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Good afternoon and welcome to our first session of Oxford Politics and the Oxford Political Thought seminar with myself.

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Someone asked me and I solidify who are the co-convenor of a series of seminars that discuss political thought in an Islamic hate register.

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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.

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And they usually join us in pairs discussing contemporary Islamic and medieval Islamic political thought, followed by a discussion.

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And this week I'm really absolutely delighted to be able to welcome Valery Hofmann

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from Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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And she is a specialist on a range of areas and covers,

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has covered a very broad array of areas and engaged in considerable amounts of ethnographic ethnographic work,

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and particularly in Egypt, but also in sort of on the coast of Africa, Zanzibar, and is today here to speak about about this.

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And so this week's seminar is on the theme of dissent.

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And Valerie is speaking on charges of radicalism about the Wahhabi polemics and the articulation of identity.

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She is, of course, one of the world's leading authorities on about Islam,

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a branch of Islam, which is very often under studied and under taught as well.

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And I'm sure your students will not be able to complain that at the University of Illinois.

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But with us, we're really delighted to have you, Valerie, and we really look forward to your presentation.

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And then Fazal, my co-convenor, and I will join you in a discussion thereafter.

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For any audience members, I would like to just remind you that you're more than welcome to ask questions in the chat.

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Those will show up for me and I will put them to Valerie in the sort of latter half of this discussion.

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And I would really take advantage of this because we are very fortunate just to have Valerie this week.

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So there's plenty of time for discussion and we look forward to seeing you every two weeks during term time.

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But I would like to first sort of thank again Valerie for making the time, and you can take it from here.

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Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you so much. It's really an honour to be speaking with you.

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So I'm going to begin by recalling some violent incidents that occurred in the Valley, Algeria,

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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.

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Multiple violent incidents that resulted in more than 20 deaths, scores of people wounded,

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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,

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damaging the livelihood of many people, particularly about the merchants.

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So these incidents, which are known as aftermath of our day to day of being,

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both the name of the province where it occurs as well as the capital city of that province,

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were described by the media as ethno sectarian violence between it Baba Amr, Zeke and Maliki Arabs.

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Now, many writers disputed the idea that that really was ethno sectarian violence because it bothers.

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And Maliki's had enjoyed peaceful coexistence for centuries.

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And so there were other explanations offered economic and political changes that caused various problems.

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Some blamed criminal elements from a part of the town of Hardtail, which is popularly called Mexico, because of the power of local drug cartels.

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But all of that raises the question of why would violence occur at this particular point in time in particular.

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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.

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Of sectarian violence in some other countries of the Muslim world,

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while others said this is typical deflection of blame from a problem that is really whole home-grown.

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So one of another explanation was that the incidents were actually engineered

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by the government in preparation for the presidential election in April 2014,

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in which Abdul Aziz beautifully was running for a fourth term as president, even though he had had a stroke in 2013.

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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.

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So I and eyewitnesses spoke of the complicity of police and security forces who encouraged criminal

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elements to attack Abadi homes and businesses and helped them by tossing tear gas canisters into houses.

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Standing by idly while Maliki's entered and about the mosque and announced over loudspeakers from the mosque a jihad against the bodies.

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So suspicions of the government's culpability seem to be confirmed by the fact that the violence ended abruptly on April 17th,

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2014, the day of the presidential election.

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So as we know, sectarian violence can never be reduced to a single cause.

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So more than one of these explanations is plausible.

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But for purposes of this talk, because I'm talking about advanced Wahabi polemics,

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I'm going to focus on one explanation in particular, and that was that some people said Salafi sheikhs stirred up hatred for anybody.

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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.

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I realise that Wahhabi don't like to be called Wahhabis.

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They call themselves Salafis. But the word Salafi has many different meanings, right?

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And so on.

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But when we have sheikhs in Algeria who identify with the ideology of Saudi Arabia, they are typically called Salafi, right, rather than Wahhabi.

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So I just recognise that the appellations can be complicated.

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But in any case, the Saudi owned channel, it was blamed for disseminating hatred in Algeria.

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At the end of October 2013, a conference was held in Amman, Jordan on the on the topic,

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the coverage and their persistence until the time of the Antichrist at the jail.

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And of course, this language is drawn from Hadith, right?

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So it was all it was about how what does it all mean?

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And this program, which was broadcast on infra in this program, an Algerian sheikh identified the bodies as the Claridge of our time,

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describing them as unbelievers beyond the pale of the Omar and the Miller.

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I mean that just not beyond the pale of proper Islamic belief, but they're not even in the hallmarks of Islam.

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And citing proof texts from Hadith that allow the shedding of their blood, the violation of their women and the plunder of their property.

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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.

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It is not a coincidence that its rebroadcast three days ago coincided with the first violent incidents after fanning the flames of Fitna.

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Demonstrations began right after the broadcast after six citizens were killed,

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more than 60 wounded, stores burned, property looted, families forced out of their homes.

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The demonstrations were by followers of the prophet who repeated the slogan that in there,

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in the law, above the Adu law, meaning there is no God but Allah.

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And if all these are the enemies of all of Allah.

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Now there are hadiths, of course, in which the Prophet Muhammad predicted the emergence of a group labelled America.

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And. Means to fly, shoot or penetrate.

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It's linked to an expression marked a sign.

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The arrow has passed through, meaning the matter is finished.

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And so in a Hadith, the Prophet said that people from Myanma will leave the religion as fast as an arrow leaves the bow and it's shot.

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You will look at the place where it lands. You'll see nothing.

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Now, most authors interpret this as a reference to the radical cleric, the had traits of early Islam.

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And some versions encourage the Muslims to kill al-Mahdi wherever they find them.

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Now. As this audience probably knows,

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the shortage or had sites originally were those who abandoned Ali at the Battle of Spain in the year 657 of the Common Era,

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when he agreed with his nemesis, Malawi.

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Have you sofiane agreed to the proposal to submit their disagreement to human arbitration?

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Those who rejected the arbitration were called Mahatma because of their slogan.

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Their hope is that there is no judgement but gods.

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The meaning of the term had a g or a wattage in the plural has been debated.

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Could be leaving all these Armani ami.

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Some say that it means they left the UN altogether.

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Some say it means there. There. It refers to their readiness to go how to wage jihad in the path of God.

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The adage split into various sects and the one that is most commonly thought of when people think of

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the a giant label is the the as the al-Zarqawi's or Azhar a group that was led by now fight upon us.

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And they of course, are the most radical.

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They're the ones who believe that the commission of grave sin or persistence in minor sin

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without repentance makes one an unbeliever who has committed apostasy and should be killed.

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And they said all true believers should migrate away from the society of unbelievers to

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their camp to do a new hijrah like the migration of the Muslims from Mecca to Madina in 622,

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and that they should wage war against the group's opponents.

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Those who did not join them should be killed, their property seized, their women and children enslaved.

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The onslaught of these terrorised parts of what are today Iran and Iraq.

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But the movement was defeated and largely eliminated by the movements near the close of the second century.

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So they have existed for a very long time now.

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Other foraging groups rejected the necessity of a hijrah,

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and although they also felt that the labels Muslim and believer should be reserved for observant members of their own group,

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and they felt, yes, it's a good thing to overthrow tyrants if possible.

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They also believed it is permissible to live peaceably together alongside other Muslims and to hide one's true beliefs in a hostile environment.

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And and so that orientation includes the group that came to be called it bodies.

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And today, if all these are the only remaining group that adheres to the position of the original monarch,

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among those who rejected the arbitration bodies reject the label patchy because people associate catechism with violence

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against other Muslims and that's never been and about the practice it parties of course are a distinct branch of Islam.

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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.

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And although even some emerged in Bosnia back in the eighth century, they were forced out of that region of southern Iraq through persecution.

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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,

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though, to North Africa, where baptism became a vehicle for indigenous people's rejection of the Arab conqueror conquests.

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And so upon the inmates, you know, states that were founded on the basis of urbanism were established in Oman, the Hadramout, Yemen and North Africa.

