Ziauddin Sardar's Reading List

"The future is the best place to find whatever you are looking for. Why? Because you can’t change the past. You can interpret it, rediscover it, draw lessons from it, but you can’t change it. Neither can you change the present. Change is not instantaneous; it takes time. So by the time the present has been changed, it is already the future. So I see the future as the only arena where real change – positive or negative – is possible. But I look at the future not in the singular – as the future – but in the plural, as futures. Futures are an arena for numerous possibilities – where all kinds of alternatives to the present can be envisaged and developed. I am not too interested in predicting the future, although forecasts and predictions are a very significant and important part in our world. I am much more interested in shaping the future. Futures of Islam, like futures of most cultures, are open to numerous pluralistic and democratic possibilities. The emphasis of my own work has been on shaping pluralistic and sustainable futures for Muslim societies. But I have to admit that Muslims, as a whole, are not very good at looking towards the future or exploring alternative futures paths. We tend to be nostalgic about the glories of our history and fatalistic about our current problems. It should not come as a surprise to discover that the first book on the future of Islam was written by an Englishman: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Blunt was an accomplished Orientalist, and wrote a numbers books on the Middle East. He was also a close friend of Jamaluddin Afghani, the famous 19th-century Muslim reformer of Egypt. The Future of Islam was written as a series of essays for the Fortnightly Review in the summer and autumn of 1881 and published as a book in the following year. As a supporter of Arabs, Blunt was aggressively anti-Ottoman: he thought the Ottoman Empire was an impediment to the emergence of ‘progressive thought in Islam’. Considering the period the essays were written, The Future of Islam is a very perceptive book, with a genuine futuristic understanding of the political and intellectual trends of the time. Yes, indeed, Blunt made many predictions, and quite a few turned out to be true. He predicted the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the transfer of Islam’s ‘metropolis’ from Constantinople to Mecca, the emergence of independent Muslim states, and a movement of liberal Islam in Egypt, even the arrival of a ‘Mahdi’ in the Sudan! I think Blunt was spot on when he argued that the future survival of Islam depends on an internal reform of law and ethics. But he was sensible enough to suggest that such reforms are best undertaken by Muslims themselves. ‘I would urge,’ he wrote, ‘that it is to Mohammedans themselves that we must look to work out their ultimate regeneration according to the rules of their own law and conscience.’ The Future of Islam has its biases and prejudices, but it is worth reading, even almost 130 years after its publication, for Blunt’s perceptive insight into Muslim politics and his awareness of the general direction Islam has been moving during the past century."

"Most people think that The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is a religious text focused on theological issues. But in my opinion, Muhammad Iqbal, who is renowned in the Indian subcontinent as a poet and philosopher, was the first Muslim futurist. And this powerful and challenging book is packed with deep insights on the future of Islam. Like me, Iqbal is concerned with shaping rather than predicting the future. He was totally disillusioned by the religious scholars who he described as ‘ignorant’ and ‘absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience’. He wanted to develop a modern epistemology of Islam as the basis for the reconstruction of a future Muslim civilisation. He saw the future as an open possibility, not closed and predetermined, and life as an organic unity where everything was connected to everything else. He wanted to change everything, particularly the sharia, or Islamic law, which he saw as arcane and outdated. He argued that every generation has to rethink Islamic law and recast it in a futuristic framework. I think the full import of Iqbal’s futuristic thinking has yet to be appreciated by contemporary Muslims. He was certainly one of those who inspired me to write The Future of Muslim Civilisation. I accepted his assertion that time within Islamic cosmology is largely future time: devout Muslims are always preparing for a future life, both here in this world, where as trustees of God they are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the abode of their terrestrial journey and preserving its good health for future generations, and the hereafter, where a full account of earthly activities is due. The book presents an alternative vision of a dynamic, thriving future civilisation of Islam. It starts with an observation that is also a glaring dichotomy. Given that Islam is perforce a future-orientated world view, why is the future so conspicuously absent from contemporary Muslim thought and discourses? So – single-handedly for almost a decade – I tried to shape a current discourse on Islamic futures. When The Future of Muslim Civilisation was first published, way back in 1979, most Muslim scholars found it difficult to comprehend. Part of the difficulty was due to the fact that there was no internal language for discussing the future of Islam: I had to invent my own language. But there was another problem: the inertia associated with thinking about the future. Considering the mountains of problems that the Muslim world faces today, why should we be concerned about the future? – this was the most common comment on the book. But now it is seen as a classic in the field. Yes. I had to tackle the difficulty that most Muslims – indeed most people – experience with thinking about the future. Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, tries to overcome this resistance by showing the sheer depth of futures consciousness within Islamic concepts and ideas that most Muslims take for granted. I examined such ideas as ‘Islamic state’, ‘Islamic economics’, the sharia, fundamentalism, etc, explored the possible future problems inherent within them, and suggested various paths to viable futures. I like to think I succeeded in raising the future consciousness of a small segment of the international Muslim community."

