Islam in Process—Historical and Civilizational Perspectives Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam Volume 7 2006-12-06 16-23-03 --- Projekt: T491.gli.arnason.yearbook7 / Dokument: FAX ID 00fb133402603594|(S. 1 ) T00_01 Schmutztitel.p 133402603618 Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam Edited by Georg Stauth and Armando Salvatore The Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam investigates the making of Islam into an important component of modern society and cultural globalization. Sociology is, by common consent, the most ambitious advocate of modern society. In other words, it undertakes to develop an understanding of modern existence in terms of breakthroughs from ancient cosmological cultures to ordered and plural civic life based on the gradual subsiding of communal life. Thus, within this undertaking, the sociological project of modernity figures as the cultural machine that dislodges the rationale of social being from local, communal, hierarchic contexts into the logic of individualism and social differentiation. The conventional wisdom of sociology has been challenged by post-modern debate, abolishing this dichotomous evolutionism while embracing a more heterogeneous view of coexistence and exchange between local cultures and modern institutions. Islam, however, is often described as a different cultural machine for the holistic reproduction of pre-modern religion, and Muslims are seen as community-bound social actors embodying a powerful potential for the rejec- tion of and opposition to Western modernity. Sociologists insist on looking for social differentiation and cultural differ- ences. However, their concepts remain evolutionist and inherently tied to the cultural machine of modernity. The Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam takes these antinomies and contradic- tions as a challenge. It aims at no less than an understanding of the ambiguous positioning of Islam in the global construction of society, and thus attempts to combine original research on Islam with conceptual debates in social theory and cultural studies. Scientific Advisory Board Stefano Allievi, University of Padua Fanny Colonna, University of Marseille Eberhard Kienle, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine Khalid M. Masud, ISIM, Leiden Cynthia Nelson, American University of Cairo, † Sami Zubaida, Birkbeck College, University of London 2006-12-06 16-23-03 --- Projekt: T491.gli.arnason.yearbook7 / Dokument: FAX ID 00fb133402603594|(S. 2 ) T00_02 advisory board.p 133402603634 Johann P. Arnason, Armando Salvatore, Georg Stauth (eds.) Islam in Process— Historical and Civilizational Perspectives Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam Volume 7 2006-12-06 16-23-03 --- Projekt: T491.gli.arnason.yearbook7 / Dokument: FAX ID 00fb133402603594|(S. 3 ) T00_03 Titel.p 133402603650 This volume was prepared with support by Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut NRW, Essen, and Sonderforschungsbereich der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 295 »Kulturelle und sprachliche Kontakte«ander Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. © 2006 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Coverlayout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by: Jörg Burkhard, Bielefeld Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion, Wetzlar ISBN 3-89942-491-3 2006-12-06 16-23-03 --- Projekt: T491.gli.arnason.yearbook7 / Dokument: FAX ID 00fb133402603594|(S. 4 ) T00_04 Impressum.p 133402603658 Table of Contents Editor’s Note 7 Introduction 8 JOHANN P. ARNASON, ARMANDO SALVATORE, AND GEORG STAUTH Crystallizations Chapter 1 Marshall Hodgson’s Civilizational Analysis of Islam: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives 23 JOHANN P. ARNASON Chapter 2 The Middle Period: Islamic Axiality in the Age of Afro-Eurasian Transcultural Hybridity 48 BABAK RAHIMI Chapter 3 Identity Formation in World Religions: A Comparative Analysis of Christianity and Islam 68 ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI Chapter 4 The Emergence of Islam as a Case of Cultural Crystallization: Historical and Comparative Reflections 95 JOHANN P. ARNASON Crossroads and Turning Points Chapter 5 Revolution in Early Islam: The Rise of Islam as a Constitutive Revolution 125 SAÏD AMIR ARJOMAND Chapter 6 ´Abdallah b. Salam: Egypt, Late Antiquity and Islamic Sainthood 158 GEORG STAUTH Chapter 7 Story, Wisdom and Spirituality: Yemen as the Hub between the Persian, Arabic and Biblical Traditions 190 RAIF GEORGES KHOURY Chapter 8 Islam and the Axial Age 220 JOSEF VAN ESS Cultural and Institutional Dynamics Chapter 9 Islam and the Path to Modernity: Institutions of Higher Learning and Secular and Political Culture 241 SAÏD AMIR ARJOMAND Chapter 10 Global Ages, Ecumenic Empires and Prophetic Religions 258 ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI Chapter 11 Reflexivity, Praxis, and “Spirituality”: Western Islam and Beyond 279 ARMANDO SALVATORE Chapter 12 Public Spheres and Political Dynamics in Historical and Modern Muslim Societies 306 SHMUEL N. EISENSTADT Abstracts 319 Contributors 327 Editors’ Note Contributors to this volume come from very different disciplines including clas- sical oriental studies, history and sociology. This diversity in disciplinary ap- proach was from the start reflected in terminology and attitude towards sources and texts. We thought it valuable to maintain this diversity, and specifically we have not engaged in homogenising difference in transliteration and forms of quo- tation – in some cases resembling different traditions to write Arabic in Latin let- ters and to give reference to sources and material. The individual texts, as they stand, reflect the homogeneous attitudes of the authors and we do believe that this contributes to flavour the dialogue which we pursue with this book. Sigrid Noekel – as so often – has taken the considerable task of coordinating and participating in editing this volume at various stages of its growth and we would like to express our very special thanks. Professor Jörn Rüsen, President of the KWI (Kulturwissenschaftliches Insti- tut) in Essen, Germany, and Professor Walter Bisang, Speaker of the “Sonderfor- schungsbereich 295: Kulturelle und sprachliche Kontakte,” Univerity of Mainz, Germany, with their support have made the preparation of this volume possible, again we convey our gratitude. Frankfurt am Main, September 2006. G.S. Introduction JOHANN P. ARNASON, ARMANDO SALVATORE, AND GEORG STAUTH The papers included in this issue of the Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam come from two workshops held at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities), Essen, in April 2004 and April 2005. The program of the first one linked the comparative analysis of Islam to ongoing de- bates on Axial Age theory as related to the formation of major civilizational complexes. The second workshop was primarily concerned with the historical sources and constellations involved in the formation of Islam as a religion and a civilization. Since the two stages of the project were closely related, it seems ap- propriate to publish the results in one place and allow for multiple foci. The origins of the axial hypothesis It has been observed that Max Weber’s sociology of religion and in particular some passages from an article on Hinduism and Buddhism published in 1916 in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik prefigures the core hypothesis of Axial Age theory (Arnason 2005: 22)1. This theory is based on a comprehen- sive hypothesis concerning the nature of the radical transformations that made possible a momentous breakthrough in the complexification of community life and the differentiation of social fields out of archaic communities regulated by cyclical and mythical views of the cosmological order. The Axial approach facili- tates examining on a comparative basis the basically simultaneous discovery of “transcendence” across various civilizations. Historical and civilizational analysis is oriented here to Axial Age theory in- tended as a research program for locating and explaining, in historical-compara- tive and sociological terms, the type of breakthrough that allowed, through the shaping of notions of transcendence, for the emergence of a type of human re- flexivity conventionally identified as the passage from the narrativity of mythos to the rationality of logos (Jaspers 1953 [1949]). As maintained by Björn Wit- trock, transcendence is not to be interpreted in strictly theological terms, but as the emergence of a form of reflexivity that transcends those activities tied to the 1 Arnason, Johan P. (2005) “The Axial Age and its Interpreters: Reopening a De- bate.” In: Johann P. Arnason/Shmuel N. Eisenstadt/Björn Wittrock (eds.) Axial Civilizations and World History, Leiden: Brill, pp. 19-49. JOHANN P. ARNASON, ARMANDO SALVATORE, AND GEORG STAUTH | 9 daily necessities of human beings, as also reflected in elaborate mythologies of cosmological shape or in what we might call the ritual integration of community (Wittrock 2005: 62)2. More than any other particular line of inquiry, new historical and sociological approaches to the Axial Age revived the idea of comparative civilizational analy- sis and channeled it into more specific projects. A closer look at the problematic place of Islam in this context will help to clarify questions about the axial version of civilizational theory as well as related issues in Islamic studies. For pre-socio- logical interpretations of the Axial Age, exemplified by Jaspers’s well-known es- say on The Origin and Goal of History (Jaspers 1953 [1949]), Islam was at best of marginal interest. The phase