Islamic Liberation Theology (Book Review)

This is an ambitious and frusturating book which tries to chart a course for an "Islamic liberation theology" just as Gustavo Gutteriez and James Cone did for Christianity. Dabashi argues that the ideological division of "Islam and the West" no longer has any meaning for contemporary Islamic praxis. In fact this binary division has produced an Islamic politics of opposition to Western modernity, forcing Islamic ideologues and ideology into anti-democratic stances and revolutionary excesses which mirror or even at times outdo the worst totalitarian impulses of Western thought.

I found Dabashi's narrative interventions provocative, especially his exegesis of the life and work of Malcolm X (see his chapter "Malcolm X as a Muslim Revolutionary"), placing him into dialectical interplay with religious currents within Shi'a Islam. He also helpfully draws on Gutierrez's notion of a "historical pilgrimage" of religion in an effort to re-historicize Islamic heritage.

Unfortunately the book suffers from a lack of judicious editing and and all too often a-historic approach to contemporary issues. He inscribes categories like "the West" and "modernity", equating them at times with global capitalism, at times with the European Enlightenment, at times with the foreign policy aims of the US government collapsing hundreds of years of history into categorical oppositions. Perhaps it is the historian in me, but I found this weakened Dabashi's important arguments overall, making them far too easy to dismiss because there is insufficent attention given to problematizing the ideological weight they are asked to hold in his argument. Dabashi also veers randomly between theorization and historicization, getting sidetracked in a kind of academic word-goop which obfuscates the potential of his points. As soon as you think he is going to make a good, potentially transformative point, he veers off into generalities and post-modern language of a particularly useless nature. For example, he writes, "a whole new mode of resistance movement, neither ethnically nationalist nor religiously nativist, is now needed to confront the predicament of Muslim peoples at large." (164) The reader anticipates a description of what Dabashi thinks this mode might look like, but instead is treated to agnosticism: "It is useless to speculate what precisely the particular disposition of these modes of post-national and post-nativist resistance would be. A total distrust of ideological meta-narratives is by far the most critical feature of this emerging mode of resistance." (164)

So why is it useless to speculate on a mode of resistance that is already emerging?! I interpreted Dabashi's ambivalence and slippery language, as evidence of his desire that a transnational movement for Islamically based justice and liberation to emerge. (Malcolm X is very important in Dabashi's formulation of this and Dabashi's comparison between Malcolm X and Sayd Qutb is intriguing) But Dabashi cannot theorize about this supposedly emerging global movement because its actual existence as a historical trend is much more a matter of personal perspective than Dabashi cares to admit. The world may be global and Islam may be a global religion, but there are thousands of "imagined communities" within the global umma, and the ties which bind Muslims together are not necessarily any stronger than those which tie nations or cultures together. Furthermore, don't the bin Laden's and other globally wanted "jihadists" (whom Dabashi rejects as reactionaries) view themselves as instituting precisely the kind of transnational movement he claims Muslims need (minus that skepticism of meta-narratives bit)? Dabashi dreams of a global justice movement which will simultaneously resist global capitalism, Western modernity, and Islamist totalitarianism. But isn't this a bit much to ask of any one movement?

The tension the reader observes in Dabashi's stance is symptomatic of the gap between a "skepticism of ideological meta-narratives" and the will to power necessary to carry out any project of justice and reform in the real world. Dabashi like many intellectuals is skeptical of that will to power, seeing in it the seeds of the demise of both revolution and reform-minded projects. Yet without it, the impulse for Dabashi's "new geography of liberation" remain words on a page.

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The Role of Islam in Tanzania's Liberation Struggle

What's often left out of the Nyerere-centric narrative of Tanzanian nationalism is the contributions of Muslim townsmen.

Back during my first trip to Tanzania in 2006, I went with a friend to the Maktaba ya Taifa in Dar-es-Salaam and happenned across Mohamed Said's book on Abdulwahid Sykes. It came as a revelation to me that Sykes and other Muslim leaders in Dar had been the impetus and the organizational core of the Tanganyikan African Association, the organization which would eventually become TANU.

The book is a chronicle of that struggle, and Mohamed Said is anxious not to allow his readers to forget this 'underground' history.

Dr. John Iliffe has offered his review of Said's book. He critiques its somewhat polemical tone and addresses a personal accusation Said made against him. However I believe despite the occasional polemic, Said's work brings to light some important aspects of Tanzanian history that deserve a wider audience. We owe Bwana Mohamed Said a debt for bringing this forgotten history to light. Please visit the following links for more of his work:

Islam's Role in Tanzania's Freedom Struggle

Interview with Mohamed Said

The Question of Muslim Stagnation in Education

Islam and Politics in Tanzania

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Hizbu'llah and Terrorism: Dispelling the Misconceptions

Sura al-Qasas (28) :5 (English): And we wished to be gracious to those who were being oppressed in the land, to make them leaders and make them heirs.

