English – Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

Visit the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies Website

🟡

Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

Throughout the early Islamic period, people from various Shurāt subgroups identified themselves in their poetry and to others as ‘the exchangers’ (al-shurāt), an appellation derived, along with related words, from Qur’an 2:207. The faces of different categories of exchangers-the ideal, the elegized, the summoned and the leader —depict various facets of the concept of exchange. The singular form, ‘exchanger’ (shārin), was claimed as an identity by people from across the spectrum of Shurāt groups, activist and quietist, from the earliest moments of the Shurāt experience until the late Umayyad period. Its basic meaning is two-fold: making a choice and taking decisive action. Whether activist or quietist, each person who called himself an exchanger (shārin) was distinguishing himself from the governing authority. It was his interpretation of exchange that determined how he expressed his opposition. The poems containing this term give us insight into the variety of meanings that exchange could signify. In addition to being used to define ideas about governing authority and leadership, it has often been associated with fighting the adversary in battle. The poems show that it can also mean to retreat, to be executed in captivity and even to admit defeat. The exchanger (shārin) is presented in the context of his life beyond the battlefield and beyond mere rhetoric. Thus, the poetry sheds valuable light on various social relations within Shurāt communities.

The Ibāḍī sect of Islam originated in Iraq during the first/seventh century, but missionaries soon travelled west to the Maghrib where many Berbers, who had already converted to Islam, became followers. The Ibāḍī missionary effort culminated with the establishment of an Ibāḍī Imamate by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustam in about AH 160/AD 776. Many Berber tribes in North Africa became affiliated with this state while establishing good relations with the Aghlabids, who then ruled modern-day Tunisia and Tripolitania. When the Aghlabids launched their conquest of Sicily in 212/827, members of Ibāḍī Berber tribes were among the Muslim forces. With the establishment of Muslim rule on the island, Ibāḍī tribes from North Africa began to settle there. Arabic and Ibadi historical sources suggest that their communities in Sicily became part of the Ibāḍī trade network that flourished between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. The rise of Ibāḍī commercial interests on the island may have led Ibāḍīs there into conflict with the new Fāṭimid state that replaced Aghlabid rule. It seems possible that some of the struggles between the Muslims of Sicily and the Fāṭimid central government in Ifrīqiya were due to Fāṭimid attempts to control the Ibāḍī trade network and to undermine the economic power of the Ibāḍī tribes on the island, much as they had done in North Africa.

Ibāḍī Islam, practiced by the sultans who ruled Zanzibar from 1832-1964, is a moderate sect that emerged out of Khārijism. Like the Khārijīs, Ibāḍīs recognize as Muslims only those who belong to their own sect; unlike the Khārjīs, they do not support violence against non-members. Although they advocate ‘dissociation (barā’a) from non-Ibāḍīs, this is an attitude of withholding religious ‘friendship’ (walāya) and not one of hostility. Ibāḍism emerged during the heated political disputes of early Islam and was nurtured in the relative isolation of Oman’s mountainous interior and of remote areas of North Africa. The sultans of Zanzibar ruled over a highly diverse population, mainly Sunnī Muslims. Bū Sa’īdī rulers sponsored the development of Zanzibar as a centre of Islamic scholarship for both Ibāḍīs and Sunnīs. In practice, Ibāḍī-Sunnī relations were very friendly and Sunnī scholars were among the sultans’ closest confidants. During the reign of Sayyid Barghash (1870-88), some conversions of Ibāḍīs to Sunnī Islam provoked a severe reaction from the monarch; Ibāḍī scholars of the time also felt threatened by the attraction of Sunnī Islam. Nonetheless, Ibāḍī and Sunnī scholars had cordial and collegiate relations and crossed sectarian lines for the purposes of study and adjudication.

The historiography of Salafī reform in the Arab world has confined this movement within Sunnī circles and completely overlooked the role of Ibāḍī Salafism. Like their Sunnī counterparts, Ibāḍī reformers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries called for a return to the era of the salaf in order to reform religious practices and renew Islamic thought. More interestingly, Salafism paved the way for a reconciliatory position between Sunnīs and Ibāḍīs for the sake of Muslim unity. This paper sheds light on Ibāḍī Salafism and highlights aspects of this Ibāḍī -Sunnī rapprochement. It analyzes the writings of two modern Ibāḍī reformers, Qāsim al-Shammākhī and Ibrāhīm Aṭfiyyash. While both supported Sunnī reformers, each did so in a different way. Al-Shammākhī defended the Sunnī Salafī argument to abolish the madhāhib (schools of jurisprudence) and open the gates of ijtihād. This, he believed, would allow both sects to find a meeting point in the pre-madhāhib era and would reveal the truth of Ibāḍīsm to Sunnīs. Aṭfiyyash’s approach was to deny any relationship between Ibāḍīsm and Khārijism. He wanted to present Ibāḍīs as adherents to the ideals of the salaf rather than those of a splinter group. Their different approaches reflect increasing flexibility in Salafī Ibāḍīsm after World War I. In all cases, Sunnī Salafī reform appealed to Ibāḍīs and provided reformers from both sects with the opportunity to create an ideological and political alliance.‬

