Methodological Approach to the Study of Shakib Arslan: Islamic Thought and the Arab World in the Interwar Period

Abstract

This research note explores an innovative methodological approach to the study of Shakib Arslan. Often perceived as a redoubtable anti-colonial activist, Arslan also earned a place in the pantheon of Arab nationalism, and has recently been rediscovered as the central figure of interwar Europe’s transnational Islamic movements. This research seeks to integrate these multiple fractionalized images of Arslan within an integrative approach. It begins by placing Arslan within the context of a unified Islamic consciousness unconcerned with national, regional and cultural frontiers. Although this vision of a united Islamic umma permeated Arslan’s self-consciousness, the relationship between Arslan’s Islamic revivalist thought and his Arab nationalist thought has all too often been understood within the context of the nationalist paradigm. Rather than understanding religion as one element of the nationalist consciousness, this research proposes a three-vectored approach uniting Arab nationalism, the Islamic Revival, and Westernization-modernization within a dynamically integrated system of mutually interactive vectors. This tripartite system both analyzes Arslan’s thought along these three axes, and makes each strand of thought dependent on the two others. Depending on time, place, and a multiplicity of factors in Arslan’s existence, each intellectual current evolves in dynamic relation with the other intellectual currents, resulting in a unique symbiosis integrating elements of Arab nationalism, Westernization-modernization, and the Islamic revival within a single world view.