Minaret of Freedom Weblog

Manufacturing Counter-mythology

[This is a preprint of a book review scheduled for publication in the Molinari Review in May 2021]

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera, Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2017, 358 pp., US$29.95. ISBN 161017095-4 (hb).

Myths are important. Actual myths play a fundamental role in a society in shaping its values. While they may be rooted in some historical event, their historical accuracy is of no significance compared to the role they play in giving a means of communicating the fundamental values of that society. As a youth I read books that informed me how Greek mythology played such a role in ancient Greek society. Similarly, a book entitled The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain could have been an exposition on how the enlightenment scholars who use Muslim Spain’s relative tolerance as an object lesson in trying to move Western thought in the direction of pluralism and liberty. It is not.

One might expect a book with this title could be using the word “myth” to mean a set of broadly accepted misconceptions (in the manner of the Washington Post’s series of “Five Myth About [whatever]”). Were that the case, one would hope that the book would make a careful attempt to correct errors in the popular understanding of specific historical events. Alas, Fernández-Morera’s book has a different objective. It is not some popular misunderstanding of history that is the target of his screed, but the work of respected experts.

To understand the author’s objective, one must first know the standard historical understanding of Spain under eight centuries of Muslims rule. There were changes in rulership over the centuries during which the degree of tolerance and coexistence had ups and downs as exhibited by centralized dynasties (Ummayad, Almoravid, Almohads) and local principalities. The mainstream historians view the period from the 8^th century liberation of most of Spain from the preceding three and a half centuries of occupation by the Visigoths until the final phase of reconquest by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 as one of a relatively tolerant society that, although by no means completely free of discrimination against its non-Muslim minorities, generally respected their right to life, labor, raise their families—certainly in comparison to the way that religious minorities were treated in other parts of Europe at that time. Further, historians note that what they call this “Convivencia” was a time of fruitful interactions among the groups that led to philosophical, scientific, and cultural development that not only contrasted to the “Dark Ages” in some other parts of Western Europe, but provided a positive influence in bringing Western Europe out of the Dark Ages in the later medieval period. The author aims to indict the academic establishment which, he believes, has blithely accepted the propaganda of Muslim apologists, for failing to see the period in question as manifesting what he professes to be an intolerance not only worse than western Europe of the time, but from which the Spanish Inquisition that followed was a relief.

The author is well aware that the counter-myth he seeks to create flies in the face of the academic establishment’s understanding of the era, but, for him, this fact indicts the establishment. Thus, when defending the work of Sylvain Gougenheim against his critics (“an international collective of 56 researchers in history and philosophy” who found his work “amateurish,” “discredited,” and ”scientifically dishonest,” among other things), the author dismisses their criticism as the work of those who could never dare to match the outsider Gouggenheim’s supposed insights because to do so “would endanger the attractiveness of the field of research that provides a living for the Islamic studies experts, and … risk … loss of funding …, ostracism … and difficulty finding university positions” for students and those newly entering the field (p. 7).

To overturn centuries of historical study is not easy, so the author employs a clever methodology. He announces at the outset that his “book’s interpretive stance is Machiavellian, not Panglossian” (p. 3). Specifically, he dismisses any modern understanding of Islam as irrelevant to understanding the realities of medieval Spain. All that matters to him “is that, for the culture of medieval Islam in al-Andalus, the important texts were not so much the Quran as the religious laws as interpreted by the ulama [scholars] of the Maliki legal school that dominated al-Andalus…” (p. 10). He can then deflect any doubt shed on allegations of intolerance on grounds that they are in opposition to Qur’anic commandments with the argument that such doubt is irrelevant to a society in which the jurisprudence of one particular school—and a somewhat authoritarian one at that—has precedence over what all Muslims accept as the “Word of God.” This powerful tool pre-empts using any objection that a purported act is a violation of holy scripture as reason to question the historical accuracy of the claim that the act took place. It also pre-empts accusing rulers who engage in such actions as failing to live up to Islamic ideals. It does more.  It allows the author to doubt the historical accuracy of reports of any good and praiseworthy acts as historically inaccurate on the grounds that they violate the precepts of the Maliki school, and allows him to maintain that, even if true, such reports only exemplify departure from, rather than adherence to, Islamic law. The author says of those who argue otherwise, that their “understanding of the Qur’an may be true, but, to borrow Cervantes’s words, ‘it matters little to our story.’”

This premise poses a challenge for a reviewer such as I who has no special expertise in the Maliki school.  Indeed, I am one of those Muslims whom the author considers irrelevant for insisting that the jurisprudence of the religious scholars can be overruled by the words of the Qur’an.  To remedy this deficiency, I have turned to two experts in Maliki law for assistance in evaluating the author’s understanding of that school. By special arrangement between the Minaret of Freedom Institute and the Tayba Foundation, Shaykh Muhammad Mahmoud ibn Ahmad (Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic Language, Higher Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies – Mauritania) and Rami Nsour Alidrisi (Executive Director of the Tayba Foundation who has lectured on Maliki law at the Zaytuna Institute ) have provided me with deep background on the Maliki scholarship related to the questions raised in the book. Rami Nsour provided the English translation of the results of Sh. Muhammad research and additional explanatory comments. For simplicity, I shall herein cite their work as “Ahmad and Alidrisi.”

In Chapter 1, the author seeks to depict the initial Muslim conquest of Spain as an example of some Islamic duty to conquer the world, which is how he would have us understand the term “jihad.” He rejects as apologetics any concept of jihad as a spiritual duty, saying that for the Maliki scholars it was only a material duty to spread the religion of Islam and its legal precepts by the sword.

It is certainly true that, after the Prophet’s (peace upon him) death, Islam began a rapid expansion of territory under Muslim rule that coincided with a rising obsession in books of Muslim jurisprudence with struggle (the literal meaning of the Arabic word jihad) in warfare. The pertinent question, however, is not whether Islam permits fighting. The Qur’an gives explicit permission to fighting for a just cause by just means. The question is whether aggression is permitted or whether war is limited to defense (of self or of other oppressed people). The same question is dealt with in the Catholic doctrine of just war theory.

The author finds the standard historical account that the Muslims were invited into Spain by the oppressed people of the country suffering under the Visigoth rulers unpersuasive. In the history books, Julian, governor of Ceuta invited the Muslims into Spain because the tyrannical king Roderic had violated (some say seduced) his daughter. The author does not recount this story at all, only mentioning Julian to dismiss him as an outsider “Christian lord from North Africa.” Further, the local Christians whose aid (together with that of the local Jews) made the Muslims’ rapid conquest of Spain possible, are dismissed as “a competing royal faction [that] sided with the invaders … [f]or personal or other reasons….”

The author wants us to believe that the fact that dhimmis (protected minorities) paid a tax, jizyah, not levied on Muslims somehow shows that religious oppression is the motive for the Muslim entry into Spain. Toward that end, he cites Ibn Rushd (best known in the West as the philosopher Averroes) as an authority to prove that jizyah is “a payment for sparing the lives of Christians and Jews while they remain under the power of Islam” (p. 26). To the contrary, Ahmad and Alidrisi note that Ibn Rushd actually uses jizyah as it has generally been understood by Muslims, as a head tax in lieu of military service. It is ironic that the author detracts from his main claim (that Ibn Rushd uses “jihad” to mean military service) by pretending that jizyah is a penalty for not accepting Islam rather than a substitute for military service. Ibn Rushd points out that women and children and others not eligible for military service are exempt from jizyah.

In Chapter 2, the author sets out to dismiss the remarkable scientific and technological achievements of Muslim Spain. He starts by claiming that the Muslim conquest “interrupted … the full emergence of a new Christian Hispano-Visigothic civilization.” His strongest argument in support of his speculation as to why said emergent civilization would have been successful is that the Visigoth code would subordinate the ruler to the rule of law, and that everyone had a duty to know the law. However, the same was true of the Islamic law. The fact that this limit on tyranny could facilitate a flourishing society is not the same as guaranteeing one would emerge.

His other arguments are less persuasive. He would have us believe that the failure of the Spaniards to adopt the Visigoth’s unitarian religion shows the religious liberty which the Visigoths afforded them. Actually, them Visigoths considered themselves as superior to the occupied peoples and discouraged assimilation. Muslims did not impose Islam on the locals, but welcomed conversions that made the locals equal to them under the law. Nonetheless, the Visigoths did, after more than a century convert to Catholicism. This conversion evidently pleases the author, but it coincided with the deterioration of their treatment of the Jews under their rule, and does not advance the chapter’s aim to demonstrate that the Visigothic conquest was a progressive one whose flourishing was stopped only by the arrival of Islam.

