Islam, the Enlightenment & Quantum Physics | Dr Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:02]Hello everyone and welcome to blogging theology and today I am delighted to welcome back Dr. Francesca Bocker.

[00:00:10]You're most welcome. Assalamu >> alaykum salam and thank you for having me back here.

[00:00:16]>> It's great to to have you back. Uh for those who don't recall, Francesca has a master's degree in neurocognitive psychology, a PhD in systematic neuroscience, both from the University of Munich in Germany, and a diploma in Islamic psychology from Cambridge Muslim College here in the UK. She has been working inside and outside academia on the issue of Muslim identity in Italy.

[00:00:43]Her latest book, The Italian Islam Manifesto, touches upon the most urgent topics facing Muslims in Italy. She's also the director of the Iban Rush Islamic Studies Institute, the first Italian language, Madrasa for children and youth. So, you're doing some pioneering work there about Islam and Italy. Uh, fantastic work you're doing.

[00:01:07]I wish you all the best for that. Um and today I'm very happy to say we're going to be talking um about the European Enlightenment. What what is the European Enlightenment um and the birth of Orientalism and particularly their view the views from the uh the Enlightenment period about Islam uh because it's quite quite some interesting diverse opinions.

[00:01:30]They're not all one one kind. But um how you introduce what is the enlightenment first of all uh from an Islamic perspective?

[00:01:39]>> Yes. Thank you so much, Paul. Really, because you you chose this topic. We we had some chats about what might we talk about and you picked up the enlightenment, which is something I did a few years uh ago before focusing more on Italy. I was more focused on European Islam on a wider lens. And thank you for bringing me back to this. It's it's nice and it help me refreshing also the material I am going to talk about. So one one thing I believe is really crucial if we're going to talk about the enlightenment is to understand what is from a Muslim perspective because the name itself can prove to be quite deceiving for Muslims because enlightenment has this beautiful aura right it talks about light and all languages all European languages translating it like along or illuminismo bring this beautiful light image to mind and sometimes we might think okay But also in Islam like Imam Malik said knowledge is a light. So there might be something similar between us perhaps but uh going more in depth uh and I suggest for Muslims who are interested into the enlightenment to start really uh for example from Kant who wrote uh this short article vasist along what is the enlightenment and from there it's already quite clear that we're talking about different types of light and the light of the enlightenment is a type of light which is if we want to keep The lights metaphor, a torch which really only illuminates something very specific with the one specific type of reasoning while living out what was be before mainly namely religion or what they call superstitions.

[00:03:22]And this type of hyperfocused thought, hyperfocused analysis and with all the positivistic and undertones it gave on science when applied to the study of Islam gave really birth to to orientalism. There is no other way to say it. I believe this is a direct uh result of it. Even though when we go to the very first text of the enlightenment, we see that there is much less apologetics against Islam than before compared to Middle Ages, right?

[00:03:54]Where really the view of Islam is the worst thing ever and like only negative things were right. It's not just so interrup but it's not just it was worse than uh during the medieval period the perceptions of Islam. It was completely based on myth and error that there was nothing about it usually that was true.

[00:04:10]you know that the Muhammad worshiped three gods. I mean you you can't exaggerate how mistaken and profoundly wrong western perception of Islam were during the medieval period. Now Islam had been around for centuries. So there wasn't really an excuse but nevertheless uh views were totally and you get the same tropes been recycled from writer to writer from myth to myth and it was only really with the enlightenment that some writers began to actually attend to what Islam actually taught what Quran actually says. uh but but so yeah there was a quite quite an interesting paradigm shift from the medieval Christian period to the enlightenment period. So maybe there was some little bit of light being been being shed at the enlightenment.

[00:04:49]>> Yes. And on Islam in particular there are a few steps that I think are very significant for the understanding that the west had of our religion. And for example if we take some of the very first texts that really represent the encyclopedic uh vocation of the enlightenment. For example, the bibotech oriental of Bartell below which was already in 1697.

[00:05:10]Uh he he speaks about Arab, Turkish, Persian sources directly finally but still there is a lot of euroentrism. I just take two lines from his entry for Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and he says the interpreters of the Quran and other schools of Muslim or Muhammadin-law have attributed to this false prophet all the praises that arens policians or polynists and other heretics have attributed to Jesus Christ while at the same time depriving him of divinity and that's his entry and we see two main uh lines here first point is already not analyzing objectively claiming the falsehood of this doctrine.

[00:05:54]Second point is using western schemes to understand the Islamic phenomenon because he says the Muslims are like this in this way and they are like that in this other way without adopting indigenous terminology and indigenous ways of understanding and this is a big damage that started from that time and there is also very important for the study of Islam. A compatriot of mine, Ludovviko Marachi was one of the first translators of the Quran uh into Latin.

[00:06:24]And of course, he had to translate the Quran into Latin. So, he had to write an introduction in which he distanced himself quite a bit from it because we still had the Inquisition going on, right? It's a time of contradiction, the Enlightenment. We still have the Inquisition going on, but we're breaking the shackles of religion. It's complicated. And so in his introduction to the translation of the Quran, I I translate without a doubt that superstition contains everything that is credible and probable regarding the Christian religion and what seems to be in accordance with the laws of nature.

[00:06:58]But it completely excludes the mysteries of faith which are considered too difficult for human nature. Therefore, modern idolattors more readily embrace Sarah law than the evangelical law.

[00:07:11]Again, the same problem. The same problem in very different context. So, we see this is really one of the first European trends in in understanding Islam. While at the same time, there were some authors that did praise Islam for being more rational than Christianity.

