Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:09 Greetings and welcome to this edition of the Maidan podcast. My name is Peter Mandeville and I'm the director of the center for global Islamic studies at George Mason university. I am delighted that we are joined today by an old friend and teacher Dr. Hesham. Hellyer Dr. Hellyer has numerous affiliations. He is a fellow at Cambridge university. He's also a senior associate fellow with the Royal United services Institute in London and the non-resident scholar with the Carnegie endowment for international peace. He is someone that I have had the pleasure to know, and to learn from a Fu for well over a decade now. And so it's always a delight to have the opportunity to listen to and learn from him. So, Dr. welcome to the Maidan podcast,
Speaker 2 00:01:01 Peter, thank you very much. That was a very kind introduction and a very hospitable welcome. And, uh, may I say the feeling is entirely neutral?
Speaker 1 00:01:11 So, um, our basic theme today, the kind of broad terrain that we want to cover in this conversation is to explore the question of how traditionalist our lemme are positioning themselves today in response to a variety of social and political developments in regions, such as the middle east and Southeast Asia. However, I wanted to start by getting a little bit of clarity and clarification on kind of terms and categories. You know, I think the, the discussion of Muslims and Islam is a domain that tends to suffer from a kind of impulse towards taxonomy, right? You always have to define what someone is or they sell a fee SoFi that? Um, and so here we are with this very broad term, um, and, and, and quite generic sounding of traditionalist alumni. So I wanted to ask you first, who are the traditionalist dilemma and what distinguishes them from other types of religious scholars,
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Peter that's, that's a great place for us to start. And I do think that when it comes to definitions and categories, people do differ a lot. And, uh, what I've noticed over my career in policy circles, but also in academia, less so in academia, more so in policy is that the, the lack of clarity on these different categories and taxonomies brings about huge confusion, a lot of arguments where there aren't actually necessary, uh, but also a lot of misleading sort of policy descriptions as well. So I think that's very important. And, you know, historically speaking, if we're sort of taking ourselves out of the contemporary moment for, for a second, historically speaking, uh, you have three, I would argue extant Muslim groups, and then they're broken down. So the first would be the Sundays. They described themselves as , I E the, the people of the, the sun or the prophetic model or the prophetic way, uh, well, the drama and the group, I E the largest sort of group of Muslims.
Speaker 2 00:03:26 And they're probably around 80 to 90% of Muslims worldwide. Then there is the shower, shower, meaning party, and the full name of it would be shared the alley. I, the party of Allie and their narrative is that they are the correct and rightful inheritors of that mantle. I E of following the son-in-law of the prophet. Uh and the last group are the , which, you know, very much smaller than the sheer, uh, the shower, probably anything from, you know, 10% upwards of, uh, of Muslims worldwide, the shower, very, very small. And they exist basically in a tiny part of Tunisia, as well as being the majority in amen, and, you know, pockets of places elsewhere. So, and then they're broken down. Okay. So when we talk about traditional lists, generally speaking, what the literature talks about, protect, and here, we're talking about the literature in generally speaking English.
Speaker 2 00:04:28 Okay. So traditionalist doesn't necessarily come up as much when you're talking about other, other languages, including most Islamic hate languages. Okay. So the it's usually in the English language that people talk about that, and you have different, let's say different meanings that are ascribed to that word. So traditionals can mean that movement, which was responding to modernity in the 20th century. And, you know, there's a whole discussion around that with regards to renig went on and, uh, and others, and, and that's a reaction against modernity on a physical philosophical level. That's generally not what people are talking about when we get into this discussion around power and politics, although sometimes they do overlap. Okay. But maybe we get into that another time, but generally what people are talking about when they say traditionalist is that they quote unquote follow traditional Islam. Again, a very, how should I say?
Speaker 2 00:05:22 A very English centered kind of discussion? Okay. So generally speaking, traditionalist Islam or traditional Islam in the English language would usually mean a Sony, okay. Be following or at least recognizing the normativity of the four extant schools of law three, following one of the three main approaches in theology, uh, in certainly theology, of course, uh, and the last recognizing the legitimacy of a Sufi orders. So that would generally be what people would say is traditional it's to them. And they would put it as such. Now I have to say that within the Arab world, within the Indian sub-continent, none of that is going to be particularly controversial. So the, the vast majority of the Muslim world that is, that is suddenly if you go to the religious establishment of those places, as opposed to, you know, the quote unquote, the masses, that's not going to be particularly controversial.
