WHAT DO Muslims believe? It is as difficult to provide an answer to this question as it is to provide an answer to the question of what Jews, Christians, or Hindus believe. Even if we were to say, as many do, that Muslims are radical monotheists—believing in the complete transcendence and oneness of God—how do we fit the cult of saints discussed in
chapter 7 into this framework? To claim that all Muslims from Tunisia to Bangladesh believe the same things and have the same encounter with their religion is, of course, ridiculous. For example, some Muslims believe that one should mark and celebrate the birthday of Muhammad, whereas other Muslims are steadfastly opposed to such a practice and argue that it is a form of polytheism that lifts Muhammad up to the level of a god. Is one of these beliefs better or more correct than the other? Is one authentically Muslim, and the other not? Such questions, more typically entertained by the theologian, cannot for obvious reasons concern us here.
Claims of what constitutes Muslim belief risk assuming that the millions of Muslims located in various geographic and cultural regions around the globe think about the religion in a unified manner. Moreover, such claims draw too sharp a distinction between Islam the religion that exists monolithically and the various cultures in which this Islam finds itself and that threaten to pollute it, distort it, or otherwise dismantle it (depending on one’s point of view). Many anthropologists—from Clifford Geertz to Mark Woodward to Laurence Rosen—have shown that great discrepancies exist between the theological and textbook presentations of Islamic doctrine, on the one hand, and the manifold ways that Muslims cobble together meaning from diverse local customs and beliefs, on the other. Many of these local customs are syncretistic, taking Muslim beliefs and practices and combining them with those that predate Islam in particular regions.
1To conceive of Islamic belief might also be to assume that Muslims actively think about their religion and conceive of it in ways that differ sharply and significantly from other aspects of their life. The fact of the matter is that, as other scholars have shown, the very term “religion” might not even be a useful one to apply to various cultures and eras.
2 Religion, at least as configured in the largely Protestant West, is often regarded as belonging to a particular sphere of the individual and his or her internal or spiritual piety, and it has been constructed largely as something that differs markedly from other spheres of life (e.g., the political and the economic) that have been signified as the so-called secular. Yet these dichotomies—religious/secular, internal/external, spiritual/mundane—often begin to break down and have limited utility when applied to other cultures.
Two major problems arise when discussing belief. First, there is often a tendency to construct a, b, and c as genuinely Islamic, but not d, e, and f. Why? What makes the former factors inherently Islamic, but not the latter? Is it because the former deal with what scholars in the West have decided to count as “religious” (e.g., prayer, death) and the latter with what they count as “secular” (e.g., legal rulings, economic transactions)? Although Westerners may be comfortable making such distinctions, many Muslims consider them spurious.
Second, we also tend to assume that all Muslims must necessarily believe what theologians have constructed as an authentically “Muslim” belief. But why must they? Or if they do, why must we assume that the belief means the same thing at different times or even in different geographic locations? All these issues pose numerous pitfalls for those wishing to understand Muslim belief except in the most basic of ways.
To try and negotiate these methodological difficulties, this chapter examines both the historical construction and the elucidation of certain concepts and ideals that have played a role in the formation of Islamic belief. The advantage of this two-pronged approach—as opposed to making the claim that all Muslims today believe the same things—is that it reveals something of the cultural, political, and ideological factors that have played a role in shaping Islamic identities both in the past and in the contemporary period.
Central to every religion is the question of self-definition: How does religion, as a social and cultural form, enable its practitioners to imagine themselves as a community, and how is this community imagined to be different from rival communities? This question is, of course, as much political as it is religious. This is not to say that the earliest attempts to define terms such as “Islam” and “Muslim” were necessarily polemical; however, it is necessary to be aware that the need for self-definition corresponds to an awareness of difference and the attempt to make such difference into an ontological category.
At the time of Muhammad, when the Muslim community was just beginning to take shape as a historical and sociological entity, there had to be certain ways that believers could differentiate their belief from rival monotheisms within the Arabian Peninsula. Islam, like every religion, was engaged in a process of self-making, defining itself against various “others.” Legal, social, religious, and political identities were formed in response to other such identities.
Once again, and this should come as no surprise, we have a paucity of historical sources to reconstruct the origins of Islamic theology—or, perhaps more accurately, the origins of what we might call early attempts by Muslims to carve out space for themselves in the crowded marketplace of both rival monotheisms and rival interpretations of Muhammad’s message. This paucity is in part the result of the dearth of early sources, later sources pretending to be earlier ones, and the omnipresent problem of how to interpret the later material.
