1 00:00:04,500 --> 00:00:10,020 Welcome all to the fourth iteration of the Oxford Political Hall seminar, 2 00:00:10,020 --> 00:00:17,100 and we are delighted to welcome today industry and Badawi from the American University in Cairo and what are the degrees 3 00:00:17,100 --> 00:00:24,720 from the University of Michigan who will both be addressing the issue of violence in different times and places? 4 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:29,790 I will invite some. I'll ask me my co-convenor to introduce them properly. 5 00:00:29,790 --> 00:00:35,190 But before doing so, I just want to just lay down some of the regulations here, 6 00:00:35,190 --> 00:00:44,350 which is that industry will begin and speak for 20 minutes and then be followed by Murad for another 20 minutes, after which we shall have Q&A. 7 00:00:44,350 --> 00:00:52,770 And if you should have any questions, please put them either in the Q&A box anonymously or under your own name or in the chat box. 8 00:00:52,770 --> 00:01:00,510 And if you're unable absolutely to do that, you can raise your hand and I can or someone can call upon you and you can start 9 00:01:00,510 --> 00:01:05,550 asking you questions during the talks so as not to wait until they finish. 10 00:01:05,550 --> 00:01:12,120 So with that, I'll hand over to you something. Thank you very much and welcome to business Raine and Murad. 11 00:01:12,120 --> 00:01:17,430 It's really wonderful to have you here from across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, as the case may be. 12 00:01:17,430 --> 00:01:20,670 And I'm just going to introduce the screen, 13 00:01:20,670 --> 00:01:26,940 just give a little bit of biographical background and then please feel free to sort of launch into your discussion. 14 00:01:26,940 --> 00:01:33,390 So in this vein, Badawi is a an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. 15 00:01:33,390 --> 00:01:40,350 He is an associate professor of public and international law, and she received a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies. 16 00:01:40,350 --> 00:01:47,520 He holds an Al-Alam in international comparative law and a licence and a B.A. in Political Science. 17 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:53,820 So, by the way, he has experienced working in the United Nations within the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 18 00:01:53,820 --> 00:02:00,390 on Refugee Law and has offered consultancy work to several organisations on humanitarian and Islamic law. 19 00:02:00,390 --> 00:02:07,110 Your relatively recently published book in 2019 is entitled Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict with Israel, 20 00:02:07,110 --> 00:02:14,910 and we look forward to your lecture on Islamic conceptions of violence in the modern period. 21 00:02:14,910 --> 00:02:19,900 So without further ado, please go ahead. Thank you, Sam. 22 00:02:19,900 --> 00:02:25,050 It's a pleasure to be with you here today, and I'm looking forward to the discussion we're going to have today. 23 00:02:25,050 --> 00:02:29,820 I'm just going to give a brief introduction of what I intend to talk about today. 24 00:02:29,820 --> 00:02:38,910 The focus of my talk today is how different Muslim actors have attempted to reformulate and interpret 25 00:02:38,910 --> 00:02:45,600 Islamic regulations on armed conflict and rules of war and Islamic jurisprudence in the modern context. 26 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:49,410 And I'm going to look at three main actors. 27 00:02:49,410 --> 00:02:56,490 The first actor that I'm going to look at is Muslim institutions with a focus on Al-Azhar and its approach to Islamic laws of war. 28 00:02:56,490 --> 00:03:01,890 And then I'm going to look at two examples of mainstream scholars who are independent scholars Wahhabism, 29 00:03:01,890 --> 00:03:06,630 highly Assyrian scholar and Yusuf accordingly. 30 00:03:06,630 --> 00:03:12,210 Just to give a sense of mainstream approaches to Islamic law, to Islamic laws of war. 31 00:03:12,210 --> 00:03:16,350 And then I'm going to shift to a discussion of militant groups and their 32 00:03:16,350 --> 00:03:23,350 interpretations of Islamic laws of war with a focus on al-Qaida and the Islamic State. 33 00:03:23,350 --> 00:03:29,530 To start out this discussion, I think that one, there's an important framing question, the premise that needs to be taken, 34 00:03:29,530 --> 00:03:35,650 which is understanding the dilemma that many of Muslim states in the Muslim world that we're faced with, 35 00:03:35,650 --> 00:03:40,690 which is the post-colonial moment and the and the move towards independence, 36 00:03:40,690 --> 00:03:47,350 understanding how Muslim institutions and how Muslim scholars interpreted Islamic law cannot be separated from that moment. 37 00:03:47,350 --> 00:03:57,910 With the rise in pressure for legal reform and the assertion on the primacy and supremacy of European inspired laws, including international law. 38 00:03:57,910 --> 00:04:06,010 We see a shift towards an attempt towards an assertion of Islamic law and see what international humanitarian law. 39 00:04:06,010 --> 00:04:13,450 So in the 50s and the 60s, we see a rise in scholarship that addresses the question of Islamic laws of war, 40 00:04:13,450 --> 00:04:18,790 whether within the Muslim world or from Muslim scholars who are in Western academia, 41 00:04:18,790 --> 00:04:24,610 such as having the more magical Hungary and from within the Muslim world itself. 42 00:04:24,610 --> 00:04:28,160 I have extensively at Al-Azhar conferences. 43 00:04:28,160 --> 00:04:34,630 The measurement, of course, is the Maya, which is a scholarly community under under the auspices of Al-Azhar, 44 00:04:34,630 --> 00:04:38,620 and it has conducted annual conferences to address issues of Islamic law. 45 00:04:38,620 --> 00:04:46,360 And we see a focus on Islamic laws of war and scholarship, understanding Islamic rules of war in that era. 46 00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:53,560 And my argument is that that focus is heavily influenced by an attempt to 47 00:04:53,560 --> 00:05:00,460 emulate the principles of international law with regards to come back and see. 48 00:05:00,460 --> 00:05:12,890 For example, a scholar like Muhammad, who has dedicated extensive focus to Islamic laws of war, offers an interpretation of Islamic law that largely. 49 00:05:12,890 --> 00:05:17,270 Aligns with our understanding of Islamic law in order to do that. 50 00:05:17,270 --> 00:05:26,240 My argument is that much of significant features of Islamic law are suppressed in order to arrive at that Congress. 51 00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:35,270 One important feature that is suppressed is the question of diversity and that this is closely connected to an attempt to offer an authoritative, 52 00:05:35,270 --> 00:05:37,130 singular interpretation of Islamic law, 53 00:05:37,130 --> 00:05:47,810 but also closely connected to the idea of singular law and the idea of the sovereign authority establishing one interpretation of law. 54 00:05:47,810 --> 00:05:56,510 So we see diversity suppressed and issues that have been contested and have been heavily negotiated and elaborated 55 00:05:56,510 --> 00:06:02,120 upon by jurists leading to different interpretations are largely treated as a singular interpretation. 56 00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:10,340 For that, I'll use the example of combatants or the example of who may be targeted under the Islamic legal tradition. 57 00:06:10,340 --> 00:06:18,980 Of course, the notion of come back and see in and of itself is a modern notion that is heavily associated with the rise of full-fledged armies, 58 00:06:18,980 --> 00:06:23,150 the under the auspices of a sovereign state. 59 00:06:23,150 --> 00:06:32,900 So it cannot be separated from that. But in order to offer an interpretation that those who do not participate in fighting may not be targeted. 60 00:06:32,900 --> 00:06:37,310 We see a selective reliance on the jurisprudence and suppression of the diverse 61 00:06:37,310 --> 00:06:41,600 use of jurisprudence of different jurists who offer varying interpretations. 62 00:06:41,600 --> 00:06:48,110 For example, if we look at the classic tradition, we see varying views. 63 00:06:48,110 --> 00:06:54,500 So with on the one hand, you have Hanafi views such as showband, you, for example, 64 00:06:54,500 --> 00:07:00,560 who list certain categories who may not be targeted because they're unable to participate in fighting. 65 00:07:00,560 --> 00:07:08,330 And that list is rather expensive, expensive to include the categories that are common to those who are familiar with the symbols of war, 66 00:07:08,330 --> 00:07:15,890 such as women, children, older men, the blind, the crippled hard labourers and so on and so forth. 67 00:07:15,890 --> 00:07:19,540 So an explicit list. And we move away from that. 68 00:07:19,540 --> 00:07:22,730 Then we see, for example, to the other end of the spectrum. 69 00:07:22,730 --> 00:07:31,040 We see scholars like al-Shughur and of the hasn't who assert that men who have reached the age of puberty may be targeted. 70 00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:34,850 So a very different interpretation. And within those different interpretations, 71 00:07:34,850 --> 00:07:42,860 there is an extensive examination of the force's extensive examination of prophetic traditions and practises to arrive at that interpretation. 72 00:07:42,860 --> 00:07:50,240 But all of that is suppressed in the modern interpretation in order to arrive at that singular interpretation. 73 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:55,790 The argument that those who do not participate in fighting may not be targeted. 74 00:07:55,790 --> 00:08:05,060 Another feature that is closely connected to the question of suppression of diversity is selectivity and selectivity that is often incoherent. 75 00:08:05,060 --> 00:08:09,400 So unlike, for example, in earlier approaches to Islamic law, 76 00:08:09,400 --> 00:08:16,460 where we see jurists following a particular school of thought and they espouse that jurisprudential school's positions, 77 00:08:16,460 --> 00:08:22,930 we see an eclectic choice that is largely reminiscent of the process of the future. 78 00:08:22,930 --> 00:08:29,260 But with no coherent, so a shuffling might be relied on in a particular position to advance a certain view, 79 00:08:29,260 --> 00:08:34,930 and his use might be disregarded if they are if they are not seen as befitting of the argument that 80 00:08:34,930 --> 00:08:42,220 the author is making and that approach and that methodology of interpreting Islamic laws of war, 81 00:08:42,220 --> 00:08:46,060 I argue, continues to live on until the present day. 82 00:08:46,060 --> 00:08:54,190 So another significant stage that we see Islamic jurists confronted with is the moment of 9-11 in the post-9 and post-9 83 00:08:54,190 --> 00:09:02,830 11 and the rise in arguments about Islamic militancy and the surge in arguments about how we interpret Islamic laws. 84 00:09:02,830 --> 00:09:13,360 Treatment of 9-11 leads to again, a renewed interest in that, and we see very similar approaches with the addition of the new significant approach, 85 00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:20,050 which is reliant on older regimes of jurisprudence that may have offered, 86 00:09:20,050 --> 00:09:28,450 may have been developed for a different set of acts to end trying to apply them to the crime of terrorism. 87 00:09:28,450 --> 00:09:38,500 And I used the example of hearable, which is a regime that in the classic jurisprudence, is often seen as reserved for highway robbery and banditry, 88 00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:46,930 explicitly criminal activity that deals with a crime that receives the highest, perhaps the harshest punishment in Islamic law. 89 00:09:46,930 --> 00:09:56,350 And taking that and extrapolating it to the crime of terrorism and that becomes a very common feature of the approach of mainstream 90 00:09:56,350 --> 00:10:04,720 jurisprudence and particularly those who are affiliated with the state in order to deal with the crime of terrorism imperative, 91 00:10:04,720 --> 00:10:10,390 too, that we see suppression, complete suppression or silence on the regime of Bashar, 92 00:10:10,390 --> 00:10:17,110 which has normally been the regime that deals with political violence under classical Islamic jurisprudence. 93 00:10:17,110 --> 00:10:27,010 The reason Bundy is suppressed is not surprising because the regime of Barry is to some extent rather agnostic to whether or not you have the right 94 00:10:27,010 --> 00:10:36,940 to rebel and focuses more extensively on regulating the acts of rebellion and provides extensive protections for the different warring parties, 95 00:10:36,940 --> 00:10:41,410 including extensive protections for the rebelling group. One. 96 00:10:41,410 --> 00:10:48,980 The I mean, so you have scholars who argue that that rebellion groups, if they flee the battle, they may not be pursued there. 