Why has sociology failed to analyse Islam

anddevelop curricula about

the lives of Muslims?

Max Farrar

Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University

Abstract

This paper sets out some results of the Islamic Studies Network’s project on the teaching of Islam in social science departments of British universities, led by C-SAP, from 2009 to 2012. An appeal for case studies of existing teaching on the topic of Islam and/or the lives of British Muslims was met with stony silence from sociologists in sociology departments. The project was rescued by sociologists in religious studies, by anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and colleagues in politics departments. Two volumes of cases studies have been published. Dissemination events similarly failed to attract sociologists. This paper speculates on the possible reasons for this neglect. Is it sociology’s atheism, or its neglect of the study of everyday life? Is this a sub-set of its reluctance to study and teach on ‘race’ and racism? Is it the institutional racism of higher education leading to under-representation of Muslim social scientists? (But why should the study of Islam be expected to be their prerogative anyway?) Or is there an unconscious echo among British sociologists of those who criticize Muslims for allegedly leading ‘parallel lives’? The paper closes with an advocacy of an intervention in the debates about Islam under the banner of ‘public sociology’.

Key words:

Islamic Studies Network, teaching, Islam, Muslims, religion, public sociology

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The HEA Islamic Studies initiative

In 2007 the British Labour Government recognised Islamic Studies as a strategically important subject and recommended the formation of a UK Islamic Studies Network (ISN). Its policy came in the wake of a report it commissioned which criticised the way in which Islam was being taught in British universities because it wasbased on ‘out-of-date and irrelevant issues’. The BBC reported: ‘Academic Ataullah Siddiqui's review paints a picture of Islamic studies departments where the post-9/11 and 7 July world has largely passed them by’. Welcoming the report, Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell explained the government’s rationale for boosting the teaching of Islam in British universities: ‘The effective and accurate delivery of Islamic studies within our universities is important for a multitude of reasons including wider community cohesion and preventing violent extremism in the name of Islam’.[i] At the same time, Tony Blair (then Prime Minister) announced the project in these terms, according to another BBC report: ‘British politicians must listen harder to the “calm voice of moderation and reason” of the majority of the country's Muslims . . . "The voices of extremism are no more representative of Islam than the use in times gone by of torture to force conversion to Christianity represented the teachings of Christ." Signalling Higher Education’s reluctance to be harnessed to such blatantly social engineering purposes, Professor Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK, was quoted as saying: ‘It will be for the relevant academic community to debate any future changes to the teaching of Islamic studies’.[ii]

This Islamic Studies Network, as it came to be called, was established and led by the Higher Education Academy (HEA). In total, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Scottish Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales contributed £750,000 of funding to support the Network. It was to produce a series of scholarly activities and publications, focused on teaching and learning, between 2009 and 2012.

Islamic Studies is used by the Network as an umbrella term for the academic study of Islam, Muslim cultures and societies and Islamic knowledge through a variety of subject areas and perspectives. This includes, but is not limited to, those working in: Religious Studies, Theology, Language Studies and Linguistics, International Relations, Law, Finance, Management and Business Studies, History, Literature and Textual Studies, Security Studies, Economics, Education, Science, Philosophy, Art, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Politics, Anthropology and Sociology, and the interdisciplinary Area Studies programmes, for example those associated with Middle East or South Asian Studies. The ISN is coordinated by a project team drawn from across the Higher Education Academy including representatives from five Subject Centres, and overseen by an Advisory Board.[iii]

Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd were appointed in 2009 by the HEA Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) to coordinate the social science contribution to the ISN. C-SAP’s aim was to collate existing work by social scientists on the topics of Islam and the lives of Muslims, and to encourage further curricular development in this field. To that end, Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd produced two volumes of case studies (2010, 2011), setting out in considerable detail how social scientists taught specific topics. In each volumethere were ten case studies.[iv] A dissemination event took place in 2011. C-SAP was wound up in 2011, and the social science work of the ISN is now managed directly by the HEA. During 2011-2012, two ‘expert seminars’ for social scientists on Islam and Muslims’ lives took place place,[v] and web-based teaching and learning materials on these topics are being assembled. Attendance at free public events in London, Birmingham and Sheffield varied between ten and 26, with no attendee being a full-time member of staff of a sociology department.

