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Thanks, Mogg. And yes, as Nima said, MB = Muslim Brotherhood.
James,
Medieval Arabic 'books of magic' and their relationship to Muslim 'orthodoxy' is the focus of my research, so I'm *always* happy to discuss Picatrix. I'd point out that the work (Ghayat al-hakim, 'The Goal of the Wise', as it's called in Arabic) was almost certainly composed in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), probably in the 10th century CE. That's a very specific cultural milieu -- which is to say that thinking about 'Islam in general' probably won't take you very far with regard to this work -- and if you're really interested then you'll want to drill down on the history of Isma'ili thought and Andalusian Neoplatonism. Look for Charles Burnett and David Pingree's many articles, and Claire Fanger's new volume _Invoking Angels_ has some related material, but an easier place to start might be Maribel Fierro's article on the possible origins of Picatrix (though her theory of its authorship is not universally accepted) called: "Batinism in al-Andalus: Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtubi (d. 353/964), Author of the 'Rutbat al-Hakim' and the 'Ghayat al-Hakim (Picatrix)'," in Studia Islamica 84 (1996): 87-122. If you don't have access to JSTOR then write me off-list and I'll be happy to send you a copy.
Medieval Spain is a long way from Iran and Afghanistan, but taking the calendar thing as a separate question, I'd ask what you mean by an 'astrological calendar'? If you mean a solar-calendar that takes March 21 as its first day, then yes, that's true of the current Iranian calendar and many of its historical ones. This no doubt has a lot to do with the region's Zoroastrian heritage, with which Islam has had a long and complex relationship. I suspect Nima Azal could give a much more detailed response, as he's far more familiar with Persian stuff than I'll ever be.
Certainly Mecca and Medina have great symbolic value, but it rather transcends whatever political regime controls the territory around it. In fact, a lot of Muslims are currently extremely unhappy with Saudi stewardship of the site, largely due to the gross luxury hotels they're developing all around the Great Mosque, and the various historical sites related to the prophet that they keep destroying in the name of Wahhabi iconoclasm. I hate to be reductionist (and I honestly don't want to stray even further off topic into politics) but I think the US relationship to the Saudis really is entirely about oil and the money that flows from it, and I think this has everything to do with why the US seems to be backing the Saudis' attempts to position themselves as the defenders of Sunni orthodoxy against 'the Shi'ite menace' -- and that, btw, is an old game in the Muslim world, cf. the Seljuks, Saladin, the Ottomans, etc.
As for Iraq, you again have to consider the Sunni/Shi'a divide. The Iraqi gov't that the US put in place is essentially a Shi'i gov't, and Iraq is a majority Shi'i country. This means that any symbolic capital the US accrues by allying with the (Sunni, virulently anti-Shi'i) Saudis would in fact work against it in dealing with the Iraqis. Do you see the issue? Nota Bene: the US is absolutely terrible at negotiating the sociopolitical landscape of the ME, so trying to make coherent sense of it policies is often a losing game.
- N
On 9/25/2012 5:59 AM, James John Bell wrote:
Noah,
Thanks, very helpful, and I humbly admit that analysis is a very simplistic big picture in-progress attempt, just have been trying to get a handle on Islam and US foreign policy, and recently met with some academic theologians, Islamic Studies, who I would credit with influencing this Islamic reformation interpretation of recent global events. My apology to the list for responding to Julie’s question, I had just returned from a trip and had been discussing this stuff for a few days so saw it as an opportunity to summarize and see what wasn’t in focus in this analysis. I very much appreciate your response Noah.
I agree this topic is not ‘magic centric’ per se. I have been trying to wrap my head around the Picatrix grimoire and so I personally find the religious history/overview/trends useful. I was surprised to learn that Islam still uses a classical zodiacal calendar to this day in Iran and Afghanistan, but maybe that’s incorrect as I thought Islam had distanced itself from astrology. Anyway, if you could recommend a good resource in this area, the ‘occult history of Islam’, that would be ideal.
