Biography

Introduction

The essays brought together here deal with somewhat unusual sub-jects—the study of Islam as a religion and the academic study of reli-gions. A critical reader may well wonder what hidden motives led to the choice of such abstract and heavy topics, what could be the back-ground of an author who deals with Islamic religion and its problems? So let the author start by saying something about himself and his inter-ests, before introducing the themes of this book.

1. Some Biographical Notes

Youth

I was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1930. My father was a Pro-testant minister, devoted to his many tasks with faith and ethical and spiritual commitment. He had broad interests in culture and scholar-ship, and possessed a large library. My mother was a qualified engineer and would later teach mathematics. She was a person of reason and faith, socially committed and engaged in organizational work for women in the Church and society. They were a hard-working couple with faith in their hearts, strength in their minds, and a strong sense of responsibility.

We were three children in the family. We grew up in a large house with a huge garden. I happened to be the eldest and liked reading. The world around us had its problems, from the Depression with its un-employment to political radicalization ending in war. My parents were involved in relief efforts.

For Holland, the war started in May 1940. Two years later my father was arrested and spent a month in prison. Though there was no fighting in our part of the country, hardship grew with an ongoing for-eign occupation and less and less food. Churches were full on Sundays and religion was relevant. My father was close to me and I helped him when he asked. A movement had started to overcome the rigid denomi-national, social, and political divisions that had plagued the country. The war ended in May 1945. I remember a shared elan in rebuilding the country and coming to a more normal life. After three years of con-

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2 Introduction

fusion, with debates and military action, the Netherlands accepted the independence of Indonesia, its former colony, in 1948. My mother, more progressive, supported it; my father's attitude was more conserva-tive.

I was rather serious at the time, introverted and not going out; at home I withdrew into my own study. After much hesitation about what course I should take and though I was attracted by the sciences, in the end I decided to become a minister and thus to study theology. My father squarely opposed the idea and held that I was not suited for such a profession. Some critical student friends, too, discouraged this inclina-tion. As a result, for one year I studied law, but then I turned to theol-ogy. I was at the University of Amsterdam, which was known to be pro-gressive. I enjoyed a student's freedom and was interested in the science of religions; I took an intellectual attitude toward religious matters and was little concerned about future work and social responsibility.

I could pursue my last two years of study (out of six, 1948-54) thanks to a government grant, and I was free to choose my own pro-gram: Science of Religions, Existentialist Philosophy, and Early Church History, in particular of the Eastern Churches. It was a lonely venture, since hardly any students had chosen this combination, and there were few graduate courses at the time.

France: Islam

In 1953, following up a serious suggestion from elsewhere, I decided to concentrate on studying Islam and to learn Arabic. I graduated in Amsterdam in July 1954 and in September began studying Arabic in Leiden. It might be late, but slowly my life was taking shape now, in foreign contexts.

For some fifteen months I lived at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. In a way, it was a start to living "abroad" in what was like a foreign enclave on Dutch soil, with graduate students from developing countries. At the Institute I followed a suggestion made by Chris van Nieuwenhuijze, who was working there, to analyze some Western scho-lars' approaches to Islam and the images of this religion resulting from their work. This would be the subject of my thesis.

Some Frenchmen suggested to me to apply for a fellowship to study in Paris. I arrived there in January 1956 and stayed for a couple of months. I met the eminence grise Louis Massignon who had retired in 1954 and I decided to include him among the Orientalists I was study-ing. He had his own spiritual world of thought and I had to find my way in it as a student of religion, taking notes on his stream of ideas and memories. With the French fellowship I had the chance to visit Tu-


Introduction

nisia immediately after independence in March 1956. It was the first Arab country I got to know and was joyfully celebrating its indepen-dence. On my return to Amsterdam, my supervisor, C. J . Bleeker, urged me to start writing. In November 1957, I again went to Paris with a fellowship, swearing that I would not return to Holland without having finished my dissertation. That would be in June 1959. I had now become a wandering Dutchman, working and reflecting descrip-tively on Islam and also on religion in general, along phenomenological lines. The years in Paris had been crucial.

The Islam and the Muslims I discovered in Paris between January 1956 and July 1959 had various human and political faces. Most visible were the Algerian workers who survived on the margins of France's empire and the French labor market. I had no direct experience of them, but obtained documentation about their situation from the White Fathers. Reports leaked through about the repressive measures directed by the French police and CRS against Algerians in France and about what was happening to Algerians in their own country during the war (1954-61).

The Algerian War was the second aspect of Muslim realities I saw, though only from a distance. It had started in November 1954, six months after the French defeat in Vietnam, and would get worse year by year. I had not done military service myself and could only observe from the outside. The French recruits called up to go to Algiers re-minded me of the Dutch recruits I had seen setting off by ship for Bata-via between 1945 and 1948. That was only a short time after Holland itself had been liberated from foreign occupation.

Confidential reports spoke about the French army's torture of Alge-rians, but they were denounced vehemently by French officials and trust-ing citizens alike, who saw them as insults to the honor of the French army. I saw how the army and the war were sacralized and was im-pressed by French militants who vehemently opposed it. In 1958 I wit-nessed the threat of a coup by the army in Algiers against the govern-ment in Paris.

