IN THIS ISSUE

The Role Of Religious Reasons in a Democracy

Misbah Spring 2009

Volume 2, Issue 2
 3

Misbah Magazine
Exploring Islam and the Muslim World

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Hamza Masood ‘10

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Nabil Abdurehman ‘11

COPY EDITOR
Daoud Rana ‘12

CO-TREASURERS
Yasmin Belo-Osagie ‘11
Urooj Raja ‘11

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Mika Devonshire ‘12

WEBMASTER
Tiffany Tong GS

EDITORS EMERITUS
Babur Khwaja ‘09
Wasim Shiliwala ‘09
Joy N. Karugu ‘09

MISSION SPONSORS AND CONTACT

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Princeton University - Spring 2009
 1

Contents

Editor’s Note 2

REVIEW Politics of Knowledge Production: A Critical Look at Delong-Bas’ 3

Wahhabi Islam
Celene Ayat Lizzio ‘08

ARTS Al-Mutanabbi: A Towering Figure in Classical Arabic Poetry 6

Introduction and Translation, Barbara Romaine

COMMENTARY The Role of Religious Reasons in a Democracy 8

Mairaj Syed GS

ISLAM IN THE
Albania: The Land of ”Spiritual Window Shoppers” 12
WORLD Shaista Ahmed *07

REFLECTION Muslim In China 17

Nabil Abdurehman ‘11

Princeton University - Spring 2009

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Editor’s Note

Dear Reader,

The second issue of Misbah was very well received,

and we are well on our way to helping inform opinion
about Islamic and Muslim issues. As always, we
seek to ask questions not always asked, and raise
issues from a critical perspective. You will find in this
issue a cross-examination of a Wahhabist apologetic
and a discussion of the broader dimensions of the
debate on Wahhabism, a classical Arabic poet’s
musings on love and passion and a look at the use of
religious reasoning and language in public debates
in a democracy. Visit Albania and encounter a very
different conception of Muslim identity from the
orthodox position, and join an African-American
Muslim in finding a little bit of home among the
Muslim community in Beijing.

While we have strived to provide a wide variety of

voices, both Muslim and non-Muslim, it is important
to remember at this bridging issue between editorial
boards, that our primary aim in the endeavor of this
magazine is to encourage an internal debate on what
Islam really means for us, what it means for our
future, and what being a Muslim implies about our
culture, heritage and identity. In that respect, we will
begin to focus more specifically on questions that
examine the Islamic community with its future in mind.
In the meanwhile, we hope you enjoy this issue as
much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Yours,
Hamza Masood

Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World

 3

Politics of Knowledge Production: A Critical Look at

Delong-Bas’ Wahhabi Islam
By Celene Ayat Lizzio ‘08

In her recent book Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and stance.6 This is, however, just one instance in the
Reform to Global Jihad,1 Natana J. Delong-Bas pres- book where the evidence undercuts itself; a closer
ents an account of the life and teachings of Ibn Abd al- look at the book’s source documentation reveals
Wahhab, the 18th century Muslim cleric instrumental that Ibn Al-Wahhab inextricably affirms the hierar-
in the political and religious consolidation of modern chic authority of the clerical mujtahid [institution-
day Saudi Arabia. The work churns heavy controversy ally qualified and highly specialized jurist] while
regarding the merits of Wahhabism, which is now the disavowing the legitimacy of his Shi’a clerical
forerunning religious orientation in Saudi Arabia with counterparts.7 Al-Wahhab’s position is tantamount
networks of affiliated Muslims in other regions of to denying the legitimacy of minority opinion.
the world. Thus, at stake in Delong-Bas’ work is the Certainly this is not what I would want to term
perception of the historical and ideological making of progressive.
the present-day Saudi political apparatus as well as the While the book is engaging, there is also reason to
religious orientation financed largely by Saudi Arabian argue that Delong-Bas’ analysis hinges too much
oil wealth.
Not surprisingly, the book has been hotly debated in
academic and journalistic circles,2 even being banned
by the prestigious Al-Azhar Institute in Egypt.3 Sur-
prisingly, however, is that Delong-Bas presents the
English reader with an unprecedentedly favorable
perspective on Ibn Al-Wahhab, the very same figure
that multiple other scholars writing in English and
European languages have been quick to link directly
to the ideology and practices of contemporary Muslim
militants.2
Not only does Delong-Bas avoid cursory language
suggesting that Wahhabism is puritanical,5 but based
on her privileged access to original documents in royal
Saudi archives, she seeks to portray Ibn al-Wahhab as
a modernist reformer and progressive in his milieu.
Delong-Bas is clearly entrenched in the accusatory vs.
apologetic framework that characterizes much of the
critical scholarship on Wahhabism, however, either ac-
cepting her account at face value or dismissing her as
a Saudi apologist would merely ignore the whole grain
of a potentially valuable debate.
For example, in one instance the work argues that Ibn
al-Wahhab adamantly supported the “rejuvenation
of the practice of independent reasoning (ijtihad),”
which is generally considered a favorably progressive
Prophet’s Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia. Photo by Shabbir Siraj.

Princeton University - Spring 2009

 4
on what is purportedly written by Ibn al-Wahhab and
less on the political authority that he was instrumental
in establishing. How is the image of a meticulous and
bookish scholar, “a pragmatic man as well as a deter-
mined preacher,”8 reconciled with Ibn al-Wahhab’s
complicit endorsement of a brutal Arabian conquest?9
Furthermore, through what lenses on history does Ibn
al-Wahhab become a villain, if not through his own
political affiliations or the theological positions that he
supported?
Mosque of Amr Ibn al-’As, Cairo, Egypt. Photo by Sarah Mousa ‘10
The tensions named above invite further scholar-
ship on Wahhabism, but I have a more immediate
question to explore here. As students, we are trained
in the academy to perpetually examine the role that
historians play in the construction of our knowledge,
and hopefully too we are gradually discovering how
to circumvent biases and pitfalls in our own writing.
However, it is no small task to affirm the existence of
multiple plausible historical readings, acknowledge
our own subjectivity, and to simultaneously cast our
own particular reading as noteworthy, insightful and
plausible. How do we achieve this, as students and
emerging scholars?
In attempting an answer to this question for myself,
I am struck by an assertion of Muhammad Arkoun
which suggests how one might begin to think and
write about the ebb and flow of history, including our
participation in it.
The task of historians of religions, cultures, and
philosophy is to show how ethnocultural groups of
varying size and dynamism have dipped into the com-
mon stock of signs and symbols to produce systems
of belief and non belief that, all the while assigning
ultimate meaning to human existence, have served
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
to legitimate power drives, hegemonic empires, and
deadly wars. All “believers,” whether they adhere to
revealed religious or contemporary secular regions,
would thus be equally constrained to envisage the
question of meaning not from the angle of unchanging
transcendence—that is, of an ontology sheltered from
all historicity—but in the light of historical forces that
transmute the most sacred values, those regarded as
most divine by virtue of their symbolic capital and as
inseparable from necessarily mythical accounts of the
founding, and from which each ethnocultural group
extracts and reorganizes what it calls identity or per-
sonality.10
The obvious strength in Arkoun’s perspective is that it
acknowledges how knowledge production is embed-
ded in cultural and political realities and furthermore
suggest that knowledge production can generate “sym-
bolic capital” capable of being transmitted and trans-
formed to suit a variety of arising situational needs.
With Arkoun’s paradigm as a corrective to Delong-
Bas, what is overlooked in the latter’s account of Wah-
habism is that a figurehead’s words on the pages of
any given volume are merely a fraction of what gives
genesis to a social movement. Rather, movements are
constituted by an often ad hoc conglomeration of com-
munal stories that in some fashion become synergistic.
Thus, in the case at hand it might be reasonable to
suggest that Wahhabi discipleship is not motivated so
much by the rigorous intertextual study of the master’s
works, but rather by participation in the fullness of the
cultural and political milieu. It must be further consid-
“...a figurehead’s words on the
pages of any given volume are
merely a fraction of what gives
genesis to a social movement.”
ered that even the closest of Ibn al-Wahhab’s disciples
are autonomous such that their own intellectual back-
ground and circumstances become the lenses through
which the master’s works are propagated.
Delong-Bas argues in effect for a reinstatement of
respect for Ibn al-Wahhab as a moderate or progres-
sive in his milieu, yet her work is far from becoming
a definitive account of the origins and developments
of Wahhabism. Not only are the positions of Ibn al-

