Review

Reviewed Work(s): Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and
Internal Criticism by Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Review by: Ebrahim Moosa
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 83, No. 2 (June 2015), pp. 569-
572
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24488062
Accessed: 08-01-2024 15:05 +00:00

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 MR BOOK REVIEWS

Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and

Internal Criticism. By Muhammad Qasim Zaman. Cambridge University
Press, 2012. 363 pages. $32.99.

Few books will shape the subfield of Islamic studies in the manner that
Muhammad Qasim Zaman's refreshing interpretation of traditional religious
thought in the modern period promises to do. The reader encounters a select
number of religious actors and authors, intellectual cohorts, and a multitude of
themes derived from modern Islamic thought and practices spawned in South
Asia and the Middle East in a tightly knitted narrative. Counterpoint bridges
regions and scholars in different locales, a style that fruitfully engages a reader's
interest, just as the author's rigor and attention to detail are impressive features
of the narrative arc. Readers already familiar with modern Islamic thought will
recognize some of the dramatis personae of this book, but those unfamiliar can
comfortably rely on Zaman's skillful introduction to better known characters as
well as lesser known figures. Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan (d. 1898) of India, Rashid
Rida (d. 1935) of Ottoman Syria but who resided in Egypt, and Yusuf al
Qaradawi (b. 1926) of Egypt but now resident in Qatar are familiar names for
those who follow debates on modern Islam. Tradition-oriented Muslim schol
ars-cwm-political activists in preparation India like 'Ubayd Allah Sindhi (d.
1944) and his mentor Mahmud Hasan (d. 1920) or Hifz al-Rahman Seoharwi
(d. 1962) and Ashraf Ali Thanawi (d. 1943), to mention but a few, are arrayed in
Zaman's pantheon of Deobandi scholars who have yet to attain name recogni
tion in the fields of Islamic and religious studies in the Western academy.
Deoband is a Sunni school of thought founded in 1866 that has spawned a fran
chise of madrasas, seminaries that follow its distinct theological orientation. For
delivering the ideas of a host of traditional scholars with a historian's care in
measured factual detail, thematic coherence, and in pellucid prose, we are indeed
in Zaman's debt.
The heroes of this book are clearly Rida, whom one of his Indian admirers
described "as the greatest religious scholar ('alim)" (7) of Egypt and Syria;
Sindhi, a Sikh convert to Islam and pan-Islamic activist whom Zaman describes

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, June 2015, Vol. 83, No. 2, pp. 569-598
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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570 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

as "the most vocal internal critic the Deobandis have ever known" (17) of India,
and Qaradawi, the Qatar-based but Egyptian-born contemporary traditional
scholar affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood who vocally supported the upris
ings during the Arab Spring and severely chastised those who undermined politi
cal change in places like Egypt and Syria.
Zaman's goal is to discern the patterns of authority in contemporary mani
festations of traditional Islam and the internal criticism as well as diversity
evident among the traditional religious scholars, the 'ulama. In part 1 of the
book, he treats theoretical issues in Islamic law such as consensus (ijma),
debates about interpretive authority (ijtihad), and questions about the common
good (maslaha). As he does throughout the book, his key interlocutors Rida,
Sindhi, and Qaradawi as well as others provide him with substantial material in
order to engage in a contrapuntal historical conversation among scholars within
the 'ulama tradition. So, Zaman can, for instance, successfully show how some
scholars deemed the consensus-derived authority of past scholars as binding but
then also points out how several contemporary traditionalists have recast the
meaning and place of consensus in modern Muslim jurisprudence in order to
make the construct more malleable to the contingencies of contemporary societal
needs. Here figures like Qaradawi and his European Council for Fatwa and
Research (ECFR) have utilized a variety of scholastic methods to unwind preex
isting strict consensus positions. Of the many cases discussed, one involves the
question whether a woman who converted to Islam could remain married to her
spouse belonging to another faith. Conversion, under classical Islamic law, of es
pecially the wife while the husband remained in his non-Islamic faith tradition,
triggered a requirement to separate the spouses, since a Muslim woman was not
permitted to remain married to a person of another faith. Qaradawi and a few
contemporary scholars have rethought this issue for a European context by revis
ing the goal, purpose, and meaning of this rule in the context of the conversion
of the wife. The spouses need not be separated according to the interpretation of
scholars affiliated to the ECFR. Needless to say, Qaradawi and the Sudanese
scholar Hasan al-Turabi who advocated a similar view but who did not restrict
the previous marriage taboo to instances of conversion have now gained many
'ulama detractors who charged them of violating the tradition and for effectively
undermining the hallowed epistemological "constants of the community."
Zaman demonstrates how the 'ulama navigate the internal tradition in a world
shaped by forces that are antithetical to tradition. While his gaze is on the main
trained on the 'ulama tradition, he does concede that Muslim modernists and
Islamists who contest the 'ulama tradition also qualify as "internal" critics. One
should note, however, that the 'ulama, especially the South Asian ones, have
in the past relentlessly delegitimized the reformist and interpretive efforts of
non-'ulama scholars and one wished that Zaman explained how he reached the
conclusion that such groups qualify as "internal critics," at least in the view of
the 'ulama.
Zaman also dwells on the differences among the 'ulama and then tries to
reflect on broader theoretical issues from the vantage point of the interventions
made by Alasdair Maclntyre on tradition and Jose Casanova on public religion.

