Joseph Preville asks Silverstein, the author of “Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford, 2010), about his interest in Islamic history and delves a little more in the fascinating subject. What inspired you to specialize in the history of religion and culture? I suppose that my interest in this field began in my teens, when I realized that everyone, regardless of background or personal beliefs, must think about the role of religion in society in general and in their own lives in particular. Even ‘fundamentalist atheists' who write anti-religious books spend much of their time thinking about religion (even if only to reject it). The real question for me is why I ended up choosing to focus on Near Eastern religions, such as Islam. A key element was that I began studying Arabic and Persian, out of an interest in languages. It is nearly impossible to study these languages and literatures without taking account of their Near Eastern context and that, I suppose, led me to religious history. I've never looked back since. In your opinion, when does Islamic history begin? That's a good question! Most historians will start with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), of course, and even the Islamic tradition regards what went before him as a ‘jahiliyya'. But I'm keenly aware of the fact that Islamic tradition also considers Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and many other figures to have been Muslims and there is a case to be made for seeing ‘Islamic history' as being that history which is important to Muslims; Islamic history would thus start with Adam. Nonetheless, in order to integrate ‘Islamic' history with other histories I have chosen in the book to adopt a detached historian's perspective on this and to start with Arabia in the 7th century CE.Why is the study of Islamic history imperative in the 21st century? Your question takes it for granted that the study of Islamic history is relevant nowadays and I would strongly agree with you on that. There are, in my view, a number of reasons for Islamic history's relevance to the modern world, some of which pertain particularly to Muslims (e.g. the need to know what the Prophet and his Companions did in order to formulate ‘sunna' on the basis of their precedents), others of which pertain specifically to non-Muslims (such as the realization that Muslim societies over the past 13 centuries have been highly diverse and varied, and that ‘western' societies have in many ways been shaped by their historical interactions with Muslim ones). There is a lot more to say about this, which is why I devote two chapters of the book to just this question! Is it possible for a nation, such as the United States, to evolve into a Judeo-Christian-Islamic society? Well, it's not impossible, but only time will tell. My feeling is – and I say this as an expert in neither American society nor in predicting the future – that it does indeed seem that things are going in that direction. Strangely, widespread secularization of American (and, more generally, Western) society is actually contributing to this, as Jews, Christians and Muslims are brought together by common issues such as ‘faith-schools', the ‘religion vs. free-speech' debate, and so forth. When they feel beleaguered, communities tend to unite around common causes and I can see a Judeo-Christian-Islamic society emerging for these ‘negative' reasons. As for positive reasons, I would just point out that ‘Judeo-Christian' is a phrase that relates equally to society and civilization and to religion. The societal norms and values that are associated with Judeo-Christian civilization are, for the most part (if not entirely), shared by Muslim societies too; so to that extent, there should be no obstacle to the emergence of such a society. One would need to come up with a term less clunky than ‘Judeo-Christian-Islamic', and I'm not sure that ‘Abrahamic' is the best alternative, but that's another question. Have you ever visited Saudi Arabia? I'm afraid I haven't … yet. Having read and learnt so much about it, though, I think it is only a matter of time before I visit my friends and colleagues there. Shall I take your question as a formal invitation? I certainly do hope to visit the country at some point in the near future, insha'allah.
