Turning to MacIntyre
Alasdair MacIntyre, as far as I know, does not directly address the issue of conflict with Islam. In spite of this, I find his conception of a tradition, particularly as introduced in After Virtue and developed in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? to offer a helpful way forward.[1]
In the first place, MacIntyre’s approach works as an empirical account of the historical form of Christianity and Islam. Our relations with Islam will be helped by a better understanding of what we’re dealing with – what we mean by “Islam,” “Christianity,” and “the West.” If we can see each of these large phenomena as describable as MacIntyrean traditions, I believe we can make progress in relating with Islam. Further, by taking MacIntyre’s account as not merely descriptive but also normative, we can discern a way for our tradition to engage with competing traditions.[2]
MacIntyre on Tradition
MacIntyre provides his densest definition of a tradition in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? He says there:
A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretive debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.[3]
The first and most obvious way to take this definition is as descriptive of the way traditions – or as he observes in the context of offering an earlier version in After Virtue, a tradition that is “in good order” – come into existence and have their being. Not every tradition, if we can personify this complex social phenomenon, is willing to identify itself as a tradition.
Following MacIntyre, I will say that a tradition is a social embodied argument. It is formulated by people using words. There is not mere obviousness and agreement. A tradition is extended through time. Traditions are dynamic, not static. Any given tradition is not now exactly what it was or what it will be. A tradition can be defined. We can identify what it is that makes a tradition the tradition that it is and not some other tradition. These definitions are continually refined as new questions become relevant and old questions lose their relevance or adequacy. A tradition is defined through conflict in terms of internal interpretive debates. Participants in the tradition desire to move the tradition forward both in terms of social space in general and in relation to particular neighboring and competing traditions. There will be differing understandings of what the tradition is, what it stands for, what it’s trying to accomplish and how it should go about accomplishing its goals. Finally, a tradition is always butting up against other traditions. Some of these traditions will be seen as direct competitors, while others will be seen in such a way that co-existence might be possible.
If this is an accurate account of a tradition we can say that a tradition will have both fundamental continuity and discontinuity over time. It will have continuity in the sense that it is at all points precisely this tradition and not some other. It will have discontinuity because the internal interpretive debates and the competitive debates with other traditions are in constant flux. This continuity and discontinuity are in tension. A significant generator of internal interpretive debates is the question of change itself, particularly how much and in what ways the tradition can change and still be the counted as the same tradition. In the Reformation era, for example, the debates between Protestants and Catholics became not primarily over which had the better interpretation of the faith but which was the true approach. For a more recent example we can look to early twentieth century America. In the Fundamentalist controversy J. Gresham Machen’s argument was not that Liberal Christians were mistaken Christians, that is, mistaken participants in the Christian tradition, but that in their innovations they had left the faith altogether and formed a new and different religion.
One of MacIntyre’s original objectives in developing his theory of tradition constituted rationality was to understand the failure of moral reasoning within modern western culture. He tells the story of the modern tradition that fails to perceive its own character as a tradition. One can read modernity’s self-understanding in Lessing’s tale of a great ugly ditch. On one side of the ditch are the necessary truths of reason. On the other side are the accidental truths of history. Reason, rationality, truth and knowledge were all together on one side, the side of timelessness and universality. Anything on the other side was mired in temporality and contingency. Moderns tended to see anything describable as a tradition as firmly ensconced on the temporal side of the ditch and thus something to be studiously avoided. Moderns had taken themselves to have discovered the method of finding truth about the human condition. Possessing the correct method, they were guaranteed to progress from there on out.
Failing to see their tradition as a tradition is by no means peculiar to modernity. Some Christians and some Muslims are just as loath to see their traditions as traditions. Tradition-rejecting Christians see themselves as believing, teaching and practicing exactly what Jesus and the first apostles believed, taught and practiced. They might choose one particular translation of the Bible as authoritative, thoroughly and completely representative of the Bible as the first Christians had it. They gloss over the temporality and contingency of the faith. Though the founding events are distant in time, we today have immediate access to them.
Some Muslims take a similar view of their “tradition.” They read the Qur’an and hadith, finding clear and simple truths that will take them back to the time of Muhammad. If only Muslims would rid themselves of all the accretions that have built up from surrounding jahili cultures over the years, they could again, after all these years, have real Islam again.
When adherents of Christianity and Islam reject the traditionary aspect of their traditions they settle for a form of essentialism. They pick out a set of characteristics that exemplify the true essence of the tradition. These characteristics are universal and timeless. They are the same always and everywhere. These characteristics and these alone mark the boundaries of the tradition. If one fits within these characteristics, one is a true believer. If not, one is a heretic or infidel.
A casual observer might notice that there are many varieties of Christian and many varieties of Muslim in the world today. What ought such an observer to make of this variety? If we take the essentialist or tradition-rejecting point of view, the analysis is simple. The groups that fit the definition, that match the pre-determined set of characteristics, they’re the true believers. Whether the observer stands inside or outside the tradition, the identification can be made. If one knows the definition, one can make the call.