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But conquests by non-party groups and conversions out of a baptism to Sunni Islam

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led to a loss of about two sons hold on most of North Africa and all of Yemen.

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So the only state today that claims that the majority of its Muslims are a body is the Sultanate of Oman,

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although there are disagreements about statistics. But that's what they claim.

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In any case, in North Africa, a party communities may be found today in remote areas the Maasai Valley in Algeria,

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the Nafusa mountains of northwest Libya and the island of Java in Tunisia as well, of course, as.

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Migrants to the capital cities of those countries.

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In addition, Omani rule in East Africa, which began as early as the 17th century.

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And economic problems in Oman in the 19th century led to the migration of many of these from the Omani interior to the Swahili coast.

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And there are some in-market bodies that remain there today.

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Now, as you may know, had a G has been used as a pejorative label for all radical Muslim groups in the world today,

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those that engage in terrorism against in violence against Muslim targets.

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So to call the advances coverage is to imply that they are radical extremists that pose a danger to the Ummah.

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On the other hand, there have not been any other terrorist groups.

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On the contrary, most Muslim terrorists, as we know, have been inspired by Wahhabi Salafi attitudes and teachings.

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So if Bin Abdulwahab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement in the 18th century, as probably many of you know,

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drew on a humble tradition that deemed practice essential to faith, which is a point on which about these actually agree.

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But and whereas most Sunni Muslims would say that a muslim who doesn't pray,

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but who acknowledges the obligation of prayer is a negligent Muslim Wahhabi would say not just Wahhabis,

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but even many of the bullets would say no such a.

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Anyone who abandons prayer is a Catholic is an unbeliever.

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The 12th century. If Jose said such a person should be killed.

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So and of course, as we know it, an Abdullah Wahab in the 18th century,

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considered popular veneration of holy places to be un-Islamic and to be tantamount to shift to polytheism.

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And he called on his supporters to fight against the polytheists until they adhere to monotheism, meaning the Wahhabi creed and way of life.

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He also didn't hesitate, not in his theoretical writings, but in his sort of more informal, like his letters,

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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].

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You know, I mean, Kifah, I'll talk about the meaning of that word a little bit later.

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Cathar is usually translated as unbelievers.

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In the case of a baptism, I prefer to use a different translation because Cathar can mean more than one thing anybody thought.

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Ibn Abdulwahab. Son Abdullah denied that Wahabis considered all other Muslims to far.

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But Abdullah's son Sulaiman said that not only the Shia but non Wahhabi Sunnis are kofar.

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And when the Wahhabis captured Mecca in 1803, Sulaiman compelled all these to give an oath of allegiance to the Wahhabi creep,

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and when they protested that they were being treated like Kafir, Sulaiman said,

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Well, we disavow all the people of our time except those who belong to our group.

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Yeah. So the the Egyptian Ottoman invasion of Wahhabi territory in the early 19th century

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led to the rise of a discourse of separation that had long lasting impact.

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I mean, right to this day, it because Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt who invaded Arabia on behalf the Ottoman sultan, was successful.

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Many Saudi vassals defected from the Wahhabi camp.

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And Suleiman saw this as a betrayal not only of Wahhabism, but of Islam itself.

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He says that he said that such people have gone over to the enemy, to the land of idolatry,

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and he made it a requirement for all true Muslims to migrate to Wahhabi controlled territory.

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So and, you know, this has had a long impact even into the 20th century.

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In the early 20th century,

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another Wahhabi chef expressed horror when he heard that some of the brethren who lived in Oman had made friends with their bodies.

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He wrote that it's contrary to faith to be kind to Japanese bodies and tomb worshippers because they are kofar.

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And he cited Hadith that encourage true Muslims to.

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Kill such people, assuring them that they would be rewarded on the day of judgement.

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So Salafis have often regarded other groups, including the parties, as part of a, you know, an insidious conspiracy to destroy Islam from within.

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And of course, they see themselves as the only ones who can save it.

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Now, the Saudi kingdom, of course, has moderated its practice.

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And I mean right with the beginning, with the founder of the third Saudi state, Abdul Aziz Ansari.

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And but Wahhabism, of course, in its doctrine, remains hostile to many deep rooted Islamic tendencies, including Sufism, Shiism, theology, etc.,

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and really the hard won ethos of coexistence and tolerance,

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of a diversity of perspectives that really has characterised much of the history of Sunni Islam.

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Now, from the outset, Wahhabism critics compared Wahhabi to had its rights, by which they meant absolutely right.

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And so the Ottomans call them a despicable had a child sect referred to there had a child Sauds that wreaked

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havoc on Muslim countries and it bothers also likened the Wahhabis to the Azhar in their practice of fear.

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I think Takfiri is a term so many of us use now.

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It probably doesn't need explanation, but it means accusing, calling other people unbelievers or polytheists.

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And also the demand of Hitler to their own territory was similar to the exotica and their bloody wars against other Muslims.

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So when the Wahhabism, the late 18th and early 19th century,

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conquered much of what today is the Sultanate of Oman and convinced many people in that area to embrace Wahhabi doctrines.

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The leading about this scholar Oman. At the time, Abu NAB Hassan Al-Harazi, rejected the idea that the Wahhabis could become police because he said,

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he believes don't declare the people of the people to be unbelievers or deem it permissible to kill them,

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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,

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some things from us, some, and created something new and equal called Wahhabism.

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A terrible calamity. And.

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So. And you said that there is no basis in religion to label members of the AUM as Muslim Muslim king polytheists.

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And so he said the Wahhabis are the mad actor of the Hadith.

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Right. And they are the real. So what?

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And so we have, you know, and that idea was adopted by other bodies as well.

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So we have an ironic situation in which the Baathists and Wahhabis accuse each other of being had a Shiite meaning radical.

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And while each group claims to be the only one that preserves the original Islam of the self.

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Okay. So the pious ancestors.

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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.

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It's one area that I've really looked at a lot. British officers in the 19th centuries saw a great deal of similarity between Wahhabism antibodies,

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including a tendency toward Puritanism, if you like,

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and stern application of the law, prohibitions against smoking and against decorating mosques and tombs,

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a lack of veneration of saints and belief in their intercession.

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So some and some British observers even conflated the two groups thinking,

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for example, that hasn't been a case who was brought to power in 1868 as a result of.

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Concerns about the uprising that overthrew the ruler of Oman and put him in power as the imam.

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The British resident in the Gulf at the time described him as having strong Wahhabi views and tendencies.

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And so, you know, this idea that they really the same as so both groups do believe that only those who

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fulfil their religious obligations should properly be called Muslims and believers.

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Both groups prioritise the Koranic imperative of commanding the right, forbidding the wrong, and the Abadi conservatives,

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who led a series of uprisings against the Sultanate of Oman in the 19th and early 20th century referred to themselves as al-Mukhtar.

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We are those who enforce obedience, which is a clear echo of the Wahhabi use of the term and the British political agent and must not win this.

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When Hasan had been placed was in power as the abbot, the imam says that the metal matara are held the populace in Muscat, in a vise of fear,

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issuing strict regulations about dress and public behaviour, prohibiting the use of tobacco and prohibiting music in public.

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They zealously strode the streets, cane in hand, vigilantly looking for backsliders.

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This description is quite resonant, isn't it, of Saudi Arabia's religious police.

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So you can understand perhaps some of this. Another thing that bothers the Wahhabi share is a strong emphasis on the doctrine of Malaya,

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which means or wala, as the Wahabi say, which means loyalty or affiliation or association.

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On the one hand, Walla Walla here with Muslims and Bara or Bora Bora are meaning dissociation or disavowal of

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those who are considered the enemies of God in order to maintain the purity of their communities.

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Both of them have really emphasised this doctrine and have a strong preoccupation

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with this distinction between those who are in and those who are out of the group.

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And so, of course, there is a chronic basis for these concepts.

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I'll just read a little description written by a 10th century Abati scholar describing the behaviour appropriate to dissociation.

