Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Phoenix Books)

This short book was originally delivered as the Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion and Science for 1967 at Yale University. It is customary for the lecturer to say nice things about the hosting institution and the series of lectures in which he makes his entry. But Clifford Geertz is very honest about his purpose and direct about the limitations he faces. He thinks that comparative religion "hardly more than merely exists" as a scientific discipline, and that the kind of sociology of religion first outlined by Max Weber is "still very largely a program". A science of religion may forever be beyond our grasp. What's more, he has doubts about the Terry Foundation's stated goal of "building the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion". For a self-confessed non-religious person who sees science and religion as fundamentally antagonistic, this program doesn't really sound like a good idea. Geertz conceives of science and religion as competing against each other in a "struggle for the real" and, although he sits squarely on the side of science, he doesn't preclude the possibility that religion may, in the end, win the day.As the author states at the outset, in his typically ironical fashion, "the comparative study of religion has always been plagued by this peculiar embarrassment: the elusiveness of its subject matter." There are two reasons for this. First, as other social scientists also have noted, "it is extremely difficult to get phenomenologically accurate descriptions of religious experience." Try to talk to a mystic in a trance, or to a priest absorbed in the accomplishment of his rites. Even the most direct, first-hand testimonies, such as the quotes and narratives collected by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience, are mere recollections after the facts, imperfect efforts to put words on what cannot be named or described. Freud encountered the same problem when he set to write The Interpretation of Dreams. On the other hand, as Geertz notes, a religious perspective on things doesn't limit itself to the perimeter of the sanctuary. The experience of the sacred suffuses and influences the entire worldview of people who have been visited by God's spirit. "Like the philosophers in Plato's cave, they are back in a world of shadows they interpret in a different way as a result of having been, for a moment, in the sunlight."The second factor that makes religion an elusive phenomenon is the general tendency to substitute cliché for description, and assumption for analysis. Words can be deceptive: categories encourage the "pigeonhole approach" of ordering the real in neat cases, without asking oneself first "whether there really are any pigeons in all of these pigeonholes", or by assuming that "whatever is in a particular sort of pigeonhole must be a particular sort of pigeon". By putting a name on things, we assume we have a firm grasp on them, and we begin to build theories based around nebulous concepts that obfuscate as much as they reveal. From the definition of dendrolatry, or tree worship (a favorite of the author, and said to be especially prevalent in India), we assume that there are "dendrolators practicing dendrolatry in arcane dendrolatological ceremonies". This is not to say that we should stop speaking about "religion" altogether: after all, "these rather singular things certain people do, believe, feel, or say somehow belong together with sufficient intimacy to submit to a common name." But we should be careful about interpreting meaning: what "mystical", or indeed "Islam", means in the two contexts studied by Clifford Geertz, a Moroccan walled city and an Indonesian market town, turns out to be very far from the same thing.So what do Islam and mysticism mean in the context of Morocco and Indonesia? The two places couldn't be further apart: "They both incline toward Mecca, but, the antipodes of the Muslim world, they bow in opposite directions." Instead of describing islamic rules and norms in the abstract, Geertz starts from exemplary figures that each embody the "classical style" of religion in Indonesia and in Morocco. The Indonesian figure is Sunan Kalidjaga, the most important of the so-called "nine apostles" traditionally considered to have introduced Islam into Java and, more or less single-handedly and without resort to force, converted its population to the new creed. The story of his conversion--sitting by the side of a river and meditating the doctrines of Islam without any textual basis--establishes the link between a world of god-kings, ritual priests, and declamatory shrines and one of pious sultans, Koranic scholars, and austere mosques. The Moroccan figure set off against Kalidjaga is a historical character known as Sidi Lahsen Lyusi or Al-Yousi, whose biography has been masterfully authored by the French scholar Jacques Berque. Caught in a spiritual cauldron in which "doctrinal ardor and rustic violence produced vivid personalities, some benefic, some not, locked in a combat cruel and picturesque", Lyusi was a turbulent wanderer, seeking to capture truth not by waiting patiently for it to manifest itself to its emptied consciousness, but by tirelessly and systematically tracking it down.Confronting a Javanese quietist like Kalidjaga with a Berber zealot like Lyusi reveals two "classical styles" of religion: "On the Indonesian side, inwardness, imperturbability, patience, poise, sensibility, aestheticism, elitism, and an almost obsessive self-effacement, the radical dissolution of individuality; on the Moroccan side, activism, fervor, impetuosity, nerve, toughness, moralism, populism, and an almost obsessive self-assertion, the radical intensification of individuality." These religious traditions--illuminationism and maraboutism--are now embattled and transformed by three developments: "the establishment of Western domination; the increasing influence of scholastic, legalistic, and doctrinal, that is to say, scriptural, Islam; and the crystallization of an activist nation-state". The general movement toward "an Islam of the book rather than of the trance or the miracle" is associated with the rise of a radical and uncompromising Islam: Geertz labels this historical moment the "scripturalist interlude". He notes that "stepping backward in order better to leap is an established principle in cultural change; our own Reformation was made that way. But in the Islamic case the stepping backward seems often to have been taken for the leap itself." Unsure of the issue of that interlude, he concludes with the two figures that have led their countries toward independence, and who both represent a reactualization of the classical style: "With Sukarno the theater state returned to Indonesia; and with Muhammed V maraboutic kingship returned to Morocco." "Whether these revamped traditions, having been construed, can now persist depends upon whether the pattern of life they imply is viable in a semi-modern nation-state in the latter part of the twentieth century."Although Clifford Geertz warns the reader against the simplifying assumptions of general categories, his most fruitful insights come from the ordering of his empirical material through working concepts and dual oppositions that help structure the field of comparative religion. He borrows from Max Weber the opposition between hereditary and personal charisma, and sees the two at work in the figure of the Moroccan warrior saint or "homme fétiche", who claims both extraordinary powers and direct lineage to the Prophet. He introduces the Weberian distinction between the "intrinsic" theory of legitimacy, which sees authority inherent in the ruler as ruler, and finds its expression in the Shia notion of a sacred leader or Imam; and the "contractual" theory he traces to the Sunni concept of a sacred community, the Umma. Again, the Moroccan Sultanate combines both notions of legitimacy: the principle that the ruler is ruler because he is supernaturally qualified to be so, and the principle that the ruler is ruler because the competent spokesmen of the community have collectively agreed that he is.Another useful notion is the distinction between "religiousness" and "religious-mindedness": between being held by religious convictions and holding them. Religious-mindedness, celebrating belief rather than what belief asserts, is the result of a process of ideologization of religion brought about by the twin forces of secularism and scripturalism. In both countries, the loss of spiritual self-confidence results in the transformation of religious symbols from imagistic revelations of the divine, evidence of God, to ideological assertions of the divine's importance, badges of piety. Geertz also makes a distinction between the "force" of a cultural pattern like religion, the thoroughness with which such a pattern is internalized by the individual, and its "scope", the range of social contexts with which religious considerations are regarded having more or less direct relevance. As he notes, the force of religion is, generally speaking, greater in Morocco than in Indonesia, while its scope is narrower.These distinctions make Observing Islam a valuable contribution to the field of comparative religion. They also help structure modern debates with more realistic and differentiated typologies than the simple assumptions, now so commonly found in the media, of a "rise of fundamentalism" or a "clash between tradition and modernity". The observance of Islam can only be grasped and understood through its close observation: Islam needs to be observed if we are to draw any meaningful conclusion regarding its meaning and direction.

