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Islam
Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World,
by Akbar S. Ahmed. 253 pages, glossary, references, index. London: I. B.
Taurus, 1999. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN
1-86064-257-8
This
book is not academic. I am not propounding and defending a thesis. It is
not a chronological history; for that there are other admirable books.
The book is impressionistic—part travelogue, part history (p. xii).
In
recent years there has been a spate of ‘short’ or ‘brief’
introductions to Islam, some admirable but most repetitive. Akbar Ahmed,
a renowned Muslim anthropologist at Cambridge, has written extensively
on Islam in both its historical and contemporary settings. The present
volume “arose out of a BBC television series” (p. xi) with which
Ahmed was intimately involved. While Ahmed insists this is not an
academic text, he in fact propounds and defends quite a few ideas about
Islam. It is certainly not a good academic book for what generally
passes as an objective view of the subject, but it is useful to have a
readable perspective from a Muslim intellectual embedded in a
quintessential Western institution. If you are looking for a reliable
introduction to Islam or the Muslim World, this book would be a poor
choice. It reads more like an op-ed piece of monograph length than
either a scholarly or mass-market narrative. In order to arrive at
‘Islam Today’ Ahmed retells yet again the basics of Islam and what
he styles a Muslim view of its history up until the start of the
twentieth century. He then looks at the collision of ‘Muslim
Nations’ and ‘Western Modernity’ through the abbreviated case
studies of Turkey, Iran, and India followed by a succinct discussion of
what he sees as the major issues in this confrontation (pp. 132-62).
These include the Arab-Israeli conflict, democracy, law, family,
marriage, and women’s roles. His chapter on Muslim minorities provides
a timely focus on what is happening in Central Asia and the Indian
subcontinent. Finally, he concludes with his previously stated diatribe
against the Western media’s exploitation of Islamic
‘fundamentalism.’
The
chief merit of Ahmed’s work, that he presents an avowedly
‘Islamic’ perspective, is also the main problem.
The tone is apologetic, giving the impression that there is an
idealized ‘Islam’ that the words and actions of bad Muslims (many of
whom appear to have been wealthy or shi`a)
should not impugn. Ahmed’s ‘Islam’ is defended by anecdotal
appeals to rationality. For example, the custom of the prophet cleaning
his teeth with a twig called siwak
has been proven by “some Swiss pharmaceutical companies” to contain
chemicals that reduce inflammation and caries (p. 23). Then we are
told that for “a Muslim there is no clash between science and the
Quran” (p. 30) and that the Quranic view of creation “can as easily
absorb Darwin as Hawking” (p. 31). The rhetorical style suggests that
this book is primarily intended for fellow Muslims who recoil at both
the extremist actions of Islamists and the stereotypical depiction of
such actions in the media. Hyperbole rules the text: thus, we learn that
the Arabs who entered Spain were “a vastly more developed
civilization” (p. 72) than the intolerant Europeans who eventually
threw them out. Despite being an anthropologist by training, Ahmad
succumbs to calling both Islam and Hinduism “cultures” (p. 84).
Sloppy scholarship mars Ahmed’s otherwise interesting observations on
recent travels. The list of references is woefully incomplete with a
penchant to cite books published in New Delhi.
Daniel
Martin Varisco
Hofstra University
The
Chronicle of Abraham of Crete,
translated by George A. Bournoutian.
(Armenian Studies Series) 190 pages, map, glossary, select bibliography.
Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 1999. $26.95 (Paper) ISBN
1-56859-082-2
The
Chronicle of Abraham of Crete, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of
the Armenian Church, has now been expertly translated into English from
the critical Armenian edition by George A. Bournoutian, who adds a
enlightening and useful commentary. This chronicle illuminates in detail
many important events in northern Iran and the South Caucasus between
1734 and 1736, a time of almost continuous warfare between the Ottomans
and the Persians in this area. The
Chronicle is also one of the few non-Persian primary sources
recounting events in the life of Nader Shah.
Bishop
Abraham of Crete, a man of great learning, journeyed as a pilgrim to the
Holy See of the Armenian Church in Etchmiadzin. On the death of his
predecessor, he was elected—quite unwillingly, he maintains—as head
of the Church to lead it during a period of unusual turmoil and
instability. Abraham, a born diplomat and fluent in Turkish and other
languages, apparently became something of a favorite of Nader and
personally observed many of the events in his life, including Nader’s
spectacular coronation on the Mughan Steppe during his campaigns
in northern Iran and the South Caucasus.