Regarding Saudi Arabia and Mecca, my understanding was that as the birthplace of Muhammad and where the Quran began, Mecca is the holiest city in Islam and the pilgrimage to it is obligatory for Muslims. Thus while it’s not the exact same authority as the Pope in the Vatican over all Catholics, it holds a ‘symbolic power’ over all of Islam and thus Saudi Arabia as the US strongest ally makes strategic sense at least from a propaganda or public relations standpoint.
The US invasion of Iraq established a 'democratic' but nonetheless theocratic system beholden to orthodox Islamic interests, and so US influence/control can be strengthened via US foreign policy goals tied to the symbolic center of Islamic authority in Saudi Arabia - "The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as an Islamic, democratic, federal parliamentary republic." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iraq - The US will of course do the same in Afghanistan, which I see as maintaining the decades old US foreign policy plan of backing the Islamic Kingdoms by setting up and maintaining puppet theocratic governments, albeit there is a modern spin on this whereby they look more like the US system of democracy, but there is no separation of church and state. If Prof. Couliano were alive he might call US foreign policy in the Middle East the establishment of ‘Sorcerer States’.
- James
On 9/25/12 1:23 AM, "mandrake" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
On 22/09/2012 22:14, Noah Gardiner wrote:
Noah
I really enjoy your posts, they are always so informative -
can you just remind me of the meaning of the abbreviate MB in final paragraph?
mogg
As one of the people involved in the "spasm of extremely negative comments" re Toyin's posting of links to "Innocence of Muslims" a week or so ago, I would point out I that I objected primarily to his implication that the film was in some way educational about the life of Muhammad, and his assertion that it fell outside the category of propagandistic misinformation. This is an academic list, and as I seem to be one of the few active participants working on the Islamic world at a graduate level (no offense to anyone else who may be out there, I just haven't seen many others post to the list), I felt compelled to respond to his posting. I made no effort to "silence" him, but rather asked him to clarify his intentions, and made clear my strenuous disagreement with his point of view. The fact that he made no effort to link his postings to the subject of magic was of entirely secondary concern to me.
I'm happy to see people discussing any aspect of Islam on this typically rather euro-centric list, though I don't think the recent posts are going to take us terribly close to magic topics, as the events in question seem (to me at least) to relate primarily to issues of post-colonialism, globalization, the internet, etc.
@James John Bell, the notion that Islam is undergoing a 'Reformation'-type event has been bandied about for a while, and is basically correct in my humble opinion, as long as one doesn't take the comparison too seriously. I think most scholars would say this event was well under way in the 19th century and has been ongoing ever since -- see, for example, the writings of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh at the turn of the 20th century, or even al-Jabarti's comments on the French at the turn of the 19th.
That said, the pluralist, non-hierarchical, localized, and fluid nature of religious authority in Islam presents real problems for your analysis. Saudi and the Gulf kingdoms (especially the latter) have no particular religious authority within Sunnism, excerpt perhaps among Wahhabis, a relatively small group that is in no way coterminous with the MB. If anything, the clerics at al-Azhar in Cairo (who are also not the same thing as the MB) might historically be a slightly better comparison to the Holy See, but that institution's relationship with Mubarak over the last 30 yrs seriously jeopardized the authority of its leaders, such that their standing in the Sunni world is currently being re-negotiated. And where is Shi'ism in your analysis? While the Sunni/Shi'a divide has not been the sort of 1500-yr deathmatch that some in the media like to portray it as, it is a major division that has grown increasingly violent in the post-colonial period, and it's of central concern to ME politics at present.
- Noah
On 9/22/2012 4:45 AM, Jon Sharp (LTS) wrote:
I would have to agree with Nick. There have been a number of off-topic posts recently and while one poster was roundly castigated by various list members, other posts similarly unrelated to the academic study of magic have passed without comment.
The post that prompted a spasm of extremely negative comments was concerned with i) religion ii) contemporary social manifestations of religious commitment and iii) the association of religious commitment with violence.
