Introduction
The post-September 11th world has brought a new concentration upon the nature of Islam and the Muslim world, especially in light of the millions of Muslims that live in the West. The turmoil in Syria and Iraq, as well as in parts of North and East Africa, has brought hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants and refugees to the shores of Europe. Once there, they join the millions of other Muslims who have already made their homes in the West. Although the secular democracies of Europe are seen by many as places of opportunity and freedom, many Muslims find their presence to be unwanted, unwelcomed and hated; their religious sensibilities disrespected; their culture maligned, and their faith positions mocked and degraded. Indeed, the post-secular society, in which both religious communities remain an important and powerful presence despite the continual secularization of the lifeworld, is a contentious mix of worldviews, cultural norms, epistemologies and moral systems. Following the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School, such a society can either chose to embrace the diversity and live in a dynamic democracy, or retreat into stagnant provincialism, in which the various secular and religious communities fail to engage in a productive discourse. As such, the challenge of the post-secular society can either result in a vibrant multi-cultural and cosmopolitan democracy, where constitutional values are the basis for shared citizenship, or the various factions can continue their discourse avoidance and fragment into waring faction, which will inevitably lead to increased social conflict.
The purpose of this study is to probe the various points in western society, especially Europe, where the issue of professing Islam can either be a force for solidarity among religious communities and secular citizens, or a force of division. Informed by the Frankfurt School for Social Research, especially Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and the 2nd generation philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, this study will be attempt to shed light on the future possibilities of a more reconciled future society wherein Islam finds a welcoming place within the post-secular society. As both a critical scholar of religion as well as a citizen of a secular state, I and many others wish to avoid the situation in which western societies degenerate into rigid communities of exclusivity; we wish to arrest and reverse the
Professing a religious position can be a perilous proposition in a world that has been thoroughly secularized. It is an even greater problem when the faith that one professes is thought to be suspicious or threatening by the dominant group within one’s society, which is the case for Islam in much of Europe.2 When a community’s deeply held beliefs, the basis of their identity, spiritual life, and cultural norms, is thought to be backwards, oppressive, undemocratic and unenlightened, it becomes easy for that community to internalize those accusations and close themselves up within their particular religious lifeworld (religiöse lebenswelt) and refuse to engage the broader society in a non-antagonistic and/or open way. When the marginalized religious identity is the source of social scorn, many within the faith community often cannot bolster the courage to engage other voices as equal members within that society, despite the fact that the believers may be the carrier of all the same civil rights afforded to them via their status as equal citizens of such a society. The notion of “equality” through mutual recognition, as often articulated by the Critical Theorist Jürgen Habermas, is the precondition for democratic and pluralistic deliberation. When society fails to adequately internalize and/or practice such notions of equality, democracy becomes distorted and degenerates into a hollow state-ideology in service to a single class, race, creed, etc. Therefore, when an undemocratic and therefore unfree situation presents itself within a context of social hostility on the basis of religious faith, especially Islam, the Muslim believers are often confronted with three choices; (1) abandon the faith, (2) engage in “religious dissimulation” (taqīyah), or (3) retreat into fundamentalism – the cutting off of an individual from the symphony of voices within the national discourse and adopting a staunch and unyielding attitude towards their own beliefs. Religious fundamentalism, by its nature, deprives the national discourse of the authentic voices of religious communities, as the believers often refrain from the social and theological risk created
On the other hand, irreverent and critical thought, which is often perceived as insulting, is essential in the modern world, as it helps diminish the temptation of dogmas, authoritarian ideologies and political economic idolatry. Yet, on the other side, the tyranny of relativism, which plagues modern society, leaving it without any philosophical and/or ethical anchors, cannot simply go unchecked and unquestioned. Joseph Ratzinger, later to be named Pope Benedict xvi, pointed out in a conversation with the philosopher Jürgen Habermas that there is a danger in the over extension of relativism, multiculturalism, and tolerance within a society that is rooted in the Enlightenment and the secular state. The danger is especially acute when that state fails to adequately integrate minorities into the overall national culture.4 The national anxiety concerning the non-integration and assimilation of Muslims within European society cannot be ignored as it is rife with future possibilities, both negative and positive; this anxiety can either be a source for discourse amongst European and Muslims or a source of continual antagonism and future violence.
However, the non-integration of Muslims risks the production of the “perpetual other” within the secular European society, which threatens the very stability of Europe. In terms of assimilation, the retreat into the comfort of Islam, the culture of national origin, and the Muslim community’s often refusal to integrate within the national life of the host nation – the self-ghettoization of Muslims – creates a parallel society within Europe. They are not fully integrated but not fully segregated either, but rather a state of limbo exists. Coupled with the historical suspicion of Islam being anti-democratic, authoritarian, patriarchal, and violent, Muslims are seen not only as the suspicious “other” but also the lurking enemy within. In light of this, immigration by Muslims appears to many Europeans to look more like a stealth invasion, especially during the refugee/immigrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.6 The fact that this society within a
The Post-Secular Society
The Critical Theorist Jürgen Habermas is keenly aware of the antagonism between the religious and the secular, the immigrant and the native, the democratic and the authoritarian, and the religiously devout Muslims and their European neighbors who are just as committed to their secular values. In order to look for democratic means to address the antagonism between these antagonisms, Habermas, in his chapter, What is Meant by a “Post-Secular Society”? A Discussion on Islam in Europe revisits the sociological debate about secularism and religious communities within Europe, especially the particular challenges presented by Islam. Reviewing former thought about the inevitability of global secularity, he points out the three basic premises of traditional secularization theory; (1) that science, technology, positivism, natural causation, i.e. the anthropocentric vision of the world, can no longer be reconciled with a worldview that is rooted in a theological and/or God-centric understanding of ultimate reality; (2) that religion has resigned itself to the private sphere after the loss of its social power within the state, economy, and national institutions; and (3) that the material abundance that was created with the capitalization and industrialization of the West, the availability of consumer goods, the advance of medicine resulting in the increase in the lifespan and healthy living, the reduction of existential and material anxiety, and the alleviation of ubiquitous violence, all made religion superfluous to the average individual – where once God provided for the people, now the markets provide; where once Christians prayed for their “daily bread,” now the bread factories see to it that it’s available. The scarcity of necessities and the uncertainty of life, which was
Yet Habermas is aware that those who have dogmatically held onto such theories of secularization have become frustrated by the failure of religion to fully disappear in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Their claims, that religion belongs to the adolescence, or even infancy of human history, that it’s a gestalt des geistes as Freud believed – and thus has no place in the adulthood of the modern humanity – are frustrated by religion’s stubbornness to find history’s exit door. In this sense, religion is fluctuat nec mergitur!8 Most stubbornly, and despite the ever-increasing secularization of the cultural, economic, and political realms, religion continued to infuse itself into the lifeworld of billions of people. The rise of religious fundamentalism, especially amongst Muslims both in Europe and the Middle East, the growth of conservative orthodoxy amongst the older denomination of Christianity, the move towards religiously infused governments in Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, etc., and the international and ecumenical popularity of the Pope Francis, all point to a resurgence of religion on a global scale.9 For the secularization theorists, religion’s shelf-life has long expired but it is still held onto by the masses, despite that it is understood by the expert cultures to be a roadblock to man’s progress and an entrenched impediment to his survival. Religion, for the militantly secular, scientific, and atheistic, is man’s poison – one he is too foolishly eager to consume. Confusingly, they wonder why so many continue to swallow the religion pill on a daily basis when they should know the pill is a placebo.