Wahhab described on the whole as tension free, but it
would seem that Ibn al-Wahhab is subtly portrayed as
falling in line with Islamic thinkers who hold gener-
ally favorable reputations for the English speaking
audience.11
Thus, I am not convinced that Delong-Bas presents
an utterly compelling view on Wahhabism, although
she does make a commendable effort in articulating
a less common perspective for us to engage. Overall,
the work of Delong-Bas and its reception suggest that
scholarship on religious ethnocultural movements
must grapple tenaciously to surpass polarizing narra-
tives. What is also interesting is the puzzle of com-
plex political circumstances surrounding the produc-
tion and transmission of knowledge, whether in 18th
century Arabia, or in our own contemporary academic
context.
Al-Qa’ed Ibrahim Mosque. Alexandria, Egypt. Photo by Sarah Mousa ‘10. Ahmed Khan, Jamal al-Din Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida
Celene Lizzio was a member of the Princeton Class
of 2008. She is currently studying at Harvard Divinity
School. She may be reached at clizzio@hds.harvard.
edu.
5
1. All page number references are to the 1st ed. of this work (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004).
2. For example, in the New York Post Steven Swartz, executive direc-
tor for the Center for Islamic Pluralism, gives a scathing critique:
“Delong-Bas’ work to clean up the image of Saudi extremism, as well
as the Muslim Brotherhood, suggest she’s incompetent for any academic
posting in her field…” in “Brandeis’ Self-Hate,” January 5, 2007, http://
www.islamicpluralism.org/articles/2007a/070105brandeis.htm. Ac-
cessed March 20th 2009. Additionally, a Fox News article archived on
Campus Watch, the internet resource identifying “problems in Middle
Eastern Scholarship” again Stephen Schwartz writes: “Perhaps no sin-
gle figure better represents the lamentable situation of Middle East stud-
ies (MES) today than Professor Natana J. DeLong-Bas.” Schwartz goes
on to cite Delong-Bas’ research grant support from Saudi institutions as
evidence of her biases. See “Natana DeLong-Bas: American Professor,
Wahhabi Apologist,” Real Clear Politics, Jan. 19, 2007. http://www.
campus-watch.org/article/id/3035. Accessed March 20th 2009.
3. See John Esposito, “Behind the Ban,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No.
767, (Nov. 2-9, 2005), http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/767/cu2.htm .
Accessed March 20th 2009.
4. For Delong-Bas’ remarks on this topic see p. 4-5 and the correspond-
ing end notes, p. 292, in which she criticizes Hamid Algar’s Wahhabism:
A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International,
2002).
5. The terminology “Puritan” is used by Khalid Abou El Fadel in The
Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: HarperCo-
lins, 2005). See p. 257. 292 for his disparaging remarks on Delong-Bas’
work made without engaging her more developed premises.
6. Delong-Bas, 282.
7. See Delong-Bas paraphrasing Ibn al-Wahhab, 109.
8. Delong-Bas, 25.
9. In a book critique Lawrence Rosen elaborates: “Delong-Bas argues
that al-Wahhab did not demand conversion or death. On the contrary,
he said that attempts at persuading an enemy to come over to Islam—
or at least not fight against it—should be accompanied by treaties or
other means to seek peace. Jihad should be defensive, and only if there
is adamant refusal or injury to Muslims should violence be employed.
Yet as one reads the author’s account, one sees evidence that calls this
‘moderation’ into question,” (The Historian, Book Review Vol. 88, Issue
1, Spring 2006): 123. See also the review by Gamsw Cavdar in Middle
East Policy, Vol. 13 Issue 1 (Spr. 2006).
10. Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncom-
mon Answers, Translated by Robert D. Lee (Boulder: Westview Press,
1994), 19.
11. Clearly, there are some critics who find strength in this analysis.
For instance, Francis Robinson gives his enthusiastic endorsement:
“With careful and skilful scholarship DeLong-Bas has demonstrated not
only what a versatile and creative scholar Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was in his
day but also how much his ideas, as opposed to those who claim to build
upon his legacy, have to offer progressive Muslim thinkers today…What
a bonus that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab of all people should speak the language
of Islamic modernism, without being tainted by any association with the
West and with the authority of a man centrally placed in the scholarly
traditions of the faith!” Book Review. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soci-
ety, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 16, Issue 1 (Spr. 2006): 97-98.
Al-Wahhab may very well be a contemporary of championed modern-
ist figures such as Shah Wali Allah, or he may be a precursor to Sayyid
and other celebrated progressives, however it remains unconvincing that
his theological views are of the same grain.
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 6
Al-Mutanabbi: A Towering Figure in Classical Arabic
Poetry
By Barbara Romaine
Arab-Islamic history is marked by the appearance
of figures whose impact upon the world was so
extraordinary that they persevere to this day: not
merely as icons, nor simply as subjects of scholarly
discourse, nor as artifacts in archives and museums,
but as vivid presences in contemporary households.
Among those who come immediately to mind is the
tenth-century poet known as al-Mutanabbi. Born in
the year 915/303, he was originally called Abu al-
Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Ju‘fi, but in adulthood
he assigned himself the laqab (appellation) “al-
Mutanabbi,” thereby laying claim to poetic powers
no less than those of a prophet. His assessment of
his own gifts may strike us today as boastful, but in
truth his exalted status in the tradition of Classical
Racing Camels in Training, Dubai. Photo by Elvis Payne.
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
Arabic poetry is indisputable: his verse had, and
continues to have, a mesmerizing effect on its readers
and listeners--the word “listeners” here, by the way,
is important, for such poetry is meant to have a life
beyond the printed page: it is meant to be declaimed.
If the major themes of al-Mutanabbi’s work could be
encapsulated in a brief summary, then perhaps the
lines most famously attributed to him would serve this
purpose: “The horseman, night and the desert know
me; and the sword and the lance, paper and the pen”
(The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Cyril Classé, ed.,
Harper Collins, 1991, p. 291). The verses included
here reflect these themes, but they are also, I believe,
evocative of experiences and emotions that resonate
with audiences of every time and place. Consider, for

