In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power

Rating:
Summary: Islam's political repercussions
Review: Few writers, Thomas W. Lippman wrote in the Washington Post, have explained so lucidly the complex developments of Muslim history.

It is difficult to address the questions of Islam, the Arabs and their relations with Israel and remain nonpartisan. But Business Week's Ronald Taggiasco called Pipes' scholarly explanation of events and faith in that little-known, volatile, and important part of the world well worth reading.

Pipes' reasoned, literate explanation of what generated the Islamic resurgence goes a long way to explaining recent events. Written in 1983, this book provided the first comprehensive political study of Islam's extraordinary role in modern world. We are fortunate indeed that Transaction has rescued the political and global implications of the Islamic revival, revealed here, from the out-of-print category, complete with a new preface for 2002.

The book is divided into three sections. The first covers the premodern legacy of Islam's sacred laws and its failure to implement the public ideal represented by those laws--as existed in the single state for Muslims (Dar al-Islam) from 622 to 753 A.D. According to Pipes, for most of Muslim history, traditional Muslims were willing to accept the gap between the ideal and the actual, to live with a less-than-complete implementation of Shari'a, although the Muslim approach to politics derived from the "invariant premises of the religion" established more than 1,500 years ago.

The second section covers Islam's encounters with the West, beginning with the matched powers of Crusaders against the Ayyubids, and proceeding quickly to Napoleon's 1789 invasion of Egypt. (This prompted the Ottoman Sultan Selim III to declare Jihad against the French and join the infidel British and Russian empires to keep his own in tact).

Muslims had ruled millions of Christians in Europe for 450 years before being displaced by Turkey. Then the western cultural onslaught began in the first half of the 18th century, and ran from Umma's eastern end (China and Indonesia) to its west (Crimea). By the end of 1919, only Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Arabia and Yemen retained political independence, the first three by balancing the claims of Britain against those of Russia and the latter two simply by being remote and completely barren. Meanwhile, the Muslim Empire had also lost battles of scientific, technical, mechanical, geographic and historical knowledge. Even daily Western life differed markedly from that of the Islamic east. Thus fundamentalists began lobbying for strict Shari'a everywhere in the Umma.

In contrast, reformist Muslims argue that traditional Shari'a is hopelessly illiberal and conflicts with the true Qur'anic values. They reject Shari'a traditions emanating from Hadith, consensus of the 'ulama and reasoning by analogy as inauthentic and outdated, respectively. Similarly, they approve of parliamentary systems of government, but view hold their record in Islamic society in contempt. On some fronts, liberal views conflict with themselves. While they admire pan-Islamic solidarity they are not committed to it; and they recognize national interests but disapprove of Muslim states fighting one another. And as for non-Muslims, according to Pipes, reformists are caught by ambiguity, between their desire for equal status for all and the wish for Dhimmi laws that traditional Islamic states use to bestow a special place on Muslims, while relegating all non-Muslims to inferior, even slavish conditions. The fact that Westernization did not markedly improve the Muslim world in the 1970s led to increasing fundamentalism.

Pipes devotes the third section to Islam in current affairs, detailing the effects of the fundamentalist surge on 22 Muslim-dominated nations from Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan in Central Asia and Asia to Algeria, Morocco and Egypt in Africa and Syria, Iran and Iraq, in the Middle East. In at least 8 other nations, from Malaysia to Nigeria, Muslims vie with non-Muslims for power. In one of these--the Sudan--the conflict has grown bloody since this book was written, forcing millions into subjugation and slavery. Pipes also reviews 20 areas, including the former Soviet Union, where Muslims account for less than a quarter of the population but are asserting themselves. Pipes includes an extensive 50-plus page look at the means that the oil boom provided to promote Islam. Oil is behind the political importance of Saudi Arabia, and the Iranian Revolution, for example.

But Pipes also concludes that an Islamic revival dependant on oil constitutes a mirage, for the cash that oil provides cannot last forever. This, Pipes predicts, will leave the Islamic world with a choice that has become increasingly urgent--to adapt and come to terms with global Westernization, or to accept apologetics, introversion and poverty.

This broad treatment remains as helpful in understanding current events as when it was written nearly 20 years ago. Alyssa A. Lappen

Rating:
Summary: Pipes is a genius!
Review: I am reading as much by Daniel Pipes as I can.

