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Youshaa Patel, "The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line Between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present" (Yale UP, 2023)
01:33:18
An interview with Youshaa Patel
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Hello Salaam and welcome to the podcast New Books in Islamic Studies, a channel with the New Books Network. I'm your host Shehnaz Aqani. According to a famous prophetic report, whoever imitates a people becomes one of them. But what does imitation here mean? In fact, what does the statement really mean at all? And how have Muslims historically understood it? How did this simple report become a doctrine in the Islamic tradition? What does the hadith mean for Muslims today in an increasingly inter religious atmosphere and especially for those living in the west or in other non Muslim majority contexts? And finally, why do humans care at all? Why do we invest so much in being different and displaying that difference from those whom we declare as an other? These and many other questions are answered in Yusha Patel's exciting book the Muslim Difference, defining the line between believers and unbelievers from early Islam to the present, published with Yale University Press in 2022. The book explores the issue of difference and frames the Hadith as significant to Muslim inter religious encounters, showing that ideas and examples of imitation and Muslims understanding of the concept of the Shabbah or imitation or resembling the other have changed throughout times and in different contexts and and the debate around issues of religious difference, imitation and Muslims effort to distinguish themselves from non Muslims tells us a lot about how Muslims understand and define religion. In our conversation today we discuss the origins of the book, some of its main arguments and findings, the prophetic reports on imitation, its role in establishing a Sunni orthodoxy given that the Hadith or the concept of the Shabb is not found in Shi' a collections and influential scholars and thinkers development of the concept individuals such as Ibn Taymiyyah and Najmaddin al Ghazi. We also discuss examples of small differences that are not to be imitated and Patel explains the significance and value of these small differences which are quite powerful and symbolic. Our conversation ends with the relevance of imitation and emulation for today's Muslims, including Muhammad Abdu's Transvaal fatwa on, among other things, Muslims wearing European hats or Muslims doing, you know, Christian European things and how other Muslim scholars responded to this fatwa. Let's now hear from Yusha Patel. Hi Salamiusha, thank you so much for joining me to talk about your very wonderful and very relevant book the Muslim Difference defining the Line between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the present. Thank you for joining me for this conversation.
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B
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you and hopefully the audience will appreciate it and be excited as much as we are.
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A
Oh, absolutely. So we like to begin our discussion with the author's intellectual journey, their intellectual background. Can you tell us who you are, describe your journey, tell us how you got here and where you are right now?
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B
Sure. A Memoir Compressed into five minutes well, I guess first of all I'll introduce my myself. I'm Associate professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College in Eastern Pennsylvania. I received my PhD from Duke University and I guess those are my initial credentials to begin the intellectual journey. Where to start? There's so many beginnings. I think I'll start with my intellectual journey and then in some ways work backwards to the book. So I was in high school and it was my senior year and I took a course in 20th century literature and thought and I was exposed to folks like Sartre and Camus and Freud and Kafka and that got my, that got me interested in kind of philosophy and religion, subjects that I didn't have too much of an interest in before. So when I went to the University of Michigan, when I did my undergraduate degree, I continued to explore those ideas even though I entered as, as pre med. And so, you know, I did all the pre med requirements because that's what good South Asian boys do. And but then realized at the end of my sophomore year that I really wasn't interested in becoming a medical doctor. I didn't like blood, I didn't like being in hospitals. So I decided to pivot and at that point I was interested in making a lot of money. So I decided to major in economics and you know, see what I could do in the world of business and what I, whatever. So at the same time I continued to take courses in philosophy and religion, existentialism, and in my senior year I took a course with Professor Sherman Jackson Jackson called Islamic Intellectual History. And that was really the first course in Islamic studies that I had taken. And it was, it was, you know, mind blowing to me and opened up, you know, new worlds. But still at that point I had no aspiration of going into the academy. So I moved to Chicago and there worked as a management consultant and later worked for a mutual fund. So but at that point I still wasn't very happy with what I, my career trajectory. So I thought, would it be fun to be able to study religion and Islamic studies for a living? And I was like, I could do that. So I took courses at the University of Chicago in the Near Eastern language and I think civilizations program to take more courses in that field and to help prepare me for graduate school. I was fortunate that I was accepted at Duke University to work with Ibrahim Moussa and Bruce Lawrence and also at UNC to work with Carl Ernst and also Leela Prasad at Duke University, who are my eventually my dissertation mentors. So that is sort of my trajectory into the world of academia, into Islamic studies as a non linear, your path. And you know, that's how I got into the academy now kind of the book in particular, and how that particular book and subject became the focus for the better part of over a decade. I'm going to rewind a bit and go all the way back to my birthplace of Edinburgh, Scotland. This is a story that I mentioned in my preface, but I feel it's worth mentioning here. And I was in prime primary one, the equivalent of kindergarten in the United States. And I was in my class and one day I came home and I Told my mother, I'm in a group all by myself. And she was confused, like, what did I mean? And I. I was. I was upset. I don't remember too well, but from what I remember and from what my mom rehearsed repeated to me of the story, I was upset that I was put into a reading group all by myself while all the other students were in groups. It was also the case that I was the only student of color and the only Muslim in the class. So my mother, who had spent some time as a teacher, knew that this was not the way to teach young children. Because when you go to school, it's not just about learning. It's about learning how to function socially. There's a socialization process when we go to school. And this was not the way for an immigrant person of color to be. To learn how to socialize. So she confronted the teacher, Ms. McGowan, and said, well, why are you teaching my. My son in this way? Because if he. If you do when he's not allowed to interact with other students, then he'll think he's different. And so. But Ms. McGowan defended her teach her pedagogical methods. And my mother then went to the administration and wasn't successful. That traumatic event was in many ways a tipping point for my parents, who decided that after some other experiences of, I guess, non belonging, that maybe it might be a good idea to leave the country altogether. So later that year, that's exactly what we did. We emigrated or immigrated to the United States, and I landed up in New Jersey. So I begin with that narrative because the idea of being different and thinking about what that means was something that goes back to my earliest memories. Now to kind of Fast forward roughly 20 years to that time in Chicago when I was working as a management consultant. I still had no aspirations of going into the academy. I'm now at a Friday khutbah, a sermon, attending a Friday sermon in the north side of Chicago. And the khatib, the speaker mentions in his sermon that the Muslims must be different. And that was the theme of his sermon. And what proceeded or to take place really fascinated me. How did he justify this within the Islamic tradition? That it was a normative ideal, an obligation almost for Muslims to be different, and what did it mean? So he recited this hadith, this tradition of Muhammad, or whoever imitates a people becomes one of them. And that was the signature sort of saying or statement that he used to argue that it's important for Muslims to cultivate a distinct identity. He then cited many other hadith, everything from traditions about growing long beards to dressing distinctly. To argue that to be different was not merely an internal trans transformative process. It was not merely about subject formation or self cultivation. It was also about displaying your Muslimness. So I was, you know, and this was sort of around 9 11. So I'm thinking to myself, wow, this has major implications for Muslim belonging, for Muslim aspirations, at least for immigrants like myself, of assimilation or acculturation, adaptation, whatever word you want to use. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I was thinking a lot about that sermon because it had so much it really hit to the core of who I was and I think other people there were also perhaps affected by that. So it was something that kind of stayed in the back of my mind when I went to, to Duke and when I took a course on Islamic law with, you know, Professor Ibrahim Musa. And I was trying to decide upon, you know, what I should do for my topic for that paper. And I thought, well, I haven't really read anything that was really sophisticated theoretically and conceptually about this idea. And so I chose that for my paper and eventually chose that for my dissertation. When I spoke to Michael Cook about this idea, he gave me the image of throwing a brick into a, a window and shattering it. He said that's the, the image that I have of, of, of this idea for a dissertation. And it helped to crystallize the idea in my mind that this was actually a good choice for, for that subject. So that is how I got into the book, or rather into the dissertation, which eventually became a book. The journey I had on the dissertation and spending about a year in Damascus, which is one of the best times of my life, living with a, in home family and exploring this important manuscript related to this concept is something that I hope to get into in this conversation. But yeah, so that's a concise version of the journey and the story.