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He says the enmity of the Muslims for infidels, if they do the deeds of infidelity, is demonstrated by speaking harshly to them,

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hating them, separating from them, avoiding sitting with them, fighting them until they return to work on his.

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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.

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Deem them as miscreants, but not do not fight them.

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Right, because you have to have a certain strength to be able to fight them.

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And he says whoever doesn't dissociate from infidels is not a muslim.

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In God's eyes, one must separate and dissociated from anyone who commits a grave sin or persists in any act of disobedience to God,

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no matter who he is, living or dead, father or son, distant or near.

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So and this is somewhat similar to what Ibn Abdul Wahab wrote.

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He wrote, A person's Islam is not sound, even if he is a monotheist towards God and deserts polytheism,

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unless he is hostile to polytheists and declares to them his hostility and hatred.

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So, you know, so the Wahhabis had this belief that society was composed of antithetical forces, of true Muslims on the one hand,

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and polytheists on the other, and then those, of course, who pretended to be true Muslims, the hypocrites.

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Right. So, okay, now I abhor these don't condone violence against anyone except oppressive rulers and their supporters.

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And then only if you have an adequate number of people who have pledged themselves to the cause to make it potentially successful.

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But their writings nonetheless reflect a similarly stark perspective of a society composed of antithetical forces of good and evil.

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At least the writings that I from the pre-modern period certainly do that.

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And so the liberal system strengthens the feeling of being a member of a closed and cohesive community.

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Those who violated community laws, especially in North African communities, would be excommunicated.

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And anybody in the Mosab told me that in former Times a person who deviated from community laws would be denounced publicly in the mosque.

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The entire community would dissociate from him, and even his wife would not speak to him,

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which encouraged the miscreants hasty public repentance and restoration to the community.

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So in this way, the community was sort of kept very cohesive and the religious scholars had a great deal of authority.

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Now, this type of BARA has communication no longer exists among all these,

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but some of the commentators on those violent incidents in Calderdale described Sunni resentment of the

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insularity of the communities in the Mosab and the refusal of IT bodies to marry outside their own community.

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So I find that rather interesting.

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Now, despite the alleged, you know, the similarities that are there between Abadi's and Wahabis that the British observed,

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the British also commented favourably on about the friendliness and tolerance, you know,

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so that I'll just actually read one quote in particular, because I really like this one.

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The British official, W.H. Ingram, who spent time, a lot of time in Zanzibar as well as in the hadramout,

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said he would rather live among Baathists than among Baptists or Methodists,

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because in his experience, if all these are the most tolerant people in the matter of religion, I have known.

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So now this may strike you as odd, considering everything I just said about Wilayat and Bara,

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and the idea that only pious all these could really be Muslims and believers.

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I will acknowledge that there is a certain disconnect between sort of the theoretical aspects of it, but the belief in its classical versions.

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I think that Boston has changed a great deal, especially in Oman.

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And so disconnect between that theory and actual practice.

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In actual practice, you really don't see any signs of disapproval, even let alone a disavowal of anybody's.

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But there there are also important differences.

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And one of the biggest differences is the interpretation of Kufr, which is usually translated as unbelief.

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I prefer to translate Kufuor as infidelity or unfaithfulness because the advantages

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distinguish co-authorship with which would be the unfaithfulness of unbelief.

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On the one hand, that would be polytheism. And they say no member of the OML should ever be accused of polytheism.

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Okay, so that's one type.

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But then those who are either have errors in their doctrine, they're not a body.

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Or if all these who commit grave sins and don't repent are also unfaithful to God.

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And so that type of infidelity is called for.

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And if the unfaithfulness of hypocrisy or Kufuor, Nama and here Kufuor means ingratitude.

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You know, just as the Koran contrasts a shackling Catherine the grateful and the ungrateful.

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So in this case, Kufuor and Amar are those who are ungrateful to God for His blessings.

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So they also insist that all members of the honour should have the same legal rights,

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regardless of their sect or their level of piety, including the rights of intermarriage.

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In theory, which is interesting, since I just said Sunnis complain that their bodies won't let probably their daughters marry Barry.

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Not bodies, but in theory, intermarriage, mutual inheritance, praying together.

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No problem. Bodies have no problem. Praying behind a body, let behind a non-involvement mosque.

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Prayer for their dead burial in Muslim cemeteries.

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Greeting with the Muslim greeting all of these and of course, eating the meat that they sacrificed.

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All of these are our rights for all the entire Ummah.

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The Wahabis, on the other hand, have at least historically regarded those who did not embrace their doctrines as polytheists.

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And the chef, Abdel Aziz bin Bags, who was the Saudi mufti and probably the most important, the leading Saudi scholar of the 20th century,

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when asked if it was permissible to pray with the party, said, no, it is not permissible to pray with the bodies.

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Other body doctrines that distinguish them from the hobbies are they deny that the prophet will intercede for grave sinners.

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And so anyone who's in hellfire is going to remain there.

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And their reach. They reject all anthropomorphic descriptions of God as being literally true.

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So they're similar to the Montezuma in taking them in interpreting them in a metaphorical fashion,

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they deny the possibility of seeing God in the afterlife.

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They also say the Quran is a creative expression of God's speech.

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It's not identical with an eternal divine attribute of speech,

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and they believe they have confidence in the efficacy of human reason to know of the existence of God and something of his nature.

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So and there are minor differences in practice, which is usually what people are aware of.

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If all these pray with their hands, stamp out their sides, things like this,

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but and parties student even though they don't have Sufi orders and they don't make pilgrimages to the tombs,

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nonetheless, many about these have been drawn to Sufi teachings,

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to a sort of mystical sense and the leading party scholars in Oman in the 19th century and early 20th century,

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many of them were, you know, composed, mystical poetry, wrote commentaries on April 14th, poetry, things like that.

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So and this is a strong contrast with Wahhabi rejection of mysticism in any form.

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And who, as I said it all, these are not literalists in matters of theology.

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And they dismissed Wahhabis and handbills and anyone else who takes the anthropomorphic descriptions of God literally as Hush,

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we're dealing with an irrational acceptance of literal texts.

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So and whereas Sunni Muslims idealise the generation of the prophet and his companions and say that the Great Fitna,

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the great Civil War that broke out a mere 34 years after the Prophet's death was a legitimate disagreement in matters of each to have.

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That's often what is said among people who were all righteous.

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The above bodies don't accept that. They believe that the third Caliph Osman,

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if an orphan abandoned righteousness after the first six years of his rule that ultimately

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he deserved to be assassinated when he refused either to abdicate or to repent.

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And that Maria and his supporters. Who rejected the rightful imamate of the fourth Caliph Ali.

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Were rebels who committed grave injustices. So.

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So there are. You know, one thing that I do want to say is that, of course, doctrines and practices aren't static.

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Right. They're subject to social and political influences.

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And, you know, the founder of the third Saudi state rejected a lot of the precedent.

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He lifted travel restrictions to other countries.

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He sent his sons on diplomatic missions. He had Arab advisers from Ottoman lands.

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He had Westerners come in and advise on economic development.

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He abstained from treating the Shia as idolaters.

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And so he but in doing this, of course,

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he rejected all parts of the Wahhabi heritage that have been preserved by either more conservative ulema or by radical jihadi groups.

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As we know, that nicest today in East Africa, a textbook that was written by anybody in 1920,

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said that it's okay to feel love in one's heart for a non-white body.

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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 affiliate,

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that it doesn't affect behaviour or that the prophet was calling to everyone we can be too.

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And finally, in Oman, since Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, one of some big changes has been a dramatic sectarianism of people.

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This is 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,

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even, who don't really know what makes a body different from anybody else.

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And so it bodies have come to see look at all of these sectarian borders as kind of ridiculous as well as horrifying.

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They see themselves as the moderates par excellence, tolerant of everyone, able to mediate in the sectarian disputes of the Middle East.

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And the one thing, though, the mufti of Oman, who's been the same person since 1975, Sheikh Ahmed Al-khalili,

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says that dissociation is important from those who are unjust and therefore scholars who support unjust rulers.