[00:07:28]uh that included Islam into those bundam or this beautiful rooms displays and really as one of the glories of humanity what what Islam produced and there are even some lower points for example Volter very well known wrote this play about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam which even gut judged as being uh such a horrible play he refused to translate it and in fact he made a fake German translation is really interesting uh about that >> wow that's that's interesting So there were there were different views of the the the almost unanimously negative view of uh the medieval high Christian period, the Catholic period and then the breaking into the so-called reason, rationality, the enlightenment. Um and you mentioned Gerta there who had a a comparatively positive appreciation of the prophet's life and and even learned some Arabic I think and uh was able to read the Quran directly to some extent.

[00:08:22]And then other people who are still very orientalist in their perspective, you know, bringing in their own uh categories rather than attending to what Islam actually says in its own terms, trying to impose uh an agenda on it. So uh um of course Voltater, you mentioned him, the famous uh dramatist and uh who's much lorded today um in some circles. So who were the good guy? who who are the people who really in the enlightenment period attempted to understand Islam on its own terms rather than uh you know impose on it uh western um orientalist categories. Are there people we can look to as uh pioneers of accurate study of Islam in the west?

[00:09:07]>> Yes, I would say so. And my my sole example for that time would be G actually. And I'd like to say something a little bit more about his biography and maybe if you want we can move on to what actually he said about Islam compared to what his contemporaries were saying.

[00:09:22]>> Yeah. His life is is really incredible because at a young age already 20 years old he wrote a poem in appreciation of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and he wrote in his private letters which are still uh conserved in the gut arches about how he exerted himself to live as a Muslim which I think is quite significant. He learned Arabic. In his uh notebooks, we see the exercises he takes and his handwriting, mashallah, improving through the decades. And it was really a deed of love that he had towards the Arabic language. And when he died, it is reported he had a Quran on his nightstand. And these are very significant facts. I have tried to collect some of these in a book uh which has been translated into French. So perhaps this is more available than Italian. uh which is >> when was he? He was around in the what the 18th century, 19th century. Uh >> yes. So he spans the second half of the 18th century uh the of the 17th and the 18th. So uh he's he dies 1832 uh after completing his uh the last version of the best lisher which is uh dedicated to the Quran.

[00:10:39]>> Yes. So this is this is really something amazing and through his life the way he studied and approached Islam though uh was through the encyclopedias that were published by the enlightenment because he did not have access to manuscript. He lived in VHimar which was not a central city and even though he had basically anything he wanted concerning the liberty of creation of writing and so on he still suffered being a little bit away from the thinking centers of the age. So also to know Islam he could never like really find Arabic manuscripts except the Quran >> and so he he based himself so he makes some mistakes in his notebooks. uh but he he really does his best like there are some pages in which he's trying to understand okay so these mortazites what are they actually saying against this asher and he makes schemes and he really really exerted himself and I was so praiseworthy at the time and incredible >> I mean Gerta is incredibly prominent figure in in Europe um he's a poet a writer a supreme intellectual uh he's seen as a great great man but you're saying in private he was actually a Muslim and this is not widely known. I mean, it's not like everyone thinks, "Ah, Gerta the Muslim, we better not let our children read him then." You know, that's a um no one seems to be raising any alarms. So, is have we turned a blind eye to what he was really about in Europe? Are we pretending perhaps we're looking at his public poetry and not really looking at his spiritual interests and commitments and uh in Islam? Are we pretending perhaps not to see what's really there?

[00:12:17]Uh yes, I I have had the opportunity of working on Gut's personal archief for about two years. Uh and uh in that I've noticed that a lot of fragments that are quite explicit about his adherence to Islam, I would call it were uh not published. Well, I think that these are incredibly enormous importance for European history and I've tried to compile them and then make them public in a book uh concerning that uh and also in some articles so perhaps they're easy to find online now but still it hasn't catched on a lot uh I believe it takes a little bit of time for this to understand but I I I really am sure that a person that writes like that in his letters in his diaries that marks when is the beginning and the ending of Ramadan in 18th century Vimemer on his diary most probably was a Muslim.

[00:13:12]>> Sorry, why why Gerta? Why did he because he seems to be fairly unique in that respect. What is it about him that attracted him to to Islam because this was this wasn't normal at that time.

[00:13:23]>> Yes, it is a way though that was open for many people but it seems that only he arrived to Islam through that way and that was the way oft literature. So there was this idea that the world has a unique literary and philosophical heritage and that a real intellectual is able to read and understand and enjoy and create through what the world all population all cultures have given to him. So his mentor already when he was about 20 told him you know you seem so bright but have you tried reading the Quran and that was how he got into it.

[00:13:59]He read it as an as many people today read the Va or the Avesa like okay I want to be a complete intellectual so let's do this >> well that's what I did one of the reasons I read the Quran years ago before I thought you know I've never read this book you know I'm really interested in the Bible I should read the Quran I remember one of my Christian friends saying you bought a copy of the Quran I'm really surprised Paul you got a copy of the Quran you know why not I what it's a book like you know one of the world's great literary works so I thought um so maybe there's a similar motivation Yeah.

[00:14:30]>> Yes, there is a similar motivation there. And actually as he was so young when he read it, he got into so much full enthusiasm. And then we have some letters of his friends which are like hold your horses a little bit because he was starting writing this extra mystical poetry about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam day of judgment imagery like and he was really really going an incredible interesting route. uh but then he toned it down a little bit but never stopped having this interest rather he kept it for private >> right >> interest not secret a private because there's a difference we also have you know some some closeted Muslims through history and this is much harder to prove but he actually lived like that and wrote like that just his published works have Islamic keys to be understood not only the divine also the fast has uh many Islamic themes in my understanding but not as openly as one could do nowadays for example. Oh, FA. Do you mention FA? That's the work that I I I've read most. The only one I'm familiar with by by Gerta. Uh, absolutely central work of the Europe European Enlightenment of European literature. If you haven't read it, recommend I recommend you uh get a copy very easily get a copy of of Gertis Faust of course. Um so he he was an extraord extraordinary uh figure and there was another figure wasn't his almost contemporary um who in some ways was even more significant in his day and that is Hegel the philosopher uh Hegel who I think was at the university taught philosophy at the uh University of Berlin um and basically dominated European philosophy in the 19th century in ways which perhaps we find hard to understand today because he certainly wasn't a postmodern or anything like that. But um but he he had a quite a different view on on Islam, didn't he? From compared to Gerta anyway.

