An Islam: Overview [First Edition]. Fazlur Rahman. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p4560-4577. Islam: An Overview [First Edition]. [ABBREVIATED]
ISLAM: AN OVERVIEW [FIRST EDITION] THE SYSTEMATIC CONTENT OF ISLAM With the rise of Islamic legal and theological thought in the eighth century CE, a framework had to be articulated within which religious developments were to be set. The most basic sources in this framework were the Qur'n and the sunnah of the Prophet. The Qur'n The God of the Qur'n is a transcendent, powerful, and merciful being. His transcendence ensures his uniqueness and infinitude over and against all other creatures, who are necessarily characterized by finitude of being and potentialities. Hence God is all-powerful, and no creature may share in his divinity (belief in such sharing is called shirk and is condemned in the Qur'n as the most heinous and unforgivable sin). This infinite power is expressed, however, through God's equally infinite mercy. The creation of the universe, the fact that there is plenitude of being, rather than emptiness of nothing, is due solely to his mercy. Particularly with reference to humanity, God's creation, sustenance, guidance (in the form of revelations given to the prophets, his messengers), and, finally, judgment, are all manifestations of his power in mercy. God created nature by his command "Be!" In fact, for whatever God wishes to create, "He says, Be! and there it is" (36:82). But whatever God creates has an orderly nature, and that is why there is a universe rather than chaos. God puts into everything the proper "guidance" or "nature" or laws of behavior to make each part fit into the entire pattern of the universe. "All things are measured" (e.g., 54:49), and only God is the measurer; hence he alone is the commander, and everything else is under his command. This command, which is a fact of automatic obedience in the case of nature (3:83), becomes an "ought" in the case of humans, for whom moral law replaces natural law. Nature is, therefore, a firm, well-knit machine without rupture or dislocations. Here it is interesting and important to note that while the Qur'n patently accepts miracles of earlier prophets (67:23), in response to pressure from Muhammad's opponents for new miracles (e.g., 2:23, 10:38, 11:13), the Qur'n insists that it is itself the Prophet's miracle, and one that cannot be equaled. As for supernatural miracles, they are out of date because they have been ineffective in the past (17:59, 6:3335). Nature is, therefore, autonomous but not autocratic, since it did not bring itself into being. God, who brought nature into being, can destroy it as well; even so, although the Qur'n, when speaking of the Day of Judgment, often invokes a cataclysm that strongly suggests destruction (see, for example, srah 81), in many verses it speaks instead of a radical
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transformation and a realignment of the factors of life (e.g., 56:6063). Finally, the universe has been created for the benefit of human beings, and all its forces have been "subjugated" to them; of all creatures, only they have been created to serve God alone (e.g., 31:20, 22:65). In its account of the human race, while the Qur'n holds that humans are among the noblest of God's creatures and that Adam had indeed outstripped the angels in a competition for creative knowledge, a fact testifying to his unique intellectual qualities, it nevertheless criticizes them for their persistent moral failures, which are due to their narrow-mindedness, lack of vision, weakness, and smallness of self. All their ills are reducible to this basic deficiency, and the remedy is for them to enlarge the self and to transcend pettiness. This pettiness is often represented by the Qur'n in economic terms, such as greed, fraud, and holding back from spending on the poor (as was the case with the Meccan traders): "If you were to possess [all] the treasures of the mercy of my lord, you would still sit on them out of fear of spending [on the needy]" (17:100). It is Satan who whispers into people's ears that they would be impoverished by spending, while God promises prosperity for such investment (2:268). Instead of establishing usurious accounts to exploit the poor, believers should establish "credit with God" (2:245, 57:11, 57:18 et al.). In its social doctrine and legislation, the Qur'n makes a general effort to ameliorate the condition of the weak and often abused segments of society, such as the poor, orphans, women, and slaves. People are asked to free slaves on freedom-purchasing contracts, "and if they are poor, you give them from the wealth God has bestowed upon you" (24:33). An egalitarian statement concerning males and females is made, but the husband is recognized as "one degree higher" (2:228) because he earns by his strength and expends on his wife. Polygamy is limited to four wives with the provision that "if you fear you cannot do justice [among them], marry only one" (4:3), and the further admonition that such justice is impossible "no matter how much you desire" (4:129). Kind and generous treatment of wives is repeatedly emphasized; celibacy is strongly discouraged, although not banned outright. The basic equality of all people is proclaimed and ethnic differences discounted: "O you people, we have created [all of] you from a male and a female, and we have made you into different nations and tribes [only] for the purpose of identification--otherwise, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is the most righteous" (49:13). In the economic field, the widespread practice of usury is prohibited. The zakt tax is levied on the well-to-do members of the community; it was meant as a welfare tax to be spent on the poor and the needy in general, but srah 9:60, which details the distribution of zakt, is so comprehensive in its scope that it covers practically all fields of social and state life. In general, fair play and justice are repeatedly advised. Detailed inheritance laws are given (4:7ff.), the main feature of which is the introduction of shares to daughters, although these shares are set at half of what sons receive. Communal affairs are to be decided through mutual consultation (shr baynahum, 42:38), a principle that has never been institutionalized in Islamic history, however.
