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Field Notes article

Reflections on Human Personhood: An Islamic Perspective

Modernity has played havoc in appraising human personhood.  Science and technology are progressing unabatedly to improve the quality of human life, and yet the end result unwittingly points to further confusion in appreciating the natural and spiritual dimensions of the human person.  Increasingly, human beings appear mono-dimensionally geared towards improving and maintaining their physical form, devoid from a meaning that is connected with their total existence on the planet.

The indifference with which we treat human relationships today has prompted many religious leaders to assert the foundational religious mission of creating human communities that value their beliefs, practices, and interaction with fellow humans.  “Where are science and technology taking us?” is an oft-repeated question when biotechnology, through assisted reproduction or genetic engineering, interferes with the psychosomatic constitution of human beings and threatens to affect future generations undesirably.  What has a religious tradition like Islam, which has a documented history of encouraging and endorsing scientific research that benefits humanity as a form of devotion to God (‘ibada), to say about biotechnological research — whose benefits remain to be proven?

Religions emerge with a single most important purpose: to guide humanity toward spiritual and moral perfection by connecting them to one another.  They aim to steer humanity toward a meaningful life.  Spiritual and moral guidance prepares humanity to become the conduit for divine purposes on earth.  Besides divine revelation and endowed reason, the entire natural environment also contributes to human endeavors to further spiritual and material well-being.  Humans discover new resources through science and deepen their understanding of the underlining laws of nature that govern creation as a whole.  This is the juncture where human beings interact with the natural world to understand and garner its functionality to their advantage.  In this way, science is at the service of humanity to advance it to attain its divinely ordained personhood.

The Unfolding of Scientific Truth

In this sense, the future of human personhood is intimately intertwined with the unfolding of scientific truth.  The Qur’an captures the comprehensive mission of revelation from God in these terms: “We shall show them [human beings] our signs in horizons and in themselves, so that it will become clear that it is the truth.  Is it not enough that your Lord is witness over all things?” (Q. 41:54).  The “signs in the horizons” are, collectively, nature, which moves in an orderly fashion that suggests the purposiveness of creation; the “signs” in human beings suggest the human capacity to understand right from wrong and to promote the good of the larger community of which they are a part.

Yet phenomenal advancements in biotechnology reveal the tensions that may arise between scientific developments and religiously inspired conceptions of order and progress. For example, the claim that scientists can use genetic modifications to produce healthier babies or clone more desirable persons threatens the meaning of an individual’s organic connection to society and nature. The promise of progress through scientific manipulation seems to conflict with the priorities of morally and spiritually aware members of a community that consciously wills justice and compassion for its members in accordance with a divine order or plan.

No Harm, No Harassment

Besides the need to understand and live within the order of nature, humans need to search for practical ways to pursue their individual interests as well as the collective good.  The Qur’an emphasizes the purpose of interpersonal relations by reminding humanity that they have been created of a male and a female and made into nations and tribes in order for the people to “recognize each other” (Q. 39:13).  What is the best course of action that people can adopt to “recognize one another?”

The most fundamental principle of Muslim social ethics is “No harm, no harassment,” which means there shall be no harming, injuring or hurting of one human by another in the first instance, nor in requital.  In other words, no course of action that leads to one human being harming another should be adopted.  This principle has served as an important check on the potentially dehumanizing implications of advanced medical technology and research in the life sciences.  There is a clear need for moral analysis about what is permissible or impermissible when human life and dignity — human personhood — are at stake.

In a world characterized by competition over recognition and financial advantage, the potential implications of biomedical research that deals with human subjects increase the need for a regulatory body that can appraise ethically questionable modes of research and experimentation.  Although international standards for biomedical research involving human subjects are gradually being adopted in Muslim countries, there is a widespread lack of accountability among medical professionals and researchers in the life sciences who often lack the training and sophistication needed to deal with major ethical and theological quandaries.

There is no way to separate the subject and the object of experimentation when the investigation deals with human beings.  Yet no amount of medical erudition or expertise can by itself provide the ethical criteria necessary for rulings that may involve life-and-death decisions.  Respect for human personhood is built upon one’s personal moral convictions and the ability to consider the merit of necessary particular scientific intervention in a person’s course of medical treatment.  In the final analysis, any and all experimentation dealing with human beings carries with it a moral responsibility – a responsibility to the subject, who has a right to know, to comment, and to seek guidance before agreeing to any scientific intervention that can impact his or her personhood.

Abdulaziz Sachedina
Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ph.D., is Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His research and writing focuses on the field of Islamic Law, Ethics, and Theology (Sunni and Shiite). More recently, he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including Interfaith and Intrafaith Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and Islam and Human Rights.
Field Notes article

Human Persons and Human Dignity: Implications for Dialogue and Action

What is the human person? As human beings, we are biological as well as social creatures; we inhabit both physical and cultural space. What distinguishes us as persons, and not just as organisms, is a culture of human dignity – the shared idea that, as human beings, we are entitled to respect and recognition from one another.

Where does the dignity of the human person come from? Broadly speaking, one can distinguish secular-scientific and religious foundations.

From a secular and scientific angle, we have dignity and should respect and recognize one another because of our common humanity. Some emphasize our shared capacity for independent thought; in line with Immanuel Kant, they see autonomy and rationality as a foundation for human dignity.  Others focus more on our ability to identify and sympathize with others, an approach related to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of “pitié” and Adam Smith’s “moral sentiments.”

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and neuroscience have deepened our understanding of this latter, relational approach to the foundations of human dignity. In the long run, evolution appears to have favored the development of ecological sensitivity, group identification and solidarity, and cooperation in the acquisition and shared use of resources. In the here and now, new developments in neuroscience suggest that our brains are much more than autonomous information processors; they change and grow through our interactions and relationships with others and with our external environments.

