(A talk solicited by the von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies as part of the "From the Mediterranean to the Pacific: American Politics, Local Polities, and the Power of Religion" series.)

 All too often, speakers begin their talks by saying that they wish to raise more questions than they answer, then go on to raise only those questions they can answer.  My talk today is of a different nature: it is both a self-critique and a discussion of my discipline's--that is, History's--inability to deal satisfactorily with the problem of religion.  In other words, I shall truly be raising questions for which I have no answers.  I have no problem with this: I am venturing into uncharted waters, the question of religion is a complex one, and, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead, "so far as concerns religious problems, simple solutions are bogus solutions."

 The problem of "doing" religion has become particularly acute for me during the last few weeks.  Like many of my colleagues, I have been spending a great deal of time speaking to groups about the events of 11 September.  I usually deliver a boilerplate address which is followed by discussion.  (I have attached the text of the address as an Appendix below.)  Unbeknownst to most members of the audience (or perhaps they are just too polite to say anything), there is a fundamental contradiction between what I say in my speech and what I say in the discussion.  This contradiction goes to the heart of the historian's problems with religion.

 My standard speech about 11 September is entitled, "No, It's Not About Religion."  I have chosen this title because it has become commonplace among the media to regard the crime of 11 September as the logical outcome of something called "Islamic fundamentalism."  Perhaps the best example of this perspective was an article entitled "It Is About Religion," written by Andrew Sullivan and published in the N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine on 7 October 2001.  The one saving grace of this article is that the author is not the usual Muslim-basher--he hates all monotheistic religions equally, not just Islam.  This article was followed up by an op-ed piece in the same newspaper by Salman Rushdie entitled, "Yes, This Is About Islam."  Rushdie has apparently learned nothing since his run-in with the Iranian government and his conversion to Islam.  In the past, his strange opinions were mitigated by his ability to spin a great yarn--a talent which, if Fury: A Novel is any indication, Rushdie seems to have squandered.  Both articles ask, "What can one expect from belief systems that think they hold a monopoly on truth?"  Both articles treat religion--specifically, a scripturalist interpretation of religion--as if it were the necessary and sufficient motive force for the crime of 11 September.

 In contrast to these articles, I make the following argument in my boilerplate talk: those who would attribute the crime of 11 September to something called "Islamic fundamentalism" are wrong for two reasons: First, the term fundamentalism should be shunned because it is imprecise.  Second, the focus on the religious roots of the crime obscures the true roots of the crime.  I identify four factors which lie at the root of the crime:

 1.  The threat, real or imagined, of American globalization, which is seen by many around the world as a figleaf for American imperialism.  In my talk I compare Bin Laden's organization with anarchist movements which have recently reemerged after almost a century-long hiatus and remind my audiences that it was not a "Muslim fundamentalist" who torched a MacDonald's in France.

 2.  The second factor which contributed to the crime is the political and economic shocks that have hit the Middle East since the 1960s--the rise and fall of populist governments, such as Nasser's, followed by the rise and fall of oil-based economies.

 3.  Third, there is the demonstration effect of the Iranian revolution, Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation, and Hizbollah successes against Israel in Lebanon, which provided a new model for political activity.

 4.  Finally, I state that we must take Bin Laden's polemics against America and American policy in the Middle East seriously, because they represent the viewpoint of many in the region, even those who abhor Bin Laden and his tactics.  Among those policies are our Palestine policy, our enforcement of sanctions against Iraq, our stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, and our support for every king and tin-horn dictator who will support our policies and give us oil.

 As far as religion is concerned, I paraphrase the mantra first stated by my old boss and dear friend, Philip S. Khoury, in the early 1980s: "Islam must be seen as the vehicle for political and economic demands, rather than as being itself the ‘impulse' behind these demands."

