By: Alex Nanang Agus Sifa (tugas mata kuliah Orientalism semester 3)
Prologue
The orientalist version of Islamic defined by a limited, but highly persistent, bundle of interpretative themes which have the effect of bringing into question the authenticity of Islam as religion and culture.[1]
First, there is a dominant theme of historical decay, retreat and decadence, because of which the explosive rise of Islamic society was followed by an equally rapid and total decline. The consequence is that Islam is a religion which either fails to fulfill some latent promise or which represents some retardation of the prophetic monotheism of the Abrahamic faith.
Second, the ‘failure’ of Islam is located within a broadly teleogical conception of history in which unfolding of Islam and its interruption are explained by reference to certain innate and ineradicable features of the muslim mentality, the favoured characteristic being Leibniz’s ‘Mahommedan Fate’. In the sociological version, this conception of in inherent flaw in Islamic social structure concentrates on alleged gaps in the civil society of Islam. The social stationariness and economic stagnation of Islamic society are thus connected with the absence of autonomous urban communities, a bourgeois capitalist class, achievement motivation and a systematic, but flexible , legal system.
Third, there is the orientalist notion the Islam, if not exactly defective form of Pauline Cristhianity, is then at a least parasitic and arid religion. The expansion and appeal of Islam can be partly explained by its alleged simplicity, both in theological formulation and ritual practice. While Islam typically held to be merely dependent on the Judaeo-Christian tradition in spiritual term, Islamic philosophy and natural theology are themselves highly dependent on Greek philosophy. In addition, Islamic philosophy is dependent on decadent forms of Hellenism, namely the Neo-Platonic compilations of Plotinus.
Finally, while the orientalist is professionally immersed in his or her subject, there is characteristically an emotional gap and cultural hostility which alienates the orientalist from Islam, producing a covert antipathy towards the orient. The personal distance between orientalist and Orient serves to reinforce the notion of the uniqueness of the West and the unbridgeable gulf separating Orient and occident. These persistent themes within the orientalist tradition by with ‘Islam’ is constructed and represented were deeply embedded in the diverse scholarly work of Gustave Von Grunebaum, who has become the object of both academic glorifications and critical scorn.[2]
The Bibliography of Gustave Von Grunebaum
Gustave Von Grunebaum was born in Vienna on 1 September 1909 and received his Ph.D from the University of Vienna in 1931. Having taught at the University of Vienna, he emigrated in 1938 to the United States, where he subsequently taught at the Asia Institute, New York the (1938-1943), University of Chicago (1943-1957) and as Director Of the Near Earten Center, at the University of California, Los Angeles (1957-1972). The early publications of Gustave Von Grunebaum were primarly concerned with issues in arabic poetry, but, while he never abondened his interest in arabic literature, he became known as the author of a number of influential studies of macro-cultural problems relating to the unity of Islamic history and society. These macro cultural studies included Medieval islam (1946), islam (1955) and Classical Islam (1970). He was also editor of and contributor to Unity And Variety In Muslim Civilization (1955) and The Dream Of Human Societies (1966). A bibliography of his scholarly publications lists 172 items covering the years 1936 to 1970. Gustave Von Grunebaum can therefore be regarded as a typically productive member of the European migration to the United States in the period of fascist ascendency.[3]
His Views in Islamic Concepts
Unlike the majority of academic orientalists steeped in the scholastic minutia of such problems as Averroes’ view of tragic poetry, Gustave Von Grunebaum came to appreciate the relevance of anthropological and sociological studies into the analysis of Islam. He was, for example, perceptively critical of Max Weber’s commentary on the role of Islamic town in economy and society (1968). It was, however, the cultural anthropology A. L. Kroeber which Gustave Von Grunebaum adopted as perspective on his favorite theme, that of Islamicate cultural diversity and integration.
Gustave Von Grunebaum also adopted the conceptual apparatus of Robbert Redfield’s studies of folk society which distinguished between the great tradition of the scribes and the elite, and the little tradition of the village and the illiterate mass; this dichotomy made an appearance, for example, in Gustave Von Grunebaum’s commentary on the adjustments in Islamic society of the orthodox culture to the local cult tradition. While there are those overt interest in cultural anthropology, Gustave Von Grunebaum’a work appears to depend more on Hegel’s idealism than on Kroeber’s cultularism.
