In this timely and thoughtful book, Ahmet Kuru provides us with a panoramic survey of key historical and political developments in the pre-modern Islamic world that helps set the stage for a reckoning with its present. Based on his survey, he isolates specific factors that have resulted in what the author describes as three persistent problems in the contemporary Muslim-majority world: the crystallization of a culture of political authoritarianism; onset of endemic violence; and, a situation of chronic economic underdevelopment. Kuru dismisses from the outset two tendencies in some quarters to explain the origins of these problems. One attributes them to Islam that is invoked as a reified concept in such discourses; the other to Western colonial occupation of a broad swath of the Muslim-majority world starting in the 19th century.
Kuru says that the reality is far more complex and that neither of these explanations can account for the current situation. Instead, he says, one should focus on a critical pre-modern development—the formation of the ʿulamaʾ-state alliance starting in the 11th century—that in large measure contributed to the onset of these problems. The author sets out to prove his thesis by charting a historical course from the early centuries of the Islamic period to the 11th century and beyond. This allows him to trace vibrant periods of cultural, intellectual, and economic flourishing in the early centuries that he attributes to the non-interference of the state in such activities and the independence of the learned scholarly elite from the government. All this began to change in the 11th century, according to our author, when the ʿulamaʾ began to increasingly consort with the rulers. The alliance that sprung up between them ultimately proved to be quite stultifying and produced the kind of top-down political control that promotes authoritarianism. The loss of the ʿulamaʾ's traditional role as a non-governmental group that could lobby for the welfare of the people as honest, independent brokers has proved to be disastrous, the effects of which are still with us today.
With regard to what appears as endemic violence in Muslim-majority societies, Kuru offers a nuanced analysis that takes into consideration specific historical and political factors. His position is markedly different from that of certain Western academics, such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, and secular Muslim critics, such as Adonis of Syria, who have pointed to what they understand to be a violent essence within Islam that predisposes Muslims to violence. Kuru challenges this essentialist position by pointing to the diversity of views among pre-modern Muslim scholars on what constituted legitimate violence and the conditions under which violence becomes permissible. The larger point that the author makes is that religious texts are multivalent—how readers choose to read them is highly contingent on their worldview and the specificities of their life circumstances. In Kuru's opinion, it will be difficult to curtail violent activities unless a credible learned class of scholars mounts a searing critique of militant interpretations and challenges their legitimacy. But, he laments, given the ʿulamaʾ-state alliance, no such scholarly class who can speak with such credibility and moral authority has emerged or is currently visible.
On the third topic of economic development, Kuru observes that the Islamic world began to lag behind European societies due to increasing political authoritarianism from the 11th century onward. This development hobbled a vibrant merchant class and prevented the rise of a bourgeoisie that could function independently of the ruling elite. In the modern period, similar problems are being replicated within rentier economies that help prolong the dominance of authoritarian political and religious elites.
The picture is, therefore, rather dismal. So how to break out of this morass? The solution is quite obvious to Kuru—the ʿulamaʾ-state alliance has to end. A new class of intellectuals and scholars has to emerge that can present new ideas free of state interference and who can speak truth to power, as they were entrusted to do in the past.
The author's overall analysis provides a helpful longue-durée perspective on today's problems in the Muslim-majority world. But Kuru does not tell us how this solution can be achieved when one of the main reasons for the longevity of certain authoritarian regimes in the Muslim-majority world is that they are being shored up by the West. The burning, unaddressed question remains: how do Muslim-majority societies win deliverance from outside interference and the machinations of others who would use them as pawns in their own power plays? In her recent book How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020), Elizabeth Thompson painstakingly documents how Britain and France ruthlessly aborted the rise of a pro-democracy movement in Syria in the post-World War I period because it was politically inconvenient, thereby setting in motion illiberal currents that continue to destabilize the region. Her analysis is a chilling augury for the present—there is no doubt that for the foreseeable future, the political aspirations of the populations of the Middle East will continue to be held hostage by global power dynamics and the ability of these populations to chart their own destiny will continue to be thwarted.
Kuru's concluding comment that Muslims should establish competitive and meritocratic systems in order to solve the problems of violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment is all well and good. But one is tempted to ask: are these systems also not required to be moral, just, and ethical? Here I am reminded of the views of Wael Hallaq articulated in his book The Impossible State: Islam, Politics and Modernity's Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) that the modern nation-state project as it developed in the West has scant regard for moral and ethical concerns because of its exclusive focus on political and utilitarian objectives. The resurgence of blatant nativism, virulent racism, and religious bigotry that have allowed authoritarian ideas to gain ascendancy in a significant number of Western countries today appear to lend credence to Hallaq's perspectives. Furthermore, environmental degradation spearheaded by the industrialized countries threatens to render the earth uninhabitable within this century. Might the guidance of a revitalized, non-state affiliated ʿulamaʾ, who are capable of marshalling their moral imagination, allow the Muslim-majority world to rethink perhaps what flourishing societies in the 21st century could look like without succumbing to the costly missteps of liberal modernity? Kuru's analysis persuades that that would be an experiment worth undertaking—should it be allowed to get underway.
