Islam

George Braswell

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9781433670367
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

This book is essential reading for anyone who desires a complete, balanced view of Islam beyond what appears on the nightly news, Written from a western Christian viewpoint, but with a detailed first-hand knowledge of Muslim life, Islam: Its Prophet, Peoples, Politics, and Power digs deep beneath the surface to reveal Islam as a rich, proud and powerful force in world affairs. Though Dr. Braswell's book is thorough and scholarly, his personal experiences and insights make it a practical travel guide as well. And despite the enormous scope of Islam, the book's clear organization and careful research have produced a valuable reference for ministers, missionaries, diplomats, businessmen, students and travelers.
-- Historical overview of Islam
-- Details of prayer rituals, social customs and traditions
-- Special focus on Islam in North America
-- Reference section including maps, diagrams and glossary

STEREOTYPES

Western mass media have presented Islam and Muslims in various images and stereotypes. As a result, the majority of people think that most Muslims live in the Middle East. Few know that the largest Muslim populated nation is Indonesia in Southeast Asia and that tens of millions of Muslims live in Central Asia, China, and India. Few know that there are more Muslims in Great Britain than Methodists; that France is ten percent Muslim; that there are more Muslims than Episcopalians in the United States.

Some may think that the Nation of Islam in the United States is representative of worldwide Islam, whereas the Nation of Islam is not acceptable among most orthodox Muslims. The casual observer does not know that Islam is an expanding world religion present on all continents and within many populations.

According to a stereotype, all Arabs are Muslims, but millions of Arabs are Christians. Iranian Muslims are from Indo-European stock while Arab Muslims and Jews are from Semitic stock. Iranian Shi’ite Muslims may have more in common with Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims than with Iraqi Sunni Muslims or Saudi Arabian Sunni Muslims.

According to popular conception, early Muslims have been presented as militant warriors from the hinterland of Arabia. Westerners know little of the excellence of medieval Islam’s art, science, literature, medicine, architecture, and urban development. While Christian Europe languished in the dark ages, the Muslim Middle East excelled in the fineries of civilization.

There are searing memories among Muslims of the Western crusaders of the medieval ages who came from Christianized Europe to liberate Palestine from the Muslims. The holy wars of Christianity against the Muslims have been compared with the holy wars of Muslims against the West. Images of war, bloodletting, and vicious atrocities have been presented in the name of religion, both in Christianity and Islam.

Recent history brings up vivid images to westerners: the oil embargo, the Persian Gulf War, airline hijackers, militia groups such as Mujahidin and Hamas. The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran became known as the archetypal Islamic fundamentalist as he hurled the term “Great Satan” against the United States. The bombers of the World Trade Center building in New York City were depicted as radical Islamic fundamentalists. Some Muslim groups blow up embassies, bomb mosques, explode car bombs in crowded streets, and murder diplomats, and those groups claim credit for the violence and brutality in which innocent women and children often are killed. What does all this mean for Islamic belief and practice?

Thus, images and stereotypes about Islam float around in the public domain, fueled by events and reported by the media. The reader needs to make sense of the realities behind and beyond these images.

ANOTHER VIEW

Other images should also inform us. Former President Sadat of Egypt, leader of a predominantly Muslim nation, made peace with his neighbor, Israel. King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace accord with Israel. During the Persian Gulf War Islamic nations such as Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and others joined with Western nations to fight against Iraq. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq had declared a Muslim holy war against the West as he invaded a neighboring Muslim nation, Kuwait.

Across the world, Muslims live beside non-Muslim neighbors. Their children attend school together. They work together. They share in community events together. Muslim medical doctors treat non-Muslim patients. Images of Muslims and non-Muslims living out their lives together seldom find a place in media presentations. There are about one billion Muslims. Most of them live peaceful lives, removed from the violent happenings of the headlines. What do they themselves think about and feel toward the reporting of their religion as it is so often depicted in extreme behavior? I hope these pages will give insights into the nature and function of the religion called Islam and the people called Muslims.