 So far, so good.  But in the discussions following my talks, someone always raises a question about George W. Bush's "war on terrorism."  My response is that the crime of 11 September should have been dealt with as a law enforcement issue, not as war.  I cite three reasons for this:

 1.  A declaration of war carries implications that may do more harm than good.  It raises the status of Bin Laden--after all, nations make war on nations, not on individuals

 2.  A declaration of war leads the American population to expect a definite end, preferably the surrender or destruction of its opponents.  On the other hand, since crime is a recurrent problem, law enforcement is an ongoing concern.

 3.  Most important, war mobilizes the enterprise and passions of the entire population.  In return for the sacrifices the mobilized population is expected to make, it will look for scapegoats if things do not go well.  Law enforcement, on the other hand, is the concern mainly of professionals.  The active involvement of the population--vigilantism--is discouraged.

 Let us stop for a minute and compare what I do in my talk with what I do in the discussion.  While in my talk I do not ignore religion, I reduce religion to a cipher.  Accordingly, I do state that the use of an Islamic idiom can act as a roadmap demarcating proscribed and prescribed tactics and strategies for movements such as Bin Laden's.  But by doing this, I downgrade the importance of Bin Laden's religious discourse to a subordinate role--that of merely defining tactics and strategy.  Overall, in my talk I emphasize the social and political roots of the crime of 11 September.  In the discussion, however, I attribute to discourse power and agency.

 This brings us to the power of religion and why we do not have a clue.  There are a number of things historians do well and a number of things we do badly.  Unfortunately, much of what goes under the rubric of religion fits into the latter category.  Religion as an object of study emerged as a result of the same processes that gave rise to the modern historical discipline.  Among those processes was the emergence of the modern university system, which was accompanied by the drawing of fixed disciplinary boundaries and the rationalization of disciplinary methodologies.  When the first chair of comparative religion was created in Switzerland in 1873, the field incorporated the same methodologies and assumptions that guided historical writing at that time: assumptions about progress, evolution, and teleology, for example.  Most important, when comparative religion became a discipline in its own right, it was assumed that the same laws that govern history--laws which were discernable by reason--could be applied to study religion.  When it comes to religion, these assumptions have served us well on some occasions, but proved deficient on others.  Thus, on the one hand, historians can well figure out the social composition of religious movements, analyze the structure of religious institutions, and dissect the intricacies of religious debate.  On the other hand, historians do not deal well with religious belief and its effect on social organization and social activity.  I think there are three reasons for this:

 First, history attempts to subsume religion within its own, idiosyncratic rendering of reality.  Unfortunately, religion provides an alternative rendering of reality derived from a logic completely foreign to historians and the historical discipline.  Thus, as Lynn Hunt puts it, the immediate impulse of historians when confronted by religion is to translate religion into categories we think we can handle: we automatically reduce the question of religious beliefs to those social and economic forces which purportedly provoked their appearance.

 But there are a number of flaws in dealing with religion in this way.  Let us return to Philip S. Khoury's statement once again--"Islam must be seen as the vehicle for political and economic demands, rather than as being itself the ‘impulse' behind these demands."  In his statement, Professor Khoury makes a number of assumptions: he assumes, for example, that politics and economics are real and instrumental while religion is a mere expression of that reality.  To see how much of an assumption this is, let us compare Professor Khoury's assumptions with those now popular among cultural historians.  Many cultural historians (such as myself) practice what is called "social constructivism."  Social constructivists believe that all the big ticket items historians like to talk about--not just nations and cultures, but the entire domains of economics and politics--are, to borrow Benedict Anderson's well-worn cliché, "imagined," or, as the name suggests, "socially constructed."  Thus, social constructivists believe that we cannot privilege the "real world" of economics and social relations over the "constructed world" of, for example, religion.  Nor, since the domains of religion, economics, and politics are all equally constructed, do social constructivists believe it is possible simply to reduce one to the other.  Nor is it possible to claim that one is a garbled image of the other, à la Durkheim.

