A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam Paperback – 8 Jun. 2021

The Author provides a remarkable original thesis in his exploration of the cultural and intellectual history of classical pre-modern Islam. The core of his thesis is the acceptance and domestication of ambiguity in the civilisation of Arabic Islam in contrast to the Modern Western culture. The West with its Cartesian quest for “clear and distinct ideas” seeks precision of expression, and unequivocal certainties, abhorring ambiguity.The book explores lexical, semantic and syntactic ambiguity manifested in the sacred texts of the Quran and Hadith and open to multiple exegetical interpretations. It describes the extraordinary flourishing of an Arabic literary culture dominated by poetry, that thrived on ambiguity and the playful polysemy of meanings with the open ended aesthetic complexity of the text. This ambiguity was not confined to the stylistic linguistic expressions, it overflowed into the systems of jurisprudence lending great flexibility and openness in the interpretations of ritual and civil laws. The world of classical Islam accepted ambiguity as an inevitable state of human existence, affirming that language, gestures and signs are not unequivocal. This attitude towards ambiguity laid the ground for greater tolerance and acceptance of diversity, in contrast to an entrenched Western medieval culture fashioned by a dogmatic Church.Contrary to accepted wisdom, in the earlier eras of Islam, secular and religious discourses coexisted side by side while nowadays politics and religion are inextricably bound. Religion played a highly diverse role in different spheres, incorporated in various degrees within the separate fields of law, Sufism, theology, and much lesser degree in medicine and literature. The western way since the 17th Century was to eliminate ambiguity obsessed by its quest fo the exclusive truth and its universalising pretensions. Unfortunately modern Islam as it confronted the Western cultural challenges, borrowed the ways of its adversary ,and discarded its long standing healthy scepticism to claims of truth and certainty, by sprouting its recent fundamentalist ideologies. It has retreated into dogmatism buttressed by a lower degree of tolerance to ambiguity. Paradoxically post modern Western culture, is beginning to accept a sceptical approach to dogmatic claims to truth, and displays greater tolerance to ambiguity and pluralism.The text is replete of extensive analyses about many aspects of Islamic culture and descriptions of various social attitudes including the ambiguity of sexual desire, the title of one of its chapters. By elaborating the concept of “tolerance to ambiguity” as an important cultural determinant, the author provides a rich insightful approach towards the understanding of human cultures, both modern and premodern. A magisterial study that helps to dispel our ingrained misconceptions about the history of Islam.