The study of Islam within social science curricula in UK universities

This paper argues that the response of sociologists in British universities to researching and teaching about Islam and the lives of Muslims is lamentable. The wealth of material in the field of Islam and Muslims’ lives is hardly addressed within the sociology curriculum. Sociologists are manifestly neglecting this area of study, to the detriment not only of their students’ education, but also to the public life of the nation.

The evidence for this statement comes from a study by Lisa Bernasek and Gary Bunt. They examined randomly selected web-sites of 110 of the 156 higher education providers in the UK to establish how many modules in how many discipline areas contained some study of Islam. They found 1,101 relevant modules. As expected, the predominant discipline area was religious studies (28% of all modules). Next came politics, with 17% of all modules (220), close to history with 16%. Sociology had 5% (65 modules), while anthropology had 1% (20 modules) (Bernasek and Bunt 2010 pp. 14-15). These researchers found that 66% of these modules were taught at 12% of higher education institutions, and that the great majority of teaching relating to Islam took place in pre-1992 universities, with the Russell Group universities being pre-eminent among these. A handful of new universities taught fewer than ten modules relating to Islam; none taught more than that (Bernasek and Bunt 2010 p. 12).

My further inspection of the data analysed by Bernasek and Bunt revealed that social science modules referring to Islam were often cross-disciplinary, with module titles such as those shown in Table 1.[vi] (The full list of social science modules which embrace Islam and Muslim societies is included in Appendix C, as Table 2 of Volume One of the Case Studies (Farrar 2010).)

Table 1: Examples of titles of social science modules referring to Islam and Muslims, with discipline areas, taught in UK universities

  • Race, Racism and Cultural Identity (Sociology )
  • Western Civilization (History/Sociology)
  • Islam (Religious Studies/Sociology)
  • Ethnic Diversity and Racism in Britain (Sociology)
  • Multiculturalism in theory and practice (Politics/sociology)
  • Postcolonialism and Muslim Studies (Sociology)
  • Islam in the west: the politics of co-‐existence (Religious Studies/Sociology)
  • Harems, homes and streets: Gender and space
  • in Middle Eastern literatures (Sociology)
  • Muslims in the West (Politics/sociology
  • Social Impact of Sufism in the Muslim World (Religious Studies/Sociology)
  • Muslims in Britain and the Concept of Citizenship (Politics/sociology)
  • Socialization, Conformity and Deviance (Sociology)
  • Ethnography of a Selected Region -‐ Near & Middle East (Anthropology, sociology, politics)
  • Islamic Law and the Modern World (Law/Sociology)
  • Religion and Belief in the Modern World (Economics/Sociology)
  • Anthropology of Islam (Anthropology)
  • Anthropology of Religion (Religious Studies)
  • Anthropology of the Middle East (Political and legal Anthropology)
  • Contemporary Middle East Politics (Politics)
  • The Islamic Revival: from 18th-century Reform to
  • 20th-century Political Action (Politics)
  • Democracy and Authoritarianism: India and Pakistan (Politics)
  • Politics in a plural state: Pakistan (Politics)
  • Religions, Cultures and Civilizations in International Relations (Politics/Religious Studies)
  • The Middle East in Global Order (Politics)
  • Arab-‐Israeli Conflict (Politics)
  • The Politics of Islamism (Politics)
  • Political Islam In Global Politics (Politics)
  • International Relations of the Modern Middle East (Politics)
  • Islam & Muslims in History and Society (History/Politics/Religious Studies)
  • Islam and Muslims and International Relations: contemporary issues and twenty-first century challenges (Politics/Religious Studies)

