Christine D. Baker, Medieval Islamic Sectarianism (New Texts Out Now)

Christine D. Baker, Medieval Islamic Sectarianism (New Texts Out Now)

Christine D. Baker, Medieval Islamic Sectarianism (New Texts Out Now)

By : Christine D. Baker

Christine D. Baker, Medieval Islamic Sectarianism (Arc Humanities Press, 2019). 

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? 

Christine Baker (CB): I became interested in this topic because, when I was in graduate school, I slowly became more and more surprised at the Sunni-centrism of the narrative of medieval Islamic history. The more I read, the more it seemed evident to me that we present an altogether too tidy vision of the development of different forms of Muslim identity. In this, I was inspired by Richard Bulliet’s excellent book, Islam: The View from the Edge, which challenged scholars to find new narratives of Islamic history that did not center the Sunni caliphate. 

Further, I had been long fascinated by the Fatimids and the Buyids, two Shi’i states that rose to power in the tenth-century Middle East during a time when many people were converting to Islam for the first time. Although there is a fair amount of scholarly attention paid to the Fatimids, the Buyids are relatively understudied and there is very little written on the two dynasties together. Researching these dynasties and the impact they had on the articulation of different forms of Shi’i identity made me want to write about the role that these two states played in this process. 

Finally, I wanted to offer a book aimed at more general readers that would help them understand the development of different forms of Muslim identity (and the role played by ruling states).

... this book grapples broadly with questions of the formation of Sunni orthodoxy and notions of “heterodoxy” in Islam.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address? 

CB: In addition to analyzing the history of medieval Islamic sectarianism and the history of the Fatimids and the Buyids, this book grapples broadly with questions of the formation of Sunni orthodoxy and notions of “heterodoxy” in Islam. I attempt to interrogate the idea that Sunni orthodoxy was fixed and stable notion before the tenth or eleventh centuries and examine other forms of Islam, many of which do not fit neatly into a Sunni-Shi’i binary. I also address how medieval states articulate their legitimacy and the role of historical memory in that process. 

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work

CB: This is my first book, but most of my previous publications have either focused on the Fatimids and Buyids, with broader ideas of how medieval authors crafted historical narrative. In this book, I use the tools of narrative analysis to examine how the Fatimids and Buyids articulated their legitimacy and made claims to authority that would appeal to a diverse audience.  

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

CB: While there is new research in this book that I hope will be interesting for scholars of medieval Shi’ism, the book is intended for a non-specialist audience. There are many excellent books on Islamic sectarian identities, but I wanted a book to write a book that explored the extremely complex process of developing different forms of religious identity and how those identities played a significant role in political authority. I am hoping that this book will provide an easy source for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and scholars in related fields to understand the uncertainty in what we know about the development of different forms of religious identity in the medieval Islamic world.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

CB: I have two main projects that I am currently working on. First, I am assembling an edited volume entitled Diversity in Medieval Islam with Dr. Eric Hanne (Florida Atlantic University). This edited volume is bringing together scholars who work on non-Sunni and/or non-Arab perspectives in the medieval Islamic world to show the significance of these movements within the articulation of medieval Muslim societies. Second, I am working with two colleagues (Dr. Erin Colin and Dr. Michelle Sandhoff) at my own institution, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, on collecting oral histories of Muslims who live outside of major urban centers in order to see how living outside of cities affects the development of Muslim communities. 

J: How has this research influenced your teaching? 

CB: I am the only faculty member with a specialization in Middle Eastern history at my institution, so I tend to teach classes focused mostly on the modern Middle East (because these are the topics where there is the most student demand). While I do not often teach within my own subspecialty, I have found that researching competing (and sometimes complementing) forms of Islam greatly informs how I cover Muslim identities for a student audience. In this, I try to emphasize the overall diversity of the Muslim experience in all time periods. While Sunni Islam plays, of course, an incredibly significant role in Islamic history (both medieval and modern), I aim to teach students not to generalize too much about religious identity and be open to many different forms and interpretations of faiths of all kinds. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from the introduction)

Surveys of medieval Middle Eastern history designed for students and non-experts…still often present what renowned historian Richard Bulliet called the ‘view from the centre’:

The view from the center portrays Islamic history as an outgrowth from a single nucleus, a spreading inkblot labeled ‘the caliphate’…. [which], in seeking to explain the apparent homogeneity of Islamic society in later centuries, itself something of an illusion, projects back into the days of the caliphate a false aura of uniformity, leaving untold the complex and strife-ridden tale of how Islamic society actually developed.

I hope to provide a view of the development of different forms of sectarian identity that shines a light on the complexity and diversity of early Islamic society.

In this book, I will focus on the tenth century, a period in Middle Eastern history that has often been referred to as the “Shi’i Century,” when two Shi’i dynasties rose to power. This era often seems like an anomaly: a period when, for a short time, Shi’is grabbed the wheel of Islamic history but were quickly ousted. Following from this assumption, historians often call the period after the Shi’i Century the “Sunni Revival” because that was when Sunni control was restored. I will argue, however, that these terms present a misleading image of a unified medieval Islam that was predominately Sunni. By looking at the development of terms like Sunni and Shi’i, as well as how they were used by Muslim states, we will learn about the lived experience of countless medieval Muslims. 

