Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History.

NAJIAR, FAUZI M.

Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi's Islamic Intellectual History. By TAMARA SONN. OXFORD and New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996. Pp. xi + 206. $39.95.

This book is primarily a translation, with introduction and notes, of Bandali Jawzi's Min Tarikh al-Harakat al-Fikriyya fi al-Islam, published in Jerusalem in 1928. Bandali Saliba Jawzi was born in Jerusalem on July 2, 1871. Orphaned in childhood, he was schooled in Greek Orthodox monasteries in Jerusalem and Lebanon. In 1891, he moved to Moscow, where he pursued his theological studies at the Theological Academy. He later transferred to Qazan, where he taught Arabic while continuing his studies. After a short visit to Palestine in 1900, he returned to Qazan, married a Russian woman, and lectured at the University until 1920, when he joined the faculty of the University of Azerbaijan. It was during a sojourn in the Middle East that he wrote his major work. He died in Baku in 1942. In Russia, Jawzi became enamored of socialism, an ideological orientation that permeates his history of intellectual movements in Islam.

In an introduction and commentary, Tamara Sonn, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida, discusses the political and intellectual environment in which Jawzi wrote. It was the period of late nineteenth- and early twentieth century Islamic reform, dominated by the thought of Muhammad Abduh, and his attempt to reinterpret Islamic principles in terms of modern science and technology. Jawzi's hermeneutics, "based on a recognition that all texts, including religious and historical documents, are the result of human interpretation, and that interpretations are inevitably influenced by the milieux in which they are produced" (p. 7), are, like Islamic reform, rooted in ijtihad, the liberal source of Islamic law. Jawzi's analysis of Islamic intellectual movements "is offered not only as a corrective to orientalism but to Muslims' misapprehension of their own heritage" (p. 44). With the best intentions, Sonn presents Jawzi as a forerunner of Edward Said, with an affinity to postmodernist writers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.

In a short introduction to his book, entitled "The Unity of Social Laws," Jawzi takes issue with Western historians who denied that the nations of the East could ever have a "history" in the sense it is understood by European scholars. They attribute this failure to understand history to religion, autocratic political systems, and the Easterners' "rejection of social and cultural evolution, as well as the influence of Western civilization" (p. 72). For example, Ernest Renan is castigated for his statement that "Islam detests science and calls for the destruction of civil society," which Jawzi considers as lacking objectivity, and is no longer tenable. As a Marxist, Jawzi attributes the "temporary" decline of civilization in the Eastern nations not to religion, but to socio-historical forces, such as "immigration and conquests by Barbarian nations ... the Crusades ... and the shift in commercial routes." He concludes that "the history of the East, the social and intellectual life of its people in general, and that of the Islamic people in particular, are subject to the same laws and factors to which the life and history of the Western nations are subject" (p. 74). Jawzi's intention is to demonstrate that there is no difference between East and West, and that one is not innately superior to the other.

In chapter one, "The Economic Bases of Islam;" Jawzi plays down religious zeal as being responsible for Islam's triumphs, stressing the economic and social movements in sixth-century Makka that were behind the Prophet's message. To understand the rise of Islam one must understand the socio-economic milieu of Makka and its neighbors, he asserts. A rich commercial city and a caravan stop, Makka attracted a steady flow of pilgrims and traders. The custodians of the Ka ba exploited the pilgrims to enhance their financial, political, and spiritual power. The economic conditions of the city, divided into two classes, the rich and the poor, are vividly described in the Qur an. The Prophet, who knew poverty and orphanhood well, made social justice and equality central to his mission. His campaign against the "class of shameless oppressors" is described as a "social revolution." "So the origins of the Prophet and his social milieu strongly affected his later life, his call, and the content of his words" (p. 83). His message boded danger to the economic interests and administrative authority of the ruling class, generating strong opposition to him, and forcing him to flee for his life. Of the many reforms the Prophet ordained, the zakat--what Jawzi calls a "socialist tax"--was bitterly condemned by the wealthy classes. Meant to reduce disparities between rich and poor, the zakat was no radical socialist measure aimed at the communalization of private property. In fact, with the change in his political fortunes, the Prophet tempered his zeal against personal wealth and land accumulation. "The Prophet was neither a socialist nor a communist in the modern sense of these two terms, nor in any other sense," Jawzi avers (p. 88).

