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The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Nikki R. Keddie
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

Extract

Within the Muslim world, revolts with a religious aspect or ideology have had a long history. My current comparative research on this topic indicates that these revolts, common in the early centuries of Islam, became less frequent thereafter. These revolts may generally be characterized as either “left” sectarian or “orthodox” revivalist. The latter revived after circa 1700. It is part of my thesis to see three phases to these modern revivalist revolts and to say that all three phases were, in different ways, tied to interaction with the West, although this was far from being their only cause. These three phases were the pre-colonial phase, early resistance to colonialism, and the recent Islamic revival. The scope here covers the whole Muslim world, and the approach is comparative.

Type
Religion and Politics
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1994

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References

1 See, for example, al-hulk, Nizam, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings (London: Routledge, and Paul, Kegan, 2nd ed., 1978), 190238, stressing heretical movements and revolts.Google Scholar

2 Lapidus, Ira M., “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 6:4 (1975), 364Google Scholar; Zubaida, Sami, Islam, the People and the State (London: Routledge, 1989), 4142Google Scholar; Ayubi, Nazih N., Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; Sivan, Emmanuel, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 175Google Scholar, with citations to two articles by M. Arkoun. I quote and discuss this point and its literature at greater length in “Islam, Politics, and Revolt: Some Unorthodox Considerations,” in Keddie, Nikki R., Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1994).Google Scholar

3 Any kind of continuity not caused by immediate factors could be characterized as essentialist, even though few people carry their thoughts to this logical extreme. The views that do carry anti-essentialism to its logical conclusion are primarily those called “occasionalism” in the early modern West, which were put forth earlier by a school of conservative Ash'arite theologians in Islam who said that there are no secondary causes and that God recreates the world every moment. The late Ash'arites said that apparent worldly causation and order were due only to God's mercy to humanity and that God could equally create a completely new world, or none at all, at each moment. This is a theory designed to combat all natural law and, some say, to mirror arbitrary rule; and it is in some ways ironic that the strongest anti-essentialists of our day are mostly on the left, although they have either not thought of the implications of a totally anti-essentialist position or would renounce such totality.

4 Watt, W. Montgomery, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Idem, “The Significance of the Early Stages of Imami Shi'ism,” in Religion and Politics in Iran, Keddie, Nikki R., ed., 2132Google Scholar; and Keddie, Nikki R. and Cole, Juan R., “Introduction” to Shi'ism and Social Protest, Cole, and Keddie, , eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

5 Interview with Mansour Ehsan, based on his University of Oregon Ph.D dissertation.

6 Some of these movements are discussed comparatively in the following works, which I have used with profit: Voll, John Obert, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Levtzion, Nehemia and Voll, John, Eighteenth Century Renewal and Reform in Islam (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, especially relevant articles in the book by Levtizan Voll and Louis Brenner. See also Roff's, William arguments in the book he edited, The Political Economy of Meaning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). I have also benefited from travel to, and discussions in, Senegal, Nigeria, North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, England, and France.Google Scholar

7 See Goldstone, Jack, “East and West on the Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey and Ming China”Google Scholar (unpublished paper); Fletcher, Joseph, “Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modem Period, 1500–1800,Journal of Turkish Studies, 9 (1985), 3757.Google Scholar

8 There is some controversy among scholars about neo-Sufism. See O'Fahey, R. S., Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990), ch. 1.Google Scholar

9 Voll, John Obert, “Linking Groups in the Networks of Eighteenth-Century Revivalist Scholars,” in Voll, Levtzion and, eds., Eighteenth Century RenewalGoogle Scholar; and AlJuhany, Uwaidah Metaireek, “The History of Najd Prior to the Wahhabis; A Study of Social, Political and Religious Conditions in Najd during Three Centuries Preceding the Wahhabi Reform Movement” (Seattle: Ph.D dissertation, History Department, University of Washington, 1983).Google Scholar

10 Watt, W. Montgomery, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953)Google Scholar, and Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956)Google Scholar; and Rodinson, Maxime, Mohammed, Carter, Anne, trans. (New York: Vanguard Books, 1974). This interpretation has been opposed by various recent scholars, including Patricia Crone and Michael Cook.Google Scholar

