Islamic Globalization: Pilgrimage, Capitalism, Democracy, And Diplomacy

Pilgrimage, Capitalism, Democracy, and Diplomacy

Robert R Bianchi

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9789814508452
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Islamic Globalization examines the Muslim world's growing importance in creating a more inclusive international system that is increasingly multipolar and multicultural. The author describes an emerging pattern of Islamic globalization as a series of transformations in four interrelated areas — pilgrimage and religious travel, capitalism and Islamic finance, democracy and Islamic modernism, and diplomacy and great power politics. The book integrates the disciplines of religion, politics, economics, law, and international relations highlighting developments in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. It provides new insights into the rapidly growing ties between China and the Islamic world, exploring their likely impact on the balance of power in Eurasia and beyond.

Contents:

• • Introduction: Islamic Globalization
• Pilgrimage and Religious Travel:
  • A Pilgrim's Eye View of the Hajj
  • The Contemporary Hajj
  • The Hajj and Human Migration
  • Women's Participation in the Hajj
  • Religious Travel in Islam
• Capitalism and Islamic Finance:
  • Capitalism and Islam
  • The Battle for the Soul of Islamic Finance — If It Has One
  • The Revolution in Islamic Finance
  • Islamic Finance and the International System: Integration without Colonialism
• Democracy and Islamic Modernism:
  • Egypt's Revolutionary Elections
  • The Social and Economic Bases of Ennahdha Power: Khaldunian and Tocquevillian Reflections on the Tunisian Elections
  • On Liberty and Human Interest in the Work of Iliya Harik
  • Leonard Binder's Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Developmental Ideologies
  • Philosophers, Lawyers, and Journalists: Arab and Turkish Ventures in Modernist Islam
• Diplomacy and Great Power Politics:
  • Morsy in Beijing: Implications for America's Relations with China and the Islamic World
  • China–Middle East Relations in Light of Obama's Pivot to the Pacific
  • China and the United States in the Middle East and the Islamic World
  • The Lands of Islam in a China-Led Afro-Eurasia
  • Conclusion: Toward a New Concert of Civilizations

Readership: Students, general public, policy makers, business executives, and journalists, with interests in the Middle East.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Islamic Globalization

This collection of essays examines an emerging pattern of transnational modernization that I call Islamic globalization. It is a distinctively Muslim approach to globalization rooted in four mutually reinforcing transformations—international pilgrimage and religious travel, capitalist economic development, political and religious democratization, and growing assertiveness in world diplomacy.

These are long-term trends that are gaining force throughout the Islamic world as a whole. They suggest far more positive and encouraging views of diverse Muslim societies in Asia and Africa than we are accustomed to hearing from journalistic accounts that focus on terrorism and the daily crises of the Middle East. By adopting a wider historical and geographic perspective, we can see that Muslims are some of the most active participants in globalization and that they are contributing to its creative adaptations in a wide variety of non-Western settings.

It is fitting to speak of Islamic globalization because religion has stimulated much of the progress in Muslim countries and because the growth of capitalism and democracy is promoting more open-minded approaches to religion and greater interest in balance of power diplomacy. These interaction effects give Islamic globalization an additive and cumulative dimension—perhaps even a potential for self-sustaining innovation if it engages with similar experiments in other non-European civilizations, particularly China, India, and Latin America.

Like reformers in other great world civilizations, Islamic modernists frequently move back and forth between conflicting assessments of tradition and its future relevance. Many view Islamic globalization as the natural evolution of a living multicultural heritage with ancient roots. Others insist on a revolutionary break with repressive authority and Western neocolonialism. And many others see themselves as continuing a historic pursuit of ideals that have animated and eluded every generation since the dawn of Islam. Nonetheless, educated Muslims generally agree that Islam rests on a vast body of learning and general principles that is open to constant reinterpretation by all believers rather than a handful of fixed rules that can be monopolized by a clerical caste or an authoritarian state.

Against this background of socioeconomic development and political-religious reform, the leading countries of the Islamic world have joined the mainstream of modern life and are exerting a profound and growing influence in every aspect of global affairs. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Nigeria—these are the current and emerging powers that are carving out major roles not only in their neighboring regions, but throughout the Muslim world and the wider international system. In varying degrees, each of them has experienced a series of remarkable—and often tumultuous—transformations in nation-building, economic development, social re-stratification, cultural pluralism, democratic reform, and foreign policy.