Speaker 2 00:06:29 So when you talk about Morocco, okay, this is actually enshrined in Moroccan law that Morocco follows the medical school of suddenly felt. So one of the four that it follows the school of the ESHA era in terms of theology. So that's one, and that's, you know, one of the major approaches and our Aveda and quote unquote follows Junaid the, to solve, which is, you know, a code word for saying that, you know, it's just shoddy art based Sufism. Uh, and you see the same in other institutions like the Elkhart in Egypt, the Roe in Tunisia, in Yemen and so on and so on and so on, but that's about it. You know, those are approaches to the Torah or the tradition of Islam. Those are religious approaches beyond that. You have politics, you know, and how these things manifest themselves in the world. And then there are huge differences that go across the board in that regard, which I'm sure we're going to get into over the next half hour or so, but those differences have meant that over the past century or so you have different movements come up like different selfie movements in different types of selfie movements.
Speaker 2 00:07:34 So what, what are returned purest selfie movements that emerge out of Saudi modernist Salafi movements, which emerge out of the late 19th or the 20th century in Egypt and in Syria. And these are going to be connected to what I've described as, you know, this more normative, historically based approach. They're not necessarily always counter to them either. And they come out of it and they become the subjects of great philosophical dispute within religious establishment across the Muslim world, but sometimes on a religious level, sometimes more of on a political level, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody agrees on politics within this nebulous thing that we call traditional Islam. They don't, there are lots of differences of opinion on, on a wide variety of things, not least to do with the modern nation state, um, engaging with political power, upholding, fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I hope I didn't make that even more, even more complicated now,
Speaker 1 00:08:35 No, this is a wonderful way to start because you've already kind of helped to put some brackets around traditionalism as a concept and associated with specific things and people in the world, which is really helpful, but you've also nodded towards some of the other questions that I want to explore with you today, including the question of how traditionalist groups and formations differ from other across different regions, where politics fits into the picture. And of course, this question of how we should think about the relationship between traditionalist scholars and other approaches to contemporary Islamic scholarship. That seemed very prominent today, such as Celsus elitism. Before we turn into those questions, though, has sham. I wanted to ask you about a particular turn of phrase or choice of terminology that I have seen in your published work off and on over the years, which always struck me as fascinating you in writing about these issues sometimes refer to what you call normative soon ism.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 And it's just, it's fascinating to me to kind of see that kind of formulation because obviously debates and discussions about what constitutes true Islam or authentic Islam is so much of the fodder of the conversations that we have. And the whole concept of normative Sunnism seems to suggest that there is some things settled that is normative, and you, you don't, I know, use the term in a way that suggests that, that you somehow exclusively have unique knowledge as to what constitutes normative Sunnism you, you use it in, in a fairly analytic fashion, um, is if there is this kind of object out there called normative Sunnism. So I just wanted to invite you to talk a little bit about what you mean by that to unpack it a bit, because as I understand it, it's not wholly unrelated to the way that you have characterized the boundaries and parameters of traditional Islam. Just now
Speaker 2 00:10:29 It's a good question. Um, it's, it's very difficult to answer that question, given our modern moment. And I say that because although, you know, we might be on a call right now, discussing this in a very analytical sort of way. We might be engaging on this drawing upon historical facts and figures and you know, things that are, are not really a subject of dispute, but simply bringing up the issue of what constitutes or what falls within the realm of what historically has been suddenly Islam, frankly, invites huge pitfalls that are dangerous. And if I can be Frank and what I mean by that is that if I were to say right now, for example, that, you know, group a or group B is historically rooted within a normative approach to soon as them, I E that they can trace all of their thoughts, their approach to law, their approach, to theology their approach to spirituality, to trends that existed before the modern period.
Speaker 2 00:11:33 And I say that, you know, group ABC diverged from that, then even though it might be absolutely true, and I might have the facts to back it up, there will be those in today's current political environment that will take that sort of exposition and say, oh, in that case, we can go to war with them. Or in that case, we can lock them up. Or in that case we can band them. So it becomes really difficult, you know, and I've struggled with, well struggling, maybe not the right word, but I've been very, very precise in how I engage in this discussion, particularly over the past sort of five to 10 years, because you never know what's going to happen after, you know, you make these sorts of analysis and becomes very difficult, particularly in the aftermath of, you know, the, that first wave of the Arab spring.
Speaker 2 00:12:20 So when I use the word normative, I mean that indeed that there's been a settling process. And I do say settling process because it's not something that simply ends, right? So you have extant schools of law. Excellent. Simply meaning that they're still operative that people still follow them and that they are able to follow them because there are enough people who are experts in each of those schools that can actually teach them and understand them in the way that they were being taught. Before. I remember when I was studying this years ago, that there was one fear that, uh, that an instructor I had, who is from Syria, he talked about the hamburger school and he had actually studied the handle of the school of film. And he had done so with one intention, one intention alone, because he had previously studied Chaffee and he said, I want to study it so that doesn't get lost.
