Good afternoon and welcome to our first session of the Oxford Political Thought Seminar with myself with some anatomy and
physiology who are the co-convenor of a series of seminars that discuss political thought in an Islamic hate register.
We cover everything from pre-modern to modern Islam, and we are delighted to invite some of the world's leading authorities on Islamic thought.
And they usually join us in pairs discussing contemporary Islamic and medieval Islamic political thought, followed by a discussion.
And this week, I'm really absolutely delighted to be able to welcome Valerie Hoffmann,
emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
And she is a specialist on a range of areas and covers,
has covered a very broad array of areas and engaged in considerable amount of ethnographic ethnographic work,
and particularly in Egypt, but also in sort of on the coast of Africa, Zanzibar and is today here to speak about about this.
And so this week's seminar is on the theme of dissent.
And Valerie is speaking on charges of radicalism, about the Wahhabi polemics and the articulation of identity.
She is, of course, one of the world's leading authorities on about Islam,
a branch of Islam, which is very often under studied and under taught as well.
And I'm sure your students will not be able to complain that at the University of Illinois.
But with that, we're really delighted to have you, Valerie, and we really look forward to your presentation.
And then Faisal, my co-convenor, and I will join you in a discussion thereafter.
For any audience members, I would like to just remind you that you're more than welcome to ask questions in the chat.
Those will show up for me and I will put them to Valerie in the latter half of this discussion.
I would really take advantage of this because we are very fortunate just to have Valerie this week.
So there's plenty of time for discussion and we look forward to seeing you every two weeks during term time.
But I would like to first thank again Valerie for making the time, and you can take it from here.
Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you so much.
It's really an honour to be speaking with you.
So I'm going to begin by recalling some violent incidents that occurred in the Valley, Algeria,
which is one of the North African enclaves of where about the communities remain from November 2013 to April 2014 and then again in March 2015.
Multiple violent incidents that resulted in more than 20 deaths, scores of people wounded,
the desecration of it by the tools and the burning of many shops and homes and forcing hundreds of families to flee and of course,
damaging the livelihood of many people, particularly about the merchants.
So these incidents, which are known as Aftermath, about a day and a half day of being both the name of the province where it occurs,
as well as the capital city of that province, were described by the media as ethno sectarian violence between it all the amazing and Maliki Arabs.
Now, many writers disputed the idea that that really was ethno sectarian violence because if these and Maliki's had enjoyed peaceful
coexistence for centuries and so there were other explanations offered economic and political changes that caused various problems.
Some blamed criminal elements from up a part of the town of Artesia, which is popularly called Mexico, because of the power of local drug cartels.
But all of that raises the question of why would violence occur at this particular point in time in particular.
And so many writers thought that foreign hands were involved in trying to to damage Algerian national
unity at a time when there was a lot of sectarian violence in some other countries of the Muslim world,
while others said this is typical deflection of blame from a problem that is really home-grown.
So another explanation was that the incidents were actually engineered by the government in preparation for the presidential election in April 2014.
In which. Abdul Aziz beautifully was running for a fourth term as president, even though he had had a stroke in 2013.
And the violence was meant to strike fear in the local population and convince them that they can only be safe if the current regime is re-elected.
So I and eyewitnesses spoke of the complicity of police and security forces who encouraged criminal
elements to attack Abadi homes and businesses and help them by tossing tear gas canisters into houses.
Standing by idly while Maliki's entered and about the mosque and announced over loudspeakers from the mosque a jihad against the Baathists.
So suspicions of the government's culpability seemed to be confirmed by the fact that the violence ended abruptly on April 17th,
2014, the day of the presidential election.
So as we know, sectarian violence can never be reduced to a single cause.
So more than one of these explanations is plausible.
But for purposes of this talk, because I'm talking about about the Wahhabi polemics,
I'm going to focus on one explanation in particular, and that was that some people said Salafi sheikhs stirred up hatred for anybody.
So I should just pause and say that in this talk, I'm sort of I'm using Wahhabi when I'm specifically referring just to Saudis,
I realise that Wahhabis don't like to be called Wahhabis.
They call themselves Salafis. But the word Salafi has many different meanings, right?
But when we have sheikhs in Algeria who identify with the ideology of Saudi Arabia, they are typically called Salafi, right, rather than Wahhabi.
So I just recognise that the appellations can be complicated.
But in any case, the Saudi owned channel, it was blamed for disseminating hatred in Algeria.
At the end of October 2013, a conference was held in Amman, Jordan on the topic,
the coverage and their persistence until the time of the Antichrist at the jail.
And of course, this language is drawn from Hadith, right.
So it was about what does it all mean? And this program, which was broadcast on it.
In this program, an Algerian sheikh identified the bodies as the Claridge of our time,
describing them as unbelievers beyond the pale of the Omar and the Miller.
I mean that just not beyond the pale of proper Islamic belief,
but they're not even in the humour of Islam and citing proof texts from Hadith that allow the shedding of their blood,
the violation of their women and the plunder of their property.
So one Algerian reporter wrote from the first time this was broadcast a month ago, the flames of fitna, of discord in our day have increased.
It is not a coincidence that its rebroadcast three days ago coincided with the first violent incidents after fanning the flames of Fitna.
Demonstrations began right after the broadcast after six citizens were killed,
more than 60 wounded, stores burned, property looted, families forced out of their homes.
The demonstrations were by followers of the prophet who repeated the slogan that in the in the law, above the law, meaning there is no God but Allah.
And if all these are the enemies of all of Allah.
Now there are hadiths, of course, in which the Prophet Muhammad predicted the emergence of a group labelled America,
that America means to fly, shoot or penetrate.
It's linked to an expression of Islam.
The arrow has passed through, meaning the matter is finished.
And so in a Hadith, the Prophet said that people from my myanma will leave the religion as fast as an arrow leaves the bow and it's shot.
You will look at the place where it lands. You'll see nothing.
Now, most authors interpret this as a reference to the radical cowards that had traits of early Islam.
And some versions encourage the Muslims to kill America wherever they find them.
Now, as this audience probably knows the marriage or had it, Shi'ites originally were those who abandoned Ali.
The Battle of Spain in the year 657 of the Common Era.
When he agreed with his nemesis, Malawi hubby Sofiane agreed to the proposal to submit their disagreement to human arbitration.
Those who rejected the arbitration were called Alma-tadema because of their slogan.
