Book Reviews : Islam in Perspective: A Guide to Islamic Society, Politics and Law by Patrick Bannerman. London: Routledge, for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1988. £35.00. The Iranian Military in Revolution and War by Sepehr Zabih. London: Routledge, 1988.£35.00
| DOI | 10.1177/004711788900900507 |
| Published date | 01 May 1989 |
| Author | Anthony Parsons |
| Date | 01 May 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
449
Islam
in
Perspective:
A
Guide
to
Islamic
Society,
Politics
and
Law
by
Patrick
Bannerman.
London:
Routledge,
for
the
Royal
Institute
of International
Affairs,
1988.
£35.00.
The
Iranian
Military
in
Revolution
and
War
by
Sepehr
Zabih.
London:
Routledge,
1988.£35.00.
These
two
books
go
well
together.
The
first
is
a
scholarly
discussion
of
Islam
in
all
its
aspects,
written
against
the
background
of
the
contemporary
’Islamic
revival’.
The
second
is
an
account
of
one
of
the
grim
practicalities
of
perhaps
the
greatest
single
efflorescence
of Islam
in
today’s
world-
the
Iranian
Revolution.
Patrick
Bannerman
(apart
from
being
the
grandson
of
Helen
Bannerman
of
Little
Black
Sambo
fame)
is
the
Head
of
the
Middle
East
Section of
the
Research
Department
of
the
Foreign
and
Commonwealth
Office.
His
book
is
the
fruit
of
a
sabbatical
year
which
he
spent
at
the
University
of Virginia.
As
I
would
expect,
it
is
deeply
and
painstakingly
researched
and
I
trust
that
it
will
be
of
value
to
official
and
ministerial
policy
makers.
I
should
perhaps
warn
them
that
it is
not
light
reading.
Bannerman
has
packed
his
text
densely
with
analysis,
argument,
fact
and
conclusion.
When
describing
manifestations
of
Islam -
law,
the
state,
international
relations
etc. -
he
is
lucid
and
reasonably
terse.
But,
when
elaborating
his
own
analyses
and
conclusions,
he
tends
to
launch
into
inter-
minable
sentence
structures,
adding,
qualifying
and
refining
until
my
brain
reeled
and
my
powers
of
retention
faltered.
When
confronted
on
the
last
page
with
a
sentence
twenty
seven
lines
in
length,
I
thought
that
I
was
back
in
my
long
past
studies
of classical
Turkish
where
sentences
frequently
persist
for
several
pages.
I
also
think
that
he
is
a
bit
hard
on
us
amateur
commentators.
He
takes
up
a
lot
of
space
in
demolishing
the
view
that
we
regard
Islam
as
a
monolith,
whereas
I
believe
it
is
generally
accepted
that
there
is
as
much
difference
between
the
practice
of
Islam
in,
for
example,
the
Philippines
and
Nigeria
as
there
is
between
Anglican
Christianity
in
a
sedate
English
country
church
and
the
Afro-American
vigour
of
a
revivalist
chapel
in
Alabama.
Having
said
all
that,
his
book
is
immensely
informative
and
valuable.
He
evokes
how,
unlike
modem
Christianity,
Islam
informs
the
whole
life
and
society
of
believers
and
even
exerts
control
or
pressure
over
relatively
autonomous
aspects
of
human
behaviour.
He
explains
how
the
law,
temporal
power
and
all
other
forms
of
activity
which
we
have
come
to
regard
as
entirely
secular
derived
ultimately
from
God
in
Muslim
eyes.
This
has
of
course
posed
immense
problems
of
state
and
governmental
legitimacy.
In
Shia’
Islam
(Iran
is
of
course
a
Shia’
state)
all
political
authority
is
vested
in
the
Hidden
Imam
who
went
into
occultation
in
the
ninth
century
AD:
all
other
government
is
usurpatory
unless
participated
in
by
the
religious
leadership,
the
vice-
regents
of
the
Hidden
Imam.
This
explains
the
tension
between
the
clerics
and
the
Westernising
Shah
which
underlay
the
revolution.
Sunni
Islam,
as
the
author
explains,
is
less
rigorous
although
he
points
out
the
inherent
impossibility
of
transplanting
into
an
Islamic
environment
Western
style
democracy
with
its
notions
of
powers,
law,
etc.
deriving
from
the
people
and
being
exercised
through
their
elected
representatives.
In
the
Muslim
community
the
chain
of
command
is
reversed,
with
God
at
the
top:
the
most
the
ruler
is
obliged
to
do
is
to
’consult’
the
community.
None
of
the
early
chapters
should
be
skipped.
The
book
builds
up
logically
from
the
views
of
medieval
Muslim
interpreters
of Islamic
law
etc.
to
those
of
the
nineteenth
and
twentieth
centuries.
But
the
most
relevant
parts
to
us
who
are
trying
to
understand
and
cope
with
what
some
call
’Islamic
fundamentalism’
are
those
which
deal
with
the
attempts
of the
modern
’synthesisers’
to
reconcile
Islam
with
today’s
world
and
with
the
’affirmers’
who
range
from
peaceful
political
activists
to
violent
extremists.
Great
Egyptian
thinkers
like
Mohammed
Abdu
(1844-1905)
and
Rashid
Ridha
(1895-1935)
tried
hard
to
reconcile
the
traditional
’which
offered
stagnation,
slavish
imitation
of
Moslem
tradition,
and
resistance
to
change;
and
the
modernist/secularist,
which
offered
uncritical
acceptance
of
Western
ideas
and
culture
almost
to
the
exclusion
of
the
indigenous
cultural
and
intellectual
environment’.
Their
efforts
were
unsuccessful
and,
in
the
1970s
and
’80s,
the
’affirmers’
have
held
sway
over
the
public
mind,
particularly
To continue reading
Request your trial