Islam had a number of other faces, too. It was a subject of research and study, primarily at university institutions with a scholarly tradition. It was a spiritual force to which Louis Massignon and the Badaliya com-munity devoted meditation and prayer. There was also an Islam of inter-est to French business, in the Near East, starting from Beirut and in North Africa, centered on Algiers—not to speak of the Islam reinforcing struggles for independence. In 1956 alone, the two French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia acquired independence and Egypt defended it-self against three aggressors in the Suez War. Algeria's bloody war ended with independence in 1962. Sensitive observers discovered many more faces of Islam still, once they had met Muslims and listened to them.


4 Introduction

Last but not least, indeed, there was the Islam of communication. I was interested in meeting Muslim intellectuals, and many of them had gravitated to Paris from North Africa and the Near East. Paris offered space to a French-speaking Muslim intelligentsia that could develop in-tellectual ferment and social activity there. From Paris in the late 1950s I remember people like Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi from Morocco, Osman Yahya from Egypt, Muhammad Hamidullah from India, and Nadjm oud Din Bammate at UNESCO, of Caucasian origin and possessing, so the rumor went, an Afghan passport. I also met the open-minded Has-san Hanafi from Egypt, who was then working on his doctorate at the Sorbonne.

Islam hardly emerged as a living religion in the context of the French Republic's Ιαϊάίέ. The modest Mosquee de Paris, expressing French gra-titude to its Muslim conscripts in the First World War, was an excep-tion. Only a few French-language Muslim books existed at the time, such as Vocation de l'Islam by the Algerian Malik Bennabi. He ad-dressed the French public with his personalized and well-articulated ver-sion of Islam, replacing the collective Islam of tradition.

In France I found certain repetitive views of Islam everywhere. Given the ideology of France and its empire, French civilization and its bles-sings, not to speak of the insistent voice of French settlers in North Africa, Islam was broadly perceived as something retrograde, belonging to the past. It had to be vanquished by a great nation and subdued within a higher civilization. The French at the time, with a few excep-tions, had little direct experience of Muslims themselves, considered as equals, and their various ways of life.

So much for the Islam and Muslims I found in Paris. There was so much more to know about Islam and my curiosity was awakened.

France: Religion

But there were also religions other than Islam. The religion of the Chris-tians I found in Paris during that same period (1956-59) also had var-ious facets. I was struck by what was different from the Christianity I had known in Holland. Our own family included several Protestant de-nominations, but in Paris I discovered Catholics, and rather good ones. I remember a lively student group run by a Jesuit, a Dominican stretch-ing out an ecumenical hand toward Orthodox Christianity, and a group of White Fathers doing humanitarian work among Algerian workers.

In Holland, notwithstanding the separation of Church and State, Protestants lived with what they called at the time the "Catholic dan-ger", which they saw as striving for political and other kinds of power in society—including banning mixed swimming pools. In the 1950s the


Introduction 5

Catholic Church obliged its members to vote for the Dutch Catholic People's Party in the elections. In France, the Catholic Church was a private association in a secular state, and that was a far better situa-tion. Just as France had its culture and its intellectuals, the French Catholics I met had their cultural and intellectual resources as well as their particular faith. In the encounters I remember offhand, they distin-guished themselves by self-confidence, a certain flair for reasoning, and human warmth. I found similar warmth among Orthodox Christians I met, who were mostly of immigrant origin and possessed of a profound soul and a peaceful imagination. That was different from northern Pro-testant Christianity.

These observations of religion in France were deepened when I came into contact with Louis Massignon as a scholar and a kind of spiritual witness. He had retired in 1954 and must have been about 73 then. I had never before met such a person or encountered that kind of spiri-tuality.

Massignon seems to have understood religion as fundamentally com-passion and sacrifice for the sake of others, as imitatio Christi. It im-plied intercession for those who suffer and communication with them by way of compassion. In this spirituality, developed around the experi-ence of human suffering, he saw Islam as a kind of suffering "by exclu-sion". By remaining consciously outside the Divine, Muslims—unlike Christians—fatally lacked a direct access to God.

Christians, however, could intercede for them. Members of the Ba-daliya ("substitution") community, which Massignon had founded in 1934, saw it as their vocation to stand in for Muslims spiritually. This was more than prayer or intercession in words. Christians would inter-cede spiritually for Muslims so that they could become instruments for the salvation of Muslims in a nearly sacramental way and so that the latter might find the God of grace. In response to a deep longing, Mas-signon himself was ordained as a priest in the Greek Catholic (Melkite) Church in Cairo, in 1950. It was not to be publicly known.

This kind of compassionate Christianity, without evangelization or a call for Muslims to convert, and with an almost sacramental view of Muslim life and Christian prayer, was completely new to me. In Mas-signon's view, substitution was the essence of relations between Chris-tians and Muslims on the deepest level. Though I was struck by Mas-signon's spiritual dedication, I kept my distance from his idea of sub-stitution. It went against my notion of human persons bearing responsibility for themselves and for others, but without confusion be-tween individuals.

Another aspect of Massignon's religiosity struck me, besides his spiritual insight into communication by way of sacrifice and substitu-


6 Introduction

tion. He was also a man of sharp intellectual distinction and militant action when necessary, though without physical violence. In the 1950s , critical years for France, committed Catholics like Francois Mauriac and Louis Massignon could be ferocious in their unmasking of the hy-pocrisy, lying, and diplomatic subterfuges of the government. They de-manded unconditional justice for those who were trampled down, exploited, and deprived of human dignity. Yet they did not make an ideological program of it. For Massignon, Gandhi was the model of effective nonviolent opposition to naked power. I had heard about a militant Christian faith mainly from sermons, from missionary ac-counts, and from what I had heard of the resistance of certain Chris-tians during the Second World War. I hated violence. Joining collective demonstrations and running the risk of being beaten up by the police force, as happened to Massignon, was foreign to my nature and mental universe.

