- In 1965 the publishing company Routledge of London, one of the most
famous publishers in the English-speaking world, issued a book by
J.J.Saunders, A History of Medieval Islam. Saunders was an academic
historian. The first few chapters of the book have titles such as “The First
Conquests”, “The Civil Wars”, “The Arab Empire”, clearly indicating that
top publishers were displaying the mainstream academic opinion that
Islam was anything but “a religion of peace”. Moreover, the first page of
the text by Saunders shows that the Islamic State is a fundamental part of
Islam:
the memorable struggles of Church and State, from which emerged the
Western theory and practice of civil and political liberty, had no
counterpart in Islam, which knows no distinction between secular and
ecclesiastical, and [Islam] is puzzled by our concepts of representative
government and a free society. (p.vii)
In the decades since Saundersʼ book was published, America and
Europe have been struggling with an ever-growing Muslim population, a
very significant number of whom do not want any separation between
Islam and the State. Yet at the end of this book from the 1960s Saunders
says:
Spiritually and intellectually, the future of Islam remains doubtful. The
efforts [...] to re-formulate Islamic law and doctrine in a manner more
acceptable to the modern world have won little support or favour from the
ulama [the Islamic clerical scholars...] Some social reforms have been
achieved: slavery and concubinage, both sanctioned by the Koran, have
vanished over a large part of the Muslim world, and here and there the
veil has been discarded... (p.203)
Saunders’ pessimistic view on the lack of reform in Islam might as
well have been written in 2015 rather than 1965. Not only is it exceptional
in the West to meet a Muslim woman who is not veiled in some way, but
we have seen the return of sex-slavery with the rise of Boko Haram in
Nigeria and of Islamic State in Syria. Muslims are far more regressive
now than in 1965.
In the same year that Saundersʼ book was published Hugh Trevor-
dana p.
(Dana P.)
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