The World's Religions: Islam

Peter Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134931941
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

The theological and philosophical bases of the beliefs are clearly presented with their history, development, expression and everyday practice. It is written by international specialists in a scholarly but non-technical style.

1
Introduction

Peter Clarke

Since its introduction in the Arabian peninsula in the early years of the seventh century CE Islam has come to embrace over onesixth of the world’s population and stretches almost continuously over wide and diverse areas from, for example, Mauretania in the west to China in the east. This makes it easier to point to those parts of the world, such as Australia and South America, where to date Islam has had little or virtually no impact, than to enumerate the numerous regions where it is the religion of a majority or a substantial minority of the population or those, such as the Iberian peninsula, where it once had a strong presence and has left a very distinctive mark on the culture and history.

One of the most striking aspects of this religion as it has travelled and developed beyond its original homeland is, to use the biological concept of homogenesis, the likeness of the offspring to the parent body, and this sameness is in the words of one scholar ‘all the more puzzling in the theoretical absence of a Church, and hence of a Central authority on Faith and Morals’, for ‘There is no obvious agency which could have enforced this homogeneity.’¹ While this is so, the fact that Islam is a religion of a book, the Qur’an, dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel and which is for Muslims in a most literal sense the word of God, and that it has in Mecca a focal point to which believers throughout the Muslim community are linked by prayer and the hadj or pilgrimage, make for a considerable degree of unity and cohesion.

However, while the idealist portrait of this faith is inclined to leave things there, stating that Islam is one and the same thing wherever it is found, it is also clear, as contributions to this section of the volume show, that the reality is somewhat different. Islam is not some kind of seamless, monochromatic garment-like entity without either variation or division, nor did the Prophet Muhammad ever imagine it would be so. Although Muslim communities in Africa are very often recognisably believing in and practising what is essentially the same faith as those in Central Asia or China or Europe, there exist, all the same, certain differences of emphases, style, practice, content and intensity of commitment. Moreover, even within the same community there are more often than not at least two sides to Islam, one ‘official’ and grounded in a scrupulous concern for right belief and even more for orthopraxy, and the other ‘popular’ and sometimes shaped and moulded as much by the local culture as it is by so-called ‘pure’ Islam.

Although the coverage provided here is by no means comprehensive, several of the case studies enable the reader to glimpse something of the variety and difference as well as the homogeneity in Islam as found in, among other places, North Africa, Iran, the Indian sub-continent, Turkey, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, western and eastern Europe, and the United States. Adaptation or assimilation, however, has often given rise to dispute between the ulema, religious experts who may be regarded as the custodians of Muslim values, and those who have ‘mixed’ Islamic practice with local custom, although not all local belief and practice is considered as false and therefore to be rejected. However, very often in the history of Islam what some authors refer to as the smaller jihad or jihad of the sword, as distinct from greater jihad which denotes a more spiritual activity like fighting one’s evil inclinations or even studying the fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, has been waged in response to such syncretism, the stated purpose being to purify Islam.

The idea of ‘pure’ Islam from a Muslim perspective consists essentially in submission in faith to God’s will revealed to his prophets and finalised in the series of revelations in Mecca and Medina to the last of the prophets, the Prophet Muhammad ( c. 570-632 CE). These revelations were collected together soon after Muhammad’s death to form the holy book or scripture of Islam, the Qur’an. This book lays stress time and again on the Oneness of God, and the Muslim confession of faith or Shahada reads: ‘There is no god but God and Muhammad is his Apostle.’ God is totally other and must never be likened to or associated with anything finite and to do so is to commit the most grievous of offences, shirk or association, and especially the association of a companion with God in the sense of polytheism or the worshipping of another besides God. On the other hand, God is ‘closer to man than his own jugular vein’ (Qur’an 2, 182), one of the qur’anic statements which the Sufis or mystics of Islam refer to in justification of their practices.
While from very early times Sufism has been part of the Islamic tradition, its position within that tradition has not always been secure. The way in which the quest for a mystical experience of oneness with God has been pursued, and the technical terms such as fana or annihilation which are used to interpret that experience, often wrongly compared to the Buddhist notion of Nirva?a, has led on occasion to bitterness and conflict between mystic and scholar, the latter concerned to preserve the doctrine of Tawhid, or the oneness of God, the basis as we have just seen of all the articles of belief of Islam. It was for this reason that al-Husein ibn Mansur alHallaj, the Iranian mystic, was executed in 922 CE. There was also, and to an extent still is, the fear amongst the ulema that inherent in Sufism was the tendency to emphasise the importance of the interior or inward path of faith in and submission to God at the expense of outward observance of the Shari’a or sacred law of Islam discussed below.

