Salafism as a social movement with Dr Aaron Rock-Singer (2022-10-13) ​

0:00:03 hello everyone and welcome to blogging
0:00:05 theology today I am delighted to talk to
0:00:08 Dr Aaron Roth singer you're most welcome
0:00:10 sir
0:00:11 thanks so much for having me I'm really
0:00:13 looking forward to this conversation me
0:00:15 too of those who don't know Aaron is a
0:00:18 social and intellectual historian of the
0:00:20 modern Middle East and Islam
0:00:23 he received a ba from the University of
0:00:25 Pennsylvania his M Phil from Saint
0:00:28 Anthony College University of Oxford and
0:00:31 his PhD from Princeton's Department of
0:00:33 near Eastern studies
0:00:35 he's currently an assistant professor of
0:00:37 Middle East history at the University of
0:00:40 Wisconsin Madison
0:00:42 and as a historian of the modern Middle
0:00:45 East he has a research focus on 20th
0:00:49 century Islamic movements and states and
0:00:53 he's the author of The recently
0:00:54 published book entitled in the shade of
0:00:58 the Sunnah salafi piety in the 20th
0:01:01 century Middle East this is published by
0:01:04 the University of California press
0:01:07 so what is your new book about Aaron and
0:01:10 why did you feel the need to write it at
0:01:13 this time well Paul thanks so much for
0:01:15 having me it's really a pleasure to be
0:01:16 here and I really value this kind of
0:01:19 public engagement and you know my hope
0:01:21 for the book is that it will have
0:01:23 um an audience outside of Academia now
0:01:27 this is a book about the emergence of
0:01:29 salafism as a social movement generally
0:01:31 sales fees are studied in terms of
0:01:34 either their political engagement or a
0:01:37 specific subset of the movement some of
0:01:39 the jihadism and the engagement in
0:01:41 political violence but the problem is
0:01:43 that this doesn't actually represent the
0:01:45 vast majority of cellaces the vast
0:01:47 majority of salaries globally are
0:01:48 quietest um even though
0:01:51 um political discourse about salafism
0:01:52 tends to portray exactly the opposite
0:01:55 and so what I was interested in is
0:01:57 really getting to the core of how
0:01:59 salaphism works as a social movement how
0:02:02 it emerged how it shapes Society
0:02:04 um and how it is also shaped by the
0:02:07 society from which it has emerged and to
0:02:10 do so I decided to focus on what might
0:02:13 seem at first to be a somewhat
0:02:15 unorthodox approach namely salafi's
0:02:18 social practice the daily practices by
0:02:20 which salafis distinguish themselves not
0:02:22 simply from other Muslims but not simply
0:02:25 from non-muslims but also from other
0:02:26 Muslims these internal distinctions
0:02:29 among Muslims being really important
0:02:31 here and so to do so I trace in the book
0:02:34 the origin of four social practices that
0:02:37 become distinctly selfies one of which
0:02:40 is praying in shoes which was
0:02:42 essentially revived by salafis in the
0:02:45 mid 1940s though it had significant
0:02:48 precedent and early Islamic history a
0:02:51 second is a fist-length beard combined
0:02:53 with a trend mustache a third is
0:02:55 observance again of the prohibition
0:02:57 against letting one's robes hang down
0:02:59 they may spell and finally separation of
0:03:03 men and women to respond to the threat
0:03:07 of gender mixing or ipsilat of ginseng
0:03:10 and I basically show in the book
0:03:13 a when these practices emerge and B how
0:03:17 they emerge uh and when and how are
0:03:20 really interesting for understanding
0:03:22 solipsism because Solace are often
0:03:24 depicted as being rather humorless and
0:03:28 literalist interpreters of the Islamic
0:03:30 tradition
0:03:31 um that there's this assumption that
0:03:33 telethis go to the Quran and Sunnah and
0:03:36 then ta-da they the position is fully
0:03:38 formed now that's simply not true and
0:03:41 what I show in the book is that over the
0:03:44 course of the period between roughly
0:03:45 1930 the 1930s and 1980s selfies come to
0:03:48 articulate these distinct practices but
0:03:51 that at the beginning of this period
0:03:52 they had not yet articulated these
0:03:55 distinct practices that engage direct
0:03:57 engagement with the Quran and the Sunnah
0:04:00 if we're going to call it literalism
0:04:02 then we need to acknowledge that
0:04:04 literalism is actually an interpretive
0:04:05 approach that has many potential
0:04:07 manifestations and that solipsism
0:04:09 represents one outcome of that or one
0:04:12 potential outcome of that now the second
0:04:15 reason I came to study salafism is
0:04:18 because I was in some sense frustrated
0:04:20 by
0:04:21 somewhat unidimensional depictions of
0:04:24 them that salafis were understood
0:04:27 essentially to be religious automatons
0:04:29 and I didn't find this to be a
0:04:31 particularly persuasive depiction
0:04:33 because salafis you know it feels funny
0:04:36 to have to say this but some of these
0:04:37 like any other Pious or you know
0:04:39 non-religious folks are people and are
0:04:42 shaped by the world around them in
0:04:44 exactly the same way that everyone that
0:04:46 people oh this is this is news folks
0:04:48 we've heard it first on belonging
0:04:49 theology from Professor
0:04:53 just on that point I love picking up
0:04:56 books this is why the book uh uh the
0:04:57 making of a salafi Muslim woman policy
0:05:00 conversion by Annabelle Inga who's not a
0:05:02 Muslim uh I stress she's a researcher at
0:05:04 King's College I was a university here
0:05:06 in London and I mentioned this positive
0:05:09 conversion uh it's about many converts
0:05:11 to salafi understandings of Islam who
0:05:13 are women and uh many many otherwise
0:05:16 which are these women are Highly
0:05:17 Educated people and it's a process uh
0:05:20 over time and they're thoughtful and
0:05:22 considered and I'd often know a great
0:05:24 deal about their particular
0:05:25 understanding of Islam so just to back
0:05:27 up the there's women to choosing to
0:05:30 converge to a salafi understanding of
0:05:32 Islam so just to give a more dimensional
0:05:34 perspective to what you're saying yep
0:05:36 yeah absolutely and you know the goal
0:05:38 here
0:05:41 are the ideas
0:05:42 and conceptions of particular social
0:05:45 practices emerged but how they emerged
0:05:48 and how they were shaped by competing
0:05:50 ideological influences I think it's very
0:05:52 important to take seriously the cellacy
0:05:55 effort to derive all law from the Quran
0:05:58 and the Sunnah I think it's very
0:06:00 important to take seriously the fact
0:06:03 that this represents a broader
0:06:04 self-understanding
0:06:06 but if we are going to understand
0:06:09 salafism as a 20th century social
0:06:11 movement which I think there's a very
0:06:12 good case for doing so if we are going
0:06:15 to really bring out the richness of the
0:06:18 world from which solopism emerges and
0:06:21 within which it develops then we need to
0:06:23 think more broadly about how salafis are
0:06:26 shaped not merely by their ideological
0:06:30 competitors whether islamists or secular
0:06:33 nationalists but how also how they're
0:06:35 shaped by models of what it means to be
0:06:38 a citizen transmitted by States
0:06:41 particularly this idea that the citizen
0:06:43 in order to be a proper and faithful
0:06:46 citizen must regulate their body in
0:06:49 certain ways that they must appear in a
0:06:53 certain fashion because that kind of
0:06:55 appearance is not just about
0:06:56 distinguishing people but it's about
0:06:58 signaling a broader ethical Allegiance
0:07:00 and so that's what I went looking for I
0:07:04 wanted to explain how cellophane works
0:07:06 as a project in a manner that would be
0:07:09 both recognizable to those who identify
0:07:11 as salafi themselves but also a
0:07:14 conversation that academics could have
0:07:17 um about how this movement works and how
0:07:20 it has developed because the only way we
0:07:23 are going to understand these questions
0:07:25 is essentially pushing past these
0:07:28 platitudes I think yeah absolutely it