Like the religious believer who retreats into a purist way of thinking about the world, many secular fundamentalists also take refuge in Logical Positivism’s metaphysics of what-is-the-case – deeming all non-materialist, non-scientific, and non-causational explanations of ultimate reality to be
The continuation of religion’s existence amidst the thoroughly secularized world points to the fact that there is either (1) some persistent longing for something other than what-is-the-case (the world as it is) and (2) that religion still provides something to mankind that the secular world has yet to discover.15 Most dialectically, it appears that the very coordinates of secularity have produced the necessary conditions for religions’ continual presence – and/or rejuvenation – in society. In other words, secularity has produced a new form of religiosity: one that has become immune to secularity’s attacks, or at least has found the capacity within itself to deter secularity’s aggressively corrosive nature – a post-secular form of religion. This is not a world in which religion has triumphed over secularity, as could be misunderstood by reading “post” as being simply “after” in terms of time, but one where religion remains a continual and persistent presence within the increasingly secular world. Indeed, like a elastic band that is stretched at both ends, the more secular the contemporary world becomes, the more it creates the conditions for this new post-secular form of religion. The dialectic within secularity is such: as secularity expands
As scholars of history, society, religion and secular philosophy, we are challenged by this paradoxical phenomenon. Surely we in the West cannot go behind history and return to religion as a comprehensive worldview that determines the trajectory of the state and civil society, nor can we anachronistically return behind the Enlightenment without collapsing civilization into a false utopian dream of what society should look like now that we’ve experienced the horrors of secular modernity. Indeed, as Adorno has remarked in his essay Reason and Revelation, any attempt to return to religion post-Enlightenment is rooted in what we perceive as our needs and desires, not our being convinced of the metaphysical truth of religion’s claims.16 No, we are forced to muscle our way through secular modernity with one eye turned back towards history in proleptic solidarity with past victims and the other sternly directed towards the future with the object of creating a more-reconciled future society, which must include space for religious voices. This situation imposes an important question upon us: what can we as Critical Theorists do on the practical level to address the growing antagonism between the secular and the sacred; between the atheistic citizen and their religious counterpart; between the secular West and the dar-al-Islam (abode of Islam)?
In the realm of society, Habermas’ late writings on religion are increasingly sensitive to the antagonism between the sacred and the profane and how it manifests itself in the life of the nation-state and body politic. In light of his time diagnosis and prognosis, he proposes an answer to the vexing conditions of post-secularity – one that lays a challenging burden on both the religious and the secular if we are to see that the fundamental antagonism between the sacred and the profane within our current transition period – that is exacerbated by the ever-increasing power of capitalist markets and their global expansion – does not bring the world to total violence, i.e. alternative future No. 2, the totally militarized world capable of abc (atomic, biological and chemical) wars.
However, even when individuals have been emancipated from their fears, myths and fantasies, many intrinsically feel the price has been too high foradvance of thought,… aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters… Enlightenment’s program was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge.18
Beyond the purely subjective answer, secularity has failed to answer the most basic questions about life, its end point, its meaning, and how to console the grieving person in their moment of inner-most despair and torment. Consequently, there is a pervasive feeling of nihilistic emptiness in today’s secularized world. It continues to create mentally, physically and spiritually broken and crippled individuals, who are isolated and on the margins of society. Despite the problems, the pain of spiritual vacuousness is being globalized through the secularization process via aggressive forms of capitalism; the pain that was once limited to secular Western nations is swiftly becoming weltschmerz (world pain) and many are looking once again towards religion for anesthetic answers.
