Debates on Islam and Knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt: Shifting Worlds, Mona Abaza, London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. pp304 On the eve of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared, "We need an Islamic reformation, and I think there is real hope for one". Using different terminology, a similar call came from Middle East Studies specialist Daniel Pipes. Wolfowitz's intellectualisation of the re-colonisation of the Arab World is consistent with the notion of "Manifest Destiny", a US variant of the "White Man's Burden", which has been used frequently to rationalise imperialist belligerence. Implicitly, the targeting of Islam for "reformation" within the framework of the Greater Middle East project of regional "democratisation" also partakes of the de- historicised and de-socialised reductionist logic characteristic of Orientalism. Informed by an entirely different methodological orientation and political posture, Mona Abaza's book represents a most welcome antidote to the reification of Islam, bringing into analytical purview its "contrasting worlds". In this serious scholarly work, Abaza illuminates the dynamics of Muslims' intellectual productions, bringing into focus temporal and social dimensions that are often eclipsed in conventional studies of Islam as a standardised, uniformly expressed, de-historicised and de-socialised cultural system. Focused on two predominantly Muslim countries, Egypt and Malaysia, the study's review of the historically and socially contextualised islamisation of knowledge debates in the two countries directs attention to "competing intellectual agents and their field". This takes the reader well beyond the national boundaries of the study's research locales, underscoring "the interactive encounter with the West, particularly Western academia." In extending due consideration to western influence, Abaza remarks that "It seems that Americanization and Islamization are being paired. They function very well together." Such clarification of the socially and politically mediated outcome of responses to the call for the Islamic cultural authentication of knowledge is well served by the global perspective informing Abaza's analysis. The broad comparative scope of her investigation of the Islamisation of knowledge is such that the object of study is linked, not only to structural power relations involving the state within Egypt, and within Malaysia, but also to processes of globalisation, the politics of difference, and trans-national relations of intellectual dependency. Whereas Abaza's research is clearly informed by earlier work on the location of non-Western intelligentsia in metropolitan structures of hegemony, it also reflects a novel specific concern with locating these intellectuals in relation to "the contradictory role of post-colonial institutions". Her approach to the evolution of the Islamisation of knowledge discourse favours related socio-political dynamics. Thus, readers are spared the minutia of static discourse content analysis. Yet, as a reader who is less familiar with the case of Malaysia than with that of Egypt, it is difficult to render judgment about continuities and discontinuities in the absence of easily identifiable points of comparison. These do not emerge even after careful re-reading. As a researcher of the historically and socially contextualised production, reproduction, and challenge of the intellectual, social, and political contours of the islamisation of knowledge debates, Abaza herself has not been insulated from the dynamics of intellectual development. With commendable courage, she eschews the pretence of the impartial observer, admitting that her original antagonism towards the protagonists of islamisation of knowledge discourse was tempered by "experiencing in the West the ascendance of right- wing ideologies, the recession, and the increasing power fights which are 'third worldizing' and 'provincializing' Western academic life ". Although one would expect the readership of Abaza's book to be primarily academic, and in spite of the book's cumbersome and distracting organisational structure, its contents are certainly relevant to the non-specialised reader interested in Islamic societies and the social production of ideas. In relation to the intellectual servicing of the War on Terrorism, it is also likely to prove beneficial to those engaged in a critical reading of what Edward Said has described as the type of "aggressively ideological" and propagandist work that discredits Arabs and Islam. Directed by a political economy of knowledge methodology, serious researchers have linked the current proliferation of sophistry masquerading as "Middle East scholarship" to the revival of the sagging fortunes of Orientalism and the end of the Cold War and declaration of the War on Terrorism. Illustrative of this revival is the research cum political agenda of Daniel Pipes of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum. Pipes recently declared that the "ultimate goal" of the War on Terrorism ought to be the "modernisation of Islam", or, as he put it, "religion-building". Commensurate with the "modernisation", and "reformation" of Islam, attempts are now underway in the US to normalise such "religion-building". While Daniel Pipes seeks funding for an institution of Islamic Studies that "can articulate a moderate, modern and pro-American viewpoint on behalf of US Muslims....", there is a pending congressional bill that would legislate unprecedented governmental regulation of the regional studies programmes of academic institutions in the US. Surpassing even the academic witch hunt of the age of McCarthyism, moves towards such regulation have been prompted by assertions that Middle East Studies scholars failed to anticipate the "Islamist threat", which is deemed responsible for the September 11 tragedy. As reactionary intellectuals acquire an unprecedented degree of control over Middle East Studies internationally, and enjoy great influence in the formulation of US foreign policy, readers lacking knowledge of languages other than the lingua franca of our age are likely to face a further reduction in opportunities for direct access to the ideas of indigenous Muslim intellectuals. For all the talk about our "Information Age", the regulation of the flow of knowledge in no way approximates to the much-publicised ideal. Worthy of note in this regard is a recent article by Tariq al- Bishri, one of the many Islamist intellectuals whose works are subjected to critical review and socio-historical contextualisation in Abaza's comparative study. Writing in the current issue of the Cairo journal Wujhat Nazar (April, 2004), al- Bishri documents his experience related to the publication of the UNDP 2003 Arab Human Development Report, which, along with the 2002 version, was used to develop the framework of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, according to a US State Department official. Al-Bishri explains how the contents of a background paper that he prepared for the UNDP study under the title "Religion and Knowledge" were not incorporated into the published Report. In an introductory note he writes, "I leave it up to the reader...to decide whether it is appropriate to list the name of someone in a report without publishing what he presented, and in the absence of any sign of his contribution". By contrast, Mona Abaza's serious scholarly work is distanced from the type of authoritative censorship that is all too familiar to scholars who refuse to service imperialist agendas. Its careful compilation of references, scripted in Arab and Western languages, directs readers to original works, offering them a chance to subject Abaza's own analysis of the debates on Islam and knowledge to critical evaluation. By Soheir Morsy
