Islam

A Concise Introduction

Neal Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780700711031
• eBook ISBN: 9781136817809
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This user-friendly reference work provides an accessible introduction to Islam for the general reader and student alike. It presents a historical overview, a description of Islam as a living faith along with a discussion of the problems raised by Western perceptions of Islam. Including key dates and simple definitions, the book provides readers with explanations of technical matters such as the structure of Arabic names and the various ways of transliterating Arabic.

1 What do you Know about Islam?

News Coverage of Islam

This book is intended for beginners. Nevertheless, it would be naive of me to assume that you had no previous knowledge of the subject. How could that be when the media bombard you daily with information about the Muslim world? With this thought in my mind, I decided to spend half an hour with a newspaper before settling down to write this opening chapter. It is Monday May 26 1997. The international news, on page 12 of today's Guardian, begins with a map of the Sudan and a large photograph of soldiers loading their automatic rifles on strips of cloth aligned like prayer mats in the desert. The caption reads, ‘The Islamic state-in-the-making promises martyrs divine marriage with houris in paradise if they fight in the south’, and the accompanying article about the Sudanese civil war is headed, ‘Dark times loom for visionary Sudan’. At the foot of the page, there is a briefer article covering the election results in Iran. It mentions the struggle of the police to maintain dress and behaviour codes; during the post-election celebrations a woman was stopped in her car and arrested for wearing make-up, and schoolgirls (whom the Iranian authorities require to wear Islamic cover from the age of nine) discussed ripping off their head scarves. On the facing page the heading is, ‘Taliban put neighbours on alert’. Beneath it there is another large photograph, this time of turbaned warriors aboard a battered truck in front of a domed mosque. The Taliban have now gained almost complete control of Afghanistan, and an earlier article in the same issue described how yesterday in Mazar-i-Sharif men doffed turbans and long shirts, while the few women who dared to venture outside their homes wore the one-piece head-to-toe burqa. The writer concluded, ‘It is as if the country is being plunged back in time for the sake of peace’. Now, in this article, the focus is on the likely impact of the Taliban victory on the neighbouring central Asian states, which were until recently part of the Soviet Union. The words of a United Nations official are printed in bold type in a central panel, ‘The fear is that you have five new states in search of an identity. Amid all their problems, one rallying identity is Islam’. The only other articles featuring Islam mention matters of more immediate concern to British citizens: two British nurses condemned to be beheaded under Islamic law in Saudi Arabia continue to plead their innocence, alleging that they confessed to murder under duress after being sexually abused by the police; and Mohammed Sarwar, the first Muslim Member of Parliament, is still resisting calls for his resignation in the wake of accusations of bribery.

As far as I am aware, none of the above information is untrue. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of these newspaper reports is to project a distorted image of Islam as a backward and barbaric religion which is inimical to the values of western civilisation and which poses a threat to British citizens at home and abroad. There are three reasons why the image is distorted. First, all the articles which feature Muslims involve violence, repression, sexual immorality or corruption, and the two photographs combine martial and religious motifs. Nothing is said about situations in which Muslims live in peace, or about Islam's emphasis on charity and personal integrity. Presumably, such things are not considered newsworthy.

Second, the incidents which are mentioned are reported in a highly selective way. It is not made clear that there are many Muslims in the Sudan who do not support the National Islamic Front; that many of the young people in Iran who long for a less repressive regime nonetheless have no desire to reject Islam; and that in Afghanistan the majority of those who fought against the Taliban were themselves Muslims. Nor is sufficient emphasis given to the fact that Islam encourages the next of kin of murder victims to accept compensation rather than press for the death-penalty, and that if the two British nurses in Saudi Arabia are beheaded it will be because of the hardness of heart of their alleged victim's non-Muslim brother in Australia. As for the scandal surrounding the newly-elected MP for Govan in Glasgow, there is no mention of the reactions of Britain's Muslims, many of whom feel that he has disgraced not just himself but them and the whole of their community.