It is important to note that for Habermas, the object of the post-secular society can only be the society that has already been thoroughly secularized and not one presently struggling to become secular.20 In other words, to be post-secular presupposes a prior state of secularity. Therefore, post-secularity is limited to only those nation-states which have a secular constitution, secular polity, and a secular state; those states that have constructed a secular way-of-being-in-the-world through some kind of rational deliberation or non-theistic philosophy as opposed to a traditional theocracy or any other form of governance that relies on revelation or divine command for its legitimation. Furthermore, the cultural climate of the nation-state must also be one that is not only open to secularity, but accepts it as a basic norm, i.e. that the desireability of secularity is not a subject of disagreement and contestation (even if the degree of secularization and what that ultimately means can be a matter of debate). States in which the secular constitution and secular government is imposed from above upon a people who identify themselves as predominately
For Habermas, if the secular West has moved into a post-secular condition, we then have to have a change in consciousness concerning three important factors.21 First, Habermas points out that citizens of secular states find themselves anxious at the sight of resurgent religion which ‘shakes the secularistic confidence that religion is destined to disappear.’22 He believes that they must begin to resign themselves to the inevitability that religion will persist despite the growth of secularism. Second, secular citizens are becoming more aware that religious voices are increasingly contributing to various discourses within the public sphere; that they are ‘assuming the role of communities of interpretation’ and that they can contribute as a ‘sounding board’ for society when engaged in difficult moral and ethics decisions and dilemmas. Additionally, the existence of other religions within the multicultural societies of the West confronts Christianity’s exclusivism and privileged status by presenting alternative interpretations of reality and moral problems, and in doing so can offer previously unimagined solutions.23 Habermas points out that religions have increasingly become sources for meaningful thought-material in a world that has become increasingly malcontent to accept the finality of the status quo or the simply given. Lastly, the influxes of religious minorities into secular
To view these questions from the standpoint of the ‘neutral observer’ is to take the wrong perspective. According to Habermas, we must rather ask a series of pertinent questions, ‘How should we understand ourselves as members of a post-secular society, and what must we expect from one another if we want to ensure that social relations in secular nation-states remain civil despite the growth of cultural and religious pluralism?’25 Indeed, how does both the religious foreigner practice their religion in a secular society and how does the secular citizen embody their convictions within a society in which religion remains an active component in the public sphere? How do these groups of believers, non-believers, and agnostics learn to engage in conversations that do not descend into crude stereotypes, crass innuendos, disrespect, and hatred? Can they witness for their different religious and philosophical positions together as citizens, or is shared citizenship too deficient in providing them a platform by which they could discover an “overlapping consensus” on a variety of issues? Additionally, can secular society regain a healthy admiration for religion, and can religious communities understand and appreciate the role and achievements of secularity within the modern world despite their absence of divine legitimation? How should these two work together so that their living together does not descend into hating and killing? Can Habermas’ notion of post-secular society prepare a space in which professing a religious worldview – especially one that is associated primarily with foreigners – can
What Does It Mean to Profess Islam?
Through their adherence to five pillars and the moral code of Islam, Muslims profess every day to the most basic of theological claims: tawḥīd. ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah’ (La ilaha il Allah, wa Muhammad Rasul Allah). It is both a statement about ultimate reality, that the world and all it contains is a creation of a divine being that interjects its will into human history – a belief that is also shared by Jews and Christians – and a statement about how and why the divine has entered into history, not as an divine incarnation like Jesus of Nazareth in Christianity, but through a human messenger, a Prophet. For Muslims, the religion that was perfected by the divine is a complete and total way of life – a way of being that is meant to be understood as a total ‘submission’ (islam) to the will of the creator: a radicalization of what Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke: ‘not my will Lord, but yours be done.’26 For Muslims, this Christian statement has to carry through to all aspects of life, not just during ṣalāt al-jum`ah (congregational Friday prayers), the ‘eids (holy days), or in moments of crisis. Similar to the Calvinists, who find religious devotion in the everydayness of work, Muslims see the potential for ibādah (worship) in all things at all times (as long as they’re permitted activities). As such, all aspects of daily life take on a religious significance.
Profession is bearing witness through words – through the speech act – through language that expresses the ultimate commitments, ultimate concerns, ultimate values, and core beliefs of the individual.27 It articulates the
Because of the integrated wholeness of the Islamic tradition, the bifurcation of the lifeworld into a religious private and secular public sphere is a problem for the devout Muslim; faith does not stop at the threshold of the home and it cannot be artificially locked within the home. The five pillars of Islam are to be equally confessed in the realm of the family, civil society, and the state, regardless of whether they reside in a secular or religious society.29 Therefore for most Muslims, Islam cannot be relegated and/or isolated to the home without doing considerable damage to the integrated wholeness of the believer’s lifeworld. If the individual Muslim in praxis remains steadfast in separating the two spheres of life they often senses that they violate the very creed they professes which recognizes no such distinction, causing great difficulty, anxiety, and fear of divine punishment. If Islam is the perfected religion established by the God of the Qur’an, and that the Prophet instituted it in such a way that it is a religion that regulates – and therefore liberates – all spheres of life, and if the individual is a modern European who only confesses his religious beliefs behind closed doors while living the secular life in the public sphere, then they effectively forsake the sunnah (the way of the Prophet) and the divine
Witnessing in Islam: On the Tradition of Radical Praxis
The practice of “witnessing” for the faith of Islam takes on two fundamental dimensions. First, when in times of peace, the propagation of the Islam via da’wa (invitation to Islam), or activities associated with calling others to Islam. Muslims are encouraged to present Islam to non-believers in the most peaceful, merciful, and loving way, as to interest them in an alternative and truthful way-of-being, learning more about the will of the divine, and ultimately welcoming them into the ummat al-Islamiyah (Islamic community). Despite the stereotype of the Muslim that conquers by the sword, forcefully compelling anyone into Islam via violence or the threat of violence has been strongly condemned by an unequivocal verse in the Qur’an (Sūrat al-Baqarah, 2:256): there shall be no compulsion in religion. According to Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence), if a non-Muslim is ever wrongly forced to accept Islam, they are within their rights to revert back to their original tradition (or non-tradition). Da’wa is meant to be an open invitation to Islam, not an attempt to incarcerate within Islam. In peacetime, Muslims are to stand as witnesses for the Islamic tradition both in word and in deed through their submission to the moral and ethics principles laid out in the Qur’an, the Sunnah (way of the Prophet), ahl
