Shattering the Myth By Bruce B. Lawrence, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998,237 pp.

Abstract

Shaffering the Myfh is a claim by Bruce B. Lawrence at severing the almost
inextricable link, in western perceptions, between Islam and violence.
Lawrence’s argument is simple and seemingly straightforward, although, as he
professes, at odds with most popular and academic understandings of Islam.
Comprehending Islam, as he puts it, requires a clear discernment of its integrated
metaphysical and circumstantial dimensions which over time has given
rise to distinct forms of Islamic sociopolitical manifestations. Changing global
conditions in the economic sphere have further propelled new forces and
sociopolitical actors onto the public scene. Thus women may be expected to
play a different and more important role in Muslim civic space in the near
future. This changing role of women serves to offer hope, rather than despair,
about the role of Islam in the 21st century (p. 3).
Through a deconstructive process of reversal and re-inscription, Lawrence
attempts to expose the privileged violent/peaceful male/female violence hierarchy
that supports and justifies such perceptions of Islam. To reverse the first
hierarchy and ‘disconnect’ Islam from violence (p. 9) he adopts a double stratagem,
one definitional, the other discursive. In the former, Islam, as well as
being a religion, is stressed as a modem day ideology subordinated to that of
nationalism-nationalism doing for the modem era what religion did or tried
to do, in premodern times (p. 15). In the second strategy Lawrence discourses
through the violent colonial legacy perpetrated by the West and its brutal
impact on its victims (pp. 9-10).
To reverse the second hierarchy, Lawrence, less candidly, stresses a feminist
perspective. Whereas the Muslim ‘enemy’ is invariably depicted in Western
stereotypes as a ‘male’ warrior from the past or a modem-day ‘male’ terrorist
(p. 5), the feminist re-inscription depicts women as an “index of Muslim identity.”
The purpose is to include a perspective on Muslim women that adds complexity
to the typical rendition of Muslim norms and values (p. 6). Lawrence
seeks to reconstruct the ‘determinist’ interpretations of Islam, pertaining to violence
and the subjugation of women, and to link it to the Western colonial era.
The logic is that by reversing and reconstructing certain violent hierarchical
categorizations so as to transform particular Western understandings and perceptions
and hence attitudes toward Muslims, the latter may become less
inclined to react defensively or violently. This would allow for a broader more
peaceful exploratory interdisciplinary, international, cross-cultural approach
(p. 12). In this sense and throughout his work, Lawrence subordinates and
marginalizes Islam in favor of three determining, competing, and challenging ...