Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists and Industrialization

328 Pages·1985·13.545 MB·English

by  Ernest Gellner (editor)

Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists
and Industrialization
The Southern Shore of the Mediterranean
Religion and Society 25
GENERAL EDITORS
Leo Laeyendecker, University of Leyden
Jacques Waardenburg, University of Utrecht
MOUTON PUBLISHERS • BERLIN • NEW YORK • AMSTERDAM
Islamic Dilemmas:
Reformers, Nationalists
and Industrialization
The Southern Shore of the Mediterranean
Edited by
Ernest Gellner
MOUTON PUBLISHERS • BERLIN • NEW YORK • AMSTERDAM
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Islamic dilemmas, reformers, nationalists and
industrialization.
(Religion and society ; 25)
1. Islam—Near East—Congresses. I. Gellner,
Ernest. II. Series: Religion and society (Mouton
Publishers) ; 25.
BP63.A4N42437 1985 306\6'091822 85-333
ISBN 3-11-009763-X
ClP-KurztitelauJnähme der Deutschen Bibliothek
Islamic dilemmas: reformers, nationalists, and
industrialization : the southern shore of the
Mediterranean / ed. by Ernest Gellner. - Berlin ;
New York ; Amsterdam ; Mouton, 1985.
(Religion and society ; 25)
ISBN 3-11-009763-X
NE: Gellner, Ernest [Hrsg.]; GT
© Copyright 1985 by Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. All rights reserved, including those
of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form — by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means — nor transmitted nor translated
into a machine language without written permission from the publishers. — Printing:
Druckerei Hildebrand, Berlin. — Binding: Dieter Mikolai, Berlin. Printed in Germany.
Preface
Jojada Verrips (for the University of Amsterdam)
Daniel Meijers (for the Free University of Amsterdam)
Thinking up a conference is easier than setting one up, as Dr. John
Davis discovered while serving as a Visiting Professor in the
Department of European and Mediterranean Studies, Anthropology-
Sociology Center, University of Amsterdam, in 1977-1978. In a recent
book, which essays a critical synthesis of what anthropologists have
written about the People of the Mediterranean (1977), Dr. Davis
observes that little systematic study has been made of religion as
Mediterranean people practise it. To help remedy this deficiency,
Dr. Davis proposed to hold a conference on the subject attended by
outstanding scholars of Mediterranean society, and drew up a list of
prospective contributors. His collegues in Amsterdam received both
suggestions enthusiastically, but finance was another matter. Hence
it was only after Davis had left Amsterdam that funds were obtained
to underwrite the gathering he had planned. Finally, in December
1979, two years after Davis first proposed his idea, the conference
was held at the Free University of Amsterdam. For three days anthro-
pologists and sociologists discussed each other's conference papers,
most of which (suitably revised) appear in the present volumes,
edited by Ernest Gellner and Eric R. Wolf, who chaired the proceed-
ings. We are deeply indebted to Professors Gellner and Wolf, both
for their splendid management of the discussion, and for the labours
they undertook afterwards to prepare these books for press. They
have our heartfelt thanks.
Their good work would have come to naught, however, but for the
financial support graciously provided by the Subfaculty of Sociology,
Cultural Anthropology, and the Sociology of Nonwestern Peoples at the
University of Amsterdam; the Subfaculty of Social and Cultural
Sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam; and the Netherlands
Ministry of Education and Science. We also wish to thank Ir. J.H.H.
Hasenack, chief administrator of the University of Amsterdam subfac-
ulty and Mr W. Buitenhek, his counterpart at the Free University,
for their personal interest and help in making this conference
possible.
After John Davis left Amsterdam, we, the undersigned, took charge
VI
of organising the conference. Hence we wish to thank our colleagues
in the Departments of European and Mediterranean Studies, University
of Amsterdam, and the Anthropology of Religion, Free University, for
their continuing trust and support - in particular Drs. Tom
Nieuwenhuis (University of Amsterdam) and Drs. Miep Stanwvan Ginhoven
and Mrs Freeke Falkenhagen (Free University) whose assistance was
indispensable.
After the conference Dr. Adrianus Koster, who already had been
helpful in many ways, took over Daniel Meijers1 responsibility for
the publication of the present volume. At this stage Ms Gay Woolven,
Department of Philosophy, Logic,and Scientific Method, London School
of Economics; Dr. Katie Piatt, Ms Hannie Hoekstra and Ms Nettie
Westerhuis, University of Amsterdam, helped prepare the draft.
Ms Marijke Kreuze, together with Ms Elly Molendijk and Mrs Gremina
Hoekstra, Free University, typed this final manuscript. Thanks, too,
are due to the Administration of the Free University for aid in
translating several key contributions from the French language.
In addition, we owe thanks to Drs. Bertus Hendriks, Drs. Edien
Bartels, and Professor Sydel Silverman, who rounded off the
discussion with clear summaries and sharp comments.
Lastly, we wish to thank Professors Leo Laeyendecker and Jacques
Waardenburg for their advice and support.
A conference like this can succeed only if the written contributions
are of high quality and, moreover, if a certain community of interest
develops among the participants. The reader can best judge whether
the first condition has been met. As for the second, all we can say
is that despite the multinational composition of the discussants,
the division of the proceedings into two segments, concerned with
religion on the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean
respectively, and the mix of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish
traditions among us, our sense of academic community and shared
scientific interest never flagged. On the contrary, if our experience
suggests a general conclusion, it is that religion in Mediterranean
society is an exciting subject, the study of which offers
indispensable insights into how life is lived there. Hence we hope
that these books will stimulate others to continue the work of