[00:16:28]>> Yes. And I think that they are really two giant figures and to understand the roots that Europe took entering the 19th century. It is really important to be familiar with both to a certain extent.

[00:16:41]And I think that the first difference between the two is that Hegel took away wonder from the world.

[00:16:50]>> Wow.

[00:16:51]>> While Ge as a poet kept wonder and what we would call tadabur takur inside anything and even if we read his for example his um theory of colors which is a scientific uh work I suggest everybody reads it. How full of wonder and praise of God that is for Hegel instead the world just is a system and so there is a philosophy of history that you know is a system and can be understood. So these are two views even more of Islam, even more just of life, of nature, of what it means to be a human, what is the most developed human uh even and concerning Islam, both have spoken about very similar themes, which makes it very interesting to make a comparison between them. Uh when one starts reading, for example, their definitions of Islam, it doesn't seem to be that different. So Hegel talks about a full communist so a complete abandonment while gut uh talks about so an unconditional abandonment more or less that the English is the same. So one might think okay they're just trying to translate to German but if we try to pull the aspects of Islam that they studied they're very different. So Hegel was very little interested in the religion because he said it's not very interesting and it's incomplete as well.

[00:18:21]But he was very interesting in the historical reality of Islam. So what did Muslim kingdoms do? What do Muslim people do as a group as a society? And there he also um he took a bit from Voltater the idea of fanatism and he repeats that word quite a lot uh in in his works while Gut's interest in Islam that we can get from his notebooks and so on is primarily the Quran >> and he says that the Quran is something really uh unexplainable with words and it is an eternal guide because of its action. So these are the terms that he's using and of course we're talking about Islam so we talk about the Quran but we also have to talk about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and Hegel completely ignores the figure of the prophet and this is not only him many orientalists afterwards try to explain Islam as just a series of mechanical uh events in history and the prophet is just the founder while in uh in Ge He he he writes openly, I never considered him an impostor. I always consider what he said to be truth, which is a shahada. So this is the written shahada of >> now you mentioned it. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. In his own day. That's true. Yeah. By the way, I'm going to link uh to your article um comparing Gerta's and Hegel's views on Islam, a thematic approach, which is uh in English, a very interesting and scholarly uh paper there. So you can uh read up some more about that. And my own favorite book on on Hegel is this one by Peter Singer who's an Australian uh academic uh professor. Um a very short introduction published by Ox University Press. It's nice and thin as you can see uh is very readable. Hegel in my opinion is not readable. He's difficult um to understand. He obviously wrote in German and also he but he was incredibly uh reading singer on Hegel. Haggot has some incredible insights particularly about the modern world, modern consumer capitalism for example, the nature of existence in in our contemporary world.

[00:20:33]Uh even though he died more or less at the same time as Gerter I think in the first half of the 19th uh century. Um this he he is still a very important thinker is what I'm trying to say. Uh despite uh the fact that he's not really followed today. There aren't many Hegelians around. Of course, famously Karl Marx um kind of took over Hegel's thought and turned it upside down in some ways and and we we now we have Marxism which is perhaps the most famous um illegitimate child of Hegel put it that way. I don't know. Um but I do recommend this book. It's a great read.

[00:21:08]Um and it's inexpensive and not very long if you want to know more about this really important European uh thinker. So anyway, >> yes. And actually talking about illegitimate children of of Hegel, I'd like to say something before going back to to this contractive approach and it is that nowadays since and it's always been the case since Hegel is so difficult to be read then everybody can be a new Hegelian without having any consequences right and that's the same of yeah of many philosophers I I studied and loved very much Haidiger during my work and I see many Haidagarians and I am like >> how where does it relate?

[00:21:46]>> Yeah I mean I know he's not talking about Haidiga and I don't know what Haidigga said about Islam but Hideiger was actually a national socialist and he wasn't forced to be a national social because a everybody in Germany at that time no no before it was compulsory he enthusiastically signed up to the Nazi party and he did in some of his Jewish colleagues at the university in Germany he got them uh uh to lose their posts uh and today many people on the left the political left like him you know he's kind of oh he has some interesting thoughts about this and this dude he was Nazi. I mean, he really was. It wasn't.

[00:22:21]It's really weird how we how we kind of lionize these figures and it can a lot of what they their political allegiances if they didn't really matter. But that's not how Hegel saw it. He he saw his own uh worldview very much impregnated with that. Of course he he lived after the war after Second World War and said some things about the environment and technology which are interesting but he never um repented or or disowned as far as I'm aware anyway his past at all.

[00:22:49]>> Yes.

[00:22:50]No, this is very interesting because we have many figures uh in western thought starting from the 20th century I would say that have incredible insights and an incredible weakness of character at the same time. So it is very problematic to say to say I'm a Hadarian because you might you know seem like a Nazi and I don't want to look like that but at the same time >> the western thought is made like that.

[00:23:16]So we are able to accept for example Fuko and his deconstructionist methods while at the same time he was a horrible person. So >> sorry it's really good. Just just pause on Fukov for a second. who's a very fashionable uh uh laterally in France now in the United States where everyone's a fukarian you know all that kind but this guy if you look into his biography his life boy did he get up to some dodgy stuff uh with I said boy with young boys um and other places and you know and the way he ended his life ended and so but that didn't seem to matter because he's a guy of the left and so we don't talk about or Karl Marx his views on race if you look at Karl Marx's views on non-white races and and Frederick Engles, his his colleague. Shocking. And yet they they don't seem to have any impact on the the veneration uh given to these figures in the Western Academy, which is really odd really. But um you're absolutely right. Uh it's not just character flaws. Some of these people did things like like Fukco, which would certainly end up they would end up in jail for long prison sentences if they were prosecuted today.