   The second reason why historians do not deal well with the problem of religious belief and its effect on social organization and social activity is that the question of religious belief--as opposed to religious institutions or the social bases of religion--brings contingency (individual, willful action) into a discipline that assigns pride of place to finding universal historic laws.  Historians hate contingency.  If there is contingency there are no inviolable laws.  History becomes just one damned thing after another, and historical arguments are reduced to debates about how the arch of Cleopatra's nose changed the world.

 Finally, historians still have not reached a consensus on the relationship between ideas and social practice, although we have been trying for about a century and a half.  Things were easier when many of us were Marxists, when the ideas held by individuals depended upon the relationship of those individuals to the means of production.  Proletarians thought one way, the bourgeoisie another, and, apparently, peasants not much at all.  If individuals believed differently from what was expected of them, they were victims of false consciousness and it was our responsibility, as intellectuals, to set them straight.

 Nowadays, ideas "articulate with" social practice, are "imbricated in" social practice, "cohere with" social practice, are "informed by" social practice.  These commonplace expressions indicate two things: first, the historians who use these expressions realize that there is some relationship between ideas (such as religious beliefs) and social practice.  Second, those historians do not have a clue as to what that relationship is.  The actual relationship between ideas and social practice remains an object of mystery, to say the least.

 I wish I could say things are different among historians of the Middle East--that we have made our peace with religion--but actually our problem is even worse than that experienced by historians of other regions.  This has to do with the strange history of the historiography of the Middle East, particularly in the Anglophone world.  This history might be roughly divided into two periods: before 1978 and after 1978.  The year 1978 was, of course, the year in which Edward Said's Orientalism was published.  Before then, many scholars of the Middle East wore the mantle of "Orientalism" proudly.  As a proud mantle, the term Orientalism intimated the philological roots of the discipline.  In its post-Saidean pejorative sense, the term Orientalism has come to refer to those who believe that nearly every attribute of Middle Eastern society and culture could be ascribed to an essential, instrumental Islam.  No democracy in the Middle East?  Blame Islam.  No capitalism, no revolutions, no civil society, no corporate structures?  Again, it is Islam's fault.

 After Said's devastating critique of Orientalist assumptions, many of the best Anglophone scholars of Middle Eastern history--particularly early modern and modern Middle Eastern history--avoided the problem of religion and its effect on social life altogether and instead turned their attention elsewhere.  The 1980s was thus the golden age of Middle East labor history, social history, and economic history.  Those who did broach the subject of religion tended to remove religion from its social context or, like Khoury, to focus their investigations on the quest for the "real" social forces that were masked by an Islamic "false consciousness."

 Only recently have things begun to change.  As a result of European historiography's "cultural turn" and the provocative work of the Subaltern Studies group we now know that religion and culture are not to be denied.  But now comes the hard part: although we know what the problem is, we still do not know if it is soluble and, if it is, how to solve it.  Thus, although may seem a bit presumptuous, I want to throw out two suggestions that I think should be at the heart of our research agenda:

 First, I think we have to re-examine the category of religion.  From the critiques of Said, Clifford Geertz, Bryan Turner, and others, we know enough not to essentialize religions such as Islam.  Nevertheless, we still use the term religion to refer to a category of activity that we regard as universally and transhistorically consistent.  It is this fixed category that must be questioned.

 Let me explain what I mean by using the example of gender history.  All too often, cultural historians of the modern Middle East have approached the study of gender and discourses of gender in one of two ways.  The more common and banal of the two might be termed the "women, too" approach (what Joan W. Scott derisively calls "herstory").  In this approach, women are merely written into a pre-existing historical narrative.  Thus, for example, there have appeared recently a number of histories about the role of women in nationalist movements or anti-imperialist struggles from North Africa to Iran.  Most of these histories leave the nationalist narrative of itself unchallenged.

   A more sophisticated approach--pioneered by Joan W. Scott--sees gender relations as both representative and constitutive of overall relationships of power within society.  This approach enables historians to apply gender analysis much as Marxist historians apply class analysis.  The strength of this approach is that, unlike the former approach, it takes gender relations seriously, rather than treating them as an embellishment.  But one of the problems with this second approach is that it assumes that a single strategy for reading cultures might be applied across time.

