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Anti-Islamic
Polemics: Secularist, Orientalist and Christian*
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By
Parvez Manzoor
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18/08/2004
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In
the world of Realpolitik, order and hegemony are synonymous.
Every bid for power masks itself as a quest for order and no
imperialist ever strives to dominate others, he merely seeks peace!
Alas, the world of the intellect is no different. It is beset by the
same cognitive ambivalence (and moral duplicity!) that prevails in
the realm of power-politics. The notorious conundrum of history and
theory is a case in point: every attempt at historiography is an
exercise in politics, just as every political design is enunciated
through a re-writing of history. The intertwinement of the political
and the historical discourses is thus indispensable to every
ideological struggle and forms an ineluctable trait of every
ideational debate. Little wonder that the interface of history and
theory, which is the distinguishing mark of the intellectual climate
of our times, provides ample evidence of the hegemonic ambitions of
the West. An ill-disguised attempt to masquerade an imperialist,
political, design as an empirical, historical, theory is Samuel
Huntington's notorious thesis about the 'Clash of Civilizations'
that has now been laboriously elaborated from a humble article in Foreign
Affairs to an overbearing tome. And yet the cruel paradox is
that for all its trust in the power of the civilization in command,
it is an apprehensive tract that displays an acute, almost
apocalyptic, sense of crisis, just as its realistic vision is
informed by a nihilism of reason and values which is, in the final
analysis, morally and politically irredeemable.
Every
attempt at historiography is an exercise in politics, just
as every political design is enunciated through a re-writing
of history. |
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The
architect of the controversial theory of the 'clash of civilisation',
Samuel Huntington, it is well worth recalling, was a theoretician of
the Cold War whom the collapse of the Communist regime robbed of a
vocation, if not of a career. His bid to carve out a new role for
himself has now given us a cavalier scheme of a future world order
that is spared the spectacle of ideological strife and political
struggle but which is haunted by the spectre of civilisational
strife. It is a world where people are willing to die neither for
economic rewards nor for political laurels but for cultural
solidarity. Here are the principal claims of Huntington's theory: 1)
The Enlightenment's project to create a universal civilisation must
be scraped. The West is unable to unify an increasingly recalcitrant
world either by the power of its arms, or by the lure of it ideology
and gadgetry; 2) Modernization is distinct from Westernisation and
has, paradoxically, been instrumental in undermining Western
hegemony; 3) A civilisation-based world order is emerging in which
the West increasingly finds itself at loggerhead with ‘the
Rest’. The principal threat to the supremacy, nay survival, of the
West, however, comes from the emerging confederacy of arms between
the Confucian and the Islamic civilisations; 4) 'The survival of the
West depends an Americans reaffirming their Western identity and
Westerners accepting their civilisation as unique not universal, and
uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western
societies.'
Leaving
aside the depressing fact that this is a nakedly xenophobic tract
that unwittingly (or perhaps not so unwittingly!) comes close to
sanctioning, in the name of civilisational struggle, the politics of
genocide and ethnic cleansing, Huntington's morally crippled vision
cannot even be empirically redeemed in a politically real world. A
civilisation, defined by Huntington as ''the biggest 'we' within
which we feel culturally at home as distinguished from all the other
'thems' out there'', it should be clear to everyone, is not
necessarily 'the strongest we'. It lacks both the stronger emotional
appeal of a Gemeinschaft such as a tribe or a nation, and the
coercive power of a Gesellschaft such as a state or a party.
Islam is a case in point: it is a civilisation without a 'core
state', a sacred community without the semblance of a single
attribute of a world-polity. Or, as another reviewer of
Huntington’s book chidingly reminds us:
That
such a clash exists (between Islam and the West) is not, of
course, in question. But when it comes to cold assessment of the
strategic significance of this civilizational clash, the rather
surprising conclusion is that it is limited. For the world of
Islam is both technologically backward and deeply split. The
ability of Islamic states to wage war against the West is
generally very limited... Islamic governments may be about to
obtain long-range missiles and are acquiring nuclear and chemical
weapons: that will demand a serious response; but the West
undoubtedly has the means, through credible threats of retaliation
and through the urgent development of ballistic-missile defense,
to overcome this challenge -- as long as it also has the will.