[00:24:27]>> Yes. And this is uh this is interesting because on the one hand we have these types of thoughts that we might want to engage with uh as Muslims but on the other hand we have these characters and there is a historian that writes about Greek philosophy Pierre Hadu um and he wrote about the beginning of Greek philosophy and he he said something very interesting that phil authentic philosophy ancient philosophy was first of all a practice >> before system of thought and in a moment in which the two things stopped overlapping we have some problematic issues and >> Plato and Plato particularly famously you know it was about how to live one's life as a just person a good person one's relationship with the divine uh the nature of a just society and so on it wasn't like for Hegel this kind of uh system of of political ideologies and history it really was what we would call today a religion in some ways it was a dean it wasn't just a an intellectual pursuit. It was what is it to be a good person? What is it to be just and and holy and so on and Yeah. Absolutely right.

[00:25:35]>> Yes. And if you spend your whole life trying to understand what is being that is the question of Haidiger but you forget what is to what is to be a good person then you're not a good person because you didn't pay any attention to that and we have to recognize this that a part of moral philosophy has been ignored by the west in the last 200 years and are some very dire consequences to that I believe.

[00:25:58]>> Yeah. Gosh. Um and can I recommend a couple of other books while while we're on the This is Thank you. by uh John Tolen. Now he's a a professor of history at the University of Na in uh France, but he's actually an American academic.

[00:26:13]This is a brilliant book, Faces of Muhammad, Western perceptions of the prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to today by professor Tolen and it really is extraordinary. uh and you know he goes into what medieval many prominent medieval thinkers in the west thought about Islam which is un you would not believe what they thought and taught uh how how they couldn't have got it more wrong if they tried and and beginning with the enlightenment we start seeing some light literally uh with people like Gerta and some old tropes you know recycled people like Voltater and and others but it's absolutely a marvelous book there's a fantastic chapter here on on Napoleon as well he's meeting with Gerta because they actually they actually met um and it's just a a brilliant brilliant book very sympathetic and and uh academic and readable uh so I recommend that work and another one by a Muslim uh writer uh this big toe here uh Islam and the English enlightenment an untold story by uh Sha. So this talks about John Lockach and and others uh and the the the influence of Islam Islamic history on their thinking. John of course had a huge influence on the American Declaration of Independence and uh the founding fathers in America. This is actually quite a thick tone. Uh I've not finished it but uh this is a very good book. Islam in the English uh enlightenment and um talking about orientalism of course is the great classic itself. Edward states uh oriental. There's so many different covers of this book. This is particularly odd one. There's oneeyed woman but um I guess there's a there's a metaphor there. You know we'll go there.

[00:27:48]Anyway, this is the Bible of orientalist studies, I guess. Uh there himself, Palestinian um academic, University of Colombia. Um and uh there have been some Muslim well there have been some Muslim critiques of that um uh while Halak although he's not officially a Muslim but uh restating orientalism a critique of modern knowledge which is to some extent a critique of uh Edward Sai's work or orientalism um and this is absolute brilliant work um by a contemporary uh writer who's also at Colombia University I think same university >> he was uh and of course there's other books by Wal Halak as well which are equally worth reading. Um so there's a some of the um books I'd recommend.

[00:28:39]>> Yes, you mentioned Napoleon by the way.

[00:28:40]There is something interesting I wanted to remember our public perhaps as the connection there because uh you asked me which intellectuals try to engage with Islam. know if we're not talking about intellectuals but men of action well Napoleon certainly tried to do it in a very unique way declaring that he was the real Muslim right when he was entering Egypt and there is very famous quotation in which he calls for the kadi for the for everybody to tell the people that we are the real Muslims and then he arguments further why are we the real Muslims and he says were we not the ones who destroyed the pope that was waging war against Muslim for centuries.

[00:29:23]>> And so this is a type of very strange engagement with Islam that has happened from the French world. And the French world has a history of strange engagement with Islam even before the whole current uh issues that that we are seeing nowadays that I would still call strange and unsettling. But for example, Victor Hugo.

[00:29:43]>> Oh, Victor Hugo. Yes. Yes.

[00:29:45]>> Yes. Yes. So uh he he calls Napoleon Mahmed.

[00:29:51]So the western Muhammad at a certain point which is weird and then >> he goes on uh writing all these several poems on the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam which I advise people not to read because they're not good. But um these poems paint this double light of Islam. And this double light of Islam is on the one hand facts that are accurate.

[00:30:17]So he he pins down the correct year of the hijra, the correct city, the correct place, the names of the people. It's right, it's fine. It it checks out. But then the psychological characterization is horrible.

[00:30:32]And if we think about it, that's a little bit the same of what Hegel was already doing before. Because for example he was saying that Islam uh is telling about in his philosophy of history quite a few accurate facts for for the time about battles and dynasties and things that check out but then how is he characterizing them? The English translation would be fanatism, destructive uh revolution and harsh service. And if we again go back just for a second to go to the words that he uses for the history of Islam because here we're now we're talking Napoleon, we're talking Hegel, we're a little bit more of the practical side of things. He talks about an advantageous fearlessness or he talks about a joyous observance love between the two worlds.

[00:31:22]>> Wow.

[00:31:23]>> That's quite a different way of of saying things.

[00:31:26]>> That's right. But of course the the the study of the east uh of the orient was was mingled with colonialism. Uh you mentioned Napoleon. He didn't just proclaim himself a Muslim uh arguably insincerely. Um but you know this was all to do with getting the Muslims in Egypt on his side who he had just invaded of course with an army of orientalist scholars who then did practice their orientalist uh scholarship on on uh Egyptian society.

