Mahmoud Ayoub - Islam: Faith and History

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ISLAM: FAITH AND HISTORY

Oneworld Publications

10 Bloomsbury Road

London WC1B 3SR

England

This ebook edition published in 2013

Mahmoud M. Ayoub 2004

Reprinted in 2012

All rights reserved.

Copyright under Berne Convention.
A CIP record for this title is available
from the British Library.

ISBN 9781851683505

eISBN 9781780744520

Typeset by Jayvee, India
Cover design by Design Deluxe

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The last hundred years of Muslim history have been full of surprises, challenges and transformative events. They began with the hope of a pan-Islamic state that would restore to Islam its original power and glory. But the First World War, the consequent demise of the Ottoman state on which pan-Islamic hopes rested, and the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ten years later, threw the Muslim world into confusion and despair. This sad state was aggravated by the colonization of most Muslim nations by Western powers, a situation that persisted beyond the end of the Second World War and was responsible for most of the intractable problems that continue to bedevil many Muslim countries today.

While the two world wars devastated and left Europe too exhausted to continue its domination of the world of Islam, the period of colonization had already burdened Europes former Muslim protectorates with insoluble problems in India, the Middle East and the Sudan, to name but a few examples. The West had reconstructed old countries, such as Syria, Arabia, and the Ottoman state, and created new ones, for instance some Gulf states, Pakistan, and a host of other Asian and African countries. At least officially, most, if not all of these countries adopted the Western nation-state model with its parliamentary democracy. This radical change, from a central Islamic state authority be it that of a sultan or a figurehead caliph to numerous nation states, fragmented the Muslim ummah into sometimes artificial and often mutually hostile states and forever altered the course of its history.

The Muslim nations reacted to Western incursions and influences in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. The creation of the Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt in 1929, Jamat-i Islami in India and later Indonesia, and the Arab League in 1945, as well as other such religious and nationalistic organizations, were attempts to redress some of the effects of this fragmentation and its economic, political, and military consequences. The most important reaction to the state of powerlessness and disunity which characterized the Muslim world in the second half of the twentieth century was the Iranian Islamic revolution, which sparked a number of smaller but highly significant uprisings. This revolution is a unique phenomenon in modern Muslim history in that it brought to power a religious establishment that had always been in moral opposition to the temporal authorities. It was a revolution, moreover, inspired not by any Western model, such as communism, socialism, or capitalism, but by Islam. Thus, in spite of its Sh character, it in turn inspired the rise of a number of limited but effective revivalist movements in occupied Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Many Western and Muslim scholars have been trying to make sense of these events and developments and to place them in their proper historical perspectives. But events move so fast that many of these studies become outdated soon after, if not before, their appearance. The works of the late Fazlur Rahman and Seyyid Hossein Nasr are good examples of this laudable effort. However, the 1979 edition of Rahmans seminal book Islam, and final revision before his death in 1988, was made prior to the actual outbreak of the Islamic revolution in Iran. Likewise, while Dr. Nasrs latest introduction to Islam (2003) is clear and insightful, it is too brief and general to serve the need for a comprehensive book on the subject. Another scholar who deserves mention is Akbar Ahmad, whose sociological studies of Islam and contemporary Muslim society utilize post-modern theories and perspectives in examining many important issues. These are only a few examples of a large library of useful books that should be consulted. A good selection for further reading is presented at the end of this book.

In no way do I wish to minimize the importance of those excellent works of Western and non-Muslim Arab scholars that deal admirably with modern Muslim history, but I do feel that Muslims ought also to be engaged with their history and its problems and that the way in which they engage should reflect their special concern and commitments. This engagement, moreover, should give their works a special flavor and perspective. Of course, Muslim scholars must, and often do, strive for academic objectivity; still, they cannot divorce themselves from their faith and tradition. This should, however, make them even more critical than their sympathetic Western colleagues, whose appreciation for Islam and its civilization may make them more circumspect.

I have done my best in this book to balance my personal engagement in my faith and culture with objective academic integrity. I have also attempted to place the discussion of purely religious topics in their proper historical context. I begin in the prologue by presenting my personal religious experience as my own existential framework for the discussion of the faith and history of Islam.

The book is divided into eleven chapters. It begins with a discussion of the term