Islam: The View from the Edge
by Richard W. Bulliet

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Book Reviews of Islam: The View from the Edge

Book Review: Islam: A View from the Edge
Summary: 5 Stars

Islam: A View from the Edge is a socio-historical analysis of the Nishapur Diaspora through the experience of the new converts and their relationship with the ulemas. The aptly titled book is a survey of how Islam developed in the periphery rather than in the center, and how the scholastic developmental patterns in the center were heavily influenced by the creativity in the periphery. He suggests that the edge's creative source was the question-answer motif employed by the converts to learn about Islam. When people converted they would seek out individuals who knew the answers to questions regarding worship. This led to the emergence of individuals who succeeded in gaining the convert's ratification for their interpretive efforts as being the most authentic representations of the divine intent. Such fluid discourse led to the development of local expressions of Islam. Bulliet contends that there was no single legitimate interpretation of Islam but rather many in the early years of Islamic history. Islam was homogenized by the efforts of many Persian ulemas who were expatriates of what is today Eastern Iran. These individuals organized themselves into schools of law around charismatic eponyms which came to be known as madhhabs.

Madhhabs would later become the center of all religious interpretive exercises and a source of legitimacy in the Muslim body politic. In particular Bulliet points out the Ashari-Shafi community of Persia that were the most influential consolidators of Sunnism. They spread their rationalistic expression of Sunni Islam via their stock and trade, namely the Madrasa, a quintessential Persian innovation in early Muslim civilization. This group eventually became part of the center and its version of orthodoxy was championed by such figures as Nizam al-Mulk. This form of Sunni Islam was understood by its proponents as the middle path between the excessively rationalistic Mu'tazilites and the overly conservative traditionalist Hanbalites. Nizam al-Mulk commissioned the famous Nizamiyya Madrasas in Tus and more importantly in Nishapur and Baghdad. It was from these schools that the Ash'ari-Shafi'i scholars propagated their doctrines and inserted a type of mythology into the collective memory that the scholastic evolution within Sunni Islam had its end goal their grand synthesis of the text and reason.

If there are any criticisms that could be directed at Bulliet's work it is that he stresses the edge disproportionately and effectively gives an impression that the center had no significant role in the development of Islam. Bulliet says the view from the edge is needed because it is the edge that ultimately creates the center (pg. 12). However he becomes too dogmatic in distinguishing between the edge and the center and overlooks their similarity. The development of the center Iraq and the edge Iran/Nishapur have much more in common than in differences. The relationship between the edge and the center should be seen as interactive where both influenced each others development. However this does not take away from the fact that the book is very well written and offers a fresh look at the origin and development of Islam.

That obscurantism withstanding, there is a lot that we as American Muslims can learn from Prof. Bulliet's research. We here in North America constitute a particular edge and the discourse within our community can, if we take the task at hand seriously and work determinedly, produce the type of reorientation of the Sunni worldview in the center, that the Ash'ari-Shafi'i Ulema achieved in Medieval Islam, from authoritarianism to the authoritative pluralism, in the 21st century. Insha'Allah.

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