When I picked up this book, I was mainly reading for the analysis of Moroccan Islam. However, Geertz approaches both countries in such an eloquent and accessible fashion.The purpose of this short work is to compare the practices of Muslims in Indonesia and Morocco. That's going to be tough to do, but Geertz admits to the inherent problems early on, and (I believe) succeeds in confronting them by the end of the book. He begins with the introduction of Islam to both spaces, and covers the formative periods of their religious development. He ends each analysis during the post-colonial phases of the country's history. The concluding chapter, which draws conclusions regarding the comparison of religious sensibilities, does so through the capturing of a society's "common sense". Geertz plays this out much better than I ever could, but it suffices to say that Geertz comes to very thoughtful conclusions about our imagination-made-large qua religion.I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in comparative religion, Islam, North African/Asian Islam, or who wants to read a really cool ethnography.

Although written in 1971 Geertz' observations are just as valid today as then. It also goes a long ways towards giving explanation to the rise of militant Islam. All who are curious about that phenomenon should read this little book.

it's an interesting read, up to a point. The problem is as Geertz himself admits this is more comparative religion than pure anthropology/ As Clinton Bennett In Search of the Sacred notes, it also suffers from almost being underwritten to come to these very rosy conclusions, so you do not get a real review of the two but a very optimistic review.