97 00:10:48,980 --> 00:10:52,930 Their wounded may not be dispatched and other arguments that are largely restrictive, 98 00:10:52,930 --> 00:10:59,410 including extensive restrictions on the confiscation of their books property. 99 00:10:59,410 --> 00:11:09,310 That is not necessarily a regime that lends itself to utilisation by a sovereign state in our understanding of the modern sovereign state. 100 00:11:09,310 --> 00:11:17,350 Hence, it's not surprising that the disregarded and that we see leaning towards a much more permissive regime in 101 00:11:17,350 --> 00:11:24,460 terms of punishment and a regime that is that provides a harsher judgement of the act of violence itself, 102 00:11:24,460 --> 00:11:34,020 which is the regime of hearable. To a great extent, that is the general discourse that we see until the rise of ISIS, but the rise of ISIS, 103 00:11:34,020 --> 00:11:41,460 and I'm going to come back to that when I talk about militant groups is a perplexing moment for mainstream scholars 104 00:11:41,460 --> 00:11:49,830 because ISIS collapses old categories just as the category of hearable and Betty is collapsed by mainstream jurists. 105 00:11:49,830 --> 00:11:59,670 I can't even go a step further by expanding apostasy extensively beyond any other expansion that we see by other militant 106 00:11:59,670 --> 00:12:09,720 groups in order to resort to the regime of apostasy to to justify their practises with the different warring parties, 107 00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:19,410 including civilians living under the control of the Muslim regimes who are deemed apostates by the Islamic State. 108 00:12:19,410 --> 00:12:29,880 However, the response by efficient mainstream institutions does not necessarily live up to the premise of fighting against that challenge. 109 00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:33,960 In some areas, they're successful in other areas. They seem to falter. 110 00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:37,200 So when it comes to fiat, for example, 111 00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:48,510 we see a very solid assertion on the classic Azahari doctrine of limiting the purview of the fear and limiting the resort to that fear. 112 00:12:48,510 --> 00:12:56,550 And we see a basis there. But when it comes to other areas that ISIS relies or other claims that ISIS makes, 113 00:12:56,550 --> 00:13:05,130 we see a much weaker resort to the jurisprudence to push back against ISIS and use here the example of hacking me. 114 00:13:05,130 --> 00:13:12,060 The assertion on the need to uphold Islamic law in order for a regime to govern Muslim 115 00:13:12,060 --> 00:13:17,370 societies and the destruction of that is a benchmark to assess Islamist city of the regime. 116 00:13:17,370 --> 00:13:26,310 With that, we see punchlines. We see general statements that do not necessarily offer a serious and concerted 117 00:13:26,310 --> 00:13:30,750 effort to deal with questions of democracy and how and how we understand democracy, 118 00:13:30,750 --> 00:13:40,220 questions of cost of law and how and what the space for positive law is within a legitimate Muslim regime in the modern context. 119 00:13:40,220 --> 00:13:45,950 And part of my argument is that this is hardly surprising considering the very difficult 120 00:13:45,950 --> 00:13:51,920 terrain that official Muslim institutions are trying to tread because on the one hand, 121 00:13:51,920 --> 00:13:55,940 they need to assert their legitimacy, they need to maintain their legitimacy. 122 00:13:55,940 --> 00:14:03,410 But on the other hand, their relationships with the different regimes and their relationships with sovereign 123 00:14:03,410 --> 00:14:10,430 states who rely on positive more extensively are strenuous or difficult to to manage. 124 00:14:10,430 --> 00:14:14,960 That makes it very difficult for them to actually address that issue. 125 00:14:14,960 --> 00:14:17,550 But that doesn't go without attempts to make gains. 126 00:14:17,550 --> 00:14:25,850 So one of the main lines that we see asserted by official Muslim institutions is the line of the assertion of authority. 127 00:14:25,850 --> 00:14:37,030 So what extensively we find, I mean aggressive assertions of authority and progressive assertions that Muslims cannot. 128 00:14:37,030 --> 00:14:43,640 Offer a direct interpretation of Islamic law on their own. They need to go to a qualified scholar in order to do that. 129 00:14:43,640 --> 00:14:48,560 As a matter of fact, I think in a president interview with one prominent Muslim jurist in the past. 130 00:14:48,560 --> 00:14:56,800 He made the claim that none other than Muslim jurists should read the texts and attempt to interpret them on their own. 131 00:14:56,800 --> 00:15:02,420 But they should actually go to the scholars to offer that interpretation. 132 00:15:02,420 --> 00:15:08,870 Two, to a great extent, if we look at the trajectory, we see that with independent mainstream scholars, 133 00:15:08,870 --> 00:15:14,780 there's more inclination to deal with and probably monetise those issues. 134 00:15:14,780 --> 00:15:24,350 So with Daily, for example, we see a more concerted effort to deal with the question of fear with the question of the place of Muslim 135 00:15:24,350 --> 00:15:30,470 regimes and subjects of Muslim regimes in the Muslim world to arrive at a conclusion very similar to Al-Azhar, 136 00:15:30,470 --> 00:15:34,700 but with perhaps a more rigorous interpretation. 137 00:15:34,700 --> 00:15:38,390 But again, we also see the line of succession of all sorts. 138 00:15:38,390 --> 00:15:46,100 So for example, if we I mean, on a separate issue on the question of suicide bombing, today, we reserves the space for the Muslim scholar, 139 00:15:46,100 --> 00:15:52,220 for the Muslim jurists to determine when and where is the resort to suicide bombing legitimate? 140 00:15:52,220 --> 00:15:53,000 By associating, 141 00:15:53,000 --> 00:16:02,210 by utilising the tool of Islam and the tool of Muslim becomes a tool to also grant the jurists that kind of authority of of interpretation. 142 00:16:02,210 --> 00:16:07,010 On the other end of the spectrum, we see militants who are not who, 143 00:16:07,010 --> 00:16:11,900 I argue are not again who have not escaped the predicament and the dilemma of the 144 00:16:11,900 --> 00:16:16,580 modern nation state and how to deal with their place in the modern nation state. 145 00:16:16,580 --> 00:16:26,800 It was uncovered that we see some expansion, extensive expansion of some of the categories relating to targeting, for example. 146 00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:32,380 And we see the same selectivity. So, for example, when it comes to targeting, 147 00:16:32,380 --> 00:16:37,600 we see an expansion of indiscriminate targeting beyond the regime of deterrence 148 00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:42,760 and beyond what what is envisioned by scholars under the regime of deterrence. 149 00:16:42,760 --> 00:16:47,260 And we also see attempts to connect what is not, not necessarily connected. 150 00:16:47,260 --> 00:16:54,490 For example, Zawahiri argues that weapons of mass destruction are attempting to own or utilise weapons of mass 151 00:16:54,490 --> 00:16:59,740 destruction can be compared to indiscriminate targeting by tools such as hurling machines and so on. 152 00:16:59,740 --> 00:17:05,350 This regarding the fact that classical jurists have actually acknowledged some 153 00:17:05,350 --> 00:17:09,760 level of discrimination and those weapons by giving direction to the Muslim Army, 154 00:17:09,760 --> 00:17:17,050 to Earth to attempt to avoid harm that is likely to be inflicted in those situations is hardly imaginable. 155 00:17:17,050 --> 00:17:21,010 In a situation where you resort to weapons of mass destruction, who are, 156 00:17:21,010 --> 00:17:27,310 by their nature, indiscriminate and a much more expansive fashion than those weapons. 157 00:17:27,310 --> 00:17:35,890 And the weakest point or the weakest link that we see in a al-Zawahiri's jurisprudence is again, 158 00:17:35,890 --> 00:17:46,150 in no way the utilisation of the logic of the modern nation state to argue for the denial of the regime of. 159 00:17:46,150 --> 00:17:53,680 So the regime of a man is a regime that is arguably a very individualised system under classical Islamic jurisprudence. 160 00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:59,230 Anyone could could grant them not just the state, not just the the caliph could grant them. 161 00:17:59,230 --> 00:18:08,890 And anyone could. Of course, the Caliph could revoke that women. But but it's a it's a much more fluid system than we see in the modern nation state. 162 00:18:08,890 --> 00:18:17,140 But he utilises the authority of the modern nation state and the logic of the modern nation state be to deny the possibility of individual amend, 163 00:18:17,140 --> 00:18:27,400 thereby again employing the same methods of selectivity that we see associated with mainstream scholars on the other end of the spectrum. 164 00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:32,500 We see a new animal, which is the Islamic State and its approach to Islamic jurisprudence. 165 00:18:32,500 --> 00:18:39,850 Arguably, I mean, even the rigour of analysis is as much weaker in comparison to al-Zawahiri's work. 166 00:18:39,850 --> 00:18:44,230 For example, the resort to jurisprudence is much weaker, 167 00:18:44,230 --> 00:18:51,220 but we see an expansion and extensive expansion of the notion of apostasy to include Muslims who 168 00:18:51,220 --> 00:18:58,960 live under so-called apostate regimes by relying on scholars such as it and hasn't and timea. 169 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:06,400 Despite the fact that that those same scholars have in some instances acknowledged that Muslims 170 00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:13,570 who live under regimes was adherents to Islamic law may be seen as subjects such as Egyptians. 171 00:19:13,570 --> 00:19:21,190 In the case of, or the margins of the very famous Martin fatwa issued by the Times, that led us to a very different conclusion, 172 00:19:21,190 --> 00:19:28,750 thereby collapsing all categories and denying their opposition any tool of challenge to Islamic law. 173 00:19:28,750 --> 00:19:38,740 And on the other hand, we also see the same resort to the denial of protections of the Shia by expanding the interpretations of apostasy of the Shia. 174 00:19:38,740 --> 00:19:46,210 But most importantly, by denying the applicability of regimes that are so entrenched in Islamic law and namely the regime of Jesus. 175 00:19:46,210 --> 00:19:57,450 So we see the assertion that. Christians in Egypt may be targeted simply because they live under a regime that is not Islamic, 176 00:19:57,450 --> 00:20:00,900 which is very odd because it goes against the rationale of a man, 177 00:20:00,900 --> 00:20:09,090 at least not even GZA or the mean is that just because they have been granted a semblance of a safety pact and more importantly, 178 00:20:09,090 --> 00:20:13,410 because at the end of the day, with the classical doctrine, they must status. 179 00:20:13,410 --> 00:20:19,880 This is offered. And once it's offered it, there are regulations for how you do it. 180 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:27,680 And there are regulations for how they provide for it, and that is completely silenced in the debate that we see associated with ISIS. 181 00:20:27,680 --> 00:20:31,580 I'm going to come back to that, perhaps in the discussion, we want to take more time. 182 00:20:31,580 --> 00:20:38,840 But the general gist of that analysis is that despite whether or not we're dealing with groups who deny 183 00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:43,520 the existence of the modern nation state or entities that are entrenched within the modern nation state, 184 00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:50,450 there's no escaping it. There is no escaping its impact on how we understand Islamic laws of war today and 185 00:20:50,450 --> 00:20:58,520 how that understanding is so entrenched in our logic of how to deal with militancy. 186 00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:03,560 Thank you so much for three nights. This is an incredibly impressive piece of 20 minutes. 187 00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:10,430 I mean, this is so much packed into this and you brought so many fascinating voices into the conversation 188 00:21:10,430 --> 00:21:16,880 and so much analytical nuance to reflecting on how the Muslim nation state has an impact on this. 189 00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:25,170 The way in which scholars are ostensibly completely different stripes actually coming to Islamic law, 190 00:21:25,170 --> 00:21:30,200 or the classical tradition in similar ways because of what modernity has wrought. 