[00:31:54]And um so I I don't think the Egyptians were fooled by by his claims. I'm I'm the new Muslim caiff. Ho ho. Um but uh but nevertheless, sorry, the study of orientalist study of Islam wasn't just an ivory tower pursuit. It was inextricably connected to orient colonialism. This is something that Edward say speaks about a lot in his magisterial uh work. Do you want to say a bit about that? Why why the why it's not western academic studies I mean you could say the same today of course we're very much connected to uh conquering Muslim lands uh for the west's benefit of course >> yes absolutely and uh there is a macro uh shift with colonialism in which academia becomes the first servant of colonialism in my understanding and this is from the very beginning so we're not talking about uh later authors but already dehat brian one of the first enlightenment people he says that the Arabs are like soldiers without a captain they're citizens without a law they're a family without a head of family and they are an example of civilized people who then fell down to the state of savage and actually if you think and if you read behind the line this comes also a bit the narrative of the cionist movement a little bit uh And this this is scary that it has such old roots because the way of understanding the Arabs as this big civilization which then is fallen down and now it needs help or it needs people to control them.

[00:33:31]Already is bringing the first ideas that then the scientist movement is using now and this is something that as academicians as as people of thought and culture we should make this very clear where are the origins of these problems and we should eradicate them. Right? So read critically these authors in schools in university not like take them for granted. But this of course is not like chatanist there are many steps in between. For example, uh one very well known by the English speakaking audience as uh Rudart Kipling who during the PhilippineAmerican War uh writes about the white man burden, right? And this white man burden which is to uh serve even says in the poem to serve your captives needs, right? To civilize those people. And he calls these people half devil and half child at a certain point in the poem.

[00:34:27]>> Wow. which is scary because first of all it tells about an idea of childhood which is primarily western and is so alien from Islam because for us children are a beautiful fra right they're the closer to Allah subhanaa tala they still remember the covenant they're they're amazing uh if if you admire a child really you have a better relationship with Allah subhanaa tala in a certain way >> while keeping is saying these people are scary because they look a little bit like children And here you can really see the derangement right that the enlightenment brought. And it's a derangement which is also teaching derangement. Uh have you ever realize how boring are western schools who follows this this approach? Right?

[00:35:12]Okay. There are different types of rocks. This is the name of the first rock. That's this what type of way to study nature is that what type of way to study animals? Stripping away of wonder.

[00:35:22]stripping away all beauty and leave not leaving the time to reflect and to ponder and some people tried to to do better like Maria Montasuri and the pedagogical revolution of the 20th century but still wonder is nowhere and still childhood is not taken care of and this again comes from the enlightenment.

[00:35:43]No, this reminds me in in the UK context of of Isaac Newton who uh is credited with lots of things, you know, uh just advancing optics and discovering gravity and writing princip.

[00:35:59]But the point is that that although he was privately very committed as a Christian and had very interesting ideas about God who's a unitarian publicly he his his understanding of the cosmos was very mechanical uh completely drained of any uh sublim subliminity any sense of mystery or awe as you as you say and and this brought the protest and people in England here William Blake the poet uh and the romantic movement against this kind of new mechanical machine-like universe that Newton apparently was proposing for for science. Um and and and the only there keep stressing that Newton privately wasn't like that. He he was a passionate Christian. But but he he seems to had a hand in creating this colorless mechanical universe and people protested against it. You know, where is the supply and where is the beauty?

[00:36:50]Where is the truth? The meaning. Uh and so that was the birth of the romantic movement not just in England but in other parts of Europe as well. That's not really orientalism. I know it's a different subject, but I just thought it was worth mentioning.

[00:37:03]>> Yes, absolutely. Also, because if we think about the the romantic movement and the this rationalism that through Newtonian physics stripped away any uh wonder, any the romantics would call it magic. That's not really the term we like to use, but that's what they like to use.

[00:37:23]>> If you see now that we have the revolution of quantum physics, >> Yeah. Still people can't wonder. They just get scared. Subhan Allah. That's strange because quantum physics really in its basic core assumption puts back awe into matter. Uh even at the basics understanding yet people are not able to have awe. And if you read the letters of the pioneers of quantum physics, they were terrified of their discoveries not in wonder. So >> and the ash the asherite ashite theologian the clan theologian. Well that sounds a bit like occasionalism.

[00:37:54]you know they uh you know they they bring this kind of theological uh interpretation to uh quantum mechanics.

[00:38:02]Yeah. Well, we we've been here we've been here before anyway.

[00:38:06]>> Yes.

[00:38:06]>> Um so yeah coming back to I mean the what one of the most popular works in Europe translated into English all of languages 100 nights was it the the orientalist literary works. What was that book called? um something with 101 nights in the west that book um but um which I've not read I must say it's one of the you know the the allegedly most famous Muslim books I've never never l looked at but I mean what about orientalist novels and paintings and things like that how what was their role in all of this in in trying to disseminate an orientalist perspective >> yes this is actually an an amazing topic because it takes a direction which is a little bit different than the political than the philos ophical than the historical >> yet it complements it. If we see the way in which western authors made paintings let's start with paintings because it's easier portraits in particular of Muslim leaders. If we start from the 15th century for example with the amazing uh Bellini and the Venetian schools then their portrait of these sultans with this very big turban and they are so respectful right in their stance and they demand authority and power.

[00:39:20]>> Yes.

[00:39:21]>> Go to 100 years later all this power is stripped off and it just becomes like um a collection book. You see this is the image of a Turk and this is the image of Nuts black person and it just becomes a collection of different people of different costumes. Uh and this is some of the popular prints at the time but the actual orientalist school of painting uh developed with colonies being very well established and being safe places for westerners to travel.

