On authority II [1]

Marqas, of The Manrilla Blog, has a post on a recent Sherman Jackson lecture where Jackson discusses the problem of authority among American Muslims. By extension this could apply to all Western Muslims (maybe even Muslims in general).

Marqas raises some interesting points, including those well known to Western Muslims: authenticity and identity, and how Islam will develop in the US (Britain, France, etc.). That is being a 'Western Muslim' will not seem like an anomaly, anymore than being a Muslim from the various Islamic traditions in India, the Arab peninsula, North Africa and so on is considered an anomaly. I would hazard a guess that, in this respect, American Muslims will surpass their coreligionists in Europe; we, at least British Muslims, are still tied very strongly to our 'ancestral' homelands.

There is on additional point I would like to add, which Marqas hasn't explicity mentioned, and that is the one related to competing sets of knowledge. Not only has literacy enable people to formulate their own opinions, but the increase in knowledges, from the 'hard' to the 'human' sciences, has led to a direct challenge to religious knowledges. [2] The specialisation of traditional religious knowledge has led to a boundary being erected around what is and isn't "religion"; this can only have the effect of limiting the scope of the religious scholar's authority. So the additional questions to the problem Marqas raises are how religious knowledge is integrated with the physical and human sciences; and is this possible or even desirable, and what would be the consequences? [3]

Notes
[1] See an earlier post where I discussed the topic of authority of Islam, "On authority".

[2] Let me make it clear that I do not subscribe to the religion versus science argument (for obvious reasons). It is worth noting that far too many "founders" of modern science were also "religious" for the simplified religion-versus- science clash to be fruitful for any understanding. In any case, this is a slightly skewed myth, helped along by polemics from Victorian agnostics and atheists, as well anti-Catholic English writings, from the 19th-century. But it is fair to say that scientific knowledge puts a strain on certain religious doctrines (and vice versa); the most obvious one being related to the existence of homo sapiens (evolution versus creationism). This is why, I believe, people educated in the traditional Islamic disciplines, but with exposure to modern science, attack the epistemological and ontological foundations of modern science (a la S.H. Nasr) and not merely the results of such a scientific endeavour. For a good example of this sort of critique see Nuh Ha Mim Keller's response to a question on evolution.

[3] See an earlier post on contemporary Muslim approaches to science, "The Muslim Science Wars".

Comments

[vonaurum]

The problem of authroity is one of those problems which do not seem to have a solution in the near future and seems to be coming back again and again. A lot of scholars seem top have their own fiefdoms where they rarely communicate with people outside the fiefdom. In many times it is not even the scholar's fault. Unfortunately many of us have developed a very narrow view of scholarship where differences are not respected.