 At the risk of slipping into what George Ball has called the "Goldilocks strategy" through which bureaucrats make their own preferences appear moderate and reasonable, let me suggest a third approach, one that is neither too hot nor too cold.  Borrowing from Leila Ahmad and others, I prefer to treat gender relations as a mutable, historically-defined category whose function in and meaning for any particular society can only be determined empirically, on a case-by-case basis.

 Now let me insert the word religion where I have just used the words gender relations:  I think it is time historians treated religion as an historically-defined category whose function in and meaning for any particular society can only be determined empirically, on a case-by-case basis.

 My second suggestion for a research agenda is as follows: To understand the function of religion in the contemporary world and its meaning for the contemporary world, I think it is necessary once again to take the concept of modernity seriously.

 The history of the concept of modernity might be summarized as follows: first there was modernity, then there was no modernity, then there were multiple modernities.  The idea that there was a single, linear path to an unvarying state of modernity emerged from the eighteenth century Enlightenment.  It was secured during the nineteenth century when, in the words of historian Eric J. Sharpe, "evolution, from being a theory, rapidly became an atmosphere."  Among social scientists, the popularity of the idea of modernity reached its apex in the 1950s and 1960s.  It then fell into disfavor as a result of the excesses of modernization theorists and the structuralist assumption that a dynamic modernity implied the existence of its opposite: a stagnant tradition.  Unfortunately, we threw out the baby with the bathwater.  Most recently, the idea of modernity has been modified and resurrected, in part because of the work of Michel Foucault and others.  Now, it is becoming increasingly common for historians to talk about something called "alternative modernities."

 The idea of alternative modernities is rooted in the assumption that the emergence of a world economic system, beginning in the sixteenth century, and the emergence of a world system of nation-states, beginning in the eighteenth century, fundamentally transformed the trajectory of world history.  Responses to the emergence of these twinned systems was not uniform throughout the world or even within putative nations.  The attributes of "French modernity" have been, of course, different from the attributes of "Ottoman modernity."  Nevertheless, the world economic and state systems defined the parameters in which every functioning society had to operate.

 Could it be that the world economic and state systems also redefined the function and meaning of religion as well?  Take, for example, the relationship between the state and religion.  Might it not be possible to conjecture the following: before the eighteenth century the relationship between dynastic states and religion was commonly parasitical.  For example, many dynasts depended upon religion to establish the legitimacy of their rule--hence the notion of divine right of kings.  After the eighteenth century, there emerged the idea that the state had an identity and interests of its own separate from the identity and interests of the ruling dynasty.  The acquisition of that identity and those interests required the willing mobilization of a citizenry working for the "common good."  Now the relationship between state and religion was reversed.  The notions of state identity, state interests, and the "common good" were based on a number of assumptions which, once accepted, redefined the meaning and function of religion.  For example, religion--which had previously referred to a system of personal belief--now took on additional functions.  Religion became a cultural marker and the hallmark of cultural authenticity.  But by becoming a cultural marker and the hallmark of cultural authenticity, religion and the state came to share a history, to evolve side-by-side.  Religion and the state became subject to the same social and economic constraints, often mimicked each other, and, when not mutually supportive, were at least locked in a uneasy embrace.  Could this not explain why Islamic movements have so far failed to propose an alternative to the state and the state system?  It is a question worth pondering.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 APPENDIX: NO, IT'S NOT ABOUT RELIGION

 Over the past several weeks, we have heard a lot about "Islamic extremism," and "Islamic terrorism."  While catchy, these terms lead us down a blind alley.  Those who perpetrated the crime of September 11 did, of course, use Islamic symbols, advocate a return to Islamic values (whatever those might be), and take advantage of religious institutions and networks for mobilization. Thus, we have been inundated with religious apologetics, on the one hand, and a smug, "I told you so" glibness, on the other.  Apologists cite Qur'anic verses that condemn suicide, the taking of innocent life, and asymmetrical violence.  Muslim-bashers, on the other hand, ask, "What can you expect from a religion that assigns pride of place to martyrdom and jihad?"

