Fundamentalism, bureaucratization, and the state's co-optation of religion: A Jordanian case study

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 369-393

  Antoun, Richard T ^a  

^a BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BUREAUCRACY; CIVIL SOCIETY; RELIGION; STATE ROLE;

ASIA; EURASIA; JORDAN; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 33749242394     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: 14716380     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743806412393     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. I coined this term to indicate individuals who have to some extent embraced the world view and ethos of fundamentalism and many of its prominent attributes described later.
2. See Antoun, "Civil Society, Tribal Process, and Change in Jordan: An Anthropological View," International Journal of Middle East Studies 32 (2000): 441-63, for an elaboration of the argument in the social context of tribalism rather than religion.
3. For examples of this comparative approach, see Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, 1989)
4. and Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
5. For a more detailed account of these and related concepts, see Richard Antoun, Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Movements (New York: AltaMira Press, 2001)
6. and Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God.
7. This capsule summary necessarily simplifies the complexity of the concepts presented and their analysis. See Antoun, Understanding Fundamentalism, for the argument, the analysis, and the evidence.
8. See Michael Herzfeld, The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992), 49, 51.
9. Ibid., chap. 2.
10. Ibid., 62.
11. See Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 229.
12. Ibid., 124.
13. Ibid., 242.
14. See Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
15. Ibid., 136.
16. See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, (Glencoe, III.: The Free Press, 1947)
17. and Peter Blau and W. R. Scott, "Professional and Bureaucratic Organization," in The Political Influence of the Military: A Comparative Reader, ed. Amos Perlmutter and Valerie Place (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980) for a discussion of these attributes by prominent social scientists.
18. The institute was first termed Ma'had Shar'i (Islamic Religious Institute) and later renamed Ma'had al-'Ulum al-Shar'iyya (Institute of Islamic Religious Sciences).
19. See the section appearing later on the growth of fundamentalism in Jordan for a discussion of the proclamation's significance.
20. For a discussion and analysis of the Islamic "lesson" (dars) as it was given in Kufr al-Ma, Jordan, in the 1960s, see Antoun, "Themes and Symbols in the Religious Lesson: A Jordanian Case Study," International Journal of Middle East Studies 25 (1993): 607-24.
21. Of course, the dichotomy of state and civil society has a long tradition in the views of the philosophers John Locke, Georg Hegel, and Jurgen Habermas. For the evidence against applying this view in tribal societies in Jordan, see Antoun, "Civil Society, Tribal Process."
22. The ethos indicates the emotional tone and quality of a people's life, their moral and esthetic style and mood.
23. All village proper names used are pseudonyms.
24. See Antoun, "Institutionalized Deconfrontation: A Case Study of Conflict Resolution Among Tribal Peasants in Jordan," in Conflict Resolution in the Arab World, ed. Paul Salem (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997) for examples of the use of intermediaries.
25. Multiplex ties are those that cut across many interests. In the 1960s when two villagers interacted with one another, they interacted according to several roles simultaneously. They were coworshipers in the same mosque, neighbors in the settlement area or on the cultivated land; they often met in the same guest house in the evening and might cooperate in farming or harvesting; and they might be tied by the marriage of their children or other kinsmen. These many lines of interest - economic, religious, recreational, consanguineal, or spatial - tinged their relationships with moral and ethical meaning. The mentor-student tie was one of these multiplex relationships.
26. World view is the widest intellectual construction an individual places on his/her world and the events taking place within it; ethos is the emotional tone or attitude with which the individual faces his/her world and the people in it. I have written at length on a cross-cultural basis about fundamentalism in Understanding Fundamentalism. I cannot define all terms used in the analysis here. I shall only give a very brief summary of the lineaments of this religious ideology and assume that readers will refer to the full study for details.
27. In the 1960s, I had noted that many peasants in the village entered the mosque barefoot for Friday prayers and proceeded to pray without washing their feet.
28. The 'idda is the prescribed period of waiting during which widows and divorced women cannot contract a new marriage after the dissolution of a previous one. The woman is entitled to a payment during this period.
29. See Antoun, "On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions," American Anthropologist 70 (1968) for an essay describing the importance of the modesty code in rural Jordan and in the Qur'an.
30. The prohibition on taking pictures of human beings is an aspect of the world view of many fundamentalists.
31. See Understanding Fundamentalism, chap. 7, for a full description and analysis of this incident and its significance for fundamentalism.
32. Jam'̄a here does not designate so much a formal group but, rather, a collectivity mobilized for action.
33. I later discovered that the religious activity at the mosque was related to the Muslim movement of spiritual renewal, Tablighi Jama'at, founded approximately 90 years before in British India.
34. Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).
35. Ibid., particularly chaps. 3 and 5 for details.