Their hope is that there is no judgement but gods.
The meaning of the term had a je or or a edge in the plural has been debated.
Could mean leaving all these ami. Some say that it means they left the UN altogether.
Some say it refers to their readiness to go out to wage jihad in the path of God.
The adage split into various sects and the one that is most commonly thought of when people think of the fat,
a giant label is the Salafis or Azhar, another group that was led by Nayef.
And they, of course, are the most radical.
They they're the ones who believe that the commission of grave sin or persistence in minor sin
without repentance makes one an unbeliever who has committed apostasy and should be killed.
And they said all true believers should migrate away from the society of unbelievers to
their camp to do a new hijrah like the migration of the Muslims from Mecca to Medina in 622,
and that they should wage war against the group's opponents.
Those who did not join them should be killed, their property seized, their women and children enslaved.
The Oslo police terrorised parts of what are today Iran and Iraq.
But the movement was defeated and largely eliminated by the riots.
Near the close of the second century. So they have existed for a very long time.
Now other foreign Shiite groups rejected the necessity of a hijra.
And although they also felt that the labels Muslim and believer should be reserved for observant members of their own group,
and they felt, yes, it's a good thing to overthrow tyrants if possible.
They also believed it is permissible to live peaceably together alongside other Muslims and to hide one's true beliefs in a hostile environment.
And so that orientation includes the group that came to be called it Bodies.
And today, if all these are the only remaining group that adheres to the position of the original Mahatma,
those who rejected the arbitration bodies reject the label.
Pat Achi Because people associate catechism with violence against other Muslims.
And that's never been about the practice. It bodies, of course, are a distinct branch of Islam.
They're not Sunni or Shiite, and they're a very tiny minority in the Muslim world, less than 1% of the world's Muslims.
And although about ism emerged in Bosnia back in the eighth century, they were forced out of that region of southern Iraq through persecution.
Most of them, since they were descended from tribes that had come from Arabia, went back to Arabia, but they had also.
They also sent out missionaries, though, to North Africa, where about this?
Some became a vehicle for indigenous people's rejection of the Arab conquests.
And so upon the inmates, you know, states that were founded on the basis of liberalism were established in Oman, the remote Yemen and North Africa.
But conquests by non embody groups and conversions out of a baptism to Sunni Islam
led to a loss of about two sons hold on most of North Africa and all of Yemen.
So the only state today that claims that the majority of its Muslims are anybody is the Sultanate of Oman,
although there are disagreements about statistics. But that's what they claim.
In any case in North Africa it bond.
The communities may be found today in remote areas, the Mosab Valley in Algeria,
the Nafusa mountains of northwest Libya and the island of Java in Tunisia as well, of course, as migrants to the capital cities of those countries.
In addition, Omani rule in East Africa,
which began as early as the 17th century and economic problems in Oman in the 19th
century led to the migration of many bodies from the Omani interior to the Swahili coast.
And there are some in market bodies that remain there today. Now, as.
You may know had a G has been used as a pejorative label for all radical Muslim groups in the world today.
Those that engage in terrorism against in violence against Muslim targets.
So to call the about this whole adage is to imply that they are radical extremists that pose a danger to the Ummah.
On the other hand, there have not been any the terrorist groups.
On the contrary, most Muslim terrorists, as we know, have been inspired by Wahhabi Salafi attitudes and teachings.
So if Bin Abdulwahab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement in the 18th century, as probably many of you know,
drew on a humble tradition that deemed practice essential to faith, which is a point on which these actually agree.
And whereas most Sunni Muslims would say that a muslim who doesn't pray, but who acknowledges the obligation of prayer is a negligent Muslim,
I would say not just Wahhabi, but even many of the Hun bullets would say no such a.
Anyone who abandons prayer is a Catholic is an unbeliever.
The 12th century, Jose said such a person should be killed.
And of course, as we know it, Abdullah Wahab, in the 18th century,
considered popular veneration of holy places to be un-Islamic and to be tantamount to shift to polytheism.
And he called on his supporters to fight against the polytheists until they adhere to monotheism, meaning the Wahhabi creed and way of life.
He also didn't hesitate. Not in his theoretical writings, but in his sort of more informal,
like his letters to denounce even humble scholars who didn't accept Wahhabi teachings,
to denounce them as as far as not just Cathar, but guilty of [INAUDIBLE].
You know, I mean, Cathar talk about the meaning of that word a little bit later.
Cathar is usually translated as unbelievers.
In the case of a baptism, I prefer to use a different translation because Cathar can mean more than one thing anybody thought.
Even Abdulwahab. Son Abdullah denied that Wahabis considered all other Muslims far.
But Abdullah's son Sulaiman said that not only the Shia but non Wahhabi Sunnis are kofar.
And when the Wahhabis captured Mecca in 1803, Sulaiman compelled all of these to give an oath of allegiance to the Wahhabi creep.
And when they protested that they were being treated like Kafir, Sulaiman said,
Well, we disavow all the people of our time except those who belong to our group.
Yeah. So the the Egyptian Ottoman invasion of Wahhabi territory in the early 19th century
led to the rise of a discourse of separation that had long lasting impact.
I mean, right to this day, because Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt who invaded Arabia on behalf of the Ottoman sultan, was successful.
Many Saudi vassals sort of defected from the Wahhabi camp.
And Suleiman saw this as a betrayal, not only of Wahhabism, but of Islam itself.
He says that they said that such people have gone over to the enemy, to the land of idolatry,
and he made it a requirement for all true Muslims to migrate to Wahhabi controlled territory.
And, you know, this has had a long impact even into the 20th century.
In the early 20th century,
another Wahhabi sheikh expressed horror when he heard that some of the brethren who lived in Oman had made friends with their bodies.
And he wrote that it's contrary to faith to be kind to Japanese bodies and to worshippers because they are kofar.
And he cited Hadith that encourage true Muslims to kill such people, assuring them that they would be rewarded on the day of judgement.
So Salafis have often regarded other groups, including their bodies, as part of a, you know, an insidious conspiracy to destroy Islam from within.
And of course, they see themselves as the only ones who can save it.
Now, the Saudi kingdom, of course, has moderated its practice.
And I mean right with the beginning, beginning with the founder of the third Saudi state, Abdul Aziz Ansari.