Whereas professing is inherently concerned with the individual and the divine – a relationship that can easily retreat exclusively into the private sphere – the practice of witnessing is a public praxis that is geared primarily towards the individual believer and the society around them. The social aspect of witnessing is one that cannot be overlooked in understanding how the dynamic of Islamic witnessing works. It is within society that the subjectivity of the Muslim can transcend itself, go out to the other, and return back to them and complete their faith. The “other” in society is that which makes possible the realization of the believer’s moral commitments, social obligations, and divine commandments. It is with the “other” in society that the Muslim is commanded by his religion to practice the humanistic values of compassion, mercy, solidarity, and unconditional love. Although the mystics of Islam, the Sufis, often stoically shy away from the world outside of themselves and seek refuge in a deeply personalized relationship with the divine, and therefore sometimes forget the social demands of the ummah (community), the non-mystic Muslim, adhering to the prophetic model of religious life, is compelled to realize their religiosity in concert with others – whether that be in a community of believers or in a community of adversaries – either one of which serves as the
New Religion as Return of the Old
Islam, like Christianity, is not only a matter of a personal relationship with the divine, but is also a matter of active and dynamic social solidarity with the poor, the suffering, and the victims of nature and history, the tyrannized and the oppressed, and all those forced to live under unjust conditions. It was for these innocent victims, created by al-Qur’aysh (Muhammad’s tribe in Mecca),
In order to witness the encroachment of corporate capitalism within the most holy of spaces within the Muslim world, one need only visit Mecca – the most sacred space for Muslims – where the commercialization of the surrounding area continues unabated. Every western fast food chain, designer clothes, technological gadgets, or luxury items most associated with western bourgeois culture and the consumer society can be purchased within the city. It is a very modern city dedicated to a pre-modern religion and the modern cult of consumption. This phenomenon is the result of the collaboration with Saudi Salafism and corporate capitalism; the most poignant symbol of this alliance being the new Makkah Royal Hotel Clock Tower or Abraj al-Bait Tower that looms ominously over the great mosque of Mecca – a grotesque display of
Critics have dubbed this commercialization of sacred space the “Las Vegas-ization” of Mecca, as the “other-worldliness” of the sacred geography appears increasingly diminished in contrast to the secular and capitalist oriented culture. In the end, the “otherness” of Mecca is giving way to the “sameness” of every other major city in the world, as it sheds the aura of sacredness for ubiquitous advertisements and the same consumer goods that are found throughout the world. Apart from the Grand Mosque and other features of the city associated with Muhammad and the early Muslims, Mecca becomes indistinguishable from other Middle Eastern cities where the influence of corporate capitalism is abundant. For many Muslims, it appears that Mecca has returned to the market ethics of al-Qar’aysh, the primary enemies of the early Muslims, who also maximized profits from the pilgrims on their way to visit the holy Ka’ba, just as the first century money-changers did around the Jewish Temple, which sparked Jesus’ earthly dies irae (day of rage) against their profit making. For these Muslim critics, it appears that the globalizing secular force of capitalism has created a new jāhilīyah (age of ignorance) and its destruktiven geist (destructive spirit) has pierced the very heart of Islam’s most sacred space. Mecca, in many ways, stands today as a city divided between two religions. First, the religion of Islam that has always resisted its integration within the antagonistic spirit of capitalism, and secondly, the new “religion” of globalized capitalism – which has a way of quietly undermining the communicative nature of revealed religion, leaving behind a pitiful shadow of what religion once was. Additionally, from the perspective of Walter Benjamin’s dialectical materialist historian, the catastrophe of elegance and luxury comes at the cost of the more than
Witnessing in the Time of War
Witnessing in the time of war is of utmost concern in the latest period of Islamic history, as it has come to the forefront under European colonialism, post-colonialism, the “War on Terror,” the Arab Spring, and the various civil wars that have recently plagued the Muslim world. Although the western World’s fascination, condemnation, and distortion of the Islamic concept of jihād has gone on since the rise of the first Islamic empire that displaced the crumbling and oppressive Byzantines and Sasanians in the Middle East, and later threatened the lands of the Roman Catholic Church, it has yet to fully understand what jihād means from within a normative Islamic perspective. Whether this is intentional or through neglect is a continual topic of debate. On the other hand, a pervasive symptom of the nouveau-jahili-status (state of modern ignorance) of today’s dar al-Islam is that many Muslims aren’t able to adequately define or intellectually defend the notion of jihād either. When it comes under scrutiny, many Muslims adopt a reactionary attitude that levels the complex concept down to a simple slogan of “holy war,” the very same misconception of jihād that many uninformed westerners have. Religious illiteracy is not only a symptom of secularization, but of deficient religious education in supposed religious societies, and the Muslim majority countries are no exception. In a
Ultimately, all attempts to engage in a jihād bil-saif must be justified via rational discourse and legitimately rooted within the Prophetic tradition. It must therefore also maintain the standards, regulations, and prohibitions that were articulated both by Muhammad and the Qur’an, as these are the constitutional sources of the normative values that govern all forms of jihād.
Just as the once-revolutionary nature of Bourgeois philosophy is twisted into its opposite, the revolutionary and compassionate nature of jihād has also been transformed into the very opposite of its original emancipatory intention. Suicide bombers have not only become the fear of non-Muslims flying on Russian Aeroflot (Aэpoфлóт) airlines, United States and nato soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, bus riders in Britain and Israel, and trains in Spain, they are also feared by Muslims in historically Muslim lands who reject extremism, who visit Shi’a shrines, or who work for peace and reconciliation between warring factions. Indeed, if one was to adopt a quantitative methodology, one should clearly see that Muslims have been the victims at the hands of such terroristic activities more so than westerners.42 The Islamic ummah is targeted both by
Although what is deemed “radical” in today’s discussion of religion – those that bend religion to their extremist and often violent ideology – the real “radical” nature of Islam is in the opposite approach; the prophetic trajectory that Muhammad directed the early Muslim community towards was the truly radical approach, if we understand the term “radical” as being to “grasp the roots” of a given subject or action. In this case, the roots are in the prophetic tradition of the Biblical and Qur’anic prophets. When we examine what in Islam is described as the “age of ignorance” (jāhilīyah), there we see the prototype of those contemporary Muslims who brutalize, oppress, and murder, embodying not the example set forth by Muhammad, but by his enemies: al-Qur’aysh. Likewise, in the example of the Roman Empire, its sociopathic Caesars, its Legions, and its Praetorian guard, we see the prototype for those “Christians” who brutalize, oppress, and murder today; and in the example of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians we see the archetype for the Israeli Defense Force (idf) that deprives Palestinians of their native land, their families, and their lives. In the victims of al-Qur’aysh, the Roman Empire, and the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, we see the model of the unjust martyr-manufacturer, whose spirit can be found today in the authoritarian and violent expressions of the religions that were once their victims.
