Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change.

• Author: Tayob, Abdulkader I.

Tibi's book is a fascinating study of Islam using the Geertzian model of religion as a cultural system. He argues for a dynamic, mutually affective relationship between the cultural and historical dimensions of a society. In particular, this book is thus an attempt to assess the extent to which Islam as a religio-cultural complex can accommodate change within its dogmas and doctrines so that they reflect changing social and material conditions.

Tibi describes the varying nature of Islam in its geographical and historical expanse with a dominant orthodoxy that emanates from the central Islamic regions and slowly and imperfectly filters through to the remotest parts. It is this orthodoxy that is held up for critical assessment in its inability to accommodate changes in the modern world. It is found wanting for the modern world in its legal framework, its language construction, and its institutions of learning.

The modern world in turn is understood in the process of globalization emanating from Europe, with a universalizing world market armed with industrialization and rationalization as its tools and secularization as its ethic. Needless to say, the new "orthodoxy" is much more spectacularly successful than the earlier Islamic one.

Like the earlier Islamic world that Tibi characterizes, the modern world allows for varieties but not contrasts. Moreover, there is an asymmetrical development between the North and the South which cannot be wished away. But for Tibi this is a historical anomaly that will unfortunately continue for some time. More important, Tibi argues that any romantic notion of "ghettoization" or "dissociation" from the world market and culture is doomed to fail.

Tibi's position on the historical asymmetry and his plea for some form of cultural "biding of time" reminds me of a valid criticism he makes of Muslim practice. Muslims are aware of a wide chasm separating their ideals, represented in their religious texts, and their actual practice. The difference is often attributed to their sinful unwillingness to conform to Divine legislation, and to the fact, less willingly admitted, that the divinely perceived legislation does not reflect historical circumstances any longer. Tibi correctly recognizes it as a "behavioral lag" between the pious Islamic formulations by elites (traditional and modern) and actual practice. Yet, he too expects Islamic culture to ignore the asymmetry, a euphemism for European cultural and economic...