From Arabism To Islamism
In 1963, after returning to the United States, he was hired as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Between 1964 and 1968, al-Faruqi established himself as an Associate Professor at the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, where he initiated its programme in Islamic Studies. In 1968, he accepted a position at Temple University as a Professor of Religion, where he also founded the Islamic Studies Programme. He held that position until his death in 1986.
Much of al-Faruqi's early thought is associated with what he called urubah (Arabism). In his 1962 book, On Arabism: Urubah and Religion, he argued that urubah comprises the core identity and set of values which embrace all Muslims, a single community of believers (ummah). Al-Faruqi formulated the notion of urubah in contradistinction to two other hegemonic ideologies: Arab nationalism and non-Arab Islamic revivalism. Adopting an overtly essentialist position, he argued that more than merely the language of the Qur'an, Arabic provided the only possible linguistic structure within which the Islamic conception of the world could be apprehended. Therefore, he asserted that urubah captured the core of Muslim consciousness, its values and faith – it was inseparable from the identity of all Muslims (al-Faruqi, 1962: 2–30).
He also maintained that urubah was the only context within which the non-Muslim Arabs countries could integrate into their larger societies. Even non-Muslim Arabs, according to al-Faruqi, could identify with urubah expressed in the Qur'an. In effect, urubah left non-Muslim Arabs and non-Arab Muslims at the mercy of combined linguistic and religious essentialisms. Any other form of consciousness and identity was a distortion created by colonial penetration (al-Faruqi, 1962: 211).
Though few would question Arab influence on non-Arab Muslim faith and culture or Arab Muslim influence on non-Muslim Arabs, the implication that they both find their ultimate expression and fulfilment in al-Faruqi's interpretation of Arabism might be regarded by some as an attempt to establish the hegemony of Arab Islam or, more precisely, Arab Muslim culture. Both Arab nationalists and non-Arab Muslim intellectuals shunned al-Faruqi's agenda to bring non-Arab Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs together through urubah. While many Muslim intellectuals such as Fazlur Rahman agreed with al-Faruqi's assertion that the Qur'an could not achieve the same eloquence and expressiveness in any other languages except Arabic, they were critical of al-Faruqi's blatant Arab chauvinism. Al-Faruqi's sojourn in Pakistan did little to alter his doctrine of urubah.
Interestingly, it was in the United States several years later that he began to question the foundations of his earlier position. In 1968, for the first time he encountered members of the Muslim Students' Association (MSA) at Temple University. The convergence of Muslim students from diverse cultural backgrounds dramatically swayed his perception of Arab versus Islamic identity. In the spring of 1968, while a patient at the Johns Hopkins Ophthalmology Centre, al-Faruqi confided in one of the active members of the MSA, Ilyas Ba-Yunus, "Until a few months ago, I was a Palestinian, an Arab, and a Muslim. Now I am a Muslim who happens to be an Arab from Palestine" (Ba-Yunus, 1988: 14).
Read more about this topic: Ismail Al-Faruqi