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All lectures notes from Extremism in a Global Context!
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All lecture notes from the CSM course Extremism in a Global Context, as taught in 2023/2024.
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Extremism (Islamism) in a global contextLecture 1: Introduction
> Islamist extremism as focus
The Origins of Islam
> Out of the Arabian desert (632)
> pre-islamic Hijaz
> Christian and Jewish traditions abound
> Neighbouring empires weak → Byzantines, Romans, etc crumbling
> Arabs in jahiliyyah (state of ignorance? → pre and post islam is pre and post jahiliyyah))
> Origins of the Kaaba → story that Abraham built it which is unlikely
→ messages delivered to Mohammed by angel Gabriel → from age 40 to age 63 he received
messages → after his death they piled all of his messages into the Koran → Koran unedited
document so far → only one edition that applies to Shias, Sunnis, all groups → special because of
its melodic tone and openness for interpretation
→ ‘Jihad’ = Struggle → can be a daily struggle but we think about jihad as a holy war
→ ‘Sharia’ = consensus → there isn’t one single Sharia but one that is mainly referred to by us
(with the hand-chopping)
→ Islam expanded very rapidly (in 30 years) both due to its convincing story and due to the
weakness of the surrounding empires. also military very well organised
→ we often think about the political or confrontational side but it has many dimensions just like
other religions and it focusses much on the family and home etc, what we also see in Christianity
and Judaism
→ Medina created because Muslims persecuted in Mecca → Medina is where the second half of
the Koran was conceived
→ Hadith? → words of the prophets? → a million exist → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith
> Early life of Muhammad
> Trading and travel → could count but knowledge tells that he was illiterate
> The call to Islam
> Continuity and conjecture
> The Abrahamic traditions → Judaism and Islam very closely related in some of its practices
(some festivals, not eating pork, etc)
> The Prophet passes, aged 63 → issues after his death because no succession plan
- had a young wife, Aisha, and she was very young when they were wedded (between 6
and 13 prob) → many Western and Orientalist accounts use this info to
defineMohammed as a child molester
→ Abu Bakr as successor: his best friend and father of Aisha → when he came into power as
Caliph many wars first → then came Omar and he went on to conquer many lands (Halifs)
→ some grandson kills the other grandson (of Mohammad)
,→ Sunnis versus Shias → Shia argue that prophets offspring and direct family(Ali and fam) should
have been the Caliphs and not Abu Bakr, while Sunnis follow Abu Bakr and the other Caliphs
→ internal fissions continue until about 750 when ???
→ depictions of the Prophet in Sunni Islam are a big no no but in Shia Islam you have little
images which depict the prophet
→ literalism: people take ancient texts and interpret them in its absoluteness
> Twenty-three years in making
> The Qu’ran in context
> The Call to Islam
→ some of the text of the old verses of Qu’ran are in ancient version of arabic
> the First Four Caliphs → Abu Bakr, Omar, Osmar, Ali ?
> The Umayyads
> The Abbasids
> The Buyids
> The Golden Age → scientific discoveries: algebra, Mathematics
→ The Golden War? Ghengis Khan etc → many Mongols killed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan
→ the Crusades on the other side from Europe: the three religions were battling in the Middle
East for settlements → most crusades not very successful
→ routes part of the silk routes
The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age (750-1258 AD)
> Science, technology, learning → oldest universities
> hospitals, labs, parks, animal reserves → until 17th century we were still using arab designed
medical influences
> mathematics, physics, astronomy
> medicine, sociology, development economics
> trade and growth
→ The Mongol Empire completely trashed and ruined Baghdad (then capital of the Arab Empire)
and burned down the famous House of Wisdom (Grand Library of Baghdad) BUT later
converted to Islam
> Challenging forces - Mongols
> The Crusades and ‘Holy War’
> Retreat to literalism → as response to the two forces coming their way from both east and west
→ retreat both politically and ideologically: is where problems with Islam come from: hold on to
values more literally → implications: religious authority not there to build academic institutions
and encourage advancement, so thus become training grounds for literal interpretations, leading
to schooling system of repetition and memorisation instead of reasoning and philosophy
> Progression became regression
, → today, we see that these once colonised Muslims countries (80% at some point colonised by
westerners) still have a sense of being persecuted? → cradle of civilisation becoming cradle of
looking at the world narrow terms
→ winston churchill: wrote britain in the 1900s, very problematic figure
→ noble leaders chose idea of forced hold onto religion going forward
> Timurid and the collapse of Muslim India (15th C)
> The emergence of European colonialism
> The British in India → wars between India and Pakistan because of territory as a result
> The First War of Independence 1857
> Scientific Racism/Industrial capitalism in the West vs the weakening of structures and institutions,
and further retreat inwards in the Muslim East
→ because of colonial rewriting in history, it is like the scientific progression in the Islamic world
never existed → scientific racism → as if the western or white people were scientifically superior
- non-white part of the world is ‘backward, inferior, etc’
- take away from the idea that one side is always bad and the other side is always the victim
The Golden Age in Short
> Inspired by Muslim thirst for knowledge as inspired by the Prophet and the Quran: the scholar's ink
is more sacred than the blood of martyrs
> books through mass printing, widespread travel, unified by the Arabic languages, in which
everything known to humankind slides
Advancing scientific thinking
> science was not restricted to medicine = mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy,
typography, and later to social sciences, especially through Ibn Khaldun
Muslim Science
> prominent stage for world learning from 8th to 12th century
- universities, libraries, scientific development in major fields
- open society
> The prominence of religious authorities and the shifting away from scientific knowledge to religious
knowledge
- closed society
> 12th C revealed major tensions between the traditionalists (who shunned reason) and rationalists
(who criticised them)
- rationalists = saw god as approachable at the level of individual
- traditionalists = saw god as approachable only through them
Religious power increases
> evidence that scientific production declined in the medieval period but are we sure of the causes -
i.e. because Islam and science are incompatible, the Mongols, or colonialism?
- even the historical decline in scientific production goes from east west as the Mongols
invade…
- the rival movements also start from east west
slides
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