By examining a wide range of Arabic and Persian literature from the eighth to the thirteenth century, Louise Marlow shows the tension that existed between the traditional egalitarian ideal of early Islam, and the hierarchical impulses of the classical period. The literature demonstrates that while Islam's initial orientation was markedly egalitarian, the social aspect of this egalitarianism was soon undermined in the aftermath of Islam's political success, and as hierarchical social ideas from older cultures in the Middle East were incorporated into the new polity. Although the memory of its early promise never entirely receded, social egalitarianism quickly came to be associated with political subversion. This 1997 book will be of use to a wide readership of Islamic historians and of scholars assessing the impact of the modern Islamic revival.
Islamic scriptural sources offer potentially radical notions of equality. Yet medieval Islamic philosophers chose to establish a hierarchical, male-centered virtue ethics. In Gendered Morality, Zahra Ayubi rethinks the tradition of Islamic philosophical ethics from a feminist critical perspective. She calls for a philosophical turn in the study of gender in Islam based on resources for gender equality that are unlocked by feminist engagement with the Islamic ethical tradition. Developing a lens for a feminist philosophy of Islam, Ayubi analyzes constructions of masculinity, femininity, and gender relations in classic works of philosophical ethics. In close readings of foundational texts by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, Nasir-ad Din Tusi, and Jalal ad-Din Davani, she interrogates how these thinkers conceive of the ethical human being as an elite male within a hierarchical cosmology built on the exclusion of women and nonelites. Yet in the course of prescribing ethical behavior, the ethicists speak of complex gendered and human relations that contradict their hierarchies. Their metaphysical premises about the nature of the divine, humanity, and moral responsibility indicate a potential egalitarian core. Gendered Morality offers a vital and disruptive new perspective on patriarchal Islamic ethics and metaphysics, showing the ways in which the philosophical tradition can support the aims of gender justice and human flourishing.
This book represents the perspective of a number of concerned and dedicated Muslim scholars. It is a "vision" which embodies the basic principles of Islamic methodology, coupled with an action plan to realize the reconstruction of Muslim thought and the Islamization of the humanities and the social sciences. The International Institute of Islamic Thought presents this book to the Muslim ummah as an action plan. It is meant as a guide to be adopted thereby to foster the awareness of ummah of its worth and potential, of the real causes of its civilizational crisis and of the ways and means to overcome malaise.
Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong. The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected. Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism. Table of Contents: The Question of Egalitarian Society Hierarchy and Equality Putting Down Aggressors Equality and Its Causes A Wider View of Egalitarianism The Hominoid Political Spectrum Ancestral Politics The Evolution of Egalitarian Society Paleolithic Politics and Natural Selection Ambivalence and Compromise in Human Nature References Index Reviews of this book: This well-written book, geared toward an audience with background in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences but accessible to a broad readership, raises two general questions: 'What is an egalitarian society?' and 'How have these societies evolved?'...[Christopher Boehm] takes the reader on a journey from the Arctic to the Americas, from Australia to Africa, in search of hunter-gatherer and tribal societies that emanate the egalitarian ethos--one that promotes generosity, altruism and sharing but forbids upstartism, aggression and egoism. Throughout this journey, Boehm tantalizes the reader with vivid anthropological accounts of ridicule, criticism, ostracism and even execution--prevalent tactics used by subordinates in egalitarian societies to level the social playing field...Hierarchy in the Forest is an interesting and thought-provoking book that is surely an important contribution to perspectives on human sociality and politics. --Ryan Earley, American Scientist Reviews of this book: Combing an exhaustive ethnographic survey of human societies from groups of hunter-gatherers to contemporary residents of the Balkans with a detailed analysis of the behavioral attributes of non-human primates (chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos), Boehm focuses on whether humans are hierarchical or egalitarian by nature...[Boehm's hypotheses] are invariably intriguing and well documented...He raises topics of wide interest and his book should get attention. --Publishers Weekly Boehm has been the first to look at egalitarianism with a cold, unromantic eye. He sees it as a victory over hierarchical tendencies, which are equally marked in our species. I would predict that his insightful examination will reverberate within anthropology and the social sciences as well as among biologists interested in the evolution of social systems. --Frans de Waal, Emory University Hierarchy in the Forest is an original and stimulating contribution to thinking about the origins of egalitarianism. I personally find Boehm's ideas convincing, but whether one agrees with him or not, he has formulated his hypotheses in such a way that this book is likely to set the terms of the discussion for the forseeable future. --Barbara Smuts, University of Michigan The most unique and interesting feature of this clear, well written book is the way Boehm links the study of nonhuman primates (particularly chimpanzees) to traditional concepts of political anthropology. As a political scientist, I was intrigued by Boehm's suggestion that democracy, both ancient and modern, could be understood as the expression of the same natural dispositions that support the egalitarianism of nomadic bands and sedentary tribes. I expect that many scholars in biology, anthropology, and the social sciences would learn from this stimulating book. Even those who disagree with Boehm's arguments are likely to be provoked in instructive ways. --Larry Arnhart, Northern Illinois University Chris Boehm boldly and cogently attacks a whole orthodoxy in anthropology which sees hunter-gatherer 'egalitarianism' as somehow the basic form of human society. No praise can be too high for Boehm's brilliant and courageous book. --Robin Fox, Rutgers University
The debates on 'Islam and Modernity' clearly include in their analysis notions of the State. Abdelillah Belkeziz here charts the development of the concept of 'the state' (al-dawlah) in Islamic discourse over the last two centuries. The result is a tour de force survey of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern era, which encompasses three successive waves: the modernist trends of the early and later reformers like Sayyed Jamal Eddin Al-Afghani; the dogmatism of ideologues like Hasan Al-Bana; and the rhetoric of revivalists like the Ayatollah Khomeini. Through this analysis, Belkeziz argues that modern Islamic political thought succeeded in producing ideologies, but ultimately failed to produce a unified theory of state. This work is an essential encyclopedic resource for all scholars and researchers of Political Islam and will become a standard work in the field.
Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.
The book examines the growing tension between social movements that embrace egalitarian and inclusivist views of national and global politics, most notably classical liberalism, and those that advance social hierarchy and national exclusivism, such as neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and national populism. In exploring issues relating to tensions and conflicts around globalization, the book identifies historical patterns of convergence and divergence rooted in the monotheistic traditions, beginning with the ancient Israelites that dominated the Near East during the Axial age, through Islamic civilization, and finally by considering the idealism-realism tensions in modern times. One thing remained constant throughout the various historical stages that preceded our current moment of global convergence: a recurring tension between transcendental idealism and various forms of realism. Transcendental idealism, which prioritize egalitarian and universal values, pushed periodically against the forces of realism that privilege established law and power structure. Equipped with the idealism-realism framework, the book examines the consequences of European realism that justified the imperialistic venture into Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in the name of liberation and liberalization. The ill-conceived strategy has, ironically, engendered the very dysfunctional societies that produce the waves of immigrants in constant motion from the South to the North, simultaneously as it fostered the social hierarchy that transfer external tensions into identity politics within the countries of the North. The book focuses particularly on the role played historically by Islamic rationalism in translating the monotheistic egalitarian outlook into the institutions of religious pluralism, legislative and legal autonomy, and scientific enterprise at the foundation of modern society. It concludes by shedding light on the significance of the Muslim presence in Western cultures as humanity draws slowly but consistently towards what we may come to recognize as the Global Age. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003203360, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This study analyses the commentaries of four Muslim intellectuals who have turned to scripture as a liberating text to confront an array of problems, from patriarchy, racism, and empire to poverty and interreligious communal violence. Shadaab Rahemtulla considers the exegeses of the South African Farid Esack (b. 1956), the Indian Asghar Ali Engineer (1939-2013), the African American Amina Wadud (b. 1952), and the Pakistani-American Asma Barlas (b. 1950). The authors considered all proritise the Qur'an over the hadith. Rahemtulla considers this an essential move for a Muslim liberation theology and concludes with proposals with a new construal of what a politically radical Islam might mean, sharply differentitated from Islamism. This work provides a rich analysis of the thought-ways of specific Muslim intellectuals, it substantiates a broadly framed school of thought. Rahemtulla draws out their specific and general importance without displaying an uncritical sympathy. He sheds light on the impact of modern exegetical commentary which is more self-conciously concerned with historical context and present realities. In a mutally reinforcing way, this work thus illuminates both the role of agency and heremnetucal approaches in Modern Islamic thought.
The 'mirror for princes' genre of literature offers advice to a ruler, or ruler-to-be, concerning the exercise of royal power and the wellbeing of the body politic. This anthology presents selections from the 'mirror literature' produced in the Islamic Early Middle Period (roughly the tenth to twelfth centuries CE), newly translated from the original Arabic and Persian, as well as a previously translated Turkish example. In these texts, authors advise on a host of political issues which remain compelling to our contemporary world: political legitimacy and the ruler's responsibilities, the limits of the ruler's power and the limits of the subjects' duty of obedience, the maintenance of social stability, causes of unrest, licit and illicit uses of force, the functions of governmental offices and the status and rights of diverse social groups. Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes is a unique introduction to this important body of literature, showing how these texts reflect and respond to the circumstances and conditions of their era, and of ours.