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A
Thank you so much for all of that. That was very helpful because my next question was going to be what are the origins of this book? I found your discussion, your experience in Edinburgh as a child and then coming into the US and hearing that Khutbah, also very, very powerfully written. It felt very lyrical and it was such a beautiful style of writing too. So that was a good fun read and sa but yeah, so then let's talk about what you see as some of the main contributions or some of your main arguments findings in the book. We'll get to some of the main points in detail for the, for the rest of the interview also. But if you want to just summarize some of the main contributions and ideas, that would be great.
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B
Sure. The book, I admit, is ambitious. It's ambitious from the title. It promises or at least claims that it's going to cover this idea of being different from early Islam to the present. So academics, including myself, might look at that title and, and be skeptical. I'm not sure about that. How can you cover the entirety of Islam, Islamic history in a single book? So I mean, I, I understand that skepticism and I might approach the title with a bit of skepticism too. But what I do is I do, I do attempt to make it into a manageable study. Would I have, you know, attempted to, you know, looking back? Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't have chosen the precise, You know, diet, the, the expansiveness of this diatonic study as, as I, as I did. But I, I felt I was just really curious and I wanted to explore the beginnings of this idea. I wanted to explore who thinkers were that, that helped to shape this idea into something of a normative discourse. And that is one of the arguments in the book. And I, and because of its relevance to the present, as, as you mentioned and to my own experiences, I wanted to at least touch upon some of the modern and contemporary connections to modern Muslim life. So to kind of get back to the beginning of the ide. I struggled with even framing the topic because on the one hand, as you mentioned, the, the tradition itself that is in many ways at the core of this idea is whoever imitates a people becomes one of them. There's no actually explicit mention of being different in that tradition. So the idea of emulation or imitation also figures into the core of, of the book. But because of the way this tradition has been pressed into service by musl across time and place and a whole cluster of other hadith traditions that, that does. So I felt that this is really kind of what Muslim thinkers were trying to get at, the importance of being distinct and different. And so I had to sort of conceptually frame, I chose to conceptually frame the book with that idea. So the, the book is an attempt to explore this idea of being distinct and it makes it manageable by taking this, these cluster of traditions, these scriptural traditions, namely the hadiths and hadiths for non specialists can be scary. And because much of hadith studies often involve snat analysis, studying transmission networks that are often portrayed as being off limits or to non specialists. So I, what I wanted to do, if I'm going to do a, a write A book that focuses on hadith traditions and how they've been interpreted and received over time. I wanted to make it at least accessible to a non specialist audience as best as I possibly could. And so the idea of. And so that's what I attempt to do in this book. So even though the book does, is not divided into two parts, it does the first three, four chapters focus on the beginnings of this idea within the Hadith traditions. How did. What are some of the scriptural bases and evidence that later Muslims would use that helped to shape the idea of being different? So the first chapter, for example, which I've titled Turning Away from Christians and Jews, examines some of these hadith traditions that focus on a particular moment in the life of the Prophet, which seemed to indicate there was a pivot from a policy of deliberately emulating Muslims, non Muslims, Christians and Jews to pivoting away from that idea. And so that is the subject of the first chapter. It then kind of takes on from that looks at the hadith tradition in particular, whoever imitates the people becomes one of them and then moves on to kind of expanding on how the single tradition evolved into what might be called a discourse. And then I then look at key thinkers who helped to develop this idea in, you know, Damascus and Egypt and then ultimately contemporary United States and elsewhere. In terms of the. Some of the main ideas that I'm working with, concepts and theories. I argue in the introduction that I'm trying to speak, or try to not talk about theory from above, only in terms of applying sort of Euro American theories and ideas and, and applied it merely to Islamic texts. But I'm also trying to generate theory from what we might call below. So to think of Muslim thinkers or to, to portray Muslim thinkers, Muslim ulama, as theorists of themselves and themselves thinking about what it means to be different, thinking about imitation and what mimesis is. And so that is my, one of my main approaches in terms of the overall book, to view Muslim thinkers as theorists in themselves. Another, you know, kind of connected to that. I guess the other key thing that I'm trying to do in this book is to connect being different to this idea of mimesis or imitation. And so I spent a lot of time, or at least some time in the introduction explaining why imitation or mimesis is so important to human experience. So from, from our childhood, from the very beginnings of when we're. And when we enter this world, we are imitating and emulating our parents, images that we see, other people that we see. And it shapes fundamentally who we are and who we become to such a degree that we are often unconscious of what we are emulating or imitating. And so that is one of the reasons why this idea of being distinct and different became so important to Muslims was that imitation they saw as being this human process, this fundamental technology of the self that had to be managed and had to be controlled and had to be disciplined. And so, so much of these traditions that we see are attempts by the Prophet, at least, if we believe these hadiths to be at least some of them, to be authentic and later Muslim thinkers to discipline and at least control the unwieldiness of our tendency to emulate it and imitate others. And that's one of the reasons why this book is also about otherness. And that's very much central to this book what it means for how did Muslim thinkers across time and place imagine and construct the other, not merely the religious other, but also the internal Muslim other, whether that other was a slave, whether it was gendered, whether that other was even a non human creature such as a jinn or an animal. And that was one of the most surprising things to me when exploring this idea of being distinct and different was the degree to which not only were Muslims focus on Muslim relations with non Muslims and Christians and Jews, but also the degree to which Muslim thinkers were very much concerned with Muslims imitating and emulating other Muslims and creating a hierarchical society based on those differences. And I explore that in chapter three in detail.
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A
I was going to ask you a question and I still like to get into it at some point in our conversation, but just this, this tendency for humans to want to differentiate themselves from, from the other. And you have some really interesting theories that you're discussing here that explain why humans do this and not a clear boundary, but as you show very well, it's a transformation, right? And it's, it's very inconsistent. There are times when imitating, imitating the other is good. There are time when it's, times when it's not good. But I would especially like for audience to hear, to hear of some of the examples that you explore here of what exactly imitation means, what things that we shouldn't be imitating the non Muslim or the other in.