example, the following: “The way of all creation is to
refuse a love enduring / How can life, then, restore to
me love lost?”
An enduring inspiration, al-Mutanabbi continues,
generation after generation, to inhabit the
consciousness of the recipients of his artistic legacy.
Among the factual details, then, of Radwa Ashour’s
semi-autobiographical novel ’Atyaaf (Specters) is
the scene in which the novelist’s husband and grown
son--Mourid and Tamim al-Barghouti, respectively,
themselves both poets of considerable repute--embark
of an evening upon an impassioned recitation of lines
they have memorized from al-Mutanabbi’s Diwan,
or collected works, passing the stanzas back and
forth antiphonally. During this recitation, they are in
something like an altered state: enraptured, completely
in thrall to the timeless power of al-Mutanabbi’s verse.
The translation of poetry from any language
to any other language is, to my mind, a very slippery
undertaking; it is one I tend, in fact, to avoid,
preferring the somewhat safer territory of prose--
and generally modern prose at that. I doubt I would
“The horseman, night and the
desert know me; and the sword and
the lance, paper and the pen”
ever have had the audacity to take on al-Mutanabbi
had I not been called upon to do so as part of a larger
project, namely the translation of Radwa Ashour’s
Specters (not yet published in English translation).
Moreover, I could not have achieved a credible
translation of the verses by al-Mutanabbi that are
featured here without the steadfast assistance of Dr.
Ashour herself, who collaborated closely with me
in producing the final version, reproduced below. I
wish also to acknowledge the help of my colleague
Hisham Mahmoud (Lecturer in Arabic at Princeton),
who generously took time from his busy schedule to
provide me with valuable input.
Barbara Romaine is a former lecturer of Arabic at
Princeton and currently teaches
Arabic at Villanova University. She may be reached at
barbara.romaine@villanova.edu.
7
From the Diwan of Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad
ibn al-Husayn al-Ju‘fi al-Mutanabbi:
I want this time of mine to obtain for me
That which time obtains not from itself.
Meet your destiny only without seeking it,
So long as body and spirit keep company,
For happiness sustains not that in which you rejoice
Nor will grieving restore to you that which you have lost.
Let then the camels of this world bear you away.
Forsooth, all partings are alike to me,
No recompense within your caravans receding,
No price for my life if I should die of longing.
Those who partake of passion are undone:
Knowing not the world they fall, uncomprehending,
Their eyes dissolve in tears, likewise their souls,
As they yearn for naught but ugliness with its fair face.
How often have I been slain, how often perished in your
midst
And then risen: no more the grave and shroud.
The witness to my burial before they spoke
Was a multitude, but then they died before those they buried.
Man achieves not all he hopes for,
Winds blow contrary to the will of ships.
We make ready the sword and lance,
But death slays us without a fight.
We keep close the swiftest steeds,
That yet cannot outrun time’s steady gait.
And who in bygone times loved not the world?
Yet never can such love be fulfilled.
The allotment of your life is one beloved,
The allotment of your dream a thing imagined.
With grievous losses has fate assailed me until
So covered with its arrows is my heart,
Each missile striking breaks upon the last
Powerless; I have become insensible to calamity
For attending to it nothing have I gained.
I want from the passing days that which they will not,
And I complain to them of our separation: they are its army
The way of all creation is to refuse a love enduring;
How can life, then, restore to me love lost?
All but incurable, he whose malady is the wide-eyed gaze,
Of which so many lovers before me have perished.
Let him who wishes look upon me, for the sight of me
Is a warning to all who think passion a simple matter.
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 8
The Role of Religious Reasons in a Democracy
By Mairaj Syed ‘08
The late 70s and 80s saw the rise of political parties
and movements throughout the Muslim world com-
mitted to using a distinctly Islamic language to express
their social and political aspirations, projects, and poli-
cies. For some time now, many Americans for a va-
riety of reasons have regarded this phenomenon with
suspicion, if not outright hostility. From looking the
other way when a military junta set aside electoral re-
sults in Algeria in 1992, in an election that would have
put an Islamic-oriented party won a majority of seats,
to supporting corrupt and authoritarian regimes for
fear of the alternative, the suspicions of Western politi-
cal elites have enormous real-world consequences.
The former action plunged Algeria into a decade long
civil war which has claimed over a hundred thousand
lives. The latter has contributed to the persistence of
autocratic regimes in the Muslim world for decades.
Regardless, many in the Muslim world regard such
action as clearly belying the West’s professed commit-
ment to advocating democratic principles and values,
and argue that, at the end of the day, the rhetoric of
democracy is mere ideological façade used to disguise
policies actually based on real-world Machiavellian
political calculations oriented towards sustaining
Western political, economic, and cultural hegemony.
While this judgment is partially justified, to some
extent, elite suspicion of Islamic political parties and
movements, at least amongst liberals, is motivated by
a certain commitment towards the place of religion in
public political life. One form of this commitment is
given voice by the late political and moral philosopher
John Rawls, ‘43.1 Rawls argues against the recourse
to religious reasons in the course of public delibera-
tion and debate in a constitutional democracy on any
given issue. Rawls is concerned about how an endur-
ing moral consensus on the democratic constitutional
structure of a society can be sustained in a religiously
plural society, where reasons rooted in the religious
traditions of one community carry no weight for mem-
bers outside that group. Yet, deliberation on the most
important issues facing a democratic society must still
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
proceed. What does this deliberation look like?
Public reason is the term that Rawls uses to designate
the form and substance of the type of deliberation that
should take place on political matters in a democratic
society. Generally speaking, the way that Rawls deals
with the problem of reasons that are rooted in religious
traditions are to argue against their citation in public
deliberation. He argues that the ethics of citizenship
in a democratic society point to the exclusion of argu-
ments that rely solely on such reasons. At face value,
Rawls is not just solely against reasons that are rooted
in particular religious traditions, but what he more
broadly calls a comprehensive doctrine. A compre-
hensive doctrine can be any religious, moral, or ethical
doctrine that has a fairly substantial story to tell about
what constitutes the moral social or individual life,
including specific norms on a range of issues that are
normally considered outside the scope of politics.2
This poses a problem – if you should not, in the course
of deliberating on a political matter, offer reasons that
are solely rooted in comprehensive doctrines, then
what kind of reasons can you offer? By excluding
comprehensive doctrines have you effectively evis-
cerated the exchange of reasons that constitute public
deliberation?
Here, Rawls turns to outline the form and substance of
a public reason capable of sustaining democratic de-
liberation. He believes that both the ethics of citizen-
ship in a constitutional democracy and the substance
and form of the types of reasons that such citizens are
appropriately able to invoke to justify their beliefs
and practical recommendations on a matter of politi-
cal importance can be discovered in the latent politi-
cal culture of a democratic society. It is the job of the
theorist to make these explicit in the form of norma-
tive propositions.
Rawls’ argument is not a justification for constitutional
democracy. Rather it takes the existence of such a po-
litical arrangement for granted. With that, it takes for
granted the basic norms he believes characterize the
political culture of a constitutional democracy. In such

