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John Tolan, "Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present" (Princeton UP, 2025)
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Hello, everybody.
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This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. I hope you're well and I thank you for listening in today. Today, I'm so pleased to welcome Dr. John Tolin, who is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Nantes. His books include England's Jews, Faces of Muhammad, Princeton, which is published by Princeton St. Francis, and the Sultan and Saracens. In his newest book, A New History from Muhammad to the Present, published by Princeton University Press in 2025, Dr. John Tolan offers a concise new narrative history of Islam that draws on the transformative insights of recent research to emphasize the diversity and dynamism of the tradition. This book provides an essential and timely new history of the religion and all its astonishing richness and diversity as it has been practiced by Muslims around the world from 7th century Mecca. Today, many popular histories of Islam continue to repeat conventional pietistic accounts. In contrast, Dr. John Toland draws on decades of new historical research that has transformed knowledge of the origins and development of the Muslim faith. He shows how the youngest of the three great monotheism arose in close contact with Jewish, Christian and other religious traditions and a mixture of cultures, including Arab, Greek, Persian and Turkish. How Islam spread across an enormous territory encompassing hundreds of languages, cultures, and how Muslims have forged widely different beliefs and practices over 14 centuries and how Islamic history provides a crucial context for understanding contemporary debates in the Muslim world. Without any more delay, I would like to welcome Dr. John Tolin. Dr. John Tolan, it is so nice to have you here. How are you?
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Very good, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Before we delve into, you know, the nitty and gritty of this very fascinating history, I think it's always helpful to understand kind of the personal and professional trajectory of the writer, how you got to where you are, what initiated your interest in the Islamic world and history and what made you really write this book.
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Well, I started off my dissertation when I was a student at the University of Chicago, was on a character named Petrus Alfonsi, who was an Andalusian Jew who converted to Christianity and then wrote polemics against Judaism and Islam. And this got me interested in the whole dynamics of relationships, rivalries and polemics between Jews, Christians and Muslims in medieval Europe and more broadly in the medieval Mediterranean. And as I've delved into the, you know, I've written a number of things in the history of relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle Ages and beyond. And the more I delved into history of Islam, the more I realized that, as you said in your summary, most of the sort of general books on Islam for a wide audience are still based on this sort of traditional pious narrative of the beginnings of Islam. Whereas there's been much very interesting work on the beginnings of Islam. I think of my friend and colleague Ali Amermoise in France. I think of Fred Donner in Chicago with his Muhammad and the Believers. And what Fred Donner did is one of the problems with the early history of Islam is that the documentation we have is rather late. Most of it, things like the hadith or traditions were transmitted orally and only written down during the Abbasid time. So two centuries more or less after the death of Muhammad. So it's very hard to sort through that material and to know what is authentic, what really corresponds to the earliest history of Islam and what was fabricated later. And even the Abbasid scholars who wrote down these hadiths acknowledged that it was very difficult for them to sort through what was true from what was a later fabrication. So what Fred Downer did in his book is looked first at the Quran as the oldest, indeed source and the source closest to the teachings of Muhammad of any written source we have. And he looked at how the word believer, mumin, is frequent in the Quran, much more frequent than the word Muslim. And for in Danner's interpretation When Muhammad spoke to believers, he was really speaking not only to what will later be termed Muslims, but to anyone, Jews, Christians or others who is ready to accept this biblical tradition in which there are a number of prophets. And he, Muhammad is the latest of the prophets. So seeing Islam in this way and seeing how, and I try to show this in, in the first couple chapters of my book, what we think of as Islam, the basic elements of Islam, the Shahada or the declaration of faith. Well, there are elements that we find in the Quran, the Hajj to Mecca and so forth. But a lot of what distinguishes Islam and the symbols of, we associate with Islam were really created during the Umayyad period, so within more or less a century after the death of Muhammad. And they were created in a context where the Umayyads were using Islam to justify their conquest and justify their dominion over a huge empire in which the great majority of subjects were were not Muslim. They were Christians, many Zoroastrians, Jews. And creating Islam as a superior religion to Christianity and Judaism, rather than simply a continuation of the prophetic message, allowed the Umayyads to create social hierarchies in which the Muslims were superior to the Christians and the Jews, the famous dhimma system. And so what I tried to look at is how this happens and how what we consider the fundaments of Islam really, whether it's Islamic justice, Islamic culture really evolved slowly over the first several centuries of the Umayyad and then Abbasid periods.