Whatever Islamic myth may suggest, the Islamic world did not beat
the Russians in Afghanistan (the Stingers did that), it did not
beat the West in the Gulf War, and, most telling of all, it huffed
and puffed but did nothing significant to assist the beleaguered
Muslims in Bosnia. (Harris, Robin: book review, National Review,
28 Oct 1996)
Islam
is the only logical anomaly in his [Huntington’s]
theoretical scheme. Indeed, every other entity that is
designated as 'civilization' is a super-state… |
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No
doubt the triumphalist logic of the post-Cold War era creates its
own momentum for the continuation of the West's civilizational
crusade against Islam. Nonetheless Huntington's effort to capitalize
on this vulgar sentiment and turn it into a respectable doctrine
smacks of pure expediency. For nothing can hide the miserable fact
that Islam is the only logical anomaly in his theoretical scheme.
Indeed, every other entity that is designated as 'civilization' is a
super-state (USA (The West); China (Confucian); Russia (Orthodox);
India (Hindu) Japan (Japanese) etc.) and partakes in the 'clash of
civilizations' as a state. The only outsider in this league of
super-powers and the only non-actor in the game of global politics
is Islam. It is the only civilization that is being threatened by
everyone and which is in no position to threaten anyone!
As
an exercise in serious strategic analysis, then, Huntington's thesis
does not pass muster. It fails to describe with sufficient clarity
what motivates states, what makes them rally or not around a
cultural axis, or what set limits to their politics of
civilizational identity. Nor is it clear what cognitive gain is
there in replacing the economic determinism of Marx by the cultural
determinism of Huntington? Notwithstanding the notoriety of this
work, then, the significance of the civilisational factor in global
politics remains a question mark. In fact, Huntington's book is a
sleazy piece of polemics that is far more xenophobic in tone, and
far less inhibited in its pursuit of primal passions, than anything
produced during the Cold War. None of its spurious statistics or
specious arguments can turn it into a respectable work of
scholarship.
If
politically Huntington's thesis is expedient and jingoistic,
morally it is bankrupt and devoid of all humanistic
pretensions. |
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If
politically Huntington's thesis is expedient and jingoistic, morally
it is bankrupt and devoid of all humanistic pretensions. There is no
inkling of a universal humanity; no common 'we' that redeems the
cultural and religious karma, no utopian peace which abrogates the
'clash of civilisations'. In a civilisational world-order, no person
simply belongs to the whole of humanity; s/he is always a
civilizational being belonging to the West, Orthodoxy, Islam and the
rest! True enough, the notion of common humanity conveys nothing but
utopian babble to modern political science which prides itself for
its 'realistic' temper. Hence, as a Machiavellian theorist,
Huntington is not expected to defer to any utopian morality. That
may be so, but could Islam abdicate its right to envision and
cherish a universal humanity for the sake of political realism?
Could it claim any right to founding a 'civilisation' without having
any faith in human unity?
The
'clash of civilisation', if indeed there is any justification for
giving currency to this apocalyptic phrase, is meaningful only if it
is not construed as a quest for political scrambles, if it does not
allude exclusively to this-worldly pursuits. For whatever the nature
of the contest between Islam and the West in the future, the real
discord, according to a Muslim, is between an Islam that is a
project for the realization of human unity and a West that is not
loathe to sacrificing universal humanity for the sake of preserving
its hegemony. Unlike the West, Islam is not self-referential and the
raison d’être of its civilisation is not self-perpetuation but
the realization of certain higher goals, the most salient of which
being the moral unity of mankind. Without this unnegotiable moral
commitment, 'Islam' would be a indistinguishable from other earthly
empires; it would accept any kind of compromise in the name of
political 'realism' and rejoice in being 'unique' rather than strive
for a universal humanity. That Huntington's vision rids Islam of its
transcendental mission and reduces it to a 'warring tribe' is
another reason why the Muslim cannot comply with its stipulations.
Whatever the lure of the Western model of power, recognized as
morally vacuous even by Huntington who believes that 'the West won
the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion
(to which few members of other civilisations were converted) but
rather by its superiority in applying organized violence', the
Muslim cannot accept it without betraying the Islamic commitment.
