Introduction
A Culture of Ambiguity by Thomas Bauer may be one of the most significant books in Islamic Studies in recent decades.[1] Originally published in German in 2011, it was not until 2021 that it was translated into English. The author’s thirty years of expertise and erudition are effortlessly displayed, earning him the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award in Germany.[2] Seldom is an academic book dripping with insights for specialists also written with enough sparkle to be enjoyed by casual readers. But this is precisely what Bauer has done.
Bauer explores the concept of ambiguity and the tolerance thereof in premodern Muslim societies, arguing that they possessed it in abundance while Modern Islam—whether of fundamentalist or liberal varieties—displays a profound lack of said tolerance due to Western influence and its colonial incursions.
Bauer explores the concept of ambiguity and the tolerance thereof in premodern Muslim societies, arguing that they possessed it in abundance while Modern Islam—whether of fundamentalist or liberal varieties—displays a profound lack of said tolerance due to Western influence and its colonial incursions. Stated in such bald terms one may be surprised that such an argument could even be made anymore, let alone be published. Yet it’s a credit to his erudition and wit that he nearly succeeds.
So how has Bauer pulled off such an argument? Surely, it must be based on stronger grounds than the intuitions of an academic, however sagacious. Rest assured, Bauer takes us on a wide-ranging tour through Classical Islam, from rites of hospitality to the boundaries of scholarly dispute, from Near-Eastern attitudes of sex to the fecundity of religious texts, from dazzling verses of poetry to clear-eyed secular politics. If, in the end, we may insist that the book’s argument is less authoritative than it appears, it’s hard not feel invigorated by what is a glorious amble through the riches of Islamic civilization.
Given its theoretical bravura, Bauer concept of ambiguity has the potential to spark a small cottage industry within Islamic Studies; it has already inspired several scholarly works, including Oliver Scharbrodt’s Muhammad Abduh: Modern Islam and the Culture of Ambiguity[3] with likely more books and Phd’s in the academic pipeline. Furthermore, it’s influence has spread beyond the confines of academic study of Islam and the humanities in general, and even beyond with academic articles dedicated to political theology[4], radicalisation studies[5] to philosophy[6], and more. Yet it is precisely due to the compelling force of Bauer’s argument that makes it necessary to closely examine limitations and insights of concept of ambiguity.
In the first part of this essay, a close reading will show that the concept of ambiguity suffers from conflating different usages without any distinction, with some usages working far better than others. By offering a taxonomy of its usage, I separate exactly what can be redeemed, and what lacks coherence from ambiguity. In the second part, I raise the question: is ambiguity a useful way to evaluate a religious tradition, and on what basis can we use ambiguity as a master key in understanding religions. I conclude by cautioning against the use of ambiguity as a conceptual schema in comparing cultures and suggest that it surreptitiously smuggles in Western presuppositions despite Bauer’s best intentions.[7]
Now this does not pretend to be anything but a critical review of Bauer, interrogating his ideas of ambiguity, its coherence and implications, and despite my best efforts in civility, there’s no hiding my polemical intent. Even so, I wish to insist that this book is a product of a fine mind and generous soul, and that I have no doubt that if anyone reads the book, they will only leave more humbled, indebted as well as greatly enriched by reading it. Without a doubt, this is a book that should be read as well as kept on a shelf.
The many varieties of Ambiguity
Bauer borrows the concept of the ‘tolerance of ambiguity’ from Else Frenkel-Brunswik. In the 1940s, Frenkel-Brunswik found that individuals who struggle with emotional ambivalence also have a high intolerance for ambiguity on a cognitive level. She proposed that there are two types of personalities – tolerant or intolerant of ambiguity – and that this orientation is a fundamental variable in psychology. Interestingly enough, her work also linked racism to an intolerance of ambiguity. More recent studies have expanded on her findings, revealing connections between ambiguity and personality traits like rigidity and dogmatism.
Perhaps a good way to appreciate the intuitive appeal of Bauer’s arguments are not facts of human cognition but rather the mundane reality that human history is overflowing with diversity. If the world is inherently complex and messy, he argues—quite plausibly—that the capacity to manage diversity is essential and the cultures that embrace ambiguity are better equipped to handle life’s complexities.
Different cultures, he argues, have unique ways of responding to ambiguity, which can reveal their distinct mentalities and cultural traits. He contrasts cultures who seek to eliminate anything smacking of equivocation, creating a black and white world of categorical truths, with those who accept the inevitable and are content to reconcile contradictory elements and ‘domesticate ambiguity.’ In cultures such as these, while unlimited ambiguity may be controlled, there is no attempt to obliterate it. For Bauer, then, cultures that tolerate, perhaps even value, ambiguity score highly; instead of seeking to eliminate it, ambiguity is domesticated and managed so one can live with it.
Between Classical and Modern Islamic attitudes to ambiguity
Only a few centuries ago, classical Islamic civilization embraced and appreciated ambiguity. In a tantalisingly brief history, Bauer shows the extent to which Islamic scholarship, and the civilization as a whole, was enchanted by ambiguity. Classical Islam did not seek to resolve contradictions but rather accepted them, even finding pleasure in the effect ambiguity produced. Language played a crucial role in Islamic scholarship, with dictionaries and studies on metaphor and poetics being extensively published. This literary training fostered scholars with supple minds, enabling them to approach problems and texts with a nimbleness and lightness of touch. By contrast, modern Islam has undergone a radical transformation, and is characterized by a lack of tolerance for ambiguity. Contemporary Muslims, whether fundamentalists or liberal reformers – and it has to be said that Bauer’s book cannot see beyond this unhelpful dichotomy – claim to possess the one true meaning of the Quran, disregarding the richness of interpretation embraced by classical scholars.
Classical scholarship viewed differences of opinions as a blessing from God, while according to Bauer, Western Orientalists and Muslim modernists misunderstand this richness as a sign of Islam’s decline. Modern Muslim scholarship focuses on identifying the correct interpretation and why others are wrong, rather than determining the most plausible one. This difference in approach illustrates the opposing perspectives of Modern and Classical Islam on the spectrum of tolerance. He notes that Western observers unfortunately often mistake the intolerance seen in Modern Islam as its true face, disregarding its once rich history.
More contentiously, in Bauer’s telling, it was the West who was to blame for all of this. He attributes this decline to devastating changes that took place in the 19th century when rhetoric vanished from school curricula. Arab liberal intellectuals began to be embarrassed about their rich tradition, and even today many look at their heritage as mere degeneracy. The denigration of their heritage is also common amongst Islamists who are convinced that all spheres must be subject to the legal rules of Islam. However, they are in fact offering what he considers an ideological representation of Islam, ‘a caricature of the West’s own ideologization and disambiguation of the world.’[8] Lamenting this tragedy, Bauer claims the Western image of Islam that blames Islam’s contemporary faults to its heritage, ‘tallies with the fundamentalists hatred of their own history, which they see as a continuous process of decline and decadence.’[9] He argues that the hatred of disambiguation lies at the root of both of these readings, and in fact originates from the West, claiming that ‘intolerance of ambiguity in modern Islam is a phenomenon of modernity’.[10]
Types of Ambiguity in Classical Islam
One of the most insightful aspects of Bauer’s study is that he demonstrates that there is more than one way to be ambiguous.[11]
a) One characteristic ambiguity of classical Islam was that of an (i) acceptance of a plurality of discourses, some of which were mutually incompatible. Bauer shows how scholarly discourses like jurisprudence and theology could exist simultaneously, setting norms that were mutually incompatible and even conflicting. Despite some scholars wanting exclusive dominance of a single discourse, say hadith or theology, the majority accepted this plurality. Over time, these discourses integrated and found middle ground positions; notably, Imam al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) integrated rationality into jurisprudence, Imam al-‘Ashʿarī (d. 324/936) blended Greek philosophy with Islamic theology, and Imam al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) incorporated Sufism into mainstream Sunnism. This process did not disregard the original positions, but rather formed a new framework where multiple positions could coexist. No opinion or position was completely invalidated; instead, they competed and coexisted with each other.