The
only contemporary sources that match Abraham's chronicle in detail and
accuracy are the official history of Nader by Mirza Mohammad Mahdi Khan
Kowkabi Asarabadi and the quasi official history by Mohammad Kazem Marvi.
While much of Abraham’s history is corroborated by both of these
sources, they make no mention of the numerous meetings and conversations
that Catholicos Abraham had with Nader, before and after his coronation,
which are recorded in such detail in the Chronicle.
Although Mohammad Kazem mentions Nader’s visit to the monastic
compound in Etchmiadzin, he makes no mention of the Catholicos being the
object of Nader’s interest.
Furthermore, neither of the Persian sources mention Abraham’s presence
at the qurulta'i on the Mogan
Steppe which elected and crowned Nader as Shah, while Abraham describes
in the most minute detail events that the Persian writers only recorded
more superficially several years later. This detailed record of the qurulta'i
by a foreign observer is Abraham's singular contribution to Iranian
history. In fact, each of these three chroniclers recorded certain
events not mentioned by the other two. Taken together, they present a
more complete account of the period. In addition, Abraham’s detailed
records on conditions in the cities, towns, villages, and countryside
through which he traveled provide valuable material toward a
socio-economic history of the South Caucasus during this time.
It is probable, as Bournoutian argues, that Abraham wrote his
history in part for the church hierarchy “to record the promises,
privileges, and property rights granted by the new Persian
administration to Ejmiatsin, orally and through various decrees
[and]
to establish a record in those uncertain times of Persian respect for
the Holy See in the event that the [Ottomans recaptured eastern
Armenia]” (p. 149). If so, Abraham's foresight proved providential,
since the Ottomans soon regained eastern Armenia and the Armenian
Patriarch of Constantinople inherited Abraham's testimony.
Dennis
R. Papazian
The
University of Michigan, Dearborn
History
of the Wars, 1721-1738,
by Abraham of Erevan. Translated by George
Bournoutian. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 1999. 97 pages, 3 maps, 2
illustrations, footnotes, select bibliography, index. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN
1-56859-082-2
Abraham
of Erevan’s History of the Wars/Patmut‘iwh
paterazmats‘n is one of three accounts in Armenian dealing with
the Afghan and Ottoman invasions and occupations of Iran and of
Transcaucasia. The other two are The
Chronicle of Petros Gilanents (annotated English translation by Caro
O. Minasian, Lisbon: 1959) and The
Chronicle of Abraham of Crete, which has also been translated into
English by Bournoutian and published by Mazda Press. Abraham of
Crete’s account has long been known to scholars of Iran, as it first
appeared in Marie-Félicite, Collections
d‘Historiens Arméniens, vol. II, which was published in 1876 and
used extensively by Laurence Lockhart in his Nadir
Shah: A Critical Study Based Mainly upon Contemporary Sources
(1938). The translation under review is based on the edition of
Abraham’s original manuscript (MS A) by Father Sahag Djemdjemian
located in the Mekhitarist Armenian Catholic monastery on the Island of
San Lazzaro in Venice and another manuscript (MS B), by Mett’eos
Karakashean of Evdokia. Bournoutian utilizes both MS A and MS B in his
excellent translation.
Abraham of Erevan’s account, like that of his counterpart,
Abraham of Crete, describes Nadir Shah’s many military campaigns
against the Afghans and Ottomans during a crucial period of the history
of Iran and of the wider Middle East. The military campaigns that
Abraham describes contributed greatly to Nadir’s assassination in 1747
and to the end of the short-lived Afsharid dynasty (1736-47). His
account emphasizes the vital geostrategic importance of the region now
encompassing eastern Turkey, Iraq, western Iran, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. Abraham’s description of the wars, especially Nadir
Shah’s, stresses again the crucial role of warfare in the rise and
fall of empires and dynasties. The wars contributed to the emergence of
a ‘peace’ policy on the part of the Ottomans, the rise of a new
empire in Afghanistan, further Russian encroachments in the Crimea and
Transcaucasia, and the fall of Nadir’s own empire.
Bournoutian provides a clear translation with excellent notes and
pertinent illustrations from Jahanogsay-e
Nadiri,
one of the two main Farsi sources describing the Afghan and Ottoman
invasions. On page 18 the words against
each other should be deleted; on page 62 it should be binbaşıs
instead of mimbaşis.
