Abstract
Dietrich Jung’s book Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere continues the European discussion of religion by focusing on ‘a genealogy of the modern essentialist image of Islam’ (the book’s subtitle). In this book, Jung challenges the fixed decrees concerning today’s ‘world religions’. In Jung’s own words:
[H]ow did this inadequate and false construct come to such prominence and how does it still retain its hold on so many people? The longer my engagement with the Middle East has lasted, the more I have asked myself why Islam is so frequently represented in the holistic term of an all-encompassing socio-religious system. How is the persistence of this specific image of Islam to be explained against all empirical evidence. (p. 1)
In Chapter 1, Jung explains the problem of the essentialist image of Islam in both popular and academic discussions and in both the Islamic world and the West, Islam seen as ‘a comprehensive, unique and unifying way of life encapsulated in the scripture of revealed texts and the example of the Prophet’ (p. 5), which is a striking contrast to the pluralist culture of the West. Jung writes that in Islamic studies only a minority of Islamic scholars would support this essentialist view. Most of the Islamic scholars in the West and the Muslim world conceptualize the formation of complex social, cultural and historical conditions leading to political and religious systems.
Jung summarizes that the global public opinion regarding the modern essentialist perception of Islam was formed by the mutual interaction between Orientalists and Muslim intellectuals and activists in the 19th century. According to Jung, this Islamic perception and Orientalist understanding is contrary to the history of the Muslim world. Jung cites many intellectuals, ranging from Ignaz Goldziher, Christiaan Hurgronje, Robertson Smith, Durkheim, Renan and Muhammad Abduh to Muhammad Ikbal, Ziya Gökalp, Namik Kemal, Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb. Jung adduces that juxtaposing their intellectual debates plays an important part in the establishment of the essentialist Islamic perception.
Jung claims German liberal Protestantism as the most influential mentality for how religion is viewed in the modern world. This understanding first manifested itself in Bible studies, then in sociology, and then Islamic studies. Since the 19th century, global modernity ensured that Western and Islamic public spheres would become integral parts of each other. Jung states that in the last 200 years we witness penetrative and overlapping processes. The first of these being founded on liberal Protestantism and its influence on the rise of a modern world image of religions. The biggest contributors to this concept were 19th-century Orientalists and theologians such as David Strauss and Robertson Smith. Second, the Islamic assembly is presented not only as a part of life politically but as a way of life that is an alternative to European religion and culture. Third, the noteworthy individuals in the early period of Islamic modernity cemented this image of Islam as they joined the worldwide public sphere. Finally, following the imperial period, Islam’s vital and essentialist image generated a productive environment for the works of intellectuals such as Sayyid Qutb and Mawdudi.
In the first section of his book, Jung points out the similarities between Islamist and Western academics’ work regarding Islamic image and asks ‘[w]hy do orientalists and Islamists similarly define Islam as an all-encompassing religious, political and social system?’ (p. 7). Behind such images lies a conjecture: a legitimate perspective on Islam should view it to endorse a different lifestyle possessing pure needs, which then allows observers to identify ‘deviations’. Such an Islam in the studies of Orientalists makes it appear as different from European cultures in terms of being the primary component of life as opposed to dynamic, democratic and pluralist European culture. Only a fraction of the academics working in Islamic studies support this paradigm. The vast majority maintain a structuralist position in which cultural, historical and complex social factors contribute to the development of religious and political systems.
In Chapter 2, Jung revisits Orientalism and the influence of Edward Said. Jung identifies several Orientalist themes, and claims that these themes still have a powerful influence on the essentialist view of Islam. He then discusses the international public sphere and multiple modernization. In Chapters 3 and 4, Jung focuses on the four founding fathers of Islamic studies: Ignaz Goldziher, Christian Hurgronje, CH Becker and Martin Hartman. Jung claims that modern Islamic studies are founded on four main points that are still found in today’s intellectual environment. Jung defines and debates these main intellectual environments: the evolutionist view of history, the pragmatic contrast between tradition and modernity, the modern understanding of religion and the role of secular education. Relying on these four intellectual bases, German researchers evaluated Islam as a holistic and deterministic system connected to morals and laws of the Middle Ages.
In the last two chapters, Jung discusses how Western understandings of Islam are internalized by Muslim intellectuals, despite the multiple character of Islam. This was first asserted in Seyyid Qutb’s project, which attempted to rebuild the ‘true Islam’ with modern concepts and methods. The Salafi movement and its leaders are imputed with clinging to modernity’s global expressions. It is possible to see how traditional Islamic approaches turn into modernist and fundamentalist mentalities, especially around the question of Sharia (Islamic law). First perceived as a metaphor for a way behaviour guided people to salvation, Sharia has turned into a general intellectual expression representing social, religious, scientific and other fields. With the establishment of modern governments in the 19th century, and under the influence of Islamic reform, the meaning of Sharia morphed into a series of rigid rules.
Jung does not present any solutions for the inaccuracy, but he cogently delineates how the essentialist view of Islam effects our perception. Jung’s work is a must-read for those curious about why there is a variance between popular Western (and sometimes academic) images and the realities experienced by the Muslim communities, as well as why there are similarities between Islamist and Western academics regarding Islam’s image. According to the essentialist view, Muslims are viewed as constituting a holistic monolith. There is believed to be one true Islam and other interpretations are viewed as a deviation from ‘true Islam’. However, when we look at history and the present day we see numerous approaches to and interpretations of Islam. Muslims are ever-changing and bring forth new interpretations under historical circumstances.
Finally, from an Islamic perspective, Islam may be viewed to contain an unchanging essence. Islamic essentialism by itself cannot be viewed as right or wrong – that sort of analysis would depend on the subject and structure of the discussion. Jung claims that essentialist Islam was erroneously turned into a fundamentalist abstraction by Orientalists and later by Islamic researchers, then adopted, consciously or subconsciously, by Muslim intellectuals.