Interestingly, scientific methods that do not begin with the concept of human dignity are increasingly leading to a conclusion compatible with it — that we have good evolutionary and biological reasons to acknowledge one another as fellow human beings worthy of respect and recognition and therefore endowed with an intrinsic dignity.

For Catholicism and Islam, the focus of the Contending Modernities project, the dignity of the human person has divine foundations. Because God created each of us and cares for each of us, each individual person has an intrinsic and inviolable dignity. The moral theology of the person is most developed in Christianity; it is connected with the mystery of the Trinity (one God in three persons), and in the Incarnation (God becoming a human being.) But the idea of the person, as a creature of an all powerful and merciful God, also plays an important role in Islam. God reveals his law to humankind and calls us to live as His co-regents on earth, honoring one another with recognition and respect.

There is, of course, a fundamental asymmetry between the secular-scientific and the religious understandings of the human person. The non-believer will reject the idea that the dignity of the human person has divine origins, while the believer will typically assert that human dignity has both divine and natural foundations.

Yet this asymmetry need not be a barrier to dialogue. In our contemporary era, even those who reject the idea of human dignity as fuzzy and unscientific generally affirm the importance of according basic respect and recognition to all human beings. The basic idea of the human person and of universal human dignity is shared, even as terminology differs. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emerged out of decades of contestation within and across secular and religious traditions – and in revulsion against the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust – remains the clearest and most powerful expression of this far-reaching consensus.

In practice we know that this broad contemporary convergence around the idea of the human person and human dignity, across the secular-religious divide, coexists with fierce disagreement on a range of ethical and policy questions. Is the human embryo or fetus a human person deserving of protection? Are primates or other non-human animals to be considered persons with intrinsic dignity or rights? Should governments work to secure equality of opportunity for their citizens and provide a minimum standard of living for all? Should governments and citizens share their wealth with those in need outside, as well as inside, a nation’s borders? Questions relating to the human person and human dignity can be multiplied across economic, social, cultural, and foreign policy domains (even if, in the United States, they tend to center on bioethics).

A key challenge in such ethical and policy debates, within and across secular-scientific and religious communities, is to keep the ideas of the human person and of human dignity in the foreground. That means asking what is at stake for particular people and their livelihoods in particular contexts, as well as thinking through the ethical implications of our individual and collective decisions for global humanity, at a time when the rapid advance of technology and of globalization in all its dimensions is rendering those decisions more complex and consequential.

A focus on the human person has a further implication, perhaps the most challenging of all – that in all these ethical and policy controversies, we should acknowledge the humanity and dignity of our interlocutors, no matter how much we may disagree.

Thomas Banchoff
Thomas Banchoffis Vice President for Global Engagement at Georgetown University. He also serves as founding director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and as Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His research centers on religious and ethical issues in world politics. Dr. Banchoff is the author of Embryo Politics: Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies(Cornell University Press, 2011).
Global Currents article

Latest Contending Modernities Report Sparks Debate on the Future of Multiculturalism

Following the launch of the latest Contending Modernities publication “Making Multiculturalism Work”, a range of politicians, scholars and journalists have engaged with the findings of author David Barclay of the Contextual Theology Center. Here, Barclay outlines reaction to the report.

The latest Contending Modernities publication, produced in conjunction with Theos, has attracted significant attention since its launch at the end of June. The report’s main claim, that the way towards a sustainable ‘multicultural settlement’ is not through new theories or top-down policies but through grass-roots relationships across difference, has sparked comment and renewed calls for engagement on these issues amongst prominent politicians, academics and journalists.

The Rt Hon David Lammy MP speaks at the launch of 'Making Multiculturalism Work'
The Rt Hon David Lammy MP speaks at the launch of ‘Making Multiculturalism Work’

The Economist described the report as a “clarion call for ‘political friendships across difference’ in which people of various faiths and no faith form local coalitions to attain their ends”. Noting that the central thesis “challenges some secularist thinking about broad coalitions” the article explored how Making Multiculturalism Work was “plunging into” the “hard debate about the terms on which people of different religions and none can or should co-operate to achieve common goals.”

Launching the report in Westminster, the Rt Hon David Lammy MP described it as “a timely and important piece of work”, and said it was “refreshing to read a report that focuses on practical multiculturalism, moving away from theory and looking at how relational politics adds meaning to theoretical discussion of this challenging issue”. Professor Adam Dinham of Goldsmiths, University of London, argued that “anyone interested in the successful expression of multiculturalism in action should read this report and welcome it for the practical contribution it makes to a fractious debate at a crucial moment.”

The Revd Dr Michael Ipgrave, Church of England Bishop of Woolwich — where British soldier Lee Rigby was recently murdered ­— also welcomed the report. He said that it “rightly contests the elitist view that people and organisations need to prove their progressive credentials to be considered acceptable as partners” and that it “points to a way of engaging which is more widespread, more invigorating, and more effective than any ‘-ism’: the core human practice of forming friendships.”

Finally, Professor Luke Bretherton of Duke University said “This important report presents a constructive way forward on one of the neuralgic issues facing contemporary Britain: how to forge a common life between different faith groups and people of no faith without demanding everyone abandons what they cherish about their way of life in order to do so.”

Several other news and comment websites have featured articles on the report, including The Huffington Post, Prospect Magazine,Conservative Home and Left Foot Forward.

David Barclay
David Barclay is a Partner at Good Faith Partnership helping leaders in politics, business, faith, and charity to work together towards shared goals. From 2012-2016, he was the Faith in Public Life Officer at the Contextual Theology Centre, based in East London, which helps churches to engage with their communities. He is a former President of the Oxford University Student Union, and has spent two years living and working in Western China.
Global Currents article

Addressing Global Restrictions on Religion: The Need for Increased Positive Examples from OIC Member States

Despite the expressed hope of many world leaders that the political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 would lead to greater freedoms and fewer religious restrictions for the people of the region, research suggests that the region’s already high level of restrictions on religion have continued to increase in recent years. A recent report titled Arab Spring Adds to Global Restrictions on Religion, produced by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, is the fourth annual report in a series that measures and analyzes government restrictions on, and social hostilities toward, religion.