Although discussions concerning Islamic identity would emerge through the reading and interpretation of familiar literature such as the Quran and the materials comprising the Sunna, mature reflections on Islamic faith and belief took several centuries to develop. What we now consider to be hallmarks of Muslim faith (e.g., God’s oneness, Day of Judgment) arose in response to a series of intercommunal debates (many of which we have encountered in previous chapters). These debates were responsible for the formation of what would emerge as “orthodoxy,” further revealing that beliefs do not fall from heaven but develop in a utilitarian manner in response to the most mundane of needs.
However, a question that we must constantly ask ourselves whenever we encounter the term “orthodoxy” is, Whose orthodoxy?
Part II pointed to the tendency to emphasize Sunni Islam as orthodox, but this emphasis is both problematic and incorrect. Even if we were to assume that it were true, we would then have to ask further: Which Sunnis? The mainstream Sunni viewpoint in the past, as now, was never a unified orthodoxy, but in a constant state of tension among various groups (e.g., rationalist, pietistic, traditionalist, universalist, and particularistic).
Indeed, this dialectic of contestation and synthesis is ultimately responsible for the formation of Muslim beliefs and identities. Again, however, there exists the caveat that beliefs (like identities) are rarely consistent, that they change over time, and that different sectarian movements possessed (and still possess) different—sometimes radically different—beliefs.
One of the earliest of what we might in retrospect call theological debates within early Islam was whether the “grave sinner” (i.e., a murderer) could still be considered a believer and part of the community. This issue was not just legal, but practical, with many specific and practical connotations for the developing community, such as whether one could pray beside a “grave sinner” or marry one. The Kharijites—a group that split from the partisans of Ali when he agreed to arbitration with Mu
ʿawiya (
chapter 5)—held that the grave sinner threatened the true believers’ purity and that such sinners, along with their families, should be executed. The Kharijites also tended to reject the emerging Sunna literature in favor of the Quran because of what they considered to be the Sunna’s innovative nature. Although the Kharijites would be quickly marginalized, largely because they situated themselves in opposition to the ruling authorities, their influence would assert itself in various submovements throughout the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, taking the more moderate position that only habitual sinners should be punished.
Another position on the issue of the “grave sinner” was taken by a group known as the Murji
ʾa. Although critical of sin, this group held that it was not within humans’ power to decide the fate of the grave sinner. Only God can decide this question, and humans have no right to make decisions about what is right and wrong and thus about who is or is not within the community of believers. This position—and the more general position that only God knows the business of human affairs—would eventually become the position taken by mainstream Sunni Islam and associated with Abu Hanifa, especially the creedal statement attributed to him:
al-fiqh al-akbar.
3
AL-QAEDA AND OTHER MODERN MILITANT ISLAMIC
GROUPS AS “NEO-KHARIJITES”?
In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States on September 11, 2001, numerous political commentators came up with the notion that those militant organizations responsible for these and other attacks resembled the Kharijite movement within Islam in its first hundred years. Hesham A. Hassaballa, writing for the American Muslim (an organization devoted to “peace, justice, and the reconciliation of all humanity”—slippery signifiers like the Fox News “fair and balanced” motto), for example, argues,
The murderous fanatics who kill in the name of Islam are trying to cast themselves as “Muslim heroes.” They try to claim that they are “defending the ummah” with their acts of terrible destruction. Yet, we easily see through their facade of piety for the satanic murderers that they truly are. Just like the Kharijites, these fanatics consider all those Muslims who do not accept their twisted interpretation of Islam as “infidels,” whose blood is lawful to be shed. Just like the Kharijites, these extremists have committed a number of atrocities against their own co-religionists. Just like the Kharijites, these murderers threaten the safety and security of the Muslim ummah, and what is worse, today’s “neo-Kharijites” even threaten the very existence of the Muslim ummah.
*Although the use of terms from early Islamic history to refer to modern movements is certainly attractive to some, it is not without problems. First, many modern militant groups derive their understanding of Islam from modern thinkers (such as Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb [see
chapter 10]) rather than from the ideology, whatever it might have been, of a seventh-century splinter group. The use of technology and
select features of the modern world make groups such as al-Qaeda a decidedly modern religious phenomenon even though they certainly envisage their struggle to be an ancient one.
Individuals and groups are certainly free to use whatever terms they want to define themselves and others, considering that language evolves and changes through time. However, to avoid potential misunderstandings it is extremely important to be aware of the language that we and others use.
