Ibn Battuta...was particularly censorious of Abu Muhammad Yandakan al-Musufi, who was a good Muslim and had earlier on actually visited Morocco himself. When Ibn Battuta visited him at his house, he found a woman conversing with a man seated on a couch. Ibn Battuta reports:
I said to him: "Who is this woman?" He said: "She is my wife."
I said: "What connection has the man with her?" He replied:
"He is her friend." I said to him: "Do you acquiesce in this when you have lived in our country and become acquainted with the precepts of the Shariah?"He replied: "The association of women with men is agreeable to us and a part of good conduct, to which no suspicion attaches. They are not like the women of your country." I was astonished at his laxity. I left him and did not return thereafter. He invited me several times, but I did not accept.
Note that Abu Muhammad's difference from Ibn Battuta does not lie in religion- they were both Muslim- but in their decision about right lifestyles.
If Sen has read Ibn Battuta, then he must know that
1) In a immediately preceding passage, the fellow had shown his hatred and disdain of Black people. He was astonished that Berber speaking Muslims considered it an honor to dine with Blacks and to eat their, perhaps simpler, food.
2) He says that the people of Mussaffa, though of Berber language, were not merely friendly to pure Black people but also 'matrilocal' and gave freedom to women in the same manner as the Indians of Malabar.
Thus, Battuta had differences with all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. Religion, Colour of skin, Customs, type of food, disposition to give rich presents, etc, etc. His own identity is firmy linked to his own body and his own antecedents and ambitions. His differences with others arise out of the fact that they have different bodies and different traits and different thoughts about how life should be lived.
Why- in seeking an example of 'Muslim identity'- has Sen quoted a racist whose people thought it a splendid thing to enslave and traffick black people? Incidentally, Mauretania still has a problem of descent based slavery featuring rape and forcible impregnation by the 'masters'.
An article on the web reveals- 'The roots of Mauritania's caste system go back as early as the eighth century. During that time, Arab-Berber “Moors,” in what is now Mauritania, began to capture and enslave people belonging to neighboring black West African ethnic groups, namely the Wolof, Fula, Soninke, Serer, and Bambara peoples.'
What point is Sen making? He says the difference between Battuta and the Mauretanian was not religious. Yet, that is exactly what it was. Battuta was saying 'this is un-Islamic behavior. You are a bad Muslim. If Hindus of Malabar do this, they are not disobeying their Religion, because they aren't Muslims. You are.'
Over the next six centuries, which view prevailed? Battuta's, that women should be 'pardah nashin', or that they should gad about with male 'friends'? The answer is that, for Religious reasons, Battuta's view was held normative. There may have been exceptions for Tuaregs or Bedouins ranging the desert and so forth. But 'best practice' involved harems and purdah and burqas.
Following Ackerlof & Kranton, we might suppose that two main types of Muslim identities existed
1) Being observant and having a great camel and a wife who keeps out of sight
2) Being observant and having a crap camel and a wife who insists on entertaining male guests by fisting them while off her head on toilet wine.
A fellow Muslim might mark you down for having a crap camel and a drunken ho-bag of a wife. You may be fond of your crap camel and ho-bag wife. But, as a Muslim, having the former identity would yield more utility.
In this sense, Muslims have a single identity. A guy should ensure his camels and wives are good, not utter sluts unfit for their proper purpose.
Having traits associated with a high status identity, though those traits don't themselves yield you utility- coz you happen to like ho-bags and lame camels- nevertheless do yield you higher utility unless you are misidentifying yourself. Suppose I had the traits associated with being a good Muslim of Ibn Battuta's time. I'd actually have high utility. I would take great pleasure in my religious observances and the speed of my camel and the chastity of my wife. Indeed, I'd be a much better man altogether. I can imagine myself showing courage in battle and the sort of quiet, but manly, virtues women like in a husband. In other words, if by some magic I suddenly had a Religious identity- whether as a pious Muslim merchant leading caravans across the Sahara, or as a Shinto Priest in Edo Japan, or a Jedi Knight in a Galaxy far far away- I'd get much higher utility than from being the slob that I am.
It may be that Akerlof & Kranton's 'Economics of Identity' is the theory of consumption I ought to prefer. This raises the question, would there be additive utility from multiple identities? I think this is where the whole thing falls down. The moment choices have to be made as to which identity will prevail at the margin in time allocation, then we are back to square one. 'Identity-fusion' is off the menu. Your identity is defined merely by your body and what groups it can afford to belong to and what things it can afford to retain as belongings.
In other words, 'Identity' may be useful in Economic analysis, but Multiple Identities are useless. The same point can be made about preferences and 'meta-preferences'. Invoking the latter leads to an infinite regress. We are pointed to some higher type of Identity or Preference which subsumes all the others seamlessly.
Still, essentially powerless or heteronomous people- obliged to 'believe in the kindness of strangers'- may want to believe in meta-preferences and multiple identities and the notion that the Tzar secretly sympathizes with the Jews and will, at the last moment, save the from the Cossacks.
Similarly, they may wish to say- despite my being of the conquered people, I have this other identity as one of the master race!