Focusing on 2011, the report found that while government restrictions on religion in the Middle East and North Africa region remained high, social hostilities markedly increased. For instance, the number of countries in the region experiencing sectarian or communal violence between religious groups doubled from five to ten. We can assume that next year’s Pew Report will not present a fundamentally different conclusion as the turmoil in the region continued throughout 2012.

Looking for Signs of Progress

While the overall picture painted by the report (pdf) is one of increasing restrictions and social hostilities, I was particularly interested to read examples of governments and societies around the world attempting to address the rising tide of restrictions through a variety of initiatives and actions, from encouraging interfaith dialogue to modifying laws and policies. Specifically, I tried to identify any positive news or good practices displayed by member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which were highlighted in the Pew Center’s analysis.

According to the report, “efforts to combat or redress religious discrimination and increase tolerance were reported in a total of 76 countries in 2011.” Policy changes were one tool used to decrease religious restrictions, such as official recognition of previously unrecognized religious groups. Two examples of this were the official registration of the Roman Catholic Church by the government of Azerbaijan in July 2011 and the Albanian government’s recognition of Judaism as an official religion in September 2011. Other initiatives sought to prevent violence against religious minorities by increasing security deployments, as was the case with the government of Bangladesh ensuring the peaceful celebration of Hindu, Christian and Buddhist festivals in 2011.

Interfaith dialogue was another vehicle utilized in addressing religious restrictions and social hostilities towards religious groups. The signing of an agreement between the governments of Saudi Arabia, Austria and Spain to establish the King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) in Vienna, Austria, provides an example of inter-state cooperation to improve interreligious and intercultural tolerance.

The report states that “in addition to interfaith dialogue, other educational and training initiatives to increase religious tolerance and decrease religious tensions occurred in a total of 39 countries in 2011.” In some cases, educational projects focused on groups that were considered likely to be influenced by extremism, as was the case in Uganda where police outreach to Muslim youth increased following the 2010 terrorist attacks. Other initiatives, such as the sponsorship of 10 Omani students to participate in a religious pluralism program at Cambridge University, focused on building tolerance through higher education.

I was happy to see the first workshop of the OIC co-sponsored Istanbul Process referenced as an example of training initiatives involving multiple countries. The event, which focused on “training government officials in effective outreach to religious communities,” drew representatives from 26 governments and four international organizations to Washington D.C. at the invitation of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Istanbul Process was initiated by OIC Secretary General Ihsanoglu and Secretary Clinton in July 2011 following the consensual adoption of the OIC sponsored Resolution 16/18 by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2011. The resolution was a landmark development in bringing an end to the controversy and divide over the concept of defamation of religion at the intergovernmental level.

On a personal note, as a Turkish citizen I was pleased by the Turkish government’s decision in August 2011, allowing for the compensation or return of properties to non-Muslim communities whose land had been confiscated by the state in 1936. This development was indicative of the governmental and societal interventions in 2011 in “a total of 29 countries on behalf of religious groups that previously had experienced problems acquiring land or obtaining building permits.” In this regard, another example was the Kuwaiti government’s decision to allocate land for the Coptic Orthodox Church to build a place of worship to accommodate its members in the country.

Coordinating Role of the OIC in Promoting Religious Tolerance

Despite these examples of positive progress in promoting religious tolerance, the question remains whether the 57 OIC member states will be able to counter the trend of increasing restrictions on religion and social hostilities toward religion in the coming years.

In a commitment to furthering necessary progress, the OIC should take on an even greater role in coordinating the efforts of the member states. Under the coordination of the OIC General Secretariat and the newly established OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC,) a dialogue should be initiated encouraging OIC member states to voluntarily exchange information on their interfaith efforts and protections for religious freedom. This collaboration would be instrumental in highlighting the good practices of many OIC member states on the international stage and setting standards of best practice for those countries that are still developing their efforts on these issues.

While negative perceptions and discriminatory practices targeting Muslim communities in some Western countries are increasing at alarming levels, open dialogue on this scale will preempt the perception that OIC member states focus only on Muslim communities in the West. Rather, it will serve to further interfaith dialogue focused on the protection of all faiths and beliefs. It is only through the translation of transparent and inclusive dialogue into governmental and social action that we can we begin to address and combat the trend of increasing restrictions on religion in order to protect the religious freedoms of future generations.

Ufuk Gokcen
Amb. Ufuk Gokcen is the Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to the United Nations in New York since April 2010. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Gokcen, a Turkish national, was the political adviser to the OIC Secretary General from 2005 to 2010 at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. From 2001 to 2005, he was First Secretary/Counsellor and Deputy Head of his country’s Embassy in Syria. Previously, he served at the Turkish Embassies in Riyadh and Muscat as well as at the Middle East Department of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Presently he also acts as a key representative of the OIC General Secretariat to the US State Department.
Field Notes article

Local ‘Political Friendships’: The Key to Making Multiculturalism Work

Towards the start of my research for Contending Modernities on multiculturalism I found myself watching a TV debate on the topic. The panel touched all the bases you would expect to be covered in such a debate – national identity, immigration, religious and political extremism – and yet it was difficult not to feel that the discussion was floating above some of the real life challenges of multiculturalism, captured perfectly by one politician’s insistence that we should ‘forget about blending people and just build the most beautiful mosaic society we can’.