Because the Kharijites argued that humans had the right to judge their fellows, it necessarily followed that they believed that humans had the freedom to choose whether to commit a particular action. This position of free will became most closely associated with another early group known as the Qadarites (the Arabic word qadar means “determination”). Once again, this theological debate was not simply theological, but intimately connected to contemporaneous political events emerging largely from the sectarian movement that became known as Shiʿism. Those who supported the Qadarite position were in favor of active rebellion against the ruling Umayyad forces, arguing that the community had the right to overthrow an unjust ruler, whereas those who supported the Umayyad political forces argued that their power to rule had been preordained by God. What would eventually become mainstream Muslim belief is actually a combination of these two principles: that God knows all, but that humans must act as if they have the freedom to act. If this freedom did not exist, there would be no need for the strictures of religion.
As the early Islamic Empire moved into new areas, it was only a mater of time before earlier civilizations left their mark on Islamic thought. The Abbasids, as noted in
chapter 4, came to power in the mid-eighth century, and they legitimated their rule in part on the establishment of cultural and scientific institutions. Part of this work included a massive translation movement of texts from Greek and Syriac into Arabic, which gave rise to a considerable body of Greek-inspired rationalism as texts by Plato, Aristotle, and others were translated into Arabic and subsequently interpreted and commented on by Muslim thinkers.
Another likely impetus behind the emergence of Muslim rationalism was the need to justify Islam and Muslim belief to non-Muslims. Early Muslim theological encounters with more sophisticated late antique Christianities seem to have encouraged some Muslim scholars to begin the study of non-Muslim rationalist texts and the reading of Muslim texts in their light. The fanciful anthropomorphisms in the Quran created the need among some Muslims to rationalize these anthropomorphisms, thereby bringing them under the control of human reason.
One of the earliest groups to engage in this sort of rationalist theological speculation was the
Mutazilites. The origins of this group are obscure, with some sources claiming its members arose from among the group associated with Hasan al-Basri as an attempt to strike a middle way between earlier theological schools such as the Kharijites and the Murji
ʾites. Others argue that the Mutazilites were descendents of the Qadarites. Regardless of their origins, the Mutazilites referred to themselves as the
ahl al-adl waʾ-tawhid (People of [Divine] Justice and Unity), and they played a crucial role in introducing rationalism into Islam and then in developing Islamic sciences.
The result was the introduction of Greek rationalist speculation into Islam. It is important, however, not to regard the Mutazilites as philosophers, even though they used reason. They often knew their conclusions beforehand and so used rationalism to argue backward to formulate premises.
The Mutazilites used rationalist principles to articulate, as their name suggests, God’s justice and unity. One sees, for example, the role of Greek rationality in the Mutazilite discussion of divine justice. According to them, God’s justice necessarily equates with his goodness; as a result, God can do only that which we consider to be just and good acts. God, on this reading, can neither perform nor endorse (i.e., reward) unjust actions. Critics of this view not surprisingly argue that it is both impossible and ridiculous to limit God’s actions by means of our own limited understanding of the words “justice” and “goodness.”
The emphasis on justice led the Mutazilites to stress the importance of free will. If God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, it is important that humans have the ability to choose between good and evil. Evil actions must necessarily result from human decisions to act in a particular way, and because God is just, he can have nothing to do with that which is evil. God, according to the Mutazilites, is compelled to reward the righteous and to punish the sinner. To do otherwise would be unjust, something that God could never be, they argued.
Divine unity, the other major Mutazilite principle, emphasizes God’s transcendence to the world. To describe God using too familiar language is to risk making God too much like humans. To say that God is “happy,” for example, is to make God analogous to us, thereby compromising his unity. This issue led Mutazilite theologians to employ a form of negative theology in which the only things that can legitimately be said of God ought to be said in negatives (e.g., “God is not sad”) because only negatives do not impinge on God’s absolute unity.
THE DEBATE BETWEEN AL-SIRAFI AND
MATTA B. YUNUS ON THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC
In an early dialogue supplied by Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (ca. 930–1023), we get a good sense of the debate over the role that Greek science has played in Islam. Al-Tawhidi provides us with the “transcript” of a debate between Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus (d. 940) and Abu Saʿid al-Sirafi (d. 979). Yunus, the teacher of the famous Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870–950), argues that logic is a universal science that is central to clear thinking. Al-Sirafi, in contrast, holds that logic is not universal, but a Greek linguistic habit that is both unnecessary and unhelpful to Arabic speakers, who have all they need in the rules of Arabic grammar.