191 00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:34,520 I'm sure this will elicit a lot of discussion on the past attendees, 192 00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:39,170 and please feel free to type in your questions at this stage if you would like to raise your hand. 193 00:21:39,170 --> 00:21:46,670 We're going to take the questions after the session, but right now I'm going to switch over to one of the tweets. 194 00:21:46,670 --> 00:21:50,780 Meredith Reese is a associate professor of political science at the University 195 00:21:50,780 --> 00:21:55,220 of Michigan with his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania, 196 00:21:55,220 --> 00:22:01,340 and he has a wide range of interests in political theory and the history of this proposal, including in war and peace. 197 00:22:01,340 --> 00:22:05,210 Critical theory, conceptual history, anti-colonial and postcolonial thought. 198 00:22:05,210 --> 00:22:12,510 Political theology, internet like you basically are interested in everything pertaining to sort of Islamic politics, 199 00:22:12,510 --> 00:22:16,340 and I think this is reflected, of course, in your writing as well. 200 00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:26,930 So your book again, relatively recent book came out in 2019 was entitled War for Peace Genealogies of Abundant Ideas in Western and Islamic Thought, 201 00:22:26,930 --> 00:22:29,630 and you have other work that you're working on right now. 202 00:22:29,630 --> 00:22:37,130 I think you have another book planned, which currently is tentatively titled Out of History, Genealogies and Language, Time and Violence. 203 00:22:37,130 --> 00:22:45,080 So I look forward to that as well. But you'll be talking about theorising colonialism, capitalism and violence and an Islamist key. 204 00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,520 So let me hand it over to you for the next 20 minutes. Thank you. Great. 205 00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:54,080 Thank you. Faisal, thank you. Summer for the invitation. 206 00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:59,910 I'm excited to be here sharing a mix of recent and new work with you, and I'm excited to be in conversation with you. 207 00:22:59,910 --> 00:23:07,310 While I'll be focussing on excavating some unusual themes from say it perturbs writings. 208 00:23:07,310 --> 00:23:11,690 Say it Cottbus, known as the main theorist of 20th century Islamism, 209 00:23:11,690 --> 00:23:17,720 and he's often considered to have been the intellectual backbone of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s. 210 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:24,110 Today, he's mostly red for his prison writings, which are considered far more radical. 211 00:23:24,110 --> 00:23:33,140 I'll refer to some lesser known works from the early 1950s, including articles published in the journals Dawa and. 212 00:23:33,140 --> 00:23:39,920 His neglected peace plan for the formation of an Islamic Federation and his diagnoses of capitalism, 213 00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:46,670 colonialism, Orientalism and race as interlocking in a formation of violence. 214 00:23:46,670 --> 00:23:49,700 I'll also work in some remarks about the journal Dawa. 215 00:23:49,700 --> 00:23:54,830 I'm currently trying to work through a few thousand pages of the journal, which was published over the course of four years, 216 00:23:54,830 --> 00:24:01,670 and this is all part of a project on theorising of violence, colonialism and capitalism by Islamists in the 1950s. 217 00:24:01,670 --> 00:24:08,510 So I'm promising a lot, so let's jump right in. I'll frame my comments with four premises. 218 00:24:08,510 --> 00:24:16,730 First premise and this should not be controversial. Muslims and Islamists are theorists of violence, and I mean this in two ways. 219 00:24:16,730 --> 00:24:21,140 On the one hand, Islamists aren't simply occasional agents of violence. 220 00:24:21,140 --> 00:24:25,970 They theorise their own violence and to treat this as theory rather than, for example, 221 00:24:25,970 --> 00:24:35,090 mere propaganda is to understand is to understand it as an intervention into an ongoing set of debates, ideas and practises. 222 00:24:35,090 --> 00:24:41,510 On the other hand, Islamists also theorise the already pre-existing and prevalent structures of violence, 223 00:24:41,510 --> 00:24:46,070 and certainly in the 1950s, they understood these two to be intimately linked. 224 00:24:46,070 --> 00:24:56,800 Though I'm focussing today on the analysis of the latter, the pre-existing structures of violence there genealogies their idioms and their connexions. 225 00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:04,780 Second, put theorise, Asians of Violence have numerous underappreciated resonances and linkages across the history of political thought, 226 00:25:04,780 --> 00:25:10,720 including in the writings of Conte, the boys, fennel, Edwards said, and others. 227 00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:14,560 These linkages are, I believe, entirely incidental, 228 00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:21,280 but drawing attention to them can help us diagnose the politics of contemporary disciplinary formations 229 00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:27,220 or why we read certain thinkers in certain ways alongside some thinkers and not others for some themes, 230 00:25:27,220 --> 00:25:34,570 but not others. Third, recovering this cross-section of Islamist thought on violence brings into view. 231 00:25:34,570 --> 00:25:40,420 Theories of how violence is linked with colonialism, capitalism and Orientalism. 232 00:25:40,420 --> 00:25:46,390 So it moves us away from constructions of Islamic thought in terms of fanaticism and ideology. 233 00:25:46,390 --> 00:25:52,000 And it forces us to reckon with a different radical thread that is palpable in these archives, 234 00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:58,750 one that treats fanaticism actually as a colonial discourse and then diagnoses its inner workings. 235 00:25:58,750 --> 00:26:06,280 It helps us exceptionalism, the thematics that are assigned to particular bodies of knowledge. 236 00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:11,890 So it's against what we might call the contemporary choreography of critique. 237 00:26:11,890 --> 00:26:15,550 Finally, intention with much of what I have said, 238 00:26:15,550 --> 00:26:23,680 situating part of within a broader sphere of Islamist intellectual production in the 1950s shows an entire discursive structure. 239 00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:28,480 Many writers, many publications that were reflecting precisely on these very terms, 240 00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:37,720 although theorists and historians of Islamism tend to focus on individual thinkers and their books, and I include myself in this. 241 00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:47,140 Looking at the social, political and institutional life of journals movies as a way towards a different and I think, exciting model of giving theory. 242 00:26:47,140 --> 00:26:54,340 So let me offer a few example, a few examples of these premises juxtapositions and provocations. 243 00:26:54,340 --> 00:27:00,190 First Federation Khattab and KÖNNTE, and this one will be brief. 244 00:27:00,190 --> 00:27:05,500 One of the chapters of my book, which some I mentioned, were for peace. 245 00:27:05,500 --> 00:27:12,790 I read in relation to cut specifically how each constructs a federation that begins with domestic legal reform, 246 00:27:12,790 --> 00:27:19,840 then a federation of these states banding together and then how they police the globe against enemies 247 00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:26,410 of peace instead of consider of colonial powers policing each other and their former colonies. 248 00:27:26,410 --> 00:27:33,040 Put up solution is for the colonised Muslims to police the coloniser and the entire globe. 249 00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:38,380 The only thing I'll add here is about how to stop and can't critically diagnose 250 00:27:38,380 --> 00:27:44,410 how appeals to peace have operated as covers for violence and then unironically, 251 00:27:44,410 --> 00:27:52,360 each offers a three part peace plan that, in the name of peace, authorises a particular form of exceptional violence. 252 00:27:52,360 --> 00:27:57,790 So these formations reflect and entrench hierarchies within humanity. 253 00:27:57,790 --> 00:28:09,550 I'll leave comments here. For now, we can pick them up later if there's interest to war and empire or with the boys in his book on Universal Peace, 254 00:28:09,550 --> 00:28:18,580 but observes that the American intervention in Korea reveals the violent colonial truths of a self-styled democratic bloc. 255 00:28:18,580 --> 00:28:24,490 Interestingly, although the political theorists today don't really say much about the Korean War, 256 00:28:24,490 --> 00:28:33,520 the boys too situated this war as putting on full display an American war industry and in fact, both Perturb and the boys. 257 00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:40,270 They draw attention to the institutions of colonial peace and how they enable particular kinds of war ones that 258 00:28:40,270 --> 00:28:48,730 oftentimes don't go by the name of war for both the prevailing colonial capitalist and racialised peace facilitates war, 259 00:28:48,730 --> 00:28:56,190 violence and subjugation across the globe and both imagined and anti-colonial federation. 260 00:28:56,190 --> 00:29:03,480 Although, bro, the war drums are beating there, it is a prospect knocking on the ears of the wretched of humanity. 261 00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:07,770 I heard it before in America, even before the onset of the Korean War. 262 00:29:07,770 --> 00:29:15,330 Everyone who's lived in America during the last two years clearly has understood that America will wage war, and he goes on. 263 00:29:15,330 --> 00:29:21,540 Anyone who has followed American journalism and its other media apparatus through radio, cinema, universities, 264 00:29:21,540 --> 00:29:31,200 colleges clearly understood that this is a nation preparing to wage war and it is packing public opinion with this idea and the war is coming, 265 00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:36,480 he says, because the heads of American capital are in dire need of a new war. 266 00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:45,330 They generally have engaged in massacres no matter how much their propaganda waves around the names of ethical principles and humanitarian goals. 267 00:29:45,330 --> 00:29:52,650 And his primary examples are Korea and Palestine as sort of exemplifying colonial hypocrisy. 268 00:29:52,650 --> 00:30:02,820 His 1953 essay, Principles of the Free World at Two observes that the name of the free world is a cover for colonialism in Tunis, 269 00:30:02,820 --> 00:30:09,960 Marrakesh, Kenya, Vietnam, the free world. The rips apart the skin of freedom and strangles free people everywhere. 270 00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:15,960 So this view of colonial discourse rhetoric and misrepresentation as tactics across the globe. 271 00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:21,600 It produces a geography in which North Africa and the Near East, Eastern Europe and East Asia, 272 00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:27,780 Africa and Southeast Asia are all bound together, sharing the same fates and the same problems. 273 00:30:27,780 --> 00:30:38,220 Whereas attention to his federation would trace a geography that maps onto the Muslim world whereby it polices the globe against injustice. 274 00:30:38,220 --> 00:30:46,800 This diagnostic geography puts Muslims and non-Muslims into the same colonial present, and attention to either, I think, 275 00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:59,120 helps us to unsaleable Islamism to locate authorisations of colonialism and enter colonialism as internal to and as overlapping with Islamist thought. 276 00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:08,120 Three. Capitalism, consciousness or fennel with Hoda Kotb theorises capitalism, I was surprised to witness. 277 00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:14,810 We already saw him linking capitalism to war. But he also links to the colonial management of culture and consciousness. 278 00:31:14,810 --> 00:31:20,780 And on top of all that, he uses the language of critical political economy to make a number of his arguments. 279 00:31:20,780 --> 00:31:28,130 So oftentimes, these kinds of borrowings are read in terms of the sneaky Islamists trying to co-opt the language of his opponents. 