Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (30 page)

1.
Ibn Hisham,
Sira,
vol. 1, p. 83.

2.
Ibn al-Kalbi,
Kitab al-asnam,
p. 28. Ibn Hisham recounts the same incident in his
Sira,
but there the famous person involved was unnamed. He does nonetheless mention that some historians attribute the anecdote to Imru
^c
u al-Qais.

3.
A Koranic example in which Pharaoh is described as acting arrogantly toward Moses and refusing to obey because he takes himself for a god—behavior that results in punishment—is in sura 79, v. 15-26:

4.
See Mernissi,
The Forgotten Queens of Islam,
chap. 9.

5.
Khayr al-Din al-Zarkali,
Al-a
^c
lam, qamus ashl
^c
ar al-rijal wa al-nisa
min al-
^c
arab wa al-musta
^c
rabin wa al-musta
^c
raqin
(Beirut: Dar al-
^c
Ilm li al-Malayin, 1983).

6.
Al-Mas
^c
udi,
Muruj,
vol. 4, p. 18. Al-M
mun’s references to Moses’ throwing down his staff and to his burning hand are from sura 28, vv. 31-32.

7.
Al-Jahiz,
Kitab al-hayawan
(Book of Animals), quoted in Ibn Kalbi,
Kitab al- asnam,
p. 34.

8.
Ibn Hisham,
Sira,
vol. 4, p. 53.

9.
Hodgson,
The Venture of Islam,
vol. 2, p. 543.

10.
Dariyus Shayegane, “La Dechirure,”
Le Debat,
reprinted in “Islam et politique” (special issue), 1991, p. 296. In his book
Le regard mutile
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), Shayegane gives a sophisticated analysis of the Iranian situation and of what happens in a Muslim society when the normal course of modernizing is crudely blocked, freezing enthusiasm and destroying hopes.

11.
In
The Veil and the Male Elite
I explained that in the course of its egalitarian revolution Islam allowed women to emerge as subjects, whereas in the
jahiliyya
they had had the status of objects, inherited and passed on like livestock. At the rise of Islam women were among the Companions of the Prophet and as such participated actively in community affairs, claiming their rights and sometimes succeeding in obtaining them. With the advent of the Umayyad despotism, however, women sank back into a slavelike status like that which they had had in the
jahiliyya.
This theory is apparently disputed, because the book was banned in Morocco several months after its publication in French (Paris: Albin Michel, 1987).

1.
Al-Jahiz, “Kitab al-hijab,” in
Rasa
^c
il al-Jahiz
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 25-86;
Kitab al-tajfi akhlaq al-muluk
(Beirut: Al-Sharika al- Lubnaniyya li al-Kitab, n.d.). In
Kitab al-taj
al-Jahiz presents a lengthy discussion of the use of the caliph’s
hijab,
including the occasions on which it was used in daily life to hide the caliph from his entourage. An excellent French translation by Charles Pellat is available, entitled
Le Livre de la couronne
(Paris: Societe d’Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1954).

2.
Despite the veil thrown across the degraded past, characterized as a “time of ignorance,” the Arabs have always been very interested in the pre-Islamic cults, and all the early writers on religious history devoted pages and pages to it. I will list a few that I like most: Ibn Hisham,
Sira;
Ibn Habib,
Kitab al- mukhabbar;
Ibn al-Kalbi,
Kitab al-asnam
(English), trans. N. A. Faris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952); Tabari,
Tafsir;
Ibn Sa
^c
d,
Tabaqat;
Yaqut,
Mu
^c
jam al-buldan
(often quoted, but I have not read it); al-Mas
^c
udi,
Muruj.

Interest in the
jahiliyya
and its beliefs has not lessened with the years; modern writers carry on this tradition, especially those who explore pre-Islamic poetry: Taha Husayn,
Fi al-shi
^c
r al-jahili
(1926); idem,
Fi al-adab al-jahili
(1927); Ahmad al-
^c
Ula,
Muhadarat fi tarikh al-arab
(Baghdad: Maktabat al- Muthanna, 1960), vol. 1, “Al-din al-jahili"; and Ahmad al-Hufi,
Al-mafafi al-
shfr
al-jahili
(Woman in Pre-Islamic Poetry) (Cairo: Dar al-Nahda, n.d.).

