The Spirit of Tolerance in Islam

Reza Shah-Kazemi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781780761312
• eBook ISBN: 9780857735270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

In 1932, the eminent British scholar of Islam, Sir Hamilton Gibb, wrote: "The nobility and broad tolerance of this religion [Islam], which accepted all the real religions of the world as God-inspired, will always be a glorious heritage for mankind. No other society has such a record of success in uniting, in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavor, so many and so various races of humanity." (Whither Islam?) Such scholarly objectivity towards the tolerance which has historically characterized the Islamic tradition as a whole is in short supply these days. Through an insidious symbiosis of fanatical Muslims and prejudiced Islamophobes, the very opposite image of Islam has emerged as one of the most dangerous stereotypes of our times. The most cursory glance at history will not only reveal the falsity of this stereotype of an intolerant Islam, it will also reveal the little known fact that, not so long ago, it was the Islamic world that provided models of tolerant conduct for a fanatically intolerant Christian world tearing itself apart over dogmatic differences. The first part of this monograph examines the historical record of tolerance in the Islamic tradition, illustrating the expression of the principle of tolerance through the rule of such dynasties as the Ottomans, Mughals, Fatimids, and the Umayyads of Spain. In the second, the principle of tolerance is shown to be rooted in the spirit of the Qur'anic revelation and embodied in the exemplary conduct of the Prophet.

Part 1

A Glance at the Historical Record

It was stated above that a modicum of historical research suffices to refute the claim that the only true Muslim is an intolerant one. It was also made clear that John Locke and other European thinkers of the Enlightenment period were painfully aware of the contrast between a broad-minded and tolerant Ottoman Muslim polity on the one hand, and a dogmatically and mutually intolerant set of Christian nations and churches on the other. It would be appropriate at this point to sketch out some of the ways in which Muslim tolerance was manifested in different historical contexts, before proceeding in the second part of this essay to explore the roots of the spirit of tolerance so evidently characterising the history of Muslim relations with followers of other faiths. We do not mean to imply that the Muslim record is impeccable on this score;¹ only that, in stark contrast to Christendom throughout much of its history, those instances of dogmatic intolerance in Islamic history are exceptions that prove the rule. What follows, then, is a series of snapshots of four dynasties, starting with the most recent, the Ottomans and Mughals, then proceeding to the Fatimids, and finishing with the earliest, the Cordoban Umayyads. Our principal aim here is to show how the Muslim spirit of tolerance is brought to light in these different dynasties; a secondary aim being to highlight some of the distinguishing features or particular accentuations of this spirit as they came to be expressed within each of these Muslim contexts.

The Ottomans

In their introduction to a comprehensive two-volume history of the Ottoman empire, Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis sum up the essential features of this remarkable dynasty which was, for nearly seven hundred years (1280–1924), the principal Muslim ‘Other’ in relation to Christendom.

For nearly half a millennium the Ottomans ruled an empire as diverse as any in history. Remarkably, the polyethnic and multireligious society worked. Muslims, Christians and Jews worshipped and studied side by side, enriching their distinct cultures. The legal traditions and practices of each community, particularly in matters of personal status—that is, death, marriage and inheritance—were respected and enforced throughout the empire. Scores of languages and literatures employing a bewildering variety of scripts flourished. Opportunities for advancement and prosperity were open in varying degrees to all the empire’s subjects. During their heyday the Ottomans created a society which allowed a great degree of communal autonomy while maintaining a fiscally sound and militarily strong central government. The Ottoman Empire was a classic example of the plural society.²

The millet system (Arabic: milla, ‘religious community’) was the chief instrument by means of which the multi-religious empire functioned. The spirit of religious tolerance was the guiding principle of this system within which religious communities were permitted to govern themselves, in return for the payment of the jizya (poll-tax) and recognition of the political authority of the Ottoman rulers. The system was established under Mehmet II (r. 1451–1481) who conquered Constantinople in 1453. One of his first acts was to appoint Gennadius Scolarius as patriarch of the Greek Orthodox community now referred to as a millet. The Patriarch was given the rank of a pașa ‘with three horsetails’; he had the right to apply the laws of the Orthodox faith to his followers, in both religious matters and such secular domains as education, hospitals, social security and justice. As noted by Ottoman historian Stanford Shaw:

The millet leaders found their self-interest cemented to that of the sultan, since it was by his order that that they were given more extensive power over their followers than had been the case in the Christian states that had previously dominated the area. The complete Ottoman conquest of southeastern Europe once again united most of the Christians in the area, Greek and Slav alike, under the authority of the Greek patriarchate, making the Church a particular beneficiary of the Ottoman expansion.³

Such was the respect granted by the Ottomans to the Orthodox Patriarch Gennadios and his church that the Greeks preferred Muslim rule to that of the Latin Franks or the Venetians. The clergy taught that the sultan had a divine sanction to rule, and had a mandate to do so not only as leader of the Muslims but also as the protector of the Orthodox Church. The degree of religious tolerance granted to all Christian denominations was such that the Calvinists and Unitarians of Hungary and Transylvania ‘long preferred to submit to the Turks rather than fall into the hands of the fanatical house of Habsburg’.⁴ It is not hard to see why. After complaining bitterly at the massacre of thousands of Russian Orthodox by Polish Catholics in the seventeenth century, Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, exclaimed: ‘God perpetuate the empire of the Turks for ever and ever! For they take their impost [the jizya] and enter into no account of religion, be their subjects Christians or Nazarenes, Jews or Samarians.’⁵ Similarly, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople it is said that ‘the Easterners [Greek Orthodox Christians] declared that they preferred the Sultan’s turban to the Pope’s tiara’. The bitter memory of what had happened to their city in 1204, two centuries earlier, during the so-called ‘Fourth Crusade’, was still fresh in their minds: the Catholic Venetians sacked the capital of the Byzantine Empire in the most despicable manner, committing ‘one of the most abominable outrages in history’.⁶