[00:39:50]Artists travel to this lands. They try to sketch down everything they see. Then they go back home and sell the paintings of this reality. But these paintings have to sell. So they have to include things that the western public at the time would like. And so orientalism painting becomes a way to sell like let's say art which is more like erotic than actually related to what they were seeing in the Muslim world. And this is really >> you know to me there are many covers as I said to this book by Edward say orientalism. Another cover I've got which I won't show you um is a is is of a painting uh an orientalist painting I think from the 19th century with a group of kind of Arab shakes sitting around in front of a naked boy a naked youth literally >> in a mosque. In a mosque >> in a mosque I didn't realize >> you look at the walls behind it's a mosque which is >> quite unplausible that that ever happened.

[00:40:44]>> Exactly. That's my point. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. uh it's just I mean without going to the obvious reasons why it's not not going to happen but this represented for this orientalist painter some kind of I don't know trope that he thought was made sense of that world of the east uh even though it's completely ridiculous from any realistic point of view and and and that very well chosen for the book of the a book on orientalism because even though it's it's not good cover to have but it never expresses that orientalist misunderstanding misrepresentation of of the West. Oh, the book I was thinking of, by the way, is 1001 Nights, a collection of of Middle Eastern folktales, looking at Wikipedia compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age, often known in English as the Arabian Knights. The first English translation was in 1706, uh, actually. So, very, very famous.

[00:41:37]Never read it. I don't know anyone who has. No one ever talks about it, but anyway, it's um hugely important in the history of European literary uh understandings of of Islam in the east.

[00:41:50]>> Yes. And it it creates I believe that is the most important books for the whole trope of the haram >> h as a place of boredom and pleasure and this strange vibe that one gets from orientalism. If you look at orientalist paintings, people are always very bored, very inactive, uh, and very sexualized. And this is a strange combination. And it goes back to the keepling view, right? Half devil, half child. This is not a mature situation in which they are found. Not even when they're sexualized, it doesn't look mature. It looks like what are they? They're not understanding. What are they doing? They're just on couches.

[00:42:27]They're just laying. Uh, and and this is this is weird. And uh there is actually an example of an Italian princess in the 20th century. She's called Victoria Liata who went to an actual harim and uh wrote a book and said, "But you're crazy of thinking of of the things that that would happen here. It's just a normal place where women live and they read and they write and they're educated and they spend their day in much more interesting ways than aristocratic women at the time because she was a princess. So she was quite an expert on boredom because aristocrats have quite an expertise on that and she said actually it's much more interesting what happens over there. Unfortunately I think this book is not found in any other language than Italian and is still quite a rare book but if you think someone can find the words of Victoria Leata who was also the first Italian translator of Tolken weirdly enough so a strange character but >> very interesting book.

[00:43:21]>> Yeah. Um well just perhaps move moving on um and what one of the myths um that I've certainly heard of although less so these days is this idea of in the west when it comes to Islam closing the doors of ish jihad. So I guess the idea is a long long time ago any kind of creative legal Sharia Islamic kind of engagement with contemporary issues was closed. the scholars no longer uh it was decided long ago uh that the corpus of law was uh fixed final definitive didn't need to be updated at all or engage uh with the world around it and so the doors of Ishtihab which basically means reason independent reasoning were closed forever and this has something to do with the the backwardness of of Islamic thought I mean on every level that's just wrong but um uh why did this bizarre idea come about in the first place in in in the west because I I've never seen anything like it in the in the in the Muslim world. It's just >> yes, this is a completely western idea that then we we feel like we have to defend against as if it was a real thing. But several authors have shown that there is no incidul which would be the Arabic term for that in Arabic manuscripts of the time. So who closed it and which gate are we talking about? Yeah. So >> first of all I'd like to say something about this that is the door of htihad and the word htihad sometimes is taken very much out of context by orientalist and Islamic studies professors or academicians at still now still now it's taken out because it jihad uh usually was used by experts of and it is one of the ways in which the jurist can work one of his abilities is we do not talk about um about other things. For example, we wouldn't say that what imal was doing was strictly. It was more of a process of of right of a renovator, renewer.

[00:45:27]>> So is a thing and in other disciplines as well. But Islam has this idea of a renovation that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam promised us is every century. So how can we believe that the doors are closed if the prophet said every century there will be a renewer of the faith?

[00:45:47]>> Sure. So this is again one of the circumstances in which in academia an a word from the Islamic context is taken given a different meaning and then they try to find the culprits and the culprits are either Imam Shvi or Imam Gazali. The ones that try to create a system but why is creating a system wrong in the Islamic world but is always so right in the west because otherwise also Hegel would have closed the doors of reasoning. Right.

[00:46:12]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:13]>> So many many double standards there.

[00:46:15]>> Yeah. I mean most western philosophers think they're creating the final definitive statement on philosophy and that's it. We can all go home now because philosopher X be heaggel or nature or whatever has has given us the definitive uh philosophy of life and of course uh that's never the case. There's always someone a disciple usually comes along and overturns the master's thinking. And uh um just to move on if I may there is a certain book which I I know you you've referenced uh and I'll hold it up. It's been mentioned by many people. It's called A Culture of Ambiguity, an alternative history of Islam by a German scholar, Thomas Bower.

[00:46:50]I'm not trying to pronounce his name.

[00:46:51]It's actually translated from the German. Published bizarrely by Columbia University Press. Most of the books I've got here seem to be published by Colombia. Um, and this has been very much praised by people like Abdul Hakim Morad at Cambridge and others. And I' I've read about a third a third of it.

[00:47:06]Um, what is this this concept of ambiguity? Why is this? Because the author is not, as far as I know, a Muslim, but he writes with great aerudition and sensitivity uh in in terms of the best of German scholarship.

[00:47:20]Doesn't appear to be particularly orientalist. I don't know what you think, but what why is his work significant in telling us about ambiguity in the history of Islam?