As the titles indicate, some of the modules are specifically about Islam, but many appear because the module descriptors indicate that there is some reference to Islam. Usually, where the title indicates that the module is about Islam, the whole of the programme is devoted to Islam and related issues. But the data shows that quite often only 5% to 30% of the module is devoted to matters Islamic in sociology and anthropology modules, while it sometimes rises to 60% in politics modules. The data-set also provides information on the variety of departments in which social science material relating to Islam is presented. Sociology, anthropology and politics with an Islamic inflection is to be found in departments with a wide variety of titles including International Studies and Social Sciences; Politics, International Studies and Philosophy; Human Sciences, Sociology and Policy Studies; and Social Science, Media and Cultural Studies. The material available on-line includes either module descriptors or web-sites on which detailed information about each module can be found; thus there is a rich source here for colleagues wishing to develop new modules referring to Islam within their existing social science degree courses. Unfortunately, very few sociologists seem to be sufficiently interested in this topic to find out what is available.

The titles in Table 1 give a flavour of the rich variety of issues that could form part of a sociology curriculum in any British university. Particularly when sociology is willing to drop its ring-fenced attitude and welcome intersections with politics, anthropology, cultural studies and history, the potential for exciting work on Islam and Muslims is vast. Yet Bernasek and Bunt (2010) could find only 65 sociology modules, most of which were jointly run with other departments, and almost all of them in old universities. (This fact is specially ironic, given that the vast majority of British Muslim students are in new universities, and these students provide not only an excellent resource for lively teaching, but might be the most keen to study Islam and the lives of Muslims.)

Over a two-year period, Farrar and Todd appealed to social scientists to provide examples of the teaching they were doing in this field. While the fee they offered for each case Study was not large (£250), there was a small financial incentive. If organizing sociologists is like herding cats, obtaining information from them about their teaching on Islam and Muslims is like pulling cats’ teeth.

Seventeen social scientists contributed the following topics to the two volumes of case studies. Table 2 sets out the titles of the modules taught, and their discipline areas.

Table 2: Titles of Case Studies in Farrar/Todd (2011, 2012)

  • Fieldwork at a Mosque with the Bristol Muslim Cultural Association (sociology).
  • Muslims, Multiculturalism and the State (sociology/religious studies).
  • Ethnography of Muslim Societies (anthropology/cultural studies/religious studies).
  • Morality and Belief in Islam (anthropology).
  • Anthropology of Islam/Muslim Societies (anthropology).
  • The Inspirational Night Dream in Islam: from the Qur’an to al-Qaeda and the Taliban (anthropology).
  • The concept of Islamic civil society in Iran (politics).
  • Marriage, families and Islam (sociology/anthropology).
  • A Community of Inquiry: talking to Muslims (philosophy)
  • How Muslims and Christians understand concepts of faith today: a case study on the work of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Soren Kierkgaard (religious studies/philosophy).
  • Bringing Islam and Religion (back) into Social Policy Teaching (social policy).
  • Developing undergraduate students’ skills in qualitative data analysis through the exploration of on-line Hajj diaries (psychology).
  • The Messages Behind Imam al-Husayn’s Martyrdom: How Shi‘i Muslims Commemorate the Tragedy of Karbala (sociology, anthropology, history, theology).
  • Forced Marriage: an issue for social workers (social work, law).
  • International Relations of The Modern Middle East (international relations, politics).
  • Seminar on ‘War on Terror - New Racism or Security? (sociology, social policy, criminology).
  • Western Studies on the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) (religious studies).
  • Using of Wiki for Teaching ‘Islam and Modernity’ Module (international politics).
  • Seminar on Islam and Sexual and Reproductive Health Policymaking (health sciences).
  • Families, sexuality and citizenship in Islam (sociology, anthropology, politics).

Only one was classed as sociology pure and simple; five case studies involved sociological analysis. The response from sociology to our appeal for information on their modules was pathetic.