Massignon had admirers, but also enemies of his thought and spiri-tuality in very different sectors of society, including his own Church. To me, the way he contributed, through humility, to bring a rigid ecclesias-tical hierarchy to revise significantly both its doctrine and its practice concerning Muslims and Islam is simply admirable. N o t only about Islam and Christianity, but also about the Vatican and the Church, he knew more than most other Christians.

So much for the religion I found in Paris, with its opportunities for meeting independent minds—among scholars and philosophers, authors and artists. Creative exchange and interaction awoke further curiosity and stimulated further searches in the following years.

These Parisian observations and reflections on Islam and religion in general changed the views I had known in younger years. Thanks to this experience, my mind started to move and to open up more. Under-neath, however, remained some elementary notions of religion I had acquired at home. They included a sense of grace and destiny or predes-tination, an awareness of the responsibilities and demands placed on human beings, and a singular feeling of guidance accepted from and extended to others. One had to accomplish many tasks in life, to be alert to possible opposition and to seek ways and means to survive mentally and spiritually in a pitiless world.


Introduction 7

Study and Work: Contexts

Amsterdam

History of Religions and Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Amsterdam were taught by Professor C. J. Bleeker (1898-1983), himself a specialist in the religion of ancient Egypt. Bleeker's view of phenomenology was oriented less toward experience in religion and art than toward a schematization of religion, simpler and more distant than that of G. van der Leeuw (1890-1950) in Groningen. Neither van der Leeuw nor Bleeker were philosophers—nor did they claim to be. But van der Leeuw had been influenced by German scholar-theologians like Rudolf Otto and Rudolf Bultmann, and Bleeker by Swedish historical research like that of Geo Widengren.

Both had been students of W. B. Kristensen (1867-1953) in Leiden and worked for a phenomenological approach to religion(s). Existing theological judgments and debates about religion and religions, in their view, should make way for a scholarly study of the phenomena con-cerned, based on text studies. The stress on differences between reli-gions and on the uniqueness of Christianity should make way for com-parative studies of all religious data and systems. Bleeker's stand had nothing to do with Husserl's or Heidegger's phenomenological philoso-phy, and his views about what is essential in religion(s) had less to do with Husserl's Wesensschau than with his own liberal Protestant posi-tion. Whereas van der Leeuw was fond of depth, Bleeker was less.

In the composite theological context of the Netherlands in the period between the two world wars (1918-1939), the phenomenological atti-tude fulfilled a cultural function. It offered a positive view of the diver-sity of religions and called for transcending the historical boundaries of one's own religion. This kind of phenomenological attitude corre-sponded with the need for tolerance, but at the price of an unproblem-atic idea of religion. As a student, I was interested in examining criti-cally the presuppositions of this phenomenology and of the study of religions in general, not to mention the assumptions of the religions themselves. I learned from Fokke Sierksma's experiences—even in Lei-den—that the time was not ripe in Holland for such critical question-ing.

The case was different with analyzing presuppositions and assump-tions in Islamic Studies, carried out in a French intellectual context. In my thesis I tried to combine a phenomenological description of scho-larly representations and images with a keen analysis of conceptualiza-tions and the value orientations underlying them. These were due to the personal, that is subjective, background of individual scholars, the con-text in which they had grown up and been educated, the cultural and


8 Introduction

scholarly milieu in which they worked, and of course the major prob-lems of the time. My search was for noticeable and in fact unavoidable "subjective" factors in the work of five scholars of Islam who had fo-cused on Islamic religion. I defended my thesis at the University of Am-sterdam in 1961 and it was published as a book in French in 1963, with an expanded edition in 1970. It reflects the critical cultural con-text in which it was thought out and written.

Arab Universities

I owe much to French culture, scholarship, and collegiality. They en-abled me to work extensively on Louis Massignon, opened doors to the Arab world, and encouraged my own research project on the history and current situation of universities in the Arab world. Jacques Berque supported the project at the CNRS and I could carry it out by visiting Arab countries in the course of 1963-64.

The underlying problem was the role of universities in the develop-ment of Arab countries. This work brought me into contact with the concerns of Arab intellectuals between 1959 and 1964. The resulting book, published in French in two volumes in 1966, treated a neglected subject relevant for the future of Arab societies and their intelligentsia.

Montreal

I had the chance to work for a year as a Research Associate at the In-stitute of Islamic Studies of McGill University in Montreal (1962-63). Interesting things were going on there. W. Cantwell Smith's The Mean-ing and End of Religion appeared in spring 1963, at the end of his stay at McGill before he left for India and before his appointment at Har-vard University in 1964. This penetrating and erudite study represented something of a revolution in science of religion. The author argued that the very concept of religion was inadequate and should be replaced by the two complementary concepts of "cumulative tradition" and "faith". This conceptual innovation should lead to a new way of studying reli-gions better able, in his view, to grasp what religion is all about.

This proposal forced us, colleagues and students, to think about what we are doing in studying religions and why. It put relevant ques-tions and breathed fresh life into the still rather tradition-oriented ways of thinking about religious matters and the study of religious texts. When he introduced the concept of "faith" as a subject of scholarly in-quiry, he broke away from positivist and empiricist scholarly traditions


Introduction 9

in the field. What could be Smith's philosophical and theological agenda for the study of religions? Was it not an empirical discipline?

