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BOOK

R VI WS

Jean Jacques

Waarde~bnrg

L'ISLAM D ANS LE MIRR AIR DE L'OCCIDENT.

Mouton Co.. Par isand Hague. 1963. pp.

XVI.

374.

The author of this work (from the inside of whose ti tl e page i t appears tha t

this is th e second edi tion) is a Dutch scholar of the Histo ry of Religion and is no t

an Ialamist-indeed, he does not claim t o know even the Arabic language. The

problem with which he is concerned i n this work also lies essentially in th e field

of Comparat ive Religion: How is i t possible for the follower of one religion to

come to a genuine and creative understandmg of another. It is, therefore.

primarily concerned with methodology. In the work under review the aut hor

has chosen as a test case th e attempts of the modern Wes t to understand Islam

and. hence, i t may be considered a practical application of thi s methodology-or.

rather. th e methodology is. so t o say, inductively supposed t o be inferred from

the actual instances provided in this book. Hence th e tit le of the book Islam

in the Mir ror of th e Occident .

The largest pa rt of t he work is devoted t o the life and work of five selected

Western -cholars of Islam-Goldziher. Snouck Hurgronje, Becker. Macdonald

and Massignon. Their life. background, nat ure and method of education, nature

and method of work on Islam and th ei r conclusions abo ut Islam are analysed in

great (and often repetitive) de tails. In each case i t is endeavoured to seek

out how the backgrounds-mental and otherwise-of these scholars have

coloured

their conclusions about Islam.

I

must confess tha t the author comes out with

certain start ling conclusions relative to th e five scholars studied. Among them.

he finds Massignon and Macdonald as coming nearest to the fufilment of his

requirements for creative study of another religion. About Massignon, he

asserts that he had identified himself with the object of his research. i.e. al-

Hal lej and Sufis in general. The only question is whether the selections of

al-Hallaj and Sufis in general as Islam or as representatives of Islam is itself not

ut te r subjectivism. Similarly, to sta te abou t Macdonald th at he mentally went

ou t of his own milieu and discovered t he 'Creator-God' of Islam by Whom he

was spiritually overwhelmed . seems t o me a dere lic tio n of al l standards of

objective appreciation-particularly when th e missionary Macdonald firmly

held th at Chris tianity was infini tely superior to Islam. (We are not. of course.

questioning here the

schol rship

ei ther of Massignon or of Macdonald) .

This raises th e basic quest ion of what i s th e object of studying another

religion than one's own? Is it pure. objective scholarship-irrespective of whether

this is achievable or completely achievable or not? Or, is i t in order

to create a

sympathetic understanding a t a human level

Or, thirdly, is it in order to enrich

one's own religious heritage Or , finally, is

it

in order t o create something

new

Numerous sta tements of the auth or interspersed al l over the book lend

support to each of the above alternatives.

H e not only insistently repeats th at

objectivity is absolutely requisite b ut thi s seems t o be t he legacy of the ent ire

Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 5:3 (1966)

Dr Muhammad Hamidullah Library, IIU, Islamabad. http://iri.iiu.edu.pk/

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exercise of th is work.

On the other hand, he explicitly states th at i t is neither

possible nor desirable for the

studen t of another religion to be denuded of an

ini tia l point of view (see especialIy p. 324)-which. of course, must colour his

appreciation. There are other ques tions of a similar nature which arise from the

book bu t t o which i t is difficult t o give a satisfactory answer. Hi s decided

preference for Massignon and Macdonald t o the scholarly performance

(although

th is is a t times mixed with sarcasm, no dou bt) of Goldziher and Snouck Hu gr on je

would seem t o argue that appreciation of religious phenomena is something

over

and above th at of merely historical or sociological facts on th e other hand. he

explicitly rejects tha t there is a particula r "religious dimension" t o facts or their

appreciation and proclaims th at religious appreciation "arises ou t of" the consi-

dera tion of facts (pp. 319-20) H e also nowhere defines what a religious fact is.

In th e circumstances, we cannot do be tte r than state the process of religious

appreciation as the author himself has described i t to us. This is contained in the

last chapter of the book.

To "comprehend," according t o the author, is much more th an t o "know".

Afte r a knowledge of detailed facts, one has t o discover (project ? a coherence

in to these facts ao tha t they make a "whole". In the soul of th e researcher.

there mu st be an "openness (ouverture)" for the phenomenon studied and the

phenomenon studied mu st also "open itself up" to the menta l eye of the resear-

cher. There is no special method of religious research, which distinguishes i t

from other forms

of scientific research. nor is there a special dimension which

makes us appreciate religious facts in a way other than , say, scientific facts.

There must be no preconceived prejudices or depreciation of the phenomenon

studied; otherwise, there will be no mutual "openness". There has to be. how-

ever, an init ial po int of view, as we have seen before. But there must be to ta l

"epochy" or suspension of judgement on th e p ar t of the subject (p. 322). The

subject mus t be "attracted" or "drawn" by the power of the object and the former

mu st exhibi t a tota1:absence of spiri tua l act ivi ty in face of the religious phenome-

non. Among the objective facts of a religion. certain aspects have t o be "selected"

as central. Thus, in th e case of Islam. the concept of Allah. th e God, th e centre

of human activity, pervasive and transcendent, in Whom there is a sense of tota l

dependence, must be given th e central weight. (One wonders if this is quite true

of al-HallHj and his disciple Massignon ).

Th e question of all questions is, no doubt, what is the criterion of selecting

cent ral concepts of a religion and structur ing them. The book of Jean-Jacquea

Waardenburg is extremely interesting because i t raises all these questions a t

once. Th e di fficulties that we have underlined are no t so much criticisms of

Dr. Waardenburg but represent a frame-work of so many tensions endemic t o

the field of comparative religion-for al l study of a foreign religion is in the final

analysis an exercise in comparative religion. These difficulties are no t perhaps

so much objections to be answered or impediments to be removed bu t constitu te

genuine tensions within a healthy balance of which lies the hope for a fruitful

inter-religious dialogue for humanity.

RAWALPINDI

FAZLUR RAHMAN