Speaker 2 00:13:13 He's like, what do you mean got lost? There are all these books. And he said, yeah, but you can't pass on a school of law unless there are enough people that have mastered that school of law in person in the flesh. That was his worry. Now maybe he, maybe his worry was exaggerated, but it was very interesting to me to see that this emphasis on living mastery that had been passed on from living masters was extremely important. And considering the extent to which something could continue to be normative in a real sense, I E not just in a book. So the parameters of what Sunni Islam has historically been about again, has been about these approaches of the folk, which again, have settled on the processes that make up the forest schools. And I say the processes, because again, they had continues and, you know, development within those schools of law continue.
Speaker 2 00:14:06 That's not something that simply ends years ago in academia. People were still arguing about whether the quote-unquote gates of HD had to been closed. And, you know, that was settled thankfully in academia because it wasn't something that had really come up within historical jurisprudential arguments. There was about levels of HD had that might be beyond the reach of a, of most people, but even so when it comes to theology again, you know, there's a very famous formula is not the right word, but a very famous approach that, mm, safari Annie put forward where he said that the three memes of Atmos on, uh, are, uh, , uh and the Hamlet, and that these are the three approaches that, you know, Stan, you know, that's something I took read the , that's the and you know, what the selfies, my considered to be their predecessor, you know, and that's obviously a debatable, but, you know, that's the thing.
Speaker 2 00:15:06 And when it comes to Sufism, that generally speaking, as I said earlier, you know, it's, it's a recognition that Sufism itself is a legitimate science, but also that there are multiple ways of manifesting. And in the same way, there are multiple ways of manifesting the schools of law. So when I say normative, Sunnism, that's what I'm talking about. And again, I'm, I'm very cautious, or I try to be cautious at least about, you know, saying what groups or groups do not fall into that particular category, because it does allow for our work to be used in ways that we just wouldn't want it to be used. And that's a real concern that I have. That's a real concern that I have. It's also why I try to keep in mind that these discussions don't happen in a vacuum that you have governments and states and movements that are very keen to take certain differences and make them huge when they're not all that huge, but also even when there are differences. So they, okay, there are differences and you might not regard them as normative. That doesn't necessarily mean that to be arrested or locked up or something. It is delicate in that regard, but I'm glad you brought up the question. I hope I've answered it properly.
Speaker 1 00:16:14 You have, and you've also offered a great segue into where I'd like to go next, which is to begin to explore those differences and the politics and the politics of difference in this space. You in characterizing traditionalist scholarship already indicated that there are some notable differences between different groups across the Muslim majority world and Muslim minority world with respect to traditionalist Islam. And so I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about the similarities and differences between traditionalist, lemme in different geographies. And how should we understand the sources of these differences? Is it down to kind of differences and educational formation and scholarly training? Is it just sort of different networks that people move and work in, or is it more to do with kind of differences in the, if I can put it this way, the ambient religious culture in different regions, or, or is it primarily politics or geopolitics these days?
Speaker 2 00:17:11 I think it's all those things. If I'm quite honest with you. So there has been a narrative that's being put forward. I disagree with this narrative, but it's a, it's a neat sort of narrative where people argue that those that maintain this connection to a premodern approach to Sunni Islam are by virtue of that going to basically be slaves to power, okay. That they're going to be quietest, that they're not going to be interested in doing anything else. And that by necessity, if you're looking for any sort of, you know, active, uh, activist sort of approach, then it has to be rooted in newer sort of movements and revivalists and us, et cetera, yada yada, yada, that sort of take formation in the early to mid 20th century. I'm very skeptical. I'm not even skeptic. I think this is bunk because when you look again at how history has unfolded, that's simply not the case.
Speaker 2 00:18:07 You have groups that were entirely normative in terms of their approach to Sunni Islam in the pre-modern period in the modern period that were very suspicious of power, or that were very, very much in an oppositional mode to different political authorities of their day. Sometimes those authorities were, were foreign. They were Colonial's powers or imperialist powers. Sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they were, there were Muslim powers who they deemed not to be just forms of rule. And you can argue that because of the fact that they held to, you know, very mainstream approach to Sunni Islam, that they were simply going to be quiet this because that's not what happened. That's not what happened with people like automotive mythos in Libya who fought against Italian fascism. And was a disciple in a Sufi order, very much attached to a very historically normative approach to the Sunni Islam.