But Wahhabism, of course, in its doctrine, remains hostile to many deep rooted Islamic tendencies, including Sufism, Shi'ism, theology,
etc. and really the hard won ethos of coexistence and tolerance,
of a diversity of perspectives that really has characterised much of the history of Sunni Islam.
Now, from the outset, Wahhabism critics compared Wahhabis to had its rights, by which they meant absolutely right.
And so the Ottomans call them a despicable had a child sect referred to there had its swords that wreaked havoc
on Muslim countries and it bothers also likened the Wahhabis to the Azhar in their practice of talk fear.
I think, you know, Takfiri is a term so many of us use now.
It probably doesn't need explanation, but it means accusing, calling other people unbelievers or polytheists.
And also the demand of Hitler to their own territory was similar to the Azad and their bloody wars against other Muslims.
So when the Wahhabis in the late 18th and early 19th century conquered much of what today is
the Sultanate of Oman and convince many people in that area to embrace Wahhabi doctrines.
The leading body scholar of Oman at the time, Abu Nabil Han Al-Harazi, rejected the idea that the Wahhabis could become bullies because he said,
he believes don't declare the people of the people to be unbelievers or deem it permissible to kill them,
enslave their children and plunder their wealth. So he said, these are US-Iraqi practices, which means that they've taken some things from humble ism,
some things from us, some, and created something new.
And he called Wahhabism a terrible calamity.
And he said that there is no basis in religion to label members of the AUM as Muslim Muslim king polytheists.
And so he said that Wahhabi are the metaphor of the Hadith.
Right. And they are the real. So what you know, and that idea was adopted by other bodies as well.
So we have an ironic situation in which the Baathists and Wahhabis accuse each other of being had a Shiite,
meaning radical, while each group claims to be the only one that preserves the original Islam of the self.
Okay. So the pious ancestors.
Now, one thing I found interesting as I was learning about I look very much at the history, the history of the 19th century in Oman.
It's one area that I really looked at a lot. British officers in the 19th centuries saw a great deal of similarity between Wahhabis antibodies,
including a tendency toward Puritanism, if you like,
and stern application of the law, prohibitions against smoking and against decorating mosques and tombs,
a lack of veneration of saints and belief in their intercession.
And some British observers even conflated the two groups thinking, for example, that hasn't been the case.
Who was brought to power in 1868 as a result of concerns about the uprising that overthrew the ruler of Oman and put him in power as the imam?
The British resident in the Gulf at the time described him as having strong Wahhabi views and tendencies.
And so, you know, this idea that they're really the same.
And so both groups do believe that only those who fulfil their religious obligations should properly be called Muslims and believers.
Both groups prioritise the Koranic imperative of commanding the right, forbidding the wrong, and the abandoning.
Conservatives who led a series of uprisings against the Sultanate of Oman in the 19th and early 20th century, referred to themselves as al-Mukhtar.
Those who enforce obedience, which is a clear echo of the Wahhabi use of the term and the British political agent and must,
when Hasan had been placed, was in power as the abad.
The imam says that the metal restorer held the populace in Muscat in a vise of fear,
issuing strict regulations about dress and public behaviour, prohibiting the use of tobacco and prohibiting music in public.
They zealously strode the streets, cane in hand, vigilantly looking for backsliders.
This description is quite resonant, isn't it, of Saudi Arabia's religious police.
So you can understand perhaps some of this. Another thing that embodies the Wahhabi share is a strong emphasis on.
The doctrine of alala or wala, as the Wahhabi say, which means loyalty or affiliation or association.
On the one hand, Walla Walla here with Muslims and Bora Bora Bora Bora.
Meaning dissociation or disavowal of those who are considered the enemies of God in order to maintain the purity of their communities.
Both of them have really emphasised this doctrine and have a strong preoccupation
with this distinction between those who were in and those who were out of the group.
And so of course there is a chronic basis for these concepts.
I'll just read a little description written by a 10th century Ebony scholar describing the behaviour appropriate to dissociation.
He says the enmity of the Muslims for infidels, if they do the deeds of infidelity, is demonstrated by speaking harshly to them,
hating them, separating from them, avoiding sitting with them, fighting them until they return to work on his command.
Now, if out of fear the Muslims must practice dissimulation, hiding their views, then they'll just separate from them in their hearts and hate them.
Deem them as miscreants, but not do not fight them.
Right, because you have to have a certain strength to be able to fight them.
And he says whoever doesn't dissociate from infidels is not a muslim.
In God's eyes, one must separate and associate from anyone who commits a grave sin or persists in any act of disobedience to God,
no matter who he is living or dead. Father or son.
Distant or near. And this is somewhat similar to what Ethan Abdulwahab wrote.
He wrote, A person's Islam is not sound, even if he is a monotheist towards God and deserts polytheism,
unless he is hostile to polytheists and declares to them his hostility and hatred.
So the Wahhabis had this belief that society was composed of antithetical forces, of true Muslims on the one hand,
and polytheists on the other, and then those, of course, who pretended to be true Muslims, the hypocrites.
Right? Okay. Now, about these don't condone violence against anyone except oppressive rulers and their supporters.
And then only if you have an adequate number of people who have pledged themselves to the cause to make it potentially successful.
But their writings nonetheless reflect a similarly stark perspective of a society composed of antithetical forces of good and evil.
At least the writings from the pre-modern period certainly do that.
And so the liberal system strengthens the feeling of being a member of a closed and cohesive community.
Those who violated community laws, especially in North African communities, would be excommunicated.
Anybody in the. Mosab told me that in former times, a person who deviated from community laws would be denounced publicly in the mosque.
The entire community would dissociate from him and even his wife, but would not speak to him,
which encouraged the miscreants hasty public repentance and restoration to the community.
So in this way, the community was sort of kept very cohesive and the religious scholars had a great deal of authority.
Now this type of bara as communication no longer exists among all these,
but some of the commentators on those violent incidents in Calderdale describe Sunni resentment of the insularity
of about the communities in the Mosab and the refusal of IT bodies to marry outside their own community.
So I find that rather interesting.
Now, despite the alleged, you know, the similarities that are there between the bodies and Wahabis that the British observed,
the British also commented favourably on about the friendliness and tolerance, you know, so that.
Actually, I read one quote in particular because I really like this one.
The British official, W.H. Ingram, who spent time, a lot of time in Zanzibar as well as in the hadramout,
said he would rather live among it bodies than among Baptists or Methodists,
because in his experience, if all these are the most tolerant people in the matter of religion, I have known.