Their economies have industrialized and diversified, they have become firmly integrated into international trade and financial networks, and they dominate the land and sea lifelines of natural resource supplies that sustain both developed and developing markets. Their societies are highly urbanized and educated, spawning a new generation of middle class consumers, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are spearheading a vigorous associational life and a more assertive civil society.

Democratic reforms and revolutions have toppled dictators, monarchs, and military rulers spreading multiparty competition and parliamentary rule in one country after another. Cultural and religious modernization have severely eroded the authority of traditional religious leaders, particularly of the ’ulama (classical legal scholars), promoting broad individual freedom to interpret Islamic texts and heritages for lay people of all ages and genders with modern education in the sciences, the professions, and the business world.

Islamic nations are both strengthening and challenging the current architecture of international organizations and diplomacy. In addition, they have created unique international regimes to manage the global surge in pilgrimage and the transnational boom in Islamic financial services.

Both individually and collectively, these countries have already become a key force in global capitalism and diplomacy. They lead efforts to mediate regional conflicts that can quickly escalate into international confrontations. In an increasingly multipolar balance of power system, they operate as swing votes and quasi-allies of the Great Powers, particularly the United States and China. And they are bound to play a pivotal role in a wide range of future efforts to reform global governance, including banking regulation, controlling climate change, reorganizing the United Nations Security Council, limiting nuclear proliferation, and insuring equitable access to vital resources of energy, water, and food.

Pilgrimage and Religious Travel

In many respects, the Hajj—the annual pilgrimage to Mecca—is the hallmark of Islamic globalization. Newly independent nations quickly removed colonial restrictions on pilgrimage and subsidized modern jet travel for newly prosperous middle class and rural populations with growing disposable incomes. Rival political parties outbid one another in expanding Hajj services to win the support of Muslim voters in newly democratizing systems. Virtually every country’s pilgrimage contingent included higher proportions of women, young people, urbanites, and graduates of secondary schools and universities. Private tourist agencies offered an array of Hajj packages to Muslim submarkets with different income levels and religious preferences. Modernist and reformist writers filled much of the new mass demand for literature about Hajj rituals and symbolism with interpretations that connect the pilgrimage to the problems of daily life and the injustices of rapidly changing societies.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference—the so-called United Nations of the Muslim world—established a novel international regime that set national quotas for the size of pilgrimage contingents and devolved broad administrative powers to government-run Hajj bureaucracies throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Consequently, for the first time in history, about 80 percent of today’s pilgrims come from the non-Arab countries of Asia and Africa instead of the nearby Arab states that dominated Hajj activities for more than a millennium. Thus, the Hajj has become much more representative of the diversity and modernity of Muslim societies, more enmeshed with global markets, technology, and migration flows, and more deeply politicized at both national and international levels.

Capitalism and Islamic Finance

Economic development in the Islamic world has moved decisively into the capitalist mainstream. Even countries that previously experimented with state-led import substitution and autarky are now driven largely by private and foreign firms producing for export and tied to international finance and transport. The long debate over whether Islam is compatible with capitalist development seems to have been resolved with a resounding verdict in the affirmative. Instead, attention has shifted to the rapid emergence of a specialized industry of Islamic financial services tailored to the religious tastes and nationalist sentiments of hundreds of millions of middle class consumers, savers, and investors.

Islamic finance is blossoming into a distinctive type of capitalism where a multitude of Muslim and non-Muslim institutions compete for market share by inventing and branding products that claim to offer all of the conveniences of conventional banking while also complying with the principles of Islamic law. The potential profits are astronomical, the risks are incalculable, and rising competitors are likely to sweep the current leaders from the field in the coming decades. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation¹ has established specialized agencies to regulate the industry in line with central bank and Basel Club rules for disclosure and capital adequacy. Nonetheless, fierce rivalries remain between regional centers in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and London who cater to divergent cultural and religious markets. Worse yet, there are no uniform professional standards to prevent glaring conflicts of interest among the burgeoning class of “financial ‘ulama” who hold themselves out as objective jurists while also serving as highly paid directors and consultants of the very institutions they are supposed to monitor.

Democracy and Islamic Modernism

Capitalist development has encouraged democratic politics and both, in turn, have promoted more pluralist and liberal religious currents. Majority rule has triggered profound and permanent power shifts from big cities to provincial towns and villages, from military officers and intellectuals to business people and middle class professionals, and from Westernized secular elites to more pious common citizens.