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Thank you, Dr. Tolan. I appreciate that. Really kind of insightful introduction into how you really approach the subject. I think you also ask a really kind of compelling question, question at the outset of your monograph, and you say, who am I to write a history of Islam? I thought that was such a kind of, you know, really provocative and truthful statement at the. At the outset. And I was just really kind of interested to know why. What really provoked you to kind of, you know, delve into that query and how do you answer that book and in your kind of own intellectual work? I just thought that was. Yeah, fascinating.
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Yeah. So I think it's very important. I mean, we, as historians or scholars in general, we want to be objective as possible, but we always know that we're not 100% objective. We always know that we're coming from someplace. And it's different to be writing as a scholar within one's own tradition, whether it's a national tradition or a religious tradition or other, or to be looking in from the outside. And there are advantages and disadvantages. To each. But I think one has to. You know, you can't approach every tradition as an insider or as an outsider. But I think you have to be try to be aware of where you're coming from. And I think in that passage you quote, I want to be quite frank with the reader. I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a theologian, and my book isn't trying to define you. There are other books that do much better about talking about Islamic doctrine. What I'm really interested in is looking at this link between Islamic. For me, Islamic history. It's hard to untangle what's religious from what's the civilization. And what I wanted to do was to show how Islam has been lived and understood over centuries by very different people in very different situations with very different needs and desires.
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Yeah, definitely. Thank you. You really begin your study with an exploration of the problem of defining Islam and the many contradictions and paradoxes that are associated with the study of Islam. So at times, I mean, historically, these dichotomies are used to characterize the religion. For example, you know, a peace, a religion of peace or violence, or a set of principles based on normative law, sharia, or on kind of just, you know, organic learning for. So how do you. And how does this kind of fascinating study really move beyond these methodological blunders? Because I think that you really are able to transcend that. So how. How do you do that?
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Well, I think again, by focusing on the plurality of. Of lived experiences and of perspectives of what Islam is. And I think one of the things that one finds repeatedly is, well, to simplify a debate between more spiritual interpretations and more legalistic interpretations. You see this already in Baghdad in the 9th century, indeed, earlier in many ways. But in Baghdad in the 9th century, you have the establishments of the four madhhabs, or legal schools. And you also have the emergence of Sufism, and you have at the same time, the caliphal court, in which Islam is, among other things, the basis of this imperial ideology. So you have several differing ways of approaching what Islam is. And I just published a book recently in France of, directed with my colleague Ali Amer Muizi, a book on Muhammad seen by historians over the centuries, both Muslim and non Muslims. And one of our contributors wrote about Turkish Sufis. He said that in the late Middle Ages, some Turkish Sufis explained that, well, there are various ways they can see the Prophet Muhammad. And they said the Prophet Muhammad has three different costumes. He has a costume of the warrior, he has the costume of the lawmaker. And he has the costume of poverty, which is the spiritual costume of the Sufi. And this is. We, the Sufis, have chosen the third Muhammad, the Muhammad of Asis, the Muhammad of rejection of worldly riches and glory, the spiritual Muhammad. But in a way, they also recognize that these two other Muhammads were legitimate and that other people chose them. So it's an interesting way of saying there are different ways. And of course, Muhammad here stands for as often Islam as a whole. There are different ways of seeing Islam. There's a Sufi sensibility, there's a much more legalistic sensibility, and there are other ways indeed, of understanding what Islam is. And this is true in Baghdad in the 9th century. It's true. I give the example also of 16th century Indonesia, where you have Sufi poets who are writing in Malay and are praising Asisis in blending themes from classical Islamic Sufism with themes from Buddhism and Hinduism. And these tendencies shock other Muslims in Indonesia who have a much more rigid, legalistic definition of Islam. And of course, we see that until today, we see, Starting in the 18th century, the Wahhabi movement emerge and other movements like the Muslim Brothers and the Salafists, who are combating, for example, in Western Africa, some of the Sufi orders which have been so important in the spiritual and everyday life of many African Muslims. So those struggles are being worked out today. And the problem is that today is that some of these people, the people who represent the more fundamentalist versions of Islam, like to pretend that only their vision of Islam is the legitimate one. And they have a lot of influence, a lot of money now to try to convince people that that's true. So what I'm trying to do in my modest way, is show that Islam has always been much more than that. There have always been very different ways and in many cases, conflicting ways of understanding what Islam is.
