Words of Experience; Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst; Fuerst; Wheeler

Edited by

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst [+–]

University of Vermont

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst is an associate professor of religion at the University of Vermont. She received her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where Carl Ernst was her mentor. She is the author of Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (IB Tauris, 2017).

Brannon M Wheeler [+–]

United States Naval Academy

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Brannon Wheeler is a Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis where he was the founding Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies. He received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago after having received a BA in Religion and History at Pitzer College, studying with Carl Ernst at Pomona College. He is the author and editor of nine books including Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago, 2006). He is currently finishing a book-length project on camel sacrifice and martyrdom in Islam.

Carl W. Ernst devoted his academic life to translating Islam, linguistically and culturally, typically within the intellectual context of Religious Studies. His work has focused on how Islamic concepts have travelled across time and space, and his influence on Islamic Studies and Religious Studies is far-reaching. This volume features contributions from long-standing colleagues, scholars whose own work has built on Ernst’s contributions, and former students. It looks at themes in Islamic Studies that Ernst has addressed and expands on his major contributions.

Essays in this volume touch nearly every major element in Islamic Studies – from the Qur’an to Sufism, Islamophobia to South Asian Islam, historical and contemporary praxis, music and more. This collection demonstrates one core tenet of Ernst’s work, specifically the argument that Islam is not rooted in one place, time or language, but is a vast network, routed through myriad places, times and languages.

Series: Comparative Islamic Studies

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements [+–] vii-viii

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst,Brannon M Wheeler FREE

University of Vermont

United States Naval Academy

View Website

Carl W. Ernst devoted his academic life to translating Islam, linguistically and culturally, typically within the intellectual context of religious studies. His work has focussed on how Islamic concepts have travelled across time and space and his influence on Islamic studies and religious studies is far-reaching. This volume features contributions from long-standing colleagues, scholars whose own work has built on Ernst’s contributions, and former students. It looks at themes in Islamic studies which Ernst has addressed and expands on his major contributions. Essays in this volume touch nearly every major element in Islamic studies – from the Qur’an to Sufism, Islamophobia to South Asian Islam, historical and contemporary praxis, music and more. This collection demonstrates one core tenant of Ernst’s work, specifically the argument that Islam is not rooted in one place, time or language, but is a vast network, routed though myriad places, times and languages.

Introduction

A Shaykh for All Occasions [+–] 1-15

Bruce B. Lawrence £17.50

Duke University

Bruce B. Lawrence is a graduate of Princeton, the Episcopal Divinity School, and Yale. He holds an honorary Th.D. from the Virginia Theological Seminary Honorary. Lawrence is a scholar of pre-modern and modern Islamic movements, from West Africa to Southeast Asia. He has published 15 books. Lawrence is the founder of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University where he recently retired as the Marcus Family Professor of the Humanities at Duke, and is now Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus.

The field of study with which Carl is most closely identified is Sufi studies, and it contains a number of complementary dyads, opposites that complement, even as they compete, with one another. One such dyad is qabd and bast. The former means: condensed, contained, bounded; the latter means: expansive, exploding, unbounded. Neither is used here in an ontological sense, as it is in Qur’anic studies methodology, to imply the restrictive power of the One, at once the Other and the Unseen, or the expanding power of the same One, Other and Unseen. In Carl’s case the two – qabd and bast – are instrumental; they depict how Carl engages others, always in a vertical trajectory, either moving from what seems limited to what is large, aka, ground to sky, or starting with the sky and moving to other spheres, aka, sky to cosmos. In this introduction, I apply these terms to Carl’s career and the essays in this volume.

Chapter 1

Is Islam a “Religion”? Contesting Din-Religion Equivalence in Twentieth Century Islamist Discourse [+–] 19-40

Brannon Ingram £17.50

Northwestern University

Brannon Ingram is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam.

