Thursday, June 7, 2007
Talal Asad on religion, modernity and Islamism
Interview with Saba Mahmood, Stanford Humanities Review (1996)
Full interview available at:
http://www.stanford.edu/group
Talal Asad is a professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York, and is the author of the groundbreaking work, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Similar to Michel Foucault and Edward Said, Asad's works examine the mutual influence of knowledge and power in generating structures of thought dictating discourse and ways of organizing the world. He primarily focuses on the issue of religion and secularism.
Saba Mahmood is herself an eminent Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and the author of Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2005); a work examining women in the Islamist movement in Egypt.
This interview, conducted when Dr. Mahmood was still a graduate student at Stanford University, was originally entitled "Talal Asad: modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions." In the excerpts provided here, Asad discusses the methods of Islamism, or the call for an Islamic polity. He provides fresh insight into important Islamic concepts such as ijtihad (independent reasoning) nasiha (advice), and ikhtilaf (difference of opinion), avoiding facile equations to their counterparts in the Western "liberal" tradition. He looks critically at the notion of religious "evolution" towards secularized deism and points to the curious phenomenon of disembodied religious belief in the West, where so-called Christians and atheists practice the same life-style. He warns against linking the social practice of Islam with the modern nation-state: not because of the practice of Islam should not be "public", but because the nation-state itself must be transcended.
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Talal Asad: A different vision of polity. That is an aspect of Islamist thinking that requires much more original work. I feel that there is a need to rethink the nature of the political in a far more radical way than Islamic movements seem to have done. To a great extent, there has been an acceptance of the modernizing state (and the model of the Western state) and a translation of its projects into Islamist terms. Often Islamists simply subscribe to the parameters of the modern nation- state, adding only that it be controlled by a virtuous body of Muslims. A much more radical idea is needed before we can say that Islamists have a vision of a distinctive kind of polity.
However, I don't want to exaggerate the homogeneity of these movements. There have been some interesting schematic attempts at rethinking. For example, the Tunisian Islamic leader Ghannushi, who is banned from Tunis , has recently argued for the political institutionalization of multiple interpretations of the founding texts. In one sense, the institutionalization of divergent interpretations is already a part of the Islamic tradition (both Sunni and Shi`a). But, if I understand him correctly, Ghannushi is trying to politicize that traditional arrangement and make it more fluid, more open to negotiation. Starting from the classic distinction between the essential body of the text, on the one hand, and its commentaries ( i.e., "consequences"--what follows), on the other, he argues that the latter be brought into the political arena. This would involve the electorate being asked to vote for or against the policies that flow from given interpretations--and always having the option of changing its mind about them. In other words, the political implications of an interpretation (not all "the meanings" of the text itself) would be open to acceptance or rejection like any other proposed legislation or project. This clearly needs to be much more elaborately developed and clarified if it is to make political sense.
Are elements of this kind of thinking part of the Islamic discursive tradition?
I certainly think they are. That's what ijtihad, the principle of original reasoning from within the tradition, is all about. There is a lot of talk about ijtihad nowadays among Muslims, but too often it's used as a device to bring Islamic tradition in line with modern liberal values for no good reason. I believe it ought to be used to argue with other Muslims within the tradition and to try to formulate solutions to problems that are recognized as problems for the tradition by other Muslims.
Yes, nasiha is different from liberal notions of public criticism. For example, it doesn't constitute a right to criticize the monarch and/or political regime but an obligation. Similarly, the business of criticism is not restricted only to those expressly qualified--the educated and enlightened few. It's something that every Muslim has the duty to undertake, and whose theory the `ulama must continually reconsider and discuss for each time and place. It is, therefore, a form of criticism that is internal to a tradition. That is to say, only someone who has been educated in that tradition, who has been taught what "appropriate Islamic practices" are, can undertake it properly. This is not a criticism that anyone coming from the outside, a total stranger, say, armed with a fine sense of logical argument and a set of universal moral principles, can carry out. So it is quite different from the notion of abstract and generalized criticism that has to be confined to the enlightened, literate members of a polity.