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B
Yeah, so, you know, yeah, so I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, look at this question in kind of three parts. First I'm going to focus on the Arabic term which is in that hadith. Then I'm going to think, speak briefly about the importance of the body and visibility and then I'll give some specific examples. So first looking at that key term. So this is an Arabic term that is part of that hadith. It's a fifth form term to get a little bit nerdy here. Fifth form Arabic term that implies some kind of self reflexivity. It can be translated as imitate. But other terms can also be used such as resemble, even assimilate. For example, MJ Kister's article on the subject where he focuses on Jewish shoes, he uses the translation chabu as do not assimilate. Imitate. Mimesis, right, is another term that one could use. So there's this cluster of terms within English that connect to this Arabic term of tashabu. So tishabu in many ways exceeds the term imitate that I'm using generally speaking to speak about this idea. So that's the first thing I want to the audience to understand that this Arabic term is robust and it's also, it spills over into other ideas of doubt. So there are some other Arabic terms, derived terms such as fool's gold, that's derived from Shabbah, Mutashabi had in the Quran refers to chronic verses that are ambiguous, that are unclear. Once again, that's derived from the trilateral Shabaha. The Arabic term tashabu is not found in the Quran and it is primarily a Hadith based term. So that's the first thing I want to keep in mind or have audiences, you know, the readers recall. Now, the idea of resembling also helps us to think about visibility. If someone says, oh, you resemble Jeff Goldblum or you resemble so and so, they're kind of focusing on your external resemblance. So the term itself also helps us to think about why so much of the discourse on the subject revolves around the body, revolves around the physical senses. And one of the things that I mentioned at the outset is that when thinking about distinction and difference, some people might enter this book thinking they're going to read about theology in the sense of debates about whether Jesus is God or not and how Muslims distinguish themselves in that way. But that's not the primary sort of domain or zone that Muslim things were focusing on when the idea being different. They were focused on things that were embodied and visible. And so that's another, I think, conceptual frame of reference that I'm really bringing that I want to, that I emphasize at the outset in this book. And that's something that colors the entire book from the beginning all the way through the end, the importance of the body, the importance of visibility in the physical senses. And why is that? Because one of the other main points I argue is that this is also about shaping an Islamic public. If, if Muslims can't be recognized visibly or even audibly as Muslims, then how can Muslim elites shape an Islamic polity? What would that look like? And so that's one of the key questions about Muslim difference. It's not just about what does it mean to be different. It means what does Muslim difference look like? And that's one of the important conceptual points I'm making in this book that I think speaks to the relevance of this whole study, to many of the debates that we're having today about visible Muslimness, whether in Europe and North America, whether it has to do with Swiss minaret bands or niqab bands or anxieties over Muslim beards and its associations with. Being the bad guy, for example. So these questions about visible Muslimness connect very much to this discourse. So in terms of specific examples, contemporary examples include apparent bans on Muslims celebrating Christmas and other holidays and even celebrating Halloween, for example. The apparent necessity of Muslim growing beards. And when you look in, you know, and those are some of the modern or contemporary kind of applications of this idea that you find in various fatawa and discussion boards and even treatises against imitation, which I haven't spoken about, that I should. When you go back in time and you go to the hadith traditions and I try to survey at least some of them, I can't. I don't survey all of them, but I do attempt to be illustrative and not necessarily exhaustive. They connect to everything from an interesting anecdote, just to mention one is the anecdote that I speak of in chapters three and four and four, in particular, about the Caliph Omar and his encountering with a slave girl who was wearing a hijab or a headscarf. And one might think today. And then what ends up happening in this tradition is that. That he chastises her, and in some. Some versions, literally physically strikes her for. For wearing a headscarf and posing as a free woman. One might read this tradition, be surprised. Well, isn't wearing a hijab a good thing? Isn't wearing a headscarf a good thing? Why would the Caliph Omar be chastising someone for wearing a headscarf? And that gets us into some of the, I think, the surprising historical matters in this book that we're entering a time in which hierarchy and maintaining certain hierarchies were very important. So the hierarchy between a slave woman and a free woman and the different legal applications to those Legal persons was very much something that was important to early Muslims to maintain. And so whether or not this hadith is authentic, not, you know, one could do the isnad analysis, and there are many traditions and Omer Anshasi has written an article examining all these different traditions recently. But that gets at the idea of how this idea of emulation was applied in ways that are actually different from how they're applied today. But we're getting into the body, into visible Muslimness. You mentioned pecking like a rooster. So not only, you know, the domain of social life, but also ritual life was shaped by this idea. So I mentioned the idea of Jewish shoes. So we find traditions, for example, that encourage Muslims to wear shoes in the mosque when they pray. Because at least according to this tradition, the assumption was that Arab Jews, when they entered a synagogue, would remove their shoes. And apparent emulation of Moses, when entering a holy space. When he encountered God, he was ordered, as you know, not only mentioned in the Bible, but also the Quran, he took off his shoes. So the application or the idea was that, okay, when entering a holy space, it's good to remove one's shoes. But then we find a Hadith tradition where the Prophet is condemning or at least criticizing that practice and telling Muslims, well, actually, when you enter the mosque, keep your shoes on. Now, anyone who's entered a mosque today will know that that's not what Muslims do generally. I have entered moss in which actually to revive this Sunnah, as it were. They, they wear shoes in the mosque and I was like, on a carpet. I'm not sure about that anyway, but so that's once again another, you know, topic that we might be like, shoes entering, like, what does this have to do with. But it is about ritual practice, you know, with regard to pecking like a rooster. When the Prophet Muhammad was attempting to instruct and teach Muslims how to pray, he was teaching them proper corporeal techniques to, on how to pray. Because when Muslims pray, it's not merely an abstract disembodied experience. You, you stand, you bow, you prostrate, you put your hands in a particular place, whether it be on your chest or underneath your belly button, depending on the school of law, depending on your gender, you face a particular direction, physical direction, cardinal direction. So this involves disciplining your body in a particular way. So when the Prophet was teaching Muslims how to pray, he would say, well, if you are going to prostrate, don't peck like a rooster, right? Rather, you know, don't take your time, go slow, be relaxed. He Also allegedly instructed Muslims not to kneel down like a camel. So when going down to prostrate. So in other words, when prostrating, put your hands down first before your knees. Don't put your knees down first and then place your hands down. Today, this has relevance to distinguishing Salafi forms of prayer from, say, how Hanafis pray, Hanafi followers of the Hanafi school. And if you Salafis are very strict about placing one's hands first before one's knees before when prostrating as a way to say, well, this is the proper way to pray. And this is the hadith proof text that demonstrates that. So there are numerous ways in which this idea was applied to, in Muslim everyday life. And so many of them revolve around the body, corporeal techniques, and visibility. Even with regard to the adhan, when we look at the idea of the call to prayer and you look at Muslim texts on the subject of being different, how Muslims came to the idea of calling to prayer with an audible voice is another way in which the idea of being distinct and different was imagined by Muslims. So there are different narratives, hadith traditions about how this came to be. But the idea was that, okay, Jews use a shofar, Christians use a, another instrument, not a bell, at least in the 7th century, but another instrument. So Muslims should then use the human voice to call to prayer. And so this is another way in which we find this applied to the domain of ritual life. So there are many other traditions and domains and zones of, of Muslim life that we don't even think about today, or at least we just assume had nothing to do with being distinct and different, but just came about organically. And in a way they were organic. They were based and rooted in encounters that Muslims had with the others. And I think it helps us to see, conceptually speaking, how religions very much develop in intersubjectively. And so, you know, when we teach about religion or Islam or we teach a world religions course, we often, we tend to teach them discreetly. But the reality is that when we look at the histories of these religions, they develop and emerge because of the encounters that practitioners have with, with others that ultimately shape core, core features of what those religions eventually become in everyday life.
