Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World.

Although this book was originally conceived as a comprehensive treatment of Sayyid Qutb, the author then decided to expand it into what Mahmoud Ayoub's foreword calls "a comprehensive analysis of modern Arab Islamic intellectual history. . . ." The need for such an analysis is unquestionable. The good news is that Abu-Rabi' has made an excellent start. He has a solid grasp of both the important issues and the subtle fulfillment. The thoroughness with which the context of the discussion is established is inconsistent. The discussion itself treats only Hasan al-Banna, Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, and Sayyid Qutb in any detail. Reflecting the book's evolution, the first two get only a chapter each compared to three chapters for Qutb. The book is also riddled with the typographical errors that too often plague Muslim publications.

The author is an Islamic engage who is also steeped in the Western intellectual milieu. As such, he has the ability immediately to recognize the pertinent elements in a prolific writer like Qutb, and to avoid mistaking peripheral issues for central ones. He can guide us through the work of his subjects with analytical tools provided by Westerners ranging from Clifford Geertz to Eric Hoffer, augmented by his insider's familiarity with modern Islamic literature.

This study provides ample evidence that the Islamic resurgence is a response to colonialism and to the excess and/or failures of the nation-states which have been imposed upon the Arab and Muslim world, rather than a reaction against notions of human rights. This enables the reader to appreciate the absurdity of the notorious tendency of Westerner analysts to document criticisms of the Islamic revival by references to secular states like Iraq or traditionalist states like Saudi Arabia. On the contrary, the "bone of contention of many Islamist movements is their critique of oppressive social and political reality as well as [a] passive and subdued intellectual environment" (p.53). Claims to secularism by some Arab states (or hypocritical claims of religiosity by others) hand the forces of political protest the opportunity to claim Islam as the foundation of their resistance.

The author makes the point that the Islamic resurgence appropriates modern technology and science. It is the failure of the Arab state to bring the nation into modernity that provokes reaction. Aiming to "explain and transcend the challenges posed by the modern world" the Islamist "understanding of tradition is . . . innovative and not anachronistic, elastic and not rigid" (p.56).

Abu-Rabi's tack is briefly to sweep through the predecessors of the Islamic resurgence, to discuss the cases of Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Muhammad Fadlallah in some detail, and then to wrap up with a brief tour of some of the secular and leftist critics of the moment. The approach is a sound one. However, except for the thorough treatment of Qutb and the concise treatment of Falallah, it need fleshing out.

The author establishes the context of his discussion by starting with Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi. Following the Orientalists, al-Nadwi identifies the Muslim decline as originating in the wake of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs. The early separation of religion and state opened the door for an influx of incompatible Greek ideas to fill the moral vacuum in political life. The author criticizes al-Nadwi for ignoring the fact that Islamic discourse "does not - and, indeed cannot - constitute an autonomous discourse in modern Arab history."

In similar fashion, Abu-Rabi' looks at Muhammad al-Bahiy, Abdallah Laroui, Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri, Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi, and Hichem Djait. All share a belief that modern Arab and Islamic thought is born of a reaction to the colonial experience and that is has taken two forms: reformist and modernist. He identifies the reformist movement as seeking to "reconstitute modern Muslim thought on the basis of rebuilding Muslim culture and education," and the modernist movement as seeing that appropriation of "the best features of the Western world" does not contradict learning from Islamic tradition. Perhaps a less subtle difference could have been used to define the two camps: Abu-Rabi' characterizes the modernists as "the intellectual allies" of the Orientalists.

I was disappointed that Abu-Rabi' did not give more attention to Muhammad 'Abduh, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, and Rashid Rida in providing a context for the Islamic revival. Perhaps, given their undisputed importance, he assumed that readers would already be sufficiently familiar with the details of their work to appreciate how the intellectuals of the current movement differ from them. If so, this was a mistake for a book that aims to be comprehensive.

The author identifies three major positions on the central historical and philosophical problem of Islamic tradition. Orientalism and Arab secularism (especially Marxism) dispute the efficacy of tradition; conservative or traditionalist Muslims call "for the revival of the past in a modern setting;" and those in the middle seek "a rapprochement between Islamic tradition and Westernization."

Abu-Rabi' argues that al-Banna, like al-Ghazali in the Twelfth Century, strikes out against "blind imitation, useless knowledge, and unsound argumentation" (p.75). Al-Banna formed the Ikhwan to promote an Islamic state to counter problems which include "self-indulgence and luxury; the transfer of authority [over Arab lands] to non-Arabs, and Muslim infatuation with authority" (p. 79). To understand al-Banna's critique of the West we should remember that is was formulated in the context of the rise of totalitarianism in the West during the interwar period.

If any player in the Islamic resurgence can be called antimodern, it would be Sayyid Qutb. Thus, Abu Rabi's detailed study of the evolution of Qutb's thought from his early secular days to his part in the Ikhwan is well-justified. Qutb began his study of the Qur'an strictly from the viewpoint of literary critique, at a time when he rejected Islam, Arabism, and liberalism as well. In the process of his artistic contemplation of the Qur'an he rediscovered the power of its imagery and discovered a powerful social message. His earlier belief that Egyptians have a different mentality than Westerners (or Arabs) was transformed by the realization that what really distinguished Egyptian society from Western society is the existence of a religious consensus. "As an Idea, in the Hegelian sense, Qutb's Islam is a self-conscious and willing religion" (p. 110).