The author boasts of the Roman aqueducts as if they were an innovation of the Visigoths rather than merely the adoption of an old Roman technology. He even denies the role Islam played in the transmission of the works of ancient wisdom to Western Europe by claiming they had not been lost to Europe because they were still extant in Byzantine libraries. Of course, Byzantine libraries were the ultimate source material of the Greek texts on which the Syriac and Arabic translations were based. Indeed, Muslim rulers had commissioned Eastern church Christians to translate these texts into Arabic in the first place. Western Europeans were oblivious to them until they made contact with Muslim civilization centuries later (in large part through the translations of these texts in Latin in Spain!). The author will have none of this, echoing Gougenheim that “with the translations made at the monastery of Mont Saint-Michel, medieval scholars hardly needed translations of Aristotle from Arabic into Latin” (p. 73). Both Gouguenheim and our author conveniently pass over the two-hundred-year gap between the translation movement in Spain and that at Mont St. Michel. The author blames the rise of Islam rather than the split within the Church itself for the lack of “cultural communication” between the eastern and western churches (p. 77). The historical reality is that while St. Thomas may indeed have read Latin translations of Aristotle from other sources, it is Ibn Rushd whom he honored as “The Commenter” on “The Philosopher.”

Chapter 3 is devoted to arguing that the Spanish Muslims were intolerant even of other Muslims (outside the Maliki school) by arguing that Maliki thought dominated daily life and the “ulama in Spain followed only the teaching of Malik and claimed as authorities only the Qur’an and Mallik’s Muwatta” (p. 97). Ahmad and Al-Idrisi reject this, saying, “there were many schools of jurisprudence other than the school of Malik” in Andalusia and providing numerous examples.

The interruption of Maliki influence during the Almohad dynasty gives the author the opportunity to claim that the establishment’s admiration of “Jewish and Christian influence [as] a wonderful example of convivencia and tolerance” at the time is just a reflection “of the nadir of Islamic power in medieval Spain” (p. 97).  In other words, he would have us believe that even if there was tolerance it can’t possibly be due to Islam because the rulers weren’t Malikis. There are many things wrong with this. The author wants to focus on the Malikis not because they best represent Islam, but because he sees them as dominating the society. If the Almohads weren’t Malikis that doesn’t necessarily mean they were less religious. They certainly did not see themselves that way. Rather than argue that the rise and fall of tolerance must prove that Islam is intolerant, a more reasonable conclusion is that people can be more or less tolerant.

To prove Maliki intolerance of fellow Muslims, the author alleges that the widely used juridical manual al-Tafri “prescribed death for unrepentant Mutazili heretics” (pp. 98-99). Ahmad and Al-Idrisi deny this, and, based on Maliki commentaries from that time state that the reason the government fought those dissidents was that “they rebelled against the government and caused civil unrest, and it is not due to the fact that they hold beliefs that are innovations,” offering as further proof the fact that those not charged with rebellion were not killed.

Chapter 4 is devoted to challenging the Umayyids’ reputation for tolerance by arguing that “they elevated religious and political persecution, inquisitions, beheadings, impalings, and crucifixions to heights unequalled by any other set of rulers before or after in Spain” (p. 120). Beyond accusing medieval Spanish Muslims of being, well, medieval, he seems to believe that those cowardly historians have wrongly awarded to Torquemada a crown that rightly belongs to the Ummayids. (Tellingly, Torquemada doesn’t even appear in the book’s index. Mentioning the Grand Inquisitor might distract the reader from the alleged villainy of the Muslims. In fact the Spanish Inquisition is indexed only twice: in reference to page 4, where Princeton’s Kwame Appiah’s unfavorable comparison of the Spanish inquisition to the Umayyid policies is sneered at as part of a “culture of forgetting,” and in reference to p. 100 where the author finds it “ironic” that the Spanish Inquisition targeted Muslims and Jews who feigned conversion to Christianity to save their skins when the Maliki school condemns anyone who practices another religion while pretending to be Muslim as “the worst form of apostate.”)

For the author, “such notions as ‘toleration,’ [and] ‘freedom of conscience’ … were essentially foreign to Malikism” (p. 100). Ahmad and Al-Idrisi wonder how such a claim can be reconciled with the general freedom of practice of religion accorded to Christians and Jews, who did not have to leave the country en masse as Jews and Muslims were forced to after the Reconquista. Or with the enormous number of churches left standing. Or the fifteen Andalusian monasteries. Or how the Christians maintained their own tradition’s code of law. While one would be right to doubt the courts were unbiased in all mediation between Muslims and non-Muslims, I doubt one could find after the Reconquista an equivalent to the following report Ahmad and Al-Idrisi cite from Ibn Sahl’s Ahkam Al Kubra: “There was a Christian woman who was married to a Muslim man. She passed away and left two young girls [who were Muslim as their father was Muslim]. The children’s maternal grandmother was a Christian and she claimed custody of the children. The children’s paternal grandmother (who was Muslim) also claimed custody of the children. The jurists decreed that the custody belonged to the maternal grandmother, even with her being Christian.” Al-Idrisi adds, “This rule of the maternal grandmother of Muslim children being granted custody over Muslim relatives is a well-known Maliki ruling that can be found in the section on Custody (Hadanah) in the books of jurisprudence, such as the Mukhtasar of Khalil and other works as well.”

To back up his sweeping anti-historical claim, the author starts with the assertion that Malik’s Risala states, “A freethinker (zindiq) must be put to death and his repentance is rejected” (p.100). The translation of zindiq into freethinker is wrong, contradicted by Malik’s own definition of zindiq in the very next sentence as “one who conceals his unbelief and pretends to follow Islam” (p. 100).” The author’s boasted reliance on “original sources” is actually a reliance on translations of original sources, and the translators are suspect. Ahmad and Al-Idrisi suggest that Malik is using the word to mean “hypocrite” which is certainly supported by Malik’s definition. The author would have been on firmer ground to accuse the Malikis of intolerance against hypocrites. We must all (at least in the 21^st century) agree that it is wrong to make hypocrisy a capital crime. And even in the seventh century the Qur’an stated that one who hides his religion not to engage in fraud but to defend himself from persecution should get a pass. Al-Idrisi argues that this debate is tainted by the issue of apostasy. While it is fair to brand Malikis (and other Muslims who hold apostasy to be a capital crime) to be intolerant on that count, it is hypocritical in the classical sense to pretend that the Malikis are any worse than the Spanish Inquisition on this score. So, one point to the author for calling out the Umayyids as less tolerant than his 21st century readers and minus ten points for dropping the context of the time. Further, not all Malikis interpreted Malik’s statement as referring to all hypocrites or apostates. Ahmad and Al-Idrisi note that judge Qadi Isma’il understood Malik to be referring only to the muharib, meaning “one who carries weapons to take things from people.”

For some reason, the author thinks his case is advanced by exaggerating the punishments inflicted on Muslims for violating the Muslim law, even though these laws were not imposed on or enforced against non-Muslims. Thus, he claims on p. 103 that the punishment for wine-drinking on a fourth offense is death. Ahmad and Al-Idrisi say that “there is no scholar in the Maliki school who holds this opinion. In fact, there is no scholar in any of the recognized schools who holds this opinion.” The author seems to have stumbled upon a hadith which is rejected for legal purposes by all except “a few Dhahir scholars.”  Rather than demonstrate intolerance, the appearance of this hadith in the author’s source material would seem to reflect the reluctance (or at least an inability) of the Malikis to suppress rival legal rulings, even from outside the Sunni mainstream.

Some of the accusations against the Muslims have less to do with intolerance than with the fact that they looked down on Christians for their perplexing beliefs (such as the notion of one God in three persons) or their despised practices (like consuming intoxicants). The inclusion of such irrelevancies is clearly meant to play to the complementary biases of his own intended audience (to look down on people who don’t believe in an incarnate God and who refuse to sit down with you for a cold beer). Tolerance is irrelevant to those things about which we are indifferent.

Having said that, however, we must address the allegation of gratuitous disrespect, such as the claim that “[w]hereas Malik did not object to a Muslim’s using water left over by a menstruating woman or by a Muslim in a state of impurity, he forbade using the water left over by a Christian, or using for ablutions anything a Christian had touched, or eating food left over by a Christian” (p. 111). Ahmad and Al-Idrisi respond that “Malik disliked using the leftover water of a Christian is not because he is Christian, but rather because of the likelihood that they use alcohol.” By the same token the water or food of a Muslim who drank alcohol was forbidden, and the food or water of a Christian of whom one was certain had not used alcohol was permitted. The distinction between Christians and Muslims is one of presumption of tainting by prohibited substances and not disrespect of person.

The author would have us believe that the many churches left standing by the Muslims must have actually been torn down on the strength of the precedent of Malik having written in the Utbiyyah regarding the churches of Fustat (in Egypt), “I believe they should be changed and destroyed, not left in that state and there is no good in them.” Ahmad and Al-Idrisi say that this was a narrow opinion regarding a people who were not dhimmis and had no treaty with the Muslims. It was to clarify this point that Ibn Rushd commented, “The people who have treaties are allowed to build new churches in the areas that they included in their treaties and also to repair old churches. This is if they are not within the limits of the Muslim land and Muslims do not live among them, and this is even if they do not put that right as a condition. … Whereas if they are in the limits of the Muslim land, then they do not have the right to build new churches unless they had a treaty with that right.” They quote another scholar who opined dhimmis should not be prevented from building new churches “in their villages that are included in their treaties, because the land is their land, they can sell their land as they see fit and the Muslims cannot take anything from it.” They add that the Ahkam of Ibn Sahl, “one of the most famous legal texts from the Andalusian period … states: ‘They are not to be prevented from the churches in their villages that they included in their treaties after the land was conquered nor are they prevented from building new churches. This is because they included that right in their dhimma treaty which included their right to do what they want with their land. And there is no tax on the churches, as the tax is upon the produce of their land.’”