Historians have long debated about the formation of medieval sectarian identity and I am not the first one to argue that, even in the tenth century, the term Sunni tends to be misleading because religious scholars often used it to indicate whatever they viewed, personally, as Muslim orthodoxy. There have also been excellent critiques of the idea of the Shi’i Century and the Sunni Revival. Richard Bulliet argued that what has been called the ‘Sunni revival’ was actually only the first stage in the creation of institutions to standardize and disseminate the ideas that would later become the markers of Sunnism and, historian Jonathan P. Berkey noted that, “like many grand historical themes, this one is perhaps a bit too neat and simple.” Most recently, Art historian Stephennie Mulder observed that, even at the height of the so-called “Sunni Revival,” Sunnis and Shi’is alike sponsored and venerated shrines dedicated to members of the family of the Prophet later held up as uniquely Shi’i. Despite these sound critiques of the “Sunni Revival.” The story of the tenth century is still predominantly told as a sectarian narrative, divorced from the overall history of the medieval Islamic world, which helps feed into the overall view of sectarian hostility in Islam. This book will reintegrate the Shi’i Century into the broader narrative of medieval Islamic history and trace the complexities of sectarian identities in order to dispute Sunnism's early dominance over the concept of orthodoxy and challenge the idea of sectarian conflict dating back to the origins of Islam.

[…]

This book analyses the crystallization of Sunni and Shi’i identity and how these Muslim sects developed over time. But, in order to do that, we will focus on analyzing how medieval dynasties articulated their authority and legitimacy. Deconstructing how medieval rulers claimed power (which is what we mean by ‘authority and legitimacy’) allows us to see what was important to the people over whom these medieval dynasties ruled. This approach might seem like an indirect way of approaching how medieval Muslim communities defined their sectarian identities. But religious identity played a significant role in medieval political legitimacy—medieval rulers often claimed to be chosen by God in some way—so examining how these rulers used their faith to talk about their right to rule gives us insight into what the people they ruled would have thought about their faith. In addition, many of the peoples of the medieval Islamic world did not leave behind sources attesting to their feelings about sectarianism, so this approach allows us to glimpse their views on the matter and not only focus on the opinions of elite religious scholars. 

But what, exactly, do we mean when we talk about authority and legitimacy? Whole books have been devoted to this very topic but, stated simply, authority is power. The power to create law, collect taxes, go to war, and enforce obedience. There are different kinds of authority, of course. We will focus on the authority of the caliph, but other people held different types of authority in the medieval Islamic world: people like military leaders and religious scholars. The caliph needed these people to support his authority. 

Legitimacy is linked with authority: it encompasses the system of government used to claim the right to exercise authority. Governments claim legitimacy in different ways. For example, modern democracies base their legitimacy on elections. The government has the right to tax, make laws, and go to war because it was elected by a majority of the people. In the medieval world, rulers often based their legitimacy on the spiritual authority of God. The king/caliph/emperor had the right to rule because he was chosen and supported by God. 

In medieval societies, rulers made clear statements claiming their right to rule and used symbolic ways of communicating their authority through art, architecture, and ceremony. As the Muslim empire expanded, the ways that the caliphs claimed legitimacy changed. At first, when the Muslim community was small and homogenous, it was easier: even if not everyone always agreed, the community knew the first four caliphs for their loyalty to the Prophet and the piety of their faith. These two attributes, plus the fact that they were selected by leaders within the community, gave them legitimacy in the eyes of most Muslims. (Some Muslims argued that, to be legitimate rulers, they also must be related to the Prophet.) 

Furthermore, when discussing authority and legitimacy, it is significant to consider the audience for these claims. Even medieval rulers needed to make claims that would appeal to a wide variety of constituencies. As the Muslim empire expanded to rule over a more heterogeneous population, most of which was not Muslim, they had a harder task. Non-Muslims would not grant the caliph legitimacy because of his piety or relationship with Islam. The caliph had to act how people would expect a medieval ruler to act. In general, the Umayyads and the ‘Abbasids (as well as the Fatimids and Buyids) borrowed ways that pre-Islamic empires, like the Byzantines and Sassanids, had claimed their legitimacy. Since the Byzantines and the Sassanids had ruled over the region for centuries, they had established protocols for claiming authority that would be recognizable by the diverse peoples of the region. Muslim dynasties based a lot of their authority on Islam, but also used architecture, regalia, rituals, and ceremony that would be recognized as markers of legitimacy to a non-Muslim audience.

Despite the ways that the caliph would need to appeal to a wide variety of peoples, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to maintain his power, historians tend to focus on how religious scholars responded to the caliph. We do this because religious scholars tend to be the group we know the most about in medieval Muslim society: they wrote most of the sources that survive. So we know a lot about what they thought about sectarian identities, but we do not always have clear ways to find out what other people might have thought. Most people, especially non-elites, did not leave behind written sources, so it can be difficult to determine their views. In this book, we will examine how the Fatimids and Buyids used or did not use their sectarian identities to claim legitimacy in order to ‘read between the lines’ to see what kinds of messages were acceptable to broad medieval audiences.

The era of the Fatimids and the Buyids offers a unique opportunity to examine ideas of identity in medieval Islamic society because the tenth century witnessed tectonic shifts within the very idea of ‘Muslim society’. First, it was the period when the Middle East became predominately Muslim for the first time, bringing more non-Arabs (and their ideas) into the Muslim faith. Second, Fatimids and Buyids domination of the region represented a massive break with the earlier unity of the Islamic world under one caliph. And third, because the Fatimids and Buyids identified as Shi’i, their competition and the reaction of Sunni political elites and religious scholars helped crystallize different forms of sectarian identity.

Analyzing how the Fatimids and Buyids, two Shi’i dynasties, claimed their legitimacy over a diverse population of Muslims and non-Muslims allows us to glimpse the myriad of ways that the people of the tenth century viewed themselves and their identities. The caliph had to express his right to rule in a way that resonated with the people he ruled. In the ‘Shi’i century’, we might expect medieval Muslim rulers to foreground their sectarian identities, but they did not. We also might expect that critiques of these Shi’i states would focus on their Shi’i identity, but they did not. This book looks at what that can tell us about sectarianism and medieval Islamic society. 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.