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And plenty of that in the Middle East. Right. It should it should not be should be subject to dissociation.

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So he denies that bodies dissociated from Sunnis or Shia, he supports the unification of the Oman,

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but he believes that it is totally wrong to endorse the policies or support the unjust rulers.

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So I'm going to end at this point. There's a lot more that could be said, but.

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We'll stop here and let's. I'd be very happy to hear your questions and comments.

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Thank you so much, Valerie. That's really a wonderful kaleidoscopic view of the sort of early theological debates and the resonances with some of the

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other theological traditions from early Islam down to the present current geopolitical concerns across different nations.

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And I'm really happy that you got a call that, because I'm going to probably ask a question about him soon enough.

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But Faisal, I wanted to invite you if you wanted to ask any questions, and I naturally have a whole host of questions related to this.

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And I wanted to also let the participants know the sort of people who are joining us from around the world, actually, that if you have any questions,

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please feel free to put them in the chat and we'll definitely come to them if you'd actually like to,

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because there's a sort of a relatively familiar crowd with us this afternoon.

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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.

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But first, let me turn to you face at least. Thanks very much for so many.

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Thanks very much, Valerie. That really was fantastic. And you know, as she was speaking, I thought to myself in so many ways,

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some of these tensions seem to be as a manifestation of what Freud might have called the narcissism of minor differences.

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And it's precisely, as it were, the similarities that create the conflict rather than the differences.

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Because the problem is how do you actually signify and identify the differences in in this situation,

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especially in contemporary times when you know that the name what is your coverage has become almost a kind of universal term of castigation, right?

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Anyone can be called it.

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As you so nicely pointed out, anybody can call it Wahabi, hot, edgy, you know, so-called moderate Muslims can call militant ones.

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alQaeda is a psychology and they do very frequently and the reverse.

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So in a way, it's almost as if the terminology has become a universal identifier that I find really fascinating.

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It's a such an ancient term and B belongs, as you nicely point out, such a small less than 1% of the current population of Muslims in the world.

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There's something, bizarrely, if you will, apart from the theological and the political issues involved,

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there's something of a psychic or psychological nature or ideology that allows for this kind of thing to happen.

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And I just want to add one more thing and then ask you to comment, which is that, you know,

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when you're describing the British officials who are well-disposed towards the bodies,

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of course, many of the same ones are also well disposed to the Wahhabis and some of the reasons,

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because they see them as harking back to their own Protestant and Puritan past.

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And as a result, perhaps you see modernist Muslims falling into the same kind of logic where, you know, Wahhabism gets to be seen.

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The philosopher Muhammad Iqbal writes in In colonial India as the first throb of modernity in Islam.

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And 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,

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you know, through descent and through what scholars have indeed done through the idea of the republic or Republicanism.

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And so I find it really fascinating, just as a mutation,

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I have always been or regularly been seen since the 19th century in Western scholarship as being rationalists,

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the bodies or the marriage have often been seen as being the first Republicans.

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And usually this tells a born I'm sure it's entirely anachronistic to use these terms held on the modernist

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Muslim scholarship and perhaps one on sort of more diffuse ideas among diverse Muslim populations.

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And so it's a bit of a shade, you know. QUESTION But I just wanted to get in the different ways in which terms like coverage

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or indeed Wahhabi have been deployed in from the 19th century until today.

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And then ask, you know, how those deployments actually might effect the strange similarities that you pointed out.

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Right. Conflicts that come out of similarity rather than difference.

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Well, I think you're raising Freud's phrase narcissism is of minor differences.

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And so perfect because my husband is a psychoanalytic psychologist and we have long conversations on these issues,

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and I don't claim to really fully understand it. But one of my goals in what I have found is that there's been.

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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,

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but in the world at large from a psychoanalytic perspective.

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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.

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You know, purification, of course, never ends, right?

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No one is ever going to get to the clarification of the entire world and globalisation where you are constantly encountering other points of view.

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Despite the closed world we create on social media,

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we still encounter others and are therefore challenged with regard to our own ideas of uniquely holding on to the truth.

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And that. That dynamic can lead either to more openness or to more closeness, really,

380
00:48:29,770 --> 00:48:37,150
depending on the extent to which you identify this as a threat to who you are.

381
00:48:38,110 --> 00:48:43,530
So I am interested in, you know, one thing I haven't talked about.

382
00:48:43,570 --> 00:48:53,470
It's not really a matter of reinterpreting in Buddhism, but what I find very interesting is that the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Oman.

383
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:57,790
Has it had a travelling exhibit?

384
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:10,280
I don't know if you saw it in England on religious tolerance in Oman and that the Omani version of Islam is total tolerance.

385
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:17,689
And in a way this is really true. I mean, in Oman, the Sultan has given lands to Hindus to build temples.

386
00:49:17,690 --> 00:49:24,889
Buddhists can practice, anyone can practice. So it goes even beyond what we would normally consider the monotheistic religions.

387
00:49:24,890 --> 00:49:31,670
Although I should note that Jews and Christians are called mystical classical body literature.

388
00:49:31,850 --> 00:49:39,170
So they're not just kofar the mystical, but the you know,

389
00:49:39,830 --> 00:49:49,880
they're the journal that was published and actually edited by Abderrahmane Salame from the Ministry.

390
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:54,110
It was called A Profound Mutual Understanding.

391
00:49:55,010 --> 00:50:02,870
And that was really actually it was Abderrahmane Osama's uncle, Abdullah Salameh.

392
00:50:04,660 --> 00:50:07,750
Who wrote a book called.

393
00:50:10,130 --> 00:50:19,220
Oh, gosh. Religious tolerance, a vision for a new world in which he said that without understanding each other's religious point of view,

394
00:50:19,220 --> 00:50:26,240
he said all religions aim to promote good morals and kindness, etc. love.

395
00:50:26,660 --> 00:50:32,060
And therefore we need to understand each other and not feel threatened by each other.

396
00:50:32,240 --> 00:50:36,620
He felt that the future of humanity was really premised on this.

397
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:50,150
So I feel that that is very interesting so that this has been a part of of Oman's present self-presentation to the world.

398
00:50:50,660 --> 00:50:54,220
And John Wilkinson, in his book on about this, I mean,

399
00:50:54,230 --> 00:51:02,600
it was just a minor point that he said at the end when he talked about how if all these present themselves as peaceful and they are moderate,

400
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:10,730
they are nice people. And he said, I wonder if niceness is going to be enough to excite young people in Oman.

401
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:13,970
I thought that was an interesting question.

402
00:51:15,410 --> 00:51:27,440
But whatever I think the question of not only what causes groups to radicalise, but what causes groups to embrace moderation and openness.

403
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,890
It's part, of course, a strategic thing. Right.

404
00:51:30,980 --> 00:51:35,900
Bodies are a tiny minority. And in the you know,

405
00:51:36,410 --> 00:51:47,660
everybody until the mid-19th century called themselves film in which they were a or had a joint sect according to their own literature,

406
00:51:47,660 --> 00:51:54,080
for the most part. Sometimes, however, they also used al-Khawaja as a code term for the Azhar.

407
00:51:55,190 --> 00:52:04,550
But in the late 19th century, with the growth of pan Islamic sentiment, we start having the issuance of a body works.

408
00:52:04,570 --> 00:52:10,910
Talk about the difference between the apologies and the whole adage that if all these are not co-opted and that is,

409
00:52:11,630 --> 00:52:16,370
you know, like a gut reaction now just because we are not allowed it.

410
00:52:16,940 --> 00:52:27,370
And even Abdurrahman Assalamu objected to my even in an article that I wrote to my even saying that they were he said,

411
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:32,810
don't use the word cowardice, use the word Mahatma. I said that no one's going to know what that means.

412
00:52:32,900 --> 00:52:41,540
At least they know what it means. So it but I you know, in any case, I think that yes.