36. According to the Ottoman millet system, still recognized in Jordan, Christian courts of various recognized denominations handled the civil affairs of their communities. These courts are still today part of the government structure. The implementation of the Christian courts' decisions are carried out by state authorities and have the force of law. So the integration of "state" and "church" extends beyond the religion of Islam. I am thankful to a personal communication from Nicolas Gavrielides for this information.
37. The terms, dīn al-dawla and dīn al-milla, are found in Sayed Qutb's book, Ma alim al-tariq (Milestones), and his usage may have popularized the terms. People's religion takes many forms, for example, mystic orders, fundamentalist movements, proletarian urban protests, bazaar merchant's associations, academic fora. I am only recounting the version I encountered in one district in rural Jordan.
38. In an article entitled "The Changing Voices of Islam: The Emergence of Professional Preachers in Contemporary Egypt," The Muslim World 81 (January 1991), Patrick Gaffney has argued that, in Egypt, the distinction between state and private mosques is no longer clear-cut as a result of the government's efforts through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s to bring them under bureaucratic supervision. However, he also points out that the proliferation of mosques during that period (from 16,000 mosques in 1950 to 50,000 in 1985) has prevented the state from actually implementing bureaucratization in more than one quarter of all mosques. In addition, Gaffney points out that the contrast of activist (da'i) and conformist preachers remains important in Egypt. With some difference in terms (populist vs. state) and numbers, the same general conclusion holds for Jordan. That is, despite the growing attempts of governments to control religious activity, there remains a distinct contrast in content and style between religious activity associated with the state and such activity associated with social movements opposed to the state.
39. Starrett has emphasized the competitive rather than the inextricably entwined aspect of the relationship between dīn al-dawla and dīn al-milla in contemporary Egypt: "In Egypt the authority of the ulema, the 'traditional' state-trained and subsidized scholars, is under threat by a new market-driven economy of religious commodities produced by private sector companies, secular intellectuals (psychologists, lawyers, physicians, and academics), and independent movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the smaller Islamic groups, which are the political and military vanguard of the Islamic trend. The state under Mubarak has responded to this new informational economy not by restraining it heavily, but by entering the fray with products carrying the imprimatur of al-Azhar, the Ministry of Religious Endowments, the Supreme council on Islamic Affairs, and subsidiary organizations," Starrett, Putting Islam to Work, 97. Occasionally, the complex and ambivalent character of the relationship assumes prominence, including the fact of the complexity of the bureaucracy itself, which sometimes works at cross-purposes: "The same government that declares Islam the religion of the state produces public sector beer and wine (but then bans the sale in several southern provinces to quiet Islamist opposition),"
40. Starrett has emphasized the competitive rather than the inextricably entwined aspect of the relationship between dīn al-dawla and dīn al-milla in contemporary Egypt: Occasionally, the complex and ambivalent character of the relationship assumes prominence, including the fact of the complexity of the bureaucracy itself, which sometimes works at cross-purposes: "The same government that declares Islam the religion of the state produces public sector beer and wine (but then bans the sale in several southern provinces to quiet Islamist opposition)," "In Egypt the authority of the ulema, the 'traditional' state-trained and subsidized scholars, is under threat by a new market-driven economy of religious commodities produced by private sector companies, secular intellectuals (psychologists, lawyers, physicians, and academics), and independent movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the smaller Islamic groups, which are the political and military vanguard of the Islamic trend. The state under Mubarak has responded to this new informational economy not by restraining it heavily, but by entering the fray with products carrying the imprimatur of al-Azhar. ibid., 212.
41. For the impact of transnational migration on Jordan, see the author's extended account of transnational migration from Kufr al-Ma to 17 different countries for higher education and work as well as military service; Richard T. Antoun, Documenting Transnational Migration: Jordanian Men Working and Studying in Europe, Asia, and North America (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005).
42. See also Antoun, "Sojourners Abroad: Migration for Higher Education in a Post-Peasant Muslim Society," in Islam, Globalization ad Postmodernity, ed. Akbar Ahmed and Hastings Donnan (London: Routledge, 1994)
43. and "Jordanian Migrants in Texas and Ohio: The Quest for Education and Work in a Global Society," in Arabs in America: Building a New Future, ed. Michael Suleiman (Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 1999).
44. Vickie Langhor, "Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes: Rethinking the Relationships between Islamism and Electoral Politics," International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 605.
45. Ibid., 606.
46. Ibid.
47. Although I have interpreted the shawl and headband as "tribal," it is a multivocal symbol and, depending on the situation, can have national or religious meaning, or alternatively, all three meanings simultaneously.
48. The following excerpts from Luqman's sermon discourses are drawn from my analysis of "Religion and Politics" in Muslim Preacher in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), chap. 7.
49. Sermon on Justice, Kufr al-Ma, Jordan, July 1966.
50. Ibid.
51. Sermon on Pilgrimage, 29 April 1960.