Unlike
the West, Islam is not self-referential and the raison
d’être of its civilisation is not self-perpetuation but
the realization of certain higher goals, the most salient of
which being the moral unity of mankind. |
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Behind
Huntington's opportune political theory lies of course the polemical
enterprise of Orientalism, whose tendentious and overwrought sources
he has skillfully, if somewhat disingenuously, exploited. Needles to
say, Orientalism's epistemological and moral pretensions have been
effectively deconstructed by Edward Said whose insights are
indispensable to any discussion on Huntington's theory. Another work
which may prove out to be equally indispensable and seminal in this
regard is, I believe, Patricia Springborg's Western Republicanism
and the Oriental Prince. A feat of monumental scholarship and
formidable analytical acumen, Springborg's study de-masks the
Western discourse of power, of the construction of Western identity
and Oriental difference, in a masterly fashion and by so doing
hammers the last nail in the coffin of Orientalism. Though in the
revisionist tradition of Edward Said, as a scholarly work it is far
bolder, far more ambitious in scope and far more imaginative in its
handling of the immense historical sources that it probes, be these
ancient and Greek or medieval and Latin or modern and European, than
anything known previously. It brings to surface the submerged mass,
the proto-historic subconscious, of the iceberg of Western self
whose visible tip was displayed by Said in his Orientalism. A
highly demanding though extremely rewarding work which no serious
scholar of world-history can afford to miss.
Though
Springborg presents a polemical argument and challenges the West's
comfortable view of its evolution, her work belongs to the best in
the tradition of critical historiography. It both overwhelms by the
sheer weight of its facts and persuades by the chaste logic of its
argument. Just as myth-making provides greatest incentive to the
writing of history, the author confesses, myth-unmasking lies at the
heart of her critical enterprise. And the myth she unmasks is that
of Western republicanism and the oriental prince, of the contractual
Rechtsstaat and the autocratic despotism, that shapes the East-West
divide which is as old as history itself. This myth poses for us
boundaries, she claims, 'some of which are self-erected walls,
others ancient lines of demarcation between conceptual systems, and
yet others are like mirrors through which Alice in Wonderland can
step - they reflect distortions which disappear under examination
and sometimes reverse images.' What Springborg's study tries to
accomplish is, by her own standards, 'an appraisal of these
boundaries, their historical basis and the purpose they serve.'
The
myth she [Springborg ]unmasks is that of Western
republicanism and the oriental prince, of the contractual
Rechtsstaat and the autocratic despotism, that shapes the
East-West divide which is as old as history itself. |
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The
surprising finding of Springborg's investigation is that the
ideological 'Berlin Wall' between the East and the West was not
erected until after the Reformation. Prior to that, from Antiquity
to Renaissance, the boundaries between the two, intellectual as well
as civilizational, were quite fluid. Only with the rise of the early
modern European states in the post-Reformation times does the East
become a constant reference point for the West and acquires its
characteristically 'despotic' physiognomy. And yet the roots of this
'Orientalism' - Islamophobia and anti-Semitism - go far back into
ancient times. From seemingly innocent, archaic, quaint and
apparently arbitrary elements in the writings of the ancient sages,
she discovers prototypes for later racial and cultural stereotypes.
For instance, Aristotle's defense of slavery, which in her opinion
was 'treated more benignly than it deserves by conventional
commentators', shows upon scrutiny to contain thinly veiled 'racial
imperatives' to treat "Greeks like brothers, barbarians like
plants and animals". The slave by nature, Springborg makes no
bones about the meaning of the Aristotelian text, 'was quite simply
an Asiatic.'
The
'self-assumed identities' of the modern Western European states,
insists Springborg, were theorized in a specific historiographical
tradition, that of republicanism. It was out of the struggle between
weak, concession-dispensing monarchies and the economically dominant
classes - a contest that was ultimately decided in favour of the
Bourgeoisie - that the specifically ideological theory of the modern
European state was generated. The Bourgeoisie laid claims to
inheriting the mantle of the ancient polis and managed in the
process to create oriental despotism as a foil for classical
republican theory. Yet the irony is, notes Springborg, that all the
evidence suggests that 'the ancient Middle East may well have
pioneered city-republican forms, of which the Greek polis was only
an example.' The list of borrowed institutions included: 'the
bicameral legislature, eligibility to which was decided on property
qualification and birth to free citizens; rule of law, an
independent judiciary, procedures for holding magistrates to account
and trial by jury; the rotation of magistracies among an isonomous
elite; voting by ballot and by lot; private laws of contract and
commercial law.'
The
state in the East, then, was 'essentially pluralistic, aggregating
the institutions of civil society in a classical Hegelian manner.'
Needless to say, this is true of the classical Muslim empires as
well. In fact, the Islamic East experiences the authoritarian state
in its pure form only with the coming of the Western colonialism.