b) Another characteristic ambiguity was an (ii) acceptance of divergent interpretations, which suffused the whole gamut of classical Islamic scholarship and heritage, and according to Bauer, is one of the most salient contrasts between modern and classical scholarship. For example, classical hadith scholarship developed a sophisticated theory of probability, while modern scholarship aims toward simplification and tends to view various sound, acceptable, and weak interpretations as only dichotomously true or false. Classical scholars recognized that ambiguity was unavoidable, but they were dedicated to curbing it and shepherding this ambiguity into a manageable system that guaranteed legal reliability. However, the capacity of classical scholarship to negotiate between competing shades of grey, did not survive modernity and it not only vanished but was replaced with an Islam that displayed hostility towards this rich heritage.
c) Finally, the last characteristic ambiguity was the acceptance of (iii) ambiguous texts, actions, and places, the potential to ascribe to one text, action or place different meanings. According to Bauer, ‘the ambiguous text par excellence is the Quran’[12]; said to be revealed in variant readings and given the fecundity of its language, its verses bear so many interpretations.
But enough of theory, let’s see how Bauer applies ambiguity to action, to texts and cultures, and even to civilizations.
Ambiguity in Action
There is a stark contrast in rigor when Bauer discusses classical scholarship and making broad generalizations about contemporary Islam. It is unclear whether this disparity is intentional or unintentional, but I suggest that there is a deeper confusion about the concept of ambiguity. Usefully for us, Chapter 8—The Serene Look at the World—exhibits both types of ambiguity in quick succession. To demonstrate what I mean, let’s explore how Bauer discusses secular attitudes in political writing and compare it with his discussion of Islamic attitudes towards foreigners.[13]
Misreading the Political Tradition
Bauer argues that Islamist understanding of politics are founded on three precepts: a) there is only one set of political norms, b) it can only be an Islamic one, and c) there can only be one system. They hold these precepts as self-evident and that the Muslim community always regarded them as so, and when the community no longer held these precepts to be true, they experienced profound despair. Alternatively, Bauer argues that there have historically always been varied discourses on politics, the state, and political rule in the Islamic world. He contends that religious and secular assumptions have constantly informed each other.
The great Shāfiʿī jurist, theologian, Quranic commentator, Imam al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) is now mostly famous for his book on al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya, Islamic Rulings on Government, a compendium of legal rulings concerning state power. Many modern Muslims regard it as the central text to understand how Islamic politics. Bauer disagrees, arguing that this misreads the tradition. Law in fact was only one discourse amongst the plurality of discourses that surrounded governance and statecraft. Al-Māwardī’s legal treatise can be seen as a contribution to the existing plurality of discourses, as a summation of the thoughts of jurists. Rather than a theory of the state, it should be understood as a compilation of relevant legal thinking that was hitherto scattered. Bauer argues that Al-Māwardī played a crucial role as the originator of political discourse among jurists, even as he acknowledges the authority of other existing discourses. Unbeknownst to modern Muslims, these discourses both preceded the legal discourse of politics, and coexisted alongside it, influencing and being influenced by others in turn.
Jumping 300 years, Bauer points to the existence of numerous discourses: (1) the theological discourse; (2) the legal discourse of the jurists; (3) the wholly secularized panegyric discourse of the poets, (4) historiography, (5) the genre of mirrors-for-princes, and finally (6) philosophical discourses. Contrary to modern Islamists who insist that religion ought to control politics, what we find in fact is that classical scholarship consists of ‘a coexistence of different, apparently irreconcilable discourses.’[14] Bauer argues that the best understanding of politics in the Islamic tradition would not focus on al-Māwardī or texts generated by ulama alone; rather, understanding Islamic political thinking requires a familiarity with all the discourses mentioned.
Instead of showing that rulers did not impinge on religious law, he establishes how other discourses impinged on law. Unlike Islamists or Orientalists, he doesn’t focus on 1) theological or 2) legal discourses, rather he offers examples of 3) secularized panegyric poetry, and 5) mirrors-for-princes genre. He argues that these genres were more representative, being more abundant and more closely aligned to the courts of secular authorities. He sets off on a virtuoso tour of Ibn Nubāta Miṣrī (d. 768/1366) the leading poet and prose stylist of his time, who composed ‘mirror-to-princes’ poetry. Bauer is at his best when dissecting the literary arts, and he makes some striking observations.
Bauer argues there was something akin to a secular sphere within Islamic governance, he notes that ‘in the panegyric discourse, religion does not play a role, not even in the legitimation of the ruler’.[15] This is evidenced by the absence of religious references when the local prince is crowned as Caliph and heir to the Prophet. He infers from this, a tad strongly, that religion appears irrelevant to politics for both the prince and the public. Moreover, the poem’s depiction of the prince’s rule lacks any religious elements, focusing instead on the prince’s responsibility for the country’s wealth, security, and order, without establishing an Islamic state or applying Islamic law.
Despite the prince growing older and becoming more devout, Ibn Nubāta’s poetry consistently reflects a political vision. It is evident on Ibn Nubāta’s part that the qualities required for good rulership are not specifically religious virtues but martial ones. Despite the prince’s religious fervour, religion and politics are portrayed as separate spheres in the poetry, and according to Bauer, again a tad strongly, that ‘for [Ibn Nubāta], politics and religion simply do not have anything to do with each other.’[16]
In Ibn Nubāta’s mirror-to-the-princes poem, a literary genre where political advice is expressed as advice to the ruler, few religious motivations, if any, are hard to discern. Unlike other religiously motivated ‘mirrors’ it makes striking omissions. There is no mention of normative religious text, nor is religion a giver of norms. When suitable role models are offered, none of them are religious role models such as scholars or companions, and even the Prophet are noticeably absent.
For Ibn Nubāta, the only thing that counts is success. It’s no surprise then that many of his maxims impinge on the divine law. Every maxim presents a historical example, from the Ayyubids, Abbasids, and Buyids, and if lessons can be taken, then he is not shy of presenting the Christian Prince of Aragon as an example. On the other hand, there is no mention of didactic fables or stories from Persians or Greeks. Bauer argues that for Ibn Nubāta, history is the final teacher, and we should read his vision of politics as being consistently empirical.
Bauer assures us that Ibn Nubāta was not impious and actually wrote a generous amount of poetry venerating the Prophet Muhammad. He also transmitted Ibn Hishām’s biography of the Prophet and was renowned for possessing short chains of Prophetic narration. However, he argues that in politics, these religious aspects are irrelevant as politics and religion are separate spheres. Instead, Bauer rather boldly concludes, something worth quoting in full, ‘Religion does not provide norms for the execution of politics, nor does religious advancement appear as an aim of political action. Religion is merely the object of a kind of politics that uses religion as a means to contribute to the success of the ruler and the welfare of his subjects.’[17] Politics, for Ibn Nubāta at least, seems to call for the ‘domestication of religion rather than its advancement’.[18] It’s important to note that he is careful to state that Ibn Nubāta’s political vision was not atypical. When Ibn Nubāta’s shows politics ‘as an autonomous sphere that derives none of its norms of action from religion’, no known religious scholars were known to protest.[19]
Critics may offer a different explanation; it may simply be that classical Islam mapped the religious and secular differently to ourselves. However, this only concedes Bauer’s point. He argues that modern Islamist discourse ought not be seen as the authentic heirs to the Islamic political tradition. Instead, these multiple co-existing discourses gave rise to a ‘perspectival understanding’, as Bauer puts it, ‘sometimes pollinating each other, sometimes rivalling and even fighting against each other, but always reined in by the knowledge that one single perspective can never claim the whole truth for itself’.[20] Only when modernity collided with the Islamic world did this perspectival understanding melt away. The Ottomans sought to combine religious and secular authority, and later Islamist ideologues like Syed Abul A’la Mawdudi (d. 1399/1979) and Sayyid Qutb (d. 1386/1966) insisted on a homogenized Islamic perspective across all aspects of society. This transition eliminated classical Islam’s tolerance for ambiguity. At this point, Bauer concludes, classical Islam’s tolerance for ambiguity has been eliminated.
