Beyond Islam

A New Understanding of the Middle East

Sami Zubaida

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857731388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamische Theologie

In this magisterial work, Sami Zubaida draws on a distinguished career's worth of experience trying to understand the region to address the fundamental question in Middle East studies: what is the Middle East? He argues, controversially, that to see it through the prism of Islam, as it is conventionally viewed, is to completely misunderstand it. Many of what we think of as the 'Islamic' characteristics of the region are products of culture and society, not religion.To think of Islam itself as an essential, anti-modern force in the region rather than something shaped by specific historical-economic processes is, Zubaida argues, a mistake. Instead, he offers us an alternative view of the region, its historic cosmpolitanism, its religious and cultural diversity, its rapid adoption of new media cultures, which reveals a multi-faceted and complex region teeming with multiple identities. Wide-ranging, erudite and powerfully argued, Zubaida's work will be essential reading for future generations of students of this fascinating region.

Ernest Gellner’s Sociology of Islam

Ernest Gellner, renowned philosopher, social theorist and anthropologist with fieldwork studies in Morocco to his credit, wrote on Muslim societies against a wide canvas of philosophical, theoretical and cross-historical references, making the subject more familiar and absorbing to the Western reader. Above all, he advanced a coherent model of ‘Muslim society’ that allows the reader to gain a clear conceptual hold on the subject. The historical components of this model are given an impeccable Muslim ancestry in Gellner’s extensive drawing upon the fourteenth-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun. This ancestry of his ideas would appear to dispel any suggestion of ethnocentrism or Western arrogance. Gellner’s analysis of Muslim history has the further virtue of being sociological: it advances a sociology of Muslim society based on the dialectic between the city and the tribe, as well as on the provisions of the Islamic religion and the components of its historical and ideational formation.

This model of Muslim society is not only historical. The modern developments in politics and society in the region can be analysed within its terms: the demise of the tribe entails the ascendancy of the city, with its peculiarly urban socio-religious ethos: rational, scriptural, puritanical (the Weberian cluster), and is, as such, conducive to modernity and economic development. This aspect of the theory has the liberal virtue of combating ethnocentric and hostile perceptions of Islam as medieval obscurantism. While Gellner’s formulations insist on the separateness and alterity of Islam as a coherent and unitary entity distinct from the West, it nevertheless assigns it the virtue of being an alternative route to modernity.

Like all general models of complex historical phenomena, Gellner’s may be said to suffer from over-generalization and from the neglect of awkward elements that do not fit in. This line of critique is the familiar historian’s resort against theorists. Antiquarian nit-picking, however, does little to diminish the cognitive hold of a good model. Specialists on the region may be critical of many elements of the model, and may cite facts and examples to support their objections, but the generalist reader is much more impressed by the integral picture presented, especially when it seems to offer equally coherent deductions to illuminate pressing political issues of the day. The following critical review, then, confronts a difficult task. It will examine and analyse historical and contemporary episodes and examples, with the intention not just of throwing doubt on the model in terms of ‘facts’, but of challenging the very idea of a homogeneous ‘Muslim society’. It is argued that there are many Muslim societies, and that the range of their variation is comprehensible in terms of the normal practice of social and political analysis, like any other range of societies. Of course, there are certain cultural themes common to the Muslim lands and epochs, arising from religion and common historical reference, much like the common culture arising from Christian religion and history. It would be a mistake, however, to think that these cultural items and the entities they specify are sociological or political constants: they are assigned different meanings and roles by different socio-political contexts. The discussions and examples of the category of ‘ulama’ in what follows will illustrate this point.

Gellner does not stand alone in this theoretical position. His work is supported and enhanced by modern contributions in history and historical sociology. The work of Patricia Crone on early Islamic history lends Gellner’s model a historical foundation: the formative period of the Islamic polity cast it in a mould from which it cannot escape. Important works in historical sociology or comparative history, including Gellner’s own as well as those of John Hall and Michael Mann, elaborate similar types of analyses of the West and the rest, including ‘Islam’.¹ In the contrast drawn between the totalized entities of Islam and the West, these writers pursue a common tradition in Western writing, dubbed ‘Orientalist’. However, as Yahya Sadowski has pointed out,² this group differs from its predecessors in crucial respects. While previous writers have emphasized aspects of the Islamic polity conforming to Oriental despotism, with an allpowerful state and a helpless, unorganized society, Gellner, Crone and others present the opposite picture of a weak state, short on legitimacy and vulnerable to both internal threats from a solidary community under ulama leadership and external threats from the tribes. In the modern context, this Muslim-led solidary community – the descendant of the unvarying historical form – is now the adversary of the modern state, still challenging its legitimacy in terms of what Gellner calls the ‘Islamic Norm’. Modern Islamism is illuminated in this model in terms that are coherent within a general and historical view of Islam as a unitary entity. The cogent statement of this analysis in terms of social theory is appealing to the generalist reader seeking illumination on the ‘Islamic phenomenon’.

