Mevlevi ("whirling dervish") ritual, followers of Rumi (tomb in Konya, Turkey)
reciter Kani Karaca

Ibn Khaldun, 242-256
43.  How it happens that access to the ruler becomes restricted in the dynasty.  Such restriction becomes important when the dynasty grows senile.
44.  Once senility has come upon the dynasty, it cannot be warded off
45. How disintegration befalls dynasties
46.  The authority of the dynasty at first expands to its limit and and is narrowed down in successive stages, until the dynasty dissolves and disappears
47.  How a new dynasty originates
48.  A new dynasty gains domination through perseverance, and not through sudden action

Following Muhammad, pp. 200-213
6. Postscript: Re-imagining Islam in the 21st Century

Beyond East and West

• the 20th-century Euro-American concept of Islam combines relentlessly colonial attitudes with amnesia about colonialism
• there is no time warp denoting progress of civilization vs. retrograde barbarism
• technology and military hardware confer no moral superiority
• Islam as a symbol with a history, religionized as an anticolonial ideology
• copyrighting of religion as a trademark commodity
• the opposition of East and West has become a pernicious us vs. them opposition, clash of civilization, a policy that can only see Islam as an obstacle to globalization
• North and South as an alternative language, based on economic reinterpretation
• anti-western globalizations of Arabia and Iran

New images of Islam and religion

• Quick review:
  • Islam= "submission" (to God); religiously less important than Iman (faith) and Ihsan (spiritual virtue)
  • in modern times identified as one of many religions in competition (European concept from colonial age), so "Islam" has taken on group identity in resistance to US/European control
  • "Muslim" = "one who submits" (to God), thus by extension an adherent of the Islamic faith;
  • Islamicate = pertaining to the cultural sphere connected to Islamic religion but separate from it (arts, government, etc.)
• Islam is not to be confused with, or exclusively limited to, any of the elements of Islamic tradition, including:
  • any particular regime or Empire -- the rise and fall of empire has no moral meaning
  • Muslim-majority-countries-plus-countries-with-significant-Muslim-minorities
  • Muslim majority countries that appeal to Islamic authority (excludes Indonesia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizia, Yemen)
    Qur'anic theologies
  • ethical systems appealing to Muhammad
  • lineages of charismatic spiritual transmission, Sufi or Shi`i
  • pilgrimage to local shrines
  • music, poetry, art, architecture
• Islamic law replaced by appeals to Islamic authority in legal codes of nation states
• ritual as ethics, despite Protestant views that ritual is irrelevant
  

Islam and pluralism

• multiple interpretive authorities and local traditions
• re-evaluation of tradition by feminists, including Islamist women
• can there be a tolerance of pluralistic ethics? Augustine on historical dimension of religion
• centrality of Muhammad, but refracted by history and locality
  

Importance of a class like this
Pew surveys on anti-Islamic attitudes increasing in US (2003-2006); recent issues

• imams refused boarding for praying in airport
• example of radio talk show calling for special IDs for Muslims
• Keith Ellison, first Muslim in US Congress