Ahmad and Al-Idrisi hold that the claim that Muslims were prohibited from mixing with Christians is false. “In regards to the Muslims not mixing with the Christians at all, this is not correct. Rather, the Muslims used to mix with non-Muslims in many aspects of their life such as their marketplaces, trades, and other elements of public life. In fact, their mixing extended to matters of worship and as a proof of this it has been recorded that ‘when the Muslims conquered Andalusia, they followed the examples of [those] who followed the opinion of Umar” of the permissibility of sharing space in churches in land administered by treaty rather than war. That “Muslims shared the worship space of the non-Muslims of Cordova in their grand church. In that shared space, the Muslims built a masjid and in the other portion of the space the church remained” is just one of many such reports.

Yet, on p. 122, the author deems it impossible that Muslims should ever have shared space in a church. Absence of evidence turns out to be ignorance of evidence, since the purchase of St. Vincent’s church he sneers at on p. 121 as an offer the Christians “couldn’t refuse” was, in fact, the result of negotiations between the amir and the Christian leadership of church property that had been shared with Christians for generations, until the number of Muslim attendees began to dwarf the number of Christians. Kenneth Baxter Wolfe, in Christian Martyrs in Spain, writes that negotiations resulted in the “promise of a large cash payment as well as permission to rebuild one of the extramural churches” that had been destroyed during the conquest.

In Chapter 5 the author turns to the favorite target of Islamophobes, the treatment of women. I shall not prolong an overly long book review by going over territory already covered well elsewhere. Instead, I will focus on what is unique to Fernández-Morera’s claims. Here he outdoes himself, claiming that the  Maliki legal text Al-Tafri “stipulates that not only a muhsan woman who fornicated should be stoned, but also married female slaves….” (p. 145). Ahmad and Al-Idrisi find the passage to state the opposite:  that a female slave may not be stoned for fornication, only free women (and men) were subject to such punishment. It is one thing to criticize Malik for holding adultery to be a capital crime under Islamic law, another to accuse him of saying the opposite of what he has said regarding slaves.

A more picayune charge, one all the more annoying since he resorts to misrepresentation on such a petty point, is the author’s complaint that “Following Malik, al-Tafri even forbade women to loosen their hair when cleaning it during ablution…. In fact, Spanish Maliki jurisprudence advised proper Muslim women to keep their hair short….” (p. 149). According to Ahmad and Al-Idrisi, this is not what the author of al-Tafri says. Rather than forbidding women from unbraiding their hair to wash before prayers he is acknowledging their right to simply “wipe over the hair, and she does not need to undo her hair.” They add “This is to make it easier for women, since unbraiding the hair at every washing for the prayer would be a clear difficulty. This is part of the spirit of tolerance and ease that the author of the Myth is calling for.”

The author also takes a unique, albeit somewhat incoherent, approach to dismissing the establishment’s claims of (relative) female freedom and empowerment in Muslim Spain. He doesn’t deny that some women enjoyed certain liberties and educational benefits, but insists that rather than due to some kind of Islamic tolerance, it was because these women were slaves, from marginalized sectors of society, or from privileged families. His argument is that Maliki law required “decent” women be “only used for procreation, being therefore destined to the service of their husbands and relegated to the cares of procreation, upbringing and education [of the children]” (pp. 156-157).  He is here quoting Ibn Rushd, who is actually criticizing the status quo, and who goes on to complain that this attitude towards women stifles their potential as human beings. For the author, however, the fact that it does describe the status quo means that any exceptions are not “decent” women but slaves, sluts, or women of such high privilege that they can afford to flout Maliki law the way hypocritical Muslim rulers flout the laws against drinking and adultery. The passage in question comes from Ibn Rushd’s commentary on Plato’s Republic and, in the words of Charles Butterworth, scholar of medieval political philosophy, exemplifies how he, “like Alfarabi and Avicenna, helps us understand what it means to live a good human life … by taking the best from the learned tradition whether it is Muslim or not.”

Ahmad and Al-Idrisi observe that the author is putting forward his own interpretation of Maliki jurisprudence seen through the “lens of his contempt for Islam” and unimpeded by the intermediation of any Maliki scholar. Thus, when he writes, “According to the Mudawwana, if even part of the hair of the woman comes out from under her veil during prayer, she must restart the prayer” (p. 153), he completely misses the point that the scholars are offering a recommendation that the prayer be repeated, not an obligation—which means that the prayer is not invalid. Worse yet, when the author claims, “In Maliki jurisprudence modesty in the case of a hurra (free Muslim woman) was so important that a man could see his future wife only if she had not yet reached puberty” (p. 157), in a book with 96 pages of endnotes, he gives no citation for this claim. For good reason: This is not the position of the Maliki school. Ahmad and Al-Idrisi write, “It is well-known in the Maliki school that a man may look at the face of a woman that he is proposing to” and they find no basis for the claim of any exception for postpubescent women in the Maliki literature.

Chapter 6 purports to refute the notion of a Jewish golden age in Spain. There is no doubt that Jews, like Christians, suffered some persecution. But the author is not satisfied with that. He wants us to be believe that Jews had it better in Christian lands than in Muslim Spain. Rather than devote space to refuting this absurdity, I shall refer those who are interested in a more credible critique of the status of Jews in Muslim Spain to take a look at Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages by Mark R. Cohen. Of Fernández-Morera’s perspective, suffice it to say that he mistreats the great Maimonides in a manner reminiscent of his mistreatment of the Malik fuquha. He takes a passage in which the great Jewish scholar, in his role as leader of the Jewish community, warns against letting the close proximity to Christians and Muslims provided by the Convivencia become an excuse for violating the Jewish law as evidence that there was no Convivencia: “This fact alone could dispose of the Convivencia. Maimonides explicitly ruled against eating and drinking with non-Jews. Practicing Jews must not … eat crab, lobster, oysters, squid, octopus, pork, or blood products, among other things – prohibitions that made eating with non-Jews religiously risky and therefore inadvisable” (p. 197).

The title of Chapter 7 sums it up: “The Christian Condition: From Dhimmis to Extinction.” His main claim is that any success or prosperity or liberty enjoyed by Christians or Jews in Muslim Spain “occurred in spite of—and in direct opposition to—Islamic injunctions, and it created resentment among the ulama and the Muslim population.” As the chapter title suggests, he claims that establishment scholars have not only ignored the persecution of Christians, but have erased from the books their “extinction.”  So, not content to argue that Spain was not a paradise, he wants it to be remembered as a genocide. This is the counter-myth he seeks to establish.

Islamic Spain was not perfect, nor does it live up to the ideals of 21^st century libertarianism. The enlightenment writers who hyped its positive aspects and overlooked its flaws were motivated by the desire to positively influence their own societies that fell short of even the Andalusian reality, let alone their liberal ideals. If you want a balanced view of Andalusian history, it is best not to rely on any single perspective, let alone a single source. More credible works than this are available that cover a spectrum of perspectives from Maria Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World to David Nirenberg’s Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, and including Salma Khadra Jayysi’s The Legacy of Muslim Spain, Roger Collins’s Caliphs and Kings, Olivia Remie Constable (with Damian Zurro)’s Medieval Iberia: readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, and Mark R. Cohen’s aforementioned Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages.

If, on the other hand, you want a freshly fabricated mythology with the negative objectives of demonizing Islam and replacing romanticized memories of the accomplishments of Muslim Spain with amnesia about the Spanish Inquisition, then this is your book.

I prefer not to speculate why an associate professor at Northwestern University would choose to write such a book, but I go out on no limb to guess that the reason it was published by ISI is that no academic publisher wants to embarrass itself. ISI, on the other hand, already sacrificed the respectability it once had as a conservative institution on the altar of Islamophobia years ago with the publication of such anti-Muslim propaganda as Robert Reilly’s The Closing of the Muslim Mind, described by Yale Professor of Islamic Studies Frank Griffel as “war literature.” This book, too, is war literature.

I wish to thank Shaykh Muhammad Mahmoud ibn Ahmad and Rami Nsour Alidrisi for their essential assistance and Prof. Charles Butterworth for his helpful comments on this review.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org

“THE MEANING OF JERUSALEM THROUGH MY MOTHER’S MEMORIES AND MY FAITH”

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.

Minaret of Freedom Institute

Adapted from WHAT JERUSALEM MEANS TO US: MUSLIM PERSPECTIVES AND REFLECTIONS

I am a Palestinian-American Muslim. Although I was taken away from it while still in my mother’s womb, Palestine is my motherland in a multi-dimensional sense. My mother was not only born and raised in Jerusalem, but she was named for it. Her name was “Qudsia,” the feminine form of al-quds, “The Holy (one),” the Arabic name for Jerusalem. My father is from a small village just outside of Jerusalem, called Bir Nabala. The Israelis have expanded the boundary of the city to the point where it impinges now on my father’s village.