a society, Rawls believes the political culture “will
normally produce a plurality of comprehensive, moral,
and religious doctrines.” The freedom of conscience,
religious belief and practice typically guaranteed in
constitutional democracies by itself to a certain extent
engenders a diversity of beliefs regarding the types
of life considered morally or religiously worthy of
approbation. In the United States, for instance, given
both the freedom to choose and practice whatever
religious or non-religious life one chooses, along with
the constitutional requirement proscribing the state
from financially supporting and enshrining any one
religious denomination leads, perhaps in a free mar-
ket-like fashion, to a proliferation of individual views,
religious churches, and other such organizations, on
what the life lived morally well looks like.
Moreover, citizens in such a society are importantly
free, equal, and regard each other as such. But how
do free and equal citizens who regard each other as
such collectively deliberate on common matters facing
them when they share widely differing views on what
the morally and religiously good life is all about? For
instance, how can Mormons convinced of the Divine
sanction of polygamous marriages based on a read-
ing of their particular scripture deliberate with those
Christians committed to monogamous marriage as the
only type of marital union approved by God? How
can each group reason with the other on the laws that
should regulate the institution of marriage given their
lack of shared commitment to either an adjudicat-
ing scripture or a set of theological principles? To
overcome this problem, Rawls first argues that the
facts of the plurality of comprehensive doctrines and
the mutual recognition of each other as both free and
equal generates the ethical requirements of mutual
civility and reciprocity. The principle of reciproc-
ity requires that, in the course of public deliberation,
citizens, who mutually recognize each other as free
and equal, substantiate their positions by recourse to
reasons that they prospectively regard as reasonable
to all. To base an argument solely on a scripture that
only a given community accepts as authoritative in a
religiously plural society, for example, would be an
instance of the violation of the ethical norm of reci-
procity and respect for one’s fellow citizens. Rawls
does not argue that each citizen is morally obliged to
eliminate all arguments rooted in comprehensive doc-
trines. Rather, one’s argumentation cannot rely solely
on religious premises. However, when one does offer
a religious argument in favor of a particular political
9
policy, one is obliged to offer a justification rooted in
public reason at a later time.
Concretely, public reason is more than the just formal
ethical requirement on citizens to offer reasons that
they prospectively see as reasonable to citizens com-
mitted to other comprehensive doctrines. Just as the
formal reciprocity requirement is rooted in the politi-
cal culture that characterizes a deliberative democracy,
other substantive values, such as a guarantee and
priority of basic rights, liberties and opportunities, also
constitute the stuff of public reason – available for all
citizens for use in their advocacy of political policies.
In the American context, Rawls considers the pream-
ble to the U.S. constitution to be one concrete example
of a document exhibiting political values that consti-
tute public reason. In other words, Rawls says that the
preamble contains a whole host of values that can be
deployed by citizens in the course of deliberation on
issues confronting the political community. Beyond
the formal requirement that citizens only offer reasons
that they think all other citizens would find persuasive,
Rawls is trying to fill out the substantive ideas that
fill out the language of deliberation in a constitutional
democracy.
The UN General Assembly, Taken from the perspective of Pakistan’s
representative. Photo by Anne M.
If one is committed to the Rawlsian conception of the
public deliberative sphere required in any constitu-
tional democracy, or some version similar to it, one
can see why liberal political elites in America would
regard the rise of Islamic political parties and move-
ments, and their attendant declarations of commitment
to democratic principles with suspicion. How can one
define one’s political aspirations in a language that, at
least at the outset, excludes those without the neces-
sary theological commitments? How can Islamic
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 10
political parties and movements be simultaneously
committed to the freedom and equality of all citizens,
and, from the political elites’ point of view, a fairly
specific and robust vision of what a life lived morally
and religiously well is?
It goes without saying that Rawls’ conception of the
public sphere and his attempt to define, beforehand,
what types of arguments are acceptable in demo-
cratic deliberation has elicited criticism. Recently,
Jeffrey Stout, professor of Religion at Princeton, has
questioned Rawls on several key points, noting at the
outset that the requirement to offer only certain types
of reasons seems to be in tension with the value of
free expression.3 In contrast to Rawls notion of public
reason, inspired by a view of public deliberation that
can’t get off the ground unless the values invoked are
agreed upon beforehand, Stout views deliberation as
possible without pre-existing conditions. In fact, at
the descriptive level, Stout views Rawls conception
of democratic deliberation as an impoverished reflec-
tion of a much richer reality. The fact that many of
the most admired social and political movements in
America, from the abolitionists, to the civil rights
movement, to labor movements, relied heavily on
religious ideas and imagery in mobilizing people for
their causes seems to belie the requirement that delib-
eration in a democracy be based solely on some sort
of public reason. More specifically, if the application
of Rawls’ idea of public reason would end up exclud-
ing such exquisite performances of political speech
such as Lincoln’s second inaugural address, or King’s
speeches, both of which are full of allusions to Bibli-
cal imagery if not outright theological content, this at
the very least, should give us pause.
Moreover, Stout contests the claim that respect for
citizens as both free and equal requires the issuing of
reasons which would reasonably be held by all. Rath-
er, respect for persons is manifested not by issuing a
reason any person would reasonably entertain, but by
engaging in immanent criticism (similar to reasoning
from conjecture for Rawls) of the specific justifica-
tions individual citizens offer or offering them specific
reasons which they consider authoritative from their
individual perspective. Stout’s vision of deliberation
is not exclusively an attempt at arriving at a consensus
on what the best political policy or even constitutional
arrangement is from a starting point all parties agree
on. Rather, attempts at persuasion involve inhabiting
the opposing point of view in order to show how the
advocated policy is, in actuality, inconsistent with a
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
higher value the opponent herself holds. An example
can help clarify how this works. The Sunni classi-
cal legal tradition unanimously held that a husband’s
pronouncement of divorce three times in a single sit-
ting constituted three separate divorces and resulted in
a decisive divorce between the husband and the wife.
Importantly, as opposed to non-decisive divorces,
a decisive divorce stipulates that the husband and
wife cannot get remarried until the wife gets mar-
ried to another man and divorces him first. The ease
with which such a divorce could be accomplished,
along with the steep impediment to re-marriage and
“Rawls is trying to fill out the
substantive ideas that fill out the
language of deliberation in a
constitutional democracy...”
reconciliation the religious law imposes, combine to
potentially cause significant social hardship for fami-
lies, especially for women, who, from a sociological
perspective, were mostly dependent on their husband
for material support. In order to counteract the social
harm that results from this law, reformers in early
20th century Egypt argued against the Sunni consen-
sus on the rule that a triple divorce in a single sitting
should not count as three separate divorces, but rather
a single non-decisive divorce.4 If the reformers were
principled and committed Rawlsians they could not
argue by reference to reasons that are rooted in any
religious tradition. They are precluded from arguing
that the existing law is not supported by examination
of the very scriptural sources their opponents regard
as especially authoritative. Rather they are limited to
making arguments rooted perhaps in notions of gender
equality or perhaps the unequal distribution of harm
and hardship that application of the law produces. If
they are Stoutians, even if they themselves don’t hold
the relevant scriptural sources or religious traditions as
authoritative, they can still point out to their opponents
the fact that the scriptural sources do not decisively
support only their construction of the relevant rule,
or that the sources adduced by the inherited traditions
don’t meet the criteria of authenticity, or that before
the Sunni consensus on the rule, there existed dis-
agreement on whether or not a triple divorce uttered
in a single setting should be considered decisive or re-

