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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How a common experience drove two civilizations apart, March 14, 2005
In recent years media attention for the Muslim world has increased tremendously and many reputable scholars of Islam have joined the flurry of publications that is released month after month. With Following Muhammad -- a thoughtful essay on Islamic spiritual traditions -- Sufism expert Carl Ernst has attempted to counterbalance the torrent of books on political radicalism. Bernard Lewis, the nestor of Islamic history writing, took the easy way and jumped the bandwagon of Islam-bashing by rehashed his 1999 Vienna Lectures Series under the title What Went Wrong?
Partially in response to Lewis, fellow-historian Richard Bulliet of Columbia University dusted off some of the manuscripts in his archives and then elaborated further on these earlier musings. His The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization consists of four essays and, although the first one was drafted more than thirty years ago, they have been reworked into a remarkably consistent argument.
Refashioning that earliest essay, from which the book has taken its title, into a rebuttal of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis, Bulliet explains that there are more similarities than differences between Christendom and the Muslim Middle East. The conversion processes during the earliest centuries shared many features; in particular the slow percolation of the new religions into the lower social strata. As contacts became more intensive during the middle periods, it is true that mutual hostility increased but even then peaceful exchange was more common than violent interaction. Only from about 1500 did the two civilizations go their separate ways, but - in an explicit rejection of Huntington - Bulliet observes that this was more due to accidents of history than an inherent necessity resulting from irrevocably different outlooks.
The second chapter "What Went On" is a correction of Bernard Lewis' negative assessment of Islam as a failed civilization. Bulliet attributed this misreading to the influence of 20th-century western history on Lewis' own worldview. Having been very much part of the effort against totalitarianism during WWII and the Cold War, Lewis fails to appreciate that a Muslim world fighting for independence from colonialism had very different issues on its mind. In his detached survey of Islamic political history, Bulliet consistently argues that, throughout the centuries, safeguarding justice and opposition to tyranny was the constant preoccupation of a religious establishment that tried to remain aloof of politics. When either indigenous despotic regimes - fashioned after the absolute monarchies of early modern Europe (!) -- or imperialist outsiders managed to take over the main power centers in the Muslim world this counterweight was successfully repressed. However, an unintended side-effect of the ensuing modernization efforts has been the rise of alternative `religious authorities' which have started challenging these political constellations.
The next chapter is more of a self-evaluation, in which the author critically examines the misconceptions that are still prevalent in his academic field of Middle Eastern studies. He illustrates this by critical assessments of three seminal works published in the first decades after WWII, when area studies were first introduced in the US. Tied up in the `development theory paradigm', scholars singled out only those congenial to this theory as acceptable representatives of and spokespersons for the Muslims. Those proposing alternative approaches to the challenges of a rapidly changing world, by drawing on the treasure house of their own cultural legacy, were greeted with suspicion and hostility.
Based on his own studies of medieval Islam, Bulliet extends some of the prevailing trends of that past into the future. In his closing arguments Bulliet shows that throughout history the most creative responses to the challenges, which the Muslim world had to face, came from `the edge'; meaning the often heterodox strands of thought and practices shunned by the power centers - and not infrequently emerging at what were also the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world. In our contemporary world, Bulliet sees three such edge situations that could become significant for the future: the `diaspora' Muslim communities of Europe and America; the democratically oriented political parties in certain Muslim countries; and newly formed institutions of higher Islamic learning. With regard to the latter, the writer specifically mentions Indonesia, where many Muslim scholars of Islam holding western degrees occupy key positions at Islamic universities and in the religious affairs departments. Interestingly, one of them is a graduate of Bulliet's own Columbia University. In his own writings, the rector of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Institute for Islamic Studies in Jakarta, Azyumardi Azra, has also stressed the important role played by Muslim intellectuals of the geographical periphery in shaping the intellectual discourse of Islamic reformism.
Bulliet's long-range historical perspective is a welcome contribution to the current discussions on the role of political Islam in the contemporary world, a discussion that has remained too limited in scope because of the myopic perceptions of those focusing only on the most spectacular excesses that have recently unfolded on the world stage.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Civilization has got to go!, March 16, 2006
This review is from: The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (Paperback)
Bulliet, a learned, articulate, and persuasive writer, argues that we should reject Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" rhetoric and embrace the notion that Islamic/Middle Eastern Civilization and Christian/European Civilization are one. Sort of. I say "sort of," because he doesn't really think that Islam and Christendom form a single civilization; rather, he sees them as sibling civilizations that have each shaped the other's development much more profoundly than is commonly acknowledged today.
The strengths of Bulliet's book are, on one hand, in showing that Christianity and Islam, and Europe and the Middle East, have not merely been rivals, but have frequently had fruitful exchanges in the past; and, on the other hand, in critiquing Huntington's arguments and scholarship. These -- plus the slimmness of the volume and the fluidity of the writing -- make the book worth reading. (The biggest revelation to me was that when the Islamic Caliphate sprang up and began rapidly conquering territory, it almost immediately gained control of two of Christianity's five patriarchates and presumably a similar proportion of that day's Christians. This undoubtedly contributed to the Great Schism in Catholicism.)