Why has British sociology failed to analyse Islam and the lives of Muslims?

What follows is a series of speculations on the reasons why sociology has so neglected this area of study, based on my short (twenty year) career as a sociologist at Leeds Metropolitan University, and as a member of the BSA’s Race & Ethnicity Study Group.

1)Sociology’s atheism

Sociology was produced in response to modernity, and modernity is inextricable from the de-institutionalising of religion. As the Western world was ‘disenchanted’ by the structural force of capitalism, sociology contributed ideologically. While Durkheim demonstrated how essential religion was in providing solidarity as modernity tore social bonds asunder, the impression that religion was a social fact of a bygone age was unmistakable. Marx’s important characterization of religion as the sigh of the oppressed and the soul of soul-less times picks up on the positive functions of religion, but goes on, famously, to liken religion to an opiate. Weber saw Protestantism’s affinity with capitalism (and said Eastern religions were so torpid that they inhibited social and economic progress), but arguedthat Christianity was incapable of resisting the juggernaut of technical rationality. These mixed messages about religion’s place in modern society reverberate in today’s sociology – particularly in the view that mass social occasions like football matches and stadium music events, like religious worship, have ‘collective effervescence’ effects – but it could be argued that post-modernity’s destruction of all meta-narratives has put paid to religion within the discipline, even among those who do not call themselves post-modernists. If sociology discounts, and then seems to disavow religion, it must be hard for religious sociologists to feel at home in sociology departments. It is by no means necessary to be religious to study religion, or the lives of religious people, but there is no doubt that sociology’s curricula hardly includes religion. Students, in my experience, rarely mention religion, and when they do, their exceptionality is marked. Thus, I was once subjected to an angry tirade from a Rastafraian mature student who thought that I (and the rest of the staff in a lecture series on modernity) were disrespectful to religion. On another occasion, a student, who carried his guitar with him wherever he went, asked for permission to play to the class. His rousing Christian song was greeted politely, but with visible embarrassment.

2)Sociology’s neglect of the study of everyday life and its fetishisation of theory

Despite the disenchantment of the modern Western world, despite the undermining of the certainties offered by modernity’s other big social theories, despite man seeming to live quite happily by bread alone (combined with some circuses), religion is not only an important force in Western society, but is absolutely central in the rapidly modernising societies of the South and East. Islam is the world’s largest religion, and is the most rapidly growing religion in the West. In 2009, there were 1.57 billion Muslims (23% of the world’s population). By 2030 just over a quarter of the world’s population will be Muslim.[vii] But even if sheer numbers do not impress – sociology is rightly sceptical about the facts speaking for themselves –the important developments in British society which began with the imperial domination of the Indian sub-continent, and developed rapidly within the metropolitan centre as South Asians, many of whom were Muslims, arrived here in the 1960s and 70s, would seem to be worthy of sociological analysis. When I studied sociology at Leeds University from 1968 to 1971 I was at one of the few university sociology departments which took pride in being a centre for theory (probably thanks to the presence of John Rex on its staff from 1949 to 1962). Yet even here the curriculum was well populated with empirical modules, including one on the sociology of religion. When I taught sociology at Leeds Met University in the 1990s and early 2000s, however, theory was so dominant that ‘the sociology of modern Britain’, one of the few empirical modules, was relegated to a part-timer (until I offered to take it over). As an external examiner in this period it was clear that most sociology departments were overwhelmed by theorists (though few were as top-heavy as Leeds Met). ‘Theory’ almost seems to be the mark of the ‘real man’ in sociology. While religion cannot be analysed properly without application of theory, it is a subject area which demands to be taught with detailed attention to the everyday lives of religious, and secular, people. Yet ‘everyday life’ seems to be the reserve of disciplines which owe much to sociology, but are separate –criminology, religious studies, media/cultural studies, for example – or has become associated with specialist areas, such as the sociology of medicine or education.