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Yeah, definitely. And the breadth is so. Is so vast. I mean, in terms of the history, which we're definitely going to get into, is so wide and you're able to kind of encapsulate so much. So I wanted to ask you about the COVID of your book. It features a particularly unique illustration that is purposefully, as you state in your introduction, selected. So can you tell us why the figure of Rabi Al Adawaiya, this mystic who lived in Basra in Iraq, is so moving and significant to be placed on the COVID And how does she really kind of embody some of the larger themes that you, you explore in your work?
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Yeah, this is, this is a. I chose this because I. I really wanted to Surprise people. And, and indeed when I proposed this to my French editor, because I, I first wrote the book in French, they, they didn't want it because this is going to confuse people. They, they won't associate this with Islam. And I managed to convince the people at Princeton to put her on the COVID because it is a surprising image to represent Islam because we think of Islam and we're thinking of people associated with Islam, we think of male Arab figures. Where here is this Iraqi woman who's from the 9th century, but shown. At first glance, it seems like an Indian woman, because this is an 18th century painting from northern India, from Mughal India. And she's portrayed according to the canons of beauty of Mughal India, with her hair, with her almond shaped eyes, her henna and so forth, beautiful clothing, pearl necklace. And she's shown, whereas Rabia was Iraqi and according to the legends, she was quite poor. Some of the legends say that she had been a slave. So clearly she doesn't look like this image, doesn't look like historical Rabia, but she looks like she could be a member of the Mughal elite. And we see her in this beautiful setting, peaceful setting, in a meadow with a river in the background, this sort of idealized city across the river. And she is receiving a paper in which is written a Quranic verse from Surah 3 of the Quran in which it says, God is my protector, he is sufficient. And this is a passage of the Quran that is often recited by Muslims, particularly in situations of danger, and has been, you know, for the last 14 centuries from Muslims all over the world. So in one way, you know, here's this Iraqi Sufi saint who is clearly still venerated almost a thousand years after her death in India, this Quranic verse that connects her to Muslims all over the world in all times. And at the same time, it's very anachronistic. But as I said in my introduction, it's a little bit like at the same time we're in the 18th century, you look at European paintings of Jesus and he's often presented as a tall blonde with blue eyes, who doesn't look at all like Jesus, who's a Palestinian Jew. But by portraying these figures, whether it's Jesus or Rabbi Adonuya, as someone who looks like us, who looks like some of the people we know, somehow that brings these characters close. So it speaks to me to the great diversity of Islam. Here we are at 18th century India, but also to the continuity people like Rabia are still admired. And I don't know if you heard in the if you follow pop music. But Rosalia came out with a new album, looks devoted to saints from different traditions and she's got a song on Rabia so clearly continues to be someone revered not only within Islam but also beyond Islam. So to me, she was a nice figure to represent Islam. Particularly, as I said in my introduction, in a day in the US and in Europe when so much of the discourse on Islam is about terrorism and violence or it's about, you know, obeying Muslim laws, Asharia and so forth, and here you have something that's extremely peaceful and it's about devotion to God and contemplation. So this to me gives a whole different idea of what Islam is all about. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he, he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
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Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com yeah, that's so interesting. And I didn't, I know Rosalia, but I haven't, I haven't heard that song. So I'm definitely going to check it out. I appreciate that. Thank you, Dr. Tolan. So I think that, I mean, my last kind of introductory question before we delve into the book is kind of how was this book really different to write? Considering your earlier work, which really explores and traces anti Semitic discourse and Christian polemics and theological tracts and other divisive kind of forms of rhetoric, you've looked kind of at prominent medieval polemicists such as Alvaros and Eulogius and the enemies that they express. So this book really, I feel from when I read it, it really takes kind of a decidedly different tone. So how did you approach this work? And how does that kind of contrast from more of your kind of earlier work? That.