In 1947 my father returned to Palestine from America to find a wife. He had left Palestine while yet a twelve-year-old boy. His parents had both died and his eldest sister had to raise the family. He came to America to earn money to support the family. Now, he was back looking for a life-mate, and the college-educated city girl, school teacher, and radio pioneer (the first woman to read the news on Jerusalem radio) seemed the ideal wife to hold up under the cultural shock of a move to America.

My mother was pleased to marry this handsome and very intelligent, albeit uneducated, man, but she did not want to forsake her beloved homeland or the environs of the city for which she was named. If he wanted to marry her, he would have to stay in Palestine. He gladly agreed, and, in November of 1947, they wed. And I took up residence in her womb.

In May 1948, less than six months into her pregnancy, the massacre at Deir Yasin took place. My mother had a student from Dir Yasin, and the stories of how the terrorists had split open the bellies of pregnant women to rip out the fetuses and stamp on them had their intended effect.  She was terrorized, and she changed her mind. She would leave family and her ancestral homeland to come to a country she did not know to keep her baby safe from the terrorists.

By the time she got her visa, my mother was too close to term to be allowed to fly on an airplane. They booked passage on a ship (the Marine Carp) instead, and, ten days before the due date, I was born on board. I would not set foot on the land in which I was conceived until thirty-two years later. My knowledge of Jerusalem would come to me through my mother’s memories and the religion in which she raised me.

Jerusalem Through My Mother’s Memories

Raised in America, I envied my classmates who personally knew their grandparents. I knew mine only through my mother’s memories and a photograph of my grandfather in his fez and Ottoman mustache. He had been an assistant to the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, and his marriage to an Arab woman of Jerusalem spared his life from the anger of the mob during the Arab uprising of 1916.

I had met only one of my maternal uncles, who had come to the United States to study. He passed on a flavor of my homeland through his playing of the lute, an instrument he left behind when his studies were done and he returned home. It hung on my mother’s wall until her passing when it was inherited by my niece, now a musician in New York City. Of my mother’s other brothers, known to me only through her reminiscences, Lutfi was a memorable rascal. One time he got into trouble by sneaking up on a Jewish neighbor and clipping off one of his sidelocks.

My uncle’s juvenile mischief notwithstanding, the image my mother painted of the relations with her non-Muslim neighbors (the “People of the Book” as the Qur’an calls them) was warm and convivial.  She would tell me how she would accompany her Christian neighbors as they walked the stations of the cross. Muslims do not believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) had been crucified (for the Qur’an says that was only what God had made appear to be the case), but that did not stop her from sharing in the spirit of their holidays, as they would share in the Muslim Eids (feast days), when Muslim tradition demands that the meals marking the end of the month of fasting be shared with all close enough to smell the food.

In some ways, life in Jerusalem was atypical for my mother. She was a graduate of the Jerusalem Women’s College. A picture of her graduating class now hangs in my living room.  There were only two dozen graduates that year, a testament to the rarity of higher education for women in Jerusalem in the first half of the twentieth century. Her family was too poor to send more than one child to college, and tradition would have demanded that it be Lutfi rather than Qudsia. But Lutfi was not the academic type and urged his father to let his studious sister go because she would appreciate it more, go. Fortunately, my grandfather’s good sense prevailed over tradition, and he conceded.

Once out of college my mother not only took up teaching, but also got a job with the Palestine Broadcasting System. There she produced award-winning programs on the history of Islam and of the region. She even got to read the news one time when the regular announcer failed to show up. She did not enjoy the experience, as by that time the conflicts between the newly arrived Zionists and the indigenous peoples had become so seriously violent that, she said, she wept as she read the reports.

Her tears are another memory of Jerusalem. I cannot forget the day I came home from school to hear her crying.  No child should have to hear his mother cry. It is for parents to dry the tears of their children. Young children do not know how to dry the tears of their parents.

“Why are you crying?’ I asked her.

“I am so homesick,” was her reply. She missed her family, her neighbors, the sights and the sounds of the holy city. I cannot remember if I was six or eight or ten when this happened. I only remember feeling helpless. It was something about which I could do nothing.

Jerusalem Through My Religion

When I was about to enter fourth grade, I began to ask my mother questions about religion. She gave me a copy of the Qur’an that included Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation into English. I began my serious study of Islam, which continues to this day. Within the narrative of Islam is a tale of three cities: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. The significance of Jerusalem as the city of David, Solomon, Jesus, and Muhammad is the way it links three different religious communities into a single essential religious history. David, Solomon, and Jesus (peace be upon them all) who lived in Jerusalem are mentioned more often by name in the Qur’an (16, 25, 17 times, respectively) than Muhammad (four times, peace be upon him). And Moses (peace be upon him)—for whom the Holy Land was the object of his flight from Egypt, although he never made it to Jerusalem—is mentioned by name 135 times. Mary or Maryam, Mother of Isa or Jesus, is the only woman named in the Qur’an, with her name appearing seventy times. The 19th chapter or sȗrah of the Qur’an is named after her.

This significance is expanded upon by the Hadith (traditional reports about things the Prophet said and did) recounting his “Night Journey” to Jerusalem. The event is alluded to in the Qur’an in the passage (17:1): “Glory to (God) Who took His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque [Masjid-al-Harâm, in Mecca] to the farthest Mosque [al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem], whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who hears and sees (all things).” The traditions state that the Prophet was transported to Jerusalem (whether materially or in a vision is irrelevant to the point) where, united with all the previous prophets, he prayed together with them to the One God.

This significance of Jerusalem is also attested to by the fact that it was the original qibla, or direction of prayer as well. When the qibla was changed to Mecca, the Qur’an explained (2:142) that “To God belong both East and West” and (2:177) that righteousness lies not in facing a particular physical direction, but in belief and good deeds.

This significance of Jerusalem can be seen not only in the religious texts, but in Muslim history. When Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab conquered Jerusalem in 637, he neither slaughtered the Christian inhabitants (as the Persians had done to the Christians when they conquered the city twenty-three years earlier and as the Crusaders did to the Muslims four centuries later) nor expelled them, but allowed them to remain. When the appreciative Patriarch Sophronius invited him to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Umar declined explaining that, although it was not forbidden for him to do so, he feared some future Muslims more zealous about religious identity than observant of religious law might use his having prayed there as an excuse to convert the church into a mosque. In later generations some Christians accused Umar of betraying them by letting Jews into the city, but had he made any promise to keep them out it would not have been legal under Islamic law.

My Visit to Jerusalem

Not until I was in my thirties would I finally set foot on the ground of my mother’s native city. My father had become afflicted with cancer and sought to cross a major item off his bucket list by taking his children to visit Palestine. My brother Maher, my new bride Frances (for whom this would be our honeymoon), and I eagerly accepted. After spending a week with some cousins in Amman, we would spend a week in the home of my mother’s big sister in the Old City.

When I told my mentor, Harvard Professor Robert Nozick, about my forthcoming trip, he urged me not to take as discrimination the close search we would receive from the Israeli border guards, assuring me that everyone, even Jews like himself, received the same scrutiny. I think he failed to notice some subtle differences in treatment. On the day we crossed over the Allenby Bridge from Amman to Jerusalem, I, with an Arab name, but traveling on an American passport and with an American accent, got through customs in 25 minutes.  For my parents, with American passports but Palestinian accents, it took 50 minutes. For my cousin, a permanent resident of Jerusalem, it took the WHOLE DAY. Knowing that it would, she had left Amman after dawn prayers.  We waved to her as she cooled her heels in the waiting room in the late morning, and she joined us in my aunt’s house for supper late that afternoon.

As we approached the city, our car, identified by the license plate color as owned by a Palestinian, was stopped by the Israeli police. When the officer poked his head into the car he saw my very American-looking wife in the back seat next to me and hastily explained, “I’m just checking to make sure your seat belts are fastened.”  How thoughtful.

My aunt’s five-hundred-year-old house is ensconced within the walls of the Old City, near Herod’s Gate or Bab as-Zahra. Except for the master bedroom and the tabûn (a special kitchen for baking bread), every room is adjacent to the central courtyard, which itself is partly covered by a grape arbor. The grapes were not yet ripe, but had we come a month later, I think I could have just reached up and grabbed myself a fresh snack.

My aunt had always spoiled her little sister. Her hospitality as well as that of her husband and their daughters now was incredible. As Frances and I were newlyweds, they insisted we take the master bedroom, a lovely chamber with a cathedral ceiling. They did not want us to lack anything, which caused an awkward moment after our supper.

My aunt asked us what we wanted to do that evening, and Frances said she would like to go out for ice cream. A deathly silence fell upon the household.  My aunt spoke little English, so finally my cousin explained the cause of their embarrassment: The ice cream parlor was in a section of the city closed off to non-Jews at night.  “I don’t need ice cream,” Frances reassured our hosts.

