Muslim Society

by Ernest Gellner

Book Overview

Of all the great world religions, Islam appears to have the most powerful political appeal in the twentieth century. It sustains some severely traditional and conservative regimes, but it is also capable of generating intense revolutionary ardour and of blending with extreme social radicalism. As an agent of political mobilisation, it seems to be overtaking Marxism, arid surpassing all other religions. The present book seeks the roots of this situation in the past. The traditional Muslim society of the arid zone has, in the past, displayed remarkable stability and homogeneity, despite great political fragmentation, and the absence of a centralised religious hierarchy. The book explores the mechanisms which have contributed to this result - a civilisation in which (in the main) weak states co-existed with a strong culture, which had a powerful hold over the populations under its sway. A literate Great Tradition, in the keeping of urban scholars, lived side by side with a more emotive, ecstatic folk tradition, ill tile keeping of holy lineages, religious brotherhoods and freelance saints. One tradition was sustained by the urban trading class and periodically swept the rest of the society in waves of revivalist enthusiasm; the other was based on the multiple functions it performed in rural tribal society and amongst the urban poor. The two traditions were intertwined, yet remained in latent tension which from time to time came to tile surface. The book traces the manner in which the impact of the modern world, acting through colonialism arid industrialisation upset the once stable balance, and helped the erstwhile urban Great Tradition to become the pervasive arid dominant one, culminating in the zealous arid radical Islam which is so prominent now. The argument is both formulated in the abstract and illustrated by a series of case studies and examinations of specific aspects, and critical examinations of rival interpretations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521274079
• ISBN13: 9780521274074
• Release Date: April 1983
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Anthropology of Muslim Society

This is a disparate but classic collection of essays by an exceptional anthropologist well-deserving of the eminence and fame associated with his name, even after his death. Although the various articles-drawing upon observations from Gellner's field of choice, N. Africa-stand contained therein on their own merit, the real centerpiece-the most famous writing of Gellner on Islam is the first, "Flux and Reflux in the Faith of Men." This essay is by far the longest as well-comprising about 1/3 of the work. In it, he fuses the Hume's theories of religion with ibn Khaldun's cyclical view of history with its tense dialect between the nomadic and sedentary forms of human existence whereby he constructs an ingenious account of pre-modern Muslim Society. Also interesting is his discussion of how this oscillating pendulum has in a sense become `unhinged' since the advent of modernity. Classic reading.