Conclusion

However much Islam expands into new regions, however much it diversifies through emigration, factionalism and conversion, however much it exchanges old identities for new, it is hard to doubt that the Arab Middle East will remain its symbolic core.

Its three holiest cities are there: Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem (al-Quds). The Jewish state in Palestine and the continued occupation of Jerusalem are not so much grievances for the displaced Arab population of that region as profound symbols of an alien presence at the heart of Islam itself. Israel stands for much more than a small enclave carved out of Arab soil, just as European Turkey was once more than the Ottoman outpost. It stands for the West as a whole, for the alienating processes of modern life, for the conflicts brought about by the radicalising innovations of contemporary thought and behaviour. The metaphors used express this vividly: a cancer, a growth, a tumour. For Muslims everywhere, the wellbeing or sickness of the Middle East has become an index of the vitality or weakness of Islam. If the cancer is the West and all it stands for, it is not yet clear what the cure should be: radical surgery to excise the tumour, chemotherapy to modify it, or homoeopathy, using like to cure like.

For better or worse, modernity has left its stamp on the Middle East. In the process, some of the most isolated and inwardlooking corners of Islamdom have been confronted in the course of decades with dilemmas that even societies long innured to the forces of technological and social change have found intractable. Destinies set long ago by sectarian visionaries and serious-minded theologians have been checked or deflected by forces unprescribed-for in religious law or the classical theories of Islamic government. Thus far, responses to change have been remarkably consistent, whether they be those of Wahhabis, Ibadis, Zaydis, or Twelver Shi'is: a rejection of modernity on the part of the conservatives followed by a reluctant bowing to the pressures of life in a world that will not tolerate seclusion.

Until recently, the future seemed to lie with the modernists: Islam could and would adapt to Western ideals of freedom, democracy, female emancipation and unremitting progress (even if the Western powers set a poor enough example of such virtues themselves). But now the demands for a return to tradition are being heard with growing insistence on every university campus and in mosque after mosque throughout the Islamic East.

In the past two centuries, Islam has undergone very little rethinking of its doctrinal essentials. The authority of the Qur’an still goes unchallenged, the authenticity of the hadith collections is still largely unquestioned, the basic assumptions of the theologians concerning God, revelation, faith or morals remain intact. What challenges there have been have all been to the operation of Islam in society, to the functioning of an integral Islamic polity rather than to the practice of Islam as a faith. Thus, Shari'a law has been threatened by the introduction of secular law-codes, the sense of Islamic community (Jamaa or umma) by the fragmentations of modern nationalism, the continuity of the sunna as an embodiment of orthodox practice by wave upon wave of innovation (the very term for which, bida, is the nearest Arabic translation of ‘heresy’) and the traditional emphasis on Islam as a source of proper knowledge by the spread of Western education at all levels. A separation of religion and state wholly alien to Islamic experience has been allowed to develop along lines inspired by the Christian ideal.

As modernisation brings its strains and stresses ever more deeply into the lives of ordinary people, the inevitable reaction is beginning to occur. For fundamentalist Muslims, it seems very easy to pinpoint where things went wrong and to propose an all-purpose solution to the multitude of problems facing modern societies. The Islamisation of all areas of life from government to dress is held out as the universal panacea for all the ills of a society gone astray from the course of its own destiny.

In most places, this involves an idealisation of the past, while in others it calls for a radical shift from traditional practice. Nevertheless, there are places like central Arabia, Oman and Yemen where the theocratic ideal has been nearer to realisation than elsewhere. It remains to be seen what impact neofundamentalism will have on such societies and what implications any moves in that direction may have on Muslim communities elsewhere. Perhaps the real crisis Islam has yet to face will come if and when the fundamentalists recognise the potential of Western technology as a means of implementing their vision of the perfect society. If that should ever happen, one of the greatest achievements of classical Islam—the delicate balance preserved between the perfectionism of the urban clerics and the more casual practice of the rural hinterland—will have been rendered truly a thing of the past.

Conclusion

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