The next day, we made our way past soldiers armed with rifles to a camp filled with “internally displaced” refugees. The day after that, Frances had traded in her touristy-looking straw hat for a Muslim style headscarf that provoked visible affection from the locals we met.

Then, we went to the market to engage in some old-fashioned haggling.  My cousin had tutored me on exactly the tone of voice to take in responding to a shop-keepers opening price with an incredulous “shooo?” (“Whaaaaat?”)  Frances admired an embroidered caftan. How much?  They gave a price.  “Shooo?” I said. I offered one fourth of what they asked.  Impossible. They offered half. We walked out.  They chased after us into the narrow old city street. OK. Deal.

One day we took a day trip to Ramallah, stopping at my father’s village of Bir Nabala. I finally was able to meet the aunt who had raised the family while her brothers went to America to support them. She had not seen her little brother in over thirty years. Every time my brother or I got near her, she would begin to whisper prayers over us.

Bir Nabala means “well of Nabala.” I asked if it were possible to drink of the water of the well. The locals seemed surprised that anyone would want to drink of the well water when piped water was available, but I insisted. The water was brackish, but to me the drink was a satisfying coming-home ritual. We then took a walk to the ruins of the house in which my father grew up, destroyed by an earthquake. Later I was shown the room in which I was conceived. Afterward I stood on the roof of that house and looked at the moon over the Jerusalem suburb and at a nearby hilltop where settlers were building their illegal homes.

My aunt’s neighbor was a professional tour guide, and we joined his tour starting at the Garden of Gethsemane. He said he always took his shoes off there because it is holy ground. We took in the panorama of the city below us, dominated by the golden Dome of the Rock. Beside it is the smaller silver dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Then, at prayer time on Friday we were there, less than a 10-minute walk from my aunt’s house.

As we entered the plaza a Muslim guard shouted at Frances, but backed off when my mother shouted back at him. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was full, so I had to pray on the plaza between the two mosques. The women got to pray in the more impressive Dome of the Rock. I got to pray there later after it had emptied out. On my way in I saw a hole in the wall made by Israeli fire during the June 1967 War. Mosque officials refused to repair it so that no one could ever forget.

Inside, I positioned myself so that I was facing both Mecca and the large rock where some believe that Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him, mentioned by name in the Qur’an 69 times) prepared for the sacrifice of his son. The Qur’an does not name the son in question but, like the Bible, says it was his only son at the time. There was a time when Ishmael (peace be upon him, mentioned by name 11 times in the Qur’an) was his only son and never a time when his second son Isaac (peace be upon him, mentioned by name 15 times) was the only son, so Muslims conclude the son in question was Ishmael. The fact that the Qur’an makes no mention of the name tells Muslims that the story of Abraham’s sacrifice is about the love of God, not about real estate.

I was removed from Jerusalem, but Jerusalem will never be removed from me.

Jörg Matthias Determann’s Islam, Science Fiction, and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2021). 270pp.

Reviewed by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org

Anyone susceptible to believing stereotypes depicting the religious views of Muslims as violent variations of Christian fundamentalism would expect a book subtitled “The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World” to be a very short book indeed, featuring a fatwa against the notion of extraterrestrial life as blasphemy contrasted with a couple ex-Muslim writers of bad fan sci-fi fiction. Instead, Jörg Matthias Determann has produced a fascinating collection of numerous examples of a wide variety of men and women from Muslim majority countries or of Muslim persuasion engaged in an almost equally wide variety of activities ranging from serious science to flying saucer cults, along with a panoply of sometimes profound and sometimes silly, sometimes derivative (or outright plagiarized) and sometimes ingenious (even original) science fiction. Suitable for use in a university level course the book is downright pleasant read for anyone with any curiosity about Muslim interest in astrobiology and science fiction.

The opening chapter, “The Lord of the Worlds” is named after the opening verse of the Qur’an which praises God as the Lord of a multiplicity of universes. This places the notions of multiple planets or even the “multiverse” comfortably within the most sacred text of Islam. While early Muslim commentators understood this notion of multiple worlds to include the multiplicity of creations across a wide variety of dimensions (material, spiritual, intellectual, animal, vegetable, mineral, etc.) they would not have been inclined to exclude any conception of multiple worldliness as beyond the Divine dominion. Even the notion of space travel was not new to the Arabs as the second century Syrian writer Lucian of Samosata had written “A True Story about a trip to the Moon” (p. 4) fourteen hundred years before Cyrano de Bergerac’s fantasy on the same theme. The notion of extra-terrestrial life is not problematic for a religion in which God is Lord of all the worlds in the way it is for a religion that conditions salvation on the sacrifice of the Divinity’s “only begotten Son” for the redemption of the dominant species on a single world. Determann notes that “much science fiction from Egypt, Malaysia, Turkey and other countries reflected and promoted dreams of a united Islamic world.” It is no surprise then to learn that Muslim science fiction writers have imagined both believing and disbelieving aliens.

Chapter 2, entitled “Missions and Mars” looks at scientific journals and popular magazines. In the West, the notion of “panspermia” (that the seeds of life are spread throughout the cosmos) is associated with Enlightenment writers like Benoît de Maillet (pp. 39-40). Determann notes their debt to Muslim predecessors such as Zakariya al-Qazwini, the thirteenth century author of Marvels and Strange Creatures Existing (p. 40). Gustave Flaubert called de Maillet’s Telliamed an ‘Arabic book'” (p. 40). The reciprocal influence of such works on later Muslims took a while to emerge, but a couple of centuries later Christians and Muslims were seriously debating extraterrestrial life” (p. 41).

Rather than threaten Muslim religious sensibilities, the spread of the Copernican paradigm moved the Bengali physician and poet Mir Muhammad Husayn to argue, “each of the fixed stars along with its planets and satellites is a universe by itself” and that “the existence of an infinite number of worlds demonstrates God’s omnipotence” (pp. 43-44). The attempt of “colonial administrators and missionaries to equate European astronomy with Christianity largely failed” (p. 45). Reformers such as Obeidallah Ubedi and Syed Ahmad Khan strongly urged Muslims to embrace science, feeling it poses no threat to Islam (pp. 45-46). Khan said, “The Work of God and the Word of God can never be antagonistic to each other.” Court official Mohamad Abul Hasan Siddiqi boasted that although “[t]he first chapter of the Book of Genesis has always been a puzzle to the church commentators … the Last Book of God , the Quran, has saved its believers from such a labour-lost task” (p. 47). While some tried to argue for heliocentricity from the Qur’an, most felt it to be a matter religiously indifferent, although one Syrian translation of Jérôme de Lalande’s Treatise of Astronomy “transformed the text into a geocentric one” in which “Uranus and the asteroids … all rotate around the earth” (p. 49).

While Muslims, appalled by his hostility to the Prophet (pbuh), demonstrated against the historical work of H. G. Wells, they had no objections to his science fiction (p. 47). Yet, a perception that Christians and materialists were using Western science to challenge Islam provoked the Egyptian physician Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi to publish articles in which he claimed the Qur’an contained allusions to scientific facts “unknown during the time of the prophet Muhammad” including terrestrial “rotation and the common origin of all planets in ‘smoke'” (i.e, gas and dust, p. 56) and that the stars move independently from one another rather than being embedded in a fixed sphere” (p. 57). He also claimed the Qur’an referred to the creation of animals in the heavens as well as on earth (p. 57). Allusions to extraterrestrial life in Arab periodicals was so frequent that the “scientific imagination then shaped important books on Qur’anic exegesis” (p. 62). The al-Azhar trained religious scholar Tantawi Jawhari incorporated some elements of modern cosmology both in his multi-volume exegesis The Jewels and into a work of utopian fiction published in 1935 (p. 62). Even professional astronomers got into the game. Helwan Observatory’s Abdel Hamid Samaha lectured “on cosmological ideas in the Qur’an at the Lund Observatory in Sweden,” informing his Western audience that his understanding that Qur’anic statements indicated “the existence of life either identical, similar or probably different from ours in the outer space” came both from his Muslim religious beliefs and that “also as a scientist I am inclined to believe that such is at least very probable” (p. 62).

Chapter 3, “Trips to the Moon,” focuses on science fiction films, from which we learn such interesting tidbits of jurisprudence as that a “Pakistani woman may marry an alien as long as he is a Muslim” (p. 71). Determann rejects attributing the rarity of Pakistani sci-fi films to Islamic cultural bias since there are plenty of Muslim contributors to sci-fi films coming out of India (p.74). The difference, he concludes, is that while Islam per se does not inhibit the creation of science fiction films, a secular political environment seems more conducive to their production (p. 75). He notes, for example, that although Saudi Arabia “is comparable in its authoritarianism to” its socialist neighbor states, it started banning cinemas in the 1950s (just as science fiction films were gaining popularity) on the grounds that public theatres brought “unrelated men and women together” (p. 75). This hostility is directed at the medium films rather than the genre of sci-fi. The Saudi grand mufti’s 2017 denunciation of cinema as venues for of depravity that “might show movies that are libertine, lewd, immoral and atheist, because they rely on films imported to change our culture” (p. 75) may reflect the cultural climate of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan as well (p. 77).

