Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (22 page)

The inevitable conclusion is that Islam cannot be viewed as a culture, nor can it be identified with any particular human culture. Some cultures have longer histories of Islamization than others, but the cultures of all people who self- identify as Muslims are all equally Islamic and cannot be hierarchically organized as being more or less Islamic. This is primarily because Islam is a transethnic, transnational, transracial idiom that people use to craft cultural identities for themselves. Could it be, then, that Islam should be understood as a civilization?

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It is a common practice to view human history as a composite narrative of numerous civilizational stories: ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Aztec, Mayan . . . the list is a very long one. In this perspective, individual civilizations are self-contained entities that come into being, live their stories, then disappear from view, leaving behind physical and mental traces – some faint, some spectacular – on the stage of history. Civilizations, it would seem, are all but natural entities with distinct characteristics and life-cycles, not much different than the animate and inanimate genera and species that collectively make up our natural habitat. And who can take issue with this popular view? Civilizations indeed existed and continue to exist (though endangered by the onslaught of globalization), and, since none has yet proven to

be permanent, they are indeed transient, some would even say fi phenomena.

Agreed? Yes, but there is a nagging concern. Granted that civilizations are entities of some kind, where and how do we draw their boundaries? Better yet, do they even have boundaries in the first place? This turns out to be a thornier question than first imagined. And in asking it, we run into a major misconception about civilizations that we need to dismantle in our attempt to identify Islam as a civilization. This misconception can be called the “cocoon theory of civilization.” Contrary to this all too pervasive idea that civilizations somehow have protective skins around them that jealously guard their quintessential kernels, close scrutiny of any civilization worthy of the name reveals only highly porous transitional areas instead of continuous and firm borders. Civilizations are entities alright, but they are not self-contained, water- tight units. Their stories often tend to be thoroughly intertwined, even incomprehensible when told in isolation from the stories of other civilizations. What leads to the prevalence of the cocoon theory is often the temptation to imagine civilizations not only as natural entities of some sort but also, and more specifi , as
biological
entities endowed with life and purpose. The naturalization of the concept of civilization does not stop at the observation that civilizations are similar to natural entities: since a civilization has a beginning and an end and is subject to growth and decay, we naturally assume, it must be alive and must function like any living organism. This is another major misconception about civilizations that we have to clear up, and it can be called the “personification of civilization.” Contrary to this view, civilizations are not independent agents on the stage of human history. They are not capable of any kind of action, nor are they alive in any biological sense. A civilization is nothing more than a particular, even unique (though this
singularity
should not be abused), combination of ideas and practices that groups of human actors – who are the real agents of human history – affirm as their own and use to define and develop their own sense of presence and agency in the world. On a radical level, human history is not the cumulative narrative of civilizational stories; it is the story of individual and collective human agency as defined around a fascinating series of core ideas and practices that we call civilizations. Islam, we contend, is

best understood as a civilization in this sense.

Before we can identify Islam as a civilization, however, we need to unwrap the layers of misconception woven around the concept of Islamic civilization by proponents of the cocoon and personification theories. You should be forewarned that these misconceptions are held by Muslims and non-Muslims, Westerners and Easterners alike: if no one has a monopoly over the truth, much the same can be said about untruths.

It is often thought that Islamic civilization, built originally on divine

foundations (the view of most Muslims) or ideas and practices derivative from Judaism and Christianity (possibly the view of most non-Muslims), took its

peculiar shape through a series of complicated, evasive maneuvers that enabled it to preserve its pristine purity. Muslims, it is assumed, rejected cultural influences from the outside and jealously guarded their core values from being contaminated through contact with other civilizations. An influential Muslim view, perhaps the prevalent one, is that whenever and wherever they succeeded in preserving the divine kernel, Muslims flourished; whenever and wherever they succumbed to non-Islamic “contamination,” they perished or lost power and became weak, even subjugated. The prevalent non-Muslim view seems to be the exact opposite: Muslims gained power where and when they were willing to temper the rather uncompromising, even rigid dictates of their religion with unabashed borrowing from other civilizations and lost this power where and when they turned a blind eye to the benefits that others had to offer.

Yes, you have guessed it: this is one, perhaps the most prevalent, version of the cocoon theory of Islamic civilization. Islam, it is often observed, came into this world fully grown and, to boot, in full daylight: a holy book, a prophet, a divine law – all introduced into this world from the other world, like a potent drug injected into the body. Exceptionally, however, this drug – which is “true Islam” – does not interact with the body and is only efficacious when it is preserved intact in its pure and pristine state.

Proponents of this view often focus on the interaction between the nascent Islamic civilization and the Hellenistic philosophical traditions of late antiquity to exemplify what can be characterized alternatively as the presumed civilizational/cultural xenophobia (if the proponent is a non-Muslim detractor) or the unsullied purity (if she or he is a Muslim defender) of Islam. According to this reading of Islamic history, Islam had one genuine opportunity to assimilate the admirable qualities of Greek philosophical and scientific traditions (most crucially, its
rationalism
), made a serious venture in this direction (hence the glorious period of Islamic philosophy and science of the ninth and tenth centuries
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prompted by a massive translation movement from Greek into Arabic), but ultimately reverted to its original stock of ideas and practices unaffected by any cultural or civilizational influences (like Greek rationalism) that did not bear the divine stamp of approval.

