Reflection on -izations

April 28, 2008

All -izations are a result of the secret ministry of cultures. Set a group of people down someplace and they will begin to conform everything to their own patterns. If the French take up residence, we see a process of Frenchification. If Muslims take up residence we see Islamization. If on the other hand these groups have minority status in a new country, we witness the reverse: a process of Americanization or some other -ization. This all happens quite unconsciously.

The book Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 by David Prochaska sketches the process whereby a single Algerian town went through this -ization process. This often involves details that appear unimportant when seen from a grand historical perspective: statues, street names, postcards, and architectural styles. These details work to guide perceptions and create a city that not only houses, but represents an identity. And every identity will elide other identities.. or at least make them seem not to exist. If we ask who is in charge of all these details like the naming of streets, we will not get much of an answer. People just go about their lives and individuals make choices about naming a street after a personal hero or constructing a building that conforms to their architectural taste.. and the end result is a "French" city in Algeria.

A book I read over the past couple of weeks covers another version of -ization.. Islamization. Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society by Leor Halevi follows the changes in burial rituals that came about as Islam became dominant in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Burial rituals are a convenient way to measure -ization because every culture has to do something with the corpse and at the same time religious leaders will feel compelled to have some say about the manner in which it will be treated. So these rituals at death, while not pretty reading, are an exceedingly useful window on the process of Islamization.

One ritual involved the placement of a tombstone to mark the site of a burial. Burial markers inscribed with verses from the Quran became a popular way to memorialize a deceased person, yet the pious-minded were firmly in opposition to this practice and looked back to the unmarked graves of Medina as an ideal. Halevi uses this to point out the early (8th century) divergence of the traditionist and popular versions of Islam (41). And that is a good point, but I think more interesting is the way this ends up complicating the way we think about the process of -ization.

For example, one might imagine that Islamization would take place as leading thinkers reflected on their new religion and formulated Islamic rituals and patterns connected to death for the rest of the group to follow. An alternative picture might be that as Muslims came into contact with other cultures they mostly adapted to the practices that were around them, wrapping them in superficially Islamic terms. But the reality seems to have been messier. No one had control of the reins of -ization. Islamic thinkers did formulate rules.. but the crowd didn't listen; they liked their gravestones with verses from the Quran! Muslims adapted some practices from the cultures around them, but mostly they found their way to specifically Islamic rituals and practices. And again, the strange thing is that this is all an unconscious process, the end result being a constellation of ritual practices that reflect the new commitment to Islam.