He is a genius, a historian and a person out to save America from the dangers of Saudi Arabian terrorists.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarship with a Bias
Review: IN THE PATH OF GOD is a reprinting of the 1983 edition that came out during the Reagan era. Following its initial publication reviewers noted its hostility towards Islam and Muslims. One such reviewer observed in the Washington Post (12/11/83) that Pipes reveals "a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims [...] he professes respect for Muslims, but is frequently contemptuous of them." The writer went on to add that Pipes "is swayed by the writings of anti-Muslim writers," and that his book "is marred by exaggerations, inconsistencies, and evidence of hostility to the subject."

Not much of the content has changed in this latest publication. The important distinction that Pipes has more recently been drawing between "Islamism" (the political ideology) and "Islam" (the religion) is more or less absent from this work.

The shortcomings of the earlier work remain. One can't help to wonder whether anyone could write about Judaism or Christianity with the same liberty that Pipes gives himself with Islam. His arguments, unfortunately, are deceptively convincing on the surface, until further scrutiny.

What is one to make, for example, of Pipes's categorization of Westerners who have a favorable view of Islam as either those "who feel ill at ease in the West," or as "apologists...[who] promote Islam for profit" (pp. 14-15)? This is a sweeping generalization, and it is unfortunate that a self-proclaimed intellectual of his stature can resort to such a gross and binary simplification. His train of thought implies that no one can be an adherent of mainstream Western values and at the same time admire Islam. This mindset would presume that such respectable scholars of Islam, such as Charles Butterworth, Michael Sells, and Jane McAullife, to name a few, who often speak highly of Islam, are either achieving a personal gain by doing so or are "ill at ease" in their own societies.

The book is also marred by numerous errors. But the problem is not so much the errors as it is the kinds of errors one finds, and what they show us about the ideological nature of his scholarship. For example, in chapter 4 Pipes claims that "Muhammad abrogated the treaty [with the pagans] and captured Mecca." This is false. Any historian will tell you that it was the Koreish (then the pagan enemies of Muhammad) who launched an offensive onslaught against an ally of the Prophet, thus abrogating the treaty. Pipes's claim that Muhammad abrogated the treaty to capture Mecca presents the Prophet of Islam as a crude liar and conniving leader.

His ignorance of Muslim theology comes out when he claims the Koran falsely implies the Trinity to consist of Mary, Jesus, and the Father (p. 78). The Koran only presents a scenario of Judgment Day in which Jesus will deny having called people to worship him and Mary (5:116). Infact, there was a sect known as the Maryamites in early history that actually worshipped Mary. Had Pipes examined the verse, its commentaries, and the Near and Middle Eastern historical and theological context in which the Koran emerged, he would not have put forth the argument so hastily. But perhaps that would be making too much of a demand on someone already intent on showing us how the Sacred Text of Islam has it all wrong.

Some of his historical mistakes are simply embarrassing, coming as they are from someone who holds a PhD in Islamic history. "They [Shi'i Muslims] recognize as valid," he writes, "only the third of those first four caliphs, Ali ibn Abi Talib." Ali ibn Abi Talib was the fourth caliph, not the third, a fact that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Islamic history should be familiar with. To use Bernard Lewis's words in another context, "This would be rather like putting the English Civil War before the Normal Conquest. Although no doubt irrelevant to the main issue, this procedure would not inspire confidence in the writer's ability to evaluate work on English [read: Islamic ] history" (p109, Islam and the West).

Athough IN THE PATH OF GOD has been widely praised by non-specialists since its publication 20 years ago, it has hardly been used by academics who are actually familiar with the territory, and who are able to detect the politically charged nature of his writing, which presents itself as disinterested scholarship but which actually distorts the subject. Only those experts who share the one-sided political leanings of this author utilize and recommend his works.


Rating:
Summary: a wonderful book, better then the newer one
Review: Mr. Pipes, eminent scholear and great inflamicist of Islam most recently completed his book 'militant Islam reaches America' but this book is by far more scholaraly and gives a more complete picture of the Islamic world. This read has several shortcomings. Mr. Pipes attempts to survey many Islamic countries where Islam is the vast majority or the near majority. In these short paragraph length studies he does not touch on one subject that needs to be touched on, namely the fate of minorites in Muslim societies. He does not explain the ethnic cleansing carried out in many Muslim countries that helped create a homogeneity within nations like Turkey. Nevertheless he provides a wonderful appendix that includes a list of Muslim populations of countries throughout the world. What one will realize when reading this list is that the number of minority populations in a Muslim country is directly proportional to the time the country has been Muslim. I recommend this book wholeheartedly in light of our need to understand and critique the Islamic world. A good companion to 'The Rage and the Pride'.