So now this may strike you as odd,
considering everything I just said about Wilayat and Bara and the idea that only pious if all these could really be Muslims and believers.
I will acknowledge that there is a certain disconnect between sort of the theoretical aspects of it, but the belief in its classical versions.
I think that the has changed a great deal, especially in Oman.
So disconnect between that theory and actual practice in actual practice.
You really don't see any signs of disapproval, even let alone a disavowal of anybody's.
And there are also important differences. And one of the biggest differences is the interpretation of Kufr, which is usually translated as unbelief.
I prefer to translate Kufr as infidelity or unfaithfulness because the parties distinguish that [INAUDIBLE] would be,
which would be the unfaithfulness of unbelief.
On the one hand that would be polytheism. And they say no member of the old man should ever be accused of polytheism.
That's one type. But then those who are either have errors in their doctrine.
They're not advancing. Or if all these who commit grave sins and don't repent are also unfaithful to God.
And so that type of infidelity is called for, if not the unfaithfulness of hypocrisy or NAMA.
And here Kufuor means ingratitude, you know, just as the Koran contrasts a shackling.
Catherine Right. The grateful and the ungrateful.
So in this case, the Kofar Nama are those who are ungrateful to God for His blessings.
So they also insist that all members of the honour should have the same legal rights,
regardless of their sect or their level of piety, including the rights of intermarriage.
In theory, which is interesting, since I just said Sunnis complain that their bodies won't let probably their daughters marry Barry.
Not bodies. But in theory, intermarriage, mutual inheritance, praying together.
No problem. Bodies have no problem. Praying behind a on body let behind anonymously the Imam Mosque prayer for their dead burial in cemeteries.
Greeting with the Muslim greeting all of these and of course, eating the meat that they sacrificed.
All of these are rights for all the entire Ummah.
The Wahhabis, on the other hand, have at least historically regarded those who did not embrace their doctrines as polytheists.
And the Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin vase, who was the Saudi mufti and probably the most important, the leading Saudi scholar of the 20th century.
When asked if it was permissible to pray with the party, said, no, it is not permissible to pray with the parties.
Other embodied doctrines that distinguish them from the hobbies are they deny that the prophet will intercede for grave sinners.
And so anyone who's in hellfire is going to remain there.
And they reject all anthropomorphic descriptions of God as being literally true.
So they're similar to the Montezuma and in interpreting them in a metaphorical fashion.
They deny the possibility of seeing God in the afterlife.
They also say the Quran is a creative expression of God's speech.
It's not identical with an eternal divine attribute of speech,
and they have confidence in the efficacy of human reason to know of the existence of God and something of His nature.
And there are minor differences in practice, which is usually what people are aware of.
If artists play with their hands, stamp out their sides, things like this.
And it parties, even though they don't have Sufi orders and they don't make pilgrimages to tombs.
Nonetheless, many bodies have been drawn to Sufi teachings, to a sort of mystical sense.
And the leading party scholars in Oman in the 19th century and early 20th century, many of them were,
you know, composed, mystical poetry, wrote commentaries on April 14th, poetry, things like this.
And this is a strong contrast with Wahhabi rejection of mysticism in any form.
And who has said it bombed? These are not literalists in matters of theology,
and they dismiss Wahhabis and handbills and anyone else who takes the anthropomorphic descriptions of God literally as hushed.
We're dealing with an irrational acceptance of literal texts.
And. Whereas, Sunni Muslims idealise the generation of the prophet and his companions and say that the great fitna,
the great Civil War that broke out mere 34 years after the Prophet's death was a legitimate disagreement in matters of each to have.
That's often what is said among people who were all righteously abhor these.
Don't accept that. They believe that the third caliph, Osman Ibn,
often abandoned righteousness after the first six years of his rule that ultimately
he deserved to be assassinated when he refused either to abdicate or to repent.
And that Marwa and his supporters. Who rejected the rightful imamate of the fourth Caliph Ali.
Were rebels who committed grave injustices.
You know, one thing that I do want to say is that, of course, doctrines and practices aren't static, right?
They're subject to social and political influences.
And, you know, the founder of the third Saudi state rejected a lot of the precedent.
He lifted travel restrictions to other countries.
He sent his sons on diplomatic missions. He had Arab advisers from Ottoman lands.
He had Westerners come in and advise on economic development.
He abstained from treating the Shia as idolaters.
But in doing this, of course,
he rejected parts of the Wahhabi heritage that have been preserved by either more conservative ulema or by radical jihadi groups,
as we know, the nicest today.
In East Africa, a textbook that was written by anybody in 1920, said that it's okay to feel love in one's heart for a non-white body.
If he's nice to you that that doesn't matter. As long as you also in your heart have acknowledged that this is not a religious affiliation,
that it doesn't affect behaviour, that the prophet was kind to everyone.
We can be too. And finally, in Oman, since Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, one of some big changes,
there's been a dramatic sectarian ascension of people to some so that no sectarian teachings are allowed in schools or mosques.
And this has led to the rise of a whole generation of Omani two generations
even who don't really know what makes a body so different from anybody else.
And so if bodies have come to see, look at all of these sectarian borders as kind of ridiculous as well as horrifying.
They see themselves as the moderates par excellence, tolerant of everyone, able to mediate in the sectarian disputes of the Middle East.
And the one thing, though, the mufti of Oman, who's been the same person since 1975, Sheikh Ahmed Al-khalili,
says that dissociation is important from those who are unjust and therefore scholars who support unjust rulers.
And plenty of that in the Middle East. Right should be subject to dissociation.
So he denies that if bodies dissociated from Sunnis or Shia.
He supports the unification of the OMA, but he believes that it is totally wrong to endorse the policies or support the unjust ruler.
So I'm going to end at this point. There is a lot more that could be said, but.
We'll stop here and let's. I'd be very happy to hear your questions and comments.
Thank you so much, Valerie.
That's really a wonderful kaleidoscopic view of both the sort of early theological debates and the resonances with some of the
other theological traditions from early Islam down to the present current geopolitical concerns across different nations.
And I'm really happy that you got a call now because I'm going to probably ask a question about him soon enough.
But first, I wanted to invite you if you wanted to ask any questions, and I naturally have a whole host of questions related to this.