Determann finds, however, that “[i]nterest in space and its creatures only increased over the course of the 1950s” in the broader Muslim world (p. 84). Dystopian stories then appearing, like those of Egyptian Tawfiq al-Hakim “could be interpreted as critiques of the modernizing projects that governments like his own were engaged in” (p. 85). The growing number of literary and stage sci-fi pieces in Egypt spilled onto the silver screen in 1959 with the release of “Journey to the Moon,” but (p. 86) there was no sequel or imitation once Nasser’s socialist regime nationalized the major media companies including the entire film industry (p. 87). State repression quashed “scientific imagination” even as it inadvertently inspired it (p. 88). With the movie industry in state control, that inspiration erupted on the stage (pp. 88ff). One explicit example of Islamic science fiction was The Fifth Dimension, a story in which German physicist repentant of past work for the Nazis, his niece, and her journalist fiancé escape an earth fated for nuclear annihilation to discover a utopia on Mars. The author, Ahmed Raef, was a protégé of his fellow prisoner Muhammad Qutb (p. 89). Following the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideals, the freely elected ruler of the Martian utopia has sworn “to follow the laws of God, not to be unjust, and not to follow personal interests that may cause him to deviate from divine guidance.” Further he is subordinate to “a council of 100 wise people” and subject to a recall process that may be initiated by any citizen.

The influence of Western science fiction is pronounced, and the Turkish film “Tourist Omer in Star Trek” could easily be argued to be a violation of copyright (p. 96). Although Determann focuses on science fiction by Muslims he does not ignore the influence of Islamic culture, people, and landscapes on non-Muslim science fiction such as Frank Herbert’s Dune and George Lucas’s “Star Wars” (pp. 96ff). However, he does not mention Daniel Moffit’s Mechanical Sky trilogy.

I would have been more comfortable if Chapter 4 had it been called “Muslim UFO Cults” instead of “Islamic UFO Religions.”  The previous chapter ends with a segue asserting that in contrast to the “light entertainment” of Muslim sci-fi films, the publications of these cults often drew large audiences by “promoting dark and complex conspiracy theories” that sometimes “combined Middle East politics with Qur’anic exegesis and space research” (p. 104). A Kuwaiti UFO sighting in 1978 (p. 105) is the first of “a wave of sightings over the Gulf countries” around the time of the fall of the shah of Iran. Determann notes differences in the reports of sightings in different parts of the Muslim world. Malaysians reported space aliens as tiny humanoids, only “three to six inches” in size (p. 109). More broadly, Muslims were quick to identify aliens with the jinn mentioned in the Qur’an (p. 109), non-human entities made of smokeless fire but which Muslim traditions hold can assume other shapes.

In America, a mother ship played a significant role in the mythology of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. In their mythology the white race, itself the product of a eugenics program initiated by a mad scientist name “Yakub,” had enslaved the naturally black people of Earth. They would be rescued from their oppression by the Mother Plane, “a wheel-shaped wonder under the control of black Muslim scientists … able to defy Earth’s gravity, lift up mountains and generate its own oxygen and hydrogen.” (p. 112). With the rising popularity of flying saucer theories “some scientists and officials felt obliged to counter them with more cautionary accounts” (p. 119). Yet Determann suspects that one balanced account by a scholar trained in both religion and science may “have inadvertently lent legitimacy to the topic,” despite the author’s boldfaced declaration denying any “evidence for the existence of any life like on Earth” (pp. 119-20). A character in the Turkish Sci-fi film “Buddy” seems to suffer from UFO envy when he asks, “Why do they always come to the Americans? Let them come to us once” (p. 122).

Not all Muslims enamored of flying saucers see them as mechanical objects from outer space. The influential Jordanian professor of Islamic Law Umar al-Ashqar identified them as jinn who reside on Earth (p. 129). The Egyptian journalist `Isa Dawud also rejected an extra-terrestrial origin for UFOs, offering a conspiracy theory explaining “that their owners were humans with ‘dreams to rule the world'” (p. 130). Determann suggests that Virginia-based Voice of America journalist Abdul Aziz Khan drew so many parallels between 20th century UFO sightings and stories in the Qur’an and went so far as to imply “Muslims … must believe in UFOs” (p. 133). He even argues that the word for “covering up” truth, kufr, in the Qur’an refers is the conspiracy to cover up the truth about UFOs (p. 134). On the secular side, an extremist Kamalist who billed herself as “Turkey’s first female UFO researcher” (p. 134) hailed Ataturk as “the first world leader to see the extraterrestrial origin of his own people” (p. 135).

A reference to Begum Roqeya’s 1905 utopian story Sultana’s Dream, about a technologically advanced future society called Ladyland, where women dominate the public space and “men live in seclusion” (p. 139), paves the way for the examination of literary science fiction in Chapter 5, “Building Nations and Worlds.” A century after Roqeya’s groundbreaking work, Arab sci-fi was so underdeveloped that UAE sci-fi pioneer Noura al Noman “actually believed that there was none” (p. 141). She blamed the Arab educational system for ignoring the sciences, unaware that in Syria, where sciences were taught in the schools, magazines published hundreds of such stories (p. 141).

Dystopias are critically respectable given the prevalence of authoritarian governments in Arab world and were especially popular in the wake of the collapse of the Arab spring, though they were just a small part of the genre in the Muslim world (p.142). “Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and Indonesia stood out through the sheer quantity of novels and short stories they churned out” (p. 142). Often the subject matter in sci-fi produced in the former colonies was as “concerned with nation-building as it was with world building” (p. 143). Pakistan’s writer Asrar Ahmad, writing under the name Ibne Safi (“Son of the Pure One”), combines a commitment to religious purity with an enthusiasm for religious pluralism and “an excitement about technological futures (pp. 1413-4). The work of Bengali author Zafar Iqbal shows his” hostility towards political Islam” yet “occasionally employs his religious imagination” (p. 147), and will even (albeit rarely) feature personal piety (p.148). His wife argued that his reputation as “anti-Islamic” was undeserved, insisting “that none of his books contained ‘anything that goes against Islamic sentiment'” (p. 148).

Influences on the Egyptian writer Nehad Sherif range from Egypt’s Kamel Keilany to “medieval authors al-Ma`arri and IbnTufayl as well as … Jules Verne and H. G. Wells” (p. 149). With a nod to the debates over religion and science “in the context of competition between Christian and Muslim missionaries,” one of his characters contrasts scientific discoveries that were once “denounced as ‘unbelief’, ‘atheism’ or ‘apostasy'” with his prediction that humankind would soon stand on the moon and on other planets, adding, “Trust that all of this will only happen by the command of God and his perfect will” (pp. 150-1). In his novel The Time Conqueror he defends the permissibility of cryogenics by reminding us that “God, ‘who created us’, gave us the ability to discover.” His works on alien encounters were “framed in religious terms” that were inclusive while at the same time privileging Islam (p. 156). He died in 2011 hailed as “the dean of Arabic science fiction,” a favorable comparison to America’s Robert Heinlein (p. 157).

Determann includes authors skeptical of Islam such as Eliza Vitri Handayani. who conceived of our universe as “a game in an alien kid’s computer” which would explain “[w]hy many of his rules seemed arbitrary or egocentric…. He is, after all, just a child” (pp 173-4).

The final chapter, “Muslim Futurisms” turns to the Muslim world’s engagement with new technology in both research and fiction. The UAE planned “to establish a city on Mars by 2117” (p. 177) The discoverers of organic material on one of Saturn’s moons included two founders of the Astrobiology Network of Pakistan (p. 180). Although the Iranian nuclear agreement failed to thaw U.S.-Iranian relations, “[m]ajor American presses had long … published articles by Iran-based authors, citing freedom of speech in their defense” (pp. 183-4). One of them “detected at least nine planets between 2010 and 2018 alone (p. 184). Another co-authored a poster session at the American Physical Society session in Denver on “use of microlensing for exoplanet detection” (p. 185). Determann doubts sanctions can “stifle Iranian creativity.” (p. 191).

Further, he thinks “war has been productive in the Middle East even in cases where it has been devastating” otherwise (p. 192). Iraq+100 transforms Americans into” violent and hedonistic aliens.” Yet, a young student among the aliens “has doubts,” fearing divine retribution from the “Setter of the Cosmological Constant” (p. 193). Palestine+100 “won a PEN Translates award and NPR selected the volume as one of its favorite books of 2019+ (p. 194). Determann wonders if some Muslims’ aversion to the theory of evolution might inhibit the scientific imagination in ways that war and sanctions have failed to do (pp 194ff.) “While evolutionists in Iran and Pakistan enjoyed considerable influence,” Turkey has been victimized by con artist Adnan Oktar (a/k/a “Harun Yahya”) who, notwithstanding convictions for fraud and sexual abuse, was part of the campaigns that removed evolution from Turkish textbooks (p. 195). Nonetheless, there was an increase in serious sci-fi films in Turkey in the 2010s. Among them, “the psychological drama Ivy, … less successful at the box office” than more comical sci-fi, was “well received by critics and festival judges” (p. 200). Politically astute viewers could see the Turkish government in “the captain whose ship is going nowhere, … while his five crewmembers stand for different parts of society: workers, pious Muslims, young people, leftists and Kurds” (p. 200).