Speaker 2 00:19:07 You had that in many different parts of the Muslim world. I'm in Southeast Asia and south Asia and other parts of Africa. And so on. I mean, that's not, that's not really going to work very well if that's, you know, the narrative, do you want to put across you, you also had it again when it came to opposing Muslim rulers. Again, it didn't mean that if they held to a traditional kind of approach, that they weren't going to be able to break out of this quietest sort of mold also by the same token, on the other side of it, you had people who were very much involved in these quote unquote reformist movements, these revivals movements. Sometimes they would have been pure selfie movements. Sometimes it would have be modernist selfie movements. So you know, much more Muslim brotherhood in content and they supported, you know, the, the powers that be a little known sort of fact, that I came across in my research was when the civil war in Algeria broke out, this is often brought up as evidence that quote unquote political Islamism is never going to be allowed the chance to express itself well in the form of FIS, that was definitely the case.
Speaker 2 00:20:16 They won the elections and the elections and the results were canceled and so on. And so that part of the narrative has some grounding, but another part of the narrative, which hasn't been studied as much as that there was a Muslim brotherhood movement in Algeria at the time. And it backed the military. When you talk about the Arab uprisings between 2011 and 2013, in particular, you had Salafi groups that were supportive of the powers that be as opposed to being supportive of, uh, any sort of revolution activity. When it came to Sudan, where all motor Bashir was finally forced from power, the quote unquote modernist revival is tendencies, which were linked to the brotherhood and so on. They were very supportive of the Bishard regime. When you get to a place like Syria, there's a much more of a division and the division isn't between traditionalist LMS or more historically mainstream LMS on one side and the revivalist on the other, because within the quote unquote traditionalist camp, there was huge diversity of opinion.
Speaker 2 00:21:18 was obviously an example of someone who's stood by the regime. There were many others who certainly did not, and were incredibly active in opposing the Syrian regime and, you know, validating, armed, struggle against it. Uh, same thing happened in Libya as well. When you talk about it in the sub-continent in India and in Pakistan has a big history there of LMI being involved in political activity and history will not be kind to those who insist that quote unquote, a historically normative approach to as, and means that they have to be quietest. That's certainly not what happened in some continent. And I think people try to do this and force that, you know, that round peg into the square hole, frankly, for ideological reasons that are not particularly useful in an analytical frame. Now, the question is why they have those differences. And that's what I meant when I said that, you know, all of the factors that you brought up, I think all of those factors apply.
Speaker 2 00:22:11 And I think a big function of it is, is frankly just very sociological in terms of how people live, these kinds of experiences. I remember being in Egypt in 2011 when the uprising began and a very noted scholar who I've written about a lot, who was part of the protests chef I met and was actually killed towards the end of the year in the midst of being in a clash between protesters and the security forces. So the question then becomes, well then who was he? Was he part of a revivalist movement? He was not, he wasn't the Salafi, he wasn't part of the Muslim brotherhood. He was actually on the country, someone who was very, very supportive of the historical religious establishment of Egypt, more to the point worked in the state religious institution. You know, he was a in area. So, you know, a very significant official, official state official kind of position.
Speaker 2 00:23:10 And he never resigned that position, by the way, you know, he even passed, the fat was saying that police officers can not fire an unarmed protesters while he was in that position. So, you know, complicating the narrative I think is really important and making sure that people understand that actually it's not a foregone conclusion that you're going to have this approach to politics or that approach to politics because people don't really operate like that. They don't simply take what they see in a text and simply apply it. It becomes mediated through their experiences. And we've seen so much diversity on how people apply these different approaches that I think it behooves us to complicate and, and recognize the complexity of this,
Speaker 1 00:23:53 This point that you made about the assumed inherent quiet TISM of traditional scholarship is fascinating. And one that I think has become entangled in, in complicated ways with the security policies and agendas of countries. Well outside the immediate regions we're talking about, including Europe and north America. Certainly one thing that I began to notice here from my vantage point in Washington, DC in the years immediately following nine 11. So we're, you know, going back 16 or more years now, there came to be internalized within the Washington DC national security establishment. This idea that Sophie's are intrinsically quietest. And therefore, if you were to somehow promote Sufism, and I guess by extension traditionalist scholarship in the middle east using us resources, then you would somehow have a neutralizing effect on the political discourse and the mobilization space that activists groups, and particularly militant activist groups like and eventually ISIS would have to operate.