improving our understanding of religious observance and commitment,
and its significance for social existence, in the modern world.
Jojada Verrips
Daniel Meijers
Table of Contents
PREFACE V
Jojada Verrips (for the University of Amsterdam)
Daniel Meijers (for the Free University of Amsterdam)
INTRODUCTION 1
Ernest Gellner
LAW AND REALITY IN MODERN ISLAM 10
Niko Kielstra
ISLAM AS A VEHICLE OF PROTEST 22
Jacques Waardenburg
TOWARDS AN ECONOMIC MODEL OF VIRTUOSO RELIGION 49
Bryan S. Turner
MILITANT ISLAM: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 73
Jamil M. Abun-Nasr
THE ORIGIN OF MODERN CONSERVATISM AND ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM 94
Hassan Hanafi
TRIBAL PILGRIMAGES TO SAINTS' TOMBS IN SOUTH SINAI 104
Emanuel Marx
THE MECRUF OF TAMJLOCHT OR THE RITE OF THE BOUND VICTIM 132
Paul Pascan
THE DISCREDITING OF A SUFI MOVEMENT IN TUNISIA"1" 146
Kenneth L. Brown
ISLAND PURITANISM 169
Katie Piatt
TRAJECTORIES OF CONTEMPORARY SUFISM 187
Michael Gilsenan
THE CULT OF SAINTS IN NORTH-WESTERN TUNISIA1; AN ANALYSIS OF 199
CONTEMPORARY PILGRIMAGE STRUCTURES
Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
Vili
THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION OF THE MUSLIM MYSTIC ORDERS IN 240
YUGOSLAVIA
Alexandre Popovic
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS POLITICS IN THE LEBANON 255
Anton Wessels
ASPECTS OF THE CHANGING NATURE OF LEBANESE CONFESSIONAL 267
POLITICS: AL-MUEABITUN, 1958-19791
Marion Farouk-Sluglett
and
Peter Sluglett
Index 1: Proper Names 285
Index 2: Subject Matter 297
Index 3: Foreign Words 314
Introduction
Ernest Gellner
To discuss the religion of the southern shore of the Mediterranean
is to discuss Islam. Though Islam does not have a monopoly of that
region, given Jewish minorities in the Maghreb and both Jewish and
Christian ones in the Near East, nevertheless it overwhelmingly
dominates it. The departure of colonial settler populations, and the
transformation of the Jews from a set of diaspora communities into
the territorially compact national state of Israel, have further
accentuated the Islamic hegemony. Only the Christian communities in
Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Egypt now constitute significant
exceptions to this religious unity.
The papers assembled in this part of the volume reflect it. What
remains of situations of religious pluralism is represented by the
discussion of the highly significant but a-typical Lebanese case.
Otherwise, they deal with problems, conflicts and developments
internal to Islam.
Three great forces or processes are at work in this world:
industrialisation, nationalism, and Reformism. By industrialisation,
one means of course that entire syndrome of economic and social
changes which is associated with the diffusion of modern technology,
and which is sometimes referred to as 'modernisation', and which
extends far beyond the methods of industrial production in any
narrow sense. Its elements are as evident in agriculture and include
features such as increased administrative effectiveness and hence
greater centralisation, urbanisation, population growth, disruption
of local communities, and increased literacy. By Reformism is meant
that tendency towards a more scripturalist, fundamentalist, rigorous
form of religion, which seems to be the central theme of the
cultural history of Muslim countries for the past century. In a
generic and non-prejudicial sense, it could also be called
'protestantism', in as far as it displays those traits which, in
Europe, are associated with that term: stress on the authority of
the written Word of the canonical text, distrust of spiritual middle-
men and of the use of audio-visual aids to piety.
But in Europe, the age of the Reformation, and that of
2 Ernest Gellner
industrialisation and nationalism, were separated by some two or
three centuries. These great transformations were of course connected,
but they were not simultaneous. The most famous theory of the genesis
of industrial society makes extreme protestantism into a crucial pre-
condition of 'capitalism' and modern rationality. The link between
protestantism and nationalism is also close. Bernard Shaw commented
on it in St. Joan'. Cauchon speaking of the Maid, says:
"Call this side of her heresy Nationalism
if you will ... it is essentially
anti-Catholic ..."
and Warwick replies:
"Well, if you will burn the Protestant,
I will burn the Nationalist ..."
St. Joan was ahead of her time in Europe, in being both 'Protestant'
and Nationalist at the same time, but in Islam this conflation is
now common. Nationalism and protestantism (I shall continue to use
this term in a generic, sociological sense, without prejudice),
constitute ideas, doctrines or values which have important, and
overlapping, implications for the relationship of men to culture and
society. Protestantism says, in effect, that the individual should
heed and repect the recorded Word without excessive (or any) use of
intermediaries, and that inner guidance and transcendent Authority
suffice. Superficially, this might seem an anti-social doctrine,
dispending as it does with the need for external sanctions and group
feeling, and stressing instead the exclusive authority of something
other-worldly and hence trans-social. But such a supposition neglects
the far greater effectiveness of inner sanctions, especially when
purified of reliance on external support, and when purged of
contamination by compromise, haggling; and also of that special
indulgence which socially incarnated, over-incarnated, all-too-human
or all-too-social religion can hardly help showing to those who are
loyal and generous to it and its representatives, irrespective of
their purity of heart and faith. Paradoxically, 'protestant' religious
styles cause men to internalise ideas and values more effectively,
just because they do not employ more immediate, all-too-mundane
reminders, reinforcements and bribes. Self-discipline is the most
effective kind. Innere Fiihrung may or may not work in the Bundeswehr,
but it works admirably in religion. It defines a community,
especially a large or anonymous one, better than more institutionally
incarnate religions.
And what has nationalism to do with this? A very great deal. A
realistic definition of nationalism is this: It teaches that a man's