I. Armstrong, Islam: A Short History--Chapter 5: Islam Agonistes

A. The Rise of Western Europe and the United States (not a simple story... in some ways, the life work of Max Weber)...

1. Expansiveness of capitalism... Marx: "The cheap price of its commodities is the battering ram with which it breaks down all Chinese walls."

2. Colonialism and the conquest of many, many Islamic countries (and others, of course)

Armstrong: "Instead of being one of the leaders of world civilization, Islamdom was quickly and permanently (her word) reduced to a dependent bloc by the European powers"... particularly England and France

a. Justification: racial superiority

b. Extra problem for Islam: ""From the time of the Prophet, Muslims had seen current events as theophanies... The humiliation of the ummah was not merely a political catastrophe, but touched a Muslim's very soul."

3. Post-colonial regimes

a. Early reform movements as a response to Western domination tended to be either anti-Islam or only superficially Islamic... often supported by Western countries and funded by oil monies (Instructor:almost all with U.S. support, at least intermittently)

1). Turkey the Muslim country that most managed to maintain its independence (although it lost its empire), and there Attaturk created an aggressively secular society (closed the madrasahs, suppressed Sufi orders, and commanded Western dress)

2). In Iran, the Pahlavi monarchs, again determinedly secular and cooperating with the west... e.g. development of oil industry

3). Saudi Arabia... Kingdom of great inequality (which is very anti-Islam, says Armstrong) and Wahhabi Islam (Islamic schools, few rights for women)

4) Pakistan: Ali Jinnah determined secularist and subsequent leaders have also allowed minimal role for Islam (until present??? 2009)

5). Egypt: secular regimes

6) Iraq: Baath party of Saddam Hussein

b. Fundamentalist response. Armstrong emphasizes that there are fundamentalist movements in all the major modern religions, even Budhism and Confucianism, and that the term itself originally arose in the United States in the early 20th century...not a kind of dark side unique to Islam, is what she's trying to emphasize)

"Fundamentalism thus begins as an internal dispute with liberalizers or secularists within one's own culture or nation."

1) Mawdudi, founder of Jamaat-i Islami in Pakistan... call for universal jihaad and said it ranked as a duty right up there with the 5 pillars of Islam

2) "The real founder of fundamentalism in the Sunni Islamic world was Sayyid Qutb. Originally part of the reformist Muslim Brotherhood but after imprisonment by al-Nasser called for jihaad not only against western powers but against "apostate" Muslim rulers

3) Shia world: Khomeini in Iran... "The kerbala myth (massacre of Hussain, son of Ali, and his followers) inspired ordinary Shiis to brave the shah's guns in the thousands, some donning the white shroud of martyrdom.

4. Muslims in the west... 176-191... Expand this section

"Now any secularist government in the Middle East was uncomfortably aware that if there were truly democractic elections, an Islamic government might come to power."

Why does Armstrong quote Yusuf al-Karadawi? (p. 186)

II. "Generation Faithful" series in the New York Times, based on interviews with young people in Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan in 2008. 60% of the population under 25

A. "Generation Faithful: What Happened Next," December 22, 2008: "The broad issues were almost always the same..." (read highlights)

B. "Stifled, Egypt's Young Turn to Islamic Fervor," Feb. 17, 2008

1. Ahmed Sayyid, p. 1... "I can't get a job, I have no money, I can't get married, what can I say?"

"Yes, I do think Islam is the answer..." (read highlights)

2. Young people the basis for a religious revival. In 1986, 1 mosque for every 6,031 Egyptians... now one mosque per 745 people(and the population has doubled, so that's about 17 times as many mosques...

II. CSK, chapter 9: The Globalization Debate

"Standard sociological theories : "development" (a functionalist derivative)vs. "exploitation (a Marxist derivative) seem ill equipped to explain the worldwide religious resurgence," particularly the form that we call "fundamentalism."

A. Fundamentalism. Discusses origins of the term in U.S. and extension to include all contemporary religious movements that display "exclusive militancy" (Schoenfeld). Also notes that "all fundamentalisms ... are specifically modern products."

B. Reactions to "global culture," with its post-modernist relativism and its "absent center" and "homeless mind"

1. Authors see the three Abrahamic religions as providing the model for fundamentalism... see narrative beginning with "suppose" on p. 249... "universalizing the particular"

a. The Religious Right in the United States... U.S. vs. the "godless atheism" of the Soviets... the role of Israel... end times... (our friends on a mission to save the Moslems...)

Why? Role of status anxiety (p. 255: Larry's job history)... other groups, "liberal protestants" and "reform Jews" advancing more rapidly into political-economic elites

b. Islamization (term preferred by those we more often call Islamic Fundamentalists)

1)Began in reaction to British colonial domination in Egypt and Pakistan (then part of British India)

2) Failure of pan-Arabism(1960s: Nasser in Egypt, Qadafi in Libya, Hussein in Iraq) seen as related to not being immersed in Islam

3) Iran: the Shah, symbolizing western modernization and relativization, but not creating prosperity for most of the population and depending on a repressive secret police... role of U.S. returning the Shah to power... Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamization: "We did not want oil, we did not want independence, we wanted Islam."

4) Symbolism of Israel: a racist society established with Western support in violation of western principles of secularism and universalism... a client state of the U.S. ( which contains the largest Jewish population of any country in the world) and in which American Jewish citizens can hold dual citizenship in Israel... far and away the largest recipient of our foreign aid, mostly for weapons

5) Symbolism of American civil religion: "God Bless America" as the most visible reaction to the 9/11 attack.... Billy Graham as the religious spokesperson of the American reaction (CSK note that he'd spend his career holding "crusades")

6) Target of 9/11 bombings: World Trade Center and Pentagon

c. Ultraorthodoxy (Judaism): Israel as the promised land for the Jewish people

1)... the assassination of Itzak Rabin (sanctioned by an orthodox rabbi in New York City)

Assassin: "I did this to stop the peace process"

New York rabbi Abraham Hecht had declared Rabin in a state of moser (someone who surrenders his people). Hecht quoting Maimonides: "someone who hands over Jewish land or wealth to an alien people is guilty of a sin worthy of the death penalty... someone who kills such a person has done a good deed."... absolute statement deprived of all context... originally stated in a context where Jews were outcastes, used to justify the assassination of the head of a Jewish state, Israel... (see p. 267-8)

fundamentalism as "text without context"

2)Israel as the exception which "tests" the rule of globalization, violating the secular politics that are the norm of global society-- that all sociocultural products arise out of sociocultural contexts... all truth is mediated by context... The resurgent forms of at least the Abrahamic traditions that we have examined here are also new forms of these religions (because they deny the relevance of context)

Reverend John Nelson: "This is how God has spoken to me.... How has he (she) spoken to you?"

III. Presentations