Third, the articles do not furnish the readers with the historical background which they would need in order to see these current affairs in perspective. The roots of the Sudanese civil war reach back to the colonial period, when the British exacerbated ethnic and religious divisions by closing the south of the country to the Arabic-speaking Muslims from the north and giving grants to Christian mission schools where pupils were taught in English. The present regime in Iran dates from the Islamic revolution which put an end to the tyrannical rule of the Shah in 1979. Because the Shah was pro-western and enjoyed the full support of the USA, the Islamic government has been staunchly opposed to western influences of any sort, not least the relaxation of conventions governing female modesty. The endemic instability in Afghanistan was made worse by the clash of western and Soviet interests during the Cold War. The USSR invaded the country in 1979 to prop up the communist government. The USA and Britain reacted by aiding the Mujahidin, who were a loose alliance of Muslim groups united in their opposition to communism. When the Soviet troops finally withdrew in 1989, however, external support for the Mujahidin dried up and their former foreign backers encouraged factional fighting to undermine their attempt to establish an Islamic state. Nevertheless, in the face of near total anarchy they decided eventually to back the Taliban as the faction most likely to restore order. As regards Saudi Arabia, it is important to remember that the British and American economies are heavily dependent on the purchase of petroleum and the sale of armaments. Over the years, the Saudis have proved reliable suppliers of the former and avid customers of the latter. It has therefore been in Britain's and the USA's economic interest to turn a blind eye to the deficiencies of Saudi Arabia's judicial system, especially as the majority of its victims have been Saudi dissidents or migrant workers from the Third World. Finally, in the UK, Muslims have been present in large numbers since the nineteen-fifties and now comprise a significant minority, but the lack of proportional representation militates against Muslim candidates being elected to Parliament. There is much more to the background to each of these four situations, but I hope that I have said enough to make you realise that Britain and the USA are not simply innocent spectators of events in the Muslim world.

A History of Misrepresentation

It is worth pausing to ask why it is that the media image of Islam and Muslims is predominantly negative. A simple answer might be that western society requires external enemies and internal scapegoats in order to preserve its own cohesion and that, now that the Cold War is over, the Muslim world has inherited the traditional role of the Soviet Block, while Muslim immigrants bear the stigma formerly reserved for ‘reds under the beds’. Although there is an element of truth in this, the reality is more complex. Over the past few decades, a number of militant Islamic movements have come into existence. The reason for their emergence will be explored in the course of Chapter 4. The fear and suspicion which they arouse is to some extent justified but the assumption that they have the support of all Muslims, and that they represent authentic Islam, is not. Moreover, negative views of Islam were prevalent in Europe before these movements saw the light of day. The origin and development of distorted perceptions of Islam form a long and fascinating story. Here I have space to evoke only a few of the more important episodes.

The roots of European hostility to Islam reach back to the seventh and eighth centuries, when Muslims conquered large parts of the Byzantine Empire including Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. The state religion of the Byzantine Empire was Orthodox Christianity, and Christian theologians like John of Damascus (d. before 753) responded to the loss of those territories, and the conversion of Christians to Islam, by developing a polemical approach to the new religion. They argued that Islam was the most recent and most pernicious of the many heresies which had beset the Church, and they portrayed Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) as a false prophet, the forerunner of the antichrist, who had acquired a garbled knowledge of Christianity through contact with an Arian monk. Despite gross distortions, the writings of the Byzantine theologians did contain some accurate information about Islam. It was known, for example, that in pre-Islamic times the Arabs had been pagans, and that Muhammad had taught them that there was only one God, although the polemicists gave him little credit for this because of his denial of the Trinity.