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One noteworthy feature of the moral teaching of the Qur'n is that it describes all wrong done against anyone as "wrong done against oneself" ( ulm al-nafs, as in 2:231, 11:101, 11:118). In its teaching on the Last Judgment, the Qur'n constantly talks of "weighing the deeds" of all adult and responsible humans (101:611, 7:8 et al.). This doctrine of the "weight" of deeds arises out of the consideration that people normally act for the here and now; in this respect, they are like cattle: they do not take a long-range or "ultimate" (khirah) view of things: "Shall we tell you of those who are the greatest losers in terms of their deeds? Those whose whole effort has been lost [in the pursuit of] this life [i.e., the lower values of life], but they think they have performed prodigies" (18:104). The rationale of the Last Judgment is to bring out the real moral meaning, "the weight" of deeds. But whereas the Last Judgment will turn upon individual performance, the Qur'n also speaks about a "judgment in history," which descends upon peoples, nations, and communities on the basis of their total performance and whether that performance is in accord with the teaching of the divine messages brought by their prophets: many nations have perished because of their persistence in all sorts of disobedience and moral wrong, for "God gives inheritance of the earth [only] to good people" (21:105). The Qur'n, therefore, declares unequivocally that God has sent his messages to all peoples throughout history and has left none without guidance (35:24, 13:7). These messages have been essentially the same: to reject shirk (associating anyone with God) and to behave according to the law of God. All messages have emanated from a single source, the "Mother of All Books" (13:39) or the "Hidden Book" (56:78) or the "Preserved Tablet" (85:22), and although every prophet has initially come to his people and addressed them "in their tongue" (14:4), the import of all messages is universal; hence it is incumbent on all people to believe in all prophets, without "separating some from the others." For this reason the Qur'n is severely critical of what it sees as proprietary claims upon God's guidance by Jews and Christians and rejects Jewish claims to special status in strong terms (62:6, 2:9495, 5:18, et al.). Despite the identity of divine messages, moreover, the Qur'n also posits some sort of development in religious consciousness and asserts that on the Last Day every community will be judged by the standards of its own book and under the witness of its own prophet(s) (4:41, 16:84, et al.). The Qur'n protects, consummates, and transcends earlier revelations, and Muhammad is declared to be the "seal of the prophets" (33:40). Sunnah The word sunnah literally means "a well-trodden path," but it was used before Islam in reference to usage or laws of a tribe and certain norms of intertribal conduct accepted by various tribes as binding. After the rise of Islam, it was used to denote the normative behavior of the Muslim community, putatively derived from the Prophet's teaching and conduct, and from the exemplary teaching of his immediate followers, since the latter was seen as an index of the former.
Modernism
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In the eighteenth century, against a background of general stagnation, a puritanical fundamentalist movement erupted in Arabia under Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhb (17031792). The movement called for a return to the purist Islam of the Qur'n and the sunnah and its unadulterated monotheism, uncompromised by the popular cults of saints and their shrines. Ibn Abd al-Wahhb married into the family of Sa'd, a chieftain of Najd, who accepted his teaching and brought all Arabia under his ruling ideology. In the nineteenth century a reformist militant group called the Jihd movement arose out of Wal Allh's school, and three more movements followed in Africa--the Sans in Libya, the Fulbe in West Africa, and the Mahdists in the Sudan. Although these three movements emerged from different environments, common to all of them was a reformist thrust in terms of the recovery of the "true pristine Islam" of the Qur'n and the Prophet, particularly emphasizing monotheism; an insistence upon ijtihd, that is, rejection of the blind following tradition in both theology and law in favor of an attempt to discover and formulate new solutions to Islamic problems; and finally, resort to militant methods, including the imposition of their reformist ideologies by force. In addition, these movements generally brought to the center of consciousness the necessity of social and moral reforms as such, without recourse to the rewards and punishments of the hereafter. In other words, all three were characterized by a certain positivistic orientation. While these pre-modernist reform movements laid great emphasis on ijtihd, in practice their ijtihd meant that Muslims should be enabled to disengage themselves from their present "degenerate" condition and to recover pristine Islam. Also, it is a general characteristic of all fundamentalist movements that in order to "simplify" religion and make it practical, they debunk the intellectualism of the past and discourage the growth of future intellectualism. In such cases education becomes so simplified that it is virtually sterile, thus leaving little possibility for ijtihd. Nonetheless, these movements signaled real stirrings in the soul of Islam and paved the way for the intellectual activity of the Muslim modernists--Muslims who had been exposed to Western ideas and who, by integrating certain key among ones them with the teaching of the Qur'n, produced brilliant solutions to the crucial problems then faced by Islamic society. The influence of pre-modernist reformism upon the modernists is apparent from the fact that they keep the Qur'n and the tradition of the Prophet as ultimate referents for reform while criticizing or rejecting the medieval heritage. Thus, although their individual views regarding, for example, the relationship between faith and reason differ, all of them insist on the cultivation of positive sciences, appealing to numerous verses of the Qur'n that state that the entire universe has been made subservient to good ends of humankind and that we must study and use it. In the political sphere, citing Qur'n 42:38, which says that Muslims should decide all their affairs through mutual consultation (shr, actually a pre-Islamic Arab institution confirmed by the Qur'n), the modernists contended that whereas the Qur'n teaches democracy, the Muslims had deviated from this norm and acquiesced to autocratic rule. Similarly, on the subject of women, the modernists argued that the Qur'n had granted equal rights to men and women (except in certain areas of economic life where the
