Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change

Abstract

In a previous work entitled The Crisis ofModem Islam, Bassam Tibi argues for the understanding of religion in the social process as it is incorporated into reality as a social fact. Toward this goal, his methodology allows no place for religion as theology and metaphysics. He draws from both Durkheim’s sociology of religion and Bloch’s philosophy of religion but, as he explains, his intention is directed toward international relations and toward Islam as a cultural system. This intention evokes some disappointment, for despite the fact that Tibi sees international relations and the Islamic culture system as interdependent, one must conclude that his understanding of the great philosophical tradition of Islam is reductionist. In the book under review, Tibi defines his central thesis as follows: “[Religion consists of sociocultural symbols that convey a conception of reality and construe a plan for it. These symbols are concerned with reality but do not correspond to it, as is the case, for example, with symbols of nature” (p. 8). This is by no means an original thesis. Tibi’s new mentor is the bourgeois anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who in the late 1960s wrote an essay on “Religion as a Cultural System,” in which he defines religion in the following terms: Religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in man by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods of motivations seem uniquely realistic. Tibi’s focus is, therefore, on the production of meaning in Muslim societies. In order to interpret the religious and cultural reality of contemporary Muslim societies, Tibi takes on a number of challenges. In the first chapter, he attempts to define Islam by using sociological criteria. Since he dismisses the spiritual side of religion, Tibi’s endeavor emerges as yet another reductionist approach to Islam. On the basis of this approach, he ventures to discuss what he calls “the basic cultural patterns for the perception of change in Islam.” He contends that Muslims from all walks of life have constantly striven to bring their actions into harmony with the message of the Qur’an and, consequently, the need to reinterpret the Qur’an has always arisen. Tibi maintains that Muslim societies are traditional and thus incompatible with modern needs and conditions. He claims that there is an important ...