Welcome to Part Two of the project “Interviewing Religion,” where I interview scholars of Middle Eastern religions about their research, discuss how their work connects to broader public issues, and ask for suggestions for further reading. [You can read Part One here!] A huge thank you to the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Luce Foundation, who supported my work with one of their Advancing Public Scholarship Grants. I couldn’t have launched this project without their assistance.
For my second interview, I’m excited to introduce Dr. Seema Golestaneh. Golestaneh is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where her research and teaching bridges the fields of religious studies and anthropology. Golestaneh’s primary focus is contemporary Islamic thought in the Persian-speaking world, including the work and discourse of Sufi communities across Iran and Iranian intellectuals like Ali Shariati. Her publications include the book Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran, while her current research explores the political thought of Afghani intellectuals in the late 1980s and 1990s.
I recently spoke to Golestaneh, who graciously answered a few questions about her research and publications. I encourage you to get a copy of her book (an excellent read) and check out the many resources she mentions here.
1) How did you first get interested in studying Sufi communities in Iran?
Golestaneh: I came to study Sufism in a fairly roundabout way. My scholarly background was in comparative literature with an emphasis in aesthetic theory, so when I made the move to anthropology I initially was going to work with musicians in Iran. When I started spending time with the musicians, however, I found that not a small number of them were involved in Sufi communities. (As I was to learn later, music plays a significant part in the lives of certain Sufis.) These musician friends were my earliest introduction to contemporary Iranian Sufism, as prior to this I was only familiar with the poetry that is often categorized as “mystical.”
I became more and more curious about these mystical communities, until slowly I realized I would like to study their ideas and practices, hopes and dreams, in real depth. I also quickly realized that only minimal research had been done on the topic since the 1979 revolution, so I was encouraged by that fact as well.
2) You’ve been asked to present your work at a local community center. How would you describe your research on contemporary Islamic thought in the Persian-speaking world?
Golestaneh: I would say that my work explores how people understand and orient themselves to the broader world through their engagement with religious traditions (in my case, Islam). I approach Islam as a living, dynamic practice, one that is being constantly re-imagined not only through the traditional means of analyzing scripture or ritual practices, but through its interactions with the broader world around it. And by broader world, I mean that contemporary Islamic thought is shaped by people’s interactions with everything from nature to political economies, poetry to geopolitics.
I am especially interested in how seemingly abstract Islamic mystical concepts, such as dissolution of the self (fana) and the illusory nature of reality, influence and are, in turn, influenced by the sociopolitical context in which they operate. What I found was that, for my interlocutors in Iran, Sufi thought is not a purely transcendent or escapist endeavor, but is very much engaged in the social world, holding great application (or amal) for their lives.
I’ll give one example concerning the idea of fana, or dissolution of the self. When I interviewed people about how they might describe their experience of fana, I received two sets of answers. For the first set, people described the loss of self as a relief from worrying about the trials and tribulations of life, saying things like “I didn’t have to think about myself as an unemployed person,” or “I wasn’t worried about war.” (I am paraphrasing here). The second set of people described the loss of self in much more classical theological terms, describing things like emancipation from the lower, more base forms of the soul (nafs-e amarra), and becoming closer to God (tauhid). For the first group, fana offered a respite from the problems of the profane world, for the second group, fana offered a perhaps more radical alternative, one where the social world was deemed irrelevant.
3) Tell me about your recent projects and publications. Which ones are your favorites and why?
Golestaneh: I must admit I am most proud of my book, Unknowing and the Everyday. It is a labor of love that took about fifteen years to complete, starting with the earliest ethnographic fieldwork through the final edits of the book manuscript. Beyond the labor involved however, I hope the book sheds light on the sophisticated nature of Islamic thought today, how Islamic ideas are being debated, pondered over, argued for and against, by everyday people all over the world.
Each chapter analyzes how Sufi knowledge (ma’arifat, which I translate as “unknowing”) is applied to things like concepts of the self, the body, authority, place, and memory. What does it mean to unknow something, to question that which is supposedly unquestionable? This is the project of Sufism. While I do speak at length with some religious authority figures, I’m most excited for people to read the conversations with lay people, as I am consistently impressed by the level of sophistication of their thinking.