Do you think that the post-Reformation Protestant conception of religion, as an internal belief system that has little to do with arranging political and social life, influenced or transformed the character of Islamic debates in this century? If so, in what ways?
Well, I think to some extent they have--where Islamic reform movements have adopted standards of rationality from modern Western discourses or even where Muslim apologists claim that Islam does quite well when properly measured by Western standards of justice and decency. This influence is also evident whenever the shari`a is made compatible with Western law and practice and is subjected to institutions of the modern state. And the modern state gives rise to two quite distinct movements--those for whom religious faith is something that fits into "private space" (in both the legal and the psychological sense), and those for whom the "public functions" of the modern state must be captured by men with religious faith.
It has often been argued that the tradition of liberalism is based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance in ways that Islamic tradition is not, and that the concept of plurality remains foreign to Islam. How would you respond to that?
Well, I would say that it is certainly not a modern, liberal invention. The plurality of individual interests is what the liberal tradition has theorized best of all. On the other hand, the attempt to get some kind of representation for ethnic groups and minorities in Western countries has been difficult for liberalism to theorize. Liberalism has theories of tolerance by which spaces can be created for individuals to do what they wish, so long as they don't obstruct the ability of others to do likewise. But these aren't theories of pluralism in the sense we are beginning to understand the term today. Liberalism has theories of multiple "interests," interests which can be equalized, aggregated, and calculated through the electoral process and then negotiated in the process of formulating and applying governmental policies. But that is a very different kind of pluralism from the different ways of life which are (a) the preconditions and not the objects of individual interests, and which are, (b) in the final analysis, incommensurable.
Now the Islamic tradition, like many other non-liberal traditions, is based on the notion of plural social groupings and plural religious traditions--especially (but not only) of the Abrahamic traditions [ahl al-kitab ]. And, of course, it has always accommodated a plurality of scriptural interpretations. There is a well- known dictum in the shari`a: ikhtilaf al-umma rahma [difference within the Islamic tradition is a blessing]. This is where the notions of ijtihad and ijm`a come in. As modes of developing and sustaining the Islamic tradition, they authorize the construction of coherent differences, not the imposition of homogeneity.
Of course there are always limits to difference if coherence is to be aimed at. If tolerance is not merely another name for indifference, there comes a point in every tradition beyond which difference cannot be tolerated. That simply means that there are differences which can't be accommodated within the tradition without threatening its very coherence. But there are, of course, many moments and conditions of such intolerance. One must not, therefore, equate intolerance with violence and cruelty.
On the whole, Muslim societies in the past have been much more accommodating of pluralism in the sense I have tried to outline than have European societies. It does not follow that they are therefore necessarily better. And I certainly don't wish to imply that Muslim rulers and populations were never prejudiced, that they never persecuted non-Muslims in their midst. My point is only that "the concept of plurality," as you put it, is not foreign to Islam.
Talking of pluralities of interpretations within the Islamic tradition, some scholars make a distinction between the Sufi [mystical] and Salafi [reformist] tradition within Islam. You have criticized the ways in which these two traditions are often mapped onto rural/urban, folk/elite, and oral/scriptural dichotomies, respectively. Yet it is hard to deny the substantial differences between Sufi and Salafi thought. How can one fruitfully engage with these differences without falling into simplistic dichotomies?
Unfortunately, people continue to make these simplistic contrasts. It is true that for some sections of the Islamic tradition, such as the Hanbali tradition that is officially dominant in Saudi Arabia today, Sufism is thought to be quite different from what is defined as the central Islamic tradition. But the definition of the central Islamic tradition according to Saudi Hanbalis is not, strictly speaking, a Salafi one either. Wahhabi Islam has a specific connection with a particular state--even when it constitutes a contemporary language of opposition to the regime. This is a complicated question, and I don't want to get into details here. All I want to say here is that it's not as if there were only two options in Islam-- Sufi or Salafi. For reformers like Muhammad `Abduh, these were not mutually exclusive categories. `Abduh, one of the founders of the Salafiyya [reform] movement, always accepted the Sufi tradition. Certain aspects of his relationship with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, including the Sufi language of love in which they sometimes communicated, can only be explained in terms of their familiarity with Sufism. `Abduh thought that certain kinds of reform were necessary for contemporary Islam, but he regarded these as compatible with Sufi thought and values. This was not a new attitude. The great medieval reformer, Imam Ghazali, was at once a scripturalist (an elitist, if you like) and a Sufi.