Bournoutian has now accumulated a publication and translation vita that
places him in a good position to write a new history of Nadir Shah’s
period and/or a new biography of ‘the last great Asiatic conquerer’
to replace that of Laurence Lockhart written in 1938. Mazda Press is to
be congratulated for making these valuable sources available in English
to interested scholars.
Robert
Olson
University of Kentucky
The
Theory and the Practice of Market Law in the Medieval Islam: A Study of Kitsb
Nis`ab
al-Ih`tisab
of
Umar b. Muhammad
al-Sunami
(fl. 7th-8th/13th-14th
Century),
by M. Izzi Dien. 247 pages, footnotes, appendices, bibliography. London:
E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1997. Distributed by The David Brown Book
Company, P.O. Box 511, Oakville, CT 06779. $99.00 (Cloth) ISBN
0906094-33-X
The title of this study may be misleading to non-initiates. The work is
not a treatise on economics or economic law, but a manual for the muh
tasib, the Islamic
‘market inspector,’ responsible for enforcing public morality not
only in the market but also in general. Such topics as the prohibition
on men’s wearing silk, the interdiction on use of hashish, proper
regulation of funeral customs, and the condemnation of illegitimate Sufi
practices loom larger than problems of the market.
The Theory and the
Practice of Market Law is an important work neglected by scholars
despite considerable attention over the past fifty years to the genre of
hisba manuals. An early,
uncritical edition by Sprenger (Calcutta, 1830s) fell almost immediately
into oblivion. In 1983, Dr. Izzi Dien published the first critical
edition (Jeddah: Dar al-Uluum); and another edition (apparently unknown
to Izzi Dien) appeared two years later (ed. Marizan Said Marizan Asiri,
Mecca: Maktabat al-Tailib al-Jami,
1405-6/1985-6). The present study represents Dr. Izzi Dien’s
attempt to make the treatise available to an audience unable to read
Arabic, and consists of two introductory analytical chapters and an
abridged English translation of the entire work, with some annotation.
What makes the Nisab
al-ihtisab
exceptional is its adherence to the Hanafi legal school (other preserved
hisba treatises from the
central Arab lands and Andalusia are overwhelmingly Shafi or Maliki) and
its provenance from the Eastern Islamic world. But that provenance, and
even the author’s name and dates, have remained obscure, and Dr. Izzi
Dien has done the field a service in establishing that al-Sunami (not
al-Shami) lived in India (not Central Asia or Egypt) in the early
eighth/fourteenth century. His further attempts to link the work with an
Indian environment are strained, as explicit references to Indian or
Hindu customs are surprisingly few. Al-Sunami relies on quotations from
earlier Central Asian Hanafi legal scholars, and while the work differs
from better-known manuals from further west, the amount of ‘local
color’ is disappointing.
Except for the crucial investigation into the author’s
identity, Dr. Izzi Dien’s two introductory chapters, on “The Nisab
and its author” and “The value of Nisab
al-ihtisab,”
are rather perfunctory. The translation is serviceable and reasonably
accurate, but the decision to resort frequently to paraphrase, summary,
and omission (not clearly marked), seems ill-advised, omitting much of
what is most interesting. The usefulness of an elaborate apparatus of
“Glossary of Arabic Words Used in the Translation,” “Books
Mentioned in the Text,” “Biographies of People Mentioned in the
Text,” and “Bibliography and Abbreviations” is vitiated by a high
incidence of inaccuracy. For example, Zufar, identified correctly as a
pupil of Abu Hanifa (d. 150/767-8), is said to have died in 110/728-9.
Readers unable to use the Arabic text can obtain from this study an idea
of what it includes, although they will be frequently confused or even
misled; scholars with Arabic would do well to turn to one of the
editions. In any case, the prohibitive price of a study that offers
relatively little to either audience makes it difficult to recommend.
Everett
K. Rowson
University of Pennsylvania
Muslim
Diversity: Local Islam in Global Contexts,
edited by Leif Manger. (NIAS Studies in Asian Topics, 26) 260 pages,
index. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999. $75.00 (Cloth) ISBN
0-7007-1104-X
“There are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain
them,” (p. 17) claims Leif Manger in his introduction to this
important new volume, challenging not just Orientalist presentations of
Islam but also the contemporary religious sensibilities of a good many
Muslims. The contributors clearly share this strategy; their “focus
not on Islam, but on Muslims” (p. 151) validate his claim for Muslim
diversity.