11 In addition to the Juhany dissertation in note 3, above, see especially Rentz, George W., “Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703/4–1792) and the Beginning of Unitarian Empire in Arabia” (Berkeley, Ph.D dissertation. History Department, University of California, 1948)Google Scholar; El-Shaafy, Muhammad S. M., “The First Saudi State in Arabia” (Leeds, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 1967)Google Scholar. A vivid and instructive contemporary account is in Burckhardt, John Lewis, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831)Google Scholar. On Wahhabi doctrine, see Laoust, Henri, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmad b. Taimiva (Cairo: Institut Français d'archaeologie orientale, 1939)Google Scholar, Book III, ch. 2. For contemporary information, see Burkhardt, John Lewis, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1831)Google Scholar, and Niebuhr, M., Travels through Arabia and Other Countries of the East, Heron, Robert, trans. (Edinburgh, 1792).Google Scholar

12 Juhany, , “History of Najd.”Google Scholar first chapters. Goldstone, , “East and West”;Google ScholarFletcher, Joseph, “Integrative History.”Google Scholar

13 Cook, Michael, “The Expansion of the First Saudi State: The Case of Washm,” Bosworth, C. E. et al., eds., The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1989), 661700.Google Scholar

14 Dobbin, Christine, Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784–1847 (London, 1983)Google Scholar. Dobbin has also published related articles. The padris are also discussed in a number of Dutch sources and writings, as well as in a smaller number of English works that have been largely superseded by book, Dobbin's. O'Fahey, Enigmatic Saint, 188, n. 48, says: “Professor Anthony Johns of the Australian National University points out (personal communication) that no study of the religious writings generated by the movement has yet been made; this he hopes to undertake.”Google Scholar

15 See Keddie, Nikki R., “Islam and Society in Minangkabau and in the Middle East: Comparative Reflections,” Sojourn (Singapore), 2:1 (1987)Google Scholar; Abdullah, Taufik, “Adat and Islam: An Examination of Conflict in Minangkabau,” Indonesia, II (10) (Cornell University, 1966)Google Scholar; Bachtiar, Harsja W., “Negari Taram: A Minangkabau Village Community,” in Koentjariningrat, , ed., Villages in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Graves, Elizabeth, The Minangkabau Response to Dutch Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1981)Google Scholar; Benda-Beckman, F., Property and Social Continuity and Change in the Maintenance of Property Relations through Time in Minangkabau (The Hague: Martins Nijhoff, 1979)Google Scholar; Errington, Frederick K., Manners and Meaning in West Sumatra: The Social Context of Consciousness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Kahn, Joel S., Minangkabau Social Formations: Indonesian Peasant and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 In Imam Jombol's home town of Jombol, on the equator in Sumatra, I saw a fighting statue of him, in which he was characterized in a typical Malay lingua-franca mixture of words from Arabic, Persian, , and Dutch, , as the “Martyred National Hero.”Google Scholar

17 Among those who most convincingly tie jihad movements to socioeconomic conditions and trade, including slave trade, is Clarke, Peter B., West Africa and Islam (London: Edward Arnold, 1982)Google Scholar. Also suggestive of such ties is the dissertation (unfinished when I saw it in 1985) of B. Barry of Senegal, which was, however, when I saw it, in part problematic. Other useful works include Christelow, Allen, “Religious Protest and Dissent in Northern Nigeria: from Mandism to Quranic Integralism,Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 6:2 (1985), 375–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curtin, Philip C., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Idem, Jihad in West Africa: Early Phases and Interrelations in Mauritania and Senegal, Journal of African History, XII: 1 (1971), 1124Google Scholar; Crowder, Michael, West Africa under Colonial Rule (London: Hutchinson. 1968)Google Scholar; Riskett, M., The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of Shehu Usuman dan Fodio (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Last, D. M., The Sokoto Caliphate (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Levtzion, N., Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (Oxford, 1968Google Scholar); Lovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Robinson, David, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Trimingham, J. S., A History of Islam in West Africa (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Willis, J. R., ed., Studies in West African Islamic History (London, 1979)Google Scholar; and a significant body of jihad literature in translation, such as Muhammad, 'Abdullah ibn. Tazyin al-Waraqat, Riskett, M., trans. and ed. (Ibadan University Press, 1963). There are numerous translations and scholarly dissertations that are, unfortunately, available only in the universities of northern Nigeria. There is also a considerable local and Western article literature, of which the articles by Marilyn Waldman may be singled out.Google Scholar

