OGS Proposal

In the past two decades, Islamophobia has found its way into the public discourse of Europe through the visceral and hate-filled diatribes of Oriana Fallaci, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Geert Wilders.  Even North American authors such as Toronto-born Mark Steyn warn of a ‘Eurabia’ threat and the dangers of Muslim immigration.  It has become necessary to understand how this rhetoric has affected public policy and the people it targets.  I intend to investigate how European Muslims have organized themselves in opposition to this discrimination in order to create a legitimate discourse in the public sphere on issues such as immigration and religious accommodation.

In order to frame my investigation, I have decided to focus on post-Cold War France.  France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, estimated at roughly 4 million, which largely resides in high-density social housing (banlieues) on the outskirts of major cities. France is a fervent proponent of secularism (laïcité), and its policies often focus on the integration of immigrants into ‘French’ culture instead of their accommodation.  France also has an established extreme-right political party, the Front National, which has legitimized xenophobia as a political issue.  The past twenty years have seen some progress, exemplified in the institutionalization of Islam through the creation of the Conseil francais du Culte musulman (CFCM) in 2002, but it has largely been negated by setbacks such as the decade-long headscarf debate that led to the 2003 Stasi Commission, the Salman Rushdie Affair, tougher immigration laws in 1993, the 1995 bombings of Paris and Lyon and the riots in 2005.  A case study on France gives an extreme example of what is currently happening across Europe.

My study will look at the development of Muslim organizations within France, and how they have reacted to the county’s extreme secularism and the integration policies of the Chirac and Sarkozy governments.  In order to accomplish this I will investigate the policies, writings and media coverage of the CFCM, the conservative umbrella group Union des organizations islamiques de France (UOIF) and a sampling of grassroots programs from the banlieues.  My goal is to demonstrate how these groups have adapted to the increasingly hostile political environment in France, and to investigate whether these groups have become more conservative or extreme as a response to this conflict with society and secularism. (Berger 1969, 1979; Marty 1993; Taylor, 2007) I will also utilize recent ethnographical research in order to investigate how representative these groups are of the French Muslim community (Silverstein, 2004). 

During my two-year M.A program, I will be working under the guidance of Religion and Politics specialist Dr. Ruth Marshall.  My courses will include work in ethnography, religion and the public discourse, and religious conflict.    I am also required to learn a second language, and will take the opportunity to perfect my reading comprehension in French. During my undergraduate career I took courses on contemporary issues in Islam and the sociology of religion.  My undergraduate research paper was a case study on the impact of the Front National in legitimizing xenophobia and racism in France.  I also attended a specialized program on inter-religious dialogue at the Lessing Institute, at the Anglo-American College in Prague.

Blog 2

"What makes "world religions" imaginable and palpable as an objective reality is something like a new sensibility of global awareness, a sense of immediacy of the far and wide world" (Masuzawa, 40)

Context is everything, so it is important to take a very cursory (and flowery) look at the developments in Europe in the early modern period in order to understand the mind-set of the scholars Tomoko Masuzawa studies in her book The Invention of World Religions. Copernicus had kick-started the scientific revolution and Descartes fleshed out the scientific method, which brought with it a means to systematically understand the world around us. New worlds were being discovered, and old worlds were being colonized. The world was shrinking and our need for understanding was growing. Although rather late to the party, the study of religion was eventually caught up in this fervor.

