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But one of the most popular works in Europe, translated into English, all sort of languages, 100 nights. Was it the the orientalist literary works? What was that book called? Um, something with 101 nights in the west, that book. Um, but um, which I've not read, I must say it's one of the, you know, the the allegedly most famous Muslim books. I've never never looked at, but I mean, what about orientalist novels and paintings and things like that? How, what was their role in all of this, in in trying to disseminate an orientalist perspective?
>> Yes, this is actually an an amazing topic because it takes a direction which is a little bit different than the political, than the philosophical, than the historical >> yet it complements it. If we see the way in which western authors made paintings, let's start with paintings because it's easier, portraits in particular of Muslim leaders. If we start from the 15th century, for example, with the amazing uh Bellini and the Venetian schools, then their portrait of these sultans with this very big turban and they are so respectful, right, in their stance, and they demand authority and power.
>> Yes.
>> You go to 100 years later, all this power stripped off, and it just becomes like um a collection book. You see, this is the image of a Turk and this is the image of a Nuts black person, and it just becomes a collection of different people of different costumes. Uh, and this is some of the popular prints at the time, but the actual orientalist school of painting uh developed with colonies being very well established and being safe places for westerners to travel. Artists travel to this lens. They try to sketch down everything they see. Then they go back home and sell the paintings of this reality. But these paintings have to sell. So they have to include things that the western public at the time would like. And so orientalism painting becomes a way to sell, like let's say, art which is more like erotic than actually related to what they were seeing in the Muslim world. And this is really, to me, there are many covers, as I said, to this book by Edward Said, orientalism. Another cover I've got, which I won't show you, um, is a is is of a painting, uh, an orientalist painting, I think from the 19th century, with a group of kind of Arab sheikhs sitting around in front of a naked boy, a naked youth literally >> in a mosque, in a mosque >> in a mosque. I didn't realize >> if you look at the walls behind, it's a mosque, which isn't quite implausible that that ever happened.
>> Exactly. That's my point. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. Uh, it's just, I mean, without going to the obvious reasons why it's not not going to happen, but this represented for this orientalist painter some kind of, I don't know, trope that he thought made sense of that world of the east, uh, even though it's completely ridiculous from any realistic point of view, and and and that very well chosen for the book of the a book on orientalism because, even though it's it's not good cover to have, but it never expresses that orientalist misunderstand, misrepresentation of of the West. Oh, the book I was thinking of, by the way, is 1001 Nights, a collection of of Middle Eastern folktales, looking at Wikipedia, compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age, often known in English as the Arabian Nights. The first English translation was in 1706, uh, actually. So, very very famous. Never read it. I don't know anyone who has. No one ever talks about it, but anyway, it's um hugely important in the history of European uh literary uh um understandings of of Islam in the east.
>> Yes. And it it creates, I believe, that is the most important books for the whole trope of the haram >> as a place of boredom and pleasure and this strange vibe that one gets from orientalism. If you look at orientalist paintings, people are always very bored, very inactive, uh, and very sexualized. And this is a strange combination. And it goes back to the Kipling view, right? Half devil, half child. This is not a mature situation in which they are found. Not even when they're sexualized, it doesn't look mature. It looks like what are they? They're not understanding. What are they doing? They're just on couches. They're just laying. Uh, and and this is this is weird. And uh there is actually an example of an Italian princess in the 20th century. She's called Victoria Aliata, who went to an actual haram and uh wrote a book and said, "But you're crazy of thinking of of the things that that would happen here. It's just a normal place where women live and they read and they write and they're educated and they spend their day in much more interesting ways than aristocratic women at the time," because she was a princess. So she was quite an expert on boredom, because aristocrats have quite an expertise on that, and she said, actually it's much more interesting what happens over there. Unfortunately, I think this book is not found in any other language than Italian and is still quite a rare book, but if you think, someone can find the words of Victoria Aliata, who was also the first Italian translator of Tolkien, weirdly enough, so a strange character, but >> very interesting book.
