Muslim Selbstverständnis: Ahmet Davutoğlu answers Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences

In formulating his understanding of Islamic history, thought and politics, the Turkish Muslim thinker Ahmet Davuto?lu approves and adopts the German philosopher Edmund Husserl's formulation of phenomenology — or, philosophy of consciousness. Both Husserl and Davuto?lu perceive a crisis in humanity and identify its causes in scientism and logical positivism, against which they develop their respective phenomenological alternatives. This article places in parallel Husserl's stylised history of Western thought and Weltanschauung method with that of Davuto?lu's Muslim worldview, in order to illuminate the latter's putatively comprehensive interpretation of Islam, diagnosis of the ills of secularism, modernisation, and crisis of values he finds in Muslim societies; and his prescribed treatment for those ills: the privileging of ontology over epistemology, and the full unfolding of core theological concepts of revelation, monotheism, and prophecy. Davuto?lu seeks to reconcile tensions and disputes within Islamic intellectual traditions concerning the nature of God and God's attributes, and the tension between mysticism and rationalism, and the historical and the atemporal. In summary, Davuto?lu's intervention in Islamic traditions is interesting in the effort it makes to appropriate elements of both Husserl and GWF Hegel for the purpose of reconciling a phenomenological reading of Islam with established Islamic authorities and commitments.     

Calvin and the Two Bodies of Christ: Fiction and Power in Dogmatic Theology

This article re-examines the slow rhetorical quality of Jean Calvin’s political theology by drawing attention to the literary dimensions of Calvin’s theological writing. In conversation with recent work on political theology and Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), I show how Calvin relies on a participatory grammar and a fictive rendering of the incarnation to theorize the relationship between the concrete body of Christ and the corporate “body” of the church. I argue that this recovers theological resources for maintaining a critical distance between words and things that resists absolutist incarnations of political theology. Foregrounding the role of fiction in constituting dogmatic theological arguments aids in distinguishing the role of theological analogies from mythical foundations. By better attending to the literary dimensions of dogmatic theological writings, it may be possible to further complicate and recast the relationship between theological categories and modern political thought.     

Secular cultural policy in Islamic countries: desirability and feasibility

Secularism in Islamic countries is a hotly-debated topic which produces dramatic sociopolitical consequences on the one hand, and wide-ranging academic controversy on the other. The real social potential of secularism among Muslim populations is an issue that is not always estimated properly. The present paper first reviews some historical examples of secular cultural policy in Islamic countries. This review covers the secular reforms in four political, social, legal, and educational spheres. Subsequently, using data from the World Values Survey, it compares empirically the desirability of a public role for religion in 18 Islamic and Western countries. Furthermore, it examines the acceptability of Western secular culture in six countries in the Muslim world. Bearing in mind Casanova’s analytical approach to the theory of secularization, it comes to the conclusion that a democratic application of a secular cultural policy in Islamic countries is neither desirable nor feasible.     

Law,Principle, and the Theologico-Political History of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article takes it cue from the debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson regarding the possibility of political theology within Christianity, and in response, offers a conceptual-historical portrait of sovereignty and its juridical dimensions. Beginning with the introduction of Roman law into the medieval Church, the article traces the logic of “legal principle” as the basis of sovereign decision and how the form of legal distinctions adopted into canon law translate the Romanitas of law into the theory of papal sovereignty. By the Romanitas of law, that is to say the principle of sovereignty in law. The article then seeks to describe the conceptual translations of Roman politics and Stoic metaphysics into theological form and the logic of this translation into medieval natural law. The article concludes by evaluating how the civic theology of Rome is conceptually inherited by the politics and legal framework of sovereignty and returns to Peterson’s critique of Schmitt, arguing that political theology can be understood as a dynamic where politics is theologized, assuming that in the history of religion, theology and politics are never fully distinct to begin with.     

Images of Muslims in Western Scholarship and Media after 9/11

This article endeavors to trace changes in the images of the Muslim of the Orient, a product of Orientalism, to contemporary images of the Muslim post 9/11, marking a transition from classical Orientalism to a new Orientalism or Islamism. The study demonstrates how most Western scholarship and media, through the construction of so‐called Islamophobia, have portrayed Muslims in terms of global terrorism, Islamic jihadism, fanatic Islamism, fundamentalism, fascism, and Islamic authoritarianism. Much of the scholarship and media dealing with Islam and Muslims require critical assessment and revision. The article also addresses ways through which Muslims in academia and the media have opposed negative images of Muslims. For instance, in response to the irrational acts of extremists that have fostered negative stereotypes of Islam, public lectures, sermons, conferences, and media programs have recently and abundantly been made by Muslim scholars and media activists to present Muslims positively at both the national and global levels.     