Following Hannah Batatu's lead (The Old Social Classes and the
Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton, 1978) Springborg
convincingly asserts that 'nineteenth-century European colonisers
were the first with the technological capacity and the long
experience of authoritarian rule to have both the ability and the
will to smash the institutions of civil society, destroy the old
social order, and create the vacuum into which first the colonial
power, then its stooges (transplanted and faked-up kings, shahs,
etc.) and finally the revolutionary one-party state could step up.'
Compared to the pluralistic East, the state in the West, according
to Springborg, was 'classically authoritarian' and 'rested on the
absence of participatory structures.' The ubiquity of autocracies in
the Muslim world, then, is not due to any inherently despotic
disposition of the Oriental mind, but a gift of Western colonialism
and modernity.
Among
other potent myths whom Springborg squarely lays to rest in this
exciting study is Marx Weber's claim (advanced in the Preface to his
celebrated work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism)
of the 'rational'—administrative, technical and
scientific—superiority of the West over the East. For all his
advocacy of separating 'facts' from 'values', she shows with a
summoning of formidable historical data, the great sociologist was
surprisingly lax in checking out his own facts! (A similar charge
against Weber has been made by Bryan Turner: Weber and Islam.
London, 1978.) To the favorite Orientalist query—or taunt—as to
why, despite a finally graduated division of labor, capitalism did
not emerge in the East, Springborg, following Goitein, retorts that
'it was because business generated a specific professional form, the
partnership, neither based on division between owners and
non-owners, nor giving rise to employer-employee relation.'
Centuries of small business organised in partnership, 'in which some
partners contributed capital, others labour, but all were happily
"owners"', simply shut out large-scale industrialist as a
dominant type. Not surprisingly, the emerging discipline of Islamic
economics takes 'partnership' as the pivotal idea of its
entrepreneurial system.
'Such
historic inversions are due less to malice or a predilection
for untruth than they are due to the ideological status of
the claims involved—as provisional truths staking out
territory and hoping, thereby, to create facts…' |
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It
is obvious from the above discussion that this is a very learned
work which deals principally with the modern West's appropriation of
the ancient East, while at the same time creating the myth of its
backwardness and despotism. (Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Machiavelli
and others form the focus of its investigation. Islam, by contrast,
is restricted to a brief discussion of the traditional 'Mirror of
Princes' and Ibn Khaldun. In other words, this is not a work that
addresses the specialized Islamic scholar, though obviously anyone
with an interest in the history of ideas and politics, Islamist
included, ought to find it extremely stimulating.) The five basic
categories of this myth which tells the deep origins of Orientalism
and anti-Semitism, according to Springborg are: race, property,
oligarchy, etiology and economy. The greatest of the ironies,
Springborg remarks further, is that 'property, among the liberties
on which "freedom of the Greeks" was said to depend,
should have the jealously guarded ruling oligarchies within Graeco-Roman
systems. Freedom for the many was defined politically, for the
ruling few it was defined politically and economically.' As to the
bigger question about the nature of the relationship between myth
and reality, or the distortion of historical truth in
historiography, Springborg believes, that 'such historic inversions
are due less to malice or a predilection for untruth than they are
due to the ideological status of the claims involved—as
provisional truths staking out territory and hoping, thereby, to
create facts. They are also to the nature of stereotyping: the
characterisation of the East as the "other", or merely as
the negation of all that was being claimed for the West, by
polemicists knowing, in fact very little about it.'
The
five basic categories of this myth which tells the deep origins of
Orientalism and anti-Semitism, according to Springborg are: race,
property, oligarchy, aetieology and zan ambiguous conclusion
regarding the relationship of universal religions and universal
empires. Contrary to the commonly held belief of the late antiquity
that allegiance to one God both justifies the exercise of imperial
power and makes it more effective, Fowden's historical inquiry shows
that monotheism does not merely abet imperial ambitions it also
undermines them. Though antecedents of the idea of the religious and
political unity of the state, he shows, can be traced in the
polytheistic world of Greece and Rome, it was Constantine who placed
religion at the centre of Roman political ideology with the
consequence that 'by Leo's day, one could not become emperor if one
was not a Christian.'