And I wanted to also let the participants know the sort of people who are joining us from around the world.
Actually, if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat and we'll definitely come to them if you'd actually like to,
because there's a sort of a relatively familiar crowd with us this afternoon.
If you'd like to ask a question in person, I can let you sort of get hold of the mic at some point since we have a bit of time as well.
But first, let me turn to you face at least thanks very much for some and thanks very much, Valerie.
That really was fantastic. And you know, as he was speaking, I thought to myself in so many ways,
some of these tensions seem to be as a manifestation of what Freud might have called the narcissism of minor differences.
And it's precisely, as it were, the similarities that create the conflict rather than the differences.
Because the problem is how do you actually signify and identify the differences in in this situation, especially in contemporary times,
when you know the name courage, your courage has become almost a kind of universal term of castigation.
Right? Anyone can be called it, as you so nicely pointed out, embody and call a Wahhabi authority.
You know, so-called moderate Muslims can call militant ones, al ISIS prodigy, and they do very frequently and the reverse.
So in a way, it's almost as if the terminology has become a universal identifier that I find really fascinating.
It's a such an ancient term and B belongs, as you nicely point out, to such a small less than 1% of the current population of Muslims in the world.
So there's something, bizarrely, if you will.
Apart from the theological and political issues involved,
there's something of a psychic or psychological nature or ideological see that allows for this kind of thing to happen.
And I just want to add one more thing and then ask you to comment, which is that, you know,
when you're describing the British officials who are well disposed towards the bodies,
of course, many of the same ones are also well disposed to the lobbies and some of the reasons,
because they see them as harking back to their own Protestant and Puritan past.
And as a result, perhaps you see modernist Muslims falling into the same kind of logic where, you know, Wahhabism gets to be seen.
The philosopher Muhammad Iqbal or a writes in in colonial India as the first problem of modernity in Islam.
It's interesting because your story could tell give us an alternative genealogy of such a modernity if we want to go down that road at all,
you know, through descent and through what scholars have indeed done through the idea of the republic or Republicanism.
And so I find it really fascinating,
just as I have always been or regularly been seen since the 19th century in Western scholarship as being rationalists,
the embodies or the coverage have often been seen as being the first Republicans.
And surely this tells upon,
I'm sure it's entirely anachronistic to use these terms held on the modernist Muslim scholarship and perhaps one on sort of more diffuse.
Ideas among diverse Muslim populations.
And so it's a bit of a shaggy dog question, but I just wanted to get in the different ways in which terms like coverage or
indeed Wahhabi have been deployed from the 19th century until today and then ask,
you know, how those deployments actually might effect the strange similarities that you pointed out.
Right, conflicts that come out of similarity rather than difference.
Well, I think you're raising Freud's phrase narcissism of minor differences is so perfect because
my husband is a psychoanalytic psychologist and we have long conversations on these issues.
And I don't claim to really fully understand it. But what I have found is that there's been.
Quite an interesting literature in the last decade, couple of decades on trying to explain the rise of fundamentalism not just in the Muslim world,
but in the world at large from a psychoanalytic perspective.
I'm interested also in trying to understand why we're about this able to give up this idea of purity as the main goal.
You know, purification, of course, never ends, right?
No one is ever going to get to the certification of the entire world and globalisation where you are constantly encountering other points of view.
Despite the closed worlds we create on social media,
we still encounter others and are therefore challenged with regard to our own ideas of uniquely holding on to the truth.
And that dynamic can lead either to more openness or to more closeness, really,
depending on the extent to which you identify this as a threat to who you are.
So I am interested in, you know, one thing I haven't talked about, and it's not really a matter of reinterpreting it this.
But what I find very interesting is that the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Oman has, you know,
it had a travelling exhibit, I don't know if you saw it in England on religious tolerance in Oman.
And the Omani version of Islam is total tolerance.
And in a way this is really true. I mean, in Oman, the sultan has given lands to Hindus to build temples.
Buddhists can practice, anyone can practice. So it goes even beyond what we would normally consider the monotheistic religions.
Although I should note that Jews and Christians are called mystical in classical, partly literature.
So they're not just Cathar, they're musical.
But the journal that was published and actually edited by Abderrahmane me from the ministry was called a found Mutual Understanding.
And that was really actually it was Abdel Rahman Hassan, his uncle Abdullah me.
Who wrote a book called.
Religious tolerance, a vision for a new world in which he said that without understanding each other's religious point of view,
he said, all religions aim to promote good morals and kindness, etc. love.
And therefore we need to understand each other and not feel threatened by each other.
He felt that the future of humanity was really premised on this.
So I feel that that is very interesting.
So this has been a part of of Oman's present self-presentation to the world and John Wilkinson in his book on it.
But this I mean,
it was just a minor point that he said at the end when he talked about how if all of these present themselves as peaceful and they are moderate,
they are nice people. And he said, I wonder if niceness is going to be enough to excite young people in Oman.
I thought that was an interesting question.
But whatever I think the question of not only what causes groups to radicalise, but what causes groups to embrace moderation and openness.
It's part, of course, a strategic thing. Right.
Bodies are a tiny minority. And in the you know,
in their bodies until the mid-19th century called themselves film in which they were a had a giant sect according to their own literature,
for the most part. Sometimes, however, they also used outrage as a code term for the Azhar.
But in the late 19th century, with the growth of pan Islamic sentiment, we start having the issuance of a body works.
Talk about the difference between the apologies and the whole adage that if all these are not and that is,
you know, like a gut reaction now just because we are not caloric.
And even Abdirahman Salameh objected in an article that I wrote to my even saying that they were he said,
don't use the word Houthis, use the word Mahatma. I said that no one's going to know what that means.
At least they know what it means. So in any case, I think that, yes, as one psychoanalyst who deals with international diplomacy actually make Vulcan.
An emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. He uses the image of a tent that we all have these different identities, right?
And so there is the big tent and then there's the smaller tent. And at each level, you have to have symbols to to show what group this is.
So that when there are, as he said, similar to what Floyd was saying, when there are minor differences or seemingly minor differences,
it becomes even all the more important to symbolically differentiate.
Now, in this case, I think in terms of. Attitudes towards others about these.
And what happens today are very, very different. So in spite of all of this theoretical similarity in the language, you know,
another advocate scholar in common with whom I was co-writing an article objected to my saying that anybody's regard.
No, anybody's as far.