This framework of analysis constitutes the familiar philosophy of history asserting the ‘uniqueness of the West’, deriving from Max Weber among others, in which the West’s historical achievements of capitalism, industrialism, modernity, democracy and so on, together constitute a reference point for an analysis of world history. This history is divided into civilizational areas (typically India, China and Islam) whose respective histories are searched for configurations that might be responsible for their failure to measure up to the achievements of the West (the history and sociology of an absence). A more recent, and much debated, variation on this theme is Samuel Huntington’s thesis of the ‘clash of civilizations’, presenting world history and present patterns in terms of distinct unitary ‘civilizations’ standing apart and in potential conflict with one another – certainly in the case of Islam versus the West. It is not my aim here to address this philosophy of history; much has been written on it already, especially with regard to the much debated Weber thesis. The main concern of this chapter is ‘Islam’ as a category in this analysis.³ My intention is not so much to show that they are wrong about Islam, but to challenge ‘Islam’ as a coherent sociological or political entity.

In what follows I shall concentrate on reviewing the elements of Gellner’s model of ‘Muslim society’ contained in his book of that title,⁴ and schematically repeated in his later Postmodernism, Reason and Religion.⁵

Gellner’s model of Muslim society

Gellner starts from Ibn Khaldun’s characterization of the cycles of rule. The theory, however, is not confined to Ibn Khaldun’s historical examples, but aspires to a general interpretation of all Muslim societies, past and present. As we shall see, Gellner is obliged at one point to concede exceptions, notably the Ottoman Empire, but these exceptions are soon forgotten and the general sweep restored in further elaborations. Let us examine the elements of this theory.

First, the Khaldunian model. It rests on the distinction and contrast drawn between tribe and city. The ruling dynasty in the city is of tribal origin, but urbanized and civilized. Tribal forces outside the city are armed and militant. They are subordinate to the power of the ruling dynasty only insofar as the latter is sufficiently powerful to subdue the tribes, or sufficiently wealthy to buy them off. For much of the time, the power of the ruler over the tribes is nominal; they enjoy virtual autonomy and pose a potential threat. This threat becomes operative if and when the rulers are weakened and their forces in decline and decadence. Decadence of power is a necessary phase in the cycle supposed in this model. Dynasties that have conquered the city and its wealth do so with the militant vigour of their nomadic stock, and the solidarity (asabiyya) of their kinship bonds. In time, the rulers become settled and accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of the city, the branches of their kin develop factional interests and competition over wealth and power, which saps their solidarity. The cost of their expanding retinue and luxury spending leads to an intensification of the taxation burden on the urban population and their growing discontent. The growing weakness of the rulers encourages aspiring tribal dynasties, lusting for the city, to organize military campaigns, which ultimately topple the rulers and replace them, only for the cycle to be repeated.

Gellner expressed no doubts regarding the validity or accuracy of Ibn Khaldun’s representation of the political dynamics of history. Can we accept without question the testimony of past historians regarding their own time and society, let alone their generalization from that to the whole of human history? Do we accept Herodotus, Xenophon or Tacitus in this manner? Surely, we must at least consider the historicity of Ibn Khaldun’s utterances?⁶ In fact, Ibn Khaldun was writing at a time of exceptional political turmoil in the Maghreb, with almost constant wars between dynasties and tribes. He himself was deeply involved in the politics and intrigues of dynastic rivalries as a servant of one ruler or another, deftly switching loyalties, sometimes getting caught and imprisoned.⁷ Should we not at least consider this context in our evaluation of the author and his model?

For Gellner, if not quite for Ibn Khaldun, religion plays an important part in the cycle of rulers, which makes it peculiarly Islamic. Islam, for Gellner, is distinguished by a holy law, Shari‘a, of divine inspiration and is, therefore, eternal and unchangeable by human volition. This law is based on the Quran and prophetic utterances and examples. It is elaborated, upheld and applied by a class of ulama. These, while lacking in institutional organization (and are, therefore, unlike a church) are nevertheless distinguished by their common attachment to the law. Their training and practice are concerned with the reading, ordering and interpretation of the holy text. Their orientations are scriptural and legal. These traits clearly distinguish them and their religious style from popular and tribal styles of religiosity.

Tribal religiosity, for Gellner, is orientated to personality and charisma, not text and learning – to cults, rituals and ceremonies, not to law.⁸ For Gellner, urban religion is Weberian (textual and puritanical), while tribal religion is Durkheimian (his characterization). For the tribes, religion and religious leaders are to do with solidarities and boundaries, with war, alliance and mediation, whereas for the townsfolk they are to do with the sober regulation of peaceful communities of pious merchants and artisans.