From the perspective of the critical religiologist, the prophetic tradition, initiated by Abraham, as he accepted the call of his unseen God, laid down the geography for the prophetic and therefore radical tradition of love and mercy, justice and peace, that permeated the history of religious revolutions through Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah of the 7th century Arabia.43 Furthermore, it is the radical commitment to equality, equity, justice, compassion, which manifests itself in the care of the poor, the orphan, and the widow that was translated into secular language – forsaking the theological legitimation – by socialists and even many communists. Impatient for a heavenly manifestation of a reconciled and therefore peaceful and un-alienated society, they attempted to construct a world in which the messiah could endorse upon his arrival (even if many, like Marx himself, could no longer believe in such religious figures). Regrettably, such lofty values in secular form are also subject to distortion, denigration, and functionalization for the means of oppression and brutality, as
“Perfected Religion”: A Problematic Conception
The historic rise of Europe out of the Dark Ages has come at the expense the traditional Muslim territories, especially in the Middle East and North African, which was the principle bearer of advanced civilization in the Mediterranean area after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Despite the fact that the early Muslims severed the southern part of the Mediterranean from its northern half – which was culturally integrated via the shared Greco-Roman culture and later Christianity – the southern Mediterranean was quickly integrated into a more progressive society than the European one: the various Islamic Caliphates and dynasties. Chief among the reasons for the Muslim’s rapid advancement, in terms of intellectual achievements and not territorial gain, was its insistence on education, the emergence of scholarship, and the unconquerable drive to absorb the knowledge of the previous civilizations into the growing Islamic empire.44 By the 8th century ce, the Islamic empire was vast, stretching from India to Western Europe, from the southernmost point of Arabia to deep within central Asia. In order to organize such an empire, in order to codify the Islamic tradition, in order to provide for the needs of the new Islamic territories, the Muslims had to be practical, less dogmatic, and learn from those who came before. They were rich in religious zeal, piety, and morality, but lacked the worldly experience of being rulers of empires. This reality would require gaining and expanding upon knowledge received from the previous civilizations. From India the Muslims learned complex mathematics; from the Romans they learned about logistics of city building, from the
For the early Muslim intellectuals and scholars, the truth of philosophy could be reconciled with the faith of Islam via reason and sound logic. No
Yet for some, the Islamic practice of interrogating non-Islamic thought and inviting the wisdom of others into the Islamic domain was not a virtue that brought about a more progressive and beneficial society, but a dangerous mixture of Allah’s religion and man’s fallible thought. For these believers, whatever comes from Allah should never be conflated or “diluted” with the thoughts of man, let alone those who were outside of Islam: kāfirūn (disbelievers). The preservation of the “purity” or authenticity (ṣahīh) of Islam was of utmost importance, and so damnant quod non intellegunt.48 This aversion to outside thought remains within much of the ummah of Muslims today, especially among those of a more fundamentalist trajectory.
This reactionary response to those who are unable to experience Islam as a dynamic religion as opposed to a stagnant one have made their objections to Islamic philosophy known from the beginning of the Islamic empire until today, and still hold a considerable and undeserved tyranny over many Islamic intellectuals who, as a consequence, isolate themselves within academia
However, this distrust of “outsider” knowledge is not unique to the Muslim world, as this bifurcated intellectual tradition, or the double truth thesis – which is intrinsic to the divisions of class and education – was also the case in the Roman empire: let the plebeians have their religion and we’ll keep our patrician philosophy; the western Enlightenment period: let the peasants keep their superstitious religion and we’ll keep our reason and rational civil/natural religions.49 Rational truth had to be protected from the mythologically enamoured and exclusivist masses, who, from the perspective of the intellectual elites, had not the mental capacity to understand reality for what it really was, but rather needed “pictorial” and/or simple representations of reality. Two forms of faith were thus produced: unenlightened religion for the “riff raff” (Ḥashwiyya), faith justified by reason for the elites.
As stated before, Sūrah al-Ma’ida (5:3) of the Qur’an states, ‘This day, I have perfected your religion, completed my favor upon you and have chosen Islam as your religion.’50 From the position of those who attempt to preserve the intellectual chastity of the Islamic tradition, this verse is taken to mean that Islam is a “closed” religious system, as if through “perfecting” Islam it has been made impenetrable to any other knowledge, wisdom and/or thought. Perfected is taken to mean “without lack,” “fully developed,” “already identical with itself,” and “complete.” Additionally, it is assumed that by ‘perfected’ any other
In order to understand the Qur’anic language that is used to describe the ontological state of Islam during the time of Muhammad, we have to think in terms of Islam in-and-of-itself and the believer who approaches the Islamic tradition from the outside (even if they are a Muslims). Islam is the object of study and the Muslim is the subject that studies. These are two very different phenomenon and therefore have two very different ontological statuses: the Qur’an is – for lack of a better word – the incarnation (incarnationem) of the divine for Muslims; it is the word of Allah (Kalam Allah) made present in the finite and fallible world; it is Deum in libro.51 For most devout Muslims, it is the uncreated but historically bound presence of the divine that is accessible – on the surface level – to all believers. The Qur’an as such is the door to the divine presence. The believer accesses this presence through recitation, contemplation, and study. Furthermore, it is a record of Allah’s thought concerning historical (particular) and ahistorical (universal) issues, problems, etc., revealed to Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah in the 7th century Arabia. Being that the believer is a finite creature, the product of history, and bound to their own mortality, moral fallibility, and incomplete knowledge, they are in need of guidance. Therefore it is the duty of the believer to not only come to know the Islamic tradition from within itself but also to incorporate and embody the values, principles, and ideals of the Islamic tradition so that the object (Islam) and the subject (the believer) become identical with each other to the best of the believers ability. This attempt to be a believer who has incorporated the Qur’anic way-of-being-in-the-world requires a certain amount of intellectual and philosophical tools, as the Islamic tradition is not one that asks its devout to be “childlike” in faith, to be without education, or to mortify intelligence, but rather demands of its followers to be people of intellect as opposed to simply being people of taqlīd (imitation).