Six months later, having just finished writing the report, I heard the very sad news that the wife of a man I had met through my research had suffered a stroke. This man was part of a multicultural father and son’s group in East London that used a small grant to organise monthly trips with activities like camping and archery. The amazing thing about this situation was that this very diverse group rallied around the family in the most incredible and practical way – from cooking meals to offering lifts to and from the hospital. In fact, the wives of the dads were even getting together – Hindus, Catholics and Muslims – to pray for this woman and her family.

The lesson of these two stories is the message of Making Multiculturalism Work – that overcoming the challenges presented by diversity requires fewer expert opinions and clever one-liners, and more local relationships between people of different faiths and ethnicities.

Political Friendships

My research set out to investigate how projects in the UK are already bringing diverse groups together and forming what Harvard scholar Danielle Allen has called  ‘political friendships’ across difference. In particular I looked at the UK government-funded Near Neighbours programme, which enables different faith groups to undertake social action projects together, and the civil society campaigning of community organisers as practiced by Citizens UK.

The first thing that became clear was the importance of working together. Dialogue is all very well, but if there is no tangible common action then it will be hard to create any sense of shared destiny. The Near Neighbours programme is a good example of how governments can contribute through giving small grants with the sole criteria that projects bring people together from different faiths or ethnicities. Such initiatives allow people to engage each other in ways that make sense to them, with nobody telling them what they should be doing or how.

Second, if people are going to move beyond surface level co-operation, they need to be free to share their deepest motivations. Citizens UK has been quick to recognise this, giving its participants chances to share ‘testimony’ in public meetings. This often involves the sharing of personal stories where themes that aren’t always permitted in the public sphere, such as  family and faith, are particularly in evidence. The result is that campaigners can trust each other to stick together when challenges arise because they know exactly what their collective efforts represent to each person involved.

Fostering Unlikely Alliances

Encouraging political friendships by building skills in working together and sharing core motivations involves making difficult choices. One challenge is in deciding who is considered acceptable to work with. There is something of an irony in ‘progressive’ circles that whilst outwardly championing diversity and difference, many people are often quite restrictive in who they will co-operate with in public. The example of the debate regarding whether political parties in the UK should be working with faith groups, which they might agree with on social justice but disagree profoundly with on issues of equality and personal morality, highlights this dilemma.

The experience of Citizens UK and Near Neighbours suggests a need to change the way that individuals and groups judge potential partners, moving from using a ‘progressive test’ of their beliefs to a ‘relational test’ of whether they can co-operate with people from different backgrounds. They have found that this more open form of cooperation can create unlikely alliances which are transformational for all involved, and that such experiences are actually more likely to soften fringe views than simply giving people the political cold shoulder.

The second challenge of the report is to those who might feel nervous about the idea of exploring core motivations because it could lead to the divisive subject of faith and religion coming up in public. Again, the experience of Near Neighbours and Citizens UK suggests that this fear is somewhat ungrounded. Instead, they found that people are usually quite good at negotiating fundamental differences themselves without relying on boundaries for what is and is not a publicly acceptable topic for discussion.

Practical Multiculturalism

The business of creating a more practical multiculturalism by promoting political friendships across difference might be a little more complex than it first seems. But at its heart this report has a very simple message: that the future success of multiculturalism will not be won by lofty new theories or more debates on national identity, but by encouraging real relationships at a grass roots level between people of every background and belief. Nobody is exempt from contributing to this task, and it is up to all of us to consider how the institutions in which we are involved might strengthen their members’ skills in working together and sharing core motivations. Then like the dads of East London we might just find ourselves surprised by the possibilities of political friendships to create diverse yet united communities of which we can all truly be proud.

David Barclay
David Barclay is a Partner at Good Faith Partnership helping leaders in politics, business, faith, and charity to work together towards shared goals. From 2012-2016, he was the Faith in Public Life Officer at the Contextual Theology Centre, based in East London, which helps churches to engage with their communities. He is a former President of the Oxford University Student Union, and has spent two years living and working in Western China.
Field Notes article

Community Organising and Congregating Values

The resignation of Pope Benedict VXI in February, the first Pope to step down as Head of the Catholic Church in 600 years, has sparked much reflection for my work as a Muslim woman, and a Community Organiser in East London. In the Pope’s 2012 year-end address to the Curia, he discussed interreligious dialogue not as a means to convert others but as process of understanding in which both parties remain consciously within their identity. I am struck by these words:

“It is necessary to learn and accept the other in his otherness and the otherness of his thinking. To this end, the shared responsibility for justice and peace must become the guiding principle of the conversation”

This is a message that seems to resonate with the experiences of Christian, Muslim and Secular leaders who are involved in Community Organising in East London. Although they have differing worldviews, they are able to compromise and work together for the common good in their community.

However, the congregating of these values is not without its compromise and tension.

Service, Mission, and Advocacy

My research for Contending Modernities (pdf) focuses on the relationships between religious and secular leaders in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and how their motivations to work for the common good interplay with the compromises and tensions they experience in animating their values in public life.

The study considers three key factors: service; mission; and advocacy as congregating values that are integral to motivating these different communities to work together, and explores the underlying conflicts that can arise from their differing perspectives. Through a series of interviews, community leaders have articulated openly how they have overcome some of challenges that working together can pose.

Some of the challenges discussed include: the prioritising of time to the wider community or the institution, relationship building as an opportunity for soft evangelism or conversion, dilution of faith values, religions versus secularism and tensions in leadership.

Despite these challenges, Christian, Muslim and Secular leaders in Tower Hamlets remain committed to relationship building and working together for positive change in the community. Interestingly, interreligious dialogue does not go far enough– action is the oxygen that keeps these relationships alive in the messy politics of public life in East London. Community organising facilitates the finding of common ground in uncertain terrain.