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And yeah, so, yeah, there was a very different exercise. And as a matter of fact, it was my editor in France who suggested that I write this. And I said, no, I work on European history and European Muslim relations and Islam in Europe. And I said there must be a bunch of other books that do this better than I can. And she said, oh, I don't think so. And I started to look. And that's when I realized, as I said earlier, that most of the general books on Islam, whether it's in French or in English, tend to ignore the last 30 or 40 years of research on Islamic history. And they often tend to be very much Arab in focus. Whereas I wanted to one, as I said earlier, to introduce readers to the consequences of this recent research and showing how gradually Islam develops. But I also wanted to, you know, look beyond the Arab world and to look at Islam in sub Saharan Africa, in what's now India and Pakistan, in what's now Indonesia. And I knew quite, you know, frankly, quite little about that. And of course, you know, I didn't have to do. This wasn't about doing research. This is about, you know, reading a lot of fascinating things by people who've been working on these, on these areas. So I learned a lot and had quite a bit of fun looking at 16th century Indonesia or 19th century, 17th to 19th century West Africa.
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Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Tolan. Yeah, definitely. Especially if one is kind of tethered sometimes to the medieval period, to have that opportunity to go into kind of modern, more contemporary research can be very illuminating. So now kind of getting into the more kind of substantive discussion, I was in chapter three, you kind of, you explore the Abbasid Caliphate and you narrate this theological discussion between the Nestorian patriarch Timothy the first and the Caliph Al Mahdi, who invited Timothy to his court in the 8th century to kind of polemically engage with one another this dialogue. And you have kind of an interesting dialogue embedded within the text, which is kind of exploring this really interesting exchange. So how frequent in the historical record were kind of Christian patriarchs called to the court of caliphs to participate in these polemical discussion? And what was kind of, I mean, what would you say is the underlying purpose of these encounters? Was it really kind of performative or was there, as we kind of interpret as historians, a sincere desire on the part of the ruler empowered to kind of, you know, understand, you know, the faith of the Christians that were kind of under. Under their power? How would you characterize that?
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Yeah, it's hard to say. We know that a number of these kinds of encounters happened, and in some cases there may have been some pressure being put on the, you know, in the Christian, in this case, or in any case, non Muslim participants. But in some cases, as in this case, it seemed to be a fairly free exchange. And clearly, in this case, neither Timothy or the caliph seem to think that they're going to be able to convince the other one or convert the other one, that doesn't seem to be the goal, but in a way to defend their own traditions. And what's interesting to me in this particular exchange and what surprised me is how much the Caliph knew about Christianity and Christian doctrine and conversely, how much the Patriarch knew about Islam and the Quran. So they were able to make arguments based on the other scripture. And this is the time, as I also mentioned in that chapter, where we see how much Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologies are evolving together, both in collaboration and in competition. And I talked about Saadia Gaod, who was the Gaod or the head of the Jewish school near Baghdad. And he was very much influenced by Muslim theology and Greek philosophy, and in a way, sort of redefined the theology of Judaism as a response to that. And we see similar things among Christians living in the Caliphate. So these three religions in their various incarnations. Because, of course, there were all sorts of competing Christian churches, there were competing currents within Islam, within Christianity. They're all interested in what each other are doing in a. Often a competitive but sometimes collaborative manner.
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Yeah, that's really just so fascinating. I found it really interesting to kind of read that exchange, and I think there was. Yeah, there was a few of those. So in this chapter, and I would say, you know, for much of the book, the breadth of the scholarship is really wide. And in this specific chapter, you kind of, you explore the time of the Prophet, the Sahaba, and then you move to examining kind of the Khalifa, Rashidun. Those are the four caliphs, the Umayyads, and the Abbasids, and then the three caliphates in the 11th century, the Fatimids, the Ayyubids. So I'm just. I'm interested to know kind of the sources that are used when you're kind of compiling this very kind of vast history, both the primary and the secondary.
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Well, yeah, I can't access all the primary sources because they'd be vast, and I don't have all the languages. But what I'm doing is trying to base myself on the base, what I'm writing on the best and most recent scholarship in these different fields. And there's a tremendous amount of good things out there that I've been able to read and use. And I try to give an idea, you know, in each, in the footnotes and bibliography of, you know, the most important things that I've relied on.