Speaker 1 00:25:00 One thing that I did want to get into a little bit later is kind of your views on the industry. That's kind of grown up around this relationship between national security and the promotion of traditionalist scholars. But I first wanted to explore in a little bit more detail, one particular geography that you've already mentioned to sham, which is that of Syria, obviously Syria as a location has had a very important standing, certainly within the middle east, as, as a hub of traditional scholarship, you already mentioned the importance of the late chef Ramadan as sort of this figure of towering stature. And so I wanted to get your views on how the civil war and its aftermath, what effect has that had on traditionalist scholarly networks in the middle east, given the sort of central role that Damascus has played in that world for so long,
Speaker 2 00:25:56 Syria plays are played rather a significant role in the production of religious knowledge in the Arab world. But Syria was also, I won't say that its authority was contested. That's not so much the issue, but because Syria was also under a pretty closed regime, it also meant that its networks beyond Syria were less than what you might find from other countries. For example, you had people from Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Malaysia traveling from that part of the world to further their studies and they are world generally, generally speaking, they wouldn't be going to Syria. They would go to the Alzheimer in Egypt. They might go to Jordan. They might go to Saudi. Very few comparatively would go to Syria. And that's a function of simply the, the political dynamics of the time you had Westerners who would travel. Sometimes they would travel far more to Syria and they would travel to Sierra because they would be under the impression.
Speaker 2 00:26:57 And it's not an unfounded impression that although the institutions might not be as well known as others like the cuddle yin or the alcohol, for example, that the quality of education would be better or at least more reliable. Again, they were not necessarily unfounded in this assumption at all. So the civil war has ended that Bashar, the asset's extremely brutal regime has ensured that, you know, first, a lot of scholars, I personally suspect that most scholars have left Syria altogether, that there are very few that are left in Syria. And that doesn't mean that everybody went to war against special asset because there are quite a few that did not engage in the uprising. I'd said very little about the uprising, but they left anyway. And they relocate to the different places. Some of them, a huge number of them relocated to Turkey Turkey was where they managed to find refuge and space to continue their teaching.
Speaker 2 00:27:49 And then others, you know, scattered into different places. But I would say the largest plurality probably went to Turkey partly because of geography because it's a neighboring state when it comes to the differences though that happened in Syria as well and how that plays out in the networks. That that was also something that was interesting because yes, was a very significant figure. He was not the only significant figure within more broadly speaking, Syrian scholarly networks. And quite a few of them were very opposed to the Assad regime and made the opposition extremely well. No, and you had this, you know, very, uh, very intense sort of discussion on folding in different religious establishment, but also, uh, students, all of these religious establishments between, uh, you know, 20, 20 11 and onwards, particularly up until 2014, I suppose, where people wonder, you know, well then what was the right sort of course of action, uh, Ramadan bowtie is this great towering scholar, but he stood by the tyrant.
Speaker 2 00:28:52 What does that mean? Right. And I think a lot of people try to find meaning in his approach that was rooted in his religious credentials or in his religious commitments. And I'm not sure if that's the best way to sort of examine it because the reality is, is that the same religious commitments that he had were shared by people who took a completely different view and who were not less bound or less committed to the same Corpus of religious teachings as he was, but they took a completely different viewpoint on what that meant in terms of opposing the Assad regime. So that, that that's raised an interesting question for everyone on. Sometimes people try to, I won't say get away from it because I do think it's a legitimate sort of way to look at it, but people say that actually, he didn't really know what was going on that Ramadan and boltsy wasn't really engaged in technology that much, that he didn't own a television, that the information that he consumed was generally sort of given to him by the secret services and that he'd lived in that system for so long that he simply depended on the empirical data that he was given, as opposed to suspecting the empirical data, which is why he characterized the protestors in such strong language, because that's what he thought they were.
Speaker 2 00:30:11 He wasn't lying. A lot of people explain a way his opposition and this regards to the uprising and is explaining it away. But I also think that it has grounding as well, not saying it's wrong, but then others will then bring up. Another question is widened. He double check. Why didn't he verify? And that's when I think things get kind of interesting from a analytical viewpoint, because I think that many who look at these establishments from particularly outside of the region are probably not as aware as they might think they are about the effects of living under systems like that, that if you live under an authoritarian system for a significant period of time, particularly in your sort of formative years, then the things that you begin to imbibe or recognize as just normal, which are not normal, which are completely abnormal, which are completely outrageous, but that you've seen them so many times that you simply become immune to what they are.