This chapter examines how and why the prominent Islamist thinker Abul A`la Mawdudi theorized din so as to distinguish it explicitly from ‘religion’. Drawing on Carl W. Ernst’s discussions of din and ‘religion’, the chapter begins by suggesting that the academic study of Islam has given insufficient attention to the relationship between din and religion. It then shows why Mawdudi believed ‘religion’ was the opposite of din; religion, for him, was a politically vacuous category that colonizers imposed on Muslims as a means of control. I argue that his denial of din-religion equivalence was a critique of the category of religion directed at recuperating the political valence of din under colonial rule. If Mawdudi construed ‘religion’ as inherently private and apolitical, din was its purported opposite: inherently public, political, totalizing, and all-encompassing. A second way that Mawdudi differentiated din from religion was in explicitly arguing that din was, unlike religion, not a comparative category: there is only one din. The chapter will also suggest some provisional possibilities as to the pathways by which Mawdudi came to understand ‘religion’ in the form in which he did.

Chapter 2

Muslim Writings on Hinduism in Colonial India [+–] 41-51

Ali Altaf Mian £17.50

University of Florida

Ali Altaf Mian is Izzat Hasan Sheikh Fellow in Islamic Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Florida. His research interests include Islam in South Asia, gender and sexuality in contemporary Islam, and Islamic law and ethics. He is currently preparing two manuscripts, including Muslims in South Asia (for Edinburgh University Press).

Carl Ernst’s scholarship on Hindu-Muslim interactions in pre-colonial South Asia enables us to theorize the broader “hermeneutical structures” that underpin Muslim writings on “Hinduism” in the modern period. Building on Ernst’s work, I examine the multiple discursive registers Muslims used to construct “Hinduism” in colonial India. I argue that while colonialism and communalism were important socio-political processes in colonial India, contemporary textual records point us to consider the significance of numerous additional socio-political factors. Hindu-Muslim encounters in colonial India were therefore articulated and embodied in multiple ways, including those that challenge both Hindu fundamentalism and Muslim separatism.

Chapter 3

Sons of the Green Light: Khidr and Sufism in the Ansaru Allah Community/Nubian Islamic Hebrews [+–] 52-75

Michael Muhammad Knight £17.50

University of Central Florida

Michael Muhammad Knight is Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida

In his scholarship on South Asian Sufism, Carl Ernst provides us with a salient framework for resisting religious as well as regional essentialisms, and encourages us to problematize the familiar scholarly trope of “syncretism.” Extending Ernst’s insights to the study of African American Islam, I discuss engagements of Sufism by the Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH), a movement that became prominent in the northeastern United States in the 1970s and 80s. Informed by Ernst’s critical challenge to the study of Sufism, I interrogate dominant narratives concerning the AAC/NIH and argue for alternative approaches.

Chapter 4

Religion, Islam, Hinduism, Sufism and Yoga [+–] 76-93

Joy Laine,James W. Laine £17.50

Macalester College

Joy Laine is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Macalester College and is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher.

Macalester College

James W. Laine is the Arnold H. Lowe Professor of Religious Studies and the chair of the Religious Studies department at Macalester College in Minnesota, United States.

Following Carl Ernst’s critical questions growing out of his analysis translations of yoga texts by Sufi practitioners, we analyze contemporary American debates about the nature of yoga practice –whether it is essentially Hindu or not, religious or not— in the context of legal disputes about the teaching of yoga in public schools. The case in question, Sedlock vs. Baird, brought by parents of children in the Encinitas (CA) public schools, challenged the legality of teaching yoga, understood as a religious practice, in a public school, given the establishment clause of the constitution prohibiting such practices. We compare the attempts to justify yoga as non-religious to those attempts of Creationists to portray their opposition to evolution as scientific. We conclude by thinking through the variety of definitions deployed by interested parties for the key terms: religion, Islam, Hinduism, Sufism, yoga.

Chapter 5

Ascension Visions of Sufi Masters: The Rhetoric of Authority in Visionary Experiences of Ibn Abī Jamra (d.ca. 699/1300) and Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209) [+–] 94-111

Frederick S. Colby £17.50

University of Oregon

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Professor Colby specializes in Arabic narratives on a central story in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, the night journey (isra) and ascension (mi’raj). Through his close examination of Arabic manuscripts stored in Damascus, Istanbul, Cairo, and in other major repositories throughout the world, his research explores the early formation and development of a popular strand of Islamic ascension literature attributed to Muhammad’s cousin and companion, Ibn ‘Abbas. Colby is the author of Narrating Muhammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ‘Abbas Ascension Discourse (SUNY, 2008).

