Scholarly Contributions

ISLAM

Growing up in a Christian family Professor Abdul Aziz Said was nonetheless surrounded by Islamic culture and had the opportunity to be exposed to Sufi beliefs and traditions from a young age (see A Meaningful Life). As a scholar many years later, his work expanded understanding within the international relations and conflict resolution fields on the importance of religious and cultural beliefs and identity, and he was frequently sought after for his expertise on the political and social dynamics of the Islamic world. Said’s scholarship also focused extensively on understanding Islam itself. At a time of rapid social change within Islamic societies, Said brought a nuanced and more expansive approach to understanding Islam. Challenging fear-based generalizations and stereotypes about the religion, his work instead demonstrated the diversity of experience within the Islamic world and identified core Islamic principles toward just politics, human rights, and peacemaking.

In his 2001 co-edited volume titled Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam: Precept and Practice, Said identifies several factors that have inhibited scholarship on Islam within the Western world, particularly when it comes to Islamic conceptions of peace. These include the “rootedness” of narratives within Western historical experiences instead of also including non-Western contexts, and the preference for secular and rational-choice based explanations over an understanding of religious motivations and cultural contexts.¹ His own scholarship expanded in the 1980s and 1990s to account for the growing rise of Islamic revivalist movements, which many Western-based scholars and policymakers misunderstood and conflated with fundamentalism (see Islam and Politics). In an article titled “Islamic Fundamentalism and the West,” Said explains that the rapid changes in the Islamic world are complicated by “the present experience of Muslims with Western cultural supremacy … because Western attitudes reinforce an alien system of values and thus accelerate the displacement of Islamic cultural norms that are already weakened. New symbols of legitimacy and status – wealth and the nation-state – are introduced, while many Muslims lose faith in their cultural heritage. Islam now faces the greatest challenge in its existence.”² Said called for new approaches that center human dignity and uplift Islamic contributions and life-affirming values. His efforts to understand contemporary politics within their social and historical contexts and to articulate religiously and culturally rooted frameworks became all the more urgent as Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts continued to falter, conflicts with and across the Islamic world escalated, and events such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center generated increased fears of terrorism.³

As anxieties heightened within both the Western and Islamic worlds and especially as the “clash of civilizations”⁴ thesis dominated mainstream scholarly and policymaking circles, by the 1990s Said was actively seeking to promote Islamic-Western peacemaking through his writing as well as his public and citizen diplomacy. Through numerous articles and several books on the topic, he also demonstrated the importance of grounding solutions within the traditions and values of Muslim peoples themselves. Drawing on the universally recognized, authoritative sources of Islam – including Qur’anic verses, hadith and sunna (sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad), and both historic and contemporary examples from Muslim societies – Said articulated an Islamic framework for understanding politics, human rights, and peacemaking. Notably, at American University he pioneered a major area of research and teaching on the relationship among Islam, pluralism, and peace. He successfully worked to establish the Ibn Khaldoun Chair of Islamic Studies, which was held by a number of notable scholars including prominent Turkish sociologist Şerif Mardin, who influenced Dr. Said’s own thinking on the historical processes of change within Islamic societies. Said himself occupied the Mohamed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace for two decades. Working with both students and Islamic scholars, Said convened several conferences on topics such as “Nonviolence in Islam” and “Cultural Diversity and Islam” and spoke widely on these topics among diverse academic and policymaking circles.

Ultimately, Said’s work contributes to a more dynamic and life-affirming depiction of Islam, strongly challenging dominant Western assumptions that conflate Islam with underdevelopment and militant fundamentalism. By demonstrating Islam’s core principles of human dignity and peace, his work offers both scholars and policymakers concrete recommendations as well as inspiration for renewed thinking and hope toward more peaceful relationships with and across Muslim societies.

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