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Thank you, Dr. Tullan. So in your part two, I think it's you're looking kind of. You're looking at the expansion of the Muslim world in the 11th and 13th centuries. And in 1095, I mean, we have this kind of very pivotal, the Council of Claremont and one of these very critical sermons that's given by Pope Urban ii. So can you kind of give us a little explanation of what is being said in this sermon? Why is it important and how does it kind of shape the coming years?
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Well, we don't know exactly what is said because we have several conflicting accounts. But he had received a request from the Alexei I, the emperor of Constantinople, for aid against military aid against the Seljuk Turks, who were conquering Anatolia from the Byzantines at this time. And so he wanted to send soldiers east to help the Byzantines. He also wanted to use this as a way to get Christian knights to stop fighting among themselves, stop having war in Europe against other Christians, and to send them off to fight the infidels, as he said. And the Holy Land. And the different versions of the sermon aren't the same. Some of them say that he specifically said, we need to take back the city of Jerusalem. Others don't mention that, but that clearly quickly became the goal. So these crusaders, as they're later called by historians, the word didn't exist yet, but they go off to Constantinople, then go through Anatolia and fight the Seljuks, and end up taking various cities, including Jerusalem in July 1099.
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Thanks, Dr. Tolan. Yeah, that's a very, I guess, critical period, especially if you're familiar with medieval history. So I appreciate that response. So throughout, also this, this chapter and this kind of looking at the expansion of the Muslim world, you really rightly, kind of, I think, explore how Christians and Muslim princes forged complex and changing alliances in the Near East. For example, the sultans of Damascus and the kings of Jerusalem who negotiated nine peace treaties in the 12th century. Even the animal heads who align themselves at times with Catalans and Portuguese mercenaries. So when, what other ways are these kind of relations punctuated by both kind of conflicts and coexistence?
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Yeah, the. The conflict and coexistence are both constants. And there is conflict sometimes along religious line between Muslims, Christians and Jews, or within Islam, between Shiites and Sunnis, within Christians, between Eastern Orthodox and Catholic. But there are also quite commonly alliances, as you said, between Damascus and Jerusalem, between the Venetians and the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt. And so often what we find is coalitions of Christians and Muslims on one side fighting against other coalitions of Christians and Muslims on the other. So the sort of stereotypical idea of fanatical European crusaders fighting against fanatical Muslim jihadists doesn't fit at all. The historical reality, definitely.
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And kind of the enduring, I think, persistence of these images is always quite interesting because a historian, you try to kind of disentangle them, but sometimes the image is kind of more powerful than the historical truth. So thank you for that, Dr. Tolan. I think that you have this fascinating chapter, which I really. I just was so kind of interested by, where you explore Ibn Battuta. And it's really kind of a tribute to this really compelling historical figure you have, you know, I'd say this kind of remarkable ability of introducing the reader to kind of these key and towering figures in the history of the Islamicate. So some who were not even Muslim themselves, but prospered or produced central intellectual works for their own religious communities, such as Maimonides or Alfonso el Savio. And then you look at Ibn Battuta from the 14th century, who traveled throughout Iraq and Iran, Zanzibar throughout Syria and Anatolia. He crossed the Black Sea to the Crimea and overland to Constantinople. And he even crosses the steps of Central Asia as you explore, explore in the company of the Mangal Khan of the Golden Horde. So you dedicate a chapter to his travels and you really, I think, just compellingly elucidate the features of his rehla. So why did you choose to dedicate a chapter to this particular figure? And how is the episode of Ibn Battuta emblematic of larger currents in this period?