Cantwell Smith was honest and endowed with a splendid mind, in-tent on discussion and debate. During the Second World War he had lived and worked in what in 1947 would become West Pakistan. In these years he wrote Modern Islam in India, an innovative study of the social basis of new Muslim presentations of Islam in what was still Brit-ish India. After his appointment for Comparative Religion at McGill in 1950, he developed additional approaches in Islamic Studies. Not im-posing himself but reflecting with others, Smith could communicate rather well with people from Asia and the Middle East, giving them a forceful incentive to develop their own ideas. Cantwell Smith's way of analyzing the occurrence and meanings of basic religious concepts—in-dicating the "faith" dimension—in Islam and elsewhere was typical. It was further refined in Toshihiko Izutsu's seminar on semantic analysis of the Qur'än that year and in his later publications on semantic re-search.

Cantwell Smith's way of identifying and bringing rational arguments to bear on problems in the study of Islam and religions in general was persuasive. He committed himself to the Study of Religions and to Isla-mic Studies in particular as a study of persons. The positive response in certain Protestant quarters to such an appreciative, all-encompassing approach of religion suggested another climate of research on religion than the one I had known in Europe. I admired Cantwell Smith as an intellectual but I must admit that his particular theological questioning and argumentation were not always convincing or even clear to me.

I happened to meet Cantwell Smith again several times afterwards. With all the criticism his approach evoked in social scientific circles, his thinking about religious data and ideas was original and brilliant. Later on, we would publish his Selected Papers on Understanding Islam on his request in the series "Religion and Reason". I remember how he prepared the manuscript with the highest demands on himself and the utmost precision.

Los Angeles

My first regular job in life was at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), when I was 34. I stayed there for four years, teaching Arabic (1964-65) and Islamic History (1965-1968) and also pursuing my earlier quests on the history of Islamic Studies. Gustave Ε. von Gru-nebaum (1909-1972) was an Austrian-born Orientalist who migrated to the USA in 1938. After having taught at the Asia Institute in New York and the University of Chicago, he became Professor of History at


10 Introduction

UCLA and was appointed Director of its newly established Near East-ern Center in 1957. He then launched a major MA and PhD program in Islamic Studies there.

Von Grunebaum had studied Oriental languages in Vienna and Ber-lin and obtained the Habilitation with a study on pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. In the US, his interests broadened to take in Islamic history and civilization, including compared with other civilizations. He also paid attention to developments in the 19 th- and 20 t h -century Muslim world. His was the weight of immense erudition and a persistent questioning, on a theoretical as well as a factual level. Educated in Vienna, he had a Central European cultural outlook. European culture meant much to him and he kept up contacts with many colleagues in Europe.

By then, California and Los Angeles were no longer on the far edge of the world. In the 1960s, von Grunebaum used to invite scholars and researchers from Europe and the Middle East to research and teach at UCLA. Consequently, its Near Eastern Center became an international meeting point stimulating young researchers. The University Library built up its holdings of books on Near Eastern and Islamic Studies. It was well equipped, and research facilities at UCLA were better than in most European countries. In 1967 von Grunebaum created the bi-an-nual Levi della Vida Prize at UCLA for scholars of eminence in Islamic Studies. Themes chosen by the prizewinners were the subject of interna-tional scholarly meetings. Besides his vast scholarship, von Grunebaum was a gifted organizer and administrator.

During those "Golden Sixties" California was prosperous. Since the 1940s, if not earlier, Europeans of various backgrounds had been set-tling there, not only prospective filmstars but also authors, artists, schol-ars, businessmen, and people of means. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were still unexpected possibilities in the air and success stories attracted young people to go west. The educational system was good. European scholars contributing to education and culture were welcome. But there were other sides to California, too. I remember the hippy culture in Southern California of the 1960s, but also violent ethnic clashes in Los Angeles. Protest meetings against the Vietnam War were increasing. The war was escalating and men were being called up; student pacifist demonstrations met with police violence. Ronald Reagan emerged as a political figure. Starting out as a movie actor, he became Governor of California in 1967.

Gustave von Grunebaum suggested that I put together an anthology of medieval Muslim texts in English translation that would show interest-ing Muslim contributions to the study of religions. I indeed collected a number of relevant texts, both medieval and more recent, but then abandoned the idea of an anthology. I did not have sufficient philologi-


Introduction 11

cal training to do the translation work. But the subject itself—Muslim views of other religions—continued to haunt me. In 1991 I organized a workshop on the subject in Lausanne. The book that resulted from it offers, besides specialized papers, a historical survey of such Muslim views and a bibliography as complete as possible at the time. It was published in 1999, but not many scholars seem to know of it.

My own experience of four years in California was one of hard work. It certainly led to attachments but less to fundamental thought or wisdom. In 1968 I had the US immigrant green card; I could have had a permanent job and become a Californian for life. At the decisive mo-ment, however, my choice was for Europe. But it was not without pain, and for several years I went on dreaming of New World efficiency, in-cluding scholarly creativity.

All in all, the five years' experience of work in Montreal and Los Angeles had been precious. I had become another man, but somewhat lonely, too. I wanted to remain an observer, not fully participating in American society. But the New World kept me in being and saved my independence of mind over against received ideas. Just as France had stimulated my intellectual interests, North America structured my desire to innovate.