Witchcraft,Human Nature,and Political Theology in Jean Bodin’s de la Démonomanie des sorciers

ABSTRACT

Jean Bodin (1530–1596) is most well-known as the thinker Carl Schmitt credits for modern absolutist sovereignty and political theology. Contemporary critics of sovereignty, following Schmitt, ascribe to Bodin a theological politics of obedience and the negation of individual and collective human freedom through authoritarian discipline (Cocks, Joan. On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Yet, a dedicated study of Bodin’s own political theology remains wanting. His most extensive discussion of theology and law is in his more obscure work on the jurisprudence of witchcraft. In de la Démonomanie des sorciers (1580), Bodin provides a theological account of a divinely created rational order where benevolence and evil are at work in the world. Humans must exercise the free will to choose between them. Bodin’s theological anthropology anchors his political theology with important implications for the proper exercise of human political power within the natural and divine order.     

How Theological is Political Theology? The Case of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism

ABSTRACT

How theological is political theology? Twentieth century American Protestantism illustrates that the answer depends on more than the extent to which a political theology is theological. For example, Walter Rauschenbusch and subsequent emancipatory political theologians understand theology's political significance very differently than John Howard Yoder and other political theologians influenced by the Radical Reformation. Nevertheless, both groups conceive the Christian gospel as a politics and so concur that Christian theology is essentially political. By contrast, Reinhold Niebuhr interpreted the gospel as disclosure of God's mercy and therefore denied that Christian theology is primarily a politics--for society or the church. Hence, although all three of these political theologies are thoroughly theological, they are not political in the same manner or for the same reasons. Accordingly, in addition to quantitative considerations, ascertaining theology's place in political theology involves discerning how a political theology is theological and why a theology is political.     

On Ambivalence and (Anti-)Normativity (or,Theology as a Way of Life?)

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.     

A Popular Public Theology

Abstract

The article begins by exploring what is meant by a popular public theology drawing on the work of the missiologist Werner Ustorf. A popular public theology refers to the informal and unofficial theological speech of society, distinct from the more formal theology of the Church and academy. Such popular public theology is found in contemporary culture, albeit often in diffuse and incoherent form. It is then argued that a popular public theology has an inbuilt relevance to the concerns of society, avoids problems associated with public theologians needing to be fluent in more than one academic discourse, and is not in danger of being reliant on the social sciences. Finally, it is suggested that by discussing the implications of cultural theological statements, public theologians are able to contribute critically to social and political debates.     

Re-Ghettoization: Armenian Christian Neighborhoods in Multicultural Tehran

This paper incorporates a study of “re-ghettoization” among the Armenian Christians of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on how legal marginalization has led to the emergence of an entirely separate existence from the Muslim majority in Tehran among Armenians born after the revolution. By focusing on the spatial and social divisions of the hayashatner (Armenian neighborhoods) and the “social” ghetto of the Ararat Compound, this article addresses the question: what are the social implications for religious discrimination in the Muslim Middle East? This paper is based on three extensive blocks of fieldwork carried out in Iran from 2010 to 2015.     

What is a Salafi Reformist?

Abstract

Tariq Ramadan is one of the most prominent and controversial Western Muslim political thinkers today. He has been called everything from a moderate liberal Muslim thinker to a radical Islamist in disguise. He calls himself a Salafi reformist. According to him, Salafi reformists read the sacred texts of Islam dynamically, using reason, and reject literalist readings. Yet Ramadan also calls Sayyid Qutb a Salafi reformist. The problem is that, by most accounts, Qutb is the quintessential radical Islamist. This raises the question of what Ramadan thinks actually makes someone a Salafi reformist, and what this can tell us about his political teaching. To answer this question, I put Ramadan and Qutb into conversation. I argue that, while Ramadan meets his own criteria for being a Salafi reformist, Qutb does not. I suggest some reasons why Ramadan may not share this view; his political theology tells a different story.     

Muslim Political Theology Before and After Empire: Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl’s Station of Leadership (Manṣab-i Imāmat)*

ABSTRACT

This essay examines an important yet hitherto unexplored early-nineteenth century Indo-Persian work of Muslim political theology Station of Leadership (Man?ab-i Imāmat; also known as Darājāt-i Imāmat), written by the towering and contentious Sunnī thinker and political theorist from Delhi Shāh Mu?ammad Ismā?īl (d. 1831). In this hugely critical though lesser known of Ismā?īl’s texts, he sought to detail a theory and framework of ideal forms of Muslim political orders and leaders. Man?ab-i Imāmat presents a fascinating example of a text of Muslim political theology composed during a moment marked by a crisis of sovereignty as South Asia gradually yet decisively transitioned from Mughal to British rule. In this essay, through a close reading of Man?ab-i Imāmat, I aim to bring into view a vision of Muslim political thought and understanding of sovereignty that exceed and subvert the modern privileging of a territorial conception of the nation-state as the centerpiece of politics. I show that while tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology that assumed Islam’s superiority over and subsumption of other religious identities and traditions, sovereign power for Ismā?īl indexed not territorial sovereignty but the maintenance of Muslim markers of distinction in the public performance of everyday religious life.     