In 2017, Saudi Arabia “surprised critics of its human and women’s rights records by granting citizenship to a robot named Sophia” (p. 204) while planning “a new solar-powered city that relies on robots and self-driving cars (p. 205). In 2018 the Pakistani-born artist Saka Afridi created the art-form of Sci-fi Sufism that mixes “mysticism with technology” and draws on the influence of Afrofuturism, IslamoFuturism, “Arthur C. Clark’s novel Childhood’s End and art by Hiroshi Sugimoto, as well as Muhammad’s ascension into heaven” (pp. 205-207). There is now an “Islam and Science Fiction website (p. 208).

Determann closes his book with an acknowledgement of the controversy posed by the intersection of Islam and Western science fiction. On one side we have a biologist at Duke University protesting that the hijab has no place “on the bridge of the starship Enterprise [for it] would imply that Islam had survived to the 23rd century, while we have no reason to believe that any other modern human religion can claim similar” (p. 209). On the other side we have the actor leVar Burton who praised African American activist Blair Imani’s cosplay appearance as his character Geordi La Forge in a hijab at the 2017 Comicon in San Diego as the “best cosplay of Geordi, EVER” (pp. 209-10).

Given the broad geographical scope of Determann’s subject of study and the wide variety of languages involved, this book is an astonishing achievement. Anyone seeking an introduction to the intersection of science fiction and/or extraterrestrial life with Islam needs this book.

[These are my notes from the National Interest Foundation discussion on Libya’s transitional government and the prospects for December’s elections. These notes summarize my impression of selected highlights of the presentations and are not an attempted transcription. I have paraphrased in the first-person for convenience.]

Federica Saini Fasanotti, Brookings Institution.

We have good movement on the political level but big problems on the security and social level. Insurgency usually comes from a huge sense of injustice.  Four men (the members of the Presidency Counsel, Mohamed Younis Ahmed Al-Manfi, Abdullah al-Lafi and Musa Al-Koni, and the new Prime Minister Abdul Hamid al-Dabaib) are tasked with finding the new government. It is too early to tell, but many signs are good.  Everyone congratulated the winning ticket, including Marshall Khalifa Haftar. Internationally, not only Tukey, but even Egypt has congratulated the winning ticket. After the names of the new government are announced the House of Representatives (HOR) will have the option to approve. The PM could in theory unilaterally approve the new government, but that could cause problems.

Dr. Esam Omeish, Libyan American Alliance.

Things are happening hour by hour in Libya. We have yet to reach a stable, let alone successful, state.  The General National Congress (GNC) did a pretty good job of initiating a hopeful process, but they were unable to finish the job and the parliamentary election was challenged in the Supreme Court as well as by poor turnout (less than 25%). In the midst of this mess a warlord arrived and militarized the conflict with his so-called “war on terror,” as did foreign intervention from Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE. Once again we are on the brink of a failed state.  The Presidential Council of nine people was given international recognition to resolve the matter. International envoy Salama managed to bring people together and then came Haftar’s attack, and the setback of casualties and human suffering. In January 2020 a number of international actors rallied to the national government. After a cease fire the political track was restarted and Stephanie Williams rose to the challenge leading to the Tunisian and Moroccan meeting and in turn to the 74 member meeting (a 75th died of Covid) that has successfully elected a Presidential Council of three people and a PM. After the rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt, the UAE remains as the most difficult proxy to deal with. Any failure of Libyans to deliver a legitimate government that speaks for all Libyans leaves an unstable situation with a threat of war.

Dr. William Lawrence, American University.

I completely agree with both Federica’s cautious optimism and Esam’s catalog of cautions. It is amazing that this process has remained on track. A lot of people thought Libya would change after the revolution, but the problems of 2011 have not bee solved at all. The fundamental possibilities and aspirations of Libya are the same as those in Tunisia and the rest of the region. Any Libyan under forty will offer the same set of values offered by American or European activists. Libya was derailed not by elections but by Haftar’s three-year effort to take Benghazi. Haftar was the opponent of democratization. Oil money is important.  There is a domestic spoils system and an international spoil system, and promises made behind the scenes about distributions of benefits and contracts to keep the political track moving forward.  If anyone who received promises by this system is cut out, the progress will unravel. The power brokers are the people behind these spoils. That doesn’t mean that we must resign ourselves to Libya being a corrupt system, but we need to put into place safeguards to reduce the corruption in the future. Even many of the soldiers who supported Haftar share the sentiment of throw the bums out. The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative Stephanie Williams understands this and the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) that she launched is making important decisions about governance and about these financial commitments.  For 220 years the U.S. has either been fighting with Libya, saving Libya, or ignoring Libya.  The U.S. has been critical not only on the ground in Libya but at the U.N. which is why Libyans have a lot of confidence in the U.S. as deus ex machina. No one, even the Turks, has shown as much leadership.

Federica Saini Fasanotti. I certainly agree about the militarization of the problem by Haftar being a blow to the process. I would not be surprised if Haftar is awarded a ministry, such as defense, since if he is left on the sidelines he remains a danger, even though he does not want to be a politician and sees Libya as unready for democracy. I remain skeptical about the security issue: you have 20 million weapons and six million people and no private sector for the young people.

Doug Bandow. What are your thoughts on Saif al-Gadhafi?

Dr. Esam Omeish, Gadhafi’s people are still a force in Libya and they must be brought into the political process, although those who participated in atrocities must be excluded. They were allied with Haftar until recent developments split them.

Dr. William Lawrence. Libya is subject to an enormous amount of propaganda from Russia and others pushing for Saif, but Libyans are well aware of this. We know Haftar was promised the defense ministry. We don’t know if he was promised the Finance Ministry. There may be another delay in the election, but Libyans will not tolerate another five-year delay. All the Libyans who sold their weapons in 2014 in anticipation of peace had to buy them back at higher prices to fight against Haftar.  They will not make the same mistake again. That means we have to save an armed Libya. That will be tricky, but it is necessary. Since 2015 there have been sanctions against some persons but others equally deserving sanction have been spared because they were “needed” for the process. Sanctions are necessary but they are useless unless they are consistent.

Federica Saini Fasanott. In my opinion sanctions are the weapon of the weak. I don’t understand the strategy of the United States. The U.S. could have a wonderful role in dissuading foreign intervention into Libya.

Dr. Esam Omeish, When the administration was looking for things to do in March, they had meetings at Treasury that found that it would cost $37 billion just to deal with players they had already identified. Biden has automatically renewed a process that sadly has gotten nowhere over ten years.

Dr. William Lawrence. Most countries want access to oil and gas. The Russians also want a port or two and a military base in Libya. The first job of the new parliament will be to kick the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group out. The UAE is the most confusing.  It goes back to a geopolitical, geo-economic strategy of creating commercial opportunities and spaces throughout the region while also fighting the Muslim Brotherhood at all costs. I don’t think they know how to get what they want in Libya.

Dr. Esam Omeish. I think there are some positive interests in the cases of Italy and Egypt.  The French interests have always been one sided, but maybe they could learn. With Russia, it is important to refuse a base, but when it comes to contracts, the Libyans are willing to negotiate, even as regards unpaid debts. Tripoli is the next Dubai as a gateway to Africa.

Doug Bandow. Concluding remarks?

Dr. William Lawrence. The spoils system will either keep it on track or derail it.  I think it will probably stay on track, but the Turks and the Italians and others have to step up. I think Haftar will try to spoil it, although I don’t know when. Everyone has to be ready for that. In my opinion we need to look at Libya and Tunisia as a package. I know its hard to justify aiding a rich country, but there is too much at stake.

Dr. Esam Omeish.  I am not pessimistic. We have no option but to remain hopeful. There are too many ways to fail and too few to succeed. I agree that Haftar is the biggest threat. We need to find a way to remove him from the scene. I don’t think the international community can afford to leave a geographical area the size of Libya as unstable.

Federica Saini Fasanott. All the signs are good and Haftar is silent, but I see so many problems in front of this future government. In addition there is Covid.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org

[These are my notes from the Muslim World League’s 2nd conference on cultural rapprochement between the United States and the Muslim world held in New York City October 3-4, 2018. These notes summarize my impression of selected highlights of the presentations and are not an attempted transcription.]

OPENING SESSION

Dr. Abdullah bin Mahfudh Ibn Bayyah. Chairman of emirates fatwa council and president of the forum for promoting peace in Muslim societies.

The holy Quran calls on those who differ to seek a starting point for agreement. Islam’s way of looking at things is to weigh benefits and harm. Any ruling that goes from benefit to harm from justice to injustice has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. We want for all religions and all their adherents to move from mere acknowledgement of the other to knowing the other. We have inaugurated the alliance of virtues or of shared values inspired by the alliance of ethical businessmen from the time of the prophet. Our message to humanity is love, peace, and friendship. We believe that this is possible as long as we do not despair of God’s grace or of one another. Since its founding the United States has promoted many values in community with Islam. Defining a concept such as freedom can lead to confusion. As Muslims we value freedom but not in a way that leads to chaos. With the approach of Columbus Day it is appropriate to note that the first member of Columbus’s crew to spot land on the voyage was a sailor who died as a Muslim in Morocco.