Manger’s introduction brings together insights from Talal Asad, Michel
Foucault, and recent critical writing on globalization to demonstrate
the importance of examining Islam as a discursive tradition that links
local, regional, national, and global processes into a ‘global
culture’ of Islam. The eight case studies in this volume examine Islam
in Bangladesh, Pakistan, West Africa, China, Java, Syria, and the Sudan.
They deal with a range of issues, from migration to jihad,
Salafiyya to syncretism; from each the reader gains new insight into how
Muslims have understood and responded to the inconsistencies and the
changing balance of power between local and ‘orthodox’ (or
international) variations of Islam.
What emerges from the readings is a clear picture of the profound impact
of two phenomena on the construction and contestation of local Muslim
identities: first, the incorporation of once peripheral regions into
the colonial state and/or nation-state, and second, the incorporation of
transnational labor migration and increasing participation in the world
economy. While it is clear that local Muslim practices and religious
experience have come under increasing assault from a homogenizing and
orthodox brand of Arabian Islam that has spread via these two phenomena,
the studies elicit a multiplicity of voices—ordinary people as well as
scholars—that reveal the dynamism of diverse and continually changing
Muslim identities and local contexts, which Manger terms ‘identity
spaces’ (pp. 17-19).
More specifically, contributions by Tor Aase, Eldar Braten, Annika Rabo,
Sharif Harir and Manger demonstrate the impact of the increasing
hegemony of the national state on local political economies, human
geographies, and religious experience. As Aase’s and Manger’s
chapters demonstrate, the root of these changes lie in increased
government presence in the region, which leads to a transformation of
the parameters of legitimate Muslim identity that “resignifi[es]
principles of social differentiation from identification by language and
ethnicity and toward religious markers” (Aase, p. 63). The effects of
this resignification vary from increased sectarian hostility in Pakistan
to the privatization of folk religious practices in Java or Sudan.
The
chapters addressing the international dimension reveal a wide variety of
positions along the continuum from Muslim to non-believer that
characterized both the eighteenth-century reformist Islam of `Uthman Dan
Fodio and the shifting geography of Islam in late-twentieth-century
Bangladesh and China. In each case returning pilgrims or migrants have
brought with them orthodox practices that challenge local praxis. In
Bangladesh this process has shifted perceptions of locality in such a
way that the Islamic heartland and its ‘international version of
Islam’ has become the ‘core’ and Bangladesh the periphery in the
minds of local Muslims (Gardern, pp. 41, 49). In China, the Salafiyya
movement has supported nationalist and modernizational programs of the
state while remaining critical of the accretion of indigenized Chinese
practices into Islam.
Given
the historical and geographical breadth of this volume, Muslim
Diversity is well-suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate
courses that examine modern Islam in comparative perspective. It could
also prove a useful resource for intra-religious Muslim and inter-faith
dialogues that aim to increase respect for and tolerance of diversity
within and between religions of the larger Muslim world.
Mark
LeVine
Cornell University
Moderate
and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Quest for Modernity,
Legitimacy, and the Islamic
State, by Ahmad S. Moussalli. 249 pages, endnotes, bibliography,
index. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1999. $49.95
(Cloth) ISBN
0-8130-1658-4
Ahmad
Moussalli is the author of numerous books and articles on issues related
to the debate about so-called Islamic fundamentalism.
In Moderate and Radical Islamic
Fundamentalism, he seeks to contribute to the study of
fundamentalism from a predominantly theoretical point of view. He is
preoccupied with the original thought or thoughts of fundamentalist
movements within Islam rather than with these movements as such. The
book is a textual analysis of the doctrines of political thinkers such
as Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Turabi, Rashid al-Ghannushi,
Abu al-A‘la al-Mawdudi and others considered leading theorists of
Islamic fundamentalism. As terms of reference for the study of their
works Moussalli lists “modernity, science, legitimacy, empowerment,
ideologies, state and society, and the West” (p. 4). His question is
whether fundamentalist doctrines past and present have instigated
changes within the intellectual Islamic discourse at large. In his
investigation, Moussalli resorts to a combined method of political
science, linguistics, and history. He detects linguistic differences
between radical and moderate political language, for instance, in
relation to the fundamentalist usage of the Qur’an as a source thought
to legitimize fundamentalist doctrine not only religiously but also
politically.