Muḥammad’s ascension represents a touchstone for Sufi discussions of mystical experiences, and this essay comparatively examines dream ascension narratives attributed to two middle period Sufis, Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209) and Ibn Abī Jamra (d. ca. 699/1300). Through comparison with Rūzbihān’s visions of ascent and what Carl Ernst’s studies help us to see in them, the present chapter sheds new light on key themes in the accounts of Ibn Abī Jamra’s visionary ascensions, including visions of ascent and descent, sacred text exegesis, and autobiographical elements mentioned in the dream visions. Ultimately this essay raises new questions about the dream work Visions of Beauties (Marāʾī al-Ḥisān) appended to Ibn Abī Jamra’s abridgement and commentary on Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ, and it also suggests directions that future research on the text might take, especially a consideration of its wider genre, scholarly networks, and political milieu, following the lead of Carl Ernst’s excellent study of Rūzbihān’s Unveiling of Secrets.

Chapter 6

“It’s in the Bones”: Muslim Pathologies and the Problem of Representation in Disgraced [+–] 112-137

Samah Choudhury £17.50

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (PhD candidate)

Samah Choudhury is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The play Disgraced, written by Pakistani American playwright Ayad Akhtar, took home the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and has continued its popularity streak across American theatrical stages in the years since its debut. This article examines Disgraced and its central character – a lying, violent, and ultimately pathological Muslim man, Amir Kapoor. I ask how this particular pathology – drawing from Fanon’s conception of how colonial subjects understand themselves in relation to white colonizers – allows us to think about the Muslim figure beyond its otherwise hegemonic imagery. I propose two modes through which to read Akhtar’s decision to position Amir squarely within the stereotype as it relates to the climactic moments of the story: a declaration of pride on 9/11, the loss of his job, and the savage beating of his white wife. These modes – in which the Muslim is self-pathologized or has a pathology imposed upon him – simultaneously reinforce and subvert the expectation of the Muslim, though the perennial problem of publicly representing a beleaguered minority within a hostile political climate remains. The enactment of a physical act of pathological violence, in particular, outstrips the otherwise nuanced reading of imposed pathology due to the fleeting medium of live performance.

Chapter 7

Sufism’s Ambivalent Publics [+–] 141-161

Katherine Pratt Ewing £17.50

Columbia University

Katherine Pratt Ewing is Professor of Religion and Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University. She has done ethnographic fieldwork in South Asia and among Muslims in Europe and the United States focused on debates among Muslims about the proper practice of Islam in the modern world, including current ACLS-funded research in northwest Africa.

Sufism has been swept up into globalized debates that are increasingly framed as an opposition between Sufis and Salafis. Carl Ernst has reflected on how scholarly approaches to Islam have historically been filtered through Protestant Christian understandings of religion, arguing that such approaches contribute to the Islamophobia so evident in public discourse today. I reconsider how and why Muslim ambivalence toward Sufism, which continues to grow along with the rise of Salafism, is the product of a new semiotic ideology linked to this global public discourse, often taking the form of what could be called “Sufiphobia.” Focusing on transnational flows of public discourse on Sufism, my goal is to trace some of the roots of this Sufiphobia among modern Muslims and to consider what is happening to Sufism as a result.

Chapter 8

Sufi Cyberscapes: The Inayati Order in the Virtual Ecosystem of American Islam [+–] 162-186

Robert Rozehnal £17.50

Lehigh University

Robert Rozenhal is a Professor in the Department of Religion Studies and the founding director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Duke University, and an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (Oneworld, 2019); Piety, Politics and Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam: Beautiful Behavior, editor (Bloomsbury, 2019); Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century Pakistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He previously served as the national co-chair of the Islamic Mysticism program unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Drawing on Carl W. Ernst’s multidimensional scholarship, this essay explores the changes and challenges that increasingly (re)shape Sufi identity, piety, and practice in cyberspace. The case study focuses on the digital footprint of the oldest and one of the most prominent Sufi communities in the West: the Inayati Order. Molded by the enduring legacy of its founder, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan (1882-1927), this multidimensional Sufi tariqa has from its inception embraced a universal, perennialist mysticism. Through careful and coordinated planning, today’s Inayati Order in North America is now pivoting into the Internet Age under the leadership of his grandson, Pir Zia Inayat Khan (b. 1971)—strategically deploying digital media to broadcast its message, solidify the bonds of community, and broaden its social networks. An exegesis of the new flagship website (https://inayatiorder.org) illustrates the Inayati Order’s articulation of its own past, its understanding of Sufi identity and authority, and the trajectory of its evolving and expanding administrative architecture. Blending language, symbols, sounds, and imagery, this sophisticated and multilayered digital document spotlights the deep linkages to Islamic sacred history, Indo-Muslim culture, and the Chishti Sufi tradition from which this hybrid community emerged.