Beginning as early as the seventeenth century a four-way classification system was employed by religion scholars to discuss the variety of religions in the world, which included Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism and Idolatry. This system was not meant to identify and describe 'belief' systems that paralleled Christianity, but instead "it classified peoples according to the kinds of homage they pay, the ceremonies and customs they observe that purpose, as well as according to the specific objects and beings to which they perform these acts" (61, emphasis mine). Europe was seen as synonymous with Christendom, and Christianity was seen as the one true, universal faith. Collecting qualitative and empirical data, therefore, was more important in differentiating these non-Christian, non-European peoples from the West. The system was designed around the idea ofEuro-Christian supremacy, and the scholars that used it were Christian apologists. Simply, it was rooted in bias.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the system began to change, and by the 1930s taxonomy for the 'world religions' had taken shape. This included the ten to twelve 'major' or 'great' religions (which aside from the Abrahamic faiths now includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, the traditions of the 'Far-East') and a myriad of smaller traditions lumped into categories like 'preliterate' and 'shamanism'. To show how this system developed, Masuzawa looks at the works of nineteenth century comparative theologians. These men studied the world religions in order "to establish the truth of Christianity" (78, quoting Clarke). The classification system that began to form out of these polemics was based on a West versus East philosophy, where Eastern religions are simply preservations of historical and incomplete beliefs, and the West (Christianity) is progressive and at the forefront of history (4). The classification fell along very strict geo-spatial and racial lines. Islam took the brunt of this taxonomy's biases, becoming the "epitome of the racially and ethnically determined, nonuniversal religion" (xiii), trapped by its extreme "backwardness" (83) and although younger, unable to compete with the progressiveness of Christianity.

The Invention of World Religions clearly shows the biases that our current taxonomy of 'world religions' was built around, but it seems to missing some of the context of why this classification system was developed and why, although far from perfect, it is a both a necessary and useful tool today. I began this blog entry with a quote concerning global awareness, and discussed the context of the scientific revolution because I believe that they played a key role in the creation of the 'world religions', the inherent western bias in it, and why it is still worth using. The scientific revolution and the age of exploration began in Europe. They could have started anywhere, but because of a variety of historical circumstances they began there. As Europeans began to interact more with the world around them (much to the dismay of the world around them), they encountered new peoples and new ideologies. This interaction led to a fascination with, and a need for, information about these 'others'. As the scientific revolution began to affect the humanities, they began using more empirical methods of research which required the creation of more elaborate taxonomy systems. Since, by sheer chance, Europe spearheaded these new approaches, they were of course Euro-centric in nature.

The classification of 'world religions' has outgrown its classical biases to some extent. Scholars no longer use it as a means of proving the truth of their own religion, but as a useful way of categorizing the nearly unmanageable amount of religious groups into
workable subjects. Since both Masuzawa and Smith used linguistics in their work, I will do the same. I see the 'world religions' as akin to the classification of languages. If we take 'Russian' as an example, we can show it as Indo-European>Satem>Balto-Slavic>Slavic>East Slavic>Russian, just as we can say Judaism>Hasidism>Chabad-Lubavitch (thanks wikipedia!). The first-year undergrad taking a 'world religion' course will learn about the broad themes and largest denominations present in Hinduism, and if they choose to focus on that religion will learn about its subtleties as they continue their education. The most practical way of teaching the subject is to start broad and then focus in on the detail, and looking at 'world religions' allows us to do just that. There are of course some problems with the system. The people who never studied religion, or who stopped after that first 'world religions' class, will have an incomplete picture of what Hinduism is. The categorization of 'preliterate' traditions has also lagged behind the rest, and needs to be broken up into smaller, more coherent units in order to escape from the bias attached to it.

As a complete aside, I was wondering how you guys would describe an –ism? While reading Masuzawa it was hard not to notice that Christianity is the only religion that isn't one (aside from Islam, but it was Mohammedanism when it was anglicized) I'm just wondering why that is.

What is Methodology?

I may as well start this entry by stating my own opinions on methodology before I delve into what this week’s authors have to say on the subject, and give fair warning that I have never taken a course on theory before. I think of a methodology as a matrix where a researcher can make sense of her findings. The methods used are as diverse as the number of authors writing, because everyone will use what best fits their own biases in order to best communicate their ideas. Authors will dabble in or modify a variety of methods of research in order to support their conclusions. I suppose this kind of thought process places me in the same sociologist matrix as Berger-Luckmann, and allows me to wholeheartedly agree with Huntington’s statement that “what we learn in our encounter with these texts is in every way a function of the tools we bring to our study” (Huntington, 9). While reading the articles this week, it seemed to me that both authors were critical of the use of a single, wholeheartedly endorsed methodology, and both were cognizant of the biases that inevitably come from the author and the tools he uses.

