James McDougall's 'Worlds of Islam' celebrates rich heritage and diversity

Worlds of Islam: A Global History

by James McDougal

Published by Penguin

574 pages ₹1,299

 

In this book, James McDougal has provided an insightful story of what, in world history, being Muslim has meant at different times and in different places. Mr McDougal recounts the dramatic spread of Islam from the eighth century across West Asia, North Africa and into Spain and the Balkans, and, later, to Africa and Southeast Asia. 

The author also explains the cultural and scientific achievements of this new faith during the early period of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and the destruction wreaked upon the latter by the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. In subsequent years, new empires emerged and broke up, with Muslim armies fighting each other and their non-Muslim foes in Europe, Central Asia, India, and China. 

But the Muslim space, Mr McDougal points out, was “neither exclusive nor all-encompassing”. In several conquered territories, Muslims remained a minority for several centuries, living alongside Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists. Their beliefs and practices were also “richly varied” — influenced less by their faith and more by their own background (before they became Muslim), economics, politics, language, and culture. Nor did Islam suffuse their political order — “there was never a single model of an Islamic state, or of a Muslim society,” Mr MacDougal writes. 

One recurring theme that unites this book is Sufism. Like adherents of other formalised mainstream faiths, Muslims too sought a deeper spiritual life shaped by a profound understanding of God and a deep love for God that went beyond the aspects of law, governance and shared identity that Islam had provided. Islam had mystics — both men and women — from its earliest period whose tombs have been pilgrimage destinations for thousands of followers over several centuries in different parts of the Muslim world. 

Among the great scholars who shaped Sufic thought and practice in Islam are: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1058-1111) and Muhi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240). Al-Ghazali upheld the importance of implementing the obligations of sharia before seeking a personal interaction with God and obtaining knowledge and truth. Ibn Arabi grew up in Seville, in Muslim Spain, travelling to several centres of learning, before settling in Damascus. He is associated with the idea of “unity of being” or “oneness of existence”. 

The lives and teachings of Sufi saints evoked respect and served to popularise Islam among ordinary people. A good example is the Chishti order, founded by Abu Ishaq Shami (d. 940), which was brought to India in the 12th century by Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti (1142-1236), whose mausoleum at Ajmer annually attracts thousands of pilgrims of different religious denominations. One of the most interesting chapters in the book is titled: “Voices of Renewal”. It refers to discussions among Muslim scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries about how Islam could be rejuvenated and made compatible with the challenges of the modern era. Most of the discussants pursued internal self-criticism, moral regeneration and rectification of the faith. They accepted “the value of the present” rather than harking back to an idealised past. 

This was not a period of decline for Islam, Mr McDougal asserts, as the faith spread further than ever across Africa and Asia, these were, in fact, “times of creative, confident re-imaginings of what Islam and Muslim life should be”. 

During this period, the impact of Sufi scholars in Africa was significant. The teachings of two of them — Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani (1737-1816) and Sidi Mohammed ibn Ali al-Sanussi (1787-1859) — have spread across Africa and beyond. Al-Tijani’s teaching is influential across northwest Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Americas. While al-Sanussi avoided involvement in politics, his followers became a force of resistance against French and Italian colonial incursions, culminating, after the Second World War, in the installation of its leader, Idriss al-Sanussi, as king of Libya by the British. As Western imperialism seized power from Muslim potentates through the early 20th centuries, it adopted a monolithic view of the Muslim community — so that being Muslim became “a racial, more than a religious category”. Muslims, Mr McDougal says, were viewed “as a mass ruled by instinctive, inherited behaviours”. Building on this background, as the Cold War ended, US “neocons” (rightwing scholars who conflated US interests with those of Israel) identified “Islam” as the civilisational enemy of the West. 

Samuel Huntington’s 1993 essay, “Clash of Civilisations”, argued that conflict between Western and Islamic civilisations had been going on for 1,300 years and would shape the coming era. Mr McDougal describes these observations as “absurd” and as “ideology masquerading as analysis”. Huntington’s views had emerged from the outdated 19th century European understanding of history founded on the integrity and supremacy of the West — though bad history, it was a powerful myth! This has travelled far beyond US shores to buttress authoritarian regimes and populist movements in democratic states with prejudices that have “dehumanised Muslims, seeing them uniformly as enemies to be excluded or contained”. 

This book is a monumental work, providing an extraordinary sweep of Islamic history in all its colour and diversity. It is founded on the profound scholarship appreciated by the specialist, but has the clarity and lucidity that appeals to the general reader. In these fraught times, this should be the go-to work to investigate the dynamics of Islam — one of the world’s most powerful and enduring civilisational influences.

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The reviewer is a former diplomat