The situation in mediaeval western Europe was somewhat different. Apart from Spain, very little territory was lost to the Muslims. In fact, by weakening the Byzantine Empire, Islam strengthened western Christendom, for it gave the Frankish kingdom the opportunity to form a new Christian empire and it made it possible for the papacy to advance its claim to universal authority over the Church. In their isolation, western Europeans long remained almost entirely ignorant of Islam and assumed that the Muslims, or Saracens as they called them, were idolaters like the Slavs and other barbarians who lived beyond their borders. In 1095, when Pope Urban II summoned the European knights to launch the First Crusade, it is unlikely that any of those who responded knew or cared about the beliefs and practices of the people they vowed to fight. They simply assumed on the basis of the Bible that the Saracens were the descendants of Abraham's illegitimate son Ishmael and that Christians, as Abraham's true heirs, had a right to the Promised Land. During the period of the Crusades, more accurate information about Islam became available. A decisive step was made by Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny (d. 1156), who commissioned Latin translations of the Quran and other Arabic texts in a bid to defend the Church against Islam. The so-called Cluniac Corpus, which was produced in Spain, included an anti-Muslim tract called the Apology of al-Kindi. This had a section on the life of Muhammad, which contained details drawn from Islamic sources but selected for their polemical utility and presented in a hostile manner. Subsequent Mediaeval biographies of Muhammad, penned during the period of the Crusades and drawing on information derived ultimately from Byzantine sources, were written in a similar vein. They generally depicted him as an opportunist, an imposter, a lecher and a warmonger.

Despite widespread appreciation of Arab philosophy, medicine and science, the largely negative attitude to Islam as a religion persisted well beyond the end of the Middle Ages. The main reason for this was that Islam was the religion of the Ottoman Turks, and the expanding Ottoman Empire posed a serious threat to Europe and hence to Christendom. During the second half of the fourteenth century, the Ottomans overran a large part of the Balkans. In 1453, they captured Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and converted the cathedral church of Haghia Sophia into a mosque; in the sixteenth century they conquered Hungary, besieged Vienna, and made two abortive attempts at taking Malta; and as recently as 1683, they were again at the gates of Vienna.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when Ottoman power was visibly waning, Europeans began to visit Muslim countries in increasing numbers as diplomats, merchants and travellers. At the same time, more scholars began to treat the Muslim world as a serious field of study. A Frenchman, D'Herbelot, compiled what amounted to the first encylopedia of Islam, the Bibliothèque Orientale, which was published posthumously in 1697. Despite D'Herbelot's admiration for Islamic civilisation, however, he did not question the received wisdom that Muhammad was an impious impostor who founded a false religion. Nevertheless, as the European Enlightenment progressed, attitudes began to change, especially amongst those who were less enamoured of Christianity than D'Herbelot had been. Islam was sometimes haled as a rational religion akin to the Deism of the Enlightenment philosophers. Many educated people admired the fact that Muslims were egalitarian; that Islam preached a comparatively healthy attitude to sexuality; and that the Ottomans had proved extraordinarily tolerant towards religious minorities such as Jews and Protestants. These educated people included the historian Henri de Boulainviliers (d. 1722), who wrote a full-scale biography of Muhammad, describing him as a great statesman and a profound political thinker and lawgiver, who founded a religion which fostered reason, justice and tolerance.

European admiration for Islam, which was widespread during the Enlightenment, was shared by Napoleon Bonaparte. Unfortunately for Muslims, however, his short-lived occupation of Egypt, which lasted from 1798 to 1801, heralded the advent of the colonial period and the eventual incorporation of most of the Muslim world in the French, British and Dutch Empires. The effect of this on European perceptions of Islam were both positive and negative. On the positive side, great advances were made in the study of Arabic, and key Islamic texts were edited and translated; there were pioneering ethnographic studies like Edward Lane's The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1842); and the drawings in David Roberts’ Egypt and Nubia (1846–9) led to an appreciation of Islamic architecture. On the negative side, however, even the best European scholars in this period tended to exude an almost effortless superiority. Islam was, after all, the religion of subject peoples. Subject peoples are, it was supposed, inferior. Hence, the argument went, Islam is an inferior religion. Worse still, in the eyes of many European scholar administrators, Islam was actually the root cause of Muslim inferiority – an archaic system of beliefs and practices which stood in the way of progress and modernity. Although some held this opinion sincerely, others were not above employing double standards. For instance, Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Egypt, attacked Islam for its degrading treatment of women, while back at home he was a founding member and sometime president of the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage.

The seclusion and veiling of women in Muslim societies had long been a subject of fascination for Europeans. From the end of the sixteenth century onwards, travellers had returned from Istanbul with anecdotes about the Sutlan's seraglio; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Galland had produced a bowdlerised French translation of the tales of The Thousand and One Nights. In the nineteenth century, however, the ‘Orient’ increasingly fuelled male erotic fantasies. Voyeuristic paintings of Muslim women in harems, slave markets and Turkish baths, became fashionable; Sir Richard Burton translated The Thousand and One Nights in full, adding detailed notes about the sexual mores of the Arabs; and writers like Flaubert escaped the ennuis and restraint of European society to look for inspiration in Egyptian brothels.