Making calls regarding who is in or out, who is a real participant in the tradition and who is unfaithful in practice or skewed in interpretation, is a normal part of life. Even if we reject essentialist conceptions of these traditions, questions as to the true nature of the tradition will remain. And that is exactly the point one can find in MacIntyre. A tradition – a living tradition, anyway – continually asks and answers questions of definition, purpose and identity, not taking any of these to be finally settled. Yes, some issues will be treated as settled for all time. In the Christian tradition one might identify the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection as well as practices like forgiveness of sins, the Eucharist and baptism as settled once and for all. But consideration of even these core doctrines and practices ought to give us pause when we consider the history of the tradition. Debate continues within the Christian tradition as to whether Jesus is God-incarnate or whether such a notion is just a myth. And a resurrection? If we mean that some illiterate fishermen came to believe that the Jesus they knew to be dead was now alive, such a belief is compatible with modern science and our reliance on technology. We can turn to Freud’s theories of wish fulfillment and find an adequate explanation. But an actual resurrection? Surely that is unbelievable and we ought not to expect modern Christians to believe such a thing. On the supposition that one can deny core doctrines of the faith and still be a Christian, people who take these positions continue to inhabit churches, not only in the pews but even as pastors, seminary teachers and as bishops.
Or ratcheting the questions back a notch, even a superficial knowledge of Christian denominations shows us groups that adhere to these core doctrines but have widely divergent interpretations of what they signify, how they are to be interpreted, and how the churches are to implement them. If we understand Christianity as a tradition in the MacIntyrean sense, we can find room for both great variety and a constant struggle for truth within the tradition.
If we take just a half step away from our own participation in our traditions we can recognize that if our traditions are of any size or significant substance such interpretive debates have been and are ongoing. I specify taking a step away, since full immersion in a tradition makes us more prone to the essentialist temptation. When I speak of taking a “step away” from my tradition, I don’t mean finding a neutral place to stand where I can observe my tradition objectively. Rather, I have in mind the ability to see my tradition as a tradition. However totalizing and universal my tradition may be in relation to what I take to be reality, I recognize that the tradition I inhabit is not, in spatial terms, the only tradition, or in temporal terms, eternally unchanging. My tradition has a history and continues to engage with other traditions as that history continues.
To the degree that we incline to an essentialist rather than a traditionary understanding of our traditions, we will get them wrong. We will also find ourselves in hardened positions as we deal with insiders and outsiders who differ from us.
How do the Muslim writers I dealt with earlier approach the essentialist – traditionary distinction?
The Muslims that we in the West think of as “fundamentalists,” or violent jihadists – Abou el Fadl’s “puritans” – have an essentialist understanding of Islam. God revealed the truth to Muhammad. Muhammad, an illiterate, recited what God told him so others could record it, creating the Qur’an. The Qur’an is plain and straight-forward. Anyone who comes to the Qur’an with the right attitude will be able to understand it. The proponents of ongoing violent jihad take themselves to exemplify the simple, plain and natural interpretation of the Qur’an and thus of Islam. Anyone who differs from them must be either deceived or deceivers.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali also adopts an essentialist perspective toward Islam. Where the jihadists work from their essentialist understanding to promote Islam, her essentialism takes her in the opposite direction. All real Islam, by her account, is evil and destructive. If one claims to be a Muslim but rejects those evil elements, one must not truly be a real Muslim.
Faisal Abdul Rauf, Akbar Ahmed and Khaled Abou el Fadl all recognize the diversity within Islam and admit to its status as a tradition. Ahmed and Abou el Fadl explicitly enter the traditionary fray, the former arguing against an over emphasis on group cohesiveness (or in MacIntyre’s terms, paying exclusive attention to internal questions). Abou el Fadl’s discussion of the history of jihad is perhaps most instructive. First, against the jihadists, he deals with jihad as if it has a history, and is not something revealed clear and entire to Muhammad and presented to later generations equally clear and entire in the Qur’an. Rather, the concept of jihad has changed over the years as Muslims have sought to remain faithful to their own tradition even while engaging, sometimes peacefully, often not, with other traditions. Second, Abou el Fadl takes the time to narrate how both interpretations of jihad, the “puritan” and the “moderate,” have come to be. In neither case does he rely on reductionist arguments that would simply explain the other position as in instance of perversion from without. While clear that he thinks the puritan understanding and practice of jihad is dangerously wrong, he lays out an explanation of how they reached their view through historical events and a desire to be faithful Muslims. It is not the case that the puritans are simply evil.
[1] A review of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Muhammad Legenhausen is available online (in a slightly corrupted version) at http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/whosejustice/title.htm. Considering the relationship between Christianity and Islam, his emphasis is on their common competition with liberal modernity.
[2] Are there any non-competing traditions? If we can imagine traditions on a map of conceptual space, traditions that compete with each other are those that abut each other somehow. Traditions that are farther away are currently non-competing, though situations might change to bring them closer together. I think some adjacent traditions can be complementary, but this complementarity will likely only be temporary. None of this is to say that the competition cannot befriendly.
[3] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), 12.