So I gave him a whole bunch of quotes from different ibs-c literature, past and recent, and he finally went, okay, so you know the literature, okay.
So clearly he didn't want me to spread what he knew to be true because it does not reflect contemporary upon the attitudes at all.
And I think it's interesting that Nepal is a very proud of the baptism.
The state of Oman promotes the publication of about the same as a part of Omani heritage.
But there are parts of that heritage that they don't want disseminate it.
There's one book that was written in, I think, the 15th, 16th century that is really adamant about how horrible all nine groups are.
That book is banned in Oman, even though at first they published it that they went, Oops, that was mistake.
Let's get rid of that one. Likewise, back in 2005, there was an announcement of a discovery of a plot to overthrow the government.
Wow. What is that? Well, it was just a study group of intellectuals who were studying the requirements of the traditional way by the imamate.
That is a threatening thing to do in a sultanate about ISM theoretically does not endorse dynastic rule at all.
So Oman was a very wise ruler.
He was, yes, had a little power in his hands, but he also knew how to exercise it with a great deal of wisdom.
So after these people were all sentenced to prison terms or whatever.
He swooped in and pardoned them all and took their leaders and gave them official
positions in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and thereby co-opting them.
And so he was very, very, very smart.
When he came to power, there was still a significant a body rebellion that was being conducted mainly from Saudi Arabia.
Interestingly enough, the the leaders of the former, if not the inmate who were defeated by Sultan Qaboos,
his father, the in Timor in the late 1950s, had fled into exile in Saudi Arabia.
And Saudi Arabia didn't mind agitating things, you know, roiling the situation there in Oman and Sultan Qaboos, however.
Through offering positions and offering money, was able to get some of the inmates supporters to come back and help build a new country.
Others never came back.
But he was ultimately recognised by the son of the leader of the last rebellion that established the separate imamate in Oman in 1913.
His son Mohammed,
who had earlier written about how Imamate and Sultanate are constantly at odds because they're based on such totally different ideas.
But ultimately, he met with Probus and recited a poem which I found written in his own hand in his library in Oman,
in which he praised purpose for his justice.
And so to praise him for his justice, that's an acknowledgement that he is a legitimate, good man.
So I feel like, you know, it's very interesting the changes that have happened to them.
One brief question, if I may, Osama as a by myself, I just would like to think,
but I may be completely wrong that some of these changes you describe actually may have originated in Zanzibar,
because, of course, they occurred there first.
And then after the revolution in 1964, you have the migration of many Zanzibar east to Oman, where they established in the civil service.
You know the story better than I do. And in Zanzibar, of course, there wasn't an absolute monarchy by the time of the revolution.
It was a constitutional monarchy with political parties.
It was not an experiment that ended well. And this is now exile.
But it just makes me wonder whether actually the peculiar circumstances of East Africa that became a kind of laboratory for sure.
All the reform. I agree with you.
I think that we really see this in the of just say the leader of the the uprising of 1913 was Nordine Salame,
who was actually the great grandfather of the man of Salame, by the way.
And so it was his grandson who became the Minister of Religious Affairs, Abdullah Salame.
Until recently he stepped down from that position.
But but the new Minister of Religious Affairs was one of the organisers of the Religious Tolerance in Oman exhibit.
So I anticipate that there will be continuity there.
In any case, what? I guess some Iraqis in Zanzibar had written to the Salame because he was the leading scholar of that generation.
In the very beginning of the 20th century and said, you know,
is there are some there are Muslims here who send their children to schools that have been set up by the Christians, meaning, you know, Europeans.
And by then, of course, Zanzibar was a British protectorate,
but there had been missionary groups of various types that had had a set up schools and hospitals.
And people are learning foreign languages and people are modifying their dress to include a European style jacket on top of their,
you know, the dishwasher, the the robe that they're wearing.
So. And he replied, Oh, and some people are even trimming their beards, so.
And no, Regina Salame replied that none of this is acceptable.
Down a bit and you really see, you know, here he is a blind scholar in the interior of Oman and you are contrasting this this environment.
And he, of course, was a was the leader of a land uprising that didn't manage to conquer all of Oman,
but managed to conquer the interior and establish an image in the interior while the Sultanate remained on the coast.
And so the distinction between the interior and the coast became very important.
But I think, yes, in Zanzibar, in Zanzibar was so incredibly cosmopolitan, really.
And so I think that the amount of interaction, the friendships that were formed,
really strong friendships between the bodies and other people, other Muslim groups, including amongst all the.
I think that you're right. It has you know, and sometimes I, I see some contradictions in the person, for example, of Abu Mazen,
a Bahraini who was a great poet, but also a judge and a religious scholar in Zanzibar.
He's the one who wrote that textbook saying, you know, it's okay to have affection just in that kind of thing.
But he was a big supporter of Noureddine Asylum's Uprising, considered himself the poet of of the revolution.
And all of this the the Hassan have been savage of this new uprising.
But he also wrote to encourage Muslims to unify, to face colonialism and even for Egyptian Muslims and Copts to unify and to make common cause.
And so, you know, these apparent contradictions are, I think, a reflection of the compartmentalisation of the self that we all do.
Right? We we all wear many hats and sometimes we wear the professor hat, sometimes we wear the parent hat or or the, you know, the national hat.
So whatever hat it is or the religious identifier, hat, whatever it is that you're wearing.
And so he could, at the same time, be an aunt and support him.
You should read his poetry, how he praises the martyrs of the massacre who were slaughtered by Ali at at number one.
And he says, We are thirsting to drink from the waters of Nero one.
He's number one, which was Halley's massacre of the early house, which is becomes as symbolically important as Karbala for the for the Shia.
Right. And so this desire to participate in that, I mean, that is about as sectarian as you can get.
But on the other hand, he also promotes pan-Islamic sentiment and even nationalist sentiment when it is favours, when it's a good thing to do.
I didn't really answer your question, but I think it it's an it fascinating thing this reflection of complicated.
But I did want to say one thing about the Zanzibar and and Oman.
I happened to sit in on an audience that Sheikh Abdullah me, when he was minister of religious affairs, gave to a visiting professor,
a muslim professor from the US who had a group of students with him and one of and the professor asked him a question about autism and he replied,
It's in Arabic. But he replied, The autism of Oman is unlike the about autism that you see elsewhere, because we are people of the sea.
