I have just finished reading The Mosaic of Islam (the ebook version)
I have some comments and a couple of corrections.
P. 38: "most Muslims do not understand Islam correctly." I find this shocking. It assumes that there is a correct Islam. There is a historical Islam not a correct or a wrong one. As Ahmad Shahab put it beautifully there are contradictions and coherence of what Islam is in most Muslims. It has been the case in most of Islam's history. And the spectrum is so wide from Mauritania to Indonesia..
P. 58: There is no socio-political explanation of the reason(s)/background behind the emergence of Muhammaed and Islam. There is no mention at all of the state and the character of the new society as if the changes in the juriprudence just sprung from a Caliph's brain with no connection to the material life.
P. 66: "Part of the reasons where there is so much chaos ..." How does the beginning of the chaos in Libya (an uprising and NATO intervnetion), Syria (a non-religious uprising and the brutal repression of the regime), Iraq (invasion, occupation and the destruction of the social fabric of the Iraqi spciety), and Yemen (poverty and marginalisation and Saudi intervention with imperialist support) relate to understanding Shari'a or not understanding it?
Furthermore, there is no mention of historical factors which led to this: colonialism, failure of the renaissance, the encroachment of capitalist modernity, fragmentation of the umma, etc.
P. 144: Regarding the "violence of M. Ibn Abdu -al-Wahhab. "Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had preached a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet and repudiated such later developments as the Shiah, Sufism, Falsafah, and the jurisprudence (fiqh) on which all other Muslim ulema depended. He was particularly distressed by the popular veneration of holy men and their tombs, which he condemned as idolatry. Even so, Wahhabism was not inherently violent; indeed, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had refused to sanction the wars of his patron, Ibn Saud of Najd, because he [Ibn Saud] was fighting simply for wealth and glory. It was only after his retirement that Wahhabis became more aggressive ..." Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood, Vintage ed., 2014, p. 337
P. 161: an issue of precision should be established. Muhammad, the first name of Ibn Abdu al-Wahhab should be added to the name. His brother Sulayman actually disagreed with him on the fundamental issue of calling other Muslims heretics and Jihad must be launched against them.
P. 180: The argument of producing a counter to "Islamic terrorism"
through producing a counter to its theology I think is very one-sided. It excludes or relegates to the background, the social, economic and political circumstances of such terrorism. It also excludes the structural violence (state terrorism, and the violence of poverty, dislocation, humiliation, unemployment, resentment, etc).
The Crusaders had influenced Ibn Taymiyya's outlook. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian suffering influenced Bin Laden. Why can't we say the same about the sanctions and the occupation of Iraq and the role that played in boosting "militant Islam"? Who are the thinkers behind the movement? What was the role played by the Arab regimes and their Western imperialist ones in supporting sime Islamist organisation to counter-weight the nationalist and leftist movements? What was the social background of Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi, for example? Where do the recruiters of "militant Islam" come from? Is the high rate of unemployed graduates and social marginalization a push factor towards joining "militant Islam"... See Assef Bayat's Life As Politics, for example. Compare this with Karen Armstrong's analysis and Jonathan Brown's Misquoting Muhammad.
P. 212: Inaccuracy: murabitun comes from the verb raabata and and thus the noun ribaat (the latter means rampart/the wall of the medina). Muraabit is one who is ready for a battle at a fortress or a rampart.
P 232: remove "not" in "they even had not".
There is no mention at all whether ISIS was part (and partly a product) of the counter-revolution and the failure of the uprisings of 2011. Other forces include the regional regime and imperialist powers. As one reviewer put it, Mourad "is quite dismissive of the Arab Spring and does not really reference the catastrophic role of wider inter-imperialist competition." (Dave Weltman)
I recommend the book. I have learnt a few things from it.
I have some comments and a couple of corrections.
P. 38: "most Muslims do not understand Islam correctly." I find this shocking. It assumes that there is a correct Islam. There is a historical Islam not a correct or a wrong one. As Ahmad Shahab put it beautifully there are contradictions and coherence of what Islam is in most Muslims. It has been the case in most of Islam's history. And the spectrum is so wide from Mauritania to Indonesia..
P. 58: There is no socio-political explanation of the reason(s)/background behind the emergence of Muhammaed and Islam. There is no mention at all of the state and the character of the new society as if the changes in the juriprudence just sprung from a Caliph's brain with no connection to the material life.
P. 66: "Part of the reasons where there is so much chaos ..." How does the beginning of the chaos in Libya (an uprising and NATO intervnetion), Syria (a non-religious uprising and the brutal repression of the regime), Iraq (invasion, occupation and the destruction of the social fabric of the Iraqi spciety), and Yemen (poverty and marginalisation and Saudi intervention with imperialist support) relate to understanding Shari'a or not understanding it?
Furthermore, there is no mention of historical factors which led to this: colonialism, failure of the renaissance, the encroachment of capitalist modernity, fragmentation of the umma, etc.
P. 144: Regarding the "violence of M. Ibn Abdu -al-Wahhab. "Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had preached a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet and repudiated such later developments as the Shiah, Sufism, Falsafah, and the jurisprudence (fiqh) on which all other Muslim ulema depended. He was particularly distressed by the popular veneration of holy men and their tombs, which he condemned as idolatry. Even so, Wahhabism was not inherently violent; indeed, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had refused to sanction the wars of his patron, Ibn Saud of Najd, because he [Ibn Saud] was fighting simply for wealth and glory. It was only after his retirement that Wahhabis became more aggressive ..." Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood, Vintage ed., 2014, p. 337
P. 161: an issue of precision should be established. Muhammad, the first name of Ibn Abdu al-Wahhab should be added to the name. His brother Sulayman actually disagreed with him on the fundamental issue of calling other Muslims heretics and Jihad must be launched against them.
P. 180: The argument of producing a counter to "Islamic terrorism"
through producing a counter to its theology I think is very one-sided. It excludes or relegates to the background, the social, economic and political circumstances of such terrorism. It also excludes the structural violence (state terrorism, and the violence of poverty, dislocation, humiliation, unemployment, resentment, etc).
The Crusaders had influenced Ibn Taymiyya's outlook. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian suffering influenced Bin Laden. Why can't we say the same about the sanctions and the occupation of Iraq and the role that played in boosting "militant Islam"? Who are the thinkers behind the movement? What was the role played by the Arab regimes and their Western imperialist ones in supporting sime Islamist organisation to counter-weight the nationalist and leftist movements? What was the social background of Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi, for example? Where do the recruiters of "militant Islam" come from? Is the high rate of unemployed graduates and social marginalization a push factor towards joining "militant Islam"... See Assef Bayat's Life As Politics, for example. Compare this with Karen Armstrong's analysis and Jonathan Brown's Misquoting Muhammad.
P. 212: Inaccuracy: murabitun comes from the verb raabata and and thus the noun ribaat (the latter means rampart/the wall of the medina). Muraabit is one who is ready for a battle at a fortress or a rampart.
P 232: remove "not" in "they even had not".
There is no mention at all whether ISIS was part (and partly a product) of the counter-revolution and the failure of the uprisings of 2011. Other forces include the regional regime and imperialist powers. As one reviewer put it, Mourad "is quite dismissive of the Arab Spring and does not really reference the catastrophic role of wider inter-imperialist competition." (Dave Weltman)
I recommend the book. I have learnt a few things from it.
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