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Islamic Perspective Islamic Perspective Journal of the Islamic Studies and Humanities Volume 16, Winter 2016 Center for Sociological Studies In Cooperation with London Academy of Iranian Studies Chairman: Seyed G. Safavi, SOAS University, UK Editor-in-Chief: Seyed Javad Miri, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS), Iran Book Review Editor: Yoginder Singh Sikand, National Law School, Bangalore, India Managing Editor: Vahideh Sadeghi, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS), Iran Editorial Board Akbar Ahmed, American University, USA Rohit Barot, Bristol University, England Kenneth MacKendrick, University of Manitoba, Canada Faegheh Shirazi, The University of Texas at Austin, USA Judith Blau, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA Warren S. Goldstein, Center for Critical Research on Religion, USA Oleg V. Kuznetsov, State University of Chita, Siberia, Russia Syed Farid al-Attas, National University of Singapore, Singapore Seyed G. Safavi, SOAS University, UK Richard Foltz, Concordia University, Canada John Herlihy, Petroleum Institute, UAE Margarita Karamihova, Sofia University, Bulgaria Gary Wood, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA Seyed Javad Miri, Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Iran Husain Heriyanto, ICAS, Indonesia Eleanor Finnegan, University of Florida, USA Tugrul Keskin, Portland State University, USA Advisory Board George Ritzer, University of Maryland, USA Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky, USA William I. Robinson, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA Omid Safi, University of North Carolina, USA Charles Butterworth, University of Maryland, College Park, USA Mahmud Keyvanara, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran Zivar Huseynova, Xezer University, Republic of Azerbayjan Yoginder Singh Sikand, National Law School, Bangalore, India Rachel Woodlock, Monash University, Australia Ejder Okumuş, Eskişehir osmangazi University, Turkey Manuscript Submission Submissions of articles, book reviews and other correspondence should be sent to: Seyed Javad Miri at [email protected]. Aims & Scope The Journal of Islamic Perspective is a peer reviewed publication of the Center for Sociological Studies, affiliated to the London Academy of Iranian Studies (LAIS) and aims to create a dialogue between intellectuals, thinkers and writers from the Islamic World and academics, intellectuals, thinkers and writers from other parts of the Globe. Issues in the context of Culture, Islamic Thoughts & Civilizations, and other relevant areas of social sciences, humanities and cultural studies are of interest and we hope to create a global platform to deepen and develop these issues in the frame of a Critical Perspective. Our motto is homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. Contributions to Islamic Perspective do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board or the Center for Humanities and Sociological Studies. The mailing address of the journal is: Dr. S. J. Miri, Islamic Perspective Center for Sociological Studies, 121 Royal Langford, 2 Greville Road, London NW6 5HT, UK, Tel: (+44) 020 7692 2491, Fax: (+44) 020 7209 4727, Email: [email protected] Copyright © 2016 by London Academy of Iranian Studies. All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This Journal was printed in the UK. ISSN-1946-8946 To order additional copies of this Journal, contact London Academy of Iranian Studies, 121 Royal Langford, 2 Greville Rd, London NW6 5HT, UK. www.iranianstudies.org [email protected] Islamic Perspective Journal of the Islamic Studies and Humanities Volume 16, Winter 2016 Contents Articles Finding a Common Cause between Religion and Materialist Philosophy Dustin J. Byrd / 1 Hizbullah’s Religious Ideology and the differences with Sunni Islam Joseph Alagha / 29 To what extent the theory of ‘social cohesion’ is applicable to the MENA region? Hossein Godazgar & Masoumeh Velayati / 93 Islamic Civilization between Crisis and Revival Mukerrem Miftah / 113 The Methodology of Ayatullah al-Khū'ī in his Mu‘jam al-Rijāl Liyakat Takim / 137 Malcolm X and the Emancipative form of Social Theory Seyed Javad Miri / 149 Islamic Perspective, Vol. 16, 1-28 Center for Sociological Studies, 2016 Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nūr and Critical Theory: Finding a Common Cause between Religion and Materialist Philosophy Dustin J. Byrd Assistant Professor of Humanities Olivet College Olivet, MI USA Abstract The Islamic scholar Bediüzzaman Said Nursi wrote his famous book Risale-i Nūr partially in the hopes of rescuing the dar al-Islam from the ravages of secular western materialist thought. Later in the 20th century, the Frankfurt School for Social Research developed within their Critical Theory