Conscience in the construction of religion : A critique of Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam

While Marshall G. S. Hodgson, who died in 1968, was influential in the United States as professor in charge of the history of Islamic civilization course at the University of Chicago and as author of a series of scholarly articles on Islamic history, art and religion, 1 Hodgson has been aptly described as “a lesser-known giant among better-known scholars” (Hodgson 1974, I, ix). Although this is unfortunate, the appreciation of the true stature of Hodgson may well be corrected by the appearance of his three-volume, posthumous work The Venture o f Islam. This study is certainly worthy of close scrutiny since its intention is to criticize and transcend the presuppositions of traditional “Islamics”—to use Hodgson’s terminology—which rest on Arabism and philology. By “Arabism” Hodgson meant the tendency to treat pre-Islamic Arabian culture as somehow native to Islam so that Bedouin culture is regarded as “lost” if it is not carried into the Islam of the Fertile Crescent. By contrast, Arabism regards Persian, Syriac and Greek cultural components as “foreign” to the genuine Arabian core of Islam. In order to counteract such assumptions, Hodgson attempted to give what he regarded as an appropriate weight to more central Islamicate regions and cultures. By the philological bias, Hodgson pointed to the exaggerated emphasis given high culture, to the neglect of more local or lower-class social conditions; and within high culture, to be preoccupied with religious, literary, and political themes, which are most accessible to a philological approach.

This selection and introductory material © Andrew Rippin 2007.