Political freedom has stimulated a steady proliferation of competing parties, interest groups, and ideologies. Open and vigorous debate has created greater room for diverse interpretations of Islam with modernist and liberal tendencies gaining ground against conservative and extremist views. The recent victories of Islamic liberals in Egypt and Tunisia followed earlier breakthroughs in Turkey and Indonesia, assembling similar multiclass coalitions and interregional alliances.

The essays in this section examine the social and intellectual bases of modernist Islamic movements, particularly in Egypt and Turkey both before and after the revolutions of the Arab Spring. They highlight the electoral strategies of Muslim democrats in Egypt and Tunisia as well as the central role of professionals and lay people in broadening the understanding of Islamic heritage to include far more than the conventional legal schools.

Diplomacy and Great Power Politics

Islamic countries have adopted a newly assertive and independent role in international politics. They operate as pivotal balancers in regional conflicts, as quasi-allies that pragmatically hedge support for Chinese and American rivals, and as collective advocates of more inclusive institutions of global governance. Diplomats in Turkey and Indonesia have emerged as particularly skillful and influential mediators in the volatile Middle Eastern and Asia-Pacific regions. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have drifted far beyond their earlier pro-American orbits, leveraging their economic and geostrategic advantages to win stronger Chinese backing against their archenemies in Iran and India. Even Egypt—a virtual American dependency for three decades—is eager to regain its leading role as a power broker in Arab, Islamic, and global arenas.

China’s deepening relations with the Islamic world are helping Beijing to integrate its own Muslim minorities while building a network of partnerships that traverses the breadth of Eurasia as well as the Indian Ocean basin. The Obama administration’s “pivot to the Pacific” is a belated—and probably futile—effort to reverse this momentum and to put China on the defensive by encircling it with hostile neighbors. The United States seeks to disengage from Middle Eastern quagmires and refocus its attention on Pacific economic opportunities. However, it is more likely that Obama and his successors will become embroiled in simultaneous Middle Eastern and Pacific crises that can quickly aggravate one another and escalate beyond control.

Western strategy can pursue a wiser and more effective course. Instead of trying to undermine the rising power of China and the Islamic world or working to turn them against one another, America and Europe would be better advised to offer both Chinese and Islamic leaders a greater share of power in helping to restore balance to an increasingly unstable multipolar system.

My views of Islamic globalization have coalesced from a series of research projects in many disciplines and countries over several years. I began with studies of associational life and interest group politics in Turkey and Egypt, shifting gradually to the international political ramifications of the Hajj in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. As I developed new interests in international law and legal pluralism, I examined the controversies surrounding Islamic finance and efforts to blend religious law with customary, Western, and international legal traditions. Most recently, extended residences in China, Qatar, and Singapore have allowed me to explore the wide overlap and longstanding interchange of Islamic and East Asian civilizations, giving me a new appreciation of their combined power in world politics.

As my interests broadened, I became evermore aware of my many debts to Leonard Binder and the late Fazlur Rahman, my teachers and colleagues at the University of Chicago. Whether I was focusing on religion or politics, on law or economics, or on regional or global questions, their contributions to Islam, the social sciences, and the humanities were always in mind and on point. I also had the good fortune to enjoy many years of debate and encouragement from Louis Cantori and Iliya Harik, my predecessors at Chicago and my dearest friends who were taken from us much too soon.

The research and fieldwork reflected in these pages were undertaken at several institutions—the University of Chicago (both the Department of Political Science and the Law School), the American University in Cairo, Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Qatar University, the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, and the National University of Singapore.

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¹The Organization of Islamic Cooperation was formerly known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference. It assumed its current name on 28 June 2011.

I: Pilgrimage and
Religious Travel

Chapter 2

A Pilgrim's Eye View of the Hajj

When I went on the Hajj I soon discovered that I had to put aside most of what I had learned about it before hand. Nothing prepared me for what I saw—the maddening confusion and mass exhaustion, the daily brushes with death, and the stunning courage and kindness of countless strangers who held the world together when it was about to fly apart in all directions. I had thought that the Hajj was a religious ritual and that like other rituals it was a time and place outside of real life where people sought a fleeting touch of the supernatural and a glimpse of eternity. And then it would be finished. We'd leave the magic behind and get back to business. God would be in His proper place and humans would be in theirs.