0:07:31 sounds very worthwhile project just to
0:07:32 give a very brief uh paragraph uh from
0:07:36 an article by Abu Khadijah he's a
0:07:38 leading salafi writer and teacher in the
0:07:40 UK and he he's written an article which
0:07:42 one can read online called what is a
0:07:44 salafi and it has many many paragraphs
0:07:47 to it I was going to read a few brief
0:07:48 sentences from the very start and he
0:07:50 says and this is a self-definition of a
0:07:52 leading salafi uh in the UK to be a
0:07:55 salafi he writes means adhering to the
0:07:58 Creed methodology and the way of life of
0:08:01 the salaf the pious predecessors these
0:08:03 are the like the Disciples of Jesus if
0:08:06 you like immigration uh although they're
0:08:08 not quite the earliest of the uh Salif
0:08:11 was the generation of the prophet and
0:08:13 his companions then after them came The
0:08:15 Virtuous three generations of believers
0:08:18 who held fast to the Sunnah of the
0:08:20 prophet and his companions so it's not
0:08:22 just the Quran it's the those three
0:08:24 generations as well the person who
0:08:26 understands this path correctly he
0:08:28 writes follows is exactly without
0:08:31 introducing anything into it nor
0:08:34 deviating from it is a salafi quote
0:08:37 unquote and that's when article entitled
0:08:39 what is salafism and what does he call
0:08:42 to by Abu Khadija do you just Google
0:08:45 that and a very long article gives many
0:08:47 many points and subsections and details
0:08:49 of what you must believe to be a salafi
0:08:52 so their perception is very much that
0:08:54 they are the authentic original
0:08:56 inheritors of that first practice and
0:08:59 the other thing that we discussed this
0:09:01 briefly Aaron before before we started
0:09:02 the recording is the misunderstanding
0:09:05 and you briefly alluded to actually of
0:09:06 in the west particularly in Europe of
0:09:09 salafi's uh equating with terrorists or
0:09:12 violence Jihad this is virtually this is
0:09:15 false because the overwhelming majority
0:09:17 in Britain in Germany and everywhere and
0:09:19 in Egypt your special area are quietest
0:09:22 politically in other words they're not
0:09:23 even involved in politics let alone uh
0:09:26 violent uh overthrows okay and they
0:09:28 usually quite have a very uh austere
0:09:30 doctrine of obedience to the state uh to
0:09:34 the governing authorities to the Islamic
0:09:35 rule is even when they behave unjustly
0:09:38 it's only in very particular exceptions
0:09:40 can the removal of Islamic ruler be even
0:09:43 thought about let alone routinely
0:09:45 considered so that the reality is quite
0:09:48 different from the Western perception
0:09:49 very often yeah and I actually think one
0:09:52 of the there's recently um Thomas
0:09:54 hakehamer's wonderful book about abdall
0:09:57 Azam came out and for my purposes one of
0:10:00 the juiciest anecdotes was essentially a
0:10:02 description of the Jihadi movement in
0:10:05 1980s Afghanistan of which salafis were
0:10:07 a distinct minority
0:10:09 um and the basic gist of the story that
0:10:12 heck Hammer was telling because was that
0:10:14 essentially these credit these
0:10:17 theological and legal disagreements that
0:10:20 celesties had with non-selfies
0:10:23 um based on both you know handbally
0:10:26 Theology and a particular approach to
0:10:28 emphasizing the first three generations
0:10:30 of the Muslim Community actually got
0:10:32 them in some social hot water in 1980s
0:10:35 Afghanistan because they were a minority
0:10:36 within that broader majority now since
0:10:40 then the Salah fijihadi approach has
0:10:42 taken over the Jihadi movement more
0:10:44 broadly but it was that wasn't all the
0:10:46 case and as you rightly know
0:10:48 the vast majority of selfies are quiet
0:10:50 and so in some sense it's a very strange
0:10:54 reversal that the the minority of
0:10:58 celestees who are celebrity jihadis end
0:11:01 up being represented as the majority
0:11:04 um of the group
0:11:05 um I I do want to come back to that
0:11:07 self-deficit definition by Abu Khadijah
0:11:11 because I think it's actually a very
0:11:13 really brings out something fundamental
0:11:16 about how celices see their projects
0:11:19 namely that this is a project of
0:11:21 reproducing of
0:11:24 intense Fidelity to the model of the
0:11:27 Salah of the first three generations of
0:11:30 the pious ancestors and of not deviating
0:11:33 from it of not embracing any form of
0:11:35 innovation and I
0:11:38 I think that
0:11:40 in terms of how I I think there's good
0:11:42 reason to think that salafis understand
0:11:45 themselves in exactly this way uh that
0:11:48 this is a self-understanding that is
0:11:50 sincere
0:11:51 um it is backed up by serious textual
0:11:53 study
0:11:55 um an intensive project of textual
0:11:57 reconstruction of the seventh century
0:12:01 um in order to best approximate the way
0:12:04 that Muslims lived during this early
0:12:07 period
0:12:08 but here's the thing right
0:12:10 selfies are no more capable than any
0:12:14 other human being of avoiding the
0:12:17 intellectual dynamics of their time of
0:12:20 stepping outside of History
0:12:22 um and so to say that salafis don't
0:12:25 engage in Vida
0:12:27 this is a position of course within the
0:12:30 Islamic tradition it's an interpretive
0:12:31 position it's a position of pcopy thick
0:12:35 um but it's
0:12:37 it's in some sense an insufficient
0:12:39 position if we're analyzing salaphism as
0:12:42 a project because
0:12:45 we can't none of us can escape the
0:12:48 worlds from which we come even to the
0:12:50 extent that we rebel against those
0:12:51 worlds that we push back against those
0:12:54 worlds we can't escape those worlds we
0:12:56 are always reacting to those worlds and
0:12:58 so if we think about salafism in the
0:13:01 Middle East as a project that
0:13:02 essentially emerges
0:13:04 um
0:13:05 in the shadow of both Colonial modernity
0:13:09 and the overwhelming power of first
0:13:14 um Colonial States before that the
0:13:17 ottoman Egyptian state in the Egyptian
0:13:18 context and then postcolonial secular
0:13:21 nationalist States
0:13:24 they are reacting to this they are
0:13:26 shaped by this like you know to take the
0:13:28 example of Egypt like other Egyptians
0:13:30 they assist they attend Egyptian Public
0:13:33 Schools they often work in Egyptian
0:13:35 State institutions which have their own
0:13:37 internal Logics which have their own
0:13:39 ways of seeing the world and
0:13:43 it simply is to place salafis within
0:13:45 history to say they are reacting to that
0:13:48 world from which they come and
0:13:52 what they're doing is not reproducing
0:13:54 the 7th Century what they're doing is
0:13:57 not sidestepping the inevitable reality
0:14:00 that
0:14:02 one is necessarily shaped by the changes
0:14:05 of History whether one likes it or not
0:14:07 um but rather what they're doing is
0:14:09 engaging in an active reconstruction of
0:14:13 the 7th Century in order to mount a
0:14:17 particular project in the 20th and 21st
0:14:20 centuries and to give you an example of
0:14:22 how a term that is very old can have new
0:14:25 meaning
0:14:26 um and this is really something I focus
0:14:28 on in chapter two of my book the concept
0:14:32 of tahit right this is about as basic an
0:14:34 Islamic concept as there is the concept
0:14:38 that we can trace back to the earliest
0:14:40 of Islamic history is a concept that
0:14:44 within the theological tradition uh
0:14:47 particularly figures such as IBN tymia
0:14:50 is very clearly not simply about belief
0:14:54 but also about practice as colebunzel
0:14:56 has pointed out this is not a question
0:14:57 of monotheism this is a question of
0:14:59 monology of orienting all of One on the
0:15:02 actions towards the worship of one God
0:15:06 so we see salafis in the 20th century
0:15:09 saying we are proponents of tahit we
0:15:13 live by talcit yes this question is what
0:15:16 does that mean there are certainly just
0:15:18 I just put for viewers who may not
0:15:21 realize the the idea that tauhed is the
0:15:23 central concept or concern of of of