And so this influence of maritime culture that we interact and I felt this was incredibly interesting because he was
the grandson of the man who set up the Imamate in the interior of Oman in opposition to the Sultanate of the coast.
And so but he says we are people of the sea and therefore our Arabism is different from that of others.
I found that really fascinating. Thank you so much, Valerie.
I mean, I've got so many questions, but we've only got around 20 minutes or so.
So, I mean, I'm sure we'll be able to cover a lot of terrain,
but I also don't want to sort of prevent this from coming back because I was really enjoying that discussion on both of your parts.
Just the last thing you mentioned about poetry and saying poetry in praise of, you know, another one.
It reminded me of and even had who?
Is a sort of prominent hierarchy from the earliest generations get exactly when he died and he has a famous kind of poem.
I'll just read the first line. Yeah. A little button. Yeah, that'll better mean the theme rather than the other logo.
I mean, the luxury liner was a, you know,
what a wonderful strike from a man of Toccoa who didn't want to do anything but give contentment to his lord or something like that.
This was in praise of the killer of Ali. Right. And and that I love.
And Hepburn is someone who is highly regarded as a narrator by Sunnis as well.
But they always say, you know, they can be trusted in transmitting because they think anyone who sort of like commits a major sin is outside the deen.
So we can certainly trust them as transmitters of Hadith. But it's just fascinating the the diversity of sort of perspectives that you have.
And I guess, I mean, like the question that I spend some time thinking about is at what point does a position become sectarian?
And that's just so contingent on so many different dimensions.
One of the things that you mentioned was that, you know, in a sense, brothers and by becoming moderates.
Now, the question for the next generation is, well, why should I be above?
Like, what's special about this? This is just like anodyne, you know, liberalism, shall we say?
Right. I mean, like this one of the closing paragraphs in Francis Fukuyama, this book saying the end of history is going to be a boring place, right?
No, there's nothing nothing will excite people. It's just going to be about calculation and sort of like profit margins and things like that.
Of course, we're seeing the resurgence of European right and we're seeing the resurgence of all sorts of problematic movements around the world.
And I think I guess one of the questions I had was, what does the future hold now that, you know, bodies have reached the end of history?
Right. But besides that, I also wanted to sort of query one of the points you made earlier,
saying that the abandonment and abandonment of Salat or prayer is what constituted cover for the Wahhabis.
And you were saying, yes, some of the said this medieval era, but it's actually not too dissimilar to what a lot of Sunnis say more generally.
It's just I guess the Wahhabis would put those words in action because there's an explicit Hadith from the prophet,
which the Sunnis at least would consider canonical.
I'm not sure about the traditions, but I expect the above these too as well, where the Prophet says a lot of you were being venomous.
Salah commentary together you know, the, the covenant that they've taken with me, meaning the believers is prayer.
Whoever leaves it is a disbeliever.
And, you know, this is the same problem that you have with various hadiths where the prophet says such and such an act is Kufr.
Is that literally kafir or is it some kind of metaphorical effect?
And so the early jurists, including Ahmed Hamdan, said this is actually Kufr.
In fact, most of the jurists, as far as I know, said that, you know, someone who does this and persists is non-believer and should be killed.
Only the hanafi talking Sunni jurists. Only the Hanafi say it's kufr, but they should be imprisoned and beaten until they stop praying.
Right. Which so. So the jurists, actually, it is pretty standard for opinion.
I think the you know, in practice, it must have been on it in the breach more than in the observance.
And that's why when the Wallabies come and start practising this and you know, in reality it really shocks the, shocks people's consciousnesses.
So I just want to maybe a reflection on that and you know, if we have some more time we can go into other things.
But I think, you know, I don't want to prevent myself from coming back.
It's fine. So please. Not sure I have a real response.
I think that you raise some. Interesting points.
I think it's still the case that in the discussion of the meaning of email,
it is Sunnis who non-random Sunnis have said Imam is, you know, the acknowledgement of belief.
The profession of faith is just fowl. Whereas the humble said it was you know I'm a and so the about these are similar that way but I think you're
right of course that to articulate it is one thing is it actually going to be practised is another issue.
So yeah, I agree with that. Any speculations on the future of the baptism in the context?
It's like it just became maybe not distinct in any way in a sense.
Well, actually, I think it these are.
Very proud of their of their beliefs. You know, the mufti actually has written a lot of in defence of evangelism,
but his most recent work as Magnum Opus is a multi-volume work called Borehole Hut The Demonstration of the Truth,
in which he devotes an entire volume to a single aspect of Dr. No.
He's finished the theology parts now. He's getting into the into the fifth part, which is less interesting to me personally.
Sorry. But, you know, he has this belief that any reasonable person who really will look without fanaticism or excessive
allegiance to the amounts of his school will will recognise the reasonableness of the body doctrine.
And there are many people who agree with him on this.
So I think even though that doesn't in any way prevent harmonious coexistence with many other people,
I think that many of the intellectuals are still very, very firm about their distinctiveness.
Now, this is just the intellectuals I did, you know, until recently,
there was no way to pursue a post bachelor degree in Islamic studies and theology in Beaumont.
Now, that has changed. They now have one at public university.
So they have the the College of Study of Sciences, which used to be an independent institute,
and now it's a college that's been incorporated into some sort of university.
And they have a faculty of about the non-party faculty there.
So so at that time, when there was no way of,
of pursuing a master's or doctorate in Islamic studies without going to another country where you're inevitably going to study in a Sunni institution.
Now, they didn't go to Saudi Arabia for, I think perhaps understandable reasons.
They tended to prefer the best university in Jordan or the Zaytuna University in Tunis.
But I asked the mufti, are you at all afraid about that?
People will be converted to Sunni Islam will fall away, that there will be no future for him?
And he was unconcerned, which I thought was interesting. I interviewed a number of Alema Abadi alumni who had done their studies.
I asked about their experience of doing it and what it made them think.
Most of them, interestingly enough, ended up writing their dissertations on a subject related to modernism.
But there have, of course, been converted to Sunni Islam.
You know, I asked the former dean of law at Sultan Corpus University about I said, you know, asked him about the future of the baptism.
Right. And his reaction was, who cares?
The differences are secondary issues that no one cares about anymore.
I mean, so I mean, can I can I actually add to the anecdote you mentioned of the you know,
that I think you said the mufti seeming unconcerned that they would potentially leave a body Islam to something like mainstream citizen.