vocable. The Stoutians would argue that according to
their opponents own standards of what constitutes an
authoritative argument, the triple divorce rule is either
at most unsupportable, and at the least not inevitable.
This is precisely the route that Egyptian reformers of
the early twentieth century took.5
To say that there is nothing unethical about issuing re-
ligious reasons in deliberation about a political policy
is not the same thing as saying that it is positively rec-
ommended in all circumstances. As a practical matter,
it is better to buttress your advocacy of a policy by
reasons that are as broadly supported as possible. In
fact, issuers of religious reasons who live in a reli-
Ancient Islamic ruins of Palmyra, Syria, once under the control of the
Roman Republic. Photo by Chris Gordon.
giously plural society must, simply at the pragmatic
level, weigh the effectiveness of this type of advocacy
if they desire persuasion of the number of people
required for actual change in political policy. But this
concern, which Rawls’ transforms into an ethical duty,
Stout interprets as practical constraint facing those
who wish to introduce justifications rooted in doc-
trines not shared by others. It just doesn’t make sense,
most of the time, to quote scripture to those who don’t
consider the given scripture authoritative. That’s
like trying to advocate for a policy of banning pork
products in the United States by offering the Qur’anic
prohibition as a reason. The simple and practical fact
of trying to convince a plurality of citizens on a given
public policy requires, most of the time, reference
to multiple sets of reasons whose authoritativeness
derives from different, perhaps even competing, and at
times conflicting philosophical registers.
Stout’s criticisms of Rawls’ notion of public reason
seem cogent. Moreover, recent anthropological empir-
11
ical research has questioned the necessity of a public
reason type liberal project for deliberation for a func-
tioning pluralistic democracy. John Bowen notes that
public discourse in Indonesia about the nature of the
legal norms to be applied in a wide variety of issues in
Indonesia proceeds in a manner described by Stout –
an ad hoc and immanent and perhaps messy conversa-
tion rather than a systematically coherent procession
forward from agreed upon premises.6
Both Stout’s conceptual criticisms and Bowen’s em-
pirical findings call into question liberal suspicion of
Islamic political parties and movements in the Mus-
lim world on account of their wider general suspicion
of religion in the public sphere. In some contexts
(mostly in the Arab world), these parties are the only
viable democratic challenge to autocratic and corrupt
regimes, a fact that even liberal and secular Muslim
intellectuals in some Muslim majority societies are
beginning to recognize.
Mairaj Syed is a graduate student in the Religion
Department. He may be reached at msyed@princeton.
edu.
1. I rely solely on the following article to present his views: John Rawls,
“Public Reason Revisited”.
2. In fact, Rawls considers his own earlier work, A Theory of Justice, as
an instance of a comprehensive, albeit, liberal doctrine. See 806-7.
3. I rely mostly on Chapter 3, “Religious Reasons in Political Argu-
ment”, of Stout’s book, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004).
4. I benefited from conversations with my fellow colleague, Tarek El-
gawhary, about this issue.
5. Or consider this more recent statement by activist Mona Zulficar,
regarding a more recent controversy in Egypt: “The New Marriage Con-
tract Initiative adopted a strategy of engaging religious discourse, based
on the women’s reading of their rights under the principles of Sharia.
We reclaimed for the first time our right to redefine our cultural heritage,
as Muslim women under the principles of Sharia. It was evident that we
could not rely on modern constitutional rights of equality before the law,
as these did not apply under Family Law, which claimed to be based on
principles of Sharia. We could not afford to shy away from the challenge
and continue using solely a strategy based on constitutional and human
rights. We had to prove the religious discourse could also be used by
women to defend their cause,” cited by Diane Singerman, “Rewriting
Divorce in Egypt: Reclaiming Islam, Legal Activism, and Coalition Poli-
tics” in Remaking Muslim Politics, edited by Robert Hefner (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 161.
6. See John Bowen, Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthro-
pology of Public Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 3-12.
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 12
Albania: The Land of “Spiritual Window Shoppers”
By Shaista Ahmed *07
In the summer of 2006, I set off to Albania for a sum-
mer internship as part of my Woodrow Wilson School
graduate program. I had been extended an opportunity
by the Prime Minister of Albania to come examine
the nation’s economic policies with his economic ad-
visors at the Keshilli i Ministrave (Council of
Ministers).
Before leaving for Albania I tried in earnest to piece
together information about a country that I, and
apparently many others, knew next to nothing about.
With the exception of having produced one of the
world’s most prominent humanitarians, Mother Teresa,
any meaningful descriptions about Albania seemed
to be drowned out by references to mafiosos and hu-
man trafficking.
I consulted the CIA Factbook, for a better depiction of
what the country had to offer me and was comforted
to find that roughly 70% of the country was comprised
of Muslims, which - as a Muslim – immediately
made this foreign nation seem much more familiar to
me.1 However, what I found when I arrived in the
capital city of Tirana that summer surprised me. In-
stead of finding some form of religious refuge, I came
to find that Albania, purportedly a majority Muslim
nation, was Muslim in a sense completely alien to me.
Albania is a nation that has been eclipsed by the popu-
larity of the neighboring Mediterranean nations of
Italy across the Adriatic and Greece to the southeast.
Albania still remains largely ignored by many in the
West, save for avid travelers or international NGO
workers. Interestingly, only half of all ethnic Alba-
nians live in Albania. The second largest group of
Albanians resides in Kosovo with substantial popu-
lations also residing in Turkey and the Republic of
Macedonia.
After 46 years of communist rule, democracy emerged
in Albania in 1991 with multiparty elections.
However, 18 years later, Albania remains plagued by
the issues of a fledgling democracy. Rampant
corruption, high unemployment, and pyramid schemes
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
whose collapse crippled the country in 1997 seem to
have made political stability far from reach. The na-
scent democratic government has been faced with the
formidable task of decentralizing decades of commu-
nist rule while learning-as-they-go their role as
democratic leaders. This combined with the public’s
inveterate cynicism towards the state –a byproduct of
the oppressive communist era- has made Albania’s
road toward democratization a long and difficult one.
In August of 2007, President Bush, the first American
President to ever to do so, traveled to Albania where
he was met with a pop-star style reception. Bush’s
enthusiastic reception should not come as a surprise.
What becomes immediately apparent once you arrive
in Albania is that the majority of Albanians are
fanatically pro-American. This is due in large part to
the fact that the US led the charge in the NATO
bombing campaign against Serbia in response to Slo-
bodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing of Albanians in
Kosovo.
“I came to find that Albania, pur-
portedly a majority Muslim nation,
was Muslim in a sense completely
alien to me”
Also, many Albanians still remember U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson standing up to the European
powers’ desire to divvy up Albania at the end of World
War I which helped win Albania’s independence.
In return, Albania has done much to show its gratitude.
It was the only country to give asylum to
Guantánamo detainees and also, as a member of the
‘coalition of the willing’ sent troops to Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Besides its love-affair with the US, what also became
apparent after I arrived in Albania was the significant
gulf between the image that I had conjured in my mind
of Albania, as a Muslim-majority nation, and the