0:15:25 faith is not exclusive to salafis of
0:15:28 course no not at all the mainstream is
0:15:30 still in Tradition but also a sense to
0:15:31 that yeah so there's an element of
0:15:33 making distinctions here rather than a
0:15:35 completely new phenomena this is a
0:15:37 particular understanding of that perhaps
0:15:39 so you're going to explain more detail
0:15:41 but this is a shared belief of all
0:15:43 Muslims and it is taught by the Quran
0:15:45 endlessly tauhid is a central concept
0:15:47 the Oneness and unity of God as opposed
0:15:50 to associating partners and distorted
0:15:53 understandings of God held by other
0:15:54 Traditions is emphasized constantly as
0:15:57 the central belief of Islam amongst
0:16:00 virtually all Muslims I suppose yeah and
0:16:02 so this is part of what's so curious
0:16:04 about about the decision as a matter of
0:16:08 differentiation from other Muslims to
0:16:10 emphasize tahit to this degree and the
0:16:13 question is so why do sellers do that
0:16:15 and what does the cellacy conception of
0:16:18 Tahiti include uh and the question of
0:16:22 why they do it is because what we are
0:16:24 talking about is an internal Muslim
0:16:26 battle that the Supreme isn't that that
0:16:30 salacis are the only ones who uphold hey
0:16:34 to all Muslims do this rather the claim
0:16:36 is that their understanding of tahit is
0:16:39 the correct one correct but we need to
0:16:42 also think beyond the strict categories
0:16:45 of taheda as a category because what
0:16:48 does it mean
0:16:49 in a country that is such as Egypt that
0:16:52 is majority Muslim vastly you know has a
0:16:55 vast Muslim majority to say we uphold
0:16:59 what does that even mean and here we
0:17:02 also have to think about the fact that
0:17:04 tahit asserting tahit in some sense is a
0:17:07 claim of sovereignty it's a claim of who
0:17:10 should control how we think how we Act
0:17:13 and there
0:17:15 in the background are the claims to
0:17:18 sovereignty of the modern Egyptian state
0:17:20 in the background are the is the
0:17:23 dominance of secular nationalism in the
0:17:26 20th century
0:17:27 and so if we really want to understand
0:17:29 what it means for Celsius to invoke
0:17:31 God's Oneness
0:17:34 we first of course look to Islamic
0:17:36 history into what that concept means we
0:17:38 look horizontally to other Muslims to
0:17:40 understand the way in which this fits
0:17:42 within this broader Islamic context but
0:17:44 we also look to ideological developments
0:17:47 that have nothing to do with the Islamic
0:17:50 tradition and part of what's so intro
0:17:52 what was so interesting to me in this
0:17:53 book is when I went looking for how
0:17:56 salaphies in 20th century Egypt came to
0:17:59 articulate a particular understanding of
0:18:02 how hate that was premised on not just
0:18:05 belief but action it's that they relied
0:18:09 on a category that superficially has
0:18:12 real basis in the Islamic scholarly
0:18:14 tradition but they were using a
0:18:16 different concept namely they're using
0:18:18 the concept of ADA or custom
0:18:20 and you know the customs of the prophet
0:18:23 and the observance of the customs of the
0:18:27 Prophet as one of the key aspects of
0:18:30 teleheat now looking at this is was very
0:18:33 interesting because right one
0:18:35 historically we have a real distinction
0:18:38 between acts of worship
0:18:41 Mutual transaction
0:18:43 and a variety um
0:18:46 of local practices over which there is
0:18:49 no that are simply lost as or they're
0:18:52 just custom
0:18:53 um and the Islamic tradition has no
0:18:55 particular statement over them and for
0:18:56 example one of those uh one of those
0:18:59 categories is clothing right that
0:19:02 Muslims throughout history have dressed
0:19:03 in widely different ways that broadly
0:19:07 speaking there is a concern with
0:19:09 imitation uh of non-muslims
0:19:12 um but that there are and there's an
0:19:14 incredible diversity not just
0:19:16 historically but also today of how
0:19:17 Muslims
0:19:19 um now
0:19:20 what's interesting is in the 1930s and
0:19:22 40s in Egypt and also Beyond Egypt
0:19:24 salafisa come to incorporate a very
0:19:28 different definition of
0:19:31 it's a definition drawn from secular
0:19:33 nationalism in which custom is a central
0:19:36 the the effacement of previous Customs
0:19:40 the the replacement with new Customs are
0:19:43 an essential means of mobilizing the
0:19:47 social collective in pursuit of a
0:19:49 particular project
0:19:51 this is and thus custom becomes part of
0:19:55 the salathy conception of God's Oneness
0:20:00 now if we're just thinking about the
0:20:03 Islamic legal tradition this makes very
0:20:05 little sense and if we're even thinking
0:20:07 about the Hadith Corpus this makes very
0:20:09 little sense but if we situate salaphism
0:20:12 within it within the context of 20th
0:20:16 century ideological contestation
0:20:17 particularly with secular nationalism
0:20:19 then the connections become clear
0:20:22 can you give examples just to make it
0:20:25 clearer what we're talking about
0:20:26 specifically do you mentioned clothing
0:20:28 uh perhaps um so
0:20:33 if we're talking about well let me let
0:20:35 me take a step back
0:20:37 for salafis to be a salafi is to be seen
0:20:41 as a selfie that there's a real concern
0:20:44 with appearance now one might think of
0:20:48 concern with appearance as superficial
0:20:51 I think that's missing that's missing
0:20:54 something crucial
0:20:55 um I mean there's this classic
0:20:56 distinction between shells and cores and
0:20:59 I I think that that is missing the point
0:21:02 here one might also say oh well the
0:21:05 reason salafis care about beards is
0:21:07 because secular nationalists care about
0:21:09 beards and it is and islamists care
0:21:12 about beards and they all have their own
0:21:15 interpretations of what a what proper
0:21:16 facial hair looks like interestingly in
0:21:19 the case of the Muslim Brotherhood and
0:21:22 Egypt's leading some of the organization
0:21:26 the Hadith report that each site in
0:21:29 support of their respective
0:21:30 interpretations of beards is actually
0:21:33 the same Hadith report it's about IBN
0:21:35 Omar trimming his beard to a minimum of
0:21:38 to the minimum of the kapta of the Fist
0:21:41 um prior to going on umra
0:21:44 but the crucial point is so why are they
0:21:47 fighting over facial hair why are they
0:21:49 competing over facial hair why do people
0:21:52 care about facial hair and it's
0:21:55 certainly the case that if we look at
0:21:56 Islamic history facial hair is a key
0:21:59 site for masculinity generally and
0:22:03 religious masculinity in
0:22:05 particularly imitating of course there's
0:22:07 a great passion to imitate to the
0:22:09 prophet it is like you know even down to
0:22:11 uh you know my new details of behavior
0:22:15 and hygiene and so on appearance uh
0:22:18 beard uh there is this desire to emulate
0:22:21 the most uh you know the most
0:22:23 extraordinary man who ever lived and
0:22:24 indeed the God says so in the Quran that
0:22:26 we should yeah there's a perfect example
0:22:28 so there's an understandable motivation
0:22:30 uh to to do that if one is uh very
0:22:33 committed to uh Islam to imitate the
0:22:36 prophet indeed that's the point of the
0:22:37 religion to some extent yeah yeah and so
0:22:40 this is so
0:22:42 there is this goal of imitating the
0:22:45 prophet but
0:22:47 essentially all of these legal debates
0:22:50 over how long a beard should be
0:22:53 are more or less theoretical debates we
0:22:57 don't find scholars in the pre-modern
0:22:59 period engage in Furious argumentation
0:23:01 of whether the beard is a minimum of a
0:23:04 fist or not we you know there's this
0:23:06 wonderful debate in the mid-1990s
0:23:08 between Abdel Aziz bin baz and Mohamed
0:23:11 to heavyweight the misalatism on exactly
0:23:15 this topic and the question is so why is
0:23:18 everyone so concerned with fears
0:23:20 not
0:23:22 the argument isn't that beards are novel
0:23:24 but what is it about the 20th century