Yet should a Westerner feel giddy that a basis for a secularism has been authentically traced back to the Islamic tradition, reviving hopes that a Muslim Enlightenment will finally prevail? On this, Bauer leaves us with an important qualifier. Historically, compared to Europe, there has been a different relationship between secular authority and religious clerisy. In the Islamic past, the clerisy’s autonomy allowed them to challenge political power and defend the rights of common people. However, current dictatorships in Muslim countries tend to be alliances between the executive, the military and liberal upper-class elites who are the heirs of Ibn Nubata’s vision. According to Bauer, this is why the politically powerless masses often perceive Islamist parties as better representing their interests compared to corrupt secular parties tied to the military and upper classes. Even if a robust secular conception of politics existed in the Islamic world, secularity may not be the important condition for democratic reform that Westerners think it is. As Bauer ominously warns, ‘Ibn Nubāta’s secular “Machiavellian” concept may be appealing because it is secular, but democratic [author’s italics] it is not.’[21]
There is much to admire about Bauer’s analysis. Budding Islamists would do well to read and learn from his forebears. The point is clear: anyone who wants to argue seriously that secular thought is inauthentic, or at best marginal to the tradition, must present an answer that integrates a fair body of literature that says otherwise. Even more significantly, Bauer argues that the Islamist mindset rests on a mistake; they restrict themselves to the legal and theological discourses, whilst ignoring or being unaware of other historically Islamic discourses. This results in a narrow mindset preventing them from appreciating a rich, polyvalent discussion, but instead generating a diminished vision where there is nothing but Islamic law and theology everywhere.
Of course, Islamists may respond by repudiating secularism on the basis of normativity. Just because Muslims did something before—in this case secular politics—does not make it acceptable for them nor for us.
Yet such an argument begs the question; it assumes that secular politics is wrong when in fact this is what needs to be argued. Firstly, if Bauer is indeed right that such a secular political vision existed amongst the governing classes, then this is in need of explanation. Putting it differently, if Islam rejects secularisation, then how can we explain its stubborn persistence? Any response needs to integrate the fact and reality of the Islamic secular[22], and to do this we need to consider historical evidence, legal opinions of the scholars, as well as the silence of religious authority. Secondly, careful readers will note that such an objection is concealing a subtle if unmistakable shift in argument: we have moved from a) ‘the Islamic civilization was never secular, and this entails that our contemporary political life must expunge a secular vision in order to be authentically Islamic’, to one that argues b) ‘for our political public life to be authentically Islamic, we must return to our early forebears who did not besmirch their political vision with secularity, even if later the Classical Islamic civilisation did so.’ These two arguments are not the same; the latter argument (b) is on far weaker grounds, raising doubts in a way that the former does not.
Whatever you think of Bauer’s analysis, this is a carefully worked argument. Unfortunately, in the very same chapter, we have very different types of explanations. We discover Bauer’s treatment of cultural attitudes towards ‘foreignness’ and xenophobia, differ significantly in their strength and rigor.
Foreignness and Classical Islam
Bauer argues that in classical Islam, foreigners were seen as outsiders and that this attitude was more benign and moderate compared to other cultures. The Islamic world did not have a strong drive for conformity before the First World War because their understanding of foreigners was different from that of the modern West.
The foreigner occupied a third category, neither friend nor enemy, and this third space is reflective of the tolerance of ambiguity that prevailed in the pre-colonial Near East. Foreignness in Arab civilization was not a characteristic of origin, lineage, race, or language, but an emotional definition, it was an individual who ‘feels’ himself to be foreign. It was not related to a specific geographical place and could change over time. The status of being foreign was based therefore on the individual’s perspective and their sense of belonging.
Bauer argues that a close reading of Arabic literature suggests that ‘foreigners’ were not perceived to be in opposition to ‘natives’, and therefore it was impossible to perceive foreigners as a collective threat, leading to a lack of xenophobia in everyday life. Prejudices did of course exist, but they did not escalate into discrimination and violence because they did not threaten the identity of the native population. It is no surprise then that the category of the foreigner in the Near-East cannot be found.
In the pre-colonial Near East, foreigners were treated as individuals rather than a collective. They could be taken advantage of, or shown empathy and familiarity. The foreigner was never seen as having a collective identity that could oppose the native sense of self. In addition, single groups of foreigners could never establish a collective identity. As long as the foreigner does not appear as the enemy, he would not be perceived as belonging to a distinct category. For the high level of social tolerance in the Islamic world, the most important precondition was the high level of tolerance of ambiguity: “[I]n the Islamic world, the ambiguity of the foreigner who is neither friend nor foe, and who simultaneously belongs and does not belong, simply was not perceived as a problem.”[23] This tolerance extended to interacting with people of different colours, religions, and languages both within and outside of their country.
While today, Jews and Christians are oft regarded as being discriminated against in the Middle East, Bauer argues that historically at least, the reality was more complex. Religious minorities were part and parcel of the fabric of Islamic society and integrated as part of a wider Ummah, even if by definition they held a secondary if not quite second-class status. In a civilization that defined itself as an Islamic community, it would not be possible to give Non-Muslims a primary rank. This led to a situation of ambiguity, that characteristic of classical Islam, rather than seeking to eliminate this ambiguity, sought to domesticate. This was done by granting these communities a legal status, making them part of the legal order, and legitimate part of society, and yet excluded from the various restrictions that applied only to Muslims, as well as given privileges such as their own jurisdictions and courts. As Bauer puts it, “The ambiguity of belonging and not belonging was dissolved in a way that integrated ambiguity itself [author’s italics]. The not-belonging became part of the belonging.”[24] Even as they were outside of the religious identity these religious minorities were integral to rural and urban communities. Bauer is not slow to point out how successful such a policy has been, “[F]or a thousand years, this model appears to have been one of the most successful ones for regulating the integration of population groups that did not share the core characteristic by which a society defined itself.”[25] The large numbers of religious minorities present in the Muslim world, both in villages as well as towns, all the way up to the World War I, was a fitting testament to the resilience and role that minorities had in the pre-Colonial Middle East, and contrasted starkly with the situation in Europe.
In contrast to the pre-colonial Middle East, the modern West establishes foreignness through the law. Yet even if a foreigner attains citizenship, they may still be considered a foreigner to society. Integration in the modern West often involves assimilation, a process by which a foreigner should excise all foreign ‘bad’ elements and feed any ‘good’ ones into the wider economy. The language of integration, “to acclimatize oneself, to fit oneself into, to familiarize oneself, to fall into line, to follow someone/something…to adapt oneself, to accustom oneself, to conform to, to get used to”[26] is contrasted with the Arabic concept of ‘inas’ defined as, ‘bringing about familiarity’[27] that natives or better still residents offer to person who ‘feels’ foreign. In the pre-colonial Middle East, foreignness is the ‘subjective feeling of feeling foreign’ and is cured by feeling at home in a new place, whilst in the Modern West, the foreigner is given additional and necessary burden of having to conform to the surrounding society through assimilation, adjustment, and blending in.
Bauer highlights the tolerant and ambiguous nature of the pre-colonial Near East towards foreigners compared to the modern West. The lack of a collective foreigner category and the acceptance of ambiguity allowed for social tolerance and integration of minorities in the Islamic world, in a way that was scarcely imaginable to the West.