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burden of earning and supporting the family is squarely laid on men), but the medieval practice of the Muslims had clearly departed from the Qur'n and ended by depriving women of their rights. Regarding polygamy, the modernists stated that permission for polygamy (up to four wives) had been given under special conditions, with the proviso that if the husband could not do justice among his co-wives then he must marry only one wife, and that finally the Qur'n itself had declared such justice to be impossible to attain (4:129). Of the half-dozen most prominent names in Islamic modernism, two were ulam-trained along traditional lines: Jaml al-Dn al-Afghn (18391897), a fiery activist with a magnetic personality, and his disciple, the Egyptian shaykh Muhammad Abduh (1845 1905). Three were lay intellectuals with modern education: the Turk Namik Kemal (18401888) and the two Indians Ameer Ali (d. 1928) and Muhammad Iqbl (1877 1938), while the Indian Sayyid Ahmad Khan (18171898), the most radical of them all in theological views, was a premodern lay-educated scholar. Yet, despite their differences and the fact that none of them, except for al-Afghn and Abduh, ever met any of the others, they shared the basic tenet-- la premodernist reform movements--that medieval Islam had deviated on certain crucial points from the normative Islam of the Qur'n; this argument runs through all the issues that they discuss. However, while these modernists sought reform within their own societies, they also waged controversies with the West on the latter's understanding of Islam, and some of them, particularly Iqbl, argued about the West's own performance on the stage of history. Iqbl bitterly and relentlessly accused the West of cheating humanity of its basic values with the glittering mirage of its technology, of exploiting the territories it colonized in the name of spreading humanitarian values, which it itself flouted by waging internecine wars born of sheer economic savagery, and of de-womanizing the women and dilapidating the family institution in the name of progress. Iqbal was an equally strong critic of the world Muslim society, which for him represented nothing more than a vast graveyard of Islam. He called the whole world to the "true Islam" of the Qur'n and the Prophet, a living, dynamic Islam that believed in the harnessing of the forces of history for the ethical development of mankind. Iqbl and others, such as the Egyptian Rashd Ri (d. 1935), proved to belong to a transitional stage from modernism to a new attitude, perhaps best described as neofundamentalism, for unlike the fundamentalism of the pre-modernist reform movements, the current neo-fundamentalism is, in large measure, a reaction to modernism, but it has also been importantly influenced by modernism. This influence can best be seen on two major issues: first, the contention that Islam is a total way of life, including all fields of human private and public life, and is not restricted to certain religious rites such as the Five Pillars (to which the Islam of the traditionalist ulam had become practically confined); and, second, that cultivation of scientific knowledge and technology is desirable within Islam. Besides emphasis on technology (although Iran appears to pay only lip service to science and technology), neo-fundamentalists have, on the one hand, oversimplified the
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traditionalist curriculum of Islamic studies, and, on the other, embarked upon a program of "islamization" of Western knowledge. Besides these points, the most basic factor common to the neo-fundamentalist phenomena is a strong assertion of Islamic identity over and against the West, an assertion that hits equally strongly at most modernist reforms, particularly on the issue of the status and role of women in society. This powerful desire to repudiate the West, therefore, leads the neo-fundamentalist to emphasize certain points (as a riposte to the modernist, who is often seen as a pure and simple westernizer) that would most distinguish Islam from the West. Besides the role of women, which is seen to lie at home, the heaviest emphasis falls on the islamization of economy through the reinstitution of zakt and the abolition of bank interest (which is identified with rib, or usury, prohibited by the Qur'n). No neo-fundamentalist government in the Muslim world--including Iran and Pakistan--however, has been successful in implementing either of the two policies, while the Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhf has declared that the modern banking institution is not covered by the Qur'anic prohibition of rib. Neo-fundamentalism is by no means a uniform phenomenon. ... ... Islam's attitude to other religions According to Qur'anic teaching divine guidance is universal, and God regards all peoples as equal. Every prophet's message, although immediately addressed to a given people, is nevertheless of universal import and must be believed by all humanity. Muhammad himself is made to declare, "I believe in any book God may have revealed" (Qur'n 42:15), and all Muslims are required to do likewise. This