Islam Without Allah?

The Rise of Religious Externalism in Safavid Iran

Colin Turner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780700714476
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136851667
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This ground-breaking and controversial work locates the antecedents of today's Islamic 'fundamentalism' in 16th and 17th century Iran and the forced conversion of the Sunnite population of Iran to the largely alien doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism; the concomitant extirpation of Sufism and philosophy; and the gradual rise of the 'faqih' or jurist.

Chapter 1

Belief and submission reconsidered

Introduction

One of the earliest foci of theological speculation among Muslim scholars was the relationship between belief (īmān) and submission (islām), and whether there is a meaningful distinction between them. The question was prompted initially by disagreement over whether certain sins committed by Muslims would result in their loss of belief (īmān) or their expulsion from the fold of Islam. The Murji’ites were particularly vocal in the debates which centred upon this issue.¹

That there exists a substantive conceptual difference between īmān and islām is something which, in the first half of this chapter, we shall attempt to clarify with the aid of evidence from the Koran, the Traditions (ahādīth) – both Sunni and Shi’ite – and various works of Koranic exegesis or tafsīr. What we must bear in mind, however, is that the issue at hand transcends the purely theological, and that in no way are we endeavouring to seek a solution to the kind of problem raised by the Murji’ites and their contemporaries. Rather, our aim is to attempt to show how confusion surrounding the terms īmān and islām, and the collapse of the distinction between them, has facilitated the rise to predominance of the jurist in the Islamic world of learning; the gradual limitation of the concept of knowledge (‘ilm) in Islam to the domain of jurisprudence; and the consolidation of nomocentric legalism as the dominant discourse of resurgent Islam and the Muslim scholarly community. Furthermore we aim to show how the failure to recognize that there are in fact at least two modalities of islam adumbrated by the Koran has, wittingly or otherwise, diverted attention away from those Koranic precepts which emphasize the acquisition of self-knowledge, divine gnosis, submission and belief over the regulations, rites and rituals of Islamic orthopraxy.

As far as the Koran is concerned, the process whereby a man comes to believe in a Creator can be said to start with the act of tafakkur (thought or deliberation). The Koran declares in no uncertain terms that the whole of the cosmos is, as it were, a vast open book which is to be pondered, understood and interpreted. It also points out that those among mankind who possess intelligence, insight, understanding, discernment and knowledge will ultimately be able to know the meaning of the ‘Book of Creation’, for the cosmos is replete with ‘signs’ (āyāt) which point to its Creator: the cosmos ‘speaks’ to man as a revelation of God.² The cosmos is held to possess a meaning over and above itself: knowledge about the cosmos is deemed to be of use only if it leads man to the realisation that there is a Creator. At this point – or rather at every point of realisation – man may submit to the knowledge he has obtained or he may choose to ignore or cover (kafara) it and deny the divine origin of the cosmos.³ If he submits to the knowledge he has acquired concerning the Creator of the cosmos, he will have entered the initial stages of islām (submission).

In theory, the logical outcome of this initial stage of submission is acceptance of, and adherence to, the commands of the Creator, which manifest themselves in the code of social, economic and political regulations known as the Islamic sharī‘a. Personal acts of obedience such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage are an integral part of this code: one who adheres to these regulations is known as a Muslim, and is accepted as a member of the Islamic community (umma). There are, thus, two basic forms of submission: one which is internal and concerns īmān; and one which is external and concerns the outward display of obedience.

As we shall see, the Koran declares that, more often than not, man submits externally without submitting internally, which means that whoever is born into a Muslim community cannot assume that he is automatically a believer simply because his parents and culture are Muslim. Naturally, it is not our concern to prove either quantitatively or qualitatively that most Muslims are not true believers in their own revelation: such an undertaking would be as presumptuous as it would methodologically implausible. The point we wish to make here is that the Koran itself posits a very clear difference between, firstly, īmān and islām, and secondly between submission to God (islām) and submission to God’s laws (Islam). That there exists a huge majority for whom Islam in its external manifestation is practically synonymous with the internal act of belief and submission referred to as islām is admitted by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike.⁴ What is generally overlooked, however, is the fact that this tendency to ignore, or inability to recognise, the difference between īmān and the two types of islām has served to divert scholarly attention from the fundamentals of the faith (usūl al-dīn) to the secondary principles (furu‘ al-dīn): since īmān is internal and cannot be gauged by others it has gradually been overshadowed by Islam, which is external and governed by a code of rules and regulations, the derivation, interpretation and implementation of which constitute the domain of highly specialised knowledge occupied by the faqīh or jurist. In actual fact, the Koran affirms that belief is susceptible to increase and decrease; however, when belief is equated with Islam, the fact that a believer’s īmān is either on the increase or the decrease tends to be ignored: since Islam is a static concept, īmān is also understood to be static. As a result, the commands in the Koran which call on the believers to examine themselves and their belief constantly are either overlooked or misinterpreted. Consequently, the concept of da‘wa or ‘inviting to belief’ is focused erroneously on non-believers outside the Islamic community; within the Islamic community itself, the lion’s share of Islamic teaching is taken by the faqīh, who instructs the people in Islam but not in īmān. According to the Malaysian scholar Naquib al-Attas, confusion and error among Muslims concerning the concept of knowledge has led to the rise of false leaders in all spheres of life, particularly in those fields of knowledge which are not obligatory (fard al-‘ayn). Al-Attas says:

