Narrating Diasporic Religion and Postsecular Identity in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s A Palace in the Old Village

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

For many post-graduate programmes in religious studies, the problem of defining the word 'religion' is recurring. No one has yet succeeded in putting forth a definition of religion that all scholars everywhere find compelling. The best example of this is the entry of religion the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where the author gives a succession of definitions. Partly this is due to religious studies being a recent discipline so that the contemporary meanings for the term, especially as a synonym for the term 'faith', are fairly new. Looking at the term 'religion' historically prior to Europe's Protestant Reformation, the term 'religion' refers only to Christianity. Islam, on the other hand, began as a faith or 'way of life' [diyn]. Not only did religion refer only to Christianity, it referred only to certain aspects of Christianity - the institutions and structures. Within Roman Catholic circles to this day, to enter religion or to become a religious means to join a monastic order - to become a monk or a nun. Making the term 'religion' synonymous with 'faith' can be traced back to Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher's 1831 edition of On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (see https://archive.org/details/werkemiteinembil04schl/page/n5/mode/2up ].  Only with this publication did the term 'religion' become synonymous with the term 'faith'. Prior to that, religion meant institutions and structures. In this sense, Islam never began as a religion over 1400 years ago; rather Islam began as a faith. For example, after German expatriate Karl Marx relocated to London in 1849 and critiqued 'religion', it was the institutions and structures of the Church of England he was critiquing, not 'faith'. This is why the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the 20th century was able to launch Marx-inspired 'liberation theology'. This distinction between faith and religion seems well apprehended by the paper's author(s), especially in Note #7 when they write in their abstract "Indeed, Ben Jelloun presents Islam as a faith, as a spiritual practice; a diasporic religiosity which is not associated with any political doctrine or organization" and in their paper "Ben Jelloun is particularly shocked to see Islam corrupted by politics and placed in the service of oppression".

A minor style recommendation is removing the reference to Nadav Safran in the third line of the introduction - leaving Johnson as the lone reference is sufficient. Further, Nadav Safran's 1985 book on Saudi Arabia is a known piece of CIA clandestine publishing, verified to be propaganda by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the United States Congress. CIA, under the Directorship of the late William Casey, secretly paid Safran $107, 430 to underwrite his book - Saudi Arabia: The ceaseless quest for security. Congressman Don Edwards (D-CA) complained in 1986 "The CIA also underwrote with $45,700 a symposium on Islamic fundamentalism organized by Safran, without telling either Harvard or the participants of the CIA involvement". Congressman Edwards asked "How many books, magazines and newspapers are there in the US that are in reality CIA propaganda? How many professors and clergymen are on its payroll? . . . The question will always be: Is it honest or is it CIA?". Removing any reference to Safran's subsequent works removes any doubts from readers.

Lastly, changing the first-person narrative in the concluding paragraph to align with the third-person narrative of all preceding paragraphs is recommended. For example: 

"Both global and local culture might find their agency in the postsecular project that reduces the gaps between the West and the Global South and goes beyond the self/other and us/them animosity . . . From a postsecular perspective employing postsecularism as a critical tool to examine A Palace in the Old Village, Ben Jelloun is upholding postsecular values by negotiating instances of extremism and communalism that mark the failures of both organized religions and Eurocentric secularism." 

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The paper is very well argued and the overall topic is really interesting and relevant to the journal’s special issue. It is considered that some of the main arguments that are presented in the paper (specially those regarding the interpretation of Ben Jelloun’s novel) have been already suggested by previous literature and therefore the originality of the article might be considered somewhat limited, although the text is still a relevant contribution since it serves as a good synthesis.

 

Here are some suggestions for the consideration of the author:

 

-       In the first page, it is said: “literary critics have been reluctant to address the questions of religion and spirituality in diasporic literature due to the secularity of the mainstream postcolonial and postmodern literatures”. This could be nuanced considering a couple of works that have being published in the last decade, e.g. Nash et al (2014) Postcolonialism and Islam: Theory, Literature, Culture, Society and Film, Routledge; Santesso and McClung (2017): Islam and Postcolonial Discourse: Purity and Hybridity, Routledge.

