by Muhammad Qasim Zaman
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Product Description
From the cleric-led Iranian revolution to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, many people have been surprised by what they see as the modern reemergence of an antimodern phenomenon. This book helps account for the increasingly visible public role of traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars (the `ulama) across contemporary Muslim societies. Muhammad Qasim Zaman describes the transformations the centuries-old culture and tradition of the `ulama have undergone in the modern era--transformations that underlie the new religious and political activism of these scholars. In doing so, it provides a new foundation for the comparative study of Islam, politics, and religious change in the contemporary world. While focusing primarily on Pakistan, Zaman takes a broad approach that considers the Taliban and the `ulama of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and the southern Philippines. He shows how their religious and political discourses have evolved in often unexpected but mutually reinforcing ways to redefine and enlarge the roles the `ulama play in society. Their discourses are informed by a longstanding religious tradition, of which they see themselves as the custodians. But these discourses are equally shaped by--and contribute in significant ways to--contemporary debates in the Muslim public sphere. This book offers the first sustained comparative perspective on the `ulama and their increasingly crucial religious and political activism. It shows how issues of religious authority are debated in contemporary Islam, how Islamic law and tradition are continuously negotiated in a rapidly changing world, and how the `ulama both react to and shape larger Islamic social trends. Introducing previously unexamined facets of religious and political thought in modern Islam, it clarifies the complex processes of religious change unfolding in the contemporary Muslim world and goes a long way toward explaining their vast social and political ramifications.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Understanding religiopolitical activism of "traditional" ulama, 2008-07-29
This is a well-argued book, which brings out the complexity of the role of the ulama in contemporary Muslim societies with clarity and simple elegance. It deals with the response of the ulama after the encounter of Islam with the moment of rupture constituted by colonialism and Western modernity.
Running throughout the book, Zaman examines the contextually defined, dynamic relationships of cooperation and contradiction between the modernists, the Islamists and the ulama. Whereas modernism and Islamism, trends that emerged in the Muslim world since the late nineteenth century, are seen to be largely rooted in modern, Westernized institutions of education, the ulama are generally perceived to be carriers of "tradition," which in turn is conceptualized as static and unresponsive to the modern world. "Modernist" Muslim intellectuals have sought `to find ways of making Islam compatible with what they have taken to be the challenge of modern age' (p.7). The Islamists, on the other hand, `are drawn to initiatives aimed at radically altering the contours of their societies and states through the public implementation of norms they take as "truly" Islamic' (p.8). The interests of the modernists and the Islamists are generally perceived to be opposed to those of the ulama and they share the view that `one certainly does not need the ulama to interpret Islam to the ordinary believers' (p.10). It is implied that ulama are tied to a frozen tradition. However, Zaman demonstrates in this book that `boundaries between the ulama and the "modernists" can become blurred, just as they sometimes do between the ulama and the Islamists' (p.10). Thus the ulama are not only engaged in religiopolitical activism, like the Islamists, but also participate in redefining and reconstituting "tradition." In fact, understanding "tradition" as a dynamic and pluralistic venture is critical to the project of this book.
Following the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and the anthropologist Talal Asad, Zaman takes tradition to be a "discursive tradition". Understood in this way, he finds that `appeals to tradition are not necessarily a way of opposing change; that what passes for tradition is, not infrequently, of quite recent vintage; and that definitions of what constitutes tradition are often the product of bitter and continuing conflicts within a culture' (p.3).
"Reforms" in education, particularly at madrasas, by the colonial government in India is the starting point of analysis in this book. Zaman shows how the ulama ended up arguing for a "distinctive sphere of religion" in order to preserve their authority under the onslaught of new changes. It leads to tension, collaboration and contradictions between the ulama and later post-colonial state, especially in countries like Egypt and Pakistan.
The most interesting part of the book is its comparative perspective. Zaman discusses the uneasy and complex relationship between the ulama and the state in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Phillipines, Iran, India and Pakistan. He makes a distinction between the official or dominant and the "peripheral" ulama and examines their relation with each other, with the state and the Islamists.
Finally, in interpreting the recent ulama activism, Zaman suggests the influencing role of three key factors. First factor is the ties that the ulama have established with the Islamists although these two groups are generally seen to be opposed to each other. It is a product of the reconfiguration of education, since the colonial intervention, and its intended and unintended consequences. Secondly, international patronage, primarily in the form of Saudi Arabian money in financing mosques and madrasas, has played a critical role in empowering the ulama. And lastly, the impact that the Iranian revolution of 1979, especially the pre-eminent role of the religious leaders in the running of the state, and Iranian attempts at expanding the influence of Shi'ism, has provided an opportunity to the Sunni ulama to be more active at the grass-root level. These three factors have contributed to the ulama activism globally though each Muslim country has had its own specific contexts that are critical to understanding the complexity of nation-specific activism of the ulama.
Zaman has carried out an impressive analysis at the macro level. However, what is missing is the use of some ethnographic studies to examine the understanding of tradition, actual activities and relation with Islamists in specific cases of madrasas at the micro level. The book is too much preoccupied with the major ideologues among the ulama and the Islamists. Therefore the nature of ulama activism at the grass-roots level remains a mystery.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Fabulous book!, 2005-02-05
As I do research on the Islamic clergy, I have found this book most helpful. It is written in a clear manner, and devoid of jargon, and makes centuries of history accessible to the novice. It's a great book!
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