One should stress here that not only did the millet system provide Christian leaders with a degree of autonomy greater than that which was possible for these religious leaders under the earlier Christian regimes in the region,⁷ it also brought about—or rather, enforced—a degree of intra-Christian tolerance that was noticeably lacking under Christian rule: such denominations as the monophysite Armenians, to mention one of the key examples, were considered heretical by the Greek Orthodox church, whereas under the Ottomans the Armenian Church was recognised as an independent millet in 1461. This millet came to include a host of other smaller Christian groups, and this diverse group of denominations co-existed peacefully for centuries within the framework of the Ottoman empire.

Shaw’s point above regarding the coincidence between the ‘self-interest’ of the sultan and that of the millet leaders needs to be reformulated somewhat, for it was not simply a question of a pragmatic convergence between political interests. Rather, one needs to take cognisance of the fundamental nature of the system within which these interests were brought into a mutually beneficial mode of convergence, a system governed more than any other single variable by the spirit of Islamic law and the tolerance it enjoined. Indeed, it was at times when the political self-interest of the sultan clashed with the imperatives of tolerance inherent in Islamic law that one observed deviations from the norm, and lapses into what Braude and Lewis rightly refer to as ‘atypical’ intolerance: ‘persecution was rare and atypical, usually due to specific circumstances’. The tolerance that typified Ottoman rule stemmed not from any exceptional circumstances, still less from the whim of the rulers, but from the very nature of the system per se, the system which was ‘maintained by both Holy Law and common practice’.⁸

Braude and Lewis, in common with many other historians who have studied this period, also refer to the fact that religious discrimination was operative within this system, Muslims being clearly the ruling class. Such discrimination shows that Ottoman tolerance cannot be equated with the modern ethos of religious egalitarianism, but it also goes to show that even when Muslims were in the ascendant, the hierarchical organisation of religious communities did not entail persecution or intolerance, only the relegation of the minorities to what would be called today ‘second-class’ status. The inequalities inherent in such a religious hierarchy are to be evaluated according to the medieval standards of the time, not those of the modern world; and according to imperial political structures, not democratic ones.⁹ At a time when anti-Semitism was rife in Christendom, and when the existence of any kind of Muslim community within Christendom was largely unthinkable, Ottoman standards of religious tolerance should be seen not only as highly exceptional, but also as expressive of the spirit of tolerance central to the Islamic ethos. This spirit logically implies equality in matters of religious conscience, even if the political manifestation of this spirit in the imperial and medieval context of the Ottoman world led to the observed socio-political inequalities between Muslims and non-Muslims. These inequalities are of the contingent order, being particular outcomes of a specific historical context; whereas the principle of tolerance, logically implying religious equality, is of the essence, which transcends such contingencies. If one wishes to distinguish between the essential and the contingent as regards Ottoman conduct towards the non-Muslim Other, therefore, one’s focus should be on the fundamental principle at work, which generated tolerance and respect, and not on political contingencies which may have entailed intolerance and disrespect.

Another factor to note as regards the Ottoman system—which was inherently tolerant—as opposed to the role of the sultan—which was possibly capricious—is that in actual practice the sultan had, in the words of Stanford Shaw, ‘very limited power’. This was because so much power was de facto delegated not only to the autonomous millets, but also to the professional guilds, various corporations and religious societies, including the futuwwa (chivalric) orders, Sufi tarīqas and waqf organisations. If the sultan’s role was largely symbolic, what was it that made these social and religious forces work together in harmony? Shaw answers as follows:

The most concrete binding force of the system was the corporative substructure of society that brought together Muslims and non-Muslims alike as a result of common pursuits for union with God, and common economic activities and interests. Products of the society that had evolved in the Middle East over the centuries to meet the needs of all its people, these institutions harmonized conflicting interests in a way that the Ottoman political structures never did, nor aspired to do. One result of this was that decay within the political structures of empires such as that of the Ottomans had much less effect on the operation of the system than one might imagine.¹⁰

Whilst on one level the point being made here appears to be presenting tolerant co-existence as a systemic norm which operated quasi-independently of the Ottomans, or any empire in the Middle East, one should note that at a deeper level what is being implied is that the spirit of tolerant Islam was the operative principle at work here, that principle which, precisely, made room for ‘Muslims and non-Muslims alike’ to engage in their ‘common pursuits for union with God, and common economic activities and interests’. Again, one need only contrast this sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Trajectory of Tolerance
• Part 1 A Glance at the Historical Record
• The Ottomans
• The Mughals
• The Fatimids
• The Umayyads of Cordoba
• Dhimmīs: ‘Protected Minorities’
• Part 2 The Spirit of Tolerance
• Tolerance and Revealed Knowledge
• Confirmation and Protection
• Plurality of Faiths
• Healthy Competition
• Inevitability of Difference
• The Prophetic Paradigm: Compassionate Forbearance
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Select Bibliography