‘An Angel Directs the Storm’: The Religious Politics of American Neoconservatism

Abstract

In his inaugural speech, President George W. Bush suggested that the mission of America to spread freedom and democracy in the world is a divinely authored mission. The intention first announced in Bush's inaugural to globalize an American Christian vision of freedom and democracy, and of free market capitalism, reflects the theological underpinnings of the neo-conservativism of the Bush administration. In this article I trace the remarkable continuities between the neo-conservative political theology of Bush and his acolytes and more mainstream Niebuhrian approaches to democracy and the ‘manifest destiny’ of America. I then subject the emergence of an American imperium, and the political theology associated with it, to a critique in dialogue with early Christian critics of Roman Empire, and with the Christian pacifist tradition as recently retrieved by North American theological ethicists John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas.     

Hobbes as Political Theologian

Abstract

Although an orphaned subject among scholars of religion, the theology of Thomas Hobbes is now among the most contested issues in Hobbes studies and the study of early liberal political theory. This essay maps the state of the question and offers a theological appraisal of it. In so doing it attempts to critique a leading reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan by highlighting its attack on civil religion and endorsement of a biblical political theology. The relationship between Hobbes’s political and theological views in Leviathan also receives sustained attention.     

Aiming for a Just Society

Abstract

I think it is time that theologians, as well as the Church at large, speak up and speak to the social injustice we are faced with because of the economical collapse in Iceland in autumn 2008. If we think theology (i.e. the discourse about God) does not happen in a vacuum, if we think it is affected by, and is also affecting its context, then theology must have a part to play in the political discourse. If we think everything related to our human condition is affecting our understanding and our talk about God, then all theology has to be political in the most inclusive sense of the word. In this article the intention is to test major theological terms against the situation we are faced with in our society, which is recovering from an economic collapse. Thus the question: to what extent are key theological terms useful when we need to address the outgrowth of social injustice and self-inflicted economical catastrophe?     

The Theology of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

The theological turn in studies of Carl Schmitt is pronounced. This paper does not challenge this turn, but questions what theology means for Schmitt. Specifically, it challenges the assumption that Schmitt's political theology is grounded in divine revelation. By distinguishing between “theology in the sense of divine revelation” and “theology in the sense of epistemic faith,” it argues that Schmitt's political theology is epistemic in origin. Schmitt's political theology is not rooted in faith in divine revelation, but in the narrower notion that human cognition is, ultimately, rooted in faith not reason, revelation, or common sense.     

Obeying,Believing and Rebelling

Abstract

This article offers a decisive alternative to a growing consensus within public theology that political liberalism represents the pro-Pelagian, atomistic and un-ecclesial face of modernity. Through a careful reappraisal of the sceptical theology of Michel de Montaigne I claim that contemporary Christian advocates of liberalism can develop a deeply Augustinian counter-account which has the ability to reconcile notions of individual autonomy and conscience with a strong sense of ecclesial authority. At the centre of this innovative settlement, I point to the value of Montaigne’s theological anthropology, which, in its sensitivity to human fragility and sin, offers a rich validation of pluralistic and tolerant societies by contesting absolutist claims to both knowledge and power. In framing political liberalism in these explicitly theological terms, such an account comes into sharp confrontation with the movement known as Radical Orthodoxy, which has defined the liberal tradition as intrinsically anathema to an authentically Christian understanding of politics. In contrast, this article claims that political liberalism, far from being automatically antagonistic to Christian theological commitments, can be justified by them.     

Walter the Chancellor on Ilghazi and Tughtakin: a prisoner’s perspective

This article concerns two leading Turkish rulers, active in the Near East during the crusading era: Tughtakin of Damascus and Ilghazi of Mardin. They were important commanders, but the surviving sources create difficulties when outlining the contours of characters and cultural perspectives. Muslim authors typically present them as idealised Islamic rulers and yet it is difficult to accept such stereotyped portraits. This article sheds new light on these men, seeking to understand how far they had transitioned from the steppe culture of their forefathers into a more distinctively Islamic mould. It focuses in particular on the Antiochene chronicle written by Walter the Chancellor. He witnessed both rulers at first hand when he was their prisoner in Aleppo in 1119, an experience which left him deeply scarred. This is tainted evidence, yet it will be shown that many of Walter’s observations also provide invaluable insights that deserve to be taken seriously.     

Ideology and the ‘Liberation of Theology’: The Role of Critique in Juan Luis Segundo and Slavoj Žižek

The turn to religion within critical theory has brought the critique of ideology back into theological view. This essay examines the relation of theology to ideology in the liberation theology of Juan Luis Segundo. Segundo's key contribution is his use of the concept of ideology as an efficacious force in theological work in service to poor communities. I argue that the critical and political force of Segundo's theology is dulled by this neutral use of ideology critique. This may be ameliorated by consulting Slavoj ?i?ek's negative use of Christianity as ideology critique. Without endorsing ?i?ek over Segundo, I propose that ?i?ek's critical use of political theology can help liberation theology reengage the role of negativity and critique in the immanent relation of theory and praxis.