 It really does no one any good to essentialize Islam or search for the "Islamic" roots of the crime.  Before we can begin to understand the Middle Eastern roots of the crime, it is necessary to realize two things: First, the terms "Islamic extremism," or, just as bad, "Islamic fundamentalism" are flawed because they are imprecise.  The category of "Islamic fundamentalism," for example, is so broad that it brings under its umbrella the governments of Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia; organizations that are involved simply in providing social welfare services to their communities; organizations that merely want to be left alone and withdraw from what they perceive as a corrupt society; and organizations involved in politics.  Among the latter are organizations that participate in elections (such as in Jordan), those that fight what they call anti-imperialist wars of national liberation (Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine), and those that can justify the crime of September 11.

 The second problem with emphasizing the Islamic nature of Bin Laden's organization is that focusing on Islam may blind us to similar movements that use a totally different set of symbols.  Unlike many constituency-based Islamist groups, Bin Laden's organization is notable for its accentuation of action over ideology.  Whatever ideology it does profess is vague, emphasizing resistance over any practical blueprints for reorganizing society.  From this, one might draw the conclusion that the closest analogues to the Bin Laden movement are probably anarchist movements which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, died out, then re-emerged at the end of the twentieth.

 Anarchism appeared when the modern state form was spreading throughout the world and replacing previous forms of political organization.  The ability of the modern state to pervade almost every aspect of social life sparked a defensive reaction.  The recent reappearance of anarchist movements is directly related to what many see as the threat of "globalization": the homogenization of cultures, the influence of a distant, unelected corporate technocracy, and expanding commercialization and the commodification of culture at the expense of "authentic" indigenous cultures.  The complaints that anarchists and others lodge against "globalization" are the very complaints that Bin Laden lodges against America, with one exception: Bin Laden expresses his rage in an Islamic idiom.  And while it is true that this Islamic idiom can act as a roadmap demarcating proscribed and prescribed tactics and strategies for movements such as Bin Laden's, it does not in itself provide the impetus for the formation of these movements.

 In the main, there are four reasons why movements such as Bin Laden's would emerge at the present time.  First, there is the previously mentioned rejection of "globalization" which, in fact, is seen as a figleaf for American imperialism.  This rejection of an "American globalization" exists not only in the Middle East but in Europe, Japan, China, Latin America, and Russia as well.  On the broadest level, then, the United States is a target because of what it is and what it represents: the foremost military, economic, and, arguably, cultural power in the world today (by cultural power I mean America's ability to impose its cultural standards and referents worldwide).

 There are also regional reasons why a movement such as Bin Laden's might emerge at the present time.  The past several decades have not been good for the Middle East.  As a matter of fact, beginning in the 1960s the region has been hit by a number of debilitating shocks.  First, the populist regimes of the 1950s and 1960s--like Nasser's in Egypt--which had seemed to promise so much for so many ended up by delivering so little.  This was partly caused by their own authoritarian tendencies and the inefficiencies of centralized economic planning.  But just as important, one must count the pressures from the United States on those regimes.  During the Cold War, these pressures were generated by America's inability and unwillingness to comprehend and deal with Third World nationalisms on their own terms.  Beginning in 1958 or so, Nasser, Nasserism, and Arab unity became a prime target of American vituperation.  Many in the Middle East were drawn into the mutual acrimony between the American government and governments in the region and responded in kind.

 Then came the oil revolution of the 1970s.  The oil revolution promised to transform social and economic relations of the region.  Instead, the oil revolution consolidated the position of America and America's conservative allies in the region; widened the gulf between rich and poor, both within and among nations of the region; opened up the region to the worst consumerist and free market dogmas; and brought little in the way of social transformation. Ironically, one of the few accomplishments of the oil revolution was to provide financial support for the Bin Laden family.  And then the oil bubble popped anyway.