Ruhana Ali
Ruhana Ali is Program Director for Europe and the Middle East at cross-boundry leadership organization "Common Purpose." She was previously a Citizens UK Community Organiser working in Tower Hamlets training and developing local leaders in the art of public action. Ruhana read Social Policy, Criminal Justice and Psychology at the London School of Economics and became the first Muslim women to be elected as Sabbatical Officer of LSE Students' Union. Her briefing paper "Community Organising and Congregating Values" can be downloaded from The Contextual Theology Centre.
Contending Modernities article

The Secularization Debate in Indonesia and Egypt

Literature on the secularization debate seldom alludes to Muslim discussions of the issue. Among sociologists of religion, secularization theory used to be considered as part of conventional sociological wisdom, but has since been increasingly disputed and discredited. Scholars like Harvey Cox and Peter Berger are often cited as examples of those who have “repented” from ascribing to secularization theory. “After reviewing these developments,” Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart wrote, “Peter L. Berger, one of the foremost advocates of secularization during the 1960s, recanted his earlier claims” (Norris and Inglehart, 2004:4). One should note that there are also opponents of secularization, such as David Martin, who later recanted their earlier position and became its proponents. Both camps often make their case by referring to the “Islamic phenomenon”, albeit without delving into Muslim engagements with this secularization debate.

The Secularization Debate in Indonesia

During the 1970s and 1980s Indonesia and Egypt witnessed public debates involving both proponents and opponents of secularization. When the late Nurcholish Madjid delivered an influential speech to a gathering of major Islamic organizations on January 2, 1970, in Jakarta, it soon engendered a wide controversy in the country. Madjid called for the liberation of Muslim minds from stagnation in religious thinking caused by an inability to differentiate between values that are transcendental and those which are temporal. The vast majority of Muslims, he observed, reject the necessity of Islamic renewal and reform because they perceive “everything as transcendental and therefore, without exception, valued as divine” (Madjid, 1987:207). It is in this context that he called for secularization to make what was temporal stay temporal and liberate the Muslim community from the tendency to spiritualize it.

At the time, Madjid was serving a second term as the General Chairman of the Association of Muslim Students – a modernist, urban Muslim student organization, known as HMI. He went on to earn his PhD in 1984 from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani-born scholar whose progressive ideas caused storm in Pakistan, forcing him to live in exile. Madjid launched his “secularization” idea before he studied under Rahman’s tutelage. However, his engagement with Western scholarship at the University of Chicago led him to refine his approach to the secularization debate.

Madjid’s idea of Islamic renewal received mixed responses from Indonesian Muslim intellectuals, initiating a vibrant and exciting discourse surrounding secularization. Reactions to Madjid’s ideas took the forms of public debates, Friday sermons, and newspaper articles. Unfortunately, most such discussions focused on debates surrounding terminology, particularly focusing on “secularization” and “secularism”, which is understandable given the fact that such terms have yet to become popularized in intellectual discourse in Indonesia. Madjid used the terms along the same lines as Harvey Cox who defined secularization as the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical tutelage, and the turning of his attention away from other worlds and toward this one. As such, Cox argued, “it should be carefully distinguished from secularism” (Cox, 1965:18). Drawing on this distinction between secularism and secularization, Madjid argued that the latter is meant as a form of liberating development, and is “not to convert Muslims to become secularists.”

While he employed the terms from a sociological perspective, his opponents, including Dr. HM Rasyidi, understood secularization from philosophical point of view, suggesting that secularism is the logical consequence of secularization. Two years after Madjid’s electrifying speech, Rasyidi published a book entitled Koreksi terhadap Drs. Nurcholish Madjid tentang Sekularisasi (Correction to Drs. Nurcholish Madjid on Secularization). By referring to Alan Richardson’s Religion in Contemporary Debate, he contended that secularization and secularism are integral parts of Western history which uphold the separation between religion and state. Perhaps, Madjid was then aware that a Coxian conception of secularization was likely to evoke a storm of criticisms. Following his return from the University of Chicago, he no longer referred to Cox to justify the sociological meaning of secularization, but rather to other sociologists like Talcott Parsons and Robert Bellah who called such a type of secularization “radical devaluation” or “desacralization.” As Robert Hefner has rightly noted, “Madjid himself expressed misgivings at his choice of terms, commenting publicly that his reference to ‘secularization’ had invited misinterpretation” (Hefner, 2000:118).

The Secularization Debate in Egypt

Viewing secularism as a Western (European) experience that is alien to Islam has been prevalent historically among opponents of secularism in Egypt. Such opponents argue that secularism was born in pre-modern Christian Europe out of the necessity to fight the crippling dominance of the church over the political realm and over intellectual life. It is this claim of the specificity of the European experience that scholars like Fouad Zakaria have bluntly rejected. Like Madjid, in the 1980s Zakaria took part in several public debates about secularization, including one involving influential preachers such as Muhammad al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It is worth noting that Zakaria stood up in defense of secularism against such respected Ulama in front of unfriendly audiences. As described by Nancy Gallagher (1989: 108-215), during his presentation he was greeted with rumbling and threatening protests. The audience increasingly became restless even though the moderator continually called for silence and kept asking the highly partisan audience to show respect to the speakers.

Zakaria was born in Port Said in Egypt in 1927. He studied at Cairo university (BA) and ‘Ayn Shams university (MA, PhD). He is one of the prominent Arab thinkers who have consistently offered a sustained critique of the intellectual, political, and social foundations and contemporary manifestations of Islamism in the Arab and Muslim world. Even before the public debate in Cairo, the famed Muslim scholar Qaradawi wrote a book devoted to rebutting Zakaria’s idea of secularism, entitled al-Islam wa al-‘almaniyya wajhan bi-wajhin: Radd ‘ilmi ‘ala Fuad Zakaria wa jama‘a al-‘almaniyyin (Islam and Secularism Face to Face: Scientific refutation of Fouad Zakaria and Secularist Groups).