On the other hand, charlatans and fraudsters may make similar claims simply to enrich themselves. One way to spot what they are up to is to look at which personalities they single out as epitomizing a particular identity.
Is it possible that Sen- a Hindu whose people were ethnically cleansed from his ancestral East Bengal- has a particular conception of Muslim 'identity' against which, however,- he protests against in a manic way?
Perhaps something similar is at work when Sen mentions Aurangzeb vs Dara Shikoh despite the fact that though not all Muslim Alim celebrate the former as 'Mard-e-Momin', none endorse the latter.
Sen writes- 'Faced with such diversity among Muslims,
which, from the normative point of view, decreased as orthodoxy established itself as the mimetic target
those who can see no distinction between being a Muslim and having an Islamic identity would be tempted to ask: "Which is the correct view according to Islam? Is Islam in favor of such tolerance, or is it not? Which is it really?"
This can be a life and death question. Is Rushdie or Taslima Nasrin an apostate? Is it licit to kill them? Courts in Islamic countries have to make these sorts of decisions.
What about Ahmadiyas? Are they or aren't they Muslims? What about Alawis or other Shias? Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on the answer. Sen's own view is that 'Islamic identity' is detachable from the legal question- is this person a Muslim or not? But that type of 'identity' won't save your life. Look at what happened to Rushdie. He affirmed his Islamic identity. But the fatwa remained in place. Now he is an open infidel and, being in the US, all the safer for it. Sen type 'identity' is just play-acting.
The prior issue to be faced here is not what the right answer to this question is, but whether the question itself is the right one to ask.
Sen ignores the fact that the law- even in India- needs a definite answer to the question 'Is x a Muslim or not?'. This affects inheritance rights and the law relating to marriage and divorce. In Islamic countries, the answer is even more important.
Being a Muslim is not an overarching identity that determines everything in which a person believes.
But a Muslim who does not believe such 'pillars of the Faith' as are required by an Islamic court may be judged an apostate. This could have very grave consequences. Sen is saying 'being a Muslim doesn't mean all beliefs are predetermined'. But no one has suggested otherwise. He is battling a particularly stupid strawman of his own invention.
For example, Emperor Akbar's tolerance and heterodoxy had supporters as well as detractors among the influential Muslim groups in Agra and Delhi in sixteenth-century India.
It had no supporters whatsoever among the Alim.
Indeed, he faced considerable opposition from Muslim clerics. Yet when Akbar died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq, who was sharply critical of many of Akbar's tolerant beliefs, had to conclude that despite his "innovations," Akbar had remained a good Muslim.
And thus had occupied the throne legitimately- which meant his son succeeded him legitimately. To have said otherwise would have been dangerous.
The point to recognize is that in dealing with this discrepancy, it is not necessary to establish that either Akbar or Aurangzeb was not a proper Muslim.
Yet Abdul Haq Dehlvi found it necessary to do so. The opinion of an infidel, like Sen, is of no account. But, Islamic Divines did have to assert the right opinion or else they might find themselves missing a head.
They could both have been fine Muslims without sharing the same political attitudes or social and cultural identities.
An identity is not a proclivity. I may have a proclivity for twerking like Beyonce. This does not mean I have a 'Beyonce identity'.
It is possible for one Muslim to take an intolerant view and another to be very tolerant of heterodoxy without either of them ceasing to be a Muslim for that reason.
It is possible for both to be considered non-Muslim under Pakistani law. The fact is 'Muslim', like 'Hindu', or 'Parsi', is a term with legal force. I may say I am Parsi, but Indian law will not permit me to maintain this identity. I may say I am Muslim and thus entitled to set up an educational institution with 'minority' status. But the law will not permit the deception.
This is not only because the idea of ijtehad, or religious interpretation, allows considerable latitude within Islam itself,
Ijtehad is merely a type of equitable remedy. At one time, much was claimed for it. But that fad has passed. One could say that legislation and codification represents 'ijma' (consensus). But the direction of such legislation may be retrograde from Sen's point of view.
but also because an individual Muslim has much freedom to determine what other values and priorities he or she would choose without compromising a basic Islamic faith.
But that faith would only be very basic. The 'cultural muslims' of the former Soviet Union are an example. But, as in the current Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, that affiliation may be all that is required.
Where there is Violence between Groups, Identity has only one dimension- which group do you belong to? I recall being asked in an Irish pub in Kilburn whether I was a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu. 'Catholic!' I answered vehemently. It was the right answer. I was bought drinks instead of having my head kicked in.
Sen knows very well that Hindus were ethnically cleansed both under 'liberal' Muslims- like Jinnah and Shurawardy- as well as under orthodox Muslims. As in Kipling's 'Under the City Wall', the moment blood starts to flow, 'liberalism' does not matter. Blood lust, it turns out, is merely a matter of blood- not ideology.
The philosophical aspect to Sen's book is explained in an interview he gave to Kenan Malik for Prospect Magazine from which I quote-
At the heart of the book is an argument against what Sen calls the communitarian view of identity—the belief that identity is something to be “discovered” rather than chosen.
