Values in Islamic Culture and the Experience of History
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Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Life Series IVA, Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 13 Series IIA, Islam, Volume 9 Values in Islamic Culture and the Experience of History Russian Philosophical Studies, I Edited by Nur Kirabaev Yuriy Pochta The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2002 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Values in Islamic culture and the experience of history / edited by Nur Kirabaev, Yuriy Pochta. p.cm. – (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series IIA Islam; vol. 9) (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series IVA, Eastern and Central Europe; vol. 13) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Civilization, Islamic. 2. Religion and culture. I. Kirabae, N.S. II. Pochta, Y.M. (Yurii Mikhailovich). III. Series. IV. Series: Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series IAV, Eastern and Central Europe; vol. 13. DS36.85.V35 1999 99-38193 909’.0999997671—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-133-6 (pbk.) Table of Contents Preface vii by George F. McLean Introduction 1 by Nur Kirabaev Part I. Islamic Culture in the contemporary world: problems of research Chapter 1. The Image of Islamic Culture in European Consciousness 11 by Yuriy Pochta Chapter 2. Islamic Civilization and the West: Problems of Dialogue 41 by Nur Kirabaev Chapter 3. Islamic Civilization: An Empire of Culture 49 by Maitham Al-Janabi Part II. Islamic Culture: Its Nature, Major Concepts and Problems Chapter 4. Social and Historical Premises of the Origin and Development 79 of Classical Arab-Islamic Culture by Artur Sagadeyev Chapter 5. Ancient Heritage in Kalam Philosophy 99 by Taufik Ibrahim K. Chapter 6. The Political and Legal Culture of Medieval Islam 135 by Nur Kirabaev Chapter 7. Humanistic Ideals of the Islamic Middle Ages 165 by Artur Sagadeyev Part III. Islamic Culture: Classical Paradigm and Modernity Chapter 8. Classical Arab-Islamic Culture in the Context of Dialogue of Civilizations 199 by Taufik Ibrahim K. Chapter 9. Islamic Culture in Search of a Golden Mean 221 by Maitham Al-Janabi Chapter 10. Wahhabism and "Peoples' Islam" in the Arabian Peninsula 259 by Alexander Rodrigues Chapter 11. The Ethnoconfessional Situation in the Horn of Africa 303 by Abdillahi Hassan Chapter 12. Islam in the Context of Modern Civilization 323 by Nur Kirabaev Index 343 Preface George F. Mclean As we enter upon the global age our life with others intensifies exponentially. This is not merely a matter of economics, although there was notable truth to the observation of Hegel and Marx—not to mention Aristotle and his whole tradition—that physical exchange is basic for interchange between humans. Today, however, because the social sphere is so intense, political relations have come to supercede, organize and direct economic interchange. The World Bank and the World Trade Organization, while certainly economic entities, were created and are rum today as integral dimensions of the political world order. But when we ask how the economic and political orders operate we find that not only is this not at random, neither is it according to the formal economic and political principles and goals of profit and power. Beneath (or above) these are the cultural patterns that identify the parts and interrelate them in a truly global whole. The challenges of the economy may be shared, but each people responds in its own term. How peoples understand themselves and manage their homes, communities and nations is specific to each major civilization and defines the many ways of life. Thus, the issues of human cooperation have become civilizational, both in breadth and in depth. The ability to understand other cultures and to integrate their concerns in determining one’s actions is now crucial. And as truly human relations are mutual, understanding the other entails a corresponding process of self-discovery, while hermeneutics tells us that only in an awareness of self can we interpret the other. Today the time of orientalism understood as curiosity about the strange and exotic has passed. We now live together through immigration notably from the East into the West and through globalization extensively from the West into the East. Issues of difference are no longer at arm length, but matters of proximate daily interchange. Issues of war and peace are no longer articulated by symmetrical rows of canons along the Marginot line, but by the asymmetry between the massive Pentagon in Washington and the one room madrasa in the mountains through which the Silk Road long since wound its way. This involution reflects a profound shift in the terms of engagement. Since Plato in the Western tradition all has been basically objective in character. The body of knowledge was given in Greek and Roman literature; its was modelled in alienated adib behavior, and interpreted through the external economic dialectic of formation theory. As pointed out by Y. Pochta in Chapter I this is now in the process of being substituted through a general shift from objectivity to subjectivity. In these new terms it is possible to take account of the inner consciousness of the person or people with their awareness, evaluation and creative response to their concrete circumstances. As this forms a culture and a civilization; it will be referred to as the civilizational interpretation of Islam in the West. In these terms it now becomes possible to engage Islam not as a theoretical world view or a pawn in economic interaction, but as a people with their concerns and fears, hopes and responses. This work on Western interpretations of Islam is situated astride the major divide between these two approaches: between the past objectivist, even materialist ideology, on the one hand, and the emergence of new attention to human interiority and its meaning for the evolution of cultures and peoples, on the other. To adapt a classical phrase: this is to stand formation theory on its head. Moreover, if interpretation is the basis of action then this augurs to be a most important book for the relations between peoples in a global age. The Soviet Union has one of the largest Muslim populations, and hence a unique engagement with Islam and its culture. From this inestimable store of experience in its studies of Islam rich results can be expected. Yet, as heirs to a materialist ideology, the public context has long been in tension with the pervasively religious character of Islam. Thus, this work on Islam faces a unique challenge and constitutes a true hermeneutic laboratory. This is true regarding not only the object to be known, but the subject who seeks to know and understand; it exemplifies a major effort from a secular culture to understand another that is religious. This then is a matter not simply of reporting a set of objective facts or behaviours, but of being able to enter into the mind and heart of another culture in order to empathize with its concerns and live together in true cooperation. Moreover, though there has been much discussion about the ability of Islam to develop Western patterns of social life in order to live with the West, amazingly little has been written about the ability of a secularized West to live with Islam. As exemplifying an effort at cross cultural understanding this work itself gives witness to the challenges to be faced and the developing avenues along which success can be hoped. All of this has taken on the greatest urgency in view of the Russian experience in Afghanistan and Chechnia, and the escalation of asymmetrical violence as we enter into the new millennium. As the issue of mutual understanding with Islam has been catapulted into the front rank of human concerns this book has taken on major importance. Part I, "Islamic Culture in the Contemporary World: Problems of Research," begins this effort by presenting a hermeneutic for the study of Islamic culture. Chapter I by Yuriy Pochta, "The Image of Islamic Culture in European Consciousness," is particularly instructive. He analyzes how the lens of interpretation is in a continual process of change and its special dynamics with regard to Islamic studies in the West. One is the difficulty of the West in escaping its Eurocentrism resulting in what can be called a missionary approach. This is not to suggest a crusade intentionally to impose one religion over the other, but rather the inability to envisage an alternate to the Western liberal vision of life or civilization. As a result Islam has been continually misinterpreted as a religion, culture and society. Wishing it well has consisted largely in wishing that it would change to become like the West. Only recently have some begun to consider it in its own terms, rather than in those of the Christian West. A second major difference is between the "civilizational model" in which the role of culture, religion and spirit is seen to predominate and the "formational model" based on material conditions, class and ideology. Soon after the Revolution the limitations of the formational model became manifest in the massive destruction of mosques, while the West has been trapped in a theological fundamentalism of its own since the peace of Augsburg in 1555. This chapter brings all of this to reflective consciousness, thereby pointing to the need to view Islam in terms of its own cultural identity. Hopefully, this could augur the dawn of an authentic pluralism in which Islam can find its respected place. Hence we will keep this distinction of method in mind in reviewing each of the subsequent chapters as it points to the ability of the West to encounter Islam.