 The third reason why these movements have appeared recently is the success of the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union, and Hizbollah resistance against the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon.  These successes seemed to demonstrate the invincibility of new forms of resistance struggles.  At the same time, they underscored the ineptitude and impotence of secular nationalist regimes.

 Finally, one must take seriously the specific charges Bin Laden and others lodge against the United States.  These charges represent the perception of America in the minds of many in the Middle East, even those who abhor Bin Laden and his tactics.  George W. Bush claimed that so-called "Islamic extremists" hate us because of our freedom.  Actually, many in the region hate what they perceive to be our arrogance and hypocrisy: we claim benevolent intentions while we maintain sanctions on Iraq with devastating results; we don the mantle of justice while we support Israel's war against the Palestinians; we shed crocodile tears for human rights while we cozy up to every king and dictator, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, who will advance our own national interests; we take pride in our repudiation of imperialism while we maintain troops in Saudi Arabia just in case.

 As travellers to the region know, most inhabitants of the Middle East seem to have ambivalent feelings toward the United States.  There is much about American society that many in the region admire and seek to have for themselves.  The predominant sentiment is incomprehension at American policies, not hatred.  Americans are just now learning to ask, "Why do they hate us?"  Middle Easterners have been asking the same about Americans for over half a century.

 All this being said, it is important to understand that the emergence of a variety of movements that use a religious discourse cannot be taken simply as a "return of religion" and a rejection of modernity, as so many commentators have done.  Indeed, just the opposite: the historical novelty of these movements comes from three sources: their ability to respond to twentieth century conditions (like the enormous growth of urban concentrations in the region which provide a prime recruitment ground for an endless stream of underemployed and disaffected); their ability to address twentieth-century expectations (like the expectation that the state should provide for social welfare--a role which states in the region have abandoned and which many Islamist organizations have taken upon themselves); and their ability to combine these conditions and expectations with a discourse that assigns pride of place to cultural authenticity.  Think of it--that odd offspring of nineteenth-century European romanticism--the notion of cultural authenticity, which transformed Islam from what it had been--a system of belief--to a cultural marker.  It seems that outside the Government Department of Harvard University, there are no stauncher adherents to the doctrine of cultural authenticity and its logical conclusion, "the clash of civilizations," than there are in the Middle East.

 On the other hand, we are so blinded by associating modernity with the particular historical evolution of the West that we are unable to understand that these movements are offering alternative approaches to modernity.  More precisely, the twin towers upon which the modern age rests are a global economic system and a world system of nation-states.  Islamic movements do not offer an alternative to these systems.  Indeed, when they do offer a program, they end up--consciously or not--inserting that program within the current economic and state systems.  No "Islamic economic system" has been presented or even devised, in spite of all the rhetoric about an "Islamic Third Way."  No alternative to the state system has been presented or devised either: Hamas fights for the liberation of Palestine, Hizbollah for the sovereignty of Lebanon.  Even the Taliban calls the country it rules, "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." By using the term "Islamic," the Taliban acknowledges that yes, Afghanistan is part of an Islamic cultural sphere.  On the other hand, the use of the term "emirate" indicates that the Taliban is claiming for Afghanistan sovereignty within the international state system, as emirates have done from the middle ages through the eighteenth century Wahhabi emirate of Arabia.

 All this seems to demonstrate, then, that there is no "clash of civilizations."  The sentiments felt by the inhabitants of the Middle East toward the United States--animosity, ambivalence, or incomprehension--have precise historical roots and cannot be attributed to the essential nature of some irreducible civilization.  These roots are complex, but are, nevertheless, explicable and comprehensible.  Accepting the notion of a clash of civilizations mystifies America's problems in the region and renders any effort to resolve those problems futile.  This, to paraphrase Talleyrand, would be worse than a crime--it would be a mistake.