**For context on this series of blog post, please see the post titled "There are Too Many (But Really, Not Enough) Experts in My Life**
Who speaks for Islam, anyway?
Who speaks for Islam, anyway?
This misconception, that Islam is a monolith, is the most important to examine. Why? Because it drives so much of the fear we have of Islam and Muslims. It is the fuel that lights the fire of misunderstanding and bigotry that is the rhetoric surrounding Islam in America today.
Ok, so what do I mean by this?
I mean that there is a tendency to insist that Islam can only be one thing. It can not be many things. In other words, Islam is X or it is Y.
So, if Islam is X (let’s say, X = “violent”) then it can not be Y (with Y = “peaceful.”)
Alternatively, if it is Y, it cannot be X. It can ONLY be one or the other. Only one interpretation can speak for Islam!
Now, thinking that a religion is a monolith is not always a problem. Many people of faith want to claim that their faith holds Truth, and that Truth can be known, in certain ways, through a life lived in piety to God. I am not contesting that claim.
What I am contesting is the danger of misunderstanding, and of just plain old ignorance, of the diversity of interpretations that live within all religious traditions - Islam included.
Want an example? Ok, here’s one:
Have you read it? It’s OK if you haven’t. You’ll get the gist below. What’s important for our purposes, though, is to know that this article ignited a storm of responses in the academic and policy world. Some were supportive, others were disparaging, but nearly all of them were directed at the following four lines in Wood’s article:
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”
As evidence, Wood employed the words of Islamic Studies scholar, Bernard Haykel, who Wood calls the “foremost secular authority on the Islamic State’s ideology.” These are worth quoting at length (so you get the full picture). Wood writes:
It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment.
But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”
And, Wood later continues,
According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance.
“People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
I’m sure you can imagine the responses that followed (by Muslims and non-Muslims alike).
Interestingly, saying that ISIS is “religious,” is not a particularly controversial thing to say. Asking American foreign policy makers to pay attention to this point is also not especially provocative (though it is “out of the box” thinking in our foreign policy machine). In fact, I think that if Wood had deleted the four sentences above from his essay (and probably a few more in other paragraphs) the majority of his readers would have been nodding their heads throughout the article. Yes, ISIS is “religious.” Yes, it is motivated by “religious thinking.” Yes, we ought to think about that point when orchestrating an American response. And so on.
But his objective was lost or ignored by many of his readers, because they were fixated on his insistence that ISIS is “Islamic. Very Islamic.”
The controversy surrounding Wood’s article, then, was not centered on his claim that ISIS is a religious group, or a group that has religious components to it, or even a group that is largely directed by religion. Rather the controversy was directed at the point that Wood made it sound like ISIS speaks for Islam.
In all fairness to Wood, I don’t think that was his intention. (You can read his follow-ups here and here.) In fact, I think his argument that the American foreign policy community ought to pay more attention to religion (in certain ways) is on point.
But, it was not how his article was taken. At all. In fact, if we look at Wood’s critics, it was not a point they discussed at any length. Rather, the worry shared by rejoinders to Wood’s article was that the general reader would not be able to differentiate between “ISIS” and other Muslims. Or, that the vast majority of Muslims who condemn ISIS and its actions as “un-Islamic” would be deemed “wishy-washy” believers – AKA: not “real” Muslims, by Wood’s readers.
In other words, Wood’s critics worry, and rightly so, that his framing of ISIS in the Atlantic article would be detrimental to the way Muslims are perceived.
But why all this worry over one article? Why get so riled up over one person’s position?
Well.
Wood’s critics are deeply aware of the fact that, by and large, Islam is treated as a monolith by the general public. One article, they worried, especially if it was misunderstood, could ignite a storm.
Herein lies the problem.
This widely held understanding of how a religion (and Islam as a whole) functions (“this OR that”) is flat-out wrong.
Yet it is, by and large, the understanding of religion – and Islam in particular - that many of us hold.
There are many reasons for this.
To begin, most of us are not well-versed when it comes to the subject of religion – either our own or someone else’s.
Additionally, many of us are afraid of Islam and Muslims because of what we see on TV - so we are quick to accept explanations that seem to substantiate or rationalize our fear.
Moreover – and this is especially important – we are not trained to think about the religions of others (part of the impetus for this blog).
The truth of the matter is that Islam is not a monolith. Like every other religious tradition in the world, Muslims have, since the inception of their 1400-year-old tradition, debated, contested, and argued about the types of questions that preoccupy people of faith:
What is the nature of God? How ought I live my life so that it is in line with the will and direction of the Creator? What are the sources of authority for answering these questions? Where and to whom can I turn to help understand the texts and other sources of religious authority that are available to me? What does it mean to live in a community with people who do not share my faith (among other things)? What is my responsibility to others in light of my faith? What are my responsibilities to God? How ought I conduct my personal affairs in light of what God has commanded? And so on.
Friends. I can not emphasize this enough. Religion = contestation of meaning. Muslims, just like every other people of faith, have different interpretations of what their religion requires and how their texts direct those requirements.
That’s what it means to be a part of a religious tradition, especially one with over 1400 years of history behind it, in which these types of questions have to be worked through over, and over, and over again by Muslims all over the world as their respective historical, political, social, and economic contexts changed.
Moreover, religion is deeply personal. One Muslim’s experience with God is not identical to another’s. People experience God in different ways, and because that experience is individual, and experienced through all of the characterizing features that make up that particular person, it is going to look and feel different for each person involved.