one I encountered.
Religious Schizophrenia
One night I was invited to a soirée hosted by an Alba-
nian expatriate I had befriended. He had invited other
expatriates and Albanians friends, whose proficiency
in English gave away their advantaged educational
background. During the course of the night, his guests
took turns to make impromptu toasts to the host
almost as an excuse to sample the many alcoholic bev-
erages in our host’s well-stocked bar.
Following suit, an Albanian woman in her late twen-
ties, hoisted her glass of Jack Daniels and said, “I
remember there was a word I once heard my grand-
mother use: ‘Insha’Allah’. With that I would like to
toastour host – Insha’Allah!”
A chorus of “Insha’Allah!” ensued from the crowd.
As a Muslim, the Albanian guest’s sacrilegious invo-
cation of Insha’Allah, meaning ‘God-willing’, startled
me enough to choke slightly on my Coca-Cola. At that
moment my reaction was in response to many
things. The most obvious was the stark juxtaposition
of a phrase like Insha’Allah and the consumption of
alcohol -which is forbidden in Islam.
But digging deeper I realized at that moment what I
found most revealing – her knowledge of Islam was so
minimal that it left her unaware of the irony of her
Ethem Bey Mosque, Tirana, Albania. Photo by m. Alwynt.
statement. I was intrigued at how she held onto the
phrase as a cultural trinket, a family heirloom that she
had salvaged from her grandmother’s generation,
something she had saved as a contribution to her host,
in exchange for his hospitality that night.
13
After work one day an Albanian friend of mine invited
me out for ‘a coffee’ with some of her friends in one
of Tirana’s many cafés. As I chatted with the others, I
suddenly heard the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer,
coming from the xhami –mosque in Tirana’s Skender-
berg Square. I was immediately captured upon
hearing the call to prayer. Entranced by the adhan, I
commented on the rarity of hearing the call to prayer
as a Muslim in a non-Muslim majority nation and was
met by confused gazes. With the exception of my
friend, I came to learn most of the others had not
known what the call was intended for.
One of the Prime Minister’s advisors I had befriended
explained to me that every year at the end of
Ramazan [known to most Muslims as the Ramadhan,
the month in the Islamic calendar in which Muslims
are required to fast] he along with his two brothers
would expect a call from their mother. Regardless of
the fact their family has never fasted a day of Ra-
mazan, she would always invite her sons to a festive
lunch to celebrate Bajram (the Albanian word for Eid-
ul-Fitr, the celebration marking the end of the month
of fasting).
As each fall gave way to winter, he and the rest of the
family would expect a call from their mother
congregating all the members of her family for a
Christmas lunch. Come spring the family would be
expected to assemble again to regale on raki (Albanian
wine) and a medley Albanian dishes and sweets in
celebration of Easter.
The advisor’s multi-faith family celebrations, the
young woman’s sacrilegious toast, and the adhan that
fell on unaware ears exemplified the state of the reli-
gious landscape I discovered in Albania: amorphous
and schizophrenic. Struck by these incidents, I became
curious about Albanian’s true religious identity and
went on a quest to better understand Albanians rela-
tionship with religion.
Religious History
I came to learn that religious freedom was amongst the
first rules promulgated under the freshly democratic
government. However 17 years later, contrary to what
the CIA Factbook may have intimated, Albanians
haven’t rushed to embrace organized religion. Alba-
nians remain largely undecided, and at times, staring
with a cynical eye toward organized religion, ap-
proaching it with trepidation.
This should not come entirely as a surprise. Under the
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 14
iron curtain of communism, any religious fervor was
suppressed by the communist dogma that religion was
the ‘opium for the masses’. Under Enver Hoxha’s re-
gime formal worship was illegal and those who sought
to practice their faith clandestinely were under state
of constant paranoia that someone- a stranger, friend,
parent or even a child- would report them.
That afternoon in the café in Tirana the others didn’t
take notice of the sound of the adhan not simply
because it was drowned out by the din of the cafes and
bars - they didn’t take notice of it because there was
not a formidable audience for it in Albania and there
had not been one for a while. Under communism most
mosques were converted into gymnasiums, locked up
or turned into mueums or cultural centers.2
Main Square of Tirana, Albania. Photo by Lassi Kurkijarvi.
Over the course of four decades, the communist re-
gime was successful in wiping out religion in Albania
and within the consciousness of its people. Fearful that
children might slip and divulge their secret to others,
parents were reluctant to pass on their religious tradi-
tions to their children. The regime was proactive in
seeking out and removing any form of religious prac-
tice. During Lent and during Ramazan, communist of-
ficials often distributed dairy products and religiously
prohibited food in schools and in work
settings to catch Christians and Muslims in the act of
performing religious fasts and then publicly shaming
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
those who refused the food.3
Digging deeper in Albania’s history reveals that Enver
Hoxha’s campaign to cleanse Albania of religious
influence was assisted by the Albanians’ amorphous
religious history. As a people, Albanians had
(collectively) never been loyal to any one particular
religion. It is claimed that Albania’s national hero
Skanderbeg was taken to Constantinople as a
child,where he received military training and convert-
ed to Islam. He eventually climbed the ranks serving
as a regional governor under the Ottoman Empire but
later deserted the Ottoman army, renounced Islam con-
verted back to Christianity, and joined with Albanians
to fight against the Ottomans.4
Originally Illyrians settled the area known today as
Albania. Later Romans conquered the Illyrians,
bringing Christianity with them. Towards the end of
the fifteenth century Albanian lands fell to Ottomans,
which lead to a long reign that stretched into the be-
ginning of the 20th century. With Ottoman rule came
Islam, and two communities developed-those associ-
ated with Sunni Islam and those associated with the
Bektashism, a branch of Shi’a Islam. While almost
two-thirds of all Albanians converted to Islam, some
claim most converted to Islam for the opportunities it
provided them as members of the Ottoman Empire.5