The Mysterious Centrality of Arabic to Ambiguity
No one can accuse Bauer of lacking in confidence, he genially makes generalizations about civilizations based solely on interpretation of texts. However, it is debatable whether his interpretations of Arabic writings are sufficient to reveal the cultural attitudes of an entire civilization.
There is a fundamental mystery at the heart of Bauer’s analysis, what exactly is the relationship between the concept of foreignness and the Arabic language. If Islamic attitudes toward the foreigners are captured in Arabic texts, to what extent is the presence of such attitudes amongst the masses dependent on the spread and penetration of Arabic amongst the laity? Are such attitudes towards foreigners solely reliant on the spread of the Arabic language in the Muslim world? Do these ideas extend beyond Arabic-speaking scholars to other Islamicate languages like Persian and Turkic? Furthermore, how do these ideas coexist with local cultures and their own notions of foreignness?
These basic research questions need to be addressed in order to determine the validity of Bauer’s claims. How such questions could be tackled is not wholly clear, dependent as we are on such fragmentary historical evidence, much of which has not survived. Yet if that is the case there seems to be a mismatch between the slight evidentiary base and the confidence in his bold conclusions? This is hardly what you would call rigorous scholarship. To prove Bauer’s argument, consistent attitudes towards foreigners must be found throughout Islamic scholarship and civilization as it gradually diffused and was internalized by different peoples and cultures. This task is significantly more difficult than examining the Arabic and Persian body of literature for neglected secularity. Yet, the reader would not discern that this is a far more tenuous argument, as Bauer doesn’t even hint at qualifications or caveats, as his argument cheerfully ambles on.
Compare this with Bauer’s analysis of political discourses of Ibn Nubāta. To examine if there indeed exists a native Islamic secularity as indicated by Ibn Nubāta, we need to scour archives, study forgotten manuscripts, and integrate hitherto neglected primary sources, and start making links between different conversations with the multiple discourses as Bauer would suggest. While it is natural to ask just how representative his chosen texts are, these are empirical questions that can be investigated to determine the validity of his arguments. Similarly, we can investigate whether the seven discourses exist or not, and how exactly ideas of secularity and religiosity can be deduced or mapped on through empirical investigation of courtly poetry and other sources.
Discourse ambiguity arguments are at their best when they rely on textual evidence that can support, weaken, bolster, or refute these claims. By contrast, Islamic cultural ideas of foreignness present a different challenge. The arguments on Islamic attitudes towards strangers may be elegant and ambitious, but they are far more speculative and harder to demonstrate empirically.
Suspect and Reductive Causal Explanations[28]
Not only are Bauer’s arguments difficult to prove empirically, he is guilty of offering reductive and dissatisfying historical explanations. The concept of tolerance of ambiguity is presented as an uncomplicated explanation for numerous complex phenomena and a running theme of the book is that in every instance in which he can tender multiple causes, he invariably offers only ambiguity.
Consider his argument that classical Islam’s tolerant attitude towards minorities not only prevented Muslim colonial ventures but also affected the West’s imperial expansion. According to him, Islam’s relaxed approach towards foreigners led to a marked lack of interest in other countries and peoples outside of the Muslim world. They were neither seen as a threat nor a source of enrichment. This, he claims, explains why the Islamic world did not conquer the world while the West did.
How seriously are we to consider the link between world conquest, colonialism and Islamic cultural attitudes towards foreigners? To say that the concept of ambiguity is doing a lot of work here is to put it mildly. To be fair there is a hint of truth in this; many historians are very quick to note the cultural attitudes that impelled many a European to travel the world in conquest commerce and glory[29]. Similarly, when historians discuss Chinese superior maritime technology, they often point to the culture of ambivalence in the Ming Court to explain why the Chinese did not pursue a belligerent imperialism.[30] In this sense, Bauer may be justified in explaining why Muslims did not conquer the world as a result of cultural reasons, attitudes he claims are intrinsic to the Arabic language, in this case a certain Muslim indifference to foreigners.
On the other hand, this supposed absence of Muslim cultural attitudes didn’t seem to stop the early conquests expanding rapidly Islamic empire from the Arab peninsula and reaching Spain within fifty years of the religion’s founding, and to three continents – from the Pyrenees to China – in less than 150 years.[31] Were these early Islamic conquests, often led by Companions of the Prophet, in alignment with Arab attitudes to foreigners, or was the spirit of these victories a betrayal of them? And to add a further wrinkle, given the later Ottoman conquests eventually hammered at the gates of Vienna, celebrated in various Turkish modern-day dramatisations so popular across the Muslim world, can we explain these conquests as a manifestation of a specific Turkic attitude towards the foreigner, or was their martial spirit a revival of the early Islamic conquests?[32] It is clear then, that Bauer is using Ambiguity to explain a great deal with very little; the merest smattering of Islamic history is sufficient to leave us questioning how sound the causal relations he offers.
That such a broad brushed explanation is not an exception to the rule can be seen in what may be a minor but typical example Bauer uses to marshal his broader thesis. He introduces his discussion of sex and sexuality, by claiming that while homosexual practice was condemned, the partner who penetrated was not considered homosexual, and so these practices were rationalised as acceptable in large portions of the Near East. He adds that classical Islam had radically different understanding of gender than previously assumed, akin to the tolerance seen in modern Western societies. On other hand, he notes that modern Islamic cultural attitudes enforce a heteronormative narrative, suggesting that this is an aberration from its classical Islamic heritage.
Somewhat predictably, Bauer attributes the spread of these heteronormative values to Victorian prudery and blames the influence of Enlightenment and Western imperialism. To illustrate, he quotes the jurist and statesman Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (d. 1312/1895), “ever since then the well-known love for and relationships with the young men of Istanbul was transferred to young women as the natural order of things,” and this change of behaviour was caused by encountering “the disapproval of foreigners.”’ Bauer takes this as evidence of Europeans spreading prudery and intolerance, and an evident change in the ‘ways of thinking and behaving that had already become noticeable, at least in the circles that had the most intensive contact with Europeans.’
Let’s examine Bauer’s example a bit deeper: what is going on exactly? On the surface such a claim would seem a typical example of a transference of values that Bauer uses on multiple occasions to explain how classical Islam had effectively been corrupted by European contact. Yet let us step back for a moment to acknowledge how extraordinary such an incident is, after all we have one religious tradition reforming another. For Bauer, such a radical shift in morals can be explained by mere ‘exposure’ or ‘contact’. One assumes that Ottoman elites were so captivated with the West, as well as motivated by a desire to reclaim their place as leading lights of civilisation, they aspired to mimic them not only in military issues, but also in the private realm, leading to their adoption of Western social morals.
Yet such an explanation seems too simplistic and before accepting such a mono-causal explanation we need to consider it further. While it’s not implausible that exposure to prudish Western elites could’ve led to a reticence of certain practices amongst Ottoman elites, what needs explaining is how the censure of ‘infidels’ had led to a such radical shift in their value system, a change in ‘the natural order of things.’ After all, why would feelings of material inferiority lead to a selective transformation of social values, the movement of affection from boys to girls, yet not affect their acceptance of polygeny or concubinage, both of which were very much against Victorian values. It is hard not to conclude that there is something missing in Bauer’s explanation.