When the proponents of the “closed” theory put forth their argument concerning the inability of Islam to appropriate the wisdom of others into itself without diluting its purity and authenticity, they cancel its entelechy, its process of “becoming” – the internal development of all there is beyond that which has already been and that which is to be. Since Aristotle, philosophers have insisted that nothing is what it was, and nothing is yet what it will be, all is “becoming” – the present is but a moment within the dialectical relationship between the
In his June 2014 article on aljazeera.com, the author Hasan Azad asked the perplexing but pertinent question, Why are there no Muslim philosophers?60 As we’ve already demonstrated, this is a highly complex question that had garnished a tremendous amount of attention from academics and scholars, both western and Muslim. From the perspective of the Critical Theory of
Looking critically back into history, we see that a very serious problem occurred in the 10th century. The closing of ijtihād (independent reasoning) among the Sunnis, in favor of what the 19th and 20th Turkish scholar Bediüzzaman Said Nursi described as taqlīdi-Islam (Islam by imitation), had created the conditions for intellectual stagnation, at least in the case of Islamic jurisprudence.62 Scholars believed that the major questions concerning the true and proper Islamic way-of-being were decided among the first few centuries after the death of the prophet and therefore the development of Islam beyond the already established customs and norms of the first generations endangered Islam: as the boundaries of the empire grew, more and more “foreign” influences crept into the ummah and threatened the orthodoxy of the “perfected” religion. In light of this, Sunni scholars moved to replace ijtihād with taqlīd, or reasoning with imitation/precedence – as a way of preserving their notion of the “perfected” religion.63 However, what such a move actually did was cancel the natural development of the tradition and its ability to adequately address the problems and challenges of the times precisely because it robbed the Muslims of the dialectical tension that would have driven its development when confronted with thought and praxis that opposes Islam or Islamic tenets. From the philosophical perspective, as thought continues to become more differentiated, more complex, and more dialectical, as the old answers no longer hold sway, new answers determinately negate the thought that proceeded them, and the development of thinking continues unabated. As ways-of-being and ways-of-thinking approach the boundaries of Islam, Muslim philosophers and theologians had to engage in critical evaluation of these alien philosophies and were therefore motivated to engage in a higher degree of critical analysis. When the reactionaries forced Islam to retreat behind its own dogmatic and un-reflexive precedents, it consequently cut itself off from its own capacity for creativity and dialectical imagination concerning religion, philosophy, culture, and polity, and thus it became stale, inflexible, and enslaved to its own past. Being systems of thought that are naturally self-reflective and self-critical, religious traditions must be able to continue to engage in a constant rethinking
Yet the contemporary situation in which the Muslim world finds itself is forcing many scholars and jurists to rethink the wisdom of closing ijtihād; they see that this self-inflicted wound is partially responsible for the abysmal state of the Islamic community. Not only has the Muslim world lost its place as a world leader, but the most dynamic developments within the Muslim community tend to be some of the most violent and reactionary, this being the result of the forced de-hellenization of Islam. The life of the mind, and not just the study of the West’s instrumental rationality – numerate thought: engineering, computers, chemistry, etc. – but also the communicative rationality imbedded in the arts, in literature, and especially in philosophy, must also be once again revived if the Muslim world is to have its own humanistic renaissance.
From the perspective of the critical religiologist, for Islam to survive the onslaught of secular modernity, it must come into contact, recover, and integrate into itself its own philosophical and intellectual heritage and history. Although the heritage is deep, it is currently neglected in the dar al-Islam. The language and conceptual material that was determinately negated from earlier philosophical thought by the early Muslim empire, which allowed the Muslim world to advance far beyond those cultures that preceded it, must be rediscovered and re-imagined within the Islamic context: an Islamization of philosophy and its critical-analytical-dialectical potentials. This process not only means returning to al-Kindī, al- Fārābī, Ibn Rušd, Ibn-Sīnā, and other Islamic intellectuals, etc., to uncover that which was buried by the heap of intellectual ashes that
From the perspective of Islam, the religion itself is “perfected,” which means that it understand and accepts its own internal development, its own increasing differentiation within the context of the times, and the unending strive to be identical with itself (to embody its own constitutional values, principles, and beliefs). Nevertheless, the active agent that can allow Islam to do such things is the Muslim ummah itself, as it is the only entity through which Islam can be made manifest. Yes, it is true that Muslims can say (or repeat) that Islam is perfected, but no they cannot allow the concept of perfection to become a barrier to the attempted “perfection” of society (if that is even possible). The Qur’an
Fear of Philosophical Blasphemy
What would happen to such a “madman” had he articulated this thesis in the presence of those de-Hellenized fundamentalist believers who fail to see the deeper point and more philosophical point of Nietzsche’s rhetorical claim? On the surface level, this appears to mock those who continue to believe in a living divine being. However, beyond the surface is a deeply philosophical statement that expressed absolutely nothing about the ontology of God but rather the conditions of the possibility for believing in the divine in our secular-scientific and industrial age.66 Would this madman spark outrage? Would there be an international riot, burning of the philosopher in effigy, attacks on westernWe have killed him – you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun?… Do we not hear the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? For even Gods putrefy! God is Dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!65
Delivering an addresses in 2006 entitled Glaube, Vernunft und Universität – Erinnerungen und Reflexionen (Faith, Reason and the University – Memories and Reflections), then Pope Benedict xvi warned about the dangers of “de-Hellenizing” religion, i.e. the separation of the faith and reason. In his speech in Regensburg, Germany, he quoted the Byzantine emperor Manuell ii Palaiologos, who said ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ This speech emphasized the theological claim that God limits himself within his own dictates, his own rationality, his own self-imposed limitations, and does not transcend or violate himself through an absolute will; he limits his will as not to become unrestrained, or, as it can be conceptualized, God is not pure will over logos. The discussion about the use of reason within religious faith was an attempt to ignite a discourse between religions concerning the importance of maintaining rationality as an integral and necessary component of religion. However, the language that the Pope was using was steeped in philosophical concepts and not theological protocol-sentences that religious fundamentalism is typically expressed through. As a result, many outraged believers, both within the intellectual elites as well as the laymen, took to the streets to condemn the Pope for offending Islam and disrespecting the Prophet. On the other hand, many fundamentalist Christians, instead of expressing solidarity with their co-religionists, condemned the Muslims for being wantonly violent in the face of the Pope’s statements, despite the fact that secularist and atheists would accuse those same Christians of the same religious obscurantism as they do the Islamic community. Additionally, while post-religious Europe found itself in a strange position of defending the very Pope that many had often deemed “our Taliban,” they emphasizing that if the Pope’s speech had been considered in its entirety, one could easily see that it was an invitation to discourse about the nature of faith and reason – which is not a foreign subject in history of Islam, even if it is foreign to modern fundamentalism. However, many within the Muslim community reacted violently, while being misinformed of the particulars of the Pope’s speech and the subject it was addressing. One need not question the sincerity of the protests – for many thought the Pope and not an emperor of a bygone age said such disparaging words against Islam. However, some Muslims critically studied the entire document, such as Tariq Ramadan, while others abandoned any attempt for dialogue in favor of an emotional outrage, despite the fact that the subject is