Back to Holland

As of July 1, 1968, I was appointed Senior Lecturer for Islam and Phe-nomenology at the University of Utrecht. After the loss of the East In-dies, the Netherlands no longer needed colonial administrators and ex-perts on Islamic affairs. But Islam slowly became a subject of attention again. This had to do with growing interests in the Middle East and in developing countries worldwide. Since the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Christians had been encouraged to enter into dialogue with Muslims, side by side with Protestants. Most important for the country itself, however, was the arrival of Muslim "guest workers" from Medi-terranean countries like Turkey and Morocco and Muslim immigrants from Surinam, which became independent in 1975.

At the University of Utrecht, the communicative gifts, spirited ani-mation, and organizational initiatives of Professor D. J. Hoens made for the development of the Study of Living Religions. Besides regular research and teaching, we started a multi-disciplinary working group of science of religions. Among the participants were scholarly authorities from the colonial period, fresh minds in their twenties, and scholars from other Dutch universities.

Utrecht was well-known for Indology, directed by Professor J. Gonda. But Islamic languages were studied as well: Arabic, Berber lan-


12 Introduction

guages, Turkish (with specializations in Ottoman Turkish and Turkic languages), Persian (including Old Persian) and Urdu. Courses were of-fered on 20 th-century developments in Muslim countries and on Islam as a religion. All of this would still expand during the 1970s and early 1980s. At the time I was actively involved in the yearbook Humaniora Islamica, two issues of which saw the light of day in 1973 and 1974. I became interested in questions relating to Islam among Muslim immi-grants in Europe in general and in the Netherlands in particular.

On a theoretical level my search has been for a framework within which to read Islamic data of different times and places in terms of one rela-tively open system designated "Islam". The hours spent with scholars like Massignon, Cantwell Smith, and von Grunebaum bore fruit in this respect too. The concept of a "signification system" has proved to be useful for studying meanings of Islamic data and Islam. Such a system is loosely composed of elements that are significant for adherents in general and for specific groups in particular. It allows for numerous interpreta-tions and applications, religious and cultural as well as social and politi-cal. Viewing and studying Islam as a relatively open signification system permits a more systematic approach to the ways Islam has been "con-structed" by Muslim individuals and communities in given contexts. This approach to Islamic religious data has proved to be more fruitful than merely applying Western concepts of "religion" to Islamic materials.

Islamic realities in the Middle East started to become more pressing, with the "revitalization" of Islam starting in the 1970s if not earlier, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the civil war in Lebanon, the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s, and the wars in Afghanistan starting in 1979—and in the background the everlasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the interests involved. In 1974-75 I had the opportunity to work at the NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study) in Wassenaar on Muslim perceptions of other religions. At that time I married. My wife is a specialist in Arabic literature.

In Holland I had more direct social concerns for the first time. They had to do with Islam in the shape of some hundred thousands of Mus-lim immigrants who were to become part of Dutch society. I listened to what these people told me about their experiences. I tried to explain to the authorities that Islam is a serious religion and that they must meet certain basic needs of Muslims if they wanted to achieve any integra-tion. Evidently, Dutch society had not been prepared to make room for Muslims as fellow citizens; people had to be informed about what Mus-lims are, what Islam may mean to them, and what life in Turkey, Mo-rocco, or Surinam is like. Besides social problems there were political problems, too: the direct or indirect influence of foreign governments,


Introduction 13

the need for a common representation of the various Muslim organiza-tions, the interests of Dutch political parties in attracting votes either from the immigrants or from those who would have liked to send them back to their countries of origin, and relations between existing Muslim organizations, not to mention urgent problems of refugees and asylum seekers.

I had energetic Dutch friends with practical qualities and experience of life, some of them researchers, often connected with Churches, who committed themselves to the cause of Muslim and other immigrants. I served on two government committees. My own first interest was in what Muslims would do here with their Islam and how younger genera-tions would articulate their identity.

Although there was some discrimination on a popular level, when I left in 1987, the country as a whole was still acting in accordance with its tradition of tolerance toward immigrants who contribute to eco-nomic life and respect public order. I could not have imagined that fig-ures like Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh with their behavior toward Muslims would ever enjoy popular sympathy. But by then I was living outside the Dutch borders and I was no longer involved.

My assignment in Utrecht was not restricted to Islam but also included Phenomenology, specifically the Phenomenology of Religion. At that time it was largely considered the systematized descriptive and com-parative study of religious phenomena of past and present-day religions.

Since my student days, if not earlier, I had felt called upon to ex-plore the sensitive field of true scholarly, non-normative research on re-ligion^) and to delve into the foundations of such research. Like the study of art and literature, of history and of culture in general, that of religion—as of psychology—should adhere to scholarly standards and arrive at conclusions of general validity. With the confessionalization of research according to a scholar's own religion, its fragmentation in a number of disciplines, and ever-increasing specializations, there is a cry-ing need for a more coherent view of this field of study based on solid theory. It should not be a philosophy of religion but should study reli-gion in terms of human expression. I started to set out my own course here, at the beginning under the flag of phenomenology.

The first task was to encourage scholarly publications on the subject. In 1970 I succeeded in establishing the "Religion and Reason" series of monographs and collective works devoted to the study of "Method and Theory in the Study and Interpretation of Religion", as the subtitle read. It had a board of distinguished advisors with different scholarly orienta-tions and was published by Mouton in The Hague and Paris.

The second task was to link present-day theoretical and methodolo-gical concerns with the views that the "founding fathers" had for-


14 Introduction

mulated when they designed the scholarly study of religion(s). So I prepared an anthology Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods, and Theories of Research, with a historical introduc-tion and a separate, extensive bibliography. Compiling it was an oner-ous task some fifteen years before the introduction of computers at the university. The two volumes appeared in 1973 and 1974 and were well received. A paperback edition of the anthology appeared in 1999.