"This brings me to my next book recommendation: The Future of Islam in the Middle East. Faksh looks at the future of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, Algeria and Saudi Arabia and concludes that it has no future. Faksh offers a refreshing and powerful analysis of the vacuous nature of Islamic fundamentalism. He is very far sighted but his book is largely neglected. I think it deserves to be read and re-read. He argues that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is overstated, and the deep cultural and moral principles of Islam, and its overarching emphasis on diversity and pluralism, will eventually sweep it aside."

"I think the future of all three monotheistic faiths is intertwined and interconnected. This point is strongly made by Hans Küng whose book is my next recommendation: Islam: Past, Present and Future. Küng is undoubtedly the most enlightened Catholic philosopher of our time. This is a monumental work: it covers the evolution and development of Islam, the present crisis of Muslim civilisation, and looks at what Küng calls ‘possibilities for the future’. Islam is the last in a trilogy which has also covered Judaism and Christianity. And Küng is simply brilliant in making connections between the three monotheistic faiths and highlighting the areas of convergence. Küng is extremely thorough. So he looks at the future of Islamic law, the future of Muslim politics and ‘Islamic state’, the possibilities of an Islamic economic order, the future of the Islamic way of life, and even the images of hope that Muslims themselves have produced. He thinks that Islamic law should and would change in the future to meet the challenge of human rights, gender equality, and the rights of minorities, by developing a new ethical framework of rights and responsibilities. He predicts that Muslim politics will acquire ‘secularity’ without totally embracing secularism, and Islamic economics, including the banking system, will evolve further as a major system of commerce based on ethical principles. What I really like about this book is Küng’s passionate belief that the differences between Islam and the West are more apparent than real, and that the religious divide between Islam and the other two Abrahamic faiths can be readily bridged. The deadly threats that humanity faces, he argues, require us to demolish the walls of prejudice, stone by stone. He would argue that it is a necessary requirement for our future survival."

"The most urgent task facing Muslim society, I think, is the reformulation of the sharia. Here, the human rights lawyer Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im has provided an invaluable lead. He has written extensively on Islam and human rights. In this book he argues that Islam cannot have a viable future without rethinking Islamic law and the relationship between religion and the secular state in all Muslim societies. The sharia needs to be free from state control, he suggests, just as the state should not be allowed to misuse religious authority. An-Na’im is a profound thinker with a deep knowledge of Islamic sources; and offers a penetrating analysis of Islamic law in our time, examining the role of sharia in Turkey, India and Indonesia, and its possible future development and evolution. And I couldn’t agree more with his assertion that the idea of human rights and citizenship are totally consistent with Islamic values and norms. I am always hopeful. After all, a major function of faith is to give us cautious hope. This is why Küng also concludes his book by expressing ‘unshakable hope’ about the future. But hope is intrinsic in the very idea of future. An awareness of the future can empower people and open up possibilities where none existed before. The future is a frontier where all things are possible, including the possibility of breaking the power and the hold of the present over our future. But for that to happen we should see the future not as a commodity but as a domain of alternative potentials and promises."

"Ibn Battutah, whose name can be translated as Son of a Duck, is my hero and is regarded as ‘the traveller of Islam’. He left his native city of Tangier in 1325 at the age of 21 with the intention of performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. But he continued beyond Mecca. Travelling by horse, mule, ox wagon, junk, dhow and on foot, he covered over 75,000 miles and visited over 40 countries. Wherever he went, he found it easy to get employment as a jurist, or a courtier or an ambassador. His journeys involve swashbuckling adventures and chases with concubines in tow. He is a riveting read. The interesting thing with Ibn Battutah is that travel for him was not just going from one place to another; it was living in a place. Wherever he went, he made his home. He had a house, he married and he got a job. This allowed him to learn about the place by living as a part of it. Then he would move on. It wasn’t until he returned to Morocco in his ripe old age, that he wrote down all his adventures. It’s got a wonderful title in full, The Precious Gift for Lookers into the Marvels of Cities and Wonders of Travels . You have to read Ibn Battutah to discover that. But what is important is that everywhere he went, although he could not perfectly merge with the cultures he encountered, he took a great amount of time trying to understand them. He treated each culture on its own terms, and didn’t impose his own values on them. I think that’s very important for any traveller – if you want to learn from a different culture, then you have to treat it with equality and respect. Only then will that culture become available to you. If you go there with too many of your own preconceptions, then you will limit your experience. Dialogue is obviously very important, but it has to be from a basis of knowledge, not from a basis of ignorance. And the only way you are going to develop knowledge about another culture is if you live in that culture for a considerable period of time. You simply can’t walk into a completely different city, with a different culture, and begin a reasonable dialogue. You can only learn so much from books; in order to really learn about a culture you have to live and see the world through its eyes. If you do this, then yes, it is acceptable to raise questions about how other people behave."