Speaker 2 00:31:13 And you begin to see them as just very, just very regular. And I've seen this many times, you know, I mean, as somebody who's spent a lot of time in the Arab world, but a lot of time outside of it, my father is English. My mother was an Arab. I've spent my entire life between these two very differing kinds of political environments. And I can see it very clearly that there's some things that people take for granted that they never would otherwise. And we sometimes, you know, make assumptions about, you know, how much an effect that might have Americans, for example, make assumptions about guns that nowhere else in the world is going to fly, right? And Brits will make assumptions about healthcare, which will definitely not be the case in the United States and so on and so on. But these things are a bit more blatant.
Speaker 2 00:31:59 Whereas the effects of living under authoritarianism is very, very different, is very, very different and much more subtle. And the religious establishment are not immune to the same sort of pressures and things that you know exist. And I remember thinking about this years ago when it came to , but one thing about chef I met personally, I suspect had a lot to do with why he was different when he was younger, he was a radical, we note that he was politically a lot more radical when he was younger. And then he left that and he, he embraced, you know, a much more mainstream kind of approach. But I reckon that actually his younger days of being, you know, more radically sort of inclined in terms of his politics, that, that actually, they actually saved them from that. You know, so there are these very contextual, very subjective realities that play out.
Speaker 2 00:32:58 And there are all of these different factors that exist. And yes, I'm not someone by the way that thinks that ideas that approaches to religious texts are simply irrelevant. And you know, it's all about circumstance. I don't believe that. I think that some people are genuinely inspired and motivated and pushed by very firmly held beliefs that are rooted in what they at least think is religion. I do believe that. And you know, this puts me at odds with a lot of people that I know who would prefer to think that no, no ideas, ideas don't really mean anything. They're just excuses for people to be the way that they are. And I don't believe that at all. But taking that aside, there's still going to be a huge amount of variation that's there. Okay. So yes, there'd be certain things that are cut off from you.
Speaker 2 00:33:48 So if you, if, for example, you, you hold to whatever you were taught at the in Morocco. I don't think that it's going to be plausible for you to stick to that. And at the same time, join a group like ISIS. For example, you'd have to say goodbye to a lot of this stuff in order for you to do that. So there will be things that you will be quote unquote immunized from at the same time. Does that mean that everybody who goes through that sort of system is going to think that the king is Manian and should never be questioned, or it doesn't mean that there's going to be a variation of approaches there. I suspect the latter more than, than anything else.
Speaker 1 00:34:23 There are a couple more questions or topics that I'm hoping that we might be able to touch on while we have you. One of them is to delve into the entanglement, the political insecurity entanglement of traditional scholarship. In, in recent years from the mid two thousands onwards, there have been a number of governments in the middle east that have pursued efforts that have kind of appeared to try to position them as purveyors of moderate anti extremist Islam. And, you know, we saw this coming out of Jordan to some extent, certainly Morocco and the GCC sub region of course, has been active in this space in recent years with countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, to some extent, being involved in pursuing projects and conferences and summits focused on pluralism and tolerance and moderateness and interfaith solidarity building, including sometimes fairly high profile relationships or what appear to be relationships of patronage between those governments and particular religious scholars.
Speaker 1 00:35:29 So some of it is obvious the longstanding relationship between the shaft loose of Ocado, we and the authorities in Doha, you know, , who's perhaps the scholar who most cleanly fits the traditionalist mold as you've defined it in the conversation and some work that he was doing in the UAE some years back. And of course, more recently the prominence of in Bayer. And of course, we've just had just this past weekend, the latest meeting of the forum for peace and Muslim societies that the chef presides over. I wanted to get your views on kind of how we should parse and make sense of the politics of official engagement within sponsorship of religious scholarship in the present political insecurity contexts.
Speaker 2 00:36:15 Uh, before I get to that, the examples you've given are very clear examples as to why there's no single sort of explanation here. Use of is not religiously speaking quite the same mold as someone like Alia, Jeffrey, or Abdullah than Bayer, and yet the loyalty aspect or the support of a particular government and not criticizing the government to say the least, but also supporting its approaches beyond that's pretty much share, even though they come from very, very different backgrounds and approaches to religion, more generally speaking. And I think that's important because I think people forget that. I would also say that when you look at Turkey, if we want to include that in the discussion as well, that you're going to find differences there too. And that those differences don't necessarily mean that those are support out of the gun are going to be quote unquote anti traditionalist or on those who oppose them.