In 1973 a first international conference on method and theory in the study of religion was held in Turku, Finland under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Religions. Typically for the time, only Western scholars were invited. The proceedings of this con-ference, edited carefully by Lauri Honko, the organizer, and published in "Religion and Reason" in 1979, give some useful insights into the discussions of the subject among scholars at the time.

Debates on method and theory in the study of religions also took place in the Netherlands. In the late 1960s, Prof. T. P. van Baaren in Gronin-gen started an interdisciplinary working group on the study of religion. It was more specifically oriented toward the application of approaches current in the social sciences—in particular cultural anthropology—in the study of religions. This constituted an alternative to the stress on studying religious texts, as commonly applied in the history of religions. Broadly speaking, the working group stood for a study of religions tak-ing into consideration the social and other contexts in which religious data and religions occur. This was not new in itself, but what was new in the Dutch context at the time was the stress on the importance of anthropological theory and the formalization of theory to arrive at maximal validity. Typically for the dualism current at the time, van Baaren himself developed systematic science of religion as an alternative to systematic theology. Science of religion and theology, taken as disci-plines, represented two different camps.

At about the same time, Dirk Hoens started a similar interdisciplinary working group in Utrecht. It had a greater variety of orientations and specializations, including in the social sciences, than the Groningen group. This led to more informative presentations by members about what they were actually doing and to a different kind of scholarly ex-change. I participated in both groups, and several of their publications appeared in the series Religion and Reason. During the 1970s, coopera-tion among younger researchers at Dutch universities increased.

International contacts also grew, stimulating for younger researchers and sometimes leading to common research projects. In the 1970s, for instance, I took part in a German study group on "Theorizing Reli-gion", which led to an invitation from a German publisher to write an introduction to Religionswissenschaft. I felt honored, but the task of


Introduction 15

synthesizing my thinking in a readable paperback was more demanding than I had anticipated. The book, which appeared in 1986, pleaded for a particular hermeneutical approach to religious data and for a kind of phenomenology concentrating on what these data mean(t) for specific groups. It regarded religions as signification systems that can be inter-preted in different ways. The various meaning constructions resulting from such different interpretations are a fascinating subject of study. The book was later translated into several languages.

In the late 1970s universities in the Netherlands and elsewhere came under increasing budgetary restrictions. Our department in Utrecht, for instance, simply lost its two chairs when the two professors took early retirement and were not replaced on the same level. That of course meant an extra burden for the few younger scholars who remained. The same thing happened in other European countries.

This situation made me look for a possible way out. In 1986 rumors circulated that university professors would have to work in their offices and clock in every day. I realized that it was time to pack my bags. I applied for a position in Lausanne and was lucky enough to be ac-cepted. Ria Kloppenborg, a specialist in Buddhism, became my succes-sor for the study of religions, the first woman professor on the faculty. Ghassan Ascha, from Syria, was appointed for Islam, the first Muslim scholar with tenure to teach Islam at a Dutch university. So my depar-ture created two jobs. Some fifteen years later, the Department of the Study of Religion changed its name to pursue more formally the orien-tations toward dialogue that Dirk Hoens, Ria Kloppenborg, Jan Plat-voet, and I had started with people of non-Western faiths in those Golden Seventies.

Visitor to Switzerland

As of September 1, 1987, I was appointed for science of religions (science des religions) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. I would have only eight years before the retirement age of 65 and had to use my time well. Within a year, the scholars of religion working at the university established a Department for the History and Science of Reli-gions that involved three faculties and would attract an increasing num-ber of students.

In these years I wanted to concentrate on Islam, in particular past and present relations between Islam and Christianity, and relations be-tween Islam and the West in the 20 th century. My old research project on Muslim views of other religions was rounded off with an interna-tional workshop in Lausanne in 1991, resulting in a book that was re-


16 Introduction

leased in 1999. Our department organized several scholarly workshops on the themes mentioned, with both Muslim and non-Muslim partici-pants. On a scholarly level, they were an initiation to dialogue as well. The proceedings of these workshops were published.

From Switzerland I was able to travel abroad more often. This en-abled me to have more contact with other researchers studying relations between Muslims and Christians. I could now collect books and docu-ments on these subjects and also on the situation of Christian minorities in Muslim countries and Muslim minorities in the West and elsewhere. I also collected material about the history of Islamic Studies, recent de-bates on Orientalism that reached a peak with Edward Said's Oriental-ism of 1978, and recent changes in mutual perceptions between Mus-lims and non-Muslims.

Coming from a country relatively open to the outside world, I experi-enced Switzerland as the opposite in many respects. Many Swiss re-garded Europe as something beyond Swiss borders, and when we ar-rived a well-developed system of spying on all those who could be sus-pected of leftist tendencies was in place. The country was not a member of the United Nations and kept aloof from the European Union. Swiss conscientious objectors were sent to prison, banks could be more powerful than government, the situation of women was backward and that of workers from abroad was lamentable. Without much bad con-science I kept aloof from Swiss society with its particular problems and withdrew into academia. I had come to do here intellectual work largely on my own, and Switzerland let me do it in peace, both at the university (1987-1995) and after retirement (1995) when I stayed here.

Since September 1995 I have enjoyed the status of emeritus professor of the University of Lausanne, tackling new tasks and finishing texts al-ready underway, including two books of selected papers that appeared in 2002 and 2003. Since 2003 I have been working on and off on this book.