Dr. Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Alissa. Muslim World League (MWL) Secretary-General.

In this meeting we are free to discuss new issues. All religions are exposed to extremism because all have elements who think they have a monopoly on the religion and the have pretexts that change the holy scripture and attack the values of the religion. To confront Islamophobia it behooves us to make known the true Islam that promotes forgiveness and tolerance. The motives behind the distortion of religion is political ambition. Religion cannot be imposed, and true religiosity understands the wisdom of God is in all religions. The MWL has always understood the importance of not isolating children from the world. We must totally reject all forms of racism and bigotry. “They have what they have and you have what you have and don’t ask about what they are doing.” We want a peaceful and just solution for the Palestinian problem from the table of negotiation and nothing else.

Important Communication Issues Between the U.S. and the Muslim World (Immigration, Minorities, Religious Identity and Integration, as well as Islamophobia.)

Dr. Bawa Jain (Secretary General for the World Council of Religious Leaders)

There was a young Saudi in America who in either venue tells people what they want to hear.

Mr. Mohammad Al-Sammak (Secretariat General, The Islamic / Christian Spiritual Summit)

Freud has a theory of the narcissism of differences, that no matter how small they are, we make them a major matter if they are our differences. 11% of all Americans now believe all Muslims are anti-American.

Bridging the Religious and Cultural Gap

Dr. Bob Roberts (Founder Glocal.net) The Israeli-Palestinian Peace:

Every religion is everywhere. How do we build bridges? I used to be afraid of Muslims. I overcame it by becoming friends with Muslims. I love Shaikh ibn Bayyah. He would make a great Baptist pastor. I built relationships with Muslims in my area. My tribe, the Baptists, are the strongest driving force behind Islamophobia. We are building Baptist Muslim retreats around the world. After retreats we must visit one another’s homes. We must switch from interfaith to multi-faith. You don’t have to compromise your belief; just be respectful. That we get along  because we agree on everything is baby faith. To respect the right to disagree must be the objective. Until I say the same thing in public that I say in private I am not transparent. As a child of God I should be just as concerned about Lebanon or Syria as I am about my own country. We deal with imams and pastors because we want to reach their congregations. Our primary concern as Christians is love and the primary concern of Islam is peace. Those concepts go together.

Mr. Marwan Faouri (Secretary-General of the Global Forum for Moderation) Cultural and Historical Polemics: “Understanding Diversity and Pluralism”

The Palestinian issue is the central issue and the test of rapprochement.

John Duke Anthony. President and CEO National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

More than 70 times the U.S. has cast a veto in the UN. More than 40 times it has cast a veto in defense of Israel. If the terrorists have done more to harm the image of Islam than anything else, America’s support of Israel has done more to harm the image of America than anything else.

Historical Role Models of Cultural Exchange Between East and West

Dr. Uchenna Ekwo. Center for Media and Peace Initiatives.

In any newsroom there are people proud to be war journalists but there are no peace journalists.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org

[On December 16, 2020, Nonviolence International held a webinar on Jonathan Kuttab’s book Beyond the Two State Solution. The following highlights are lightly edited excerpts transcribed from the YouTube recording of the entire webinar, which readers are encouraged to access here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4zm_VwZPm0&feature=youtu.be]

David Hart, Co-Director of Nonviolence International: I am Jewish and was raised being told of a land that was taken from us in a war when the whole world was against us. And still, somehow, we prevailed. International law made clear that no nation may keep land taken in war, but we were defending ourselves and we certainly would not hold the land long. When I learned something of the reality of everyday Palestinian life and came to see it as a deep affront to those basic values Jews are taught are at the heart of our faith, I was somehow more able to accept this contradiction because it came with the story that land would be traded for peace, and the occupation would end soon. That was decades ago. Sadly actions that have reshaped facts on the ground have made the call for a two-state solution more of a cover for oppressive policies than a realistic path towards peace with justice. Jonathan’s book attempts [to implement] a fundamental principle of creative conflict resolution.  He takes seriously the basic needs of both parties. What will it take for us to extend our compassion to the Palestinian people? Maybe we could start with the recognition that they are fully human, Radical, I know, but true nonetheless. My hope is that those willing to grapple with this complex and difficult issue will read Jonathan ‘s book and help us change the conversation.

Jonathan  Kuttab, Co-founder of Nonviolence International, practicing attorney in Israel Palestine, and the United States: I think this project started when Bob Herbst and I started thinking about: What does really take? What does each side really want? Can we create a new vision that makes sense for both people? It was a painful conversation, because I was one of those who believed in a two state solution before it was [widely advocated].  I thought it was a pragmatic way to deal with these two narratives, these two ideologies, that were mutually exclusive. “The more we get the less they get.” “The more they get, the less we get.” “One additional immigrant means one fewer person for us.” “One more Palestinian birth is a demographic threat to the other side.” After a while it became clear to me that the two-state solution not only doesn’t work, because it has been thoroughly and consistently undermined, but that it has become an alibi for the status quo, an alibi for refusing to address the injustices, an alibi for dealing with the discriminatory and sometimes very racist ideologies that totally negate and demonize [the “Other.”]

This book has three parts.  The first part explains how the two-state solution was created, and how it was undermined and collapsed and is no longer workable, because I think it is important to get rid of false hopes before we create new hopes. The second part, the most important part, is to set out a vision. People ask, “Is it even possible to think of a vision that satisfies the needs of both?” I think it is possible, but it is very painful. It requires that we give up the idea of exclusivity. Rather than argue if your narrative is correct or incorrect it requires asking what is it that your narrative provides for you? What is it that you want? Zionist Israelis tell me, “We want a Jewish state.” But what is a Jewish state? What does that mean?  You can’t circumcise a state! What is the irreducible minimum that you want out of this state. And, yes, the Palestinians also. “What is it that you want out of a Palestinian state?  For a long time we were told that the goal of Palestinian nationalism was statehood, but you can give me a state that means nothing. You give me a passport, but I can’t travel. You give me a Parliament but I can’t vote for it. You give me airport, but I can’t fly out of it. So, what is it I want out of statehood.  I want something very concrete. I want freedom; I want equality; I want freedom of movement; I want self-fulfillment; I want participation in my life; I want empowerment. A state is supposed to give me that; but if you give me state without any of those contents you give ne nothing.  I make no judgements; I claim no symmetry between the two parties. I simply ask can we come up with a vision that will accommodate the other rather than negate and demonize and criminalize and delegitimize the “Other.” The third part of the book, which I think is the weakest, is a chapter that I was almost forced to add at the end, which is “How do we get from here to there.” This book is not for anyone who insists on their maximalist ideology. If I say, “Filistiin Arabia, Palestine is Arab,” that all these Zionists from all over the world should go back to wherever they came from, then this book is not for me. Similarly if you think Israel should be as Jewish as France is French, if  you aren’t willing to accept Palestinians’ right here, then this book is not for you. This conversation is for those who say, “Despite what I believe, despite what I think, despite what I have grown up with, despite my  historic/religious/national/whatever rights, I recognize that there is this other group who are living in this land today and I can’t get rid of them, an dits not right to get rid of them. I need to find a way to accommodate them [and] t incorporate them into my visions.” I am totally open to those who disagree. I am totally open to this conversation.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, faith-based activist, one of the first women to become a rabbi: I ant to begin by doing a land acknowledgement … to understand a root cause. When I am on Turtle Island I acknowledge that I am a guest on Ohlone land, and when I travel to Palestine I acknowledge that I am a guest on Palestinian lands. We can begin the healing with a vision of radical inclusion and equity.

Robert Herbst, Jewish Voice for Peace, human rights lawyer: I’m in my seventies and for decades I was uncomfortable about the oppression over there, [but] I only really expressed my concerns within the tribe until  when the Gaza operation “Protective Edge” became too much for me to bear. In 2016  I met Jonathan and we bonded very quickly over the one-state idea. A caste-based society in which Jews dominate over non-Jews is not kosher.

Azmerah Hammouri-Davis, Friends of Sabeel, Black-Palestinian poet: It was not until I was arrested an airport while leaving Israel that I realized how insensitive my teacher’s joke [about being a terrorist seven years earlier] really was. I was contained for an hour, strip searched, patted down [for the crime of having] a Palestinian grandfather whom I had never met. When I asked why I was arrested I was told, “This is Israel, what do you think?” How naïve of me. [Since then,] I have net so many Jewish colleagues who are committed to this work. There is a wave of people ready to dismantle old logic, to cultivate, to see the joy and humanity in each of us, and to say this can be different.

Rabbi Gerald Serotta: The brilliance of what Jonathan writes about is that it is not a solution but a vision. It is an attempt to bring justice and dignity [to the] forefront.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org