>> Yeah. Um, well, just perhaps move moving on, um, and what one of the myths um that I've certainly heard of, although less so these days, is this idea of in the west, when it comes to Islam, closing the doors of ijtihad. So I guess the idea is a long, long time ago, any kind of creative legal Sharia Islamic kind of engagement with contemporary issues was closed. The scholars no longer, uh, it was decided long ago, uh, that the corpus of law was uh fixed, final, definitive, didn't need to be updated at all or engage uh with the world around it, and so the doors of ijtihad, which basically means reason, independent reasoning, were closed forever, and this has something to do with the the backwardness of of Islamic thought. I mean, on every level that's just wrong, but um uh why did this bizarre idea come about in the first place in in in the west, because I I've never seen anything like it in the in the in the Muslim world. It's just >> yes, this is a completely western idea that then we we feel like we have to defend against as if it was a real thing. But several authors have shown that there is no ijtihad, which would be the Arabic term for that, in Arabic manuscripts of the time. So who closed it, and which gate are we talking about? Yeah. So >> first of all, I'd like to say something about this: that is the door of ijtihad, and the word ijtihad sometimes is taken very much out of context by orientalist and Islamic studies professors or academicians at the, still now, still now it's taken out because ijtihad uh usually was used by experts of, and it is one of the ways in which the jurist can work. One of his abilities is ijtihad. We do not talk about it um about other things. For example, we wouldn't say that what Imam Malik was doing was strictly. It was more of a process of of right of a renovator, renewer.
>> So is a thing and in other disciplines as well. But Islam has this idea of a renovation that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam promised us is every century. So how can we believe that the doors are closed if the prophet said every century there will be a renewer of the faith?
>> True. So this is again one of the circumstances in which in academia an a word from the Islamic context is taken, given a different meaning, and then they try to find the culprits, and the culprits are either Imam Shafi or Imam Ghazali, the ones that try to create a system. But why is creating a system wrong in the Islamic world, but it's always so right in the west? Because otherwise also Hegel would have closed the doors of reasoning, right? >> yeah yeah >> so many many double standards there.
>> Yeah. I mean, most western philosophers, they're creating the final definitive statement on philosophy, and that's it. We can all go home now, because philosopher X, be Hegel or Nietzsche or whatever, has has given us the definitive philosophy of life. And uh, of course uh, that's never the case. It's always someone, a disciple usually, comes along and overturns the master's thinking. And uh um just to move on if I may, there is a certain book which I I I know you you've referenced uh and I'll hold it up. It's been mentioned by many people. It was called A Culture of Ambiguity, an alternative history of Islam by a German scholar, Thomas Bower. I'm not trying to pronounce his name. It's actually translated from the German. Published bizarrely by Columbia University Press. Most of the books I've got here seem to be published by Columbia. Um, and this has been very much praised by people like Abdul Hakim Murad at Cambridge and others. And I' I've read about a third, a third of it. Um, what is this this concept of ambiguity? Why is this? Because the author is not, as far as I know, a Muslim, but he writes with great erudition and sensitivity uh in in terms of the best of German scholarship. Doesn't appear to be particularly orientalist. I don't know what you think, but why is his work significant in telling us about ambiguity in the history of Islam?
>> Yes, there are several of his works that I believe are really very important for for for Muslims. Uh, and even the the the ones that are still in German, unfortunately, I I would advise getting them and reading them with Google Translate rather than not reading them, because they're so precious. In particular, there is one on the Islam Alter. So, the medieval Islam, did it exist or not? That's a very important topic, by the way, because thinking that Islam is middle ages, then it requires an enlightenment, right? And we're back to the enlightenment again and again. But going back to Culture of Ambiguity, it's an amazing book, one of my favorite books really of Islamic studies. Uh, however, uh, there is this word ambiguity that he uses, which in German makes perfect sense. But I think that in English, also in Italian, ambiguity has also a negative meaning, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Not it's not very clear. It's sort of, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
>> I think that's perhaps a better word could have been used. I don't know. But ambiguity would be a multifold openness, rather than a a univocal way, the opposite of that. So Islam is the culture that lives open unless there is a reason to close them. And he makes amazing examples. For example, the readings of the Quran. We have 10 readings, but we only have 10 readings. The scholars said you can read the Quran however you like as long as it connects back to an isnad. So the idea is always there is absolute freedom as long as it is motivated by something, like the food, right? Everything is halal unless there is a good reason for proving it is haram. And he makes a case that actually Islam has always tolerated ways of understanding which were mutually uh incompatible, but understood at a higher level, they could have been so. Sorry, just just a point: how is his word name, his surname, is it Ba or Bua? How do you >> okay, I wasn't mispronouncing it. Um, he just talked about modernity, by which it means west, I suppose, and uh our our fetish for clarity and black and white and yes and no. This idea of ambiguity, whatever the word is, really sits very uncomfortable with this kind of quasi-scientific need for certainty and one right answer. We can't tolerate this kind of ambiguity um which seems to be part of the DNA of Islam historically and and also how that, and how that that western mindset has affected Muslim mindsets now as well, that we that we also require one answer to what does this verse say, definitively, clearly, unambiguously, in its uniform sense, there's no sense where it could mean several different things uh but it's affected the Muslim mentality to some extent as well, he pointed that out. I think >> yes. But you know what? It fits very well this mentality, postmodernity, because people nowadays do not have well, people nowadays are complicated, right? And I don't want to enter too much into the psychology, but on the one hand they still believe many Newtonian ideas for science. Science is the ultimate layer of truth. Yet do what makes you feel good. Do whatever you want. Uh, there is no absolute goodness. There is no absolute anything. So a culture of ambiguity could be a middle lane between these things and bring back to reason the fact that the postcontemporary self is shattered between needing to believe in something, namely science, without understanding it, and understanding that we cannot live off just one answer. And we as Muslims, we are making the mistake that we are focusing so much on things like what is the exact centimeter of cotton a woman has to put until the wrist, is the wrist included, excluded, to women that have converted since one day, right? And we put to them this type of content. No, before we should put to them the variety and the openness of our intellectual tradition for them to develop love, attachment, understanding, and then we go into details. Uh, because the Sharia is still there for a reason, right? And it has to be followed, but but with an understanding.