Of course, Zakaria was not the first to introduce the secularization debate to Egyptian intellectual discourse. The debate on this issue had taken place since the middle of the nineteenth century and culminated in the controversial work of Ali Abd al-Raziq, al-Islam wa-usul al-hukm (Islam and the principles of governance), published in 1925. Zakaria inherited this perennial controversy from his predecessors who had first encountered the tangible impact of European cultural and intellectual influences in the Arab region. This explains why, in contrast to the Indonesian context, reactions to Zakaria did not merely revolve around questions of terminology, but the broader question of whether secularism is a solution or problem for the Muslim world today.

Contrary to his critics, Zakaria argued that secularism is not the product of a particular society in specific times and places. Rather, it is a necessary requirement for any society threatened by the oppression of an authoritarian mode of thinking which prohibits people from questioning, criticizing, and thinking about their future. “The reasons that pushed Europe in the direction of secularism,” he asserts, “are cropping up in our present Islamic world, and therefore the widespread idea that secularism is the result of specifically European conditions in a certain stage of its development is baseless” (Zakaria, 1989:66). Zakaria rejects the accusation that his view of secularism is antithetical to Islam, saying that “arguments of most secularists against the interpretations of Islamists are also derived from Islam itself” (2005:21).

Madjid and Zakaria lived in different social and political contexts, yet both used the discourse on secularization and secularism as a starting point to discuss important issues facing the Muslim community in their respective countries. It is difficult to assess, however, the extent to which they have succeeded in their intellectual endeavors. It seems that the Indonesian soil is more fertile than that of Egypt for this modern idea to take root. What accounts for this different reception in both countries needs a further analysis. The point here is that this complexity of Muslim discussions of secularization in Islamic lands, and their engagements with Western scholarship, should not be overlooked.

Mun’im Sirry
Field Notes article

The New Cosmopolitanism: Global Migration and the Building of a Common Life

The Contending Modernities Global Migration working group is pleased to announce an interdisciplinary conference to be held in London, UK on 14 & 15 October 2013 – The New Cosmopolitanism: Global Migration and the Building of a Common Life. The conference grows out of the working group’s research project in London, which focuses on the ways that broad-based community organizing enables secular and religious citizens to build a common life. The conference will bring this research into dialogue with a wide range of theoretical and empirical research on the role of faith in public life in pluralist and culturally diverse societies. A keynote lecture will be given by The Most Reverend Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin.

Call for Papers

Few questions in contemporary studies of migration and citizenship have proved more urgent in recent years than the question of how migrants and hosts in societies marked by growing cultural and ethical pluralism are to live together peaceably and inclusively. Globalizing cities in Europe and North America are rapidly becoming home not only to new waves of immigrants, but also to new forms of civic identity, citizenship and civil society. Central to this new multicultural cosmopolitanism are people of faith, whose religious identity and commitments—not least their understanding of what constitutes a just and humane society— informs their interaction with one another and with secular actors and institutions. Working in collaboration, and in other cases in competition, Christians, Muslims (as well as Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, and Hindus), civic and business leaders, and political action groups are working to build community, gain representation and shape local and national democracy.

The global expansion of migration, within and between the global north and south, and the global resurgence and “publicization” of religion – have combined to bring religious and secular models of citizenship and civic education to the fore.  Nonetheless, there is surprisingly little consensus among religious leaders, educators, and policy makers as to what framework might allow people from different religious and ethical backgrounds to live together tolerantly and inclusively.  The lack of consensus is all the more vexing in that migration and religious revitalization today have created multicultural and multi-ethical landscapes all over the globe.  The question of the place of religion in modern multicultural societies is not an academic one, then, but one of the most pressing ethical challenges of our age.

The conference will consider this issue from theoretical and practical perspectives:

(1)  How have global migration and the concept of multiculturalism created new challenges for the democracies of North America and Europe around understandings of citizenship, membership, democratic participation, religion in public life, and social justice?  The conference organizers encourage paper submissions for panels that would consider these questions from the perspective of law, political philosophy, and theology.

(2)  Faith-based community organizing in the inner city has become an important way for immigrants and migrants to forge community with neighbors across the boundaries of ethnicity, race, and religion on issues of economic, political, and social justice.  It is also a vehicle for citizenship formation in multicultural settings.  The conference organizers encourage paper submissions that analyze and explore the practical experience of organizing in urban settings that involve Catholic, Muslim, and secular groups.

Submission guidelines

Please submit paper proposals to Remi Kathawa at remi.kathawa@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2013. Please limit proposals to 750 words.

 

Vincent Rougeau
Vincent Rougeau has been Dean of Boston College Law School since 2011. He previously worked as a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.  He teaches and writes in the area of law and religion, with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching, and is the author of Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order (Oxford, 2008).
Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Field Notes article

Community Organising in London’s Congolese Diaspora

‘Culture is to social organisation, as mind is to brain’. As civic space in London becomes increasingly cosmopolitan, this observation by Mary Douglas emphasises the need to delve deeper into the cultural make up of this thriving metropolis. My experience of engaging members of London’s Congolese diaspora in community organising has highlighted the increasing demand for both intentional processes of integration, and the opening of spaces within which citizens can actively engage in public life. This blog outlines two forthcoming papers, which I am currently completing as part of the Contending Modernities research and education initiative: Democratising Democracy; and The Culture of Community: Opportunities and Challenges created through Diaspora Community Organising.