The primary weakness of the book is apparent in its title. By making an argument about "civilization," Bulliet accepts Huntington's terms of argument. "Civilization" is a shorthand that both authors use for an amalgam of societies, religious institutions, empires, nation states, etc. To talk about Islamic and Christian "civilizations" as if these were clear and coherent entities persisting across time and space for centuries does too much violence to the historical record and weakens Bulliet's attempt to disarm manicheans like Huntington. What is "Christian civilization"? Is it the societies and cultures of Western Europe? Does it include the societies and cultures of Eastern Orthodoxy? What about Islamic civilization? Why doesn't it include (in Bulliet's reading) the Islamic world outside of the Middle East? Discussing history at the level of the "civilization" places the discussion on an extremely abstract plane that encourages vast overgeneralizations and distortions like Huntington's.
A minor criticism that also stems (partly) from the title has to do with Bulliet's displacement of "Judeo" by "Islamo" in "Islamo-Christian Civilization". The term "Judeo-Christian" is an Americanism that allows people to say that we're a Christian society without dissing what has until recently been America's largest non-Christian religion. The term also directs attention to Christianity's Jewish (Abrahamic) roots. Bulliet has no qualms about dismissing the "Judeo" part of the phrase because--at the risk of oversimplifying what he says--Jews have mostly been a powerless minority within Christendom over the past couple millenia and have not had the same kind of influence over Christian civilization that Islamic civilization has had. Thus, Christian civilization is more meaningfully described as Islamo-Christian than Judeo-Christian. While he clearly has a point, I still feel slighted (as a Jew).
One more thing about the title: On first reading, the title implies that Bulliet will be making a case for the fusion of Islamic and Christian civilizations. While he probably wouldn't oppose such a project, Bulliet's project is something else: arguing that Christian Civilization *is* Islamo-Christian Civilization. I can see why Bulliet didn't choose to title his book "The case for seeing our civilization as Islamo-Christian," but that is the book he wrote.
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wisdom in a media of shallow polemics, January 19, 2005
Four chapters of this marvelous book deliver a strong, thoughtful, compelling message about understanding the past, present, and possible future of Muslim societies on their own terms. Would that pundits and media `experts' provide at least some part of this maturity. Bulliet eschews polemic and bitterness to provide sound perspective some of the most essential themes of public discourse and policy regarding the world of Islam.
The whole book is a compelling alternative to common (and shallow, ideological, Islamphobe) views promoted by Neocons and others. Whatever your present perspective, understanding will be sharpened by careful reading of this excellent book.
The only thing I do not like is the title, which makes a point but has mislead some reviewers already so that they dismiss or misunderstand the sound arguments presented.
The first chapter condemns Huntington's thesis about the "Clash of Civilizations" indicating how it is both misleading and damaging. (Bulliet might have added it has been used for aggressive, hateful, and misguided policies that obscure economic, oil, and geostrategic motives). Christianity and Islam as social, political, and institutional matters are "siblings" not clashing civilizations and excellent comparative analysis about responses to often similar needs are enlightening.
The second chapter "What Went On" provides much insight and more than the entire book with a similar title that has been widely promoted for those who want to think that they have answers "What Went Wrong". It is insightful and fascinating on topics ranging from expansion and conversion to the social and institutional place of clerics, law, religious hierarchy.
"Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places", chapter 3, avoids polemic while showing how area studies in the US provided a sort of revised "Orientalism" driven by triumphalist assumptions about democracy, development, and capitalism all the more biting (and ideological) because of the competition of the Cold War. Even now this has not been corrected to deal with things more objectively and with some degree of empathy.
The fourth and final chapter on the "Edge" analyses and speculates about the direction of development in Islam based on creative and changing situations that may become sources for broader future development - as they often have in the past.
Bulliet eschews blame and bitter argument and does not dwell on the sometimes negative aspects of Colonialism, intervention, anti democratic interventions by democracies of the west. Nor does he dwell on terrorism, putting it in perspective as presently exceptional and not widely supported. He is perhaps, if anything, too kind to some of those critiqued. (There is the implication that an approach based on `clash' and antagonistic policy ideologues who intensely dislike Islam - including Pipes and Lewis as well as NeoCons perhaps - may create more terrorism. This is a whole other discussion however.)
This is a short book (161 pages, Appendix, and notes) that will challenge readers of any stripe to improve their understanding, their reasoning, and perspective. It could well replace four longer books one might otherwise choose to read on these subjects. Attention is richly rewarded providing the mature and considered views of a thoughtful scholar that so clearly sets it apart from the many shallow books that have rushed to print since 9-11. Read it carefully whether your interest is history, exclusively current events, or speculation about the future.
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