Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8414 Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 theological discourse. After all, Islamic culture fascinated Goethe, Proust, Lessing, and Joyce – hardly an indication of a lack of enlightenment. In Islam’s books and monu- ments these writers saw something that we, who are so often brutally confronted by Islam’s present state, no longer can easily perceive. Perhaps the problem of Islam is not tradi- tion, but rather the near-total break with tradition – Islam’s loss of cultural memory, its civilizational amnesia. Modernization as experienced by each of the peoples of the Orient was imposed brutally from above, through colonialism and secular dictatorships. Iranian women, for example, did not let go of the heads- carf gradually; instead, in 1936 the Shah sent his soldiers out into the streets to tear it from their heads by force. Unlike in Europe, where people experienced modernity (despite various setbacks and crimes) as a process of emancipa- tion that spanned decades and centuries, in the Middle East modernization was largely an experience of violence. Modernity is thus linked not with freedom, but with exploitation and despotism. Imagine an Italian president driving a car into Saint Peter’s Basilica, jumping onto the altar with his dirty boots, and striking the Pope in the face with his whip – then you will have a rough idea of what it meant when, in 1928, Reza Shah marched through the holy shrine of Qom, Iran, in his riding boots and responded to the imam’s request to take off his shoes like any other believer by striking him in the face with his whip. You would find comparable events and key moments in other countries across the Middle East, countries that did not detach themselves slowly from the past but rather sought to raze the past and erase it from memory. Surely, one might have thought, the reli- gious fundamentalists who gained influence throughout the Islamic world after the failure of nationalism would value their own culture. Yet the opposite was the case: by seeking to return to a legendary state of original purity, they not only neglected Islamic tradition but zealously fought against it. ISIS’s acts of iconoclasm will be surprising only to those unaware that in Saudi Arabia there are virtually no ancient relics left. In Mecca, the Wah- habis destroyed the graves and mosques of the Prophet’s closest kin and even his house of birth. The historic mosque of the Prophet in Medina has been replaced with a gigantic new construction, and on the spot where, until a few years ago, the house still stood that was home to Mohammed and his wife Khadija, you will now find public toilets. Aside from the Quran, my studies focused mainly on Islamic mysticism, that is, Sufism. Mysticism may sound marginal and esoteric, a kind of underground culture. In the context of Islam, nothing could be further from the truth. Well into the twenti- eth century, Sufism formed the basis of popular religion almost everywhere in the Islamic world; in Asian Islam, it still does. At the same time, the spirit of mysticism pervaded Islamic high culture, especially poetry, visual art, and architecture. As the most common form of religious practice, Sufism served as the ethical and aesthetic counterweight to the orthodoxy The Kaaba, the holiest place in Islam, this plain yet magnificent edifice, is literally overshadowed by Gucci and Apple.