In addition to scholars, administrators, artists and writers, Christian missionaries played an important part in fashioning the European vision of Islam during the colonial period. Many of them held views which were scarcely more enlightened than those of the medieval polemicists. Monseigneur (later Cardinal) Lavigerie, who became Archbishop of Algiers in 1867, argued that the French government should support the Church's attempt to convert Muslims to Christianity because this was the only way that such barbarians could be civilised, and in 1882 Muir translated the Apology of al-Kindi into English for the benefit of Protestant missionaries working in India.

Although, as we have seen, European perceptions of Islam during the colonial period were somewhat mixed, two events above all others reinforced the popular image of Islam as the enemy of civilisation. The first was the Greek War of Independence, which lasted from 1821 to 1829. For western Europeans, Greece was a symbol of both Christianity and classical culture. Hence European sympathies were with the Greeks as they fought against their Ottoman overlords, and essayists and poets alike picked up their pens to portray the latter in the blackest possible terms. The second was the First World War. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the Ottomans had little choice but to side with Germany. The Sultan called on Muslims to join him in jihad (holy war) against Britain, France and Russia. In the course of the war, Britain and her allies disseminated propaganda which vilified the Ottomans along with the Germans. Impartial historians have long recognised that the Germans were by no means as culpable as was alleged, but few have seen the need to put the record straight regarding the Ottomans.

Continuing Obstacles to Understanding

Since the end of the First World War, a number of distinguished Christian scholars have forged lasting friendships with Muslims and have worked throughout their lives to undo the harm caused by centuries of anti-Muslim polemic. The conciliatory statements issued by the Second Vatican Council in the mid nineteen-sixties are a measure of these scholars’ success at the official level. The statement contained in the ‘Declaration on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions’ is particularly significant. It reads as follows

Upon the Muslims too, the Church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all- powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men. They strive to submit wholeheartedly even to His inscrutable decrees, just as did Abraham, with whom the Islamic faith is pleased to associate itself. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. They also honour Mary, his virgin mother; at times they call on her, too, with devotion. In addition they await the day of judgement when God will give each man his due after raising him up. Consequently, they prize the moral life, and give worship to God especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

Although in the course of the centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this most sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding. On behalf of all mankind, let them make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.

(W. M. Abbot, The Documents of Vatican II,
London 1967, p. 663).

Nevertheless, this revolution in the Roman Catholic Church's official policy has been slow to influence the thinking of ordinary church-goers in Europe and America, many of whom still cling to the medieval notion of Islam as diabolic.