The above verse constitutes one of the foundational beliefs on which the organization of Hizbu'llah draw. There is an all too common misconception, perpetrated by so-called journalists--who write copy using the worst sort of cliches to lock certain mental images into their readers' minds, that Hizbu'llah is a fundamentalist sectarian and terrorist organization. Two relatively recent books help to dispel this notion by placing Hizbu'llah's accomplishments within the framework of Shi'ite political mobilization, the political opportunities offered by the civil war, and the heteregenous nature of Lebanese society. Each book shows the development of Hizbu'llah from a guerilla movement who at times engaged in what the international community deemed as acts of 'terror' into a full-fledged political party with a stake in Lebanese politics.

The first book, by former U.N. observer Augustus Richard Norton, is a short but authoritative account of Hizbu'llah's development in the context of recent Lebanese history. It has the advantage of including some analysis of the 2006 war with Israel, in which Hizbu'llah emerged from a devastating bombardment organizationally intact.

The second book is an older account by a Lebanese insider, based on interviews, televised speeches, and an excellent review and critique of the secondary literature about the organization. Amal Saad Ghorayeb analyzes Hizbu'llah through the paradigm of 'oppression' and sees Hizbu'llah as a theologically flexible, guerilla movement which stands ideologically on the side of the oppressed. This is a helpful paradigm, because it sees Hizbu'llah as basically responding to opportunities to organize people against oppression, using Islam as an idiom, not as an Islamic movement to 'Islamisize' Lebanon and the world.

Hizbu'llah's mission (if not always its tactics) stand in the best traditions of Islamic liberation theology, and are fundamentally consistent with Biblical teaching about God's special concern for the poor (see Matthew 5:5 for the Biblical precursor to the Islamic idea).

One thing both authors stress is the evolution of the party, from a entity existing outside of the system, to a major player on the Lebanese political scene. Hizbu'llah's challenge will be to remain relevant to its mass base and yet manuever within the convulutions of Lebanese politics without being corrupted by the alliances it forges.

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Mau Mau and Historical Memory

Been in the library a few days this week, in between being a junkie at my favorite cyber cafe. I've been leafing through Oginga Odinga's Not Yet Uhuru, a political autobiography of one of Kenya's most prominent nationalists who was 'unbought and unbowed' throughout the long struggle for independence. I was particularly impressed with how Odinga tackled the problem of economic nationalism by forming business cooperatives and even doing contracting and construction. He seemed to realize the practical needs that underlie political promises and revolutionary zeal.
He details land tenure and allocation among the Luo people, his struggles as a teacher with white racism, as well as to the historical development of African Christianity. The rise of independent African congregations like the Israel Uhuru Church, Dini ya Roho and Nomiya Luo Church demonstrated how Africans took the universal message of the gospel and in the words of Bildad Kaggia, removed the 'European abominations' which had polluted the message of Jesus. This Africanization of Christianity also meant (in the case of Odinga) refusing to give his child a European name.
There are some interesting tidbits about the assistance rendered by the young Indian militant Pio Gama Pinto, as well as the role of newspapers in disseminating ideas to the African masses.
Odinga devotes time to considering the period in Kenya's history euphemistically known as 'The Emergency' or 'Mau Mau.' Odinga questions the facile assumptions about what Mau Mau really was, and places it at the center of historical consciousness in the struggle for Kenyan independence. "There was no such thing as Mau Mau. The poor were the Mau Mau and poverty could be stopped but not by bombs and weapons."
Despite the horrific portrayal of Mau Mau in numerous books, magazines, and movies (such as Africa Adieu, villifying Mau Mau as criminals and thugs, as anti-white lunatics, etc.

Odinga reveals the reality of the situation in which British mass arrests and land dispossession forced thousands of members of KAU to flee to the forests and become the Land and Freedom Army. Kenya can no more deny or be made to deny this part of its past than the United States can the Revolutionary War.
Odinga cites some very revealing statistics which ought to put in perspective who were the real 'gangsters': Out of the 2,000 people killed by Mau Mau, only 30 were white. On the other hand, the British detained 90,000 Africans during the same period and killed 11,000! And all this was to defend the interests of a small minority of white settlers who had forcibly dispossessed Africans of the best land in Kenya's most fertile areas.