Throughout their history, Albanians made a number of
attempts at self-determination. Albanian leaders
assembled the Prizren League, which pressed for au-
tonomy within the Ottoman Empire. Later in the late
nineteenth century Albanian nationalists attempted to
stand up to threat of the division of Albanian
populated-lands amongst Montenegro, Bulgaria, and
Greece. However these and other attempts at Albanian
nationalism and resistance were easily thwarted.
One of the reasons was that Albanians lacked a geo-
graphical or political center. Many Albanians were
scattered across different regions and were historically
mired by religious and social division. Albanian
nationalists recognized that the Albanian people
lacked an overarching identity to bind them and turned
to an agenda of secular nationalism to overcome these
differences. Nationalists looked to the Albanian
language and common ethnicity as a means of uniting
them. In a famous poem by Albanian poet Vaso Pasha
wrotedescribed “The religion of Albanians is Albani-
anism” which became the motto of the Albanian
Renaissance. The motto was later re-claimed by
Hoxha in his effort to purge Albania of religion
under communism.
The Real Albania
Even prior to my arrival to Albania, along with count-
less others, I prejudged this dynamic region. Subcon-
sciously, I had forced a Muslim paradigm onto Alba-
nia, and as a result I found myself frustrated by the
expectations it failed to meet. In my naiveté, I had
expected to find a community of Muslims that would
instantaneously embrace this Muslim foreigner. In-
stead, I was disappointed to meet an overwhelming
majority of Albanians that wanted little to do with
(and perhaps because knew little of) their Muslim
identity.
While statistics may boast that Albania is a majority
Muslim nation, the reality is that Albanians --on the
whole are not practicing Muslims. I found that most
Albanians look upon religion as a component of their
ethnicity. For some, like the young Albanian woman at
the party, religion is simply a relic of Albanian’s
suppressed pre-communist identity. While some Alba-
nians drifted back to the religious identity of their
ancestors after the collapse of communism, others
remained atheistic or agnostic, shunning religion
altogether. After having been victim of one ideology,
many are wary of religion and look upon religion as
15
another form of communism. Others I found were
largely indifferent because they consider religion to be
superfluous to their daily struggles for survival.
The staunch nationalism cultivated during the Alba-
nian Renaissance and under Hoxha’s regime still
resonates with most Albanians today. While Albania’s
religious and spiritual identity may be ambiguous what
is certain is that most Albanians I came across claimed
their Albanian identity before anything else.
Albania’s Future Religious Land-
scape
Albania’s amorphous religious identity is a byproduct
of its hyper-modernism after 40 years of standing
still socially, economically, and religiously. While
other nations saw their shifts from one ideological
trend to another phased over of an expanse of time, the
sudden lifting of the iron curtain in Albania meant that
it experienced everything all at once.
The decades-long denial of religious expression under
communism has left a palpable void in the lives of
some Albanians. Some Albanians are slowly seeking
out a sense of spirituality. Like the advisor’s family
who never had the opportunity to practice a religion,
as each holiday arrived there was a sense amongst his
family that something needed to be celebrated, a reli-
gious rite needed to be performed. There was a
lingering feeling that certain days of the year needed
to be sanctified with family and food.
“After years of oppression, Alba-
nians are now finding themselves
openly debating existential ques-
tions- something I realized I had
taken for granted as a practicing
Muslim in America.”
Not surprisingly Albania has become prime religious
real estate for evangelicals of every creed. Many
religious organizations have come to recognize this
and have been quick to fill the void, most notably the
Protestants.6 However Albanians, who have spent most
of their youth and adult age under
communism, are finding that learning to embrace reli-
gion is tantamount to learning ‘a foreign language in
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 16
old age’ as one individual recalled to me. For many
Albanians understanding religion is a significant feat
because democracy is still a stranger to them. After
years of oppression, Albanians are now finding
themselves openly debating existential questions –
something I realized I had taken for granted as a
practicing Muslim in America.
With the religious marketplace now accessible to Al-
banians and the religious freedoms to freely navigate
within it, many Albanians are treading carefully in
terms of what religious identity they want to be
associated with.
Albanians are sensitive to the poor and corruption-
laden image that precedes them. This poor image is, to
some degree, pushing some Albanians to keep their
Muslim, or rather, ancestral Muslim identity at bay.
One official I spoke with mentioned that he would
prefer to distance his nation’s image as a Muslim
majority nation. He feared his nation already had poor
reputation amongst the European community and as
result of September 11th, any ties to Muslim faith
would associate Albanians with radicals and extrem-
ists, further tarnishing their reputation. Some Alba-
nians are wary of the backlash that an association with
the Islamic faith could bring.
Others fear, similar to communism, the pursuit of the
wrong religious ideology may isolate Albania from
the rest of the world. Ismael Kadare, notable Albanian
author has emphasized that Albania return to its
‘European family’ and embrace its ‘original religion’
– pre-Ottoman Christian identity. Kadare – along with
others- believe that embracing Islam and even the con-
notation of an Islamic identity would stifle the
progress of Albania, as communism once had, and
would only further isolate it from the European
community. However, this is prompting an Eastern
European nation like Albania to pick between its
Christian-European and Muslim-Ottoman roots. For
Albanians this means choosing between one part of
themselves, their heritage, and rejecting the other.
Albania’s decision to proceed cautiously when it
comes to picking a religious identity may be histori-
cally justified. The de-emphasis of religious identity
and the embrace of secular nationalism was critical to
the self-preservation of the Albanian people who had
historically been balkanized by religion, geography
and occupying nations.
At the moment Albanians are still adjusting to their
newfound religious freedoms. With only 25-40 percent
actively participating in formal religious services, the
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
vast majority of Albanians do not actively practice a
religion.7 As Albanians become more settled in their
new religious freedoms they may choose to explore
and embrace religion at a growing rate. However, it re-
mains to be seen how a nation like Albania, which for
most of its history has been majority atheist or non-
practicing, will accommodate the needs of its growing
religious population and maintain its secular national
ist identity without compromising the religious free-
doms of its people.
While these issues remain to be seen, at the moment
what is apparent is that Albanians are ravenous for
knowledge and the opportunity to experience things
that-while not new to others-are still very new to them.
Regardless of the Muslim label they may have been
given, Albanians don’t feel beholden to a particular-
dogma.
After traveling around Albania that summer, I find
Albanians’ true relationship with religion is best
captured by the title of a Rumi poem: These Spiritual
Window Shoppers. Many are trying out new religious
identities and as many more creeds come to the fore of
Albanian consciousness, will continue to do so.
Shaista Ahmed was a MPA graduate from the Wood-
row Wilson School’s Class of 2007. She can be
reached at shaistaiahmed@gmail.com.
1. CIA Factbook 2007, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/al.html
2. Raymond Zickel and Walter R. Iwaskiw, editors. Albania: A Country
Study. Washington: GPO for the
Library of Congress, 1994
3.Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. U.S. Department of State - International Religious Freedom Report
2007
7. U.S. Department of State - International Religious Freedom Report
2006
The Great Mosque of Beijing. Photo by Nabil Abdurehman ‘11.

