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

In early 1988, the Egyptian press was inundated with articles and editorials about the controversial book al-Islam al-siyasi (Political Islam), published in Cairo in December of 1987 by Judge Muḥammad Saʿid al-ʿAshmawi. Only in the last two centuries has Islam been so available for redefinition, for repossession, for claims and counter-claims. The critical reception, both public and published, of al-ʿAshmawi’s al-Islam al-siyasi placed in relief this modern phenomenon, this terrifying and leveling conception of Islam as ‘up for grabs’. This article analyses a representative sampling of the most revealing and highly charged reviews by eminent scholars and journalists, including Jad al-Ḥaqq ʿAli Jad al-Ḥaqq (Shaykh al-Azhar), Fahmi Huwaydi, Faraj Foda, ʿAli al-Dali, and ʿAbd al-ʿAẓim Ramaḍan. Al-ʿAshmawi’s claim that Islam is not, never has been, and was never intended by God to be a religion dictating the political and legal infrastructure of Muslim society runs counter to centuries of Islamic thought and raises the stakes in the modern battle over the custody of Islam. What is so threatening about this book for some? For others, what is so welcome about it? In what ways does the critical response to this book reflect changing Egyptian attitudes about Islam? This article attempts to answer these questions and situates the key players in the debate around al-ʿAshmawi’s book within the wider debate over rethinking Islam in the modern world.

The Florentine Dominican Riccoldo da Monte Croce was a thirteenth-century missionary and apologist to Eastern Christianity and Islam, who travelled throughout the Middle East during a period in which the Latin Church was in ferment, challenged by the internal danger of heresy, and external threats from Mongols and Muslims. Yet, this essay places Riccoldo, whose life has been the subject of little extended study, particularly in English, at the end of a thirtyyear period of optimism and anti-crusade feroour in the West. Not only was Europe rediscovering Eastern Christianity, but there was hope of the possible conversion of both Mongols and Arabs to the Latin rite, or at least political alliances with the Mongols against the Muslim empires. The first part of Riccoldo’s journey was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where his faith and sense of mission were renewed. During the second, and longer part of his journey, Riccoldo encountered many people of different races—Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Mongols—and religions—Christians of all persuasions, Buddhists, and both Shiʿi and Sunni Muslims. While his initial impression of Muslim spirituality and ritual was positive, it is radically changed when, while in Baghdad, he witnessed the display of prisoners and booty resultins from the fall of Acre in 1291. Riccoldo’s subsequent crisis of faith called into question his belief in the providence of God, and would radically colour his understanding of the place of Islam in what he had heretofore perceived as ‘Christian history’. For Riccoldo, the fall of Acre would have to be answered from a Christian theological perspective, with lasting significance for the history of Muslim-Christian relations.

Ancient South Arabian civilization has been largely ignored by anthropologists in their comparative study of complex cultures. This omission of South Arabia from the catalogue of civilizations is difficult to explain considering that during the first millennium BC this region gave rise to an economy based on long-distance trade in luxury goods and a complex division of labour which supported an urban culture and mature state politics manifest in a social structure based on class, a developed ritual life, and a military organization which conducted full-scale warfare with other regional civilizations. This paper deals with the evolution of the state in South Arabia and distinguishes the key factors which define a specifically South Arabian political culture. Besides the monopoly on the incense and spice trade between the Indian East and the Mediterranean region, South Arabian civilization was characterized by a dynamic tribe-state relationship; this dialectic promoted the rise and fall of numerous polities, as well as competition between ritual centres and peripheries. Overall, South Arabian political culture provided a rich and complicated background to the rise Of monotheism in the peninsula, an inter-civilizational competition for control over the Red Sea shipping lanes, and the appearance of Islam.

Japan has often been acknowledged as a major example of successful cultural, in particular religious, syncretism and has, in modern times, projected this positive self-image to the outside world. In a long process of mutual accommodation, several religious and value systems from China have permeated Japanese culture to be amalgamated with indigenous ritual practices and idea systems. This has led to the coexistence of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and a plethora of New Religions, as well as folk-religious practices. Each of these has been allocated a specific position in the life-trajectory of the individual, as well as a niche in the social domain of different forms of community organization. By testing some hypotheses about the historical trajectory of religious coexistence against the present-day example of the New Religions, the paper explores some of the preconditions for such coexistence in the future. It also examines the different forms which the syncretistic mixing of ritual practices may take, and the correlates in the value-system—and in the type of community—the diverse religious forms seem to engender or attempt to satisfy. The Japanese case seems to raise some important theoretical questions as to the distinction between syncretism and pluralism in the framework of exclusioity and inclustity for processes of cultural diffusion. Therefore, the paper concludes with some general observations on the reflexive dimensions of self-identity and otherness in Japanese discourse and their relevance for post-modern theories of cultural hybridity.

