Authority in Islam

From the Rise of Mohammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads

Hamid Dabashi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351317108
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

From the origins of Muhammad's prophetic movement through the development of Islam's principal branches to the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty, the concept of authority has been central to Islamic civilization. By examining the nature, organization, and transformation of authority over time, Dabashi conveys both continuities and disruptions inherent in the development of a new political culture. It is this process, he argues, that accounts for the fundamental patterns of authority in Islam that ultimately shaped, in dialectical interaction with external historical factors, the course of Islamic civilization.

The book begins by examining the principal characteristics of authority in pre-Islamic Arab society. Dabashi describes the imposition of the Muhammadan charismatic movement on pre-Islamic Arab culture, tracing the changes it introduced in the fabric of pre-Islamic Arabia. He examines the continuities and changes that followed, focusing on the concept of authority, and the formation of the Sunnite, Shiite, and Karajite branches of Islam as political expressions of deep cultural cleavages. For Dabashi, the formation of these branches was the inevitable outcome of the clash between pre-Islamic patterns of authority and those of the Muhammadan charismatic movement. In turn, they molded both the unity and the diversity of the emerging Islamic culture. Authority in Islam explains how this came to be.

Dabashi employs Weber's concept of charismatic authority in describing Muhammad and his mode of authority as both a model and a point of departure. His purpose is not to offer critical verification or opposition to interpretation of historical events, but to suggest a new approach to the existing literature. The book is an important contribution to political sociology as well as the study of Islamic culture and civilization. Sociologists, political scientists, and Middle Eastern specialists will find this analysis of particular value.

1

Battle of the Old and the Charismatic

There arise from time to time men who bear to the moral condition of their age much the same relations as men of genius bear to its intellectual condition. They anticipate the moral standard of a later age, cast abroad conceptions of disinterested virtue, of philanthropy, or of self-denial that seem to have no relation to the spirit of their time, inculcate duties and suggest motives of action that appear to most men altogether chimerical. Yet the magnetism of their perfections tells powerfully upon their contemporaries. An enthusiasm is kindled, a group of adherents is formed, and many are emancipated from the moral condition of their age.

—W. E. H. Lecky

The emergence of Muhammad as a charismatic prophet in the early seventh century, the establishment of his personal authority against the traditional Arab order, and the variety of ways in which this authority was sought to be continued aftei his death all provide a unique historical situation in which the Weberian theory of authority, particularly the two modes of traditional and charismatic, can both illuminate the case study and, in turn, be illuminated by it.

Three major forces became active simultaneously upon the death of Muhammad, subsequently giving rise, out of their interactions, to the formation of three responses to the loss of the Muhammadan charismatic authority.

The most important and dominant force was the charismatic legacy of Muhammad and its strong propensity to be established permanently. As Weber recognized, if a charismatic movement is not to be a passing phase in the traditional mode of a given society, then it seeks to imprint itself permanently on its historical course (1978a, 246). In all domains of public and private life, the legacy of the charismatic movement seeks to establish and perpetuate the particularities of its order of authority. Weber considered this entire process under the rubric of routinization. The particular case of Muhammad’s charismatic authority, and the variety of ways in which it was sought to be institutionalized, makes the very use of this term—routinization—problematic. Weber sought to elaborate all of the possible ways in which the initial charismatic movement might be institutionalized; yet all such possibilities, for Weber, share this element of routinization. In the case of post-Muhammadan developments, the use of this term is problematic for two fundamental reasons: first, in the diversity of modes in which Muhammad’s charismatic authority was sought to be institutionalized; and second, in the particular case of the Shiʿites, which was essentially an attempt towards the perpetuation of this mode of authority.

Generally, the extent and nature of pressure that the charismatic authority itself exerts in the postcharismatic period, once established in the form of an alternative, is determined by the particular formulation of (1) the qualities and attributes of the charismatic figure, that is, how extensive and comprehensive this authority is; (2) the mode of relationship between the charismatic figure and his ultimate and higher source of legitimation, God; and (3) the mode of the relationship established between the charismatic figure and his followers. More specifically, in the case of Islam this pattern consisted of the hierarchical structure of authority between Allah and his messenger, Muhammad, and that between Muhammad, as the Messenger of God (rasul Allah), and the Islamic community (ummah). Allah’s authority over this world is considered to be omnipotent; Muhammad’s authority, too, consequently, was comprehensive and all-inclusive. From the other side of the command/obedience nexus, the total life of a Muslim, in all its diversity, is subject to this authority.

