Max Weber & Islam

341 Pages·1999·9.923 MB·English

by  Toby E. Huff, Wolfgang Schluchter

Max Weber
& Islam

Max W eb e r
& Islam
Toby E. Huff
Wolfgang Schluchter
EDITORS
O Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1999 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1999 by Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 99-24272
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Max Weber and Islam / edited by Toby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter ;
with an introduction by Toby E. Huff
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56000-400-2 (alk. paper)
1. Weber, Max 1864-1920. 2. Sociology, Islamic. I. Huff, Toby E.,
1942- . II. Schluchter, Wolfgang, 1938-
BP173.25.M39 1999
306.6’ 97 ’092—dc21 99-24272
CIP
ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-400-4 (hbk)
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction
Toby E. Huff 1
1. Hindrances to Modernity : Max Weber on Islam
Wolfgang Schluchter 53
2. The Institutionalization of Early Islamic Societies
IraM. Lapidus 139
3. Aspects of Islamization: Weber’s
Observations on Islam Reconsidered
Nehemia Levtzion 153
4. Islamization in Late Medieval Bengal:
The Relevance of Max Weber
Richard M. Eaton 163
5. Max Weber and the Patrimonial Empire in Islam:
The Mughal Case
Peter Hardy 183
6. Paradise or Hell? The Religious Doctrine of Election
in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Islamic
Fundamentalism and Protestant Calvinism
Rudolph Peters 205
7. Weber and Islamic Reform
Barbara D. Metcalf 217
8. Secularization, Weber, and Islam
Francis Robinson 231
9. Weber, Islamic Law, and the Rise
of Capitalism
Patricia Crone 247
10. Weber and Islamic Sects
Michael Cook 273
11. Weber’s Analysis of Islam and the Specific
Pattern of Islamic Civilization
S. N. Eisenstadt 281
Bibliography 295
Contributors 317
Index 321
Preface
Beginning in 1979 Professor Wolfgang Schluchter of Heidelberg
University began preparations for a series of high-level conferences
focused on Max Weber’s studies in the sociology of religion. The in­
tent was to bring together a renowned panel of experts—biblical schol­
ars, Hebraists, Sinologists, Indianologists, and Islamicists—to evalu­
ate Weber’s studies. These were to be masters of the specialized
scholarly materials in the particular religious tradition in question, and
individuals who had enough familiarity with Max Weber’s writings to
offer up-to-date assessments of Weber’s early twentieth-century writ­
ings about the world religions. Each conference of experts was charged
with offering new interpretations and critiques of Weber’s wide-rang­
ing and monumental thought that often delved into legal and economic
history, theology, as well as the political history of the civilization in
question.
The first of the volumes to appear (in German) was focused on An­
cient Judaism.1 The next conference of experts took up Weber’s writ­
ings about China and the religious traditions of Taoism and Confucian­
ism.2 Following that a distinguished panel of scholars evaluated Weber’s
thought on Hinduism and Buddhism.3 This was followed by a reas­
sessment of Weber’s thought on Ancient Christianity.4 Next came the
conference (June 1984) that sought to reconstruct and evaluate Weber’s
widely scattered comments on the sociology of Islam. The results of
that conference form the basis of the present volume.5
Until now, none of these conference proceedings have been avail­
able to English-speaking readers. With this volume we bring to the
English-speaking world the results of the conference proceedings fo­
cused on Weber’s comments on Islam and the Muslim world. Each of
the original authors was contacted in order to prepare this edition of
the volume.6 Most of the original essays have been newly revised to
incorporate significant developments and new understandings of Is­
lam that had appeared since the mid-eighties conference. Given the
procession of world events that have transpired since the mid-1980s, it
is evident that the topic of Islam and its place in the current geopoliti­
vii
viii Max Weber and Islam
cal context, has grown in significance. Likewise, the effort to reassess
Weber’s early twentieth-century pioneering efforts to understand Is­
lam from a sociological point of view is greatly overdue. As the reader
will bear witness, some of the critiques of Weber’s ideas in this volume
display great subtlety as well as erudition in the quest to faithfully
assess Weber’s sometimes oblique, but always richly flavored, com­
ments on Islam.
Toby E. Huff
Notes
1. Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Studie iiber das antike Judentum. Inter­
pretation und Kritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981).
2. Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Studie iiber das Konfuzianismus und
Taoismus. Interpretation und Kritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983).
3. Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Studie iiber das Hinduismus und
Buddhismus. Interpretation und Kritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984).
4. Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Sicht des antiken Christentums. Interpre­
tation und Kritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985).
5. Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Sicht des Islams. Interpretation und Kritik
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987). A sixth volume of critical and interpretive studies
focused on Occidental Christianity was also published: Wolfgang Schluchter, ed.,
Max Webers Sicht des okzidentalen Christentums. Interpretation und Kritik (Frank­
furt: Suhrkamp, 1988).
6. However, two authors, Maxime Rodinson and Ernest Gellner, died in the interim,
and their papers have been omitted, though they are available in other places.
Introduction
Toby E. Huff
Those who have read broadly in Max Weber’s voluminous writings
and understood his larger purpose have grasped the fact that he worked
on a canvas much larger than the issue of “the Protestant ethic and the
spirit of capitalism.”1 It is true, of course, that it was precisely to test
certain implications of the relationship between economic ethics and
religious orientations that Weber moved into comparative cross-cul­
tural, historical, and civilizational frames of reference. By moving in
that direction, Weber sought to establish whether or not there were any
other world religions like Christianity, which had given birth to such
unrelenting pursuit of economic rationalism which was linked to the
rise of modern capitalism in the West. However, in moving to this en­
larged conception of his problematic, Weber came to see his problem
as one which had to account for the general emergence of Western
rationalism as a whole. In that broader conception, Weber postulated
that the West had not only been unique in generating modern capital­
ism, but also modem science, and a host of related cultural phenom­
ena, such as modem bureaucracy, the Western legal system, and a wide
range of peculiarly rationalized cultural forms in art, architecture, and
music. In this connection, Weber’s monograph translated as The Social
and Rational Foundations of Music2 merits special attention. For as
Wolfgang Schluchter notes below, Weber’s realization that art and
music, too, were highly influenced by scientific and technological prin­
ciples, was for him a major breakthrough. This realization that so-called
“nonrational” forms of cultural creativity had been shaped by the West­
ern forces of rationalism forced him to recognize that all forms of cul­
tural development in the West, not just economic, are under the grip of
Western rationalism. In the scholarly literature this tortured term, ra­
tionalism, remains controversial and I shall have something more to
say about it later. For now I would simple say that Weber uses the term
1