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Yeah, well, I had a lot of fun writing that chapter, and he's so fascinated because I wanted to try to show the richness and diversity of this Muslim world, that the 14th century already stretches from China to Morocco, and very few people had knowledge of more than a small part of that world. Most Moroccans, they might have gotten to Mecca for the Hajj. It might have gotten as far as Baghdad and Damascus, but certainly not as far as China and vice versa. So not only did he travel across this huge area, but he left this very compelling travelogue in which one really sees how he perceived this diversity of the Muslim world. And of course, within this Muslim world, other non Muslim elements and the relations between. One of several of the common themes that I've sort of emphasized throughout the book is the relations between Muslims and non Muslims. And that's nicely illustrated in this chapter as well. And when I first discovered this character of in Battuta, I was fascinated by how he managed. He starts off as this young pilgrim from Tangiers who goes east and doesn't have much in the way of money and possessions, but somehow he managed to get received as an honored guest by these rulers, Muslim rulers all across the Muslim world, who give him jobs, who shower him with gifts, who offer them their daughters in marriage. And what explains this? And for me, it's really as an educated, cultured Arab in the 14th century, going to non Arab lands, as in the Turkish lands, Persia, and then particularly when he gets further east in India and the Maldives, he was a rare commodity. And Muslim rulers were delighted to have this learned Moroccan who knew the Arab texts, who knew the legal traditions, and so he was able to receive employment. Night. I compared them a little bit. At the end of the chapter, I made a comparison to English or French travelers in the 19th century who could travel through their colonial empires and always be considered among the elite and usually get jobs and be welcomed as guests into the colonial elites. Of course, this isn't. In 14th century, there's no colonial empire, but there is a sort of international Muslim, well, the Ummah or the Dar al Islam, which clearly valued his education, his culture, his legal training. And so he was able, in the same way as a 19th century Frenchman or Englishman to go around it in the same way as that he had the attitude of his own superiority to the locals he met who spoke other languages, who had other religions and so forth.
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Yeah, you really capture that very well. I think it's. Yeah, it's such a. His is just so, so fascinating. So. And I'm actually wondering maybe from that, you know, from your response from that question, is that kind of sense of superiority that Ibn Battuta really kind of historically embodied. Is that what you meant by. I mean, you allude to kind of this concept of Muslim Orientalism in your work. So I was wondering if you could like. Yeah, let me know a little bit more about that.
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Well, that's. Yeah, that's. Some of the work on Ibn Battuta has coined this term Muslim Orientalism, where, you know, there is this sense of superiority, you know, and it's Orientalism and it's, you know, as European Orientalism, there's a, a sense of superiority, but there's also a fascination. So it's not all negative. And he's clearly fascinated with Chinese society, with Indian society, but in the long run, you know, it's Islam and it's his familiar Arab society that he feels are superior.
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Yeah, definitely. So kind of moving on now to the. You kind of. You explore also this period of Decolonization and nationalism. So I'm, I, this was just, it's just so interesting the way you're, you are able to kind of span these just really kind of formative periods in Islamic history. So in this really kind of fascinating survey of the period of decolonization, you give a pretty strong kind of indictment of Arab nationalism following the 1967 defeat and the high aspirations of the Nasser Arab. You characterize Arab nationalism as in some ways being unable to kind of unite these Arab countries and doing little kind of for Palestinians and failing to really improve the life of the masses, which, the lives of the masses serving kind of the power of autocratic rulers who imprisoned their political adversaries and crushed any really popular dissent. So, and then in some ways it's also, I think, in, you know, rightly kind of portrayed as the driving force behind popular support for pan Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Muslim parties. So how does really kind of the contemporary period that we're living in affirm these assertions or complicate them? And how are some of these competing ideologies kind of complicated by figures like you? You introduced Abdul Wahab Medeb, who I actually didn't know of. And that was really interesting to read, who also you describe in this chapter. Sorry, that's a very long and convoluted question. I hope you got it.
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Yes, I mean, you know, one of the things when I look at, in the, in the final chapter, I look at the, the Arab Spring and the, you know, hope brought forth in the Arab Spring. And I think there was a lot of, you know, people were obviously fed up with these autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, in Syria obviously, and elsewhere. But there was not a clear sense of what to replace it with. And in the Egyptian and the Tunisian elections, the religious party has ended up winning at first in closely contested elections. And so much of the popular movement that managed to inspire the Arab Spring, whether it's in Tunisia, in Yemen or elsewhere, people were then very disappointed in what happened. They ended up having the choice between autocratic Islamist rulers and autocratic authoritarian military rulers. And Tunisia seemed to be the hopeful exception for a while, but now seems to be moving closer and closer to more and more authoritarian regime. So in, in the short run, it's hard to be optimistic about the situation there, but there is a lot of energy that one can hope will at some point soon start to move things forward again.