18 Clarke, , West Africa, 80Google Scholar. Some similar themes are voiced in Barry's thesis and in Curtin, P., “Jihad in West Africa: Early Phases and Interrelations in Mauritania and Senegal,Journal of African History, XII (1971), 1124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Clarke, , West Africa, 87.Google Scholar

20 Riskett, , Sword, 66.Google Scholar

21 Mahadi, Abdullahi, “The State and the Economy: The Sagrauta System and its Role in Shaping the Economy of Kano with Particular Reference to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Ahmadu Bello University, Zarla, Nigeria, 1983). 1 read this in Zaria and do not know if it is available in the West, though a shortened published version may appear.Google Scholar

22 For a work stressing the revolutionary nature of the 'Urabi movement, see Cole, Juan R. I., Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's 'Urabi Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Among the useful works on nineteenth-century revival movements responding to Western conquest are

(1) on Shamyl: Baddeley, John F., The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908)Google Scholar; Haxthausen, Baron August von, The Tribes of the Caucasus (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855)Google Scholar; Moser, Louis, The Caucasus and Its People: With a Brief History of Their Wars;Google Scholar and Gammer, Moshe, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Checknia and Daghestan (London: Cass, 1994).Google Scholar

(2) South Asia: Ahmad, Qeyamuddin, The Wahabi Movement in India (Calcutta, 1966)Google Scholar; Datta, K. K., History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, I (Patna: Government of Bihar, 1957)Google Scholar; Hardy, Peter, The Muslims of British India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, W. W., The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen? (London: Trubner and Co., 1871)Google Scholar; Malik, Hafeez, Moslem Nationalism in India and Pakistan (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1963);Google Scholar

3. Col, Abd al-Qadir:. Azan, Paul, L'Emir Abd el Kader 1808–1883 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1925)Google Scholar; Danziger, Raphael, Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977).Google Scholar

There is a need of further study of these movements and the Senussis by historians with a knowledge of the requisite languages and of Islamist movements elsewhere.

24 Holt, Peter, The Mandist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins, Development and Overthrow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1977)Google Scholar; Peters, Rudolph, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979).Google Scholar

25 See Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 103.Google Scholar

26 See especially introduction, “From Afghani to Khomeini,” to the 1983 edition of Keddie, Nikki R., An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).Google Scholar

27 Keddie, Nikki R.. “Western Rule versus Western Values: Suggestions for a Comparative Study of Asian Intellectual History,Dipgenes, 26 (1959), 7196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 The literature on what those in the field generally call Islamism is extensive and growing. Among the most useful works are Ayubii, Nazih N., Political Islam (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; Arjomand, Said Amir, ed.. From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dabashi, Hamid, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Esposito, John L., ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Fischer, Michael M. J., Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983);Google ScholarAlavi, Fred Halliday and Hamza, eds., State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1988)Google Scholar; the entire issue on Islam and Politics,” Third World Quarterly, 10:2 (04 1988), 4731103Google Scholar; Kepel, Gilles. Le prophete et pharaoh: Les mouvements islamistes dans l'Egvpte contemporain (Paris: Seuil, 1990)Google Scholar, Khomeini, Imam, Islam and Revolution, Algar, Hamid, trans. (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Marty, Martin and Appleby, R. Scott, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed, 4 vols. to date (Chicago: University of Chicago, 19911993)Google Scholar; Mortimer, Edward, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York: Random House, 1982)Google Scholar; Rodinson, Maxime, L'Islam politique et croyance (Paris: Fayard, 1993)Google Scholar; Sivan, Emmanuel, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven. CT: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Zubaida, Sami, Islam, the People, and the State (London: Routledge, 1989).Google Scholar