As I mentioned, my search has been for a theoretical framework making it possible to grasp the lived meanings that people assign to their religions or to elements of them in various situations and contexts. My basic interest is in people as actors, in what persons and groups of people themselves see or construct as meaningful, rather than what an existing theory, philosophy, or theology has to say about meaning and significance—though that too is relevant for this kind of research.

Phenomenology in this connection is not only a kind of inner reflec-tion of what is meaningful, but also training in listening to, observing, and discerning what other people mean when expressing themselves.

Present-day Islamic religion, lived in a turbulent world of tensions and conflicts, is a field where such an open approach is desperately


Introduction 17

needed, for scholarly reasons as well as others. In the present-day con-text, the results of research are constantly put to the test, on several levels and from various angles. A number of approaches are applied now to the study of "Islam" in general—especially politics—and some to the scholarly study of religious aspects of Muslim societies and of "Islam" as a religion. Which of these approaches will be most reliable to stand all critical tests best—not only those of media preferences or usefulness for policy makers?

The present book proposes a reasoned and reflective approach to Muslims and Islam, respecting the faith of the first and the facts of the second.

2. The Present Book

The book consists of five parts, each with a particular heading and con-taining essays written at different times, independently of each other. They can all be read separately for their own sake. If an earlier pub-lished version exists, it has always been revised and sometimes com-pletely rewritten before being published here.

Part One: Two Questions poses two basic questions underlying the book. The first question concerns the science of religions, in particular how

this field of research can render service to the study of Islam. The second question is how we should study elements of Islam not

only separately but as parts of a larger system that constitutes a whole, is significant in itself, and communicates "meanings". Such a significa-tion system can be read, interpreted, and applied in many ways, for instance religiously, esthetically, legally, socially, politically. Such read-ings can overlap, be ideologized, and absolutized. The readings and in-terpretations given of the system vary in accordance with situations and contexts, the tradition and school of particular groups, and of course the guiding interests and intentions of the interpreters themselves. All such readings and interpretations imply a particular vision of Islam.

The answers that are given to further questions in the book depend in part on the answers given to these first two basic questions.

Part Two: Issues in Islamic Studies concentrates primarily on issues that have become relevant in the second half of the 20 t h century.

Chapter 3 discusses the nature of Islamic Studies and some specific relations between this field and the Study of Religions in general.

Chapter 4 describes some social scientific orientations in Islamic Stu-dies.


18 Introduction

Chapter 5 deals with Islamic Studies and intercultural relations. Can Islamic Studies be seen as part of intercultural relations, for instance between the Western and the Islamic worlds? In what way can these studies be relevant for such relations? What has been the general role of Muslims themselves in Islamic Studies? What is the contribution of Muslim scholars in more general "Islamic Studies" and in typically Muslim "Studies of Islam"?

The final Chapter 6 tries to identify some presuppositions and as-sumptions that underlie academic Islamic Studies and to determine their implications for scholarship on Islam as a religion.

Part Three: The Practice of Islamic Studies in History looks at some achievements of Islamic Studies in the recent past.

Chapter 7 focuses on the work of the French scholar Louis Mas-signon (1883-1962) and indicates the circles in which his impact has been most palpable. He studied particular religious aspects of Islam and interpreted it in terms of the particular spirituality that was his own. A general problem that also underlies his work is that of the attitude that non-Muslim and Muslim scholars respectively may take toward Mus-lims and Islam in their work. What are the consequences of a scholar's private attitude for a scholarly—that is, generally valid—interpretation of Islam as a faith and religion? When does a private attitude open up fruitful perspectives for research and when does a private attitude on the contrary block fruitful research?

Chapter 8 sketches some trends in Islamic Studies as carried out by Western scholars in the second half of the 20 th century, in particular studies of the early history of Islam. It seeks to identify certain changes in scholarly orientations and in practical interests among scholars dur-ing the period. It gives only a general survey, not addressing develop-ments in the study of particular Muslim regions or particular aspects of Islam.

Chapter 9 describes scholarly presentations of Islam as a religion given since the mid-20th century by five recognized scholars of Islam, with different approaches, orientations, and personal backgrounds. Be-cause of their particular presuppositions, conceptualizations, appre-ciations, and contexts, these scholars throw different kinds of light on Islam. They also present different views of the relations between the Western and the Muslim world.

Chapter 10, the last chapter of Part Three, discusses the impact of the Cold War and its Middle Eastern aftermath on Islamic Studies as well as on the study of religions in general. The Cold War had a sizable impact on the field on both sides of the Iron Curtain and affected Islamic Studies even afterwards.


Introduction 19

Part Four: Studying Religions deals with the academic study of religions to the extent that it is relevant to the study of Islam as a religion. This depends, among other things, on how one views the specific tasks of the study of religions.

Chapter 11, "Religions as a Subject of Empirical Research" describes the emergence of the academic study of religions, especially as a philo-logical and historical discipline, about a century and a half ago. It pays attention to the dichotomy that arose somewhat later between "ex-plaining" and "understanding" in the study of religions, indicating some of the consequences of this dichotomy, and making proposals to avoid a rigid dualism in the practice of these two approaches.

Chapter 12 discusses the Phenomenology of Religion that arose in the Netherlands in the first half of the 20 t h century. It tries to see it in its historical context and hints at its cultural function by relativizing the religious and specifically theological differences that were stressed by leaders and theologians in the religions themselves.

