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Charles Malik and the Origins of a Christian Critique of Orientalism in Lebanon and Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Todd M. Thompson
Todd M. Thompson*
Affiliation:
Biola University
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Extract

The field of Oriental studies was the main context in which amateur and professional scholars developed the academic study of Islam before World War II. The role of religion in the rise of this discipline is now widely acknowledged, but the role of religion, particularly Christianity, in the critique and transformation of Orientalism after World War II has never been explored. Given the prevalence of Christian scholars in Islamic studies after 1945, why has this been the case?

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 51: Christianity and Religious Plurality , 2015 , pp. 350 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2015

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References

1 Historically, the term ‘Orientalism’ has referred variously to a scholarly discipline, an imperial educational policy, a tradition of art and architecture and a discourse of imperial power: see MacKenzie, John M., Orientalism: History, Tlieory and the Arts (Manchester, 1995), xii–xiii.Google Scholar In this essay, I use it, like Malik, to refer to a scholarly discipline. While geographical terms like ‘the West’ appear in quotation marks in this essay only when they reflect the exact language of the cited material, the reader should note that I consider such designations to be historical constructs rather than natural entities.

2 Urs App, Tlie Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia, PA, 2010).

3 Daniel, Norman, ‘Some Recent Developments in the Attitude of Christians Towards Islam’, in Re-discovering Eastern Christendom: Essays in Commemoration of Dom Bede Winslow, ed. Armstrong, A. H. and Fry, E.J.B. (London, 1963), 154–66, at 165Google Scholar.

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15 Washington DC, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Charles Habib Malik Papers, Box 256, Folder 1, Charles Malik, draft PhD thesis, ch. 8, ‘Man and Temporality’, 317.

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18 Woessner, Martin, ‘Provincializing Human Rights? The Heideggerian Legacy from Charles Malik to Dipesh Chakrabarty’, in Barreto, Jose-Manuel, ed., Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law (Newcasde upon Tyne, 2013), 65–101 Google Scholar, at 72.

19 Malik, thesis draft, ch. 9, ‘The Existential Basis of the Cosmology of Process’, 338.

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21 This is the main problem I find in Woessner's otherwise illuminating and valuable account. He makes the strange argument that in the 1930s Malik sought to advance a critique of the dominant paradigm in the philosophy of science, drawing primarily upon ‘Heidegger's existential analytic — all without necessarily relying upon religion’. He goes on to draw the untenable conclusion that Malik's dependence on Christian teaching would only become ‘more explicit’ much later, suggesting that this was possibly motivated by a delayed recognition of the dangers of Heidegger's thought: Woessner, ‘Provincializing Human Rights’, 76. For an alternative perspective, more in line with my own, that emphasizes the continuity in Malik's Christian philosophical project and his immersion in the work of Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas both prior to, and alongside, his engagement with Heidegger in the 1930s, see Malik, Habib C., ‘The Arab World: The Reception of Kierkegaard in the Arab World’, in Stewart, Jon, ed., Kierkegaard's International Reception: The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, 3 vols (Farnham, 2009), 3: 39–96 Google Scholar, at 41, 43.

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31 Ibid., fol. 48, Charles Malik to I. N. Clayton, 11 January 1944.

32 Ibid.

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37 Ibid.

38 Malik, ‘Understanding each other', 67.

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57 Hourani, Albert, ‘Islam and the West’, Listener 48 (1952), 501–2Google Scholar, at 502.

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59 Said, Edward, Out of Place: A Memoir (London, 1999), 263, 265.Google Scholar Malik married Said's mother's first cousin, Eva.

60 Ibid. 265–6, 276, 280–2.

61 Ibid. 264, 268–9, 281–2.

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75 Hourani, untitled document.

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77 Kenneth Cragg, ‘Islam in the Twentieth Century: The Relevance of Christian Theology and the Relation of the Christian Mission to its Problems’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1950).

78 Ibid. 39.

79 Ibid. ii.

80 Ibid, ii, 3.

81 Ibid. 22–3.

82 Ibid. 23–4.

83 Cragg, Kenneth, ‘The Christian Church and Islam Today: The Spur of the Moment, III’, MW 42 (1952), 207–17Google Scholar, at 217.

84 Cragg, Kenneth, ‘“Each Other's Face”: Some Thoughts on Muslim-Christian Colloquy Today’, MW 45 (1955), 172–82Google Scholar, at 174.

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid. 175.

87 See, for example, Nussbaum, Martha, Political Emotions: Wliy Love Matters to Justice (Cambridge, MA, 2013)Google Scholar; Hordern, Joshua, Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology (New York, 2013)Google Scholar.