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 Book Reviews 571

While Zaman is reluctant to adjudicate how the 'ulama' s discourses would fit
with Maclntyre and Casanova's conceptions of tradition and public religion, re
spectively, he notes that "whatever their particular claims to authority, the
'ulama s discourses must contend with rival positions within and outside their
ranks" (139). Further theorization as to how the 'ulama could accomplish this
toleration is certainly needed. For the question remains, in at least the view of
this reviewer, whether the 'ulama discourse can indeed undo some of the theo
logical strictures embedded in their paradigmatic epistemological formulations
that in turn govern their methodologies without losing the monopoly and power
to interpret Islam. This is a theme one wishes the author would address more
gainfully as he continues his work on the 'ulama and the making of a tradition.
Absent a paradigmatic theological reconstruction, it would be hard to imagine
the 'ulama being in a position to find even a modus vivendi in order to further a
genuine intra-Muslim value-pluralism, beyond mere questions of manageable
differences and ethical toleration.
In part 2, Zaman addresses a plethora of interesting topics with admirable
subtlety and meticulous detail. They range from debates about knowledge forma
tion and tradition within the madrasas of South Asia and their counterparts in
the Middle East; women in law and society; a very rich chapter on socioeconomic
justice where the views of a select number of Deobandi 'ulama are ventilated in
engaging ways; and, finally, a review of the justification of religiously sanctioned
violence in claims made by advocates of jihad and suicide bombings as well as
the views of those who refute such practices. It would be impossible to summa
rize any of these debates since they involve multiple and complex angles and the
reader ought to relish those arguments first hand. In fact, the strength of this
book lies precisely in its rich and textured detail, where Zaman surveys as well as
analyzes valuable aspects of Islamic law and theological practices that were not
previously available in English.
What Zaman has successfully accomplished is to present multiple themes
and contentious debates with a critical resonance by highlighting the tensions in
the arguments of the various contenders. In his view, the inherent paradoxes,
ambiguities, silences, and difficulties in making sense of the discourses of the
'ulama also amount to the strength of their tradition. Paradoxes and contradic
tions, in his view, invite rival discourses and these, in turn, shape the public dis
course. Seeking coherence in 'ulama discourse, one understands the author to be
saying, might be an overrated virtue. What this reviewer seemed to have grasped,
among many other things from Zaman's learned study is that the 'ulama, as
both collectivities and individuals, occupy discrete life worlds. And despite their
claim to adhere to a tradition fully equipped with its constants, in the end, it is
the lived reality or the facts on the ground that determine the values that are nur
tured and made possible by material conditions and lived reality. Those multiple
contexts are riddled with different macro-political and economic tensions, to
gether with contestations of power over knowledge. Inspired by Zaman's
example, future scholarship dedicated to Islamic law and society will render the
field a great service by also taking the hermeneutical battles to some of the

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572 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

narratives generated by macro-political and economic conditions that impact

Muslim practices and ideas. For in my view, not only would the sociology of
knowledge help us to understand the 'ulama tradition in greater complexity, but
we are also challenged to understand the multiple types of reasoned discourses
(logoi) that shape and determine 'ulama discourses, some of which Zaman has
helpfully identified in this important study

doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfV004 Ebrahim Moosa

Advance Access publication February 23, 2015 University of Notre Dame

Ecology and Religion. By John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker. Island
Press, 2014. 280 pages. $70.00.

In this volume, John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker provide a scholarly in
troduction to the emerging field of religion and ecology, and at the same time, an
update concerning the engagement of religious leaders and religious communi
ties with environmental issues, whose sense of ecological concern is informed by
their religious traditions. Persons aware of the field of religion and ecology will
be familiar with the names of John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker from their
role in the series of ten edited volumes that resulted from a series of conferences
on Religion and Ecology held at the Harvard Center for the Study of World
Religions (1996-98). These were among the first scholarly efforts to relate ecology
and religion. Perusing these volumes, one is easily convinced that there are texts,
practices, teachings, and insights in a great variety of religious traditions that can
contribute to the care of the planet, and to a sense of the sacred in the environ
ment. The question that naturally arises is what can be done to implement these
insights to address present conditions. For persons who may be disheartened
about the possibility of relating these insights to real conditions in the world this
volume is encouraging. Although compared to those earlier volumes this book is
relatively short, it is rich with detail and insight concerning the present state of the
field. In light of the achievement of those earlier volumes, this book provides
insight into the progress that has been made in relating the insights of the great re
ligions to the present environmental crisis and in the role that religion can play in
the emergence of a global ecological culture.
John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker introduce the volume by telling us
about the experiences that propelled them into this emerging discipline. John
Grim explains that growing up in North Dakota, the high planes afforded him
many encounters with the natural world. As an undergraduate at a Benedictine
University in Minnesota, he studied the religious traditions of the West. But, as a
graduate student at Fordham University, he studied with Thomas Berry and
became intrigued with healing practices, and chose to research shamanism among
Central Asian and North American peoples. John's research into the religiosity of
the first nation people of North America and the healing practices of Shamans in

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