This paper discusses the role of Khārijī thought in modern Arab intellectual history and attempts to answer the question: What prompted Arab scholars to suddenly become interested in the Khārijīs? After a brief introduction, the paper begins by looking at the modern reinterpretation of Khārijī history in Ibāḍī scholarship and notes that modern Ibāḍī scholars seem convinced that a favourable image of the Khārijīs will help to reconcile Ibāḍism with Sunnism. The second part of the paper argues that modern Arab scholars, who have unearthed and analyzed the vast corpus of Khārijī poetry, have used the poetry as a rhetorical vehicle to rehabilitate the image of Khārijīs in the turath and to narrow the religio-political gap between Khārijīs and Sunnīs. The paper’s third part contends that ideologically-oriented Arab scholars have reinterpreted and, most importantly, made use of Khārijī history and thought in order to promote modern (Western) ideologies and beliefs long shunned in the Arab/Islamic world. In all cases, one may argue that the rise of modern Islamic fundamentalism and its portrayal as neo- Khārijīsm by some has led Arab scholars to reconsider the role and image of the historical Khārijīs. Although only a handful of modern Arab scholars have discussed and analyzed Khārijī poetry, they have produced an important and essential genre of literature on the history and beliefs of the Khārijīs. This study is significant because it unravels a body of literature that is still little known in the West.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is analyzed With three interrelated goals: first, to improve understanding of the reasons for failed conflict resolution in the Middle East by contrasting it With successful peacemaking in South Africa; second, to critically probe analogies between the two disparate situations and scrutinize whether the frequently used apartheid label fits Israeli policies; third, to draw specific lessons from the South African experience for alternatives in the Middle East. Analogies With the South African case are increasingly applied to Israel/Palestine for two different purposes: to showcase South Africa as an inspiring model for a negotiated settlement and to label Israel a ‘colonial settler State’ that should be confronted With strategies similar to those applied against the apartheid regime (sanctions, boycott). Both assumptions are problematic because of the different historical and socio-political contexts. Peacemaking resulted in an inclusive democracy in South Africa, while territorial separation in two states is widely hailed as the solution in Israel/Palestine, Ihe death of Arafat and the realignments in Palestinian politics are not changing the basic structural interests and power relations in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

This paper argues that we have entered a ‘Tocquevillean’ phase in world affairs that represents the culmination of a long-gestating historical process. Since 1945, there have been three phases of global politics: between 1945 and 1989, the world was Marxist-dominated by the discourse of economics; from 1989 until 2001, it was Weberian-dominated by the discourse of cultural conflict; and, since 2001, it has been Tocquevillean —dominated by the discourse of American exceptionalism, which here refers, in particular, to the United States’ peculiar combination of religious openness and constitutionally-guaranteed individual rights. As the state retreats from its former role, the relationship between these two elements has come to represent the central historical issue of our time and this will be the case for the foreseeable future. This is a matter in which the United States has a peculiar experience, well-analyzed by Tocqueville. September 11, 2001 marked the definitive switch to a Tocquevillean world, the principal characteristic of which is rifts within the societies of ‘the West.’ Beyond more immediate points of contention, the current tension has a great deal to do with religion and its role in a secular democratic order, a subject about which Tocqueville had some very illuminating things to say. Against this background, this paper explores the ways in which religious belief resonates or conflicts with political freedom in movements around the world and the role of the United States in a world bubbling with religious ferment.

The argument presented in this paper develops in relation to three interrelated themes. It begins by considering the current LIS-dominated discourse on democracy and democratization, which argues that democratic values and practices are essential to human freedom and peace. However, as I next observe, the urgency to democratize is mediated through the power of the State. Moreover, in the current conjuncture, the objective of democracy is integral to the construction of what may be described as postmodern formations of political and economic power. These are appearing as a transmogrification of preceding orders, creating a New Leviathan which, from many positions, might seem to be predicated on constant war, rather than the production of peace and the conquest of human misery. The ordering dynamic of the New Leviathan is one of continual fracture, an expanding plane of contested sovereignties of various kinds. I describe this dynamic, which forms the paper’s third theme, as one of Wild Sovereignty. Here, I expand upon Giorgio Agamben’s discussion ofHomo Sacer, which considers a concept of sovereignty defined in terms of one’s relation to ‘bare life.” Wild sovereignty as a dimension of the New Leviathan is radically productive of regions and spaces of bare life in which more and more People are thrust to the very edges of existence as a consequence of the contesting forces of constituting power in its wild sovereign form‬.

Numerous pilgrims and travellers report that the tombs of the Arab prophets are much longer than the tombs of ordinary people, ranging from ten to fifty metres in length. Little has been written on these long tombs despite their frequent mention in a variety of sources and the clear association between the Arab prophets and the giants of antediluvian times. This paper proposes a broad theoretical context within which to interpret the long tombs of prophets in the Hadramawt and in other locales throughout the Near East and Africa. Rather than providing a systematic overview, this paper highlights a number of details that link Islamic examples with those from other religious traditions, including classical Greece and the ancient Near East. It examines some of the different explanations given for the lengths of particular tombs with the goal of reaching a larger conception of how these long tombs are related to Islamic models of prophethood and the spread of religion. The comparison of various traditions suggests that the long tombs are to be understood as part of an Islamic mythology of the origins and development of civilization from the time of Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden to the era of the Prophet Muhammad and beyond.

Islamic scholarship records a large number of accounts featuring sayings by Christian monks (both monastics and ascetics) and their encounters with Muslim ascetics and mystics. On one level, these accounts attest to the fact that the perception of Christian monks as holy figures in the Near East survived into the early Islamic period and that they were still acknowledged for their spiritual authority and aura in Muslim circles well into the fifth/eleventh century. The continuity of this recognition indicates the degree of its diffusion among Muslim scholars. On another level, these accounts reinforce the conclusion that encounters between Christian monks and Muslim ascetics and early mystics must have played a role in the emergence of particular attitudes, views and practices within Islamic ascetical and mystical traditions.