Moderate
and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism
consists of an introduction, a conclusion and six chapters. In chapter
one, Moussalli illustrates “Two Discourses on Modern Islamic Political
Thought: Fundamentalism and Modernism” relative to what they say on
the issues of knowledge, politics and society. In chapter two, he goes
further into “Fundamentalist Discourses on Epistemology and Political
Philosophy.” In chapter three, “Fundamentalist Discourses on
Politics: From Pluralistic Democracy to Majoritarian Tyranny,”
Moussalli delineates how Islamic fundamentalist scholars perceive
Western pluralism and democracy. In chapters four to six, the author
discusses the discourses of Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Hasan al-Turabi
on the Islamic state, democracy, shura,
and political ideology.
Moderate
and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism is
full of innovative views and ideas about how to read various texts
of Islamic fundamentalism. One concludes from it that ‘radicals’ and
‘moderates’ are not clear-cut categories for a classification of
Islamic fundamentalists. There is much that is moderate in radical
discourse and vice versa. Statements throughout the book such as
“knowledge, to a fundamentalist, is an act of belief; to a modernist,
belief is an act of knowledge” (p. 10) make the book an exciting read.
Not an easy one though, and it is not for beginners.
Jan
Goldberg
St.
Antony’s College, Oxford
The
Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims,
by Uri Rubin. 288 pages, bibliography, indexes. Princeton, NJ: The
Darwin Press, 1995. $27.50 (Cloth) ISBN
0-8750-110-X
The
Eye of the Beholder is
an unusual book, if not in its premise, at least in its organization.
Rubin says in his opening sentence “this book is about texts, and the
texts are studied in this book for the sake of the stories recorded in
them, not for the sake of the events described in these stories” (p.
1). The book is not an analysis of history; rather it is a textual,
literary analysis from which, nonetheless, readers are free to make
their own ‘historical’ conclusions. But contrary to the methodology
of Goldzihir and others, Rubin is not concerned with distinguishing
between fact and fiction. He is interested in the process of how these
fictional and legendary accounts came to be accepted.
Rubin’s
approach is already familiar. Muslims invented a great deal of ex post
facto tales of events to satisfy one need or another. Accretion of
legends, invented biographies, and forged events abound in the Islamic
tradition, so much so that, according to some Orientalists, we are left
with more doubt about the accuracy of the whole literary tradition, on
the one hand, and the events of early Islamic history, on the other,
including the personality of Muhammad. Applied to this book, Rubin says
that his main purpose is “to demonstrate how this story reflects the
self-image of medieval Islamic society. Medieval Islam was preoccupied
with its own status in the world’s history, trying to establish itself
as a worthy successor to other monotheistic communities which came under
its control, mainly the Jews and the Christians” (p. 3). To be able to
do so, the Muslims, according to Rubin, “sought to provide their
prophet with a biography no less glamorous than that of previous
prophets” (p. 4). Did the Muslims really need that ‘legitimacy’
after they had devastated the Byzantines and the Sasanids? Weren’t
their victories and other achievements enough to give them the
self-confidence for which Rubin claims they were searching?
Ascribing such motives to the collectivity of Muslims, and starting with
such an assumption, the author proceeds to ‘document’ the twisting
and turning of the traditions, a process during which the Muslims
borrowed and adapted stories and aspects of biographies of Moses and
other prophets. He does this according to five themes: attestation,
preparation, revelation, persecution, and salvation. He traces the
process of adaptation in each of these themes, discussing specific
examples. Using the Hadith and
Tafsir sources, among other
related studies, Rubin attempts to show that the process of creating a
vita for Muhammad went from biblical parallels, to pre-Islamic and
Meccan environment, and finally to Qur’anic legitimization. And in
this process, certain traditions were found to be unfit and therefore
rejected (oddly enough he still can find references to them in the
sources). He also informs us that the process of adaptation was not
always successful.
A textual approach will undoubtedly expose many contradictions, which
raises the question of when evidence is enough evidence. This
uncertainty may account for Rubin’s unusual organization of the book.
He does not present conclusions in his chapters. Rather he waits until
after the epilogue, in the section under “General summaries” to
review each of the themes he discusses. The “Epilogue” turns out to
be a study of the chronology of Muhammad’s life and how it was modeled
according to Moses’ life. The
Eye of the Beholder ends with a discussion on “The Evidence of the
Isnads,” a discussion that is useful in situating this book within
previous scholarship of similar approach.
Mahmood
Ibrahim
Cal Poly Pomona
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