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C
Thanks, Dr. Tolan. So kind of moving towards some concluding thoughts and questions. I have a few more and I Don't want to take too much of your time because you've been so generous with it. So, you know, we know kind of Marshall Hodson has this kind of concept of the Islamic hate. So I'm wondering, would you say this is a history of Islam or a history of the Islamic hate? Because you're not just exploring, as you, you know, said at the outset, that this isn't just kind of theological doctrine or spiritual discourse, but you really are looking also at the political makeup of different nationalisms and their failures, along with the diverse decolonial aims of Islamic hate societies. So. Meaning that they articulate a history and a religious identity that align themselves with Islam. They position themselves towards Islamic ideals, but they are, in many ways, as you analyze, kind of beholden to contemporary colonial imperial interests. Example, for example, when you explore the Afghani mujahideun or the Saudi government. So are these really indicative of Islam and the cultural and historical legacy of the religion, or are they, you know, kind of the other. Exploring kind of other national interests in the. Yeah. What would be your thoughts on that?
- [44:08]
A
Yeah, I guess I would say that it's more about history of the Islam. Islam dub, as Hodgson said. He used his. As you said, the adjective was Islamicate. But of course, what's Islamicate is also. It's Islamicate because of its links to Islam. So it's always hard to unentangle one from the other, even though conceptually one has to try to do it. But as I said in the introduction, we have separate words for Hinduism in India, we have separate words for Confucianism in China, or from Christianity and the various places in Europe and elsewhere where Christianity has been practiced. But we have this awkward use of the word Islam to refer to both Islam Dom and Islam as a religion.
- [45:08]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Tollen. So in your final chapter, you ask such a really kind of provocative question. You say, how can one tell these are your words. How can one tell of the transformations we are still experiencing, experiencing without knowing how they will end? How can one hear behind the din of daily violence the voices of those who are building the Islam of tomorrow? So after writing this, this history, what's your kind of response to this? How would you kind of conceptualize your, you know, how we kind of navigate this. This conundrum?
- [45:47]
A
Yeah, it's. It's not easy. And. But one of the things that I was very pleased with is when both came out in French. I was invited to speak to Arab cultural centers and to mosques and other Muslim associations in France and in Belgium. And there was a lot of interest and a lot of discussion and there's a lot of discussion about the role of women in Islam and can women be imams? There's a lot of discussion of a lot of interest in Sufism. There's a lot of this. Today is the anniversary of the law in 1905 that established the secular system laicite in France. And there's a lot of discussion among Muslims on how this laicite, which should guarantee religious freedom for all, can be used to help Muslims in France. So there's a lot of interesting things going on. Then in academic conferences, you see all sorts of people, all sorts of interesting work on Islam that's not only academic in import, but is going to have an impact on how people today see what Islam is. So as I said, it's very hard to know how things are going to evolve over the next five, ten or a hundred years. But there, there are some hopeful signs.
- [47:41]
C
And I think that's also very heartwarming considering, I mean, France and it's sometimes kind of complex relationship with Muslims and the. So that's really heartwarming to hear that your book has been so well received and that you're given that kind of space to actually speak to people about why it's important and why it continues to be a source of hope. So I just want to know, I mean, now, before we kind of close, what do you have planned for the future?
- [48:15]
A
Well, I'm now writing a book on anti Semitism and Islamophobia, a book which will probably first come out in French and then I want to do an English version because, yeah, I think it's urgent in France and elsewhere. There's so much that's so much nonsense that's said both about anti Semitism and Islamophobia. There are two prejudices which are very real and people are victims of violence because of Islamophobia and because of antisemitism, but at the same time trumped up accusations. What we see it, anyone who accuses, who criticizes what Israel is doing to Gaza is accused of anti Semitism by the Israeli government and by people who support it. So we need to. I think it can be very useful to have a book that will really look in detail. I mean, a rather short book, but we'll look at where do these terms come from? What do they mean? What is the history of these words and what is the history of these prejudices which have, in particular, from my book in France, I mean, looking in France and in Europe, the history of antisemitism, the history of Islamophobia, how they compare. And I think it could be a book that can be useful for maybe pacifying and informing public debate.
- [49:51]
C
Well, I very much look forward to that project. And I appreciate you, Dr. Tolan, taking the time for this interview. And thank you so much for such an insightful discussion.
- [50:02]
A
Thank you, Amadi. It's been a pleasure.