RELIGION IN CONTEXT

The study of Islam is the study of a religion. Religion means different things to people. Clifford Geertz has written seminal books on religion in general and on Islam in particular. He studies religion as a system of meanings embodied in symbols. These symbols compose the religion proper and are related to the socio-structural and psychological processes of a society. Symbols serve to synthesize a people’s worldview and a people’s ethos.

Geertz then sees religion as a socially available system of significance, including beliefs, rites, and meaningful objects, in terms of which subjective life is ordered and outward behavior guided. In Islam Observed, Geertz compares the Islam of Indonesia with that of Morocco. Orthodox and popular Islam are seen in their cultural diversities and myriad forms.¹

William Cantwell Smith, a world-renowned specialist in Islamic studies, has written that the use of the word religion is a Western concept. He has attempted to replace it with the terms faith and cumulative tradition. By cumulative tradition Smith means the mass of overt historical data such as creeds, codes, and cults that have nourished and continue to influence the faith of individuals. By faith he means an inner religious experience or involvement of an individual; faith is what one feels and the way one lives when one encounters “transcendence.” ²

Several writers present their studies of religion in various categories or typologies. W. Richard Comstock writes of five methodological perspectives on religion: the psychological, the sociological, the historical, the phenomenological, and the hermeneutical. Ninian Smart describes six dimensions of religion: the experiential, the mythic, the doctrinal, the ethical, the ritual, and the social.

Robert S. Ellwood Jr. presents a schema of religion that includes the self, history, psychology, symbol and rite, sociology, and truth and conceptional expression. Gary L. Comstock presents seven features of religion: cultus, creed, the uncanny, community, code, course, and character.

These writers study Islam in the categories that they have discreetly singled out. Thus, in a scholarly pursuit religion becomes an observed entity with the study of words, beliefs, rituals, feelings, behavior, and community action. On the other hand, William Cantwell Smith draws attention to the personal, private, subjective side of religion that often is difficult to observe and to measure.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines religion as “the personal commitment to and serving of God or a god with worshipful devotion, conduct in accord with divine commands, esp. as found in accepted sacred writings or declared by authoritative teachers, a way of life recognized as incumbent on true believers, and typically the relating of oneself to an organized body of believers.” A short, practical definition of religion is that religion is that part of some people’s lives that involves rituals, beliefs, organizations, ethical values, historical traditions, and personal habits and choices, some of which refer to the transcendent.

The reader may use some if not all of the categories these writers have used to study religion in general and Islam in particular. Islam is a religion with a transcendent God, Allah, with stated beliefs and creeds, with various rituals and ceremonies, with a system of law for all of life, and with ethical norms for governing behavior. Islam also includes a personal and devotional side to religion within and beyond the rituals of prayer and pilgrimage. It is a religion of revelation, reason, faith, and faithfulness.

TWENTY QUESTIONS

The following questions and challenges are constantly voiced today about the religion Islam and the people called Muslims:

1. What was the relationship of the worldview of the prophet Muhammad to the Judaism and Christianity of his time?

2. Where did Muhammad gain his information about Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the Bible? Was it from Allah, angels, his travels, Jews and Christians of his time?

3. What are the grounds for the Muslim belief that Jesus did not die on a cross when history and historians confirm it?

4. In the one hundred years after the death of Muhammad, how did Islam advance so rapidly and so far into the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Persia, and India? Was it by holy warfare (jihad)? Did people voluntarily accept Islam or were they coerced?

5. During the Dark Ages of Christianized Europe, what was the greatness of Islamic civilization and why? What were the advances in Islamic science, art, medicine, culture? Why were they more advanced than in Europe? What was the genius of Damascus and Baghdad and Cairo?

6. How have the Christian crusades influenced the Islamic world? What did Christians do to Muslims? What did Muslims do to Christians? Why have the Muslims never forgotten?

7. Why have the words terrorist and militant been associated with Muslims in the mass media? What kind of Muslim groups accept responsibility for violent acts? Do the teachings of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition justify these acts?

