Interpretations of Islam: Past and Present

265 Pages·1985·3.855 MB·English

by  Emmanuel Sivan

INTERPRETATIONS OF ISLAM

INTERPRETATIONS
o f
ISLAM
PAST AND PRESENT
By Emmanuel Sivan
The Darwin Press, Inc.
Princeton, New Jersey
Copyright© 1985 by the darwin press, inc., Princeton, nj 08540 usa
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, me­
chanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
in critical articles or reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sivan, Emmanuel.
Interpretations of Islam.
Includes index.
1. Arab countries—Historiography—Addresses, essays,
lectures. 2. French—Algeria—Addresses, essays,
lectures. I. Title.
DS37.S57 1985 909\097671’0072 84-70415
ISBN 0-87850-049-9
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................. ix
Part I: History Interpreted
1. Modern Arab Historiography of the Crusades .................... 3
2. Arab Revisionist Historians .................................................. 45
Part II: Impact of the Past upon the Present
3. The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam ...................................... 75
4. ‘Ulama and Power ................................................................. 107
5. Edward Said and His Arab Reviewers.................................. 133
Part III: Colonial Representations of Islam
6. Colonialism and Popular Culture......................................... 157
7. Hating the Jew as an Arab.................................................... 189
8. Slave Dealer Mentality and Communism............................. 207
Index .......................................................................................... 249

To My Mother

INTRODUCTION
THERE ARE, it has been said, two types of scholars: the divers who
plunge deeper and deeper into the water, turning around the one
object they covet, and the explorers who like to furrow the sea, in
quest of boundless horizons, describing the various worlds they en­
counter along the way. It seems that I belong to the second category,
hopping back and forth between medieval and contemporary Islamic
history, between Mashriq and Maghrib, between the viewpoint of the
Muslim native and that of the European colonizer.
Yet, if there is a raison d’être to this activity, other than the sheer
fun of exploration, it resides in the one recurring theme of my schol­
arly concerns—the relationship between the Islamic past and present.
This collection of essays intends to illustrate the diverse aspects
of this theme, perhaps in a better focused manner than I could do in
my books. I begin by discussing the deep interest of modern Mus­
lims in their past, especially the Middle Ages, which attract them
more than Westerners are attracted to their own (Western) Middle
Ages. (Half of the Ph.D. dissertations in Egyptian universities, for
instance, are devoted to medieval history.)* Two facets of this inter­
est—which one may call “history as a witness for the defense” and
“history as a witness for the prosecution”—are discussed in Chapters 1
and 2 respectively. These interpretations illustrate the subjective
presence of the past in the minds of contemporary Muslims, the past
as represented by the modern observer. But the past has a more
“objective” presence in modern realities through the legacies it
left and which survive (in various and ever-changing forms), regard­
less of whether the contemporaries are conscious of it or not. Two
such legacies are probed in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 5 attempts to
place the same leitmotif in a broader scope—that of the debate on
Orientalism launched by the book bearing this title by Edward Said.
The one great merit of Said’s book is, undoubtedly, in stressing
the “cultural archives” brought by scholars and observers to the
study of Islam. Awareness of this fact, i.e., attention to one’s own
prejudices and predilections, is the best guarantee against falling
* See my “Egyptian Historiography: Quantitative Indicators,” Hamizrah Hehadash
XXIII (Hebrew), 1973.
IX
x Interpretations of Islam
into the pitfalls of extreme subjectivism, though objectivity will re­
main, at best, elusive. This is particularly true of the outside observ­
er, and even more so of the Western one whose civilization has long
dominated (and in some ways still does) that of Islam. Studying the
various representations of Islam by Westerners is one way to enhance
such self-awareness. I have chosen to do so not at the level of high
culture (discussed by Said and his reviewers, see Chapter 5), but by
focusing on Western popular culture in one of the most intensive
(and tragic) colonial situations, namely, French Algeria (see Chapters
6, 7, and 8). The lessons to be learned therefrom are all the more
poignant, since the Pied Noirs were both a dominant class (in the
colonial context) and a subordinate class (in the French context),
both “Mediterranean” and “European.”
Chapters 1, 2, 6, and 8 are reprinted here, more or less, as they
originally appeared in English. Chapter 5 is a greatly expanded
version of a 1977 article. Chapters 3, 4, and 7 appear here in English
for the first time and were also revised or expanded.
These essays were prepared for publication at the suggestion of
my friend and mentor, Charles Issawi, during a year spent at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. My thanks to the Institute
and to its staff.