0:23:26 that leads salafis and for that matter
0:23:29 nonsalities to argue over beards and the
0:23:33 answer is and this comes back to your
0:23:35 point about this commitment to emulating
0:23:38 the Prophet Muhammad
0:23:41 19th and 20th Pro Century projects of
0:23:45 forming Sound Citizens in Egypt and
0:23:47 elsewhere make a basic assumption
0:23:50 namely that what you look like
0:23:54 reflects a broader ethical commitment
0:23:57 reflects a broader moral project and so
0:24:02 there in that context it's not not that
0:24:06 that a beard
0:24:08 acquires significance at all but rather
0:24:11 it takes on a new significance it takes
0:24:13 on an expanded significance of
0:24:16 representing one's commitment to
0:24:19 emulating the prophet Muhammad that
0:24:23 the ideal of emulating the profit was
0:24:25 always there this is something we can
0:24:27 trace well back into Islamic history as
0:24:30 well you know it's a core Assumption of
0:24:32 the Sunnah as an authoritative set of
0:24:35 texts
0:24:37 but the question is
0:24:39 why does it become then a site of
0:24:41 contestation and in interestingly enough
0:24:44 right it becomes a site of contestation
0:24:46 not merely between Islamic movements and
0:24:50 their secular counterparts but among
0:24:52 Islamic movements or even a site of
0:24:54 contestation Within salacism and the
0:24:58 only way to my mind to really understand
0:25:00 why it becomes such a heated site of
0:25:02 contestation is this 19th 20th century
0:25:05 linkage between the ethics and
0:25:07 appearance
0:25:09 this assumption that how you look
0:25:11 suggests or requires or it
0:25:16 suggests it underscores a broader
0:25:18 ethical commitment to a particular
0:25:20 project that's why it's it's so
0:25:22 important to sell us these how they look
0:25:25 far from being a superficial matter it
0:25:28 is actually intrinsically tied to what
0:25:31 it means to be a Pious Muslim to what it
0:25:34 means to orient oneself to a particular
0:25:37 religio ethical project I'm just
0:25:39 wondering in the context you mentioned
0:25:41 the 19th and 20th Century of course
0:25:42 these are the the centuries of
0:25:44 colonialism when the West Begins to be
0:25:46 in the form of the British and then the
0:25:47 French before them and other countries
0:25:50 and other parts of Africa Italy and
0:25:51 libyans are were actively colonizing and
0:25:54 imposing their quote-unquote Superior
0:25:56 civilization on the Muslim World in
0:25:59 North Africa and everywhere else I think
0:26:01 as well
0:26:02 um and so the the idea of a Muslim
0:26:04 identity in the face of such hegemony
0:26:06 military cultural political hegemony
0:26:09 might then become an issue because do we
0:26:11 emulate the clean-shaven Europeans uh
0:26:15 who address in a certain way with their
0:26:17 with their trousers and their suits or
0:26:19 their armor whatever all do we emulate
0:26:22 another model either the model of the
0:26:23 Prophet so I'm wondering how much that
0:26:26 contested
0:26:27 definition of what it is just to be in
0:26:29 the modern world in North Africa uh fed
0:26:32 into these debates in terms of the the
0:26:34 context yeah well I think it I I think
0:26:37 the colonial period is central for
0:26:39 understanding the emergence of salatism
0:26:41 because chronologically speaking that's
0:26:43 when salafism as a movement emerges
0:26:46 um and it's absolutely the case that one
0:26:48 has also these crossovers between
0:26:52 Colonial Elites and in their fashion
0:26:55 styles and local Egyptians or you know
0:26:58 local folks elsewhere
0:27:01 I think in some sense what is
0:27:04 striking about the story of social
0:27:06 practice and salafism is that these
0:27:09 debates don't for the most part break
0:27:11 out until the post-colonial period and
0:27:16 I have a few ideas as to why this is if
0:27:19 we think about the colonial period the
0:27:22 binaries the dividing line is pretty
0:27:24 clear right you have Muslims and
0:27:26 non-muslims you have foreign occupiers
0:27:28 who are not Muslim who are Christian who
0:27:30 are supporting also not just colonizing
0:27:32 but are enabling a broader Christian
0:27:35 proselytization Missionary project
0:27:38 primarily Protestant but also Catholic
0:27:41 um you of course have a minority of
0:27:43 Coptic Christians in Egypt but the
0:27:45 majority of Egyptians are Muslims so in
0:27:46 some sense we have a clear divide and
0:27:49 even the Divide between Western and
0:27:51 Eastern Christianity is quite clear in
0:27:54 this context
0:27:56 we shift to the postcolonial period
0:27:59 which in Egypt is 1952 and suddenly
0:28:03 there's a new challenge right because
0:28:05 historically you know in the colonial
0:28:07 context
0:28:08 appeals to Islamic piety as a bulwark
0:28:12 against Colonial influence as a means of
0:28:17 signaling one's identity as a Muslim is
0:28:19 a relatively straightforward there
0:28:21 because it's not resembling it's taking
0:28:25 on one model and it's not resembling the
0:28:27 foreign occupiers the challenge in the
0:28:30 postcolonial period is that suddenly
0:28:33 the vast majority of the folks who are
0:28:34 competing to claim a mantle of
0:28:36 authenticity for some religiously based
0:28:38 authenticity for others not
0:28:40 um are are almost all Muslims and so
0:28:43 therefore there needs to be a process of
0:28:45 self-differentiation among Muslims and
0:28:48 this is the context right in which this
0:28:50 appeal to tell Hayes takes on its
0:28:53 particular fail if there needs to be a
0:28:54 way for some Islamic movements to
0:28:57 distinguish themselves from other
0:28:58 Islamic movements uh now part of what's
0:29:01 so fascinating about this move and then
0:29:04 about the sources that are cited in from
0:29:06 the Hadith Corpus that are cited in
0:29:09 support of this move is that the
0:29:11 question of social distinction is very
0:29:13 much one that was present in 7th Century
0:29:15 Arabia as well right this is we have
0:29:18 many of these citations for bodily
0:29:21 practice are premised on distinguishing
0:29:23 Muslims from non-muslims
0:29:25 um yes Christians or austrians Etc
0:29:28 one of the examples uh you mentioned in
0:29:31 your book is uh the the idea of the
0:29:34 salafi's emphasizing not wearing one's
0:29:36 clothes or one's robes uh beneath uh
0:29:39 that cover the ankles yeah and and of
0:29:41 course this is a
0:29:43 um found in many authentic Hadith uh
0:29:45 which forbid wearing one's clothes below
0:29:47 the ankles bukhari for example and it's
0:29:49 interesting in looking I refresh my
0:29:51 memory looking at some of these the
0:29:52 Deeds again today
0:29:54 um sometimes the reasons are given in
0:29:56 sahi Hadid there's one particular sahi
0:29:57 Hadith which where the Prophet says uh
0:30:00 obviously not to do this practice
0:30:01 because it is a kind of showing off yeah
0:30:05 it's not just uh let us look different
0:30:08 from the others the non-believers but
0:30:10 also it symbolizes a spiritually
0:30:12 negative practice I hubris or showing
0:30:15 awful pride and so there's a sense that
0:30:18 these clothes signify a negative
0:30:21 spiritual spiritual practice or
0:30:23 disposition of the heart and that's why
0:30:25 it was uh prohibited for Muslims and and
0:30:27 salafi is having this uh needs to go
0:30:30 back to the original practice and not
0:30:31 just a salafis by the way uh it the uh
0:30:34 the abandies uh that many of these Salif
0:30:37 salafi tropes that you mentioned in your
0:30:39 book are actually not exclusive to
0:30:41 salafis uh I was speaking to a hanafi
0:30:44 scholar here in the UK earlier and he he
0:30:47 mentioned the idea bandhes now these are
0:30:48 missionary movements particularly the
0:30:50 tabliki jamaat uh actually these are not
0:30:53 salafis of course these are hanafi well
0:30:55 the hanafi uh people but they also had
0:30:58 these same uh uh uh emphasis on dressing
0:31:03 a certain way with a beard in a certain
0:31:04 way so it's so it seems to be not just
0:31:07 an exclusive salafi practice but uh is
0:31:10 found in at least one other huge event