As with nineteenth-century philosophers and historians, Hegel was impressed by the vigour and vitality of early Islam, but impressed also but its ‘failure’ to fulfill that early promise. Islam lacked that dialectical process by which human communities could in history achieve self-conciousness. The result was that Islam has long vanished from the stage of history at large, and has retreated into oriental ease and repose. Like Hegel, Gustave Von Grunebaum was the historian of Islamic decadence and retreat. In the preface, for example, of this classical Islam Gustave Von Grunebaum informs us that its very title implies a judgment. The classical represents a model. It is, in fact, a model whose reconstruction is by definition an obligation and an impossibility.[4]
Islamic history is the history of the divergence of an ideal community, based on holy law, prophetic guadance and uniform commitment to certain religius norms from the reality of its imperial fragmentation, the separation of legal prescription from everyday social practice and the loss of state legitemed by sacred principles. The decline of islam from the ideal embodiment of religious virtue was, in Gustave Von Grunebaum’s view, crucially bound up with the problem of its sacred law tradition which could not be rapidly developed to meet entirely new circumstances end exigencies of social development.[5] Thus,
The steady decay that, beginning as early as the ninth century ate away the strength of islam and had, by the middle of the tenth, ruined the central authority of Baghdad beyond repair compelled acquiescence in conditions only too far removed from those postulated by political theory. It may doubted whether the caliphate as designed by the legists ever had any real existence, but in the eleventh century the discrepancy between reality and ideal had become so flagrant it could not longer be overlooked by the body of believers…the believer was thought under obligation to obey whosoever held a way, be his power de jure or merely de facto.[6]
This alleged hiatus between religious ideal and power politics as manifest in the gaps in the shari’a has been a constant theme of orientalism and closely related to illegitimate government. It was, for example, fundamental to Max Weber’s view that the gap berween legal ideal and empirical reality could only be plugged in the legal system by irrational fatwa; the same orientalist thesis emerged in Bernand Lewis’ argument concerning the absence of all oppositional principles of islam. For Gustave Von Grunebaum, the rigidity of law and the gap between norm and practise manifests, not the absence of a principle of legitimete resistance, but, rather, the teleoligical failure of islam. Islam suffered from conservativism and lack of cultural integration:
Arrested in its growth during the eleventh century, it has remained an unfulfilled promise. It lost the power of subjecting the innumerable elements to an organizing idea more comprehensive than the desire for individual salvation. It stagnated in self inflicted sterility.[7]
While Gustave Von Grunebaum has been characterized as the theorist of decay, in fact his ‘islam’ is an endless repetition of the same, an urchanging religious reality of failure and decay. As a fixed cultural form, islam constantly erected barries and defences around itself in order to maintain its sacral identity against external intervention. Hence, the adjectives that Gustave Von Grunebaum unites with the word islam (medieval, classical, modern) are neutral or even super-redundent: there is not difference between classical islam and medieval islam, or just islam.