Chapter 9

Carl Ernst’s Methodology of Sufi Studies [+–] 187-205

F. Cangüzel Güner Zülfikar £17.50

Üsküdar University, Turkey

F. Cangüzel Güner Zülfikar received her PhD in History from Hacettepe University, Ankara in 1999 with her dissertation: “Saint (Aziz) Mahmud Hudayi’s [ca. 1543-1628] Shrine Complex: Sufi Impact in the Civil Society Organizations in Ottoman Religious, Socio-Cultural History.” She served as the Associate Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations between 2006-2010 at UNC-Chapel Hill. Since 2016 she teaches at the Institute for Sufi Studies at Uskudar University.

Carl Ernst’s methodological approach has played a significant role in the development of Sufi Studies. Ernst translates, contextualizes, and makes relevant Sufi primary sources to the present time. He engages with his topic in a multidisciplinary manner, clearly evaluating historical arguments, relations, and geographical differences in their cultural environment. He shifts religious studies methodology from “the model of comparative zoology” which had been utilized by Orientalist works into the human-centered Hodgsonian view. Ernst builds bridges of understanding by presenting his academic studies to the general public in an accessible manner. In this paper, Ernst’s methodology will be studied in an attempt to offer a model for Sufi Studies in Turkey.

Chapter 10

Translation, Travel, Transfiguration and the Practice of Scholarship in the Study of Religion [+–] 206-221

Brannon M Wheeler £17.50

United States Naval Academy

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This paper presents three different perspectives on the “experience” of scholarship described by Carl Ernst in his groundbreaking study of the Indian origins of an Ottoman Sufi text, three perspectives all related through me from my interactions with Carl. How do we articulate the tension between, to use Carl’s example, what the Turkish dervishes think they are doing (or more accurately what we think they think they are doing) and what we think they are “really” doing. These three perspectives are experimental, designed to get us beyond the tired dichotomy of insider/outsider and to eschew the baggage-laden oversimplification of syncretism.

Chapter 11

Negotiating the State and the Persianate: Carl Ernst’s Living Legacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [+–] 222-234

Candace Mixon £17.50

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, PhD candidate

Candace Mixon is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, with a concentration in Islamic Studies, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation is on material artifacts of devotion to the family of the Prophet Muhammad in contemporary Iran. She is especially interested in how Shi’ite devotion is gendered, materialized, and ritualized.

Though we have likely all benefited from the written work of Dr. Carl Ernst in his sharp scholarship, one less-discussed aspect of Ernst’s scholarship is his active role in global networking and fundraising that can make all of our projects, research or pedagogical, possible. In this essay, I explore what I have called an ‘Ernstian model’ of demanding projects, careful scholarship, and networked resources in order to demonstrate how Dr. Ernst leads by example in not only the quality and expansive nature of his scholarship but the mechanics of how to make it a successful venture. In order to embrace the Ernstian model, one should embrace or learn to have a proclivity for connection in diverse circumstances. For me, this has primarily come through his work in the “Persianate,” including navigating research and opportunities in Iran.

Chapter 12

Writing, Doing and Performing the Future of Islamic Studies: The Practical Example of Carl W. Ernst [+–] 235-258

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst £17.50

University of Vermont

This chapter argues that since so many—in and out of the field—seem to worry about or articulate hopes for the future of Islamic studies, Carl W. Ernst’s example envisions a future that is critically attuned to multiple pressures and demands, intellectually, politically, and institutionally. This essay briefly summarizes the landscapes in which scholars of Islam, often located in humanistic disciplines, conduct their research; then, it addresses how scholars of Islam have navigated their various publics in increasingly politicized settings; finally and as above, by using Ernst as a model, it suggests practical strategies for scholarly work as we look toward the future of Islamic studies.

