Islamic Diversity: Where Exactly Does Fundamentalism Start?

The new book by Susanne Schröter, a “Journey through the Islamic Multiverse”, sees itself as an objection to the shortening of Islam to “fundamentalists and radicals”.

The author introduces a different Islam, or better: the different Islams that have grown over centuries on different cultural breeding grounds or have only recently emerged.

She begins her journey with the Mevlevi and Naqschbandi dervishes in Turkey.

In short and competent presentations it becomes clear how in these variants of Turkish Sufism a sense of art, mystical love of God and (just) the strictest adherence to religious norms as well as Islamist political activism have entered into a constantly reconfigured connection.

This already shows that it is not always easy to clearly distinguish “fundamentalists and radicals” from other Muslims.

Matriarchal structures in Malaysia

Sufism bound by strict interpretations of Sharia law was and is not the only form of Islamic mysticism in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in the Balkans. This is described in the following chapter. The example of Albania also shows that nationalist ideologies are quite capable of creating unity in a religious mix-up across denominations. The war in nearby Bosnia in the 1990s was not the result of an allegedly fundamentally impossible coexistence between Christians and Muslims, but rather a failed nation building.

The journey then takes the reader to Senegal to the tirelessly working and trading on a large scale (and in some cases not particularly concerned about Sharia) adepts of Amadou Bamba. These form the most important social-religious network in the country with a tremendous influence on political events. The author also leads us to the women in Sudan and their spirit cults, to the Ibadites of Oman, the Hijras (transgender) in Pakistan, to progressive Muslims who sought refuge in the West and founded modernist Islam in the United States and Germany. We get into the world of matriarchal structures in Malaysia, which are criticized by conservatives in the course of "Islamic globalization",while at the same time American-inspired Muslim feminists seek to justify the new concept of gender equality in an Islamic way.

No idealizations, no demonizations

We continue to Indonesia, where older local or Hindu ideas (such as the goddess of the South Sea, who must be soothed by relevant rites) have lived in close symbiosis with Islam for centuries.

It was only in the twentieth century that this specifically Indonesian Islam, especially in the cities, was increasingly displaced by a global Islam.

Islam has entered into a similar connection with indigenous traditions in China for centuries.

Both fundamentalist currents and the government's concern about uncontrollable foreign religions, which also troubles Catholics, have led to increasing conflicts in recent years.

Wherever you go with the author, you learn a tremendous amount in an easy way.

Last but not least, that the Islamic world is colorful and not only Islamic.

The author does not idealize or demonize anything, she classifies all phenomena knowledgeably and with reliable judgment in their social and cultural contexts and thus illustrates the whole complexity of the lived Islam and its points of friction with a changing world.

This is done using the example of children who are brought up by Sufi masters in Senegal by sending them to beg.

What was normal for centuries appears today as a problem, since modern education decides on life chances and the ideas of individual children's rights are different than before.

It's not that easy

Answers to the problems of traditional Muslims in today's globalized world are not only provided by secularized individualistic modernity. These answers, as the author repeatedly addresses, also give in its own way a “fundamentalist” Islam supposedly “purified” from external admixtures; precisely that Islam that is described here as an opponent of the manifestations of Islam examined.

The selection made could lead the reader, if he does not read carefully, to the assumption that there is a uniformity of a "fundamentalist" Islam that can be distinguished from the multiverse described. The Twelve Shiites, the Turkish Naqschbandis, but also the Omani Ibadis and others show that the delimitation of fundamentalism from other forms of Islam is problematic. What all “orthodoxies” have in common is possibly only their rejection of open syncretism and a fearful endeavor to cleanly separate their own identity from others. With Thomas Bauer one could speak of ambiguity intolerance here. This means that contemporary “fundamentalist” Islam would be located in classical modernism. This fits (and the author refers to this again and again),that these “fundamentalisms” thrive in the Islamic world especially in urban, modernized milieus.

Precisely because everything is not so simple, after the entertaining and instructive journey through the Islamic multiverse, one would like to hope that the author will also take on the "Orthodox" in all their diversity and internal contradictions in a follow-up volume.

Susanne Schröter: "Allah's Caravan".

A journey through the Islamic multiverse.

Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2021. 203 pp., Ill., Br., € 16.95.