Discourse on difficult matters such as this simply can’t happen when one side no longer possess the philosophical language that is the precondition for such a discourse, while the other can no longer put themselves into the perspective of the religious believer, and therefore garnished little sympathy for their wounded sensibilities. While the use of the emperor’s speech may have been unfortunate, the Pope’s intentions were neither to antagonize nor to cast aspersions on Islam and Muslims per se, but rather to warn his listeners of the dangers when reason is excommunicated from religion. Had there been a discourse partner within the Muslim community who could speak the philosophical and theological language required for such an intricate discussion, such as Ibn Rušd and/or his Catholic student Saint Thomas Aquinas, then the tensions would have a greater potential for reconciliation. Until the Muslim community can once again recover its own philosophical heritage and once again bring it to the foreground of thought, it will continue to be needlessly antagonized by critical-philosophical thought emanating from the secular West, even when it isn’t motivated out of ill will or hatred. From the perspective of the critical theory of religion, invitations to discourse about uncomfortable matters should not be taken as signs of disrespect, but as an opportunity for mutual-understanding and potentially future reconciliation. A “perfected” religion remains open to discourse as it has confidence in its own claims while at the same time is prepared to re-examine itself based on better and more differentiated categories and arguments. It does not shy away from debate but rather invites it and invests itself in it. This episode demonstrates the depth to which much of the Muslim world has suppressed its own philosophical resources that were once the envy of Europe. Therefore philosophy is desperately needed in order to avoid the predictions of the neo-Conservatives’ clash of civilizations: the democratic secular rational West vs. the authoritarian religious irrational East.67
Clearly, from a theological perspective, the perfection of Islam fears no critique of itself. The question is rather, can modern believers enter into a meaningful discourse with those who can no longer believe, or speak a philosophical language to express a more differentiated way of engaging the world?
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel. (Washington d.c.: usccb Communications, 2013), 93.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 102.
Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics. (New York: Continuum, 1999), 365. ‘Hitler hat den Menschen im Stande ihrer Unfreiheit einen neuen kategorischen Imperativ aufgezwungen: ihr Denken und Hendeln so einzurichen, dass Auschwitz nicht sich wiederhole, nicht Ähnliches geschehe.’
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 183.
‘While there is life there is hope.’
One should not confuse the ‘post-secular society’ as being a society that has returned to religion. Many religious believers, seeing the destruction that secularity has had upon their faith, the moral values, and the pious way of life, engage in wishful thinking when they hear the phrase ‘post-secular,’ thinking that secularity is finally over. This is not the notion of ‘post-secular’ that we are discussing or attempting to advance in this study.
I would like to note most forcefully that Islam and Muslims are not monolithic. The Muslim community, whether it be in the West or in the traditional Muslim world, are divided by the same antagonisms as westerners. Despite the unifying factor of the Islamic tradition, Muslims are separated by race, gender, class, sect, political philosophy, geography, schools of law, sexual orientation, language, nationalities, etc. While Muslims tend to agree on the basics of their religion, the interpretations and orientations within the religion is as numerous as the stitching in the Kiswat al-Kab’ah (shroud on the Ka’bah in Mecca). Managing such diversity itself has become a problem for the global ummah as many fundamentalist find such diversity threatening. With this in mind, the diversity of faith positions, etc. should be tacitly understood whenever the general terms of “Islam” and “Muslim” are used in this book.
Jyllands Posten wasn’t the only publication to experience the ire of radical Islam. The left-wing French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which routinely satirizes religion, especially Islam, Muhammad, and Muslims, was firebombed on November 2, 2011, and was later attacked by gunmen on January 7, 2015. In the last attack, twelve people were murdered including the senior editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. The killing was believed to be motivated out of revenge for the disrespect of the Prophet Muhammad. This subject will be taken up later in this work.
Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005.
Since September 11th, 2001, there has been a remarkable incline in anti-Muslim rhetoric, politics, and political parties in both America and Europe. These can be seen in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, Greece, Italy, Ukraine, etc. Many of these parties have gained seats in the national legislatures but have failed to gain any substantial amount of control of any government body. Nevertheless, the frightening amount of silence – or lack of opposition – by others in the society could represent a tacit – not publicly endorsed – agreement with the center-right on the issue of immigrants and specifically Muslims. The silence of the majority is, to my thinking, the greatest threat to peace for Muslim immigrants in Europe.
Due to the Syrian civil war between the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Western (nato) coalition and their Syrian allies, Russian forces and isis, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees flooded into Europe. Amidst those refugees were also many immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraqis who were simply looking to Europe for a better and more prosperous life. Such a mass migration sparked a fierce debate with the eu countries as to what responsibility the eu has for such refugees and migrants. Not surprisingly, this influx of non-European Muslims became a flash point for the far-right and other liberals concerned about the influence of more Muslims in Europe.
Jürgen Habermas, Europe: The Faltering Project (Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2009), 60.
‘Tossed by the waves but does not sink.’
Habermas, Europe, 61–62.
Clearly a retreat into positivism wasn’t the case for dialectical thinkers such as Marx and the Frankfurt School.
Dustin Byrd, A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Religion: The Gospel According to John Galt. Lanham, md: Lexington Books, 2015.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1978), 54.
Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum, 2002), 129.
Horkheimer, Critical Theory, 129.
See Habermas’ discussion of Max Frisch’s funeral in St. Peter’s Church in Zürich. Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What’s Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2011), 15–16.