The rise of false leaders in all spheres of life which follows from loss of adab and confusion and error in knowledge respectively means in this particular case the rise of false ‘ulama who restrict knowledge (al-‘ilm) to the domain of jurisprudence (fiqh). They are not worthy followers of the mujtahidun..… they are not men of keen intelligence and profound insight, nor are they men of integrity in keeping the trust of right spiritual leadership. Notwithstanding the fact that the Holy Koran repeatedly condemns it, they delight in endless controversy, disputations and polemics which succeed only in making mountains out of jurisprudential molehills in whose blind paths the generality of Muslims are left guideless and bewildered.⁵

Confusion in belief, says al-Attas, stems from ignorance of tawhīd and the fundamental articles of faith and other related essentials of belief. As a result, inordinate attention is directed to the category of knowledge known as fard al-kifāya⁶ – those secondary principles which on the individual level relate to matters of personal conduct and on the social level to questions of state and society. Ignorance of tawhīd, facilitated by the false assumption that īmān and islām are synonymous, and over-emphasis on the secondary branches of knowledge (furū‘) pave the way for the ascendance of the faqīh; the fact that the word ‘ilm as used in the Koran is open to interpretation further enables the faqīh to consolidate his position by conveniently ‘limiting’ knowledge to the domain of jurisprudence.

Thus it is that the question of differentiation between īmān and islām (submission) and Islam, plus the relationship between this differentiation and the concept of knowledge in Islam, must be understood if we are to discover why, from among all categories of Muslim scholars, it is the faqīh who has been able to achieve such prominence and influence in the Islamic world of learning, especially in the context of Twelver Shi’ism and Twelver Shi’ite Iran.

The Koran on īmān and islām

The term īman is the verbal noun of the fourth form of the root āmana, which connotes trust, loyalty and security. The fourth form has the double meaning of to believe and to protect or place in safety.

There are over five hundred and seventy references in the Koran to words which are derived from the root āmana. Of these, almost half describe ‘those who believe’. A cursory study of the Koran reveals that the derivatives of the root āmana preponderate to an overwhelming degree over the derivatives of the root aslama, to submit. That belief and submission are different is clear; the constant use of the word ‘belief’ or ‘believers’ would suggest quite conclusively that īmān is the most crucial element in a believer’s make-up. Hundreds of verses in the Koran contain counsels of wisdom, commands or admonitions beginning with the phrase “O ye who believe!” And the definition of a believer – one who has īmān – can be found in numerous verses in the Koran.

The principal requirement of belief in the Koranic sense of the word is that the individual should attain to a state of perception and reflection in which he sees all the world not as ‘natural’ phenomena but as signs or āyāt of God. All of the ‘natural’ world is claimed by the Koran to point to Him.⁷ The word āyāt denotes not only the verses of the Koran but also the material constituents of the cosmos. Intellect is the prerequisite of belief: the use of reason has to be applied to the signs in order for belief to obtain. Verse 29:35, for instance, describes the destruction of those who defied the prophet Lot as a sign for those who have understanding.⁸ According to Sayyid Ali Husayni Khamini’i, īmān is something ‘without which all actions and efforts are fruitless and ultimately futile.’⁹ As for the role of the intellect and reason in belief, he says that:

Belief must be the result of a conscious choice and the use of personal awareness and understanding, not the result of blind acceptance and imitation (taqlīd). It is thus that true believers can be differentiated from the masses, whose belief is generally worthless and without substance.¹⁰

Belief must be held primarily in five – or, according to some, six – things: God, prophethood, angels, the revealed Books, the Last Day, and Divine Decree and Determining (qadā wa qadar).¹¹ Believers are those who, when God is mentioned, ‘feel a tremor in their hearts, and when they hear His signs rehearsed, find their faith strengthened and put all their trust in their Lord.’¹²

The word zāda, translated in the above verse as ‘strengthened’, connotes the idea of increase; from this verse one understands that belief may increase or decrease, and that fluctuations in belief depend on the individual’s reaction to the aforementioned ‘rehearsal of si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Belief and Submission Reconsidered
• 2. Religion in medieval Iran and the rise of the Safavids
• 3. The consolidation of Safavid power and the rise of Twelver Shi’ite externalism
• 4. Allama Majlisi: externalist extraordinaire
• 5. Externalism in focus: the Twelver Shi’ite doctrines of intizār and raj‘a
• 6. Conclusions
• Select Bibliography
• Index