If such a post was profoundly off-topic, I am confused as to how the current topic can be regarded as acceptable.
My own view is that magic touches, at least tangentially, on such a range of disciplines and areas of enquiry that it is probably more sensible to take a relaxed view of potentially off-topic postings. However, if there is going to be an attempt to silence potentially off-topic discussions it should be consistent.
Bw
Jon
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of David Mattichak [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 September 2012 08:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Religious Teachings
Personally I don't think that this is off topic and it is interesting to read James' response. I tend to agree with him too.
My own understanding of magick is heavily influenced by religion. It would seem to me to be hard to separate the two.
David
> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 08:32:43 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Religious Teachings
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Is this thread, beginning with Julie post, not off-topic?
>
> This is the list for the academic study of magic.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James John Bell
> Sent: 22 September 2012 00:33
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Religious Teachings
>
> Julie,
>
> A religion and politics question, those are always fun.
>
> There are folks on this list with more knowledge in this arena than myself,
> though I do work in the field of constructing political narratives and
> religious narratives are unavoidable so here is my answer regarding the
> "trend of the moment" - I'm curious if others feel the same at all, which is
> why I'm postulating this takeaway on current religious events.
>
> What's going on in North Africa is bigger than the response to a film, and a
> response to US foreign policy, there is for lack of a better word a
> "reformation" that has begun sweeping the Islamic world. The movements call
> themselves reform versus schism, but it is definitely underway, and many of
> the leaders have been hunted down and killed -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_movements_within_Islam
>
> Islam took off around 6-700AD, so it's reaching that volatile 14-1500 year
> mark. Sociologists have tracked world religions and theologians have
> suggested that what Islam is experiencing is similar to what Christianity
> went through in the 1500's - a period of violent reformation. The Muslim
> faith has not yet had such a massive reformation period until now.
>
> By comparison, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Kingdoms would be similar to the
> Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox fundamentalist Christian
> Kingdoms of the 16th century - those Kings who recognized the supreme
> authority of the Vatican and the Pope. Every other Christian revolted and
> became the 33,000 estimated denominational offshoots of Protestantism.
>
> North Africa, via Egypt, under control of the Muslim Brotherhood now, is the
> extension of such supreme fundamentalist religious authority. Look to the
> bloody wars in Europe that were fought between the Catholic Kings and
> Protestant German Princes in the 1500's for a potential look at what is
> about to go down, or has been going down, across the Middle East among the
> Arab Princes and their Kingdoms as they take sides in the wars of this
> Muslim reformation.
>
> Mecca in Saudi Arabia is to Islam what Rome is to all Catholics and what
> Jerusalem in Israel is to all Jews - those are the strategic centers for the
> three major offshoots of western belief systems (If the major Protestant
> offshoots had a center it might be Germany, but for example the Mormons
> don't even consider themselves protestants technically and thus their
> religious center is Salt Lake City). I'm using the broad definition that
> Protestants are any Christian belief systems that do not recognize the
> authority of the Pope and the Vatican and emerged after around 1500. Thus
> the Coptics who splintered from the Catholics in the 5th century fall into
> another category.
>
> Anyway this is definitely one reason the US stands with fundamentalist Saudi
> Arabia, it's a center of religious power for the entire region, just like
> America's other good buddy Israel and Jerusalem and it being the center of
> Jewish authority in the entire region.
>
> Again, I understand there are huge complexities at work here that create all
> sort of exceptions to what I'm putting out as a trend here, but this is one
> attempt at a lens - to use past religious history - that I have found to
> interpret recent global events and trends through.
>
> James
>
> On 9/21/12 2:58 PM, "Julie S Maclure" <[log in to unmask]> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I came across this link:
> >
> > http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sacr/about/overview-intros/religious-studies
> >
> > What do you think ?
> > How does religious beliefs differ from country to country, and what
> influences
> > the trend of the moment ?
-- Noah Gardiner Doctoral candidate, Dept. of Near Eastern Studies University of Michigan, Ann Arbor