And I mean, this may be a result of that sort of an attitude.
When I was a student as an undergraduate at Oxford and this is back in the 2000, I was studying with a scholar,
Mohammed Akram, that we who was at the Centre for Islamic Studies, and he once commented that,
you know, I, I've had like a buddies come here and visit me with converts to Islam saying, oh, you know,
this person converted after spending time with us and we'd like you to take care of sort of teaching him.
And this was a South Asian Hanafi. And I mean, he just was very admiring of the openness.
He was saying that they're not sectarian at all. Right.
And and so he has he maintains sort of good relations with a lot of about these who are you know,
this Oxford Centre for some studies is interesting because it's kind of like a constellation of funding from throughout the Muslim world,
including probably online at some point. So they'll have scholars associated with there in different orientations coming in attending.
And he says that he always loves his sort of Abadi compatriot Abadi colleagues
when they join because he always finds them so open minded and so sort of like,
you know, there's no sense of we're not Sunni either. And this is where I mean, like you were also saying earlier that, you know,
they are historically they're very distinct from Sunnis and they're very much in the Martha City tradition.
And you kind of expect that with the hierarchy sort of history, except with regard to predestination,
they're they are like the ascetic, sexually and well-fed modelling, said Alicia.
He took his doctrine from the abilities that the apostles had at first.
Okay. All right. So I'm sorry, who said this modelling?
Said this model, then said yes. All right. So I'm going to have to look that one up.
Madeleine, as always, the careful surgical reader.
Yes. But just in terms of like, you know, that history,
I wanted to ask you specifically about the transition or the democratic transition of the last century and a half.
So the Wahhabis emerge and suddenly encourages them is a dirty word, because the Ottomans, the Saudis, everyone's sort of accusing the Saudis.
And I use that term advisedly. I mean. Right, right, right.
But they're accusing them of being carnage.
And this continues, of course, in the present because not towards the sort of Saudi Salafi tendency as much anymore.
But now in the middle of the 20th century.
Geoffrey Canada has a wonderful book called Muslim Rebels,
where he looks at the way the Egyptian as her state starts attacking the Muslim Brotherhood.
And this has been revived in the post revolutionary context.
And so the term I was very interested to hear that you were saying is being deployed against cyber these in 2014.
This mirrors exactly what's going on in Egypt in 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood.
And so I sort of wonder now that term is completely sort of like so sullied in the public imagination that they're saying,
look, you know, don't associate us with the holidays. You've got nothing to do with them.
And doesn't that have a fundamental it does not represent a fundamental shift in how you sort of identify your own genealogy historically.
I wonder about that question as well and your own view.
Know that would be my last sort of question. Well, yes, I don't know.
Is it a fundamental difference?
I mean, even some very early epistles written by about these scholars talk about alpha wattage when they really mean all the other events, you know.
So. And they have always stressed the difference between them because the coverage allowed the killing of Muslims, etc., etc. and and pardon.
You know, that's really the America not is really the exotica.
And yet sometimes I have found that in the early about the epistles,
they simply talk about shortage, meaning that sometimes they talk specifically about other groups.
They also tend to lump the nature that and the are sometimes even the three who are really we don't even know of any differences,
doctrinally speaking, between the Sufi and the we don't even know much about the Sufi except that there were three states,
you know, political entities in North Africa, and there were safaris for a while in Oman as well.
But so sometimes they want to make such a distinction that we are the ones who know the proper thing, and that even if we're at war,
we may kill someone in war, but we're not going to go and enslave his wife and children or destroy his property, you know?
So they make this absolute distinction.
One thing I just thought of something interesting, because despite the the fact that these don't go around saying, you know,
we dissociate from Sunnis or or emphasising that distinction, I was invited to participate in a panel on evolving tafsir when the world.
Middle East Studies Congress the block miss World Congress on Middle East studies was held in Ankara back in I don't know again,
it was a number of years ago now but they and then in the Turkish organiser of that panel had me and the
other panellist who is an Omani Abadi and some of his friends over for dinner and after we had eaten.
They got into an argument over the verse, the chronic verse that talks about.
A radical right, you know, and that whole question of who can know, you know,
because there's no period is that are those well who are well-grounded knowledge, do they simply acknowledge God or can they know something?
They got into a big argument over it. The about this scholar upholding the idea that our intellects are able to know.
Right. And the Sunni scholars insisting that we cannot, especially in one of the Sunnis, was really quite Salafi in orientation, actually.
So I found that very interesting.
I finally put an end to it because I had to get back and go to bed.
I was leaving at three in the morning, but it could have just gone on and on and on.
I think I just found it fascinating so that they could that this is a very important distinction.
It's something that for that is only going to be of significance to scholars, of course, right to the whole up.
But for anybody either to insist that Islam is right, at least on theology, interestingly enough,
on matters of law, they say we just have to accept we don't know the difference between right and wrong.
We just have to accept what God commands. But on matters of theology, they insist on the efficacy of human intellect.
And so I think that this has become this is a very important part of the about these scholars self-perception, that we are rational.
And if only everybody else would open their minds, they could be convinced to.
Thank you so much, Valerie. This has really been a sort of wonderful, wide ranging discussion on so many dimensions of about this.
And I don't know if they said if you'd like to add anything to that.
It's a face that is shaking his head just so that the audience is understanding what's going on,
because they'll only be able to people who are speaking. I guess I would love to conclude by first thanking Valerie for really illuminating
hour and a half of reflections on the developments within about this.
And I'm just going to briefly sort of mention what's going to come up in two weeks time.
So we're having fortnightly presentations.
So just as we conclude, I want to mention that we're having bodyboarding with Nadia Abu Ali talking about the left in Islamic political thought.
So Fadi will be talking about a nation class and community,
and Nadia will be speaking talking about speaking on is is the heart for the east and reason for the West.
So a very different sort of we're trying to do sort of pre-modern and then modern than pre-modern.
Modern. But of course, Valerie, your own presentation covered just the whole swathe, the history.
So we got a lucky break this week, shall we say.
So just wanted to conclude again by thanking you for giving your time,
illuminating us and thanking all the participants this week who are attending
from around the world and looking forward to seeing you in two weeks time.
But with that, I'll bring preceding circles for this evening.
Thanks again, Valerie. Thank you. Thank you very much.
That was great.