- [37:22]
A
You know, the, the, the whole. The shoes one that the Prophet said, it's good to take your shoes off. No, sorry, take. Keep your shoes on. That was brand new information to me. And I was like, oh, blasphemy, blasphemy. Like the idea of a shoes in a mosque, like, that's not okay, but you know, and, and the whole standing up or sitting down during, for funerals or the parting of hair was really interesting too. Just these very things that appear so, so simple, but as you argue, carry so much value. And these are symbolic things also. So we'll talk about the symbolism in just a bit. But I, or I think another one that was really fascinating to me was the fasting on the 10th day. The Jews do it on the 10th day of Ashura, and so the Prophet is going to do it on the 9th. Is that. I think it was, it was like which, whichever day the Jews do it, the Prophet is going to do it a different day. And that was just really, really fasc. But you have a discussion in the book where this hadith, which even its authenticity is questioned at times, or some scholars consider the chain to be weak, but it still becomes so important and that it's not in the Shi' I collections and not just this hadith, but any, any notion of, you know, emulation or imitation being discouraged in the Shiite tradition. Can you speak to that some more? Because you argue that, that this then suggests to you that this concept, this concept, this concept of the Shabbat plays a, an important role in defining Sunni Muslim orthodoxy. And I'd love to hear some more about this.
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B
Yeah, no, thank you for that question. That's a very important question. So. Yeah, one of the, you know, surprising things when I was doing my initial exploration of this, this language, this vocabulary, right? So when we're looking at, you know, as an historian, how do we kind of get, it's an epistemological problem. How do we know anything in the past, right? So what are we, what kind of sources are we looking at? So when I'm thinking about this idea, I'm looking at these scriptural texts and Hadith traditions to get at this idea of how Muslims distinguish themselves. And one of the things in exploring various corpora or sources within, across Muslim traditions was I found that this vocabulary of speaking about difference, of using this particular term and it's connected term in Arabic to be distinct and different was heavily concentrated within the Sunni tradition. I, when looking at some of the.
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A
Core.
- [40:18]
B
Collections of hadith within 12 or Shiism, for example, this vocabulary wasn't. I, I didn't find many traditions at all. And I was, I was surprised. And so it helped me to see that not only was this vocabulary this, this tracing, this vocabulary of this distinction, indifference about tracing how Muslims viewed and perceived and distinguished themselves or defined the line between themselves and others, it was clearly a way of looking at the deliberate choices that Sunni, that, you know, the Ahlul Hadith, the Sunni partisans of hadith made when choosing which traditions to include in their collections in a way that eventually helped to shape and define the Sunni orthodoxy and, and bring into relief its difference and distinction from Shi 12, at least 12 or Shi' I orthodoxy. And so that was one of the most surprising things that I found just based on a textual analysis of these sources. Now does it mean that being distinct and different, we're not important to Shiite Muslims? Of course not. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is, and then for students of Shiism, the concept of taqiyah, for example, and I kind of argue in the book, it's almost like an inverse of this Arabic term, but Taqiyyah is protective dissimulation of protecting oneself and in many ways passing as maybe a Sunni and situations of danger. This, this idea of taqiyah became important to, to within mainstream Shiism. And I speak of that as sort of the inverse and, and, and opposite the inverse of Tashabu. But that was surprising to me because to see this distinction as it were and how Sunni Muslims talked about being different from the way Shiite Muslims talked about being different. And so that's where I argue that if we kind of expand and look at the big picture, this helps us to see that the process of collecting hadith traditions, which took a couple of centuries to take place, and I'm not going to get into the whole sort of story of how hadiths became normative and important to orthodox Islam, but you know, suffice to say for students of Islam, the Quran became sort of canonized much sooner than the hadith traditions did. Hadith traditions were canonized roughly in the 9th century and 10th century for Sunnis and cheese. So it, it just helped me see that this vocabulary of difference was also a way of seeing in the ways in which Sunni difference, Sunni Muslim difference also came into relief with the canonizations, canonization of, of hadiths. So that's in some ways why I argue in the book that there is why there's a disproportionate focus on Sunni sources within the book because this particular way of talking about difference is, is in many ways distinctive to, to Sunni Muslims. This is pro linebacker TJ Watt. And I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too, because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores, because your personal best is greater than anything.
- [44:41]
A
Thank you for that. Let's talk about a couple of the main thinkers who are so instrumental to this discussion in your book also. So Ibn say Miya was so I really enjoyed his interpretation. I know he's often reduced to, you know, extremism and Wahhabism and all of that, but here I found it so incredibly fascinating that for him, the Shabbat for him becomes not just some abstract idea, but a fundamental principle in Islam. Right? And in fact, it is when, when, when, when a Muslim does imitate a non Muslim, then there is, they're, they're doing shirk. They're not shirk Kufar. But then he also complicates this idea so that it's not such a binary, but it's there are different kinds of good or bad imitations. So I would love and then I, if I understood correctly, in this inner chapter in the same year, you're arguing that he plays an instrumental role for what sounds to me like mainstreaming this idea, developing this idea of or mainstreaming this idea, this hadith or this tradition. I would love for our listeners to hear what some of his interpretations are and how, I guess, what role he plays in mainstreaming this idea. And I'll I my next question and, and you can address it in your response if you'd like. But in terms of complicating for him, it's like it's complicated in that it's both. It's a kufr to imitate the non Muslim, but at the same time, Muslims living in a non Muslim context, Muslims living abroad in a non Muslim Conte context may in some cases be actually required to imitate them if it serves a greater good or benefit to Islam. So how is he drawing. What is, what is he arguing here? What is he, you know, what's his theory about this imitation business?