0:31:12 is arguably the largest missionary
0:31:14 Islamic movement in the world that they
0:31:16 also had this concern uh it would say
0:31:19 yeah yeah and part of what's interesting
0:31:22 is actually one of the things one finds
0:31:24 is a translation of geobandi texts from
0:31:27 Urdu into Arabic in Saudi Arabia in the
0:31:30 70s and 80s particularly in the debate
0:31:33 over the theory
0:31:35 um
0:31:37 what I what I would say is in some sense
0:31:43 it is certainly Isbell is a really
0:31:45 interesting case because one does have
0:31:48 this other value to it of
0:31:51 um
0:31:52 not communicating arrogance
0:31:56 um and but part but here again this is
0:31:58 what gets so what's so striking about
0:32:01 solidism is and this underscores this
0:32:04 concern with visibility this profound
0:32:06 concern with visibility is that in the
0:32:09 mud Hub tradition
0:32:10 there's essentially there is an
0:32:12 acceptance of this as a principle this
0:32:15 concern that Isabel signifies something
0:32:18 that is really improper um and unmuslim
0:32:21 and so therefore one should observe the
0:32:23 prohibition but also an acknowledgment
0:32:27 that sometimes that
0:32:29 long robes don't have to necessarily
0:32:33 communicate arrogance right there are
0:32:36 scenarios in which long robes are just
0:32:38 long ropes that it's nothing more than a
0:32:41 piece of cloth yeah
0:32:44 if you take the inner meaning of this
0:32:46 practice uh and retain that so we
0:32:49 mustn't be arrogant we mustn't wear
0:32:50 clothes where we show off uh and if the
0:32:54 cultural reference is no longer there as
0:32:55 it was in the 7th Century I could see
0:32:57 how one could argue that I can see that
0:32:59 salafis who have a very a more literal
0:33:02 understanding of imitating the prophet
0:33:03 precisely as he was uh what would
0:33:06 perhaps acknowledge that but still say
0:33:08 we're going to follow the prophet's
0:33:10 example because he's the prophet we're
0:33:11 gonna we're gonna be like him so he
0:33:13 might even transcend just the meaning of
0:33:15 that but also uh the the actual clothing
0:33:18 itself but so here's here's what was so
0:33:21 fascinating to me about tracing these
0:33:23 practices because what has a trajectory
0:33:25 of practices where salafi's adopt a
0:33:27 variety of practices and in doing so
0:33:31 just not only entrench a particular
0:33:34 project of emulating a profit but also
0:33:37 entrenched themselves in their societies
0:33:41 but then there's a practice that
0:33:42 essentially drops off namely praying
0:33:44 issues which is a practice that has a
0:33:46 clear basis in the Hadith not of not
0:33:50 simply someone such as IBN Omar doing it
0:33:53 which is our site our main Citation for
0:33:56 the beard but of the problem of having
0:33:58 himself doing it we know historically
0:34:01 that praying in shoes drops off within
0:34:03 the first few hundred years of Islamic
0:34:05 history as part of the broader
0:34:07 transition of the Islamic project to
0:34:10 becoming an urban
0:34:12 um one in which there was a concern of
0:34:15 essentially dirtying very nice mosque
0:34:18 carpets so we know that with the
0:34:20 exception of the Hundley School praying
0:34:22 in shoes drops off and then on Thursday
0:34:25 night in the 40s and 50s were private
0:34:27 and for about 15 years they argue that
0:34:31 this is a really Central prize project
0:34:32 that this is crucial to emulating
0:34:35 Muhammad and so forth
0:34:36 then Abdul no sir comes to power and
0:34:39 having spent the time to read every
0:34:42 single page of every single issue of
0:34:44 ansarasinda's Publications from really
0:34:48 1930 to 1990 1936 to 1995. well what was
0:34:54 very striking was that up until
0:34:57 basically 1989 they didn't talk about
0:35:00 praying issues it quarterly dropped off
0:35:03 the agenda
0:35:05 um and there's a very easy explanation
0:35:08 for that in the 50s namely that under a
0:35:11 brutal authoritarian secular nationalist
0:35:14 ruler you don't want to do anything that
0:35:16 will draw attention to you
0:35:19 um and so beards are dangerous there and
0:35:21 praying and shoes is dangerous there too
0:35:23 but what's striking is that when the
0:35:26 debate comes back and again in the 40s
0:35:28 and 50s
0:35:29 it is depicted by Leading members of
0:35:31 ansara Sunnah as being essential to what
0:35:34 it means to emulate
0:35:36 when the debate comes back what is so
0:35:38 striking is that
0:35:40 sell a few Scholars say yes the practice
0:35:44 is permissible some argue that it is
0:35:48 praiseworthy but no one is arguing that
0:35:51 it's required anymore and instead
0:35:54 they're actually coming up with a
0:35:56 variety of what are essentially
0:35:58 extratextual justifications which anyone
0:36:02 first in the mud Hub tradition is much
0:36:05 more familiar with but for solid fees
0:36:07 everything has to be based on the Quran
0:36:08 and Sunnah all these extra textual
0:36:10 justifications of why even though this
0:36:14 is a praiseworthy practice if it leads
0:36:17 to any kind of social Discord which
0:36:20 insofar as it was a practice of you know
0:36:23 very clearly identify you know
0:36:26 establishing Lines within mosques of who
0:36:28 is south and who is not invariably would
0:36:31 produce some level of social Discord
0:36:34 um that but the argument if this
0:36:35 produces some level of social Discord or
0:36:38 if this leads to the mosque carpets
0:36:42 being dirtied
0:36:43 um then it shouldn't be done then it
0:36:45 should be avoided and what's so striking
0:36:48 about this argument is that this is the
0:36:50 argument that in the 40s and 50s those
0:36:52 who were arguing against praying in
0:36:54 shoes were making and now that argument
0:36:57 has essentially been Incorporated by
0:36:59 salafis to justify
0:37:01 not engaging in a practice that half a
0:37:05 century earlier they identified
0:37:07 unequivocally as a crucial and Central
0:37:10 practice
0:37:12 um necessary to emulate Muhammad
0:37:14 interesting I didn't know about the the
0:37:16 shoes until until I looked it up I mean
0:37:18 in a local mosque here regions part
0:37:20 musculine is huge mosque we just got
0:37:22 some very nice new carpets put down and
0:37:24 I know no one would be happy if you
0:37:25 walked on those pockets
0:37:27 they would be instantly uh ejected and
0:37:30 uh and rightly so but uh but no if it
0:37:33 was the Sunnah but on the other hand
0:37:34 there are parks in a Hyde Park a
0:37:36 Speaker's Corner where uh Muslims pray
0:37:38 outside and they do wear their shoes so
0:37:40 it seems there seems to be some uh and
0:37:42 rightly so because you know it can be
0:37:44 very cold and so on
0:37:46 um so there's flexibility it seems yeah
0:37:48 and there's also of course a whole
0:37:50 conversation legally speaking of whether
0:37:52 one can pray in socks
0:37:54 um
0:37:54 but yeah it's you know what's
0:37:57 interesting to me
0:37:59 what's interesting to me is when salafis
0:38:02 are inconsistent uh and that's not
0:38:04 because
0:38:05 as a scholar I find it particularly
0:38:08 interesting
0:38:10 um to catch people any consistencies
0:38:12 because that's a not the point of what
0:38:13 I'm doing and B that's missing the point
0:38:15 of why inconsistency is interesting it's
0:38:18 precisely the tensions or
0:38:19 inconsistencies in any idea any
0:38:21 ideological project religious or
0:38:24 non-religious any world-making project
0:38:27 um it's those inconsistencies that
0:38:29 really help us understand the internal
0:38:31 tensions help us understand the
0:38:33 historical developments help us really
0:38:36 cast light on the ways in which these
0:38:38 projects are negotiated in
0:38:41 very intricate and intimate way I I
0:38:46 intimate relation to social life
0:38:49 um that there's a discourse that every
0:38:52 project has secular nationalism
0:38:55 of representing a pure ideal
0:38:59 and of then telling history in a way
0:39:03 that reproduces that pure ideal uh and
0:39:06 this is something we see done across the
0:39:08 board but if we want to understand how