 

-       At times, it seems that the author portraits Ben Jelloun’s spiritual secularism or post-secularism as something exceptional between magrebian authors. However, it might be considered other examples that illustrate similar traits than those deployed by Ben Jelloun. For example, this is the case of Mohammed Arkoun, which could be considered as a diasporic maghrebian intellectual, which, although not a novelist, tried to overcome the secularism/religion binarism, and received very similar critiques than those directed to Ben Jelloun. Moreover, Arkoun presented a view of a “Humanistic Islam” that is very similar to Beb Jelloun’s post-secular spirituality as defined in the article.

 

-       Another example can be the work of Abdelfattah Kilito, who, although not a writer of the diaspora, in his book The clash of the images portraits Islam from the point of view of the individual and the everyday practices, focusing in the sacrality of everyday places, as opposed to an official and institutionalize view of Islam. This is very similar to the interpretation of Ben Jelloun’s post-secular spirituality that is against both to Eurocentric and Moroccan’s Estate definition of Islam.  

 

-       In page number 10 it is not clear how the first quotation shows that Ben Jelloun endorses religion-state separation. This position is surely defended by Ben Jelloun, but it is not clear or evident how the selected passage shows this. It should be argued in more detail.

 

-       The first two paragraph of section 3 (pages 4 and 5) do not proceed directly to interrogate Ben Jelloun’s work (which is the stated aim of the section) but contain a general discussion of the post-secularism and spirituality. It should be considered integrating them in the previous section (number 2) or to create an intermediate section.

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article examines the representation of Islam in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s A Palace in the Old Village, in a clear and coherent manner, overall. However, before it can be published,  several weaknesses should be remedied.

 

1.     There is almost no engagement with the existing criticism about the examined novel. In other words, the author rarely refers to others critics’ arguments (about the novel), agreeing or disagreeing with them.

 

2.     Many statements are taken for granted; no arguments and/or instances are provided for them. Here are a few examples:

 

p.1. There is no transition between the statement about diaspora resulting from immigration and globalisation, and the next one, which relates diaspora to religion. Little evidence is given to corroborate these two affirmations. Is the Jewish diaspora a one-off case?

 

p2. The author states: “The relationship between literature and religion dates back to the emergence of literature, since man’s first literary explorations were of a religious nature.”: Any evidence/instances ?

 

Still on the same page, the author provides no instances/evidence of the following affirmation: “Written mainly by immigrant writers of Islamic background who adopt secular perspectives often critical of Islam, much of the Maghrebi fiction has depicted religion, Islam in particular, in negative terms and the Quran has no ethical dimension and its message is barren.”

 

pp. 3-4. The author writes; “Religions in diasporas both influence and are influenced by new locations, practices, and circumstances, leading to continual transformation and adaptation when they become diasporic religions.” Again, no evidence is provided.

 

3.     Sometimes, the author of the article refers to other authors but relies on secondary sources, instead of quoting them directly. For example on p.2, s/he writes: “Leila Aboulela, a famous Sudanese-Scottish novelist, says that the early 60 generation of novelists in the Arab World did not write about Islam.” However, the ensuing quotation, used to corroborate this statement, is taken from C.E. Rashid, rather than from one of Aboulela’s books. In addition, this long quotation should be indented and separated from the body of the text.

 

4.     There are some illogical, unconvincing, and sometimes confusing statements, as in the following:

 

 

On p.2, the author writes: “The absence of religion and spirituality as objects of study, or demonisation and misrepresentation of Islam within Moroccan diasporic literature, is mainly due to the secular nature of Western literature, specifically the rise of the English novel as a secular genre, and of the global public sphere especially during the 1950s and 1960s”. This statement sounds illogical and even confusing: how can a feature of Moroccan (that is, non-Western) literature be explained by something in the Western novel, and more surprisingly, in the English one? The author provides no justification/explanation to this surprising statement.  In addition, the whole paragraph tends to be incoherent and expeditive, discussing pell-mell  ancient Western literature and contemporary one, and arguing in turn that it is religious and secular.