- [46:32]
B
Yeah, no, great question and thank you for that. Now, to answer the question of the importance of Ibn Taymiyyah, I want to just rewind a little bit to an intervention I make in the introduction for viewers or for listeners who might be thinking about growing the beard and head scarves and wearing shoes. They might wonder why are Muslims focusing on these little things? Why are they so small? And so one of the main theories that I draw on at the end outset is this, this theory that I found by Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of small differences or minor differences. And this idea was that those who were. His basic premise was that those who are alike or most alike will tend to, or seek to distinguish and differentiate themselves in ways that are small. Hence narcissism of small differences. And so I found this theory to be attractive for help going to explain why these ways in which Muslims are seeking to be different are, I guess, quote, unquote, small. Right. But I sort of also argue that while they're small, and I argue that, well, there's a bit of a blind spot there too, that we need to nuance this idea of smallness as to the scale of these differences, the size, as it were, the differences. But in terms of the value and meaning of these differences, they're actually quite big and quite large. And that gets us into the question of their symbolic value. And this will also enter into why I think Ibn Tamia is important. So one of the arguments that I make in chapter four, which is the chapter preceding Ibn Tamia, is that the reason why these small things become important is because they gain symbolic significance. So imagine burning an American flag, right? If you think about it, it's simply burning a piece of cloth. But an American flag, for many Americans has symbolic value. And to do so, like burning a Quran, it carries much more weight than simply destroying a physical object. It has meaning for people and people value it and they see themselves in these objects. So to. To destroy these objects, for example, can cause riots, can cause discontent, can lead to legal consequences. And Ibn Taymiyyah, who, you know, I, is one of the most controversial thinkers in the Sunni Islamic tradition, at least makes an important intervention in many ways. So kind of going back to. For the 14th century, he dies in 1928, if I'm not mistaken. He is a figure who plays an important role in, as you argue, or as you mentioned, mainstreaming this idea. So even though prior to Ibn Taymiyyah, you know, the hadiths were canonized and had entered into legal corpora and Fatawa collections, I have have, at least from my research, hadn't found a single treatise that had really argued forcefully that this was a fundamental principle of Islam. And that is one of the important main arguments that Ibn Taymiyyah makes in this text called, Or it's an incendiary title, the Obligation following the Straight Path in order to be distinct and different from those Damned to hell. So I don't think an academic work like that has been written recently. But anyway, that's the title of his book. It's a polemical work. And he's operating within 14th century Damascus, where he's afraid of the Mongols destabilizing and taking over the Imam loop Sultanate. He himself fought jihad and was concerned at least both not only with foreign policy, but with domestic policy, and saw that, at least in his everyday experience, that there was a tendency for Muslims, even though by that point they were the majority within Damascus, of copying non Muslims, of celebrating various holidays and festivals. So this book has been included, you know, for decades, or at least as one of the Qutub al Bida, the books against innovation, against heretical innovation. And what I argue in this chapter is that, well, you know, scholars have focused on innovation on Bida and its importance within shaping Islamic orthodoxy and it's and its way of defining the Sunnah, the normative conduct of the Prophet. But generally speaking, they have overlooked the importance words of imitation of Tashabu to also likewise shaping orthodoxy of what is correct Islam. And so that is the role that imitation plays in Ibn Taymiyyah's text. @ the very outset, he makes his argument drawing on the Hadith traditions and drawing on the Hadith to argue that it is a normative ideal, it is a fundamental principle of Islam that Muslims must be different. And then he argues that this difference must take place visibly and in public. And one of the main contributions that he makes is not only by simply drawing these texts together and bringing them together systematically for the first time, but he gives it a theoretical scaffolding, a discursive scaffolding, if you will, arguing that when we think about imitation, we need to think about intention and motive. And that helps to define the legal and even theological consequences of imitation, because intent and there have been books written about this plays an important role in Islamic law and is a fundamental idea in defining what counts as a good act or a bad act, right? So if you pray and your intention is to. To not worship God, but to simply look good, then that prayer, even if outwardly seems like a pious act, is a mundane act. So Ibn Taymiyyah argues that intention likewise depends upon the motivation of the actor of the Muslim. Is there a deliberate and conscious attempt to degrade and defame Islam, to emulate someone else, because they look up to them and look down upon Muslims, as opposed to simply doing so unconsciously? And so this plays a role for Ibn Taymiyyah in defining how serious an act of wrong imitation is. So, for example, celebrating Maundi Thursday, which is something Alhamis Al Haqir he calls derogatively a holiday that Christian Damascene Christians would observe and would do so with eating special foods and wearing special clothes and performing special rites. He wasn't happy that Muslims would participate with these Christians in these holidays. And so after, you know, arguing theoretically for the obligation of being distinct, he then focuses on, you know, celebrating festivals in particular. But one of the arguments he makes is that Shi' ar, or these markers of difference, right? And this is where there's a level of theoretical sophistication in Ibn Taymiyyah's work and why we should think of Muslim thinkers as theorists and themselves. He's arguing and acknowledging that, look, communities define themselves through Shia, which is an Arabic term that means marker or symbolic marker. And Muslims need to preserve their distinguished, distinctive markers and not culturally appropriate markers that are not their own. And so that is where he makes this theoretical intervention of the importance of symbols to defining community, something that social sociologists, modern sociologists have spoken about. So I, I talk about this contribution that Ibn Tamia makes. Now, he's also a very pragmatic thinker and others have written about this, such as felicitas apwis and his sort of conception of maslaha, right, or thinking of the public interest or good. And he argues that in certain situations, this is Ibn Taymiyyah, that, you know, even though it's normatively prohibited, generally speaking, for Muslims to emulate non Muslims, whether it be Jews or Christians, or import these Shia or symbolic markers that are not their own, there may be situations where it's good or even obligatory and required. So if a Muslim is living abroad, for example, and modern thinkers, modern jurists, have drawn upon this fatawa to argue that Muslims living as minorities in non Muslim majority countries therefore may, as it were, assimilate based on this fatwa or based on this legal opinion. But Ibn Taymi argues that it is potentially a good idea for Muslims living abroad in Dar al Harb, right at the abode of war, to, as it were, pass as a non Muslim. But, you know, it's very much of a utilitarian or consequentialist mode of thinking, which is a mode of thinking that is very much common within Islamic legal thinking that, okay, if you, if a Muslim needs to be a spy, then he should pass as a non Muslim. If a Muslim needs to protect his or her life, then he or she should pass as a non Muslim and dress as a non Muslim and act as a non Muslim and celebrate hallelujah days as a non Muslim. Would Even though within a Muslim majority context and Darwin Islam, it would be prohibited. So this is the way that Ibn Taymiyyah attempts to add nuance to this idea of prohibited emulation or prohibited imitation to show that in certain moments, being distant, being distinct, visibly distinct, is not a good.
- [57:48]
A
Idea. Thank you for that response and especially also for the discussion of symbolism and why these, what looks like small differences actually carry a lot of meaning and value. I had a question about that and I was earlier in my list of questions, and I jumped right into other stuff. So thank you for discussing that with us. There is Ghazi, who also has a. Who has a very unique take on the hadith in his treatise. Was it the virtue of Awakening? I think. What is he contributing to this.