Illustrations and examples can, therefore, be taken indiscriminately and at random from any islamic society and from any point in history to demonstrate the unchanging nature of islamic reality. The indiscriminate selection of evidence and total disregard for precise periodization perfectly illustrate this Hegelianized version of islam in which any one item of culture is expressive of the totality. One single poem can illuminate the whole of islamic culture. The endlessly repetitious nature of islamic history is, for Gustave Von Grunebaum, one further aspect of islam’s capacity for cultural mimicry and social imitation. Islam is consequently treated as an endless borrowing from its pagan Arabic past, from Judaeo-Christian monotheistic theology, from Hellenistic logic and from Chinese technology. On the whole, islamic society was completely uncreative and almost without influence. Byzantine iconoclasm was not the product of islamic influences and the conventions of Arabic composition in poetry have made fot repetitiousness and a certain lack of invention. The need of maintain the authority of reveletion over reason put definite limits on the impact of Greek science and philosophy on islamic thought:
Where theory ran no risk of becoming dangerous, investigation went a head: optics, botanu, pharmacology and empirical medicine were all deeply indebted to islamic research. But the conceptual framework of late classical thought, and even Galen’s anatomy and Hellenistic astrology, remained untouched though certain part were known to be superseded.[8]
In philosophical matters, the islamic theorists remained entirely mimetic. Rational thought was confined to the elite; the philosophers were essentially translators, merely a vehicle of Greek thought. Islamic history is thus the history of failure, unfulfilled promises and cultural limitation. In terms of three fundamental criteria of civilization, islam can be seen to be a major filure.[9]
Despite the fact that orientalist normally hold that despotism in islamic society was the product of large scale irrigation works designed to insure progressive control over the physical condition of life, Gustave Von Grunebaum here decides to ignore those developments in experemintal science and technology which were apparently characteristic of islam.
When Gustave Von Grunebaum turned to problems of islam in terms of religious belief and practice, we find once more the notorious charge that islam is arid, simple and emotionally unsatisfying. In his study of ritual, it is interesting to note that Gustave Von Grunebaum employed the somewhat contemptuous notion of ‘Muhammadan Festival’. In this discussion of the ‘five pillars of islam’, Gustave Von Grunebaum’s main argument was that the simplicity of islamic practices creates a gap within which saint worship and the cult of the Prophet could develop to satisfy the emotional needs of the laity. From the point of view of a cultured scholar, however, islam appears somewhat underdeveloped, liturgically and ritually. The reason for this is not hard to discover.
Islam was born in one of the backward areas of the ancient world. The radical monotheism of its doctrine and the puritanism of its mood, combined with the aesthetic limitations of the muslim cultural heritage, left the believer satisfied with an arid, if physically exacting lituegy.
Because islam had no clergy, there was no social group of litugical specialist with an interest in ritual elaboration and innovation. Islam, from inception, was intended to be a ‘layman’s faith’ and, therefore, the beliefs and practices of the religion are ‘few and simple’, namely shahada, salat, saum and hajj. The implication of this view is that islam is an undemanding religion, placing few psychological burdens on the religious conciousness. Islam lacks, therefore, precisely that social leverage which is held to be characteristic of the Protestant ethic. Islam is a religion of cultural and psychological containment. Hence, in a passage which reads like a copy of Hegel’s comments on the orient in the philosophy of history, Gustave Von Grunebaum concluded his study of medieval islam with the authoritative pronouncement that.[10]
In short, Gustave Von Grunebaum leaves us, as the conclusion to his study of medieval islam, whit a thesis that the failure of islam was in the last analysis a failure of mind and will. This sense of fatalism, in a world determined by the iron laws of divine omnipotence, conditioned the human spirit to ‘pease and repose’. In the west, the emergence of the modern world was marked by a declaration of the active knowing mind, namely ‘ I think therefore I am’. The Cartesian revolution of philoshopic sceptisism paved the way towards modernization, which based on values of achievement and action.
A range of criticisms could be mounted against the Kroeberian perspective of Gustave Von Grunebaum. There are, for example, problems associated with the privileged status he accords to the analysis of poetry in the understanding of the islam, despite references to the little tradition, there is in fact no space in history of islam for everyday life and the world of common people. Rather, than considering detailed criticism, there are two very general objections to Gustave Von Grunebaum’s analysis which can be addressed. First, he examines islam from thw outside and indeed regards it as an academic duty to sit in judgment over islam. It is not islam in terms of elitist, normative and exacting Western criteria. The standards which signify the failure of islam would in fact also signify the failure of Christianity. The gap between the ideal of a Chistian community and the realities of political life as indicated in the controversy surrounding the church-sect typology and the compromise with state power and political violence would be a case in point. Put simply, Gustave Von Grunebaum’s perspective is coloured by prejudice and ultimately by an almost virulent dislike of islam.[11]
Second, there is a striking relationship between Gustave Von Grunebaum’s style and the repetitious, mimetic character which he ascribes to islam. His discourse is peppered by erudite references, by quaotations from a variety of philoshopical and linguistic sources and by a curious mixture of social anthropology and philology. Despite his apparent commitment to social science, there is curiously little significant intellectual development in his work, little change in his account of classical islam and little modernization of his views on islamic literature. Gustave Von Grunebaum not only repeats himself, but reproduces all the mimetic themes orientalism. The stationariness of Gustave Von Grunebaum’s discourse is ironically a fascimile of the social stationariness which allegedly characterizes islam and a mimicry of that very intellectual repose which supposedly characterised the muslim mind.