"This book, written by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, is his account of retracing Ibn Battutah’s journey. He completed the trip in parts, and describes each stage in three separate books – Travels with a Tangerine is the first (the second one is called The Hall of a Thousand Columns , and the third one is called Worlds Beyond the Wind . If you want to get a contemporary look on Ibn Battutah, then Tim Mackintosh-Smith is an excellent guide. In this first book, he follows Ibn Battutah, going from Morocco to Eygpt, Syria to Oman, and Anatolia to Constantinople. He sails in a dhow across the Arabian sea and travels to Delhi, then on to the Maldives and the fabled Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka. He describes his own experiences beautifully but also provides us with extracts from Ibn Battutah. The result: you see India from the 14th century perspective of Ibn Battutah’s adventures overlaid with an account of an emerging 21st-century superpower. Brilliant juxtaposition. The parallels between the two ages are often quite stark. Yes, I have to say I am very jealous – I always wanted to retrace the travels of Ibn Battutah myself. In fact, I made very elaborate plans, and even started the journey around North Africa and some of the areas in the Middle East. What I actually wanted to do was to live like Ibn Battutah. But the journey took him 29 years and I just couldn’t do the same thing."

"This book is an anthology of stories written by people who have travelled to Muslim countries and met interesting people on their way. Most of the Muslims described in the book are remarkable only in the fact that they are very ordinary. They are just farmers, taxi drivers, asylum seekers, cleaners, musicians, mothers or teachers. Yet they are living extraordinary lives. Take the story of ‘Mr F’ who survives the Taliban in Afghanistan, only to suffer unmitigated humiliation as an asylum-seeker in Britain, or Youssou N’Dour who rises above poverty in his native Senegal, to travel to France and woo people with his devotional Islamic songs."

"One of the reasons I have chosen it is that Pramoedya Ananta Toer is probably one of the most important writers of contemporary times (although we don’t recognise him as such yet) and the best way to discover his genius is to read The Fugitive . The story is about travel within one’s own homeland. The hero and protagonist Hardo is displaced despite living in his own home country, Indonesia, because of the fact that he is a colonial subject (it is written at the time of the Japanese occupation); both his physical and mental space is occupied by the coloniser. Hardo travels within his own country, in search of home. The journey is internal, but nevertheless it is a journey towards a discovery. Hardo is on the run from the Japanese. His revolt against their occupation ended in defeat unexpectedly, and after hiding for months in a cave, he longs to go home. He tries to travel back undetected, and the story describes the betrayal, disappointment and problems he encounters in the process. The novel is structured like a ‘wayang’ (traditional shadow play), where the first couple of acts are usually slow, but then the drama speeds up right up at the end, ending with a rather violent denouement. It is the story of the colonial experience of southeast Asia."

"It describes a journey which is very familiar to many Muslims. Many British Muslims travel back to what they regard as their original home – to Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Syria, or wherever their families came from – to rediscover their roots. The protagonist Sami travels from Britain to Syria to discover what Islam and his family are all about. He doesn’t take Islam very seriously although he is a Muslim, and, whilst he and his wife are in Damascus, he is upset to find that his wife, who is very liberal, starts to wear a hijab (the headscarf). At the same time, his brother is becoming the typical, unthinking fundamentalist. The interesting thing about his wife as a character is that, although she chooses to wear the hijab, she continues also to be a very liberal-minded person. In the Koran she finds a kind of spiritual tranquillity and peace, and the hijab for her is simply an expression of that peace. Sami just can’t understand this. What is so strong about the book is that it shows Muslims as a human community, struggling not just to make sense of their faith and coming to terms with Western values, but also with family problems, break-ups, unemployment and so on. The way that travel features in the book is very sophisticated; Robin Yassin-Kassab depicts the internal travel of the characters from one variety of Islam to another, the physical travel of literally going to Damascus, and also spiritual travel as certain characters find themselves spiritually enriched by their experiences. Yes, I hope to go back to Mecca where I used to live for a while during the 1970s. I am going back to do some research for a book; an exercise of opening up not just the intellect, but also the spiritual side of my private life – just what real travel ought to be!"