Textualist assumptions about Islam produce the fiction of a static, homogenous Muslim civilization

Evidence

Gibb’s master theme, in almost everything he wrote about Islam and the Arabs, was the tension between “Islam” as a transcendent, compelling Oriental fact and the realities of everyday human experience. His investment as a scholar and as a devout Christian was in “Islam,” not so much in the (to him) relatively trivial complications introduced into Islam by nationalism, class struggle, the individualizing experiences of love, anger, or human work. … Like Macdonald, Gibb seems entirely comfortable with the idea of a monolithic East, whose existential circumstances cannot easily be reduced to race or racial theory; in resolutely denying the value of racial generalization Gibb rises above what had been most reprehensible in preceding generations of Orientalists. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 710 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It is often taken for granted that Islam is homogeneous. This is in large part because Orientalists propagated the myth that Islam is a monolith that can be fully understood through its classical texts. It is only when one works from such an assumption that one can make claims about a static entity, the “Muslim civilization,” with a core set of unchanging values, or about the “Muslim mind” (viewed in the singular, as though all Muslims share a hive mind). By denying the diversity of Islamic history and practices, it becomes possible to state that “Islam” has certain inherent, unchanging characteristics that render it anti-democratic, violent, sexist, and so on. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 273 (#expands, via linked claim)

The situation on the Islamic side was entirely different. The many languages of antiquity either disappeared or dwindled into insignificance, surviving as writ­ ten languages, if at all, in scriptures and rituals. After the spread of Islam, there was only one language that mattered—Arabic. It was the language of scripture, of the classics, of commerce, of government, of science. And although, like Latin in the west, it developed a number of vernaculars, they did not, like French and Spanish and Italian and Portuguese, develop into autonomous languages. Col­ loquially of course they did, but that development was never formally recognised or recorded. Just one language met all needs, and there was therefore no need to learn any other. Why would an Arabic speaker bother to learn the barbarous idioms of infidels and savages beyond the imperial frontier? Arabic provided all his needs, and if anyone wanted to talk to him, they would learn Arabic. One finds a similar attitude in parts of the English-speaking world at the present time. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 152 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Textual Orientalism blames the Quran for every perceived Middle Eastern failing — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 176; Orientalists claimed textual reading revealed the fixed essence of Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 179; Homo islamicus named a fixed Muslim essence readable from texts alone (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist scholarship privileged a monolithic textual Islam over lived human realities #corroborates (0.95) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 710
• Claiming Islam is a monolith requires denying its historical diversity #expands (0.92) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 273
• Arabic’s dominance made Islamic civilization structurally monolingual #complicates (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 152