Muslim In China
By Nabil Abdurehman ‘11
“What am I doing,” I thought. “I’m here in
Beijing, alone on a public bus, on my way to a mosque
I could barely find on a map. I can just barely under-
stand the gist of what people are saying around me.
It’s already been over a half hour since the guy I asked
for directions told me to get on this bus, but how will
I know when to get off? Or how to return to cam-
pus? This bus is overcrowded, excessively warm, I’m
The Great Mosque of Xi’an, Xi’an, China. Photo by E. Cenzato.
standing a head or more above most people here, and
I’m being stared at. On top of all that, it looks like it
can rain any time now. What am I doing?”
This was my first Thursday afternoon in China since
Princeton in Beijing, a Chinese language immersion
program I was in last summer, had commenced. Ac-
cording to Wikipedia (and, of course, several other
17
sources), Beijing had a mosque and so I had to go ask
what time Jumu’ah, the Friday congregational prayer,
would be held. I had other motivations in going as
well. When one thinks of a Muslim “profile,” rarely
would a Chinese person come to mind. True, China
is the home to a substantial number of Confucian-
ists, Buddhists, Taoists, and atheists and those simply
disinterested in religion altogether (these last two the
result of China’s communism and years of religious
suppression). However, some estimates indicate that
China’s Muslim population could be as high as 20-30
million, with most sources agreeing on a range of 15
to 20 million, almost as high as the entire population
of Saudi Arabia. Also, there are a number of other fa-
mous mosques all around China. I wanted to visit this
Princeton University - Spring 2009
 18
one in Beijing, the Niujie Mosque, to see this historic
relic, a monument that had endured through a millen-
nium of change.
I arrived, but couldn’t believe it. I walked slowly,
trying to absorb what I could, as if this ornate archi-
tecture, which seemed borne of two wildly different
worlds and had survived over a thousand years, would
not last another day. Next to the prayer room I saw
several elderly men. I spoke to one of them in Manda-
rin, asking where the washroom was. After struggling
to understand his accent, I was relieved when he used
an Arabic term to indicate where I could make ablu-
tion. I found it, washed up, prayed, and then went back
to the group of men. They asked me where I was from
(I would get this a lot), what I was doing in China,
and so on. They said the Friday prayer would start at
1:30pm the following day. By this point, I was really
looking forward to it.
The next day came, and although I had just been
to the mosque the day before, the idea of attending
Jumu’ah left me both curious and excited; this was
the prayer all the Muslim men in the city were sup-
posed to attend. How many would come? How
would the service be held? I crossed the street to go
to the mosque, and I could already see men, young and
old, wearing white kufis, walking slowly towards the
At the Great Mosque of Xi’an, Xi’an, China. Photo by E.Cenzato.
mosque . When I arrived it was still a little early. As
time passed, more and more people came, in all about
two thousand people I think were present. Among
the native Chinese, there were a few Africans wear-
ing their traditional clothing, a few others who looked
like Arabs, and some Pakistanis and Indians. Like
me, I assumed they could only understand snippets, if
that much, of the khutbah, or Friday sermon, that was
Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World
given in Chinese. But regardless of the differences in
our nationalities and native languages, or if they were
wearing suits or traditional clothes, after the speech we
all got up and prayed, together, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Following that first visit, I returned to the mosque
every Friday afternoon. My religious obligation to at-
tending every Friday congregational prayer forced me
to become part of the Beijing Muslim community dur-
Detail of a Mosque Wall, Beijing, China. Photo by Margaret Mendel.
ing my two-month stay there. Within a few weeks of
regular attendance, I began to feel like a regular: one
day a security guard, while I was leaving the mosque
called me by my Chinese name and told me “Xia ge
xing qi wu jian”, which means “See you next Friday.”
Jumu’ah turned out to be a great opportunity for prac-
ticing Chinese with the local residents.
One of the teachers at Princeton in Beijing told me
that what she loved about me going to this weekly
prayer is that it enabled me to interact with the locals
and see what their daily life was like. I had conversa-
tions with people of countless different backgrounds at
Niujie, and their diversity seemed to me reflective of
the abundant ethnic diversity in Islam: a diversity that
is so often manifested in mosques around the world.
Once, a man in a suit sat next to me in the prayer
room. He didn’t seem to be a Beijing resident; I as-
sumed that perhaps he was visiting from a neighbor-
ing region. Later, he asked me a question about the
service, in unbroken English. I replied in Chinese. An
expression of both surprise and confusion appeared on
his face, and he took a brief pause before the hopeful
response, “Can you speak English?”
Afterwards, I was walking around Niujie trying to
familiarize myself with the area. On the sidewalk,
there was one man I thought I had seen in the mosque
a little while before, but now he was looking at a map
apparently searching for bearings. I approached him
to help, and we started talking. It turns out that he
 19
was originally from Mozambique, but lived in Portu- misunderstanding still existed. As an example, while
gal. He came to Beijing, like me, to study Chinese. the teachers for my level knew I was Muslim early on,
However, whereas I have yet to reach 20, he was in his I did not think they were that familiar with my beliefs
mid-thirties. In addition, he said he had lived in Spain and practices. Now, in the course of my speaking with
and Saudi Arabia in addition to several other countries, one of the teachers, I was asked what my interests
and spoke eight languages. were, I mentioned that I juggled, and tried to explain
Among the people I met around Niujie, the local Mus- to her what it was. She understood, but then her
lims were the most interesting to talk to because they
were able to provide me with the historical and cul-
tural background of Muslim life in Beijing. There was
one Muslim who came up to me while I was standing
on a street corner in Niujie, perhaps drawn by my
apparent unfamiliarity with the area. He told me that
the green building with domes we were standing next
to was actually an Islamic school that started at fifth
grade. Once I met a young man, just a few years older
than me, who said he was a student at the Islamic col-
lege (which turned out to be the same one as before).
Also, for the Olympics, he was volunteering as an
Arabic translator. At the mosque, he introduced me to
one of his friends, a fellow volunteer (whom I’ve since
seen again this past Friday), and then afterwards gave
me a brief tour of the grounds.
What my interactions amongst the Muslims in Beijing
most elucidated for me is the importance of Arabic as
a cross-cultural means of communication among Mus-
lims, as much for non-Arabs as for Arabs, in wide-
ranging regions of the world. These last two people
I mentioned, the translator and the one who told me Prayers outside a Mosque in China. Photo by Michelle Brea.
about the school, would speak with me in Chinese, if following question she asked with a look of sincere
something was not clear for me, they would clarify curiosity: “…And do all Muslims juggle?”
with Arabic, and if it were still a problem, only then I honestly enjoyed my time in Beijing was sad to
with English. When I went to Niujie for my first have left without being able to explore the city more.
Jumu’ah, a man came up to me, shaking my hand I made friends among some locals, adjusted to the
and giving the salaam, and asked what country I was food, and acclimated to the weather. All in all, going
from in Arabic, then in English. In Niujie, although to the Jumu’ah, following the same religious code as
the mosque is itself Chinese in architecture, inside the the indigenous Muslims here, I felt like I was living
arches and ceilings are adorned with Arabic calligra- like a Chinese Muslim there. However, now I’m back
phy. All over Beijing, all the halal Muslim restaurants to America, and there is still ignorance of Islam here
I saw (I never expected to see so many in the first just as there was there, ignorance that causes hatred,
place) had written in Arabic above the entrances “Is- violence, and misunderstanding. The solution to the
lamic restaurant.” In Beijing, Arabic is very literally a problem is not through acceptance to merely coexist,
symbol of the Muslim presence here. but through dialogue and understanding. Just like the
On campus at Beijing Normal University, where PiB Niujie Mosque is part of Beijing, Islam is a vital part
was being held, there was one restaurant that served of everyone’s history, in one way or another.
qingzhen food (the Chinese term for halal, the code of
dietary restrictions Muslims follow) in addition to five Nabil Abdurehman is a Sophomore in the Undergradu-
regular cafeterias. I saw women wearing headscarves ate Program. He can be reached at Nabdureh@princ-
and men wearing kufis not only on the street, but on eton.edu.
campus as well. Still, with Muslim life this prevalent,

Princeton University - Spring 2009

 20

Misbah - Exploring Islam and the Muslim World

Spring 2009