William Montgomery Watt - Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: POLITICS OF ISLAM

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ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND MODERNITY

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ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND MODERNITY

WILLIAM MONTGOMERY WATT

Volume 8

First published in 1988

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1988 W. Montgomery Watt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-64437-2 (Set)
eISBN: 978-0-203-07906-5 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-83080-5 (Volume 8)
eISBN: 978-0-203-38134-2 (Volume 8)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND MODERNITY

ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND MODERNITY

PROFESSOR
WILLIAM MONTGOMERY WATT

First published in 1988 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001

W. Montgomery Watt 1988

Phototypeset in Linotron Baskerville, 10/12pt
by Input Typesetting Ltd, London
Printed in Great Britain by
T.J. Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery),
1909
Islamic fundamentalism and modernity.
1. Islam
I. Title
297

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery)
Islamic fundamentalism and modernity/William Montgomery Watt.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Islam20th century. I. Title.
BP60.W37 1988
297.0904dcl9 884386

ISBN 0-415-00623-6

CONTENTS

The central theme of this book is that the thinking of the fundamentalist Islamic intellectuals and of the great masses of ordinary Muslims is still dominated by the standard traditional Islamic world-view and the corresponding self-image of Islam. This is a fact of great importance at the present time when the influence of Islam is increasing throughout the world, since it means that how contemporary problems are seen by many Muslims may be different from how they look to Western observers and statesmen.

A prominent liberal Muslim intellectual, Mohammed Arkoun, has emphasized this point by using the categories of the thinkable, the unthinkable and the unthought (pensable, impensable, impens). In a recent article, after noting that the principal philosphical problems developed in the West since the 16th century are [among Muslims] put away into [the category of] the unthinkable by the fact of the absence (or elimination) of philosophical reflection after Averroes (Ibn Rushd), he adds in a footnote:

Today ideological control confirms this unthinkable for everything connected with Islam. It is always impossible to think the historicity of the Qur'n, of the adth, of the Shar'a, since one would be touching on the foundations of actual powers. That is why the resurgence of Islam, which is spoken of by observers who pay attention only to the voices who cry out, is taking place on the basis of an immense unthought accumulated over centuries. And this unthought has become a very illuminating dimension of the conflicts and convulsions which agitate these societies. It is urgent to open analytical thinking (l'analyse) to these data, which in no way go back only to speculative

By thinking the historicity of the Qur'n the author seems to mean seeing its assertions as historical facts to which the methods of historical criticism may properly be applied. This, of course, is only one small area of the unthinkable and unthought, since, as will be seen in what follows, the standard world-view covers virtually the whole of life.

This standard or traditional world-view may be said to have been established in its main lines by about the year AD 950 and certainly by 1200. Since then it has remained unchanged. Earlier deviant sectarian views have mostly been squeezed out, and there has been little opportunity for novel sectarian views to develop. A movement like Wahhbism, which appeared in central Arabia in the eighteenth century and is now the official teaching of the Sa'udi kingdom, though novel in a sense, is essentially a reinforcement of some aspects of the standard world-view in a conservative direction.

Because of popular journalistic usage it has been thought convenient to retain the term fundamentalist in the title of this book although it is inexact. It is primarily an Anglo-Saxon Protestant term, especially applied to those who hold that the Bible must be accepted and interpreted literally. The nearest French equivalent is intgrisme, which refers to a similar but by no means identical tendency within Roman Catholicism. In Islam Sunnite fundamentalists accept the Qur'n literally, though in some cases with qualifications, but they have also other distinctive features. The Sh'ites of Iran, who in a very general sense are fundamentalists, are not committed to a literal interpretation of the Qur'n.

For the purposes of this book the important distinction is between those Muslims who fully accept the traditional world-view and want to maintain it intact and those who see that it needs to be corrected in some respects. The former group are the fundamentalists, but will here be spoken of rather as conservatives and traditionalists, while the latter group will be referred to as liberals.

Among both groups, but especially among the former, many different political movements and attitudes are to be found. The ulema or religious scholars, who are the primary bearers and transmitters of the traditional world-view, are mostly reactionary in the sense that they tend to oppose reforms. Among those here called conservatives and traditionalists, however, there is also a bewildering variety of reformist elements, and these are sometimes very critical of the ulema. The reforms they are interested in are nearly all social and political, and leave the traditional world-view unchanged. The liberals are interested not only in changing the world-view, but also in other reforms.

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