I think that most Salafi reformers would be critical of Sufism when it transgressed one of the basic doctrines of Islam: the separation between God and human beings. I've heard criticism of Sufi practices that seemed to imply the possibility of complete union with God as opposed to the possibility of complete openness to God. I think that that is the crucial point for many people who are critical of Sufism.
There is, incidentally, an interesting debate that occurred in the eighteenth century between Muhammad `Abd al-Wahhab (the Arabian reformer) and the chief qadi of Tunisia (whose name escapes me) about the so-called worship of saints' tombs which some reformers see as a feature of the Sufi tradition. The argument is over whether the frequenting of tombs and the invoking of saintly blessing constitutes `ibada [worship] or ziyara [visitation]. The qadi argues that this is not a case of `ibada, for the very reason that visitation to the Prophet's tomb at Mecca is not `ibada. The Prophet, after all, can't be worshipped (worship is reserved for God alone), but visiting his tomb is an act of piety that elicits blessing. I don't think that `Abd al-Wahab was persuaded by this argument, but there was an argument. The denunciation by some sections of the Islamic movement of other Muslims as kufar [infidels; sing. kafir] is, of course, a termination of argument. Even worse, it is a quasi-legal judgment which carries serious penalties.
It is curious that those in Islamic movements who declare other Muslims to be kufar are also the ones who argue that the door of ijtihad [exercise of independent judgment in a theological question] is open in Islam. Yet the entire idea of ijtihad, as an exercise in debate and reconsideration of scholarly argument, seems to contradict the kind of closure entailed in declaring someone a kafir.
Many Muslims would not accept, of course, that ijtihad is open to the introduction of new interpretations. Incidentally, among Sunnis, ijtihad is much more a central part of traditional Hanabli doctrine than of other schools-- for them the gate of ijtihad was never closed. But although they are open to the principle of ijtihad, they are hostile to what they regard as its arbitrary use. They are similar, in some ways, to the Khawarij in the seventh century who were prepared to call other Muslims kufar, even to make war on them. They decided that certain things were open to ijtihad and others were not. To talk about some things in the light of ijtihad was simply to open the door to kufr [infidelity]. So it is a question of where you draw the conceptual boundaries, and what action follows from the way you draw those boundaries.
In examining world traditions, theorists of religion have often contrasted deistic religiosity with a "traditional" sensibility that emphasizes, for example, correct bodily practices, literal understandings of texts, etc. Deism, on the other hand, is associated with an abstract understanding of the idea of divinity, sacred texts, and general principles of a religious doctrine. Evolutionary models of religious theory associate deism with a post-Enlightenment conception of religion, of which Post-Reformation Christianity is considered paradigmatic, and Islam, Hinduism, and certain forms of Judaism are associated with a literalist understanding of religion. Even if we reject an evolutionary model of religious development in history, there are obvious differences in the focus on correct bodily practices in some of these religious traditions. Given your emphasis on historicizing the concept of religion, and on the inimical relationship between religious discourse and bodily practices (particularly in medieval Christianity), what do you suggest are some ways to engage with this characterization of religious traditions as deist and/or literalist?