“It is necessary to dismantle the approved methodology and expose its presuppositions, rescue what is most valuable, and move on” (Huntington, 8)

Huntington’s article ‘Methodological Considerations’ focuses on the dominance of the philological and ‘proselytic’ methodologies in the field of Asian Studies. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and both rest on the concepts of an ‘objectively present tradition’ and the ‘proper application of an approved methodology’ to understand it. Huntington argues that scholars of Asian Studies have been too insular in their pursuits, and have failed to notice the criticisms of objectification and method by authors like James, Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault. While having done important work, the text-critical method neglects the meaning of the texts it translates. The text-critical scholar’s reliance on objectivity keeps him/her from realizing how their own biases affect their interpretation, since they are “not living in seventh-century India, nor do [they] share the presuppositions and prejudices of medieval Hindu society…thus [they] cannot expect on [their] own terms to engage in effortless conversation with the Madhyamika” (10). Huntington does not call for the complete rejection of the philological method, since “The problem is not whether to dispense with these valuable text-critical tools but how best to divest the philological methodology of its privileged claim to absolute hegemony in textual interpretation” (12). He also argues against interpretation being based completely in historical context, and that the philosophical views and spiritual life of both historic and present day Buddhists need necessarily be taken into account. Thus, an inter-disciplinary approach that calls into question “the presuppositions underlying any arbitrary separation of religious, philosophical, and sociological domains in the study of Buddhism” is necessary to gain a more complete picture of the Buddhist tradition (14)

“If readers leave this book simply condemning the past as peculiar, I shall have failed. But I shall have failed just as profoundly if readers draw direct answers to modern problems from the lives I chronicle” (Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 9)

Bynum is clear in the introduction of ‘Holy Feast and Holy Fast’ that one of the greatest challenges for any historian is to “[cross] the distance created by many centuries and by vastly different modern assumptions” (5). In our time-period where food is plentiful, it is difficult for us to understand the significance that eating and fasting would have had for the average medieval women. When a story surfaces that describes a fourteenth century nun who refuses to eat, is it appropriate to label her with modern terms like anorexic? Bynum describes her methodology as both functionalist and phenomenological, she explains the function of food in women’s piety and what this meant for the women themselves (6). To do this, she used the phenomenological tool of ‘bracketing’, cordoning off her own beliefs, and reading the medieval documents for what they had to say. This can be an exceptionally difficult thing to do, but your own biases and assumptions are important to realize whenever you are confronted with the strange and different.

“…historians have to learn from recourse to the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and art history” (Bynum, Fragments, 15)

Bynum wrote ‘In Praise of Fragments’ in a period of heated debate on how to best study history. The infusion of anthropological and quantitative methodologies into the discipline forced historians to question how far their studies should drift from the lives of great people and important events. It also brought into question our ability to determine historic causation while being hampered by our own modern-day prospective. In response to the debate, Bynum relates to the ideas of Lynn Hunt and finds that the ‘new cultural history’ is best seen as comic. The comic stance “is aware of contrivance, of risk. It always admits that we may be wrong…Its goal is the pluralistic, not the total. It embraces the partial as partial” (25). This is truly a brilliant way to state that no method can possibly give a complete picture of the past. Methodological debates, as well as inter-disciplinary research, are essential to the construction of good history, and the type of insularity that Huntington says plagued the Asian Studies discipline will only limit our complete understanding. Bynum’s critique of three historic authors further makes this point. She looks at the anthropological work on symbols conducted by Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz, the sociological studies of Max Weber, and Leo Steinberg’s work in art history. She places each of these works against current works in gender studies and finds that “when even the small bit we are able to retrieve about medieval women’s experience is taken into account, each modern theorist appears less universal in conclusion and implication” (16). It is all part of the whole, and all very comic.

I am generally suspicious of how useful strict adherence to a single methodology can be, and these readings didn’t alleviate me of that. I found that both authors valued an inter-disciplinary approach in order to understand the past, and that the importance of method paled in comparison to the importance of putting aside one’s own bias. So the question I leave with is; are methodological debates useful? Or is proper scholarship more like that of Bynum’s, where she writes what she thinks and sees what matrix she fits in later? (Fragments, 22)