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The Islamic Secular (2017)
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substanceof the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Givenits putative rejection of the separation between the sacred andthe profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid inIslam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profanedichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular inIslam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion.This is what the present essay sets out to do. By taking Sharia asits point of departure, it looks at the latter’s self-imposed limitsas the boundary between a mode of assessing human acts thatis grounded in concrete revelational sources (and/or their extension)and modes of assessing human acts that are independent ofsuch sources, yet not necessarily outside God’s adjudicative gaze.This non-shar`ī realm, it is argued, is the realm of the “Islamic secular.”It is “secular” inasmuch as it is differentiated from Sharia asthe basis for assessing human acts. It remains “Islamic,” however,and thus “religious,” in its rejection of the notion of proceeding“as if God did not exist.” As I will show, this distinction betweenthe shar`ī and the nonshar`ī has a long pedigree in the Islamiclegal (and theological) tradition. As such, the notion of the Islamicsecular is more of an excavation than an innovation. *This article was first published in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (2017): 1-31
Journal Article
Islam and the Blackamerican : looking toward the third resurrection
This book offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. No one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, the book shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements of the early 20th century. Rather, Islam owes its momentum to the distinctively American phenomenon of “Black Religion,” a God-centered holy protest against anti-black racism. This book begins as part of a communal search for tools with which to combat racism and redefine American blackness. The 1965 repeal of the National Origins Quota System led to a massive influx of foreign Muslims, who soon greatly outnumbered the blacks whom they found here practicing an indigenous form of Islam. Immigrant Muslims would come to exercise a virtual monopoly over the definition of a properly constituted Islamic life in America. For these Muslims, the nemesis was not white supremacy, but “the West”. In their eyes, the West was not a racial, but a religious and civilizational threat. American blacks soon learned that opposition to the West and opposition to white supremacy were not synonymous. Indeed, states the book, one cannot be anti-Western without also being on some level anti-Blackamerican. Like the Black Christians of an earlier era struggling to find their voice in the context of Western Christianity, Black Muslims now began to strive to find their black, American voice in the context of the super-tradition of historical Islam. The book argues that Muslim tradition itself contains the resources to reconcile blackness, American-ness, and adherence to Islam.
eBook
The Alchemy of Domination, 2.0?1 A Response to Professor Kecia Ali
In her critical essay, “The Omnipresent Male Scholar,”2 Professor Kecia Alisets out to call attention to what she sees as the hegemonic privileging ofthe male scholarly perspective and the need to replace this with an academiclandscape more reflective and accommodating of the experiences andscholarly vantage points of women. To this end, she profiles the works ofseveral (Muslim) men in Islamic Studies (myself included) and highlightsthe various ways in which they omit, overlook, undervalue, or dismiss thetopic of women or the scholarly views and interventions of female scholars.Her arguments are reiterated and expanded (this time without naming hertargets) in her Ismail R. al-Faruqi Memorial Lecture delivered at the 2017annual conference of the American Academy of Religion.3 The present essayaims to respond to Professor Ali’s assessment of my work, most specificallyIslam and the Blackamerican (and to a lesser extent, Islam and theProblem of Black Suffering) alongside some of the broader issues she raisesas part of her general critique. I will leave it to the other male scholars sheprofiles to respond to what she has to say about their work ...
Journal Article
Charles Long's Religion of Oppugnancy and Blackamerican Islam
Charles Long's concept of oppugnancy was central to his interpretation of Black Religion. While his primary engagement was with Blackamericans in their encounter with Christianity as part of the Columbian event that marked the ‘discovery’ of the new world, Long understood that a faithful description of Black Religion would have to go beyond Christianity and include non-Christian groups and expressions. Included among the latter was Islam. But Long never got around to bringing Islam among Blackamericans into a full conversation with his concept of Black Religion. The present paper is a preliminary effort in this regard, with the primary aim of testing the extent to which Long's “oppugnancy” could be successfully mapped onto Islam.