[00:47:29]>> Yes, there are several of his works that I believe are really very important for for for Muslims. Uh, and even the the the ones that are still in German, unfortunately, I I would advise getting them and reading them with Google Translate rather than not reading them because they're so precious. In particular, there is one on the Islam alter. So, the medieval Islam, did it exist or not? That's a very important topic by the way because thinking that Islam is middle ages, then it requires an enlightenment, right? And we're back to the enlightenment again and again.

[00:48:00]But going back to Kula Ambit, it's an amazing book. one of my favorite books really of Islamic studies. Uh however uh there is this word ambiguity that he uses which in German makes perfect sense. But I think that in English also in Italian ambiguity has also a negative meaning. Right.

[00:48:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. Not not it's not very clear.

[00:48:22]It's sort of and that's not necessarily a good thing.

[00:48:25]>> I think that's perhaps a better word could have been used. I don't know but ambiguit would be a multiffold openness rather than a a univocal way the opposite of that. So Islam is the culture that lives open unless there is a reason to close them. And he makes amazing examples. For example, >> the readings of the Quran. We have 10 readings but we only have 10 readings.

[00:48:51]The scholars said you can read the Quran however you like as long as it connects back to an isad. So the idea is always there is absolute freedom as long as it is motivated by something like the food right everything is halal unless there is a good reason for proving it is haram. And he makes a case that actually Islam has always tolerated ways of understanding which were mutually uh incompatible but understood at a higher level they could have been so >> is sorry just just a point that ba is it how's his word name is it ba or bua how do you >> okay I wasn't mispronouncing it um he just talked about modernity by which it means west I suppose and uh our our fetish for clarity and black and white and yes and no. This idea of ambiguity whatever the is really sits very uncomfortable with this kind of quai scientific need for certainty and one right answer. we can't tolerate this kind of ambiguity um which seems to be part of the DNA of Islam historically and and also how that and how that that western mindset has affected Muslim mindsets now as well that we that we also require one answer to what does this verse say definitively clearly unambiguously in its uniform sense there's no sense where it could mean several different things uh but it's affected the Muslim mentality to some extent as well he point that out. I think >> yes. But you know what? It fits very well this mentality postmodernity because people nowadays do not have well people nowadays are complicated, right?

[00:50:39]And I don't want to enter too much into the psychology but on the one hand they still believe many Newtonian ideas for science. Science is the ultimate layer of truth. Yet >> do what makes you feel good. Do whatever you want. Uh there is no absolute goodness. There is no absolute anything.

[00:50:56]So a culture of ambiguity could be a middle lane between these things and bring back to reason the fact that postcontemporary self is shattered between needing to believe in something namely science without understanding it and understanding that we cannot live off just one answer. And we as Muslims we are making the mistake that we are focusing so much on things like what is the exact centimeter of cotton a woman has to put until the wrist is the wrist included excluded to women that have converted since one day right and we put to them this type of content. No, before we should put to them the variety and the openness of our intellectual tradition for them to develop love, attachment, understanding and then we go into details uh because the Sharia is still there for a reason, right? And it has to be followed but but with an understanding.

[00:51:48]>> Yeah. No, this is absolutely extraordinary. Uh and as I say many many western Muslim academics have praised uh this book uh Tim Winter at Cambridge and others as well. So I I do uh recommend it. It's a translation uh from the the German. I didn't realize there were other works also that were worth looking at too. I mean, he's not he's not a Muslim, is he? Or was he a bit like Gertie? Is he perhaps privately sympathetic?

[00:52:12]>> I don't know. I don't know him personally, but what he's writing is really what I would be writing if I had more knowledge. So, I don't know. I don't know. Subhan Allah. It's very strange. It's very strange.

[00:52:22]>> Yeah.

[00:52:23]>> If he's not, but really he seems an amazing person.

[00:52:26]>> There's another very well-known western scholar. I'm not going to say who it is, who I've who I I've been told indirectly is actually a Muslim, although he's publicly not a Muslim. So that so the but I I think uh Tim Winter called the submarines. Um uh >> yeah, also Holly Beck right in but with a different with a different exception.

[00:52:48]>> So I think these who knows he could be a submarine as well. So um yeah, this is uh extremely interesting. So in terms of the enlightenment heritage, what it bequeathed to the world, to us, Muslims, indeed everyone must feel very ambiguous. Ambivalent ambivalent, not ambiguous. Ambivalent in other words, maybe this, maybe that. We're not quite sure uh you know how we feel or feel about it. Is there anything at all that a a Muslim do you think can take away from the enlightenment in a positive way or is it purely an internal European sort of counter religious anti-religious counter medieval movement that fetishized reason and a positive understand positivist understanding of science and thus it's not really compatible with uh uh the the uh the Islamic worldview which is much more nuanced and really on track alto together. I mean, do you have is there anything we can take away from the enlightenment project or is it just really a European thing?

[00:53:51]>> That's a great question because many times in my travels I I I meet very often this happens with Arabs. Uh people that tell me, "Oh, but you Europeans through the Enlightenment, you broke the shackles and it's really positive. We should also have this." There are books that really call for reformation of Islam in terms that look very much like the Enlightenment. And I think and this is still why the bower book of the about the middle ages is very important. We cannot use categories uh of western world to the Islamic one. It just doesn't work. Periodization um movements ideas of course is Islam is not completely impermeable. We have seen that with Greek thought. We have seen that even when Indian thought with poetry with Persian uh thought. But it cannot include something doesn't work with its own system and which completely at odd. And I think that enlightenment is completely at odd with the way Islam not only values reason, not only sees religion but lives in the world, sees perception itself. There are many many ways to know in Islam and at the end all these movements are epistemologies at the end right of the story. And so the epistemology of Islam and here there would be people like Nakibal Latas who have talked about in the best terms for nowadays are not compatible with the epistemology of the enlightenment. And one last thing I'd like to say is two suggestions of books.

