Convicted criminals and even convicted terrorists do significant intellectual work (think of Antonio Negri, co-author of the acclaimed Empire). Still, it took me aback, as the Sami Al-Arian trial is underway, to receive a serious volume of essays, Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, co-edited by a defendant in that trial. Basheer M. Nafi’s name comes up all the time in the court hearings. (For a selection of news items on the trial that pertain to Middle East studies, see the Campus Watch page on the University of South Florida.) Specifically, he is charged with “conspiracy to murder, maim or injure persons outside the United States.”
In this book, Nafi (on whom, see here and here), of course does his best to sanitize radical Islam. Here is the conclusion (on p. 34) to his discussion of Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), the thinker whose work still inspires the Wahhabi movement.
Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab’s acute recovery of the creed of tawhid, with its liberating force, from the heavy burden of the dense Islamic traditions propelled the appeal of the Wahhabi enterprise well beyond the traditional and Sufi counter-response and Ottoman political and military reactions.
Comments: (1) How can a self-respecting academic press, in this case I.B. Tauris, publish a book co-edited by an accused terrorist who remains on the lam? (2) I await the reviews of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century with interest, expecting that not a single one will make reference to Nafi’s circumstances. (August 19, 2005)
