Islam in Global Modernity by Dietrich Jung

Author:Dietrich Jung
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783658399542
Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

5.4 Conclusions: Max Weber and Islam

In his book Weber and Islam, Bryan Turner put forward the thesis that in Max Weber’s analysis, the patrimonial nature of Muslim political institutions had prevented social conditions that would have been necessary for the development of modern capitalist living conditions in the Islamic world (Turner 1974, p. 2). There would have been a lack of predictable justice, urban centers, and an economy that was not under the influence of state interests (1974, p. 15). In fact, the comparatively few pages that Max Weber devoted to Islam in his comparative cultural studies had the goal of describing a deficiency, that is, what Islam lacked in comparison to Europe (cf. Paul 2003; Leder 2020). In his assessment of Islam as a “warrior religion”, Weber probably followed the work of Julius Wellhausen, who was primarily known for his studies on Muhammad in Medina and the early expansion of the Muslims.22 In these studies, Wellhausen relied mainly on the so-called Futuh literature as his primary sources, which was “poetry with historical background”.23 The goal of these texts was the “glorification of the Arab warriors from the time of the conquests” (Paret 1981, pp. 736–742). In this literary genre, military service also appeared as a form of worship (Paret 1930, p. 183). The previously mentioned heyday of science in Baghdad or the expansion of Islam through complex trade relations, which created a globally interconnected intellectual space, the dar al-islam, was not in Weber’s sights. Against the background of the historical development of the Islamic empires between the 8th and 11th centuries, the image of an archaic “political Islam” with the warrior as its religious ideal (Weber 1972, p. 375) therefore almost sounds like a caricature of historical reality. The French historian Maurice Lombard described this period of Islamic empires as characterized by a remarkably homogeneous urban culture with “a wide exchange of people, goods and ideas” (Lombard 1992, p. 28). For Lombard, the “constitution of the Islamic world” was above all the formation of a huge, common market and not the religious revelation of the Koran carried into the world by warriors, as we encounter it in Max Weber’s writings (Lombard 1992, p. 131).

In “Economy and Society” Max Weber also dealt with the “Islamic city”. Here he compares Mecca with the development of urban cultures in Europe. The data basis used by Weber are the two books on the “holy city” published by Snouck Hurgronje. These go back to Hurgronje’s notes—“Snouck Hurgronje’s vivid representation” (Weber 1972, p. 739)—with which he began during his six-month stay in Mecca in 1885. There Hurgronje appeared as a Muslim student under the name Abdel Ghaffar and took part in the student circle of the Meccan Sheikh Ahmad Zayni Dahlan (1817–1886). Dahlan’s stories then went into Hurgronje’s books about the city (Hurgronje 1888, 1889). The Dutch orientalist documented the orally transmitted history of Mecca as conveyed by the Shaafi’i sheikh Dahlan to his students (cf. Freitag 2003). But the history of Mecca, apart from the role of the pilgrimage, is a history of the urban periphery in Islam.

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