What's Right with Islam
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What's Right with Islam

Feisal Abdul Rauf

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eBook - ePub

What's Right with Islam

Feisal Abdul Rauf

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About This Book

An American imam offers answers for today's toughest questions about Islam, and a vision for a reconciliation between Islam and the West.

One of the pressing questions of our time is what went wrong in the relationship between Muslims and the West. Continuing global violence in the name of Islam reflects the deepest fears by certain Muslim factions of Western political, cultural, and economic encroachment. The solution to the current antagonism requires finding common ground upon which to build mutual respect and understanding. Who better to offer such an analysis than an American imam, someone with a foot in each world and the tools to examine the common roots of both Western and Muslim cultures; someone to explain to the non-Islamic West not just what went wrong with Islam, but what's right with Islam.

Focused on finding solutions, not on determining fault, this is ultimately a hopeful, inspiring book. What's Right with Islam systematically lays out the reasons for the current dissonance between these cultures and offers a foundation and plan for improved relations. Wide-ranging in scope, What's Right with Islam elaborates in satisfying detail a vision for a Muslim world that can eventually embrace its own distinctive forms of democracy and capitalism, aspiring to a new Cordoba - a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace and prosperity.

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Information

Publisher
HarperOne
Year
2009
ISBN
9780061755859
Topic
Theology & Religion
Subtopic
Islamic Theology

