Thoughts on Islam and the English Enlightenment

The following response is written based on my reading of the introduction to the book Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670-1840. I might post more thoughts if I finish other chapters of the book.

Dr. Humberto Garcia’s introduction to his book, which includes a brief discussion on British Radicalism, is interesting. He stresses how Islamic republicanism provided British radicals to denounce their opponents, such as the Trinitarians. The radicals saw a connection between Islam and Christianity as they would like it to be (e.g., Deism). But to what extent does his text speak to Islamic intellectual history? I remember in another history class at Tufts, when I was arguing for an understanding of the ulema within each specific context (rather than positioning it as a universal category), a person commented that the ulema is just like the Catholic clergy, implying that they were the ruling class opposed to general interest of the people. I do not know what Garcia thinks about the Islamic ulema, but this view is definitely still common and simplifies the complexity of Islamic thought. If Islam once served as a placeholder for British radicals to envision Christianity without a clergy, it can also easily become another placeholder for other purposes.

My second point of uneasiness with Garcia’s treatment of Deism is in his easy acceptance of its ahistorical claims. Concepts of time are a crucial difference that proponents of deism conveniently glide over: They reiterate that the Prophet Muhammad is merely another Luther who came centuries earlier. Yet they fail to see how the richness of Islam encompasses both linear as well as non-linear time. Garcia does not discuss the role of prophets. According to Islam, Jesus is another prophet of the same God’s message, which Muhammad was asked by God to deliver for the last time. While Muslims and deists would be similarly opposed to Trinitarian creed that Jesus is the son of God, what do deists have to say about humanity’s constant need for prophets throughout (secular-historical) time? In Colin Jager’s concept of romantic secularization, who Garcia cites, religions become more concerned regarding issues within this world rather than the hereafter; this concept is another phenomenon of the same issue regarding time.

The final concern I have with Garcia's treatment of Deism lies in the lack of discussion in regards to Deism's attitude towards “heathens.” As Dr. Tomoko Mazusawa, author of The Invention of World Religions, succinctly summarizes on page 188, “Measured against the trio of monotheisms, all forms of Gentile polytheism were deemed no match, however grand and Olympian they might be, not to mention more humble instances of heathen idolatry, fetishism, or any other veneration of limited and particularistic deities and spirits. … any serious challenge to Christian supremacy could come only from other monotheisms.” It is worth mentioning here that the word “Gentoo,” which the British used for non-Muslims in India, was possibly derived from the Portuguese word Gentio: a gentile, a heathen, or native. Prof. Jalal shows in her book Partisans of Allah that there were many Sufis in Mughal South Asia under who promoted the oneness of God after interactions with Hindu practices. Yet how monotheistic does any deism have to be? And to whose monotheism is one measuring one’s belief? It is indeed a fine line. In terms of discursive power, waḥdat al-wujūd, deism and Brahmo are not the same.  Except in the case of Iqbal, deistic ideas of the British variant seem to have been much more prevalent than Sufi ones among colonial Indian intellectuals. To quote from page 283 of The Invention of World Religions: “According to [Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, Debendranath Tagore, and Swami Vivekananda’s] projective view, ‘Hinduism,’ though the term itself may be a neologism, refers to the ancient faith of India, a religion that was essentially monotheistic, and whose ancient wisdom is encapsulated in certain select but voluminous canonical texts, which were beginning to be known in the West as early as the eighteenth century...”  In this context where monotheism is the hegemonic discourse, it would be interesting to discuss Rammohan’s role in our class next week.

C.A. Bayly’s project in Recovering Liberties links these ideas with social realities. He relates that there were many sources for deciding the rights (adhikar or haq) of Indians under colonialism. Yet he is also acutely aware of the colonial conditions which bring these issues to rise: extraterritorial subjects such as lascars or Parsi merchants brought liberalism to the foreground of debate. The British administration’s reaction was to create separate courts for separate believers. In socio-legal reality, there seems to have been many gods in India indeed.

Some more of my thoughts during Prof. Jalal's classroom discussion on the 18th century:

• One needs to be careful in separating "the West" and "colonialism." I would argue that many people in European countries became entangled with colonial systems much later than the process of colonial domination. For example, maps served as tools of colonial domination long before they became Victorian household objects. While there are many linkages between "the West" and "colonialism" found by methods a la Said's Orientalism, the connections are less well established in social history. In my opinion, that is the complex contribution of the Early Modern historiography--if one can start to think of a world before Western dominance, then one can see how history was not pre-determined. 
• Once one can perceive of a world prior to "the West" as the hegemonic power (militarily and ideologically) know today, then one can see how the contestations within "the West" during the 18th century. What Locke, Montesquieu, or Rousseau wrote became a Western canon much later than their publication. Similarly, the dating of Sunni and Shi'a orthodoxies is also important for one to understand what one means when one discusses what is Islam. In this regard I am in agreement with Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush that Sunni and Shi'a orthodoxies only become known categories after the first thousand years since the Prophet Muhammad (in Gregorian calendar, approximately 1600s).
• "Colonialism" as an idea and "colonialism" as a social reality should be disentangled. I think many works use an analytical shorthand to mean both at the same time. We can see quantitatively in English publications how the emergence of "Colonialism" as a published word is rather recent, happening around the same time as decolonization in the 1960s. One can argue that others have been discussing colonialism in other languages much before that, but this post is primarily discussing the English-speaking academy. 