413
00:52:43,310 --> 00:52:55,280
As one psychoanalyst who deals with international diplomacy, actually, I make Falcon an emeritus professor at University of Virginia.

414
00:52:55,610 --> 00:53:03,169
He said that he uses the image of a tent that, you know, we all have these different identities.

415
00:53:03,170 --> 00:53:06,260
Right. And so there is the big tent and then there's the smaller tent.

416
00:53:06,620 --> 00:53:16,370
And at each level, you have to have symbols to to show what group this is and that so that when there are,

417
00:53:16,370 --> 00:53:18,920
as he said, similar to what Freud was saying,

418
00:53:19,820 --> 00:53:28,790
when there are minor differences or seemingly minor differences, it becomes even all the more important to symbolically differentiate.

419
00:53:29,240 --> 00:53:36,719
Now, in this case, I think in terms of. Attitudes towards others about these.

420
00:53:36,720 --> 00:53:47,549
And what happens today are very, very different. So in spite of all of this theoretical similarity in the language of, you know,

421
00:53:47,550 --> 00:53:58,380
another Abenaki scholar in common with whom I was co-writing an article, objected to my saying that anybody's regard no.

422
00:53:58,410 --> 00:54:02,220
Hannibal these as Kufour and I.

423
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:09,629
So I gave him a whole bunch of quotes from different the literature past and recent.

424
00:54:09,630 --> 00:54:12,180
And he finally went, okay, so you know the literature. Okay.

425
00:54:12,570 --> 00:54:23,220
So clearly he didn't want me to spread what he knew to be true because it does not reflect contemporary about the attitudes at all.

426
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:27,450
And I think it's interesting that deposits of re proud of the baptism.

427
00:54:27,660 --> 00:54:33,570
The state of Oman promotes the publication of about the same as a part of Omani heritage.

428
00:54:33,900 --> 00:54:38,370
But there are parts of that heritage that they don't want disseminate it.

429
00:54:38,370 --> 00:54:50,310
There's one book that was written in, I think, the 15th, 16th century that is really adamant about how horrible all non-urban groups are.

430
00:54:50,490 --> 00:54:56,070
That book is banned in Oman, even though at first they published it, they went, Oops, that was mistake.

431
00:54:56,080 --> 00:55:10,370
Let's get rid of that one. So likewise, back in 2005, there was an announcement of a discovery of a plot to overthrow the government, which was.

432
00:55:10,470 --> 00:55:17,520
What is that? Well, it was just a study group of intellectuals who were studying the requirements of the traditional about the imamate.

433
00:55:17,820 --> 00:55:25,020
That is a threatening thing to do in a sultanate about ism theoretically does not endorse dynastic rule at all.

434
00:55:25,980 --> 00:55:31,470
So but Oman was a very wise ruler.

435
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:35,429
He was, yes. Had a little power in his hands.

436
00:55:35,430 --> 00:55:38,640
But he also knew how to exercise it with a great deal of wisdom.

437
00:55:38,910 --> 00:55:42,810
So after these people were all sentenced to prison terms or whatever,

438
00:55:44,220 --> 00:55:48,690
he swooped in and pardoned them all and took their leaders and gave them official

439
00:55:48,690 --> 00:55:53,610
positions in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and thereby co-opting them.

440
00:55:53,620 --> 00:55:57,930
And so this he was very, very, very smart.

441
00:55:58,140 --> 00:56:08,990
When he came to power, there was still a significant embargo, a body rebellion that was being conducted mainly from Saudi Arabia.

442
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:15,959
Interestingly enough, the the leaders of the former about the Imamate who were defeated by Sultan,

443
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:21,560
published his father aside in Timor in the late 1950s,

444
00:56:21,570 --> 00:56:28,799
had fled into exile in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia didn't mind agitating thing,

445
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:37,560
you know, roiling the situation there in Oman and Sultan Qaboos however.

446
00:56:38,900 --> 00:56:49,220
Through offering positions and offering money, was able to get some of the inmates supporters to come back and help build a new country.

447
00:56:50,570 --> 00:56:52,010
Others never came back,

448
00:56:52,010 --> 00:57:07,160
but he was ultimately recognised by the son of the leader of the last rebellion that established the separate Imamate in Oman in 1913.

449
00:57:07,670 --> 00:57:08,809
His son Mohammed,

450
00:57:08,810 --> 00:57:18,500
who had earlier written about how Imamate and Sultanate are constantly at odds because they're based on such totally different ideas.

451
00:57:19,070 --> 00:57:29,060
But ultimately, he met with abuse and recited a poem which I found written in his own hand in his library in Oman,

452
00:57:30,290 --> 00:57:37,700
in which he praised Probus for his justice and as and so to praise him for his justice.

453
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:47,660
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.

454
00:57:48,380 --> 00:57:53,780
One brief question, if I may, Osama, as a body myself, I just would like to think,

455
00:57:53,780 --> 00:58:01,400
but I may be completely wrong, that some of these changes you describe actually may have originated in Zanzibar.

456
00:58:01,570 --> 00:58:04,580
Mm. Because of course, they occur there first.

457
00:58:05,810 --> 00:58:15,440
And then after the revolution in 1964, you have the migration of many Zanzibar east to Oman, where they are established in the civil service.

458
00:58:15,590 --> 00:58:22,969
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.

459
00:58:22,970 --> 00:58:26,640
It was a constitutional monarchy with political parties.

460
00:58:26,690 --> 00:58:30,590
It was not an experiment that ended well. And this is now in exile.

461
00:58:31,220 --> 00:58:41,270
But it just makes me wonder whether actually the peculiar circumstances of East Africa that became a kind of laboratory for the reform.

462
00:58:41,950 --> 00:58:56,330
Yes, I agree with you. I think that we really see this in the of for, say, the leader of the the uprising of 1913 was Nordine Salame,

463
00:58:57,200 --> 00:59:00,950
who was actually the great grandfather of the man of Salame, by the way.

464
00:59:01,220 --> 00:59:09,260
And so it was his grandson who became the Minister of Religious Affairs, the Salame.

465
00:59:09,620 --> 00:59:13,159
Until recently he stepped down from that position.

466
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:22,309
But but the new Minister of Religious Affairs was one of the organisers of the Religious Tolerance in Oman exhibit.

467
00:59:22,310 --> 00:59:26,720
So I anticipate that there will be continuity there.

468
00:59:27,560 --> 00:59:40,680
In any case, what? I guess some bodies in Zanzibar had written to Neutrogena Salome, because he was the leading scholar of that generation.

469
00:59:41,370 --> 00:59:46,280
In the very beginning of the 20th century and said, you know,

470
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:58,350
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.

471
00:59:59,880 --> 01:00:04,050
And by then, of course, Zanzibar was a British protectorate,

472
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:10,620
but there had been missionary groups of various types that had had set up schools and hospitals.

473
01:00:11,040 --> 01:00:22,920
And people are learning foreign languages and people are modifying their dress to include a European style jacket on top of their,

474
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:28,139
you know, the dishwasher, the the robe that they're wearing.

475
01:00:28,140 --> 01:00:38,170
So. And he replied, Oh, and some people are even trimming their beards, so and not eating it.

476
01:00:38,170 --> 01:00:41,950
Salame replied that none of this is acceptable.

477
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:49,000
Down a bit and you really see, you know, here he is a blind scholar in the interior of Oman.

478
01:00:49,420 --> 01:00:55,170
And you are contrasting this. This environment.

479
01:00:55,170 --> 01:01:03,270
And he, of course, was a was the leader of a an uprising that didn't manage to conquer all of Oman,

480
01:01:03,270 --> 01:01:10,380
but managed to conquer the interior and establish and mate in the interior while the Sultanate remained on the coast.

481
01:01:10,830 --> 01:01:16,920
And so the distinction between the interior and the coast became very important.

482
01:01:17,130 --> 01:01:23,310
But I think, yes, in Zanzibar with Zanzibar was so incredibly cosmopolitan, really.