CHAPTER 5

We’re All History

Our history shapes how we continue to act, and thus our future. It is important to be aware of events from the past, for they still determine people’s attitudes and worldviews today. It is impossible, for instance, to understand Iranians’ fear of the United States without factoring in the CIA’s overthrow of popularly elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953.1 To ignore our history is to remain trapped in behaviors of the past.
And yet history is more than, as the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1382 CE) points out, “information about political events, dynasties, and occurrences of the remote past, elegantly presented and spiced with proverbs.” He says, “The inner meaning of history…involves speculation and an attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge of the how and why of events.” According to Ibn Khaldun, history is more like philosophy and therefore “deserves to be accounted a branch of it.”2 Thus, in this chapter we take a look not only at our histories, but at the meaning of our histories—how the views of history in the Muslim world and in the West have led us to pursue different courses in our respective societies.
Take, for instance, the views of history of various major religions and philosophies. Here I would like to look briefly at the Hindu (as representative of the Far Eastern), atheist, and Abrahamic religions’ views of history. Comparing these widely varying views of history will help shed light on both the differences and the similarities between Western and Eastern worldviews and may help people of goodwill in various traditions understand what makes the others tick. I am indebted, in this overview, to the late professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, especially his book Islam in Modern History.3
According to Smith, the Hindu worldview is that the world and all its activity is maya, a meaningless illusory veil that can be pierced by proper religious insight. Samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, is to be transcended. History is the sum of our individual actions working themselves out karmically in the accumulated effect on our lives. Salvation for Hindus lies in extrication from samsara, an extrication from history by creating the right kind of karma through improved behavior so that we don’t have to continue to be reincarnated in this cycle of human suffering.4
The atheist worldview is the opposite of this. Atheism asserts that any ideas of God, of a life beyond this, are illusion, often articulated as a crutch for the weak and weak-minded. Atheism’s exclusive concern is with this world. “There is no meaning, no value, and no reality to human life other than its meaning as an item in the on-going historical process.”5 A human being has significance merely as a means to an end within history. The atheist impulse is to shape history according to purely rational human self-interest without any reference to divinely inspired morality.
The Abrahamic faith traditions fall in between these two worldviews. For them, history is fundamental but not exclusively so. For the Christian, God’s activity in history was crucial. The cross and crucifixion illuminate both the love of God and the evil wickedness of human beings. The duty of Christians is to try to save the world, even consecrating their lives to the process, while accepting with equanimity the possibility of failure. The world is filled with sin, so let’s try to improve it; our goodness lies in loving our enemies and hopefully transforming them, and if they do not transform, we try to be forgiving; and so be it if we die failing. History is therefore the field of Christian endeavor based on love as the divine purpose. Morality flows out of salvation, not into it. For the Christian, the significance of the historical process is best defined not by some notion of social progress and how much we accomplish but by how devotedly and how well we love.
In the Semitic (Jewish and Islamic) worldview, the eternal Word of God is the imperative, not as flesh but as law.6 The concern of Islamic law, or Shariah law, is to elaborate this imperative as it was embodied in the Quran and the exemplary actions and teachings of the Prophet. It means that the Muslims have to uphold the Law, to make the Law dwell among us. Therefore the social order and its activities are as much the expression in a practical form of Muslims’ personal faith as are liturgical rites that describe how people worship God. Salvation for the Muslim is admittedly by faith, but faith alone without works is insufficient; faith (iman) must be consummated and expressed by righteous action (‘amal salih). The Muslim ideal is to shape history according to God’s dictate and deeming it a failure if we do not achieve it.
As followers of a religion of adversity, Christians generally do not regard a disintegration in temporal affairs as a religious failure; Muslims do. Jesus Christ left earth in an atmosphere of persecution, and Christians continued to be persecuted. By contrast, as the historian of Islam Bernard Lewis has said, the Prophet Muhammad left this earth as a political success story; thus for Muslims, whose earliest history was associated with political success, the ideal is not just to struggle against history but for and with it.
It is worth noting that the crossfire of an increasingly globalized world has produced combinations and permutations of the above worldviews. One may therefore meet a deeply moral atheist who believes in reincarnation, a ritually observant Muslim who feels free to use and discard others for personal self-interest, or a Christian who believes in retribution over forgiveness. The syncretism may be conscious or unwitting.
HISTORY IN QURANIC PERSPECTIVE
Muslims assert that history began with God and to Him it shall return, and the human endeavor is to redeem history, to integrate temporal righteousness in this world with a timeless and eternal salvation in the next. The Quranic view of history begins with Adam; it is of a Paradise lost: of the eviction of humankind from Paradise because of disobedience to God. The Quran’s intention is to establish humanity on a path that leads back to it, to a Paradise regained in the Hereafter, and to live a life on earth that is reflective of a Paradise regained, a life surrendered to God and therefore reflective of how humans would behave toward each other in a paradisal state. Living a life that ignores God thus leads to destruction even in this world: “Those who believe [that is, have faith] and do good works, their Lord guides them because of their good works toward rivers flowing beneath them in Gardens of bliss…and surely We destroyed many generations before you when they did wrong; in spite of sending many messengers to them with clear arguments they still did not believe. Thus do We recompense the guilty people” (Quran 10:9, 13).