>> Yeah. No, this is absolutely extraordinary. Uh, and as I say, many many western Muslim academics have praised uh this book. Uh, Tim Winter at Cambridge and others as well. So I I do uh recommend it. It's a translation uh from the the German. I didn't realize there were other works also that were worth looking at too. I mean, he's not he's not a Muslim, is he? Or was he a bit like Gertie? Is he perhaps privately sympathetic?
>> I don't know. I don't know him personally, but what he's writing is really what I would be writing if I had more knowledge. So, I don't know. I don't know. Subhan Allah. It's very strange. It's very strange.
>> If he's not, but really, he seems an amazing person.
>> There's another very well-known Western scholar. I'm not going to say who it is, who I've who I've been told indirectly is actually a Muslim, although he's publicly not a Muslim. So that so the but I think uh Tim Winter called the submarines. Um uh >> yeah, also Beck, right? And but with a different with a different exception.
>> So I think these, who knows, he could be a submarine as well. So um yeah, this is uh extremely interesting. So in terms of the enlightenment heritage, what it bequeathed to the world, to us Muslims, indeed everyone, must feel very ambiguous, ambivalent, ambivalent maybe not ambiguous, ambivalent, in other words maybe this maybe that, we're not quite sure uh you know how we feel or feel about it. Is there anything at all that a a Muslim do you think can take away from the enlightenment in a positive way, or is it purely an internal European sort of counter-religious, anti-religious, counter-medieval movement that fetishized reason and a positive, positivist understanding of science, and thus is not really compatible with uh uh the the uh the Islamic worldview, which is much more nuanced and really on a different track altogether? I mean, do you have, is there anything we can take away from the enlightenment project, or is it just really a European thing?
That's a great question, because many times in my travels I I I meet, very often this happens with Arabs, uh people that tell me, "Oh, but you Europeans, through the enlightenment, you broke the shackles, and it's really positive, we should also have this." There are books that really call for reformation of Islam in terms that look very much like the enlightenment, and I think, and this is still why the Bower book about the about the middle ages is very important: we cannot use categories uh of western world to the Islamic one. It just doesn't work. Periodization, um movements, ideas, of course, Islam is not completely impermeable. We have seen that with Greek thought. We have seen that even with Indian thought, with poetry, with Persian uh thought, but it cannot include something that doesn't work with its own system and which is completely at odds. And I think that enlightenment is completely at odds with the way Islam not only values reason, not only sees religion, but lives in the world, sees perception itself. There are many many ways to know in Islam, and at the end, all these movements are epistemologies at the end, right, of the story. And so the epistemology of Islam, and here there would be people like Nakalatas who have talked about in the best terms for nowadays, are not compatible with the epistemology of the enlightenment. And one last thing I'd like to say is two suggestions of books.
>> Oh yes.
>> To understand that this phenomenon is not over. So it's not like this podcast is about, "Oh well, we like the 18th century, me and Paul, it's our favorite time in history. We just want to talk about it." But it has to do with nowadays, and I believe Muslims, by understanding the roots of the enlightenment and orientalism, can understand today better. The first is book *Muslim in Western Imagination* by Sophia Rose Arjana. And this is by an Oxford University Press.
>> Oh, I've not I've not come across this before. Sophia Rose Arjana. Okay. When did she teach?
>> Oxford University Press. And um >> where where is she? Is she part of a United States?
>> Oh, Columbia.
>> World. Amazing. We should tag them in the