SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper attempts to critically reassess the roll of Empire and Law, as broad analytical categories, in the rise and fall of Muslim Marxism – an intriguing intellectual tradition seeking to reconcile rudimentary Marxist views on social and economic justice with those of Muslim political and religious consciousness. The paper revisits perhaps the most important harbinger of the idea of Muslim Marxism – the controversial Tatar Muslim and Bolshevik political and social reformer Mir-Said Sultan-Galiev (1892–1940), via a critical reading of his selected works in Russian and Tatar, the great majority of which have not yet been translated into the English language. Contrary to some recent academic accounts, I argue that Sultan-Galiev’s thought should be understood as stemming from and remaining within the Muslim tradition. This is particularly true with regards to his interpretation of Muslim subjectivity, which uses but ultimately transgresses the early twentieth-century concepts of ethnic, national and religious belonging in order to reimagine and give primacy to Muslim political – and, indeed, revolutionary – umma. It is equally evident in his attempt to sketch out the foundational elements of what I call Muslim praxis – an intellectual and political meeting point of Islamic legal and social theory and practice. I conclude by offering some thoughts on the relevance of Muslim Marxism, particularly that of Sultan-Galiev’s and post-Sultan-Galiev’s Third World strand, for the contemporary reformulations of Muslim religious, political and social selfhood.