Those African leaders who took over the reigns of government from the British post-independence did so under the stipulation that Mau Mau and the ideology of land redistribution would not be tolerated. The assumption of independence rested, in part, on assurances to the white settlers that their land and livelihood would be kept safe. Unfortunately this has meant a steady stream of anti-Mau Mau propaganda or at the least silence. Which is really incredible to contemplate that those fighters who paid the highest price for freedom by waging guerilla warfare against an imperial army, should turn out to benefit the least from the subsequent political bargaining carried out by a political class ostensibly representing their interests. I don't think I've seen a more striking example of neo-colonialism in action.

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Revolution, Nostalgia, and Heroism

Today, the phrase African socialism seems to espouse the view that the traditional African society was a classless society. imbued with the spirit of humanism and to express a nostalgia for that spirit. such a conception of socialism makes a fetish of the communal African society.
-Kwame Nkrumah

I like this quote for many reasons. First, because it shuns that unfortunate tendency of some writers to make pre-colonial Africa a place of perfect equality, a virtual paradise before the injection of evil which inevitably came from outside the unspoiled African envirornment.
The truth is this: Africa is the place of humankind's most ancient habitation, and as such we expect to find and do, the remains of the earliest civilizations as well as evidence of their decline and fall. This is the natural cycle of all human accomplishment throughout recorded history, and we place Africa outside history if we look to its past as if all Africans were kings and queens.
This also relates to a tendency I've noticed to deify revolutionary leaders, as if they possessed the truth for all times and places. Yet to make them heroes is to rob them of their relevance; they and thousands of others rose to prominence by making the powerful uneasy, by offering the stark unvarnished truth forged by their experience. They offered no claims to universalism and for the most part no ideologically ‘correct’ analysis applicable across time and space. They spoke from the specificity of their historical community and experience. They were usually hated by liberals. And yet, in each of them, one finds a current of humanism (and I mean that term in the best sense of faith in human capacity) and a generosity of spirit appropriate to the true revolutionary. One is reminded that Che once famously said, “a true revolutionary is inspired by feelings of love.” Unfortunately, in their haste to recycle the various arguments of these legends, some of their admirers have forgotten this basis.
For radicals, especially in America, there is a crucial gap between ideology and practice. While the great writings of Fanon, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Steve Biko (to name a few) emerge from the crucible of the struggle, the radicalism of our generation is often simply recycled analysis, offered by pseudo-academics who have spent their whole life in school up till now, and who possess virtually no experience in the kind of political organizing or guerilla warfare of the previously mentioned writers. They are all theory, no practice.
My point is that borrowed ideologies, even from such luminaries as Malcolm X, rarely can respond flexibly to the challenges of actual lived experience. This will help prevent rhetorical hypocricy. For example, not long ago, I listened to a local DC filmmaker stir a crowd up by emphasizing how whites were trying to prevent his films being made, and how blacks needed to support each other. He went on to sharply criticize those Africans living in America who did nothing for Africa. Later, a friend related to me how this same filmmaker uses mostly white production companies! He brought to mind Fanon’s observation that there are many (mostly among the so-called ‘conscious’ crowd) who are “violent in their words and reformist in their attitudes.” Me, I am unabashedly a reformist. Reform should not be understood as a theoretical ideal rooted in a particular ideology (i.e. Western liberalism) but as the will to change certain aspects of society without destroying the whole society itself. Just because you favor reform doesn't mean you share the intellectual foundations of everyone else who wants reform. To be a revolutionary requires immense courage, indeed, I think it requires one to possess an incredible intensity bordering on the fanatical. This is not to discount revolutionaries, but to underscore Sekou Sundiata's words: "Revolution. You wouldn't use that word if you knew what it means/its dirty, its bloody, it overturns things."
Sadly, those who claim to be revolutionaries often use this ideology as the barest cover for their own personal ambitions. I've been utterly amazed at the childish posturing and exaggeration that passes for historical analysis at some of the 'revolutionary' meetings and gatherings I've attended; I'm even more incredulous that those who go around pumping up 'revolution' are actually arrogant about it. Sorry, this is unrelated to travel, but I had to rant for a second.