AL-SIRAFI: If logic be the invention of a Greek made in the Greek language and according to Greek conventions, and according to the descriptions and symbols that Greeks understand, whence does it follow that the Turks, Indians, Persians, and Arabs should attend to it?
MATTA B. YUNUS: This follows because Logic is the discussion of accidents apprehended by reason, and ideas comprehended thereby, and the investigation of thoughts that occur, and notions that enter the mind. Now in matters apprehended by the intellect all men are alike, as for example, four and four are eight among all the nations.
*
*The entire debate can be found in D. S. Margoliouth, “The Merits of Logic and Grammar,”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1905): 79–129.
This understanding of language and the view of God led to the reinterpretation of the Quran, especially those verses that stress God’s anthropomorphic qualities. Those verses, for example, that describe God’s body parts (e.g., his face in 6:52) or God sitting on a throne (e.g., 2:255) cannot literally be true and therefore have to be understood as metaphors. “God’s face,” according to their reading, actually means God’s essence; “God’s hand” refers to his “power,” and so on.
In order to protect God’s absolute unity, the Mutazilites further stressed the created nature of the Quran. According to them, an eternal Quran would not only jeopardize God’s unity (i.e., it would make something coeternal with him) but also limit humans’ free will because it would mean that God would have known of the fate or choices of characters within the Quran before these figures themselves did (e.g. the condemnation of Abu Lahab in sura 111). The Quran was therefore created in time. This position, especially given the way that Islam was developing, would come under widespread attack by what was gradually emerging as Sunni orthodoxy.
The Mutazilites, however, had the political support of the Abbasid caliph, al-Mamun (r. 813–833). According to traditional accounts, al-Mamun, in order to systematize belief, gave the Mutazilites permission to create an “inquisition” (
mihna), wherein Muslim jurists were posed the question whether they believed in the created nature of the Quran. Those who held that it was created were allowed to remain in their positions; those who argued that it was eternal were stripped of their position, and some—for example, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (discussed in
chapter 6 and later in this chapter)—were thrown in jail. However, there is some ambiguity regarding who the actual players were in the inquisition. It was most likely carried out by the caliph, not the Mutazilites, perhaps as a way to create something like a centralized “church” that would enforce belief, establish orthodoxy, and so on.
The early Abbasid era (starting in 750) was really the heyday of the Mutazilites. The relatively small number of Mutazilites and their increasing lack of touch with what was emerging as Sunni consensus about God and the role of reason largely meant that they would eventually fall out of favor. Those influenced by their teachings would periodically emerge in the coming centuries, and their biggest influence would be on Shiʿi legal theory.
We have already encountered the conservative Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855)—the founder of one of the four Sunni schools of law—as one of the instrumental figures in the development of Sunni legal theory (see
chapter 6). During the Mutazilite-fueled and caliphal-sanctioned inquisition, ibn Hanbal was one of the few scholars who refused to back down to the caliph and deny the Quran’s createdness. He was steadfastly opposed to the employment of rationalist theology to elucidate Islamic principles. He was imprisoned, and while in jail, his partisans tell us, he was tortured in order to make him renounce his position. He refused and quickly became a symbol of defiance for all those who held his position. In 847, ibn Hanbal was set free by the caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861), whereupon his stature as a legal scholar and critic of rationalism further increased.
The importance of ibn Hanbal’s position cannot be underestimated. Up until his time, the institution of the caliphate seemed to be the primary arbiter of law and theology within Islam. His successful challenge to this status quo effectively increased the power of the
ulama at the expense of the caliph. This shift would have tremendous repercussions on the role and influence of the
ulama down to the present.
The chief intellectual rivals to the Mutazilites were the Asharites, a group founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari (ca. 873–935). Al-Ashari was not opposed to the Mutazilites in the same manner that ibn Hanbal was, and in many ways he created a position in between the two: one that also sought to use rationalist principles, but to articulate a position more in harmony with what he perceived to be “orthodox” Islam. It is important, however, not to regard the Asharites as “irrational” or “antirational.” On the contrary, they represent a rationalist theology that was on par with the Mutazilites’ theology, but that argued for different principles. Whereas the Mutazilites argued for God’s absolute justice, the Asharites emphasized God’s absolute omnipotence. Many of the post-Ghazali writings of the Asharites—for example, those by Sa
ʿad al-Din al-Taftazani (d. 1390)—display an extremely sophisticated rationalism.