The omnipotence of Allah, the charismatic authority of Muhammad, his relationship with Allah, and the supremacy of Allah-Muhammad over the ummah, as well as individual Muslims, are all best represented in the following Qur’anic verse:

Say (O Muhammad): O mankind! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah to you all—(the messenger of) Him unto whom belongeth the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth. There is no God save Him. He quickeneth and He giveth death. So believe in Allah and His Messenger, the Prophet, who can neither read nor write, who believeth in Allah and His words, and follow him that haply ye may be led aright. (VII: 158)

Through the agency of messengership, the omnipotence of Allah was translated into the comprehensive authority of Muhammad; and the complexity of the Allah-Muhammad relationship weighed heavily on the immediate post-prophetic period.

While this process gained momentum, a second simultaneous force was activated. A charismatic movement does not occur in a social vacuum; it is generally expressed against a traditional mode of authority. Various elements of that tradition seek either to reestablish themselves or, if unsuccessful in eradicating the charismatic experience altogether, to salvage some of their strongest traits.

Muhammad launched his charismatic movement against the traditional patrimonial mode of Arab tribal authority, the various elements of which first bitterly resented the Prophet and fought to eliminate his threat to their continuous existence but finally yielded to his power and sought to reestablish themselves, to whatever degree possible, in the institutionalization process of the prophet’s charismatic authority. Yet the forceful pressure of this mode of authority for recognition was constantly countered by the charismatic force of Muhammad’s spiritual, if not physical, presence as well as by what may be termed the metaphysical superiority of Islam over the Arab paganism. complete return to the traditional mode of authority was impossible because of the successful establishment of Islam as the “religion of truth,” mitigated by the Muhammadan legacy. Yet the physical pressure to salvage some moments of that “eternal yesterday”in Islam’s today and tomorrow was constantly present.

To complicate these two simultaneous processes further, Muhammad’s compound, but interrelated, authority began, after his death, the inevitable process of its disintegration. Muhammad’s charismatic authority was, by definition, his personal quality. Recognized as the last Prophet to be sent by Allah (khatim al-nabiyyin), he was not to be followed by a similar figure of authority. The process of his personal charismatic authority being disintegrated into various domains was inevitably added to the former two developments. This process of disintegration, to whatever degree it was realized, manifested the complexity of authority that the Islamic community had inherited after the death of its founding figure. This mode of sweeping personal authority was alien to the Arab collective memory. Attempted answers to this vital question, and Muslims coming to terms with either the comprehensive preservation or the disintegration of Muhammad’s authority, added yet a third course of development that further complicated the institutionalization process that the legacy of this authority assumed.

These three simultaneous, forceful, and interacting processes, which may be visualized as three horizontal lines moving along early Islamic history, are then cut across by three vertical lines, known historically as the different branches of Islam. Each of these branches (vertical lines) will have a particular position vis-à-vis those forceful trends (horizontal lines), which were already independently and yet interconnectedly in process.

In what would later be known as Sunnite Islam there are pressures for the institutional preservation and continuation of the faith as the prophet’s legacy. This tendency toward institutionalization and perpetuation of Islam is, however, characterized most emphatically by the routinization of the social/economic life back to what Weber called a more “normal”situation. It is an inherent tendency of charisma, he noted, whenever it is institutionalized, to become either traditionalized or rationalized. There was a persistent and obvious tendency in the postcharismatic period to leave the Muhammadan experience behind as a “historical”event and arrange the Muslim community so it could resume a “stable”life.

The criterion for such an institutional arrangement is the unquestionable sacred authority of the Qur’an (as a revealed book) and Hadith (the exemplary conduct of the Prophet) over both the daily life of all Muslims and their universal metaphysical system of belief. This tendency was revealed particularly in the famous statement attributed to Abu Bakr, the first Sunnite caliph, upon the death of the Prophet: “If anyone worships Muhammad, Muhammad has died; but if anyone worships God, God is living and does not die.”The death of the Prophet marked the end of an era—a charismatic and necessarily tumultuous era—which had to be put in the background so that the Muslim community could resume a more stable daily routine.

The massive attempt of the majority of Muslims, later to be called the Sunnites, towards a stable life was a direct response to the tumultuous experience of the Muhammadan prophetic period. Moreover, among this group of Muslims there was the strongest penetration of pre-Islamic traditional Arab forces for recognition and accommodation within the new Islamic organization. The emergence of these traditional elements, urging a resumption of daily routine life, had its concomitant economic relevance and significance.