El concepto de opugnación de Charles Long fue fundamental para su interpretación de la religión de los negros. Si bien su compromiso principal fue con los negroamericanos en su encuentro con el cristianismo como parte del evento colombino que marcó el “descubrimiento” del nuevo mundo, Long entendió que una descripción fiel de la religión negra tendría que ir más allá del cristianismo e incluir grupos y expresiones no cristianos. Dentro de estos últimos se encontraba el islam. Sin embargo, Long nunca pudo llevar el islam entre los negroamericanos a una conversación completa con su concepto de religión negra. El presente ensayo es un esfuerzo preliminar en este sentido, con el objetivo principal de examinar hasta qué punto la “opugnación” de Long podría correlacionarse exitosamente con el islam.
Journal Article
Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering
In his controversial 1973 book, Is God a White Racist?, William R. Jones sharply criticized black theologians for their agnostic approach to black suffering, noting that the doctrine of an ominibenevolent God poses very significant problems for a perennially oppressed community. He proposed a “humanocentric theism” which denies God’s sovereignty over human history and imputes autonomous agency to humans. By rendering humans alone responsible for moral evil, Jones’s theology freed blacks to revolt against the evil of oppression without revolting against God. This book now places Jones’s argument in conversation with the classical schools of Islamic theology. The problem confronting the black community is not simply proving that God exists, states this book, but rather establishing that God cares. No religious expression that fails to tackle the problem of black suffering can hope to enjoy a durable tenure in the black community. For the Muslim, therefore, it is essential to find a Quranic/Islamic grounding for the protest-oriented agenda of black religion. That is the task the book undertakes here.
eBook
Initiative to Stop the Violence
Formerly one of the largest and most militant Islamic organizations in the Middle East, Egypt's al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyah is believed to have played an instrumental role in numerous acts of global terrorism, including the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In later years, however, the organization issued a surprising renunciation of violence, repudiating its former ideology and replacing it with a shari'a-based understanding and assessment of the purpose and proper application of jihad.This key manifesto of modern Islamist thought is now available to an English-speaking audience in an eminently readable translation by noted Islamic scholar Sherman A. Jackson. Unlike other Western and Muslim critiques of violent extremism, this important work emerges from within the movement of Middle Eastern Islamic activism, both challenging and enriching prevailing notions about the role of Islamists in fighting the scourge of extremist politics, blind anti-Westernism and, alas, wayward jihad.
eBook
The Islamic Secular
It is common to assume an inherent conflict between the substance of the category “religion” and the category “secular.” Given its putative rejection of the separation between the sacred and the profane, this conflict is presumed to be all the more solid in Islam. But even assuming Islam’s rejection of the sacred/profane dichotomy, there may be other ways of defining the secular in Islam and of thinking about its relationship with the religion. This is what the present essay sets out to do. By taking Sharia as its point of departure, it looks at the latter’s self-imposed limits as the boundary between a mode of assessing human acts that is grounded in concrete revelational sources (and/or their extension) and modes of assessing human acts that are independent of such sources, yet not necessarily outside God’s adjudicative gaze. This non-shar‘ī realm, it is argued, is the realm of the “Islamic secular.” It is “secular” inasmuchas it is differentiated from Sharia as the basis for assessing human acts. It remains “Islamic,” however, and thus “religious,” in its rejection of the notion of proceeding “as if God did not exist.” As I will show, this distinction between the shar‘ī and the nonshar‘ ī has a long pedigree in the Islamic legal (and theological) tradition. As such, the notion of the Islamic secular is more of an excavation than an innovation.
Journal Article
Islamic Law, Muslims and American Politics
In this article I ask whether and how Islamic law constricts American Muslims in their ability to negotiate the applied socio-political order. Assuming sharī'ah to be their point of departure, I ask if their efforts are religiously legitimate or purely pragmatic and necessarily oblivious to Islamic law. In this context, I explore how Islamic law is negotiated across space and time, the degree of recognition it accords to local (including non-Muslim) custom, and the distinction between jurisdiction of law and jurisdiction of fact. I also investigate the question of sharīah's overall scope and jurisdiction and how this impinges upon Islamic law's relationship with the secular. Among the arguments I make is that numerous aspects of the American socio-political order fall outside the parameters of the strictly shar'ῑ and, as such, Muslims may negotiate these without relying upon or giving offense to Islamic law.
Journal Article