Speaker 2 00:37:12 Got it. It won't make any sense when you do that. Too many examples will be outside of that neat equation, if there's a lot more that goes on here. And in terms of your actual question, which is a very important question, I'd say that all of the countries you mentioned, and then more on top of that, when they are involved in instrumentalizing Islam for political purposes, invariably, they're going to try to create some sort of narrative or image that fits within their political projects. So the Saudis did it, the Turks did, and I continued to do it and the Saudis continued to do it as well. The Qataris did it, the Egyptians, the Morati is most certainly the Moroccans, whenever it's slam is instrumental lies, especially when it's partisan, but even when it's not part design differences on the basic level of the state and the state, isn't a contested political authority that, you know, that's going to be the case pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 2 00:38:12 And some try to do it more often than others. It used to be that, you know, the big interfaith sort of meetings that you heard about regionally speaking would be in Doha. And then there's obviously efforts by the sororities to do stuff like that as well. And there was the king Abdulaziz interfaith center, which was previously in Vienna, which seems to have moved to Portugal recently. So that's a Saudi initiative when it comes to Egypt, there's domestic stuff, but also more international stuff that relates to that. But of course, Egypt has religious plurality in the country itself. So it has a different impetus and the Emiratis, as you noted, they have their forum going on this week. So they're definitely in that space. And that also plays into soft power politics as well on a geopolitical level. The temptation that I'm always worried of is saying that, you know, one country is doing it to the exclusion of others.
Speaker 2 00:39:08 And I think that depending on where you're talking about in, in time, right? You know, so if you go between 2000 and 2005, you will see this country is more active between 2005 and 2010. This country is more active, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I think that it depends very much on where they're at at the present time. So, you know, you brought up the UAE, he wasn't really doing this stuff outside of the country or with an, with an outward facing approach until about 20 11, 20 12, before that they were doing a lot of this sort of stuff, but it was all domestic. It was all very much about internal affairs. Egypt does a lot of stuff domestically, internationally. It does a lot less, but that's also a function, frankly, I think of, you know, focus and, and financial resources. The Qatari is don't really do much on domestic religious diversity because they don't have much of it.
Speaker 2 00:39:59 Whereas they do a lot more on international sort of stuff. The Saudis, the Saudis have been going through a very interesting sort of phase to put it lightly over the last few years because Mohammed bin settled man is certainly not interested in political pluralism, but he's, you also saw a noted Sheri, Lebanese scholar, just being given citizenship of Saudi Arabia, but he's a Lebanese school that opposed his mother-in-law right. So, you know, when religion is instrumentalized, invariably, those states are going to have to say, we've got the real McCoy and all you lot are wrong. Now they might make it explicit. They might just have it as implicit and sometimes very strange relationships come up as a result, you have places like the heart, which is extremely aware on a leadership level of its own approach to religion. And it's very critical of pure Salafism coming from Saudi and yet, well, quite happily go off to Riyadh or Jeddah and participate in conferences that are hosted by the religious establishment that they frequently criticized at heart.
Speaker 2 00:41:09 Uh, I don't know if that really answers your question or not Futura, except to say that I think a lot of countries are doing that. It's not that they're all doing it the same way or to the same extent. So as I said, if you go to different time periods, one country is probably doing it more often than others, but frankly it's pretty much inevitable that if they want to instrumentalize them for political purposes, then they're going come to this one way or the other, the Turks, the Egyptians, the , you know, it's a loss, an equal opportunity enterprise, and it can be used for very deleterious effects and arguably very good ones as well. You know what I mean? Religion can also be a mobilizing factor for many different places. Again, that's not something to ignore. Religious belonging can be deployed in a way to bring people together for them to collaborate on issues of mutual, uh, mutual, good, the et cetera, but it can also be used for really bad things. And we've seen that. We've seen that a lot over the last decade, in my opinion,
Speaker 1 00:42:14 I really like your answer Hashanah because you make it impossible for us to simply embrace a kind of crude rejection of such efforts out of the assumption that this is nothing other than cynical, instrumental mobilization of religion on the part of the state in order to achieve certain specific security or political agendas. And so, you know, certainly there are elements of that in place sometimes, but there's also a far more complicated background to this in many cases. And you know, what it might first appear is not always the case. When you dig into and understand what an international relations theory we might call the various two level games that are being played by various governments that engage in this kind of effort. So I wanted to conclude our time with you today by asking a more kind of forward-looking question. It's sort of an omnibus question about the changing global geography of traditionalist scholarship.
Speaker 1 00:43:13 Obviously we have talked about many of the conventional mainstay figures and locations associated with traditionalist scholarship, but I know that you're also someone who follows kind of emerging trends are yourself connected to of a vast and very diverse range of geographies that include places like Malaysia and South Africa. And so I wanted to invite you to talk a little bit about connections between traditionalist scholars globally, you know, between the middle east and Sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, but LOE networks and how they're changing and just get from you your sense of kind of what are the emerging trends in traditionalist scholarship. Then to what extent are we seeing a sort of different kinds of geography emerge as being more relevant in these kinds of debates and discussions, including if I might add including the impact of these changes on traditionalist formations as they exist, you know, in Europe and north America.