Careful readers may wonder if there already existed dissenting currents that were intolerant of such ‘deviant’ practices and were such practices sanctioned by all and sundry? The idea of heteronormativity being originally a Western value and introduced to the Islamic world, is a positively bizarre notion to anyone who has even the most cursory studies of Islamic texts. Whilst homosexual practices may have existed, there is little dispute that sacred texts as well as 1400 years of jurisprudence were near-unanimous in their condemnation of them, hence the need to ‘reconcile’ such practices in the first place.[33] Furthermore, Ahmed Dallal notes in Islam without Europe[34] that more than a few revivalist movements and thinkers had emerged across the islamic world before contact with Europe, from India to North Africa, that called for a renewal of commitment to texts and their proper practices despite deviant popular beliefs and folk practices. Dallal is careful to demonstrate these movements predate or were concurrent to the Wahabi revival – often presented as the progenitor to such reform movements – and notes the simultaneous rise of Neo-Sufism emerging in disparate parts of the Muslim world. Indeed the Ottomans had their own reformist, even fundamentalist movement, the Kadizadeli movement that predated the Wahhabi movement.[35] What we find then is a complex swirl of discussion and debate in the Muslim world about renewing commitment to sacred text and practice already taking place before contact by the West, and further stimulated by political and military defeat.[36]
Clearly, then it is not difficult for staunch Victorian evangelists to quote religious scripture condemning homosexual practices. Yet it is notable that these scriptures could not condemn polygeny or concubinage, which they were also trenchantly against and did not show any sign of stopping. And there is a further clue in the Pasha’s quote; we have not just a shift from the object of affections, from boys to girls, but he was struck by the astonishing speed that this shift took place. It’s almost as if the natural order in the Ottoman world-view was already predicated on a heteronormativity, and this order was deeply embedded in religious scripture. Putting it more simply, it’s clear that Europeans were invoking existing Islamic values rather than spreading new Western ones.
Yet how can we explain outsiders, especially foreigners, being a trigger to such extraordinary change in the ‘ethical natural order’? Well it’s not difficult to present examples of outsiders being harbingers of change. Consider the following anecdote from Kevin A Reinhardt’s Lived Islam,[37] which describes how advice-giving worked among the scholars in premodern times. In his recorded memoirs Ibn Battūtah (d. 769/1386), he not only observed and recorded norms and customs throughout the Islamic world, but he also enforced and corrected behaviour through his travels. Whilst travelling to Baghdad, Ibn Battūtah relates an illuminating incident when he visited a local bathhouse and was shocked by the immodest dressing. Outraged, he complained to the local governor to take severe action against those responsible, who subsequently did so.
Does anyone suppose, as Reinhardt notes, that the governor had no personal knowledge of local bathhouse customs, or that none of his entourage ever went to the local baths? Or that no local judge ever went to the baths? Yet when an outsider, a well-travelled scholar complained, the governor felt compelled to act. Reinhart remarks that Ibn Battūtah interceded to change local practice as an outsider and so, in some important sense, was a more efficacious bearer of Islamic norms, and more effective in influencing local practices. Similarly, it is more than possible that prudish Victorians, despite being Westerners and outsiders to the faith, were more successful in interceding in local practices and upholding Islamic norms, not as much because of their material superiority, but due to their shared identity as followers of the Abrahamic book and being able to invoke current Islamic scriptures against such practices, especially in the midst of febrile atmosphere of debate and discussion in how to revive Ottoman political, military and religious fortunes.
To be clear, I am not offering historical causal relation, I’m not saying this is what happened; rather, I believe there is more to Bauer’s example than meets the eye. The rich discourse of Near Eastern sexuality should not be reduced to such a simple example, even if it appeals to contemporary Western sexual preconceptions. What is required is a more thorough examination of how Ottoman discourse on sexuality evolved. In other words, readers deserve a richer, more careful account than the one offered by Bauer.
Yet such a causal relation is not atypical in the book, Bauer offers numerous examples to buttress his historical narrative, many of whom exhibit similar suspect causal relations; with little offered in terms of alternative explanations or discussion of any other relevant factors. Indeed the primary explanation he offers why Modern Islam is so different from its classical heritage is because Europeans spread their nefarious Enlightenment certainties and corrupted ambiguous-loving Muslim Orientals. One can’t help wonder the extent to which Bauer shoe horns ambiguity to fit the discussion, omitting a fair number of inconvenient facts in the process. Indeed in a delicious irony, he appears to be guilty of what he accuses Islamists of earlier, whereas they cannot but see politics everywhere; Bauer appears to find ambiguity wherever he rests his eyes.
A Polemic on Civilisations
Classical Islam inhabited the Old World, whose components were an earlier version of globalisation, an interconnected web of commerce, communication and cultural exchange. While it was not without violence, Bauer considers the Old World to possess Zygmunt Bauman’s post-modern ideal, “an acceptance of ineradicable plurality of the world; plurality which is not a temporary station on the road to the not-yet attained perfection . . . a station sooner or later to be left behind—but the constitutive quality of existence.”[38] Bauer continues, that the pre-modern world was characterized by an acceptance of plurality, and quoting Bauman once again filled by “a resolute emancipation from the characteristically modern urge to overcome ambivalence and promote the monosemic clarity of the sameness.”[39] According to Bauer at least, this is an ideal world.
The concept of foreignness is essential in construction of such a world because according to Bauer, “history also shows that the apperception of foreignness and the attitude toward the foreign(er) is an essential— perhaps the essential—factor in the success or failure of a “modernity reconciled to its own impossibility—and determined, for better or worse, to live with it.”[40] And so we finally begin to understand why foreignness as a topic was fit to discuss in a book about Classical Islam. It seems that the Modern West can learn something from Classical Islam, that without a proper attitude towards foreignness, we can never hearken to a world that accepts plurality, similar to the way the pre-modern World did.
So whilst it seems that Bauer regards the idea of the postmodern era as a ‘hope for the future’, and certainly as an improvement from the Modern desire to overcome ambivalence, in comparison to both, the pre-modern Islamic world embraced ambiguity and was tolerant in reality. As such classical Islam is a concrete model for the West, and presumably everyone else, to make a success of the unfinished project of modernity. Now to this, I must admit, I wasn’t really expecting in a history about classical Islam. And as eloquent as all this is, I’m not sure how much insight it provides in what is ostensibly an historical enquiry, as opposed to a polemic about Bauer’s preferred screed on modernity, an offering to our enduring Culture Wars.
Our befuddlement only increases when considering his account of why classical Islam’s tolerance towards ambiguity was progressively lost. Bauer suggests that this radical discontinuity was a result of Western influence rather than inherent in Islam itself. The Enlightenment generated and promoted a quest for certainty and universality and a skepticism for anything less than the Truth. With Western colonialism, these ideas travelled by way of militarily dominant empires that were able to colonize and subjugate the Near East and most of the Islamic world. Modernists and various reformists imbibed the Western culture that they were exposed to, awestruck both by their material achievements, as well by being educated by Western schooling. Both liberal intelligentsia and scholars, wittingly or otherwise, adopted Western Cartesian notions of certainty and skepticism, values that gradually led to a rigid, frigid, and dogmatic religious discourse. The modernists and fundamentalists that succeeded them could not help but find fault with their own tradition borne from a radically different temper. For Bauer, this accounts why Modern Islam drastically lost its capacity to tolerate ambiguity, and ceased to be authentic to the traditional Islamic civilization that came before it.
While there is more than a hint of truth in this account, Bauer’s account can be more accurately described as a polemic criticizing Western Modernity. The author’s reliance on the Enlightenment and Western imperialism as an ultimate explanation is not only an oversimplification, but also frankly rather tired. The idea that without the influence of the West there would be no reason for reform in Muslim societies is not only patently untrue, it fails to explain the presence of reformers predating the intrusion of the West.[41] The impetus towards reform had multiple intricate factors that go beyond a small group of scholars adopting Western values. It also denies the agency of Muslim scholars and publics to navigate cataclysmic changes in their own lifetime, from invasion to subjugation to fully fledged colonialism. Bauer’s offering the loss of tolerance of ambiguity as a wholesale explanation to account for the various transformations in cultural dynamics, changes in the generation of Islamic law, changes in values towards sex and sexuality and much more, is hard to take seriously. Clearly there was much more going on, much of which had little to with ambiguity.