4The Asharites came down on the opposite side regarding many of the Mutazilites’ key principles. Whereas the Mutazilites stressed free will, the Asharites emphasized determinism in order to protect God’s omnipotence and omniscience. According to classical Asharite theory (in many ways influenced by Greek atomism), God creates the potentiality for people to act, and even though he ultimately knows what decisions they will make, humans must take responsibility for all that they do. Al-Ashari writes: “No human act can occur without [God’s] willing it because that would imply that [the act] occurred out of carelessness and neglect or out of weakness and inadequacy on [God’s] part to effect what He wills.”
5According to al-Ashari’s formulation, God continually creates the world anew and that what we think of as cause and effect (e.g., where there is smoke, there is fire) is an illusion. Given God’s absolute omnipotence, there may well be situations that human categories cannot support. Although it may seem that fire produces smoke, there may be a time in the future when this is not the case at all. This position enabled Asharites to protect divine miracles. What we see as cause and effect is simply a product of God’s mercy. Both the fire and the smoke are the effects from God, and for our benefit he causes both (most of the time) to follow each other.
The view of God as the only creator posed a problem for the concept of free will. If humans possess free will, then they, too, are creators in the sense that they create their actions. In order to mediate between these positions, al-Ashari developed the position of “acquisition” (iktisab), in which humans acquire the will to perform a particular action because God creates the will in the first place. For example, when I walk to the store, God creates both the will and power in me to walk.
Related to God’s absolute omnipotence is the Quran’s use of terminology to describe him. Because the Asharites rejected the Quran’s creation in time, they held that its language had to mean what it said and could not be interpreted away by employing allegorical exegesis. If the Quran speaks of God’s hand or God’s face, then, by this view, these expressions must signify God in some way. Because applying human characteristics (e.g., face, hand) to God might pose certain categorical problems, however, Asharites contended that when the Quran speaks of, for example, God’s hand, the term “hand” has to be understood “without knowing how or what” (
bila kayf) it actually means. This view became known as the principle of
balkafa. Later Asharites, however, developed other, primarily philological means of dealing with anthropomorphic terms in the Quran and hadiths, such as looking for second-order meanings. Many of these Asharite positions would in fact become orthodoxy in Sunni Islam. The concepts of determinism, the eternality of the Quran, and, to a certain extent, the principle of
balkafa still largely hold for many Muslims. One of the most important of the later Asharites was Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), whom we encountered in reference to Sufism in
chapter 7.
Abu Mansur al-Maturdi (d. 944), born in Samarqand (modern-day Uzbekistan) in Central Asia, was another important tenth-century theologian who, especially after his death, played an important role in the emergence of Sunni Islam. Like al-Ashari, he followed a middle path that stressed both traditionalism and rationalism, and in his
Kitab al-tawhid (
Book of Unity) he argued that reason is God given and must be employed to judge other sources of knowledge. Although he believed in free will, like al-Ashari he argued that individuals “acquire” their actions because only God, whose existence alone is necessary and eternal, can create.
Many of al-Maturdi’s theological positions became associated with the Hanafi legal school, which had spread to Central Asia at this time. The school’s spread and eventual success seem to have been a result of the conversion of many Turks to a Hanafi/Maturdi version of Islam. The Maturdi school of theology would subsequently become the main theological school of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish expansion through the Ottoman Empire in turn enabled the Hanafi and Maturdi schools to spread throughout western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria.
Al-Maturdi’s theological position is witnessed in the creed (
aqida) penned by Najm al-Din al-Nasafi (d. 1142). This creed presents an outline of Muslim belief, beginning with sources of knowledge before moving on to discuss God, his nature and attributes, belief, communication of God to his messengers, and life in this world. The creed subsequently gave way to many commentaries, one of the more important being by the fourteenth-century Ashari theologian al-Taftazani.
6Beginning in the tenth century, a group of individuals sought to show the fusion between Islam and the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers of late antiquity. Although perhaps drawing on the Mutazilites’ earlier arguments, these new thinkers were not nearly as interested in apologetical claims, and many were unwilling to accept conclusions that revealed scripture told them had to be true. This reluctance led to the redefinition of many traditional Muslim concepts, such as creation, prophecy, and redemption.
Many of these philosophers were also scientists, and they engaged, commented on, and made advances in the scientific theories handed to them from late antiquity in such fields as optics, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. Because many of the Islamic philosophers were heavily invested in the Greek philosophical sciences at this time, they worked with the notion that the world was not created but eternal (à la Aristotle) and tended to naturalize traditional Muslim concepts such as prophecy and the afterlife. Their theories not surprisingly met with severe criticism by more orthodox authorities.