is so because God is one; the source of revelation is one, and humankind is also one. The office of prophethood is, in fact, indivisible. Muslims, however, have, from earliest times, considered Muhammad to be the bearer of the last and consummate revelation. Nevertheless, there is a tension within the Qur'n itself on this issue. In keeping with its fundamental teaching that prophethood is indivisible, the Qur'an, of course, invites Jews and Christians to Islam; it insists on the unity of religion, deplores the diversity of religions and religious communities, which it insists is based on willful neglect of truth, and denounces both Jews and Christians as "partisans, sectarians," with "each sect rejoicing in what itself has" (30:32). On the other hand, it states that although religion is essentially one, God himself has given different "institutions and approaches" to different communities so that he might "test them in what he has given them," and that they might compete with each other in goodness (5:48), which implies that these different institutional arrangements have positive value and are somehow meant to be permanent. In fact, the Qur'an categorically states that whether a person is a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian or a Sabian, "whosoever believes in God and the Last Day and does good deeds, they shall have their reward with their Lord, shall have nothing to fear, nor shall they come to grief" (2:62; see also 5:69).
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This tension is probably to be resolved by saying that it is better, indeed incumbent upon humankind to accept Muhammad's message, but that if they do not, then living up to their own prophetic messages will be regarded as adequate even if it does not fulfill the entire divine command. The organization of Muslims as a community--which was inherent in the message of the Prophet--set in motion its own political and religious dynamics. The Qur'an itself, while strongly repudiating the claims of Jewish and Christian communities to be proprietors of divine truth and guidance, frankly tells Muslims also (for example, in 47:38) that unless they fulfill the message they cannot take God for granted. Soon after the time of the Prophet, however, the community came to be regarded as infallible, and a Hadith was put into currency that the Prophet had said "My community shall never agree on an error." This development was necessitated partly by intercommunal rivalry, but largely by the internal development of law, since the doctrine of legal consensus had to be made infallible. In his last years, the Prophet decided on the policy of forcible conversion of Arab pagans to Islam and gave religious and cultural autonomy to Jews and Christians as "people of the Book" (although Jews were driven out of Medina by Muhammad and later from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula by Umar I). Muslims had to determine for themselves the status of Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists when they conquered Iran and parts of Northwest India. It was decided that these populations were also "people of the Book" since they believed in certain scriptures, and consequently they were allowed to keep their religion and culture, like the Jews and Christians, on payment of the poll tax (jizyah). In contrast with their stance toward Jews and Christians however, Muslims were prohibited from having social intercourse or intermarrying with these other groups. Indeed, when the community became an imperium, further developments took place that had little to do with the Qur'n or the sunnah of the Prophet but rather were dictated by the logic of the empire itself. The law of apostasy, for example, which states that a Muslim apostate should be given three chances to repent and in the case of nonrepentance must be executed, has nothing to do with the Qur'n, which speaks of "those who believed and then disbelieved, then once again believed and disbelieved--and then became entrenched in disbelief" (4:137; see also 3:90), thus clearly envisaging repeated conversions and apostasies without invoking any penalty in this world. It is, therefore, important to make these distinctions and to treat historic Islam not as one seamless garment but rather as a mosaic made up of different pieces. There are numerous other laws that are the product neither of the Qur'n nor of the Prophet's sunnah, but of the Islamic imperium, such as the inadmissibility of evidence of a non-Muslim against a Muslim in a criminal case. In this legal genre also falls the juristic doctrine that the world consists of three zones: the Abode of Islam (dr al-Islm), where Muslims rule; the Abode of Peace (dr al-ul), those countries or powers with whom Muslims have peace pacts; and the Abode of War (dr al-arb), the rest of the world. This doctrine was definitely the result of the early Islamic conquests and the initial Islamic law of war and peace resulting from them. But during the later Abbasid period,
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the concept of jihd was formulated in defensive terms, because the task then was the consolidation of the empire rather than the gaining of further territory through conquest. To this general problem also belongs the consideration advanced by several Western scholars that Islam cannot authentically be a minority religion because the presumption of political power is built into its very texture as a religion. What is true is that Islam requires a state to work out its sociopolitical ideals and programs, but this does not mean that Muslims cannot live as a minority; indeed they have done so throughout history. The Qur'n, in fact, envisages some sort of close cooperation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it invites Jews and Christians to join Muslims in such a goal: "O People of the Book! Let us come together on a platform that is common between us, that we shall serve naught save God" (3:64).
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