Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

Ibrahim Abu Rabi’ (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought ‎Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006 (Hardback), 675p. ‎

The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought is a reference book that ‎introduces the reader to the diversity of Islamic intellectual tradition. The introduction ‎places Islamic intellectuals and their productions in the contemporary context of the ‎Muslim world. Diverse, fragmented, and unevenly developed, the Muslim world shares ‎common historical developments brought about by the experience of being drawn into ‎Western modernity in its various manifestations. Colonialism, capitalism, globalisation, ‎modernization, liberation struggles, the nation state, dictatorships, religious revivalism, ‎and fundamentalism are but few aspects of the arrival of modernity in Muslim lands. ‎

Traditionally, religious scholars, ulama, qadis, and mullahs, trained in the art of ‎interpreting the religious tradition to the illiterate masses of the Muslim world had a ‎monopoly on the production of knowledge, especially that pertaining to discourses about ‎government, the rule of sharia, worship, and worldly relations between Muslims and ‎between Muslims and others. Modernity produced other intellectuals whose training, ‎scholarship and activism draw on sources wider than those accorded to a previous ‎generation of traditional intellectuals. This book captures the intellectual heritage of this ‎new generation, whose roots and intellectual ancestry are anchored in the nineteenth ‎century. In various parts of the Muslim world, from Turkey to Indonesia, a new ‎generation of thinkers try to come to grips with the challenges of modernity by ‎articulating responses that oscillate between accommodation, rejection, and re-invention ‎of the Islamic tradition. As the Muslim world faces a new situation whereby a substantial ‎Muslim population lives in the West as a minority outside the historical land of Islam, ‎this book includes a glimpse of the intellectual heritage of Intellectuals outside the ‎traditional Muslim milieu. While there has never been a uniform pattern for the ‎relationship between the intellectual and political power in the Muslim world (although ‎many ulama operated under the patronage of Muslim rulers), we find that the new ‎generation of thinkers has maintained an ambiguous, sometimes, oppositional stance vis a ‎vis the new political leaders of  Muslim countries. Abu Rabi’ lists four blocs in ‎contemporary Muslim societies: political elite, intellectual elite, business elite and ‎military elite. The politicians have not been drawn from the educated classes; they had to ‎rely on intellectuals (including religious scholars) to maintain the political and social ‎status quo, mainly legitimating new forms of governance. This meant that  many but not ‎all members of the intelligentsia had to remain subservient to power. However, as the ‎various contributions to this volume demonstrate,  a substantial  oppositional discourse is ‎produced by Muslim intellectuals who offer a critique of power and a reflection on urgent ‎questions made more so as a result of the erosion of traditional forms of legitimacy, new ‎notions of freedom and liberalism, concepts of human, minority and women’s rights, all ‎arrived with modernity. This shows that Islamic thought did not surrender to modernity ‎but offered a critique of its contours. Such critiques remain a response to the arrival of ‎new modes of thinking, methodologies and new mass education in the majority of ‎Muslim countries. ‎

While it is difficult in a short review to refer to all 36 contributions to this massive ‎volume, it is possible to group them under major sections. The first part deals with the ‎broad contours of contemporary Islamic thought, especially that related to religious ‎renewal, education (madrasah), reform.  Secularism, and Salafism. Contributors to part ‎two focus  on urgent political concerns such as European-Muslim encounters, theocracy, ‎democracy and awakening. Part three considers the theme of terrorism and Muslim ‎responses to 9/11. Through interpretations of Jihad by Muslim scholars, the reader ‎encounters a plethora of opinions and theological positions, all are worth introducing to ‎the English speaking world. Part four delves into Islamic pluralism, a fact that is now ‎difficult to capture under the heavy weight of studies focusing on Islamism, projected as ‎the dominant force in the Muslim world. Contributions on Sufism are a welcome ‎diversion highlighting the survival of a tradition despite its condemnation in some ‎Muslim literature, especially the Saudi-Wahhabi religious discourse. Part five highlights ‎aspects of Islamic thought that responds to the international context of economic relations ‎and investments, and Muslim global organisations (for example the Organisation of ‎Islamic Conference). The final part of the book exposes Muslim thinking on one of the ‎most heated and debated issues facing Muslim countries, namely women’s development ‎and status in the Muslim world. Like in other areas brought about by the immersion of ‎Muslims in modernity, the status of women is a topic well theorised by Muslim ‎intellectuals. The emergence of Islamic feminism among a group of Muslim thinkers is a ‎reflection of how modernity has penetrated not only the public sphere but also the private ‎domain of women and family. While many Muslims have incorporated technological and ‎scientific achievements of the West, it seems that there is a resistance towards endorsing ‎the moral, and ethical implications of innovations. Muslim thinkers have oscillated ‎between those who demand a serious re-interpretation of the their own tradition and those ‎who reject and condemn outside moral systems. For some, the Islamisation of feminism ‎is the only way forward. Despite many attempts at resolving the issues, a solution is not ‎always easy to reach.‎

This volume demonstrates that Muslims have responded to modernity in different ways. ‎As a result one can refer to multiple intellectual histories and visions, some have been ‎successful in challenging contemporary Muslims to think about their future while others ‎have developed and flourished only on the margin of Muslim societies, for example in ‎small intellectual elite circles, university seminars and foreign centres of learning. These ‎multiple intellectual histories are often antagonistic to the West but are most of the time ‎antagonistic to each other. Several intellectual traditions strive to become the hegemonic ‎discourse that shapes the lives of Muslims and guide them in a journey where others have ‎taken the lead in guiding international relations, economic development, life styles, ‎entertainment, education and the media. Many thinkers in the Muslim world have not ‎been able to enjoy free-thinking and continue to live under appalling conditions of ‎censorship, restriction and personal harassment. They have been deprived of the ability to ‎speak truth to power while a large intelligentsia continue to thrive under the patronage of ‎power. The duality of freedom for apologetic intellectuals and the suppression of free ‎thinking has left a serious deficit in the intellectual histories and pushed many Muslims to ‎seek shelter and protection outside the Muslim world, mainly in Western capitals and ‎centres of learning. ‎

The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought is a comprehensive volume ‎that should be acquired by major humanities and social science libraries. The contributors ‎are well-known scholars of the Islamic tradition, society and history. Undergraduate ‎students of the contemporary Muslim world with no training in the local languages will ‎find it useful as a reference for projects, dissertations and further research. ‎