280 00:31:28,130 --> 00:31:40,460 And maybe I think they can also be read generative as reflecting the success of Marxism and educating its potential opponents. 281 00:31:40,460 --> 00:31:44,570 And although I'm not going to make much reference to it today, 282 00:31:44,570 --> 00:31:53,960 there's an entire issue in a dollar that is an analysis of capitalism, class and property, and it draws heavily on Marxist idioms. 283 00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:58,400 So there are both phenomena, phenomena and Marxist resonances here. 284 00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:07,910 In his book The Battle of Islam and Capitalism, he explains that the English always knew that their armies would have to leave Egypt someday. 285 00:32:07,910 --> 00:32:11,900 And so they ensured Egypt's dependence on them. 286 00:32:11,900 --> 00:32:14,900 He offers a version of dependency theory, 287 00:32:14,900 --> 00:32:22,610 asserting that one of the central pillars of colonial control is to make the colony economically dependent on the metropole. 288 00:32:22,610 --> 00:32:29,840 So he says the English established colonialism institutional supports in the economic field by occupying 289 00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:36,710 Egyptian markets and by attempting to close off other international markets to Egyptian products. 290 00:32:36,710 --> 00:32:47,210 And all this. He says, however, would not be enough for colonialism to persist if not for the colonisation of consciousness and intellect, 291 00:32:47,210 --> 00:32:50,960 which colonialism has attended to over the last century. 292 00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:57,470 The white English have vacated governmental offices in order for the dark English to take their place, 293 00:32:57,470 --> 00:33:03,620 whose consciousness and intellect are colonised, assembled according to colonialism and its objectives. 294 00:33:03,620 --> 00:33:13,070 So having shaped the Ministry of Education, he says the white English can now be confident that the dark English will continue their mission. 295 00:33:13,070 --> 00:33:22,970 Colonialism, in other words, conscripts those who exalt freedom and culture and those who oversee education in its battles against Islam. 296 00:33:22,970 --> 00:33:32,870 Whether they realise it or not, they produce curricula on Islamic studies that simply catalogue military assaults, wars, incidents, events. 297 00:33:32,870 --> 00:33:39,260 And he says that the upshot is that Islam was a large military battle and that it had never been an intellectual, 298 00:33:39,260 --> 00:33:42,850 social or humanitarian battle as well. 299 00:33:42,850 --> 00:33:52,660 The narration of Islam as a sequence of violence and events is one strand of Orientalism, which is something I'll speak to in a few minutes. 300 00:33:52,660 --> 00:33:57,130 Autumn does not name it and he doesn't connect it with the rest of his observations. 301 00:33:57,130 --> 00:34:03,400 But he does claim that colonial education culminates in colonialism without colonists. 302 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:11,080 So for the colonisation of consciousness and intellect to reach its high point even after the departure of the occupation. 303 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:18,340 So all non-white peoples, he says, are taught to measure themselves in relation to the white man and his history. 304 00:34:18,340 --> 00:34:26,890 To denigrate their own histories, people in America talk about the white man as though they are talking about a half God and people of colour, 305 00:34:26,890 --> 00:34:32,260 like Egyptians and Arabs generally as though they are describing a half human. 306 00:34:32,260 --> 00:34:37,540 What about framing of historical narratives and world politics in terms of race 307 00:34:37,540 --> 00:34:43,810 consciousness and a racial war took place immediately after his visit to the United States? 308 00:34:43,810 --> 00:34:51,430 And the key point here is that Potter was interested in colonial consciousness, especially cultural and educational institutions, 309 00:34:51,430 --> 00:35:02,170 newspapers, books, histories, all of which narrated the glories of France, Britain and America and degraded and humiliated others, he said. 310 00:35:02,170 --> 00:35:10,180 So this includes American Empire, which he marked as trying to create an Americanised Islam, its own brand of Islam, 311 00:35:10,180 --> 00:35:16,840 one that was deep politicised and that marked all other forms of Islam as dangerous and illegitimate. 312 00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:26,080 And this is why protocols for destroying the colonialism in our consciousness towards a new pedagogy with this pedagogy, all people, 313 00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:34,960 particularly new generations, should be educated about colonialism, injustices and the injustices committed by the white man. 314 00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:42,670 Whereas Plato gives much of the Senate, much of this account in an article titled Our Number One Enemy, The White Man. 315 00:35:42,670 --> 00:35:49,810 Interestingly, this is the lesson that the front page of Dawah gave on March 30th, 1951, 316 00:35:49,810 --> 00:35:54,550 in an article by the editor titled Colonialism is our number one enemy, 317 00:35:54,550 --> 00:36:00,280 and that article said that colonialism operates in the same exact way as disbelief. 318 00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,650 No matter who is colonising who, it divides people and it divides their consciousness. 319 00:36:05,650 --> 00:36:10,600 If Muslims wish for freedom, the article said, then they have to resist colonialism, 320 00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:15,220 and they can do this by revealing all of its actions and all of its misdeeds. 321 00:36:15,220 --> 00:36:22,030 Then it ends optimistically. After that, we shall went back to club and capitalism. 322 00:36:22,030 --> 00:36:29,980 In addition to dependency, Botha refers to the alliance between a dictatorship and the despotism or autocracy of capital. 323 00:36:29,980 --> 00:36:37,210 So, he says colonialism is always concerned that the masses should not rule themselves because it then becomes difficult to subdue them. 324 00:36:37,210 --> 00:36:44,440 Thus, there must be a governing dictatorial class that possesses autocratic authority and great wealth. 325 00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:51,040 This class is the one with which colonialism can have dealings. This is because first, its numbers are few. 326 00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:58,510 And second, it depends on colonialism to persist and needs its support in the face of the masses. 327 00:36:58,510 --> 00:37:02,410 This class is in charge of subduing the masses and governing them. 328 00:37:02,410 --> 00:37:06,520 Colonialism disappears from view behind it. 329 00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:14,470 Put up the terminology and his class analysis have their provenance and the writings of Marx and Lenin. 330 00:37:14,470 --> 00:37:18,940 The terms appear with neither citation nor explanation, but at the very least, 331 00:37:18,940 --> 00:37:25,050 they show us the adaptation of the critique of capitalism into an Islamist. 332 00:37:25,050 --> 00:37:35,400 For Orientalism or before said, the two penultimate chapters of the Battle of Islam and Capitalism form an ark. 333 00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:42,120 The first one is doubts about the rule of Islam and enumerates various caricatures of Islam, 334 00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:49,620 whereas the second is enmities towards the rule of Islam, and it describes different enemies, different antagonisms. 335 00:37:49,620 --> 00:37:56,160 The six doubts are Islam's primitivism the authority of chef's tyranny. 336 00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:01,020 The vagueness of scripture herron's. And the oppression of minorities. 337 00:38:01,020 --> 00:38:09,090 But the selection is important today because these six reflect the definition of Islam as the antithesis of modernity, 338 00:38:09,090 --> 00:38:20,160 liberalism, freedom and civilisation. So the idea that Islam tries to return to the 7th century to tents in the desert casts it not simply as lagging, 339 00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:25,380 not simply as obsolete, but as a destructive refusal of modernity. 340 00:38:25,380 --> 00:38:33,570 And he says, you know, people imagine Islamic governance to mean tents in the desert, Bedouins on camels, Arabs in caves in which there would be. 341 00:38:33,570 --> 00:38:36,540 And here he really seems to be channelling Thomas Hunt. 342 00:38:36,540 --> 00:38:45,990 So I'm pretty sure he never read that there would be no building, no civilisation, no sciences and no arts and no poetry. 343 00:38:45,990 --> 00:38:51,870 He criticises these doubts as generalisations, misrepresentations, projections, 344 00:38:51,870 --> 00:38:59,820 ones that limit Islam's temporal position and merely reflect the kinds of negative models that the capitalist 345 00:38:59,820 --> 00:39:08,100 and communist blocs have permitted to appear in the world in order to repel people from a more critical view. 346 00:39:08,100 --> 00:39:18,750 The repertoire of doubts is also important because it inserts put up through his responses into the lineage of critiques of Orientalism. 347 00:39:18,750 --> 00:39:29,040 The repertoire of tropes, after all, has an Orientalist pedigree and as he says, these super Orientalist discourses and interests. 348 00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:34,020 So his critique here is about how representations and stereotypes masquerade as knowledge. 349 00:39:34,020 --> 00:39:36,270 And he then describes six enemies of Islam. 350 00:39:36,270 --> 00:39:48,030 These are the crusaders, colonists, exploiters, professional men of religion, the immoral and communists at some of these enemies rely on Orientalism. 351 00:39:48,030 --> 00:39:49,080 So as it turns out, 352 00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:57,960 the crusaders supply the spirit of the colonisers and the exploiters and men of religion rely on the colonisers understanding of Islam. 353 00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,810 So the coloniser and the Orientalist are tightly linked. 354 00:40:00,810 --> 00:40:07,980 So much so that pottered says the notion of Orientalist objectivity or neutrality functions as a mask. 355 00:40:07,980 --> 00:40:14,400 It justifies colonialism and aims to transform the colonised population's consciousness so that they internalise. 356 00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:21,300 It stems its comprehensive studies, he says, aim to neutralise the seeds of resistance. 357 00:40:21,300 --> 00:40:22,440 So, he writes, 358 00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:30,930 Orientalism was established in order to aid colonialism from a scientific point of view in order to extend its roots into the intellectual soil. 359 00:40:30,930 --> 00:40:38,700 But we hear we worship Orientalist simple mindedly. If it occurs to you, to the innocence of these saints, then your uncultured. 360 00:40:38,700 --> 00:40:42,840 You're a fanatic who brings in religion at every opportunity. 361 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:49,230 Also recall my earlier point about which histories are narrated and how put up this 362 00:40:49,230 --> 00:40:53,940 is all ideologically bound up with Orientalist and racial colonial structures. 363 00:40:53,940 --> 00:40:57,950 Let me end by highlighting a couple of things. 364 00:40:57,950 --> 00:41:05,750 First, about discussions of education curricula, doubts and consciousness, referred to the production of knowledge about Islam. 365 00:41:05,750 --> 00:41:15,260 So in an untimely moment of 30 years before Said's Orientalism, 12 years before Anwar Abdel Malik's, 366 00:41:15,260 --> 00:41:20,120 Orientalism and crisis would be theorising Orientalism its complicity, 367 00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:28,190 its complicity in the colonial project and the fantasies that it sets into motion and rationalises for European authors and policymakers, 368 00:41:28,190 --> 00:41:36,290 as well as for colonised Muslim intellectuals. This is not to simply say that the anti-colonial critique of Orientalism predates Sayed 369 00:41:36,290 --> 00:41:41,780 and the various Arab and non-Arab intellectuals should be inserted into its history, 370 00:41:41,780 --> 00:41:46,110 which is, of course, true. It is, however, and may be somewhat irreverent. 371 00:41:46,110 --> 00:41:56,030 Tree, a reference to the to put autumn's writings on knowledge production as internal to the genealogy of theorising Orientalism. 