Chapter 13 takes the work of Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) as a kind of landmark in the history of the field in the period between the 1930s and the 1980s. Eliade was still capable of projecting in his work one basic coherent vision of the nature, history, and morphology of reli-gions. This vision implied a particular view of reality and hermeneutics.

Eliade's creative work should be seen in its contexts: Romania be-fore and after the First World War, Europe before and after the Second World War, Western Europe until the late 1950s, and the USA from the 1950s until the late 1980s. Eliade distinguished himself by a particular commitment and a singular combination of scholarly and creative literary work. With his particular presuppositions about the idea of reli-gion and his particular hermeneutic, he neglected, however, "propheti-cal", "scriptural", and "law" religions such as Islam. The chapter calls—unlike Eliade—for studying religions as constructs of meaning.

Part Five: People and Their Islam concentrates on ways Muslim people should be studied with their Islam, in various countries, in particular contexts, and situations.

Chapter 14, "Believers in Focus. Exploring Subjective Meanings in Religions", discusses the presence of subjective meanings in religion, that is to say what a given religion or religious phenomenon in fact means to people and how various groups of people actually read their religion. Together with existing traditions, subjective meanings are an important element in the various readings and interpretations people tend to give of religions and religious phenomena in particular situa-tions and contexts. People are inclined to assign subjective meanings to phenomena to which they feel attached, to the religion of which they feel part, or to religion in general as an especially significant reality.


20 Introduction

The study of subjective meanings can also be relevant, for instance, for the study of religious encounters and conversions.

Chapter 15, "Islamic Reform and Renewal", applies this approach to some movements of renewal and reform that occurred in Islam—as they did in Christianity and Judaism—in the course of the 19 th and 20 t h

centuries. There have been "rediscoveries" of Islam by Muslims who, as persons, became actors with regard to their religion and faith.

This chapter also draws attention to the significance of Scripture as providing a kind of authoritative truth, generally accessible in these three religions. Movements of renewal and reform present new readings and views not only of particular texts but also of the significance of a given Scripture as such. The interpretations of a particular religion are intimately connected with the views held on and the interpretations given to its Scripture.

3. Some Perspectives

The book has several concerns that have become relevant nowadays. We should study Islam in connection with the people living with it in given times and places. We should concentrate specifically on those reli-gious normative aspects of Islam that, in practice, are recognized by the people (groups and individuals) we study. We should then analyze the relations between these validated normative (religious, ideological, etc.) aspects of people's life, on the one hand, and the material, social, and political realities in which they have to organize their lives, on the other. We should look for the relationships that exist between the dif-ferent readings, interpretations, and uses particular groups and indi-viduals make of Islam, on the one hand, and the concrete conditions of life, situations, and contexts to which these readings and uses of Islam constitute a response, on the other hand.

Ideas about Islam are linked to the human condition of those who develop them. Messages of Islam are perceived by those who in given situations are sensitive to them. Islam offers individuals and groups in given situations networks of meaning. This often happens in particular discourses—like khutbas (sermons)—that deserve serious study. We should seek for the coherence between the various meanings that indi-viduals and groups attribute to Islam in given situations. If Islam to them is a norm and ideal, what does it "mean" to them?

One of the keys to knowing the concerns of present-day Muslims is to pay due attention to the growing differentiation of the meanings they give, as individuals and groups, to Islam and especially the Qur'än. These meanings are especially interesting if they are given in different situations and contexts, both in Muslim and Western countries.


Introduction 21

The uses made of Islam and the readings and interpretations given of it should be studied not only as forms of social and political behav-ior. They should also be viewed as human operations to give meaning to things. Islam has an important function as a resource of significance and meaning for Muslims.

Scholars of religion are able to recognize Islam as the common reference of these assignments of meaning. It is a reference that is valid for all Muslims and from which they can derive meaning and significance. In given human situations, Islam as such, or specific elements of it, can be perceived as particularly meaningful.

Both Islam itself and the various elements of it are significant for Muslims and they admit a great number of interpretations. Like other religions and ideologies, Islam is lived—read, interpreted, and prac-ticed—by actors, in this case Muslim actors. Our fundamental question is: How do they read, interpret, and practice Islam in given situations? What kind of actors are they?

Selected Literature

Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. by Richard C. MARTIN, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1985.

ARMSTRONG, Karen, Islam, London: Modern Library, 2 0 0 0 . J4S Others See Us. Mutual Perceptions, East and West, ed. by Bernard LEWIS,

Edmund LEITES, and Margaret CASE. Special issue of Comparative Civiliza-tions Review, Vol. 13-14 (Fall 1985-Spring 1986), New York 1986.

AYOUB, Mahmoud M., Islam. Faith and History, Oxford: Oneworld, 2 0 0 4 . Defining Islam. A Reader, ed. by Andrew RIPPIN, London and Oakville: Equi-

nox, 2007. Islam and Inter-Faith Relations, ed. by Perry SCHMIDT-LEUKEL and Lloyd RID-

GEON, London: SCM Press, 2007. Mapping Islamic Studies. Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. by Azim NANJI

(Religion and Reason 38), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. Mircea Eliade. A Critical Reader, ed. by Bryan RENNIE, London and Oakville:

Equinox, 2006. The Myth of Religious Superiority. Multifaith Explorations of Religious Plural-

ism, ed. by Paul F. KNITTER, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. Religious Harmony, Problems, Practice, and Education, edited by Michael PYE

et al., Proceedings of the Regional Conference of the International Associa-tion for the History of Religions, Yogyakarta and Semarang, 2004 (Religion and Reason 45), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006.


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