- [58:19]
B
Discussion? Yeah, no, thank you. And Najmuddin does Najmadin Al Qazi. Right. So. So he is an Ottoman Arab thinker who lived in also Damascus and passed during the late 16th. And he lived during the late 16th and 17th centuries. Died in 1651, if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, just to rewind a bit, once again, in terms of the sources that I'm looking at. So yes, I'm looking at hadith traditions. And then. And what I argue, and I've argued in another article that was published some years ago, is that Muslims developed. Muslim thinkers developed what we might call treatises against imitation. The first of those, I argue, is Ibn Taymiyyah. There may have been some before him that are somehow lost in the manuscripts, but at least in my search, I wasn't able to find a treatise before his. The. In my view, the mo. I mean, so one could argue that Ibn Taymiyyah's treatise against imitation is the most important because it's really the first, but certainly the most, I would argue, significant in terms of its intellectual value is Najmadin Al Ghazi's treatise on imitation. And I'm not calling it a treatise against imitation because. Because he carries within this text and this important text the idea that it's. Or at least he acknowledges, unlike most folks that wrote about this subject, that imitation at least Tashabu, can be a good thing. Right. So this is where we're getting into some of the more the importance of Sufism, right, to this, to this subject matter, into the book that I haven't spoken about. I've spoken about, you know, hadith traditions. I've spoken about its relevance to Islamic law within the, you know, context of Ibn Taymiyyah. But then there's another, I guess, Tradition within the tradition, as it were, of Sufis who've written about as a technology of the self. And so in the chapter preceding Najmadin Al Qazi, I speak of the Suhrawardi Sufis as playing an important role in speaking of imitation as a technology of the self, as a mode of subject formation within Sufi communities, as a way of including novice Sufis within Sufi communities by arguing within their treatises that a person can become a Sufi by emulating those who are spiritually realized. So when I was in Damascus and I visited a Sufi sheikh and I had the opportunity to stay at his house in his home, and I shared with him the subject of my research many years ago as a graduate student, he taught me this couplet. So if you cannot be like them, as it were, or the pious, then imitate them. For imitating the virtuous or the pious is success. And this is way of, of speaking of tashabu within a Sufi context to argue that if you want to become a spiritualized, spiritually realized human being, then you need to find spiritually realized human beings and imitate them and emulate them. And for those who are familiar with the, you know, Sufism and the Sufi tradition within Islam, they know that or keeping the company, as it were, of the pious is plays a significant role in Sufi technologies of self cultivation and shaping Sufi communities. So Najmi Ghazi draws on this Sufi tradition to think about Tishabu in ways that are robust and expansive. And that's one of the arguments and contradiction I make in this chapter, that Najmuddin Al Qazi, who's living in Ottoman Damascus, when, you know, there are, when that period of time had its own sort of upheaval, social upheavals. So as Ibn Taymiyyah was concerned with Muslims imitating non Muslims in festivals, Najmi Nin Al Ghazi was concerned with Muslims imitating unruly Muslims and maybe even non Muslims in coffee houses. So we see within this rise in the 16th and 17th century the emergence of coffee houses with than Muslim tradition. And so he writes this text, writes this text or composes this text, or the virtue of awakening to what has been transmitted about imitation or emulation. It's published today as 12 volumes. And at the time when I was a graduate student researching the subject, it was yet to be published. And, and you know, two volumes were in the Assad library, one volume was in the library, Chester Beatty Library. But fortunately it's been published, it's accessible to the mainstream public, but it's A massive tone of, you know, what I might call a window into the social imaginary of a 17th century thinker that, you know, and I go into detail in the chapter, chapter of how Nachman Ghazi thinks about imitation. In other words, for him, imitation was a way of imagining the cosmos. So he has chapters on imitating angels, imitating pious figures, on imitating angels, devils, men imitating women, slaves imitating free people, Muslims imitating Jews and Christians. There are. And. And two volumes are devoted to human beings emulating or imitating animals, which I thought was really fascinating. Two volumes dedicated to animals and themselves. So it's one of the. It's important because it shows us how a thinker in the 17th century saw the world in a very much connected and integrated fashion. And his contribution is important because he views imitation as a technology of belonging. And this is one of the arguments that I make, is that Najmuddin Al Ghazi makes a very important intervention to thinking about the concept of love and the importance of love and affection to imitation. And this is an observation that Ibn Taime makes, is that you imitate those whom you love, you imitate those whom you admire, you imitate those whom you have affections for. And so for Najm Al Ghazi to distinguish true and false imitation, superficial and, you know, substantive imitation, you have, it comes down to love, right? And so he juxtaposes the tradition Mantashabbahavi koman for minhum with another famous tradition of the Prophet. A person belongs or people belong with the one, with the ones they love. And this tradition argues, or at least has been used to argue, that if you want to know where you belong, who you belong, what community you belong to, whether it's Muslim or non Muslim, whether it's a Sufi, non Sufi or national belonging, it's about love, it's about your affection, it's about where your heart is. Home is where the heart is. If you want to sort of think of an English analog or an analog within sort of Euro American tradition. And so Ghazi argues that if we're going to talk about imitation and being different, then we have to talk about love. And he does so in this very sophisticated, theoretically sophisticated discourse within the first volume. And I explore this in detail in the chapter and show why his contribution to the discourse of imitation and being different is very important and one that really should put Najmadin Al Ghazi on the map of Muslim thinkers that we think about when thinking about pre colonial Islam. He's been more or less overlooked. You know, in modern academic studies and even Muslim studies and even contemporary Muslim or Islamic thought. So he's someone that I hope that this book puts on the map as an original, original thinker, is an important thinker and one that also illuminates how Muslims, even into the Ottoman era, were making really substantive contributions to the Islamic intellectual tradition. And it sort of plays an important role in dispelling kind of the, the trope that, okay, Muslims or Islam observed a decline within, you know, the Ottoman Empire, you know, Ottoman era period. His book alone shows or demonstrates that that is just not the.
- [67:44]
A
Case. Thank you for that. I want us to now talk about more sort of modernity, the modern period where the question of, you know, Muslims wearing European hats comes up. And, you know, it again, seems like a very small thing. I love the title of, of that chapter, but obviously very, very symbolic. And I think you put it really well where you say that if Europe hadn't colonized very destructively so much of the world, then this question would not be an issue at all. Nobody would be asking this question. Nobody would care. But the fatwas and the very different responses and the different explanations and interpretations of this, of what exactly it is that we can and can't imitate. So I think one of the. Was it Abduh's fatwas that says that it's only in religious matters and not cultural matters or secular matters that we're not allowed to imitate the other. And then of course it's a huge back and forth, but it has a lot of implications and consequences and I would love for us to sort of free to summarize what that debate is like and, you know, what it means for, I guess, more modern.