THE VIRTUOUS CITY
Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870–950) on the characteristics of the perfect ruler–lawgiver:
The supreme ruler without qualification is he who does not need anyone to rule over him in anything whatever, but has actually acquired the sciences and every kind of knowledge, and has no need of a man to guide him in anything. He is able to comprehend well each kind of the particular things that he ought to do. He is able to guide well all others to everything in which he instructs them, to employ all those who do any of the acts for which they are equipped, and to determine, define, and direct thee acts toward happiness. This is found only in the one who possesses great and superior natural dispositions, when his soul is in union with the Active Intellect…. For man attain revelation only when he attains this rank, that is, when there is n longer an intermediary between him and the Active Intellect…. The men who are governed by the rule of this ruler are the virtuous, good, and happy men. If they form a nation, then that is the virtuous nation.
*Al-Farabi on the superiority of philosophy over religion:
According to the ancients, religion is an imitation of philosophy. Both comprise the same subjects and both give an account of the ultimate principles of the beings. Both supply knowledge about the first principle and the cause of the beings, and both give an account of the ultimate end for the sake of which man is made—that is, supreme happiness—and the ultimate end of every one of the other beings. In everything of which philosophy gives an account based on intellectual perception or conception, religion gives an account based on imagination. In everything demonstrated by philosophy, religion employs persuasion. Philosophy gives an account of the ultimate principles as they are perceived by the intellect. Religion sets forth their images by means of similitudes of them taken from corporeal principles and imitates them by their likenesses among political offices…. Also, in everything of which philosophy gives an account that is demonstrable and certain, religion gives an account based on persuasive arguments. Finally, philosophy is prior to religion in time.
†*Abu Nasr al-Farabi, “The Political Regime,” trans. Fauzi M. Najjar, in Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, eds.,
Medieval Political Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), 36–37.
†Abu Nasr al-Farabi, “The Attainment of Happiness,” trans. Muhsin Mahdi, in ibid., 77–78.
One of the earliest Islamic philosophers was Abu Nasr al-Farabi (ca. 870–950). Although al-Farabi made many contributions to the fields of logic and mathematics, his most famous work is his
Al-Madina al-fadila (
The Virtuous City), wherein he tries to imagine the ideal state. In this work, he argues that religion is a symbolic rendering of philosophical truths meant for the masses. Like Plato, he argues that the philosopher’s duty is to provide guidance to the state, which is ideally ruled by the prophet-philosopher-king.
According to al-Farabi, following Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, God is an Intellect and by definition cannot know particulars. This means that the God of the philosophers cannot know individual actions and thus takes no active role in human affairs. Although nonphilosophers work on the assumption (or “noble lie”) that God rewards the good and punishes the evil, the philosopher realizes the importance of ethics as the sole arbiter of human conduct.
Al-Farabi—like many of the philosophers who would follow in his wake—also controversially argued that the afterlife was not based on the resurrection of the body, but on the eternal existence of the soul (often called the intellect), which loses its distinguishing features when the body dies because, again following the ancient Greek philosophical tradition, it is the essence of the individual, with the body simply being its temporary material casing.
Another important medieval Islamic philosopher is the Persian Ibn Sina (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah) (ca. 980–1037), known in the West as Avicenna. His fourteen-volume Al-Qanun fi-al-tibb (The Canon of Medicine) was a standard medical text in Europe and the Islamic world up until the eighteenth century. In addition, his Kitab al-shifa (The Book of Healing) is a scientific and philosophical encyclopedia that covers all the main sciences of the day, from logic to physics to metaphysics.
Al-Ghazali was extremely critical of al-Farabi and Avicenna. He wrote a work titled Tahafut al-falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers), wherein he accuses them of kufr (unbelief) on many accounts, the most serious being (1) their denial of the world’s creation, (2) their denial that God can know particulars, and (3) their denial of bodily resurrection. Some have argued that al-Ghazali’s critique all but ended philosophical speculation in much of the Islamic world.
Perhaps the most famous medieval Islamic philosopher is Abu
ʾl-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), best known in the West by the name Averroes. Born in Córdoba (Muslim Spain), he was appointed a judge (
qadi) in 1160. His legal stature led him to compose a work titled
The Decisive Treatise, which provided a legal ruling (fatwa) that good Muslims must engage in the study of philosophy because the Quran and the hadith command such activity. His use and praise of philosophy, however, would soon go up against the more conservative and “fundamentalist” beliefs of the Almohad dynasty, which conquered Muslim Spain in 1170. As a result, Averroes was banished to Morocco, and his library was confiscated. Near the end of his life, he was reinstated as a
qadi, and he devoted the rest of his life to his philosophical writings.