0:39:10 these movements work how they are the
0:39:12 projects of human beings living in the
0:39:14 here and now then we've got to focus on
0:39:16 the tensions and that's what's so fun to
0:39:18 me and so intellectually productive to
0:39:20 me about looking at how practices Wax
0:39:23 and Wane because it really gets us into
0:39:25 this question of how is this a human
0:39:27 endeavor
0:39:29 okay are there any other examples I know
0:39:31 you mentioned some other ones in in your
0:39:33 book uh about uh the relationship
0:39:35 between men and women uh for example
0:39:38 so selfies seek to separate men and
0:39:41 women in the book I used I used the term
0:39:44 gender segregation it can also be called
0:39:46 gender separation
0:39:48 um this is a commitment to separating
0:39:50 men and women in public space and the
0:39:53 question is where that project comes
0:39:57 from
0:39:57 um
0:39:58 now if we look back at Islamic history
0:40:00 it is clearly the case that we have the
0:40:03 separation of men and women in a mosque
0:40:06 setting
0:40:07 but beyond that the primary concern of
0:40:11 the pre-modern Islamic legal tradition
0:40:13 is
0:40:15 illicit sexual relations namely Zuna
0:40:18 that men and women will have intercourse
0:40:21 out of wedlock and preventing the
0:40:24 regulating the spaces that might lead to
0:40:28 that occurring
0:40:30 um there is not a broader concern with
0:40:34 regulating public space in a manner that
0:40:36 separates men and women
0:40:39 um
0:40:40 so the question then becomes where that
0:40:43 project
0:40:44 comes from and indeed I actually when I
0:40:47 was writing my first book about the rise
0:40:48 of the Islamic Revival in 1970s Egypt
0:40:51 and I came across the term gender mixing
0:40:54 is
0:40:56 arguing strongly against it I thought to
0:40:58 myself huh where does that come from
0:41:00 yeah maybe salatis have been doing this
0:41:01 for a long time and I then traced back
0:41:04 to the 20s and 30s and find nothing of
0:41:06 the sort and indeed find that up until
0:41:09 really the 19th through the 1960s
0:41:14 the primary argument that salafis were
0:41:17 making about female modesty was an
0:41:20 individual centered concept that the
0:41:22 idea that women should dress themselves
0:41:25 modestly that they should act modestly
0:41:28 for that matter also that men should act
0:41:31 modestly and this is most notably
0:41:34 present in two key texts from this
0:41:37 period
0:41:38 um
0:41:39 one of them by
0:41:41 muhammadini and the other by namat
0:41:44 sitski a leading female Egyptian celesty
0:41:47 who was very high up in ansara
0:41:51 and what was so interesting here is that
0:41:53 asiki wrote a book that was actually
0:41:55 originally serialized in on Sarasota's
0:41:58 magazine
0:41:59 um it was called the taparos or
0:42:00 flaunting it refers to the chronic
0:42:03 prohibition against swanting and then it
0:42:06 was published as a book in as a pamphlet
0:42:08 in the early 70s
0:42:10 so we have this whole discourse of
0:42:12 tabarish
0:42:13 which allows many subscribes to which
0:42:15 sitski subscribes to which is about
0:42:17 individual female conduct
0:42:19 over the course of the 1970s salafi is
0:42:23 not merely in Egypt but also in areas as
0:42:26 varied as Yemen Kuwait Saudi Arabia come
0:42:29 to subscribe to an understanding of
0:42:31 tabarish that
0:42:33 identifies it with
0:42:36 separated with a Prohibition against
0:42:38 gender mixing so what is mean again so
0:42:40 if you just repeat it yeah the idea of
0:42:43 women flaunting flaunting okay
0:42:50 it's exclusively connected to women
0:42:53 flaunting you're saying rather than
0:42:55 correct
0:42:57 um and so
0:42:59 in the late 70s even baz who at this
0:43:03 point actually
0:43:04 is writing in ansara sunnah's magazine
0:43:07 at tell head so I promised the last time
0:43:10 I did just a case of viewers
0:43:13 was a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar he
0:43:16 was also the grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia
0:43:19 um until his death in 1999 so this is
0:43:22 not just some random scholar he's the
0:43:24 the top guy in Saudi Arabia and the
0:43:26 leader of the salafi uh understanding if
0:43:28 you like for some years from 1993 until
0:43:31 1999 just so I get that on record yeah
0:43:34 so even Bears is a huge figure within
0:43:36 the celebrity movement uh if we're
0:43:38 talking about the big three of 20th
0:43:41 century salafism we're talking about IBN
0:43:43 Bears also a Saudi scholar and
0:43:47 muhammadini originally Albanian who kind
0:43:50 of emigrated a Perpetual immigrate yeah
0:43:52 from Damascus to Jordan to Saudi Arabia
0:43:56 back from Saudi Arabia and so forth
0:43:58 um so Kevin Bess in the pages of ansara
0:44:01 sunnah's Journal takes the position
0:44:05 that gender mixing is forbidden by Islam
0:44:08 but what's so interesting is how he
0:44:11 takes that position which reveals
0:44:12 something about solipsism intellectual
0:44:14 knowledge because there are of course
0:44:17 plenty of Precedence from the previous
0:44:19 two decades in Saudi Arabia of how to
0:44:21 argue against gender mixing and we see
0:44:24 this in the work of Mohammed bin Ibrahim
0:44:26 really the doyen of the Saudi religious
0:44:29 establishment even more powerful than
0:44:31 ibnbaz in his day who dies in 69. and
0:44:36 Muhammad and Ibrahim makes the argument
0:44:38 that this leads this is a classic case
0:44:41 of damning the pretexts of sin that it's
0:44:44 not that women and men being in the same
0:44:46 place is forbidden on its own but the
0:44:49 problem is what it invariably leads to
0:44:52 um it there invariably leads to foreign
0:44:55 to sex appetite of marriage to zinna and
0:44:58 therefore it's forbidden and this is a
0:45:01 pretty standard mod Hub based argument
0:45:03 against
0:45:05 um
0:45:06 men and women being in safe space
0:45:09 but even best as a Solace he can't make
0:45:11 this argument or it's harder for him to
0:45:13 make this argument because the cell if
0:45:15 the interpretive approach argues that
0:45:16 everything is coming from the Quran so
0:45:19 therefore one needs proof texts from the
0:45:21 Quran of the Sunnah
0:45:23 so even Bez makes the argument and I you
0:45:27 know I was stunned the first time I read
0:45:28 this
0:45:29 um
0:45:30 he writes so flaunting
0:45:34 the prohibition against flaunting means
0:45:37 that prohibition against mixing
0:45:40 this is a totally new view of the
0:45:44 meaning of Tavares one that would have
0:45:46 made zero sense to either sitski or
0:45:49 albeit but it's a position that IBN best
0:45:51 takes first in ansar Center's Journal
0:45:54 then he takes it in the Journal of the
0:45:57 Islamic University of Medina
0:46:00 this is all sort of mid to late 70s by
0:46:03 the early 80s
0:46:05 he's dropped this argument he's he's
0:46:07 still arguing that separating men and
0:46:10 women is required he's still arguing
0:46:12 that tabaros is forbidden but he's no
0:46:16 longer arguing that tabarish means
0:46:18 mixing that the prohibition against
0:46:20 wanting is a pro against prohibition
0:46:22 against mixing
0:46:24 um and this
0:46:25 underscores the fact that
0:46:28 this project of separating men and women
0:46:30 is a novel one that for salaries it's
0:46:33 not just that the project isn't adopted
0:46:35 as a non-negotiable principle until the
0:46:38 1970s it's also that
0:46:41 there is this very challenging position
0:46:43 because
0:46:45 they don't have a citation from the
0:46:48 Quran or Sunnah that easily lends itself
0:46:50 to a direct proof text approach what
0:46:54 they might have I mean this is obviously
0:46:56 as we can discuss this another time but
0:46:58 there is there are different roles in in
0:47:01 Islam uh as mandated in the Quran you
0:47:03 know for example a woman's role appears
0:47:05 to be uh more to be at home and to pray
0:47:08 at home although the idea to the same
0:47:10 she can't you know don't prevent the
0:47:11 women were going to the mop the messages
0:47:12 if they want whenever there's the center
0:47:13 of gravity is very much at home and the
0:47:16 man is expected is expected uh to go to