Acknowledging the Technologies of Democracy

Naila Kabeer identifies an important challenge to the low levels of democratic engagement which have characterised the period since neoliberalism has become firmly entrenched – both politically and economically. For Kabeer, the challenge of structural inequality brought about through relatively unregulated capitalism can only be redressed through the development of active and inclusive citizenship. In her view, international initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals, which are designed to tackle what are considered to be the greatest threats to the flourishing of lives in the developing world, often only perpetuate the structural inequalities of the current economic order. Similarly, the lack of opportunities for civic engagement within narrow and technical democratic processes at local, national and international levels, only furthers this structural inequality. According to Kabeer’s account, democracy is in danger of becoming a means of advancing, rather than regulating, the inequalities generated by unfettered neoliberal economics.

Understanding Civil Society

It is essential to place an analysis of contemporary civic space in London within this structural framework. Experience of organising with the Congolese diaspora over the past year has brought into sharp focus the challenges faced by migrant communities in London. Evidence suggests that one of the main reasons for a lack of integration within British society is a fear of ‘other’. Using Edward Said’s conception of ‘orientalism’ as a lens for analysis, it becomes increasingly clear that difference can be defined according to a broad range of affiliations including culture, faith, experience, and knowledge, regardless of whether these views are real or imagined. Rather than adopting a neutral narrative which denies these differences in a superficial attempt to bring people together, community organising provides a platform through which people of contending worldviews, beliefs and experiences of civil society, can come together to work on behalf of one another for the common good.

Challenges to Inclusive Citizenship

While community organising provides a creative and progressive platform in which people of diverse beliefs, values and opinions can work together, challenging the notion of ‘difference as other’, the process of the organising highlights the fact that these differences are not necessarily easily negotiated in a neutral model. My research further explores the multitude of challenges faced by migrant groups, articulating particularly how these challenges play out in an organising context. The model of community organising is universal in order to retain sharp focus and rigorous strategy, but when one attempts to exercise this model with people of such diverse backgrounds, the ‘western’ basis of the model becomes apparent. Not only does my research articulate the need for an opening of democratic space within which people of all different backgrounds can be heard equally, the model through which citizenship becomes inclusive and active (i.e. beyond the narrow technologies of a ballot box) must be interrogated in order to understand the assumptions which lie beneath its own narrative.

Practical, Moral, and Ideological Considerations

In light of these findings, a number of important issues have been raised for further research. It is necessary to reject the assumption often made that migrant communities come to the UK and learn what it means to be part of a civil society. In rejection of this view, we must ask: What does civil society look like in the countries from which migrants come, and how would a better understanding of this enhance active citizenship within the UK?

Focusing particularly on the practical, moral and ideological barriers found by members of the Congolese community who have been involved in community organising to varying degrees, the research papers pose challenges regarding both life in the countries from which migrants come, and also in the UK. On a practical level, it is necessary to interrogate the physical norms of public life in the migrant’s country of origin. Morally, it is necessary to acknowledge what it means to come from a predominantly faith based society like the DRC, into one which is largely secular. Finally, ideologically, it is necessary to explore how notions of civil society and community are understood to migrants in their countries of origin, and how these understandings complement or conflict with similar notions in the UK. I argue that these findings should not only be seen as tools for enabling diaspora groups to engage more effectively in organising; they should also have an impact on how we, as host communities, consider our own notions of home and community.

Facilitating Sustainable Integration

It is my belief that community organising has significant potential for redressing low levels of democratic participation – through processes which actively engage citizens, encourage integration, and allow the voices of all individuals to be heard at local, national and international levels. However, in order for this process to take place, it is necessary to reject the assumption that community organising is a neutral model. Acknowledging its own cultural framework, one can begin to think through ways in which the model might be adapted to incorporate more fully the breadth of worldviews and experiences incorporated in its agenda. The sustainable answer will inevitably require long-term in-depth analysis, but the imperative is clear.

Caitlin Burbridge
Caitlin Burbridge is a community organizer in Hackney, London. From 2012-2013 she was Research Co-ordinator at the Contextual Theology Centre in East London.  Caitlin received a BA in Geography from Oxford University and an MA in International Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Her research interests include the challenges and opportunities created by the development of cross-cultural communities.
Field Notes article

Brain, Mind and Culture: Promptings from Muslim Theology

Pick up a work by Shah Waliyullah of Delhi (d. 1762), the great Indian polymath and sage-like figure, and he might commend your attention to sensory substitution, or synesthesia – what we can think of as cross talk among sensory areas in the brain. Indeed, Waliyullah is but a premiere example among many Medieval and early modern Muslim theologians who offer startling insights about perception, ideas which sometimes even resemble trending topics like neuroplasticity.  I say this mindful of the warning not to mold our “notion of antiquities after their resemblance to the present”(Funkenstein, 120).

A Bridge between Theology and Culture

Waliyullah wrote masterfully on Islamic law, spirituality, the Qur’an, and the Prophetic traditions.   In these works, he tried to explain how revelations and intuitions are mediated by the human mind, particularly the minds of prophets. In my reading it appears that he tried to build a bridge between theology and culture. His point was to show that while the minds of prophets are in one sense attuned to the celestial spheres, other aspects of their minds refract the maps of their respective cultures.  Of particular importance to him were the specifics of law, norms and values that were encoded in revealed religions like Islam at its very inception in the seventh century.  For most Muslim thinkers and theologians the relevance of norms and values were never in dispute. Yet, often the form and practice of such norms and values sparked debate. Wrestling with these problems forces figures like Waliyullah to grasp the nettle of the metaphysics and the sociology of revelation.

It is thrilling to know that Muslim theologians of earlier generations relied on varieties of knowledge of their time in order to explain and make their theological claims understandable. For theologians like Waliyullah it was almost a matter of necessity to construe a theology that took the empirical aspect of the human person seriously. In his view, theological strictures were often subordinate to the contemporaneous reality of the human being, whether in terms of psychology or sociology avant la lettre, or with the aid of other disciplines of the day like philosophy and metaphysics.

