Paul KeenanDr Yazid Said tells Paul Keenan of his quest to understand Islam
It was always going to be interesting speaking with Dr Yazid Said. Billed by his college, Mater Dei, as Ireland’s first visiting lecturer in Islamic studies – with distinct theological and philosophical specialisms – Dr Said is a man located in a distinct place and time; an Ireland growing to know more about Islam by dint of current events across the Middle East and Africa.
Yet, as The Irish Catholic sat down with Dr Said, this summation is barely part of the scholar’s story, and indeed, it is the ‘incidentals’ which lend a fresh depth of colour to his choice of study and academic career to date.
For a start, Dr Said is not a Muslim driven to know more of his faith as one might have hazarded to guess by now; he is, in fact an Anglican priest.
Born and raised at a veritable crossroads of faith, in Nazareth in northern Galilee, the young Yazid was educated to secondary level in the biblical city before progressing to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for further study.
Degrees
“I undertook theological training and later won a scholarship to Cambridge in Britain,” he explains. (He graduated from Corpus Christi College – ultimately gaining two degrees.) “When I returned to Jerusalem I was ordained there and for a period served as dean of St George’s Cathedral in the city.”
The pull of academia did not ease, however, and Yazid found himself drawn once again to the Hebrew University and to greater study of Islam, and precisely from those perspectives that were to become his specialisms later.
“It was there I first discovered al Ghazali and his works,” Dr Said explains, referring to the singular Islamic figure Abu amid Mu ammad ibn Mu ammad al Ghazali (c. 1058–1111).
For the ‘uninitiated’, al Ghazali is perhaps best understood as the St Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas of Islam, being one of the most important Muslim thinkers after the Prophet Mohammed himself. He wrote numerous books in his lifetime on Islamic philosophy and Sufism.
To Dr Said, he is an intriguing, even beguiling character – during this interview, he referred to him as “my medieval Muslim friend”.
Dr Said goes on to describe a figure whose “beautiful use of language and medieval text [were] magnetic”.
Dr Said would ultimately complete his PhD on the thought and writings of al Ghazali, a work that has now been released as Ghazali’s Politics in Context by Routledge press.
At this juncture, answers to questions posed by The Irish Catholic are steadily leading to ever more questions as to the impetus for Dr Said’s studies and his continued fascination with this foundational element of a tradition which is after all, not his.
The answer here seems to lie in the scholar’s own background in growing up at the faith interface that is Nazareth, where an understanding of differing traditions can be key to neighbourly relations.
“Islamic-Christian dialogue is an important part of where we are today, and not just in the Holy Land,” Dr Said explains, “and remains a very topical issue.”
Does he, then, have his own perspective on the current state of Islamic-Christian relations?
The violence all-too-graphically evident from elements within Islam need to be set into a context, he believes.
“If one looks to the ultra-nationalist movements which arose in the Middle East in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” he says, “they mostly failed in the way they have related to their communities, and they left a vacuum. It was over-reactionary religious movements which came into this space.
“These have had to stand against those past nationalisms to demonstrate their failings. Remember, these nationalisms had fed on the secular democracy of the West, leading to a perception [in fundamentalist Muslim minds] of a threat posed by the West.”
Vicious cycle
Dr Said illustrates here something of a vicious cycle in which one community reacts to a perceived threat from another and that reaction is, in turn, perceived as a threat by the other.
“One problem, and we do forget, is that there are Islams in this world just as there are Christianities,” Dr Said stresses. “If you look to Bosnia and you find Sunni Muslims, look to Saudi Arabia where it is Wahhabism. These do not present the same ‘agenda’.
“When we see images of violence, we need to recall that there are far more Muslims just getting on with their lives. One question to engage us is not ‘why some engage in violence?’ but ‘why most do not engage?’
“We need to be more aware of these differences, more attentive and engaging.”
All of which simultaneously leads back to the value of understanding ‘the other’ of Islam as Dr Said has worked to achieve and towards the same value offered by inter-religious dialogue, an element promoted so strongly by Pope Francis.
“Part of the excitement in studying Islam is the extent to which it allows you to grow in sensitivities and set aside assumptions,” Dr Said says. “When you engage with another tradition you face the questions you would not face with your own tradition.”
Understanding
This leads inevitably to the question of whether such an immersive understanding as he has undertaken has ever led to thoughts of conversion.
Far from it, he responds.
“I have never felt tempted to convert,” he reveals. “I am very grounded in my faith.”
In a way, it seems, it is the very scholarship engaging him which leads to that strong position, that process of seeing the value of his own tradition through comparison with others.
“How do I learn more about my own tradition by engaging with others?” he poses by way of illustration. “Why am I ‘here’ and not ‘there’?”
Some questions answered, some still awaiting further elucidation. Now comfortably ensconced on his north Dublin campus, Dr Said is grateful to Mater Dei for providing him with the opportunity both to communicate his belief in the gains to be made from understanding Islam, and to pursue his own continuing enquiries.
“It emphasises how Mater Dei has always tried to relate to changes in society,” he says of his position with the college as he prepares for the next level of scholarly research amid “the vast body of literature in the pre-modern era”. It is, he explains, “a sea in which one has to learn slowly to swim”, though he remains undaunted.
“I remain excited by the study of Islam.”