[00:55:20]>> Oh yes.

[00:55:21]>> To understand that this phenomenon is not over. So it's not like this podcast is about oh well we like the 18th century me and Paul it's our favorite time in history. We just want to talk about it. But it has to do with nowadays and I believe Muslims by understanding the roots of the enlightenment and orientalism can understand today better.

[00:55:41]The first is book Muslim in western imagination by Sophia Rose Arjana. And this is by an Oxford University Press.

[00:55:50]>> Oh, I've not I've not come across this before. Sophia Rose Arjana. Okay. Where did she teach?

[00:55:56]>> Oxford University Press. And um >> where where is she? Is she part of an >> in the United States?

[00:56:05]>> Colia world. Amazing.

[00:56:11]>> We should tag them in the video. And this book is very important because it talks about a process um which has happened in western imagination.

[00:56:21]Imagination is another way of knowing which has not been studied a lot. Uh and we don't pay enough attention to imagination. How did middle ages >> people imagine Muslim to be scary, strange? And she talks about a process of monstrication which starts from the middle. Monstriation. Yeah.

[00:56:42]>> Wow. That's a good term. I remember that.

[00:56:44]>> And she even shows some manuscripts for example in which we have like Salahodina was painted with a blue face and a snake coming out his mouth. And this she says and this book has a very strong political argument. I love it that this directly binds to the humanized bodies in for example Guantanamo Bay.

[00:57:03]>> If you think about it, how dehumanized Muslim in particular men bodies have become through this process. This is an amazing book. Another >> the Palestinians uh I mean absolutely >> so obvious that Palestinian lives, Arab lives, brown lives are not worth uh what Israeli white lives are, white lives are. It's it's such an obvious thing that the West would not tolerate uh at all what's going on if these were white people. We see this in Ukraine, of course. Um >> yes, >> where we support our white European brothers or whatever. So the the the racial solidarity, the racial white supremacist undertones are ever present in our in our contemporary news. I think the way we treat >> and they are unconscious and we as Muslims have to bring them to light because even when the Ukraine war happened in my small town, our local newspaper said we have to welcome them because they are like us and we had Syria happening a couple years before and I was flabbergasted but I know they didn't mean it. They didn't understand the roots of what they were saying. They really were seeing these people like them and they were seeing the other people unlike them. And this is something which as Muslim we should be in the first line academically, intellectually to fight with all the tools we have.

[00:58:22]>> And the second book I'd like to recommend is the new orientalist.

[00:58:27]>> Okay.

[00:58:27]>> Is an amazing >> was it postmodern? Sorry, can you read the the subtitle on the cover there?

[00:58:32]>> Postern representation of Islam from Fuko to Bodri. And this is by Ian Almond. Uh and >> I ask where he teaches. Uh, no.

[00:58:42]>> At the fire of Berlin.

[00:58:44]>> Oh, that what a relief. Not Columbia.

[00:58:45]>> Not Colombia.

[00:58:48]>> Yes.

[00:58:48]>> Oh, that looks really juicy. Actually, I must get that one.

[00:58:51]>> This is amazing uh because it's a book that takes key figures of the contemporary western uh understanding and shows how their understanding of Islam is still orientalist. Some people you would never ever uh expect. for example, uh, Borgess, for example, Lavo Xek, for example, Fuku, and really completely suggest this reading as well.

[00:59:16]>> Wow. Xek, even even he comes under criticism because he >> Yeah. Yeah. Jek, which I have here, uh, in this book, Welcome in the Desert of the Real. I have the Italian translation here. Uh, he talks about the Iraq war.

[00:59:28]So, we're going back. It's a bit of an older book.

[00:59:31]>> He never mentioned Islam once.

[00:59:35]>> Gosh. ever.

[00:59:36]>> He just talks about there is an issue.

[00:59:39]We had so many victims, collateral victims. All right. The problem is America. So he just focuses to understand America, the American system, American politics. And then there is Iraq which is the actual topic which is being bombarded and not a care. And in the Yan Almond chapter, this is shown.

[00:59:57]And of course, Jek is a neoagelian, right? And postan as well. So, hey, quite a bit of stuff. Um, >> I was I was hoping he he would be idiosyncratic enough and and brilliant enough to have transcended those. Uh, but you're you're No, >> not yet.

[01:00:15]>> Not yet.

[01:00:16]>> Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, those are the two books. Oh, fantastic. You know, I'll I'll put those in the links uh below and I will um of course buy them as well because they I I didn't know about them.

[01:00:25]Thank you so much for those recommendations. Gosh, >> I'm glad I could suggest something new.

[01:00:30]>> No, indeed. Uh I'm always on the outlook for fresh uh works like that. So uh Pastor is a great place to close on exactly one hour. Thank you so much Dr. Franchesca for your time, your expertise. Um there's so much more inshallah that we will talk about in future uh podcasts. Uh very much want to share your extraordinary knowledge, your breath and know, your encyclopedic interest in so many different um areas.

[01:00:54]I mean you've got a a PhD in systemic neuroscience. I mean which hasn't really come out in anything you've said so far.

[01:01:00]Yeah, we should do that because that's >> absolutely absolutely and then you got a diploma Islamic psychology another aspect not unrelated but nevertheless a distinct field um we could talk about Islamic psychology and the nature of being Muslim in today's world and identity and all that uh that there and and this your latest book Italian Islam manifesto that sounds very interesting as well um we're always obsessing about what's going on in America or perhaps less extent in the UK we need to look at what's going on in in other very important countries in Europe like obviously Italy. Um anyway there's much more inshallah we will discuss in future podcasts. Thank you so much Dr. Franchesco for your time. You're absolutely amazing and um yep >> wish a great day >> and you too.

[01:01:44]to you.