Of course, not all Sufis have been given to making extravagant claims or equivocal pronouncements, and through the teaching, writing and influence of the Iranian mystic al-Ghazzali (1058-1111 CE) Sufism and ‘orthodoxy’ were in theory reconciled. This great and highly controversial thinker, who became an absolute sceptic to the possibility of any certain knowledge, religious or otherwise, and who eventually appears to have turned whole-heartedly to Sufism, was to argue that it was only through marifa or personal experience that the truth of prophetic revelation could be established and that while their doctrines were correct the systems of the speculative theologians possessed no intellectual certainty. However, he also insisted that while Sufism provided the gateway to the true knowledge of God the mystic would not achieve this end without the guidance of a sound orthodox education in Islamic faith and practice. And for the ‘simple’ believer, he maintained, the safer path was through observance of the law. Throughout the Muslim world there have emerged numerous Sufi orders or brotherhoods, turuq, which have played a vital role in the development and spread of Islam.

In addition to the confession of faith already mentioned, there are four other obligations which make what are known as ‘the Pillars of the Faith’. There is the performance, with sincere and right intention, niya, of salat or the five daily prayers, the payment of zakat, a percentage of annual revenue handed over to the local authorities for the relief of the poor and needy and similar works of charity, sawm or fasting during the month of Ramadan, and the hadj or pilgrimage, providing one has the finances and the health, to the holy mosque and shrine in Mecca during the month of pilgrimage, Dhul-Hijja. There is also the wider question, of which these obligations form part, of the observance of Shari’a or sacred law which is regarded as mandatory, immutable and universal and, therefore, binding not only on Muslims but on all mankind. The Shari’a has been described as ‘the constitution of the Muslim community, the pattern of its communal order’ and is, Muslims believe, contained in substance in the Qur’an.² It, therefore, requires no supplementing but only clarification and the elaboration of its texts where method, application and interpretation are concerned, and for this resort is made to authentic Tradition, hadith, handed down from the ‘Companions of the Prophet’, otherwise first-generation Muslims, and the Sunna, practice, of the Prophet which supersede any other practice or any form of speculation. There are, however, differences between Sunni Muslims, followers of the practice of the Community or umma at large, and the Shi’a Muslims, followers of Ali, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, regarding the conditions required for authenticity of Tradition. The former, who hold to the doctrine of ijma, consensus of the Community, recognise all rulings of the four main schools, madhahib, of Islamic law, concerning what constitutes valid Tradition, while the latter reject ijma on the grounds that only the imams, leaders, from the House of Ali, can interpret the law. This in turn sheds light on the different constitutional arrangements found in Sunni and Shi’a Islam, the former being more democratic and the latter more monarchical. In the light of what has been said here about the Qur’an and the Shari’a, it is no surprise to find among Muslims an intense preoccupation with the past, with the first Muslim community, a preoccupation which is often today labelled misleadingly ‘fundamentalism’ as if it were simply confined to a minority of narrow-minded fanatics opposed to all that they regard as unIslamic. It can in fact be just as much an inspiration for change and adaptation in the modern world as for regression, for seen and understood in its ‘purity’, as many Muslims point out, Islam not only accepts as authentic the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition but positively pursues ‘knowledge’ wherever it is to be found. Moreover, as some scholars have shown, far from being incompatible with ‘modernity’ it can be a progressive faith and a force for modernisation, as those familiar with its impact on the development of the natural sciences, medicine and architecture, among other things, are aware.³

In its ‘pure’ form then, Islam is, in the words of Gellner, ‘the blueprint of a social order. It holds that a set of rules exists, eternal, divinely ordained, and independent of the will of men, which defines the proper ordering of society…and thus there is in principle no call or justification for an internal separation of society into two parts, of which one would be closer to the deity than the other.’⁴ There is in theory no clergy, no church structure and no religious virtuosi and for this reason no orthodoxy in the Christian sense, the nearest equivalent being the Sunna, the way of life and practice of the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and immediate successors known as the four rightly guided caliphs. Therefore, commitment to Islam is first and foremost expressed in the acceptance and practice of Islamic norms and way of life, obedience to the caliph or head of state and loyalty to the community. Deviation in these respects and rejection of the belief contained in the confession of faith cited above constitute the closest thing to heresy as understood in the Christian tradition. This is but one of the ways in which Islam differs from Christianity, another being the absence in the former of that division which is found in the latter between the spiritual and temporal spheres. An even more fundamental difference exists over the question of Jesus, who is regarded and respected by Muslims as a prophet, but is not believed by them to be the Son of God. Muslims, further, do not accept the Christian idea of God as Father, or the interpretation and authenticity of Christian gospel as presented by the Christian Church. To find out the truth about Jesus one has to turn to the Qur’an.

