It’s hard to imagine that an essay on Islam could add anything new to the subject. But that is exactly what Rémi Brague manages to do in his book Sur L’islam (On Islam). He addresses all of Islam’s dimensions and considers it both from Christian and Muslim points of view. He relies heavily on Arab and medieval sources, of which he is one of the greatest connoisseurs.
The following is an interview with Brague by Madeleine Duffez and Benoît Dumoulin, as well as a short review of Sur L’islam, published in L’Incorrect, No. 63, 3 April 2023. It has been translated into English and appears here with the kind permission of L’Incorrect.
Islam includes ritual and legal prescriptions that are similar to Judaism, but it applies them universally like Christianity. Is this the cause of the conflict that occurs when it meets other cultures?
We have to begin by asking ourselves why many refuse to engage with the essence of Islam as a religion. Their scripture is based on a combination of Christian and Jewish tradition. We also have to be careful not to confuse the four meanings of the word Islam that I have tried to distinguish: the fundamental attitude of submission to God, the religion of Mohammed with its beliefs and rules (the ‘five pillars’), Islam’s civilisation, and the populations inhabiting the Muslim world. For those who confuse the first two meanings, Islam holds that the other two Abrahamic religions are betrayals of God’s original revelation, of pre-creation and creation, and of the recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of Allah. This claim comes from the Quran (VII, 172). From this point of view, every non-Muslim is objectively an apostate or an amnesiac. Basically, every human being is a Muslim, either conscious or forgetful. Because of this, becoming a Muslim is reversion, not conversion.
Islam’s character of both obedience to a specific law and the universal call to adhere to that law means that it is almost impossible to coexist with other cultures. Some non-Muslim religions can be tolerated for a certain period of time, especially those that fall under the ‘people of the book.’ This designation originally included Jews and Christians, and then with each Muslim conquest, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and other religions were included under this umbrella. But the legislation is formulated so that these religions will disappear in the long term. It maintains non-Muslims in a status of second-class subjects through deliberate humiliation intended to illustrate that it is in their interest to adhere to Islam.
You often critique the hasty comparison between the exhortation to jihad and the history of the Crusades. Can you explain this “distortion in perception of the past”?
That comparison is radically flawed. The Crusades are a thousand-year-old historical fact. They were initially a reaction to the ban on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to distant traumas such as the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by the Fatimids. Jihad, on the other hand, is a permanent obligation for the community, whose military form can at any time be reactivated and extended to each Muslim when the ‘ummah’ feels that it is under attack. The Islamic world had forgotten the Crusades. However, as Islam came into contact with the West and Russia, both societies that are militarily and technologically more advanced, the feeling that the Muslim world was being invaded was revived. Hence, today, Westerners are designated as ‘Crusaders.’ This new Western crusader is often grouped as an ally with the ‘Jews,’ which, for anyone who knows a bit of medieval history, sounds like a sinister joke.
After the murder of Father Hamel in July 2016 by Islamists, Pope Francis would not acknowledge any link between this violence and Islam. Instead, he drew a dangerous parallel with domestic violence. Can one exonerate Islam of all forms of violence? Is Islamism a perverse outgrowth of Islam or are they completely unrelated?
There needs to be a distinction between a crime committed by a believer who is betraying his religion’s message and a crime committed in the name of a religion and in imitation of its founder. Islamism does not constitute Islam generally, nor do many Muslims practice this activist branch of their religion. However, Islamism is solidly based on the Quran, the Hadith, and the official biography of Mohammed. Islamist groups understand these sources very well and can competently answer any Muslim jurist who criticizes them. Thus [the Grand Imam of] al-Azhar: “It was not necessary. You should not have burned that Jordanian pilot alive. You should have contented yourselves with just cutting one hand and the opposite foot (Quran, V, 33)!”
The critique of colonization avoids the question of why one’s country was able to be colonized. You write about the decline of Islam as a civilization, which is often blamed on the West rather than on the internal weakness of the Muslim world. Does this mean that certain Muslim countries have been taken off the hook in public debate?
We must understand that many Muslims live in a very painful paradox. On the one hand, they are told that theirs is the only true and definitive religion, the ultimate and best of all the revelations. Islam is destined to eliminate all the other faiths. On the other hand, their countries are—economically, inventively, politically, and culturally—the red lantern of the world. The closer a culture is to the epicenter of Islam, the older their Islam is, the worse this paradox is. What would the countries of the Arabian peninsula be today without oil and gas?
For you, the Islamophilia of some of our elites is a form of paternalistic condescension, where Islam is viewed as a framework for simple minds with rudimentary morals. What does this say about the West?
I have pinpointed this phenomenon in my book, starting with the obscure colonial administrator who invented the word ‘Islamophobia. I suspect it in some of our intellectuals who admire the religion, would be horrified if Islamic norms were imposed on them. That shows that some Westerners still recognize that one can understand Islam without approving of it, which was the disposition towards the Muslim world during colonization. This also illustrates a certain nostalgia for customs that existed prior to modernity with its ambivalent consequences: the birth of mathematized natural sciences, economic industrialization, the rationalization of social relations,, secularization, the devastation of the environment, and the demographic winter, among other consequences.
Sur l’islam
by Rémi Brague
Paris: Gallimard, 2023
Rémi Brague delivers a brilliant synthesis of Islam. He defines it without falling into essentialism by distinguishing between it as a religion and as a civilisation. He showed that Islamism, although not the entirety of Islam, is based solidly on its foundations, thus making it very difficult to condemn it as a heresy. By distinguishing between people and ideas, Brague presents a critique of a religion that is not altered by friendship with its adherents. He reveals that Islamophobia is a false concept, which is often used to prohibit any criticism of Islam.
Brague highlights the particular conception of law that is at the heart of Islam—sealed by God in the Quran as an uncreated book. He emphasises that the divine prescriptions, which Muslims obey, are difficult to apply because they are full of paradoxes, and yet they shape social and political life in Islamic countries. Although compared to Christianity, Islam is opposed to it since conscience plays no mediating role in man’s relationship with God. Overall, it is a masterful and well-sourced essay in which the author urges us to take off our “Western glasses” in order to truly understand Islam.