- [68:52]
B
Muslims. Sure, thank you for the question. So it's, it's been described by, you know, at least one thinker as the most controversial fatwa in Islamic history. Maybe, maybe hyperbolic or maybe not, but maybe at the time it really was, I mean, it really was controversial. So, you know, so we've looked at a number of. At least a book, has explored a number of figures. So Ibn Taymiyyah Najmi Din Al Bazi. See, another important famous figure that my book draws attention to is Muhammad Abdu. Now, Muhammad Abdu is a well known figure within, you know, among students of Islam, especially modern Islam, and his role in shaping what some might call a modernist Islam or a modern reformist Islam in his role in doing so. So Muhammad Abdu at the time of the fatwa was functioning as sort of the mufti, the Primary mufti of, of Egypt as it were. And he was asked it's also known as the Transvaal Fatwa. And in this Transvaal Fata, which was a location or at least a region in South Africa, Muslims living as minorities asked Muhammad Abdu as and his capacity as mufti within Egypt of a fatwa and of sort of, excuse me of a. Relate a set of related issues that were. That were controversial and bothering them. So among them were, you know, Ken Hanafi's praying behind Shafi's. Ken, can Muslims eat meat slaughtered by non Muslims or people of the Book? And can Muslims wear, as it were, the bonita or what we might call a European styled hat? So what is a European styled hat, European styled hat or a hat at that particular time within Transvaal and elsewhere is a hat with a brim, right? And there are many different types of hats with brims like a bowler, a derby, etc. But the bottom line was that this style of hat was, was a style a, A sartorial style that was common among non Muslims living in Transvaal at the time. So can Muslims also wear clothes in this particular style? And of course that alludes to this symbolic power that wearing a hat has, right? And I argue in the book elsewhere that headgear, as it did in the very earliest phases of Islam played an important role in defining one's belonging or identifying someone as being a part of a particular group or not a community or not because of its proximity to the face. And the face is the over determined surface of identity as I mentioned. So they were wondering is it okay for us to wear these hats because of their symbolic power? And so Muhammad Abdu argued, or at least in his fatigue, Ottawa mentioned, yeah, you can eat meat slaughter with the people of the people of the Book as it were, but and you can also wear these European styled hats. You can wear hats that have this brim on the front. And he argues that, you know, yeah, it can on pragmatic rounds that yeah, maybe can help you keep the sun and not get have a sunburn burn as it were. So he kind of gives a pragmatic reasoning as it were to defend his fatwa. But this fatwa caused a firestorm. It just resulted in a lot of controversy because it seemed to indicate to those who were I guess not persuaded by the opinion that Abdu was defending the, or allowing and permitting Muslims to basically pass as non Muslims to dress as non Muslims to look and maybe even be identified as a non Muslim. And in the early 20th century when the, when the Ottoman Empire was still in existence, but on its way to oblivion, when colonialism was still operating, at least in many parts of the Muslim world, where Europeans were exerting their power over Muslims, whether it be in Africa or India or Southeast Asia, this was viewed as a form of capitulation. And so what I do is I trace the, the responses not only among ulama, Muslim religious scholars to Muhammad Abdul's fatwa. I look at its antecedents, that this was not the first time that Muslims had wondered about where it's okay whether it's okay to wear European hats. And I look at or examine responses to this fatwa among. Reformist and non reformist up till the 1950s. Now, one of the, and I, I can't, I won't go into all the details. I'll, I'll let readers do so. But one of the main points, arguments that come up is whether or not it's okay to emulate non Muslims in what might be called cultural matters, right? And in terms of, or custom or customary matters or cultural norms and ritual. Now, one of the points that I make is that historically speaking, Muslim thinkers didn't make such a distinction between what we might call the domain of religion and culture or ritual and culture. When you look at Ibn Taymiyyah's arguments, for example, when he's arguing about Muslims not participating in festivals, he's also, or dressing in a particular way. It's not only, it's not just about ritual and Muslims adopting ritual practices of religions that are of other religions, it's just about being Muslim in public and being visibly Muslim. But the debate that took place in the 20th century in response to absolute, the issue of whether a particular practice was a ritual act or not became significant. And it shows what I argue is that there's an evolving dimension to this discourse where Muslim thinkers are beginning to distinguish or define religion in a different way as something that is more, as it were, located within the domain of ritual as opposed to, to what we might call the domain of culture. And I use these terms in quotes, air quotes, realizing that it's hard to distinguish between religion and culture, and I think that's one of the more fascinating aspects of this conversation, is a way in which ulama begin to make these kinds of distinctions and to adopt this idea of imitation as maybe being restricted to the domain of ritual as opposed to, to the more public domain, as it were, or secular domain. And he used the term in quotes, air quotes, and very carefully to show that this is one way of showing how Muslim Thinkers are beginning to think of religion in a different way, of deen, which is historically a term that that's, you know, can be translated as religion, but may be translated in different ways. And so I think for religious studies scholars and scholars of religion, the, the kind of tracing the debates around the European hat is also an important way or a one way of tracing the development of how Muslim thinkers in the 20th century are beginning to think about religion in new ways, in ways that are being increasingly demarcated and distinguished from the state and even such a domain as what we might call.
- [77:37]
A
Culture. Thank you so much for that. And then my last content question is going to be about the epilogue, which, as I was just telling you, I loved it and I really appreciated your proposals and your reading of your suggestions moving forward with this traditional and this idea of emulation. But as you also explore, and I believe in the epilogue, why some differences endure and some don't. And so again, my favorite one, the most brand new thing to me in this book probably was that we could want, once upon a time we were not to wear, no, we weren't wear shoes inside the mosque, and now we don't. And Muslims, of course, do mostly wear shoes during, do not wear shoes during prayer. But, but you argue that in the past, past this effort was marked by, and you've discussed it in your inner, in the inner answers here also that this effort to mark yourself as different from the others was marked by hierarchies, but that that's not how quiet it should be today, where in a world, in today's context, in modernity, we're trying, you know, where there's an effort to reduce hierarchies as much as possible. And so I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on sort of moving forward with this tradition. What are some ways that Muslims can read this tradition or resp. Onto this idea, this claim that we should not emulate the other and what it means for on a practical level or in a, especially for those of us who live in a, in a context with the, you know, interfaith communities or interreligious communities. How do we approach this hadith or this tradition or this idea of emulating the.