It can be noted here with reference to the establishment of what is authentic and what is not in matters relating to belief and practice, that there is not to be found among Muslim scholars the same ‘critical’ approach to Muslim scripture and early Muslim history as exists among theologians and historians of the Old and New Testaments and early Christianity. Moreover, there is comparatively little in the way of documents for the first five hundred years and more of the history of Islam, although inscriptions and coins to some extent fill this gap. Meanwhile, some Western students of Islam have applied the approach and methods used in examining any historical document or oral tradition to the Qur’an and early biographies of the Prophet Muhammad. As to the Qur’an, attempts have been made to elucidate further, among other things, its structure, on the grounds that the traditional revision into Meccan and Medinan suras, chapters, can no longer be accepted on historical grounds. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the Qur’an contains material about trade, for example, that is taken to be historical fact but which is not easily supported by external evidence.

However, with regard to Muhammad there is no doubt about his existence; both internal and external sources confirm that he was a historical figure, but the latter, if they are right, suggest that Muslim tradition is not entirely accurate on a number of important aspects of his career. These and related matters are taken up in this section; but it is worth pointing out here that the student of Islamic history enters a field where a great deal of basic research still has to be done and that some of those who take this more ‘critical’ approach to Muslim sources are as persuaded as the more conservative historians of the great innovations and achievements of Muhammad, perhaps the most notable being his revival ‘of the radically monotheistic polity enshrined in the story of Moses’.⁵

While Muhammad accomplished this in Arabia, he is recognised today as the last of the prophets in a great many different cultural settings. The contributions to this section, written from a variety of perspectives including that of the historian, political scientist, sociologist and linguist, show how the message he proclaimed has been widely accepted in its fundamentals, and in other respects developed, extended and if not changed then greatly modified by peoples and generations living at times and in societies and cultures very far distant from his own.

Notes

¹ E.Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983), p. 99.

² H.A.R.Gibb, ‘ Islam ’ in R.C.Zaehner (ed.), The Concise Encyclopaedia of Living Faiths (Hutchinson, London, 1977), p. 171.

³ See for example O.Wright, ‘ Science’ in J.Schacht and C.E.Bosworth (eds.), The Legacy of Islam, 2nd edn (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974), pp. 425—89.

⁴ Gellner, Muslim Society, p. 1.

⁵ M.Cook, Muhammad (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 86.

2
Early Islam

Julian Baldick

The subject of early Islam is both extremely important and extremely fascinating. It is important because hundreds of millions of Muslims believe, or are supposed to believe, that every detail of their lives should be determined in accordance with what was allegedly said or done in Arabia in the seventh century CE. It is fascinating because at the moment a profound change is taking place in the study of the evidence, as what was previously repeated without question is now being challenged or discarded.
Let us look, first of all, at the background to the rise of Islam, at the Near and Middle East in the 620s and 630s, when the activities of a preacher, called Muhammad, and his Arab followers first enter history. The world, as it concerns us here, was divided between two superpowers: in the West, the later Roman (or early Byzantine) Empire, and in the East the Persian (or Iranian) Empire.

The Roman Empire had for long possessed Egypt, Syria, Palestine and what is now Turkey. Its main religion was Christianity. In the previous hundred years it had been badly weakened: by over-expansion in the western Mediterranean, by overtaxation in the eastern Mediterranean, by plague, by war, by autocracy, by internal struggle and, most significantly, by religious persecution. This last had been aimed at the vigorous and independent Christian traditions of Egypt and Syria, often branded as ‘heretical’, as well as at the Jewish and Samaritan minorities in Palestine. The Roman Empire’s rich eastern provinces were ripe for revolt from within or easy conquest from without, ripe for a new solution of sectarian differences and quarrels between religious communities.

The Persian Empire had for long consisted mainly of Iran and Iraq. Its main religion was Mazdaism (‘Zoroastrianism’), a faith weakened by the persecuting, archaic, inward-looking and class-bound character which it had assumed by that time. The Persian Empire itself had been weakened, in the previous century, by war and by the bloody repression of a communistic revolt, as well as by its inability to come to terms with a variety of religious movements and creeds. In Iraq the Jewish and Christian components of the population offered radically different and challenging alternatives.

In the first three decades of the seventh century dramatic events took place on a large scale, as the forces of the Persian Empire swept into the eastern provinces of its Roman adversary, only to suffer defeat and invasion in their own turn. As the holy places of the Near East changed hands literature was composed which spoke of messianic hopes and even more cataclysmic occurrences.

In sum, then, we can say that conditions had never been so propitious for the advent of a new religion, or at least a religion that has been seen as new, and never so propitious for a military explosion and expansion often viewed as little short of miraculous. The impetus was to come from another quarter: the Arabian...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Early Islam
• 3 Islam in North Africa
• 4 Islam in Iran
• 5 Islam in the Indian Sub-Continent
• 6 The Turks and Islam
• 7 China’s Muslims
• 8 Islam in Indonesia
• 9 Islam in the Middle East
• 10 Islam in Tropical Africa to c. 1900
• 11 Islam in Tropical Africa in the 20th Century
• 12 Islam in Contemporary Europe
• 13 Islam in North America