Having assumed that the Hajj was a ritual, I also expected it to be ritualistic—standardized, lock step, and by the book with everyone going through the same motions whether they made sense or not. Everything pointed to that conclusion. The main goal was to fulfill Islam's most difficult religious obligation, a journey that God commanded of everyone able knowing that less than one percent of any generation had the health and savings to obey. An important side benefit would be forgiveness of all sins and the chance to face Judgment Day with a clean slate. But neither reward was guaranteed. God would decide to accept or reject every person's pilgrimage on a case-by-case basis depending on the purity of one's intention and the conformity of one's behavior to the multitude of special rules that make the Hajj the Hajj. Only God can decide if a particular pilgrimage is accepted or not and no human, including the Hajji, can ever know for sure what verdict God has given.

In fact, the pilgrims hardly ever follow a set script and they would find it impossible to do so even if they tried. They quickly learn that the only way to survive is to throw away the rule books and improvise their own coping strategies by building close-knit "families" in which everyone looks out for everyone else so they all scrape through safe and sound. Sooner or later, nearly all Hajjis realize that the formal institutions of pilgrimage management have failed them. Even before they arrive in Mecca, they can feel the system breaking down under the weight of cronyism, partisanship, and corruption. By the time they return home months later, they each have a special pack of tales about the abuse and neglect they've suffered at the hands of bureaucrats, tour agents, religious officials, hotel operators, police, guides, shopkeepers, thieves, doctors, drivers, shrine attendants, and litter bearers.

These experiences force pilgrims to confront the inherent flaws and biases of the elaborate government-sponsored Hajj networks in their home countries and in Saudi Arabia, including the powerful nexus of political, economic, and religious authorities that control them and profit from them. The inevitable result is a ceaseless worldwide debate over every aspect of the pilgrimage, thrusting Hajj issues to the forefront of public consciousness every day of the year as the cycle of preparation, mobilization, and criticism makes all months seem like phases of one seamless Hajj season that touches Muslims everywhere whether or not they ever go on pilgrimage themselves.

The globalized Hajj debate is producing far-reaching conse¬quences. Instead of the old-fashioned notion that pilgrimage is a simple matter of conforming to unchanging rituals and unquestionable rules, today's Muslims commonly see every person's Hajj as a unique experience that even the same pilgrim could not relive at a later time. In this view, the Hajj is a deeply personal encounter with mysteries and holy symbols, open to infinite interpretations that can rival or contradict conventional meanings endorsed by clerics, governments, and social scientists.

In addition, Muslims increasingly see the pilgrimage in the contemporary contexts of earthly space and time rather than as a dream land or a suspended state divorced from the realities of this world. This change of perspective is steadily eroding Saudi Arabia's religious prestige and political legitimacy. All Muslims acknowledge that Mecca is the spiritual center of Islam and the site of God's symbolic "house," the ka'ba. But this does not mean that the Saudi state and ruling family automatically drink from the cup of divine grace as God's chosen agents.

On the contrary, nowadays Hajjis are more critical than ever of what they see in Saudi Arabia and more impressed by the greater power and vitality of non-Arab peoples who make up 80 percent of the pilgrims and an identical share of the global Muslim population. In terms of modern achievements in economic, democratic, and cultural development, Saudi Arabia is a backwater rather than a model or a center. Pilgrims from more open and cosmopolitan societies are convinced that they occupy and define the modern center of the Islamic world regardless of lingering stereotypes that they are historically or geographically peripheral.

A similar shift is occurring in popular views of the Hajj's temporal context. Traditional pilgrimage manuals often portray the Hajj as a reenactment of the legendary deeds of ancient prophets and spiritual ancestors from Muhammad, to Abraham and Adam, and even to the angels before Creation. Equally common is the future-looking focus on death and eternity—pilgrimage as a rehearsal for the Day of Judgment when all souls learn their fate in the afterlife. Such older preoccupations with the ancient and the eternal find less and less favor among today's pilgrims who are increasingly young, well-educated, urban, middle class, and female. These modern Hajjis are more at...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halt Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• 1. Introduction: Islamic Globalization
• I: Pilgrimage and Religious Travel
• II. Capitalism and Islamic Finance
• III. Democracy and Islamic Modernism
• IV. Diplomacy and Great Power Politics
• Bibliography
• Index