0:47:19 the mosque and work and so on so you
0:47:22 have this sense of different roles and
0:47:24 therefore different social spaces
0:47:25 inhabited by the genders and that leads
0:47:28 over time to the sense of
0:47:31 um what you call in your book
0:47:32 segregation but the difference is the
0:47:34 the separation of sexes in social life
0:47:37 um so there's not as if there's an
0:47:39 explicit command absolutely but
0:47:42 nevertheless there's a little logic of
0:47:43 it leading to that position uh over time
0:47:47 and they've developed over time upon
0:47:49 reflection on the Quran and the Sunnah
0:47:51 and the implications of that for social
0:47:53 relations
0:47:56 one could absolutely make the case that
0:48:00 you just made
0:48:01 but one could also make a variety of
0:48:03 other cases of of
0:48:06 men and women and this is a case that
0:48:09 non-cellacies made of men and women
0:48:12 interacting in public space in Pious
0:48:15 fashion as being something very
0:48:18 beneficial to the mafaha to the common
0:48:21 good as it being an intellectual
0:48:24 political social and economic driver for
0:48:27 Muslim majority countries now what's re
0:48:30 so it's not that gender
0:48:33 separation or segregation is Unthinkable
0:48:35 in terms of the Islamic tradition I mean
0:48:39 particularly we have this Association
0:48:40 from at least the 9th century on
0:48:43 um of female sexuality with the concern
0:48:46 with stithna and this is where that
0:48:48 Marianne Katz has done um really
0:48:50 fascinating scholarship
0:48:52 but there's still a leap there because
0:48:55 what this is doing here is not simply
0:48:57 saying that the question of zinna can be
0:49:01 regulated by expectations of individual
0:49:05 conduct
0:49:07 um
0:49:07 it's not simply saying that there is a
0:49:10 particular gendered vision of public and
0:49:13 private space which I agree with you one
0:49:15 can certainly argue in terms of Islamic
0:49:17 history that there are normative
0:49:19 expectations of men and women
0:49:21 respectively that different
0:49:22 what this is arguing is that there needs
0:49:25 to be a state-sponsored project of
0:49:29 active separation I see and this is a
0:49:33 project that
0:49:35 simply by virtue of being a project of
0:49:38 the modern state is very hard to
0:49:40 conceive of as a project of a pre-modern
0:49:42 state but also that buy salafi's own
0:49:46 interpretive approach is very very hard
0:49:48 to justify
0:49:50 um and as a result what we see is that
0:49:53 even bazen you know other selfies when
0:49:55 dealing with this question later
0:49:57 essentially try to skirt around the text
0:50:00 issue issue which is not something they
0:50:02 they commonly do
0:50:05 um I think even best here is in some
0:50:07 sense in a particularly challenging
0:50:09 position because on the one hand he
0:50:12 works as a Celestial minority in some
0:50:14 sense within a wahadi-hundly majority in
0:50:17 Saudi Arabia where gender separation is
0:50:20 already institutionalized
0:50:22 and on the other hand he has on his
0:50:24 other flank he has Al Benny who's not
0:50:27 just arguing that gender separation
0:50:29 isn't required but also arguing that the
0:50:31 nikob isn't required and so I wouldn't
0:50:34 be surprised if they're structurally
0:50:36 there was some pressure to come up with
0:50:39 a way to argue for gender separation
0:50:42 um but to me beyond the particular
0:50:45 position of if and best what's so
0:50:46 striking is that
0:50:48 as with all these practices if this
0:50:51 project was essentially self-explanatory
0:50:54 if it essentially came directly from the
0:50:57 Quran and the Sunnah
0:50:58 what took 40 years
0:51:02 um that tells us that this is a story
0:51:04 rather of a rather long interpretive
0:51:06 project that is shaped by questions of
0:51:10 women's presence in public space of
0:51:13 female sexuality of ideological
0:51:16 contestation and of the power of the
0:51:17 modern state that are very much
0:51:21 questions of the 20th century yeah I
0:51:23 think the existence of the modern nation
0:51:25 state which in the Muslim world is a
0:51:28 legacy of colonialism of course there
0:51:29 used to be a the Ottoman Empire and so
0:51:31 on and now they've got these State
0:51:32 alerts numerous stateless with numerous
0:51:35 rulers this is a uh arguably not
0:51:37 consistent with the normative Sunni
0:51:39 position of having a single ruler and so
0:51:41 on but this creates a unique set of
0:51:43 modern uh challenges where you have a a
0:51:45 powerful centralized State top-down
0:51:48 governance with European type laws that
0:51:51 regulate and so on and as a legacy of
0:51:54 colonialism Egypt obviously is one
0:51:55 example but there are many others and
0:51:57 and this creates new challenges you know
0:52:00 you just islamize this European nations
0:52:03 day or do you look to previous social
0:52:05 patterns or more devolved where you have
0:52:08 courts and other patterns of
0:52:09 jurisprudence and and Regulation and
0:52:12 it's it's a real um uh challenge uh so I
0:52:16 think you're you're highlighting some
0:52:17 some very interesting examples though
0:52:19 and you know this challenge is
0:52:22 part of what looking at these challenges
0:52:24 allows us to do is to think about the
0:52:28 ways in which selfies
0:52:31 are not simply comparable with other
0:52:34 Muslims in a given country in the Middle
0:52:37 East but
0:52:39 also comparable with broader shifts of
0:52:41 religiosity globally during this period
0:52:44 that
0:52:45 if we think about the 20th century
0:52:48 particularly the period after 1970 we
0:52:51 see religious revivals globally yeah
0:52:55 and we see efforts to reorient daily
0:52:58 life around religion everywhere from
0:53:02 sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America to
0:53:05 the United States in the Middle East we
0:53:07 see it among Jews and Christians as well
0:53:09 one has a Coptic Revival and Egypt one
0:53:12 has a religious scientist Revival in
0:53:14 Israel and so
0:53:16 then we can essentially start to ask
0:53:18 this question of
0:53:20 yeah to say yes there is something
0:53:22 distinct about The Celestine project
0:53:25 absolutely
0:53:26 there is an active reconstruction of
0:53:28 early Islamic history there are a set of
0:53:31 internal Egyptian internal Muslim
0:53:33 questions that the celesty project seeks
0:53:36 to tackle but what are the broader
0:53:39 environmental conditions that are
0:53:41 shaping these similarities globally and
0:53:43 this is one of the things that global
0:53:45 history helps us do to think about two
0:53:48 sets of questions when we notice
0:53:50 similar phenomena globally to think
0:53:52 about two sets of questions explained
0:53:54 one is are these similar phenomena that
0:53:57 essentially the product of similar in
0:54:00 similar environmental conditions
0:54:02 and B are are they the product of
0:54:05 linkages that there's a growing
0:54:06 awareness or growing interaction uh
0:54:09 among different groups which leads them
0:54:11 to dress for example dress in similar
0:54:14 ways and one of the explanations uh by
0:54:16 the global story and Christopher Bailey
0:54:18 for why we see increasingly similar
0:54:20 forms of National Dress over the course
0:54:22 of the uh long 19th
0:54:25 um and then into the early 20th century
0:54:27 is precisely this these interactions
0:54:29 where nations are distinguishing
0:54:31 themselves from other nations so
0:54:33 everyone has to have a national dress
0:54:35 and so there is some indigenous part of
0:54:38 that National Heritage that is then
0:54:39 utilized in the service of constituting
0:54:42 a national address
0:54:44 um and so this is really interesting
0:54:46 here to think about solarism and I to my
0:54:50 mind the
0:54:52 best parallel is in some sense May in
0:54:56 the political climate of today seem the
0:54:58 most unlikely um the best parallel is
0:55:01 actually ultra-orthodox Judaism that's
0:55:03 interesting yeah yes I I know yeah I
0:55:06 thought of that myself I I haven't
0:55:07 bumped into some uh so-called
