Letter from the Editor
John L. Esposito, Editor in Chief
Dear Reader,
I am pleased to report that Oxford Islamic Studies Online (OISO) has met with great success. We are especially delighted with the response from users and reviewers. Cheryl LaGuardia, a research librarian for Harvard’s Widener Library, concluded her review of OISO in Library Journal by rating it a perfect 10: “How good is it? Content: 10. Design: 10. Navigability: 10. Usability: 10. It’s solid, and, yes, it’s a 10.” OISO also received Honorable Mention for the 2007 Best Website or Platform, jointly awarded by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP).
As Islam and Islamic studies have moved to center stage since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the need for information on Islam and on Muslim societies, and thus for OISO, has grown ever greater. A newspaper article widely circulated last year by a reporter from the Library of Congress revealed that many members of Congress—among them, members of key committees concerned with the Middle East and Iraq—did not know the differences between Sunnī and Shīʿī Muslims. This lack of knowledge is reflected in the general population, and people continue to ask the same questions: What do Muslims really believe? Is Islam a particularly violent religion? Is Islam incompatible with modernization and democracy? What does the Qurʾān have to say about religious pluralism, women, holy war? What role should religion play in Muslim politics and societies?
Islamophobia as well as religious extremism and terrorism continue to grow at an alarming rate, partly as a result of the lack of accurate information. Ironically, both sides err in portraying Islam as monolithic. Their focus on the beliefs and actions of a small minority often obscures the rich ethnic, national, and religious diversity of Islam and Muslims.
Islam is indeed a global religion. The more than 1.3 billion Muslims in the world can be found mostly in fifty-six predominantly Muslim countries, extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia. They encompass many peoples, races, languages, tribes, and cultures. Because Islam has so often been associated just with Arabs (only about 20 percent of the worldwide Muslim community), few people realize that the vast majority of Muslims live in Asia and Africa, especially Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. In recent years, Islam has become a visible presence in the West as the second or third largest religion in Europe—France, Germany, and England, in particular—and in America. Today, the major cities of Islam include not only Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Islamabad, and Kuala Lumpur, but also London, Paris, Marseilles, Brussels, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles.
As the Muslim population spreads and grows throughout the world, contemporary Muslim discussion over the role of Islam in state and society reflects many questions: What is the relationship of Islam to secularization: should Islam today be restricted to personal life, or should it be integral to the state, law, and society? Is Islam compatible with modern forms of political participation such as democracy, and with religious minorities, non-Muslims, and women? Is there more than one model for the relationship of religion to political, social, and economic development? How will Muslims achieve a new Islamic synthesis that provides continuity with past tradition? Will it be imposed from above by rulers and/or the ʿulamāʾ (Islamic scholars) or legislated from below through a representative electoral process?
One particular debate illustrates the discussion Muslims are having about the role of Islam in society: should sharīʿah (ideal Islamic law) be part of a country’s legal system? Some countries have attempted to impose their versions of Islamic law. As demonstrated by the policies of Iran, Sudan, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, the implementation of sharīʿah has not followed a fixed pattern or set interpretation even among those countries considered conservative or fundamentalist. Women in Saudi Arabia (and the Taliban’s Afghanistan) cannot vote or hold public office. In Pakistan and Iran, despite other strictures and problems, women vote, hold political office in parliaments and cabinets, teach in universities, and hold responsible professional positions. The Islamization of law has emphasized several areas that have proved particularly problematic: the ḥudūd (punishments prescribed in the Qurʾā for alcohol consumption, theft, fornication, adultery, and false witness), the status of non-Muslims and minorities, and the status of women. Attempts to write new constitutions in post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-Saddam Hussein Iraq have brought calls for some form of sharīʿah and outcries from those who believe sharīʿah to be retrogressive and dangerous. Yet, the Gallup World Poll (See, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think), representing the voices of a billion Muslims in some forty Muslim countries, found that majorities of Muslims (both women and men) in most countries wanted to see religious values/sharīʿah employed as one source of law. If this is so, to what degree? Does Islamization of law mean the wholesale reintroduction of classical law as formulated in early Islam or the development of new laws derived from the Qurʾān and Sunnah of the Prophet, or can it include any laws, whatever their source (European, American, etc.), that are not contrary to Islam? Who is to oversee this process: rulers, the ʿulamāʾ, or parliaments?
In order to understand fully the ongoing debates and the ultimate decisions reached by leaders and their communities, the public will need accurate information on Islam and the Muslim world. This includes information on not only what Muslims face today but also on what they have faced in the past. For the challenge that major world religions now face is one of change and reform while maintaining continuity with past traditions. For these issues and many others, OISO is a critical resource, providing scholars and non-scholars alike with access to relevant texts and with religious, historical, political, and social contexts. An example of the timeliness of OISO can be found in the current Focus On article, which addresses the origins and future of sharīʿah law.
John L. Esposito
Editor in Chief
Oxford Islamic Studies Online
May 2008