As enjoyable as Bauer’s A Culture of Ambiguity is, it can be hardly described as a reliable account borne out of sober nuanced scholarship about why contemporary Islam is so different from classical Islam. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised why Bauer’s reductive account attracts such excitement in certain quarters; it is harder to explain why his alternative history has not been placed under more rigorous consideration. One reason is that A Cultural of Ambiguity reproduces views of Enlightenment, Western Modernity, and post-modern mores fashionable in the academy. As such Bauer has had little need to defend his ideas, merely to invoke them; it’s clear that his audience are aware of them, and heartily agree. Yet anyone with a smattering knowledge of modernity and the complicated history of reform that the Muslim world underwent, will recognize A Culture of Ambiguity for what it is: a depiction better characterised as a caricature of modern reformist movements and polemic against Western modernity than it is an alternative history.[42]
A Taxonomy of Ambiguity; the Chaff from the Wheat;
All in all, this is a dissatisfying state of affairs. Even Bauer’s academic supporters would surely concede all of his arguments are not equally grounded. Lay readers on the other hand, will find it hard to differentiate Bauer’s rigorous analysis on Islamic secularity from what is a tenuous polemic on foreigners and xenophobia, even more so when they are presented side by side, without skipping a beat, conveyed as they are in dulcet tones. Indeed it is in recognition of power of the concept of ambiguity as well as his deep scholarship and erudition, we must carefully distinguish between Bauer’s scholarship and when he indulges in sagacity.
So what do we do with all this?, how do we salvage the redeemable from what is less so? One way is by noting how many of the above arguments are different types of claims precisely because they traverse very different domains. Indeed it suggests, there appears to be a deeper confusion on the limits of ambiguity as a usable concept. With this in mind I offer the following classification: a) discourse ambiguity, b) ambiguity as an explanation for cultural attitude; c) ambiguity as an ethical marker of civilization.
A) Discursive Ambiguity
Ambiguity works at its best when Bauer offers a close reading of text, discourse, a discipline, and with his erudition and delicate sensibility reveals the sophistication that classical scholarship attained. He convincingly demonstrates, for want of a better term, the discursive ambiguity that exists in Islamic scholastic disciplines be that in the disciplines of the Quranic sciences, of hadeeth, language, and political discourses. This ambiguity encompasses interpretation, textual ambiguity, analysis of discourses, and their relationships. What is common with this kind of ambiguity is that the claims are modest, with a definitive body of evidence and open to be empirically demonstrable, focusing on description and analysis rather than evaluation.
B) Tolerance towards ambiguity as a socio-cultural explanation
Bauer is determined to offer a tolerance of ambiguity, or lack of, as a key explanation of various cultural attitudes in the Islamic world. Contrasting with contemporary attitudes, he argues that classical Islam was more accepting of ambiguity. Yet ambiguity as a workable concept is far less sure-footed when applied to the realm of culture, rather than closely analyzing various discourses. The manner in which ambiguity is used to explain cultural attitudes are not only difficult to establish but invariably dissatisfying. He is too often guilty of using ambiguity as a sole explanation for complex phenomena without exploring other possible causes. Moreover, whilst cultural attitudes towards ambiguity may partially influence cultural attitudes, his analysis invariably tends to oversimplify. Hard not to conclude that Bauer’s analysis of cultural attitudes raises more problems than they solve.
C) Ambiguity as an ethical master-key
Bauer’s comparing the respective merits of classical Islam to Enlightenment or contemporary Islam are ultimately ethical claims. For Bauer, insofar as a culture, a civilisation, or a religious tradition exhibits a tolerance towards ambiguity, it is not merely worthy of praise, but is superior to other cultures, civilizations, or religious tradition with less tolerance. Whilst such a claim may have intuitive appeal, such claims are worth looking at more closely as we will in the following section. Now, of course Bauer is perfectly entitled to make such claims, yet clearly at some point there has been interpellation of his own ethical views and personal prejudices and his scholarship, and we can question how authoritative his ethical claims are.
Presented in this way, people may argue that I’ve perhaps straw-manned Bauer, for clearly this is not the way ambiguity is presented in the book. Yet in some ways it is precisely because he unwittingly uses his three kinds of ambiguity indiscriminately, that an illuminating concept is rendered arguably incoherent. It is out of a wish to redeem what is usable in the concept of ambiguity that I felt the need to clearly delineate what can be salvaged to what must in the end be left behind.
*******
Let us take a moment to see see where the argument has taken us; the reason we seem to jump from controversial ethical claims to tight scholarship, to deeply dissatisfying historical analysis, all in one breath, is because Bauer fails to distinguish when ambiguity can be to be used, and when it reaches the limit of its utility. I offer a taxonomy to help us distinguish why some arguments work better than others, and explain how ambiguity is better suited in some research projects than others.
In what we covered above, we have seen that the concept of ambiguity is applicable in discourse analysis but becomes less grounded when extended to other areas, such as uncovering broader cultural attitudes or serving as a marker of civilizational ethics. It is important to distinguish between the different domains where ambiguity can be applied to better understand and evaluate Bauer’s arguments.
In the next section we will examine more closely the concept of tolerance as an ethical marker of civilization, and interrogate the ethical grounds that form the basis of Bauer’s ideas of ambiguity.
Ambiguity as the Master Key
By now we have grounds for doubting how well cultural ambiguity works as a socio-cultural explanation. In this section I want to examine Bauer’s use of ambiguity as a master-key to evaluate different religions and cultures.
An Alternative History
Let’s start off by distinguishing between two statements:
a) Cultural societies vary in tolerance,
vs.
b) We should evaluate traditions based on tolerance.
These statements are not equivalent. The former is stating a claim, which is presumably verifiable through historical research and record, and suggests that cultures display different levels of tolerance relative to one another; whilst the latter is tantamount to viewing tolerance as a determining factor in considering a civilization as ethically praiseworthy or not. Embedded in claim (b) is a judgement or presupposition that tolerance is a/the superior criterion by which to assess culture or tradition. This is ambiguity as a master-key. Some may say, what is wrong with that? After all, isn’t tolerance of ambiguity precisely the kind of criteria by which a tradition ought to be measured against, perhaps even a marker of religion’s truth or at least its participation in truth? Be that as it may, this is rather an odd state of affairs; we seem to have here Bauer presenting his ethical beliefs as an objective criteria in a scholarly study of another civilization. Setting aside what we think of these precepts, even presenting them as external criteria by which to read history is quite unconventional and leads to problematic results.
Were we to reconstruct Bauer’s judgements on the cultures that he mentions and their respective positions on ambiguity, the following would be a fair rendition.
Islam
a) Formative Islam – Bauer has little to nothing to say about formative Islam,
b) Classical Islam – Bauer clearly considers classical Islam being pluralistic and high in its tolerance of ambiguity, so considerably better than modern Islam at least. In addition, possibly of all the cultures he’s examined, the best overall.
c) Contemporary Islam – it is too rigid and dogmatic, has low tolerance of ambiguity and is hostile to its forebears, so therefore bad.
The West
d) Medieval Christendom – there is only a briefest mention of it. Even if Bauer regards Medieval Christendom as having a fair degree of tolerance, the overall impression is that Christianity by nature is intolerant.
e) Enlightenment West – Bauer considers it very exclusionary, too confident of its own certainties and riddled with high-handedness. Overall impression is that the Enlightenment is generally terrible and responsible for most of the world’s ills including but not limited to colonialism, and pertinently to our discussion, insidiously corrupting other civilizations including classical Islam into the pale contemporary version of Islam we see now.
f) Post-modern West – while it may be not be as tolerant as classical Islam, is an enormous improvement on the Enlightenment and one that holds enormous promise.
Presenting Bauer’s history of cultural eras in such a manner reveals the framework’s crudeness. The cumulative impression is that the more pluralistic, complex and sophisticated a civilisation is, the better it is than those less so, and iterations or cultural eras that are more tolerant are better than those less so.