Economic and political motives and interests were behind the expansion of the Arab state, and the conquest of new lands, peoples and civilizations created a whole new situation, with new strains among classes in Islamic society. Behind the new tensions were the imperialistic and economic policies of the Arabs. The taxation system (jizya and kharaj) imposed on the vanquished nations by the Umayyads generated dissatisfaction among the people, including those who converted to Islam. Political and familial rivalries shattered the harmony that existed in the Prophet's days. Religion was used as an ideological rationalization of political ambitions and economic interests, and the "revolutions" by the oppressed and exploited peoples were caused more by political and economic than religious factors. Jawzi cites the shu abiyya movement as an example. He then turns to discuss three such "socialist" movements.

The first is "Babak's Movement and His Socialist Doctrine." Babak was the chief of the Khurrami sect, which arose in Persia following the execution of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani in 755 A.D. He revolted against the caliph al-Mu tasim (833-42), was defeated and crucified. According to Jawzi, this movement differed from previous "revolutionary" movements in its organization and goal. "It was the result of social and political factors that appeared at the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth in the Abbasid kingdom generally, but particularly in Azerbaijan" (p. 104). Disaffected peoples, Persians, Kurds, Armenians, and even Arabs joined the protest movement. Jawzi seems to minimize the strong Persian national sentiments which were interwoven with ancient Zoroastrian and Mazdakian religious ideas, by stressing "that the goal of the Babaki movement was not opposition to Islam and its followers or opposition to the Arabs as a conquering and exploiting nation" (p. 108).

The second "socialist" movement that Jawzi considers is that of the Isma ilis. He describes its rise, secret organizations, and ideology, stressing Neoplatonic influences on its philosophic views and beliefs, which gradually began to diverge from Islam. The Isma ili division of people into those who can grasp the truth, the "rationalists," and therefore are in no need of laws, and the masses, "the blind and foolish," who have to be led and fed images and myths, is Greek in origin. Closely tied to their philosophic and moral views, are the Isma ilis' political and social principles. Their political goal in the first stage was to take power from the Abbasids and replace it with a socialist system. They believed in a mahdi who would return to spread justice and cure the earth of its social diseases. The two most important social goals of the Isma ilis were equality between the sexes and the abolition of private property and its distribution to the needy. Jawzi extols the Isma ilis' contributions to social thought, and to world civilization: internationalism, brotherhood, and, through the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity, the spread of scientific and philosophic principles.

The last "socialist" movement Jawzi discusses is the Qarmatians. He describes its growth and expansion, and how it shook the caliphate to its foundation. According to him, the founder was a certain Hamdan Qarmat, an Iraqi peasant, who had signs that the Iranians were going to regain the empire of the Arabs. It was a secret society based on a system of communism, which attracted peasants, artisans and zanj (negroes). Called by some the "Bolsheviks of Islam," the Qarmatians advocated community of wives and property, and organized workers and artisans into guilds. Jawzi devotes most of this section to the "Communist Republic of Bahrayn," founded by Abu Sa id al-Jannabi, and spread under his son, Abu Tahir Sulayman, famous (or infamous) for sacking the Ka ba, removing the Black Stone, and committing atrocities against the residents of Makka and the pilgrims to the holy city. One of the greatest virtues of the Republic was, in Jawzi's opinion, its closeness "to that of the Russian republic in modern times" (p. 156). The similarity of the two systems and the source of their strength "was the same--the lower classes, or the class of laborers and peasants." Everything was commonly owned, and the government controlled trade. Ignoring the defects of the system, just as he is blind to the defects of the Russian communist system, Jawzi attributes the success of the Republic to its economic and social foundations, as well as its "authoritative moral and ethical principles, both on the social and individual levels" (p. 158).

Jawzi examines his subject with specific ideological modes of perception. Despite his claim that the Isma ilis' principle of "knowledge and work" as the means for personal happiness "is what was advocated, after hundreds of years, by [Ferdinand] LaSalle and [Karl] Marx, and what has become today the motto of the Bolshevists in Russia" (p. 169), it will be an exaggeration to describe his work as a Marxist interpretation of Islamic intellectual movements. The philosophical postulates are quite different, not to mention the totalitarian character of the Soviet system. His book brings to mind Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, rather than the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital.

Professor Sonn has produced a smooth translation. Her introduction and commentary, which is a monograph in itself, places Jawzi's work in a contemporary and meaningful perspective. There are a few minor misprints. Constantine Zurayk is a Syrian and not a Palestinian scholar (p. 4), and Henri Lammens was a Belgian Jesuit orientalist and not a French historian (p. 45). Unfortunately, the index leaves a great deal to be desired.

FAUZI M. NAJJAR MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY