REVIEW-ESSAY
Ian Campbell
UFO Cults Are a Universal Language
Jörg Matthias Determann. Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World. I.B. Tauris, 2021. 282 pp. $115 hc, $103.50 ebk.
Jörg Matthias Determann, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, has given us a well-researched tour, remarkably broad in scope, of different manifestations of sf and extraterrestrial life in the Muslim world writ large, from Morocco all the way to Indonesia. I believe it will serve as a highly useful resource for scholars of sf from the Muslim world in particular and, more generally, of sf from the developing world, precisely because of its broad definitions of Islam, sf, and extraterrestrial life. Scholars searching for examples of these very different manifestations of sf tropes will be well served by Determann’s extensive bibliography and the means by which he situates individual creators and works within larger discourses.
After a brief preface, the book is divided into six chapters, each of which addresses a different manifestation of sf or extraterrestrial life in the Islamic world. The first, “Lord of the Worlds,” takes the expression rabb al-3álimín, which is the second verse in the Qur’án, as its title and subject. Determann notes the grammatical peculiarity of the word 3álimín [worlds]: it is not the standard plural (3awálim) but rather a plural implying that these worlds have human characteristics. Arabic grammar treats thinking beings—traditionally, humans, angels, and djinn—as separate from nouns representing objects, ideas, or plants and animals. Thus, the notion of different worlds/planets, each with thinking beings of their own, and implicitly subject to the god and laws of the Qur’án, existed in traditional Islamic culture(s) and therefore provides a base from which sf’s other worlds can be extrapolated. The text gives examples as diverse as Photoshop collages depicting the ongoing Syrian civil war as an alien invasion, the well-known Syrian sf writer Taleb Omran with his connections to the regime, and the modification for astronauts of Islamic practices such as facing Mecca. Near the end of the chapter, Determann gives an explanation for the breadth of his concept:
To avoid excluding influential contributors to the debate about extraterrestrial life, I employ a broad view of science and its culture. I am thus using the term “scientific imagination” to refer to products as different as science fiction films, journal articles in astrobiology and books about UFOs. The “scientific imagination” was not confined to people who would have self-identified as “scientists.” ... I am studying not just literary and film history, but also the history of science, and thus intellectual history in a broader sense. I am equally interested in products of scientific and journalistic research, whether mainstream or fringe, as I am in depictions that are explicitly fictional.... I do not seek to judge the plausibility of their different imaginations. Instead, I am trying to understand the production of different theories and images within their historical contexts. (29-30)
Taken on these terms, the subsequent chapters do indeed address the production of different theories and images within their historical contexts. I feel it is important to bring this perspective to the attention of potential readers, because this is what differentiates Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life from most other academic books about literature, broadly defined. Rather than undertaking close readings of a few texts (again, broadly defined) and using the close readings and extant theories to draw the texts into a central thesis, all of which is the work of judgment, Determann is explicitly giving us a broad perspective without such judgment. This enables him to do two things: to include far more texts than a normal book of this length would and to include fringe discourses as subjects of serious study. Moreover, each of the texts mentioned is carefully detailed, with references to both the source text and interviews, reviews, and scholarly sources, so what Determann provides is an excellent secondary source for scholars who wish to undertake closer readings of any of these works.
The second chapter, “Missions and Mars,” takes as its primary subject the use of scientific information in journals founded by Christian missionaries in India and the Levant in the nineteenth century. The missionaries appeared to believe that scientific justifications (e.g., of heliocentrism) would bolster their conversion rate, but found that the locals embraced the science but were less enthusiastic about converting to Christianity. Notably, the grounding of “worlds” in the Qur’án and in classical Islamic scientific discourse made Muslims more likely than Hindus to accept heliocentrism. Competition between Catholics and Protestants in the Levant led to Muslims’ founding scientific journals that mixed science with speculation and ultimately led to books justifying modern science as ultimately rooted in scripture—although “it is doubtful how effective the attempt to propagate either Islam or Christianity through scientific publications ultimately was” (57). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the success that Muslim scientists found under Soviet rule.
Chapter three, “Trips to the Moon,” discusses sf film and theatre. It begins with the sentence “A Pakistani woman can marry an alien, as long as he is Muslim” (71), a nice encapsulation of the overall effect of sf film in the Muslim world in the middle of the last century. Determann gives several excellent examples of sf films with superficial nods toward Islam, but argues that there was little progress in the development of the genre. This was not due to some sort of prohibition against sf films in particular, however. Rather, reactionary movements tended to disapprove of and prohibit cinema in general, while the comparatively higher costs involved in sf production made sf film less likely to attract the paucity of government support available for local cinema industries. Islam itself is not so much a problem, but “looking at Middle Eastern countries seems to confirm a broadly negative effect of Islamism [as a political movement distinct from traditional religious discourses] on the production of science fiction films” (75). In Egypt, the nationalization of the film industry was the primary culprit; in Turkey, such sf films as were produced tended to borrow heavily from Western sf, often in blatant defiance of even the concept of copyright. This borrowing is the subject of the remainder of the chapter: just as early Western sf and sf film borrowed heavily from Orientalist images of the Islamic world (notably, Frank Herbert’s Dune [1965] and its sequels), early Muslim sf film often engaged in wholesale borrowing from Western sources.
The fourth chapter, “Islamic UFO Religions,” is the best from the point of view of reading pleasure, given the sheer variety of fringe science involved. UFO sightings increased in the Muslim world in the 1950s, though it was surely a coincidence that air travel increased in a similar way. “Powerful ancient scientists” and “ancient astronauts” are just as appealing to Muslims less insistent on proper scientific justification as they are to their peers in the West. Determann gives information on the Nation of Islam’s connection to sf-like stories about ancient alien astronauts, then moves to splinter sects such as the Nuwabians, whose movement “retained Islamic aspects, even as it came to focus on extraterrestrials” (115). He goes on to discuss the wild popularity of books grounded in the idea that the Qur’án describes a multiplicity of worlds, derived or directly translated from Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods (1968). Certainly, Chariots of the Gods refers to Middle Eastern aliens, although the book is rarely mentioned in academic work, regrettably. Determann writes: “Ideas that Middle Eastern peoples had been in contact with powerful beings in the past could even have served to compensate for contemporary feelings of weakness vis-à-vis Western states” (121). Much is made of the link between the djinn and the pilots of UFOs.
“Building Nations and Worlds,” the fifth chapter, takes on the production of sf from the perspective of science education; without the latter, there will be little of the former. This serves as a springboard for a discussion of the development of sf literature in the Muslim world. A large section of the chapter focuses on the development of the genre in Egypt, with special attention paid to Nihad Sharif, whose childhood in a mostly secular home with a vast library led him to begin writing sf. Determann describes Sharif’s attempts to position sf tropes as not anti-Islamic, then moves to the generation of writers influenced by Sharif. These writers took advantage of the discursive and literary infrastructure created by Sharif and his peers to produce popular and profitable works of sf and fantasy: Nabil Farouk, Ahmad Khalid Tawfiq, about whose novel Utopia I have written in this journal (SFS 42.3 [2015]), and Raouf Wasfi, whom Determann describes as “conservative, but hardly Islamist” (165). The concluding section of the chapter discusses Indonesian sf and its relationship to Islam, which appears to be less a marriage of Islam and sf than a superficial inclusion of Islamic images and tropes in order to avoid controversy.
As a small critique of an otherwise excellent book, I do have to wonder why this chapter does not include a discussion of Mustapha Mahmoud, one of the founders, along with Sharif, of Egyptian sf and also an Islamic philosopher in his own right. Undoubtedly some material had to be cut by Determann to maintain a reasonable length, but Mahmoud was highly influential and his sf novels contain references to Islam, so it is difficult to fathom why he in particular is left out. Determann does discuss Syrian writer Taleb Omran in the first chapter, but mostly in his role as both a regime supporter and a promoter of sf; yet Omran has a long bibliography of sf novels, many of which have Islamic or spiritual themes. The only one addressed in the text is Dark Times (2003), which as Determann rightly points out is a critique through estrangement of both post-9/11 American militarism and of the sort of dynastic despotisms that have become all too frequent in the Islamic world over the last century. Omran’s works that more directly involve Islamic themes are absent from the text.
The final chapter, “Muslim Futurisms,” addresses the success of Muslim astronomers in finding exoplanets (i.e., not fictional but real worlds). This is especially notable with respect to Iran and the post-1979 Iranian diaspora. The discussion of how ultra-conservative fundamentalist Iran manages to punch above its weight in the production of science (and therefore sf) is useful: unlike in many countries in the Islamic world, where sf critiques conservative regimes through estrangement, the Iranian government promotes science precisely because it is threatened by economic sanctions. Determann addresses how science and sf talk about evolution, which is just as problematic for conservative Muslims as it is for the sort of Americans who try to claim Christianity as the state religion. The chapter and book end with a discussion of the burgeoning sf film industry in the Gulf states: the filmmakers all appear to be outsiders in some way, growing up as expatriates or the children of diplomats.
This outsider status, for these filmmakers in particular and for sf writers or artists or filmmakers in general, is fairly consistent throughout the text. Though there are exceptions such as Sharif and Omran, most of the creators and works discussed are liminal or in some ways exceptions that prove the rule that, while Islam—just as diverse a faith as Christianity—has some aspects that can ground sf, or permit it, the religion as generally practiced does not exactly encourage it, either. With a few counterexamples, such as the Syrian regime’s support for sf or the gradual establishment of the Egyptian tradition, the works of sf described by Determann are one-offs, exceptions, and not a part of mainstream literary or cultural discourse. This began to change at the end of the last century, to be sure, but for most of the period examined by Determann these works are far from the mainstream in their respective cultures. To be clear, Determann is not trying to claim that they are: he consistently reinforces that most of what he discusses prior to the millennium is exceptional or marginal to any ongoing discourse within Islamic culture(s).
For the most part, this marginality is shown to us rather than told to us. That is, rather than weighing down the book with the reactions to sf of the Islamic establishments of the time—and there are many Islamic establishments, some with official sanction and some suffering under sanctions, even within the same country—Determann shows us the diversity of points of view within Islam by focusing on the scientific imagination and the diversity with which it is and has been expressed. We do not, in general, see the reactions of Christian establishments in histories of American sf, even though the US was as overwhelmingly Christian and Christian-dominated a century ago as parts of the Islamic world are dominated by Islam today. This enables us to see that the grounding of certain concepts such as multiple worlds and thinking alien beings within mainstream Islamic discourse enabled sf to … not precisely flourish, but gradually grow in fits and starts, organically, until now in the present moment sf in Arabic and Bengali and Persian and Urdu and the languages of Indonesia has grown to fit their cultures and are gradually gaining acceptance as part of literature and culture. We do not need to see the reactions of the Islamic establishments, because the results are right in front of us. I expect that scholars will take Determann’s work and explore his sources, in order to perform the theory-informed close readings that we more often see in academic works: this book will be a useful resource for scholars working in the literature and popular culture of many different countries within the Islamic world.
Back to Home