Clearly at some point in this conversation cultural ambiguity seems to have become a hypergood,[43] and elevated as the determinative criteria by which we can ethically evaluate, by which I mean praise and censure as appropriate, our own and other religious traditions. Amidst all the goods that we treasure and esteem; amongst them truth, fairness, artistry, martial spirit, the worship and adoration of God, Bauer ranks ambiguity above them all. Presenting it like this raises a fair number of questions: why should we, the readers, take such a conceptual framework as authoritative to understand not just classical or contemporary Islam, but any religious tradition at all?
Bearing this in mind, I want to focus less on whether a civilization is tolerant or not, but focus rather on Bauer’s use of ambiguity as a master-key, an evaluative framework. In the following section I will ask whether the prominence that Bauer gives to ambiguity as the master-concept in understanding Islam and religious traditions more generally actually warranted?
Tolerance as the Master good
Let’s remind ourselves why so many consider tolerance such a virtue.
Tolerance towards ambiguity has intuitive value. At the very least, it speaks to a tradition’s confidence and intellectual capacity to navigate the diverse and complex world without rigid frameworks. This is especially true when the world, especially to us moderns, is permeated by the sheer plenitude of diversity. It perhaps explains why for Bauer it seems almost unremarkable that a tradition is only as good as its ability to cope with the very messiness of life. It would follow then, that insofar a religious tradition’s ability to handle life’s messiness and ambiguity determines its strength and maturity. And insofar as a religious tradition fails to manage life’s complexity, then this demonstrates that it is correspondingly weak, immature, and at the very least a stunted tradition, perhaps even a betrayal given its past glories. In this respect, he argues that modern Islam is at very least an immature iteration of the Islamic tradition, a pale shadow of its former glories, the implicit suggestion being that until it attains a certain tolerance of ambiguity it will not capture its former lofty heights, at least culturally, if not politically.
There is also the practical argument. The more tolerant a religious tradition or civilization is, the better equipped it is to govern, particularly when dealing with minorities or majorities that do not align with the ruling classes’ ideology. This applies to both nebulous empires and defined territorial states. Tolerance, so it is supposed, allows a diverse populace to be ruled more effectively. It’s a small step then to argue that an empire or any governing body that exhibits tolerance towards other faiths or ideologies is superior to one that does not. How often have we heard that the reason why the Liberal West is superior to other civilisations is because it’s the most tolerant to its minorities, allowing them to integrate into the Western body politics.
For these and many other reasons, philosophical liberals consider tolerance one of the chief liberal virtues. It is a mark of pride that liberalism is tolerant to minorities. It’s also a point of pride that liberalism does not require its citizens to surrender their private beliefs, whilst expecting only the most nominal loyalty to the liberal political system. Indeed, liberals often trumpet the fact that it is not merely tolerant, but the most tolerant of them all. It’s hard not to conclude that the prominence Bauer gives tolerance of ambiguity is as much an inheritance of the Enlightenment, as it is a result of Post-modernist ethics.
But then find ourselves in a rather curious position: if tolerance is regarded as a valuable aspect of the liberal tradition or post-modern society, should religions be assessed based on external criteria not native to them, or by determinative criteria that are rooted in liberalism or post-modernism? It is rather ironic that Bauer, who advocates for post-modern tolerance and criticizes the Enlightenment for its exclusivity, unintentionally reproduces a classically Orientalist criteria for evaluating cultures.
From the outside looking in
What is the best way to ethically evaluate a tradition, supposing one should do at all? Perhaps one way to look at it to consider what makes a tradition good or healthy. One would think that a healthy tradition is one that satisfies its internal goods, which are the values or virtues deemed important by the tradition. These goods vary between religious traditions but often include worship and adoration, following commandments, preserving family and property, and preserving knowledge. Some goods may overlap with other traditions, such as the need for a sufficient number of priests, rabbis or scholars. These overlapping or shared goods also exist outside of religious traditions and in cultures generally such as the need for an economic base or the ability to defend oneself in order to survive and perpetuate.
On neither score does tolerance of ambiguity do very well. Firstly, ambiguity is not necessarily an internal good for most traditions. Islam, for example, values knowledge and scholarship but not necessarily tolerance. Secondly, nor is ambiguity directly functional as a shared good in the way that martial tradition or the ability to reproduce cultural values. Nor is tolerance a necessary quality for a religious tradition to thrive or survive. There have been plenty of instances throughout history where religious traditions have thrived despite being dogmatic and intolerant, indeed there have been instances where cultures survived because they were ruthless and obliterated their enemies.
In that sense, trying to evaluate traditions based on tolerance of ambiguity may not be wholly fair or impartial. Firstly, it introduces external criteria and judgments that may not align with the values and beliefs of the tradition itself. It thereby arguably distorts our understanding of the religious tradition. After all, one would think it may be more appropriate to measure how closely a tradition realizes its own certain values rather than imposing our own values onto the tradition.
If we do praise or rebuke a culture for being sufficiently ambiguous, are we then not simply praising religious traditions to the extent they align with our own values? In other words, are we not then evaluating religious traditions to how closely they fit to liberal ideals, or to what extent they anticipate or embody post-modernist ideas? If this is indeed the case, then we are simply praising them because they realise the ideals that we ourselves believe in, and censure them, and us, when they fail to live up to our values? One thing is for sure, we have stopped trying to understand a tradition based on the perspective it understands itself.
It’s in that sense, I find it difficult to accept Bauer’s tolerance of ambiguity as a satisfying determinative criterion to evaluate cultures or religious traditions. The only tradition that regards tolerance of ambiguity an unequivocal good are liberals and post-modernists alone. Indeed, if it insists on evaluating a tradition by external criteria then inevitably this will distort our understanding of the tradition. Rather than imposing our own values on it, if we truly wanted to understand another tradition then the best way would be to understand how a tradition understands itself. Subtle as it is, Bauer’s critique of Western Islamic studies may surreptitiously resurrect a form of Orientalism 2.0.
Ambiguity as Orientalism 2.0
Armed with a lifetime of erudition and sensitivity to much that many of us would thoughtlessly disregard, it’s hard not to be dazzled by the penetration of Bauer’s analysis. Better still, he offers presumably objective criteria for evaluating Orientalist perspectives without having to surrender to orthodox Muslim scholarship. His criteria aim not only to serve as a shorthand for authenticity, but also allows for a critical exploration of Islamic tradition. Such a scholarly approach purports a way to determine what is genuinely authentic, even amidst disputes among Islamists, traditional Muslim scholarship and Western academics. It is no wonder ambiguity is so alluring; it allows us to celebrate the riches of Islamic civilization without ceding authority to Muslim orthodoxy, and furthermore it reinforces our mores by invoking historical precedents in classical Islam. So, when it comes to the question, who is the most authentic of them all? Bauer can forcefully argue: Classical Islam was the most tolerant of them all.
Yet, there is no escaping the moral inflection that pervades Bauer’s understanding of ambiguity. It is hard not to shake the feeling that what is being promoted is a cherry-picked progressive understanding of Islam, elevating certain aspects while disregarding others. Classical Islam, as Bauer presents it, oddly enough resonates with much of the culture wars taking place today. Here we find a more cohesive version of multiculturalism, less xenophobic society towards immigrants, far more acceptance of homosexual practices; and a politics where religion and politics clearly demarcates. On the other hand, it is noticeably what Bauer is silent on: what is not valorised is the virile masculinity of Ottoman Ghazi warriors, the profound sobriety of itinerant Sufis seeking out Divine Communion, or the prodigious rote memorization prized by the scholars, or the pervasive piety of the masses.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. After all Bauer’s point is not how similar the post-modern West is to classical Islam but to make the point, that while the West prides itself on having high tolerance for ambiguity, he claims that historical sources show that classical Islam actually celebrated ambiguity even more. Is it then, any wonder that we find similarities between them and us? Yet this misses my point. It’s no surprise that historians will find echoes of the contemporary world, indeed it happens all the time. Instead, we ought to be wary of eliding inconvenient truths, lest we fail to present the past in all its complexity. Putting it differently, the point is not that Bauer is wrong, it’s that his presentation of Islam is in many ways just as distorted and selective as the image he seeks to overcome. Academic histories should aim to present the past in all its complexity, rather than participating by proxy in today’s culture wars. In the end, it’s hard not to wonder if Bauer’s alternative history is a case of one set of Orientalist subjective judgments replacing another, only this time with a post-modern sheen.