3.
Ibn Hisham,
Sira,
vol. 1, pp. 86-87.

4.
Ibn al-Kalbi,
Kitab al-asnam,
pp. 13-14.

5.
Toufiq Fahd,
Le pantheon de l'Arabie Centrale,
p. 125.

6.
Ibid., p. 126.

7.
Ibn al-Kalbi,
Kitab al-asnam,
p. 15.

8.
Ibid., p. 16.

9.
Dominique Sourdel,
Les cultes du Hauran a l'epoque Romaine
(Paris: Geuthner, 1952), p. 69.

10.
Ibid., pp. 73 (esp. nn. 2 and 3), 74.

11.
Ibn al-Kalbi,
Kitab al-asnam,
p. 15.

12.
Toufic Fahd,
Le pantheon de l'Arabie Centrale,
p. 40.

13.
Al-
^c
Ula,
Muhadarat,
p. 182; Toufic Fahd,
Le pantheon de l'Arabie Centrale,
p. 169.

14.
Tabari,
Tafsir,
vol. 8, p. 43.

15.
Ibid., vol. 8, p. 51.

16.
Ibn Hisham,
Sira,
vol. 1, pp. 160ff.

17.
Toufic Fahd,
Le pantheon de l'Arabie Centrale,
p. 168.

18.
Al-Mas
^c
udi,
Muruj,
vol. 2, p. 231.

19.
Ibid., p. 248.

20.
On this subject see Y. Moubarac, “Les etudes d’epigraphie Sud-Semitique et la naissance de Plslam,”
Revue des etudes Islamiques
(1955 and 1957). On Venus in particular see Franz Cumont, “Le culte de Venus chez les Arabes au Ier sie- cle,”
Syria
8 (1927), p. 368; idem,
Monuments des mysteres de Miothra,
vol. 1, p. 231; Fr. Lenormant,
Sur le culte paien de la Kaabah;
Jacqueline Pirenne, “La deesse des reliefs Sabeens,”
Syria
42 (1965); idem, “Stele de la deesse Dhat Himyam,”
Syria
37 (1960). In the latter article see particularly p. 343: “The papyrus Oxy. 13, from the first century of our era . . . has preserved for us the great litany of Isis. And it identifies her for us as Astarte in Phoenicia, Atar- gatis in Hierapolis, as Anaitis in Persia, and attests that she is also ‘a great goddess in Arabia.’ We know that Isis, likened to the planet Venus Anaitis in Persia, was both Ishtar and Venus; the Phoenician Astarte is obviously Venus.”

21.
Tabari,
Tafsir,
vol. 24, pp. 121, 21.

22.
Yaqut,
Mu
^c
jam al-buldan,
quoted by Toufic Fahd in
Le pantheon de I’Arabie Centrale,
pp. 150ff.

23.
Tabari,
Tafsir
, vol. 27, p. 88.

24.
Ibn Habib,
Kitab al-mukhabbar,
p. 157.

25.
Numerous verses in the Koran deal with the incredulity toward the idea of resurrection, indicating the amount of effort the Prophet had to put into the psychological transformation of the Arabs. Among the many references are sura 22, v. 5; sura 11, v. 7; sura 17, v. 98; sura 23, v. 37; and sura 34, v. 16.

1.
Hodgson,
The Venture of Islam,
vol. 2, p. 168.

2.
Ouahes,
Science et technologie,
p. 49.

3.
Al-Hakim, the sovereign of the Fatimid dynasty who reigned in Egypt (386-411/996-1020), was at first mad about astrology and then just plain mad, plunging Cairo into a bloodbath by irrationally ordering the execution of innocents. The reason for his madness is not known. We do know, however, that he would often leave his palace at night to contemplate the stars on a forested hill near Cairo. Astrology played an important role in ritual and decision making for al-Hakim, in accordance with the central place of the stars in the Shi
^c
ite vision of the world. At barely thirty years old he sank into madness, which began with his fascination with the stars, the flight of time that inscribes the approach of death in the heavens, in the succession of days and nights.

The caliph al-Hakim is one of the most extraordinary figures in Muslim history. I came on him for the first time when I was doing research for my book
The Forgotten Queens of Islam,
in which I devote a chapter to him (chap. 9, “The Lady of Cairo,” q.v.). During our education we Sunni Muslims receive little information about Shi
^c
ite Islam, and the importance of the stars and time in the Shi
^c
ite vision of Islam surprised and captivated me. Another Moroccan seems to have fallen under the spell of the monstrous yet very human al-Hakim: the brilliant philosopher Bensalem Himmich, who after ten years of research wrote a fictional account of his life,
Majnun al-hukm
(London: Riad el-Rais Books, 1991).

4.
The answers to the inexorable encroachment of death offered by Western technology have been essentially cosmetic—youth creams, tonics, and the like. One can imagine the terrible crisis the world’s religions would face if an elixir of immortality were found. While we wait, however, the religions fare better than science on this terrain, for they alone offer assurance of a second life after death—not a negligible point, especially if one’s earthly life was rather mediocre.

5.
Bertrand Russell,
Religion and Science
(London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 19.

6.
Ibid., p. 24.

7.
Read any issue of
Intersignes,
but especially that entitled “Entre psychanalyse et Islam” (Spring 1990).

8.
On the concept of
ishraq
see, for example, the chapter “Sohravardi et la philosophie de la lumiere,” in Henri Corbin,
Histoire de la philosophie Islamique
(Paris: Gallimard, 1986), pp. 285ff.

9.
Tabari,
Tarikh al-umam wa al-muluk
(Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1979), vol. 3, p. 90.

10.
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 252.

11.
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 252.

12.
Ibid.

13.
Ibid.

14.
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 253, 254.

15.
Ibid., p. 254.

16.
Tabari,
Tafsir,
vol. 10, pp. 129ff.

17.
Al-Mas
^c
udi,
Muruj,
vol. 2, p. 203.

18.
The New Encyclopedia Britannica 1991,
vol. 3, p. 606.

19.
Jacques Attali,
Histoire du temps
(Paris: Fayard, 1982), p. 286.

20.
Ibid., p. 284.

21.
Opuahes,
Science et technologie.

22.
For the failure of Arabsat see the very technical report of Hassane Till,
La communication audiovisuelle dans le Monde Arabe
(UNESCO, July 1988). See also Barrak Anissa, “Arabsat: bilan et perspectives,” Memoire de DEA en Sciences de 1’information, Universite Paris 2 (February 1986).

23.
Attali,
Histoire du temps,
p. 62.

24.
Joseph Campbell,
Myths to Live By
(New York: Bantam Books, 1972), p. 242.

25.
Ibid., p. 244.

26.
Alvin Toffler,
Power Shift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century
(New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 20.