8. How does Islam perceive itself in relation to other religions? What is this perception when and where Islam is the dominant religion? What is this perception when and where it is one among other religions in a religiously pluralistic society? Does Islam allow freedom of religion and religious liberty? What does Islam mean when it says there is no compulsion in religion? Do Muslims believe Islam is the only true religion and all others are false? Can a Muslim become a Jew or Christian or Hindu without persecution from Islam?

9. What is the meaning of political Islam and religious Islam and what are differences between them, if any? Is Islam a theocratic religion? In Islamic political philosophy, is the Qur’an the constitution for law and order in the society?

10. Is one born a Muslim? How does this affect one’s citizenship and one’s religion? How does one become a Muslim: by birthright, by conversion, by adoption? Once a Muslim, is one always a Muslim? In a Muslim nation can a non-Muslim serve in the military or marry a Muslim or be a bonafide citizen?

11. When a spokesman for Hezbollah (party of God) speaks, what authority does he have in relation to Islam? Does he represent Allah? Islam? a few Muslims? an Islamic nation?

12. In a world of nation states, how does Islam address the issues of theocracy, separation of church and state, religion and politics, and freedom of religion? Why did Ayatollah Khomeini call for returning to the Constitution of Medina?

13. What religious, political, and cultural meanings does Islam attach to the city of Jerusalem and to the land of Palestine? Is Jerusalem an object of jihad (holy war)? What is the meaning of Jerusalem compared to Mecca and Medina? Why does Islam bar non-Muslims from the city of Mecca? If Muslims controlled Jerusalem, would they allow non-Muslims inside?

14. What is jihad (holy war) according to the teachings of the Qur’an and to Islamic tradition? Who can declare jihad officially? What are the criteria for jihad? Why does one Muslim leader declare jihad against another Muslim leader?

15. What are Islamic views on sexuality, gender roles, and marriage and family life? Does Islam speak with one voice on these matters? Are there differences between Qur’anic Islam and Folk Islam on these subjects? Are Muslim women required to wear a veil? Can a Muslim have several wives? What does Islam teach about the role of women in family and in society, about divorce, homosexuality, abortion, contraception, polygamy, AIDS, and suicide?

16. What is appropriate and taboo in greeting Muslims? A handshake? Words? Why does Islam prohibit accepting interest on loans? Do Muslims use contracts in business deals or is their word enough?

17. What legitimizes a Muslim group among other Muslim groups? How do various groups of Muslims relate to each other? Can one group declare jihad against another? Why do Sunnis fight Shi’ites? Iraqis fight Iranians? Muslim nations fight Iraq? What are the similarities, differences, and relationships among these groups: Sunni, Shi’ite, Sufi, Ahmadiyya, Nation of Islam, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestine Liberation Organization, Alawite, and Wahhabis.

18. Various leaders of Islamic nations or Muslim groups often speak in the name of Islam. Is one more legitimate or acceptable than the others? How have Islamic traditions related to the following: King Hussein of Jordan, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, President Assad of Syria, President Mubarek of Egypt, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, President Rafsanjani of Iran, Yasser Arafat, Wallace Deen Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan?

19. Why did Muslims come to America? Who are “Black Muslims,” about whom one reads in the press? What do Elijah Muhammad, Wallace D. Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan have in common and/or what are their differences? What is the meaning for American society and religions in America when scholars say Islam will be the second largest religion in America in the near future?

20. What—if any—challenges do Muslims face in the United States? What are Muslims’ strengths and weaknesses? How is Islam in America related to worldwide Islam?

This book investigates these questions. A postscript after the last chapter returns to these twenty broad concerns and attempts to outline some of the findings.

Islam arose in the seventh century in and around the desert-oasis complex of Mecca and Medina in the Arabian peninsula. It began among the nomadic peoples of the plains, the agriculturalists in and around the oasis, and the merchants and traders of the towns. Mecca and Medina were characterized by patrilineal tribal alliances, by animistic and agricultural orientations, by social control, and by blood revenge.¹

The Arabian peninsula was bordered on the east by the Sassanian Persian Empire and on the west by the Byzantine Empire. The Persians were officially Zoroastrians; the Byzantines were Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Byzantine Chr...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index