One may choose to be a Lesbian Astrophysicist from Guatemala but discover that, sadly, one is no such thing. Similarly one may choose to be a Liberal and discover that one is a bigoted reactionary.
“There is a certain way of being human that is my way,” the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor wrote in his much-discussed essay “The Politics of Recognition.” “I am called upon to live my life in this way.” But who does the calling?
Mummy and Daddy and Teachers and Neighbors and everybody and everything else which was in your 'social background' or context- in a word, it is the Community which calls the communitarian to live his life in a particular way. This is certainly a reasonable view which fits with our experience of certain, but not all, people.
Sen refuses to see that a Communitarian philosopher will feel it is the Community which would do the calling.
Seemingly the identity itself. For Taylor, as for many communitarians, identity appears to come first, with the human actor following in its shadow. Or, as the philosopher John Gray has put it, identities are “a matter of fate, not choice.”
So, for Sen, 'identity' means 'community'. But this is not the case. Identity means having all the same properties- including location in space and time.
In practice, one may belong to a number of different communities. I am a Hindu, a Lesbian and a Jewish Rabbi. Well, I was till it was discovered that I was a Hindu male. This does not mean I am not a member of the Hindu, male Lesbian, Rabbi community. But it is a very small community- I devoutly hope.
As for choice, that is a matter of fate, or else fate is a matter of choice or alternatively matter is the choice of fate or choice is the fate of matter or some other such shite.
Sen will have none of it. “There are two issues here,” he says when I meet him at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was master until returning to Harvard two years ago. “First, the recognition that identities are robustly pluralSen is particularly critical of the ways in which communitarian notions of identity have found their way into social policy, especially through the ideas of multiculturalism, and in so doing have diminished the scope for individual freedom.
What policymakers have created in Britain, Sen suggests, is not multiculturalism but “plural monoculturalism,” a system in which people are constantly herded into different identity pens.
“We have a system in which Muslim organisations are in charge of all Muslims, Hindu organisations in charge of all Hindus, Jewish organisations in charge of all Jews and so on.”
Multicultural policies, in other words, have allowed mainstream politicians to abandon their responsibilities for engaging directly with Muslim communities.
There is much that I agree with in Sen’s broadside against identity politics and the consequences of multicultural policies. Indeed, I have argued on similar lines in various essays in Prospect. There is much to admire, too, in Sen’s stress on human choices and in his insistence on the importance of reasoned reflection. So why do I also find his argument unsatisfying?
Sen takes for granted that we all possess multiple identities but never defines what he means by an identity. The result is that it seems to mean just about anything you want it to mean. The same person, Sen suggests, “can be without contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a historian, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English).”
Indeed she can. But what does that tell us about identity? After all, few people would deny that you could be a Christian and a tennis fan, or that someone with African ancestry could believe in English-speaking aliens. In conflating tastes, aptitudes, predilections, given biological traits, inherited cultural affiliations and acquired political beliefs into a single list, as if they all mattered equally in discussion of identity, is Sen not trivialising the concept of identity and making it more difficult to understand what it is about the contemporary world that makes identity politics both so significant and so problematic?
Identity politics is 'post modern' in that it rejects 'totalizing' narratives which sought to elide 'concurrency problems' by pointing to an 'end of history' where everybody would be happy everafter. This creates 'concurrency' problems- i.e. makes acute the question as to in what sequence needful reforms should be carried out. Another way of saying the same thing is to say that Identity politics made policy space multi-dimensional so Agenda Control or McKelvey chaos gained salience. The result was a huge waste of time with everybody getting angrier and angrier. Meanwhile, the Chinese continued to rise and rise.
“I’m not saying that being a football fan is of the same order as being a liberal or conservative,” he replies. “One could be immensely more important than the other, depending on the person. It is not just that our priorities may vary according to context, but we also have to determine what the nature of the particular context is. I might decide that it is frivolous to go to a football match when something important like voting is taking place. So my loyalty to a football club and my loyalty to a political ideal may clash. And I will then have to determine where will I go. We all face this kind of decision.”
But this seems a banal way of looking at the problem. After all, what has made the question of identity important is not that individuals do not know how to choose which hat to wear and when, but that collectively hat-wearing fashions have changed. Certain social affiliations have acquired new significance while others have faded away. In this post-ideological age, people are less likely than they were to define social solidarity in political terms—as collective action in pursuit of political ideals. The question people ask themselves is not so much “what kind of society do I want to live in?” as “who are we?” As political identities have weakened, so people have come to view themselves more in terms of their cultural, ethnic or religious affiliations. And they see those identities as given rather than chosen.
What is important, then, is not that people have forgotten that they possess multiple identities. It is rather that political identities have so little significance that people often look elsewhere for meaning—to faith, culture or ethnicity.
One consequence of this is a skewed notion of choice. Take, for instance, the argument that multicultural policies have imposed upon Bangladeshis the single identity of being Muslim.
“Quite often people are pressured into making choices which are not based on reflection,” he replies.
I share Sen’s prejudices. I share too his fears about identity politics and the consequences of cultural pluralism. But I also think that the debate about identity is more complex, and less black and white, than he appears to believe.
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