Abu Bakr’s most influential constituency consisted of the Meccan merchant establishment, a group most anxious to resume a routine economic life. Despite the continuation of Islam as the legacy of the Muhammadan charismatic movement, and despite its establishment as a strong and all-inclusive religion among the majority of Muslims, some major pre-Islamic Arab traditions found their way into the political and social developments of early Muslim history. In the same branch of Islam there also occurred the most fundamental disintegration of the Muhammadan charismatic authority into various spheres. Political authority, in the figures of the first four caliphs and others, was the first form to be separated from the total body of the Muhammadan charismatic authority. Subsequently, the religious (the formal, external, organizational, or exoteric), spiritual (the inner, devotional, or esoteric), legal, and military dimensions were further isolated and objectified into distinct and different modes, figures, and institutions of authority.

All three of these fundamental characteristics that identified the Muslim majority were manifested not only in the selection process of the first four caliphs, but also to a considerable degree in the Umayyad and ʿAbbasid leaders as well, whereby in an essentially traditional, pre-Islamic Arab mode of selecting a tribal chief by the council of the elders and his subsequent recognition by other notables of the tribe (bayʿah), the leaders of the Muslim community were selected and ascribed primarily temporal (political) authority. The honorific title “Vicegerent to the Messenger of God” (khalifah rasul Allah) signified essentially political, as opposed to religious, authority.

In what would later be identified as Shiʿite Islam, however, there was an attempt towards the preservation and institutionalization of the prophet’s charismatic authority. The same criteria of the universal and sacred authority of both the Qur’an and the Hadith are applicable here too. For the small group of ʿAli’s partisans, Islam was the ultimate monotheistic religion, Muhammad was the last divinely ordained prophet, and the Qur’an was the very word of God revealed to his most honored servant. These beliefs constituted the most fundamental doctrines upon which Islam, as both a devotional faith and a communal organization, was to be founded. There is, however, a major distinction between the preservation and institutionalization of the Muhammadan charismatic authority as demonstrated in these two groups of Muslims—the future Shiʿites and Sunnites.

In the case of the first force—the strong assertion of the charismatic movement to be institutionalized and perpetuated—among ʿAli’s partisans there was a persistent propensity to maintain and uphold the sanctity and universality of Islam as well as a growing tendency to encapsulate and preserve the very charismatic ambience experienced during the lifetime of the Prophet. This made the post-Muhammadan development of Shiʿite Islam, in all its dimensions and magnitudes, an episode in the perpetuation of charisma, not its routinization. The Shiʿite Imams constituted genuine charismatic figures with all the particularities of this Weberian typology. Of course, in the Shiʿite hierarchy of authority, the Imams were located lower than the Prophet; however, the mode and nature of their authority were personal and charismatic. But while the Prophet’s charismatic authority was defined, legitimated, or “authored”by Allah, the Imams’ authority came from the Prophet. The later Shiʿites’ refusal to accept the authority of the first three caliphs, as well as their recognition of ʿAli as the only legitimate heir to the prophetic authority, reflected their basic belief that the sacred task of designating a leader of the community, with simultaneous political and religious authority, should not be left to the community or, through a reversal of the political culture, to the established procedure of pre-Islamic Arab customs. This argument was obviously not so articulated in early Shiʿite history; neither was it emphasized in the later theological and political developments. However, every doctrinal position of the Shiʿites that marked the supremacy of the Imams as the true successors of the Prophet was a simultaneous departure from the prevailing pre-Islamic Arab practices.

As Shiʿite Islam developed, there was also the strongest resistance to the emergence of traditional Arab elements into the total fabric of Islam, despite the fact that some such influences were actually detectable. At the highest level there is, of course, an unconditional and devotional submission to the supreme authority of Allah, His Book, and His Prophet, both spiritually and organizationally. In mind and body, the two being irrevocably interconnected, the Muslim community, according to the later Shiʿite doctrine, had to be Islamic; the spirit of the Muhammadan message, which had invigorated a particular span of time and place with a sacred force, had to be breathed into the body of the Muslim community and thus shape and mold it into an integral part of Islamic universality.

As to the complexity of Muhammad’s charismatic authority, the Shiʿites gradually articulated a theology that held it intact and transferred it from the Prophet to the Imams, who participated in the same “light”that constituted Muhammad as the messenger of God. The Imams’ authority, however de jure rather than de facto it might have been, was comprehensive and all-inclusive.

These positions vis-à-vis the three major forces that shaped the early history of Islam were manifested most clearly in the recognition of ʿAli as the political, religious, and spiritual (that is, charismatic) leader of the Islamic community, increasingly believed to be divinely ordained and personally designated by the Prophet. The charismatic nature of the Shiʿite Imams and their opposition to the traditional elements were inherently interconnected. “In its pure form,” Weber pointed out, charisma “is the polar opposite of formal and traditional bonds, and it is just as free in the face of the sanctity of tradition as it is in the face of any rationalist deduction from abstract concepts” (1946, 250).

