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WHAT'S
THE REAL CHALLENGE FOR THE MUSLIM `DISSIDENT' SCHOLARS IN THE
WEST?
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by
Abdulaziz Sachedina
University of Virginia |
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[This
piece was written in response to the article on "Islamic
Studies' Young Turks," by Danny Postel in The Chronicle for
Higher Education, September 13, 2002.] Click
here to view article |
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(Link
to article provided with AM Wiebe Copyright permission)
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After eight months in Iran, with intense conversations and interactions
with both scholars at the Islamic seminaries and at the universities,
it is evident to me that without the translations and dissemination
of the `dissident' scholarship produced in the West, it is impossible
to see how the rethinking and the awaited reform among Muslims
will ever take off. Whatever self-critical and intelligent research
we, as Muslim scholars, undertake in the American and European
universities, it is going to remain strictly academic, without
any influence over the way our counterparts in the Islamic world
think and teach. We are not only faced with irrelevance in the
Muslim world. Our influence here in Muslim communities in the
North American situation is stifled and confined to the Ivory
Tower of the academia. This is even more dangerous for our groundbreaking
work, because if it cannot find readers except among non-Muslims,
and that also among academicians who applaud and support our work,
the situation must be regarded even more critical right in our
back yard. The level of irrelevance of the new `dissident' language
that has evolved to speak about Islam and human rights, democracy,
and women's rights can be observed in the kinds of people invited
to speak in the Muslim conventions and organizations throughout
the Western world.
Understandably, only few academicians, who have learnt to cheer
Muslim crowds with points of `self- glorification thesis' about
Islam and its `peace-loving' civilization have been invited to
address these conventions. The narrow-minded attitude regarding
this refreshingly new scholarship can be observed even among highly
educated and professional Muslims in this country. One would have
thought that they would be the first ones to understand and appreciate
the value of research that is being conducted by this new generation
of believing Muslims. Not so, when it comes to preserving the
security of ignorance in the matter of Islam. The greater need
to learn about the basic civic virtues and responsibilities cannot
be overemphasized in the context of North America. In the aftermath
of September 11, we discovered to our horror the kind of antagonistic
worldview that was preached in a number of Muslim organizations
that depended for their knowledge on Islam as taught by the "native"
preachers from the Middle East, who taught their communities ways
to protect their 'pure' religion that was threatened by the so-called
Muslim academicians and the `enemies' of Islam in universities.
It is under these circumstances that one can objectively and sensibly
appreciate the work that is being done by the likes of Professor
Abd al-Karim Soroush in Iran and other places. Their work is in
the native languages of the people who are searching for relevance
of their religion in the modern times. Undoubtedly, their lives
are made extremely difficult by the autocratic regimes in the
region. But, what they write, even if it be an article on the
need to challenge religious absolutist power of the obscurantist
establishment, it does the work of thousands of books that we
produce away from places where people are thirsty to read or hear
something that generates hope for men and women, youth and children,
faced with oppression and suppression. With a long term experience
of working in the academia and the Muslim communities around the
country, I can demonstrate with much evidence that if we think
that our `dissident' scholarship is going to have an impact on
the native Muslim scholars, then it is no more than an illusion
connected with our self-importance as modern, liberal, reform-minded
Muslim scholars.
We need not only cultural legitimacy in order for us to reach
out the intelligent audience in the Middle East; but also the
means to transmit our research in the language that conveys ideas
to a wider, receptive Muslim audience. By inviting some of these
scholars from our native countries to participate in our deliberations
about our historical and critical methods of assessing scriptural
sources in Islam, we might score some points in our intellectual
interaction with them. But the tendency in academic conferences
on such topics is to invite the `converted'; whereas the challenge
lies in getting those who disagree with us, or even ridicule us
as `corrupted' by Western secular methods of assessing sacred
sources. Moreover, some of us did and continue to produce scholarship
that is Amerocentric and usually applauded by the West and, rewarded
by a secure job for us, maybe in one of the Ivy League schools.
However, I believe that there are a number of scholars in this
country whose scholarship could foster better interfaith and inter-communal
relations in our religiously pluralistic and democratic society.
If this new Islamic rethinking that is taking place in our midst
here can find proper platform for its dissemination, then it could
lead to a badly needed reform in the Muslim communities to see
themselves as others see them. I am under no illusion that such
an acceptance of the `dissident' scholarship in the North American
Muslim communities is distant. The influence of narrow-minded
and stultified Islam funded by petrodollars for over a quarter
century will take much longer to defeat. In the meantime, as a
Muslim scholar, I need to think of ways to reach out the community
that needs to reform the way it conceptualizes the world of disbelief
and acts upon the intolerance and bigotry that is preached and
taught in the mosques and Islamic centers in America and Europe.
This is the challenge that those of us in the West ought to think
seriously. Intolerance and bigotry are there in the field, and,
we can no longer afford to remain in the protected arena of the
academia.
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