AVERROES AND THE LEGAL OBLIGATION TO
STUDY PHILOSOPHY
Thus spoke the lawyer, imam, judge, and unique scholar Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd:
We say: if the activity of philosophy is nothing more than the study of existing beings and reflection on them as indications of the Artisan, that is, inasmuch as they are products of art, and if the Law has recommended and urged reflection on beings, then it is clear that what this name signifies is either obligatory or recommended by the Law.
That the Law summons to the reflection on beings, and the pursuit of knowledge about them, by the intellect is clear from several verses of the Book of God, Blessed and Exalted, such as the saying of the Exalted, “Reflect, you have vision” [Quran 59:2]: this is textual authority for the obligation to use intellectual reasoning, or a combination of intellectual and legal reasoning. Another example is His saying, “Have they not studied the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, and whatever things God has created” [7:185]: this is a text urging the study of the totality of beings. Again, God, the Exalted, has taught that one whom He singularly honored by this knowledge was Abraham, peace on him, for the Exalted said, “So we made Abraham see the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, that he might be [and so on to the end of] the verse [6:75]. The Exalted also said, “Do they not observe the camels, how they have been created, and the sky, how it has been raised up? [88:17–18]; and He said “and they give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth [3:191], and so on in countless other verses.
Since it has now been established that the Law has rendered obligatory the study of beings by the intellect, and reflection on them, and since reflection is nothing more than inference and drawing out of the unknown from the known, and since this is reasoning or at any rate done by reasoning, therefore we are under an obligation to carry on our study of beings by intellectual reasoning.
**Averroes, “The Decisive Treatise, Determining What the Connection Is Between Religion and Philosophy,” trans. George F. Hourani, in Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, eds.,
Medieval Political Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), 164–165.
Because Averroes found so many contradictory ideas circulating in the name of Aristotle, he decided to clarify exactly what the Greek philosopher’s ideas were. As a result, he wrote not just one but three commentaries to each of Aristotle’s philosophical works. These commentaries are referred to as the short, middle, and long commentaries, and they were responsible for introducing the Latin West to Aristotelianism when they were translated from Arabic to Latin, often by Jewish translators familiar with both intellectual cultures. In fact, Averroes’s interpretation of Aristotle became known as “Averroism” and was one of the major schools of philosophy among Jews and Christians up until the Renaissance in the sixteenth century. Averroes also wrote a treatise defending philosophy against the attacks by al-Ghazali, which he entitled
Tahafut al-tahafut (
The Incoherence of the Incoherence).
What happened to the study of philosophy in Islam after the death of Averroes is a matter of some debate with fairly important repercussions about how we think about Islam. Some argue that Averroes’s death marked the end of Islamic rationalism, the rise of religious obscurantism, and the subsequent decline of Islam.
7 Others, however, argue that philosophy’s center of gravity switched from the West to the East, especially to Iran, where it took on a set of different emphases under the name “Illuminationism,” expounded by important philosophers such as Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi (1155–1191), who is mistakenly called a Sufi in some literature, and Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi, also known as Mulla Sadra (1571–1641).
8Although the philosophers’ ideas may not have been representative of “average” Muslims, they are nevertheless important when examining the breadth of Islamic belief and its intersection with other cultures. Such ideas, in other words, reveal that Islamic beliefs did not develop in a vacuum, but in conversation with ancient Greeks, Jews, and Christians. Moreover, it also reveals how the Islamic philosophical tradition is an intimate part of the Western philosophical heritage.
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any attempt to claim that all Muslims believe the same thing proves difficult to maintain. As a result, most of the chapter has covered many different beliefs in Islam, including the opposition that they engendered. In this last section, I survey five doctrines that in the classical formulations came to define the faith (
iman) of the believing Muslim (referred to as a
mumin). The gateway to these five doctrines is called the
shahada (testimony): “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God” (la ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah). This phrase is ideally uttered to the newborn and to the dying Muslim, and the convert repeats it when he or she accepts Islam because it theoretically makes the rest of the beliefs in Islam possible.
The two statements of the shahada—that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his messenger—are nowhere found as a single statement in the Quran. We first encounter the statement on early coins from the Umayyad dynasty and in hadith literature, where there are certain variations on it. The shahada, as we now know it, seems to date from roughly two hundred years after Muhammad’s death.