372 00:41:56,030 --> 00:42:03,620 So it's to trace a question around which thinkers and texts have permission to speak about which topics, 373 00:42:03,620 --> 00:42:06,620 or to borrow a different phrase of Edwards seeds, 374 00:42:06,620 --> 00:42:17,000 which have the permission to narrate a critique of Orientalism capitalism and their structures, or to even be in a genealogy of critique. 375 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:25,120 It's to ask who's authorised to theorise about what kinds of topics or what I earlier referred to as the choreography of critique. 376 00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:34,370 Second, bottoms discussions contain a composite of analytics from colonialism, misrepresentations and denials of violence across the globe. 377 00:42:34,370 --> 00:42:41,810 It's the structures of dispossession and a class analysis derived from Marxism to the political theology that underlies secularised. 378 00:42:41,810 --> 00:42:47,750 anti-Islamic colonialism and knowledge is all in these overlapping frames. 379 00:42:47,750 --> 00:42:55,160 The composite analytics draw in multiple regions across the colonised world into the same fate, 380 00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:59,600 one enabled by complementary structures of dispossession. 381 00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:09,380 Third, although I've only gestured to them situated in relation to various journals like A Can Help US Shift where relocate theory, 382 00:43:09,380 --> 00:43:15,470 where we locate authorisations of violence and how we locate Islamist thought in relation to it, 383 00:43:15,470 --> 00:43:21,320 it is to De Exceptionalist, the Muslim thinker, twice in terms of which scripts, 384 00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:31,850 themes and connexions can come into view and in terms of the intellectuals embeddedness and a broader network of discourse. 385 00:43:31,850 --> 00:43:41,450 Let me give you one last example. In Iowa in March 1951, put up calls French barbarism the greatest threat to the Muslim world. 386 00:43:41,450 --> 00:43:47,500 And this, he says, is the same France that buckled its knees when Hitler sneezed. 387 00:43:47,500 --> 00:43:52,000 The juxtaposition interrupts the European discourses of the barbarism, 388 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:57,580 Nazi ism and the barbarism of the colonised to draw out the barbarism of the European colonisers. 389 00:43:57,580 --> 00:44:05,380 So he says that France continues to send its tanks, artillery and its fighter jets against America. 390 00:44:05,380 --> 00:44:10,600 He then offers an inventory of French atrocities with dates and places 1789, 391 00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:18,680 Egypt 1925 and nineteen forty one Damascus 1812 1941 1944 in 1951, Marrakesh 1830. 392 00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:29,380 In 1945, Algeria 41 villages decimated and he lists other massacres across North Africa with the same dynamics, 393 00:44:29,380 --> 00:44:36,810 saying that the same dynamics also described British attacks on Egypt and Italian attacks on present day Libya. 394 00:44:36,810 --> 00:44:45,270 He contrasts these atrocities with love for France, which he calls using religious terminology. 395 00:44:45,270 --> 00:44:52,950 Worship at a border and its admirers are friends of slaves habit and what they do is glorifying 396 00:44:52,950 --> 00:44:59,520 you behind the institutional mechanisms that enable this worship are French institutes and Egypt. 397 00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:05,820 These are sites of indoctrination or re-education ones that mask barbarism and instil awe. 398 00:45:05,820 --> 00:45:10,740 And this is why France, he says, opposes having an Egyptian institute in Tangier. 399 00:45:10,740 --> 00:45:19,740 This would foster an anti-colonial orientation one facilitated by the feeling of a shared Muslim heritage, which in turn facilitates Muslim unity. 400 00:45:19,740 --> 00:45:21,810 So this mixing of theological, 401 00:45:21,810 --> 00:45:31,950 geopolitical and institutional registers marks a violence that works through the production of a cultural institutional apparatus. 402 00:45:31,950 --> 00:45:41,370 Its stages, the problem of anti-colonial consciousness and colonial violence into a direct confrontation of pedagogy. 403 00:45:41,370 --> 00:45:47,200 Thank you, and I look forward to our conversation. Thank you very much. 404 00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:56,920 Murad, I'm really I think these papers work wonderfully with each other, and both of them are in their own ways, you know, wonderfully evocative. 405 00:45:56,920 --> 00:46:04,480 While we're waiting for people in the audience to write in their questions or raise their hands, I know someone also has some. 406 00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:11,500 Let me begin with a couple of my own, if I may, Mr. Green, as you were speaking, I just thought how? 407 00:46:11,500 --> 00:46:16,090 How well the responses. 408 00:46:16,090 --> 00:46:25,990 Of Muslim authorities that you describe parallel the responses of many Western governments facing the same, if you will, threat. 409 00:46:25,990 --> 00:46:33,100 And what struck me in particular is the focus initially when you're speaking about al Qaida on the law, 410 00:46:33,100 --> 00:46:37,330 dealing with Highwomen and banditry as opposed to rebellion. 411 00:46:37,330 --> 00:46:45,220 And of course, this is it reminded me so much of the resort to piracy in the European legal order and therefore the 412 00:46:45,220 --> 00:46:53,110 exceptional ization of the militant outside everything that is regular and outside rights altogether. 413 00:46:53,110 --> 00:46:59,560 That's one thing. And the other thing, of course, has to do with the anxiety of authority or the reassertion of authority, 414 00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:07,600 which you also find perhaps not so much vis-a-vis al Qaida or ISIS's form of militancy, 415 00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:15,490 but more generally in contemporary discussions of law and legality in North America and Western Europe, 416 00:47:15,490 --> 00:47:24,760 where it's precisely the nature of legitimate authority and where it is to be located, that is in question. 417 00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:31,840 So these are not the same things or one of them might be the same and not the other, but I just wondered if you might have any. 418 00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:42,980 Words on how you think the two go together structurally beyond the specific political and intellectual context that your talk addressed. 419 00:47:42,980 --> 00:47:48,410 Thank you. So those are very interesting questions on the first point. 420 00:47:48,410 --> 00:47:54,650 Of course, exceptionalism is is the name of the game when it comes to law. 421 00:47:54,650 --> 00:47:59,450 It's always easier to argue for an exception than it is to reformulate the rule. 422 00:47:59,450 --> 00:48:09,740 And as a matter of fact, the dealing with al-Qaida is as prominent in the assertion of a very well-known exception in international humanitarian law, 423 00:48:09,740 --> 00:48:17,810 which is the category of the unlawful combatant and the claims about unlawful combatants, i.e. the terror advocated by the United States, 424 00:48:17,810 --> 00:48:27,680 arguing that al-Qaida fighters are neither combatants who deserve prisoners of war status nor there, nor are they civilians, 425 00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:35,030 and therefore they belong to a category that enjoys enjoys neither of the privileges that we see associated with either. 426 00:48:35,030 --> 00:48:39,830 So that is in no way unique to legal argumentation. 427 00:48:39,830 --> 00:48:42,350 And as a matter of fact, also, I mean, 428 00:48:42,350 --> 00:48:49,550 one interesting thing that you mentioned when it comes to going in tandem with Western governments arguments is that to some extent, 429 00:48:49,550 --> 00:48:53,570 as a matter of fact, going in tandem with those arguments. 430 00:48:53,570 --> 00:49:01,880 And ironically, so there's I mean, there's a fixation on proving that Islamic law is as humane as international humanitarian law is. 431 00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:03,260 This is very clear. 432 00:49:03,260 --> 00:49:13,550 But in doing that, there's very little disregard to how international humanitarian law challenges and legitimate violence and its own ways. 433 00:49:13,550 --> 00:49:18,380 And as we've seen in critical scholarship examining international humanitarian law extensively. 434 00:49:18,380 --> 00:49:26,810 But you also suppress areas. Even if we if we take that assumption that there is a possibility that you limit violence and you regulate violence, 435 00:49:26,810 --> 00:49:32,960 it suppresses your claim to an even more protective regime that exists within the Islamic legal tradition, 436 00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:39,650 which is the regime of birth, which offers protections that definitely surpass international humanitarian laws. 437 00:49:39,650 --> 00:49:44,570 Protections of non-international armed conflicts. Of course, there are so many. 438 00:49:44,570 --> 00:49:51,560 I mean, I don't want to be reproducing the are the functional comparison between international humanitarian law and Islamic law, 439 00:49:51,560 --> 00:50:00,200 because it's a function of this comparison that I critique and that I believe is has an assumption of a set of values embedded in it. 440 00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:07,220 But you have here a regime that allows you to offer more protections, but that it's completely suppressed, 441 00:50:07,220 --> 00:50:12,320 partly because it does not fit within the current order of governance and partly 442 00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:16,370 because it doesn't really have a resonance in international material law. 443 00:50:16,370 --> 00:50:22,520 And this is related to another argument that I make somewhere else about how to compare the disciplines. 444 00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:30,350 So generally speaking, the comparison of the disciplines now is done through a function of silence and the assumption 445 00:50:30,350 --> 00:50:35,360 of values is taken and borrowed from the international humanitarian law tradition. 446 00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:39,920 Whereas there is potentially an alternative way of looking at the disciplines 447 00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:44,700 whereby they actually guide us towards the blind spots that we see in each system. 448 00:50:44,700 --> 00:50:50,420 So rather than espousing an understanding of how law should deal with violence. 449 00:50:50,420 --> 00:50:54,500 You look at how those two disciplines regulate differently. It's a matter of fact. 450 00:50:54,500 --> 00:50:56,030 In this particular instance, 451 00:50:56,030 --> 00:51:04,670 using the regime of rebellion can guide us to the what Berman refers to as the statist and the governmental bias in international humanitarian law, 452 00:51:04,670 --> 00:51:10,100 and provide the space for an alternative understanding of how we deal with violence. 453 00:51:10,100 --> 00:51:15,350 Of course, there are some issues that you can see also and build on in looking at Islamic law, 454 00:51:15,350 --> 00:51:20,780 but there's no side to that end of the analysis of international humanitarian law. 455 00:51:20,780 --> 00:51:26,630 But at the end of the day, coming back to your point, yes, exceptionalism is I mean, 456 00:51:26,630 --> 00:51:33,980 that's the bread and butter of lawyers too, to a great extent and has been often argued by many pretty good works. 457 00:51:33,980 --> 00:51:39,600 It's actually what tells us about much more than what the what the rule tells us about law. 458 00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,290 Can you remind me of the second point, the second had to do with the, 459 00:51:43,290 --> 00:51:49,260 you know what you say about the anxiety authority and reasserting authority in as it were, 460 00:51:49,260 --> 00:51:53,490 if you will, anti-democratic way so you know, they are forced on the back foot. 461 00:51:53,490 --> 00:51:59,730 The figures that you're talking about because they have to reclaim authority from its fragmentation and dispersal. 462 00:51:59,730 --> 00:52:05,880 And then also, of course, seems to be a common trope in contemporary Western European and North American 463 00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:11,670 understandings of the vulnerability of of expert expertise and authority. 