a critical- political philosophy of religion, which attempted to rescue the West from the perverse dialectic of the enlightenment, wherein reason became irrational, science became myth and humanity practiced inhumanity upon itself. Both schools of thought could see the ultimate outcome of the world sliding into modernity’s ethical vacuousness and pervasive nihilism. As such, this article looks to those points of contact where the religious work of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and the secular Frankfurt School can make alliances in the struggle against this movement towards catastrophe, even when it acknowledges that they cannot be reconciled; where Said Nursi condemns “materialist philosophy” as a plague that is afflicting the Muslim world, and looks to the Qurʾān for guidance, the Frankfurt School determinately negates material philosophy by allowing certain religious semantic and semiotic materials to migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into their secular-critical philosophy. Nevertheless, there is a “overlapping consensus” among both schools as they both aim to rescue humanity from itself. Keywords: Risale-i Nūr, Marxism, Freudianism, Logical Positivism, Frankfurt School, Taqlīdi Islam 2 Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nūr and Critical Theory Introduction: Diagnosing the Problem Bediüzzaman Said Nursi is one of the most significant Islamic scholars to observe and articulate the potential dangers inherent within the growing antagonism between the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane in the modern period. Living in a transitional time within the Muslim world, especially in post-Ottoman Turkey, he dedicated himself to not only the preservation of Islam and the Islamic way-of-being, but also its rejuvenation; rejecting both the encroaching secular western worldview, as well as what we may describe as “cultural Islam” – Islam without investigation (taqlīdi Islam) – he challenged the Muslim world to engage its own sources of identity, its own sacred traditions, and advocated a revivification of a way of life congruent with the Qurʾān and Sunnah. However, the kind of being-in-the-world that Said Nursi advocated was becoming increasingly more difficult as secularity, positivistic scientism, and materialist philosophy continued to influence the dar al- Islam in ways that he believed would leave the ummah spiritual distorted, stunted, and/or wilted. From the perspective of Said Nursi, the western world had already abandoned its religious heritage in favor of a rapacious form of secular materialism, which manifested itself in predatory capitalism and atheist communism; it had radically privatized religion and therefore depleted it of its prophetic social force; it had adopted a relativistic stance towards ultimate truth and made itself alien to revealed religion; and in doing these it had descended into a zeitgeist of hedonistic selfishness and unbelief. With this in mind, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi directed his life and work to make sure this same phenomenon did not occur in the Muslim world. Nursi wished that the prophetic life – based on the seerah of the Prophet Muhammad – was not discarded for Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche, that the Qurʾān was not replaced by secular science and revelation was not abandoned in favor of autonomous reason. When looking upon the condition of the modern West, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi diagnosed the problem to be rooted particularly in materialist philosophy, and accused the modern philosophers of “deviat[ing] from the straight path” by introducing a materialist metaphysics into civilization that leads to meaninglessness, egoism, moral vacuousness, and the idolatry of wealth, power, and status.1 However, not all forms of secular-materialist philosophy share the characteristics that Said Nursi identifies as being inherent within materialist philosophy; to the contrary, the Frankfurt School of Social Research, also known as “Critical Theory,” shares much of the same concerns as Said Nursi. It is my contention that there is, to borrow a phrase from John Rawls, an “overlapping consensus” between the Frankfurt School and Said Nursi, despite their epistemological differences. However, this shared critique does not Dustin J. Byrd 3 allow the two to reconcile their worldviews; one remains a critique rooted in revealed religion while the other views its authority in autonomous reason, i.e. reason divorced from divine legitimization or revelation. In this article I will identify and evaluate the potential for reconciliation between Bediüzzaman Said Nursi's Qurʾān inspired Risale-i Nūr and the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory who,
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