Anouar Majid - Unveiling Traditions

Unveiling Traditions was conceived as a project to examine the extent to which Islam shapes intellectual practice in primarily Muslim societies and to give Islamic cultures a more prominent role in postcolonial and multicultural theories. The global furor over the Rushdie affair did more than any recent event to bring postcolonial fiction into the mainstream; yet, with very few exceptions, postcolonial critics never seriously examined the place of Islam in debates of multiculturalism. The challenge of including Islamic subjectivities and cultural epistemologies into a world of equal differences has been left untheorized, probably because the religious imaginary is dismissed ahead of time as either conservative or unredeemable. Yet I dont think people can step out of their cultures (notwithstanding the much vaunted hybridizing effects of the market place) and reconstitute themselves in an entirely new vocabulary. My defense of Muslims rights to their identities and memories is motivated exclusively by my strong belief that only secure, progressive, indigenous traditions, cultivated over long spans of time, can sustain meaningful global diversities and create effective alternatives to the deculturing effects of capitalism. I chose Islam because it is the religion and culture I am most familiar with. I would have done the same with Americas native populations, or any other cultural community (including Euro-American ones) whose identity springs from a pre- or noncapitalist cosmology, had I been confident in my ability to capture the histories and spirit of those traditions. In any case, I have always believed that revitalizing traditions from within is preferable to adopting new ideologies and worldviews.

Working with concepts such as Islam, capitalism, the West, and other charged terms turned out to be emotionally draining at times. My call for a progressive Islam and my critique of capitalism are inspired by the vision for a more humane global civilization; they are not expressions of my own personal practices, devotions, or pieties. It is needless to state (except for those who genuinely believe in superhuman wills) that I am as captured by the pervasive networks of capitalist culture as anyone who celebrates the free-market ideology as a liberating economic force. Though there is no doubt at all that I blame capitalism for the imbalances of our era, I dont extend the blame to the people who participate in that system (whether actively or not), for nothing is more natural than to adhere to the social rules that existing (bourgeois) systems make available to us. It would be utterly unrealisticif not quite infantileto expect a parent not to work as a stockbroker or a banker and let ones children starve or suffer needlessly because of strong objections to or reservations about capitalism. Since participation in the capitalist system has become unavoidable for most people (especially those who live in urban centers and industrialized nations), my critique entails a call for changing the rules that frame our thoughts and behaviors; it suggestswithout articulating any blueprints or outlining any utopian visionsa proposal for considering alternative regulatory social mechanisms, venues that allow people to satisfy basic human needs and communal obligations without imperiling our human, social, and environmental fabrics.

While I make no claim to transcending the immediate realities of capitalist relations, my argument in favor of a progressive Islam is also a proposal that says nothing at all about my own religious practices. In this book I speak as a layperson born into the Muslim faith, the traditional liberal variety of Moroccan Islam. More than that, my intellectual outlook was forged in the city of Tangier, whose notoriously jaded cosmopolitanism and carnal stereophony (in the words of the great semiotician, Roland Barthes) perpetually subvert the power of [syntactic] completion and invariably work against the crystallization of ideas into hard, inflexible certainties. My identity was nurtured in the aporetic linguistic spaces of Tangiers streets and cafes, places where virtue has always been measured by ones ability to propose narratives of hope while maintaining that such hope must forever remain a procrastinated reality. For in Tangier only fools seriously think that they will some day inhabit the gilded quarters of their enchanting fables.

Still, regardless of the lacunas that polarize intentions and material life into what are often irreconcilable spheres, we need the tensions that narratives of hope generate if only to reach beyond our mundane captivities. Like any storyteller, an academics vocation is to imagine a bright future for her students and audiences, to believe (however quixotically) in the possibility of a miraculous feat, a collective human enterprise that is capable of sustaining a civilization of rich and enriching diversities. Such hope invites the scholar to participate in a process of critical engagements designed to foster and cultivate a non-rancorous democratic spirit of meaningful dialogue. Michel Foucault, who had at one time despaired of ever encountering real intellectuals, said that the intellectuals duty is to question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb peoples mental habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to reexamine rules and institutions and on the basis of this reproblematization (in which he carries out his specific task as an intellectual) to participate in the formation of a political will (in which he has his role as citizen to play). Such Nietzschean moves could be quite invigorating if master narratives of hope are maintained as guiding principles.

While I worked on this project for the better part of a decade, rarely reaching beyond the confines of my home institution, I was sustained by the friendship of my colleague and formidable interlocutor, Jacques Downs. Jacquess Franklinian interests, wide-ranging historical views, and ability to maintain the longue dure firmly in mind even while he addresses transient and seemingly mundane issues have convinced me that Foucaults pessimism is still not fully justified. Committed to global education, he introduced me to Mexico at a critical moment in that great countrys history and thus added a whole new world to my small cultural repertoire. I am also grateful to my comrade Michael Morris for his constant support and for inviting me to an inspiring Zuni ceremonial dance and dinner that have allowed me to feel the resiliently vibrant but embattled pulse of native American traditions. As I stood surrounded by sunset-tinted New Mexico mesas watching mudheads and Kachinas perform their mirthful dance on a cold winter evening, I was able to tracealbeit fleetinglythe course of modern history, with both its well-known tragic consequences and its glimpses of hope. Other colleagues at the University of New Englandtoo special to name casuallyhave been equally generous with their books, time, and encouragement. I seriously doubt whether I could have written this book, or even started it, had I been at a more traditional academic setting in which the rigid and unexamined boundaries of disciplines still shape intellectual pursuits.