I do want to stress there is real value in ambiguity. So long as it is used gainfully, carefully, and rigorously, I’m certain that discursive ambiguity will generate valuable future research. It is a wonderful lens to appreciate Islamic scholarship, literature, art and many other aspects, and surely not restricted to Islamic religious tradition alone. Unfortunately, Bauer’s use of ambiguity as a causal explanation for certain cultural attitudes lacks consistency and abandons the standards of rigor he employs when using ambiguity in discourse analysis. The same applies when he wishes to present ambiguity as an ethical framework that evaluates cultures and religions. Were ambiguity to be applied consistently to all domains, then many of the arguments in the book would not have been presented, and we would have got a much leaner, more unstable concept. One imagines that such a book would have had a very different impact than this one did. If used with discipline however, Bauer’s idea of ambiguity should be lauded, as it unearths the subtle complexity within religious traditions that too often is hidden. Even more so, Bauer’s forceful presentation of classical Islam as something worth taking seriously will force re-evaluation of a glorious period often too often dismissed or neglected.
Faheem A. Hussain is an independent researcher. He has a BA (Hons.) in Arabic and Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a PGCE in Religious Studies from Roehampton University, and an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. His writings can be found at Substack [https://faheemahussain.substack.com/] and occasionally on twitter @FaheemAMHussain.
[1] https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-culture-of-ambiguity/9780231170659
[2] https://www.uni-muenster.de/Religion-und-Politik/en/aktuelles/2012/dez/News_Bauer_Leibniz_Preis.html
[3] The most prominent example is Oliver Scharbrodt’s Muhammad ‘Abduh: Modern Islam and the Culture of Ambiguity https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/muhammad-abduh-9781838607302/, my personal favorite is ‘Did Modernity End Polyvalence? Some Observations on Tolerance for Ambiguity in Sunni tafsīr’ by Pieter Coppens – https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/jqs.2021.0450
[4] ‘Political theology beyond interruption: (re)discovering the ambiguity of the practice of theology’, Whitney Harper, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0040571X211068155;
[5] ‘The Inner and the Outer Foreign Territory— A Qualitative Study Measuring Ambiguity Tolerance Within Young Muslims Living in Germany.’, Barth, L., Kaiser, P., Tuncel-Langbehn, G. et al., Int. Migration & Integration 24, 507–525 (2023). DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-022-00956-z
[6] ‘Between Identity and Ambiguity’, Reinhardt, Karoline; Symposion; vol 7 (2) (2020) DOI https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20207218
[7] I am indebted to Ahmed Jeddo and Yusuf Lenfest for reading earlier drafts of this text, and for their feedback and input. The editorial assistance provided by Yusuf Lenfest and Robert Zayd KiaNouri-Zigmund was also greatly appreciated.
[8] P. 28
[9] P. 28.
[10] p. 29.
[11] pls 20-25
[12] Pg 23.
[13] Chapter 8 – The Serene Look at the World
[14] P 221
[15] P 226.
[16] Pg 227.
[17] Pg 229.
[18] P. 229
[19] P. 233
[20] P. 234.
[21] P. 236.
[22] For some recent contributions see recent work by Rushain Abbasi a lecture can be found here “Beyond the Realm of Religion: The Idea of the Secular in Premodern Islam” https://islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-9-beyond-realm-religion-idea-secular-premodern-islam-dr-rushain-abbasi, ‘Did Premodern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dīn–Dunyā Binary in Medieval Islamic Thought’, https://academic.oup.com/jis/article-abstract/31/2/185/5699242. Another recent book Disenchanting the Caliphate The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought by, Hayrettin Yücesoy https://cup.columbia.edu/book/disenchanting-the-caliphate/9780231209410, of which a lecture can be found EP046 Prof. Hayrettin Yücesoy on his new book “Disenchanting the Caliphate” https://youtu.be/vUlGycv5jUQ?feature=shared= , And the Sherman Jackson’s The Islamic Secular, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-islamic-secular-9780197661789?cc=qa&lang=en&, of which an earlier lecture ‘Probing the Islamic Secular’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaTRMW-Dtjo.
I
[23] Pg 248.
[24] Pg 246.
[25] Pg 246.
[26] Pg 247.
[27] Pg 247
[28] This section has been extensively rewritten due to the perceptive comments of Robert Zayd KiaNouri-Zigmund.
[29] For a short introduction why Westerner pursued Empire see Stewart Weaver’s A Short Introduction to Exploration https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exploration-a-very-short-introduction-9780199946952?cc=gb&lang=en&. An interesting how cultural reasons can explain why empires differ see this Empires of the Atlantic World – Yale University Press London, where Elliot compares the British and Spanish Empire, here is an interesting review Harris on Elliott, ‘Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830’ | H-Net.
[30] See this brief but lively account that gives a glimpse exploring the reasons why the Ming Dynasty did not pursue empire.Admiral Zheng He’s Voyages to the “West Oceans” – Association for Asian Studies. This article presents a more extended discussion of this took place – ‘Why China ceased to be a Sea-Power by Mid-15th Century.
[31] See Hugh Kennedy’s readable account of the early conquests The Great Arab Conquests by Hugh Kennedy | Da Capo Press.
[32] See Chap 2 – The Ottoman Ideology of Holy War, in Viorel Panaite’s Ottoman Law of War and Peace, Brill, 2019. See also book Giancarlos Casale’s The Ottoman Age of Exploration. A review can be read here https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33047.
[33] See Ruldolph Peter’s Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, Pg 61, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, for a detailed modern discussion of homosexuality in Islam see Islam and the LGBT Question: Reframing the Narrative | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, for an example of a modern traditionist young scholar examining Muslim progressive views of homosexuality, see this article by Mobeen Vaid Can Islam Accommodate Homosexual Acts? Quranic Revisionism and the Case of Scott Kugle – MuslimMatters.org.
[34] Islam without Europe | Ahmad S. Dallal | University of North Carolina Press, see this insightful review Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought By Ahmad S. Dallal (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 436 pages.).
[35] See this by insightful article by James Muhammad Dawud Currie Kadizadeli Ottoman Scholarship, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, and the Rise of the Saudi State | Journal of Islamic Studies | Oxford Academic
[36] For two recent monologues see Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic | Brill – for a review see this Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic, Book Reviews Mehmet Karabela | Insight Turkey, and Amit Bein’s excellent Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardi…
[37] Lived Islam, pg 99.
[38] Quoting Zygmunt Bauman, Pg 257
[39] Pg 257
[40] Pg 258.
[41] See Ahmad Dallal’s Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought, https://uncpress.org/book/9781469641409/islam-without-europe/ an interview of the author discussing the book can be found here https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/37658
[42] Some books that begin to capture the complexity are Ahmed Al-Shamsy Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174563/rediscovering-the-islamic-classics, Indira Gesink’s Islamic Reform and Conservatism, https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/islamic-reform-and-conservatism-9781780764276/, Junaid Quadri’s Transformations of Tradition https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transformations-of-tradition-9780190077044?cc=us&lang=en&
[43] I borrow this term from Charles Taylor, for more on this see Jasper Van Buren – ‘The Difference between Moral Sources and Hypergoods’, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301281246_The_Difference_between_Moral_Sources_and_Hypergoods