Sociology in Islamic Perspective Selected Readings

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Preface

Ethnographic and sociological studies of Muslim societies have acquired considerable prominence and salience in the past few years. The literature on Muslim societies and the sociology of Islam is steadily growing. Many universities in Europe, USA and Canada as well as in some Muslim countries have introduced courses on contemporary Muslim societies. Scores of doctoral dissertations and research projects are being carried out at leading universities in the West.

A few Muslim sociologists have focused attention on the restructuring of sociology in an Islamic framework and on formulating the principles and premises of Islamic sociology. The material in this area is rather sketchy and scattered and is not easily accessible to students and researchers. This volume seeks to fill in this lacuna by putting together a set of selected and important papers on the subject. An extended Introduction by the editor sets out the wider historical, political, social and cultural context in which the issue of conceptualising an Islamic sociology in particular and the restructuring of social science knowledge in general can be located.

Sociology in Islamic Perspective: Selected Readings may be considered a companion volume to Introduction to Sociology: An Islamic Perspective, published by the Institute of Objective Studies in 2016.

Introduction

Eurocentrism, which connotes a deeply entrenched belief in the supremacy of Western civilization, is a pervasive feature of much of Western intellectual tradition and cultural consciousness. It is conspicuously reflected in the Western view of civilization and modernity, in the historiography of science and technology, medicine and art and in the history of ideas.

A corollary of Eurocentrism is the Western view of non-Western cultures and civilizations, which betrays either an ignorance or absence of recognition of their contributions. By and large, Western attitudes towards other cultures and civilizations are at best condescending and at worst scornful. Francis Bacon (d. 1621), a well-known English scientist, philosopher and statesman, claimed that paper, the magnetic compass, gunpowder and printing were the key inventions that separated the modern (Western) world from the traditional world. He did not know, or did not care to know, that each of these institutions had originated in China. The Austrian sociologist Norbert Elias maintained that the 'civilizing process' began in Europe. He failed to recognize that this process occurred in other parts of the world and in much earlier times. The German historian and archaeologist Johann Winckelmann (d. 1768) held that the 'true ideal of beauty could be seen only in the Greek aesthetic and artistic tradition. He considered Chinese art as inferior and decadent. Ironically, Chinese art exerted considerable influence on European art and decoration in the 18th century. The Prussian philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (d. 1835) considered the Chinese language inferior to European languages. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (d. 1803) contemptuous of Chinese national character. Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (d. 1859), a British politician and statesman, divided the world into civilized nations, with Britain representing the zenith of civilization, and barbarians, who comprised the non-Western peoples. He haughtily declared that "a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole literature of India was and Arabia." Some of the towering figures in 19th century Europe, such as Alexis de Tocqueville (d. 1859), August Comte (d. 1859), who is considered the father of sociology, and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873), viewed the Chinese as inferior (Goody 2006: 127-28). Prominent European intellectuals and writers such as Ernest Renan and Paul Tanney dismissed the possibility of an Arab contribution to science and philosophy.

In his stimulating and deftly argued book The Theft of History (2006), Jack Goody uses an evocative metaphor the 'theft of history' to describe a particularly iniquitous aspect of Eurocentrism. The theft of history, according to Goody, refers to the takeover or expropriation of history by the West. He says, "The past is conceptualized and presented according to what happened on the provincial scale of Europe, often Western Europe, and then imposed upon the rest of the world". The theft of history, according to Goody, is reflected in the widely-held view among Western intellectuals and historians that some of the key institutions of modern times, such as science, democracy, mercantile capitalism and modernity, were invented in Europe. Goody argues that Europe has deliberately neglected or underplayed the history of the rest of the world, as a consequence of which it has misinterpreted much of its own history. He states that the claim that these institutions originated in Europe is historically untenable, and the fact of the matter is that they can be found over a much more widespread range of human societies (Goody 2006: 125, 215).

There is a pervasive undercurrent of Eurocentrism and parochialism in much of social science theorizing and historiography in the West. Hegel, Kant and other European philosophers contended that Africa had no tradition of writing and therefore had no history or civilization. Both Marx and Weber believed that what differentiated the East from the West was that the former was stagnant and the latter vibrant and dynamic. T. Brook and G. Blue have succinctly brought out the Eurocentric underpinnings of social science theorizing in the West.

Too often the generalizations of social science and this is true in Asia as it is in the West rest on the belief that the West occupies the normative starting position for constructing general knowledge. Almost all our categories-politics and economy, state and society, feudalism and capitalism-have been conceptualized primarily on the basis of Western historical experience (Brook and Blue 1999: 14-15)

Kenneth Clarke's celebrated 13-part TV documentary "Civilization" is blatantly Eurocentric in that it identifies civilization exclusively with the West and focuses only on the visual arts, architecture and philosophy in Europe over the past 100 years. It is astonishingly indifferent to the impressive civilizational legacy of the non-Western world, notably China and the Islamic civilization.

In her ground-breaking work The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage (1990), Maria Rosa Menocal drew attention to the undercurrents of racism and chauvinism in European literary and cultural history. She pointed out that ethnocentric bias for centuries has prevented mainstream European scholars from recognizing the large influence of Arabic, Islamic and Andalusian cultures on the development of European medieval literature. She persuasively argued that scientific, cultural and literary advances in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire were in large measure due to the contribution of Muslim scientists, translators and intellectuals to the preservation and dissemination of the Greco-Roman heritage. She emphasized that Arabic influences in medieval Europe were not confined to literature but encompassed music, science, philosophy, architecture and the arts (Menocal, 1990).