The frequency of "colonialism" in English books uptick in the 1960s, correlating to the process of decolonization.

Comparing the frequency of "colonialism" with the word "colonies."

Obviously there are other usages of "colonies" beyond the meaning of those of colonial domination, but the gap between the two vocabularies' frequencies is still quite significant. One additional objection to the significance of the comparison of these two words might be that the culprits of colonialism would not want to use the word to describe their activities at least when writing in the English language. Thus, there is even more burden of finding "proof" and labor required of those who choose to write critical histories of colonialism, such as learning (academic) English.

Towards a Non-State Centric Understanding of Iraqi History

While reading historian Eric Davis's Memories of the State, I came across his description about how the British colonizers favored a compliant chess piece, Faisel II, and his regent, Prince Abdullah among the successors for the Hashemite royal family in the mid-1930s. Davis argued that the compliant Prince saw that the British could help him stay in power, and thus allowed for more British interference in Iraq.

Book cover

This description struck me because it seemed that the state harbors a magical "seat" where the person who manages to sit in that place, would become more invincible than other political actors. Thus generations compete for power at the magical seat, which replicates the preexisting organs and arrangements of the state, including colonialism arrangements such as the British mandate. It does not seem to be that much different from a pre-French revolution "monarchy," even though it is clear that the 20th century Hashemite monarchy was anything but like it. While Davis is aware of the differences and impact of colonial designs on the Hashemite monarchy, he still presumes a rather monolithic, state-centered narrative in the unraveling of the Hashemite monarchy for his readers.


The implicit question seems to be the age-old one: How can a "modern historical account" explain how an "Oriental despotic regime" becomes a "modern state," which has institutions providing checks and balances?

But this frame seems to be exactly the problem. The frame assumes that everyone is power-hungry as rational decision makers, and thus would definitely seize the opportunity to enter the power vacuum when available. In the Iraqi case, the colonialists could presumably offer anyone that magical seat, and anyone would capitulate. Even idealists such as leftists and nationalists might squander the opportunity during the power machination process. At the same time, states are also in competition with each other, and thus, they would all have to maintain internal stability to "get ahead" in the race. In Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, scholar Vijay Prashad has also noted how "regional stability" is also a key code word for U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. In this sense, one could see how there are people who support a state-centered narrative (including a wide range of people from U.S. foreign policy heads to certain Ba'athists and Communists), and those who would differ.

Rather than state-centered narratives, I find Foucault's conception of power more nuanced in order to understand these processes. He critiques the idea of power as a magical seat in Society Must Be Defended (p13):

In the case of the classic juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be  possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through  a juridical act or  an act that founds a right—it does not matter which,  for the  moment—thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete  power that any individual can hold, and which he can surrender, either as  a  whole or in  part, so  as to constitute a power or a political sovereignty. 

Under the Iraqi state's eyes, "Communists," "Shias," "minorities,"and "women" are separate categories. Davis takes cue from Gramsci in his formulation of the state and anti-state resistance. While Davis's book emphasized that there had been functioning political institutions and democratic activity in Iraq in 1954 and complicates a despotic stereotype of pre-1960s Iraq, his state-centric understanding of power is still limiting and replicates these monolithic categories of women, Shias, minorities and communists. Similarly, the good-intentioned policymakers have made and would continue to make the same mistake while navigating through ethnic loyalties and political affiliations of Iraq if they continue to view society from a state-centric vantage point.

Rather than staring at the magical seat, we should pay more attention to where the power projects itself toward and how it is embodied. Foucault also admits that there are not so many methods outside of this model to understand power. One can read more about that in his lectures. While recognizing the Iraqi Left-leaning intellectuals' enormous contribution in historicizing sectarianism, documenting "voices from below" and analyzing class formation in Iraq, I would also like to see more Foucauldian or non-state-centric analyses of Iraqi history.

Overall, the mainland Chinese academia also suffers from obsession with state-centric narratives. They are also using the same paradigms to understand the outside world as well. That is why I find studies on the effects of colonialism so curative to the current academic obsession. As Timothy Mitchell as written in 1991 in the article "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," "Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space." This understanding would also become beneficial to critiquing and resisting the communist government: currently many dissidents cannot formulate a strong response to the assumption that "without the communist government, China will surely become chaotic." This assumption similarly uses the overempowering ideal of a sovereign that keeps things in check: Without that sovereign, any opportunist will seize the magical seat. To have any meaningful resistance against the increasingly prevelant communist state, dissidents and resisters have to undo this understanding of the magical seat.