464 00:52:11,670 --> 00:52:15,580 Yes, I mean, of course, we see that everywhere and we see it with it. 465 00:52:15,580 --> 00:52:24,270 I mean, we see it in different contexts. But I do believe that there are particular features that makes the situation difficult for Muslim jurists. 466 00:52:24,270 --> 00:52:30,360 First of all, this is a tradition that has thrived on diversity, 467 00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:37,230 that has thrived on multiplicity and because it has thrived on diversity and multiplicity. 468 00:52:37,230 --> 00:52:40,680 It has always appreciated distance from the political sorts. 469 00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:48,850 It has always perceived of this is from the particular sole authority as a litmus test for legitimacy. 470 00:52:48,850 --> 00:52:53,230 So for Muslim jurists, in the present political order, 471 00:52:53,230 --> 00:52:59,230 it's very difficult to navigate that terrain because on the one hand, you want to assert your legitimacy. 472 00:52:59,230 --> 00:53:02,650 But that is difficult to do considering if, for example, 473 00:53:02,650 --> 00:53:12,490 we look at the case of Egypt legal measures that have developed over the years to bring institutions under the authority of of the modern state. 474 00:53:12,490 --> 00:53:15,730 So the more they're associated with the state, 475 00:53:15,730 --> 00:53:25,670 the more that erodes their legitimacy and the more that opens up the space for other voices that come and undercut the. 476 00:53:25,670 --> 00:53:33,770 I don't want to argue that there's no place for authority in Islamic law, because that would be a very erroneous reading of Islamic law. 477 00:53:33,770 --> 00:53:42,890 Yes, it's a diverse tradition, but it's a tradition that has also had its ways of vetting and offering respect and wait for authority. 478 00:53:42,890 --> 00:53:52,850 So in a way that concern that we see voiced by many as Jedi scholars and perhaps also independent scholars is a legitimate concern. 479 00:53:52,850 --> 00:53:59,810 But it's a concern that is very difficult for them to achieve considering the space that they're trying to carve out. 480 00:53:59,810 --> 00:54:06,170 For example, Ahmed A-type had continued to assert that he cannot. 481 00:54:06,170 --> 00:54:17,420 Offered a position that deems ISIS apostates. For a very legitimate and sound reason, whether in terms of expedience or in terms of jurisprudence, 482 00:54:17,420 --> 00:54:20,660 because at the very basic level in terms of experience, 483 00:54:20,660 --> 00:54:28,760 I cannot criticise them for engaging in fear and then I engage and actually myself, I'm disarming myself of that very important to it. 484 00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:38,480 But he'd come under very heavy criticism from media that is associated with political actors for failing to do that. 485 00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:49,910 So there's always a pressure to put you back in again, and in a way that is that is probably part of the legitimacy crisis when you see, I mean, 486 00:54:49,910 --> 00:54:56,030 as Harry scholars writing on socialism as the way of Islam and then moving away towards writing 487 00:54:56,030 --> 00:55:02,300 towards and how free market is the spirit of Islam and then writings on on the taboo issues. 488 00:55:02,300 --> 00:55:14,480 I mean, political rebellions and so on and so forth, and a particular line that extensively creates the space for you to lose that navigating power. 489 00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:21,860 No, thanks, that's really absolutely fascinating, and, you know, I'm sure we could speak about it at length and I'm sure we'll return to this. 490 00:55:21,860 --> 00:55:30,290 I have one question for Brad and then I will turn to you, Osama, and ask those in our audience to raise their hands or right in their questions. 491 00:55:30,290 --> 00:55:35,540 So, Murad, you know, as you speaking, I thought you have in a way two trajectories. 492 00:55:35,540 --> 00:55:40,490 And one, of course, is the one that has to do with colonialism and Orientalism, 493 00:55:40,490 --> 00:55:49,030 in which you could arguably put Sokoto in a genealogy ending in today's the colonial colonial movement, let's say. 494 00:55:49,030 --> 00:56:01,590 And I completely understand that. But the other one I'm more interested in, which is the figure of Sokoto and perhaps other Islamists as. 495 00:56:01,590 --> 00:56:07,020 Standing for expressing a critique of the post-colonial state itself. 496 00:56:07,020 --> 00:56:17,160 So now, obviously, he puts that within a context in which colonialism or neo colonialism is crucial. 497 00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:23,380 And he was also operating in a Cold War context, rather ideological state as some kind of. 498 00:56:23,380 --> 00:56:31,750 Given, let's say or necessity to think about, but if we were to set those factors aside for the moment, 499 00:56:31,750 --> 00:56:34,880 you know what strikes me as being wonderfully original, 500 00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:42,200 not only about him but about other Islamists in this period model, the of course, comes to mind immediately. 501 00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:51,560 Is that they represent. Well, before just as the case, you were making the case with, you know, Orientalism of our letter, 502 00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:59,840 you know, here you have, if you will, the the move against the post-colonial state before its time almost. 503 00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:04,580 And if we strip it off its its various kind of shootings, 504 00:57:04,580 --> 00:57:15,980 you see that being as being so extraordinarily productive the moment because it escapes the usual conventional genealogies in which we set Islamism. 505 00:57:15,980 --> 00:57:22,070 And I wonder if you might have something to say on that particular trajectory of your talk. 506 00:57:22,070 --> 00:57:27,500 Yes, that actually illuminates it in a really generative and helpful way. 507 00:57:27,500 --> 00:57:30,950 So thank you. Yes, I think that I too. 508 00:57:30,950 --> 00:57:37,910 I think I'm much more interested in that second trajectory, the first to sort of say aha kind of replacement or displacement, 509 00:57:37,910 --> 00:57:46,700 whereas the second really is about shifting the stakes of how we read these thinkers and why we read them. 510 00:57:46,700 --> 00:57:53,180 And you're entirely, I think, right? The Moto G would be another person to read precisely in this fashion. 511 00:57:53,180 --> 00:58:00,050 And the thing that I find really fascinating about how a lot of these articles, rather than in the later books, 512 00:58:00,050 --> 00:58:04,130 in these articles and in these shorter books that say what I find really fascinating 513 00:58:04,130 --> 00:58:10,640 about his analysis is how it really hones in on particular institutions. 514 00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:22,400 And in the process of honing in on like this ministry or these cultural centres or this particular way of understanding the Treasury, 515 00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:27,410 there's almost a unmasking, perhaps of the state. 516 00:58:27,410 --> 00:58:33,710 There's almost so I'm thinking here of the brilliant article by Timothy Mitchell and what was it? 517 00:58:33,710 --> 00:58:35,570 Nineteen ninety one or nineteen ninety? 518 00:58:35,570 --> 00:58:44,450 The state effect that basically asks us to look at the institutions at the overall configuration of civil society, 519 00:58:44,450 --> 00:58:48,290 rather than to take the state as something that is given or something that is pre-existing. 520 00:58:48,290 --> 00:58:54,560 And that's the discourse that followed and all of these other Islamists are operating with from the get go. 521 00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:59,750 There's something really fascinating about what he does in, on the one hand, 522 00:58:59,750 --> 00:59:07,220 naming particular institutions rather than the state and on the other hand, 523 00:59:07,220 --> 00:59:16,070 always locating those institutions as sites of the both domestic but also global battles. 524 00:59:16,070 --> 00:59:22,940 That is, help us think about them as he notes, or perhaps as vectors within a larger kind of view. 525 00:59:22,940 --> 00:59:30,350 So what I find quite fascinating is how he seems to maybe inadvertently, I don't really know zoom in, zoom out, 526 00:59:30,350 --> 00:59:37,670 zoom in, zoom out and give us these other views that make clear that what is at stake are institutions, 527 00:59:37,670 --> 00:59:43,940 that the state itself is always composed of questions of institutions, of pedagogy, 528 00:59:43,940 --> 00:59:54,140 of relations within the state and of relations between what these institutions enable regionally, locally, globally. 529 00:59:54,140 --> 01:00:02,060 And I think thinking about it as a historical institutionalist is that perhaps the way to go, really? 530 01:00:02,060 --> 01:00:04,340 Thanks very much. I mean, obviously, 531 01:00:04,340 --> 01:00:11,420 the critique of nationalism becomes part of that and and the critique that's neither a liberal critique of the post-colonial state, Cold War, 532 01:00:11,420 --> 01:00:12,860 liberal critique nor, of course, 533 01:00:12,860 --> 01:00:22,370 a Marxist critique of the nations of the post-colonial state as a kind of further step in the constitution of a colonial bourgeoisie. 534 01:00:22,370 --> 01:00:26,960 So, yeah, it opens up all kinds of questions. But Osama, can I turn to you? 535 01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:34,560 I mean, I've just been fascinated by the preceding discussion for both of you, and I've had conversations with Helmut after the show. 536 01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:43,430 You've been sort of part of this fiscal as well. I mean, the idea of looking at some like duty as this opportunity to reassess Western 537 01:00:43,430 --> 01:00:48,160 political theory and what you're doing is precisely the same thing as West Virginia, 538 01:00:48,160 --> 01:00:54,130 which is also very interesting. And that's something I've personally been interested in. 539 01:00:54,130 --> 01:01:01,930 But I'm not trained quite so systematically within the Western saturations theory literature, 540 01:01:01,930 --> 01:01:07,660 but I think that these people represent an interesting coalescing of ideas. 541 01:01:07,660 --> 01:01:13,070 I mean, when you're talking about Islamism more generally, it's not just looking at the. 542 01:01:13,070 --> 01:01:18,830 To a type of international relations theory that needs to be more thickly described, more thoroughly articulated, 543 01:01:18,830 --> 01:01:28,670 and I look forward to reading your work more closely as I also hope to read the original ideas in the in the Arabic or in the case of the North, 544 01:01:28,670 --> 01:01:33,170 in some instances, to be able to explore that in greater detail. 545 01:01:33,170 --> 01:01:41,350 I actually had a question that would take me back to the scene a bit and it sort of perhaps is framed. 546 01:01:41,350 --> 01:01:48,290 You spoke about the way in which Muslim scholars were trying to sort of ameliorate 547 01:01:48,290 --> 01:01:54,650 the impression that the Sharia somehow maybe has certain harmful effects. 548 01:01:54,650 --> 01:02:01,820 And the comparator, of course, is sort of international law as a normative standard against which we measure. 549 01:02:01,820 --> 01:02:07,460 And I think you're doing something similar in a sense to what we were just discussing with what you're trying 550 01:02:07,460 --> 01:02:14,210 to potentially displace that authority that is granted to the standard narrative of international law and say, 551 01:02:14,210 --> 01:02:18,310 Well, why does that need to be the sort of reference point? 552 01:02:18,310 --> 01:02:25,300 And for me, what's really striking is some of the story that you said is this was the same time that these colonies are trying to highlight, 553 01:02:25,300 --> 01:02:34,610 well, you know, Islamic law is as humane as the international sort of humanitarian law or whatever is to make a reference point. 554 01:02:34,610 --> 01:02:43,010 That is the time when, you know, enemy combatants or sort of non-whites get unlawful combatants, they coined that idea is being generated. 555 01:02:43,010 --> 01:02:50,390 That is at the same time, I forget the name John Yoo, perhaps is writing the torture memos for the Bush administration. 556 01:02:50,390 --> 01:02:58,350 And I wonder how those two sort of visions of the role of law. 557 01:02:58,350 --> 01:03:02,350 Why are they heading in such divergent pathways? 558 01:03:02,350 --> 01:03:06,910 You know, some of that answer might be somewhat obvious, but I'd love to hear your insights there specifically. 