I’ve also recently published an article on the twentieth-century Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati in a special edition of the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs. This edition will be accompanied by a book of previously untranslated essays written by Shariati to which I also contributed. A staunch anti-colonial thinker, Shariati is increasingly being read alongside figures like Fanon, Baldwin, and Hansberry, and I’m excited to help bring his work to the English-speaking world. He is most well-known for advocating a leftist form of Islamic thought, and he was repeatedly jailed during his lifetime for his writings. The Shariati family is involved with the publication of the translations, and I am truly honored to be a part of the project.
4) Your neighbor wants to know more about your field. What books, websites, videos, or other resources would you recommend to them? (why?)
Golestaneh: For Middle East Studies, there are a number of websites that do a good job of reporting on current events: MERIP and Jadaliyya are great, and Al-Jazeera English is pretty decent too. I also appreciate the Ajam Media Collective website and the Ottoman History Podcast for cultural studies and history respectively. Alex Shams has great pieces on Iran, especially the recent protests.
For Religious Studies, the On Being Project often has thoughtful reflections on the role of religion in the modern world. For Anthropology, Sapiens is a very accessible and intriguing journal. In terms of introductory books on Sufism, Carl Ernst’s work is a great place to start, specifically his Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition of Islam. Also, I could not recommend the work of Omid Safi more highly, especially his book Radical Love, which is a wonderful collection of translations of Sufi poetry.
5) How does your research connect to broader public issues? What overlap do you see between the topics you study and contemporary issues around the world today?
Golestaneh: Unfortunately, stereotypes about Islam are still very prevalent in many parts of the world. There are of course the tired accusations that Islam is inherently violent, anti-women, anti-gay and, most oddly, not a religion but an “ideology.”
Within these realms of misconceptions is the idea that Sufism is the only “good” form of Islam, as it is seen to adhere to the idea of religious practice viewed most favorably in the West: that of an “interiorized” religion that has no investment, interaction, or opinion on the social sphere. This characterization of Sufism, even with its positive undertones, is still very problematic as it is based on the assumptions that the only “good” type of religion is one only concerned with the “internal” debates, i.e. a much more Protestant-based type of religion (let alone the idea that other forms of Islam are “bad.”) I hope my work helps to correct this misconception.
More broadly, the topic of “religion and politics” is usually associated with horrors such as acts of violence, various forms of extremism, and sharp divisions between peoples. While my research does not engage with questions of “hard politics” per se, I think it highlights the ways in which people use religion to navigate the real world in very thoughtful ways that folks may not expect.
6) What other scholars/writers do you think are doing the most interesting work on religion in the Middle East?
Golestaneh: Oh, there are so many! For folks interested in the contemporary era, I’ll mention Stefania Pandolfo’s Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam; Amira Mittermaier’s Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination; Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi’s Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment; Angie Heo’s The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt; and Arzoo Osanloo’s Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims’ Rights in Iran.
For works based on pre-modern source material, Daniel Boyarin’s research is wonderful, I especially appreciate his Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. My colleague Kim Haines-Eitzen’s recent book Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks — and What It Can Teach Us is fascinating, as is Jason Mokhtarian’s Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran. And if you are interested in archaeological analyses of ancient religions in the Middle East, Zainab Bahrani’s work is a must.
7) How can people find out more about you and follow your work?
Golestaneh: The best way is to check out my faculty webpage! I am woefully inept when it comes to social media, but hopefully one day that will change.
Thanks so much to Dr. Seema Golestaneh for speaking with me and sharing these details about her research and publications, and her study of Sufism in Iran, among other topics. I really encourage you to check out her book Unknowing and the Everyday and the other great resources she mentioned here. For a complete list of the books, websites, and articles listed in this interview, you can also visit Interviewing Religion’s Books and Resources page.
And look for more interviews like this to come soon! You can subscribe to the blog here to get new posts directly by email.
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