It is not only Christians who have difficulty in viewing Islam dispassionately. If anything, the problem is even more acute for western secularists. There are two closely related reasons for this. First, secularists feel uncomfortable with Islam because it challenges their assumption that religion is essentially a private affair which ought to have no place in the public domain. Second, they usually fail to appreciate why many Muslims have serious reservations about the desirability of an officially secular society. Looked at from the perspective of European history, and bearing in mind both the intermittent persecution of Jews in Western Europe and the wars of religion which were unleashed by the Protestant Reformation, it may seem obvious that separation of religion and state is the best way of guaranteeing religious freedom. To many Muslims, this is far from obvious, and here I must digress a moment and attempt to put their point of view. For over five-hundred years the Ottoman empire, which was a self-consciously Islamic empire, proved remarkably tolerant towards religious minorities. Although, under Islamic law, Jews and Christians were effectively second-class citizens, their lives and property were considered inviolable and they generally prospered. (The persecution of Armenian Christians in the ninete...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Maps and Diagrams
• 1 What do you Know about Islam?
• News Coverage of Islam
• A History of Misrepresentation
• Continuing Obstacles to Understanding
• 2 Defining Islam
• 3 Islam in History
• Introduction
• The Mission of Muhammad
• The First Four Caliphs
• The Umayyads
• The Abbasids
• Islam in Spain
• The Fatimids and Buyids
• Great Seljuks, Rum Seljuks and Atabegs
• The Mongols
• The Ayyubids and Mamluks
• The Timurids
• The Ottomans
• The Safavids and the Mughals
• Islam in the Horn of Africa, East Africa, Nubia, the Funj and South Africa
• Islam in West Africa
• Islam in South-East Asia
• Recapitulation: Four Successive Periods of Islamic History
• 4 Islam in the Modern World
• Introduction
• 1699-1798 Decline & Reform: (a) The Decline of the Three Great Muslim Empires
• 1699-1798 Decline & Reform: (b) Early Attempts at Reform
• 1798-1922 European Domination: (a) The Demise of the Ottoman Empire
• 1798-1922 European Domination: (b) the Colonisation of the Muslim World
• 1798-1922 European Domination: (c) Muslim Responses to Colonialisation
• 1798-1922 European Domination: (d) the European Impact on Turkey and Iran
• 1922-1962 Decolonialisation and the Origins of Islamism
• 1962 to the Present: (a) Reasons for Islamic Resurgence
• 1962 to the Present: (b) Radical Islamism
• 1962 to the Present: (c) Islam versus Islamism?
• 1962 to the Present: (d) Genuine Revival or Force of Circumstances?
• 5 The Quran
• Its Status
• Its Preservation
• The Chronology of the Revelations
• The Message of the Quran
• Quranic Interpretation
• The Coherence of the Quran
• The Quran in English
• 6 No God but God
• Introduction
• Allah in Pre-Islamic Arabia
• The Witness of the Quran
• Islamic Theology
• Islamic Philosophy
• Sufism
• Mawdudi's Understanding of the First Half of the Shahada
• 7 Muhammad the Messenger of God
• Introduction
• Muhammad in the Quran
• The Hadith
• Modem Scepticism about the Hadiths
• Traditional Biographies of the Prophet
• Muhammad's Alleged Moral Failings
• Muslim Veneration of Muhammad
• Prophets, Messengers, Imams and Saints
• 8 Ritual Prayer
• Introduction
• Prayer in the Quran
• The Prayer Times
• The Call to Prayer
• Preparation for Salat
• Performance of Salat
• Praying together, the Friday Congregational Prayer and the Mosque
• Prayer on Special Occasions
• The ‘Barelwi’ Litany in Honour of the Prophet
• The Origins of Salat
• The Purpose and Significance of Ritual Prayer
• Ritual Prayer in the Modern World
• 9 Zakat
• Introduction
• Zakat in the Quran
• The Payment of Zakat
• The Origins of Zakat
• The Purpose and Significance of Zakat
• Zakat in the Modem World
• 10 Ramadan
• Introduction
• Ramadan and Fasting in the Quran
• The Observance of Ramadan
• The Origins of Ramadan
• The Purpose and Significance of Ramadan
• Ramadan in the Modern World
• 11 The Pilgrimage
• Introduction
• The Kaaba and its Environs
• The Pilgrimage During the Lifetime of the Prophet
• Hajj and Umra in the Quran
• Performing the Umra
• Performing the Hajj
• Visiting the Prophet's Mosque in Medina
• The Origins of Hajj and Umra
• The Purpose and Significance of the Muslim Hajj and Umra
• Hajj and Umra in the Modern World
• 12 The Sharia
• The Nature and Scope of Islamic Law
• The Principal Sunni Law Schools
• The Origins and Development of Twelver Shiite Jurisprudence
• ‘Divinely-specified’ Penalties
• The Sharia in the Modem World
• 13 Denominations and Sects
• Introduction
• Twelver Shiism
• Ismaili Shiism
• Zaydism
• Kharijism
• Beyond the Pale of Islam
• Appendix 1: The Arabic Language and Islamic Names
• Arabic in Transliteration
• Some Hints about the Arabic Language
• Islamic Names
• Appendix 2: The Islamic Calendar and Festivals
• The Principle of the Lunar Calendar
• The Muslim Year and Festivals
• The Era of the Hijra: How to Convert Dates
• Select Bibliography
• Index