559 01:03:06,910 --> 01:03:15,340 Why is it that Muslim scholars are, you know, in this on the back foot trying to say, actually, this tradition isn't as bad as you think? 560 01:03:15,340 --> 01:03:20,130 And these types of the here are trying to say, OK, what can we do this? 561 01:03:20,130 --> 01:03:29,230 This tradition needs to be instrumentalized to allow for the most part in the popular imagination is really heinous behaviour. 562 01:03:29,230 --> 01:03:33,850 So what can we do about that and what motivates those very different trajectories? 563 01:03:33,850 --> 01:03:38,450 And just thinking about your comments on that? Thank you. Thank you, Sam. 564 01:03:38,450 --> 01:03:47,440 That said, that's a very interesting question. I'd like just to direct you to a recent article written by Dina Salama on that issue, 565 01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:52,330 and she argues that Bush's arguments about the unlawful combatants category can 566 01:03:52,330 --> 01:03:57,760 be very much compared to what today's arguments about who may be targeted. 567 01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:07,210 So I mean, I do think I mean, there are some legal nuances that I might agree or disagree with here and there. 568 01:04:07,210 --> 01:04:17,730 But the idea is that we cannot necessarily read the Bush administration as reflective of the international legal tradition as a whole. 569 01:04:17,730 --> 01:04:25,710 At the end of the day, the Bush administration's position was heavily criticised by different you and human rights organisations, 570 01:04:25,710 --> 01:04:33,810 different groups and by the entity that is often seen as the guardian of international humanitarian law, the International Committee of the Red Cross. 571 01:04:33,810 --> 01:04:40,260 So in a way, while the Bush administration's position might be argued to be an aberration, 572 01:04:40,260 --> 01:04:48,990 I don't think I don't personally think it's an aberration because there is this space in the system that allows for such arguments to be made. 573 01:04:48,990 --> 01:04:59,380 And the benchmark that is being used here is the benchmark of the modern, modern international humanitarian. 574 01:04:59,380 --> 01:05:05,860 As exemplified by international institutions and international humanitarian organisations, 575 01:05:05,860 --> 01:05:10,810 and sometimes that is a coincidence, but an attempt to appeal to that, I mean, 576 01:05:10,810 --> 01:05:14,290 arguably clearly in the very early works, 577 01:05:14,290 --> 01:05:22,510 it's an appeal to the prominence of international law and the idea of the prominence of international law that comes after the Second World War. 578 01:05:22,510 --> 01:05:31,120 So it's an attempt to appeal to that discourse. But also, there are more deliberate attempts to reconcile the two that we see in the present. 579 01:05:31,120 --> 01:05:35,470 The International Committee of the Red Cross contacts and gets in touch with Muslim 580 01:05:35,470 --> 01:05:42,340 scholars to write articles that portray that immediate introduction to maintain law. 581 01:05:42,340 --> 01:05:47,110 For example, one scholar that I've mentioned and that have looked at extensively was right. 582 01:05:47,110 --> 01:05:53,680 He has written an article for the international review of the Red Cross on Islamic Laws of War. 583 01:05:53,680 --> 01:06:00,250 So that's not a coincidence. The Red Cross has an Islamic law expert. 584 01:06:00,250 --> 01:06:07,720 Now, I doubt that they have other experts from other legal traditions and they conduct trainings on Islamic rules of war. 585 01:06:07,720 --> 01:06:15,790 So there is a deliberate agenda, whether one agrees with it or not, to offer to offer that reconciliation. 586 01:06:15,790 --> 01:06:23,290 It's not always just an attempt to appease to an assumption of a superior set of ideals. 587 01:06:23,290 --> 01:06:27,430 There's also a concerted effort that is going to there. 588 01:06:27,430 --> 01:06:31,090 Just a commentary on the Bush administration is, however, 589 01:06:31,090 --> 01:06:38,020 utilised by Muslim scholars to make an argument that's very similar to the argument that Salima makes. 590 01:06:38,020 --> 01:06:44,560 So I remember in an interview, in an interview with the Typekit that I was conducting for my fieldwork. 591 01:06:44,560 --> 01:06:46,780 When asked about the practises of Okada, 592 01:06:46,780 --> 01:06:52,720 he explicitly said not every action in the name of a particular legal order is reflective of that legal order. 593 01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:58,870 Look at how the United States has justified. But if I had the invasion of Iraq, so he didn't choose the and also combatant argument, 594 01:06:58,870 --> 01:07:05,830 but he used the use of force arguments and how the U.S. is subverting international law and that this is not indicative of international law. 595 01:07:05,830 --> 01:07:10,330 So it actually creates the space for critique somehow. 596 01:07:10,330 --> 01:07:19,660 But. The ideals have become so entrenched that when you argue for a different understanding of targeting, 597 01:07:19,660 --> 01:07:27,720 this is not just a different legal interpretation. This takes you into the terrain of barbarism and brutality. 598 01:07:27,720 --> 01:07:35,740 Right and right. And I think I mean, if I may, I'm just going to link that to a broader question, which I have for yourself, 599 01:07:35,740 --> 01:07:46,420 which was the discursive power that things like the colonial and post-colonial theorists are concerned about that trying to overturn these hegemonic 600 01:07:46,420 --> 01:07:51,790 Eurocentric ideals that presuppose the supremacy or the normative ity of a 601 01:07:51,790 --> 01:07:56,530 particular sort of tradition of thinking and have in some respects underwritten, 602 01:07:56,530 --> 01:08:04,150 you know, the colonial traditions of the last few centuries. And that just don't let me see that place and all of these sorts of things now. 603 01:08:04,150 --> 01:08:11,380 I mean, in a sense, what you're arguing is that it is a a post-colonial colonial theorist ahead of the post-colonial 604 01:08:11,380 --> 01:08:17,890 decline terrorists that we have and which is a fascinating claim to advertise next say, 605 01:08:17,890 --> 01:08:23,770 because I'm sure the latter, the former, neither of them would particularly like that. 606 01:08:23,770 --> 01:08:33,940 But but yeah, I mean, I just wanted to sort of ask, in what ways does this disrupt the self-image of everyone involved, 607 01:08:33,940 --> 01:08:39,370 whether it's the Islamists or the decolonial theorists of post-colonial theorists, so to speak? 608 01:08:39,370 --> 01:08:49,390 Yeah, no. That's I think that that's in a way. Part of what's at stake in that first move, right? 609 01:08:49,390 --> 01:08:53,960 And the way the faysal very helpfully said there are sort of two trajectories. 610 01:08:53,960 --> 01:09:00,910 So that's that's I think what the the first trajectory thinking with it, that's that's sort of where it would take us. 611 01:09:00,910 --> 01:09:11,680 And it's I mean, there's a way the. I don't know, sort of paint with too grunt of a brush that I've misplaced on my finer brushes. 612 01:09:11,680 --> 01:09:19,100 There's there's a way of postcolonial theory broadly simultaneously. 613 01:09:19,100 --> 01:09:23,120 Its practitioners, and I guess I would include myself in that to some extent, 614 01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:31,940 its practitioners are certainly not outside of a certain kind of post enlightenment mode of critique. 615 01:09:31,940 --> 01:09:35,430 And yet at the same time that there is there, 616 01:09:35,430 --> 01:09:41,480 there are quite a few distancing manoeuvres that are fundamental to how post colonialism and to colonialism. 617 01:09:41,480 --> 01:09:49,880 The colonial theory operate with respect to movements that would be considered unsavoury in some way. 618 01:09:49,880 --> 01:09:54,200 And yet the shared discursive space, the shared techniques, 619 01:09:54,200 --> 01:10:03,620 the shared insights and in some ways the shared implications are something that we can't just sweep under a rug. 620 01:10:03,620 --> 01:10:13,910 So from my perspective, what's precisely interesting about it is it takes this notion of critique and it takes this worship of critique and 621 01:10:13,910 --> 01:10:20,150 says maybe we should be critical about this as the ideal that has come to dominate how we have this choreography. 622 01:10:20,150 --> 01:10:29,450 Because at the end of the day, I really do believe that one of the problems of this choreography is that it reproduces the very same kinds of silos, 623 01:10:29,450 --> 01:10:40,370 the very same kinds of geographies, the very same kinds of disciplines that our own disciplines have inherited, oftentimes quite unthinkingly. 624 01:10:40,370 --> 01:10:44,420 And what's interesting about someone like, 625 01:10:44,420 --> 01:10:54,170 I'm guessing he probably wouldn't like being put in the company of various postcolonial and decolonial thinkers. 626 01:10:54,170 --> 01:10:58,370 You probably see them as symptomatic in many ways. 627 01:10:58,370 --> 01:11:05,210 But I think what's important about reading and recovering his modes of critique is 628 01:11:05,210 --> 01:11:09,920 then the the alternatives the that opens up the alternative modes of thinking. 629 01:11:09,920 --> 01:11:19,230 You mentioned Hamada, if he does work on duty and she has this one article in particular in the Journal of Politics, 630 01:11:19,230 --> 01:11:21,860 that it came out either last year or the year before. 631 01:11:21,860 --> 01:11:28,040 That is absolutely brilliant on this front and really does try to push us to think in those terms. 632 01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:40,160 And maybe one thing that links what I'm trying to do with Photoshop and what Nasreen is also doing is poking the remainder right, 633 01:11:40,160 --> 01:11:44,760 poking at these analytics or these categories, 634 01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:46,610 or even these choreographies, 635 01:11:46,610 --> 01:11:58,060 the contemporary disciplines and the contemporary state pushes against or pushes to the margins because on the one hand, they're not useful. 636 01:11:58,060 --> 01:12:09,220 Right. And on the other hand, they raised a certain kind of question about the legitimacy of the categories and discourses that define. 637 01:12:09,220 --> 01:12:18,340 What is saleable by who and in what kinds of ways to put it in the most general terms? 638 01:12:18,340 --> 01:12:25,460 But but in that way, it would tell us that. At the same time, as we're using these categories of postcolonial and decolonial, 639 01:12:25,460 --> 01:12:31,070 we need to be really quite critical of the cultural ties to work that already goes 640 01:12:31,070 --> 01:12:41,160 into who they give centre stage to and who they silence and why that's the case. 641 01:12:41,160 --> 01:12:51,720 Thank you very much and have, as always, sort of plenty of questions to put to our esteemed panellists, but I don't want to of the discussion either. 642 01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:56,520 I have one for the and then maybe you can go back to your. 643 01:12:56,520 --> 01:13:04,770 So the three, you know, when you were talking about love from the very beginning of your talk, actually, when you mentioned so interestingly, the. 644 01:13:04,770 --> 01:13:15,300 If you will cherry picked or perhaps let us see an opportunistic or at least on systematise mode of addressing some of these questions, 645 01:13:15,300 --> 01:13:26,340 I was put in mind of the sort of critique of this form of theoretical knowledge by one of my early teachers, 646 01:13:26,340 --> 01:13:30,480 Fazlur Rahman, who approached it from a completely modernist. 647 01:13:30,480 --> 01:13:34,620 He was a modernist of modernist viewpoint is sort of railed against. 648 01:13:34,620 --> 01:13:37,110 It was a wonderful man, by the way. I don't mean to criticise him. 649 01:13:37,110 --> 01:13:49,260 But you know, he railed against the UN systematised and cherry picked a mode by which jurists had approached the textual corpus. 650 01:13:49,260 --> 01:13:55,320 Not that they were not following up argumentative lines, but they refused. 651 01:13:55,320 --> 01:14:01,470 For instance, in his view, to take the text of the Koran or that systematically. 652 01:14:01,470 --> 01:14:10,410 And of course, he understood that one reason they might have refused to do so was precisely to allow for the pluralism that you, 653 01:14:10,410 --> 01:14:20,370 Nasreen then came back to in your response, I think to some and to make it possible to head humanisation of this textual corpus. 654 01:14:20,370 --> 01:14:27,930 But as she was speaking, it struck me. Yes, I completely get that. On the other hand, do you think that? 655 01:14:27,930 --> 01:14:36,240 That form of legal or juridical pluralism, the availability of different kinds of arguments, not entirely congruent with each other. 