Unveiling Traditions

Majid Anouar Majid

Description

In Unveiling Traditions Anouar Majid issues a challenge to the West to reimagine Islam as a progressive world culture and a participant in the building of a multicultural and more egalitarian world civilization. From within the highly secularized space it inhabits, a space endemically suspicious of religion, the West must find a way, writes Majid, to embrace Islamic societies as partners in building a more inclusive and culturally diverse global community.Majid moves beyond Edward Said's unmasking of orientalism in the West to examine the intellectual assumptions that have prevented a more nuanced understanding of Islam's legacies. In addition to questioning the pervasive logic that assumes the "naturalness" of European social and political organizations, he argues that it is capitalism that has intensified cultural misunderstanding and created global tensions. Besides examining the resiliency of orientalism, the author critically examines the ideologies of nationalism and colonialist categories that have redefined the identity of Muslims (especially Arabs and Africans) in the modern age and totally remapped their cultural geographies. Majid is aware of the need for Muslims to rethink their own assumptions. Addressing the crisis in Arab-Muslim thought caused by a desire to simultaneously "catch up" with the West and also preserve Muslim cultural authenticity, he challenges Arab and Muslim intellectuals to imagine a post-capitalist, post-Eurocentric future. Critical of Islamic patriarchal practices and capitalist hegemony, Majid contends that Muslim feminists have come closest to theorizing a notion of emancipation that rescues Islam from patriarchal domination and resists Eurocentric prejudices.Majid's timely appeal for a progressive, multicultural dialogue that would pave the way to a polycentric world will interest students and scholars of postcolonial, cultural, Islamic, and Marxist studies.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Islamic studies
• Cultural studies
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 29 novembre 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380542
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unveiling Traditions

Anouar Majid

Unveiling Traditions

Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World

Duke University Press Durham & London 2000

∫2000 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper$

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Minion

by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Chapter 1 is a modified version of the article ‘‘Can the Postcolonial Critic Speak? Orientalism and the Rushdie A√air’’Cultural Critique(win- ter 1995–96). Chapter 4 (Women’s Freedom in

Muslim Spaces) is also a slightly modified ver-

sion of an article that appeared inSigns: Journal

of Women in Culture and Society23 (winter 1998)

under the title ‘‘The Politics of Feminism in Is-

lam’’ by the University of Chicago. The editors

ofSignspublished two comments on that arti-

cle, to which the author responded. Some of the information in theSignsand reply article (‘‘Reply to Joseph and Mayer: Critique as a De-

hegemonizing Practice’’ 23 [winter 1998] by the

University of Chicago) may be found in notes and other parts of this book. The author is grateful to the University of Minnesota Press

and the University of Chicago Press for allowing

him to reprint his articles in this book.

Contents

Preface vii

Introduction: Villainies Veiled and Unveiled 1

1. Can the Postcolonial Critic Speak? Orientalism and the Rushdie A√air 22

2. Millennium without Arabs? 50

3. The North as Apocalypse 73

4. Women’s Freedom in Muslim Spaces 99

Conclusion: Indispensable Polycentricity 132

Notes 157

Index 209

Preface

Unveiling Traditionswas conceived as a project to examine the extent to which Islam shapes intellectual practice in primarily Muslim soci- eties and to give Islamic cultures a more prominent role in postcolo- nial and multicultural theories. The global furor over the Rushdie a√air did more than any recent event to bring postcolonial fiction into the mainstream; yet, with very few exceptions, postcolonial crit- ics never seriously examined the place of Islam in debates of multi- culturalism. The challenge of including Islamic subjectivities and cultural epistemologies into a world of equal di√erences has been left untheorized, probably because the religious imaginary is dismissed ahead of time as either conservative or unredeemable. Yet I don’t think people can step out of their cultures (notwithstanding the much vaunted hybridizing e√ects of the market place) and reconsti- tute themselves in an entirely new vocabulary. My defense of Mus- lims’ rights to their identities and memories is motivated exclusively by my strong belief that only secure, progressive, indigenous tradi- tions, cultivated over long spans of time, can sustain meaningful global diversities and create e√ective alternatives to the deculturing e√ects of capitalism. I chose Islam because it is the religion and culture I am most familiar with. I would have done the same with America’s native populations, or any other cultural community (in- cluding Euro-American ones) whose identity springs from a pre- or noncapitalist cosmology, had I been confident in my ability to cap- ture the histories and spirit of those traditions. In any case, I have

viii Preface

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 super- human wills) that I am as captured by the pervasive networks of capi- talist 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 don’t 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 unrealistic—if not quite infantile—to expect a parent not to work as a stockbroker or a banker and let one’s children starve or su√er need- lessly 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 indus- trialized nations), my critique entails a call for changing the rules that frame our thoughts and behaviors; it suggests—without articulating any blueprints or outlining any utopian visions—a proposal for con- sidering alternative regulatory social mechanisms, venues that allow people to satisfy basic human needs and communal obligations with- out 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 prac- tices. 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 notori- ously 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 Tangier’s streets and

Preface ix

cafes, places where virtue has always been measured by one’s 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 mun- dane captivities. Like any storyteller, an academic’s vocation is to imagine a bright future for her students and audiences, to believe (however quixotically) in the possibility of a miraculous feat, a col- lective human enterprise that is capable of sustaining a civilization of rich and enriching diversities. Such hope invites the scholar to par- ticipate 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 encounter- ing real intellectuals, said that the intellectual’s duty is ‘‘to question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people’s 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 inter- locutor, Jacques Downs. Jacques’s Franklinian interests, wide- ranging historical views, and ability to maintain the longue durée firmly in mind even while he addresses transient and seemingly mundane issues have convinced me that Foucault’s pessimism is still not fully justified. Committed to global education, he introduced me to Mexico at a critical moment in that great country’s 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 din-