Theodor Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 137.
Rudolf J. Siebert, Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless, Vol 1–III. Boston: Brill, 2010.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 1.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt & Co., Inc.: 1994), 1–21; Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, 15–23.
Habermas, Europe. 59.
Habermas, Europe, 63–65.
Ibid., 63.
Ibid., 64.
Ibid., 64.
Ibid., 65.
The Gospel According to Luke: 22:42.
This conception of profession is obviously different from the act of confession which is seen as a sacrament within Catholicism. For Catholics, the sacrament of confession is the confession of sins and transgressions to a Priest in exchange for penance and hopefully absolution. Outside of this particularistic ritual, Catholics share the same phenomenon with other religion, the confession of beliefs as a public act of religious affirmation.
See Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be? New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) §§142 – 329. Also see Rudolf J. Siebert, Hegel’s Concept of Marriage and Family: The Origin of Subjective Freedom. Lewiston, ny: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1979.
Al-Qur’an 5:3, ‘This day, I have perfected your religion, completed my favor upon you and have chosen Islam as your religion.’ My translation. We will return to this issue briefly.
The ahl al-bayt is especially important for Shi’i Muslims, as it is the house of the Prophet via ‘Ali that they take as another source moral authority.
It is certainly not the case that all Sufis shy away from social life but it is a general orientation among mystics to find a deeply personal relationship with the divine that often overshadows the commitment to the greater world.
According to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son, mlk iii, the demand for the “redistribution of wealth” was the reason his father was murdered. See Martin Luther King iii’s interview by Rev. Al Sharpton, PoliticsNation, msnbc, 20 January 2014.
‘Eternal rest of God.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008), 104.
Alastair Crooke, “You Can’t Understand isis if You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia,” August 27, 2014. www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html (Accessed 11/3/2014).
See Human Rights Watch, “Bad Dreams: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia.” July 14, 2004. www.refworld.org/cgibin/texis/vtx/rwmainpage=search&docid=412ef32a4&skip=0&query=saudiarabiamigrantworkers (Accessed 10/12/2014).
Al-Qur’an, 2:190–193; 4:84; 2:216; 2:244; 2:217; 2:246–251; 4:74–76; 8:39; 8:65; 9:5–6; 12:13–16; 9:29; 9:123; 22:39–41; 47:4; 47:20; 48:17.
The Augustinian Just War Theory was a compromise between Christians and the Roman state that betrayed the radical pacifism of the earliest Christian communities.
This neglect of Qur’anic norms concerning warfare can be witnessed most poignantly in isis (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) repeated human rights abuses.
See G.W.F. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Determinate Religion Vol. 2, ed. Peter C. Hodgson. New York: Clarendon Press, 2007.
This same country is the only western country that still exacts the death penalty upon its own civilians. See Gladstone, Rick. “Amnesty International Find Executions Rose in 2013.” March 26, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/world/amnesty-international-2013-death-penalty-report.html?_r=0 (Accessed 3/29/2014).
While I do not like to engage in the fashionable counting of victims in order to make a quantitative statement about who has suffered more, I do believe that the reality of human suffering at the hands of injustice both in the Islamic and western world can be a point of mutual recognition, discussion, and eventually reconciliation. This is what I call intersubjective-passiology. Through an honest discourse centered on the common human experience of suffering, different peoples can come together and hopefully overcome their animosity towards each other. The grieving faces of western mothers and fathers are the same grieving face of the Islamic mothers and fathers. That shared grief is fertile soil for solidarity and reconciliation.
In the Islamic Tradition, Abraham (‘Ibrāhīm) is call al-Khalil Allah, the “friend of God.”
George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.
Roy Jackson, What is Islamic Philosophy? (New York: Routledge, 2014), 8–40.
There is some debate as to whether the former phrase is something the Prophet really said or if it is just a pious truism that is common within the Muslim community. The second phrase seems to be authentic according to the scholars of ḥadīṯh but has a weak isnad (chain of transmission). Either way, both represent the zeitgeist of the Muslims in the early empires.
Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 410–443.
‘They condemn what they do not understand.’
Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 20–26.
My translation.
‘The divine in the book.’
Some scholars attribute this artificial arrest of the Islamic tradition to the thinking of Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th/14th century Islamic scholar, theologian and logician, who was skeptical of what he thought was bid’a (innovation) in the daily religious lives of Muslims. His thought is seen as an early attempt to exorcise the Islamic tradition from the innovations that Muslims had brought into it. Many of the Muslim world’s most reactionary and purist movements lay claim to Ibn Taymiyyah as their intellectual precursor.
Hamid Algar, Roots of The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oneonta, ny: Islamic Publications International, 2001), 99.
Hamid Algar, Roots, 93.
Dustin Byrd, Ayatollah Khomeini and the Anatomy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: Toward a Theory of Prophetic Charisma (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 2011), 98–102; Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 60–87; ‘Ali Shari’ati, On the Sociology of Islam, trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1979), 31.
See Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, The White Revolution of Iran. Tehran: Kayhan Press, 1967.
Hamid Algar, Roots, 96–97.
In Islamic history, Yazid was responsible for the murder of Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. His murder and the penitence movement that it sparked was the true beginning of Shi’a Islam.
Hamid Algar, Roots, 111.
Hasan Azad, “Why are there no Muslim Philosophers?” June 12, 2014. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/muslim-philosophers-2014610135114713259.html (Accessed 6/29/2014).
Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in the World Civilization, 410–443.
Colin Turner and Hasan Horkuc, Said Nursi (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 47. Also see G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), Pt. 2.
One should note that the Shi’a tradition, for the most part, continued with the practice of ijtihad and did not follow the Sunnis into their stagnation.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol 1: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson trans. R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson and J.M. Stewart. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Friederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading, 2008), 103. We will return to Nietzsche’s Death of God latter in this volume.
Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1974), 96–118.
I do not ascribe to the clash of civilization thesis. It is ultimately too simplistic to think of the Muslim world as being monolithic, just as it is a mistake to think of the West as being equally monolithic. The reader should not mistake my use of the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” and the “West” as somehow endorsing such a thesis, but rather these words are being used in a general way to avoid the necessity of excessive qualifiers.