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Liberation, Theology, and the Abrahamic Religions

"We must go beyond giving a piece of bread to the little ones who knock on our doors...Saying 'yes' to them may make us feel good but does not solve the problem. one finds business people spending huge amounts on charity and it makes them feel very good. Nobody asks how come they have so much money...We must understand that if we choose solidarity with the poor that our option has a political character in so far as it means attacking structures and making decisions to take concrete actions to help specific classes."
quoted in Qu'ran, Liberation, and Pluralism


One thing I realized about myself during the course of reading Farid Esack's Qur'an, Liberation, and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression.: I cannot support any religion, no matter how orthodox, that does not have as its absolute center, support for the struggle of the poor and oppressed against their oppression. If that sounds like apostasy, then I think its an indication of how much theology these days, be it Islamic or Christian, is majoring in utter trivialities and consistently failing to address itself to the overarching needs of our world. It seems as if I am constantly reading or coming across apologetics which seek to 'prove' scientifically that the Qur'an is correct, or that Jesus was really the 'Son of God' or that modernity cannot explain the 'wonders' of creation. Which is all well and good up to a point. Yet I notice in this preoccupation a defensive position which religion has adopted against secularism and modernity and in consequence, ceded the great source of its prophetic power. Religion has the ability like no other instrument to mobilize the masses, yet the problem is that the conception of religion put forth is that of purely personal piety. I utterly reject this pie-in-the-sky approach. Its not that I don't believe in an afterlife or in the power of Allah. But I am just tired of seeing it used to justify words, actions, and policies that are directly opposed to the mandate of a JUST GOD!
Growing up as a Christian, and encountering liberation theology for the first time at the age of 21, I was deeply impressed but also deeply worried for the implication it held of relativism and undermining the authority of the Scripture. Since then, my perspective on this issue has changed radically, and I find myself drawn to its expression through the work of Farid Esack.
Esack has done for Islam what James Cone did for Christianity: give it a radical wake-up call and force it to confront the message of liberation inherent in the text of the Qur'an.
In studying the evolution of the Islamic community in the early days, one finds that the Prophet(SAW) was gathering followers from all walks of society and life and calling them to an order that transcended tribal, racial and previous religious classification. At its core, the message of Islam is no different than what Jesus came to do. Remember that Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, and that he preached from the Torah in order to call for the reform of the old order which was hierarchical and collaborationist, and had forgotten the basic 'spirit' of Judaism. Similarly in Eastern religion, the Buddha and other acknowledged spiritual masters often began their quest for truth not out of a desire to 'create' a new religion, but to reform the old one (often corrupt varieties of Hinduism). All this is not to say that Islam or Christianity are not legitimate religions in their own right. But it does go to illustrate how we generally think about religion: religion is something you 'have'. Thus, if I walk around Mombasa and go to pray in the masjid and someone asks my name, many people will not believe I am a Muslim because I have a 'Christian' name. Of course, when pushed they will admit that, "kwa hakika, dini ndani ya moyo yako." (In truth, religion is in your heart) It goes to show that religion functions dually: as a cultural marker in everyday usage, but also on a more philosophical level as a purification of the soul.Because true religion is a purification of the inner self, it follows that it will be reflected in how we live it.
This deeper reality is in line with how Jainism, one of the world's oldest religions, perceives religion, a reality also reflected in the Quran; knowledge of the truth has risen and fallen cyclically throughout history. Thus, with each new generation, new prophets have arisen in order to communicate this truth to the people, typically in the form of religion. And the Prophet (SAW), Jesus, Buddha, any great spiritual teacher would cry in disbelief and outrage if they saw the trivialities and worthless theological fiddling their followers engage in the name of 'religion'. Religion is not a immovable fortress to be guarded and hoarded. It is something so much more holy than can be expressed in words, something so much more radical than the status quo would like it to be, and something immeasurably powerful beyond imagination. I find its highest expression in the world today to be the struggle for justice, for how can we claim to 'submit to Allah', to 'be like Jesus', how can we claim a 'Christ-centered life' or to be following the way of the Prophet (Sunnah) if we are not living some kind of radical witness to the power and corruption of this world? And does not the power and corruption of this world find its most evil expression in the immoral pillage of Iraq by the US government, the tremendous and growing gap between rich and poor, the food policies of the the G8 (especially America) which have catastrophic effects on the ability of farmers worldwide to sell their produce at a fair price, the persecution and violence perpetrated outrageously against women worldwide by so-called 'Islamic' countries, and a host of other injustices, many of them far more local than what I have named.
I find myself so angry sometimes at the complacency in regards to this issue. And it leads me to define religion as this: 'an active response to the will of God with regard to justice and right conduct on every level of existence.' I acknowledge the relevance of religion as something you 'have' (i.e. culture, language, membership in a socio-ethnic group) but I prefer the first definition. What do you think? And remember, I am just an amateur scholar! I don't read Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, or any of the original languages of the books the religions I discussed find holy. But I contend that one doesn't have to in order to grasp the BASIC ESSENCE OF ALL RELIGION. RELIGION IS ONE. GOD IS ONE. Peace be upon those who follow right guidance. And God knows best.

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