On the same page (p.2), the author writes: “Thus, due to the fact that Moroccan diaspora literature has always 96 reflected its era, Moroccan writers have started to address religious and spiritual issues.” This statement is vague and a bit simplistic in that it suggests that the return of Moroccan literature to religious themes is the product of sheer imitation of Western literature, when it might well have been urged by the rise of religiosity and even extremism/terrorism in Muslim countries themselves.

p6. The author writes: “what is so-called a ‘Moroccan Islam’, a moderate Islam that is closely integrated and reconciled with Moroccan cultural specificities.” Who calls it so? Who considers it to be moderate? Any evidence that it is the case?

p.9.  The author writes: “Through his novel, Ben Jelloun points out that it is important to separate politics and religion.”: Is this not precisely one of the founding principles of France, that is of the West from which, the author of the article claims, Ben Jelloun detaches himself in the studied novel? This statement contradicts another statement by the author: “Thus, Tahar Ben Jelloun is a public intellectual who is critical of French laws about immigration, citizenship requirements, headscarf affair and laïcité” (p.9)

p.10. The author relies on the words of Maria (the protagonist’s daughter-in-law) as evidence that “Tahar Ben Jelloun endorses religion-state separation”. There is a serious logic flaw here: s/he (the author) uses both Mohammed and his (Spanish) wife as spokesmen for the novelist, although these characters have antagonistic views.

p. 11. The author seems to miss the irony underpinning the fact that Mohammed, who has always been critical of France, realises on his deathbed, that it is by far, better than his homeland. This details deconstructs all the seeming advocacy of moderate Islam and brings Ben Jelloun back to his cherished stance: an unambiguous valorisation and preference for France, and the Western world, more generally.

p.13. “Ben Jelloun is an avid defender and vehement celebrator of diasporic religion and postsecular identity that open a critical and permanent dialogue between tradition and modernity”: with this sentence, the author closes their article with an overstatement, which is at odds with the academic imperatives of precision and sobriety.

 

5.     p.7 is a bit redundant, repeating a single idea – that Ben Jelloun’s character, Mohammed, found solace and confidence in Islam, in spite of years of exile.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are several issues with grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. The following are examples:

p.2 “Only gradually, literature distanced itself from religion and came to be written” (sentence structure)

 p.2. “Written mainly by immigrant writers of Islamic background who adopt secular perspectives often critical of Islam, much of the Maghrebi fiction has depicted religion, Islam in particular, in negative terms and the Quran has no ethical dimension and its message is barren.” (sentence structure)

p.5. “When back in 1962, this young peasant was persuaded to leave his remote village in Morocco and join the immigrant labour force in France.”(sentence structure)

p.6.” “a faithful bseeeliever” (176)”” : Is this the way this word is written in the quotation? If yes, the author should add [sic], as academic conventions require.

p.8. “Although Mohammed has lived and worked in France for almost 40 years, but he never considers it as his home.” (sentence structure)

p.9. “he gets frustrated and indignant when his wife attacked Islam.” (mixing the present and past tenses)

p.11. “Despite Mohammed’s home-coming finally brings him a kind of peace” (sentence structure, grammar)

p.11. “It is obvious that Mohammed’s death is due to his failure of not being able to amalgamate Islam and secularism.” (formulation, logic: the negation in “not being able” reverses the meaning of the sentence; what the author obviously wanted to write is “his failure to bring together Islam and secularism”).

p.12. “Ben Jelloun claims the old boundaries separating the secular and the religious had already crumbled.” (tense : using the present simple with the past perfect)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has attempted to take most of the comments into consideration. This is sometimes done in a rather superficial manner, but the text reads fairly well, overall, so publication is possible, provided that they (the author) add the needed references for the explanations that have been added (pp. 1-2 and 4) and that the very few typos be corrected (eg. "Maghrebin diasporic writers tended to neglect addressing Islam", p.2)

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The article is well-written, overall.