Human history in God’s eyes, from the Quranic perspective, is about society failing to act in accord with the Abrahamic ethic, in spite of repeated admonitions to do so. The Quran urges its readers to “Consider the end of those who worked corruption in the land” (Quran 7:86). “Don’t they see,” it asks, “how many a generation We destroyed before them, whom We established on the earth even more than We established you, and sent the clouds pouring abundant rainwater, causing rivers to flow beneath them? Then We destroyed them because of their sins, and raised after them another generation” (Quran 6:6). Individuals who corrupt their societies bring about dire results not only upon themselves but also upon their communities. The Islamic objective, therefore, is to establish a society expressing the Abrahamic ethic of righteousness to God. A prosperous society not only is one that consists of believers who accept and worship God correctly; it is also one that establishes a just and equitable society, a society of moral integrity, a decent society that protects and furthers the “pursuit of happiness.”
In the Muslim worldview, every mundane event has two references and is seen in two contexts. Every human action has an eternal and a temporal relevance, and each human individual will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment for his or her personal share. Deeds have consequences of one kind in this world and consequences of another in the eternal world to come. Therefore, each action must be assessed both in itself and in its relation to historical development.
Collectively and individually, Muslims have sought Paradise both beyond this world and within history, in a kind of society they believe is correct both for the individual in the next world and for the community in this. The Quranic supplication taught to Muslims, asking that God “grant us good in this world and good in the hereafter” (2:201), added to the Prophet’s advice to “strive in your worldly affairs as if you will live forever, and strive in your affairs of the hereafter as if you will die tomorrow,”7 prompted the earliest Muslims to take on the burden and opportunity of government and of cultural creation in the widest sense.
Muslims thus are deeply convinced that what happens here below is of inescapable and lasting significance (we are referring here to the history of the community and not to individual karmic actions). And therefore the building up of a proper community life on earth is a supreme and religious imperative.
Muslims have historically executed this assignment with remarkable distinction, creating beauty on earth as an expression of God and their understanding of Paradise. Muslims tried to recreate earthly representations of the many Quranic references to the paradisal “gardens of Eden beneath which rivers flow” (Quran 2:25). Muslim attempts to create a kingdom of God on earth were modeled on their understanding of the heavenly rewards granted to the righteous believers in Paradise. These were not just constructs of beauty for beauty’s sake but acts of worship and glorification of God. In walking the gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, one is struck by an ambiance of peace and serenity, which belongs to proximity to God, in addition to the many direct reminders of God in the calligraphic inscriptions all over the palace walls. Such feelings of being close to God were recreated all over the Muslim world, from the gardens of Isfahan and Shiraz in Iran to the Mogul gardens of Kashmir to the ambiance of the Taj Mahal in India, and in all the great mosques from Cordoba to Cairo, from Marrakech to Samarqand, and from Istanbul to Jakarta.
With Christians, Muslims share the conviction that the transcendent reference is in the final analysis more important: the course of history is ultimately less significant than the quality of one’s personal life. Yet Muslims are convinced that the course of history and the social shape it assumes are profoundly relevant to the quality of personal life within it. Muslims believe that there is inherent in the structure of the world and its development a proper course, a right social shape; that the meaning of history must lie in the degree to which these laws of nature and therefore of God become actualized; and, finally, that they who understand the essential laws, and who accept the responsibility thereof, are entrusted with stewardship of the task of executing that actualization, of guiding history to its inevitable and resplendent fulfillment.
Note how similar this viewpoint is to the American worldview, in which inalienable human rights (of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) are given to us by the Creator (who created “all men equal”). As long as the government secures God-given, inalienable rights, and as long as it governs in a manner that respects these rights, it is legitimate (that is, “Islamic”). When it desecrates these rights, it is not legitimate (that is, it is “un-Islamic”). The moral authority of any of its laws must be in keeping with this; otherwise the government is not constitutional, not an expression of what we in America call natural law.
I believe that the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution express the Islamic ideal, which is itself but an expression of the Abrahamic ethic, which according to Quranic history was attempted time and time again by each prophet. This observation is enormously relevant to non-American Muslims, and it is the duty of American Muslims and non-Muslims to convey this understanding to Muslims in the rest of the world. For if they recognize in the American form of governance a genuine substantive workable expression and model of their centuries-old longing for the kingdom of heaven on earth, they can formulate their understanding of an Islamic state along these lines.
SHAPING AN ISLAMIC HISTORY
To further a workable vision shared by America and the Muslim world, it will be helpful for each to have fuller understanding of the history of the other. Only by understanding the ideas that shaped the collective history of each can we hope to create channels of communication that can further our goals of increasing respect between these two great traditions.
Islamic history is essentially about, in biblical terms, establishing the kingdom of God on earth or, in Greek terms, forging the good society. For the purpose of this book we shall segment the fourteen centuries of Islamic history into five epochs that exhibited specific ideas worth highlighting. (Readers should note that Islamic history can be segmented differently.)
Abrahamic Ethic I: The Model Universal Islamic Community,
622–632 CE