0:55:09 ultra-orthodox no they call themselves
0:55:11 that Jews uh that there was there's a
0:55:14 certain whiff is selfie about them if I
0:55:17 can put it that way and there's this
0:55:19 wonderful article
0:55:21 um from the early 90s in the Jewish
0:55:23 studies Journal tradition
0:55:25 um written by a scholar
0:55:27 um at essentially the flagship of modern
0:55:30 Orthodox Judaism
0:55:31 um the academic Flagship of modern
0:55:33 Orthodox Judaism in the United States by
0:55:36 the name of Haim solovich whose Father
0:55:38 Joseph solidcik was a major modern
0:55:41 Orthodox figure in the 20th century
0:55:43 United States uh and what's so
0:55:45 interesting about what the younger solar
0:55:48 electric rights is he essentially traces
0:55:49 this process by which the pious
0:55:52 religious practices of earlier
0:55:55 generation of Orthodox and
0:55:57 ultra-orthodox Jews in the United States
0:56:01 the expectations of piety changed they
0:56:04 became much more precise much more
0:56:06 exacting
0:56:07 the concern with how to perform a
0:56:11 particular religious obligation properly
0:56:13 was no longer you do it as you were
0:56:16 taught to do it by your parents or by
0:56:18 your community and more
0:56:20 what's the precise amount of food that
0:56:23 is required to fulfill this commandment
0:56:24 let's measure the food make sure we've
0:56:27 got the precise amount a level of
0:56:30 profound Precision that
0:56:33 a is simply not reflective of historical
0:56:38 practice among even Jews even half of
0:56:40 the century earlier but B it really
0:56:43 underscores both the spread of print and
0:56:45 the normative power of modern science in
0:56:48 this context and I think we see when we
0:56:50 think of these two cases side by side
0:56:53 um
0:56:54 the similarity between the two in terms
0:56:56 of this focus on text and precision the
0:57:00 spread of print in this context the
0:57:03 broader cultural shift in which Pious
0:57:06 individuals of a certain time look back
0:57:09 at their parents and grandparents
0:57:12 generation and say looking back at how
0:57:14 they observed religion they were lacks
0:57:16 they didn't they they thought they were
0:57:19 doing it right but they were not doing
0:57:21 it right because we know how to do it
0:57:23 right now because we are looking at
0:57:25 these sources we are measuring and so
0:57:27 forth
0:57:28 that's a really fascinating
0:57:30 transformation and it's not a
0:57:32 transformation I think salaries are
0:57:34 often
0:57:35 described as particularly focused on
0:57:38 Precision in ritual practice
0:57:41 um and
0:57:43 I think there's two problems with this
0:57:45 as a description one is that they're not
0:57:48 the only Muslims who are concerned with
0:57:50 questions of precision rituals
0:57:53 but but secondly
0:57:56 it's the fact that this concern with
0:57:58 Precision is arguably a concern external
0:58:01 to any of these religious positions in
0:58:04 the way that it is manifested now it's
0:58:06 not that people didn't seek to
0:58:08 studiously perform their religious
0:58:10 obligations in a previous generation but
0:58:13 there are a set of normative ideas of
0:58:15 what Precision means in the 20th century
0:58:18 that simply wouldn't have made a lot of
0:58:20 sense in the 19th or 18th centuries
0:58:23 um I don't know I just tend to think
0:58:25 that a lot a lot of this uh renewed
0:58:27 focus on precision and action
0:58:30 you mentioned them Jews in America and
0:58:32 so on Maya has something to do I don't
0:58:34 have any scholarship to hand to back
0:58:36 this up with the increase entrenchment
0:58:38 of secularization and the hegemony of
0:58:41 Western liberalism uh and and the
0:58:44 breakdown of religious communities and
0:58:46 this kind of cultural reinforcement it
0:58:48 was just part of the air you breathe but
0:58:49 now uh that that's been diluted or
0:58:52 destroyed completely and so to to
0:58:55 practice your faith now you have to make
0:58:56 that extra effort to actually articulate
0:58:59 it to actually practice it and what does
0:59:01 that mean what you've got to understand
0:59:02 what that means and so there is a it's
0:59:05 almost like a consequence of the
0:59:07 breakdown of traditional uh religiosity
0:59:10 in the United States and obviously in
0:59:13 Western Europe as well leading to the
0:59:15 rediscovery and reassertion of faith in
0:59:18 this precise way in that context so I I
0:59:21 might say it as partly if reaction
0:59:23 against the decline of Faith uh in the
0:59:25 west and and the way to because you
0:59:27 can't just rely on the world around you
0:59:29 anymore you've got to make an effort and
0:59:32 make an effort means you've got to
0:59:33 actually know what you're doing and
0:59:34 Define it and clarify it and so on
0:59:36 leading to that Precision so in that
0:59:38 sense it's actually a healthy reaction
0:59:40 against secularization it's a attempt of
0:59:43 religion to reassert itself in a world
0:59:45 which has taken away the support that we
0:59:48 had just five minutes ago in historical
0:59:50 time
0:59:51 yeah I think that's true and true and I
0:59:53 have something too that namely that it's
0:59:55 a reaction to the fact that modern
0:59:58 States carrying particular ideological
1:00:01 projects whatever those ideological
1:00:02 projects may be politicized daily life
1:00:05 that they seek to regulate daily
1:00:06 practice and so that it should be
1:00:08 entirely unsurprising to us that Islamic
1:00:12 movements or piety movement from other
1:00:15 faiths seek to claim daily practice and
1:00:18 this isn't the normal narrative we get
1:00:21 and this is a narrative from the
1:00:23 perspective of those who essentially
1:00:25 take secularization as a normative given
1:00:27 the narrative we get is that these
1:00:29 groups are politicizing daily life
1:00:31 but the reality is that's not actually
1:00:33 what's happening here these groups are
1:00:35 not politicizing daily they are reacting
1:00:37 to the politicization of daily life and
1:00:40 doing so on terms set by the state
1:00:45 um and so in some sense
1:00:47 one doesn't have to take a position on
1:00:51 which which model of daily life one
1:00:54 desires to Simply note that structurally
1:00:56 this is the dynamic at play here and
1:00:59 that we can't understand piety movements
1:01:01 unless we understand the ways in which
1:01:03 states politicize daily life from the
1:01:04 get-go yeah okay I just finally what uh
1:01:08 in terms of a takeaway from your book
1:01:11 um which is uh the shade of the Sunnah
1:01:14 salafi party in the 20th in 20th Century
1:01:16 Middle East what would you in in brief
1:01:19 uh share with us as viewers uh as a
1:01:23 takeaway from this book uh just to
1:01:24 remember what it might be and and
1:01:26 obviously I'll put a link to it in the
1:01:27 description below if you want to read it
1:01:28 if they want to read it for themselves
1:01:30 this is a book about the emergence of
1:01:32 salafism as a social movement and about
1:01:34 the ways in which salafi is sick
1:01:37 to recapture the model of 7th Century
1:01:41 Medina in the 20th century in ways that
1:01:44 are deeply deeply shaped by the
1:01:46 questions and concerns of the 20th
1:01:48 century so if you want to read a book
1:01:50 that really places selfies in the world
1:01:53 from which they've emerged and the world
1:01:55 that they continue to work to shape this
1:01:58 could be a book that'd be very
1:01:59 interesting uh well that's a that's a
1:02:01 great summary uh well indeed thank you
1:02:03 uh very much indeed uh Dr Aaron roxinger
1:02:07 for a fascinating
1:02:08 um discussion I must say we could could
1:02:09 have gone on for hours but uh and uh but
1:02:12 very very interesting indeed and as I'll
1:02:14 put a link to uh the book below if
1:02:16 people want to follow up um it's just
1:02:18 recently was recently published this
1:02:20 year I think yeah in May 2022. gosh it
1:02:23 says hot off the press even so awesome
1:02:24 yeah exactly yeah okay well thank you
1:02:27 very much again for your time sir and uh
1:02:29 thank you until next time