FAITH
The first doctrine followed by the believing Muslim is the faith that he should have in God and his absolute unity (tawhid). Anything that comes in the way of believing in this unity is referred to as shirk, or “associating” someone or something with God. But, again, this unity needs to be nuanced in such a manner that it includes potentially paradoxical beliefs. For example, some argue that the belief in saints that some Muslims have does not compromise God’s unity, but others argue that such a belief does. Both concepts—and many others relating to faith—often sit awkwardly and seemingly paradoxically under the canopy of faith.
ANGELS
The belief that angels function as messengers and helpers of God is the second doctrine of belief. These angels include those familiar to a Judeo-Christian audience (e.g., Jibril/Gabriel and Mikal/Michael). The Quran mentions that whereas humans are made of clay, angels are made of light. In between humans and angels exists another genus: the jinn (sing., jinni), who are made of fire. These creatures can be either good or evil and are often used to explain various aspects of life (e.g., the uncanny, the strange). Iblis or Shaytan—who, along with his retinue, tempts humans—is also made of fire, according to the Quran.
According to the Islamic tradition, Muhammad was but the last prophet to bring a scripture to his people. In this regard, there is an awareness that there existed other messengers and prophets before his time. Some of these prophets are familiar to Jews and Christians (Moses, Jesus); other are less familiar (Hud, Salih); and others are familiar in name but not in terms of prophetic stature (David, Aaron). In Islam, all these prophets are considered to be Muslim and to have brought more or less the same message.
Although one might think that this belief in other prophets would lead to a form of ecumenicism, classical Muslim orthodoxy maintains, as we have seen, that other scriptures have been “tampered” with. This doctrine,
tahrif, means that many Muslims believe that the Hebrew and Christian Bible have been falsified and that references to Muhammad therein have been removed. On this reading, then, there exists only one “untampered” scripture: the Quran.
THE FINAL JUDGMENT
The fourth doctrine refers to the End of Days, when the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked punished. According to the Quran, each individual stands before God without intermediary (although there are some interpretations that Muhammad can intercede for believers) to receive his or her judgment. The wicked will be cast to hell (jahannam), where they will be punished by angels without respite. Paradise is referred to as “the Garden” (al-janna) inhabited by beautiful young women (huris) and wine that does not make one drunk. Whether such imagery is interpreted literally or symbolically depends on the individual Muslim and the type of Islam he or she follows.
PREDESTINATION
We have already seen in this chapter how the thorny question of free will and determinism played a key role in some of the earliest theological debates within Islam. The fifth and final doctrine of faith is referred to as
al-qada waʾl-qadar (the divine decree and predestination). As this doctrine came to be understood, it argues that God knows and determines everything in the universe and that every human action is recorded. According to a hadith, “Abdallah b. Amr reported God’s messenger as saying ‘God recorded the fates of all creatures 50,000 years before creating the heavens and the earth, and His throne was upon the water.’”
9According to this passage and many others like it, God has preordained all our actions. This proposition, of course, seems to nullify human freedom to act. Regardless, however, Muslim doctrine holds that God is far beyond human comprehension and that humans must behave and act in their lives as if they do have the possibility to choose.
This chapter has attempted to show the breadth and depth of Muslim belief across the centuries. It is next to impossible to capture the complexity and diversity of this belief in a few pages, so suffice it to say that Muslims’ belief structures are not static, that they have developed over time, and that they have played a key role in the shaping of diverse Muslim identities.
NOTES
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Fakhry, Majid. A History of Islamic Philosophy. 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Frank, Richard M. Texts and Studies on the History of Kalam. 3 vols. London: Ashgate, 2007.
Goldziher, Ignaz. Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. Translated by Andras Hamori and Ruth Hamori, with an introduction and additional notes by Bernard Lewis. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Macdonald, Duncan B. Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory. London: Routledge, 1903.
Madelung, Wilferd. Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam. London: Variorum, 1985.
Martin, Richard C., and Mark R. Woodward, with Dwi S. Atmaja. Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mutazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol. Oxford: Oneworld, 1997.
Pines, Shlomo. Studies in Islamic Atomism. Translated by Michael Schwartz. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997.
Rahman, Fazlur. Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
Rosenthal, E. I. J. Political Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Van Ess, Joseph. The Flowering of Muslim Theology. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Watt, W. Montgomery. The Formative Period of Islamic Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973.
Wensinck, A. J. The Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
Wolfson, Harry A. The Philosophy of the Kalam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.