Because I’ve Read: Covering Islam

It’s a record! I have stuck with a book club for three books. I’m at least a month late, but I finished the third #BecauseWe’veRead book club choice, Covering Islam. Political-fashion blogger Hoda Katebi started the #BecauseWe’veRead after giving a TV interview. The host replied to a factual statement by Katebi with the claim she “didn’t sound like an American.” Katebi laughed it off with, “That’s because I’ve read!” Then she went home and started a virtual book club about the rest of the world. If “sounding American” means ignorance of facts about the rest of the world, I don’t want to sound American.

Because We’ve Read started with a focus on colonialism: Assata; Black Skin, White Masks; and Covering Islam. I’d been meaning to read Assata for literally decades. Black Skin, White Masks was a challenge. The premise was sound, and there is certainly value in exposure to different perspectives on colonialism and race than the American one. But dense social science language – in translation – and a pre-civil rights movement world view made it feel more like a historical curiosity than significant civil rights work.

Orientalism

Fortunately, Katebi announced a month off in between units, so I didn’t get too far behind when it took me forever to get through Covering Islam by Edward Said. As recommended, I also read the introduction to Said’s earlier book, Orientalism. This 1978 book, also by Edward Said, defines orientalism as the West’s patronizing representations of “The East”— Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. I had never thought of the Middle East as part of the “Orient,” so even the vocabulary of the book was a stretch for me.

Just the intro took me weeks to get through. There was such a thicket of social scientist speak I almost turned back on every page. Occasional blunt yet cutting remarks were all that kept me going. By the time I finished the intro to Orientalism, both books were overdue at the library.

Covering Islam

After the first chapter, I returned the book to the library and immediately put it on hold. When it came back in, I buckled down to finally finish the book. Fortunately, Covering Islam was a little easier to delve into than Orientalism. Covering Islam talked about how the Western media distorts the image of Islam. It was published in 1981 and updated in 1997. The result felt both dated and timely. His primary example of the way we talk about Islam was the hostage crisis that ended when I was in kindergarten. But everything he said felt contemporary. Nothing has changed since 1981 in the way Western journalism approaches Islam.

About “Islam”

The biggest takeaway from the book is that talking about “Islam” in the first place is off the mark. According to Wikipedia (not entirely reliable but 20 years more current than the book) Islam is the world’s second-largest religion and the fastest-growing major religion in the world. There are 1.8 billion Muslims – 24.1% of the global population. Muslims are the religious majority in 50 nations.

Talking about Islam as if it were a single, monolithic thing makes almost no sense. Substitute “Christianity” into any sentence about Islam. Does it work? Sometimes:

• Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.
• Islam is a monotheistic religion.
• Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world.
• Christianity is a monotheistic religion.

But in most cases it’s ridiculous.

Someone says:

Islam has become central to debates about social cohesion and national security

But if someone said:

Christianity has become central to debates about social cohesion and national security

Most people would say, “WTF does that even mean?”

Someone says:

Terror attacks were carried out by Muslims because of Islam.

But if someone said:

Terror attacks were carried out by Christians because of Christianity.

People would respond, “Not my Christianity!” or “That’s not what Christianity is,” or “Maybe those weird Pentecostals but not us Catholics” or even “that’s a tautology not an argument.”

In Covering Islam, Said asks:

“Is ‘Islam’ in the end useful as a notion, or does it hide, distort, deflect, and ideologize more than it actually says?” – Covering Islam p62

Most of the book belabors the point that categorizing the motivations of one-quarter of the world’s population under a single word is ridiculous. The details of religious belief are localized and in most cases motivate few decisions. Ignoring factors like national history and economics and individual personalities (nutrition, genetics, relationship with one’s mother) guarantees misunderstanding.

Hidden Assumptions

Said makes a secondary point that resonates strongly with me (ironically, perhaps?) because of my own religious education. One of the most basic lessons learned in Jesuit schools is that no discourse is possible before you have agreed on the definitions of terms and stated your assumptions. Not only does Western discourse doesn’t only toss around the undefined term “Islam” as a catch-all for anything relating to the Middle East. It also ignores the historical reality of colonialism that set up an adversarial and condescending attitude toward nearly all of the parts of the world where Islam thrives. More often than not, the bizarre and inexplicable behavior that we usually ascribe to “Islamic philosophy” or even “the Islamic mind” is easily predicted when considered through a lens of colonial history.

“If the history of knowledge about Islam in the West has been too closely tied to conquest and domination, the time has come for these ties to be severed completely.”

Said makes a very good point.