483
01:01:23,310 --> 01:01:30,330
And so I think that the amount of interaction, the friendships that were formed,

484
01:01:30,690 --> 01:01:38,410
really strong friendships between the bonds and other people, other Muslim groups, including amongst all the.

485
01:01:39,030 --> 01:01:47,759
I think that you're right. It has you know, and sometimes I, I see some contradictions in the person, for example,

486
01:01:47,760 --> 01:01:55,650
of Abu Muslim or the Bahraini who was a great poet, but also a judge and a religious scholar in Zanzibar.

487
01:01:55,890 --> 01:02:01,799
He's the one who wrote that textbook saying, you know, it's okay to have affection, just that kind of thing.

488
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:06,750
But he was a big supporter of Dame.

489
01:02:06,750 --> 01:02:13,379
The Salome's uprising considered himself the poet of the of the revolution.

490
01:02:13,380 --> 01:02:17,910
And all of this, the the Hassan have been subject of this new uprising.

491
01:02:18,210 --> 01:02:33,780
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.

492
01:02:34,170 --> 01:02:46,260
And so, you know, these apparent contradictions are, I think, a reflection of the compartmentalisation of the self that we all do.

493
01:02:46,290 --> 01:02:56,580
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,

494
01:02:56,610 --> 01:03:04,500
the national hat, the whatever hat it is or the religious identifier, hat, whatever it is that you're wearing.

495
01:03:05,460 --> 01:03:10,200
And so he could, at the same time, be an aunt and support him.

496
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:21,630
You should read his poetry, how he praises the martyrs of the massacre who were slaughtered by Ali at at number one.

497
01:03:22,140 --> 01:03:28,950
And he says, We are thirsting to drink from the waters of Marwan Nasr one,

498
01:03:29,250 --> 01:03:39,720
which was how his massacre of the early how which is becomes as symbolically important as Karbala for the for the Shia.

499
01:03:39,810 --> 01:03:45,510
Right. And so this desire to participate in that, I mean, that is about as sectarian as you can get.

500
01:03:45,780 --> 01:03:56,609
But on the other hand, he also promotes pan-Islamic sentiment and even nationalist sentiment when it is you know,

501
01:03:56,610 --> 01:04:00,060
when it favours when it's a good thing to do.

502
01:04:00,720 --> 01:04:04,230
I didn't really answer your question, but I think it's a fascinating thing.

503
01:04:04,230 --> 01:04:09,210
This reflection of complicate is. But I did want to say one thing about the Zanzibar and and Oman.

504
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:20,970
I happened to sit in on an audience that Sheikh Abdullah me, when he was minister of religious affairs, gave to a visiting professor,

505
01:04:21,150 --> 01:04:28,379
a muslim professor from the US who had a group of students with him and one

506
01:04:28,380 --> 01:04:35,310
of and the professor asked him what a question about baptism and he replied,

507
01:04:35,650 --> 01:04:44,520
It's in Arabic. But he replied, The Buddhism of Oman is unlike the baptism that you see elsewhere, because we are people of the sea.

508
01:04:45,870 --> 01:04:49,860
And so this influence of maritime culture that we interact.

509
01:04:50,100 --> 01:04:54,690
And I felt this was incredibly interesting because he was the grandson of the man who

510
01:04:54,690 --> 01:04:59,540
set up the Imamate in the interior of Oman in opposition to the Sultanate of the coast.

511
01:04:59,550 --> 01:05:07,080
And so but he says we are people of the sea and therefore our in our absurdism is different from that of others.

512
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:12,510
I found that really fascinating. Osama.

513
01:05:12,630 --> 01:05:19,560
Thank you so much, Valerie. I mean, I've got so many questions, but we've only got around 20 minutes or so.

514
01:05:19,570 --> 01:05:23,340
So, I mean, I'm sure we'll be able to cover a lot of terrain,

515
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:31,320
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.

516
01:05:31,980 --> 01:05:37,950
I mean, just the last thing you mentioned about poetry and saying poetry in praise of, you know, not one.

517
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:44,430
It reminded me of Andrew and even Hepburn, who is a sort of prominent DG from the earliest generations.

518
01:05:44,490 --> 01:05:47,980
Forget exactly when he died and he has a famous kind of poem.

519
01:05:48,480 --> 01:05:56,969
I'll just read the first one. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. But I mean the theme rather than the ever I mean, the luxury liner was a, you know,

520
01:05:56,970 --> 01:06:05,760
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.

521
01:06:06,510 --> 01:06:15,570
This was in praise of the killer of Ali. Right. And and what I love and Hepburn is someone who is highly regarded as a narrator by Sunnis as well.

522
01:06:16,050 --> 01:06:17,610
But they always say, you know,

523
01:06:17,650 --> 01:06:25,740
the they can be trusted in transmitting because they think anyone who sort of like commits a major sin is outside the deen.

524
01:06:26,310 --> 01:06:35,840
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.

525
01:06:35,850 --> 01:06:42,060
And I guess, I mean, like the question that I spent some time thinking about is at what point does a position become sectarian?

526
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:45,660
And that's just so contingent on so many different elements.

527
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:52,560
One of the things that you mentioned was that, you know, in a sense, it bothers them by becoming moderates.

528
01:06:52,830 --> 01:06:57,720
Now, the question for the next generation is, well, why should I be about like, what's special about this?

529
01:06:57,930 --> 01:07:02,080
This is just like anodyne, you know, liberalism, shall we say?

530
01:07:02,100 --> 01:07:02,340
Right.

531
01:07:03,140 --> 01:07:11,310
And I mean, like one of the closing paragraphs in Francis Fukuyama, this book saying the end of history is going to be a boring place right now.

532
01:07:11,980 --> 01:07:19,440
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.

533
01:07:20,490 --> 01:07:27,420
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.

534
01:07:28,700 --> 01:07:33,899
And I think I mean, we kind of I guess one of the questions I had was,

535
01:07:33,900 --> 01:07:38,280
what does the future hold now that, you know, these have reached the end of history?

536
01:07:38,340 --> 01:07:45,899
Right. But besides that, I also wanted to sort of query one of the points you made earlier,

537
01:07:45,900 --> 01:07:53,580
saying that the abandonment and abandonment of Salat or prayer is what constituted cover for the Wahhabis.

538
01:07:53,970 --> 01:08:01,560
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.

539
01:08:01,980 --> 01:08:08,740
It's just I guess the Wahhabis would put those words in action because there's an explicit Hadith from the left,

540
01:08:08,750 --> 01:08:10,700
which the Sunnis at least would consider canonical.

541
01:08:10,710 --> 01:08:17,520
I'm not sure about the traditions, but I expect the above these too as well, where the prophet says a lot of pain will be in vain.

542
01:08:17,580 --> 01:08:25,620
Amazon to come into Raqqa forgot kafir. You know the the covenant that they've taken with me meaning the believers is prayer.

543
01:08:25,650 --> 01:08:27,090
Whoever lives it is a disbeliever.

544
01:08:27,630 --> 01:08:33,060
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.

545
01:08:33,360 --> 01:08:36,390
Is that literally kafir or is it some kind of metaphorical comfort?

546
01:08:36,990 --> 01:08:41,190
And so the early jurists, including Ahmed in, said this is actually Kufr.

547
01:08:41,910 --> 01:08:44,810
In fact, most of the jurists, as far as I know, said that, you know,

548
01:08:44,850 --> 01:08:52,850
someone who does this and persists is non-believer and should be killed only Hanafi I'm talking Sunni jurists who only the Hanafi say it's Kufr,

549
01:08:52,860 --> 01:08:56,490
but they should be imprisoned and beaten until they stop praying. Right.

550
01:08:56,910 --> 01:09:00,630
Which so. So the jurists actually is pretty standard for opinion.

551
01:09:00,930 --> 01:09:06,390
I think the you know, in practice, it must have been on it in the breach more than in the observance.

552
01:09:06,940 --> 01:09:14,970
And that's why when the Wahhabis come and start practising this, you know, in reality, it really shocks the shocks people's consciousnesses.