The Conclussions
Gustave Von Grunebaum was the historian of Islamic decadence and retreat. He came to appreciate the relevance of anthropological and sociological studies into the analysis of Islam. For Gustave Von Grunebaum, the rigidity of law and the gap between norm and practise manifests, not the absence of a principle of legitimete resistance, but, rather, the teleoligical failure of islam. The endlessly repetitious nature of islamic history is, for Gustave Von Grunebaum, one further aspect of islam’s capacity for cultural mimicry and social imitation. Islam is consequently treated as an endless borrowing from its pagan Arabic past, from Judaeo-Christian monotheistic theology, from Hellenistic logic and from Chinese technology. Islamic history is thus the history of failure, unfulfilled promises and cultural limitation. In terms of three fundamental criteria of civilization, islam can be seen to be a major filure. Gustave Von Grunebaum here decides to ignore those developments in experemintal science and technology which were apparently characteristic of islam. islam appears somewhat underdeveloped, liturgically and ritually. Put simply, Gustave Von Grunebaum’s perspective is coloured by prejudice and ultimately by an almost virulent dislike of islam.
REFERENCES
Banani, A., Islam And The West (International Journal Of Middle East Studies: 1975)
Grunebaum, Gustave Von, Medieval Islam; A Study In Cultural Orientation (Chicago: University of Chicago Pers, 1946)
----------, Classical Islam, A History 600-1258, trans. Katherine Watson (Chicago: Aldine, 1970)
Said, E. W., Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978)
Tunner, Bryan S. Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism (London: Routlege, 1994)
Waines, D., Cultural Anthropology and Islam; The Contribution of Gustave Von Grunebaum (Review of middle east Studies 2: 1976)
[1] A. Banani, Islam And The West (International Journal Of Middle East Studies: 1975), p. 142-147
[2] D. Waines, Cultural Anthropology and Islam; The Contribution of Gustave Von Grunebaum (Review of middle east Studies 2: 1976), p. 113-123
[3] Bryan S. Tunner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism (London: Routlege, 1994), p. 68
[4] Ibid., Bryan S. Tunner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, p. 69
[5] Ibid., Bryan S. Tunner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, p. 69
[6] Gustave Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam; A Study In Cultural Orientation (Chicago: University of Chicago Pers, 1946), p. 168
[7] Ibid., Gustave Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam; A Study In Cultural Orientation, p. 322
[8] Gustave Von Grunebaum, Classical Islam, A History 600-1258, trans. Katherine Watson (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), p. 135
[9] Mastery of nature, pubic reality and the condition of the common man have been suggested as measures of backwardness or achievement of civilization. It doesn’t require elaborate demonstration that, by these standards, the islamic world has but a small contribution to make. There never has been a concerted effort in islam to put natural resources to such use as would insure progressive control of the physical conditions of life. Inventions, discoveries and improvements might be accepted but hardly ever were searched for. Ibid., Gustave Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam; A Study In Cultural Orientation, p. 343
[10] The muslim’s world is at rest, and he is at rest within it. His immediacy to God and his acceptance of the divine order were never, during the middle ages, seriously diturbed. Resignation and dubmission to the inevitable and abdication of searching reason before the inscrutable were rewarded by the conciousness of fitting perfectly and naturally into the great preordained scheme of things that embraces mankind as it embraces the genii, the angels and the stars. The muslim knows and accepts man’s limitaions. Gustave Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam; A Study In Cultural Orientation, p. 346
[11] E. W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 297
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