- [79:10]
B
Other? Sure. That's, you know, so the epilogue. I'm grateful for one of the, the readers of the manuscript in its earlier phase, because when I originally wrote the, I guess, conclusion, as it were, or what we would call the epilogue, there wasn't really any constructive element to it. I was sort of content with writing a historical study and it is a historical study, but leaving anything constructive, as it were, what we call constructive for either another work or for someone else to do. But one of the readers posed a question about, you've made this exhaustive study of this idea of being different, different from the beginnings of Islam all the way through modernity. And you kind of gesture that there are these changes that have taken place, but you're really not elaborating on them. And maybe you should, right? And so I began thinking, well, I mean, if I've done this study, then I'm probably better positioned than most to actually make a contribution to maybe how things ought to be be when thinking about this idea in modernity. And I thought about my 20 something self in that mosque many years ago, and I said, well, maybe that's something that I would have liked to have heard or read at that particular time. It would have helped me to think about this issue in ways that were important and meaningful. So in the epilogue, I do trace and you know, I would say that it's really a, you know, a beginning rather than an end, really is beginning to kind of rethinking this idea of being distinct and different in modernity, or at least contemporary times. I make a few points. Number one is the first part of the epilogue is conceptual. So I introduced this idea of style. And it's not something. Something that I allude to to in the earlier chapters, but I argue that for students of religion and students of Islam, maybe not maybe, but an important term, almost a term of religious studies that I would argue is a time concept of style. And the reason why I make this argument or this claim at the end of the book is to show that look in terms of thinking about Muslim difference and how to be distinct and different, one way of thinking about or talking about being different is through the styles of being different. Because style is a concept that involves the inward and the outward, the exterior and the interior. And so much of what, you know, I've argued and what I argue in the book is that when thinking about being different, it is something that is visible and external, but it's also for Muslim thinkers, something that is internal, invisible, visible, and about subject formation. So I argue that style is a term that helps us to bring together and think about the dhahir and the botan, the exteriority and interiority, inside and outside in ways that are dynamic and ways that are integrated and intertwined. Because that is how I claim that Muslim thinkers across time and place viewed being different as something that is internal and external and Something that's intertwined in Muslim subject formation and Muslim. Muslim imaginations of the self and Muslim imaginations of the other. So that's the first part of the. The epilogue. It's an argument, it's a claim that I'm making that I invite scholars to think about not just Muslim difference, but religion and Islam, using the term style as a way to talk about Muslim practices and Muslim forms of Muslim life life in, you know, across Islamicate societies. The second part of the epilogue is where really the, I guess the second component of the constructive dimension is, you know, that brings, I think, my. My personal experiences that I speak about in the preface to kind of bear upon what does. To Shampa. What does it mean to be different? What does it mean to be distinct for Muslims today? How should maybe Muslims begin to think about whoever imitates the people becomes one of them today, especially for Muslims who are living in interfaith societies that you mentioned. And I take a couple of examples and a couple of texts from Ayat Akhtar's Disgraced to Sherman Jackson's Islam of the Black American to build a case or the beginnings of the case that that look in premodern Islamic societies, premodern Muslim societies, it was an ideal among Muslim elites, whether in government or within religious circles, for their. For to construct in an ideal Islamic societies around hierarchies, but for Muslims today who live in liberal secular democracies or, you know, other states in which egalitarianism or equality is the ideal, and that is what defines citizenship, then you know how pragmatic and or at least how, you know, how relevant is this hierarchical worldview to the cultivation of Muslim life today. And so I make the argument that there's a growing body of scholarship not only among, I guess, reformist Muslim thinkers, but also among conservative or traditionalist Muslim thinkers, that this ideal of hierarchy needs to be rethought within modern forms of assumptions Islam. And this would also be relevant to thinking about difference and whether it's okay for Muslims to, as it were, emulate non Muslims. I argue that this hierarchical ideal, maybe, I mean not maybe, should be set aside and that in terms would then reframe the lens or at least, yeah, the lens through which we see. See these Islamic traditions on being distinct and different. Now, it doesn't mean the erasure of Muslim difference. I think today it's still important for not only Muslims but any human being to feel that they can set themselves apart in ways that are in tune with who they are in ways that are maybe visible in ways that may be invisible, but, but it shouldn't be based on this idea of somehow Muslims being superior to non Muslims in a pejorative way, or that non Muslims are somehow inherently morally inferior, which is often a subtext to what we find in pre modern Muslim discourses. So that is one of the arguments that I make rethinking and I, I think it, it's not entirely novel. There are, there are other scholars that have written about hierarchy and rethinking hierarchies, from Zahra Ayyubi to Kisha Ali to even Jonathan Brown. And so I, I think the arguments that I'm making are a way of showing that there is a realization among Muslim scholars that, that, you know, hierarchy as an ideal may not no longer works in society in which Muslims are seeking to live in harmony with non Muslims. And so I kind of propose a different way of reading the Hadith towards the end in a way that is non hierarchical, in a way that is, that attempts to enhance connections that Muslims have have with non Muslims. And I argue that this way of reading the Hadith is not foreign to the Islamic tradition, as it were, but in many ways is a natural outgrowth of the dynamic Muslim thinking that, that, that the book has shown. Right. Whether it be Ibn Taymiyyah to Najm Din Al Ghazi or Muhammad Abdu. One of the goals that I've had or that I have in this book book is to show that the quote unquote Islamic tradition is a dynamic one and one that is very much integrated or connected to the broader historical context and political context and cultural context and social context in which Muslims have lived. And I hope it is a persuasive argument. But I also probably understand that it may come upon some sort of resistance from folks, but I hope that it appears to be a natural, organic outgrowth of the historical arguments that I've made, but one that is also distinctive to who I am and my own difference as an academic, as a scholar, and just a human.
- [88:42]
A
Being. Thank you so much for that. It's the epilogue especially that I'm recommending to a lot of people. So my, the last questions that we, the last question that we ask our guest is usually to tell us about any work you're doing currently that we can look forward to in the near future. That's not to suggest that you must be constantly producing scholarship, but if you're working on anything that I can look forward to, that would be.
- [89:03]
B
Great. Sure, yeah, I think I'm, I'm working on A number of things. So I continue to write about stuff related to being distinct and different and, and have an article that's I think, just come out in Critical Muslim on, on Copycat Cats, which is some ways a brief digest on some of what I've talked about today. So that's critical Muslim 44. There's also an article that I've put on the back burner for a very long time connected to this subject in which during my time in Damascus, I had these amazing interviews with some of the most important ulama of Damascus, from Wahb Zuhayla to Mufti Salpini and Aleppo and many others, some of whom have now passed away. These amazing interviews about different Muslim assimilation, the Islamic tradition that I have recorded, but that I have yet to transcribe and sort of compile into a study. And that's something that I want to do. I'm also looking at or working on translating Ghazi's Husna Tanabu Li Mawara Dafit Shabu, the Virtue of Awakening. Not the entire 12 volumes, which would be a lifetime kind of work, but translating excerpts that I think would. That I think a broader audience should read in terms of kind of projects that are unrelated to the subject. I'm still interested in Scripture, but I'm pivoting towards looking at modern Quran interpretation and Quran interpretation within the United States, in America in particular. So a different historical context, but really thinking about, once again thinking about Islamic tradition within and its connection to culture. Right. And acculturation of Islamic tradition, which I think is also a broader kind of theme driving my, my scholarship. So it's still kind of ambiguous what I'm. What I'm. Or at least undefined, as it were, in terms of the precise book project that that is coming up. But I, I suspect it'll have something to do with, with quant interpretation in the United.
- [91:38]
A
States. All right, well, that sounds very exciting. And I, again, thank you so much for talking to me about your book that I really, really enjoyed. And I, I can't wait to assign at least chapters of it in my slum.
- [91:49]
B
Classes. It's been a true pleasure. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope that, you know, we have other new conversations in the.
- [91:59]
A
Future. Absolutely. Okay, so that was Yusha Patel on his new book, the Muslim Defining the Line Between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the present, published in 2022 with Yale. It's one of the best books that I've ever read and I am very hopeful that others will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next time.
- [92:21]
B
Sal.