Philosophy Majors Can Have Pretty Pakistani Wives (and Husbands) Too

By Shadi Hamid

I was just randomly walking around yesterday thinking about how the world is spinning wildly out of control. And then, out of nowhere, it suddenly struck me--I have never met or heard of a Muslim who majors in philosophy. You have those rare Muslim anthropology and film majors, but philosophy…I don’t think so…

I bring this up because the fact that there are no Muslim philosophy students is a superficial manifestation of what seems to me to be a much more serious problem. The fact of the matter is that free thought and self-critical intellectual discussion are not always encouraged in Muslim communities. More often than not, young Muslims from “religious” families are not encouraged to question or to think “outside the box”, and as a result, efforts to foster a more “progressive” Islam in America have been less successful than what one might have expected.

Every time I meet a new a Muslim, I hear virtually the same thing every time--“I’m majoring in Mechanical Engineering” or “I’m studying medicine” or “I’m majoring in Computer Science…I didn’t really want to, but you know how it is…” or my favorite--“Shadi, I need a nice, pretty Pakistani wife from a good family, so I gotta be a doctor.”

Obviously, I’m exaggerating, but the point remains. The majority of Muslim students go into technical fields. The older generation has conditioned us into thinking that the point of college is to get a degree; the point of a degree is to get a good job; and the point of a good job is to make money. They feel that fields like political science, philosophy, film, journalism, and psychology are nothing more than mere intellectual pretense. This is no surprise considering the background of our parents' generation. In places like Egypt and Pakistan, majoring in philosophy would never put bread on the table. And why major in politics, when the vast majority of Muslim governments don’t allow for free political expression?

The effect that this mentality has on Muslim communities in America is devastating. In comparison to other minority groups, we have little influence in the higher echelons of American society. We don’t have Muslim representation in the critical fields of politics, law, and the media. But, more problematic is that this mentality has also helped foster an environment of Muslim conformity – an atmosphere where it is better not to question.

As a result, many of our youth are limited from an early age and find themselves the victims of the protective boxes that immigrant parents impose on their kids. This is especially the case with young Muslim-American girls who often find that their parents won’t let them live away from home for college. They are not allowed to live on their own. And so they remain stuck, unable to venture out for themselves and find out who they really are and who they want to be in the future. They lose the opportunity to meet new people, be exposed to different viewpoints, and expand their horizons.

There comes a time when parents have to let go and give their children the freedom to make their own decisions. Young Muslims must be exposed to both the good and bad of society. We should encourage them to read Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ibn al-Arabi, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dickens, and so on. In the American Muslim community, it is important that we foster an appreciation for intellectual diversity and intellectual inquiry.

Have Muslims forgotten their roots? Too often, we forget our own history. During the Umayyad and Abbasid eras, Islam was absorbing other cultures and evolving as a result. Other cultures, ideas, philosophies and traditions were mixing with Islam resulting in a remarkably rich synthesis. It is this diversity that made Islam so vibrant and so alive. It was the free exchange of ideas and tolerance for other opinions that helped Cordoba and Baghdad become world-renowned centers of intellectual thought. Scholars from all over the world, non-Muslim and Muslim alike, came to Baghdad’s famed House of Wisdom to study and to discuss the philosophical issues of the day. It is ironic as well as telling that the roles have been reversed; nowadays, it is the Muslims who come from all over the world to study in the West. Where 1000 years ago Muslims were at the cutting edge of scientific and intellectual thought, now we have an Islamic world that is unfortunately quite stagnant.

Let us also not forget that the greatest Muslim doctors such as Avicenna and Averroes were also philosophers. Al-Ghazali was a philosopher. The greatest minds of the Islamic Empire were all philosophers. That was a time when the field of philosophy was held in high regard and esteem. But something happened along the way. The gates of ijtihad (interpretation) began to slowly close.

Even though the Islamic Empire retained its power well past the Middle Ages, it was clear that it was slowly losing much of its dynamism. The point here is clear: intellectual diversity, tolerance for dissenting opinions, and an ability to incorporate a wide variety of cultures was one of the things that made the Islamic Empire so successful. As Muslims began to move away from their roots of intellectual diversity, they began to suffer.

And today, we continue to suffer. All we need to do is look at the kind of dinner conversations people have in the Muslim world to get a sense of how far we’ve strayed from the example of the early generations of Muslims. Sure, these conversations are quite interesting in their own right, but they’re always about details and relatively trivial issues. Once I was sitting with a large group of family and friends in Egypt and we got in a long discussion about whether or not it was haram (religiously proscribed) to hang pictures on the wall. Or here in America, how about the long-winded pointless discussions about the art of moon sighting? We have become so obsessed with the trivial details that we have left behind the vitality and dynamism of our religion.

Why does conformity hold sway in many parts of the Muslim world? In his book Speaking in God’s Name, UCLA Professor of Islamic Law Khaled Abou el Fadl criticizes what he sees as a dominant intellectual trend: “Simplicity is seen as the key for unity and, therefore, there is a strong demand to limit the range of disagreements and to promote intellectual homogeneity.” So according to El Fadl, what we end up having is a situation where Muslims today attempt to impose an artificial uniformity on an Islamic tradition that has always been rich with great diversity.

Religion should not be made into some sort of protective box or security blanket. Religion should always be a force for progress and advancement.
It is time to question. It is time for Muslims to reclaim their religion for what it really is. And one more thing--it’s about time that we start getting some Muslims to major in philosophy.

Shadi Hamid is currently studying at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is Chair of the Political Action Task Force for the Muslim Students Association of the US and Canada (MSA-National). He is also a freelance writer whose articles have been published in more than 15 different print and online publications and media outlets, including Pacific News Service, Knight-Ridder Newswire, University Wire, Progressive Media Project, zmag.org and the Harvard Crimson. A recent opinion piece of his was translated into Spanish and published in the Los Angeles daily La Opinion. He has been interviewed and quoted by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Associated Press, and has appeared on the BBC's "Five Live" and NPR's "All Things Considered" discussing issues relating to Muslims in America, civil liberties, the anti-war movement and American foreign policy in the Middle East.