That this caricature of an account of the encounter and interaction between an emerging Islamic civilization and the pre-existing Hellenistic traditions of learning still appeals to a significant number of Muslim and non-Muslims around the globe is disturbing indeed. What is wrong with this view? Wasn’t Islam the product of a revealed message after all? And wasn’t the revelation at the very core of the civilization that was fashioned in its image? Even if we answer both of these questions with a resounding “yes!,” the cocoon theory of Islam in general and its representation of its encounter with Greek learning in particular still remains indefensible. The divine message may have supplied the impetus for the development of a civilization, may have even been its nucleus, but the civilization undoubtedly drew from many other cultural wellsprings. Heir to the

variegated cultural heritage of the Hellenistic Near East of late antiquity (with distinct Greek, Persian, Mesopotamian, Syrian and Egyptian strands, to name only the most prominent), the new civilization proceeded to incorporate many other cultural traditions – North African, Saharan/sub-Saharan African, Iberian, South-east European, Indian, Central Asian, South-east Asian – into its multicolored fabric. Indeed, it would be more proper to talk about an Islamic civilizational sphere with numerous distinct cultural regions instead of a single, uniform Islamic civilization with an unchangeable cultural kernel. Simply put, Islamic civilization went global almost immediately after its formative stage. The cocoon theory either ignores this “global” facet of Islamic civilization or belittles it. It ignores the cultural plurality and diversity of Islamic civilization by placing the Arab Middle East at its cultural center (so that Arab Islam is purported to be “true Islam”). It belittles such diversity by suggesting that Islamic civilization remained forever closed to non-Arab cultures even where significant interaction took place. Islam’s Greek heritage (yes,
heritage
and not just a fleeting, traceless flirtation) is just one prominent aspect of the historical development of Islam that is almost thoroughly masked by the cocoonists. Other aspects of Islamic civilization – some weighty and broad, others more subtle – similarly concealed from view by the senseless application of the cocoon theory are so numerous that we cannot hope to list them here. But whether local, regional, or global in nature, all interactions of Islamic civilization with originally non-Islamic cultures and civilizations are equally interesting and important: they all deserve our full attention and complete acknowledgement. Any other approach would be to impoverish and ultimately to desiccate Islam.

But cocoonists are not the only guilty party: there are also those – though they are frequently one and the same as the cocoonists – who talk about Islam as if it were a living organism or even a person. We may call these the “personifiers.” They falsely and, alas, perniciously imagine Islam (and other civilizations) to be self-contained
organisms
closed in on themselves and engaged in perpetual strife and competition with others of their kind. Their “proof” of Islamic xenophobia/purity (as the case may be), tirelessly fed especially to Western audiences from many media and pseudo-educational venues, is Islam’s supposed intolerance of others and its willingness to overwhelm them through
jihad
. This “proof” is equally as alarming – if not more – as the cocoonists’ attempt to erase Islam’s Greek heritage. This view too finds high numbers of subscribers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, though its Muslim proponents are an extremely small, yet highly vocal and visible, minority made up largely of discontented urban youth who find themselves in deplorable economic and cultural conditions.

What is wrong with this view? After all, did not Islam break into the world scene through a spectacular series of conquests? Is not jihad often proffered as the sixth pillar of Islam? Isn’t there a certain exclusiveness written into the very core of Islam? The answer is straightforward, though it comes from an oblique

angle, thus avoiding the deception conjured by talk of jihad: no, Islam is not doomed to such a poisonous exclusivism of the kind imagined by personifiers, since Islam is not an “agent” in any sense of this word. The personifiers are guilty of a chilling, indeed deadly, fallacy, which is the fallacy of denying agency to real human actors (individual and collective) and imputing it instead to phantasmagoric concoctions called religions or civilizations that are seen as the true agents of history. Only Muslims (and of course non-Muslims), and not some imaginary agent named Islam, can determine the historical course of Islamic civilization. Of course, overlaying this fallacy and concealing it from view is another fallacy about jihad that needs to be set aright. This will be to dwell on the obvious, but it bears repetition: no, jihad is not an exclusivistic doctrine of elimination of non-Muslims but an attempt to realize the central mandate of Islam, which is the ceaseless, perpetual attempt to
become
a true believer.

Let us take stock. The cocoon and the personification fallacies, it emerges, are

simply instances of that exclusive particularism we have already met under the name “cultural particularism” in our discussion on culture above. They betray the same unfortunate attempt to erect permanent, waterproof boundaries among social entities (cultures, civilizations) that are erroneously projected as the only true yet necessarily aggressive and mutually hostile actors of history. This combination of
exclusive particularism
– call it the grand illusion! – and
misplaced agency
– should we refer to it as the great agency robbery in human history that utterly dehumanizes all history? – this
unholy alliance
is utterly dangerous and should be resisted at all costs. The fundamental assumptions of all who push this envelope, namely, Islam’s supposed imperviousness to historical and social change as well as its totally exclusive and, to boot, imperialist particularism, fly in the face of incontrovertible historical and, ultimately, human evidence to the contrary from Islamic history and contemporary Muslim communities. In this connection, it is absolutely crucial to realize that this toxic combination is peddled equally by both Muslims and non-Muslims, Westerners and non-Westerners. The Muslims are, yes, you’ve guessed it, those “fundamentalists” who crowd all other Muslims out of our screens, while the non-Muslims – from self-appointed voices of Western civilization like Bernard Lewis through Samuel Huntington, to Hindu nationalists and those like V.S. Naipaul who willingly cooperate with their appalling agenda of cleansing India of Muslims, not to mention Christian fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson – are those who divide the world into civilizational cocoons and like to transform Islamic civilization into a bogus enemy called the Islamic menace. It is imperative to expose this unholy alliance between Muslim and non-Muslim exclusivists for what it is: a dangerous game of recasting Islam into their own particularistic molds, one that dehumanizes not just Muslims but all humanity. At this stage, you will no doubt want to point out that our main objective, which was to answer the question “What is Islam?” has yet to be accomplished. We may have dispensed with some misperceptions that plague our understanding