and modern Islam and Islam as the answer to the challenges faced by humankind in modernity. The first, namely, Tahaâs idea to distinguish seventh-century context from present-day application of the religion is novel. The problem is that, in order to allow the thesis to make sense, he has to reinterpret the past and reconfigure the nature of Islam extensively. In principle, this raises considerable historiographical concerns, but perhaps less so from an objective standpoint and in relation to his fundamental re-reading of the canon. This is because his hermeneuticsâhowever controversialâis, nevertheless, grounded in a heuristics for social change. The other concern relates to the reading of modernity by Taha and, leaving aside his (mis-)readings of the Marxist position, what he sees to be the failure of Western civilisation to achieve its goal of peace. On one level, his view rightly reflects the political discourse of the era to which he belonged; but the extent to which it faithfully characterises the role of Western powers in terms of geopoliticsâin particular relating to the Middle Eastâis debatable. That he asserts Islam (and not Capitalism, Communism or Marxism) as the source of human salvation brings into sharp focus the problems relating to Islam and...