12: Emilio Ferrin

Central to Professor Ferrin’s perspective is how he understands Islamic civilization (to be distinguished form Islamic Empire) and the recent development of Islamism. Put another way: how has it come about that “religionism” and a curious kind of nationalism have come to be wedded in the mind and heart of some forming a new identity claiming to be that of a “pure Islam”? In the Quran it says that when there is no more trade and no more friendship the world ends. Ferrin’s deep study of the living tradition of Islam sees its central gift as brotherhood across societies, languages, cultures, and even religious commitments. Islamism, to the contrary, is a bricolge, made up of desperate elements creating an ideology of religious substitution adopted by those who see themselves and their society as impotent in the face of colonial and modernizing forces. This is the root of its apocalyptic and puritanical view creating silos of identity anchored in nostalgia for a past that never existed. One is faithful to the extent one becomes a warrior of the last day. My sense is that this should not surprise Christians and secularists since we have similar reductionist movements in our world.