I think this is a false opposition, because abstract principles and ideas are also integral to various Islamic, Judaic, and pre-Reformation Christian traditions. Abstract ideas are relevant not only for theology, they are important also for programs aiming to teach embodied practices. I talk about these programs in Genealogies of Religion. In this sense abstract ideas are not opposed to embodied practices. This point applies to the way Christian virtues are developed in the monastic context, and it applies equally to the way nasiha constitutes an embodied practice, as I try to show in my book. The point is that, in contemporary Protestant Christianity (and other religions now modeled on it), it is more important to have the right belief than to carry out specific prescribed practices. It is not that belief in every sense of the word was irrelevant in the Christian past, or irrelevant to Islamic tradition. It is that belief has now become a purely inner, private state of mind, a particular state of mind detached from everyday practices. But although it is in this sense "internal," belief has also become the object of systematic discourse, such that the system of statements about belief is now held to constitute the essence of "religion," a construction that makes it possible to compare and evaluate different "religions." These systematic statements, these texts, are now the real public form of "religion."
So I think the contrast one should make is between the development of prescribed moral-religious capabilities, which involve the cultivation of certain bodily attitudes (including emotions), the disciplined cultivation of habits, aspirations, desires, on one hand, and on the other hand, a more abstracted set of belief-statements, "texts" that contain meanings and define the core of the religion.
Now, insofar as certain modern forms of religiosity have been identified with sets of abstracted belief-statements which have barely anything to do with people's actual lives, you get the curious phenomenon of Christians, non- Christians, and atheists allegedly believing in or rejecting religion, but living the same kind of life. Now, if this is the case, then clearly it is different from embodied practices of various kinds. I think the important contrast to bear in mind is the difference between this kind of intellectualized abstracted system of doctrines that has no direct bearing on or relationship to forms of embodied practices, and lives that are organized around gradually learning and perfecting correct moral and religious practices. The former kind of religiosity is much more a feature of modern religion in Europe and, indeed, a part of what religion is defined to be: a set of belief-statements that makes it possible to compare one religion to another and to judge the validity--even the sense--of such abstract statements. This state of affairs is radically opposed to one in which correct practice is essential to the development of religious virtues and is itself an essential religious virtue. After all, while you can talk about certain belief- statements as being credible or non-credible, true or false, rational or irrational, you can't really talk like that about embodied practices. Practices aren't statements. As Austin pointed out in How to Do Things with Words, they are performatives and not constatives. We do not say of performatives that they are believable or unbelievable. We inquire, instead, as to whether they are well done or badly done; effectively done or ineffectively done. So different kinds of questions arise in these two contexts. That is the opposition one has to bear in mind, and that is partly what my two chapters on monastic discipline are about.
In Islam, this is what matters, and if Muslims simply argue about whether or not a particular doctrine is "true Islam," and if the answer to that question makes no difference to how they learn to live, how they develop distinctive Islamic virtues, then it makes no difference whether that doctrine is the same as Christianity or not, because the way in which they live is the same, or pretty much the same. That is the point one has to bear in mind. The crucial question, it seems to me, is this: Are there practical rules and principles aimed at developing a distinctive set of virtues (articulated by din [religion]) which relate to how one structures one's life? That is what I mean by embodied practices.
Since you mostly focus on medieval Christianity in your book (Genealogies of Religion), I am curious if you think that this sense of embodied practice also exists in parts of the contemporary Islamic world, where the cultivation of correct bodily practices actually modifies the way people live on a daily basis?
Yes, I think it does in some areas. I tried to describe some aspects of that in the context of the Wahhabi concept and practice of morality, as opposed to post-Kantian conceptions of morality. In varying degrees, you continue to have this sense of morality in parts of the Muslim world, although it is gradually becoming eroded there as elsewhere. I think that, in a way, the recent Islamist movements have a sense that the pursuit of correct bodily practices is important and has to be somehow reinstituted where it has eroded, and protected wherever it exists. Unfortunately, Islamists often tend to link the maintenance of these practices to the demand for a modernizing Islamic state. This seems to me very problematic for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, the learning of these moral capabilities did not originally depend on the existence of a modernizing state. Yet now most Islamic movements are concerned to capture the center that the modern state represents, instead of trying to cut across or dissolve it.
Source : http://www.islamamerica.org/articles.cfm/article_id/102/
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