The city and its ulama represent the ‘High Culture’ of Islam – literate, legalistic, unitarian, sober and puritanical – as against the ‘Low’ or ‘Little Cultures’ of the nomads – centred around the saint, the saintly lineage, magic and ceremony.⁹ The nomads, however, recognize the superiority of the High Culture of the city and the sanctity of the law by which it lives, but cannot themselves aspire to its style, unless and until they are themselves urbanized.

Religion plays a crucial part in Gellner’s version of the Khaldunian cycle and the dialectic between tribe and city. Urban religion constitutes a ‘nomocracy’ headed by the ulama as the guardians of the divine law. This norm demands an ideal government ruling in accordance with divine revelation on the model set up by the Prophet and the early caliphs. This ideal is unattainable in practice, and rulers are always found wanting by these standards. While the ulama and their bourgeois followers acquiesced in the rule of the powers that be, especially because this power protected the city from the threat of the barbarian tribes, they did not fully accept their legitimacy. The ulama controlled the symbols of legitimacy. However, the ulama and their pious followers held themselves separate from the powers and institutions of the rulers, not wishing to be contaminated by their illegality.

Gellner characterizes Muslim society as ‘[a] weak state and a strong culture’.¹⁰ The state has a double weakness: vis-à-vis the tribes that it cannot control and which pose a constant threat, and the urban nomocracy that holds and can withhold the symbols of legitimacy.

Culture is strong because it is entrenched in this nomocracy, which forges the bonds of community based on the law and on the authority and leadership of the ulama.

The precariousness of political power is demonstrated periodically when the two threats it confronts are combined. A disaffected urban preacher addresses himself to the militant tribes, denouncing the impious rulers in the name of the sacred law. While the tribesmen are not known for their legal observances, they are nevertheless impressed by the superior religion of the city and its representatives.

When this combination of urban preacher and militant tribe coincides with the right moment in the cycle, the moment of enfeeblement of rule through decadence and fragmentation, then it can make the push against the rulers and establish a new vigorous dynasty. The most important recent example of this process for Gellner was that of the Wahhabis of Arabia. We shall return to this example.

Before we proceed to examine the different components of this model, we should note that it is posed in contrast to the historical development of Europe and Christianity. Gellner has often drawn attention to the differences between, on the one hand, a European Christianity in which the established church fosters ritual, ceremony and the mediation of a priesthood, while the non-conformist fringes are puritanical and scriptural, rejecting mediation in favour of a direct relation between the believers and their God; and, on the other, an Islam, on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, which is the mirror-image of this: in Islam it is the established urban religion that is scriptural and puritanical, rejecting magic, ceremony and personal saintly mediation, and the tribal fringes that uphold these latter elements.

The European pattern also fosters eventual secularization, accompanying the processes of industrialization and modernity, while the Muslim case is just the opposite: not only resistant to secularization, but pursuing its modernity through religion – a perfect case of what later theorists, discussed in the Introduction, have advanced as ‘alternative’ or ‘multiple’ modernities.

In response to critiques of earlier formulations of his model, Gellner recognized that the Ottoman Empire posed problems for the Khaldunian cyclical model. In a section of his essay entitled ‘The Terrible Turk’,¹¹ Gellner acknowledged that the longevity of a centralized and bureaucratized Ottoman state, including Egypt, was clearly at variance with the Khaldunian model, in that it did not succumb to its cycles. We should remark in passing that, if the model is supposed to cover the generality of Islamic society, then this is a pretty large exception, considering that it covered much of the greater part of the central Islamic lands from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. How is this exception to be explained? The devshirme system of military and bureaucratic recruitment (enslaved children levied from the Christian population of the Balkans, then trained as servants of the sultan), Gellner argued, insulated the Ottoman state from both tribes and ulama by providing loyal servants, divorced from kinship bonds and loyalties, who bypassed both these dangerous sources. In addition, the central parts of the Empire – Anatolia, the Balkans and Egypt – were inhabited by quiescent, tax-paying peasants and not militant tribesmen. Gellner noted, however, that other Muslim rulers had attempted a solution to the dilemma of political organization through recruitment of ‘non-tribal mercenary or slave armies’,¹² but, as Ibn Khaldun noted, that ‘only aggravates the disease of a declining state’. This anomaly made Gellner give up on sociology and merely add another essentialist model:

It is probably best not to make any attempt to explain away the phenomenon [of the successful Ottoman state] at all, but simply accept it as an alternative model: within the general conditions imposed both by nature and the technical and cultural equipment of Muslim civilisation, there exist at least two possible solutions to the problem of political organisation.¹³

We are back to the essence of ‘Muslim civilization’ and away from sociology/politics/economics. In fact, as we shall see, the devshirme system degenerated and came to an end by the seventeenth century; the janissaries who had initially been the product of this system were then recruited...