553
01:09:15,300 --> 01:09:21,540
So I just want to maybe a reflection on that. And, you know, if we have some more time, we can go on to other things.

554
01:09:21,540 --> 01:09:25,650
But I think, you know, I don't want to prevent myself from coming back.

555
01:09:25,890 --> 01:09:30,830
It's fine. So please. Not sure I have a real response.

556
01:09:30,830 --> 01:09:35,580
I think that you raise some. Interesting points.

557
01:09:35,580 --> 01:09:46,560
I think it's still the case that in the discussion of the meaning of email, it is Sunnis who non-family Sunnis have said Imam is,

558
01:09:48,270 --> 01:09:58,850
you know, the acknowledgement of belief, the profession of faith is just fowl, whereas the humble said it was unknowable.

559
01:09:59,220 --> 01:10:01,470
And so the about these are similar that way.

560
01:10:01,470 --> 01:10:09,760
But I think you're right of course that to articulate it is one thing to actually, you know, is it actually going to be practised?

561
01:10:09,760 --> 01:10:13,499
This is another issue. So, yeah, I agree with that.

562
01:10:13,500 --> 01:10:19,860
And these speculations on the future of the baptism in the context of like it just becoming not distinct in any way in a sense.

563
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:25,920
Well, actually, I think it these are.

564
01:10:26,830 --> 01:10:29,860
A very proud of their of their beliefs.

565
01:10:29,870 --> 01:10:37,630
You know the mufti actually has written a lot of in defence of about this but

566
01:10:37,930 --> 01:10:48,240
his most recent work is Magnum Opus is a multi-volume work called Balranald.

567
01:10:48,640 --> 01:10:57,850
The demonstration of the truth in which he goes, you know, devotes an entire volume to a single aspect of Dr. No.

568
01:10:57,850 --> 01:11:05,169
He's finished the theology parts. And I was getting into the into the fit part, which is less interesting to me personally.

569
01:11:05,170 --> 01:11:09,400
Sorry, but I think that, you know,

570
01:11:09,430 --> 01:11:19,390
he has this belief that any reasonable person who really will look without fanaticism or excessive

571
01:11:19,660 --> 01:11:26,500
allegiance to the amounts of his school will will recognise the reasonableness of the body doctrine.

572
01:11:26,740 --> 01:11:29,670
And there are many people who agree with him on this.

573
01:11:29,680 --> 01:11:43,120
I mean, so I think even though it that doesn't in any way prevent harmonious coexistence with many other people,

574
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:49,990
I think that many of the intellectuals are still very, very.

575
01:11:53,070 --> 01:11:58,979
Firm about their distinctiveness. Now, this is just the intellectuals I did, you know,

576
01:11:58,980 --> 01:12:11,129
until recently there was no way to pursue a post bachelor degree in in Islamic studies and theology in Polmont.

577
01:12:11,130 --> 01:12:16,410
Now, that has changed. They now have one at our campus university.

578
01:12:16,740 --> 01:12:23,680
So they have the the College of Study of Sciences, which used to be an independent institute,

579
01:12:23,680 --> 01:12:28,710
and now it's a college that's been incorporated into some sort of caboose university.

580
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:34,320
And they have a faculty of about the non-IT body faculty there.

581
01:12:34,710 --> 01:12:40,030
So, you know, I. So at that time,

582
01:12:40,030 --> 01:12:46,839
when there was no way of of pursuing a master's or doctorate in Islamic studies without

583
01:12:46,840 --> 01:12:52,149
going to another country where you inevitably going to study in a Sunni institution.

584
01:12:52,150 --> 01:12:56,110
Now, they didn't go to Saudi Arabia for, I think perhaps understandable reasons.

585
01:12:56,110 --> 01:13:02,650
They tended to prefer the Bates University in Jordan or the Zaytuna University in Tunis.

586
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:11,049
And then I asked the mufti, are you at all afraid about that?

587
01:13:11,050 --> 01:13:17,090
People will be converted to Sunni Islam, will fall away, that there will be no future for autism?

588
01:13:17,110 --> 01:13:26,440
And he was unconcerned, which I thought was interesting. I interviewed a number of AMA Abadi alumni who had done their studies.

589
01:13:26,470 --> 01:13:30,290
I asked about their experience of doing it and what it made them think.

590
01:13:30,310 --> 01:13:35,980
Most of them, interestingly enough, ended up writing their dissertations on a subject related to about this.

591
01:13:37,690 --> 01:13:44,980
So but there have, of course, been about this had converted to Sunni Islam.

592
01:13:47,270 --> 01:13:58,980
You know, I asked the former dean of law at university about I said, you know, asked him about the future of the autism.

593
01:13:59,390 --> 01:14:03,040
Right. And his reaction was, who cares?

594
01:14:03,050 --> 01:14:06,440
The differences are secondary issues that no one cares about anymore.

595
01:14:07,660 --> 01:14:14,090
I mean, so I mean, can I can I actually add to the anecdote you mentioned of the you know,

596
01:14:14,390 --> 01:14:20,660
that I think you said the mufti seeming unconcerned that they would potentially leave a body Islam to something like mainstream citizen.

597
01:14:21,020 --> 01:14:25,520
And I mean, this may be a result of that sort of an attitude.

598
01:14:25,520 --> 01:14:31,460
When I was a student as an undergraduate Oxford and this is back in the 2000,

599
01:14:31,490 --> 01:14:36,170
I was studying with a scholar, Mohammed Ikram Anatomy, who is at the Centre for Islamic Studies.

600
01:14:36,650 --> 01:14:48,620
And he once commented that, you know, I, I've had like these come here and visit me with converts to Islam saying, oh,

601
01:14:48,620 --> 01:14:53,599
you know, this person converted after spending time with us and we'd like you to take care of sort of teaching him.

602
01:14:53,600 --> 01:15:00,550
And this was a South Asian Hanafi. And I mean, he just was very admiring of the openness.

603
01:15:00,570 --> 01:15:03,560
You're saying that they're not sectarian at all. Right.

604
01:15:04,110 --> 01:15:10,520
And and so he has he maintains sort of good relations with a lot of about these who are you know,

605
01:15:10,610 --> 01:15:16,459
the Oxford Centre for Social Studies is interesting because it's kind of like a constellation of funding from throughout the Muslim world,

606
01:15:16,460 --> 01:15:22,820
including probably online at some point. So they'll have scholars associated with various different orientations coming and attending.

607
01:15:23,210 --> 01:15:29,510
And he says that he always loves his sort of Abadi compatriot Abadi colleagues

608
01:15:29,510 --> 01:15:33,620
when they join because he always finds them so open minded and so sort of like,

609
01:15:34,040 --> 01:15:40,000
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,

610
01:15:40,010 --> 01:15:46,610
they are historically they're very distinct from Sunnis and they're very much in the Martha City tradition.

611
01:15:46,620 --> 01:15:53,540
And you kind of that with the hygiene sort of history, except with regard to predestination.

612
01:15:53,880 --> 01:16:00,320
They're they are like the ascetic, sexually and well-fed model, said al-Asaad.

613
01:16:00,320 --> 01:16:04,490
He took his doctrine from the things that the about this guy had it first.

614
01:16:05,060 --> 01:16:09,170
Okay. All right. So I'm sorry, who said this modelling?

615
01:16:09,170 --> 01:16:13,370
Said this model and said yes. All right. So I'm going to have to look that one up.

616
01:16:13,970 --> 01:16:17,390
Madeleine, as always, the the careful surgical reader.

617
01:16:18,230 --> 01:16:24,350
Yes. But just in terms of like, you know, that history,

618
01:16:24,400 --> 01:16:29,090
I wanted to ask you specifically about the transition or the the democratic transition of the last century and

619
01:16:29,090 --> 01:16:34,280
a half so that we'll have these emerge and suddenly cottages and is a dirty word because the the Ottomans,

620
01:16:34,280 --> 01:16:38,620
the Azeris, everyone's sort of accusing the Wahhabis and I use that term advisedly.