Chapter 13

Epistemic Authority and a Just World: Remaking Islamic Studies through Collaborative Practices [+–] 259-289

Katherine Merriman £17.50

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, PhD candidate

Katherine Merriman is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with foci in contemporary Islam, race and religion, and the anthropology of religion. In addition, Merriman is the founder and guide for Muslim History Tour New York City, which explores 400 years of Islamic history captured in often overlooked sites, architecture, and events of the past.

This Chapter will explore Carl Ernst’s holistic approach to knowledge building, which is actively collaborative, engages with non-scholarly sources of knowledge, and resists the limitations of Eurocentrism in the American academy. To do so, it will focus on his work combatting Islamophobia through three parts: his scholarly writings – mainly Following Muhammad (2003), Rethinking Islamic Studies (2010), and Islamophobia in America (2013); his international scholarly collaborations; and his public engagement in education and arts-based programming. Evaluating these three elements of his work as a whole, it argues that Ernst does not explicitly draw from but follows the challenge presented by feminist writing on epistemic authority: to recognize the unequal access to knowledge-production for marginalized communities; to acknowledge positionality and the necessity of marginalized voices to produce better questions and theories; and to actively remake collective knowledge through more equitable means and towards a liberatory future. Reading Ernst’s work on Islamophobia with his scholarly relationships and public-facing work demonstrates an active practice of undoing violent binaries and oppressive stereotypes about Islam and Muslims, which are not simply a lingering Orientalism of days past but real forces that shape public life and government policy. The chapter concludes by way of linking Ernst’s larger work in Islamophobia through scholarship and practice to the author’s own intellectual and public facing work in the study of Islam in America.

Chapter 14

Afterword [+–] 290-296

Carl W. Ernst FREE

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Carl W. Ernst is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Islamic studies at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A closing set of remarks both looking back at the previous chapters and with a call for the future of Islamic studies.

End Matter

Index [+–] 297-299

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst,Brannon M Wheeler FREE

University of Vermont

United States Naval Academy

View Website

New Books Network interview with Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Brannon M. Wheeler and Carl W. Ernst (May 7,2021)

Reviews

Not only is the legacy and influence of Carl Ernst a formidable one for the field that deserves attention and serious consideration, but the majority of contributors build from his insights and methods to develop important lines of inquiry in their own right. Almost anyone in Islamic Studies would find this work important and compelling, and individual contributions clearly have resonance beyond this group in the fields of South Asian Studies, Persian Studies, Virtual Religion, American Religion, Sufism, and the academic study of religion.
Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University, USA

When taken as a whole, this rich and diverse collection of essays, reflects in many ways the rhythmic ebb and flow at the heart of Carl Ernst’s vital and animating body of scholarship. Each piece, in its own matter, is working to carve new pathways. Whether engaging with specific subfields, exploring the limits, ambiguities, and intersections of disciplines, or critically assessing and challenging the structures of the academy, the works gathered herein disclose where the thrumming heart of scholarship could and ought to go.
Journal of Sufi Studies

Almost anyone in Islamic Studies would find this work important and compelling, and individual contributions clearly have resonance beyond this group in the fields of South Asian Studies, Persian Studies, Virtual Religion, American Religion, Sufism, and the academic study of Religion, not to mention Politics.
The Muslim World Book Review

As a whole, Words of Experience showcases tremendous expertise in Islamic studies and pathways for future inquiry. With its emphasis on methodology, reflexivity, and public engagement, this collection might also serve as a useful reference for the academic study of religion broadly. As Morgenstein Fuerst notes about what it means to perform Islamic studies, this collection illustrates “how one exists and ought to exist in the academy” (252). For that reason, Words of Experience will be an invaluable resource for humanities and social science students for years to come.
Reading Religion

A worthy homage to a teacher— full of contributions worth reading, chewing over, engaging, disagreeing, and being inspired to think further on Sufism, Islam, and the study of religion.
Religious Studies Review

All of Ernst’s collaborators will find corroboration here, as will most scholars in the fields of Islamic, Sufi and Persian Studies. This book should also be read by graduate students just beginning their careers, as it sets a high bar for a meaningful academic life. They will also find meat in the short Afterword, in which Ernst responds to certain essays and comments further regarding possibilities for ongoing research.
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Words of Experience

Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst [+–]

University of Vermont

Brannon M Wheeler [+–]

United States Naval Academy

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