This awakening leads Qutb through a series of phases beginning with his articulation of the issue of social justice. Abu-Rabi' offers this translation from Qutb's Dirasat Islamiyah:

Those who consider themselves Muslim, but do not struggle against different kind of oppression, or defend the rights of the oppressed, or cry out in the face of dictator are either wrong, or hypocritical, or ignorant of the precepts of Islam. (p. 130).

That Qutb's view of social justice contains an element of utopianism, parallels with Marxism, and a special place for communal property is clearly enunciated. Yet, to confuse his views even at this stage, with communism - or socialism - is unjust. It is not simply that Qutb respects the role of private property. Qutb's critique of capitalism is based on his opposition to materialism and the Egyptian experience with colonialism. Consider the implications of the following excerpt from J. Hardie's translation of Qutb's Social Justice:

For when the American man, for example, has his radio set and his private automobile, when he may, if he is able, make a weekly excursion with his family or visit the cinema; when these things are so, it is not luxury that the White House should be the home of the President. But when millions of a nation cannot find a mouthful of pure water to drink, it is undeniably luxury that some few people should be able to drink Vichy and Evian, imported from overseas (p. 116).

We may also ponder the implications of the fact the this passage cannot be found in Arabic versions of the text printed after 1954. The focus of Qutb's contempt is not the American domestic politico-economic system, but the castration of the sociopolitical dimension of Islam in Egypt that he perceives to be the objective of American influence. The "Americanized" Islam permitted consulting Islamic law on a wide range of matters, but never on those "relating to our social and economic conditions, or our financial system" (p. 132, quoting Dirasat Islamiyah).

To Qutb, "the Free World" was a misnomer used to cover the imperialist enterprise murdering freedom in North Africa, Palestine and Vietnam. Yet Qutb also rejected communism as capitalist materialism taken one step further in its extremism. He sees the entire modern European enterprise as driven by an anti-religious impulse. Darwin, Marx and Freud each in his own way sought to prove the material nature of man to suppress his spiritual side.

Abu-Rabi' acknowledges Qutb's debts to Ibn Taymiyah, Muhammad Asad, Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi, and Maulana Maududi in his continuing evolution through philosophical and political phases. In the final stages, Qutb acknowledges that capitalism has solved many problems, but objects to its creation of the problem of interest: "workers, merchants and producers become an appendage, under capitalism, to the banking system. . ." (p.161). It also creates a class of propagandists: established university professors.

At the end, Qutb advocates a Qur'anic Islam promoting a unified aqidah, i.e., one which does not divide rituals from social transactions. It is a cultural project put forward in opposition to the alternative to Arab socialism as a means of fighting the three forces against Islam: Zionism, Crusaderism, and Communism. He identifies the goal of Orientalism as driving "a wedge between doctrine and politics in Islam" (p. 204). (Reading this phrase, I thought of its implications for Stephen Emerson's exemption of Muslims who separate doctrine from politics from his charges that Islamic activists are, otherwise, terrorists.)

The concisely written chapter on Fadlallah gives us a taste of the Shi'a dimension. It is most interesting for the similarities one finds common to al-Banna and Qutb, and indeed to the Islamic resurgence in general, especially regarding its opposition to colonialism and to the failures and impositions of the nation-state.

Abu-Rabi' wisely includes a closing chapter reflecting the secularist and leftist critiques of the Islamist movement. Where these critiques are insightful, they highlight the weak points intellectuals of the Islamic resurgence must overcome. For example, Fu'ad Zakariyya identifies a number of "pitfalls of the contemporary Islamic movements," such as the tendency to concentrate on the interpretation of texts to the exclusion of historical analysis. Where the critiques amount to stereotyping, they inform us about weaknesses in the critics. For example, the charge made by Adonis (a/k/a 'Ali Ahmad Sa'id) that the Islamic movement advocated traditionalist modes of thought that bolster state apparatuses suggests that Adonis' ideological framework blinds him to the movement's origins in resistance to the exploitative states established throughout the Muslim world. Abu-Rabi' concludes of the secularist critique: "The 'committed, balanced, and enlightened trends of the Islamic resurgence,' is dominated by the following characteristics: reason, renewal, ijtihad, middle-roadness [wasatiyya], pragmatism, respect for women and family, belief in educational and oneness, rejection of priesthood, belief in the right of the ummah to elect its rulers, preservation of private property, taking good care of the poor and downtrodden, and encouraging the love of nation and ummah" (p.263).

Much as I would like to overlook the typographical errors in a book of this importance, one typo produces a serious error in meaning. On page 181 we find: "We must be ready to pay the price so that we can carry the banner of Islam and free society from all sorts of servitude - except that to God and oppression." By failing to place a dash after the word "God" the author appears to be calling for a particularly shocking form of shirk, worshipping oppression along with God!

One hopes that we might expect a revised and expanded future edition with a tighter editorial hand, a more thorough treatment of the context established by Abda, Afghani, and Rida, and more detailed discussion of al-Banna. Even in its present form, however, this book is a welcome and important addition to the literature.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is author of Signs in the Heavens: A Muslim Astronomer's Perspective on Religion and Science and president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.