Speaker 2 00:44:17 So the way that I would interpret change would be to see students, where are students going? That's the way that I would, I would try to map it. And when it comes to the last decade, the upheaval as a result of the Arab spring has meant that fewer people were coming to Egypt for a certain period of time. Although I'd argue, I think that they've basically come back because again, it's a new generation of people, Syria, virtually nobody is going to Syria anymore because of the security situation. Yemen was never a place where a huge number of people went because it was a lot harder to get to and a lot harder to stay. And now the, the COVID-19 sort of situation is, is making things a lot more difficult when it comes to that. So that's not really changed too much. I think the biggest question has to be, are there going to be countries that allow for a wider environment of openness where people will flock to as a result of that openness.
Speaker 2 00:45:19 So when it comes to Turkey, if you've noticed over the past few years, a lot of Syrian scholars have moved to Turkey and then a lot of people are trying to set up things in Turkey. Now this is not necessarily a situation that is always going to be the same. So for example, a few years ago, the Glen movement in Turkey was not described or characterized as it is now. So that's one difference. The political standing of the president Erdogan was very different as well, five years ago, let alone 10 years ago. And the economic situation was very different as well. So I mean, all of these things do play a role. I think in terms of our institutions going to be built, are people going to flock to those institutions or not? When it comes to people who would have ordinarily gone to study in places like Mecca and Medina, are they still going to want to do that under a new authority where there wasn't much openness to begin with, but you did have people who were able to give classes outside of institutions like almond, Cora or Medina university and so on.
Speaker 2 00:46:24 Right. That's gone. Okay. And that's gone because of the overall overarching set of restrictions that Mohammed bin said, men has been responsible for at least according to the studies that I read. So that means that people who would have ordinarily gone to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to study, they're not going to do that anymore. They'll go for pilgrimage, they'll go for visitations and so on, but they won't do, they won't do long periods of study there because they don't want to just go to the university. They want to study with scholars privately in their homes or in the mosques and so on. And if those, if that's not available anymore, then they simply won't. And I know of cases like this, you know, people who have come from Southern Africa, for example, who would ordinarily have gone to, to Mecca to study and saying, no, we're just going to go to Egypt.
Speaker 2 00:47:10 And Egypt does its problems. And Egypt is an authoritarian state, et cetera. But Egypt is a place where we can find circles of knowledge that are outside of the university and we can participate in those and we can benefit from those. And we, so we can't do any more in Mecca. I think major population centers outside of the region are going to try to just keep doing what they've historically been doing and where they're unable to continue in quite the same way. They'll try to make adjustments the biggest new sort of hub in that regard. And I don't think it's huge, but I think it's interesting to watch is Turkey because for the first time in recent history, at least Turkey is a place where you don't need to learn Turkish. In order to study with Arabic speaking scholars, you can do your studies without having to learn, learn the Turkish language.
Speaker 2 00:48:02 Now, especially if you want to take from that Syrian kind of experience, then yes, you're far better off going to Turkey rather than go to Syria right now. So that will be something that's interesting. Even if we imagine in five or 10 or 20 years time, if the situation in Syria, it looks very, very different. Well, there might be a new sort of experience that has been tried and tested in Turkey and you know, that could be something very different, but again, all of this is up for grabs, okay? Because the situation in Turkey could change. The economy is not in a good state and, you know, economy plays on politics, political fortunes of different political parties and figures are very likely to be affected by that. So I think it's an interesting time to, to just keep watching. And I think over the coming years, you know, there is still flux in all of these places. There's flux taking place in religious establishments and political establishments. So I think it's an interesting time to watch and to see how this all unfolds.
Speaker 1 00:49:03 Yeah, I'm, I'm hearing flux. I'm hearing up for grabs is such a fascinating portrait that you've given us his sham of incredibly complex dynamics around these issues. And I really genuinely believe that there are very few people out there that would be able to give that kind of broad global perspective in ways that captures the big picture while at the same time, preserving enormous nuance in the way that you think about and talk about these issues. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 00:49:31 I know one guy, I know somebody, his name is Peter Vanderville, he's actually not too bad.
Speaker 1 00:49:36 That's not true at all. We're so grateful to have, have the chance to host you on the maiden podcast, to shaman, to learn from a human. We hope that you will come back again in the future to let us know how the up in the air and up for grabbing us and the flux side of things are going. So thanks so much for being with us today. And
Speaker 2 00:49:55 My pleasure. Thank you so much, Peter.