621
01:16:38,770 --> 01:16:43,070
I mean. Right, right, right. But they're accusing them of being carnage.

622
01:16:43,610 --> 01:16:51,469
And this continues, of course, in the present because not towards the sort of Saudi Salafi tendency as much anymore.

623
01:16:51,470 --> 01:16:54,500
But now in the middle of the 20th century.

624
01:16:54,890 --> 01:16:57,200
Geoffrey Kenny has a wonderful book called Muslim Rebels,

625
01:16:57,560 --> 01:17:06,260
where he looks at the way the Egyptian as her state talking to the Muslim Brotherhood and this has been revived in the post revolutionary context.

626
01:17:06,950 --> 01:17:12,230
So however, I was very interested to hear that you were saying it's being deployed against cyberbullies in 2014.

627
01:17:12,620 --> 01:17:16,760
This mirrors exactly what's going on in Egypt in 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood.

628
01:17:17,270 --> 01:17:25,819
And so I sort of wonder now that term is completely sort of like so sullied in the public imagination that they're saying,

629
01:17:25,820 --> 01:17:29,420
look, you know, don't associate us with the coverage. We've got nothing to do with them.

630
01:17:29,870 --> 01:17:38,470
And doesn't that have a fundamental it does not represent a fundamental shift in how you sort of identify your own genealogy historically.

631
01:17:38,480 --> 01:17:45,830
I wonder about that question as well and your own theological outlook, and that would be my last sort of question.

632
01:17:46,670 --> 01:17:49,880
Well, yes, I don't know.

633
01:17:50,150 --> 01:17:51,770
Is it a fundamental difference?

634
01:17:52,130 --> 01:18:03,470
I mean, even some very early epistles written by about these scholars talk about alpha adage when they really mean all the other events, you know.

635
01:18:04,730 --> 01:18:15,730
So. To end. They have always stressed the difference between them because the coverage allowed the killing of Muslims, etc., etc.

636
01:18:16,220 --> 01:18:24,070
And pardon. You know, that's really the America, not the end is really the exotica.

637
01:18:24,400 --> 01:18:31,820
And yet sometimes I have found that in the early about the epistles, they simply talk about shortage, meaning the other.

638
01:18:32,290 --> 01:18:34,870
Sometimes they talk specifically about other groups.

639
01:18:35,350 --> 01:18:47,709
They also tend to lump the not just that and the sometimes even the three who are really we don't even know of any differences, doctrinally speaking,

640
01:18:47,710 --> 01:18:53,980
between the safari and the we don't even know much about the safari except that there were three states,

641
01:18:53,980 --> 01:19:01,030
you know, political entities in North Africa, and there were safaris for a while in Oman as well.

642
01:19:01,040 --> 01:19:11,470
But yeah, 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,

643
01:19:11,740 --> 01:19:17,950
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?

644
01:19:17,950 --> 01:19:20,290
So they make this absolute distinction.

645
01:19:20,620 --> 01:19:28,890
One thing I just thought of something interesting, because despite the the fact that these don't go around saying, you know,

646
01:19:28,900 --> 01:19:43,000
we dissociate from Sunnis or or emphasising that distinction, I was invited to participate in a panel on Zimbabwe tafsir in when the world.

647
01:19:44,620 --> 01:19:49,329
Middle East Studies Congress the block miss World Congress on Middle East studies

648
01:19:49,330 --> 01:19:56,080
was held in Ankara back in I don't know again it was a number of years ago now but.

649
01:19:58,180 --> 01:20:08,580
They. And then in the Turkish organiser of that panel had me and the other panellist who

650
01:20:08,590 --> 01:20:16,210
is an Omani Abadi and some of his friends over for dinner and after we had eaten.

651
01:20:17,540 --> 01:20:23,900
They got into an argument over the verse, the chronic verse that talks about.

652
01:20:27,570 --> 01:20:38,010
A radical right, you know, and that whole question of who can know, you know, because there's no period.

653
01:20:38,400 --> 01:20:41,520
Is there? Are those well who are well-grounded knowledge?

654
01:20:41,520 --> 01:20:45,900
Do they simply acknowledge God or can they know something?

655
01:20:46,200 --> 01:20:52,350
They got into a big argument over it. The about this scholar upholding the idea that our intellects are able to know.

656
01:20:52,710 --> 01:21:03,180
Right. And the Sunni scholars insisting that we cannot especially I'm one of the Sunnis was really quite Salafi in orientation actually.

657
01:21:03,180 --> 01:21:07,110
So I found that very interesting.

658
01:21:07,350 --> 01:21:10,950
I finally put an end to it because I had to get back and go to bed.

659
01:21:10,950 --> 01:21:16,500
I was leaving at three in the morning, but it could have just gone on and on and on.

660
01:21:16,800 --> 01:21:24,209
I felt I just found it fascinating so that they could that this is a very important distinction.

661
01:21:24,210 --> 01:21:30,660
It's something that for that is only going to be of significance to scholars, of course right to the whole am up.

662
01:21:30,660 --> 01:21:43,170
But for anybody either to insist that Islam is right, at least on theology, interestingly enough,

663
01:21:43,170 --> 01:21:49,049
on matters of law, you know, they say we just have to accept we don't know the difference between right and wrong.

664
01:21:49,050 --> 01:21:56,040
We just have to accept what God commands. But on matters of theology, they insist on the efficacy of human intellect.

665
01:21:56,400 --> 01:22:06,870
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.

666
01:22:07,500 --> 01:22:12,510
And if only everybody else would open their minds, they could be convinced to.

667
01:22:13,510 --> 01:22:17,190
Let's. Thank you so much, Valerie.

668
01:22:17,200 --> 01:22:25,359
This has really been a sort of wonderful, wide ranging discussion on so many diverse dimensions of the about this.

669
01:22:25,360 --> 01:22:31,659
And I we do have like 3 minutes until we get to half past.

670
01:22:31,660 --> 01:22:34,719
So I don't know if they so if you'd like to add anything to that,

671
01:22:34,720 --> 01:22:45,220
but it's really been sort of a face that is shaking his head just so that the audience is understanding what's going on.

672
01:22:45,310 --> 01:22:48,250
So I just, I guess,

673
01:22:48,610 --> 01:22:58,780
would love to conclude by thanking Valerie for a really illuminating hour and a half of reflections on the developments within about this.

674
01:22:58,780 --> 01:23:03,099
And I'm just going to briefly sort of mention what's going to come up next week.

675
01:23:03,100 --> 01:23:06,280
So pardon me, not next week, but in two weeks time.

676
01:23:06,280 --> 01:23:08,200
So we're having fortnightly presentations.

677
01:23:09,070 --> 01:23:19,180
So just as we conclude, I wanted to mention that we're having Fadi, by the way, and Nadia Abu Ali talking about the left in Islamic political thought.

678
01:23:19,900 --> 01:23:25,900
So Fadi will be talking about a nation class and community and Nadia will be speaking

679
01:23:25,960 --> 01:23:31,960
on talking about speaking on is is the heart for the east and reason for the West.

680
01:23:32,320 --> 01:23:39,160
So a very different sort of we're trying to do sort of pre-modern and then modern than pre-modern modern.

681
01:23:39,880 --> 01:23:44,800
But of course, Valerie, your own presentation covered just the whole swathe of history.

682
01:23:44,800 --> 01:23:48,490
So we got a lucky break this week, shall we say.

683
01:23:49,810 --> 01:23:53,920
So just wanted to conclude again by thanking you for giving your time,

684
01:23:54,190 --> 01:24:00,700
illuminating us and sort of thanking all the participants this week who are attending

685
01:24:00,700 --> 01:24:05,350
from around the world and looking forward to seeing you in two weeks time.

686
01:24:06,280 --> 01:24:10,450
But with that, I'll bring proceedings to a place for this evening.

687
01:24:10,930 --> 01:24:14,049
Thanks again, Valerie. Thank you. Thank you very much.

688
01:24:14,050 --> 01:24:14,650
That was great.