The Kharijites too had particular stands vis-à-vis the three major criteria that precipitated and identified the Islamic divisions. In fact, they were the first Muslims who asked some seminal questions about the nature of Islamic faith and community. Politically, it is important to realize that from the very beginning the Kharijite movement appealed, as will be demonstrated later, to the disinherited and discontented classes of Muslims, both Arab and mawali (non-Arab Muslims who had become “clients”of an Arab tribe), who were disenchanted with both political organizations and doctrinal positions of the Muslim majority. This historical fact is important for understanding the characteristic positions of the Kharijites towards the three forces that have been identified.

The Kharijites advocated the preservation and continuation of Islam as the universal expression of the Muhammadan charismatic legacy. They were among the most pious Muslims and initially the staunchest advocates of ʿAli. As a movement that represented the aspirations of the disinherited classes, Kharijite Islam supported the institutionalization of Islam, especially in its most fundamental tenets of Muslim brotherhood and equality. Within the traditional structure of Arabian society, the Arab Kharijites were the most socially and economically deprived classes who now had been given an equal standing with other Muslims in the social context of Islam. The establishment of this faith as the new spiritual and social order was strongly advocated by these pious Muslims. This tendency was further animated by a persistent urge to keep alive the revolutionary spontaneity of the Muhammadan period. Unlike the majority of Muslims who were seeking an immediate routinization of the charismatic period, the Kharijites advocated a form of permanent revolution against what they perceived to be an unjust social system. But whereas the partisans of ʿAli tended to uphold the charismatic spontaneity of the Muhammadan period in an institutionalized mode of authority, the Kharijites failed to establish, either doctrinally or practically, any particular institutional form within which that authority could survive.

The Kharijites had a negative attitude towards the reemergence of traditional Arab elements into the total fabric of the post-Muhammadan authority without, however, being totally resistant to it. Any intrusion of traditional Arab elements, so far as it revived their former lower social status, would be resisted by the Kharijites. This was true not only for the Kharijite Arabs with less than glorious tribal ancestry but also for the mawali, who were attracted to the slogans of the Kharijites because of their opposition to the social and economic hegemony of the Arab caliphate. Non-Arab Muslims, who were denied an equal standing with their Arab conqueror-brothers, embraced the Kharijite version of Islam principally on the same grounds of its egalitarian and democratic ideals. Kharijite Islam thus basically recruited its zealot advocates from among the malcontents and the disillusioned Muslims who saw in both the pre-Islamic social conditions and the post-Islamic faith of the majority two disagreeable alternatives. They consequently opposed any reversal to the old Arab ways. Their famous motto that anyone, even an Abyssinian slave, could become a caliph quite emphatically attested to, among other things, their total rejection of both the traditional aristocratic criterion adopted by the Muslim majority and the charismatic quality believed to be present in the Shiʿite Imams. In a few other instances, however, when, for example, they deemed some measure of stability to be inevitable if they intended a degree of political continuity, they did resort to pre-Islamic motifs, as will be demonstrated later.

Their view towards the segmentation of the Muhammadan charismatic authority, to whatever limited degree this materialized historically, went along the majority lines. They preferred its being broken down into various segments, with the political authority, stripped of any significant sacred or metaphysical significance, as the sole attribute of any Muslim leader. They attached neither a traditional Arab significance nor a charismatic particularity to the position of their leader; in the former they opposed the Muslim majority, in the latter the partisans of ʿAli. Here again, their famous motto clearly defied any traditional or charismatic criteria as the prerequisite of Islamic leadership. This political authority, furthermore, was severely limited and thus made precarious by the radical “democracy”of the Kharijites, according to which their leaders were under continuous public supervision. This made the assertion of any meaningful authority highly dubious.

The charismatic authority of the Prophet, and the various ways in which it was sought to be institutionalized, overshadowed, to a considerable degree, the rest of Islamic ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Paperback Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Battle of the Old and the Charismatic
• 2. Traditional Arab Authority: An Established Order
• 3. Muhammad’s Charismatic Authority: Towards an Equivalent Islamic Typology
• 4. Establishment of Muhammad’s Charismatic Authority: Emergence of a New Order
• 5. The Foundations of Sunnite Authority: The Routinization of Charisma
• 6. The Foundations of Shiʿite Authority: The Perpetuation of Charisma
• 7. Foundations of Kharijite Authority: The Dissemination of Charisma
• 8. The Charismatic Revolution as a Reconstitution of a Moral Demand System and an Originator of New Paradigmatic Patterns of Authority
• Bibliography
• Index