Neuro-Cultural Beings

To make his argument forcefully, Waliyullah proposes what might be akin to indelible cultural maps to which our minds are formatted. Instead of viewing our minds as exclusively neural, Waliyullah implies we might think of ourselves as neuro-cultural beings.  And prophets too are not immune from the cultural mapping of their minds and personas. Their revelations are encoded and mediated by the same cultural maps that their communities project. Waliyullah’s most developed excursus on this topic comes in ‘The Fourth Vision” of his Emanations in the Two Holy Shrines-Fuyuz al-Haramayn.

If a congenitally blind person dreams, Waliyullah asks, how does he see things?  How does a congenitally deaf person hear, in his dreams? Well, he explains, persons with such deficits see or hear with the help of what we would call sensory substitutions or the blending of the senses. Persons with sight disabilities, in his words “cannot in their dreams see colors or forms, instead they see themselves touching things, hearing voices, tasting or smelling things in their dreams.” (Fuyuz, 90). Similarly, a congenitally deaf person never hears things in his dreams but is restricted to rely on his other sensory organs for information to substitute for sight or hearing.

Sensory Substitution

Sensory substitution is crucial for Waliyullah. Why? Because examples of dreamers with sensory deficits allow him to make the case that “pre-existing forms and ideas,” – what I have called cultural mapping – do exist.  These pre-existing forms or cultural maps in the mind of the dreamer become the building blocks—alphabet and language—in which dreams are experienced.

Waliyullah sets up this example to make his major point: revelation vouchsafed to the prophets is organically and culturally related to the worlds the prophets inhabited. How? What prophets speak or teach is derived from their environments and cultures and is first and foremost preserved in their minds. Therefore, he says, when prophets disclose their revelations the “vocables (alfaz), words (kalimat) and syntactical forms (asalib) that were already preserved in the mind of the ‘recipient of revelation’ become manifest.” (Fuyuz, 91). This allows him to say that rules and regulations contained in revelations were always organically connected and in sync with the habits and customs of the communities to which prophets were dispatched. Is he saying that the mind is culturally wired?

I marveled at Waliyuallah’s insights—I am assuming that many theologians and philosophers prior to him held similar views—when I found David Eagleman explain neuroplasticity in his book Incognito.  Consider Eric Weihenmayer who was blinded at age thirteen but who scaled Mount Everest as an adult. Today Weihenmayer climbs with a gadget containing a grid of over 600 tiny electrodes in his mouth called the BrainPort. This device, says Eagleman, “allows him to see with his tongue while he climbs.”

The Blending of Senses

What Waliyullah’s dreamers with sensory deficits achieve via sensory substitution is similar to Weihenmayer’s BrainPort apparatus: the dreamers see or hear with a crucial difference; they see and hear via tasting, feeling and smelling. Sensory substitution “reminds us that we see not with our eyes but rather with our brains” (Eagleman, 41). The blending of the senses is precisely one of the kinds of synesthesia involving the ‘hearing’ or ‘smelling’ of sight or the ‘touching’ of hearing. Synesthesia is believed to be seven times more common among artists, poets and novelists; in short, people who are seers of some sort. But more importantly, the mere existence of synesthesia shows that “more than one kind of brain–and one kind of mind–is possible.” (Eagleman, 80).

Contemporary neuroscience has made great strides in explaining perception. Now we know the traditional view of perception is incorrect in explaining that data from the sensorium pours into the brain and then makes itself seen, heard, smelled or tasted. Scientists now argue that the brain is a “closed system that runs its own internally generated activity.” (Eagleman, 44). Like the dreamers in Waliyullah’s illustrations who see and hear without real sight and hearing, Eagleman too confirms that during “dream sleep the brain is isolated from its normal input, so internal activation is the only source of cortical stimulation” (Eagleman, 44).

So what role do the senses play in perception? Can we completely dismiss the senses? Current knowledge of the neurocircuitry of the brain questions whether visual perception is only a procession of data crunching in a linear fashion from the eyes to the brain.  Instead, what we do discover is that perception involves nested feedback connections that enable the system to run backward. Now we learn that a loopy brain enables us to “make predictions ahead of actual sensory input” (Eagleman, 48). “The more surprising aspect… ,” says Eagleman of this new framework of perception, is that “the internal data is not generated by external sensory data but merely modulated by it.” (44). So, we still depend on sensory data but we now know it surely works differently from what we thought previously.

The Riddle of Metaphors

Waliyullah might have wanted to emphasize the synchronic relationship between the mind and culture, but in the process he disclosed how he thought humans knew and perceived things. It is eminently possible that the blending of the senses had something to do with the pre-eminence of prophets over time, just like poets.

Furthermore, our language is replete with synesthetic metaphors (Ramachandran, 79). We talk of “loud” shirts, “sharp” cheese or “a sharp person” when none of these tactile adjectives apply to shirts, cheese or persons. “We don’t have the foggiest idea of how metaphors work,” says the neuroscientist Ramachandran, “or how they are represented in the brain.” (79). He is optimistic that a scientific understanding of the neural basis for synesthesia might illuminate how metaphors are represented in the brain and how we humans have evolved to entertain such expressions in the first place. Neuroscience might help to unlock a key feature of our existence as rational and language-using beings.

So the riddle of metaphors and the brain makes me wonder, as a humanist, whether Waliyullah’s explanations imply that the brain is also culturally wired. And, if so, then what about claims that the brain is a closed system? And, if it remains a closed system, then how does the culture seep into it?

 

Ebrahim Moosa
Ebrahim Moosa is Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies in Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and Department of History. He co-directs Contending Modernities with Atalia Omer and Scott Appleby. Moosa’s interests span both classical and modern Islamic thought with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics and theology. He is the author of Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, winner of the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions (2006), and What is a Madrasa? (2015).