Once a mountain kingdom lying between the Moghul empire and the Tibetan state, Ladakh is today the third part of the political conglomerate of Kashmir. Since Indian independence, the Buddhist Ladakhis have sought greater autonomy from the Muslim-dominated Kashmiri state government, and recently the national government in Delhi has partially answered this demand. It remains to be seen whether this device will solve outstanding issues. Historical analysis shows that the Sunni members of the Muslim minority came to settle in Ladakh due to conflict-resolving treaties and invitations to take sophisticated roles in government while Shias came from Baltistan to farm. All settled residents played significant roles in the economy, and there was little strife between local Muslims and Buddhists. Communal antagonism arose in this century largely because of external influence, in particular the post-independence dominance of the pro-Muslim state government over the region. The onset of international tourism intensified competition between the communities finally leading to conflict and a politically-driven Buddhist boycott of Muslims only recently resolved by the new dispensation. But the present situation remains problematic, with the continuing right of the Kashmir government to oversee development and control funding, and new divisions emerging in the body politic which both reduce the bipolar tensions of earlier communalism and cause new questions to arise. Indian politicians have often shown skill in accommodating the variety of social identities frequently found in the many multicultural regions of India. While this history of skilled political management suggests that progress might occur without strife, the recalcitrance of the Jammu and Kashmir state government continues to block effective advance, and its violent rejection is in the cards.

Many sociological theories on new religious movements (sects or cults) point out that they create new types of community in response to contemporary social and cultural changes that have had deleterious effects both on the family and on communal relationships. This paper examines three contemporary groups in the United States as religious communities. ISKCON, a Hindu sect, has become a well-structured parish-type community whose members are engaged in different levels of involvement. It maintains its identity not only by its unique religious practices and lifestyle, but also by regional and international meetings. The Aetherius Society, a UFO religion, teaches occult wisdom and encourages its members to participate in many missions whose goals are to further the good of the earth and its inhabitants. Finally, Promise Keepers, the most recent Christian evangelical revival, while allowing its members to keep their denom-national ties, bonds them together by a strong, conservative theology and by means of small group meetings, and local and national rallies. These groups dif Jer in their ideologies, in their religious goals, in their relations to society at large, and in the type of communal relationships they have established. However, they are all characterized by a homogeneity in ideology and religious practice, and by an opposition to the secular ideology that pervades Western culture.

This paper discusses prevailing representations in social science studies on the successor states of the Soviet Union, as well as on the ethnic fringe of the Russian Federation. Whereas the critique of Orientalism has led, over the past twenty years, to a more historical and nuanced approach to understanding Islamic societies, post-Soviet Studies tend to uncritically incorporate and apply Orientalist, static and over-deterministic portrayals of Islam. In reviewing the basic critiques of Orientalism, particular attention is paid to how ‘regions and their boundaries are constructed through scholarship. Comparing scholarly and popular notions of ‘the Orient’, ‘the Balkans’, ‘Central Asia’ and ‘the Islamic world’, highlights the similarities and differences of these ‘imaginative geographis’ and the ways in which they shape perceptions of the societies and peoples of these regions. Nationalism, ethnic identification and Islamic beliefs are all offered as major factors embroiling these regions in political and armed conflict, and preventing them from integrating into the global economy and polity. This paper argues that the focus on Islam, as both the cause and the explanation of conflict in these regions, is as much a result of the disorder in post-Soviet Studies as of real political struggles taking place. The implications of conceptually assimilating these regions into the ‘Islamic World Order’ need to be carefully considered.

First §: MANY CHRISTIANS ARE unaware of the important role Jesus plays in Islam, or rather, that he is considered to be the last and most important prophet before Muḥammad’s appearance. Certainly, when reading the Qurʾanic accounts of Jesus and the numerous stories and poems composed around him, many of them will object to the fact that he is ‘only a prophet and not the Son of God for on this point the Quran is absolutely clear. When Sura 112 attests to the absolute unity and unicity of God who “begets not nor was He begotten,” other revelations are as outspoken; thus Sura 5:116 says: “It befits not Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. . . . “

First §: THIS CONFERENCE WAS the first ever held in the United States on the life and works of Professor, later Father, Louis Massignon (1883-1962). As such, it assembled the most eminent scholars of Louis Massignon studies in the world. Still largely unknown in anglophone America, Louis Massignon’s life and work were examined and analysed over several days by a number of scholars from different disciplines, including theology, Arabic literature, government, law and history.