The
focus of the study is 'monotheism on the theological level and
universalism on the historical level (both secular and religious)'
(emphasis supplied). Not surprisingly, the author is forced to
enunciate his stance on the nature of polytheism ('the divine realm
is populated by a plurality of gods of broadly comparable status,
not fully subordinated to or comprehended within a single god of
higher status'); henotheism ('affirmative belief in one God, without
the sharply-defined exclusive line which makes a belief in Him as
the only God') and monotheism ('one unique god to the exclusion of
all others') even if, as an afterthought, he adds that 'monotheism
is much more ambiguous as a reality than its definition might lead
one to expect.' Another claim is that though monotheism has been
associated with certain world religions, 'it does not necessarily
give rise to personal proselytism or organised mission, much less to
political expansionism.' For monotheism is not ineluctably
universalist: it may be 'ethnically based (Judaism)'; or merely
'receptive to converts (early Islam)' 'rather than actively
proselytising (Christianity)'. Needless to say that all these
theoretical assumptions are manifestly polemical, not to speak of
the slanted typology which historicises Islam ('early Islam') but
shields Judaism and Christianity from any such reductionism!
Whether
it is the ambiguity of Fowden's theo-political vision that renders
his historical reflection more of a personal Confessio than a
theoretical dissertation may be a moot point, what is
incontrovertible is however that his intermingling of religious
sensibilities and historical insights is quite intimate and
deliberate. And yet, the study has all the trappings of an academic
tome: an impersonal, academic, style; an articulate and
well-researched presentation of historical sources; a meticulously
executed apparatus of footnotes and bibliography'; indeed, a general
absence of emotion and scurrility. Only the Epilogue, lovingly
crafted in the style and form of a Scriptural sermon, belies its
academic pretensions. True enough, nobody need to haggle with the
personal piety of the author or question his deeply-held religious
convictions, even when these leaven a professedly secular discourse.
Nevertheless, a Muslim is entitled to respond to some of Fowden's
theological prejudices which inform his historical insights, and
especially so when these insights have a definite bearing on the
faith of Islam itself.
The
most flagrant of Fowden's theological prejudices, which are given
full reign within the world-historical, ostensibly secular,
framework, concern of course the Prophet of Islam. He is presented
as an ambitious empire-builder whose mission and call are
irrelevant, or at best incidental, to his achievements. He founded
an 'empire' and 'religion' was a by-product of his imperial
ambitions or merely a means to achieving this-worldly goals. Cf:
'Besides a secular order Muhammad also proclaimed a new revelation
from the One God, and in doing so created (whether or not this was
fully understood at the time) a new religion, as well as giving
impetus to the emergence of a new culture.' At an other occasion,
Fowden outdoes himself by claiming that 'on the political level he
(the Prophet) was able to set in motion a sequence of conquests that
resulted in world empire. And on the cultural level he did not
merely choose one religion rather than another and then rewrite
history accordingly. Instead he gave history new impetus by
proclaiming a new revelation and a new religion, while cleverly
drawing on the momentum built by earlier monotheist prophets.
Muhammad's career was a product of conjunction of opportunities, but
also of his personal ability to recognise that conjecture and
communicate it to others.' Islam, in short, is a gift of the
political genius of the Prophet who, paradoxically, is both a
passive tool in the hands of time and a clever schemer riding on the
crest of history! The only thing missing in this historical
non-drama is the will of God.
Far
more problematic than the glib display of theological polemics is
the author's propensity to "psychologize". Far too often
does Fowden rejoice in the exposition of the facile relationship
between the psychological motive and the historical happening.
Writing centuries after the events, and with the balance-sheets of
history firmly in his hands, he is able to affirm that he has
discovered the only possible historical world, that he has fathomed
the unambiguous and infallible internal logic of history which he is
only too willing to share with his reader. Nowhere is there an
inkling that the logic of history may be less than unambiguous or
that psychology and history are basically irreconcilable within the
same mode of explanation. Here are some examples of his uninhibited
determinism: 'The Islamic empire owes its stupendous success and
power to a combination of Cyrus's geopolitical achievement with a
universalist (though not, to begin with, actively missionary)
monotheism - Constantine's dream come true.'; or, by the death of
Uthman 'the geopolitical preconditions of world empire had now been
met.'; or, 'The obvious late antique cultural or, more specifically
religious universalisms, those of Christ and Mani, were universalism
from birth.' (Circularity thy name is historic causality!) What is
missing this time is the will of man.
