BRIIFS Abstracts vol.6 no.2, 2004

	John Torpey Religion and Politics in contemporary world affairs: the global implications of american exceptionalism
	Bruce Kapferer Democracy, wild sovereignties and the new leviathan
	Brannon Wheeler Arab prophets and the tombs of giants
	Heribert Adam Probing the south african solution for israel/palestine
	Suleiman A. Mourad christian monks in islamic literature: a preliminary report on some arabic apophthegmata patrum
	Louise Cainkar Islamic Revival among second-generation arab-American muslims: the american experience and globalization intersect

John Torpey
Religion and Politics in contemporary world affairs: the global implications of american exceptionalism

This paper argues that we have entered a ‘Tocquevillean’ phase in world affairs that represents the culmination of a long-gestating historical process. Since 1945, there have been three phases of global politics: between 1945 and 1989, the world was Marxist—dominated by the discourse of economics; from 1989 until 2001, it was Weberian—dominated by the discourse of cultural conflict; and, since 2001, it has been Tocquevillean—dominated by the discourse of American exceptionalism, which here refers, in particular, to the United States’ peculiar combination of religious openness and constitutionally-guaranteed individual rights. As the state retreats from its former role, the relationship between these two elements has come to represent the central historical issue of our time and this will be the case for the foreseeable future. This is a matter in which the United States has a peculiar experience, well-analyzed by Tocqueville. September 11, 2001 marked the definitive switch to a Tocquevillean world, the principal characteristic of which is rifts within the societies of ‘the West.’ Beyond more immediate points of contention, the current tension has a great deal to do with religion and its role in a secular democratic order, a subject about which Tocqueville had some very illuminating things to say. Against this background, this paper explores the ways in which religious belief resonates or conflicts with political freedom in movements around the world and the role of the United States in a world bubbling with religious ferment.

Bruce Kapferer
Democracy, wild sovereignties and the new leviathan

The argument presented in this paper develops in relation to three interrelated themes. It begins by considering the current US-dominated discourse on democracy and democratization, which argues that democratic values and practices are essential to human freedom and peace. However, as I next observe, the urgency to democratize is mediated through the power of the state. Moreover, in the current conjuncture, the objective of democracy is integral to the construction of what may be described as postmodern formations of political and economic power. These are appearing as a transmogrification of preceding orders, creating a New Leviathan which, from many positions, might seem to be predicated on constant war, rather than the production of peace and the conquest of human misery. The ordering dynamic of the New Leviathan is one of continual fracture, an expanding plane of contested sovereignties of various kinds. I describe this dynamic, which forms the paper’s third theme, as one of Wild Sovereignty. Here, I expand upon Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of Homo Sacer, which considers a concept of sovereignty defined in terms of one’s relation to “bare life.” Wild sovereignty as a dimension of the New Leviathan is radically productive of regions and spaces of bare life in which more and more people are thrust to the very edges of existence as a consequence of the contesting forces of constituting power in its wild sovereign form.

Brannon Wheeler
Arab prophets and the tombs of giants

Numerous pilgrims and travellers report that the tombs of the Arab prophets are much longer than the tombs of ordinary people, ranging from ten to fifty metres in length. Little has been written on these long tombs despite their frequent mention in a variety of sources and the clear association between the Arab prophets and the giants of antediluvian times. This paper proposes a broad theoretical context within which to interpret the long tombs of prophets in the Hadramawt and in other locales throughout the Near East and Africa. Rather than providing a systematic overview, this paper highlights a number of details that link Islamic examples with those from other religious traditions, including classical Greece and the ancient Near East. It examines some of the different explanations given for the lengths of particular tombs with the goal of reaching a larger conception of how these long tombs are related to Islamic models of prophethood and the spread of religion. The comparison of various traditions suggests that the long tombs are to be understood as part of an Islamic mythology of the origins and development of civilization from the time of Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden to the era of the Prophet Mu¡ammad and beyond.

Heribert Adam
Probing the south african solution for israel/palestine*

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is analyzed with three interrelated goals: first, to improve understanding of the reasons for failed conflict resolution in the Middle East by contrasting it with successful peacemaking in South Africa; second, to critically probe analogies between the two disparate situations and scrutinize whether the frequently used apartheid label fits Israeli policies; third, to draw specific lessons from the South African experience for alternatives in the Middle East. Analogies with the South African case are increasingly applied to Israel/Palestine for two different purposes: to showcase South Africa as an inspiring model for a negotiated settlement and to label Israel a ‘colonial settler state’ that should be confronted with strategies similar to those applied against the apartheid regime (sanctions, boycott). Both assumptions are problematic because of the different historical and socio-political contexts. Peacemaking resulted in an inclusive democracy in South Africa, while territorial separation in two states is widely hailed as the solution in Israel/Palestine. The death of Arafat and the realignments in Palestinian politics are not changing the basic structural interests and power relations in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Suleiman A. Mourad
christian monks in islamic literature: a preliminary report on some arabic apophthegmata patrum

Islamic scholarship records a large number of accounts featuring sayings by Christian monks (both monastics and ascetics) and their encounters with Muslim ascetics and mystics. On one level, these accounts attest to the fact that the perception of Christian monks as holy figures in the Near East survived into the early Islamic period and that they were still acknowledged for their spiritual authority and aura in Muslim circles well into the fifth/eleventh century. The continuity of this recognition indicates the degree of its diffusion among Muslim scholars. On another level, these accounts reinforce the conclusion that encounters between Christian monks and Muslim ascetics and early mystics must have played a role in the emergence of particular attitudes, views and practices within Islamic ascetical and mystical traditions.

Louise Cainkar
Islamic Revival among second-generation arab-American muslims: the american experience and globalization intersect

This article examines the chain of events that facilitated an Islamic revival among second-generation Arab-American Muslims. Based upon research in metropolitan Chicago, it argues against trends in the literature that describe Western-born Muslims as foreigners, immigrants or, worse, anti-Western. Similarly, it argues against setting their religious experiences solely in a domestic context. The article begins by documenting the lack of religious institutions and practices among immigrant Arab Muslims before the 1990s and the limited religious socialization of their American-born children. These conditions emerged in part from secular trends in the immigrants’ homelands. By the 1990s, a period of global Islamic revival, both immigrant and second-generation Arab Muslims found practiced Islam attractive, particularly its capacity to provide meaning and resilience for their own experiences in America. Individual decisions to embrace Islam as more than a fact of birth were facilitated by developments resulting from globalization and the creation of American Islamic institutions, yet were, at the same time, intensely personal choices rooted in local experiences. Although Islamic revival is global, its conduits should not be viewed as causal. The article engages findings by Yang and Ebaugh (2001) and Hirschman (2003), arguing that analyses of religiosity in the United States must take into account historical contexts. Religiosity is an intensely personal experience that must be explained at the intersection of the individual, the local and the global.

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