Clifford James Geertz (1926-2006) was an American anthropologist and literary critic who was professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.He wrote in the Preface to this 1968 book, “In four brief chapters---originally delivered as the Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion and Science for 1967 at Yale University---I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan… A number of people---historians mostly, but political scientists, sociologists, and economists as well---have questioned whether this sort of procedure is a defensible one… The answer … is, of course, ‘yes’: it is invalid, reckless, absurd---and impossible. .. I am attempting … to discover what contributions parochial understandings can make to more comprehensive ones, what leads to general, broad-stroke interpretations particular, intimate findings can produce… We are all social scientists not, and our worth…. consists of what we are able to contribute to a task, the understanding of human social life, which no one of us is competent to tackle unassisted.” (Pg. v-vii)He says in the first chapter, “that which we most want to know [is] by what means, what social and cultural processes, are these movements toward skepticism, political enthusiasm, conversion, revivalism, subjectivism, secular piety, reformism, double-mindedness, or whatever, taking place?... In attempting to answer grand questions like this the anthropologist is always inclined to turn toward the concrete, the particular, the microscopic. We are the miniaturists of the social sciences, painting on lilliputian canvases with what we take to be delicate strokes. We hope to find in this little what eludes us in the large, to stumble upon general truths while sorting through special cases.” (Pg. 3-4)He observes, “In Indonesia Islam did not construct a civilization, it appropriated one. These two facts, that the main impulse for the development of a more complex culture---true state organization, long-distance trade, sophisticated art, and universalistic religion---grew out of a centrally located peasant society upon which less developed outlying regions pivoted, rather than the other way around, and that Islam penetrated this axial culture well after it had been securely established, account for the overall case Muhammedanism has taken in Indonesia… In Indonesia Islam has taken many forms, not all of them Koranic, and whatever it brought to the sprawling archipelago, it was not uniformity.” (Pg. 11-12)He states, “In Indonesia as in Morocco, the collision between what the Koran reveals, or what Sunni (that is, orthodox) tradition has come to regard it as revealing, and what men who call themselves Muslims actually believe is becoming more and more inescapable. This is not so much because the gap between the two is greater… It is because, given the increasing diversification of individual experience, the dazzling multiformity which is the hallmark of modern consciousness, the task of Islam (and indeed of any religion tradition) to inform the faith of particular men and to be informed by it is becoming ever more difficult. A religion which would be catholic these days has an extraordinary variety of mentalities to be catholic about; and the question, can it do this and still remain a specific and persuasive force with a shape and identity of its own, has a steadily more problematical ring.” (Pg. 15)He explains, “On the Indonesian side, the cultural tradition … was that of the great court centers of Indic Java. In attempting to summarize that outlook… I would like to reduce it to a series of doctrines… The first and more important of these I will call ‘The Doctrine of the Exemplary Center’; the second, ‘The Doctrine of Graded Spirituality’; and the third, ‘The Doctrine of the Theater State.’ Together , they make up a world view and an ethos which is elitist, esoteric, and aesthetic, and which remains, even after the adaptations and reformulations forced upon it by four hundred years of Islamization, three hundred years of colonial domination, and twenty of independence, a powerful theme in the contemporary Indonesian consciousness. By ‘The Doctrine of the Exemplary Center,’ I mean the notion that the king’s court and capital, and at their axis the kind himself, form at once an image of divine order and a paradigm for social order.” (Pg. 35-36)He notes, “Sunni Islam did not, today still does not, represent the spiritual mainstream in Indonesia… it represented a challenge to that mainstream---a challenge which grew stronger and more insistent as it took deeper root and firmer outline and as a truly national society slowly formed, but a challenge whose force was scattered, whose appeal was circumscribed and whose triumphs were local.” (Pg. 42)He points out, “In a curiously ironic way, intense involvement with the West moved religious faith closer to the center of our peoples’ self-definition than it had been before. Before, men had been Muslims as a matter of circumstance; now they were, increasingly, Muslims as a matter of policy. They were OPPOSITIONAL Muslims. Not only oppositional, of course; but into what had been a fine medieval contempt for infidels crept a tense modern note of anxious envy and defensive pride.” (Pg. 65)He states, “In this century the scripturalist movement proceeded to what… was its logical conclusion: radical and uncompromising purism. The rise throughout the Muslim world after 1880 of what has been called… ‘Islamic Reform’… merely provided an explicit theological base for what, a good deal less effectively, had been developing in Indonesia for at least half a century.” (Pg. 69)He suggests, “Whatever else ‘Islam’---maraboutic, illuminationist, or scripturalist---does for those who are able to adopt it, it surely renders life less outrageous to plain reason and less contrary to common sense. It renders the strange familiar, the paradoxical logical, the anomalous, given the recognized, if eccentric, ways of Allah, natural.” (Pg. 101)He concludes, “So amid great changes, great dilemmas persist, as do the established responses to them. In fact the responses seem to grow more pronounced as they work less well. The Moroccan disjunction between the forms of religious life and the substance of everyday life advances almost to the point of spiritual schizophrenia. The Indonesian absorption of all aspects of life—religious, philosophical, political, scientific, commonsensical, even economic---into a cloud of allusive symbols and vacuous abstractions is rather less prominent than it was two years ago; but its progress has hardly been halted, much less reversed.” (Pg. 116)This book will interest those seeking ‘outside’ perspectives on Islam.

It was fast delivery but the book itself is damaged. The first few pages are coming off the binding and it was advertised as in good condition. I will keep it due to the fact that I need it for my studies but I have never had such problems before like this