What
was essential, and what has proved enduring, in the
Prophet's legacy is the faith and the community of faith he
founded, not the body-politic but body-Islamic. |
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No
doubt that while reviewing Fowden's book, the Muslim critic is not
expected to invoke the Transcendent as a cause of the historical
phenomena, just as Fawden cannot be indicted for eschewing the para-historical
as an explanation of the historical. Nevertheless, the question
remains, what is 'historical' and what is 'theoretical' in Fowden'a
account; what are his 'facts' and what are his 'values'? Aren't the
two hopelessly mingled; isn't his language more evaluative than
descriptive; isn't his history, in short, a fact of his imagination?
By what token is the Prophet of Islam an empire builder? (Even from
the canons of secular history, the Caliph Umar, or the monarch
Mu'awiya, or in fact the emperor Walid I, possesses more of a claim
to the founding of the 'empire' than the Prophet. Of course, the
Prophetic regime had the responsibility of creating, and defending,
the umma, and that the task entailed a political and military
struggle. It is also undeniable that towards the end of the
Prophet's mission, the Muslim community did achieve some measure of
'success'. But to confound the existential vicissitudes of the
pristine religious community with the worldly glory and ambitions of
the Ummayad and Abbasid Empire is an act of sheer bigotry and
malice. Sure enough, the Muslim is not ashamed of the might of
Islam's 'classical' empires, but s/he has never conceived 'Islam',
of which the Prophetic regime was the existential embodiment, as a
'secular project'! What was essential, and what has proved enduring,
in the Prophet's legacy is the faith and the community of faith he
founded, not the body-politic but body-Islamic. The perception of
the Prophet as a, mere, 'statesman' is a fact of the secular,
Islamophobic, imagination. How one hears the echoes of the
Orientalist refrain!
Were
Fowden's 'historicism' consistent and even-handed, were his
perception of the world bereft of all Transcendence, one may have
found his secularism less galling. This, however, is far from the
case: his is not a nihilistic tract but a deeply Christian one. For
the final paragraph of his work reads: 'The ambition to produce on
earth God's heavenly monarchy - whether in the guise of theocracy or
of a more secular autocracy - has always proved an illusion. Even
where partially realised, the ideal has been subject to the
corruption of power. Not only in his dialogue with Satan in the
wilderness, Christ rejected both earthly power and its accompanying
illusions and corruptions. Instead, he addressed to the innumerable
individuals who make up mankind, and within them to the mortal soul
that is our only truly individual and indivisible attribute.' So
this whole exercise in historiography is merely for the sake of
dethroning history and discrediting every historical project! The
irony is that among the historical projects, there is also
Christianity; its church, its empires, its princes, its art, indeed
its theology, liturgy, ethics and everything else that bears the
Christian stamp. These too have been enterprises of power and
corruption. To reject them would be to reject the Christian
existence altogether. How come that Christian sensibility is so
fundamentalist and fanatic that it can only pay testimony to the
Christian faith by renouncing Christian existence?
Unfortunately,
despite a fair degree of accord on the absoluteness of Divine
transcendence, on the ultimate futility and inadequacy of human
effort and on the primacy of the individual being and his/her moral
responsibility, the Muslim cannot fully share the anti-historical
and anti-existential sentiment of the Christian author. Nor can he
agree with the Christian polemicist that every human enterprise,
since it lacks perfection, is foredoomed to perdition. Indeed, the
most perceptive Muslim mind of this century, Muhammad Iqbal, has
responded to this kind of squeamish spirituality in these lyrical
words:
'The
great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content
for spiritual life which, according to the insight of its founder,
could be elevated by the forces of a world external to the soul of
man, but by the revelation of a new world within its soul. Islam
fully agrees with the insight and supplements it by the further
insight that the illumination of the thus world revealed is not
something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through
and through.'
The
above discussion amply demonstrates that the scholarly literature on
Islam contains a fair amount of polemics and that secularists,
orientalists and Christians equally partake of this enterprise. Plus
ca change.
Works
Discussed in the Essay:
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The Clash of Civilization and the Making of a New World Order By
Samuel P Huntington. Simon & Schuster, Rockefeller Centre, 1230
Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, 1996. Pp 367. $26.00.
ISBN 0-684-81164-2.
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Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince. By Patricia
Springborg. University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX
78713-7819, USA, 1992. Pp 350. ISBN 0-292-77664-0.
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Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of monotheism in late
antiquity. By Garth Fowden. Princeton University Press, 41
William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA, 1993. Pp 205. ISBN
0-691-01545-7.
*The
essay first appeared on Parvez Manzoor’s home
page
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