Yes, I know that “individual experience” is a very “Western” way of thinking about religion. Understood. That does not, though, take away from my overall point: which is that if we accept that human beings are individuals, then we also have to accept that there is going to be as many expressions of Islam as there are Muslims (or Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, or Jains, or any other religious tradition you can name).
Now, this is not to say that Islam is anything someone wants it to be. Please know this is not my point. Rather, while expressions of Islam are multiple, there are certain parameters that help us identify an expression of religion as Islam. For example: texts, rituals, symbols, significant figures, history, and so on. I feel comfortable saying that nearly every Muslim you meet will tell you that the most important text of the tradition is the Qur’an, and that the second most important oral/scriptural sources are the sayings of Muhammad. Nearly every Muslim will have an understanding of the five daily prayers, rituals of fasting, the story of the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and of important figures within the tradition.
Rituals, texts, symbols, authorities – these are the anchors of a tradition, helping to demarcate its (porous) borders.
This point of course is where the Wood article gets its strength. Because there are roots and anchors to religious tradition (“sources” is also a useful term), Wood’s comments and Haykel’s, too, appear to say that, “Hey, look, these ISIS folks are basing their ideas in Islamic texts – and Muslims agree that these texts are Islamic. Therefore…ISIS is Islamic.”
Ok, so how does this all go together? How is it that Islam is not a monolith, but an expert in the study of religion (and the study of Islam) is calling it Islamic?!
Part of this, really, is an issue of semantics (in the loose definition of the word). When someone like Haykel is using the term “Islamic,” he is using it the way a scholar of religion would. What he means by this is that ISIS considers itself to be a part of the Islamic tradition. His designation of “Islamic” is a way to demonstrate that, in the academic study of religion, by and large, when a group self-identifies with a particular religion, we study them as such.
Haykel’s comment on ISIS being Islamic (and referencing Islamic texts) is equivalent to a scholar of Christianity arguing that a group like the KKK, which uses scriptural arguments for its racist and hateful thinking and activities, is Christian. So, it would be like a scholar of Christianity making the claim that yes, sure, the KKK is Christian in the same sense – their ideology of hate is directed by their reading of their religious texts.
The point here, then, is that: In Haykel’s world, saying that ISIS is Islamic is not a theological or normative claim. He is not saying that ISIS speaks for Islam. Rather, he’s saying that ISIS identifies with the tradition and uses their interpretation of Islamic texts to justify their understanding of the world and their actions within it.
For scholars of religion (or most of them, I would say) one person’s interpretation of their religion is as “legitimate” as anyone else’s, even if they are making vastly different, if not wholly incommensurable, claims.
Importantly, For Haykel, “Islamic” does not equal “legitimate.” Haykel’s job, as he understands it, is not to identify “true” or “authentic” or “real” Islam. His job is to identify and analyze and better understand the multiple individuals and communities that lay claim to the mantle of Islam.
That’s what he meant when he said, “and these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
So, when Wood writes: In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war (notice he did not quote Haykel here), he is assuming that Haykel is making a normative claim or a theological one (ISIS is “real” Islam). But, the short of it is, that Haykel is doing no such thing. He’s making a descriptive, academic claim – “ISIS fighters understand themselves as Muslims.” There is a critical difference between what Haykel said and what Wood thought he said.
Ok, so what about Haykel’s other comments? You know, about ISIS fighters being more “serious” Muslims? Oh, and the one about “cotton candy” interpretations of Islam?
Let’s start with the “serious” ISIS fighters. Haykel described ISIS fighters as having an, “assiduous, obsessive seriousness that Muslims don’t normally have.”
OK, with all respect to Haykel and his work (and I mean that sincerely) I’m going to have to call BS on this one. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today. 1.6 billon. Let me put that out there again: 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today.
Yet, Haykel wants to claim that ISIS is more “serious” and “obsessive” than 99% of the world’s Muslims? Like, do you know those one billion five hundred ninety-nine million seven hundred fifty thousand Muslims who are not a part of ISIS?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say… no.
OK, so let’s address the “cotton candy” claim. More specifically, Haykel, according to Wood, claimed that,
Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.
BS again. Why?
To interpret and imagine a tradition so that it speaks to issues that people of faith face today – looking for both the universals and the historical particulars – is not an act of apostasy. Far from it! Rather, it’s called being religious, friends. That’s. How. It. Goes.
Saying that certain practices (like slavery) are now morally wrong (to put it mildly) is what most, if not nearly all, Jewish, Christian, and Muslims say when looking back at their historical texts. Because slavery is in all of them. If we afford that to Christians and Jews why can’t we do the same for the overwhelming majority of Muslims who reject ISIS? Why would Haykel insist that the only way for Muslim opponents of the Islamic state (let’s just say, pretty much all Muslims) to “condemn” ISIS is for them to somehow invalidate their texts? Why? Especially when Muslims have already repudiated the practice of slavery over and over again (just ask the black Muslims in the United States, who, by the way make up over 1/5 of the American Muslim population).
But why, I wonder, is that even a part of the narrative surrounding Islam today? Why do we ask Muslims to condemn? Why do we insist that they “speak up” against militant groups as if somehow they’re responsible for doing so? Do we ask that of Christians or Jews? Or of Buddhists and Hindus and others who also have those in their communities who act in ways that we find to be morally reprehensible? As one of my friends always says, we judge other religions by their worst examples, while judging ours by our best.
We are quick to say that those who advocate for violence and bigotry within our own faith are not “real” believers, yet, we do not extend that same courtesy to our Muslim neighbors. Why is this so?
If you want to know who speaks for Islam, go out and meet your Muslim neighbor. Go and grant them the respect and the humility to allow them to tell you their Truth.