The first thirteen years of the Prophet’s mission, from 610 to 622 CE, were focused on teaching his contemporaries the notion of one God. The Meccans got tired of the Prophet’s insistence on preaching his message and in 622 hatched a plot to assassinate him. He got wind of this, and since life in Mecca had become untenable and dangerous for him and his community, the small Muslim community of some seventy families quietly left Mecca in small groups for a town called Yathrib, which the Prophet had been invited to be the leader of. In time Yathrib was called “the Prophet’s town,” medinat un-nabi, or Medina, for short.
The ten years from 622 to 632 saw the Prophet and his nascent community plant in Medina the seeds of an Islamic good society. Defining Islam not in the Quranic universal sense but as “that which came through Muhammad,” we might call this the first chapter in Islamic history.8 During the time of Umar, when a decision was made to establish the Islamic lunar calendar, year 1 was set at 622 CE, that of the emigration (hijra) from Mecca to Medina, for that event birthed the Islamic community historically as a society. During the next ten-year period, a live connection, mediated by the Prophet, continued to exist between God and this budding human society seeking to establish a kingdom of God on earth. During this interval the community in Medina developed a sense of how the human-divine relationship might work on a societal basis.
For Muslims, this era of life in the company of the Prophet in Medina remains the finest example and model for the good society on earth. Every revival attempt throughout Islamic history has been an attempt to recreate this ideal. The ideal or perfect man was the Prophet, and Muslims value his precedent and practice, called his sunnah, and try hard to emulate it at a personal level. Therefore at the individual level, Muslims model themselves after the Prophet, and at the collective and social level, Muslims seek to model their societies and communities according to their understanding of the Prophet’s community in Medina.
What makes this period unique in Islamic history is that here was where God worked with human material to develop a set of guidelines that could inform a universal or global Islamic community. Of course certain aspects of this society were part of its time and place, and the greatest juridical works of Muslim thought have been those that helped thinkers trace the boundaries separating that which is universal and global to Islam (the eternal, timeless aspects) from that which is local and specific to the Prophet’s time and place. The Prophet revived an Abrahamic ethic, which had suffered a long absence in Arabia and which in the intervening centuries had been maintained by the Children of Israel, but in a way that could embrace all.
The community led by Muhammad until his death in 632 put into practice the commandments revealed to him in the Quran, as had been revealed to the prophets before him. Muhammad’s establishment of the first Muslim community liberated the Arabs from their jahiliyyah, their unawareness of God and the concomitants of such a covenantal relationship with the Creator. A social model was created for future Muslims to strive toward. Membership in the Muslim community, the ummah, was open to anyone who surrendered to the One God, a concept that refreshingly transcended the social stratification of the old tribal ways.
Abrahamic Ethic II: The “Rightly Guided” Caliphs, 632–661 CE
The second period of Islamic history is that between 632 and 661 CE, called the era of the Rashidun, or “rightly guided” caliphs. With Medina still the political capital of the Muslim world, the community was led by close companions of the Prophet steeped in an understanding of the Quran and the Prophet’s example and teachings.
After the Prophet’s death, various Arab tribes tried to break away from the ummah and reassert their former independence. Their actions were driven not by religious dissatisfaction but by economics. Historian of religion Karen Armstrong points out that, for centuries, “the Arabs had eked out their inadequate resources by means of the ghazu [raids on other tribes]. But Islam had put a stop to this because the tribes of the ummah were no longer permitted to attack one another.” The first caliph, Abu Bakr, forced the Arab tribes to adhere to the sociopolitical unity of an Islamic ummah. But “what would replace the ghazu,” she asks, “which had enabled the Muslims to scratch out a meager livelihood?”9 The obvious answer was a series of economically driven conquests in the neighboring countries.
Under the second caliph Umar’s leadership, the Arabs overcame the Persians in 637, conquered Jerusalem in 638, and controlled the whole of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt by 641 CE. Many of the Christians, who had been persecuted by the Greek Orthodox, and the Jews preferred the Muslims and welcomed their rule over that of the Byzantines.
Armstrong invites her readers to “look what had happened once they [the Muslims] had surrendered to God’s will! Where Christians discerned God’s hand in apparent failure and defeat, when Jesus died on the cross, Muslims experienced political success as sacramental and as a revelation of the divine presence in their lives.”10 It’s always satisfying for us to say that the past happened because God wanted it that way, no matter how much of it was our own doing. But it was much later that Muslims began to give these events a religious interpretation. Armstrong correctly points out that there was nothing religious about these campaigns; they were not about Muslims conquering the world or converting the non-Arabs to Islam. Because these early conquests were economically driven, the conquered people were not forced to convert, and until the middle of the eighth century conversion was not in fact encouraged.
Umar was a strict disciplinarian. The Muslim soldiers were not allowed to seize the conquered lands for themselves or to settle in the cities. The existing populations lived pretty much as they had except they paid a tax to the Muslim state, which was responsible for protecting them (a tax that was refunded when they could not be protected). New garrison towns were built for the Arab Muslims at strategic locations: Kufah and Basrah in Iraq, Qum in Iran, and Fustat by the Nile in Egypt.
This period of expanding Muslim rule over the neighboring ancient societies of Egypt, Byzantium, and Iran also brought a unique challenge, which was how the rulers in Medina were going to administer an empire containing members of other faiths. Two more of the Prophet’s closest companions, the Rashidun—“rightly guided” caliphs—successively ruled the Muslim ummah until 661. Their rule was formative in that the ummah was ...

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