656 01:14:36,240 --> 01:14:48,220 Sometimes even mock themselves has reached its limits because after all, Al and to a large extent, ICIS also use similar forms of. 657 01:14:48,220 --> 01:14:53,230 Whatever you want to call it and systematised, or cherry-picked or whatever legal reasoning, 658 01:14:53,230 --> 01:14:59,290 however weak it might be in comparison with that of the sort of aseries. 659 01:14:59,290 --> 01:15:08,330 So, you know, one wonders what a fate lies before this otherwise admirable tradition of legal pluralism. 660 01:15:08,330 --> 01:15:15,380 Thank you. So this is this is something that I keep going back and forth on extensively reflect, reflect on. 661 01:15:15,380 --> 01:15:26,150 I do think that on the one hand, there is an issue with system of taxation, regardless of it being singular or plural. 662 01:15:26,150 --> 01:15:32,120 We don't really see a systemised theory that is advocated by a particular institution 663 01:15:32,120 --> 01:15:37,550 or jurist and saying This is the theory that I promote or I'm trying to espouse, 664 01:15:37,550 --> 01:15:41,360 and those are the domains of it we see. 665 01:15:41,360 --> 01:15:45,230 With all the examples that I've looked at, we see direct interpretation of the text. 666 01:15:45,230 --> 01:15:50,810 Sometimes we see reliance on jurisprudence sometimes and we see contextual 667 01:15:50,810 --> 01:15:57,690 assertions of Moslehi and other times with no clarification of when to use what. 668 01:15:57,690 --> 01:16:06,000 And what you can actually rely on. This is not a question of intellectual impoverishment. 669 01:16:06,000 --> 01:16:12,330 I do think if one looks at the situation that the other is placed in, for example, it's one way to focus on another. 670 01:16:12,330 --> 01:16:22,280 It's not a coincidence. So many scholars have argued that Al-Azhar has managed to carve out a space for itself as the authority on social issues. 671 01:16:22,280 --> 01:16:29,480 And the way it carves out that authority is by claiming a connexion with the classical tradition, 672 01:16:29,480 --> 01:16:35,180 by relying on classical jurisprudence when it comes to matters such as person status and issues 673 01:16:35,180 --> 01:16:41,720 that are social rather than political taboo issues that they cannot really keep a distance on. 674 01:16:41,720 --> 01:16:49,900 So from that perspective? The connexion with the tradition is the assertion of their of their legitimacy, 675 01:16:49,900 --> 01:16:57,600 the reliance on the jurisprudence is not just an intellectual commitment to the jurisprudence, but it's also part of the reason that. 676 01:16:57,600 --> 01:17:06,030 But when it comes to other political issues where they have less of a freedom to carve out their own space, they have to. 677 01:17:06,030 --> 01:17:13,500 The whole theory starts to falter and and and the position becomes untenable. 678 01:17:13,500 --> 01:17:16,410 But it's. 679 01:17:16,410 --> 01:17:27,840 In a way, it's very difficult for them to imagine or carve out an alternative space considering the role that they play in domestic politics now, 680 01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:34,470 where they are cornered into a way to assert legitimacy by connecting themselves with that tradition. 681 01:17:34,470 --> 01:17:38,970 And I don't want to dispel the importance of the tradition. I mean of it. 682 01:17:38,970 --> 01:17:47,970 As has been argued by many, the the claim of direct reliance on the text has also been used as a pretext for justifying 683 01:17:47,970 --> 01:17:55,380 militant thought and for eroding a millennia old tradition of learning in favour of again, 684 01:17:55,380 --> 01:18:01,410 singular interpretations. So I'm not I'm not sure if there is a way out for them, 685 01:18:01,410 --> 01:18:07,740 but they are left in a situation where they're in a dilemma whereby we have two opposing parties, 686 01:18:07,740 --> 01:18:13,230 both using the same ammunition in very similar techniques to to fight against each other. 687 01:18:13,230 --> 01:18:21,770 And there's no winning that game. Thanks, thanks, it's really an extraordinary situation, isn't it, 688 01:18:21,770 --> 01:18:28,990 that and people who tend to look at the content rather than the form of these debates. 689 01:18:28,990 --> 01:18:35,110 They don't do a tweak to these strange patterns, and Osama, thank you. 690 01:18:35,110 --> 01:18:40,630 I mean, I actually did. I'm going to be a bit selfish and try and ask questions to both of you, actually. 691 01:18:40,630 --> 01:18:44,230 But you know, I'm sure we won't really have a great deal of time. 692 01:18:44,230 --> 01:18:46,480 I'm just picking up on the transplant. 693 01:18:46,480 --> 01:18:54,760 I don't mind who who goes first here, but some of what you were saying was reminiscent of her looks sort of earlier claim. 694 01:18:54,760 --> 01:18:56,490 I mean, he doesn't make it in the same way about the death. 695 01:18:56,490 --> 01:19:05,500 The idea that this sort of multiplicity basically being flattened in the modern period reflects a death, the death of the Sharia. 696 01:19:05,500 --> 01:19:15,100 And I think, you know, I've suggested in a review of some of his work that this is maybe a bit overdramatic that we 697 01:19:15,100 --> 01:19:20,100 don't know the way in which the Shariah existed over the past millennium and its variations. 698 01:19:20,100 --> 01:19:29,230 I mean, we're still, I think, trying to grapple with the extent to which there was variation in its in its practise allows for much latitude, 699 01:19:29,230 --> 01:19:35,440 including the latitude of modernity. But I think this flattening of the diversity question, 700 01:19:35,440 --> 01:19:44,860 I want you to perhaps reflect a little on what luck is claiming and whether this means somehow 701 01:19:44,860 --> 01:19:51,430 modern Muslims can't really be adherents to a tradition that is consonant with the past. 702 01:19:51,430 --> 01:19:58,120 Or, you know, as modern Muslims are engaging with these sort of global historical transformations, particularly, I think most importantly, 703 01:19:58,120 --> 01:20:07,240 the states and the fact that the state flattens, you know, legal uniformity, I think, is part and parcel of the way in which we understand states. 704 01:20:07,240 --> 01:20:13,690 Is there any prospect in a sense, do you think that for that to return that sort of diversity given? 705 01:20:13,690 --> 01:20:17,080 So that's kind of bunching two questions, one about one about the state. 706 01:20:17,080 --> 01:20:22,510 And very briefly, if it's possible because I know we're going to have to end in about three minutes, 707 01:20:22,510 --> 01:20:28,450 actually the Thomas Babington Macaulay minute on education. 708 01:20:28,450 --> 01:20:34,480 I don't know if you're familiar with this thirty speech he gave in sort of parliament, 709 01:20:34,480 --> 01:20:40,720 but I just I'm reminded of a second line and it just in 1835, he was saying, we must do. 710 01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:47,500 We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreted as between us and the millions whom we in India, 711 01:20:47,500 --> 01:20:54,040 the class of persons, Indian and blood and colour, but English and tastes and opinions and morals and an intellect. 712 01:20:54,040 --> 01:21:04,900 And it just made me think that's what came to mind when you mentioned courtships comments about the sort of black Englishman with a document. 713 01:21:04,900 --> 01:21:10,930 Anyway, I don't know who wants to take this first, but unfortunately, I have not let you go ahead. 714 01:21:10,930 --> 01:21:18,460 Thanks in and I'll be very quick. There's a super interesting genealogy, I think, 715 01:21:18,460 --> 01:21:31,750 of that set of tropes with regards to at colonial governance and the like pretty 716 01:21:31,750 --> 01:21:40,660 blatant notion of a divided self that is thoroughly racialized in these terms. 717 01:21:40,660 --> 01:21:48,130 And I just want to link it very quickly to another thing that I think is at stake in many of these conversations. 718 01:21:48,130 --> 01:21:52,720 And I think this applies to both presentations today in terms of some of the implications. 719 01:21:52,720 --> 01:21:57,250 And it's that in a lot of the discourses surrounding, you know, think what you want, 720 01:21:57,250 --> 01:22:02,800 whether it's critique or modernity or at the Enlightenment or whatever it is, 721 01:22:02,800 --> 01:22:05,590 the production of race, the development of Empire, 722 01:22:05,590 --> 01:22:13,630 the Connexions across different anti-colonial movements with a couple of rare exceptions to the the Muslim drops out. 723 01:22:13,630 --> 01:22:18,910 Sometimes the Muslim like, you know, fears his or her head and then, you know, recedes from view. 724 01:22:18,910 --> 01:22:24,910 And that is symptomatic of something much broader about how we understand many of these categories. 725 01:22:24,910 --> 01:22:33,070 And I think that that's one of the things that the kinds of genealogy that you just pointed to Osama help us rethink. 726 01:22:33,070 --> 01:22:38,030 Help us rewrite. Help us perhaps even undo. 727 01:22:38,030 --> 01:22:43,300 Okay, I'll stop there. And sorry to City and I left you with one or two minutes. 728 01:22:43,300 --> 01:22:44,740 Now that's perfectly fine. 729 01:22:44,740 --> 01:22:54,310 So I do think that there are compelling aspects to this argument with regards to the dynamics of how Shariah shifted in the modern world. 730 01:22:54,310 --> 01:23:01,480 But I also do agree with the critiques of Hamlet's argument that assert that it disregards earlier 731 01:23:01,480 --> 01:23:08,650 presence of the political authority in the making of law and how you had administrative positions of law, 732 01:23:08,650 --> 01:23:12,070 even in the very classical assertions of Islamic law. 733 01:23:12,070 --> 01:23:19,510 I mean, a case in point is, for example, if you look at how this chapter on criminal law in his textbook Shariah theory and practise, 734 01:23:19,510 --> 01:23:24,200 you find that the past section is rather brief and very, very slim. 735 01:23:24,200 --> 01:23:30,190 I mean, despite the fact that most of the time, most of the punishments were actually worth as punishment. 736 01:23:30,190 --> 01:23:34,060 So on that account, I do find there are some issues there. 737 01:23:34,060 --> 01:23:41,140 And I do have issues with the claims that Shariah is one model and it's and it 738 01:23:41,140 --> 01:23:46,570 has to fit that particular model and it cannot be reformulated or reinterpreted. 739 01:23:46,570 --> 01:23:53,530 But that doesn't necessarily mean that the. So the question is not whether or not it can be reformulated differently. 740 01:23:53,530 --> 01:23:56,770 The question is whether or not I mean, in that particular context, 741 01:23:56,770 --> 01:24:08,320 there is a space in the current political context to offer alternative formulations that may very well be very different from earlier interpretations. 742 01:24:08,320 --> 01:24:13,660 It varies over time, but in the current context, there's a very slim chance for that. 743 01:24:13,660 --> 01:24:16,610 Thank you so much. Thank you, both. 744 01:24:16,610 --> 01:24:27,020 This has really been sort of a fantastic kaleidoscope of thinking about a topic which is not seen with favour, of course, violence, so to speak. 745 01:24:27,020 --> 01:24:38,030 And for good reason in general. But I cannot thank you both enough for really giving us a wonderful sort of insight into some 746 01:24:38,030 --> 01:24:43,250 of these sort of cutting edge work that you were both involved in the theoretical reflections, 747 01:24:43,250 --> 01:24:53,240 the granular legal detail which you brought in as well. And I'm I can sort of only wish that we had much more time to be able to discuss these things, 748 01:24:53,240 --> 01:24:57,010 and I'm sure we will have plenty of options to reconnect. 749 01:24:57,010 --> 01:25:05,080 So if it's all right, I'm just going to briefly mention what's coming up next in our next session in a fortnight's time, 750 01:25:05,080 --> 01:25:10,940 so thank you both to industry and by the way and at risk for really spectacular, 751 01:25:10,940 --> 01:25:15,070 spectacularly interesting and engaging session in a couple more weeks time. 752 01:25:15,070 --> 01:25:22,990 We'll also be having a couple of scholars coming in, including more you'll be interested to know. 753 01:25:22,990 --> 01:25:28,600 Sorry. Nina Sollima, who's now based at Oxford for the next couple of years. 754 01:25:28,600 --> 01:25:33,100 And Muhammad father, who have both been naturally going to be talking about law. 755 01:25:33,100 --> 01:25:39,460 So I look forward to guests joining us then and if you have the time to join as well. 756 01:25:39,460 --> 01:25:54,192 But until then, we look forward to seeing everyone in the company.